Thirteen

Every man over forty is a scoundrel.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

I was shown into a room. A red room. Red wallpaper, red curtains, red carpet. They said it was a sitting-room, but I don't know why they'd decided to confine its purpose just to sitting. Obviously, sitting was one of the things you could do in a room this size; but you could also stage operas, hold cycling races, and have an absolutely cracking game of frisbee, all at the same time, without having to move any of the furniture.

It could rain in a room this .big.

I hung about by the door for a while, looking at paintings, the undersides of ashtrays, that kind of thing, then got bored and set off towards the fireplace at the other end. Half-way there I had to stop and sit down, because I'm not as young as I was, and as I did so, another set of double-doors opened, and some muttering took place between a Carl and a majordomo figure in striped grey trousers and black jacket.

Both of them glanced in my direction every once in a while, and then the Carl nodded his head and backed out of the room.

The major-domo started towards me, pretty casually I thought, and called out at the two hundred metre mark:

'Would you care for a drink, Mr Lang?'

I didn't have to think about this for very long.

'Scotch, please,' I called back.

That'd teach him.

At one hundred metres, he stopped at a frequent table and opened a small silver box, pulling out a cigarette without even looking down to see if there were any in there. He lit it, and kept on coming.

As he got nearer, I could see that he was in his fifties, good-looking in an indoor kind of way, and that his face had a strange sheen to it. The reflections of standard-lamps and chandeliers danced across his forehead, so that he seemed almost to sparkle as he moved. Yet somehow I knew it wasn't sweat, nor oil; it was just a sheen.

With ten yards still to go, he smiled at me and held out a hand, and kept it there as he came so that before I'd realised it, I was on my feet, ready to receive him like an old friend.

His grip was hot but dry, and he clasped me by the elbow and steered me back on to the sofa, sliding down next to me so that our knees were almost touching. If he always sat this close to visitors, then I have to say he was simply not getting his money's worth out of his room.

'Murder,' he said.

There was a pause. I'm sure you'll understand why.

'I beg your pardon?' I said.

'Naimh Murdah,' he said, then watched patiently while I readjusted the spelling in my head. 'A great pleasure. Great pleasure.'

His voice was soft, his accent educated. I had the feeling that he'd be just as good in a dozen other languages. He flicked some ash from his cigarette vaguely in the direction of a bowl, then leaned towards me.

'Russell has told me a lot about you. And I must say, I've been cheering for you very much.'

Close up, there were two things I could tell about Mr Murdah: he was not the major-domo; and the sheen on his face was money.

It wasn't caused by money, or bought with money. It simply was money. Money that he'd eaten, worn, driven, breathed, in such quantities, and for so long, that it had started to secrete from the pores of his skin. You may not think this possible, but money had actually made him beautiful.

He was laughing.

'Very much indeed, yes. You know, Russell is a very considerable person. Very considerable indeed. But sometimes I think it does him good to become frustrated. He has a tendency, I would say, towards arrogance. And you, Mr Lang, I have the feeling that you are good for such a man.'

Dark eyes. Incredibly dark eyes. With dark edges to the lids, which ought to have been make-up but wasn't.

'You, I think,' said Murdah, still beaming, 'you frustrate many people. I think perhaps that is why God put you here among us, Mr Lang. Wouldn't you say?'

And I laughed back. Fuck knows why, because he hadn't said anything funny. But there I was, chuckling away like a drunk simpleton.

A door opened somewhere, and then suddenly a tray of whisky was between us, borne by a maid dressed in black. We took a glass each, and the maid waited while Murdah drowned his in soda, and I just got mine slightly damp. She left without a smile, or a nod. Without uttering a sound.

I took a deep slug of Scotch and felt drunk almost before I'd swallowed.

'You're an arms dealer,' I said.

I don't know quite what reaction I expected, but I expected something. I thought he might flinch, or blush, or get angry, or have me shot, tick any of the above, but there was nothing. Not even a pause. He continued as if he'd known for years what I was going to say.

