Dick Francis's Gamble

11

At nine a.m. sharp on Monday morning I called Patrick in the office.

“Am I forgiven yet?” I asked him.

“Gregory’s not here today,” he replied. “He’s been away for the weekend and isn’t back until tomorrow afternoon or Wednesday. I think it best if you stay away a while longer.”

I wasn’t going to argue. Not having to be in the office over the next couple of days suited me very well.

“Can I now use the remote-access facility?” I asked. “Just to check that I’m not missing something that should be done today.”

The system allowed us to attach reminder notices to client files-for example, to alert us to a maturing bond or a rights issue so that we didn’t miss an opportunity to invest the client’s money most favorably.

“Of course,” Patrick replied.

Things had clearly mellowed over the weekend.

“So shall I plan on being in again on Wednesday?” I asked.

“Thursday might be better,” Patrick said, seemingly a little undecided. “I’ll speak to Gregory over lunch on Wednesday.”

“Thursday it is, then,” I said. “Unless I hear from you sooner.”

“Right.” Patrick seemed rather distracted. “There is a bit of a backlog with both you and Herb not being here. Diana and Rory will just have to cover everything until Thursday. I’ll ask them to stay late.”

I smiled. I bet Rory wouldn’t like that. There was no extra money for doing overtime in our job.

Detective Chief Inspector Tomlinson had called on Sunday evening to say he was traveling down from Liverpool and to ask if could I meet him at Herb Kovak’s flat at eleven the following morning. Yes, I’d said, I could.

In the end, both Claudia and I went over to Hendon together in the Mercedes because she didn’t want to be left alone, and I was delighted to have her with me.

The policeman was there ahead of us, and he had been interviewing poor Sherri Kovak, who clearly was distressed by the experience. Her eyes were red from crying, and she looked pale and drawn. Claudia went immediately over and put her arm around Sherri’s shoulders, even before they were introduced, taking her off into the kitchen.

“Thank you for coming,” the chief inspector said to me, shaking my hand. “I’m sorry but I seem to have rather upset Miss Kovak.”

“How?” I asked.

“I told her that I needed her to come back with me to Liverpool to carry out a formal identification of the body.”

I nodded. “I feared you might. You would think it wouldn’t be necessary to put people through such emotional trauma.” Especially, I thought, as one of the bullets that had killed him had entered through his face.

“I’m afraid the law takes little notice of people’s feelings.”

“And you should know,” I said.

“Yes,” he said, looking me in the eye. “I certainly do.”

Claudia came back out into the hallway, and I introduced her properly to Detective Chief Inspector Tomlinson.

“So are you the man who arrested my Nick?” she asked accusingly.

“No, darling,” I said, springing quickly to the policeman’s defense. “This isn’t the man who arrested me, this is the one who provided me with an alibi.”

“Oh,” she said. “All right, then. You may live.”

The chief inspector smiled at her little joke, but he was there strictly on business.

“Now,” he said to me, getting down to it, “where are these MoneyHome receipts?”

Claudia went back to Sherri in the kitchen while the chief inspector and I went through into the living room. I spread out the stuck-together little squares on Herb’s desk. The chief inspector’s eyebrows rose a notch.

“I found them torn up like this in the wastebasket,” I said. “I stuck them together. There are three different payment slips here, one for eight thousand dollars and two for five thousand each.”

“And you say that Mr. Kovak collected this money from a MoneyHome agent during the week before he was killed.”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s according to the stamps on them.”

“And do you know who sent him the money?”

“No,” I replied. “MoneyHome apparently only requires the recipient’s name and something called the Money Transfer Control Number in order to pay out. The agent doesn’t seem to know the sender’s name.”

“These bloody money transfer companies,” he said. “They seem to be absolutely determined to allow people to transfer money round the world completely anonymously. Cash in, cash out, no questions asked. They make it so easy for the villains, especially the drug dealers.”

“Can’t you make them tell you who sent the money?” I asked.

“They probably don’t know themselves,” he said. “And if they do get a name it’s probably false.”

“Butch Cassidy,” I said.

“Eh?”

“The recipient names on the payment slips,” I said. I added the two from my pocket to the three on the desk. “Butch Cassidy, Billy Kid, Wyatt Earp, Jessie James and Bill Cody. It’s not very difficult to spot they’re false.”

“Were they the aliases used by Mr. Kovak when he collected the money?” he asked, studying the slips.

“Yes,” I said.

I could see from his expression that the chief inspector immediately cast Herb as one of his villains.

