Bleeding Hearts

1

She had just over three hours to live, and I was sipping grapefruit juice and tonic in the hotel bar.

‘You know what it’s like these days,’ I said, ‘only the toughest are making it. No room for bleeding hearts.’

My companion was a businessman himself. He too had survived the highs and lows of the ’80s, and he nodded as vigorously as the whisky in him would allow.

‘Bleeding hearts,’ he said, ‘are for the operating table, not for business.’

‘I’ll drink to that,’ I said, though of course in my line of work bleeding hearts are the business.

Gerry had asked me a little while ago what I did for a living, and I’d told him export-import, then asked what he did. See, I slipped up once; I manufactured a career for myself only to find the guy I was drinking with was in the same line of work. Not good. These days I’m better, much cagier, and I don’t drink on the day of a hit. Not a drop. Not any more. Word was, I was slipping. Bullshit naturally, but sometimes rumours are difficult to throw off. It’s not as though I could put an ad in the newspapers. But I knew a few good clean hits would give the lie to this particular little slander.

Then again, today’s hit was no prize: it had been handed to me, a gift. I knew where she’d be and what she’d be doing. I didn’t just know what she looked like, I knew pretty well what she’d be wearing. I knew a whole lot about her. I wasn’t going to have to work for this one, but prospective future employers wouldn’t know that. All they’d see was the score sheet. Well, I’d take all the easy targets going.

‘So what do you buy and sell, Mark?’ Gerry asked.

I was Mark Wesley. I was English. Gerry was English too, but as international businessmen we spoke to one another in mid-Atlantic: the lingua franca of the deal. We were jealous of our American cousins, but would never admit it.

‘Whatever it takes, Gerry,’ I said.

‘I’m into that.’ Gerry toasted me with whisky. It was 3 p.m. local time. The whiskies were six quid a hit, not much more than my own soft drink. I’ve drunk in hotel bars all over the western world, and this one looked like all of them. Dimly lit even in daytime, the same bottles behind the polished bar, the same liveried barman pouring from them. I find the sameness comforting. I hate to go to a strange place, somewhere where you can’t find any focus, anything recognisable to grab on to. I hated Egypt: even the Coke signs were written in Arabic, and all the numerals were wrong, plus everyone was wearing the wrong clothes. I hate Third World countries; I won’t do hits there unless the money is particularly interesting. I like to be somewhere with clean hospitals and facilities, dry sheets on the bed, English-speaking smiles.

‘Well, Gerry,’ I said, ‘been nice talking to you.’

‘Same here, Mark.’ He opened his wallet and eased out a business card. ‘Here, just in case.’

I studied it. Gerald Flitch, Marketing Strategist. There was a company name, phone, fax and car-phone number, and an address in Liverpool. I put the card in my pocket, then patted my jacket.

‘Sorry, I can’t swap. No cards on me just now.’

‘That’s all right.’

‘But the drinks are on me.’

‘Well, I don’t know—’

‘My pleasure, Gerry.’ The barman handed me the bill, and I signed my name and room number. ‘After all,’ I said, ‘you never know when I might need a favour.’

Gerry nodded. ‘You need friends in business. A face you can trust.’

‘It’s true, Gerry, it’s all about trust in our game.’

Obviously, as you can see, I was in philosophical mood.

Back up in my room, I put out the Do Not Disturb sign, locked the door, and wedged a chair under the handle. The bed had already been made, the bathroom towels changed, but you couldn’t be too careful. A maid might look in anyway. There was never much of a pause between them knocking at your door and them unlocking it.

I took the suitcase from the bottom of the wardrobe and laid it on the bed, then checked the little Sellotape seal I’d left on it. The seal was still intact. I broke it with my thumbnail and unlocked the suitcase. I lifted out some shirts and T-shirts until I came to the dark blue raincoat. This I lifted out and laid on the bed. I then pulled on my kid-leather driving-gloves before going any further. With these on, I unfolded the coat. Inside, wrapped in polythene, was my rifle.

It’s impossible to be too careful, and no matter how careful you are you leave traces. I try to keep up with advances in forensic science, and I know all of us leave traces wherever we are: fibres, hairs, a fingerprint, a smear of grease from a finger or arm. These days, they can match you from the DNA in a single hair. That’s why the rifle was wrapped in polythene: it left fewer traces than cloth.

The gun was beautiful. I’d cleaned it carefully in Max’s workshop, then checked it for identifiers and other distinguishing marks. Max does a good job of taking off serial numbers, but I always like to be sure. I’d spent some time with the rifle, getting to know it, its weight and its few foibles. I’d practised over several days, making sure I got rid of all the spent bullets and cartridge cases, just so the gun couldn’t be traced back to them. Every gun leaves particular and unique marks on a bullet. I didn’t believe that at first either, but apparently it’s true.

The ammo was a problem. I didn’t really want to tamper with it. Each cartridge case carries a head stamp, which identifies it. I’d tried filing off the head stamps from a few cartridges, and they didn’t seem to make any difference to the accuracy of my shooting. But on the day, nothing could go wrong. So I asked Max and he said the bullets could be traced back to a consignment which had accompanied the British Army units to Kuwait during the Gulf War. (I didn’t ask how Max had got hold of them; probably the same source as the rifle itself.) See, some snipers like to make their own ammo. That way they know they can trust it. But I’m not skilled that way, and I don’t think it matters anyway. Max sometimes made up ammo for me, but his eyes weren’t so great these days.

The ammo was .338 Lapua Magnum. It was full metal-jacket: military stuff usually is, since it fulfils the Geneva Convention’s requirements for the most ‘humane’ type of bullet.

Well, I’m no animal, I wasn’t about to contravene the Geneva Convention.

Max had actually been able to offer a choice of weapons. That’s why I use him. He asks few questions and has excellent facilities. That he lives in the middle of nowhere is a bonus, since I can practise all day without disturbing anyone. Then there’s his daughter Belinda, who would be bonus enough in herself. I always take her a present if I’ve been away somewhere. Not that I’d... you know, not with Max about. He’s very protective of her, and she of him. They remind me of Beauty and the Beast. Bel’s got short fair hair, eyes slightly slanted like a cat’s, and a long straight nose. Her face looks like it’s been polished. Max on the other hand has been battling cancer for years. He’s lost about a quarter of his face, I suppose, and keeps his right side, from below the eye to just above the lips, covered with a white plastic prosthesis. Sometimes Bel calls him the Phantom of the Opera. He takes it from her. He wouldn’t take it from anyone else.

I think that’s why he’s always pleased to see me. It’s not just that I have cash on me and something I want, but he doesn’t see many people. Or rather, he doesn’t let many people see him. He spends all day in his workshop, cleaning, filing, and polishing his guns. And he spends a lot of his nights there, too.

He had a Remington 700, pre-fitted with a Redfield telescopic sight. The US Marines use this military version of the ‘Varmint’ as sniper rifles. I’d used one before, and had nothing against it. More interesting though was a Sterling Sniper Rifle. Most people I’d met thought only cars were made in Dagenham, but that’s where the Sterling was crafted. It was user-friendly, down to the cheek-rest and the grooved receiver. You could fit it with any mounting-plate you wanted, to accommodate any telescope or night-sight. I admit, it was tempting.

There were others, too. Max didn’t have them, but he knew where he could get them: an L39A1, the ugly Mauser SP66, a Fusil Modele 1 Type A. I decided I wanted British; call me sentimental. And finally Max handed over the gun we’d both known I’d opt for: a Model PM.

The manufacturers, Accuracy International, call it the PM. I don’t know what the letters stand for, maybe Post-Mortem. But the British Army know it as Sniper Rifle L96A1. A mouthful, you’ll agree, which is why Max and I stick to calling it the PM. There are several versions, and Max was offering the Super Magnum (hence the .338 Lapua Magnum ammo). The gun itself is not what you’d call a beauty, and as I unwrapped it in my hotel room it looked even less lovely, since I’d covered its camouflage with some camouflage of my own.

The PM is olive green in colour, fine if you are hiding in the trees, but not so inconspicuous when surrounded by the grey concrete of a city street. So in Max’s workshop I’d wound some grey adhesive tape around it, wearing my gloves all the time so as not to leave prints on the tape. As a result, the PM now looked like the ballistic equivalent of the Invisible Man, all bandaged except for the bits I needed left open to access. It was a neat job of binding; the wrapping around the stainless-steel barrel alone had taken a couple of hours.

The PM is a long rifle, its barrel nearly four inches longer than the Remington. It’s also heavy, to say that it’s mostly plastic, albeit high-impact plastic: double the weight of the Remington, and over four pounds heavier than the Sterling. I didn’t mind though, it wasn’t as if I’d be carrying it through the jungle. I made it even longer by fitting a flash hider of my own construction. (Max smiled with half of his face as he watched me. Like me, he is an admirer of beauty and craft, and the best you could say of my finished product was that it worked.)

All the guns Max had offered me were bolt-action, all were 7.62mm, and all had barrels with four grooves and a right-hand twist. They differed in styles and muzzle velocity, in length and weight, but they shared one common characteristic. They were all lethal.

In the end, I decided I didn’t require the integral bipod: the angle I’d be shooting from, it would hinder rather than help. So I took that off, minimally reducing the weight. Although the PM accepts a 10-round box, I knew I’d have two bullets at most, preferably only one. With bolt-action rifles, you sometimes didn’t have time for a second shot. While you were working the bolt, your quarry was scuttling to safety.

I picked the gun up at last, and stood in my bedroom staring into the full-length mirror on the wardrobe door. The curtains were closed, so I was able to do this. I’d already fitted the telescopic sight. Ah, Max had made things so difficult. He could give me a Redfield, a Parker-Hale, the Zeiss Diavari ZA... even the old No. 32 sniping telescope. But the PM wasn’t geared up for these, so instead of fussing and having to make my own special sight-mounting plate, I opted for a Schmidt and Bender 6x42 telescopic sight, all the time telling myself I was maybe, for once, going to too much trouble.

I was ready to pick off a flea from a cat’s whisker at 600 yards, when all I had to do was hit a human target, out in the open, at something like a tenth of that. What was I doing buying all this lavish craft and expertise when something bashed together in China would achieve the same objective? Max had an answer.

‘You like quality, you like style.’

True, Max, true. If my targets were suddenly to depart this world, I wanted them to have the best send-off I could give them. I checked my watch, then double-checked with the clock-radio.

She had just over two hours to live.

2

Everything was waiting for Eleanor Ricks.

She’d woken that morning after a drugged sleep, knowing yet another day was waiting out there, ready to bite her. Breakfast and her husband Freddy were waiting in the kitchen, as was Mrs Elfman. When Eleanor and Freddy were both working, Mrs Elfman came in and got breakfast ready, then cleaned everything away and tidied the rooms. When they weren’t working, she did the cleaning but no cooking. Freddy insisted that one or other of them had to be capable of preparing cereal or sausage and eggs and a pot of coffee, so long as their minds weren’t on work. Funny, usually Eleanor ended up cooking if Mrs Elfman wasn’t around, even if she’d to go to work while Freddy was ‘resting’. Today, however, was a work day for both of them.

Freddy Ricks was an actor, of consequence (albeit in TV sitcoms) in the early ’80s but now squeezing a living from ‘character’ parts and not many of them. He’d tried some stage acting but didn’t like it, and had wasted a good deal of their joint savings by spending fruitless time in Hollywood, trying to call up favours from producers and directors who’d moved on from British TV. Today, he was starring in a commercial for breakfast cereal. It would be head and shoulders only, and he’d be wearing a yellow oilskin sou‘wester and a puzzled expression. He had two lines to say, but they’d dub another actor’s voice on later. Freddy couldn’t understand why his own voice wasn’t good enough for them. It had, as he pointed out, been quite good enough for the 12 million viewers who’d tuned in to Stand By Your Man every week of its runs in 1983-4.

He sat at the table munching cornflakes and reading his preferred tabloid. He looked furious, but then these days he always looked furious. The radio sat on the draining board, volume turned down low because Freddy didn’t like it. But Mrs Elfman liked it, and she angled her head towards the transistor, trying to catch the words, while at the same time washing last night’s dishes.

‘Morning, Mrs E.’

‘Morning, Mrs Ricks, how did you sleep?’

‘Like a log, thanks.’

‘All right for some,’ Freddy muttered from behind his cereal spoon. Eleanor ignored him, and so did Mrs Elfman. Eleanor poured herself a mug of black coffee.

‘Want some breakfast, Mrs Ricks?’

‘No thanks.’

‘It’s the most important meal of the day.’

‘I’m still full from last night.’ This was a lie, but what else could she say: if I eat a single morsel I’m liable to be throwing up all morning? Mrs Elfman would think she was joking.

‘Is Archie up?’

‘Who knows?’ growled Freddy.

Archie was their son, seventeen years old and the ‘computer player’ in a pop group. Eleanor had never heard of anyone ‘playing’ the computer as a musical instrument, until Archie had shown her. Now his band were making their second record, their first having been a success in local clubs. She went to the bottom of the stairs and called him. There was no answer.

‘He’s like bloody Dracula,’ complained Freddy. ‘Never seen in daylight hours.’ Mrs Elfman threw him a nasty look, and Eleanor went through to her study.

Eleanor Ricks was a freelance investigative journalist who had somehow managed to make a name for herself without recourse to the usual ‘investigations’ of pop stars, media celebrities, and royalty. But then one day she’d found that magazines wanted to send round journalists to profile her, and she’d started to rethink her career. So now, after years of newspaper and magazine articles, she was finally going into television — just, it seemed, as Freddy was moving out of it. Poor Freddy: she gave him a moment’s thought, then started work.

Today she was interviewing Molly Prendergast, the Secretary of State for Social Security. They were meeting at a central hotel. They wouldn’t be talking about anything concerning the Department of Social Security, or Molly Prendergast’s position there, or even her standing in her own political party. It was much more personal, which was why they were meeting in a hotel rather than at the Department’s offices.

It was Eleanor’s idea. She reckoned she’d get more out of Molly Prendergast on neutral ground. She didn’t want to hear a politician talking; she wanted to hear a mother...

She went through her notes again, her list of questions, press clippings, video footage. She spoke with her researchers and assistant by phone. This was an initial interview, not intended for broadcast. Eleanor would take a tape recording, but just for her own use. There wouldn’t be any cameras or technicians there, just two women having a chat and a drink. Then, if Prendergast looked useful to the project, there’d be a request for a proper on-screen interview, asking the same or similar questions again. Eleanor knew that the Molly Prendergast she got today would not be the one she’d get at a later date. On screen, the politician would be much more cautious, more guarded. But Eleanor would use her anyway: Prendergast was a name, and this story needed a name to get it some publicity. Or so Joe kept telling her.

The batteries for her tape recorder had been charging up overnight. She checked them, taping her voice then winding it back to listen. The recorder, though small, had a stereo microphone built into it and a tiny but powerful external speaker. She would take three C90 tapes with her, though it was expected to be an hour-long interview. Well, it might overrun, or a tape might snap. What was she thinking of? It wouldn’t overrun. Two C90s would do it. But she’d best take a lot of batteries.

She rewound the video compilation and studied it again, then went to her computer and tweaked some of her questions, deleting one and adding two new ones. She printed off this new sheet and read it over one more time. Then she faxed it to her producer, who phoned back with the okay.

‘You’re sure?’ Eleanor asked.

‘I’m sure. Look, don’t worry about this, Lainie.’ She hated him calling her ‘Lainie’. One day, she’d tell him to his face... No, that wasn’t true, was it? It was a small price to pay for Joe Draper’s backing. Joe was an excellent producer, if, like so many of his television colleagues, a bit of a prima donna. He’d earned his money doing a cop drama series and a couple of sitcoms (one of them with Freddy playing the errant next-door neighbour), then had set up his own production company, which specialized in documentaries and docu-dramas. These were good days for independent producers, so long as you knew your market and had a few contacts in the TV broadcasting companies. Joe had plenty of friends: his weekend coke parties at his home in Wiltshire were very popular. He’d invited her along a couple of times, but had neglected to invite Freddy.

‘You forget, Joe, I’m new to this, I can’t be laid back like you.’ Okay, so she was fishing for a compliment, and of course, Joe knew it.

‘Lainie, you’re the best. Just do what you’re best at. Talk to her, open her up, then sit back and look interested. That’s it. You know, like you were a...’ Here it came, another of Joe’s tortured similes. ‘A lion tamer. You go in there, crack your whip, and when she starts to do the trick, you can relax and take the applause.’

‘You really think it’s that simple, Joe?’

‘No, it’s hard work. But the secret is, don’t make it look like hard work. It should be smooth like the baize on a snooker table, so smooth she doesn’t know she’s been potted till she’s falling into the pocket.’ He laughed then, and she laughed with him, amazed at herself. ‘Look, Lainie, this is going to be good TV, I can feel it. You’ve got a great idea, and you’re going about it the right way: human interest. It’s been a winning formula since TV had nappies on. Now go to it!’

She smiled tiredly. ‘All right, Joe, I will.’ Then she put down the phone.

Satisfied, Eleanor phoned for a bike messenger. She wrote a covering note, put it with a copy of the questions into a large manila envelope, and wrote Prendergast’s name and her home address on the front of it. When the bike arrived she hesitated before letting him take the envelope. Then she closed the door and exhaled. She thought she might throw up, but didn’t. That was it. Those were the questions she’d be running with. There was little else to do until five o‘clock but panic and take a few pills and try on clothes. Maybe she’d go out for a little while to calm herself down, walk to Regent’s Park and along the perimeter of the Zoo. The fresh air and the grass and trees, the children playing and running or staring through the fence at the animals, these things usually calmed her. Even the jets overhead could have an effect. But it was fifty-fifty. Half the time, after they calmed her she had to sit on a park bench and cry. She’d bawl and hide her face in her coat, and couldn’t explain to anyone why she was doing it.

She couldn’t explain, but she knew all the same. She was doing it because she was scared.

In the end she stayed home. She was soaking in the bath when the phone rang. Mrs Elfman had already gone home, having once more informed Eleanor that she would not touch Archie’s room until he’d sorted the worst of it out for himself. Freddy had left for his sou‘wester cereal slot, not even saying goodbye or wishing her luck. She knew he wouldn’t be home again. He’d stop in one of his many pubs to talk to other embittered men. It would be seven or eight before he came back here. As for Archie, well, she hadn’t seen him in days anyway.

She’d let the phone ring for a while — what could be so important? — but then realized it might be Molly Prendergast querying or nixing one of the new questions. Eleanor reached up and unhooked the receiver from the extension-set on the wall above the bath. It had seemed mad at the time, a phone in the bathroom, but it came in useful more often than they’d thought.

‘Hello?’

‘Eleanor?’

‘Geoffrey, is that you?’

‘Who else?’

‘You always seem to catch me in the bath.’

‘Lucky me. Can we talk?’

‘What about?’

‘I think you know.’

Geoffrey Johns was Eleanor’s solicitor, and had been for fifteen years. Occasionally, her journalism had landed her with an injunction, a libel suit or a court appearance. She knew Geoffrey very well indeed. She could imagine him seated in his grandfather’s chair in his grandfather’s office (also at one time his father’s office). The office was stuffy and gloomy, the chair uncomfortable, but Geoffrey wouldn’t make any changes. He even used a bakelite telephone, with a little drawer in the base for a notepad. The phone was a reproduction and had cost him a small fortune.

‘Humour me,’ she said, lying back further in the water. A telephone engineer had told her she couldn’t electrocute herself, even if the receiver fell in the water. Not enough volts or something. All she’d feel was a tingle. He’d leered as he’d said it. Just a tingle.

‘I think you know,’ Geoffrey Johns repeated, drawling the words out beyond their natural limits. Eleanor had a feeling he spoke so slowly because he charged by the hour. When she didn’t say anything he sighed loudly. ‘Are you doing anything today?’

‘Nothing much. I’ve an interview this afternoon.’

‘I thought we might meet.’

‘I don’t think that’s necessary.’

‘No?’ Another silence, another pause. ‘Look, Eleanor—’

‘Geoffrey, is there something you want to say?’

‘I... no, I suppose not.’

‘Look, Geoffrey, you’re one of the dearest people I know.’ She halted. It was an old joke between them.

‘My rates are actually very reasonable,’ he supplied, sounding mollified. ‘What about next week? I’ll buy you lunch.’

She ran the sponge between her breasts and then over them. ‘That sounds heavenly.’

‘Do you want to fix a date now?’

‘You know what I’m like, Geoffrey, I’d only end up changing it. Let’s wait.’

‘Fine. Well, as the Americans say, have a nice day.’

‘It’s gone two, Geoffrey, the best of the day’s already over.’

‘Don’t remind me,’ said Geoffrey Johns.

She reached up to replace the receiver in its cradle, and wondered if Geoffrey would try charging her for the call. She wouldn’t put it past him. She lay in the bath a little longer, until there was just enough hot water left in the tap to let her shower off. She ran her fingers through her hair, enjoying the sensation, then towelled briskly and set off naked to the bedroom for her clothes.

She’d had her yellow and blue dress cleaned specially, and was glad the day was sunny. The dress worked best in sunlight.

3

I took a cab from the hotel.

My destination was only a ten-minute walk away, but I knew I’d be less conspicuous in a taxi. London cab-drivers aren’t, in my experience, the all-knowing and inquisitive individuals they’re often made out to be. They nod at you when you tell them your destination, and that’s about it. Of course, mine had one comment ready as I got into his cab.

‘What you got there then, a bazooka or something?’

‘Photographic equipment,’ I answered, though he showed no interest. I had manoeuvred the long metal box into the back of the cab, where, angled between the top corner of the rear window and the bottom front corner of the door diametrically opposite, it afforded me scant space for myself. It was longer than it needed to be; but it was also the shortest adequate box I could find.

It was silver in colour, with three clasp-locks and a black carrying-handle. I’d bought it in a specialist shop for photographers. It was used for carrying around rolls of precious background paper. The shop assistant had tried to sell me some graduated sheets — they were on special offer — but I’d declined. I didn’t mind the box being too big. It did anything but announce that there was a gun inside.

In the movies, the local assassin tends to carry a small attaché case. His rifle will be inside, broken down into stock, fore-end and barrel. He simply clips the parts together and attaches his telescopic sight. Of course, in real life even if you get hold of such a weapon, it would not be anything like as accurate as a solid one-piece construction. Normally, I’d carry my rifle hanging from a special pouch inside my raincoat, but the PM was just too long and too heavy. So instead of walking, I was taking a taxi to the office.

I’d been watching the weather for a couple of hours, and had even phoned from the hotel for the latest Met Office report. Clear, but without bright sunshine. In other words, perfect conditions, the sun being a sniper’s worst enemy. I was chewing gum and doing some breathing exercises, though I doubted they’d be effective in my present cramped condition. But it was only a few minutes until the driver was pulling into the kerb and dropping me outside the office block.

This was a Saturday, remember, and though I was in central London my destination wasn’t one of the main thoroughfares. So the street was quiet. Cars and taxis waited for the lights to change further down the road, but the shops were doing slow business and all the offices were closed. The shops were at street level, the usual mix of ceramics studios, small art galleries, shoe shops, and travel agents. I paid the driver and eased the carrying-case out on to the pavement. I stood there until he’d driven off. Across the street were more shops with offices above, and the Craigmead Hotel. It was one of those old understated hotels with overstated room rates. I knew this because I’d toyed with staying there before opting for a much safer choice.

The building I was standing outside was a typical central London office complex, with four steps up to an imposing front door, and a facade which in some parts of the city would hide a huge family home broken up into flats. Indeed, the building next-door had been converted to flats on all but its ground and first floors. My chosen site, however, was currently being gutted and reshaped to offer, as the billboard outside put it, LUXURY OFFICE ACCOMMODATION FOR THE 21ST CENTURY.

I’d been along here yesterday and the day before, and again earlier today. During the week, the place was busy with workmen, but this being Saturday the main door was locked tight, and there was no sign of life inside. That’s why I’d chosen it over the flats next door, which offered the easier target but would probably be in use at weekends. I walked up to the main door and worked the lock. It was a simple Yale, not even permanently fixed. The real locks would come later on in the renovation. Meantime, there being little inside worth pinching, the contractors hadn’t bothered with a quality lock.

They hadn’t got round to installing the alarm system yet either: another reason for my choice. Wires led out of the front wall into fresh air. Later, they’d be hooked up to the alarm and a casing put over the whole. But for now security was not the main concern.

I’m not the world’s greatest locksmith, but any housing-estate teenager could have been into the place in seconds. I walked into the entrance hall, taking my carrying-case with me, and closed the door behind me. I stood there for a minute listening to the silence. I could smell drying plaster and wet paint, planed wood and varnish. The downstairs looked like a building site. There were planks and panels of Gyproc and bags of cement and plaster and rolls of insulation. Some of the floorboards had been lifted to allow access to wiring ducts, but I didn’t see any fresh rolls of electrical cable: the stuff was probably too valuable to be left lying around. The electrical contractor would take it away with him every night in his van and bring it back again next day. I knew a few electricians; they’re careful that way.

There were also no power-tools lying around, and very few tools of any description. I guessed they’d be locked away somewhere inside the building. There was a telephone on the floor, one of those old slimline models with the angular receiver resting over the dial. It was chipped and dotted with paint, but more surprisingly was attached to a phone-point on the wall. I lifted the receiver, and heard the familiar tone. I suppose it made sense: this was going to be a long job; there’d have to be some means of communication between the gang and their base. I put back the receiver and stood up.

Since I hadn’t been in the place before, I knew I had to get to know it quickly. I left the case in the reception area and headed upstairs. Some doors had been fitted, but none were locked, except one to a storage area. I presumed that was where the tools were kept.

I found the office I needed on the second floor.

The first floor was too close to ground level. There was always the chance of some pedestrian glancing up, though they so seldom did. The third floor, on the other hand, made the angle a little too difficult. I might have accepted its challenge, but I knew I needed a good hit. No time for games today, it had to be fast and mundane. Well, not too mundane. There was always my calling card.

My chosen office was as chaotic as any other part of the building. They were fitting a false ceiling, from which fell power points, probably for use with desktop computers. The ceiling they were putting up, a grid of white plastic strips, would be hiding the real ceiling, which was ornately corniced with an even more ornate central ceiling-rose, presumably at one time surrounding the room’s main light fitting, a chandelier perhaps. Well, they’re fucking up old buildings everywhere, aren’t they?

I checked my exits: there was only the front door. It looked like they were working on a fire exit to the rear of the building, but meantime they’d left all their ladders and scaffolding there, effectively barricading the door. So when I left, I’d have to leave through the front door. But that didn’t worry me. I’ve found that just as attack is the best form of defence, so boldness can be the best form of disguise. It’s the person slinking away who looks suspicious, not the one walking towards you. Besides, attention was going to be elsewhere, wasn’t it?

The window was fine. There was some ineffective double glazing, which could be slid open, and behind which lay the original sash-window. I unscrewed the window lock and tried opening it. The pulleys stuck for a moment, their ropes crusted with white paint, and then they gave with an audible squeak and the window lifted an inch. With more effort, I opened it a second and then a third inch. This wasn’t ideal. It meant the telescopic sight would be pointing through the glass, while the muzzle would be stuck into fresh air. But I’d carried out an assassination before under near-identical conditions. To be honest, I could probably have forced the window open a bit further, but I think I was looking for just a little challenge.

I peered out. No one was looking back at me. I couldn’t see anyone in the shops over the road, and no one staring from the hotel windows further along. In fact, some of the shops looked like they were closing for the day. My watch said 5.25. Yes, some of them, most of them, would close at 5.30. The tourists and visitors at the Craigmead Hotel wouldn’t be in their rooms, they’d still be out enjoying the summer weather. By six o‘clock, the street would be dead. I only had to wait.

I brought the case upstairs and opened it. I couldn’t find a chair, but there was a wooden crate which I upended. It seemed strong enough, so I placed it by the window and sat on it. The PM lay on the floor in front of me, along with two bullets. I sat there thinking about cartridges. You wouldn’t think something so small and so fixed in its purpose could be quite so complex. Straight or bottleneck? Belted, rimmed, semi-rimmed, rimless or rebated? Centre-fire or rim-fire? Then there was the primer compound. I knew that Max mixed his own compound using lead styphnate, antimony sulphide and barium nitrate, but in a ratio he kept to himself. I picked up one of the bullets by its base and tip. What, I wondered, is it like to be shot? I knew the answer in forensic terms. I knew the kinds of entrance and exit wounds left by different guns at different ranges and using different ammunition. I had to know this sort of thing, so I could determine each individual hit. Some snipers go for the head shot; some of them call it a ‘JFK’. Not me.

I go for the heart.

What else did I think about in that room, as the traffic moved past like the dull soothing roll of waves on a shore? I didn’t think about anything else. I emptied my mind. I could have been in a trance, had anyone seen me. I let my shoulders slump, my head fall forward, my jaw muscles relax. I kept my fingers spread wide, not clenched. And with my eyes slightly out of focus, I watched the second hand go round on my watch. Finally I came out of it, and found myself wondering what I would order for dinner. Some dark meat in a sauce rich enough to merit a good red wine. It was five minutes to six. I picked up the PM, undid the bolt, pushed home the first bullet, and slid the bolt forward. Then I took a small homemade cushion from my jacket pocket and placed it between my shoulder and the stock of the rifle. I had to be careful of the recoil.

This was a dangerous time. If anyone saw me now, they wouldn’t just see a man at a window, they’d see the barrel of a gun, a black telescopic sight, and a sniper taking aim. But the few pedestrians were too busy to look up. They were hurrying home, or to some restaurant appointment. They carried bags of shopping. They kept their eyes to the treacherous London paving slabs. If a cracked slab didn’t get you, then the dog shit might. Besides, they couldn’t look straight ahead; that was to invite a stranger’s stare, an unwanted meeting of eyes.

The sight was beautiful, it was as if I was standing a few feet from the hotel steps. There was a central revolving door, and ordinary push-pull doors to either side. Most people going into or coming out of the hotel seemed to use the ordinary doors. I wondered which one she would use. It was six now, dead on the hour. I blinked slowly, keeping my eyes clear. One minute past six. Then two minutes past. I took deep breaths, releasing them slowly. I’d taken my eye away from the telescope. I could see the hotel entrance well enough without it. Now a car was drawing up outside the hotel. There was a liveried chauffeur in the front. He made no effort to get out and open the back doors. The man and woman got out by themselves. He looked like a diplomat; the car carried a diplomatic plate below its radiator grille. They walked up the three carpeted steps to the revolving door. And now two women were coming out.

Two women.

I put my eye to the telescopic sight. Yes. I pulled the gun in tight against my cushioned shoulder, adjusted my hands a fraction, and put my finger on the trigger. The two women were smiling, talking. The diplomat and his wife had moved past them. Now the women were craning their necks, looking for taxis. Another car drew up and one of the women pointed towards it. She started down a step, and her companion followed. The sun appeared from behind a cloud, highlighting the yellow and blue design on her dress. I squeezed the trigger.

Straight away, I pulled the gun in from the window. I knew the hit had been good. She’d fallen backwards as if pushed hard in the chest. The other woman didn’t realise for a moment what had happened. She was probably thinking, fainting fit or heart attack. But now she’d seen the blood and she was looking around, then crawling down the steps on her hands and knees, taking cover behind the diplomat’s car. The driver was out of the car and looking around. He’d pulled a pistol from inside his jacket and was screaming at the diplomat to get indoors. The driver in the other car seemed to have ducked down in his seat.