'I am indeed, Mr Lang. For my sins.'

Wow, I thought. That was extremely cute. I am an arms dealer for my sins. That was every bit as rich as he was.

He lowered his eyes with apparent modesty.

'I buy and sell arms, yes,' he said. 'I must say, I think, successfully. You, of course, disapprove of me, as do many of your countrymen, and this is one of the penalties of my profession. Something that I must bear, if I can.'

I suppose he was making fun of me, but it didn't sound that way. It really did sound as if my disapproval made him unhappy.

'I have examined my life, and my behaviour, with the help of many friends who are religious people. And I believe I can answer to God. In fact - if I can anticipate your questions -1 believe I can only answer to God. So do you mind if we move on?' He smiled again. Warm, charmingly apologetic. He dealt with me like a man who's used to dealing with people like me - as if he was a polite film star, and I'd asked him for an autograph at a tricky moment.

'Nice furniture,' I said.

We were taking a tour of the room. Stretching our legs, filling our lungs, digesting some huge meal we hadn't eaten. To finish the picture, we really needed a couple of dogs mucking about at our ankles, and a gate to lean on. We didn't have them, so I was trying to make do with the furniture.

'It's a Boulle,' said Murdah, pointing at the large wooden cabinet under my elbow. I nodded, the same way I nod when people tell me the names of plants, and politely bent my head to the intricate brass inlay.

'They take a sheet of veneer and a sheet of brass, glue them together, then cut the pattern right through. That one,' he pointed towards an apparently related cabinet, 'is a contre Boulle. You see? An exact negative. Nothing wasted.'

I nodded thoughtfully, and looked back and forth at the two pieces, and tried to imagine how many motorbikes I'd need to own before I decided to start spending money on stuff like this.

Murdah had done enough walking, apparently, and peeled off back towards the sofa. The way he moved seemed to say that the pleasantries box was almost empty.

Two opposite images of the same object, Mr Lang,' he said, reaching for another cigarette. 'You might say, if you like, that those two cabinets resemble our little problem.'

'I might, yes.' I waited, but he wasn't ready to expand. 'Of course, I'd need to know roughly what you're talking about first.'

He turned to me. The sheen was still there, and so were the indoor good-looks. But the chumminess was dying away, sputtering in the grate and warming nobody.

'I'm talking, Mr Lang, about Graduate Studies, obviously' He looked surprised.

'Obviously,' I said.

'I have an involvement,' said Murdah, 'with a certain group of people.'

He was standing in front of me now, his hands held wide in that welcome-to-my-vision gesture that politicians like to use these days, while I lounged on the sofa. Otherwise little had changed, except that someone was cooking fishfingers near by. It was a smell that didn't quite belong in this room.

'These people,' he continued, 'are, in many cases, friends of mine. People with whom I have done business over many, many years. They are people who trust me, who rely on me. You understand?'

Of course, he wasn't asking me if I understood the specific relationship. He just wanted to know if words like Trust and Reliability still had any meaning down where I lived. I nodded to show that yes, I could spell them in an emergency.

'As an act of friendship towards these people, I have taken something of a risk. Which is rare for me.' This, I think, was a joke, so I smiled, which seemed to satisfy him. 'I have personally underwritten the sale of a quantity of merchandise.' He paused and looked at me, wanting some reaction. 'I think perhaps you are familiar with the nature of the product?'

'Helicopters,' I said. There didn't seem to be any point in playing stupid at this stage.

'Helicopters, precisely,' said Murdah. 'I must tell you that I dislike the things myself, but I am told that they perform some functions extremely well.' He was starting to go a little fey on me, I thought - affecting a distaste for the vulgar, oily machines that had paid for this house and, for all I knew, a dozen more like it - so I decided to try and blunt things up a bit, on behalf of the common man.

'They certainly do,' I said. 'The ones you're selling could destroy an average-size village in under a minute. Along with all its inhabitants, obviously.'

He closed his eyes for a second, as if the very thought of such a thing gave him pain, which, perhaps, it did. If so, it wasn't for long.