“He wasn’t a drug dealer,” I said. The chief inspector looked up at me. “And he wasn’t a crook. He was just allowing his fellow Americans to do what we in England can do quite legitimately every day.”

“Gambling is a mug’s game,” he said.

“Maybe,” I agreed. “But it’s legal, taxed and, without it, there probably wouldn’t be any horse racing. Certainly not the industry we have today.”

The policeman pursed his lips as if to say he didn’t think it would be a great loss. I wondered if all policemen were born puritanical or did it develop after several years in the job.

“Mr. Kovak was still breaking the law.”

“Was he?” I asked. “Whose law?”

“He was aiding and abetting others,” the chief inspector said with certainty.

I wasn’t going to argue with him. I was pretty certain myself that if the reports of the arrest of the CEO of the Internet gambling site was anything to go by, Herb would have faced racketeering charges in the United States if they had known what he was up to.

I also showed the chief inspector the stack of unsigned credit cards, but he seemed far more interested in the MoneyHome payment slips.

“So where do we go from here?” I asked.

“I will take these slips and try and get MoneyHome to at least divulge which of their offices the money was sent from. The transfer number should be enough to do that. Then we will have to painstakingly try to find out whose initials are on the sheets of paper.”

“You really think this must have something to do with Herb’s murder?” I asked.

“Don’t you?” he said. “We’ve no other leads to go on. You never know, perhaps Mr. Kovak was blackmailing one of his ‘clients,’ threatening to tell the U.S. authorities about their illegal gambling. So they killed him.”

“There goes that suspicious mind of yours again, Chief Inspector.”

“Suspicion is all we have at the moment,” he said seriously. “And there’s precious little of that in this case.”

There was a heavy knock at the front door.

“That will be my sergeant,” the chief inspector said. “He’s come to drive Miss Kovak and me to Liverpool.”

Claudia and I watched them go.

“That poor girl,” Claudia said, holding my hand. “Her family are all dead. She’s alone in the world.”

At least she’s healthy, I thought. How typical of my gorgeous Claudia to think of others when she had enough of her own troubles to worry about.

“Do you fancy going out to lunch?” I asked.

“Lovely,” she said.

“Luigi’s again?”

“It’s a bit unimaginative,” she said. “But, why not? I like it there.”

I drove us home and we again walked around the corner to our favorite restaurant. On this occasion the proprietor, Luigi Pucinelli, was present.

“Ah, Signor Foxton and the lovely Signorina Claudia. Buongiorno… welcome,” he said, being his usual effusive self. “Table for two? Bene. Follow me.”

He showed us to our favorite table in the window.

“We don’t often see you for lunch,” Luigi said in his Italian accent, adding an eh to every word that ended in a consonant.

“No,” I said. “It’s a special treat.”

“Eccellente,” he said with a flourish, giving us the menus.

“Grazie,” I said to him, playing the game.

Luigi was no more Italian than I was. I had met his mother one night in the restaurant and she had told me with a laugh that Luigi Pucinelli had been born Jim Metcalf in a hospital just up the Tottenham High Road, not five miles away.

But good luck to him, I thought. The food and service at Luigi’s were superb, and his restaurant thrived, authentic Italian or not.

Claudia chose the antipasto for us to share as a starter, with saltimbocca alla pollo to follow, while I decided on the risotto al funghi.

We ate the antipasto in silence.

“Speak to me,” Claudia said. “This is not the last meal of the condemned, you know.”

I smiled at her. “No, of course not.”

But we were both nervous.

Nervous of what tomorrow morning would bring.

I ordered a taxi to take us to the hospital that evening at seven o’clock.

“Why do you need to go in the night before?” I asked Claudia as we made our way down the Finchley Road.

“Something about wanting to monitor me overnight before the operation so they have something to compare the readings with afterwards.”

“What time is the op in the morning?” I asked.

“The surgeon said it would be first thing, just as soon as he’s finished his early-morning rounds.”

That meant it could be anytime, I thought.

In my experience, and I had plenty of it from my racing days, doctors and surgeons were about as good at time keeping as a London bus in the rush hour.

“At least we won’t have to wait all day,” I said, smiling at her.

She gave me a look that said she would be quite happy to wait all year.

“It’s better to get it done, and then at least we will know what we’re up against.”

“I know,” she said. “But I’m frightened.”

So was I. But now was not the time to show it.

“Everything will be OK,” I said, trying to sound reassuring. “You said they’ve found it early, and I’ve researched everything on the Internet. You’re going to be just fine. You’ll see.”