And now there were sirens. You were always hearing sirens in central London — ambulances, fire engines. But these were police cars and they were screaming to a stop outside the hotel. I stood up and moved away from the window. It was impossible, they couldn’t be here so quickly. I took another look. Some of the police were armed, and they were making for the block next to this one, the block with all the flats in it. Passers-by were being ordered to take cover, the woman was yelling and crying from the cover of the car, the armed chauffeur was crouching over the lifeless body. He put his hands up when the police took aim at him, and started to explain who he was. It might take them a little while to believe him.

I knew I had seconds to get out. They’d turn their attention to this building next. I put the gun back in its box along with the unused bullet, closed the box, and left it there. Normally I’d take the gun away with me and break it up, then dispose of it. Max never wanted my guns back, and I couldn’t blame him. But I knew I couldn’t risk walking out with that carrying-case.

As I walked downstairs, the idea came to me. There was a hospital just a few blocks away. I picked up the telephone and dialled 999, then asked for an ambulance.

‘I’m a severe haemophiliac, and I’ve just had a terrible accident. I think there’s haemorrhaging to the head.’ I gave them the address, then put the phone down and went in search of a brick. There were some just inside the front door. I picked one up and smashed it into my forehead, making sure the edge of the brick made the initial contact. I touched my forehead with the palm of my hand. There was blood.

And then from outside came the sound of a muffled explosion: my calling card.

I’d planted the device in the morning. It was at the bottom of a dustbin in an alley behind some restaurants. The alley was about five hundred yards from the Craigmead Hotel. It was a small bomb, just big enough to make a noise. The alley was a dead end, so I doubted anyone would be hurt. Its purpose was to deflect attention while I walked away from the scene. I knew it would still deflect attention, but I doubted I’d be able to walk away without being spotted by the police.

Now there was another siren, not a police car but an ambulance. God bless them, the emergency services know that when a haemophiliac phones them up, it has to be priority. I unlocked the main door and looked out. Sure enough, the ambulance had drawn up outside. One of the ambulance men was opening the back door, the other was climbing out from the driver’s side.

Together they pulled a stretcher from the back of the ambulance, manoeuvred it on to the pavement, and wheeled it towards the front door. Someone, a policeman probably, called out to them and asked what they were doing.

‘Emergency!’ one of them called back.

I held the door open for them. I had a hand to my bloody forehead, and an embarrassed smile on my face.

‘Tripped and fell,’ I said.

‘Not surprised with all this rubbish lying around.’

‘I was working upstairs.’

I let them put me on to the stretcher. I thought it would look better for the audience.

‘Do you have your card?’ one of them asked.

‘It’s in my wallet at home.’

‘You’re supposed always to carry it. What’s your factor level?’

‘One per cent.’

They were putting me in the ambulance now. The armed police were still in the apartment block. People were looking towards the source of the explosion from a few moments before.

‘What the hell’s happened here?’ one ambulance man asked the other.

‘Christ knows.’ The second ambulance man tore open a packet and brought out a compress, which he pressed to my forehead. He placed my hand on it. ‘Here, you know the drill. Plenty of pressure.’

The driver closed the ambulance doors from the outside, leaving me with his colleague. Nobody stopped us as we left the scene. I was sitting up, thinking I wasn’t safe yet.

‘Is this your card?’ The ambulance man had picked something off the floor. He started reading it. ‘Gerald Flitch, Marketing Strategist.’

‘My business card. It must have fallen out of my pocket.’ I held out my hand and he gave me back the card. ‘The company I’m working for, they’re supposed to be moving into the new office next week.’

‘It’s an old card then, the Liverpool address?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘our old offices.’

‘Are you factor eight or nine, Mr Flitch?’

‘Factor eight,’ I told him.

‘We’ve got a good Haematology Department, you’ll be all right.’

‘Thank you.’

‘To tell you the truth, you’d have been as quick walking there.’

Yes, we were already bumping through the hospital gates and up to the Emergency entrance. This was about as far as I could take the charade. I knew that behind the compress the bleeding was already stopping. They took me into Emergency and gave a nurse my details. She went off to call someone from Haematology, and the ambulance men went back to their vehicle. I sat for a few moments in the empty reception area, then got up and headed for the door. The ambulance was still there, but there was no sign of the ambulance men. They’d probably gone for a cup of tea and a cigarette. I walked down the slope to the hospital’s main entrance, and deposited the compress in a waste-bin. There were two public telephones on the wall, and I called my hotel.

‘Can I speak to Mr Wesley, please? Room 203.’

‘Sorry,’ said the receptionist after a moment, ‘I’m getting no reply.’

‘Can I leave a message? It’s very important. Tell Mr Wesley there’s been a change of plans, he has to be in Liverpool tonight. This is Mr Snipes from Head Office.’

‘Is there a number where he can contact you, Mr Snipes?’ I gave her a fictitious phone number prefixed with the Liverpool code, then put down the phone. There was a lot of police activity on the streets as I walked back to my hotel.

The thing was, the police would find the PM, and then they’d want to speak to the man who’d been taken away in the ambulance. The nurse in Emergency could tell them I’d given the name Gerald Flitch, and the ambulance man could add that my business card had carried a Liverpool address. From all of which, they could track down either Flitch’s Liverpool home or his employers and be told he was on a trip to London, staying at the Allington Hotel.

Which would bring them to me.

The Allington’s automatic doors hissed open, and I walked up to the reception desk.

‘Any idea what’s going on? There are police all over the place?’

The receptionist hadn’t looked up yet. ‘I heard a bang earlier on,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what it’s about though.’

‘Any messages for me? Wesley, Room 203.’

Now she looked up. ‘Goodness, Mr Wesley, what happened to you?’

I touched my forehead. ‘Tripped and fell. Bloody London pavements.’

‘Dear me. I think we’ve got some plasters.’

‘I’ve some in my room, thanks.’ I paused. ‘No messages then?’

‘Yes, there’s a message, came not ten minutes ago.’ She handed it to me, and I read it.

‘Shit,’ I said in exasperation, letting my shoulders slump for the second time that day. ‘Can you make my bill up, please? Looks like I’ll be checking out.’

I couldn’t risk taking a cab straight from the Allington to another hotel — the cabbie would be able to tell police my destination — so I walked about a bit, lugging my suitcase with me. It was lighter than before, about fourteen pounds lighter, and too big for the purpose. Having used nearly all my cash settling my bill, I drew two hundred out of a cash machine. The first two hotels I tried were both full, but the third had a small single room with a shower but no bath. The hotel sold souvenirs to guests, including a large holdall with the hotel name emblazoned front and back. I bought one and took it upstairs with me. Later that evening, I took my now empty suitcase to King’s Cross. Luggage lockers are hard to find in central London, so I deposited the case in the left luggage room at King’s Cross station. Seeing the size of the case, the man behind the desk braced himself before attempting to lift it, then was caught off-balance by how light it was.

I took another cab back to my hotel and settled down to watch the news. But I couldn’t concentrate. They seemed to think I’d hit the wrong person. They thought I was after the diplomat. Well, that would help muddy the water, I didn’t mind that at all. Then they mentioned that police had taken away a large box from a building across from the hotel. They showed the alley where my little device had gone off. The metal bin looked like torn wrapping. Nobody had been injured, though two kitchen assistants in a Chinese restaurant had been treated for shock and cuts from flying glass.

They did not, of course, speculate as to how police had arrived on the scene so quickly. But I was thinking about it. I was tumbling it in my mind, and not coming up with any clever answers.

Tomorrow, there’d be time for thinking tomorrow. I was exhausted. I didn’t feel like meat and wine any more. I felt like sleep.

4

There was little love lost between Freddy Ricks and Geoffrey Johns, despite which, the solicitor was not surprised to receive Freddy’s call.

Freddy was half cut, as per usual, and sounded dazed.

‘Have you heard?’

‘Yes,’ Geoffrey Johns said, ‘I’ve heard.’ He was seated in his living room, a glass of Armagnac trembling beside him on the arm of the sofa.

‘Jesus Christ,’ wailed Freddy Ricks, ‘she’s been shot!’

‘Freddy, I’m... I’m so sorry.’ Geoffrey Johns took a sip of burning liquid. ‘Does Archie know?’

‘Archie?’ It took Freddy an understandable moment to recognise the name of his son. ‘I haven’t seen him. I had to go down to the... they wanted me to identify her. Then they had to ask me some questions.’

‘Is that why you’re phoning?’

‘What? No, no... well, yes, in a way. I mean, there are things I have to do, and there are about fifty reporters at the garden gate, and... well, Geoffrey, I know we’ve had our differences, but you are our solicitor.’

‘I understand, Freddy. I’ll be straight over.’

In Vine Street police station, Chief Inspector Bob Broome was deciding what to say to the press. They were clamouring around the entrance to the gloomy station. Even on sunny days, Vine Street, a high narrow conduit between Regent Street and Piccadilly, got little light, though it managed to get all the available traffic fumes and grime. Broome reckoned the station had affected him. He thought he could remember days when he used to be cheerful. His last smile had been a couple of days ago, his last fullthroated laugh several months back. Nobody bothered trying to tell him jokes any more. The prisoners in the cells were a more obliging target.

‘So what’ve we got, Dave?’

Detective Inspector Dave Edmond sat opposite Broome. He had a reputation as a dour bugger, too. People seeing them together usually gave the pair a wide berth, like you would a plague ship. While Broome was tall and thin with an undertaker’s pallor, Edmond was round and tanned. He’d just returned from a fortnight in Spain, spent guzzling San Miguel on some beach.

‘Well, sir,’ he said, ‘we’re still taking statements. The gun’s down at the lab. We’ve got technicians in the office building, but they won’t be able to report before tomorrow.’

There was a knock at the door and a WPC came in with a couple of faxes for Broome. He laid them to one side and watched her leave, then turned back to Edmond. His every action was slow and considered, like he was on tranquillisers, but Edmond for one knew the boss was just being careful.

‘What about the gun?’

‘Sergeant Wills is the pop-pop guru,’ Edmond said, ‘so I’ve sent him to take a look at it. He probably knows more than any of the eggheads in the Ballistics section. From the description I gave him, he said it sounds military.’

‘Let’s not muck about, Dave, it’s the Demolition Man again. You can spot his m.o. a mile away.’

Edmond nodded. ‘Unless it’s a copycat.’

‘What are the chances?’

Edmond shrugged. ‘A hundred to one?’

‘And the rest. What about the phone call, did we take a recording?’

Edmond shook his head. ‘The officer who took the call has typed out what he remembers of the conversation.’ He handed over a single sheet of paper.

The door opened again. It was a DC this time, smiling apologetically as he came in with more sheets of paper for the Chief Inspector. Outside, there were sounds of frenzied activity. When the DC had gone, Broome got up, went to the door, and pulled a chair against it, jamming the back of the chair under the knob. Then he walked slowly back to his desk.

‘Shame we didn’t get it on tape though,’ he said, picking up Edmond’s sheet of paper. ‘ “Male, English, aged between twenty and seventy-five.” Yes, very useful. “Call didn’t sound long distance.” ’ Broome looked up from the report. ‘And all he said was that there was going to be a shooting outside the Craigmead Hotel.’

‘Normally, it would be treated as a crank, but the officer got the impression this one wasn’t playing games. A very educated voice, quite matter-of-fact with just enough emotion. We couldn’t have got men there any quicker.’

‘We could if we hadn’t armed some of them first.’

‘The man who called, who do you think it was?’

‘I suppose it could have been the Demolition Man himself. Maybe he’s gone off his trolley, wants us to catch him or play some sort of cat-and-mouse with him. Or it could be someone who spotted him, but then why not warn those people on the steps?’ Broome paused. His office wasn’t much bigger than an interview room; in some ways, it was even less inviting. He liked it because it made people who came here feel uncomfortable. But Dave Edmond seemed to like it too... ‘The people on the steps, that’s another thing. We’ve got a journalist, a Secretary of State, and some senior bod from an East European embassy.’

‘So which one was the target?’ Edmond asked.

‘Exactly. I mean, did he get who he was going after? If not, the other two better be careful. Remember, he’s shot the wrong bloody person before.’

Edmond nodded. ‘It’ll be out of our hands soon anyway.’

This was true: Scotland Yard and the Anti-Terrorist unit would pick over the bones. But this was Bob Broome’s manor, and he wasn’t about to just hand the case over and catch a good night’s sleep.

‘Bollocks,’ he said. ‘What about this other phone call, the one to the Craigmead?’

‘We’re talking to the receptionist again. All she knows is that a man called wanting to speak to Eleanor Ricks. Ricks was paged, but she ignored it.’

‘She hadn’t left?’

‘No, the receptionist says she walked past the desk while her name was being put out over the loudspeakers.’

‘Was the Secretary of State with her?’

‘Yes. But she says she didn’t hear anything.’

‘So maybe Eleanor Ricks didn’t hear anything either?’

‘Maybe.’

‘But if she’d taken the call...’

‘Molly Prendergast would have walked out of the hotel alone.’

‘And we’d have a clearer idea who the intended target was.’ Broome sighed.

‘So what’s our next step, Bob?’

Broome checked his watch. ‘For one thing, I’ve a transatlantic call to make. For another, there’s the media to deal with. Then I’ll want to see those buggers at the hospital.’

‘They’re being brought in.’

‘Good. Nice of them to help him escape, wasn’t it?’

‘Think he might’ve had an accomplice?’

‘I think,’ said Bob Broome, getting to his feet, ‘he might’ve just lost one of his nine lives.’

‘That phone call, sir.’

‘Oh, right.’ Broome sat down again. Someone was trying the door, but the chair was holding. He picked up the phone. He knew one man who’d want to know the Demolition Man was back in London. ‘I want to place a call to the United States,’ he said into the receiver.

5

Hoffer hated flying, especially these days when business class was out of the question. He hated being cooped up like a factory chicken. He was strictly a free-range cockerel. The crew didn’t like it if you strayed too far for too long. They were always getting in the way, squeezing these damned tin trolleys down aisles just wide enough for them. Those aisles, they weren’t even wide enough for him. You were supposed to stay in your seat to make the trolley-pushers’ jobs easier. Screw them, he was the customer.

There were other problems too. His nose got all blocked up on long-haul flights, and his ears bothered him. He’d yawn like a whale on a plankton hunt and swallow like he was choking down a lump of concrete, but his head got more and more like a pressure cooker no matter what he did. He waited till the better-looking stewardess came along and asked her with a pained smile if she had any tips. Maybe there were tablets these days for this sort of thing. But she came back to his seat with two plastic drinks cups and said he should clamp them over his ears.

‘What is this, a joke? I’m supposed to wear these things all the way to London?’

He crunched the plastic cups in his beefy fists and got up to use the bathroom. There was a guy four rows back who kept laughing at the in-flight movie, some Steve Martin vehicle which had left the factory without wheels or any gas in its tank. The guy looked like he’d have laughed at Nuremberg.

The bathroom: now there was another problem. A Japanese coffin would have been roomier. It took him a while to get everything set out: mirror, penknife, stash. They’d been sticky about the knife at airport security, until he explained that he was a New York private detective, not a Palestinian terrorist, and that the knife was a present for his cousin in London.

‘Since when,’ he’d argued finally, ‘did you get fat terrorists? Come to that, when did you last see a pocket-knife terrorist? I’d be better armed with the in-flight knife and fork.’

So they’d let him through.

He took a wrinkled dollar bill from his pocket and rolled it up. Well, it was either that or a straw from the in-flight drinks, and those straws were so narrow you could hardly suck anything up. He’d read somewhere that eighty percent of all the twenty-dollar bills in circulation bore traces of cocaine. Yeah, but he was a dollar sort of guy. Even rolled up, however, the dollar was crumpled. He considered doing a two-and-two, placing the powder on his pinky and snorting it, but you wasted a lot that way. Besides, he was shaking so much, he doubted he’d get any of the coke near his nose.

He’d laid out a couple of lines. It wasn’t great coke, but it was good enough. He remembered the days of great coke, stuff that would burn to white ash on the end of a cigarette. These days, the stuff was reconstituted Colombia-Miami shit, not the beautiful Peruvian blow of yore. If you tried testing it on a cigarette tip, it turned black and smelt like a Jamaican party. He knew this stuff was going to burn his nose. He saw his face in the mirror above the sink. He saw the lines around his mouth and under his eyes, coke lines. Then he turned back to the business at hand and took a good hit.

He wiped what was left off the mirror with his thumb and rubbed it over his gums. It was sour for a second before the freeze arrived. Okay, so he’d powdered his nose. He doubted it would put wheels on the movie, but maybe he’d find something else to laugh at. You never could tell.

Hoffer ran his own detective agency these days, though he managed to employ just two other tecs and a secretary. He’d started in a sleazy rental above a peep show off Times Square, reckoning that was how private eyes operated in the movies. But he soon saw that clients were put off by the location, so he took over a cleaner set of offices in Soho. The only problem was, they were up three flights of stairs, and there was no elevator. So Hoffer tended to work from home, using his phone and fax. He had one tec working for him; he’d only met the guy twice, both times in a McDonald’s. But the clients were happier now that Hoffer Private Investigations was above a chi-chi splatter gallery selling canvases that looked like someone had been hacked to death on them and then the post mortem carried out. The cheapest painting in the shop covered half a wall and would set the buyer back $12,000. Hoffer knew the gallery would last about another six months. He saw them carry paintings in, but he never saw one leave. Still, at least Hoffer had clients. There’d been a while when he’d been able to trade on his name alone, back when the media exposure had been good. But stories died quickly, and for a while the name Hoffer wasn’t enough.

$12,000 would buy about eight weeks of Hoffer agency time, not including expenses. Robert Walkins had promised to deposit exactly that sum in the agency’s bank account when Hoffer had spoken to him by phone. It was funny, speaking to the man again. After all, Walkins had been Hoffer’s first client. In some ways, he was Hoffer’s only client, the only one that mattered.

The Demolition Man was in action again, and Hoffer badly wanted to be part of the action. He didn’t just want it, he needed it. He had salaries and taxes to pay, the rent on his apartment, overheads, and money for his favourite drugs. He needed the Demolition Man. More crucially, he needed the publicity. When he’d started out for himself, he’d hired a publicity consultant before he’d hired an accountant. When he’d learned enough from the publicist, he’d kicked her out. She had a great body, but for what she was costing him he could buy a great body, and it wouldn’t just talk or cross its legs either.

When he’d got the call from London, he’d been able to pack his bags in about thirty minutes. But first he’d called to get a ticket on the first available flight, and then he’d called Robert Walkins.

‘Mr Walkins? This is Leo Hoffer.’ On the force, they’d all called him Lenny, but since he’d left the force and recreated himself, he’d decided on Leo. The Lion. So what if he was actually Capricorn?

‘Mr Hoffer, I take it there’s news?’ Walkins always sounded like he’d just found you taking a leak on his carpet.

‘He’s in London.’ Hoffer paused. ‘London, England.’

‘I didn’t think you meant London, Alabama.’

‘Well, he’s there.’

‘And you’re going to follow him?’

‘Unless you don’t want me to?’

‘You know our agreement, Mr Hoffer. Of course I want you to follow him. I want him caught.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I’ll transfer some funds. How much will you need?’

‘Say, twelve thou?’ Hoffer held his breath. Walkins hadn’t been tight with money, not so far, though he’d nixed Hoffer travelling club class.

‘Very well. Good luck, Mr Hoffer.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

Then he’d packed. It didn’t take long because he didn’t own a lot of clothes. He checked with Moira at the office that she’d be able to control things for a week or so. She told him to bring her back a souvenir, ‘something royal’.

‘What about a pain in the ass?’ he’d suggested.

He finished packing and called for a cab. He didn’t have any notes to take with him. All the notes he needed were firmly lodged inside his head. He wondered if he should take a book with him for the journey, but dismissed the notion. There were no books in the apartment anyway, and he could always buy a couple of magazines at the airport. As a final measure, he stuck his penknife in his carry-on luggage, and his mirror and stash in his inside jacket pocket. The knife, of thick sharp steel, was purposely ornate and expensive: that way people believed him when he said it was a gift for his cousin. It was French, a Laguiole, with mahogany handle and a serpent motif. In emergencies, it also had a corkscrew. But the real quality of the thing was its blade.

He knew the cab was on its way, which left him only a few minutes to make his final decision. Should he carry a gun? In the wardrobe in his bedroom he had a pump-action over-under shotgun and a couple of unmarked semi-automatic pistols. He kept the serious stuff elsewhere. Ideally, he’d go get something serious. But he didn’t have time. So he grabbed the Smith & Wesson 459, its holster and some ammo from the wardrobe. He packed it in his suitcase, wrapped in his only sweater. The door buzzer sounded just as he was closing his case.

At London Heathrow, he phoned a hotel he’d used before just off Piccadilly Circus and managed to get a room. The receptionist wanted to tell him all about how the hotels were quiet for the time of year, there just weren’t the tourists around that there used to be... Hoffer put the phone down on her. It wasn’t just that he felt like shit. He couldn’t understand what she was saying either.

He knew he could claim for a cab, so schlepped his stuff down to the Underground and took a train into town. It wasn’t much better than New York. Three young toughs were working the carriages, asking for money from the newly-arrived travellers. Hoffer hadn’t taken the Smith & Wesson out of his case yet, which was good news for the beggars. London, he decided, was definitely on its way down the pan. Even the centre of town looked like it had been turned over by a gang. Everything had been torn up or sprayed on. Last time he’d been in London, there had been more punks around, but there’d been more life to the place too, and fewer street people.

The train journey took forever. His body knew that it was five hours earlier than everyone around him thought it was. His feet were swollen, and sitting in the train brought on another bout of ear pressure. Plastic cups, for Christ’s sake.

But the receptionist smiled and was sympathetic. He told her if she really felt sorry for him he had a litre of Scotch in his bag and she knew his room number. She still managed to smile, but she had to force it. Then he got to his room and remembered all the very worst things about England. Namely, the beds and the plumbing. His bed was way too narrow. They had wider beds in the concentration camps. When he phoned reception, he was told all the beds in the single rooms were the same size, and if he wanted a double bed he’d need to pay for a double room. So then he’d to take the elevator back down to reception, get a new room, and take the elevator back up. This room was a little better, not much. He switched the TV on and went into the bathroom to run a bath. The bath looked like a child might have fun in it, but an adult would have problems, and the taps were having prostate trouble if the dribble issuing from them was anything to go by. There wasn’t even a proper glass by the sink, just another plastic tumbler. He unscrewed the top from his Johnny Walker Red Label and poured generously. He was about to add water from the cold tap, but thought better of it, so he drank the Scotch neat and watched the water finally cover the bottom of the bath.

He toasted the mirror. ‘Welcome to England,’ he said.

He’d arranged to meet Bob Broome in the hotel bar.

They knew one another from a conference they’d attended in Toronto when both had been Drugs Squad officers. That was going back some time, but then they’d met again when Hoffer had been in London last trip, just over a year ago. He’d been tracking the Demolition Man then, too.

‘You mean Walkins is still paying you?’ Broome sounded awed.

‘I’m not on a retainer or anything,’ Hoffer said. ‘But when we hear anything new on the D-Man, I know I can follow it up and Walkins will pay.’

Bob Broome shook his head. ‘I still can’t believe you got here so quickly.’

‘No ties, Bob, that’s the secret.’ Hoffer looked around the bar. ‘This place stinks, let’s go for a walk.’ He saw Broome look at him, laughed and patted his jacket. ‘It’s okay, Bob, I’m not armed.’ Broome looked relieved.

It was Sunday evening and the streets were quiet. They walked into Soho and found a pub seedy enough for Hoffer’s tastes, where they ordered bitter and found a corner table.

‘So, Bob, what’ve you got?’

Broome placed his pint glass carefully on a beermat, checking its base was equidistant from all four edges. ‘There was a shooting yesterday evening at six o’clock, outside a hotel near the US Embassy. A minute or two after the shooting, a bomb exploded in a rubbish bin nearby. We had an anonymous call warning us, so we sent men over there. We arrived just too late, but in time to start a search for the assassin. But he’d been a bit too clever. We went for the building directly in front of the hotel, and he’d been holed up in the office block next-door. He must have seen us coming. He called for an ambulance, gave them some story about being seriously ill, and they whisked him away to hospital from right under our noses.’

Hoffer shook his head. ‘But you’ve got a description?’

‘Oh, yes, a good description, always supposing he wasn’t wearing a wig and coloured contact lenses.’

‘He left the weapon behind?’

Broome nodded. ‘An L96A1 Sniper Rifle.’

‘Never heard of it.’

‘It’s British, a serious piece of goods. He’d tweaked it, added a flash hider and some camouflage tape. The telescopic sight on it was worth what I take home in a month.’

‘Nobody ever said the D-Man came cheap. Speaking of which...?’

‘We don’t even know who his target was. There were four people on the steps: a diplomat and his wife, the Secretary of State for the DSS, and the journalist.’

‘How far was he away from the hotel?’

‘Seventy, eighty yards.’

‘Unlikely he missed his target.’

‘He’s missed before.’

‘Yeah, but that was a fluke. He must’ve been after the reporter.’

‘We’re keeping an open mind. The diplomat seems sure he was the intended victim.’

‘Well, you have to keep an open mind, I don’t. In fact, I’m famous for my closed mind.’ Hoffer finished his drink. ‘Want another?’ Broome shook his head. ‘I need to see anything you’ve got, Bob.’

‘That’s not so easy, Leo. I’d have to clear it with my—’

‘By the way, something for your kids.’ Hoffer took an envelope from his pocket and slid it across the table. ‘How are they anyway?’

‘They’re fine, thanks.’ Broome looked in the envelope. He was looking at £500.

‘Don’t try to refuse it, Bob, I had a hell of a job cashing cheques at the hotel. I think they charged me the same again for the privilege, plus they had an exchange rate you wouldn’t accept from a shark. Put it in your pocket. It’s for your kids.’

‘I’m sure they’ll be thankful,’ Broome said, tucking the envelope in his inside pocket.

‘They’re nice kids. What’re their names again?’

‘Whatever you want them to be,’ said the childless Broome.

‘So can you get me the info?’

‘I can do some photocopying. You’ll have it first thing in the morning.’

Hoffer nodded. ‘Meantime, talk to me, get me interested. Tell me about the deceased.’

‘Her name is Eleanor Ricks, 39, freelance journalist. She covered the Falklands War and some of the early fighting in ex-Yugoslavia.’

‘So she wasn’t just puffing fluff?’

‘No, and lately she’d made the move into television. Yesterday she had a meeting with Molly Prendergast, that’s the DSS Minister.’

‘What was the meeting about? No, wait, same again?’ Hoffer went to the bar and ordered two more pints. He never had to wait long at bars; they were one place where his size lent him a certain authority. It didn’t matter if he wasn’t wearing great clothes, or hadn’t shaved in a while, he had weight and he had standing.

That was one reason he did a lot of his work in bars.

He brought the drinks back. He’d added a double whisky to go with his beer.

‘You want one?’ But Broome shook his head. Hoffer drank an inch from the beer, then poured in the whisky. He took two cigarettes from one of his packs of duty free, lit them and handed one to Broome.

‘Sorry,’ he apologised, ‘bad habit.’ It wasn’t everyone who wanted him sucking on their cigarette before they got it. ‘You were telling me about Molly Prendergast.’

‘It was an interview, something to do with Ricks’s latest project, the one for TV. It’s an investigation of religious cults.’

‘And this MP has something to do with them?’

‘Only indirectly. Her daughter was involved in one for a while. Prendergast and her husband had to fight like mad to get her back. In the end, they virtually had to kidnap her.’

‘And that’s what Ricks wanted to talk about?’

‘According to Mrs Prendergast.’

‘You don’t sound too sure.’

‘I’ve no reason to suppose she’d lie. Besides, her story is backed up by the programme’s producer.’

‘What’s his name?’ Hoffer had taken a notebook and pen from his pocket.

‘Joe Draper. One strange thing, somebody called the hotel. They asked for Eleanor Ricks and said it was urgent. She was paged, but she didn’t take the call. Not many people knew she was going to be there. Draper’s one of the few.’

‘Which TV company is it?’

‘It’s a small independent production company. I think it’s just called Draper Films or Draper Vision, something like that.’

‘You work too hard, Bob, you know that? I mean, you’re a seven-day man, am I right? Of course I’m right. You’ve got to rest your brain some time.’

‘It’s not easy.’

‘But if you don’t rest your brain, you start forgetting things, like whether it’s Draper Films or Draper Vision. I mean, little things, Bob, but little things can be the important things. You’re a cop, you know that.’

Broome didn’t look happy at this little lecture. In fact, he finished his drink and said he had to be going. Hoffer didn’t stop him. But he didn’t hang around the pub either. It reminded him of a few bad Irish bars he knew in and around the other Soho. He headed across Shaftesbury Avenue and into Leicester Square, looking for interesting drugs or interesting whores. But even Leicester Square was quiet. Nobody worked a patch these days. It was all done by mobile phone. The telephone kiosks were full of whores’ business cards. He perused them, like he was in a gallery, but didn’t find anything new or exciting. He doubted there was anything new under the sun, though apparently they were doing mind-boggling things with computers these days.

There were some kids begging from their doorway beds, so he asked them if they knew where he could find some blow, then remembered that over here blow could mean boo. They didn’t know anyway. They hardly knew their own damned names. He went on to Charing Cross Road and found a taxi to take him to Hampstead.

This was where the D-Man had carried out his other London hit, at an office on the High Street. As usual, he’d kept his distance. He’d fired from a building across the street, the bullet smashing through a window before entering and leaving the heart of an Indian businessman who’d been implicated in a finance scam involving several governments and private companies.

The D-Man always kept his distance, which interested Hoffer. Often, it would be simpler just to walk up to the victim and use a pistol. But the D-Man used sniper rifles and kept his distance. These facts told Hoffer a lot. They told him that the D-Man was a real pro, not just some hoodlum. He was skilled, a marksman. He gave himself a challenge with every hit. But he was also squeamish the way hoodlums seldom were. He didn’t like to get too close to the gore. He kept well away from the pain. A single shot to the heart: it was a marksman’s skill all right, hitting dead centre every time.

He’d planted a bomb in Hampstead too, though he hadn’t needed one. The police had thought they were dealing with an IRA device, until they linked it to the assassination. Then Hoffer had come along and he’d been able to tell them quite a lot about the Demolition Man. Few people knew as much as Hoffer did about the D-Man.

But Hoffer didn’t know nearly enough.

He took another cab back to the hotel, and got the driver to give him half a dozen blank receipts, tipping him generously as reward. He’d fill the receipts in himself and hand them to his client as proof of expenses.

‘Anything else you want, guv?’ said the driver. ‘An escort? Bit of grass? You name it.’

Nostrils twitching, Hoffer leaned forward in his seat.

‘Get me interested,’ he said.

6

Mark Wesley was dead.

It was a shame, since it meant I’d have to close a couple of bank accounts and get rid of a bunch of expensive counterfeit identity cards and an even more expensive counterfeit passport with some beautifully crafted visas in it.