'As I said, Mr Lang, I don't believe I have to justify myself to you. I am not concerned with the use to which this merchandise is eventually put. My concern, for the sake of my friends, and for myself, is that the merchandise should find customers.' He clasped his hands together and waited. As if the whole thing was now my problem.

'So advertise,' I said, after a while. 'Back pages of Woman's Own.'

'Hm,' he said. Like I was an idiot. 'You are not a businessman, Mr Lang.'

I shrugged.

'I am, you see,' he continued. 'So I think you must trust me to know my own market-place.' A thought seemed to strike him. 'After all, I wouldn't presume to advise you on the best way ...' And then he realised he was in a jam, because there was nothing on my CV to indicate that I knew the best way to do anything.

'To ride a motorcycle?' I offered, gallantly.

He smiled.

'As you say.' He sat down on the sofa again. Further away, this time. 'The product I am dealing with requires a more sophisticated approach, I think, than the pages of Woman's Own. If you are making a new mousetrap, then, as you say, you advertise it as a new mousetrap. If, on the other hand,' he held out his other hand, to show me what another hand looked like, 'you are trying to sell a snake trap, then your first task is to demonstrate why snakes are bad things. Why they need to be trapped. Do you follow me? Then, much, much later, you come along with your product. Does that make sense to you?' He smiled patiently.

'So,' I said, 'you're going to sponsor a terrorist act, and let your little toy do its business on the nine o'clock news. I know all this. Rusty knows that I know all this.' I glanced at my watch, trying to make it look as if I had another arms dealer to see in ten minutes. But Murdah was not a man to be hurried, or slowed down.

'That, in essence, is precisely what I intend to do,' he said.

'And I come into this where, exactly? I mean, now that you've told me, what am I supposed to do with the information? Put it in my diary? Write a song about it? What?'

Murdah looked at me for a moment, then took in a deep breath and pushed it out gently and carefully through his nose, as if he'd had lessons in how to breathe.

'You, Mr Lang, are going to carry out this terrorist act for us.'

Pause. Long pause. A feeling of horizontal vertigo. The walls of this massive room shooting inwards, then out again, making me feeling smaller, and punier, than I've ever felt.

'Aha,' I said.

Another pause. The smell of fishfingers was stronger than ever.

'Do I have a say in this, by any chance?' I croaked. My throat was giving me trouble, for some reason. 'I mean, if I were to say, for example, fuck you and all your relatives, roughly what could I expect to happen, at today's prices?'

It was Murdah's turn to do the glancing-at-the-watch bit. He seemed to have grown suddenly bored, and wasn't smiling at all any more.

'That, Mr Lang, is not an option that I think you should waste any time considering.'

I felt cooler air on my neck, and twisted round to see that Barnes and Lucas were standing by the door. Barnes looked relaxed. Lucas didn't. Murdah nodded, and the two Americans stepped forward, coming each side of the sofa to join him. Facing me. Murdah held out a hand, palm up, in front of Lucas, without looking at him.

Lucas slid back the flap of his jacket and pulled out an automatic. A Steyr, I think. 9mm. Not that it matters. He placed the gun gently in Murdah's hand, then turned towards me, his eyes widened by the pressure of some message that I couldn't decipher.

'Mr Lang,' said Murdah, 'you have the safety of two people to think about. Your own, of course, and Miss Woolf's. I don't know what value you place on your own safety, but I think it would be only gallant if you were to consider hers. And I want you to consider hers very deeply.' He beamed suddenly, as if the worst was over. 'But, of course, I don't expect you to do it without good reason.'

As he spoke, he cocked the hammer, and lifted his chin towards me, the gun loose in his hand. Sweat spurted from the palms of my hands and my throat wouldn't work. I waited. Because that was all I could do.

Murdah considered me for a moment. Then he reached out, pressed the muzzle of the gun to the side of Lucas's neck, and fired twice.

It happened so fast, was so unexpected, was so absurd, that for a tenth of a second I wanted to laugh. There were three men standing there, then there was a bang bang, and then there were two. It was actually funny.

