The Gun Seller

by Hugh Laurie

  I paid her fifteen pounds and filled in a membership form in the name of Lars Petersen, care of the Vice Squad, New Scotland Yard, and trotted down the steps into the basement to see just exactly how live, sexy, erotic, dancing and girls The Shala could really be.

  It was a sorry sort of dive. Very, very sorry indeed. The management had long ago decided that turning the lights down was a cheap alternative to cleaning the place, and I had the constant feeling that the carpet-tiles were coming away with the soles of my shoes. Twenty or so tables were arranged around a small stage, on which three glassy-eyed girls bounced along to some loud music. The ceiling was so low that the tallest of them had to dance with a stoop; but surprisingly, considering all three were naked and the music was the Bee Gees, they were carrying the whole thing off with a fair degree of dignity.

  O'Neal had a table at the front, and seemed to have taken a shine to the girl on the left, a pasty-faced creature who looked to me as if she could do with a large steak and kidney pie and a good night's sleep. She kept her eyes on the wall at the back of the club and never smiled.

  'Drink.'

  A man with boils on his neck was leaning over the bar at me.

  'Whisky please,' I said, and turned to the stage.

  'Five pounds.'

  I looked back at him.

  'I'm sorry?'

  'Five pounds for the whisky. You pay now.'

  'I don't think I do,' I said. 'You give me the whisky. Then I'll pay.'

  'You pay first.'

  'You fuck yourself with a garden fork first.' I smiled, to take the sting out of it. He brought the whisky. I paid him five pounds.

  After ten minutes at the bar, I decided that O'Neal was here to enjoy the show and nothing else. He didn't look at his watch or the door, and he was drinking gin with enough abandon to convince me that he was definitely off the clock. I finished my own drink and sidled over to his table.

  'Don't tell me. She's your niece and she's only doing this so she can get her Equity Card and join the Royal Shakespeare Company.' O'Neal turned and stared at me as I pulled out a chair and sat down. 'Hello,' I said.

  'What are you doing here?' he said, crossly. I rather think he may have been a little embarrassed.

  'Hang on,' I said. 'That's the wrong way round surely. You're supposed to say "hello" and I say "what are you doing here?"'

  'Where the hell have you been, Lang?'

  'Oh, hither and yon,' I said. 'As you know, I am a petal borne aloft on the autumn winds. It should say that in my file.'

  'You followed me here.'

  'Tut. Followed is such an ugly word. I prefer "blackmail".'

  'What?'

  'But, of course, it means something completely different. So all right, let's say I followed you here.'

  He'd started looking round the room, trying to see if I had any large friends with me. Or maybe he was looking for large friends of his own. He leant forward and hissed at me. 'You are in very, very serious trouble, Lang. It is only fair that I should warn you of that.'

  'Yes, I think you're probably right,' I said. 'Very serious trouble is certainly one of the things I'm in. A strip club is another one. With a senior civil servant who shall remain nameless for at least an hour.'

  He leaned back in his chair, a peculiar leer spreading across his face. The eyebrows raised, the mouth curled upwards. I realised it was the beginning of a smile. In kit form.

  'Oh dear,' he said. 'You really are trying to blackmail me. That is terribly pathetic'

  'Is it? Well we can't have that.'

  'I am meeting someone here. The choice of rendezvous was not mine.' He drained his third gin. 'Now I should be greatly obliged if you would take yourself off somewhere, so I don't have to call the doorman and have you ejected.'

  The sound-track had moved seamfully into a loud but bland cover of 'War, What Is It Good For?' and O'Neal's niece moved down to the front of the stage and started shaking her vagina at us, almost in time to the music.

  'Oh, I don't know,' I said. 'I think I like it here just fine.'

  'Lang, I am warning you. You have at this moment very little credit in the bank. I have an important meeting here, and if you disrupt it, or inconvenience me in any way, I shall foreclose on you. Do I make myself plain?'

  'Captain Mainwaring,' I said. 'That's who you remind me of.'

  'Lang, for the last time ...'

  He stopped when he saw Sarah's Walther. I think I probably would have done the same, in his place.

