The Gun Seller

by Hugh Laurie

  After a while, Ronnie disengaged slightly, and leaned back to look at me. I think maybe there were tears in her eyes, so she was definitely throwing herself into it. Then she turned towards Philip.

  'Philip .. . what can I say?' she said, which was about all she could say.

  Philip scratched the back of his neck, blushed a little, and then got back to the coffee stain on his shirt cuff. He was an Englishman, all right.

  'Leave that for a moment, Jane, will you?' he said, without looking up. This was music to Jane's ears, and she was out of the door in a second. Philip tried a gallant laugh.

  'So,' he said.

  'Yeah,' I said. 'So.' I laughed too, just as awkwardly. 'I guess that's about it, really. I'm sorry, Philip. You know ...'

  We stood like that, the three of us, for another age, waiting for someone to whisper the next line from the prompt corner. Then Ronnie turned to me, and her eyes said do it now.

  I took a deep breath.

  'Philip, by the way,' I said, unhooking myself from Ronnie and stepping up to his desk, 'I wondered if I could ask you...

  you know... if you'd do me a favour.'

  Philip looked as if I'd just hit him with a building.

  'A favour?' he said, and I could tell that he was weighing up the pros and cons of getting very cross.

  Ronnie tutted behind me.

  'Thomas, don't do this,' she said. Philip looked at her and frowned very slightly, but she didn't pay any attention. 'You promised not to do this,' she whispered.

  It was beautifully judged.

  Philip sniffed the air and found it, if not sweet, certainly less sour than it had been, because within thirty seconds of us telling him that we were the only happy couple in the room, it now looked as if Ronnie and I were about to have an argument.

  'What kind of favour?' he asked, folding his arms across his chest.

  'Thomas, I said no.' Ronnie again, really quite angry now.

  I half-turned, speaking to her, but looking at the door, as if we'd had this argument a few times before.

  'Look, he can say no, can't he?' I said. 'I mean, Christ, I'm only asking.'

  Ronnie took a couple of steps forward, edging slightly round the corner of the desk, until she was nearly half-way between us. Philip looked down at her thighs, and I could see him judging our relative positions. I'm not out of this yet, he was thinking.

  'You're not to take advantage of him, Thomas,' said Ronnie, moving a little further round the desk. 'You're just not. It isn't fair. Not now.'

  'Oh for God's sake,' I said, hanging my head.

  'What kind of favour?' said Philip again, and I sensed the hope rising in him.

  Ronnie moved closer still.

  'No, don't, Philip,' she said. 'Don't do this. We'll go, we'll let you ...'

  'Look,' I said, still with my head down, 'I may not get a chance like this ever again. I have to ask him. This is my job, remember? Asking people.' I was starting to get sarcastic and nasty, and Philip was loving every second of it.

  'Please don't listen, Philip, I'm sorry ...' Ronnie shot me an angry look.

  'No, that's all right,' said Philip. He looked back at me, taking his time, thinking that all he had to do now was not make a mistake. 'What is your job, Thomas, by the way?'

  That was nice, the Thomas. A sweet, friendly, rock-solid way to address the man who's just stolen your fiancee.

  'He's a journalist,' said Ronnie, before I had a chance to answer. The word 'journalist' came out as if it was a pretty horrible occupation. Which, let's face it...

  'You're a journalist, and you want to ask me something?' said Philip. 'Well, fire away.' Philip was smiling now. Gracious in defeat. A gentleman.

  'Thomas, if you ask him, at a time like this, after what we agreed . . . ' She let it hang in the air. Philip wanted her to finish it.

  'What?' I said, with a load of truculence.

  Ronnie stared at me furiously, then spun on her heel to face the wall. As she did so, she brushed against Philip's elbow, and I saw him arch slightly. It was beautifully done. I'm very close now, he was thinking. Easy does it.

  'Doing a piece on the breakdown of the nation-state,' I said wearily, almost drunkenly. The few journalists I've spoken to in my life all seemed to have this in common: an attitude of perpetual exhaustion, brought on by dealing with people who just aren't quite as fantastic as they are. I was trying to duplicate it now, and it seemed to be coming out pretty well. 'Economic supremacy of multinationals over governments,' I slurred, as if every dolt in the land ought to know by now that this was the hot issue.