“Oh, Nick,” she said, grasping my hand very tight. There were tears in her eyes.

I pulled her close to me, and we sat in silence as the taxi maneuvered through Regent’s Park and out onto the Euston Road.

It was a difficult evening, and night, for both of us.

Claudia was checked into the hospital by the admissions staff, for whom it was a regular routine to be completed with brisk efficiency. They didn’t mean to be uncaring, but quite a few times they made us feel uncomfortable and even foolish.

I kept having to wait in the corridor outside her room as nurses and technicians came to perform some procedure or other. Swabs were taken from up Claudia’s nose and inside her mouth, and then others were then taken from more intimate areas. Blood was drawn for this, and urine was tested for that.

After a couple of hours they finally said that she was ready for the morning and left us in peace. I turned off the bright overhead lights and dimmed the reading light to a much more subdued level. Suddenly, everything did not look quite so stark and antiseptic. Much better.

I sat on a chair by her bed and held her hand.

“You ought to go home,” Claudia said. “I’ll be fine.”

“Unless they physically throw me out,” I said, “I’m not going anywhere.”

Claudia laid her head back on the pillow and smiled. “Good,” she said.

I still couldn’t believe how badly I had read the situation between us. What a fool I had been, and what a greater fool I might have become. Just thinking about it caused me to break out in a cold sweat.

“You get some sleep now, my love,” I said to her. “You’ll need all the strength you can get for tomorrow.”

“This bloody bed is so hard, it makes my back ache.”

I spent a few minutes using the electric bed control, lifting the head or feet, trying to make her more comfortable. It didn’t really work.

“Why can’t they have bloody beds that are comfortable to lie on?” Claudia complained. “You’d think that would be the first priority.”

I recognized what was happening. She was getting irritated by the slightest little thing. It was a sign of the nervous condition she was in. I would just have to smile gently and agree with her.

“Yes, darling,” I said. “Please try and close your eyes and get some rest.”

“You try resting on this bloody thing,” she snapped, turning herself over once again to face away from me.

In the end, she settled, and in time I could tell from the sound of her breathing that she was asleep. I settled down into the chair and closed my eyes.

One of the nurses came into the room and snapped on the overhead lights.

“Time for your vitals,” she said loudly.

And so it went on through the night, with temperature, pulse and blood pressure being measured in two-hour intervals, each time accompanied by the Blackpool Illuminations. Hospitals were clearly never designed for relaxation and recovery.

No one told me to go home, so I didn’t, although I had to admit it was not the best night’s sleep I’d ever had.

Breakfast wasn’t eaten by Claudia, or even offered, there being a large NIL BY MOUTH sign hanging on a hook by the door, so I went down to the hospital lobby at about six a.m. in search of coffee and a bun for myself while the patient had a shower.

At about eight-thirty, Dr. Tomic, the surgeon, arrived, wearing light blue scrub tunic and trousers, all set for the operating room. He brought with him some paperwork and a thick marker pen, which he used to draw a big black arrow on the left side of Claudia below her belly button.

“Don’t want to take out the wrong one, now do we?” he said.

That, somehow, wasn’t very encouraging.

“What, exactly, are you going to do?” I asked.

“I will make two small incisions here and here,” he said, pointing to each side of Claudia’s lower abdomen. “I will then use a laparoscope to have a good look at all her bits and then I’ll remove the left ovary completely,” he said. “I also plan to take a wedge biopsy of the right ovary.”

“And what is a wedge biopsy, exactly?” I asked.

“A small sample that is removed, like a tiny bite, which is then tested to see if it’s clear,” he said. “Then I will sew everything up and Claudia will be back here before you know it. About two hours in total, maybe a fraction more.”

“And if the biopsy’s not clear?” Claudia asked.

“If I can tell that straightaway just by looking,” the surgeon said, “then I’ll have to remove that ovary as well. Otherwise, the biopsy will be sent to the lab for tests. There is a slight chance that I may also need to perform a complete hysterectomy if I find cancer cells attached to the uterus. But I think from the scans that that will be most unlikely.”

Claudia looked at me with rising panic in her eyes.

Dr. Tomic spotted it. “Claudia,” he said, “I promise you I will do as little as possible. But we have to deal with this. It won’t go away on its own. I have to tell you everything that might happen because I need your consent to proceed. You will understand that I can’t wake you up halfway through the operation to ask your permission to remove your womb if I need to do it in order to save your life.” He smiled at her. “But I really don’t think it will come to that.”