More drastic still, it was the only other identity I had in the UK, which meant that from now on I’d have to be me. I could always arrange to create another identity, but it took time and money.

I’d spent a long time not being me. It would take a while to get used to the name again: Michael Weston. The first thing I did was rent a car and get out of London. I rented from one of the big companies, and told them it might be a one-way rental. They explained that one-way rentals are more expensive, but since I was guaranteeing it with a credit card they didn’t seem to mind.

It was a nice car, a red Escort XR3i with only 600 miles on the clock. I drove to a shopping complex just off the North Circular Road and bought, amongst other things, a hat. Then I headed north. I didn’t phone ahead. I didn’t want Max expecting me.

I’d spent a lot of time thinking, and I kept coming up with the same answer: someone had tipped off the police, someone who had wanted me caught. There were only two possibilities: Max, or my employer. I never like to know who I’m working for, just as I never like to know anything about the person I’m being paid to kill. I don’t want to be involved, I just want the money. The work I get comes from a variety of middlemen: a couple in the USA, one in Germany, one in Hong Kong, and Max in England. It was Max who’d contacted me with the job I’d just done. He was the only other person apart from my employer who knew the details of the job.

Like I say, I’d given it a lot of thought, and still it came down to Max or my employer. This still left the question of why. Why would Max want me arrested? Was the money suddenly not enough to salve his conscience? He could get out any time he wanted to, but maybe he didn’t realise that. If he wanted out, but thought I wouldn’t like such an idea, maybe he also thought I’d want to kill him. Was he just getting his retaliation in first?

Then there was my employer. Maybe he or she had got cold feet at the very last, and phoned for the cops. This seemed the more likely answer, though there was one other consideration: what if the whole thing had been a trap from the start? I was sure I could come up with other theories, but they all led in the same direction: I was going to have to talk to Max. Then maybe I’d have to find out who my employer was, and ask them a few questions, too.

It bothered me. I hate to get involved. I hate to know. But this time there might be no other way. I might have to find out why I’d been paid to assassinate Eleanor Ricks. I’d seen the papers and the news. It was in my favour that the authorities were baffled. They still didn’t know who my target had been. But I knew, right down to her name and the details of her dress. The diplomat had been there by pure chance, though not the politician. Whoever had known Eleanor Ricks would be coming out of the hotel at six knew her very well. So they almost certainly also knew the politician would be with her. Was I scaring off the politician? Was I sending a message?

Maybe you begin to see why I don’t like getting involved. I didn’t rush my journey. I wanted my arrival to surprise Max. If I turned up straight away, he would probably be less surprised. But I broke my journey quite near him in Yorkshire, so I could walk in on him early the following morning. Max was a careful man, but he didn’t go armed to the breakfast table. He was also surrounded by fields and hills. No one would hear a shot, no one would hear a burial.

No one except Belinda.

I booked into a small hotel, wearing my cap at the reception desk. Then I went out and had a haircut, quite a severe one.

‘You sure about this?’ the barber asked.

‘I’m sure,’ I said. ‘It’s for the summer. Gets too hot otherwise.’

‘True enough,’ he said, picking up the scissors.

I wore the cap again on my way back to my room, then washed my hair and used some of the dye I’d bought on it, turning it from dark brown to inky black. I looked at my eyebrows too, but reckoned I could get away with not dyeing them. The cropped hair didn’t take long to dry. The cut on my forehead was healing quickly, though there was still bruising around the scab.

I unpacked my bag. I’d bought some new clothes at the shopping centre and ditched the ones I’d worn for the hit. This wasn’t a special precaution: I always wear cheap clothes on a hit, then discard them afterwards. If you’ve used a gun, forensic scientists will find traces of the primer compound on your hands and clothes. Incredible, isn’t it? When I tell Max these things, he doesn’t believe me. He says they make it all up to scare people off using guns. Maybe he’s got a point. In the bag I also had my standby, a .357 Magnum, not bought from Max this time but from a friend in France. It was a Colt copy, and not a very good one. On the firing range, it seemed to want to aim everywhere but at the bull. Its saving grace was that, like all revolvers, it scared people. That was its job. I didn’t think it would scare Max; nevertheless, I wanted him to know I was armed.

There wasn’t much else in the bag except for a manila envelope, a few bottles of fine white powder, some larger bottles of sterilized water, and a couple of packs of disposable syringes. I always kept them in the bag, ever since a hotel maid had spotted them in my bathroom and informed the manager that I was dealing heroin from my room. Poor girl, she’d been so embarrassed afterwards. But I’d left her a tip anyway.

I lay on my bed for a while, running one finger through what was left of my hair and stroking the cat with the other. The cat belonged to the hotel. I’d seen it in the lobby on arrival and made a clicking noise to attract it.

‘Don’t bother,’ the receptionist had said. ‘Geronimo’s very timid.’

Maybe, but I have a way with animals. Geronimo had padded meekly to my room unsummoned, and had miaowed at the door until I let him in, after which he’d twined himself round my legs a few times, then rubbed his jaw along my proffered knuckles, leaving his scent on me. I didn’t have anything for him to eat, but he forgave me. So we lay, the pair of us, our eyes closed, somewhere between thought and nothingness, until I went down to the bar for some supper.

Back in my room, having drunk an indifferent half-bottle of Montrachet, I opened the manila envelope. This contained all the details of the hit, everything my employer had wanted me to know about Eleanor Ricks. I’m not a forensic scientist or a descendant of Sherlock Holmes, but I could tell the stapled sheets of paper had been word processed. The print quality was good, and the printing itself nice and regular. The paper was heavy and had a watermark. There was no handwriting anywhere; even the envelope had been typed. All it said was PRIVATE & CONFIDENTIAL.

I read through the information again, searching for clues to my employer’s identity. There was a photo of the target, too. It was a head and shoulders shot. She was smiling, her head tipped to one side so the hair fell and rested on her shoulder. It looked to me like a professional job, a publicity shot. For a start, it was black and white, and how many people use monochrome film these days? Plus it was obviously posed, definitely not a snapshot.

Who would have access to publicity shots? The photographer of course, plus the model. The model’s employers, and probably members of her immediate family... plus fans, the housekeeper, and anyone who happened to snatch one off a desk. I wasn’t exactly narrowing things down.

I’ve said I don’t like knowing about my targets, but my employer this time had sent me a lot of information, much of it extraneous. The amount of background they knew, they had to be close to the target. I mean, this wasn’t the sort of stuff you could glean from press cuttings alone. They had to have known her pretty damned well. Either that or they’d been extremely thorough in their research.

None of which explained how they’d known the sorts of colours she’d be wearing on the day. I was back to family and the people she worked with. I had the idea I was going to have to go back to London and do some digging... but that would all depend on what Max had to say.

I settled my bill that night, since in the morning I intended starting off before breakfast. But the manageress wouldn’t hear of this, and was up at six to cook me bacon and scrambled eggs and boil some tea. She even sat with me as I ate, though I’d have preferred to be alone.

‘Long drive ahead of you?’

‘Not really. Just a busy day.’

‘I know all about that, sweetie.’

I smiled, but doubted this. As I left, Geronimo came out to the car with me, but then caught the scent of something better and trotted away. There was a heavy dew on the car, and the morning was raw, with cloud low and thick in the valleys and the roads wet. But the XR3i started at the first turn of the ignition. I had the .357 on the passenger seat, covered with the local freesheet which I’d picked up in the bar last night. As I drove off, I knew I had a long walk ahead.

Max’s house sat in nine acres of moorland, the monotony broken only by the dry-stone dykes which divided the land into unused enclosures. The dykes had been built to give local employment during the hardest years of the 1920s. They were never intended to be put to any use. Max used those nearest his house as firing ranges, and had converted a long Dutch-style barn into an indoor range. The rest of the farm buildings had either been knocked down or left to fall in their own good time. Piles of rocks dotted what had been the farmyard. Max had graded them into large, middling and small, for no good reason that I could see. But then he was always methodical, even with debris.

I stopped the car about a mile from the house and left it on the grass verge, then climbed over one of the walls and started walking. The grass was wet underfoot, and I wished I’d bought some boots. But better this than driving up to the house. You could hear a car from hundreds of yards away. Though I could see the house, I knew the kitchen faced on to the interior farmyard, not out over the moors. I counted fewer than a dozen trees in the whole expanse, and wondered how Bel could live here.

I’d pushed the Magnum into my trouser waistband, but the ground was so uneven I transferred it to my jacket pocket. I kept a hand on it as I walked. I’d noticed in the car that brown spots of rust were appearing on the barrel. That was the problem with a cheap gun, it wasn’t worth the maintenance.

Halfway across the first field, I stopped dead. I didn’t know if I was ready for this. It was a long time since I’d used a handgun, even as a means of threat. Besides, if Max didn’t have anything to do with it, I had a favour to ask of him... and of Bel.

Max no longer kept a dog. He thought animals belonged in the wild. There were no pets at all on the farm, though Bel was soppy about cats and dogs and horses. Everything was quiet as I clambered over the last wall on to the track. If Max kept to his regular schedule, he’d be in the kitchen just now, probably eating something macrobiotic. He was on a weird diet which he swore was keeping the cancer at bay. I walked around the side of the house and peered round the wall. The farmyard was silent. I could see Max’s Volvo estate parked in the barn, and behind it one of the human-shaped targets belonging to the indoor range. I took the Magnum from my pocket and walked to the kitchen door, turning the handle.

The kitchen had been gutted and redone about a year ago. It was all gleaming white tile and white units. Kept fanatically clean, it reminded me more of a hospital lab than a kitchen. And at its centre, seated at a foldaway table, was Max. He was already dressed and had strapped his mask across his maimed cheek and jaw. He was trying to eat something brown and sludgy with a teaspoon, and listening to the Today programme on Radio Four.

‘I wondered when you’d get here,’ he said, not looking up. He had one hand on his bowl, the other holding his spoon. He was showing me both hands so I wouldn’t get nervous. I wasn’t aiming the gun. It was hanging almost casually from my hand. ‘Want some breakfast?’

‘You don’t sound surprised to see me, Max.’

Now he looked up at me. ‘That’s some serious haircut, boy. Of course I’m not surprised. I heard what happened. They said the police were on the scene just too late to stop the shooting. I knew what you’d think.’

‘What would I think, Max?’ I leaned against the sink, keeping my distance.

‘Do you want some breakfast?’

‘I’ve had some, thanks.’

‘Tea?’

‘All right.’ He got up to fetch a mug from the rack. ‘You haven’t answered my question.’

‘That’s because it’s a stupid question. I was waiting for you to come up with a cleverer one.’ He shuffled back to the table with the mug. ‘Sit down, why don’t you? And put away that bloody awful revolver. It embarrasses me having to look at it. Bloody cheap Asian copy, you’d probably miss me even at six feet. How far out of alignment is it?’

‘About half an inch at twenty yards.’

Max wrinkled his nose. ‘And it’s rusting. If you tried popping me with that, I’d more likely die of shame than anything.’

I smiled, but didn’t put the gun away. Max sighed.

‘If not for me, then for Bel.’

‘Where is she?’

‘Sound asleep in her bed, lazy sow. Here, do you want this tea?’

I took the mug from the table and placed it on the draining board, leaning against the sink again.

‘So,’ said Max, ‘someone knew you were doing the hit, and they tipped off the police. Stands to reason it must have been me or whoever was paying you in the first place.’ I nodded. He looked up at me again. ‘Well, it wasn’t me. I don’t blame you for being cagey, but it wasn’t. So all I can do is tell you how the job came about. A man phoned me, a greaseball called Scotty Shattuck. Do you know him?’ I shook my head. ‘He was regular army, but got a fright or something in the Falklands. Collected a few ears as souvenirs, and when the army found out they dumped him back into society. He’s tried his hand at mercenary work since, trained some of the fighters in Sarajevo. He doesn’t have much of a rep, spends more time bouncing for night clubs than doing short-arms practice.’

‘Where does he live?’

‘Don’t rush me, Mark. Shattuck said he had a client who was interested in having a job done. What he meant was someone had slipped him a few quid to find an assassin.’

‘Why didn’t he just take the job himself?’

‘Maybe he pitched for it but the client knew his rep. Anyway, I said I’d need a few details, and we met in Leeds. He handed over a sealed envelope, giving me the gen I gave to you when I phoned you.’

‘How much did he know about the hit?’

Max shrugged. ‘The envelopes weren’t tampered with, but he could always have torn open the original envelopes, read the gen for himself, and put it in a fresh envelope after.’

‘Would he be curious enough to do that?’

‘I don’t know, maybe. Shattuck would like to play with the big boys. He seemed to think I was some sort of pimp with a stable of snipers, asked if I’d give him a trial. I told him to behave. And he did behave, too, except when payment time came.’

‘Yes?’

‘At our final meet, again in Leeds, he handed over the case. The final details were there, but the cash was short. Two hundred short. He said it was his cut. I told him that was fine by me, but the person the money was going to wouldn’t be pleased. I asked him if two hundred was worth having to look over his shoulder the rest of his life and not go near windows.’

I grinned. ‘What did he say?’

‘He didn’t say anything, he just sort of twitched and sweated. Then he took the money out of his pocket and handed it over.’ Talking was thirsty work for Max. He had a straw in his mug of tea and took a long suck on it.

‘So where can I find him, Max?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Come on, you must know.’

‘I never needed to know. It was always him that contacted me.’

I raised the gun ever so slightly. ‘Max,’ I said. I didn’t bother saying anything else. I was too busy looking at the kitchen doorway, the one leading to the hall and the rest of the house. Bel was standing there. She was wearing a short nightdress, showing very nice legs.

She was also pointing a shotgun at me.

‘I know how to use it, Mark. Put away the gun.’

I didn’t move. ‘Let’s get one thing straight,’ I said. ‘If you’re going to be working for me, my name’s not Mark Wesley any more. It’s Michael Weston.’

Max leapt from his chair.

‘Jesus, Bel! That’s a Churchill Premier!’ He ran to the doorway and took the shotgun from her. ‘Do you know how much one of these is worth?’

‘About ten grand,’ she said.

‘Ten grand is right. Less if it’s been fired.’ He broke open the barrels to show that Bel hadn’t bothered loading the thing. I put my Magnum down on the draining board.

‘Look,’ said Max, ‘let’s all calm down. I’ll tell you what I can about Shattuck, Mark.’

‘Michael.’

‘Okay, Michael. I’ll tell you what I can. But let’s sit down. All this Gunfight at the OK Corral stuff makes me nervous, especially in the kitchen. Do you know how long it took me to do this tiling?’

So Max put the kettle on and we sat down. Bel gave me a lopsided smile, and I winked back at her.

‘Black suits you,’ she said, meaning my hair. ‘Even if that haircut does make you look like a copper.’ She touched my foot with her own under the table. We’d played this game before, enjoying the fact of having a secret from Max. I tried to remember that only a few minutes ago, she’d been aiming a shotgun at me, albeit unloaded. Bel had the face of a sixth-form schoolgirl, but I knew there was much more to her than that.

‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I haven’t brought you a souvenir this trip.’

She attempted a pout. ‘I’m hurt.’

I put my hand in my pocket and pulled out the hat I’d bought. ‘Unless you want this.’

She took it from me and looked at it. ‘Gee, thanks,’ she said, her voice heavy with irony. ‘I’ll keep it under my pillow.’

Max was massaging his jaw. Usually he didn’t say much, understandably. He’d said more in the past twenty minutes than he would over the course of a normal day.

‘What was that about me working for you?’ Bel asked, folding her arms.

‘More properly, working with me.’ I was looking at Max as I spoke. ‘I’m going to have to go back to London, there are questions I need to ask. I’d look less conspicuous with a partner. Plus maybe there are some people I can’t talk to myself. But Bel could talk to them.’

‘No,’ Max said.

‘I pay well, and I’d look after her. I’d play it straight. First sign of danger, I zoom back up here with her.’

‘What am I, a ventriloquist’s dummy?’ Bel had risen from the table and was standing with hands on hips. ‘Why not ask me yourself? You sound like you’re asking to borrow a car or a bike, not a person.’

‘Sorry, Bel.’

‘You’re not going,’ said Max.

‘I haven’t said anything yet!’ she protested, slapping the table with her hand. ‘I want to hear about it first.’

So I told her. There was no point leaving anything out. Bel wasn’t stupid, she certainly wasn’t naive. She’d have rooted out a lie. It isn’t easy telling someone what you do for a living, not if you’re not proud of your work. I’d never minded Max knowing, but Bel... Bel was a slightly different proposition. Of course, she’d known all along. I mean, I was hardly coming to the farm, buying guns, firing them, customising them, I was hardly doing any of this as a weekend hobby. Still, her cheeks reddened as I told my story. Then a third round of tea was organised in silence, with the radio switched off now. Bel poured cereal for herself and started to eat. She’d swallowed two spoonfuls before she said anything.

‘I want to go.’

Max started to protest.

‘A few days, Max,’ I broke in, ‘that’s all. Look, I need help this time. Who else can I turn to?’

‘I can think of a dozen people better qualified than Bel, and always keen to make money.’

‘Well, thanks very much,’ she said. ‘Nice to know you have such a high opinion of me.’

‘I just don’t want you—’

She took his hand and squeezed it. ‘I know, I know. But Michael needs help. Are we supposed to turn our backs? Pretend we’ve never known him? Who else do we know?’

It hit me then for the first time. They lived out here in the wilds through necessity not choice. You couldn’t run a gun shop like Max’s in the middle of a town. But out here they were also lonely, cut off from the world. There were twice-weekly runs into the village or the nearest large town, but those hardly constituted a social life. It wasn’t Max, it was Bel. She was twenty-two. She’d sacrificed a lot to move out here. I saw why Max was scared: he wasn’t scared she’d get hurt, he was scared she’d get to like it. He was scared she’d leave for good.

‘A few days, Max,’ I repeated. ‘Then I’ll bring Bel back.’

He didn’t say anything, just blinked his watery eyes and looked down at the table where his hands lay, nicked and scarred from metal-shop accidents. Bel touched his shoulder.

‘I’ll go pack a few things.’ She gave me another smile and ran from the room. Only now did I wonder why she was so keen to go with me.

We were awkward after she’d gone. I rinsed out the mugs at the sink, and heard Max’s chair scrape on the floor as he stood up. He came to the draining board and picked up the revolver.

‘Do you need anything?’ he asked.

‘Maybe a pistol.’

‘I think I’ve got something better than a pistol. Not cheap though.’

‘Money’s no object this time, Max.’

‘Mark... Sorry, I mean Michael. Funny, I’d just got used to calling you Mark.’

‘I’ll be another name soon enough.’

‘Michael, I know you’ll take care of her. But I wouldn’t like... I mean, I don’t want...’

‘This is strictly business, Max. Separate rooms, I promise. And besides, Bel can look after herself. She’s had a good teacher.’

‘Don’t patronise me,’ he said with a smile, putting down the Magnum and reaching for a dishtowel.

7

‘You’re not a reporter, are you?’

It was first thing Monday morning and Hoffer wasn’t in the mood. The ambulance was parked in a special unloading bay directly outside Casualty, and the ambulance man was in the back, tidying and checking.

Hoffer stood outside, one hand resting on the vehicle’s back door. He had a sudden image of himself slamming the ambulance man’s head repeatedly against it.

‘I’ve told you, I’m a private investigator.’

‘Only I told the police everything I know, and then the bleeding newspapers start hassling me.’

‘Look, Mr Hughes, I’ve shown you my ID.’

‘Yeah, anyone can fake an identity card.’

This was true, but Hoffer wasn’t in a mood for discussion. He had a head like a St Patrick’s Day parade in Boston. Plus his ears still weren’t back to normal. Every time he breathed in through his nose, it was like he was going to suck his eardrums into his throat.

‘Talk to me and I’ll go away,’ he said. That usually worked. Hughes turned and studied him.

‘You don’t look like a reporter.’

Hoffer nodded at this wisdom.

‘You look like a cardiac arrest waiting to happen.’

Hoffer stopped nodding and started a serious scowl.

‘All right, sorry about that. So, what do you want me to tell you?’

‘I’ve seen the transcript of your police interview, Mr Hughes. Basically, I’d just like to ask a few follow-up questions, maybe rephrase a couple of questions you’ve already been asked.’

‘Well, hurry up, I’m on duty.’

Hoffer refrained from pointing out that they could have started a good five minutes ago. Instead he asked about the phony patient’s accent.

‘Very smooth,’ said Hughes. ‘Polite, quiet, educated.’

‘But definitely English?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Not American? Sometimes the two can sound more similar than you’d think.’

‘This was English. I couldn’t tell you which county though. He wasn’t a Yank, I’m sure of that.’

‘Canadian possibly?’ Hughes shook his head. ‘Okay then, you’ve given a fairly good description of him, what he was wearing, his height, hair colour and so on. Do you think his hair might have been dyed?’

‘How am I supposed to know?’

‘Sometimes a dye job doesn’t look quite right.’

‘Yeah? We must meet a different class of women.’

Hoffer tried to laugh. The door handle felt good in his hand. He kept looking at Hughes’s head. ‘And it couldn’t have been a toupee?’

‘You mean an Irish?’ Hoffer didn’t understand. ‘Irish jig, wig. No, I’m sure his hair was his own.’

‘Mm-hm.’ Hoffer had already spoken to the nurse in Emergency, the one who’d taken the man’s details and then gone to call a haematologist. She’d been as much help as codeine in a guillotine basket. He rubbed his forehead. ‘He told you he was a haemophiliac.’

‘He was a haemophiliac.’

‘You sure?’

‘Either that or he has one in the family. Or maybe he just went through medical school.’

‘He knew that much about it?’

‘He knew about factor levels, he knew haemophiliacs are supposed to carry a special card with them, he knew they get to call the emergency number and order an ambulance if they hurt themselves. He knew a lot.’

‘He couldn’t just have been guessing?’

Hughes shook his head. ‘I’m telling you, he knew.’

‘Who’s your haematologist here?’

‘I don’t know, I just act as chauffeur.’

‘That’s being a bit harsh on yourself.’

Hughes’s look told Hoffer flattery wasn’t going to work. ‘What about the business card, it fell out of his pocket?’

‘Yes. He said it was his, but the police tell me it wasn’t. They had me take a look at Gerald Flitch, I mean the real Gerald Flitch. It wasn’t him.’

‘Mm, I want a word with him myself.’

The Casualty doors crashed open as the ambulance driver pulled a wheelchair out and down the ramp. Hughes jumped out of the ambulance. There was a woman in the wheelchair so ancient and still she looked like she’d been stuffed.

‘Here we are again, Mrs Bridewell,’ Hughes yelled at her, as they prepared to hoist her into the ambulance. ‘Soon have you home.’

‘Is it worth the trip?’ Hoffer muttered to himself. He turned away from the ambulance, but Hughes called to him. The driver was already getting into his seat and starting the engine. Hughes had an arm on the back door, ready to close it.

‘I meant it about the cardiac. You really should lose some weight. We could do our backs in rolling you on to the stretcher.’

‘You’re all heart, pal!’ Hoffer called, but he called it to a slammed door as the ambulance revved away. He walked back up the hill to Emergency. The same nurse he’d spoken to was still there. She didn’t look like she’d been pining.

‘Just one more thing,’ Hoffer said, raising a crooked index finger. ‘Who do I speak to about haemophilia?’

‘It means love of blood, literally.’

Dr Jacobs was a small man with one of those English-actor voices that make American women wet their drawers. It was like Jeremy Irons was behind the scenes somewhere and Jacobs was his dummy. He also had the hairiest arms Hoffer had seen outside a zoo, and he only had ten minutes to spare. He was explaining what the word haemophilia meant.

‘That’s very interesting,’ said Hoffer. ‘But see, the man we’re dealing with here, he’s a hired killer, a gunman. He also uses explosives. Does that sound like a suitable occupation for a haemophiliac?’

‘No, it doesn’t. Well, that’s to say, not for a severe haemophiliac. You see, there are three broad levels of haemophilia. You can be severe, moderate, or mild. Most registered haemophiliacs in the UK are severe — that is, they show less than two percent factor activity.’

‘What’s factor activity?’

‘Haemophiliacs, Mr Hoffer, suffer from a clotting deficiency in the blood. Clotting is a complex event, involving thirteen different factors. If one thing happens, then another happens, and we get a knock-on effect. When all thirteen things have happened, we get blood clotting. But haemophiliacs lack one of the factors, so the knock-on can’t happen and clotting can’t take place. Most haemophiliacs suffer from a factor eight deficiency, some from a factor nine deficiency. There are a few even rarer conditions, but those are the main two. Factor eight deficiency is termed Haemophilia A, and factor nine Haemophilia B. Are you with me so far?’

‘Reading you like braille.’

Dr Jacobs leaned back in his black leather chair. He had a small cluttered office, all textbooks and test results and piles of unanswered mail. His white coat was hanging up behind the door, and there were a lot of framed certificates on the walls. His arms were folded so he could run his hands over his monkey arms. Hair sprouted from the collar of his shirt. Naked, Hoffer bet you could use him as a fireside rug.

‘Severe haemophiliacs,’ the doctor said, ‘make up over a third of all haemophilia cases. They can suffer spontaneous internal bleeds, usually into soft tissues, joints and muscles. As children, they’re advised to stay away from contact sports. We try to make them get a good education, so they can get desk jobs rather than manual ones.’

‘They don’t go into the armed forces then?’

Dr Jacobs smiled. ‘The armed forces and the police won’t recruit from haemophiliacs.’

Hoffer frowned. If there was one thing he’d been sure of, it was that the D-Man had been either a soldier or a cop. ‘No exceptions?’

‘None.’

‘Not even if they’ve got the milder form?’

Jacobs shook his head. ‘Something wrong?’ he said.

Hoffer had been tugging at his ears. ‘Flying does things to my ears,’ he said. ‘Say, can you help? Maybe take a look?’

‘I’m a haematologist, Mr Hoffer, not ENT.’

‘But you can prescribe drugs, right? Some painkillers maybe?’

‘Consult a GP, Mr Hoffer.’

‘I can pay.’

‘I’m sure you can. Did you catch your cold on the plane?’

‘Huh?’ Hoffer sniffed so much these days, he was hardly aware of it. He blew his nose and reminded himself to buy more paper handkerchiefs. Damned nose was always itchy too. ‘It’s this lousy weather,’ he said.

The doctor looked surprised and glanced out of his window. It was another beautiful day outside. He looked back at Hoffer.

‘The police have already asked me about this assassin. It seems from what I hear that he does possess some knowledge of haemophilia, but as I told them, I just can’t visualise a severe haemophiliac being an assassin. He told the ambulanceman that he was one per cent. I think he was lying. I mean... well, this is guesswork.’

‘No, go on.’ Hoffer stuck his shred of handkerchief back in his pocket.

‘Well, it seems to me that these weapons he uses, they would have a recoil.’

‘Believe it.’

‘You see, any recoil might start a severe haemophiliac bleeding. It wouldn’t be long before he’d start to suffer problems with his shoulder. After which he wouldn’t make much of a marksman at all.’

‘What about a moderate sufferer?’

‘Even with a moderate sufferer, there would be dangers. No, if this man suffers from haemophilia, then he is a mild case.’

‘But he’d still know about the disease, right?’

‘Oh, yes. But he’d also be able to injure himself without needing medical aid afterwards. Simple pressure on the cut would be enough to stop it.’

Hoffer chewed this over. ‘Would he be registered?’

‘Almost certainly.’

‘I don’t suppose those records...?’

Jacobs was shaking his head. ‘If the police wish to apply to see them, then of course there might be a chance, especially if it’s a case of catching a murderer.’

‘Yes, of course. Dr Jacobs, how many mild sufferers are there?’

‘In the UK?’ Hoffer nodded. ‘About fifteen hundred.’

‘Out of how many?’

‘Roughly six and a half thousand.’

‘And how many of those fifteen hundred can we discount?’

‘What?’

‘You know, how many are kids, how many are pensioners, how many are women? It’s got to bring the number down.’

Jacobs was smiling. ‘I have some pamphlets here you should read, Mr Hoffer.’ He opened a desk drawer, hunting for them.

‘What? Did I say something funny?’

‘No, it’s just that haemophilia affects only men. It’s passed on from the mother, not the father, but it is only passed on to the sons.’

Hoffer read the pamphlets as he sat in the bar of the Allington Hotel.

He found it all unbelievable. How could a mother do that to her son? Unbelievable. The women in the family could carry the disease, but they almost never suffered from it. And if they passed it on to their daughters, the daughters could fight it. It was all down to chromosomes. A boy got his mother’s X and his father’s Y, while a girl got two X chromosomes, one from each parent. The bad genetic information was all in the X chromosome. A man with haemophilia passed his bad X to his daughter, but the good X she got from her mother cancelled the bad X out. So she became a carrier but not a sufferer. Each female had two X chromosomes, while males had an X and a Y. So boys had a fifty-fifty chance of getting the bad X passed on to them from their mothers. And they couldn’t override it because they didn’t have another good X chromosome, they had a lousy Y which wasn’t any use in the battle.

There was other stuff, all about Queen Victoria and the Russian royal family and Rasputin. Queen Victoria had been a carrier. There didn’t have to be a history of haemophilia in the family either, the thing could just spontaneously occur. And a mild haemophiliac might never know they had the disease till it came time for a surgical operation or tooth extraction. The more Hoffer read, the more he wondered about going for a blood test. He had always bruised easily, and one time he’d been spitting blood for days after a visit to his dentist. Maybe he was a haemophiliac. He wouldn’t put anything past his mother.

He wasn’t sure what difference it made, knowing the D-MAN was probably a sufferer. It could just be that his family had a history of haemophilia; he could just be an interested onlooker. Hoffer wasn’t going to be given access to any records, and even if he did get the records, what would he do with them? Talk to every single sufferer? Drag them here and let Gerry Flitch take a look at them?

Ah, speaking of whom...

‘Mr Flitch?’

‘Yes.’

Hoffer offered his hand. ‘Leo Hoffer, can I buy you a drink?’

‘Thank you, yes.’

Hoffer snapped his fingers, and the barman nodded. The first time Hoffer had done it, the barman had given him a stare so icy you could have mixed it into a martini. But then Hoffer had given him a big tip, and so now the barman was his friend. Hoffer was sitting in a squidgy armchair in a dark corner of the bar. Flitch pulled over a chair and sat down opposite him. He flicked his hair back into place.

‘This has all been... I don’t know,’ he began, unasked. ‘It’s not every day you find out you’ve had drinks bought for you by an international terrorist.’

‘Not a terrorist, Gerry, just a hired gun. Do you mind if I call you Gerry?’

‘Not at all... Leo.’

‘There you go. Now, what’ll it be?’ The barman was standing ready.

‘Whisky, please.’

‘Ice, sir?’

‘And bring some water, too, please.’

‘Certainly, sir.’

Hoffer handed his empty glass to the barman. ‘And I’ll have the same again, Tom.’

‘My pleasure, Mr Hoffer.’

Gerry Flitch looked suitably impressed, which had been the plan all along. Hoffer gathered up his haemophilia pamphlets and stuck them down the side of the chair. It was a great chair, plenty big enough and damned comfortable. He wondered if he could buy it from the hotel, maybe ship it back.