  'For what paper would that be, Thomas?'

  I slumped back down in the chair. Now the two of them were standing, together, on the far side of the desk, while I slouched away on my own. All I needed to do was burp a few times and start picking spinach out of my teeth, and Philip would know he was on to a winner.

  'Any paper that'll have it, basically,' I said, with a grumpy shrug.

  Philip was pitying me now, wondering how he could ever have believed that I was a threat.

  'And you want some . . . what, information?' Coasting down the final straight to victory.

  'Yeah, right,' I said. 'Just about the movement of money, really. How people get around various currency laws, sling money about the place without anyone ever knowing. Most of it's general background stuff really, but there are one or two actual cases that interest me.'

  I did actually burp slightly as I said that. Ronnie heard it and turned to face me.

  'Oh tell him to get lost, Philip, for goodness' sake,' she said. She glared at me. It was a bit frightening. 'He's barged in here ...'

  'Look, mind your own business, can't you?' I said. I was glaring oafishly back at her, and you could have sworn the two of us had been unhappily married for years. 'Philip doesn't mind, do you, Phil?'

  Philip was about to say that he didn't mind at all, that all this was going splendidly from his point of view, but Ronnie wouldn't let him. She was spitting fire.

  'He's being polite, you numbskull,' she shouted. 'Philip has got manners.'

  'Unlike me?'

  'You said it.'

  'You didn't have to.'

  'Oh, you're just so sensitive.'

  Hammer and tongs, we were going. And we'd hardly had any rehearsal.

  There was a long, nasty pause, and perhaps Philip started to think that it all might slip away from him at the last moment, because he said:

  'Did you want to trace specific movements of money, Thomas? Or was it, generally, the mechanisms people might use?'

  Bingo.

  'Ideally both, Phil,' I said.

  After an hour-and-a-half I left Philip with his computer terminal and a list of 'really good mates who owed him one', and made my way across the City of London to Whitehall, where I had an absolutely revolting lunch with O'Neal. Although the food was pretty good.

  We talked of cabbages and kings for a while, and then I watched O'Neal's colour gradually change from pink, to white, to green, as I recapped the story so far. When I laid out what I thought might be a reasonably zingy finish to the whole thing, he turned grey.

  'Lang,' he croaked, over the coffee, 'you can't... I mean ... I can't possibly contemplate your having anything...'

  'Mr O'Neal,' I said, 'I'm not asking for your permission.'

  He stopped croaking, and just sat there, his mouth flapping vaguely. 'I'm telling you what I think is going to happen. As a courtesy.' Which, I admit, was an odd word to use in a situation like this. 'I want you, and Solomon, and your department, to be able to get out of this without too much egg down the front of your shirt. Use it, or don't use it. It's up to you.'

  'But...' he floundered, 'you can't I mean ... I could have you reported to the police.' I think even he realised how feeble that sounded.

  'Of course you could,' I said. 'If you wanted your department to be closed down within forty-eight hours, and its offices turned into a creche facility for the Ministry of Agriculture and F
isheries, then yes, reporting me to the police would certainly be an excellent way of going about it. Now, do you have that address?'

  He flapped his mouth some more, and then shook himself awake, came to a decision, and started sneaking huge, theatrical looks around the restaurant, as a way of telling all the other lunchers that I Am Now Going To Give This Man An Important Piece Of Paper.

  I took the address from him, bolted my coffee, and got up from the table. When I glanced back from the door, I had the very strong feeling that O'Neal was wondering how he could arrange to be on holiday for the next month.

  The address was in Kentish Town, and turned out to be one of a clutch of low-rise sixties council blocks, with freshly-painted woodwork, window-boxes, trimmed hedges and a pebble-dashed row of garages to one side. The lift even worked.