“Can’t you just remove the tumor?” I asked. “Do you have to take the whole ovary?”

“The tumor will probably have taken over most of the ovary and it is the only way of ensuring it doesn’t return.”

“If the second ovary is clear, does that mean it will remain so?” I asked.

“Let’s cross one bridge at a time,” he said. “We’ll discuss the future after the operation.”

I took that to mean no, it probably wouldn’t remain clear.

My mother’s wish for grandchildren was not looking too promising.

“Right, then,” said Dr. Tomic, “I need you to sign here.” He pointed. “And here. And here.”

Claudia looked at me in despair. I pursed my lips and nodded at her. She signed the papers. What choice did we have?

“OK,” said the surgeon, taking back the forms from her. “I’ll see you in the OR in about twenty minutes. Wait here, they’ll come for you.”

I wanted to tell him to be careful with my girl, but I didn’t. Of course he’d be careful. Wouldn’t he?

If the previous evening had been bad, the next twenty minutes were intolerable.

Dr. Tomic had left the door open, and every time someone walked down the corridor outside we both jumped.

What was there to say? Nothing. We both just watched the clock on the wall move inexorably around from eight-fifty to nine o’clock, then ever onwards to nine-five and nine-ten.

Claudia held on to my hand as if her life depended on it.

“It’ll be all right,” I said. “You heard what he said, you’ll be back in here before you know it.”

“Oh, Nick,” she said miserably, “if I come out of this with only a tiny piece of an ovary left, let’s use it to have kids.”

“OK,” I said. “You’re on.”

“Marry me first?” she asked.

“You bet,” I said.

It was an unusual proposal, but we were in an unusual situation.

At nine-fifteen an operating room orderly arrived, wearing blue scrubs and a cloth hat.

“Please be careful with my fiancée,” I said to him as he wheeled her bed out of the room and into the corridor. “She’s very precious to me.”

I went with her to the lift. However, the orderly said that he was sorry but I couldn’t come any farther. I looked at Claudia’s frightened face until the closing lift doors cut off our line of sight, and all too quickly she was gone.

I went back into her room and sat down on the chair.

Never before had I felt so desperate, so helpless, and alone.

In truth, it was not a great start to an engagement.

Claudia didn’t come back for nearly three hours, by which time I was almost crawling up the walls of her room with worry.

Sitting alone in that hospital room had been far worse than spending three times as long in a cell at the Paddington Green Police Station.

I spent some time going over in my mind what must be happening downstairs in the operating room, mentally carving up the clock face into segments. First I tried to imagine how long it would take for Claudia to be put to sleep, then how long to make the incision in her body, then how long to remove the ovary, and so on. I had no idea if I was right or not, or even if I was close, but it seemed to help.

My mental calculations, however, had her coming back to the room in two hours, and, when she didn’t, my imagination went into overdrive, envisaging all sorts of horrors. While the clock on the wall went on ticking, as if mocking me. And still Claudia didn’t return.

By the time I finally heard her being wheeled back along the corridor, I had convinced myself that the whole thing had gone horribly wrong and Claudia had died on the operating table.

But she wasn’t dead, she was just cold and shivering uncontrollably.

I was so pleased to see her but she was not a happy bunny, not at all. She was sore from the surgery and feeling nauseated from the anesthetic. And she couldn’t stop the shivering.

“It’s quite normal,” said a nurse curtly when I asked about it. “She’ll be fine soon.”

“Can she please have another blanket?” I asked.

Reluctantly, she agreed. And, in time, the shivering did abate, and Claudia relaxed and eventually went to sleep.

Dr. Tomic came to see us at about two o’clock while Claudia was still sleeping.

“I have some good news and not quite such good news,” he said to me quietly. “First, the good news is that I removed only one ovary and the other one looked perfectly fine, although I took a piece for a biopsy and it’s currently being assessed in the path lab.”

“And the not-so-good news?” I asked.

“The tumor was not quite fully contained in the ovary, as we had thought, and it had erupted on the surface. It’s often difficult to tell precisely from the scans.”

“And what, exactly, does that mean?” I said.

“It means there is every likelihood that there will be some ovarian cancer cells present in the fluid within the abdominal cavity. We will know for sure when the lab tests are complete.”

“And?” I said.

“In order to be sure we’ve killed off the cancer completely, I think a course or two of chemo will probably be needed.”

“Chemotherapy?” I said.

“I’m afraid so,” he replied. “Just to be sure.”