‘You said you’re a private detective, Leo.’

‘That’s right, Gerry.’

‘And the police tell me you’re very well known.’

‘In the States, maybe.’ Good. As suggested, Flitch had called Bob Broome to check Hoffer’s credentials. ‘So tell me about Saturday, Gerry. No rush, I just want to listen.’

Tom the barman arrived with their drinks, and Hoffer gave him another tip. ‘Let us have some nuts or something, Tom, huh?’

‘Surely, Mr Hoffer.’

The nuts and crisps arrived in small glass bowls. Hoffer helped himself to a fistful. He’d had a mellowing-out joint half an hour ago, and was now hungry.

‘Well,’ said Flitch, ‘what is there to tell? I was drinking at the bar, sitting on one of those stools there. This guy came in for a drink, and sat a couple of stools away. He was drinking some soft drink, grapefruit and lemonade I think.’

‘It was tonic, not lemonade. We know that from his bar tab.’

Flitch nodded. ‘Yes, tonic, that’s right. Anyway, we got talking.’

‘Who started?’

‘I think I did.’

‘And did this guy, did he speak sort of grudgingly?’

‘No, not at all, he seemed very pleasant. You wouldn’t think he had murder on his mind.’

‘Maybe he didn’t. These guys have a way of blocking it out when they want to. So what did you talk about?’

Flitch shrugged. ‘Just general stuff. He told me he was in import-export, I told him I was a marketing strategist. I even gave him my card.’ He shook his head. ‘What a mistake that was. Next thing I know, armed police are at the door of my room.’

‘You’re the biggest break we’ve had, Gerry. It was the Demolition Man who made the mistake, accepting your card.’

‘Yes, but now he knows who I am, who I work for, where I live. And here I am talking to you.’

‘But he won’t know you’ve talked to us until he’s arrested. Besides, he’s not stupid. He won’t come near you.’

‘He won’t have to come near me though, will he? From what I’ve heard, a few hundred yards would be close enough.’ Flitch finished his drink. Hoffer knew the man was nervous, but he suspected Flitch was a heavy drinker anyway. The guy was young, late-twenties, but he had a face that was hardening prematurely, losing its good looks and gaining jowls. Only a big man, a man like Hoffer himself, could carry jowls and not look like a drunk. Flitch was a drunk in the making, and the pattern was just about complete.

‘Tell me something, Gerry, you ever do coke?’

Flitch’s eyes widened. ‘I take it you don’t mean the soft drink?’

‘I do not.’

Flitch shrugged. ‘I might’ve done a little at parties.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘Why?’

Hoffer sat forward. ‘Know where I could get some?’

Flitch smiled. ‘In Liverpool I could help you, but not down here.’

Hoffer sat back again and nodded slowly, then craned his neck. ‘Another round here, Tom.’ Flitch didn’t say no. Hoffer rubbed a hand across his nose. ‘So what else did you talk about? Family? Background? That’s what businessmen talk about in strange bars, isn’t it?’

‘Not us, it never became personal. We talked about how easy things had seemed in the mid-80s, then how tough they’d become, and how tough they still were. He said something like, “There’s no room for bleeding hearts in our line of work”.’ Flitch shivered at the memory.

‘The guy’s got a sense of humour,’ Hoffer remarked. Tom arrived with the drinks. ‘Gerry, I’m not going to ask you what this guy looked like. You’ve already given the cops a good description, and he’ll have changed his appearance by now anyway. I’m going to ask for something more difficult.’ Hoffer sat forwards. ‘I want your impressions of him as a man. Just close your eyes, think back on that day, fix it in your mind, and then say anything you want to say. No need to feel embarrassed, the bar’s empty. Go on, close your eyes.’ Flitch closed them. ‘That’s right. Now, to get you warmed up, I’ll ask a few questions about him, okay?’

‘Okay.’ Flitch’s eyelids fluttered like young butterflies.

‘Tell me about his movements, were they stiff or fluid? How did he pick up his glass? Did you see him walk?’

Gerry Flitch thought for a moment and then started to speak.

Afterwards, Hoffer washed his face and hands in the men’s room and looked at himself in the mirror. He felt tired. He’d have to phone Walkins tonight with a preliminary report. There’d be plenty to tell him. Walkins was greedy for information about the Demolition Man. It was like he wanted to build up a good enough picture so he could then tear it to shreds. Hoffer couldn’t really figure Walkins out. There were no photographs of his daughter in Walkins’ house, though there were plenty of his wife, who’d died of lung cancer. The man was loaded, a fortune made in politics. When he was a senator, Walkins had tucked the money away, probably most of it legit. You didn’t have to be crooked in politics to make a small fortune. But when he’d left politics, Walkins must have done something to turn his small fortune into a large one, large enough to pay for Hoffer’s obsession and still leave plenty over.

He thought about doing a couple of lines. They’d keep him awake and alert. But he had one more job to do yet, and besides, he was perilously close to the end of his stash. He left the men’s room and sweet-talked the receptionist, who let him take a look at Room 203. The police had given it a good going over. There was still fingerprint powder on the dressing table, wardrobe and television. But it looked like ‘Mark Wesley’ had spent some time before checking out engaged in a bit of dusting. He’d left a couple of dry bath-towels on the floor of his room, and why else would they be there if he hadn’t been using them as dusters? However, the police reckoned they had half a palm print from the inside of the door, and an index finger from the courtesy kettle. They could not, of course, be sure whose prints they were. They might belong to a maid or a visitor or a previous occupant. They’d only know when they arrested Mark Wesley, or whatever he was calling himself now. They’d also dusted the ambulance, but Wesley had been helped in and helped out. He hadn’t touched a thing.

The room didn’t tell Hoffer anything. Gerry Flitch hadn’t told him much either. He was building up his own picture of the D-Man, but didn’t know where that would get him. He was no psychologist, no specialist in profiling. He had a friend at the FBI who might make more sense of it all. He went back to reception and found that the receptionist had his print-out and photocopies all ready. He handed her the promised twenty. He’d already been given the information by Bob Broome, but he wanted to check that Broome was playing straight with him. The information was all here. He’d used a credit card to reserve his room, but had paid cash when he checked out. The police had run tests and serial number checks on all the cash taken by the hotel on Saturday. The potential big break, though, was the credit card. The home address Mark Wesley had given to the hotel was false, but the credit card had turned out to be genuine.

It had taken a while to wring the information out of the credit card company, but now they knew all the lies Wesley had told them: occupation, date of birth, mother’s maiden name... Well, maybe it was all a fabrication, but maybe there were a few half-truths and little slips in there. It would all be checked out. The credit card company sent its statements to an address in St John’s Wood, and that’s where Hoffer was headed, as soon as his chauffeur arrived.

Broome arrived only five minutes late, so Hoffer forgave him.

‘Had a productive morning?’ Broome asked, as his passenger got in.

‘I think so, what about you?’

‘Ticking over.’

On the way to St John’s Wood, Hoffer told Broome some of what he’d found out about haemophilia.

‘If we could get a list of registered haemophiliacs, I bet we could narrow it down pretty fast.’

‘Maybe. I’ll see what I can do. It could be a dead end.’

‘Hey, we won’t know till we’ve got our noses pressed against the wall, will we?’

‘I suppose not. But maybe we can take a short cut. We’re just passing Lord’s, by the way.’

‘Lord who?’

‘Just Lord’s. It’s the home of cricket.’

‘A sports field, huh? Cricket’s the one that’s like baseball, only easier?’ Broome gave him a dark look. ‘Just kidding. But did you ever watch a game of baseball? Greatest game on earth.’

‘That must be why so many countries play it.’

They arrived at a block of flats and parked in the residents’ only parking area. When they got to the right door, Broome made to ring the bell, then noticed Hoffer slip the Smith & Wesson out from his waistband.

‘Christ, Leo!’

‘Hey, our man may be in there.’

‘It’s a mail service, that’s all. An accommodation address. Remember, they’re expecting us, so put that gun away.’

Reluctantly, Hoffer tucked the pistol back into his waistband and buttoned his jacket. Broome rang the doorbell and waited. The door opened.

‘Mr Greene?’

‘Chief Inspector Broome?’

‘That’s right, sir.’ Broome showed his ID. ‘May we come in?’

‘Of course.’

They were led down a short dimly-lit hall and into a living room. It was a ground-floor flat, as small as any Hoffer had been in. One bedroom and a bathroom, but the kitchen was part of the living room. It was well-finished though, if you liked your home decorated according to fashion rather than personal preference. Everything had that just-bought-from-Habitat look.

Desmond Greene was in his forties, wiry and slack-jawed with hands that moved too much and eyes that wouldn’t meet yours. When he talked, he looked like he was lecturing the pale yellow wallpaper. Hoffer marked him straight away as gay, not that that meant anything. Often Hoffer met men he was sure were gay, only later to be introduced to their pneumatic wives. Not that that meant anything either.

Broome had made a point of not introducing Hoffer. It wasn’t exactly Metropolitan Police policy to drag New York private eyes around with you on a case. Maybe Broome was hoping Hoffer would keep his mouth shut.

‘How long you been running this set-up, Mr Greene?’ Hoffer asked.

Greene’s fingers glided down his face like a skin-cream commercial. ‘Four and a half years, that’s quite a long time in this business.’

‘And how do potential clients find you?’

‘Oh, I advertise.’

‘Locally?’

A wry smile. ‘Expensively. I run regular advertisements in magazines.’

‘Which magazines?’

‘My Lord, you are curious.’

Hoffer tried out his own wry smile. ‘Only when I’m hunting a cold-blooded killer and someone’s standing in my way.’

Greene looked giddy, and Bob Broome took over. Hoffer didn’t mind, he reckoned he’d scared Greene into telling the truth and plenty of it. He didn’t even mind the way Broome looked at him, like Hoffer had just asked a boy scout to slip his hand into his trouser pocket and meet Uncle Squidgy.

‘How long have you been handling mail for Mr Wesley?’

‘You understand, Chief Inspector,’ Greene said, recovering slightly, ‘the purpose of a mailing address is confidentiality?’

‘Yes, sir, I understand. But as I told you over the phone, this is a multiple-murder inquiry. If you do not cooperate, you’ll be charged with obstruction.’

‘After which we’ll take your chintzy flat apart,’ added Hoffer.

‘Gracious,’ said Greene, having a relapse. ‘Oh, goodness me.’

‘Hoffer,’ said Broome quietly, ‘go and put the kettle on. Maybe Mr Greene would like some tea.’

What am I, the fucking maid service? Hoffer got up and went to the kitchenette. He was behind Greene now, and Greene knew it. He sat forward in his chair, as though fearing a knife between the shoulder blades. Hoffer smiled, thinking how Greene would react to the feel of a cold gun muzzle at the back of his neck.

‘So,’ Broome was saying, ‘are you willing to assist us, sir?’

‘Well, of course I am. It’s not my job to hide murderers.’

‘Maybe if you told me a little of the service you offer Mr Wesley?’

‘It’s the same as my other customers. There are forty-odd of them. I receive mail, and they can contact me by telephone to find out what’s arrived, or they can have the mail forwarded to them monthly. I also operate a call-answering and forwarding service, but Mr Wesley didn’t require that.’

‘How much mail does he receive?’

‘Almost none at all. Bills and bank statements.’

‘And does he have the stuff forwarded?’

‘No, he collects it in person.’

‘How often?’

‘Infrequently. Like I say, it’s just bank statements and bills.’

‘What sort of bills?’

‘Credit cards, I’d guess. Well, he doesn’t need a credit card statement to pay off the account, does he? A simple cheque and note with his account number would do it.’

‘That’s true. He never has the stuff forwarded to him?’

‘Once he did, to a hotel in Paris.’

‘Do you remember the name of the hotel?’

Greene shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, it was well over a year ago.’

‘Maybe two years ago?’ Hoffer added.

Greene half-turned to him. ‘Could be.’

Hoffer looked to Broome. ‘That Dutchman, the heroin pusher. The D-Man took him out in Paris a couple of years back.’

Broome nodded. The kettle came to the boil and Hoffer picked it up, then thought better of it.

‘Does anyone really want tea? Me, I could murder a drink.’

‘I’ve some gin,’ Greene said. ‘Or a few cans of lager.’

‘It’s your party, Des,’ Hoffer said with a grin.

So Broome and Hoffer had a can of lager each, and Greene sat with a gin and tonic. He loosened up a little after that. The lager was fine, even though a couple of months past its sell by.

‘Okay,’ said Broome, ‘so mail gets sent here and Wesley phones up and you tell him what’s arrived?’

Greene nodded, stirring his drink with a finger and then sucking the tip.

‘Does he ever get you to open mail and read it to him?’

Greene smacked his lips. ‘Never.’

‘And he’s never received anything other than bills?’

Hoffer interrupted. ‘No fat brown envelopes full of banknotes? No large flat packages with photos and details of his next hit?’

Greene quivered the length of his body.

‘Can you give us a description of him?’ Broome asked, ignoring Hoffer. The description Greene gave was that of the man Gerry Flitch had given his card to.

‘Well, that’s about all for now, Mr Greene,’ said Broome. He placed his empty can on the carpet.

‘But there’s one other thing,’ said Greene.

‘What’s that?’

‘Aren’t you going to ask if there’s any mail waiting for him?’

‘Well, is there?’

Greene broke into a huge wrinkle-faced grin. ‘Yes!’ he squealed. ‘There is!’

But having got both men excited, he now seemed to want to stall. It was a crime, after all, to open someone else’s mail without their express permission. So Broome had to write a note to the effect that he was taking away the letter, and that he was authorized to do so. Greene read it through.

‘Can you write that I’m exonerated from all guilt or possible legal action?’

Broome scribbled some words to that effect, then signed and dated the note. Greene studied it again. Hoffer was close behind him, breathing hard.

‘Fine,’ said Greene, folding the note but leaving it on the breakfast bar. He went off to fetch the letter. When he was out of the room, Hoffer tore a fresh sheet of paper from the writing pad, folded it, and put it down on the breakfast bar, then lifted Broome’s note and scrunched it into a ball before dropping it into his pocket. He winked at Broome. Greene came back into the room. He was waving a single, slim envelope.

‘Looks like a bank statement,’ he said.

It was a bank statement.

The bank was closed when they got to it, but the staff were still on the premises, balancing the day’s books. The manager, Mr Arthur, ushered them into his utilitarian office.

‘I can’t do anything tonight,’ he said. ‘It’s too late to get anyone at head office. You realise that there are channels that must be gone through, authorisations, and even then a really thorough check could take some considerable time.’

‘I appreciate all of that, sir,’ said Bob Broome, ‘but the sooner we can get the ball rolling, the sooner we’ll be near the goal. This man has murdered over half a dozen individuals, two of them in this country.’

‘Yes, I do understand, and tomorrow morning we’ll do everything we can, as quickly as we can, it just can’t be done tonight.’

They were in the Piccadilly branch of one of the clearing banks. It was, naturally, a busy branch, perfect for someone like the Demolition Man, who needed to be anonymous.

‘If we could just talk about his account for a few minutes, sir,’ Broome said. The manager glanced at his wall clock and sighed.

‘Very well then,’ he said.

Broome produced the bank statement. There wasn’t much to it. It referred to the previous month, and showed a balance of £1,500 on the 1st, with cheque and cashpoint withdrawals through the month totalling £900, leaving a closing credit balance of £600. Arthur typed in the account number on his computer.

‘Mm,’ he said, studying the screen, ‘since that statement was drawn up, he’s withdrawn another £500.’

‘In other words,’ said Hoffer, ‘he’s all but emptied the account?’

‘Yes, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. He withdrew money on each day.’

Hoffer turned to Broome. ‘He’s shedding Mark Wesley.’ He turned to the bank manager. ‘Mr Arthur, I think you’ll find that account stays dormant from now on.’

‘Can we find out where he took the cash from?’ Broome asked.

Arthur studied the screen again. ‘Central London,’ he said.

‘What about old cheques?’ Hoffer asked. ‘Do you hold on to them?’

‘Yes, for a while at least.’

‘So we could look at his returned cheques?’

Arthur nodded. ‘After I’ve had authorisation.’

Broome looked at Hoffer. ‘What are you thinking?’

‘He has to pay people, Bob. Maybe he doesn’t always have the cash on him.’

‘You think he pays for his guns and explosives by cheque?’

Hoffer held his hands up, palms towards Broome. ‘Hey, maybe not, but we need to check. Could be there’s something he’s paid for, or someone he’s paid for, that can lead us right to him. He’ll be underground now, busy making himself a new identity. All we have to go on is the old one. I say we dig as far as we can.’ He turned to Arthur, who was looking dazzled by this exchange. ‘We need old cheques, old statements, and we need to know the site of every auto-teller he’s used. There could be a pattern that’ll tell us where he’s based.’

‘Auto-teller?’ said Arthur.

‘Cash machine,’ explained Broome.

8

I sat in my hotel room, counting out my money.

I had $4,500 in cash, money I’d been keeping safe at Max’s farm. I had another $5,000 in cash in a safe deposit box in Knightsbridge, and $25,000 cash in another safe deposit box at the same location. I reckoned I’d be all right for a while. I’d all but emptied the Mark Wesley bank account, and had disposed of his credit cards. I still had my Michael Weston account and credit cards, and no matter how far the police probed into ‘Mark Wesley’, I couldn’t see them getting close to Michael Weston.

The hotel I was in had asked for a credit card as guarantee, but I’d paid upfront instead. I put some of the money back in my holdall, and put some in my pocket, leaving a couple of thousand still on the bed. I had more money in New York, and some in Zurich, but I definitely wouldn’t need to touch that.

I rolled up the final two thou and stuck it in the toe of one of my spare shoes, then put the shoes back in the closet. I’d had to take everything out of the holdall. The stiff cardboard base was loose, and I’d slipped the money under it. There was a soft knock at the door. I unlocked it and let in Bel.

‘How’s your room?’ I asked.

‘All right.’ She’d taken a shower. Her hair was damp, her face buffed. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. We were in a new hotel, the Rimmington. It wasn’t central, but I didn’t mind. I knew returning to London so soon was dangerous. I didn’t want to be anywhere near the Craigmead or the Allington. So we were in a much smaller hotel just off Marylebone Road, handy, as the receptionist said, for Madame Tussaud’s, the Planetarium, and Regent’s Park. We were supposed to be on holiday from Nottingham, so we looked interested as she told us this. Actually, Bel had more than looked interested.

‘There won’t be much time for sightseeing,’ I warned her now.

‘Don’t worry,’ she snapped back, ‘I’m here to work. What’s that?’ She was pointing to my ‘works’. They were lying on the bed, syringes and all. I started loading them back into the holdall.

‘Are you on drugs?’

‘No, I just... sometimes I need an injection. I’m a haemophiliac.’

‘That means you bleed a lot?’

‘It means when I bleed, sometimes it won’t stop without help.’

‘An injection?’ I nodded. ‘But you’re all right?’

I smiled at her. ‘I’m fine.’ She decided she’d take my word for it.

‘So where are you taking me for dinner?’

‘How about a burger?’

‘We had burgers for lunch.’

This was true. We’d stopped at a motorway service area, where the burgers had looked the most appetising display. Bel deserved better, especially on her first night in London. That makes her sound naive, a country bumpkin, which she wasn’t. But she hadn’t been to London in five years, hadn’t been out of Yorkshire for the best part of a year. I wondered if I’d been right to bring her. How much of a liability might she become? I still didn’t think there’d be any real danger, except of arrest.

‘Well, you decide: Italian? Indian? Chinese? French? Thai? London can accommodate most tastes.’

She flopped down on my bed and assumed a thoughtful pose.

‘So long as it’s between here and Tottenham,’ I added, ‘but then you can find most things between here and Tottenham.’

I was all for taking a cab to Tottenham, but Bel wanted to ride on the tube. We’d dropped the XR3i back at its shop, and I’d settled for it in cash. There was no point hanging on to it; I thought we’d be in London for a few days. One thing about Bel, she surely did look like a tourist, wide-eyed and unafraid and ready to meet a stranger’s eyes, even to smile and start a conversation. Yes, you could tell she was new in town. I couldn’t help but be a bit more worldly, even though I was a tourist too. We got off the tube at Seven Sisters and ate at a Caribbean restaurant, where Bel had to have a second helping of the planter’s punch and was nearly sick as a result. She didn’t eat much though, apart from the dirty rice and johnny cakes. The fish was too salty for her, the meat too rich.

There was an evening paper in the restaurant, and I flicked through it until I found the latest on the Ricks assassination. The diplomat from the Craigmead was causing a stink, talking about lax security and an MI5 plot against him. According to his version, MI5 and some country neighbouring his own were in cahoots.

‘Keep muddying the water, pal,’ I told his grainy photograph. There was a more interesting snippet further down the page, added almost as an afterthought. It talked about a ‘mystery call’ to the Craigmead Hotel, a summons Eleanor Ricks had ignored. It intrigued me. Had my paymaster got cold feet and tried to warn her? And being unable to reach her, had he then phoned the police instead? I’d heard stories about employers changing their minds. I wouldn’t mind if they did, so long as they weren’t looking for a refund. If they wanted their money back, well, that was a different proposition entirely.

We walked up the long High Road, looking into a few of the less salubrious pubs. I’d already explained to Bel who I was looking for, and she seemed glad of the fresh air and exercise. The traffic was blocked all the way up the High Road to Monument Way, and all the way down Monument Way too. We stopped in at the Volley, but there was no one there I knew. I always had to be careful in Tottenham. There were people I might meet here who might assume I was either after something or being nosy. For example, sometimes I bought plastic explosives and detonators from a couple of Irishmen who lived here. They weren’t really supposed to sell the stuff on, and they were always nervous.

Then there was Harry Capaldi, alias Harry Carry, alias Andy Capp, alias Harry the Cap. It was true he sometimes wore a cap. It was true, too, that he was always nervous. And if Harry got the fright and went into hiding, I wouldn’t be very happy. So I was being careful not to ask for him in any of the bars. I didn’t want word getting to him before I did. Somewhere in the middle of the Dowsett Estate, Bel started complaining about her feet.

‘We’ll take a rest soon,’ I said. I led her back to the High Road and the first pub we went into, she sat down at a table. So I asked what she was drinking.

‘Coke.’ I nodded and went to the bar.

‘A coke, please, and a half of bitter.’ While the barmaid poured our drinks, I examined the row of optics. I’d been close to ordering a brandy. Close, but not that close. Harry the Cap wasn’t in the bar. Maybe he stayed home on a Monday night. I didn’t want to go calling on him. I knew he owned a couple of guns, and the people in the flat upstairs from him were dealers. It would only take one shot, and the whole building might turn into Apocalypse Now. I took the drinks back to our table. Bel had taken off her shoes and was rubbing her feet. The men at the bar were so starved of novelty that they were watching her like she wasn’t about to stop at the shoes. When she took her jacket off I thought one of them was about to fall off his stool.

‘New shoes,’ Bel said. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have brought them.’

‘And they say townies are soft.’

She glared, then smiled. ‘Cheers,’ she said, lifting her glass. She crunched on a piece of ice and looked around the bar. ‘So this is the big bad city? How do we find your friend?’

‘We keep looking. You’d be surprised how many pubs there are between here and White Hart Lane.’

‘And we go into every one of them?’

‘That’s the idea.’

‘Couldn’t you just phone him instead?’

‘He’s not on the phone.’

‘Then I suppose we keep walking.’ She took another drink.

‘Speaking of phoning, have you called Max?’

‘Give me a break, I only left him this morning.’

‘He’ll be worried.’

‘No, he won’t. He’ll be watching reruns of Dad’s Army and laughing his head off.’

I tried to visualise this, but failed.

‘Look, Michael, do you mind me saying something?’

‘What?’

‘Well, we’re supposed to be together, right? As in a couple. Look at you, you look more like my minder.’

I looked down at myself.

‘I mean,’ Bel went on, ‘you’re sitting too far away from me for a start. It’s like you’re afraid I’ll bite. And the way you’re sitting, you’re not comfortable, you’re not enjoying yourself. You’re like a flick knife about to open.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. I slid closer to her on the bench-seat.

‘Better, but still not great,’ she said. ‘Relax your shoulders and your legs.’

‘You seem to know a bit about acting.’

‘I watch a lot of daytime TV. There, that’s better.’ We were now touching shoulders and thighs. I finished my drink.

‘Right, we better get going.’

‘What?’

‘Like I say, Bel, a lot of pubs still to go.’

She sighed and slipped her shoes back on. The men at the bar turned their attention to the television. Someone by a riverbank was gutting a fish.

We were in a pub on Scotland Green, the one people use after they’ve signed on at the dole office across the road. It was always busy, and was all angles and nooks. It might be small, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t hide in it. Harry the Cap was hiding round the corner beside the fruit machines. He was seated on a high stool, wearing a paisley-patterned shirt intended for someone three decades younger, jeans ditto, and his cap. It struck me I should have brought him the one I’d bought; he’d have appreciated it more than Bel.

He wasn’t playing the machines, and in fact was staring at the cigarette dispenser.

‘Hello there, Harry,’ I said. He stared at me without recognition, then laughed himself into a coughing fit. Three gold chains jangled around his neck as he coughed. There were more gold bands on his wrists and fingers, plus a gold Rolex on his right wrist.

‘Dear God,’ he said at last, ‘that nearly killed me.’ He wiped his eyes. ‘Did you beat him up afterwards?’

‘Who?’

‘The blind fella who gave you that haircut. It’s diabolical. I won’t even tell you what I think of the colour.’

‘Why not take out an ad?’

‘Sorry, son.’ He lowered his voice and cleared his throat. ‘Do I need an invite or are you going to introduce me?’

‘Sorry, Harry, this is Belinda. Belinda, Harry.’

‘What’re you drinking, girl?’

She looked to me first and I nodded. ‘Coke, please.’

‘Needs your permission, does she? And you’ll be wanting a double brandy, I take it?’

‘Not tonight, Harry. A half of bitter’s fine.’

He shook his head. ‘My hearing must be going.’

‘Let me get these,’ I said. ‘Are you still TJ?’

‘That I am.’ Bel looked puzzled, so he spelt it out. ‘Tomato juice. I can’t drink any more, it makes my hands shake.’

She nodded, understanding everything. I got the drinks in while Harry tried his usual chat-up lines. I needn’t have worried; Harry was okay. He was stone cold sober and he wasn’t dodging police or warrant-servers or his ex-wife’s solicitors. He was fine.

When I got back, Bel was playing one of the bandits.

‘She’s had four quid out of it already,’ Harry said.

‘And how much has she put back?’

Harry nodded sagely. ‘They always put it back.’

Bel didn’t even look at us. ‘Who’s “they”?’ she said. ‘Women in general, or the women you know in general? I mean, there’s bound to be a difference.’

Harry wrinkled his nose. ‘You see,’ he said in a stage whisper, ‘things haven’t been the same since women’s lib. When my Carlotta burnt her bra, I knew that was the end. Cheers.’

‘Cheers.’ I sipped my beer and managed to catch Bel’s eye. She gave me a wink. ‘Harry,’ I said, ‘we need something.’

‘We?’

‘Bel and me.’

‘What do you need? A wedding licence?’

‘No, something that’ll get us through a few doors, something with authority stamped on it.’

‘Such as?’

‘I was hoping you’d have a few ideas.’

He rubbed his unshaved jaw. ‘Yes, I could maybe do you something. When would you need it?’

‘Tonight.’

His eyes widened. ‘Jesus, Mark, you’ve given me tough ones before, but this...’

‘Could you do it though?’

‘I wasn’t expecting to work tonight...’ From which I knew two things: one, that he could do it; and two, that he was wondering how much he could charge.

‘It would be cash?’ he said. I nodded. ‘It’s cash I like, you know that.’

‘I know that.’

‘Jesus, tonight. I don’t know...’

‘How much, Harry?’

He took off his cap and scratched his head, forgetting for a moment his psoriasis. Huge flakes of skin floated on to his shoulders. ‘Well now, Mark, you know my prices are never unreasonable.’

‘The difference is, Harry, this time I’m not getting paid.’

‘Well, that may make a difference to you, Mark, it doesn’t make a difference to me. I charge what’s fair.’

‘So tell me what’s fair.’

‘Five hundred.’

‘What do I get for five hundred?’

‘Two identity cards.’

‘That’s not much to show.’

He shrugged. ‘At short notice, it’s the best I can offer.’

‘How long would it take?’

‘A couple of hours.’

‘All right.’

‘You’ve the money on you?’ I nodded, and he shook his head. ‘Running around Tottenham with five hundred on him, and I bet he’s not even carrying a knife.’

Behind us, the bandit began coughing up another win for Bel.

‘This is definitely your lucky night,’ said Harry the Cap.

‘Make yourselves at home.’

It wasn’t easy in Harry the Cap’s first-floor flat. For one thing, what chairs there were were piled high with old newspapers and magazines. For another, half the already cramped living room was taken up with a rough approximation of a photographer’s studio. A white bedsheet had been pinned to the wall to provide a backdrop, and there was a solitary bruised flash-lamp hanging from a tripod. Harry gave the back of the lamp a thump.

‘Hope the bulb’s not gone, bleeding things cost a packet.’ The bulb flashed once, then came on and stayed on. ‘Lovely,’ said Harry. There was a plain wooden dining-chair which seemed to be the tomcat’s regular perch, but Harry tipped the reluctant beast on to the floor and placed the chair in front of the bedsheet, angling the lamp so that it hit an imaginary spot just above the back of the chair. ‘Lovely,’ he said again.

Then he started tinkering with his pride and joy. It was a special camera which in the one unit could take a photo (slightly smaller than passport size), develop it on to an ID card, and then laminate the card. Harry patted the machine. ‘Bought it from a firm that went bust. They used to do identity cards for students.’

Bel was standing in front of a mirror, combing her hair into place. The mirror was large and old and hexagonal, and in its centre was a posed photograph of a bride and groom with their best man and bridesmaid.

‘Your parents?’ Bel asked.

‘Nah, picked it up down Brick Lane. A lot of people make your mistake. Sometimes I don’t own up.’

‘Where’s that music coming from?’

‘Upstairs, some black kids.’

The constant bass was like a queasy heartbeat. It seemed to envelop the flat.

‘Can’t you complain?’ said Bel. Harry laughed and shook his head.

‘Right,’ he said, ‘I’ll just get the cards typed up.’

He had an old manual typewriter, the sort they’d thrown from offices on to the street in the ’70s. It was solidly built, but the keys needed realigning. Or maybe they just needed a clean.

‘You’ll never notice once the machine’s reduced it.’

This, I knew from previous experience, was true. Once the card had been filled in, it was placed inside the unit, a suitcase-sized object attached to the camera, and a reduced-size copy was made, only now with photograph in place. Normally, I didn’t bother too much. People seldom really scrutinised an ID card of any make or variety. If they saw that the photo was you, they were satisfied. But this time was different.

‘Remember, Harry, some of the people I’ll be dealing with might just give my ID more than a cursory glance. Don’t go making any typing errors.’

‘Do me a favour, I did a secretarial course at night school. Seventy words a minute.’

‘I didn’t know there were seventy two-letter words.’

I left him to get on with it. Bel flicked a final hair into place and turned to me. She offered me the comb, but I shook my head. I looked in the mirror and saw a hard-looking bloke staring back. He had cropped black hair and a professional scowl. He looked just like a policeman.

