Hugh Laurie - The Gun Seller

I looked to my left, under my arm, and saw a pair of scuffed Red Wing boots. One flat on the ground, the other cocked at a right angle, with the toe buried in the dust. I slowly tilted up to find the rest of Russell Barnes.

He was leaning against the door of the van, smiling, holding out his packet of Marlboro to me. He wore a leather flight jacket, with the name Connor stitched over his left breast. Who the fuck was Connor?

The friskers had fallen back a little, but only a little, out of an apparent respect for Barnes. Plenty of them kept on watching me, thinking maybe they’d missed a bit.

I shook my head at the cigarettes. ‘Let me see her,’ I said.

Because she’s waiting for me.

Barnes watched me for a moment, then smiled again. He was feeling good, and relaxed, and loose. Game over, for him. He looked to his left.

‘Sure,’ he said.

He bounced himself casually away from the van, making the metal skin of the door pop, and gestured for me to follow him. The sea of tight shirts and wrap-around sunglasses parted as we walked slowly across towards the blueToyota. To our right, behind a steel barrier, stood the television crews, their cables coiled about their feet and their blue-white lights puncturing the remains of the night. Some of the cameras trained on me as I walked, but most of them stuck to the building.

CNN seemed to have the best position.

Murdahgot out of the car first, while Sarah just sat and waited, staring ahead through the windscreen, her hands clasped between her thighs. We had got to within a couple of yards before she turned to look at me, and tried to smile.

I’m waiting for you, Thomas.

‘Mr Lang,’ said Murdah, coming round the back of the car, stepping between me and Sarah. He was wearing a dark-grey overcoat, and a white shirt with no tie. The sheen of his forehead seemed a little duller than I remembered, and there were a few hours’ worth of stubble around his jaw, but otherwise he looked well.

And why wouldn’t he?

He stared into my face for a second or two, then gave a brief, satisfied nod. As if I’d done nothing more than mow his lawn to a reasonable standard.

‘Good,’ he said eventually.

I stared back at him. A blank stare, because I didn’t really want to give him anything right now.

‘What’s good?’ I said.

But Murdah was looking over my shoulder, signalling something, and I felt movement behind me.

‘See you around, Tom,’ said Barnes.

I turned and saw that he had started to move away, walking slowly backwards in a casual, loose-limbed, gonna -miss-you style. As our eyes met, he gave me a small, ironic salute, then wheeled round and headed off towards an army jeep, parked near the back of the mess of vehicles. A blond man in plain clothes started the engine as Barnes approached, then tooted his horn twice to clear the crowd from around the front of the jeep. I turned back to Murdah.

He was examining my face now, a little closer, a little more professional. Like a plastic surgeon.

‘What’s good?’ I said again, and waited while my question travelled the immense distance between our two worlds. ‘You have done as I wished,’ said Murdah at last. ‘As I predicted.’

He nodded again. A bit of a snip here, a tuck there - yes, I think we can do something with this face.

‘Some people, Mr Lang,’ he went on, ‘some friends of mine, told me that you would be a problem. You were a man who might try and kick off the traces.’ He took a deeper breath. ‘But I was right. And that is good.’

Then, still looking into my face, he stepped to one side and opened the passenger door of theToyota.

I watched as Sarah twisted slowly round in her seat and climbed out. She straightened up, her arms crossed in front of her as if warding off the cold of the dawn, and lifted her face to me.

We were so close.

‘Thomas,’ she said, and for a second I allowed myself to plunge into those eyes, deep down, and touch whatever it was that had brought me here. I would never forget that kiss. ‘Sarah,’ I said.

I reached out and put both my arms around her - shielding her, enveloping her, hiding her from everything and everyone - and she just stood there, keeping her hands in front of her body.

So I dropped my right hand to my side, and slid it between our bodies, across our stomachs, feeling, searching for contact.

I touched it. Took hold of it. ‘Goodbye,’ I whispered. She looked up at me. ‘Goodbye,’ she said.

The metal was warm from her body.

I let her go, and turned, slowly, to face Murdah.

He was talking softly into a mobile phone, looking back at me, smiling, his head cocked slightly to one side. And when he took in my expression he knew that something was wrong. He glanced down at my hand, and the smile tumbled away from his face like orange-peel from a speeding car.

‘Jesus Christ,’ said a voice behind me, and I suppose that meant that someone else must have seen the gun too. I couldn’t be sure, because I was staring hard into Murdah’s eyes.

‘It’s over,’ I said.

Murdahstared back at me, the mobile phone dropping down from his mouth.

‘It’s over,’ I said again. ‘Not off.,

‘What… what are you talking about?’ he said.

Murdahstood watching the gun, and the knowledge of it, the beauty of our little tableau, rippled outwards through the sea of tight shirts.

‘The expression is,’ I said, ‘to kick over the traces.’

Twenty-six

The sun has got his hat on,

Hip hip hip hooray,

We’re back on the roof of the consulate now. Just so as you know.

The sun is already bobbing its head along the horizon, evaporating the sky-line of dark tiles into a misty strip of whiteness, and I think to myself that if it was up to me, I’d have the helicopter airborne by now. The sun is so strong, so bright, so hopelessly blinding that, for all I know, the helicopter might already be there - there might be fifty helicopters, hovering twenty yards up-sun of me, watching me unwrap my two packets of brown, grease-proof paper. Except, of course, I’d hear them. I hope.

‘What do you want?’ says Murdah.

He is behind me, perhaps twenty feet away. I have handcuffed him to the fire escape while I get on with my chores, and he doesn’t seem to like that very much. He seems agitated.

‘What do you want?’ he screams.

I don’t answer, so he goes on screaming. Not words, exactly. Or, at least, none that I recognise. I whistle a few bars of something to block out the noise, and continue attaching clip A to retaining lug B, while making sure that cable C is not fouling bracket D.

‘What I want,’ I say eventually, ‘is for you to see it coming. That’s all.’

I turn to look at him now, to see how bad he’s feeling. It’s very bad, and I find I don’t mind all that much.

‘You are insane,’ he shouts, tugging at his wrists. ‘I am here. Do you see?’ He laughs, or almost laughs, because he can’t believe how stupid I am. ‘I am here. The Graduate will not come, because I am here.’

I turn away again, and squint into the low wall of sunlight. ‘Well I hope so, Naimh,’ I say. ‘I really do. I hope you still have more than one vote.’

There is a pause, and when I turn back to him, I find that the sheen has folded itself into a frown.

‘Vote,’ he says eventually, in a soft voice. ‘Vote,’ I say again.

Murdahwatches me carefully.

‘I don’t understand you,’ he says.

So I take a deep breath, and try and lay it out for him. ‘You’re not an arms dealer, Naimh,’ I say. ‘Not any more. I’ve taken that privilege away from you. For your sins. You’re not rich, you’re not powerful, you’re not connected, you’re not a member of the Garrick.’ That doesn’t register with him, so maybe he never was anyway. ‘All you are, at this moment, is a man. Like the rest of us. And as a man, you only get one vote. Sometimes not even that.’