Gavin Lyall - Blame The Dead

After twenty minutes, give or take half an hour, I could remember the secret formula for making the coffee percolator work. While it did, I washed and shaved fairly close to my face, and put on some clothes. The suitcase I'd taken to Bergen was still sitting there only half unpacked. Today I'd really have to do something about it, or at any rate maybe. By then it was past eleven.

I'd just finished my second cup of real coffee and was thinking of reapplying for associate membership in mankind when the phone went. It was Jack Morris, from the Ministry. On a Sunday?

'How're you doing buster?"

'Staggering along. What are you doing awake on a Sunday?'

'Just keeping in touch. Hold on…" The phone went quiet. I rammed it against my ear, trying to pick out barking dogs, squawling children, birdsongs. Very faintly, in the distance. I heard another phone buzz.

Jack came back on. 'We had a little talk about getting your name in the papers, remember?'

'I remember.'

'I understand you've been making guest appearances in the Norwegian press.'

I carried the phone across to the window. The sky beyond the church was the colour of a coalminer's bath water and not much drier. The street shone dully, empty except for parked cars.

'Didn't know you read Norwegian,' I said. 'Anyway, I only found a dead man over there. Could happen to anybody.'

A blue Triumph 1500 turned in from Haverstock Hill and drifted casually towards my block.

'I've had a busy twenty-four hours, buster. The Kent bobbies were on to me about this time yesterday and they donot love you. They have the wild idea that you don't only carry guns and take shots at people but then you tip other people off about what's happened and get them sending sharp solicitors down to play habeas corpus. They wanted to know if that counts the same as raping the royal family and burning a naval dockyard. I said yes.'

The Triumph hesitated by the forecourt to my building, decided there wasn't room, and crawled along a bit farther.

I said, 'They'd never have got Mockby and they'd always have taken a plea on unlawful wounding. I just cooled things down and speeded them up. And anyway, my gun was licenced.'

Two large men in short, dark car coats climbed out of the Triumph and moved slowly but purposefully towards the block.

Jack said heavily, 'Your gun was licenced. Jesus, you'd better think of something more interesting than that. You remember I said when we wanted you, you'd hear sirens? You can hear sirens, buster.'

'Thanks, Jack.' I slammed the phone down and ran.

The bastard: trying to pin me down on the end of the phone like that. Or maybe he'd been warning me – if I was bright enough to take a hint. He might feel he owed me that much.

I yanked open my front door, reached the lift, and pressed the button. As I ran back I could hear it start whining upwards, and that might give me an extra minute. Whatever sort of cops they were, they'd be the sort whose feet prefer riding lifts to climbing stairs.

Back inside my own door, I threw an unopened laundry parcel into the Bergen suitcase, added the log, the derringer and clip, my wallet and passport, thanked God I'd put on real shoes and not slippers, remembered the pigskin hip flask, then grabbed up a sports jacket and my sheepskin and started travelling.

The lift was still whining back down, so I tiptoed down the first flight of stairs – noise carried in that stairwell – then heard it open, shut, and start back up. Now I could afford to run. I ran.

The Escort was on the far side of the road but that didn't matter because the landings in our block don't have windows.

Nobody could see me – unless they'd left a third man in the car, but they'd looked a bit casual for that. And they hadn't. I shoved the case into the back seat, started up, and drove soberly away.

For the moment, I was fireproof. I hadn't shot any coppers or raped any children, so I wasn't worth a real hunt. Just a description on the teletypes with a please-keep-a-look-out-for, and not even that for maybe an hour. But knowing Jack and Jack knowing me, the airports and docks would be specially notified; I could have trouble there. Still, for the moment I was fireproof.

I drove into the big car park at the bottom of Hampstead Heath and finished dressing out of sight of the road or houses. With fawn trousers, a green shirt, black-and-grey tweed jacket, and a brown silk tie I thought I'd lost in Brussels six months ago but found in a pocket of the suitcase, I was liable to lose my place in the Ten Best-Dressed Men List. But as long as I looked complete I didn't mind looking terrible.

The derringer and clip went on my left forearm again, spare rounds in my pocket, and then I started taking the pigskin flask apart.

I'd found it in Cyprus when the original owner had departed for Russia in – obviously – rather more of a hurry than I'd just left home. It was a lovely piece of work, but the KGB have always been the Aspreys of the espionage business. It poured whisky, of course, but when you wound the cap hard the wrong way the whole short neck came off and you could lift the shoulders of the flask right out of the leather, leaving a long inner neck down to the booze compartment at the bottom. That was the master touch; who'd think of what is, essentially, a bottle having a false top? Certainly not me; I'd only been suspicious enough to get the thing X-rayed by an industrial unit.

As there'd been nothing in it and we hadn't caught the bloke anyway, I hadn't suppressed evidence by latching on to it. Now, it was my private savings bank: the teetotal end held £200 in sterling and nearly another hundred quid in Swiss francs. I took out £75 in fivers, smoothed them as much as I could, and shoved them in my wallet. Then reassembled the flask and drove across to Paddington station. No particular, reason except that I wanted to park the suitcase and Paddington's about the one station that doesn't point to the Continent or Scandinavia.

Then I got on the phone to Willie.

'You're still with us, are you?' he asked cheerfully.

'More or less.'

'Have you heard any more from Bergen?'

'No – but I'm sort of heading in that direction myself anyway. Could you ring this number-' I read across the one Kari had given me '-and tell her I'm on my way?'

'Of course, but – why the rush?'

'I'm sort of on the run. The Ministry decided to pull the chain on me. I don't know what the charges are, and I think it's just general stroppiness about the shooting at Kingscutt, but I don't want to be tied down right now. All right?"

'Well – are you going to be able to make it?'

'I think so. I've got an idea or two. I'll try and keep in touch.'

After that, there didn't seem much more to say.

Then I rang Dave Tanner's office; I knew he checked in around noon, so I hoped he'd get my message in a few minutes.

I tried to make it simple but obscure – the man on the other end might be law-abiding or stupid or something. 'Tell Tanner that Jamie rang and it's urgent. Ask him to leave a number and I'll ring back to get it in a quarter of an hour. Okay? '

He started to argue, then realised he'd understood me, and just said, 'All right, Mr Jamie.'

I had a coffee and skimmed a couple of Sunday papers and then the buffet opened and I had a beer as well. And then it was time to try Tanner's office again. He'd left a London number for me; I rang it straight away.

'Morning, Major. What's the hurry?'

'I need to get abroad, and I don't want to put the passport boys to any bother.'

After a moment, he asked, 'Are you hot?'

'Barely warm. I don't suppose it'll even be in the papers.'

Another thoughtful hush. 'Well, if you're really not in bad trouble… I'll see what we can do. Anywhere special or just out?'