I realised that I'd wet myself. Not much. But enough.

I blinked once, and saw that Murdah had handed the gun to Barnes, who was signalling towards the door behind my head.

'Why did he do that? Why would anyone do such a terrible thing?'

It should have been my voice, but it wasn't. It was Murdah's. Soft and calm, utterly in control. 'It was a terrible thing, Mr Lang,' he said. 'Terrible. Terrible, because it had no reason. And we must always try and find a reason for death. Don't you agree?'

I looked up at his face, but couldn't focus on it. It came and went, like his voice, which was in my ear and miles away at the same time.

'Well, let us say that although he had no reason to die, I had a reason to kill him. That is better, I think. I killed him, Mr Lang, to show you one thing. And one thing only.' He paused. 'To show you that I could.'

He looked down at Lucas's body, and I followed his gaze.

It was a foul sight. The muzzle had been so close to the flesh that the expanding gases had chased the bullet in, swelling and blackening the wound horribly. I couldn't look at it for long.

'Do you understand what I'm saying?'

He was leaning forward, with his head on one side.

'This man,' said Murdah, 'was an accredited American diplomat, an employee of the US State Department. He had, I'm sure, many friends, a wife, perhaps even children. So it would not be possible, surely, for such a man to disappear, just like that? To vanish?'

Men were stooping in front of me, their jackets rustling as they strained to move Lucas's body. I forced myself to listen to Murdah.

'I want you to see the truth, Mr Lang. And the truth is that if I wish him to disappear, then it is so. I shoot a man here, in my own house, I let him bleed on my own carpet, because it is my wish. And no one will stop me. No police, no secret agents, no friends of Mr Lucas's. And certainly not you. Do you hear me?'

I looked up at him again, and saw his face more clearly. The dark eyes. The sheen. He straightened his tie.

'Mr Lang,' he said, 'have I given you a reason to think about Miss Woolf's safety?'

I nodded.

They drove me back to London, pressed into the carpet of the Diplomat, and chucked me out somewhere south of the river.

I went over Waterloo Bridge and along the Strand, stopping every now and then for no reason, occasionally dropping coins into the hands of eighteen-year-old beggars, and wanting this piece of reality to be a dream more than I've ever wanted any dream to become reality.

Mike Lucas had told me to be careful. He'd taken a risk, telling me to be careful. I didn't know the man, and I hadn't asked him to take the risk for me, but he'd done it anyway because he was a decent professional who didn't like the places his work was taking him, and didn't want me to be taken there too.

Bang bang.

No going back. No stopping the world.

I was feeling sorry for myself. Sorry for Mike Lucas, sorry for the beggars too, but very sorry indeed for myself, and that had to stop. I started to walk home.

I no longer had any reason to worry about being at the flat, since all the people I'd had breathing down my neck over the last week were now breathing in my face. The chance to sleep in my own bed was just about the only good thing to come out of all this. So I strode out for Bayswater at a good pace, and as I walked, I tried to see the funny side.

It wasn't easy, and I'm still not sure that I managed it properly, but it's just something I like to do when things aren't going well. Because what does it mean, to say that things aren't going well? Compared to what? You can say: compared to how things were going a couple of hours ago, or a couple of years ago. But that's not the point. If two cars are speeding towards a brick wall with no brakes, and one car hits the wall moments before the other, you can't spend those moments saying that the second car is much better off than the first.

Death and disaster are at our shoulders every second of our lives, trying to get at us. Missing, a lot of the time. A lot of miles on the motorway without a front wheel blow-out. A lot of viruses that slither through our bodies without snagging. A lot of pianos that fall a minute after we've passed. Or a month, it makes no difference.

So unless we're going to get down on our knees and give thanks every time disaster misses, it makes no sense to moan when it strikes. Us, or anyone else. Because we're not comparing it with anything.

And anyway, we're all dead, or never born, and the whole thing really is a dream.

There, you see. That's a funny side.