Twice Shy

He jerked the gun a fraction. 'Get them,' he said. His eyes were cold. His manner showed he despised me.

I said with a suddenly dry mouth, 'I can't think why my wife said… why she thought…'

'Stop wasting time,' he said sharply.

'But-'

'The King and I, and West Side Story,'' he said impatiently, 'and Okla-fucking-homa.'

'I haven't got them.'

'Then that's too bad, buddy boy,' he said, and there was in an instant in him an extra dimension of menace. Before, he had been fooling along in second gear, believing no doubt that a gun was enough. But now I uncomfortably perceived that I was not dealing with someone reasonable and safe. If these were the two who had visited Peter, I understood what he had meant by frightening. There was a volatile quality, an absence of normal inhibition, a powerful impression of recklessness. The brakes-off syndrome which no legal deterrents deterred. I'd sensed it occasionally in boys I'd taught, but never before at such magnitude.

'You've got something you've no right to,' he said. 'And you'll give it to us.'

He moved the muzzle of the gun an inch or two sideways and squeezed the trigger. I heard the bullet zing past close to my ear. There was a crash of glass breaking behind me. One of Sarah's mementos of Venice, much cherished.

'That was a vase,' he said. 'Your television's next. After that, you. Ankles and such. Give you a limp for life. Those tapes aren't worth it.'

He was right. The trouble was that I doubted if he would believe that I really hadn't got them.

He began to swing the gun round to the television.

'OK.'I said.

He sneered slightly. 'Get them, then.'

With my capitulation he relaxed complacently and so did his obedient and unspeaking assistant, who was standing a pace to his rear. I walked the few steps to the coffee table and lowered my hands from the raised position.

'They're in the suitcase,' I said.

'Get them out.'

I lifted the lid of the suitcase a little and pulled out the jersey, dropping it on the floor.

'Hurry up,' he said.

He wasn't in the least prepared to be faced with a rifle; not in that room, in that neighbourhood, in the hands of the man he took me for.

It was with total disbelief that he looked at the long deadly shape and heard the double click as I worked the bolt. There was a chance he would realise that I'd never transport such a weapon with a bullet up the spout, but then if he took his own shooter around loaded, perhaps he wouldn't.

'Drop the pistol,' I said. 'You shoot me, I'll shoot you both, and you'd better believe it. I'm a crack shot.' There was a time for boasting, perhaps; and that was it.

He wavered. The assistant looked scared. The rifle was an ultra scary weapon. The silencer slowly began to point downwards, and the automatic thudded to the carpet. The anger could be felt.

'Kick it over here,' I said. 'And gently.'

He gave the gun a furious shove with his foot. It wasn't near enough for me to pick up, but too far for him also.

'Right,' I said. 'Now you listen to me. I haven't got those tapes. I've lent them to somebody else, because I thought they were music. How the hell should I know they were computer tapes? If you want them back, you'll have to wait until I get them. The person I lent them to has gone away for the weekend and I've no way of finding out where. You can have them without all this melodrama, but you'll have to wait. Give me an address, and I'll send them to you. I frankly want to get shot of you. I don't give a damn about those tapes or what you want them for. I just don't want you bothering me… or my wife. Understood?'

'Yeah.'

'Where do you want them sent?'

His eyes narrowed.

'And it will cost you two quid,' I said, 'for packing and postage.'

The mundane detail seemed to convince him. With a disgruntled gesture he took two pounds from his pocket and dropped them at his feet.

' Cambridge main post office,' he said. To be collected.'

'Under what name?'

After a pause he said, ' Derry.'

I nodded. 'Right,' I said. A pity, though, that he'd given my own name. Anything else might have been informative. 'You can get out, now.'

Both pairs of eyes looked down at the automatic now on the carpet.

'Wait in the road,' I said. 'I'll throw it to you through the window. And don't come back.'

They edged to the door with an eye on the sleek steel barrel following them, and I went out after them into the hall. I got the benefit of two viciously frustrated expressions before they opened the front door and went out, closing it again behind them.

Back in the sitting-room I put the rifle on the sofa and picked up the Walther to unclip it and empty its magazine into an ashtray. Then I unscrewed the silencer from the barrel, and opened the window.

The two men stood on the pavement, balefully staring across twenty feet of grass. I threw the pistol so that it landed in a rose bush not far from their feet. When the assistant had picked it out and scratched himself on the thorns, I threw the silencer into the same place.