“Does that mean I’ll lose my hair?” Claudia asked. Her eyes were closed, and I hadn’t realized she’d been awake and listening.

“It might,” he said, “although the drugs are much better than they used to be.” I took that to mean yes, she would lose her hair. “But even so, it will grow back.”

Claudia’s long, flowing jet-black hair was her pride and joy.

“Does the chemo start straightaway?” I asked.

“Within a few weeks,” he said. “We’ll give Claudia time to recover from the surgery first.”

“Will it affect the other ovary?” I asked. “I read on the Internet that some cancer drugs made women infertile.”

“The drugs used are very powerful,” he said. “They work by attacking cells that divide rapidly, like cancer cells, but they do tend to affect everything in the body to some degree. Am I to assume that preserving fertility is a priority?”

“Yes,” said Claudia unequivocally, still not opening her eyes.

“Then we will just have to be very careful,” he said. “Won’t we?”

At three-thirty in the afternoon I left Claudia resting in the hospital while I went home to change and have a shower, taking a Northern Line Tube train from Warren Street to Finchley Central.

“I won’t be long,” I told her. “About an hour and a half. Is there anything I can get you?”

“A new body,” she said miserably.

“I love the one you have,” I said, and she forced a smile.

The doctor had told us that she would have to stay in the hospital for another night but she should be able to go home the following day, or on Thursday at the latest.

The sun was shining as the Tube train rose from the dark tunnels into the daylight just before East Finchley Station. It was always a welcome sign. It meant I was nearly home.

As I walked down Lichfield Grove I could see that there was a man standing outside my house with his finger on the doorbell. I was about to call out to him when he turned his head slightly as if looking over his shoulder.

In spite of telling the police that I hadn’t seen Herb’s killer, I knew him instantly. And here he was, standing outside my front door in Finchley. And I didn’t think he was visiting to inquire after my health.

My heartbeat jumped instantly to stratospheric proportions, and I stifled the shout that was already rising in my throat. I started to turn away from him but not before our eyes had made contact and I had glimpsed the long black shape in his right hand: his trusty gun, complete with silencer.

Bugger, I thought.

I turned and ran as fast as I could back up Lichfield Grove towards Regent’s Park Road.

Lichfield Grove may have been used as a busy shortcut during the rush hour, but it was sleepy and deserted at four o’clock in the afternoon, with not even any schoolchildren on their way home.

Safety, I thought, would be where there were lots of people. Surely he wouldn’t kill me with witnesses. But he had killed Herb with over sixty thousand of them.

I chanced a glance back, having to turn my upper body due to the restricted movement in my neck. It was a mistake.

The gunman was still behind me, only about thirty yards away, running hard and lifting his right arm to aim.

I heard a bullet whizz past me on my left.

I ran harder, and also I started shouting.

“Help! Help!” I shouted as loudly as my heaving lungs would allow. “Call the police!”

No one shouted back, and I needed the air for my aching leg muscles. Oh, to be as fit as I once was as a jockey.

I thought I heard another bullet fly past me and zing off the pavement ahead as a ricochet, but I wasn’t stopping to check.

I made it unharmed to Regent’s Park Road and went left around the corner. Without breaking stride, I went straight into Mr. Patel’s newsagent’s shop, pushed past the startled owner and crouched down under his counter, gasping for air.

“Mr. Patel,” I said, “I am being chased. Please call the police.”

I didn’t know why, perhaps it was because of his Indian subcontinent cultural background, but he didn’t become angry or question why I had invaded his space. He simply stood quietly and looked down at me, as if in slight surprise at the strange behavior of the English.

“Mr. Patel,” I said again with urgency, still breathing hard, “I am being chased by a very dangerous man. Please do not look down at me or he will know that I am here. Please call the police.”

“What man?” he said, still looking down at me.

“The man outside the window,” I said. Mr. Patel looked up.

Suddenly, I remembered that I had my mobile in my pocket. As I dialed 999 for emergency I heard the shop door being opened, the little bell ringing once.

I held my breath. I could feel my heart going thump, thump in my chest.

“Emergency, which service?” said a voice from my phone.

I stuffed the phone into my armpit, hoping that the newcomer into the shop hadn’t heard it.

“Yes?” said Mr. Patel. “Can I help you, sir?”

The newcomer made no reply, and I went on holding my breath, my chest feeling like it was going to burst.

“Can I help you, sir?” Mr. Patel said again but more loudly.

Again there was no reply. All I could hear were faint footsteps.

