Gavin Lyall - Blame The Dead

'If he was a doctor I'll bet he has been.'

He nodded. 'Well, come back tomorrow and I'll change the dressing. It'll ache for a while, but you can buy yourself a fancy black silk sling and collect a lot of misplaced sympathy.'

He turned to go, then turned back and gave me the Scotch bottle. 'One more – just one, mind, and Laura'll bring you up some soup. I've got patients who don't even go looking for trouble.'

I walked around to my flat, feeling naked and vulnerable without a gun. Outside my own front door, I suddenly wished I'd had somebody walk with me: there was no reason why the Pentathol squad shouldn't be waiting inside for a second crack. The thumbscrews this time, maybe. – But they weren't.

They'd turn the place over again, of course. Hastily, but just efficiently enough to make sure I wasn't hiding anything of Bertie Bear size. And they'd left Bertie himself – the second copy – lying there only half hidden in a pile of books. Well, that settled that, anyway: nobody loved Bertie for himself alone, which was a relief.

I searched only well enough to make sure they hadn't left my Mauser HSC lying around, and they hadn't, of course. All this was getting a bit awkward: I was running out of small, easily concealed guns. All the stuff in my deposit box was long-barrelled target -22s or serious -38 revolvers and nine-millimetre automatics – including Mockby's Walther. I did a little telephoning around among friends more or less in the gun business, and by the time I was back home watching a frozen pizza defrost, I'd done a trade. If Mockby had ever thought he'd get his gun back again it was too late now.

What I'd got wasn't ideal, but it was a help: a four-inch-long Italian copy of the old Remington derringer, which itself had been a near-copy of the gamblers' sleeve gun designed by Derringer. This had two superposed barrels in -38 Special calibre, which gave it the punch of the normal American police revolver but was small and flat enough to hide on a spring clip up my left sleeve. The nameless friend threw in the clip holster as well; he should never have had the gun – even the Ministry won't licence that sort of weapon, let alone the cops – and I think he was getting tired of the risk. There was at least a chance of getting the Walther on his licence (you pretend a relative died and left it to you: they don't believe you, but it saves face all round).

When I'd finished the pizza I spent an hour watching TV and practising a fast draw whenever a bad guy appeared. In fact, you can't really be fast with a sleeve gun unless your hands are close together already, as when praying or shaking hands with yourself, both of which look a bit odd in a tense situation. But you're as fast sitting down as standing up, so it's a good gun to watch TV with, at any rate.

Friday morning was misty, with a touch of frost underneath. I got up slowly, feeling stiff just about everywhere, started the electric percolator, then busted my last egg trying to boil it. The only letter was a formal invitation to the Kingscutt funeral – posted in Harrow. I still didn't like the idea, but I was still going to have to do it. I spent most of the morning typing up a report I was doing for a chemicals firm: 'Dear Sirs, I have examined your offices, laboratories, and manufacturing plant with regard to the security aspects, and must say that I am impressed by the measures you have taken to render them espionage-proof [Always flatter the bastards first; they'll tell others that you're a bright, observant type]. However, there are a few areas in which I feel security might be improved…' And you end up, 'I suggest you keep this letter in a safe place and do NOT have it copied since it would be a useful guide to any industrial spy trying to penetrate your organisation…' That always impresses them.

Actually, the worst danger they had was the managing director, the sort who wouldn't tell you his first name during the working day and boasts about his new inventions in the golf club. How the hell d'you putthat in a formal letter?

About the time I was wondering if I'd got a stamp, and if so, where, the phone rang. I skipped the Scots accent this time, but still I only said, 'Yes?'

'Major?' A familiar voice. 'Dave Tanner.'

A private detective I'd first met when he was a military-police officer. A tough one, though if you're breeding a tough army you're going to need tough military coppers, and if you're not breeding a tough army you may as well give up wars and where's the fun in that?

Anyway, Dave had got out earlier than me and gone further; he now ran quite a sizeable agency, and I'd worked for him for nearly the first year after I got out – though my guess was still that some of his boys specialised in the sort of thing I was busy guarding against.

I asked, 'What can I do for you? You've got a case that's baffling the keenest brains in your mighty organisation?'

He chuckled. 'Could be, could be. How're you keeping?'

'Don't you read the papers?'

'Thought you'd done a pretty good job of staying out of them. Feel like a pint of lunch?'

'Maybe. Where?'

'The Lamb in Lamb's Conduit Street? '

'Okay. What's it all about, Dave?'

'Half past twelve. I'll tell you then.'

So that was that. I decided to take the car – I probably wouldn't have too much trouble parking there, and I wanted to know how my left arm would stand up to it. So I stopped off at the Regent's Park Road post office to send my report, and then it seemed easier to keep on that road and cross Camden Town through Parkway.

I got suspicious at the lights just before Parkway itself: a dark-green Morris 1300 didn't pull up beside me where there was room for him. Instead, he slowed and dawdled up behind me. And he stayed there for the next mile. Mind, so did several others: this was a main route towards King's Cross and the City. But there was something in his pattern of driving that looked as if it were based on what I did.

Any other time, I'd have been happy to make his acquaintance; we could have run up a quiet dead end and had a nice cosy chat about who and why and related topics. But right now I had a date, so he'd have to go in the deep freeze. Lose him but make it look pure chance.

For that, you can't do anything fancy – no doubling back or such like. Just stick on a logical route and use the traffic opportunities. I put a big Ford in between us at the turn into St Paneras Road, added a post office van at the Huston Road lights, and a couple of taxis at Guilford Street. After that, it was just a matter of time before he got chopped off by a red light. It happened at the Gray's Inn Road, and I was clear to circle back.

I hadn't given anybody a lesson in road manners, but it hadn't been any worse than you expect from people who drive small, slightly hotted-up cars. Nothing to make him suspicious; he'd be back.

Dave was waiting for me well back in the bar and getting started on a plate of sandwiches and a pint of bitter. I bought myself the same – so much for an invitation to lunch – and sat down.

With the blue suit, the neat, short grey hair, and the well-fed build, you'd have placed him in the Stock Exchange or maybe on the floor of Lloyd's. Except for the face. The face had that shapeless, slightly lopsided look of a small-time pro boxer. Dave had never boxed and I'd never asked him what else had happened; with a military cop you don't need to ask. Some soldier with a grudge had gone for a route march on that face one dark, lonely night. It's never the same after they use the boot.

He grinned at me, then saw the marks on my neck. "You been having fun and games, Major?'

'No, somebody else has. How's business?"

He took a vast bite of a cheese and tomato sandwich,"showing a bunch of teeth that hadn't been improved by that dark night, and spoke around it. 'Full house; we're up to our ears. And that bastard Laurie's leaving me to set up on his own. Do you want to work from an office again?'