Hugh Laurie - The Gun Seller

Short fat men in grey suits: this is a large category.

Short fat men in grey suits whose scrotums I have held in a hotel bar inAmsterdam: this is a very small category.

Tiny, in fact.

Five

Take a straw and throw it up into the air, you shall see by that which way the wind is.

To follow somebody, without them knowing that you’re doing it, is not the doddle they make it seem in films. I’ve had some experience of professional following, and a lot more experience of professional going back to the office and saying ‘we lost him’. Unless your quarry is deaf, tunnel-sighted and lame, you need at least a dozen people and fifteen thousand quids-worth of short-wave radio to make a decent go of it.

The problem with McCluskey was that he was, in the jargon phrase, ‘a player’ - somebody who knows that they are a possible target, and has some idea of what to do about it. I couldn’t risk getting too close, and the only way to avoid that was by running; hanging back on the straights, sprinting flat-out as he rounded corners, pulling up in time to avoid him if he doubled back. None of this would have been countenanced by a professional outfit, of course, because it ignored the possibility that he had someone else watching his back, who might begin to wonder at this sprinting, shuffling, window-shopping lunatic.

The first stretch was easy enough. McCluskey waddled his way from Fleet Street along towards the Strand, but when he reached theSavoy, he skipped across the road and headed north intoCovent Garden. There he dawdled amongst the myriad pointless shops, and stood for five minutes watching a juggler outside theActorsChurch. Refreshed, he set off at a brisk pace towardsSt Martin ’s Lane, crossed over on his way toLeicester Square, and then sold me a dummy by suddenly turning south intoTrafalgar Square.

By the time we reached the bottom of the Haymarket, the sweat was pouring off me and I was praying for him to hail a taxi. He didn’t do it until he got toLower Regent Street, and I caught another one an agonising twenty seconds later.

Well, obviously it was another one. Even the amateur follower knows that you don’t get into the same taxi as the person you’re following.

I threw myself into the seat and shouted at the driver to ‘follow that cab’, and then realised what a strange thing that is to say in real life. The cabbie didn’t seem to find it so.

‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘is he sleeping with your wife, or are you sleeping with his?’

I laughed as though this was the grandest thing I’d heard in years, which is what you have to do with cabbies if you want them to take you to the right place by the right route.

McCluskey got out at the Ritz, but he must have told his driver to stay and keep the meter running. I left him for three minutes before doing the same with my cab, but, as I opened the door, McCluskey came scooting back out and we were off again.

We crawled along Piccadilly for a while, and then turned right into some narrow empty streets that I didn’t know at all. This was the sort of territory where skilled craftspeople hand build underpants for American Express card-holders.

I leaned forward to tell the driver not to get too close, but he’d done this sort of thing before, or seen it done on:television, and he hung back a good distance.

McCluskey’s cab came to rest inCork Street. I saw him pay his driver, and I told my man to trickle past and drop me two hundred yards further down the street.

The meter said six pounds, so I passed a ten pound note through the window and watched a fifteen-second production of ‘I’m Not Sure I’ve Got Change For That’, starring licensed cab driver 99102, before getting out and heading back down the street.

In those fifteen seconds, McCluskey had vanished. I’d just followed him for twenty minutes and five miles, and lost him in the last two hundred yards. Which, I suppose, served me right for being mean with the tip.

Cork Streetis nothing but art galleries, mostly with large front windows, and one of the things I’ve noticed about windows is that they’re just as good for seeing out of as they are for seeing in through. I couldn’t go pressing my nose against every art gallery until I found him, so I decided to take a chance. I judged the spot where McCluskey had dismounted, and turned for the nearest door.

It was locked.

I was standing there looking at my watch, trying to work out what an art gallery’s opening hours might be if twelve wasn’t one of them, when a blonde girl wearing a neat black shift appeared out of the gloom and slipped the latch. She opened the door with a welcoming smile, and suddenly I seemed to have no choice but to step inside, my hopes of finding McCluskey ebbing away with every second.

Keeping one eye on the front window, I sank back into the relative darkness of the shop. Apart from the blonde, there didn’t seem to be anyone else in the place, which wasn’t all that surprising when I looked at the paintings.

‘Do. you know Terence Glass?’ she asked, handing me a card and price list. She was a frightfully pukka young thing. ‘Yes, I do,’ I said. ‘I’ve got three of his, as a matter of fact.’ Well, I mean. Sometimes you’ve just got to have a go, haven’t you?

‘Three of his what?’ she said. Doesn’t always work, of course.

‘Paintings.’

‘Good heavens,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know he painted. Sarah,’ she called out, ‘did you know that Terence painted?’

From the back half of the gallery, a cool American voice came back. ‘Terry has never painted in his life. Hardly write his own name.’

I looked up just as Sarah Woolf came through the archway, immaculate in a dog-tooth skirt and jacket, and pushing that gentle bow wave of Fleur de Fleurs. But she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking towards the front of the gallery.

I turned, followed her gaze, and saw McCluskey standing in the open doorway.

‘But this gentleman claims he’s got three…’ said the blonde, laughing.

McCluskey was moving quickly towards Sarah, his right hand sliding across his chest towards the inside of his coat. I pushed the blonde away with my right arm, heard her gasp something polite, and at the same moment McCluskey turned his head towards me.

As he swung his body round, I aimed a round-house kick to his stomach, and to block it, he had to pull his right hand down from his coat. The kick connected, and for a moment, McCluskey’s feet left the floor. His head came forward as he gasped for breath, and I moved behind him and slipped my left arm around his neck. The blonde was screaming ‘oh my God’ in a very posh accent, and scrabbling for the phone on the table, but Sarah stayed where she was, arms rigid at her sides. I shouted at her to run, but she either didn’t hear me, or didn’t want to hear me. As I tightened my grip round McCluskey’s neck, he fought to get his fingers between the crook of my elbow and his throat. No chance of that.

I put my right elbow on McCluskey’s shoulder, and my right hand at the back of his head. My left hand slipped into the crook of my right elbow, and there I was, the model in diagram (c) in the chapter headed ‘Neck-Breaking: The Basics’.

As McCluskey kicked and struggled, I eased my left forearm back and my right hand forward - and he stopped kicking very quickly. He stopped kicking because he suddenly knew what I knew, and wanted him to know - that with a few extra pounds of pressure, I could end his life.

I’m not absolutely sure, but I think that was when the gun went off.

I don’t remember the actual feeling of being hit. Just the flatness of the sound in the gallery, and the smell of burnt whatever it is they use nowadays.

At first I thought it was McCluskey she’d shot, and I started to swear at her because I had everything under control, and anyway, I’d told her to get out of here. And then I thought Christ, I must be sweating a lot, because I could feel it running down my side, trickling wetly into my waistband. I looked up, and realised that Sarah was going to fire again. Or maybe she already had. McCluskey had wriggled free and I seemed to be falling back against one of the paintings.