  I stood and waited on the open second-floor landing, and tried to imagine what appalling series of bureaucratic errors had led to this estate being so well looked after. In most parts of London, they collect the dustbins from the middle-class streets and empty them into the council estates, before setting fire to a couple of Ford Cortinas on the pavement. But not here, obviously. Here, there was a building that worked, where people could actually live with a degree of dignity, and not feel as if the rest of society was disappearing over the horizon in a Butlins charabanc. I felt like writing a stiff letter to somebody. And then tearing it up and throwing the bits on to the lawn below.

  The glass-panelled door of number fourteen swung open, and a woman stood there.

  'Hello,' I said. 'My name is Thomas Lang. I'm here to see Mr Rayner.'

  Bob Rayner fed goldfish while I told him what I wanted.

  This time, he wore glasses and a yellow golfing sweater, which I suppose hard men are allowed to do on their days off, and he got his wife to bring me tea and biscuits. We had an awkward ten minutes while I enquired after his head, and he told me that he still got the odd headache, and I said I was sorry about that, and he said not to worry, because he used to get them before I hit him.

  And that seemed to be that. Water under the bridge. Bob was a professional, you see.

  'Do you think you can get it?' I asked.

  He tapped on the side of the aquarium, which didn't seem to impress the fish in the slightest.

  'Cost you,' he said, after a while.

  'That's fine,' I said.

  Which it was. Because Murdah would be paying.

  Twenty-two

  The clever men at Oxford

  Know all that there is to be knowed

  But they none of them know one half as much

  As intelligent Mr Toad.

  KENNETH GRAHAME

  The remainder of my London excursion was taken up with preparations of one sort or another.

  I typed a long and incomprehensible statement, describing only those parts of my adventure in which I had behaved like a good and clever man, and deposited it with Mr Halkerston at the National Westminster Bank in Swiss Cottage. It was long because I didn't have time to do a short one, and incomprehensible because my typewriter has no letter d

  Halkerston looked worried; whether by me, or by the fat brown envelope I gave him, I couldn't tell. He asked if I had any special instructions as to the circumstances under which it should be opened, and when I told him to use his judgement, he quickly put the envelope down and asked someone else to come and take it to the strong room.

  I also converted the balance of Woolf's original payment to me into traveller's cheques.

  Feeling flush, I then went back to Blitz Electronics on Tottenham Court Road, where I spent an hour with a very nice man in a turban, talking about radio frequencies. He assured me that the Sennheiser Mikroport SK 2012 was absolutely the thing, and that I should accept no substitutes, so I didn't.

  I then headed east to Islington to see my solicitor, who pumped my hand and spent fifteen minutes telling me that we must play golf again. I told him that was a splendid idea, but, strictly speaking, we would need to play golf before we'd be able to play it again, at which he blushed and said he must have been thinking of a Robert Lang. I said yes, he must have been, and proceeded to dictate and sign a will, in which I bequeathed all my estate and chattels to The Save The Children Fund.

  And then, with only forty-eight hours to go before I was due back in the trenches, I ran into Sarah Woolf.

  When I say ran into her, I do actually mean I ran into her.

  I'd hired a Ford Fiesta for a couple of days, to take me about London while I made a final peace with my Creator and my Creditors, and the course of my errands took me within yearning distance of Cork Street. So, for no reason that I'm prepared to own up to, I took a left, and a right, and a left again, and found myself tooling past the mostly shuttered galleries, thinking of happier days. Of course, they hadn't really been happier at all. But they'd been days, and they'd had Sarah in them, and that was near enough.

  The sun was low and bright, and I think 'Isn't She Lovely?' was dribbling from the radio as I turned my head, for the tiniest of instants, towards the Glass building. I turned back, just as a flash of blue darted out in front of me from behind a van.

  Darted, at least, is the word I'd have used on the claim form. But I suppose stepped, strolled, ambled, even walked -any of those would have been nearer the truth.

  I stamped on the brake pedal, far too late, and watched in stiff-armed horror as the blue flash first backed away from me, then held its ground, then slammed its fists down on to the bonnet of the Fiesta as the front bumper slid towards its shins.

