Hugh Laurie - The Gun Seller

‘Cheers Paulie,’ I said, and threw back some vodka.

‘Hiya. How’s things?’ Paulie never looked at you when he spoke. You could be standing with your back to a brick wall, he would still look over your shoulder.

‘Fine, fine,’ I said. ‘You?’

‘Got the bugger off, after all that.’ He shook his head, wonderingly. A man constantly amazed by his own abilities. ‘I didn’t know you did buggery cases, Paulie.’

He didn’t smile. Paulie only really smiled at weekends. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘The bloke I told you about. Beat his nephew to death with a garden spade. Got him off.’

‘But you said he’d done it.’

‘He had.’

‘So how did you manage that?’

‘I lied like fuck,’ he said. ‘What are you having?’

We swapped career progress as we waited for the soup, with every one of Paulie’s triumphs boring me, and every one of my failures delighting him. He asked me if I was all right for money, although we both knew he hadn’t the slightest intention of doing anything about it if I wasn’t. And I asked him about his holidays, past and future. Paulie set a lot of store by holidays.

‘Group of us are hiring this boat in the Med. Scuba diving, windsurfing, you name it. Cordon bleu cook, everything.’

‘Sail or motor?’

‘Sail.’ He frowned for a moment, and suddenly looked twenty years older. ‘Although, come to think of it, it’s probably got a motor. But there’s a crew who do all that stuff. You getting a holiday?’

‘Hadn’t thought about it,’ I said.

‘Well, you’re always on holiday, aren’t you? Got nothing to take a holiday from.’

‘Nicely put, Paulie.’

‘Well, have you? Since the army, what have you done?’

‘Consultancy work.’

‘Consult my arse.’

‘Don’t think I could afford it, Paulie.’

‘Yeah, well. Let’s ask our catering consultant what the fuck’s happened to the soup.’

As we looked round for the waiter, I saw my followers. Two men, sitting at a table by the door, drinking mineral water and turning away as soon as I looked towards them. The older one looked as if he’d been designed by the same architect that had done Solomon, and the younger one was trying to head in that direction. They both seemed solid, and for the time being I was happy enough to have them around. After the soup arrived, and Paulie had tasted it, and judged it to be just about acceptable, I shifted my chair round the table and leaned towards him. I hadn’t actually planned on picking his brains, because, to be honest, they weren’t properly ripe yet. But I couldn’t see that I had anything to lose by it.

‘Does the name Woolf mean anything to you, Paulie?’

‘Person or company?’

‘Person,’ I said. ‘American, I think. Businessman.’

‘What’s he done? Drink-driving? I don’t do that kind of thing now. And if I do, it’s for a sack of money.’

‘As far as I know, he hasn’t done anything,’ I said. ‘Just wondered if you’d heard of him. Game Parker is the company.’

Paulie shrugged and ripped a bread roll to pieces. ‘I could find out for you. What’s it for?’

‘About a job,’ I said. ‘I turned it down, but I’m just curious.’

He nodded, and pushed some bread into his face. ‘I put you up for a job a couple of months ago.’

I stopped my soup spoon half-way from bowl to mouth. It was unlike Paulie to take any sort of hand in my life, never mind a helping one.

‘What sort of job?’

‘Canadian bloke. Looking for someone to do some strong arm stuff. Bodyguard, that kind of thing.’

‘What was his name?’

‘Can’t remember. Began with J, I think.’

‘ McCluskey?’

‘ McCluskeydoesn’t begin with a J now, does it? No, it was Joseph, Jacob, something like that.’ He quickly gave up trying to remember. ‘Did he get in touch?’

‘No.’

‘Pity. Thought I’d sold him on the idea.’

‘And you gave him my name?’

‘No, I gave him your fucking shoe size. Course I gave him your name. Well, not straight away. I put him on to some private dicks we use a bit. They’ve got some big blokes who do bodyguard stuff, but he didn’t take to them. Wanted someone upmarket. Ex-army, he said. You were the only person I could think of. Apart from Andy Hick, but he’s earning two hundred grand a year in a merchant bank.’

‘I’m touched, Paulie.’

‘You’re welcome.’

‘How did you meet him?’

‘He’d come to see Toffee, and I got roped in.’

‘Toffee being a person?’

‘Spencer. The guv’nor. Calls himself Toffee. Don’t know why. Something to do with golf. Teeing-off, maybe.’

I thought for a while.

‘You don’t know what he was seeing Spencer about?’

‘Who says I don’t?’

‘Do you?’

‘No.’

Pauliehad fixed his gaze somewhere behind my head and I turned to see what he was doing with it. The two men at the door were standing now. The older one said something to themaitre d’,who aimed a waiter in the direction of our table. A few of the other lunchers watched. ‘Mr Lang?’

‘I’m Lang.’

‘Phone call for you, sir.’

I shrugged at Paulie, who was now licking his finger and picking crumbs off the tablecloth.

By the time I reached the door, the younger of the two followers had disappeared. I tried to catch the eye of the older one, but he was studying a nameless print on the wall. I picked up the phone.

‘Master,’ said Solomon, ‘all is not well in the state ofDenmark.’

‘Oh, what a shame,’ I said. ‘And things were going so nicely before.’

Solomon started to answer but there was a click and a bang, and O’Neal’s reedy tones came on the line.

‘Lang, is that you?’

‘Yup,’ I said.

‘The girl, Lang. Young woman, I should say. Have you any idea where she might be at this moment?’

I laughed.

‘You’re askingmewhere she is?’

‘Indeed I am. We are having problems locating her.’ I glanced at the follower, still staring at the print.

‘Sadly, Mr O’Neal, I can’t help you,’ I said. ‘You see, I don’t have a staff of nine thousand and a budget of twenty million pounds with which to find people and keep track of them. Tell you what though, you might try the security people at the Ministry of Defence. They’re supposed to be very good at this kind of thing.’

But he’d hung up half-way through the word ‘Defence’.

I left Paulie to pay the bill, and hopped on a bus toHollandPark. I wanted to see what kind of a mess O’Neal’s lot had made of my flat, and also to see if I’d had any more approaches from Canadian arms dealers with Old Testament names.

Solomon’s followers got on to the bus with me, and peered out of the windows as if it was their first visit toLondon. When we got to Notting Hill, I leaned over to them.

‘You may as well get off with me,’ I said. ‘Save yourselves having to run back from the next stop.’ The older one looked away, but the younger one grinned. In the event, we all got off together, and they hung around on the other side of the street while I let myself back into the flat.

I’d have known that the place had been searched without being told. I hadn’t exactly expected them to change the sheets and run a hoover over the place, but I thought they might have left it in better shape than this. None of the furniture was in the right place, the few paintings I had were skewed, and the books on the shelves were in a pathetically different order. They’d even put a different CD in the stereo. Or maybe they just felt that Professor Longhair was better flat-searching music.

I didn’t bother moving things back to how they were. Instead, I walked through into the kitchen, flicked on the kettle and said in a loud voice, ‘Tea or coffee?’