‘Which area do you want?’ Harry asked from the typewriter.

‘Better make it Central.’

‘Central,’ he acknowledged. ‘Good, I know how to spell that.’

A good forger’s art, of course, does not lie in making up the fake ID. Anyone can fake an ID. The forger’s art lies in having to hand authentic or authentic-looking blank ID forms. Harry would never tell anyone where his blanks came from, or even if they were the genuine article. I reckoned he’d got his hands on a real ID form a while back, and had a friendly printer run up a few hundred. There were other things he could do, like put an official stamp on something. Those he made himself, and they were beautiful. He’d done a US visa for me once that was incredibly lifelike. Only, without me knowing, he’d made it a student visa. The questions at Immigration had almost given me away. Next time I’d seen Harry, I’d been able to get a fake passport at a reduced rate.

‘I’ll need both your signatures,’ he said. He’d switched on an anglepoise lamp and put on a pair of John Lennon-style NHS glasses, the kind you hate to have to wear as a kid, but often crave as an adult. I’d never needed glasses. People said it was a sign of having lived a pure life.

I was using the name Michael West on my ID, while Bel was Bel Harris. She said she’d rather stick with her own Christian name. They say that the best lies have a nugget of truth in them, and these names were just different enough from our real names that they wouldn’t help the police. I’d sometimes called myself Michael West in the USA, but never before in England. Bel was having enough trouble as it was remembering my name was now Michael and not Mark. She didn’t need another name to confuse her.

‘Right, sweetheart,’ said Harry, ‘if you’ll sit on that chair...’

Bel turned to me. ‘Is he talking to you?’

‘I think he means you.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Harry, ‘I forgot for a moment there. Women’s lib, eh? Don’t mind me, love, just sit down anyway.’

Bel eventually sat down, and Harry stuck the ID form he’d just typed into the suitcase-machine.

‘Don’t smile or frown,’ he told Bel, ‘just look natural. That’s about as natural as a performing seal. Better, better.’ There was a flash, and Harry stood up straight. ‘Lovely. Takes about half a minute. Sit yourself down, Mark.’

We changed places.

‘By the way, Harry, you’d better take a few extra shots of me. I want you to set up a whole new identity.’

‘That takes time, Mark.’

‘I know. What shall we say, four days?’

‘Make it five. What do you need: passport, driving licence, National Insurance number?’

‘They’ll do for a start.’

‘We’re talking serious money.’

‘I know. I’ll give you two hundred on account.’

‘Now, just think bland thoughts. Mushy peas, liquor, the Spurs midfield. Look at him, he’s a natural.’

There was a flash, then Harry switched to his everyday SLR camera and plugged it into the flash-lamp. He fired off a few more shots, asking me questions while he did.

‘What name?’

‘How about Michael Whitney?’

‘Date of birth?’

‘Same as mine. No, make it a month earlier. Place of birth: London. You can make the rest of it up as you like.’

‘I will then.’

When he peeled the paper from my card and handed it to me, the clear plastic laminate was still warm. Behind the plastic, I wore that same policeman’s scowl. Bel wasn’t happy with her card. She reckoned she looked like a frightened animal. I studied her card but had to disagree.

‘Look on the bright side, Bel. At least it’ll give them a laugh when they arrest us. Harry, have you got any of those—’

But he was already coming back into the room, waving two small black leather wallets.

‘Put them in here,’ he said. ‘You can fill the spare pockets with anything you like.’ He crumpled one in his hand. ‘Give them a bit of a seeing to first though, otherwise they look like they’ve just come from the sweatshop. He smiled at me. ‛No extra charge.’

Which was my cue to hand over the cash.

We took a mini-cab from the office at the corner of Harry the Cap’s road. Our driver didn’t even know where Marylebone was, and mention of Baker Street and Regent’s Park didn’t ring any of his rusted bells. So I gave him some directions, and kept giving them all the way back to the hotel. He radioed his office to see how much he should charge.

‘Depends whether they look loaded or not,’ said the crackly voice. The driver looked at me in his rearview, and I shook my head at him. I gave him the money, but no tip, seeing how I’d have been better driving myself and letting him sit in the back.

I’d got him to drop us a couple of streets from the hotel. If anyone got to Harry the Cap, they might ask questions at the cab office, and the cab office wouldn’t forget a fare from Tottenham to Marylebone Road. I didn’t want anyone coming any closer to me than that. And yes, I did have someone specific in mind.

‘Hang on,’ said Bel, ‘I want a pizza.’ So we went to a takeaway and stood with the delivery riders while Bel’s deep-pan medium seafood was constructed. Then it was back to the hotel. I took her to her room. She lifted the pizza box to my nose.

‘You want to help me with this?’

Which was, however innocent its intention, an invitation to her bedroom, where we’d have to sit on the bed to eat.

‘Not hungry, thanks,’ I said. But I’d paused too long.

‘I won’t tell my dad.’ She was smiling. ‘Shouldn’t we talk anyway? Go through the plan for tomorrow?’

She had a point. ‘Over breakfast,’ I said.

‘Cold pizza maybe?’

‘Don’t be disgusting.’

I went to my room and called Max. He’d been sitting right by the phone.

‘Everything’s fine,’ I said. ‘I’ll give you the number here, you can call Bel any time you like.’

‘Thanks,’ he said grudgingly. He then found a pen and some paper. I gave him the hotel number and Bel’s room number. ‘She’ll probably be calling you herself,’ I said.

‘If she hasn’t already forgotten me.’

‘Don’t be daft, Max, she talks about you all the time.’ This was a lie; she hadn’t mentioned her father all day until I’d brought up the subject in the pub. I won’t tell my dad. “Night, Max.’ I put down the phone.

I’d known Bel for a few years now, and naturally sex had never... well, it wasn’t that I didn’t like her. It wasn’t that we didn’t flirt. It wasn’t even that I was scared Max would bury me in one of his walled fields. It was mostly that I didn’t, as the Americans say, ‘do’ sex any more. It didn’t exactly go with the lifestyle. The women I met in my life I met infrequently and for necessarily short periods. If I wanted to get to know any of them, I had to construct a set of lies and half-truths. You didn’t get too many ads in the lonely hearts columns from women looking to meet ‘tall okay-looking assassin, 30–35, interested in ballistics, cuisine, international travel’. So I’d given up on women. I didn’t even use hotel whores often, though I liked to buy them drinks and listen to their own constructed stories.

Speaking of which, I knew I had one more call to make. It had taken me a while to get round to it. I picked up the receiver and pressed the digits from memory. I have a good memory for numbers. The call was answered.

‘Allington Hotel, can I help you?’

‘Yes, I’d like to speak to a Mr Leo Hoffer, please.’

‘Hoffer? One moment, please.’ A clack of computer keys. ‘I’m sorry, sir, we don’t appear to have a guest with that name.’

‘I’m sure he’s staying there,’ I persisted. ‘He was there today, or maybe he’s booking in tomorrow?’

‘Hold on, please.’ She muffled the phone with her hand and asked a colleague. The colleague took the receiver from her.

‘Hello, sir? I think there must be a misunderstanding. Mr Hoffer did visit the hotel earlier today, but he isn’t a guest here.’

‘Damn,’ I said. ‘I must have got a crossed line. You don’t happen to know where he’s staying, do you?’

‘I’m sorry, sir. At least you know Mr Hoffer’s in town.’

‘Yes, that’s true. At least I know that. You’ve been very helpful.’ I put down the phone. After a minute or two, I allowed myself a small smile. It was good to know Leo was here. Where he was, the circus would surely follow, by which I mean the media circus he seemed always to attract... and to covet. I always knew when Leo was on my trail, no matter how far behind.

I only had to pick up a paper and let the interviewer tell me about it.

I’d seen Leo on TV in the States. Frankly, I wasn’t flattered. They say it’s nice to feel wanted, but Leo looked like the one who should be in the slammer.

There was a soft knock at my door. Two short, one long: our agreed signal. I sighed, got off the bed, and unlocked the door.

‘Got anything for indigestion?’ Bel said.

‘Okay,’ I said, letting her in, ‘let’s go through tomorrow.’

And we did. I had us stand in front of the mirror and showed Bel how to act like a police officer, how to stand, how to speak, what to say. She smiled too much at first, so we got rid of that. And she had a natural slouch, the result, so she said, of always being taller than her girl friends and trying to bring herself down to their level.

After an hour, she got bored and started making mistakes again.

‘Listen,’ I said. ‘We’ll get one or two shots at this. After that it’d be too risky. The police are bound to find out there are impostors going around. So we’ve got to make the most of it, understood?’ I waited till she nodded. ‘Remember, these IDs weren’t cheap. Now, look at yourself in the mirror, you’re slouching again.’

She straightened up.

‘Better.’ I was standing close behind her. ‘Now do one last thing for me.’ She turned to me.

‘What?’

‘Go phone your father.’

She narrowed her eyes. ‘Yes, boss,’ she said.

I locked the door after her.

9

The hardest work Hoffer had done so far in London was find a dealer who didn’t think he was an undercover cop or the vigilante father of some teenage addict.

There was crack around, but not much actual cocaine. The stuff he’d ended up buying was far from premium grade, probably five parts lidocaine and three parts baking soda, but there was no way he was going to start doing crack or free-basing, he’d seen too much hurt result from those particular by-ways. He’d been a New York street cop when crack first hit town. In a matter of months the drug had swamped the housing schemes. Earlier in the ’80s he’d been friends with another cop who’d started free-basing. That cop had gone downhill like a well-oiled skateboard, careering all the way.

Hoffer had got into drugs the same way. He spent his days busting pushers and users, living so close to drugs that it was like the fucking things were whispering to him, even in his sleep. One day he’d confiscated some bottles of rock cocaine, only he’d handed them in one short. He soon found that there was an underclass of police officer that used a lot of drugs. Some of them just took drugs off one pusher and resold to another, keeping a little back along the way. Others had deep habits and pinhole eyes, real smack heads. You were in a privileged position, being a cop. You didn’t have to look far or try hard to score a haggle of white shit, and you so seldom had to pay. But free-basing, that was a nightmare. Someone had tried to introduce him to it, recycling their smoke into a balloon and offering him the used smoke. Hoffer had never enjoyed the more social aspects of drug use, and drew the damned line at breathing somebody else’s high.

So here he was in London, doing what he did.

He added a couple of hundred milligrams of speed to his purchase, and to offset the speed asked about quaaludes or ‘bennies’, but ended up with Librium and a bit more boo.

‘Packing heat,’ he said to himself afterwards. Soho had still failed to provide a night’s fun, so he’d prowled the West End, sitting in a fag bar for quarter of an hour before realising his mistake, and finally locating a hooker who wouldn’t accompany him to his hotel, but could provide relief in her own quarters. Hoffer couldn’t agree to this; he’d gone to a hooker’s greasy bedroom before, only to have her pimp try to roll him. So they made do with a back-alley blow job, for which she charged a twenty. That put her on £240 an hour, which was decent money. It was even more than Robert Walkins was paying.

In the morning he had a shower, the bath being too narrow for anything like a soak, put on a sober blue suit, and went to see his bank manager.

Mr Arthur looked like he was the one begging a loan for his daughter’s life-saving surgery.

‘Events will take their course, Mr Hopper.’

‘That’s Hoffer.’

‘Of course, Hoffer.’ Arthur gave a smile like a toad at mating time. ‘But it’s a bit early yet to expect any results, as I say.’

‘Say whatever you like, shithead, but listen to this.’ Hoffer leaned forward in his cramped chair. ‘I don’t have to play by any rules, so if you want to be able to leave your office every lunchtime and evening without having to check both ways for baseball bats, I suggest you give events a kick along the course they’re taking.’

‘Now look here—’

‘I am looking, and all I see is something I try not to tread in on the sidewalk. And I don’t mean manholes. Now get hassling head office for all you’re worth, and meantime let me see what you’ve got here behind the scenes.’

Arthur’s top lip was glistening with sudden perspiration. He looked like he’d lost about twenty pounds in stature.

‘I’ve got an appointment at eleven.’

‘Cancel it.’

‘Look, you can’t just—’

‘I thought I already was.’ Hoffer stood up, keeping his hands in his pockets. With his elbows jutting from his sides, he knew he looked like something from the jungle. Arthur would have clambered up the cheese-plant in the corner if he’d had any motive power. ‘Now go fetch me the files.’

He sat down again, trying to look comfortable. The bank manager sat there for a few moments, just to show he wasn’t intimidated. Hoffer allowed this with a shrug. They both knew the truth. Mr Arthur got up slowly, his hands gripping the edge of the desk. Then he walked out of the office.

He came back with a couple of files and some sheets of photocopier paper. ‘This is all I can find just now. Most of our records get sent to head office eventually.’

‘Tell them you want them back here pronto. What about the check on Wesley’s current account transactions?’

‘It’s being carried out. We have to go through all the old cheques. They’re not kept in neat little piles.’

Hoffer reached out a hand for the files. There was a knock at the manager’s door.

‘Ignore it,’ said Hoffer.

‘I certainly shan’t.’ Arthur walked briskly to the door and pulled it open. ‘This is the man, officers.’

Hoffer turned his head lazily. At the door stood two uniformed policemen. So Arthur hadn’t just been seeking out the files. Hoffer peeked at them anyway. They contained only blank sheets of typing paper.

‘You sonofabitch,’ he said. The policemen then asked him to accompany them, and he rose from his chair. ‘Certainly,’ he said. ‘No problem here,’ he assured them.

But all the time he had eyes only for Mr Arthur.

‘Never again! Do you hear?’

Hoffer heard. He was bored of hearing it. Bob Broome didn’t seem to have any other words in his vocabulary.

‘Can we turn the record over, Bob?’

Broome slapped his desk. ‘It’s not funny, Hoffer. It’s not a game. You can’t go around threatening bank managers. Jesus Christ, they run the country.’

‘That’s your problem then. Still, it could be worse.’ Broome waited for an explanation. ‘At least Arthur didn’t look Jewish.’

Broome collapsed on to his chair. ‘You’re slime, Hoffer.’

Hoffer didn’t need that. ‘Yeah, I’m slime, but I’m slime that pays. So what does that make you?’

‘Hold on a second.’

‘No, shut up and listen. Remember, I’ve been a cop, I know what it’s like. You try to look busy, but most of the time you’re treading water waiting for somebody to come tell you who it is you’re looking for. I can’t do that any more. I don’t have that luxury. What I’ve got is a head and a pair of fists, and if you don’t like that, then just keep out of my way.’

‘I just saved you from a barrow-load of manure.’

‘And I thank you for that, but I’ve walked away from shit before without needing a pitchfork up my ass.’

Broome shook his head sadly. ‘I don’t want you around, Hoffer.’

‘Tough titty.’

‘I mean it. I don’t want you anywhere near.’

‘I can handle that, Chief Inspector.’ Hoffer stood up. ‘But remember, you’re the one who called me, you’re the one who took my money.’ Hoffer walked out of the office. He didn’t bother closing the door.

On his way out of Vine Street, he saw DI Dave Edmond going in. They knew one another through Broome.

‘Hey... Dave, right?’ said Hoffer, the bright smiling American.

‘That’s right,’ said Edmond.

‘Are you busy?’

‘Well, I was just...’

‘I thought maybe I could buy you a drink?’

Edmond licked his lips. It had been a whole eleven hours since he’d last touched a drop. ‘Well, that’s very kind.’

Hoffer put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Ulterior motive, Dave. I’ve got a couple of questions, and Bob thought maybe you wouldn’t mind...’

‘What sort of questions?’ Edmond was already being steered back the way he’d come.

‘Oh, just background stuff. You know, ballistics, scene of crime, that sort of thing. And anything you have on the deceased.’

Edmond had said that if they were going to talk about guns, maybe he should invite Barney along. Sergeant Barney Wills was the station’s arms aficionado. So they took Barney with them to the pub.

It was another of those ‘olde worlde’ interiors which bored Hoffer stupid. In America, a bar looked like a bar, a place where you went to drink. He couldn’t see the point of horse brasses and framed prints of clipper ships and shelves of books. Yes, books, like people might suddenly mistake the place for a library and decide to have a drink anyway while they were there.

It was all a joke too, hardly any of it authentic. The prints were fresh and framed in plastic, the books bought by the yard. Often he despaired of the English. They were too easy to con. Edmond and Barney were perfect material for a real con artist, perfect because they thought they were putting one over on him. He was just a loud Yank with money to spend and a lot of daft notions. They’d play him along, laughing at him, taking his drinks, and they’d tell him a few stories along the way.

Hoffer didn’t mind this game. He knew who was screwing who. If the scene had been a porn movie, the two policemen would have had their cheeks bared in submission.

Barney told him what the lab had discovered about the sniper rifle. Namely that it had indeed fired the fatal shot, and that it was a specialist weapon, in use in the armed forces but not in general circulation. Arms weren’t easy to come by in Britain anyway, though recently the crack dealers hadn’t been having any problems. The army and the Royal Marines used the L96A1, but civilian target shooters wouldn’t use one.

‘It was a Super Magnum,’ Barney said, between gulps of scotch, ‘with .338 Lapua Magnum ammunition. Christ knows where he got it.’

‘There must be a few bent gun dealers around,’ Hoffer suggested.

‘Yes, but even they wouldn’t deal in an L96. I mean, half of them wouldn’t even know how to begin getting hold of one. This thing fires a thousand yards, who needs that? And the sight he had on it, this was quality gear, must’ve cost a fortune.’

‘Someone must’ve been paying a fortune,’ Edmond added.

‘Question is, who?’ Hoffer got in another round. ‘I’ve looked into assassins, guys, I mean the whole tribe of them. Leaving out the one-off crazies who go blast their local burger joint with an Uzi, they tend to come from a military background. Makes sense, right? I mean, that’s where they get the training, that’s where they first taste what a gun can do.’

Both men nodded, too busy drinking to interrupt.

‘But this guy is a haemophiliac, or at least we think he is, and the doctors assure me the military won’t accept haemophiliacs.’ Hoffer’s own words hit him: military background. Maybe he was on to something. He thought about it for a minute. Edmond and Barney didn’t seem to notice. They started up a conversation about some cricket match. Eventually Hoffer drifted back to the real world. It was the tap of empty glass on wooden table that did it. Not that his companions were hinting or anything.

‘This’ll have to be the last round, guys. We’re all busy people.’ So he got them in again, and decided the balance was all wrong. He was shelling out, and not getting back much of a dividend.

‘So, Barney, what about these gun dealers? The bent ones, I mean. Are they on a list or anything? I’d appreciate a look-see.’ What else could Barney do but nod and say he’d see what he could do? Hoffer turned to Edmond.

‘Now, Dave, you were going to tell me about Eleanor Ricks...’

The army camp wasn’t such a bitch to find after all.

Hoffer had been expecting a hellhole in the middle of nowhere, but this was just north of London, on the edge of a commuter town and slap next-door to a housing estate.

When he’d spoken to the camp by telephone, they’d said he could take a mainline train up there, it only took half an hour. So that’s what he did. The people were kidding themselves if they thought they lived in the ‘country’. They weren’t living in anything, they were living on something, and that something was borrowed time. London was snapping at their shoelaces. They worked there, earned their living there, and London wanted something back in return. It wanted them.

They tried to look prosperous and talk differently, but they were pale, almost ill-looking, and their cars only made traffic jams. Hoffer, who had considered taking a cab all the way, was relieved he’d gone by train. The roads he saw were crammed. Someone mentioned a nineteen-mile tailback on the M25. They called the road an ‘orbital’. You could orbit the globe in less time. The train wasn’t quite perfect though. It had been late leaving London, and it hadn’t been cleaned or aired since depositing its rush-hour cattle in London. It smelt bad and there was trash on the floor.

The cab Hoffer took from the station didn’t smell much better, and there was only slightly more room in the back than in a British Rail seat. He stuffed his legs in a diagonal and made do like that. He got the cab to drop him at the camp entrance. He was surprised to see armed guards on the gate. One nodded him in the direction of the gatehouse.

‘What’s the problem, chief?’ Hoffer asked, as the guard on the gatehouse phoned him in.

‘Terrorists,’ the guard said. ‘We’re on constant alert.’

‘I thought they’d stopped bothering you guys, started bothering the rest of us instead?’

‘You never know.’

Armed with this philosophical nugget, Hoffer was pointed in the direction of the office he wanted.

He was met halfway by a young soldier whose face looked to have been pressed the same time as his shirt and pants.

‘Mr Hoffer? The Major’s expecting you.’

‘It’s good of him to see me at short notice.’ Hoffer almost had to jog to keep up with the man. Somewhere along the route, Hoffer was supposed to catch the guy’s name, but he was too busy catching his own breath. He was led into a building and told to take a seat. He was glad to. He tried focusing his eyes on the recruiting posters and glossy brochures. You’d think you were booking a holiday for yourself rather than a bruising career. The soldiers in the brochures looked tough and honest and Christian. You just knew democracy and the free world would be safe in their hands, even if you were dropping them into a country where they couldn’t speak the language and the distant hills were full of mortar and Mullahs.

Hoffer caught himself whistling ‘God Bless America’ and checked it just in time.

A door opened along the hall. ‘Mr Hoffer?’

Hoffer walked along the hall to meet the Major. His name was Major Drysdale, and he had a cool dry handshake, a bit like a Baptist minister’s. ‘Come in, please.’

‘I was telling your... ah, I was saying I appreciate you seeing me like this.’

‘Well, your call was intriguing. It’s not every day I get to meet a New York detective. Speaking of which, there are certain formalities... Could I see your identification?’

Hoffer reached into his pocket and produced his detective’s ID, which had been unfortunately mislaid at the time of his resignation from the force. It came in useful sometimes. People in authority would often prefer to speak to a real police officer than a shamus. Hoffer reckoned this was one of those times. Drysdale took down a few details from the ID before handing back the wallet. That worried Hoffer, but not much. He might go on to an army file, but he doubted they’d go so far as to phone his supposed employers in the States. He kept reading about military cutbacks, and phone calls cost money.

‘So,’ said Major Drysdale, ‘what can I do for you, Detective Hoffer?’

It was a small plain office, lacking any trace of personality. Drysdale might have just moved in, which would explain it. But Hoffer thought the man looked comfortable here, like he’d sat in the office for years. He wasn’t much more than PR, a public face for the army. The camp’s real muscle was elsewhere. But Hoffer didn’t need muscle, he just needed a few questions answered. He needed a friendly ear. He was on his best behaviour and in his best suit, but Drysdale still treated him with just a trace of amusement, like he’d never seen such a specimen before.

As to the Major himself, he was tall and skinny with arms you could have snapped with a Chinese restaurant’s crab-crackers. He had short fair hair and blue eyes out of a Nazi youth league, and a moustache which could have been drawn on his face with ballpoint. He wasn’t young any more, but still carried acne around his shirt collar. Could be he was allergic to the starch.

‘Well, Major,’ Hoffer said, ‘like I said on the telephone, it’s a medical question, and a vague one at that, but it’s in connection with a series of murders, assassinations to be more accurate, and as such we would appreciate any help the army can give.’

‘And you’re working in tandem with Scotland Yard?’

‘Oh, absolutely. I have their full backing.’

‘Could you give me a contact name there?’ Drysdale poised his pen above his notepad.

‘Sure. Uh, Chief Inspector Broome. That’s B-r-o-o-m-e. He’s the man to talk to. He’s based at Vine Street in central London.’

‘Not Scotland Yard?’

‘Well, they’re working together on this.’

‘Orange, isn’t it?’

‘Sir?’

‘Vine Street.’ Hoffer still didn’t get it. ‘On the Monopoly board.’

Hoffer grinned, chuckled even, and shook his head in wonder at the joke.

‘Do you have a phone number for the Chief Inspector?’

‘Oh, yessir, sure.’ Goddamned army. Hoffer gave Major Drysdale the number. His skin was crawling, and he had to force himself not to scratch all over. He wished he hadn’t taken some speed before setting out.

‘Maybe before we start,’ Drysdale was saying now, not stonewalling exactly, just following procedure, ‘you could tell me a little about the inquiry itself. Oh, tea by the way?’

‘Yes, please.’

Drysdale picked up his phone and ordered tea and ‘some biccies’. Then he sat back and waited for Hoffer to tell him all about the D-Man.

It took a while, but eventually, two cups of strong brown tea later, Hoffer got to the point he’d wanted to start with. Drysdale had asked questions about everything from the assassin’s first error to the sniper rifle he’d used in London. And he’d kept on scribbling notes, though Hoffer wanted to say it was none of his goddamned business, tear the pad from him, and chew it up with his teeth. He was sweating now, and blamed tannin poisoning. His throat was coated with felt.

‘So you see,’ he said, ‘if the man we’re looking for hasn’t exactly been in the army, well, maybe he’s been or still is connected to it in some way. The most obvious connection I can think of is family.’

‘You mean a brother or sister?’

‘No, sir, I mean his father. I think it would have to be his father, someone who might have instilled in him a... relationship with weapons.’

‘We don’t normally allow children to train with live ammo, Detective Hoffer.’

‘That’s not exactly what I’m saying, sir. I mean, I’m sure the army’s probity is above... uh, whatever. But say this man was good with firearms, well, wouldn’t he want to pass that knowledge and interest on to his son?’

‘Even if the son could never join the army?’

‘The kid could’ve been a teenager before anyone found out he was a haemophiliac. Mild sufferers, sometimes they don’t find out till they’re grown up. It takes an operation or something before anyone notices they have trouble getting their blood to clot.’

‘This is all very interesting,’ said Drysdale, flicking through his copious notes, ‘but I don’t see where it gets us.’

‘I’ll tell you, sir. It gets us a kid who’s diagnosed haemophiliac by an army doctor, sometime in the past, maybe between twenty and thirty years ago. You must have records.’

Drysdale laughed. ‘We may have records, but do you know what you’re asking? We’d have to check every army base here and abroad, every medical centre. Even supposing they held records from so long ago. Even supposing the child was treated by an army doctor. I mean, he might easily have gone to a civilian doctor. Putting aside all this, he would have taken his records with him.’

‘What?’

‘When you change doctors, your new doctor requests from your old doctor all your medical notes. You don’t keep them yourself, your doctor keeps them. Your present doctor.’

‘Are you sure? Maybe if I spoke to someone from your medical—’

‘I really don’t think that’s necessary.’

Hoffer considered his options. He could whack the guy. He could wheedle. He could offer some cash. He didn’t think any of these would work, so he decided to be disappointed instead.

‘I’m real sorry you can’t find it in yourself to help, Major. You know how many innocent people this man has murdered? You know he’ll keep on doing it till he’s caught? I mean, he’s not going to give it up and move jobs. I can’t see him waiting tables at IHOP or somewhere.’

Drysdale smiled again. ‘Look, I know what you’re saying. I appreciate that you—’

Hoffer got to his feet. ‘No, sir, with all due respect I don’t think you do know. I won’t waste any more of your time.’ He turned to the door.

‘Wait a minute.’ Hoffer waited. He turned his head. Drysdale was standing too now. ‘Look, maybe I can initiate a few general inquiries.’

Hoffer turned back into the room. ‘That would be great, sir.’

‘I can’t make any promises, you understand.’

‘Absolutely. We’re all just trying to do what we can.’

Drysdale nodded. ‘Well, I’ll see what I can do.’

‘I really appreciate that, sir.’ Hoffer took Drysdale’s hand. ‘I’m sure I speak for us all.’

Drysdale smiled a little sheepishly. Then he said he’d get someone to escort the detective back to the gate.

‘I’ll be in touch,’ said Hoffer.

While he waited back in the reception area for his ‘escort’ to appear, he spotted a drinking fountain and flew towards it, filling his mouth with water, gargling, spitting it back, and finally swallowing a few mouthfuls.

‘How can they drink that stuff?’ he asked himself as he wiped his mouth.

‘It’s only water,’ his escort said from behind him.

‘I meant the goddamned tea,’ said Hoffer.

10

I knocked again.

‘Come on,’ I said, ‘let’s get busy. We’re not tourists any more.’

Not that Bel had seen many of the sights of London, unless sights was broad enough to encompass Tottenham and a couple of low-class restaurants. I listened at her door until I could hear her getting out of bed.

‘I’ll meet you downstairs,’ she called.

I went back to my room and tried phoning again. This time I got through. I was calling someone at British Telecom. His name was Allan and he didn’t come cheap.

‘It’s me,’ I said. ‘Have they started tapping your line yet?’

‘No, just everybody else’s. I can give you the latest royal dirt if you like.’

He didn’t sound like he was joking. ‘No thanks,’ I said. ‘I’m after a couple of numbers.’

‘I take it you mean unlisted, or you’d be calling Directory Enquiries.’

‘I’ve checked, they’re unlisted. The first is a woman called Eleanor Ricks.’

‘The one who got shot?’

‘Could be.’

‘You’ve got to be careful, man. Sometimes Scotland Yard or MI5 stick keywords into the system. If you say the word and they catch it, they record your whole conversation.’

Allan was always trying to impress me — or scare me, I didn’t know which — with this sort of comment.

‘Her husband may be the subscriber,’ I carried on. ‘He’s called Frederick Ricks. According to the tabloids, they live in Camden. I’ll need their address, too.’

‘Got it.’ He paused. ‘You said a couple of names?’

‘Joe Draper, he heads a TV production company. He’s got a house in Wiltshire, the phone number there would be useful, plus any address for him in town, apart from his office. His office is in the book.’

I could hear Allan writing the information down. I gave silent blessing to the British media, who had provided me with the information I had.

‘I see inflation’s in the news again,’ he said at last.

‘Not another hike, Allan. You’re pricing yourself out of the game.’

‘As a special offer to regular subscribers, the increase has been held to ten percent for one month only.’

‘Generous to a fault. Same address?’

‘Who can afford to move?’

‘Tens and twenties all right?’

‘Sure.’

‘Oh, one more name...’

‘Now who’s pushing it?’

‘Call it my free gift. Scotty Shattuck.’ I spelt it for him. ‘Somewhere in London probably, always supposing he’s got a phone.’

‘Right, I’ll do my best. Later today, okay?’

‘I’ll stick your fee in the post. If I’m not here, leave the details with reception. Here’s the number.’

I gave it to him and terminated the call. Downstairs, Bel was already seated in the small dining room, pouring cereal from a one-portion pack.

‘I see you’re not one of these women who takes forever to dress.’ I sat down beside her.

‘Know a lot about that, do you?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh, nothing.’ She poured milk and started to eat. I knew what she meant. She meant she was good-looking and I hadn’t made a pass at her, so what did that make me? She was wearing trousers and a blue blouse and jacket. They were the plainest items in her luggage. I tried to see her as a police officer. I couldn’t. But then I’d be the one doing the talking; I’d be the one they’d be looking at. And examining myself in the mirror this morning, I’d seen a hard-nosed copper staring back at me. He looked like he wanted to take me outside.

‘Aren’t you eating?’ Bel asked.

‘I never eat much in the morning. I’ll just have some coffee.’

‘You will if anyone turns up to serve you. I haven’t seen a soul since I came in. The stuff’s all on that sideboard, but there’s no coffee.’

I went to the sideboard to take a look. A thermos flask turned out to contain hot water, and there was a jar of instant coffee in one of the cupboards.