  'I thought you said you didn't carry firearms,' he said, after a while. Nervous, but trying not to show it.

  'I'm a victim of fashion,' I said. 'Someone told me they're in this year, and I just had to have one.' I started to take off my jacket. The niece was only a few feet away, but she was still staring at the back wall.

  'You are not going to fire a gun in here, Lang. I don't believe you are entirely insane.'

  I bundled the jacket into a tight ball and slipped the gun into one of the folds.

  'Oh, I am,' I said. 'Entirely. Thomas "Mad Dog" Lang they used to call me.'

  'I am beginning ...'

  O'Neal's empty glass exploded. Shards scattered across the table and on to the floor. He went very pale.

  'My God ...' he stammered.

  Rhythm's the thing. You've either got it or you haven't. I'd fired on one of the big crashing chords of 'War' and made no more noise than if I'd been licking an envelope. If the niece had been doing it, she would have fired on the upbeat and ruined everything.

  'Another drink?' I said, and lit a cigarette to cover the smell of burnt powder. 'On me.'

  'War' ended before Christmas and the three girls ambled off the stage, to be replaced by a couple whose act relied heavily on whips. They were pretty obviously brother and sister and couldn't have had less than a hundred years between them. The man's whip was only three feet long because of the low ceiling, but he wielded it as if it was thirty, lashing his sister to the tune of 'We Are The Champions'. O'Neal sipped chastely at a new gin and tonic.

  'Now then,' I said, adjusting the position of the jacket on the table, 'I need one thing from you and one thing only.'

  'Go to hell.'

  'I certainly will, and I'll make sure your room is ready. But I need to know what you've done with Sarah Woolf.'

  He stopped his glass amid sips, and turned to me, genuinely puzzled.

  'What I've done with her? What on earth makes you think I've done anything with her?'

  'She's disappeared,' I said.

  'Disappeared. Yes. That's a melodramatic way of saying you can't find her, I assume?'

  'Her father is dead,' I said. 'Did you know that?'

  He looked at me for a long time.

  'Yes, I did,' he said. 'What interests me is how you knew it.'

  'You first.'

  But O'Neal was starting to get bold, and when I moved the jacket closer to him he didn't flinch.

  'You killed him,' he said, part angry, part pleased. 'That's it, isn't it? Thomas Lang, brave soldier of fortune, actually went through with it and shot a man. Well, my dear friend, you are going to have one hell of a job getting out of this one, I hope you realise that.'

  'What are Graduate Studies?'

  The anger, and the pleasure, gradually slipped out of his face. He didn't look as if he was going to answer, so I decided to press on.

  'I'll tell you what I think Graduate Studies are,' I said, 'and you can give me points out of ten for accuracy.'

  O'Neal sat, motionless.

  'First of all, Graduate Studies means different things to different people. To one group, it means the development and marketing of a new type of military aircraft. Very secret, obviously. Very unpleasant, likewise. Very illegal, probably not. To another group, and this is where it all starts to get really interesting, Graduate Studies refers to the mounting of a terrorist operation that will allow the makers of this aircraft to show off their toy to advantage. By killing people. And make a genuinely huge sack of money
from the resulting flow of enthusiastic buyers. Very secret, very unpleasant, and very, very, very to the power of ten, illegal. Alexander Woolf got wind of this second group, decided he couldn't let them get away with it, and started to make a nuisance of himself. So the second group, some of whom perhaps have legitimate positions in the intelligence community, start mentioning Woolf at drinks parties as a drugs trafficker, to blacken his name and undermine any little campaign he might want to get going. And when that didn't work, they threatened to kill him. And when that didn't work, they did kill him. And maybe they've killed his daughter as well.'

  O'Neal still hadn't moved.

  'But the people I really feel sorry for in all of this,' I said, 'besides the Woolfs, obviously, is anyone who thinks that they belong to the first group, not illegal, but all the time have been aiding, abetting and otherwise lending succour to the second group, very illegal, without even knowing it. Anyone in that position, I would say, has definitely got the skunk by the tail.'