I just had to breathe, so I let the air out through my mouth as quietly as I could and took another deep breath in.

I wished I could see what was happening in the shop. After a few seconds I heard the door close, ringing the bell once again, but was the gunman on the inside or the outside?

Mr. Patel stood stock-still above me, giving me no indication either way.

“He has gone outside,” he said finally without changing his position.

“What’s he doing?” I asked.

“He is standing and looking round,” Mr. Patel said. “Who is he and why is he chasing you? Are you a criminal?”

“No,” I said, “I am not.”

I remembered the phone under my arm. The operator had obviously got fed up waiting and had hung up. I dialed 999 again.

“Emergency, which service?” said a voice again.

“Police,” I said.

“Police Incident Room, go ahead,” said another voice.

“There’s an armed gunman in the street on Regent’s Park Road in Finchley,” I said quickly.

Mr. Patel looked down at me.

“Mr. Patel,” I said urgently, “please do not look down. The man might see you and come back into the shop.”

“What number Regent’s Park Road?” said the voice on the phone.

“Near the corner of Lichfield Grove,” I said. “Please hurry.”

“Your name, sir?” said the voice.

“Foxton,” I said into the phone. “Mr. Patel, what is the man doing now?”

“He is walking away. No. He has stopped. He is looking back. Oh, goodness gracious, he is coming back this way.”

Mr. Patel leaned down, grabbed some keys from a hook under the counter and walked out of my sight.

“What are you doing?” I called after him urgently.

“Locking the door,” he said.

I didn’t have time to think whether it was a good idea or not before I heard Mr. Patel turn the key in the lock. Now the gunman would be sure where I was. And I could hear the door being shaken.

“Mr. Patel,” I shouted, “get away from the door. The man has a gun.”

“It is all right, Mr. Foxton,” he said with a laugh. “It is not him shaking the door, it is me. The man has gone past. I cannot see him anymore.”

It didn’t mean he wasn’t there so I stayed exactly where I was. My heart rate may have come down a few notches, but, as far as I was concerned, it was still no laughing matter.

“Now, Mr. Foxton, why is a man with a gun chasing you? It is like a film, no?”

“No,” I said. “This was very real life. He was trying to kill me.”

“But why?” he said.

It was a good question. A very good question.

I remained sitting on the floor behind Mr. Patel’s counter until the police arrived. It took them nearly forty minutes, and I had telephoned 999 again twice more, before two heavily armed and body-armored officers finally made an appearance at the shop door. Mr. Patel let them in.

“About time too,” I said, standing up from my hiding place.

“Mr. Foxton?” one of the officers asked, his machine pistol held at the ready position with his finger over the trigger.

“Yes,” I said. “That’s me.”

“Are you armed, sir?”

“No,” I said.

“Please put your hands on your head,” he said, pointing his gun towards me.

“It’s not me who’s the gunman,” I said, slightly irritated. “It was the man who was chasing me.”

“Put your hands on your head,” the policeman repeated with a degree of menace. “And you, sir,” he said, pointing his gun briefly towards Mr. Patel.

We both put our hands on our heads. Mr. Patel smiled broadly as if he thought the whole thing was a huge joke.

The second officer came forward and searched me, making sure he didn’t get between my chest and the muzzle of his colleague’s weapon. He then did likewise to Mr. Patel. Then he went through the shop and out of sight through a plastic curtain into the room behind. He soon reappeared, shaking his head. Only then did they relax a little.

“Sorry about that, sir,” said the first officer, securing his gun across his chest with a strap. “We can’t be too careful.”

I put my arms down. “What took you so long to get here?”

“We had to seal off the whole area,” he said. “Standard practice when there’s a report of a gunman.” He put his finger to his ear, clearly listening to someone on his radio earpiece. “Now, sir,” he said to me, “my superintendent wants to know if you have a description of this gunman.” His tone suggested that he didn’t altogether believe that a gunman had been stalking the streets of Finchley on a sleepy Tuesday afternoon in late April.

“I think I may have better than that,” I said. “Mr. Patel, does your closed-circuit TV system have a recorder?” I had passed some of my time waiting for the police by looking up at the small white video camera situated above the racks of cigarettes.

“Of course,” Mr. Patel replied. “I need to have it to catch the young scoundrels who steal my stock.”

“Then, officer,” I said. “please would you kindly inform Detective Chief Inspector Tomlinson of the Merseyside Police that we have the murderer of Herb Kovak caught on video.”

But how had he known where to find me? And why?