‘Yum yum,’ said Bel.

The coffee tasted the way thermos coffee always tastes. It reminded me of sports fields, of games watched with my father, the two of us sheltering beneath a tartan travelling-rug or umbrellas and hoods, depending on the weather. There’d be coffee and sandwiches at half-time. Thermos coffee.

‘So the schedule for today,’ said Bel, scraping up the last of the cereal, ‘is a visit to Testosterone City, yes?’ I nodded. ‘And I provide the decoration while you ask your questions?’ I nodded again. ‘Are you quite sure you need my expensive skills, Michael? I mean, performing monkeys come cheap these days.’ Then she touched the back of my hand. ‘Only teasing. Drink your coffee and let’s get out of here. This dining room’s like something out of a horror film. I keep thinking all the other guests and staff have been murdered in their beds.’ She started to laugh, but stopped abruptly, and her look was somewhere between embarrassment and fear. I knew exactly what had struck her: that there was only one murderer around here.

I didn’t know where to find Scotty Shattuck, but wasn’t prepared to sit around the hotel waiting for Allan to get back to me. So we got a taxi on Marylebone Road and headed for Oxford Street, where, above a shop selling what can be best described as tat, there was a gym and health centre called Chuck’s.

Max had been able to offer a good physical description of Shattuck, and it pointed to a man who did more than jog around the park to keep himself in shape.

‘He’s like a cross between a Welsh pit-pony and a brick shithouse,’ Max had said.

There were a lot of gyms in London, a lot of places where sweaty males pushed weights, goaded by other musclebound lifters. Some of them no doubt took a few drugs to aid muscle development and performance. They were the sorts who have gaps between their upper arms and their torsos when they walk, and can’t do anything to close those gaps.

A lot of gyms, but only one or two like Chuck’s. Chuck’s was more than a gym, it was a place to hang out, a haven for those who need to keep fit between assignments. You didn’t get the grossly over-muscled at Chuck’s. You got authentic hard men, men who’d been in the armed forces, or who had come out but still kept fit. Men sometimes recruited for work overseas, work they talked about in Chuck’s, but seldom outside. I’d been introduced to Chuck’s by an ex-Royal Marine who’d been my contact on an earlier job. He wasn’t there when we walked in, but Chuck himself was.

He was about fifty, hair like steel wool, and he wore a green combat-style T-shirt, straining across his chest. The men on the machines behind him whistled appreciatively at Bel as Chuck came towards us. Bel’s face reddened with anger.

‘What can I do for you?’

‘Are you the owner of this establishment, sir?’

He got a bored look on his face. One question had established in his mind who he was dealing with. I knew he wouldn’t recognise me; I’d changed a lot since Brent Storey had brought me here.

‘That’s right,’ he said warily.

‘I’m looking for someone called Scotty.’ Chuck’s face stayed blank.

‘As in “Beam me up?’” he hazarded. I didn’t smile.

‘Scotty Shattuck,’ I went on. I had one hand in my pocket. I was wearing tight black leather gloves, as was Bel. We’d bought them on the way here. Her idea. They shouldn’t have worked, but in fact they did make us look more like police officers. ‘He works weights,’ I went on. ‘Little guy, but well-built. He’s ex-army.’

‘Sorry,’ said Chuck, ignoring all this, ‘I didn’t catch your name.’

‘West, Detective Inspector West.’

‘And this is...?’ He meant Bel.

‘DC Harris,’ she said, stony-faced. Chuck gave her a good long examination, not caring if I noticed or not. The two customers using the apparatus had stopped and were sauntering this way, rubbing their necks with towels. Another three men were squatting by the window. The noise of traffic was a low persistent growl, with vibrations from the buses shaking the mirrors on the walls.

‘Well,’ Chuck said at last, turning back to me, ‘can’t help, I’m afraid.’

‘Look, we don’t want any trouble. It’s just that I need to talk to Mr Shattuck.’

‘I don’t think so.’ Chuck was shaking his head, hands on his hips.

‘He’s not in trouble or anything, Mr...’

‘People just call me Chuck. Know why? Because if I don’t like someone, I’m liable to chuck them out of that window over there.’

‘Ever tried a policeman?’

‘Funny you should say that. Just tell me what you want to talk to Scotty Shattuck about.’

‘You know him then?’

‘Maybe I’m just curious.’ He was checking the floor between us.

‘Come on,’ said Bel, ‘let’s go.’

Chuck looked up. ‘All I want to know is why you want him.’

The last time I’d been here with Brent, the atmosphere had been very different. But then I’d been with a member, with someone everyone knew. I hadn’t been a policeman then either. I’d misjudged this place. It looked like Chuck had a score to settle with law and order.

‘Afraid not,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘But I can assure you it’s nothing serious.’

‘No?’

The two hard men were flanking Chuck now. They knew they didn’t need to say anything. Their voices would only have spoiled the picture they made.

Suddenly Bel flipped open her ID the way she must have seen actors do on the television. ‘If you don’t tell us where to find Mr Shattuck, you’ll be hindering our inquiries. That could be construed as obstruction, sir.’

Maybe she’d been watching too much daytime TV.

Chuck smiled, first at one of his men, then at the other. He seemed to find something interesting on the tips of his shoes, and studied them, talking at the same time.

‘I’ve nothing to say. I don’t know anyone called Scotty Shattuck. End of story. Goodbye, adios, au revoir.’

I stood my ground for a moment longer, knowing I didn’t believe him. We could back off, or we could try another tactic. We didn’t have time to back off. Besides, if we left now, word could get back to Shattuck, causing him to disappear. There was one option left.

So I drew the gun.

It’s not easy to conceal a Heckler & Koch MP5, but it’s always worth the effort. It was why I’d borrowed a Barbour jacket from Max. It was roomy, and he’d sewn a pocket into it so the gun could be carried more easily. So what if I sweated in the heat?

At twenty inches long and six pounds weight, the MP5 can be carried just about anywhere without creating a stir. It only created a stir when you brought it out and pointed it at someone. I held it one-handed and pointed it directly at Chuck.

‘This thing’s got a fifteen-round mag,’ I said, ‘and I’ve set it on a three-round burst. You’ve been around, Chuck, you know what that’ll do to you. You’ll be lying in two pieces on the floor, and so will everybody else. Whole thing’ll take just a couple of seconds.’

Chuck had taken a couple of steps back and raised his hands slightly, but otherwise seemed fairly calm under the circumstances.

‘I want to know where he is,’ I said. ‘When you tell me, I’m going to go talk to him. That’s all, just talk. But if he’s not there, if someone’s warned him, then I’m coming back here.’

Chuck’s minders couldn’t take their eyes off the gun. To be honest, I didn’t think I could aim the thing properly, never mind fire it. I wasn’t used to sub-machine guns, far less ones so short you could use them one-handed like a pistol. I was brandishing it for two reasons. One, I knew it would scare the shit out of everyone. Two, I didn’t have time to take ‘no’ as the answer to any question I needed to ask.

‘I didn’t think you were a cop,’ Chuck sneered.

‘I only want to talk to him.’

‘Go fuck yourself.’

The men who’d been crouching by the window had risen to their feet. I could hear Bel breathing just half a step behind me. I should have known a pretty face wouldn’t have been enough for people like Chuck. They’d gone way beyond pretty faces in their time.

He wasn’t going to speak, so I waved the gun around a bit. One of his minders spoke for him, maybe for all of them.

‘Scotty lives in Norwood, near Crystal Palace.’

‘I need an address.’

He gave me one. ‘But he hasn’t been in for a while. I haven’t seen him around either.’

‘You think he’s got a job?’

The gorilla shrugged.

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘sorry for any inconvenience.’ I started backing towards the door. Bel was already on her way. ‘I’ll let you get back to your weight-gain. Looks like a few of you have lost a pound or two into your underwear.’ I looked at Chuck again and waved the gun a final time. ‘They call it the mercenary’s life-support.’

Then we were gone.

The taxi took us south of the river.

Bel said she felt drunk, with the excitement at the gym and then our brief jog to the traffic lights where a taxi was just unloading. I didn’t want to talk about it, not in a taxi, so she waited till the driver dropped us off. We were standing on Church Road, a busy two-lane street of large detached houses. The area must have been posh at one time, but most of the buildings had fallen into disrepair to a lesser or greater degree. The house we were standing outside definitely fell into the category of ‘greater degree’. It was a huge monstrous affair, all angles and gables and windows where you’d least expect to see them. Paint had faded and peeled from it, and some of the windows were covered with blankets for curtains, or with boards where the glass should be. The even larger house next to it had been added to and converted into a hotel. I imagined the cheapest rooms would be those to the side.

Bel wasn’t looking at the house, she was looking at me, wanting me to say something.

‘I wouldn’t have used it,’ I offered.

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

She broke into a nervous laugh. ‘The look on their faces.’ It was one of those laughs which can easily turn to sobbing. ‘I was scared, Michael, and I was behind the bloody gun!’

An elderly lady was wheeling her shopping-trolley past us. She smiled a greeting, the way some old people do.

‘Keep your voice down,’ I cautioned. Bel quickly took my meaning.

‘Sorry.’

‘Look, Bel, I don’t want to stick around London any longer than I need to. That’s why I used the gun. I can’t hang around being pleasant and polite and waiting for answers. I need them fast.’

She was nodding. ‘Understood.’ She turned at last to the house. ‘God, it’s ugly.’

‘Let’s make this short and sweet,’ I said, heading for the front door.

The expansive front garden had been concreted over some time before, but weeds and grass were pushing their way through. There were huge cracks and swells in the concrete, doubtless caused by the roots of several mature trees nearby. A car sat on the concrete, covered by a black tarpaulin which itself now sported a covering of wet leaves, moss and bits of rubbish. It was sitting so low to the ground, it either had flat tyres or none at all. Past it, a dozen steps led to the front door, rotten at its base. There was an intercom next to the door, complete with buzzers for eight flats. Only three had names attached. None of them was Shattuck. I pressed one anyway. There was no reply. I pressed another, then another. Still no reply. Bel placed her hand against the door and gave it the slightest push. It swung inwards.

‘Shall we?’ she said.

There was a lot of mail in the entrance hall, along with litter which had blown in over time, and an untidy mouldering heap of free newssheets. Someone had left a bicycle frame against the wall. There was no sign of any wheels.

Some mail sat on an upturned cardboard box. Most of the letters were for Scotty Shattuck, some identifying his address as Flat 5. I checked the postmarks. They went back almost a week.

‘Doesn’t look good,’ I said.

We climbed the creaking stairs, hearing no sounds from the other flats, and encountering not a soul. Flat 5 was three storeys up, near what had to be the top of the house, though the stairs kept winding. The door was cheap and newish, a wooden frame with thin panelling over it. A single Yale had been fitted. The door had no handles or nameplate. There were scrapes on the jamb near the lock.

‘Looks like someone kicked the old door in.’

‘Maybe he locked himself out.’

‘Maybe. Since when he’s had this new one fitted, but hasn’t got round to adding decent locks yet.’

‘That’s handy,’ said Bel. She pulled a small kit of tools from her pocket. ‘I brought this along, thought it might be useful.’

She got to work on the Yale. It took her less than a minute to open it. Not fast, but quieter than a burst from the MP5.

‘I knew there was some reason I wanted you with me,’ I said.

She smiled. ‘My dad taught me how to do it years ago. We only had one front-door key back then. He said this would save him having to get one cut for me.’

‘That sounds like Max all right.’

Bel put away her lockpicker’s kit and we entered Scotty Shattuck’s flat. You could tell straight away he hadn’t been there for some time. The place felt lifeless. It was a bachelor pad, sloppily decorated with nude mags, beer cans and empty containers from Indian takeaways. There was one chair, separated by a footstool from the TV and video. In the only bedroom, the bedclothes were messed up. The magazines here were a mix of middling porn and specialist titles for arms collectors and users. A few empty cartridge cases had been lined up like ornaments on the mantelpiece. Mirror tiles had been fixed to the ceiling above the bed.

‘Ugh,’ said Bel.

The room was dark, its walls lined with large cork tiles to which Shattuck had pinned pictures from his magazine collection. Women and guns. Sometimes he’d cut carefully around the guns and Sellotaped them on to the women so it looked like the nude models were carrying them.

‘Ugh,’ Bel said again.

I started opening drawers. What was I looking for? I didn’t think I’d find a forwarding address, but I might find something. I’d know it when I found it.

What I found were packets of photographs. I sat on the bed and went through them. They were mostly of Scotty and his colleagues in action: firstly in what I took to be the Falklands, then later in what might have been Yugoslavia. The soldiers were fully kitted, but you could tell Scotty was regular army in the Falklands, and mercenary by the time of Sarajevo. In the later shots, he wore camouflage greens, but no markings. His smiling colleagues looked like nice guys to do business with. They liked to wear green vests, showing off biceps and triceps and bulging chests. Actually, most of them were going to seed, showing beer guts and fat faces. They lacked that numb disciplined look you see in the regular army.

I knew Scotty from Max’s description. I knew him, too, because he was in a few photos by himself. He was dressed in civvies, and photographed at ease. These photos were taken by the sea, and on some parkland. Probably they’d been taken by a girlfriend. Scotty flexed his muscles for her, posing at his best. Bel took one look at him.

‘Ugh,’ she said.

He didn’t look that bad. He had a long drooping moustache which Max hadn’t mentioned, so had probably been shorn off. He was square-jawed and wavy-haired, his shape not quite squat, but definitely not tall enough for his girth. I stuck one of the photos in my pocket — it showed Shattuck with some girlfriend — and put the rest back in the drawer.

‘Anything else?’ I asked Bel, who’d been roaming.

‘Nothing,’ she said.

There was a squeal of braking tyres outside. No uncommon sound in London, but I went to the window and peered out anyway. A car had stopped outside the house. It was an old Jaguar with a purple paint job. The driver was still wearing his white work-out vest. He probably had his towel with him too. There was somebody else in the passenger seat, and Chuck was fuming in the back.

‘Time to go,’ I told Bel. She didn’t hang around. I’d seen a back door on the ground floor, and just hoped we’d have time to make it that far. I took out the MP5 as we descended, but held it beneath my coat. Either Chuck and his men were so incensed at the way they’d been treated that their pride had compelled them to follow us or else they were making a rational move. If the latter, then they had to be tooled up. If the former, I’d be in for a beating anyway.

And I’d always tried to avoid contact sports.

We were in luck. They were sitting it out in the car, waiting for us to emerge. The back door was locked by means of a bolt top and bottom, easily undone. I pulled the door open and we found ourselves in a garden so overgrown it hardly justified the term. We waded through it to the side fence and clambered over into the rear car park of the hotel. The MP5 jabbed my gut as I climbed the fence. I double-checked that its safety was still on.

From the car park, we climbed over a low brick wall on to a piece of waste ground. Past this, we found ourselves emerging from behind a public toilet on to a completely different road, busy with traffic and pedestrians. A bus had pulled up at its stop, so we jumped aboard. We didn’t know where it was going, and the driver who was waiting to be paid didn’t seem about to tell us, so I reached into my pocket for some coins.

‘Two to the end of the line,’ I told him.

Then we climbed to the top deck and took the empty back seat. A purple Jag would be easy to spot if it tried following us, but it didn’t.

‘I wonder how long they’ll sit there?’ Bel asked.

I told her I couldn’t care less.

We ended up taking a train back over the Thames, and a taxi from the station to our hotel. The receptionist had a message for me, two telephone numbers and their corresponding addresses. As I’d already seen, Scotty Shattuck didn’t possess a phone. But now I had addresses and numbers for the Ricks’s household and Joe Draper’s Barbican flat.

While Bel took a shower, I started phoning. It was probably late enough in the police inquiry for me to be asking follow-up questions. All I needed was gumption and one hell of a lot of luck. Chuck wouldn’t go to the police, he wasn’t the type. But I knew things were going to get increasingly dangerous the closer we got to the real police inquiry, which was why I didn’t give myself time to think. If I’d thought about it, I might not have made the calls.

As it was, I stumbled at the first fence. My call to the Ricks’s Camden home was intercepted by the operator, who told me all calls were being rerouted. Before I had time to argue, I was back to the ringing tone, and my call was answered by a secretary.

‘Crispin, Darnforth, Jessup,’ she said, as though this explained everything.

‘I’ve just been rerouted by the operator,’ I said. ‘I was trying to get through to—’

‘One moment, please.’ She cut the connection and put me through to another secretary.

‘Mr Johns’s office, how can I help you, sir?’

‘I was trying to reach Mr Frederick Ricks.’

‘Yes, all calls to Mr Ricks are now being dealt with by this office. You understand that his wife was killed recently.’ She gave the news with relish. ‘And Mr Johns, as the family’s solicitor, has taken on the task of dealing with all enquiries.’

‘I see. Well, this is Detective Inspector West, I’ve just been brought into the inquiry and I wanted a few words with Mr Ricks.’

‘Mr Ricks and his son have gone away for a few days. Someone on the inquiry should be able to give you the details you need.’

She was boxing me into a corner. I could either throw in the towel or box myself out again.

‘Would it be possible to speak to Mr Johns?’

‘I’m sure that could be arranged.’

‘I meant just now.’

She ignored this. ‘Three-thirty this afternoon, all right?’ Then she gave me the address.

I put down the phone and thought, not for the first time, of leaving London, leaving the whole mess behind. It was madness to keep on with this. But then what was the alternative? If I didn’t find out why I’d been set up and who was behind it, how could I take another job? I went down to Bel’s room and she let me in. She was dressed, but wearing a towel wrapped turban-style around her head.

‘So what are we up to this afternoon?’ she asked.

‘Doing our police act for Eleanor Ricks’s solicitor.’

She took off the towel and let it fall to the floor. Already she’d become a seasoned hotel guest. Next she’d be requesting more shampoo and teabags.

‘I’m enjoying this,’ she said. I looked surprised. ‘Really, I am. It beats staring at sheep and dry-stone dykes all day.’

‘I thought you watched daytime TV.’

‘It beats that, too.’ She sat down on the bed and, taking my hand, guided me to sit beside her. She didn’t let go of my hand.

‘Have you phoned Max lately?’ I asked.

‘That’s a low punch.’

I shrugged. ‘It’s the only punch I’ve got.’

‘Good.’ She leaned towards me and touched her lips to mine. I was slow responding, so she opened her eyes. ‘What’s wrong?’

I pulled away from her, but slowly and not too far. ‘We don’t seem to be getting anywhere. It’s all dead ends.’

‘No, Michael,’ she said, ‘not quite all dead ends.’ Our next kiss lasted a lot longer. By the end of it, her hair was all but dry, and this time she pulled away first.

‘Can I just say one thing, Michael?’

‘What?’

‘In that gymnasium...’

‘Yes?’

‘You were holding the MP5 all wrong.’

‘I was?’ She nodded. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve actually fired an MP5?’

She looked surprised at the question. ‘Of course I have. I get to fire most of my dad’s guns eventually. Want me to give you some tips?’

I blinked. ‘I’m not sure.’

She laughed at the look on my face. ‘You thought you were getting Little Red Riding-Hood, is that it?’

‘Well, I certainly didn’t think I was getting the wolf.’

This time when we kissed, we used our hands to unbutton one another’s clothes...

11

‘You weren’t entirely truthful, were you, Mr Hoffer?’

The speaker was DI Dave Edmond. He was in the same pub he’d been in before with Hoffer. And as before, Hoffer was buying him a drink.

‘A couple of large Scotches, please.’ Hoffer turned to the policeman. ‘How do you mean?’

‘You didn’t tell me you’d had a blow-up with my boss. He’s not very pleased with you, Mr Hoffer.’

‘Did you tell him we’d had a drink?’ Edmond shook his head. ‘What he doesn’t know can’t hurt him, right?’

‘It can hurt me, if he ever finds out.’

‘Why should he, Dave? Besides, you can look after yourself.’ Hoffer sniffed and scratched his nose. The drinks arrived and he proffered a twenty. ‘Keep five for yourself,’ he told the barman, ‘and keep these coming till the change runs out.’ He then handed a whisky to Edmond, who dribbled water into it.

‘Come on,’ said Hoffer, ‘let’s sit down.’

The just-the-one-after-work commuter drinkers had departed, so there were tables free. Hoffer liked Edmond less than he liked Bob Broome, but he smiled anyway. He needed a friend in the police investigation, and if Broome could no longer be bought, others like Edmond could. Broome would return to the fold. They’d fallen out before and then made things up. But meantime Edmond would suffice.

‘I like your style, Dave. You’re not showy. You’re the sort of guy who gets things done, who doesn’t make a song and dance number out of it.’ Hoffer lit a cigarette, then slid the pack towards the policeman.

‘Cops are cops,’ Edmond said.

‘God, that’s true.’

‘I hear you left the force.’

Hoffer opened his arms. ‘I failed the physical. I was fine once I’d caught the bad guys. I could sit on them till they ’fessed up. But I just couldn’t catch them.’Hoffer laughed and shook his head. No, it was the Walkins case. I got obsessed with it. So much so, my chiefs decided to move me to some other investigation. I couldn’t take that, so I resigned and set myself up as a private dick. Only, the only case I was interested in was the Walkins one.’

‘There was something about it in the papers.’

‘Hey, the media loved my story. They brought it flowers and chocolates. I’d given up a good career to make a life of hunting this mystery gunman. And the millionaire father of one of his victims was paying me. Are you kidding? It made great copy. Plus of course I was a fat ugly bastard, they loved that too. They like anything but normal in their photographs.’

Edmond laughed. Hoffer liked him even less.

‘They still love me,’ he went on. ‘And I don’t mind that. See, some people think I’m pandering to them, I mean to the press, and maybe they’re right. Or maybe I’m on some ego trip. All this may be true, but consider.’ He raised a finger. ‘The Demolition Man knows I’m out there. He knows I’m not going away. And I really get a kick out of that. Maybe he’s not worried, but then again maybe he is.’

‘You don’t think he’d take a pop at you?’

Hoffer shrugged. ‘I never think about it.’ He’d told this story many dozens of times, always leaving out just a few truths. Such as the fact that his employers had requested his resignation when they’d decided he was doing a bit too much obvious nose talc. It was Hoffer’s story that he’d resigned so he could follow up the Walkins story in his own way and his own time, but really he’d been given an ultimatum. Of course, once he’d explained to a reporter that he now had only one mission in life, then he’d had to do something about it, just to show willing. And then old man Walkins had come along and offered to pay him, and the story had expanded until he was trapped. Now he had his office and his employees and his reputation. He couldn’t just walk away from the D-Man, even if he wanted to.

And he often thought that he wanted to.

‘So how much do you make?’ Edmond asked, the way serving policemen always did, sooner or later.

‘Think of a number and double it,’ Hoffer said. Then he laughed. ‘No, I’m a businessman, an employer, I’ve got overheads, salaries to pay, taxes and shit. I don’t come out so far ahead.’

‘Walkins must be rich though.’

‘You kidding? He’s loaded.’

‘Is it right that his daughter was a mistake?’

Hoffer nodded. She was just about the only mistake the D-MAN had ever made. He had eleven, maybe twelve clean hits to his name, plus Ellen Walkins.

‘She was eighteen, standing in the doorway saying goodnight to some people after a dinner party. They were all government people, plus wives, family. She wasn’t the target. They reckon the target was a congressman with very strong views about certain foreign policies. Any number of dictators and crooked governments would have paid to have him shut up. But the step was icy and the fucker slipped. The bullet had been going straight through his heart, but it hit Ellen instead. The investigation got taken off our hands pretty fast. I mean, it was too big for just the police to handle. I couldn’t let them do that.’

‘Why not?’

The barman had appeared with two more whiskies, plus a bottle of water, giving Hoffer time to consider the question. It was one he’d asked himself a few times. Why couldn’t he just let it go?

‘I don’t know,’ he said honestly. ‘I just couldn’t.’ He sniffed again and shook himself up. ‘Jesus, you don’t want to hear all this. You should be the one doing the show and tell. So what have you got?’

Edmond pulled an envelope from his jacket pocket. Inside were several folded xerox sheets. There were photocopies of bank statements and old cheques, together with a run-down of cash machines Mark Wesley had used.

‘It’s not complete yet,’ Edmond explained. ‘This is just the first tranche. I could get into a lot of trouble for this.’

‘You could,’ agreed Hoffer, slipping an envelope across the table. ‘But this might cheer you up.’

Edmond counted the money into his pocket, crumpling the envelope into their ashtray, then sat waiting. Hoffer didn’t say anything for a while.

‘Guy does a lot of travelling,’ he said at last, reaching for his whisky.

‘We’ll check the travel companies mentioned, see if they can give us details.’

‘Of course you will. What about these cash withdrawals? Any pattern you can see?’

Edmond shook his head. ‘Except that some of them are in Yorkshire, according to Vine Street’s geography A-level. Not in cities either, in country towns.’

‘Maybe he lives there?’

Edmond shrugged. ‘He’s bought a whack of traveller’s cheques too, by the look of it. One of those cheques to Thomas Cook isn’t for travel.’ He pointed to the photocopy. ‘See? They’ve written on the back what it’s for, purchase of traveller’s cheques.’ Hoffer nodded. ‘We’ll see if we can take it any further. If we can get the numbers of the traveller’s cheques, might be we can find where he’s used them. There’s just one thing...’

‘What’s that, Dave?’

‘Well, all we seem to be doing is tracking backward through an identity he’s already shed. Where will that get us?’

‘Use your head, Dave. We can’t track him forwards, so what else can we do? This way, we tie down accomplices, contacts, maybe we find patterns, or even a clue to his next hit. This for example.’ Hoffer was tapping a cheque.

‘Ah, I was coming to that,’ said Edmond.

‘So,’ said Hoffer, ‘here’s a cheque made out to someone called... what is that name?’

‘It says H. Capaldi,’ said Edmond.

‘Right, so who is he?’

‘He’s a counterfeiter.’ Now Edmond had Hoffer’s full attention.

‘A counterfeiter?’

Edmond nodded. ‘Harry the Cap’s been around for years, done some time, but when he comes out he goes back to what he’s best at.’

‘What does he forge?’

‘Documents... anything you want really.’

‘Where can I find him?’

Edmond licked his lips. ‘About four hundred yards up the road.’

‘What?’

‘We’ve brought him to Vine Street. Bob Broome’s got him in an Interview Room right this minute.’

Hoffer waited for Edmond to come back.

It took a while, and he was starving, but he daren’t leave the pub and miss the policeman’s return. Instead, he ate potato chips and peanuts and then, as a last resort, a toasted sandwich. It was alleged to be cheese and ham. If you’d served it up in a New York bar, your client would have returned at dead of night with a flame thrower.

After all the whisky, he took it easy and went on to beer. The stuff was like sleeping with a severe anorexic: warm and dark and almost completely flat. Barney hadn’t come up with a list of bent gun dealers yet, so he’d nothing to read but Edmond’s photocopies. They didn’t throw up much apart from Yorkshire and this guy called Capaldi, who didn’t live in Yorkshire. Hoffer guessed that the bank was for convenience only, and that the D-Man kept the bulk of his money in stashes of ready cash. The travel stuff didn’t interest him, though if they found he’d been cashing traveller’s cheques in Nicaragua or somewhere, that would be a different story.

Edmond shrugged as he came to the table.

‘He’s not saying anything. Bob tried an obstruction number on him, but Harry’s been around too long for that. His story is that he met a guy in a pub and the guy needed cash.’

‘And this Harry, being the trusting sort, gave the stranger £500 and accepted a cheque?’

‘Well, he says he got the cheque and a Rolex as security.’

‘Did the mystery man ever come back for his watch?’

‘Harry says no. He says he flogged the watch and cashed the cheque.’

‘Did Bob ask him why he hung on to the cheque so long? It took him nearly six months to cash it.’

‘Bob did mention it. Harry said something about mislaying it and then finding it again.’

‘This guy’s wasted as a counterfeiter, he should be on the improv circuit. I know comedians in New York couldn’t make up stories that fast.’ He paused. ‘Or that full of shit either.’

‘What can we do?’

Hoffer’s eyes widened. ‘You mean that’s it? You can’t lean on him a little? What about the trusty British truncheon? You guys are purveyors of torture equipment to the world, you can get this slob to talk.’

Edmond shook his head slowly throughout.

‘You’re right we can lean on him, but only so far. Harry knows the score. If he doesn’t want to talk, he won’t.’

‘Jesus.’ Hoffer sat back. ‘I don’t believe this. All right, where is he?’

‘Who?’

‘Perry Mason. Who the fuck d’you think I mean? I mean Capaldi!’

‘He’s probably on his way home by now.’

‘Where does he live?’

Edmond looked like a cricketer who suddenly finds he’s walked on to a baseball diamond. ‘Wait a minute,’ he said.

‘Tell me where the fuck he lives!’ Hoffer reached around his back to scratch it. Or maybe he was tampering with the stitches on the ball.

‘He lives in north London,’ Edmond said. Then he gave the American the address.

Tottenham seemed a pretty sleepy place. Though it was a warm summer’s night, there weren’t many people on the streets. What people there were on the streets were black, which didn’t bother Hoffer one bit. He didn’t have a racist bone in his body. He’d take on anyone.

He was running up some good cab receipts for Walkins. He got a couple more blanks from his driver and gave the guy a healthy tip. The house where Harry Capaldi lived was a narrow three-storey building, its third storey no more than an attic. But from the doorbells, it had been sliced and diced into three apartments. Hoffer rang Capaldi’s bell. There wasn’t any answer. He looked around him. The street was quiet and dark. It was like they’d turned down the juice; the street-lamps were a puny glow most of which was obscured by insect life.

Hoffer charged the door with his shoulder. He kept low, putting his weight against the keyhole. The door gave a little, but then resisted. At the second attempt, it flew open. He walked quickly to the first floor. There was no use knocking at Capaldi’s door. The guy was either in and not answering, or else not in, and the only way to answer it one way or the other was to keep on going. This time it took a good four attempts before the door gave. When it did, it brought Hoffer into a hallway smelling of cooking fat and stale beer.

‘I only want to talk,’ he called, pushing the door closed. ‘I’m not the cops, I’m just a guy. Mr Capaldi? Hey, anyone home?’

There was a light on in the room at the end of the hall, and the sound of a TV or something. But Capaldi could have left it on when the police had come to take him to Vine Street. Or maybe he left it on all the time whatever, so nobody’d think the place was empty. Hoffer eased the Smith & Wesson out of his pocket and felt a little more comfortable.

‘Mr Capaldi?’ he repeated. Then he pushed the door at the hall’s end. It was a cramped room, mostly due to the large piece of photographic equipment sitting in the middle of it. Edmond had mentioned this. It was for taking reduced-size photos and fixing them on ID cards and the like. As Edmond had said, you couldn’t prosecute; Capaldi was legitimate owner of the equipment. And he was always too clever to let them find anything else, no fake IDs or blank forms, nothing incriminating.

There was an old dining table by the window, the sort with legs which folded beneath it and wings which folded down so it didn’t take up space. Something was making a noise beneath it, a cat or dog. Hoffer crouched down and took a look, then walked forward a couple more steps to get a better fix on it. He crouched down again and pocketed the gun.

‘I think,’ he said, ‘we’d talk more comfortably if you came out of there, Mr Capaldi.’