  He was looking over my shoulder now. For the first time since I'd met him, I couldn't tell what he was thinking.

  'Well, that's it,' I said. 'Personally, I thought it was a wonderful routine, but now over to Judith and the opinion of the judges.'

  But he still didn't answer. So I turned and followed his gaze towards the entrance to the club, where one of the doormen stood, pointing at our table. I saw him nod and step back, and the lean, powerful figure of Barnes, Russell P., strode into the room and headed towards us.

  I shot them both dead there and then, and caught the next plane to Canada, where I married a woman called Mary-Beth and started up a successful pottery business.

  At least, that's what I should have done.

  Twelve

  He hath no pleasure in the strength of an horse:

  neither delighteth he in any man's legs.

  BOOK OF PRAYER 1662

  'My, you are a slippery bastard, Mr Lang. A real piece of work, if that expression means anything to you.'

  Barnes and I were sitting in another Lincoln Diplomat - or maybe it was the same one, in which case someone had cleaned the ashtrays since I was last in it - parked underneath Waterloo Bridge. A large illuminated sign displayed the offerings at the National Theatre close by, a stage version of It Ain't Half Hot, Mum directed by Sir Peter Hall. Something like that.

  O'Neal sat in the passenger seat this time, and Mike Lucas was once more at the wheel. I was surprised he wasn't in a canvas bag on a plane back to Washington, but Barnes had obviously decided to give him another chance after the Cork Street gallery debacle. Not that it had been his fault, but fault has got very little to do with blame in these sorts of circles.

  Another Diplomat was parked behind us, with whatever the collective noun for Carls is inside it. A neck of Carls, maybe. I'd given them the Walther, because they seemed to want it such an awful lot.

  'I think I know what you're trying to say, Mr Barnes,' I said, 'and I take it as a compliment.'

  'I don't give a rat's ass how you take it, Mr Lang. Not a rat's ass.' He gazed out through the side window. 'Jesus, do we have a mess of problems here.'

  O'Neal cleared his throat and twisted round in the seat.

  'What Mr Barnes is saying, Lang, is that you have stumbled upon an operation of considerable complexity here. There are ramifications about which you know absolutely nothing, yet you have, by your actions, made things extremely difficult for us.' O'Neal was chancing his arm a bit with that 'us', but Barnes let him get away with it. 'I think I can honestly say ...' he continued.

  'Oh, do fuck off,' I said. O'Neal went a little pink. 'I have only one concern, and that is the safety of Sarah Woolf. Anything else, as far as I am concerned, is a lot of garnish.'

  Barnes looked out of the window again.

  'Go home, Dick,' he said.

  There was a pause, and O'Neal looked hurt. He was being sent to bed without any supper, and yet he hadn't done anything wrong.

  'I think I...'

  'I said go home,' said Barnes. 'I'll call you.'

  Nobody moved until Mike leaned across and opened O'Neal's door for him. In the circumstances, he had to go.

  'Well, goodbye, Dick,' I said. 'It's been an unquantifiable pleasure. I hope you'll think nice thoughts about me when you see my body being dragged out of the river.'

  O'Neal tugged his briefcase out behind him, slammed the door, and set off up the steps to Waterloo Bridge without looking back.

  'Lang,' said Barnes. 'Let's walk.' He was outside the car and strolling down the Embankment before I could answer. I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw that Lucas was watching me.

  'Remarkable man,' I said.

  Lucas turned his head to watch Barnes' retreating back, then looked to the mirror again.

  'Be careful, will you?' he said.

  I paused, with my hand on the door lever. Mike Lucas didn't sound happy. Not at all.

  'Careful of what, specifically?'

  He hunched his shoulders slightly and put his hand up to his mouth, covering the movement of his lips as he spoke.

  'I don't know,' he said. 'I swear to God, I don't know. But there's some shit going on here ...' He stopped at the sound of car doors opening and closing behind us.

  I put my hand on his shoulder.

  Thanks,' I said, and climbed out. A couple of Carls ambled up alongside the car, and puffed their necks out at me. Twenty yards way, Barnes was watching, apparently waiting for me to catch him up.