  There was nothing to spare. Absolutely nothing. If the bumper had been dirty, I would have touched her. But it wasn't, and I didn't, which allowed me to become immediately furious. I'd thrown open the door and got half-way out of the car, meaning to say what the fuck's the matter with you, when I realised that the legs I'd nearly broken were familiar. I looked up and saw that the blue flash had a face, and the sort of startling grey eyes that make men talk gibberish, and excellent teeth, quite a few of which were showing now.

  'Jesus,' I said. 'Sarah.'

  She stared at me, white-faced. Half in shock, and the other half in shock.

  'Thomas?'

  We looked at each other.

  And as we looked at each other, standing there in Cork Street, London, England, in bright sunshine, with Stevie Wonder being sentimental in the car, things around us seemed to change somehow.

  I don't know how it happened, but in those few seconds, all the shoppers, and businessmen, and builders, and tourists, and traffic wardens, with all their shoes and shirts and trousers and dresses and socks and bags and watches and houses and cars and mortgages and marriages and appetites and ambitions .. . they all just faded away.

  Leaving Sarah and me, standing there, in a very quiet world.

  'Are you all right?' I said, about a thousand years later.

  It was just something to say. I don't really know what I meant by it. Did I mean was she all right because I hadn't hurt her, or was she all right because a lot of other people hadn't hurt her?

  Sarah looked at me as if she didn't know either, but after a while I think we decided to go with the former.

  'I'm fine,' she said.

  And then, as if they were arriving back from their lunch hour, the extras in our film began to move again, to make noise. Chattering, shuffling, coughing, dropping things. Sarah was gently wringing her hands. I turned to look at the bonnet of the Ford. She'd made an impression.

  'Are you sure?' I said. 'I mean, you must have ...'

  'Really, Thomas, I'm fine.' There was a pause, which she spent straightening her dress, and I spent watching her do it.

  Then she looked up at me. 'What about you?'

  'Me?' I said. 'I'm

  Well, I mean to say. Where was I supposed to begin?

  We went to a pub. The Duke Of Somewhereshire, tucked into the corner of a mews near Berkeley Square.

  Sarah sat down at a table and opened her handbag, and while she fiddled ar
ound inside it, doing that woman thing, I asked her if she wanted a drink. She said a large whisky. I couldn't remember whether you're supposed to give alcohol to people who've just had a shock, but I knew I wasn't up to asking for hot, sweet tea in a London pub, so I made my way to the bar and ordered two double Macallans.

  I watched her, the windows, and the door.

  They had to have been following her. Had to.

  With the stakes as they were, it was inconceivable that they would let her wander round unattended. I was the lion, if you can believe that for a moment, and she was the tethered goat. It would have been madness to let her roam.

  Unless.

  Nobody came in, nobody peered in, nobody wandered past and sneaked a sideways look in. Nothing. I looked at Sarah.

  She'd finished with her handbag, and now sat, looking towards the middle of the room, her face a complete blank. She was in a daze, thinking of nothing. Or she was in a jam, thinking of everything. I couldn't tell. I was pretty sure that she knew I was looking at her, so the fact that she didn't look back was odd. But then odd isn't a crime.

  I collected the drinks and made my way back towards her table.

  'Thanks,' she said, taking the glass from me and throwing its contents down her throat in one go.

  'Steady,' I said.

  She looked at me for a moment with real aggression, as if I was just one more person at the end of a long line, getting in her way, telling her what to do. And then she remembered who I was - or remembered to pretend to remember who I was - and smiled. I smiled back.

  'Twelve years ageing in a sherry cask,' I said cheerfully, 'stuck out on a Highland hillside, waiting for its big moment - and then bang, doesn't even get to touch the sides. Who'd be a single malt whisky?'

  I was wittering, obviously. But under the circumstances, I felt entitled to do a bit of that. I had been shot, beaten, knocked off my bike, imprisoned, lied to, threatened, slept with, patronised, and made to shoot at people I'd never met. I had risked my life for months, and was hours away from having to risk it again, along with a lot of other lives, some of which belonged to people I quite liked.