Hugh Laurie - The Gun Seller

‘Woolf’s a bad lot, you know,’ he said.

We were into our third pint, and Solomon had undone his top button. I’d have done the same if I’d had one. The pub was emptier now, as people headed home to wives, or out to cinemas. I lit my too- manyethcigarette of the day.

‘Because of drugs?’

‘Because of drugs.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Does there need to be anything else?’

‘Well Yes.’ I looked across at Solomon. ‘There needs to be something else if all this isn’t going to be taken care of by the Drug Squad. What’s he got to do with your lot? Or is it just that business is slow at the moment, and you’re having to slum it?’

‘I never said a word of this.’

‘Course you didn’t.’

Solomon paused, weighing his words and apparently finding some of them a bit heavy.

‘A very rich man, an industrialist, comes to this country and says he wants to invest here. The Department of Trade and Industry give him a glass of sherry and some glossy brochures, and he sets to work. Tells them he’s going to manufacture a range of metal and plastic components and would it be all right if he built half a dozen factories inScotland and the north-east ofEngland? One or two people at the Board of Trade fall over with the excitement, and offer him two hundred million quid in grants and a residents’ parking permit inChelsea. I’m not sure which is worth more.’

Solomon sipped some beer and dried his mouth with the back of his hand. He was very angry.

‘Time passes. The cheque is cashed, factories are built, and a phone rings inWhitehall. It’s an international call, fromWashington,DC. Did we know that a rich industrialist who makes plastic things also deals in large quantities of opium fromAsia? Good heavens, no, we didn’t know that, thanks ever so much for letting us know, love to the wife and kids. Panic. Rich industrialist is now sitting on a large lump of our money and employing three thousand of our citizens.’

At this point, Solomon seemed to run out of energy, as if the effort of controlling his fury was too much for him. But I couldn’t wait.

‘So?’

‘So a committee of not particularly wise men and women put their fat heads together and decide on possible courses of action. The list includes doing nothing, doing nothing, doing nothing, or dialling 999 and asking for PC Plod. The only thing they are sure about is they do not like that last course.’

‘And O’Neal…?’

‘O’Neal gets the job. Surveillance. Containment. Damage Control. Give it any flipping name you like.’ For Solomon, ‘flipping’ constituted strong language. ‘None of this, of course, has anything whatsoever to do with Alexander Woolf.’

‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘Where is Woolf now?’ Solomon glanced at his watch.

‘At this moment, he is in seat number 6C on a British Airways 747 fromWashington toLondon. If he’s got any sense, he’ll have chosen the Beef Wellington. He may be a fish man, but I doubt it.’

‘And the film?’

‘While You Were Sleeping.’

‘I’m impressed,’ I said.

‘God is in the detail, master. Just because it’s a bad job doesn’t mean I have to do it badly.’

We supped some beer in a relaxed silence. But I had to ask him.

‘Now, David.’

‘Yours to command, master.’

‘Do you mind explaining where I come into all this?’ He looked at me with the beginnings of a ‘you tell me’ expression, so I hurried on. ‘I mean, who wants him dead, and why make it look as if I’m the killer?’

Solomon drained his glass.

‘Don’t know the why,’ he said. ‘As for the who, we rather think it might be the CIA.’

During the night I tossed a little, and turned a little more, and twice got up to record some idiotic monologues about the state of play on my tax-efficient dictaphone. There were things about the whole business that bothered me, and things that scared me, but it was Sarah Woolf who kept coming into my head and refusing to leave.

I was not in love with her, you understand. How could I be? After all, I’d only spent a couple of hours in her company, and none of those had been under very relaxing circumstances. No. I was definitely not in love with her. It takes more than a pair of bright grey eyes and pillows of dark-brown, wavy hair to get me going.

For God’s sake.

Atnine o’clock the next morning I was pulling on the Garrick tie and the under-buttoned blazer, and athalf past nine I was ringing the enquiries bell at the National Westminster Bank in Swiss Cottage. I had no clear plan of action in mind, but I thought it might be good for morale to look my bank manager in the eye for the first time in ten years, even if the money in my account wasn’t mine.

I was shown into a waiting-room outside the manager’s office, and given a plastic cup of plastic coffee which was far too hot to drink until, in the space of a hundredth of a second, it suddenly became far too cold. I was trying to get rid of it behind a rubber plant when a nine-year-old boy with ginger hair stuck his head out of the door, beckoned me in, and announced himself as Graham Halkerston, Branch Manager.

‘So, what can I do for you, Mr Lang?’ he said, settling himself behind a young, ginger-haired desk.

I struck what I thought was a big business pose in the chair opposite him, and straightened my tie.

‘Well, Mr Halkerston,’ I said, ‘I am concerned about a sum of money, recently transferred to my account.’

He glanced down at a computer print-out on the desk. ‘Would that be a remittance on the seventh of April?’

‘Seventh of April,’ I repeated carefully, trying hard not to muddle it up with other payments of thirty thousand pounds I’d received that month. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That sounds like the one.’

He nodded.

‘Twenty-nine thousand, four hundred and eleven pounds and seventy-six pence. Were you thinking of transferring the money, Mr Lang? Because we have a variety of high-yielding accounts that would suit your needs.’

‘My needs?’

‘Yes. Ease of access, high interest, sixty day bonus, it’s up to you.’

It seemed strange somehow, hearing a human being use phrases like that. Until that point in my life, I’d only ever seen them on advertising billboards.

‘Great,’ I said. ‘Great. For the time being, Mr Halkerston, my needs are simply for you to keep the money in a room with a decent lock on the door.’ He stared back at me blankly. ‘I’m more interested to know the origins of this transfer.’ His face went from blank to highly blank. ‘Who gave me this money, Mr Halkerston?’

I could tell that unsolicited donations were not a regular feature of banking life, and it took a few more moments of blankness, followed by some paper-rustling, before Halkerston was back at the net.

‘The payment was made in cash,’ he said, ‘so I have no actual record of the origin. If you’ll hold on a second, I can get a copy of the credit slip.’ He pressed an intercom button and asked for Ginny, who duly trundled in bearing a folder. While Halkerston browsed through it, I had to wonder how Ginny could hold her head up under the weight of cosmetics smeared all over her face. Underneath it all, she may have been quite pretty. Or she may have been Dirk Bogarde. I will never know.

‘Here we are,’ said Halkerston. ‘The name of the payer has been left out, but there is a signature. Offer. Or possibly Offee. T Offee, that’s it.’

Paulie’s chambers were in theMiddleTemple, which I remembered him telling me was somewhere near Fleet Street, and I got there eventually with the help of a black cab. It’s not the way I usually travel, but while I was at the bank I decided there was no harm in withdrawing a couple of hundred pounds worth of my blood money for expenses.