  'I think I prefer London at night,' he said, once we'd got ourselves in step.

  'Me too,' I said. 'River's very pretty.'

  The fuck it is,' said Barnes. 'I prefer London at night because you can't see it so well.'

  I laughed, and then stopped myself quickly because I think he meant it. He looked angry, and the notion suddenly hit me that his posting to London might have been a punishment for some past transgression, and that here he was, seething and smarting every day at the injustice of his treatment, and taking it out on the city.

  He interrupted my notionalising.

  'I hear from O'Neal that you got a little theory,' he said. 'A little idea you been working on. Is that right?'

  'Certainly is,' I said.

  Take me through it, will you?'

  And so, having no particular reason not to, I went ahead and repeated the speech I'd given O'Neal in The Shala, adding a bit here, subtracting a bit there. Barnes listened without showing much interest, and when I'd finished, he sighed. A long, tired, Jesus what am I going to do with you sort of sigh.

  To put it bluntly,' I said, not wanting there to be any misunderstanding about the way I felt, 'I think you're a dangerous, corrupt, lying piece of nine-day-old mosquito shit. I'd happily kill you now if I didn't think it would make Sarah's position even worse than it already is.' Even that didn't seem to bother him overmuch.

  'Ah huh,' he said. 'And what you've just told me.'

  'What about it?'

  'Of course you wrote it all down? Gave a copy to your lawyer, your bank, your mother, the Queen, only to be opened in the event of your death. All that shit?'

  'Naturally. We do have television programmes over here, you know.'

  'That's fucking debatable. Cigarette?' He pulled out a packet of Marlboro and offered them to me. We smoked together for a while, and I reflected on how odd it was that two men who hated each other very deeply could, by sucking together on some burning paper, engage in a fairly companionable act.

  Barnes stopped and leaned against the balustrade, gazing down into the slick, black water of the Thames. I stayed a few yards away, because you can take all this companionable nonsense too far.

  'OK, Lang. Here it is,' said Barnes. 'I'll say it all once, because I know you're not an idiot. You're slap bang on the money.' He tossed his cigarette away. 'Big deal. So we're going to make a little noise, kick up some trade. Boo-hoo. How's that so terrible?'

  I decided that I would try the calm approach. If that didn't work, I'd try the throw
ing him into the river and running like fuck approach.

  'It's so terrible,' I said slowly, 'because you and I were both born and bred in democratic countries, where the will of the people is thought to count for something. And I believe it's the will of the people, at this time, that governments do not go around murdering their own or anyone else's citizens just to line their own pockets. Next Wednesday, the people may say it's a great idea. But right now, it is their will that we should use the word "bad" when talking about this kind of activity.' I took a last drag and flicked my own dog-end out over the water. It seemed to fall a very long way.

  'Two points occur to me, Lang,' said Barnes after a long pause, 'out of your nice speech. One, neither one of us lives in a democracy. Having a vote once every four years is not the same thing as democracy. Not at all. Two, who said anything about lining our own pockets?'

  'Oh, of course.' I slapped my forehead. 'I hadn't realised. You're going to give all the money from the sale of these weapons to The Save The Children Fund. It's a gigantic piece of philanthropy, and I never even noticed. Alexander Woolf will be so thrilled.' I was beginning to stray from the calm approach. 'Oh, but wait a minute, his intestines are being scraped off a wall in the City. He may not be as fulsome with his thanks as he'd like. You, Mr Barnes,' and I even went so far as to point a finger, 'need your fucking head examined.'

  I walked away from him, back down the river. Two Carls with ear-pieces were ready to cut me off.

  'Where do you think it goes, Lang?' Barnes hadn't moved, he just talked a little louder. I stopped. 'When some Arab playboy drops into the San Martin valley and buys himself fifty Ml Abrams battle tanks and a half dozen F-16s. Writes a cheque for half-a-billion dollars. Where d'you think that money goes? You think I get it? You think Bill Clinton gets it? David fucking Letterman? Where does it go?'