Capaldi came out stiffly from beneath the table. He was shaking, and had to be helped to a chair.

‘Who are you?’ he said. But Hoffer was busy pouring Irish whiskey into a used glass. He handed it to Capaldi.

‘Drink this. Sorry if I gave you a fright.’ He looked over at the table. ‘You’d hardly believe a full-grown man could squeeze into there, would you?’ Then he turned back to Capaldi and grinned. ‘You must’ve been scared shitless. Who’d you think was ringing your bell, aliens? Think I was going to suck your heart out? Nope, all I want to do is have a little talk... Jesus, what’s wrong with your head? It’s like a fucking snowstorm.’

‘Who are you?’ Capaldi repeated. He found his cap and placed it firmly on his head.

‘Doesn’t matter who I am, Mr Capaldi. What matters is, I want to know about Mark Wesley.’

‘I already told the police, I only met the guy—’

‘I know, in a bar. But between you, me, and the police, that’s a crock of shit. Now, they can’t do much but tut-tut and send you off with a warning. Me, I can do better than that.’ He produced the gun again. ‘I can shoot you.’ Capaldi looked like someone had stuck him to the chair with superglue — head, arms, legs, the lot. ‘Now, I don’t want to shoot you. I don’t know anything about you, it may be you’re a very nice man, generous to a fault, friendly with the neighbours, all that jazz. To be frank, that doesn’t mean squat to me. I still might have to shoot you, unless you start telling me what you wouldn’t tell the police.’

Hoffer leaned forward and lifted the whiskey glass from Capaldi’s unresisting hand. He turned the glass around to drink from the clean side, and finished the whiskey in a single gulp. Now that he was calmer, he could hear a thudding bass sound from upstairs, shaking the ceiling and walls.

‘Ten seconds,’ he said quietly. ‘And I’m not counting aloud.’

He always believed in giving people time to consider their next move, especially when they were scared senseless. He’d been that scared himself once or twice in the past, and you really did lose your senses. You could eat, but not taste. You couldn’t smell anything, except maybe your sweat. Your sense of touch was restricted to the cooling damp of your trouser legs, or the gun nuzzling your head. You certainly couldn’t see straight, or hear rational arguments.

It was good to have some time to adjust.

‘Nine, ten,’ Hoffer said. ‘Shame it has to end like this, Mr Capaldi.’ He touched the gun to the counterfeiter’s head.

Capaldi started to speak, sort of. It took him five or six goes to utter the single word ‘Jesus’, and a few more tries before he could manage ‘Don’t shoot me.’

‘Why not?’

‘What?’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’m not... because I... Jesus, all I did was...’ He came to a dry stop.

‘All you did was what? Make him up a new ID? What?’ Then Hoffer too stopped, his mouth gaping. ‘You son of a bitch,’ he said at last. ‘You’ve seen him, haven’t you? I mean recently, in the last day or two?’ He glanced towards the photographic equipment, all set up with a flash-lamp and a chair for the sitter.

‘He’s still in town, isn’t he?’ Hoffer could hardly believe it. ‘Why’s he still here? No, wait.’ He knew there were other questions to ask first, so many of them it was a matter of getting the order right. Capaldi was staring past Hoffer’s shoulder. When Hoffer turned his head, he saw why. There were two big black men standing in the hall, looking in on the scene. They had their mouths open, lower lips curled.

‘No problem here, guys,’ Hoffer called.

But there certainly was a problem. They’d probably seen the busted main door, and now Capaldi’s door in the same state. And whoever they thought Hoffer was, he wasn’t police. Even the cops in Tottenham didn’t pack a .459 with their handcuffs.

They ran for the front door, yelling out someone’s name. He could hear them climbing the stairs, heading for the second floor. Hoffer looked back at Capaldi, seeking an explanation.

‘They deal a bit of dope,’ Capaldi said. ‘They don’t like strangers.’

‘Oh, shit.’ Hoffer started pulling Capaldi to his feet. ‘You’re coming with me.’

But Capaldi resisted. More than that, he was still too scared to operate his legs, and Hoffer couldn’t carry him, not with dope dealers on his ass.

‘We’ll finish our chat later,’ he promised, then ran for the door. He could hear loud voices upstairs, not just two of them but three or four or five. He started down the stairs for the front door. He could hear footsteps pounding after him. Finish it now or keep running? He wondered if they’d fire on him out on the street? If yes, then it was better to make a stand here. But some instinct told him to get his fat self outside. There were houses on one side of the street only, the other being wall and embankment leading to a railway line. He didn’t know which way to run. There didn’t seem an obviously busier road in either direction. So he took a left and ran.

There were more houses, then some lock-ups, and then a corner shop. The street met another one at a T-junction, and he made the junction just as four figures came cautiously out of Capaldi’s building. One of them pointed at him, and another raised a pistol. It could have been anything, airgun, starting-gun, even a water pistol. Hoffer wasn’t taking any chances.

As far as he could aim, he aimed over their heads, but not so far over their heads that they’d think he didn’t mean business. A couple of them dove back indoors again, but the one with the pistol kept cool and fired off two shots. The first hit some harling on the wall of the corner shop, while the second went through its display window, leaving large radial fractures around the hole.

‘Fuck this,’ said Hoffer, letting off a couple more and not caring where they went. He turned the corner into the new road, ignoring the people who were coming to their windows and doors. They seemed to go back inside pretty damned quick, but at least they came to look, which was more than would’ve happened in New York. At the bottom of the street, he saw a busy well-lit road, buses passing along it. He thought he recognised it from the cab ride. He kept turning around, but no one seemed to be following him. He knew they’d probably get a car first and follow him in that. Gun-toting drug dealers were so lazy these days.

‘Damn,’ he said, ‘I could do with some dope, too.’ Maybe they’d sell him some before taking off the top of his head. He’d known dealers kill their victims by ODing them. Well, let them try that trick on him with a mountain of opalescent coke, he’d put them out of business before he died.

He’d tucked the gun into his waistband and closed his jacket. He wasn’t running any more, just walking very briskly. There were sirens ahead. Yes, he’d passed a police station on the way here. He walked into a pub as the sirens approached, looked around the interior as though searching for someone, then stepped out again when the sirens had passed. There was an Indian restaurant coming up. It was curtained from the road, nobody could see in or out.

If he kept moving, someone would stop him, be it police or irate dealers. There were no cabs to be seen, and the buses didn’t move fast enough to be havens. He could walk, or he could hide. And if he was going to hide, why not hide somewhere he could get a meal and a drink? He pushed open the door of the Indian place and found another door which he had to pull. The restaurant was quiet, and he got the table he asked for: in a corner, facing the door. Anyone coming into the restaurant had to close the first door before opening the second. For a second or two, they’d be trapped between the two. He’d be able to pick them off while still spooning up the sauce, like a scene out of The Godfather.

‘Quiet tonight,’ he said to the young waiter.

‘It’s always quiet midweek, sir.’

After the meal, he had a couple of drinks in what seemed to be an Irish bar, not a coloured face in the place. There was a sign on the door saying SORRY, NO TRAVELLERS. He almost hadn’t gone in, but then the barman explained that it meant tinkers, gypsies, not visitors. They all had a good laugh about that.

He took a taxi back to Capaldi’s flat and made the driver go straight past it. Now that he thought of it, Capaldi would be long gone. He might not come back till all the heat had died. He might never come back at all. He’d either talk to Hoffer, and the D-Man would kill him, or he’d stay quiet and Hoffer might kill him. It wasn’t much of a life, was it?

‘Piccadilly Circus, please,’ Hoffer told the driver.

‘You’re the guv’nor.’

It was unfortunate they’d been interrupted. All Hoffer knew now was that the D-Man had stayed in town after the assassination, when normally he’d have taken off. Why? That was the question. What was there for him here?

The tip-off, it had to be the tip-off to the police. The assassin was mad about it, and maybe he was going to do something about it. He’d be tracking down his paymasters. He’d be seeking out whoever set him up.

‘I’ll be damned,’ Hoffer said to himself. At this rate, even in a city of ten million people, they might end up bumping into one another by accident.

He spent the rest of the drive wondering what his opening line would be.

12

Bel and I sat waiting for our meeting with Joe Draper. His production company had a set of offices on the top floor of a building near Harrods. We’d arrived early so Bel could do some window-shopping. I offered to buy her anything she liked, but she shook her head, even when I said I’d dock it from her pay.

Actually, we hadn’t stayed long in the store. She’d looked a bit disgusted with it all after a while. She’d hooked her arm through mine as we’d walked to Draper Productions.

‘Relax,’ she’d told me.

We’d spent last night in bed together, Bel asking questions about my life, and me deciding how to answer them. I’d deflected her for a while by talking about guns. She knew a lot about guns and ammo, but that didn’t mean she liked them. They scared the hell out of her.

Now we sat in Draper’s offices, pretending to be CID. We were wearing the same clothes as yesterday, down to the black leather gloves. We weren’t leaving fingerprints anywhere. Bel flicked through a trade mag, while I watched Teletext. There were three monitor-sized TVs in reception, all with the sound turned down. One of them was showing a looped montage of recent Draper output. The secretary kept deflecting calls to Draper’s assistant.

‘I did that,’ I said. Bel looked up from her magazine. Teletext was running a news page, all about how two East European countries were about to close their shared border. Tensions had been high between the neighbours since the break-up of the Soviet Union, but a recent perceived assassination attempt on a diplomat based in London had brought things to a head.

‘Maybe you should do something about it,’ she whispered. The whisper wasn’t necessary, the secretary having put on headphones so she could start some audio-typing.

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know, own up or something, say the diplomat was never your target.’

‘But that would mean telling them who my real target was. I quite like it that they’re not sure.’ I was smiling, but Bel wasn’t.

‘You could start a war, Michael.’

I stopped smiling. ‘You’re right. Maybe I could offer Draper the exclusive.’

She slapped me with the magazine, then went back to reading it. Teletext flipped to its News Directory. There was some story near the bottom about a shoot-out on a north London street. It was coupled with another story, some get-tough-on-drugs speech the Home Secretary had made. I didn’t think it meant anything, but I got up and went over to the secretary. She stopped her tape.

‘Yes?’

‘Do you have a handset for the TV?’ She looked disapproving. ‘I don’t want to change channels, I just want to check a story on Teletext.’

Without saying anything, she opened a drawer and brought out a couple of remotes.

‘One of these has Teletext,’ she said, restarting her tape.

‘Thanks a million,’ I muttered. I aimed one of the remotes and pressed three digits. Up popped the story. There was a bit about the Home Secretary first, then a slim paragraph about gunshots fired in a street in Tottenham. It was the street where Harry the Cap lived. Maybe some people believe in coincidence. I’m not one of them. I knew Hoffer was getting too damned close.

Just then Draper’s door opened and a young man and woman came out. They were dressed like students, but carried briefcases. The boy had a ponytail, while the girl’s blonde hair was cropped short and tipped with red dye. They shook hands with Draper, then headed for the door. Draper checked something with the secretary, then came towards us.

‘Sorry to keep you, Inspector West.’

‘That’s all right, sir, we appreciate your finding time to see us.’

He was ushering us into his office. ‘The gloves are a nice touch,’ he said. I didn’t get it. ‘I used to produce a cop show called Shiner, maybe you know it?’

‘I used to watch it,’ said Bel. Draper looked pleased.

‘Only,’ he said, ‘the Inspector in that used to wear gloves like yours.’

‘I see,’ I said. Draper saw that he hadn’t scored any points, and shifted in his swivel-chair.

‘I’m not sure how I can help. I’ve already told your colleagues everything I can think of.’

‘Just a few follow-up questions, sir. A fresh perspective.’

‘Well, okay then.’ He clasped his hands in front of him. ‘Tea or coffee?’

‘No, thank you, sir. This is DC Harris, by the way.’

Draper had been staring at Bel. ‘We’re thinking of pitching a police documentary series,’ he informed her. ‘Ever wanted to be on television?’

She smiled professionally. ‘I don’t think so, sir. Bright lights make me nervous.’

Draper laughed. ‘Too much like the interrogation room, eh?’ Now he turned to me. ‘Shoot.’

I suppose he meant I could start asking questions.

‘We’d like to know a little more about Ms Ricks, her family, colleagues, any possible enemies she may have had.’

‘Well, none of her colleagues was an enemy. Lainie had a first-rate reputation. All her fellow journalists admired her. I dare say a few TV people were preparing knives, but only in the figurative sense.’

‘How do you mean?’

He opened his hands. ‘She was going to be a star. She was a natural on TV.’ He looked at Bel again. ‘Know why? Because she didn’t trust the medium. And that came over, that honesty, that sense that she wasn’t going to put up with any manure.’

‘But she hadn’t actually made any programmes?’

‘That’s true, I’m talking about the mock-ups we do beforehand, especially with a tyro. Lainie breezed it. It was like she was walking on water. I knew when we got her on the screen, she’d start to make... not enemies exactly, but there’d be jealousy from other presenters, because she was going to show them how the job should be done.’ He shook his head and calmed a little. ‘She’s a big loss.’

He sounded like he was thinking of her in financial terms.

‘What about her family?’ I asked. ‘Did you know them?’

‘Oh yes, I suppose I knew them as well as anyone can.’

‘Meaning?’

Draper sighed, like he didn’t gossip normally, but since we were the police how could he refuse?

‘Freddy’s not an easy man to like, Inspector. I mean, his star’s so low it’s sweeping up leaves. And that doesn’t sit easy with Freddy. He still wants to act the soap star. Did you ever see him in Stand by Your Man? It wasn’t exacting stuff. Also, it was ten years ago, something Freddy doesn’t seem to realise. He sees all this “vintage” comedy being repeated on the box, and his stuff isn’t there. No surprise to anyone else, believe me. Meanwhile he sees his wife breaking into TV and there I am telling her how wonderful she’s going to be. You can see it’s not easy for him.’

‘Yes, I can imagine. Did they have arguments?’

‘All the time.’

‘What about?’

‘Everything under the sun. You want an example?’ I nodded. ‘Okay, Freddy blew their savings on a trip to Hollywood. He was out there looking for work, but all he came back with were a tan and some books of matches from expensive restaurants. Lainie was furious with him.’ He paused. ‘Look, there’s no way Freddy would put out a contract on Lainie, that’s not what I’m saying here. They had arguments, but they were never physical. They didn’t even really have screaming matches. They just smouldered and wouldn’t communicate for weeks on end. All I’m saying is, they did not have the perfect marriage. But then who does?’

Bel had a question. ‘Did you like Ms Ricks as a person, Mr Draper?’

‘Like her? I loved her. I’d’ve liked nothing better than...’ He stopped and shook his head. ‛I don’t know.’His eyes were growing moist, but then he’d been around actors all his working life. Some tricks must have rubbed off.

‘She had a son,’ I nudged.

‘That’s right, a useless streak of sham called Archie. I say that, watch this, he’ll be a millionaire at twenty-one.’

‘What does he do?’

‘He’s in a band, programmes music samples, that sort of thing.’

‘Electronics.’

‘Yeah, I can’t see the band doing much. I listened to their stuff as a favour, in case we could use any of it as backing to our programmes. Forget it. But Archie’s a genius, in a limited sort of way. I see him moving into production, and that’s where he’ll make his pile.’

‘Mr Draper, I know you’ve been asked this question before by my colleagues, probably by the media too, but can you think of anyone who would have wanted Eleanor Ricks dead?’

He shook his head. ‘It had to be a mistake. The bastard was obviously after Prendergast or the foreigner. Got to be.’

‘You sent Ms Ricks to interview Molly Prendergast?’

‘No, it was Lainie’s idea. I mean, she was running the whole show. It was her story right down the line, minimum input from me. She’d say she wanted to go in a certain direction, we’d talk about it, and she’d go off and do it. She was the driver, me, I was somewhere in the boot, like luggage. I hardly saw the light of day.’

‘And what direction was she travelling in?’

He sighed. ‘It’ll probably never get made now.’

‘We’ve spoken with Ms Ricks’s solicitor, a Mr Johns. He mentioned something about religious cults?’

Draper nodded. ‘Prendergast’s kid was in a cult for over a year. In the end, Prendergast mounted a commando-style raid to snatch her back. This was a couple of years back, it made the news at the time. The daughter’s not too bad now, it was her we wanted for the programme, but her mother said no, if we wanted to speak to anyone it would have to be her. Lainie set up the meeting partly to get Prendergast’s story, and partly to make her change her mind. We thought once Prendergast met Lainie, she might melt a bit.’

‘So it was a programme about Prendergast’s daughter?’

‘God, no, she was just a sentence, a phrase, in a much bigger book. No, Lainie was looking at the cult itself.’

‘Which one?’

‘The Disciples of Love. Sound like a band out of the sixties, don’t they? You can see them opening the show at Monterey.’

‘What sort of... tone was the documentary going to take?’

‘It was basically an expose of how the group is run. They’ve got one of these charismatic leaders, you know, like at Waco or the Children of God. But most sects go for your wallet before they try to snatch your soul, and the Disciples aren’t like that. They take in poor people.’

‘I don’t see the problem.’

‘Well, they won’t say how they’re funded. Lainie reckons it takes thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands a year to keep them operating, and their total income can’t even be half that. So where does the money come from?’

‘Did she try asking them?’

‘They didn’t so much stonewall her as put up the Great Wall of China. She got some financial wizards to do some sniffing. We got a bill from them that nearly killed us budget-wise, but they couldn’t tell us anything about the Disciples.’

‘Do you have anything here about the project? I mean, something I could take away with me?’

‘Sure, I’ve got a few copies of the Bible.’

‘Bible?’

He smiled again. ‘That’s what we work from, it’s a sort of blueprint of the shape the documentary’s going to take. We use it to get backers interested.’ He opened a cupboard. It was full of bulging files and reams of typed paper, scripts and the like. It took him a few seconds to find what he was looking for.

‘Here we go, take one each.’

The Bible was loosely bound with a cardboard cover and a thin plastic sheet protecting it. There were holes in the cover through which appeared the name of the project, Draper’s and Ricks’s names, and a few other details.

The project was just called Disciples of Love, but with a question-mark.

‘I appreciate this, Mr Draper. I’ll see these get back to you.’

He shrugged. ‘Keep them. The whole thing’s history without Eleanor Ricks.’

‘One last thing, did she have any favourite colour of clothing?’

The question threw him, so I smiled reassuringly. ‘We’re still wondering if maybe the assassin mistook her for Mrs Prendergast.’

‘I see what you mean, Lainie wearing the kind of clothes Prendergast would normally wear.’ He nodded to himself. ‘Well, I know one thing, she did like to empathise with her interviewees, and that could sometimes mean dressing like them. As to favourite colours...’ He shook his head. ‘The best I can come up with is bright colours, reds, blues, yellows. Primary colours.’

I nodded. I’d been told to look for yellow and blue. I stared at Draper, trying to see something behind his eyes, some inkling of guilt. But where was his motive? No, there was nothing there.

‘What about Mrs Prendergast?’ Bel inquired suddenly.

‘What about her?’ Draper asked back.

‘She’s a public figure, and she’s tough, plus she’s got an interest in the cult.’ Draper still didn’t get it. ‘She might be persuaded to take over where Ms Ricks left off.’

Draper leapt to his feet. I thought he was going to vault the desk, but he just leaned over it towards Bel.

‘Brilliant!’ he shrieked. ‘That’s fucking brilliant!’ He slapped the desk with both hands and shook his head wildly. He was somewhere in the hinterland between laughter and tears. ‘That is just so brilliant. Why didn’t I think of it?’

Bel’s look towards me confirmed she thought this a tautology. Draper couldn’t get us out of there quick enough, but all the time trying to be polite. He had his hand on Bel’s shoulder and one on my back. He was telling her to think about fronting his documentary series.

‘All right,’ she said, ‘I’ll think about it.’

‘You’d be a great loss to the force,’ I told her as we left.

Outside, I headed for the first newspaper kiosk I saw, and bought up several of the dailies. I wanted more on the Tottenham shoot-out. I didn’t think Harry would have said anything, but how could I be sure? Without a trip to Tottenham, the answer was, I couldn’t.

I told Bel she deserved some time to herself, and managed to press £50 on her, which in Knightsbridge would just about pay for a passable lunch. Then I headed north. I knew this was one of the most stupid things I’d ever done, but I couldn’t talk myself out of it. One thing I did know was that if I was going to meet Hoffer, I didn’t want Bel around. No matter that she was my best form of camouflage, I’d promised she wouldn’t be in danger.

Before we separated, she made me make a phone call. Afterwards, I said I’d see her back at our hotel. She kissed my cheek, and I pressed a finger to her chin. She didn’t tell me to be careful, but I knew what she was thinking.

All the way to Tottenham, I found myself doing something I never ever do. I thought of the past. Not the distant past, I don’t mind that, but the more recent past, and my life as an assassin. Well, what else was I going to do with my life? I’d never fancied being deskbound, but the army weren’t going to have me. As a teenager I was clever but easily bored, and I was frustrated that I couldn’t play football or rugby. I did try to take part in games sometimes, but the other kids knew about me, and they wouldn’t come near. They were being kind in their way, I suppose, but I couldn’t see it at the time. All I saw was that I was different. I started to spend more time on the gun range, and I acquired a marketable skill.

My father had started me off, despite my mother’s warnings. He was a top-class target shooter himself. He started me with air pistols and air rifles, then we moved up to real ammo, small calibre at first. Funny to think those afternoons of bonding had led me here.

Here, thinking about my victims.

I had never had much of a conscience. Like I say, everyone bleeds. But then I’d missed a target and killed an innocent girl. That was when word started to go round that I was losing it. I’d cried about that girl. I’d sat by a hotel swimming pool in the Bahamas and played it through in my head, over and over again, the New York cold, that icy step, that single slip...

They called me the Demolition Man, but all I’d ever really demolished were lives. You could buy a new dustbin, new windows, you could repair walls with fresh bricks and mortar. But I’d noticed something in Draper’s office, I’d noticed his pain. He’d lost someone, and the loss, for all my glibness at the time, was not merely financial. He’d lost someone he loved. He might be a hard-nosed businessman, a schemer, a ruthless capitaliser on rumour and grief. I’d seen the clips from some of his programmes; they concentrated on the tearful close-up and the hounding of interviewees. But he was human too. He could feel what his victims felt. He was feeling it now.

See, that’s why I like to get away from the scene. I never go back. I don’t buy the papers or anything, I don’t read about myself and cut out my exploits to stick in some scrap album. I do the job and I get the hell away. I never think about it afterwards. I drown the memories in alcohol and travel.

Well, here I was stone-cold sober, and travelling towards something, not away from it. I wasn’t even armed, and I knew Hoffer would be.

I got the cab to drop me on the High Road, and walked the few hundred yards to Harry’s street. The front door was still waiting to be repaired. I could see where the lock had been wrenched open, but there were no signs of leverage, no marks left by a crowbar. No footprints on the door either, which meant it had been a shoulder charge.

There was noise on the stairs. A black man came down, on his way out. He glared at me.

‘What happened here?’ I asked. He ignored me. ‘I’m a friend of Harry’s.’

He gave me a look brimming with distrust. ‘He ain’t in, man.’

‘What happened to the door?’

‘Some big white fucker rammed it.’ If he’d been a dog he’d have been sniffing me. ‘Cop?’ I shook my head. He looked around him, up and down the street. A train which had been sitting at the station started to move past us, way up the embankment. ‘Some big guy, right? Kicked the door in, kicked in Harry’s door. We came back and thought someone was ripping us off, right? So in we go, and this guy’s got a gun out and he’s standing over Harry. Harry’s looking like he’s going to croak, right? So we chased the fucker off.’

I whistled. He shifted his weight, looking pleased at the part he’d played in the drama.

‘Is Harry all right though?’

‘Dunno, man, he took off. Cops wanted to talk to him, but Harry was gone.’

‘I don’t blame him.’

‘Yeah.’

‘No point trying his door?’

‘The place is picked clean. Cops didn’t put a lock on it, so kids went in and ripped off everything. We had to chase them off, too.’

I nodded, though suspecting that the bulk of Harry’s goods were now sitting in a pile in the flat above his.

‘Thanks for helping him out,’ I said.

‘Hey,’ he shrugged, ‘what are neighbours for, right?’

Back in my room, I lay on the bed and read the Disciples of Love? project. Eleanor Ricks had been planning little less than an assassination of her own. The cult had its roots in the Pacific north-west of the USA, an area I knew, but its branches stretched all around the world. There were more than a dozen communes in Europe, but only one in Great Britain. Prendergast’s daughter had actually belonged to a commune in south-west France, but the focus of Ricks’s investigation was the British enclave on the Scottish west coast.

According to some notes added at the back of the file, she’d twice visited Scotland, but was planning a much longer visit once she’d completed what she called her ‘primary research’. Only she’d never been allowed to finish that research.

The funding of the sect seemed to be the key. So long as no one would explain it, you could guess any way you liked: drugs, prostitution, blackmail, coercion. There were press cuttings in the file referring to stories about other cults, not just the Branch Davidian in Texas but the Children of God in Argentina and some Southern Baptist splinter groups in Louisiana and Alabama. As far as I could see, cults in general provided a useful service: they kept the arms dealers in business. Koresh’s group in Waco had stockpiled enough weapons for Armageddon and beyond. I’d visited Texas. To buy a gun, any gun, all you needed was a state driver’s licence and a form you completed yourself stating you’d never been in an asylum and you weren’t a drug addict. They have about four guns in Texas for every man, woman and child. And those are the legal ones. I knew there were plenty of gun dealers who didn’t require any ID from their buyers, just a wad of cash. I’d once bought a night-vision scope from a man with a military haircut after I got talking to him in a bar in Lubbock. I paid half the market price. It was the only good thing that happened to me in Lubbock, until I met Spike. Spike was, Max and Bel apart, the closest thing I had to a friend in the whole overpopulated world.

And Spike was crazy, gun crazy.

Bel gave her knock and came into my room. She was red-cheeked as she flopped on to the bed beside me.

‘I must’ve walked for miles,’ she said. ‘How did it go?’

‘I don’t think we can hang around much longer.’

‘Well then, that makes it easy.’

‘What do you mean?’

She rolled on to her side and propped her head on one hand. ‘I’ve just spent an hour in a café reading through the file.’ She nodded at my copy. ‘And the way I see it, the Disciples of Love are as likely suspects as anyone.’

‘How would they know what clothes she’d be wearing?’

‘They must have had someone watching her, otherwise they couldn’t have compiled all that information they gave you. Maybe the watcher spotted that she wore similar clothes every day, or every interview she did.’

Yes, I’d thought of that myself. ‘Maybe,’ I said.

‘Look,’ said Bel, ‘there’s the jealous husband, the misunderstood teenage son, the producer who wanted to jump into bed with her, the lawyer who might have been just behind him in the queue.’

It was true that the solicitor, Geoffrey Johns, had professed a more than merely professional interest in Eleanor Ricks when we’d talked to him.

‘So we’ve got a lot of possible paymasters,’ I said.

‘Agreed, but none as strong as the Disciples of Love. Look at what she was saying about them. I mean, from those American press clippings these aren’t people to toy with.’

Bel had another point. The Disciples of Love had been in trouble in the USA after a journalist had been beaten up and another pummelled with his own camera.

‘We don’t know they’d go as far as assassination.’

‘We don’t know they wouldn’t. Besides, there’s my final point.’

I smiled. So far, we’d been thinking along such similar lines that I knew what was coming.

‘The need to get out of London,’ I said. Bel nodded agreement.

‘We’ve got two choices,’ she said. ‘We either wait it out here until Shattuck comes back, since he’s the only one who can tell us for sure who hired you. Or we scarper. We can always come back later, and meantime we could be doing something useful like checking on the Disciples of Love.’

‘You took the words right out of my mouth,’ I said. ‘And I can always drop you off at Max’s on the way.’

‘What?’ She sat up. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Bel, I needed you here to give me some cover. I don’t need any cover in Scotland.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I just do. They’re not combing the streets for an assassin up there.’

‘But there’s this man Hoffer. If he’s figured things out this far, what’s to stop him going to Scotland?’

‘What if he does? Are you going to shield me from him?’

I was smiling, but she wasn’t. With teeth gritted she started to thump my arms. ‘You’re not leaving me behind, Weston!’

‘Bel, see sense, will you?’

‘No, I won’t.’ She was still thumping me. ‘I’m going with you!’

I got off the bed and rubbed my arms. Bel put a hand to her mouth.

‘Oh my God,’ she said, ‘I forgot! Michael, are you all right?’

‘I’m fine. There’ll be bruises maybe, but that’s all.’

‘Christ, I’m sorry, I forgot all about...’ She got off the bed and hugged me.

‘Hey, not too hard,’ I said. I was laughing, but when I looked at Bel she had tears in her eyes. ‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘I’m a haemophiliac, not a paper bag. I won’t burst.’

She smiled at last, then embraced me again.

‘I’m coming with you,’ she said. I kissed both her eyes, tasting salt from her lashes.

‘We’ll talk to Max,’ I said.

13

‘Come in, Mr... ah...’

‘Hoffer.’

‘Absolutely. Take a seat, won’t you?’

Geoffrey Johns’s office was everything Hoffer loathed and loved about England. It was old-fashioned, a bit dusty, and fairly reeked of centuries of history and family and tradition. There was something upright and solemn and confidential about it. You couldn’t imagine Johns in red braces and Gekko-slick hair, doing billion-dollar deals on the telephone. He was more father-confessor than lawyer, and though he wasn’t so old, he put on a good act of being wise, benign and endearingly fuddled. Like making Hoffer introduce himself, even though he knew damn fine who he was. Hoffer wanted to flick the man’s half-moon glasses into the wastebin and slap him on the head, try to wake him up. The twentieth century was drawing to a close, and Geoffrey Johns was still working in the Dickens industry.

‘Now then, Mr... ah... Hoffer.’ He’d been shuffling some papers on his desk. They were little more than a stage-prop, so Hoffer bided his time, sitting down and smiling, arms folded. The solicitor looked up at him. ‘Some tea perhaps? Or coffee, I believe you Americans prefer coffee.’

‘We prefer, Mr Johns, to cut through all the shit and get down to business.’

Johns didn’t peer through his spectacles at Hoffer, he dropped his head and peered over them. ‘There are courtesies to be observed, Mr Hoffer. Mrs Ricks’s family is still in mourning. I myself am still in a state of some shock.’

‘She was a good client, huh?’

Johns wasn’t slow to get the meaning. ‘I regarded her as a friend, one I’d known for many years.’

Hoffer’s attention had been attracted to the bakelite telephone. It made him smile. The solicitor misunderstood.

‘Good God, man, what is there to smile about?’

‘Your phone,’ Hoffer said. ‘It’s a phony, isn’t it? I mean a fake.’

‘I believe it’s a replica.’

‘Lot of fakes about these days, Mr Johns. I’ll have tea, please, milk and two lumps of sugar.’

Johns stared at him, deciding whether or not to let the brash American have his tea. Politeness won the argument. Johns buzzed his secretary and asked for a pot of tea.

‘I believe,’ Hoffer said, ‘your principal duty lies with your clients. Would you agree, Mr Johns?’

‘Of course.’

‘Well, one of them’s been murdered. And her family have asked you for your help. Now, way I see it, they want her killer found, she would want her killer found, and probably you do too.’

‘Of course I do,’ fussed the lawyer. ‘No “probably” about it. I think they should bring back hanging for terrorists.’

‘Terrorists? What makes you say that?’

‘What?’

‘That the assassin was a terrorist?’

‘Well, who was his intended victim?’

‘I’ve no reason to believe it wasn’t Mrs Ricks.’

‘Really? But the MP and the diplomat...?’

Hoffer shook his head. ‘The Demolition Man usually gets who he aims for.’

‘Ah, but the papers say he shot the wrong person in New York. They say that’s where your story starts.’

Hoffer accepted this. He’d been interviewed yesterday and this morning by a couple of papers and a radio station. No television yet, which was surprising. The story had a new angle with the two East European countries closing their mutual border. The Demolition Man was still news, and Hoffer always gave good copy.

‘As I see it, Mr Hoffer,’ Johns went on, ‘my duty is to aid the official police investigation any way I can. I don’t believe you form part of that investigation, therefore I’m not obliged to grant you an interview at all.’

‘If you know anything,’ Hoffer said, ‘you’ll know that if anyone’s going to catch this man, that person is me.’

‘Really? And how long have you been tracking him? Quite a while, I believe.’

Hoffer was getting to like the solicitor better all the time.

‘Have you spoken to the police much?’ he asked.

‘Practically every day, twice yesterday.’ Johns shook his head. ‘I try to help where I can, but some of the questions...’

A tray of tea arrived. Hoffer gave the secretary a good look as she stood beside him and leaned over to put the tray down on the desk. Great legs, nice ass, but a face so thin and sharp you could use it as an awl.

‘Thank you, Monica,’ said Johns. After the secretary had gone, he started pouring milk and tea with the grace of a duchess.

‘I’ll let you help yourself to sugar.’

Hoffer helped himself. ‘What sort of questions?’ he asked casually.

‘Well, the one that got me was: what colours did she like to wear? I couldn’t see the point of that at all, but the officer said he had his reasons for asking.’

‘Didn’t tell you what those reasons were though?’

‘No, he didn’t. A typical policeman, I’m afraid.’

‘Her favourite colours, huh?’ Hoffer pondered the question himself, seeking the point behind it, while he stirred his tea. It was one of those elegant little china cups with a handle so overelaborate and undersized that he ended up with his hand around the cup itself, ignoring the handle.

Johns seemed to be having no trouble with his own handle. They probably taught tricks like that in law school.

‘I should tell you, Mr Johns, that I’m working pretty closely with the London police. They know I’m on the right side. I mean, we’ve all got the same objective, right?’

‘Yes, I understand.’

‘So don’t misunderstand me.’ Hoffer smiled humbly. ‘The press don’t always paint the real picture of me. I’m not after glory or anything, I’m not some obsessed crazy guy with a mission from on high. I’m just a cop doing my job.’ Sincerity was easy. ‘And I’d appreciate your help.’

Johns put down his cup. ‘And you shall have it, so far as I can give it.’

The telephone interrupted them. It might be a replica, but it had a nice old tinny ring which faded only slowly after Johns picked up the receiver.

‘Monica, I wanted all calls held. All right, put him on. Hello, Ray, what can I do for you? No, I haven’t had the news on this morning. What’s that?’ He looked at Hoffer and kept looking. ‘That’s interesting. When was this? Mm, well, I don’t know what to think. No, no comment at this time. Thank you, goodbye.’

He put down the phone but left his hand on the receiver.

‘That was a reporter,’ he informed Hoffer. ‘He says a local radio station has been contacted by someone claiming to be the assassin.’

‘Some crank,’ said Hoffer. ‘What’s he saying?’

‘He says he wants the two East European countries to know he wasn’t hired to assassinate the diplomat. He says he got who he was aiming at.’ Johns looked very pale as he lifted his hand from the receiver. ‘I think I need something stiffer than tea.’

There was a drinks cabinet beneath the window. Johns poured a dark liquid into two tiny stemmed glasses. There was about a shot’s worth in the glass he handed to Hoffer, who sniffed it.

‘Sherry,’ said Johns, gulping his down.

Hoffer, who’d only come across the stuff in English trifle, knocked it back, rolling it around his mouth before swallowing. It was sour to start with, but quickly got mellow as it warmed his gut.

‘Not bad,’ he said.

‘You still think this was a crank call?’ asked the solicitor.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Maybe your man has just found himself a conscience.’

‘Some conscience.’ Hoffer still didn’t get the question about Ricks’s clothes. ‘The policeman you spoke to yesterday, the one who asked what Mrs Ricks normally wore, can I ask who he was? Was it Chief Inspector Broome maybe? Or DI Edmond?’

‘No, neither of those, though I’ve spoken to them before. This was someone new to the inquiry. He apologised for asking questions I’d probably been asked before.’

‘Was he on his own?’

‘No, he was with another officer.’

‘He didn’t have brown hair, did he?’

‘Black hair, cut short as I recall.’

Hoffer was beginning to wonder. Mark Wesley had got some fake ID from Harry Capaldi...

‘Did they show you any identification?’

‘Oh, yes. The man was called Wes... no, hold on.’ Hoffer had nearly leapt from his chair, but the solicitor was fussing on his desk again, trying to find a scrap of paper or something. ‘Here it is. Inspector West.’

‘No first name?’

‘No. His assistant was a woman, a Detective Constable Harris.’

Hoffer shook his head slowly. ‘I don’t know them,’ he said, not convinced he was quite telling the truth.

Bob Broome wasn’t thrilled to see him. Vine Street was its usual chaos and gloom. Broome wouldn’t let Hoffer past the front desk, so Hoffer waited for Broome to descend.

‘I’m busy,’ he said curtly, when he finally arrived.

‘You’ll find time for me, Bob, when you hear what I’ve got.’

Broome narrowed his eyes. ‘I’ve got enough cranks around here as it is.’

‘You don’t think that call was a crank, do you?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Have you got a recording or just a transcript?’

Broome narrowed his eyes further. ‘Is that all you’re here for, to try pumping me about the phone call?’

Hoffer shook his head defiantly. ‘Just tell me this: DI West and DC Harris, do you know them?’

‘First names?’ Hoffer shook his head. Broome gave it another couple of seconds. ‘Never heard of them.’

‘West sounds a bit like Wesley, doesn’t it?’

‘Come on, Hoffer, what’s your story?’

‘Can we go upstairs and talk about it? I feel like a victim stuck down here.’

Broome decided to give the American the benefit of his very grave doubts.

‘Come on then,’ he said. On the way up, they passed Barney coming down. He winked at Hoffer.

‘I’ll have it for you tomorrow,’ he said.

‘Thanks,’ Hoffer said, trying to sound guilty or embarrassed as Broome gave him a long dirty look.

When they got to the office, Broome made a show of checking the time. ‘You’ve got five minutes,’ he told Hoffer. Then he sat down and looked like he was waiting for a show to begin.

‘I don’t pay dues to any acting union, Bob.’ Hoffer sat down slowly, taking a while to get comfortable. ‘I’ll put it to you straight, but stop acting like you’re in a sulk.’

‘Sulk? You’re going around like you’re the Chief Inspector and I’m just some office-boy who gets in your way. I’m not sulking, Hoffer, I’m bloody furious. Now, what have you got for me?’

A Detective Constable came into the room and placed a small packet on Broome’s desk. Broome ignored it, waiting for Hoffer to speak. Hoffer pointed to the packet.

‘Is that the tape, Bob?’ Broome didn’t say anything. ‘Come on, let’s listen to it.’

‘First tell me what you know.’

‘Well, know is a bit strong. But there’s this solicitor, Geoffrey Johns. Know what johns are in the States? Well, never mind.’

‘I know Mr Johns.’

‘Yes, you do. But you don’t know anyone called West or Harris. West’s in his mid-thirties, tall and lean, with short black hair. He’s with a young woman, pretty tall with short fair hair. I’ll let your guys go get more detailed descriptions from Johns and his secretary.’

‘Good of you. So you think West is Wesley?’

‘Yes.’

‘And he’s posing as a police officer?’

‘With ID faked up by Capaldi.’

‘Why?’

Broome had asked one of the questions Hoffer couldn’t answer.

‘And who’s his partner?’

Now he’d asked the other. Hoffer shrugged. ‘I don’t know, but he was asking questions about Ricks. The important thing is, he’s still in town and he’s asking around. By rights he should be miles away, but he’s here under our noses.’ The image made Hoffer think of something. He sniffed the thought away. ‘He’s here, Bob, and the only reason I can think of why he’s still around is that he’s on to something.’ He paused. ‘I think he’s going after his employer.’

‘What?’

‘The anonymous phone call, the one that nearly got him caught, he’s after whoever made it. Stands to reason it must have been someone close to the deceased, otherwise how would he know where to find her?’ He clicked his fingers. ‘That’s why he’s asking about her clothes.’

‘Her clothes?’

Hoffer’s mind was racing. ‘He must’ve been told what she’d be wearing! Christ, could that be it?’

‘I’m not really getting this, Hoffer.’

Hoffer slumped back as far as he was able in his chair. ‘Me neither, not all of it. Just pieces, and the pieces don’t all make sense.’

Broome fingered the packet, but didn’t seem in a hurry to open it. ‘Hoffer,’ he said, ‘there was some shooting in north London last night.’

‘Yeah, I read about it.’

‘We’ve got a description of a fat man seen running away.’

‘Uh-huh?’

Broome pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘There’s also been a mugging, except that no money was taken from the victim.’ Broome looked up. ‘You’re supposed to ask me who the victim was.’

Hoffer blew his nose before asking. ‘So who was it?’

‘Mr Arthur, the bank manager.’

Hoffer threw his used tissue into the bin beside Broome’s desk.

‘You wouldn’t know anything about it, Hoffer?’

‘Give me a break, Bob. I haven’t mugged anyone since I quit the NYPD. You get a description of the assailants?’

Broome was staring at Hoffer. ‘He was hit from behind. He’s got concussion.’

Hoffer shook his head. ‘Nice guy, too. Nobody’s safe these days.’

Broome sighed and rubbed his eyes. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘let’s listen to the tape.’

He had a DC bring in a portable cassette player and set it up.

‘This local station must be on their toes,’ said Hoffer.

‘They tape all calls to the news desk, partly as a favour to us.’

‘Why?’

‘Because the IRA often call a local radio station to take responsibility for a bombing. That way the news gets on the air faster, plus it doesn’t look like they’re cooperating with us.’

‘So the radio station’s a kind of go-between?’

‘Sort of, yes.’ Broome loaded the tape and pressed Play. There was some soft hissing, which became louder until someone spoke.

‘News desk, Joely speaking.’

‘This is the Demolition Man, do you understand?’

‘Dem...? Oh yes, yes, I understand.’

‘Listen then. Tell everyone I hit my intended target, got that? I wasn’t after the diplomat. He just happened to be there. Understood?’

‘Mm, yes.’ Joely was obviously writing it all down. ‘Yes, I’ve got that. Can I just ask—’

‘No questions. If anyone thinks this is a hoax, tell them Egypt, the Cairo Hilton, twelfth of December two years ago.’

‘Hello? Hello?’ But the Demolition Man had put down the phone. Broome listened to the silence for a few moments, then stopped and rewound the tape.

‘The original’s gone to the lab boys,’ he said. ‘We’ll see what they say.’

‘Sounded like he was in a callbox, and not long distance. He’s English, isn’t he?’

‘Sounds it. Sounded like he was trying to disguise his voice too.’

Hoffer smiled. ‘You weren’t taken in by the Jimmy Durante impression?’

‘Maybe he’s got a cold.’

‘Yeah, maybe.’

Broome looked at Hoffer. ‘Egypt?’

Hoffer nodded. ‘Yeah, it’s not one everyone knows about. Nobody’s been able to say it was the D-Man, so it never makes the papers. It was a precision hit, long-range, but he didn’t leave a bomb. Either that or the bomb didn’t detonate.’

‘Who did he kill?’

‘Some Arab millionaire with big gambling debts which he was unwisely ignoring.’ Hoffer shrugged. ‘The gambler was a Mr Big, didn’t think anyone could touch him. He had an armoured Mercedes and four bodyguards a grenade launcher couldn’t’ve budged. They used to huddle round their boss when he went anywhere, like he was Muhammad Ali going into the ring. Then, pop, a bullet hits the guy smack in the heart, and they’re all looking around, only they don’t know where to look because there’s nothing there to look at. They reckon it was a hit from six, maybe seven hundred yards.’

‘You know a lot about it.’

‘I’ve had a lot of time to look things up. I’ve got a file of more than sixty assassinations going back fifteen years. He could be behind any number of them.’

‘Would anyone else know about it?’

‘Only someone as obsessed as me.’ Hoffer paused. ‘It’s him on the tape, I know it’s him.’

‘We’ll see if the boffins can come up with anything.’

‘Such as?’

‘You’d be surprised. We’ve got linguistic people who might pin down his accent, even if you and I can’t tell he’s got one. We could get it down to a region or county.’

‘Wow, I’m impressed.’

‘It’s slow and methodical, Hoffer, that’s how we do things. We don’t go shooting our mouths off and our guns off.’

‘Hey, I make the jokes around here.’

‘Just don’t become a joke, all right?’

‘Whoa, Bob, okay, you got me, I yield to your sharper wit. Now what say I get a copy of that tape?’

‘What say you don’t?’

‘Still sore at me, huh?’

‘What’s Barney got for you?’

‘Just a few names, gun dealers.’ Hoffer shrugged. ‘You’re not the only one who can be slow and methodical. Gumshoes do a lot of walking, Bob, a lot of knocking on doors.’

‘Just don’t come knocking on mine for a while, Leo.’

‘Whatever you say, Bob.’ Broome had gone back to calling him Leo; it was going to be all right between them. Hoffer got slowly to his feet. ‘What about Inspector West?’

‘I’ll have someone talk to Mr Johns, get a description circulating.’ Hoffer nodded. ‘Don’t expect a bunch of roses, Hoffer, you just did what you’re supposed to do all the time. If you get anything else, come back and see me.’

Hoffer fixed a sneer to his face. ‘You can fucking well go whistle, Bob.’ He opened the door, but turned back into the room. ‘You know how to whistle, don’t you?’

And then he was gone.

Hoffer sat next morning, lingering over the hotel breakfast. The hotel he was in had a restaurant which opened on to the street, and was open to the public as well as to residents. Something inside Hoffer didn’t like that. Anyone could walk in off the street and sit down next to you. There was a guy sitting by the window who looked like Boris Karloff had donated to a sperm bank and Bette Davis had picked up the jar. He wore little round Gestapo-style glasses which reflected more light than there was light to reflect. He was reading a newspaper and eating scrambled eggs on toast. He gave Hoffer the creeps.

Hoffer wasn’t feeling too well to start with. He didn’t have earache any more, but he had a pain in his side which could be some form of cancer. Through the night he’d woken in agony with a searing pain all down one side of his back. He’d staggered into the bathroom, then out again, and was about to phone for an ambulance when he discharged a sudden belt of gas. After that he felt a bit better, so he tried again and got out another huge belch. Someone hammered on the wall for a couple of moments, but he ignored them. He just sat there bare-assed on the carpet until he could stop shaking.

Christ, he’d been scared. The adrenaline had kept him awake for another hour, and he’d no pills left to knock him out.

He put it down to nervousness. He’d called Walkins, and Walkins hadn’t been too happy with Hoffer’s report.

‘Mr Hoffer, I wish you wouldn’t sound so excited all the time.’

‘Huh?’

‘I don’t know what you think you’re doing. I mean, you call me with news of great import, and say you’re getting close, and you sound so thrilled at the prospect. But Mr Hoffer, we’ve been here before, several times before, and each time you get my hopes up, the next thing I know your lead has proved false or the trail has grown cold. I want more than your hope, Mr Hoffer. I want a result. So no more acting, no more milking me for money. Just find him, and find him fast. The media would love me to tell them you’ve been a fake all along.’

‘Hey, stop right there! I’m busting a gut here, I’m working round the clock. You think you pay me too much? You couldn’t pay me half enough for what I go through for you.’

‘For me?’

‘You bet it’s for you! Who else?’

‘Yourself perhaps, your reputation.’

‘That’s a crock of shit and you know it.’

‘Look, let’s not get into a fight.’

‘I didn’t start it.’ Hoffer was standing up in his room, facing the dressing-table mirror. He was hyperventilating, and trying to calm down. Walkins was thousands of miles away. He couldn’t hit him, and he didn’t want to hit a stand-in. He took deep slow breaths instead.

‘I know you didn’t, Mr Hoffer, it’s just that... it’s just we’ve been here before. You’ve sounded so close to him, so excited, so sure. Do you know what it’s like at this end, just waiting for your next call? You can’t possibly know. It’s like fire under my fingernails, knives stuck between my ribs. It’s... I can hardly move, hardly bear to do anything except wait. I’m as housebound as any invalid.’

Hoffer was about to suggest a portable phone, but didn’t think flippancy was in order.

‘Sir,’ he said calmly, ‘I’m doing what I can. I’m sorry if you feel I build up your hopes without due cause. I just thought you’d want to know how it’s going.’

‘I do want to know. But I’d rather just be told the sonofabitch was dead.’

‘Me, too, sir, believe me.’ Hoffer stared at the gun lying on his bedside cabinet. ‘Me, too.’

And here he sat next morning, awaiting his order of Full English Breakfast with orange juice, toast and coffee. His waitress was a crone. She was probably in the kitchen grinding up wormwood to add to the egg-mix. He wondered if maybe she had a sister worked in the porn cinema where he’d wasted more money than time last night. There were three movies on the bill, but he’d lasted only half the first one. The stuff they were showing was as steamy as a cold cup of coffee, and the ‘usherette’ who’d waddled down the aisle selling ices had looked like she was wearing a fright-mask. She’d still managed to exude more sex than the pale dubbed figures on the unfocused screen. The film was called Swedish Nymph Party, but it started with some cars drawing up outside a mountain chalet, and the licence plates were definitely German, not Swedish. After that, Hoffer just couldn’t get into the film.

London was definitely getting shabby.

A few more hungry clients wandered in off the street. There was no one about to show them to a table, so some wandered back outside while others sat down and then wondered if they’d maybe walked into Tussaud’s by mistake.

‘Mr Hoffer.’

‘Hey, Barney, sit down.’ Hoffer half rose to greet the policeman. They sat opposite one another. ‘I’d ask you to share my breakfast, only I don’t have any yet, and the speed they’re serving you could probably come back after work and they’d be pouring the coffee.’

‘I’m fine, thanks.’

‘I’m glad someone is. Thanks for coming.’

‘I think it suits us both. You’re not exactly this month’s centrefold at Vine Street.’

‘Yeah, Bob really holds a grudge, huh? Just because I took him off the payroll. Speaking of which...’ Hoffer handed over two twenties. ‘This ought to cover your expenses.’

‘Cheers.’ Barney put the notes in his pocket and produced a folded-up piece of lined writing paper. It looked like he’d saved it from a wastebin.

‘This is a class act, Barney.’

‘You wouldn’t have been able to read my typing, and names are names, aren’t they?’

‘Sure, absolutely.’ Hoffer unfolded the paper gingerly and laid it on the table. It was a handwritten list of names. There were two columns, one headed London/Southeast and the other Other Areas. But there were only names, no addresses or other information.

‘Maybe I pay too much,’ said Hoffer.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘This tells me less than Yellow Pages, Barney. What am I supposed to do, scour the phone book for these guys or what?’

‘You said you wanted their names.’

‘What did you think I would do with them? Find one I liked and name my first son after it?’ The policeman looked uncomprehending. He couldn’t understand why Hoffer wouldn’t be pleased.

‘This is all hush-hush info. I mean, on the surface these guys are clean. This isn’t the sort of gen you could just get anywhere.’

‘I appreciate that, really I do. I hear what you’re saying. But Jesus, Barney, I expected a little more.’

Barney took the list back and studied it. ‘Well, I could give you some addresses off the top of my head.’

‘That would help. I’d be real grateful.’ Hoffer took the list back and got a pen from his pocket. He looked around in vain for his breakfast. ‘Two more minutes, I swear, then I’m going into that fucking kitchen and cooking it myself.’

A new waitress had appeared at the front of the restaurant and was handing menus to customers who’d come in, and taking the orders from others. Then Hoffer’s waitress appeared with a tray full of food, but took it to another table.

‘That fuck came in after me!’ Hoffer hissed. ‘Hey! Excuse me!’ But the waitress had dived back into the kitchen.

‘These first three are south London,’ Barney was saying, his finger on the list. ‘He lives in Clapham, that one’s Catford, and the third one is Upper Norwood. Actually, Shattuck’s not a dealer so much as a buyer, but he sometimes tries selling stuff on.’ Hoffer was scribbling the information down. ‘Now as for these others...’

‘Hey, wait, you said addresses.’

So Barney screwed shut his eyes and concentrated like he was the last man left in the quiz show. He came up with three streets, but only one positive house number.

‘They’re not big streets though.’

‘I am duly thankful,’ Hoffer said dubiously. The waitress appeared bearing another tray, this time laying it on Hoffer’s table.

‘I’ve got to tell you, honey,’ he said, ‘the starving in Africa get fed faster than this.’

She was unmoved. ‘We’ve got staff problems.’

‘Right, it takes them longer than other people to fry ham. Tell them to turn the gas on next time.’

‘Very droll.’ She turned away with her empty tray. Hoffer attacked a small fat sausage, dipping it in the gelatinous yellow of his solitary egg.

‘This is one sad-looking breakfast,’ he said. It looked almost as lugubrious as Barney, and had all the charm of the guy in the Gestapo glasses, who was now having a third cup of coffee. The toast felt like they’d lifted it from a pathology lab, where it must have lain not far from the deep-frozen pats of butter.

‘These others,’ Barney was saying, ‘the other London names, they’re north of the river or a bit further out. That one’s Clapton, that one’s Kilburn, he’s Dagenham and the last one’s Watford.’

‘Addresses?’

Barney shrugged. ‘Then there are these ones outside London. One’s near Hull, there are two in Yorkshire, a couple in Newcastle, one in Nottingham, and one in Cardiff.’ He paused. ‘I’m not exactly sure which one’s which though, not off-hand.’ He brightened and stabbed at a name. ‘He’s definitely Bristol though.’

‘Bristol, huh? Well, thanks for your help. Thanks a heap.’ He tried the coffee. By this stage of the meal, it could hold few surprises. Hoffer was suitably laconic. ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘You know, Barney, a lot of people complain about the food in the States. They say it’s beautifully presented, you know, great to look at, but that it doesn’t taste of much. Either that or it’s all fast food, you know, burgers and pizza, and there’s no real cuisine. But I swear, compared to the stuff I’ve eaten in London, a poor boy sandwich from some mosquito-filled shack in the Everglades is as foie gras and caviar.’

He stared at Barney. Barney stared back.

‘You don’t much go for it then?’

Hoffer was still staring. ‘Did you say Yorkshire?’ ‘Pardon?’

‘Two of these guys live in Yorkshire?’

‘Yeah, Yorkshire... or Lancashire, thereabouts.’

‘This is important, Barney. Yorkshire? Think hard.’

‘I don’t know... I think so, yes.’

‘Which ones?’

Barney could see this meant a lot to Hoffer. He shook his head like a pet pupil who’s failing his mentor. ‘I don’t know. Wait a minute, Harrison’s in Yorkshire.’

Hoffer studied the list. ‘Max Harrison?’ he said.

‘Yes, he’s Yorkshire, but I think he’s retired. He got cancer or something. It rotted all his face.’

‘Terrific. I’d still like an address.’ Hoffer was speaking slowly and carefully.

‘I can find out.’

‘Then find out. It’s very important.’

‘Why Yorkshire?’

‘Because the Demolition Man has spent some time there, and some money there.’ Hoffer went down the list again, picking between his teeth with one of the tines of his fork. None of the names set any bells ringing. ‘I need to know about the Yorkshire dealers, Barney, I need to know about them soonest, capisce?’ Barney looked blank. ‘Understood?’ Now Barney nodded. ‘Good man. How soon?’

‘Later today, maybe not till tomorrow.’

Which meant Barney couldn’t get them till tomorrow, but didn’t want to admit it straight out.

‘I mean,’ he went on, ‘I’ve got my real job, you know. I can’t suddenly go off and do other stuff, not without a good reason.’

‘Isn’t my money reason enough?’

‘Well, I won’t say it isn’t welcome.’

‘A hundred if I get them today, otherwise it’s another forty.’

Barney thought about haggling. He was London-born and bred, and Londoners were famed for their street wisdom, their deal-doing. But one look at the New Yorker told Barney he wasn’t going to win.

‘I’ll do what I can,’ he said, getting to his feet.

‘And Barney, typed this time, huh? Bribe a secretary if you have to. Use your old charm.’

‘Okay, Mr Hoffer.’ Barney seemed relieved to be leaving. He sought a form of farewell, and waved one arm. ‘Enjoy your breakfast.’

‘Thank you, Barney,’ said Hoffer, smiling a fixed smile. ‘I’ll certainly try.’

He stuck with the coffee and toast. After all, breakfast was included in the price of his room. The toast put up some resistance to the notion of being gnawed to bits and swallowed, but the coffee seemed to have a fine corrosive quality. So engaged was he in the battle, that Hoffer didn’t notice the Karloff-Bette Davis test-tube baby leave his table and start walking back through the dining area towards the hotel proper. But he noticed when the man stopped at his table and smiled down on him.

‘What am I, a circus act?’ Hoffer said, spitting flecks of bread on to the man’s burgundy jacket. It was one of those English-style jackets that the English seldom wore, but which were much prized by Americans.

‘I couldn’t help hearing you try to... ah, summon the waitress,’ the stranger said. ‘I’m American myself.’

‘Well,’ Hoffer said expansively, ‘sit down, pardner. It’s good to see another patriotic American.’

The man started to sit.

‘Hey,’ snapped Hoffer, ‘I was being ironic.’

But the man sat down anyway. Close up, he had a thin persistent smile formed from wide, meatless lips. His face was dotted with freckles, his hair short and bleached. But his eyes were almost black, hooded with dark bags under them. He wasn’t tall, but he was wide at the shoulders. Everything he did he did for a specific purpose. Now he planted his hands on the table.

‘So, how’re things going, Mr Hoffer?’

‘I get it, another fan, huh? No autographs today, Bud, okay?’

‘You seem nervous, Mr Hoffer.’

‘As of right now I’m about nervous enough to bust you in the chops.’

‘But you’re also curious. You wonder who I am really. On the surface you affect disdain, but beneath your mind is always working.’

‘And right now it’s telling my fists to do the talking.’

‘That would be unwise.’ There were long regular spaces between the words.

‘Persuade me.’

The man looked at the cold food still left on Hoffer’s plate. ‘The food here is appalling, isn’t it? I was disappointed when you booked into this hotel. I was thinking more the Connaught or the Savoy. Have you ever eaten at the Grill Room?’

‘What are you, a food critic?’

‘My hobby,’ the man said. ‘How’s your mission going?’

‘Mission?’

‘Locating the Demolition Man.’

‘It’s going swell, he’s upstairs in my room watching the Disney Channel. Who are you?’

‘I work for the Company.’

Hoffer laughed. ‘You don’t get any points for subtlety, pal. The Company? What makes any of my business the CIA’s business?’

‘You’re looking for an assassin. He has murdered United States citizens. Plus, when he kills, he often kills politicians.’

‘Yeah, scumbags from sweatshop republics.’ Hoffer nodded. ‘Maybe they’re all friends of yours, huh? How come you haven’t introduced yourself before?’

‘Well, let’s say we’re more interested now.’

‘You mean now he’s almost started World War Three? Or now he’s killed a journalist? Let’s see some ID, pal.’

‘I don’t have any on me.’

‘Don’t tell me, you left it in your other burgundy jacket? Get out of my face.’

The man didn’t look inclined to leave. ‘I’m very good at reading upside down,’ he said.

Hoffer didn’t understand, then saw that Barney’s sheet of paper was still spread open by the side of his plate. He folded it and put it away.

‘Arms dealers?’ the man guessed. When Hoffer didn’t say anything, his smile widened. ‘We know all about them, we had that information days ago.’

‘Ooh, I’m impressed.’

‘We even know what you told Chief Inspector Broome yesterday.’

‘If you know everything, what do you want with me?’

‘We want to warn you. You’ve managed to get close to the Demolition Man, but you need to be aware that we’re close to him too. If there should come a confrontation... well, we need to know about you, and you need to know about us. It wouldn’t help if we ended up shooting at one another while the assassin escaped.’

‘If you’re after him, why not just let me tag along?’

‘I don’t think so, Mr Hoffer.’

‘You don’t, huh? Know what I don’t think? I don’t think you’re from the Company. I’ve met Company guys before, they’re not a bit like you. You smell of something worse.’

‘I can produce ID given time.’

‘Yeah, somebody can run you up a fake. There used to be this nifty operator in Tottenham, only he’s not at home.’

‘All I’m trying to do here is be courteous.’

‘Leave courtesy to the Brits. Since when have we ever been courteous?’ Hoffer thought he’d placed the man. ‘You’re armed forces, right?’

‘I was in the armed forces for a while.’

Hoffer didn’t want to think what he was thinking. He was thinking Special Operations Executive. He was thinking National Security Council. The CIA was a law unto itself, but the NSC had political clout, friends in the highest and lowest places, which made it infinitely more dangerous.

‘Maybe we’re beginning to see eye to eye,’ the man said at last.

‘Give me a name, doesn’t matter if it’s made up.’

‘My name’s Don Kline, Mr Hoffer.’

‘Want to hear something funny, Don Kline? When I first saw you I thought, Gestapo-style glasses. Which is strange, because normally I’d think John Lennon. Just shows how prescient you can be sometimes, huh?’

‘This doesn’t get us very far, Mr Hoffer.’ Kline stood up. ‘Maybe you should lay off the narcotics, they seem to be affecting your judgement.’

‘They couldn’t affect my judgement of you. Ciao, baby.’

For something to do, Hoffer lit a cigarette. He didn’t watch Kline leave. He couldn’t even hear him make a noise on the tiled floor. Hoffer didn’t know who Kline was exactly, but he knew the species. He’d never had any dealings with the species before, it was alien to him. So how come that species was suddenly interested in the D-Man? Kline hadn’t answered Hoffer’s question about that. Did it have to do with the journalist? What was it she’d been investigating again? Cults? Yes, religious cults. Maybe he better find out what that was all about. Wouldn’t that be what the D-Man was doing? Of course it would.

He foresaw a triangular shoot-out with the D-Man and Kline. Just for a moment, he didn’t know which one of them he’d be aiming at first.

His waitress was back.

‘No smoking in this section.’

‘You’re an angel straight from heaven, do you know that?’ he told her, stubbing out his cigarette underfoot. She stared at him blankly. ‘I mean it, I didn’t think they made them like you any more. You’re gorgeous.’ These words were obviously new to the waitress, who softened her pose a little. The brittle beginning of a smile formed at the corners of her mouth.

‘So what are you doing this evening?’ Hoffer went on, rising to his feet. ‘I mean, apart from scaring small children?’

It was a low blow, but no lower than the one she gave him.