‘I’ve got an appointment at eleven.’
‘Cancel it.’
‘Look, you can’t just — ’
‘I thought I already was.’ Hoffer stood up, keeping his hands in his pockets. With his elbows jutting from his sides, he knew he looked like something from the jungle. Arthur would have clambered up the cheese-plant in the corner if he’d had any motive power. ‘Now go fetch me the files.’
He sat down again, trying to look comfortable. The bank manager sat there for a few moments, just to show he wasn’t intimidated. Hoffer allowed this with a shrug. They both knew the truth. Mr Arthur got up slowly, his hands gripping the edge of the desk. Then he walked out of the office.
He came back with a couple of files and some sheets of photocopier paper. ‘This is all I can find just now. Most of our records get sent to head office eventually.’
‘Tell them you want them back here pronto. What about the check on Wesley’s current account transactions?’
‘It’s being carried out. We have to go through all the old cheques. They’re not kept in neat little piles.’
Hoffer reached out a hand for the files. There was a knock at the manager’s door.
‘Ignore it,’ said Hoffer.
‘I certainly shan’t.’ Arthur walked briskly to the door and pulled it open. ‘This is the man, officers.’
Hoffer turned his head lazily. At the door stood two uniformed policemen. So Arthur hadn’t just been seeking out the files. Hoffer peeked at them anyway. They contained only blank sheets of typing paper.
‘You sonofabitch,’ he said. The policemen then asked him to accompany them, and he rose from his chair. ‘Certainly,’ he said. ‘No problem here,’ he assured them.
But all the time he had eyes only for Mr Arthur.
‘Never again! Do you hear?’ Hoffer heard. He was bored of hearing it. Bob Broome didn’t seem to have any other words in his vocabulary.
‘Can we turn the record over, Bob?’
Broome slapped his desk. ‘It’s not funny, Hoffer. It’s not a game. You can’t go around threatening bank managers. Jesus Christ, they run the country.’
‘That’s your problem then. Still, it could be worse.’ Broome waited for an explanation. ‘At least Arthur didn’t look Jewish.’
Broome collapsed on to his chair. ‘You’re slime, Hoffer.’
Hoffer didn’t need that. ‘Yeah, I’m slime, but I’m slime that pays. So what does that make you?’
‘Hold on a second.’
‘No, shut up and listen. Remember, I’ve been a cop, I know what it’s like. You try to look busy, but most of the time you’re treading water waiting for somebody to come tell you who it is you’re looking for. I can’t do that any more. I don’t have that luxury. What I’ve got is a head and a pair of fists, and if you don’t like that, then just keep out of my way.’
‘I just saved you from a barrow-load of manure.’
‘And I thank you for that, but I’ve walked away from shit before without needing a pitchfork up my ass.’
Broome shook his head sadly. ‘I don’t want you around, Hoffer.’
‘Tough titty.’
‘I mean it. I don’t want you anywhere near.’
‘I can handle that, Chief Inspector.’ Hoffer stood up. ‘But remember, you’re the one who called me, you’re the one who took my money.’ Hoffer walked out of the office. He didn’t bother closing the door.
On his way out of Vine Street, he saw DI Dave Edmond going in. They knew one another through Broome.
‘Hey ... Dave, right?’ said Hoffer, the bright smiling American.
‘That’s right,’ said Edmond.
‘Are you busy?’
‘Well, I was just ...’
‘I thought maybe I could buy you a drink?’
Edmond licked his lips. It had been a whole eleven hours since he’d last touched a drop. ‘Well, that’s very kind.’
Hoffer put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Ulterior motive, Dave. I’ve got a couple of questions, and Bob thought maybe you wouldn’t mind ...’
‘What sort of questions?’ Edmond was already being steered back the way he’d come.
‘Oh, just background stuff. You know, ballistics, scene of crime, that sort of thing. And anything you have on the deceased.’
Edmond had said that if they were going to talk about guns, maybe he should invite Barney along. Sergeant Barney Wills was the station’s arms aficionado. So they took Barney with them to the pub. It was another of those ‘olde worlde’ interiors which bored Hoffer stupid. In America, a bar looked like a bar, a place where you went to drink. He couldn’t see the point of horse brasses and framed prints of clipper ships and shelves of books. Yes, books, like people might suddenly mistake the place for a library and decide to have a drink anyway while they were there.
It was all a joke too, hardly any of it authentic. The prints were fresh and framed in plastic, the books bought by the yard. Often he despaired of the English. They were too easy to con. Edmond and Barney were perfect material for a real con artist, perfect because they thought they were putting one over on him. He was just a loud Yank with money to spend and a lot of daft notions. They’d play him along, laughing at him, taking his drinks, and they’d tell him a few stories along the way.
Hoffer didn’t mind this game. He knew who was screwing who. If the scene had been a porn movie, the two policemen would have had their cheeks bared in submission.
Barney told him what the lab had discovered about the sniper rifle. Namely that it had indeed fired the fatal shot, and that it was a specialist weapon, in use in the armed forces but not in general circulation. Arms weren’t easy to come by in Britain anyway, though recently the crack dealers hadn’t been having any problems. The Army and the Royal Marines used the L96A1, but civilian target shooters wouldn’t use one.
‘It was a Super Magnum,’ Barney said, between gulps of Scotch. ‘.338 Lapua Magnum ammunition. Christ knows where he got it.’
‘There must be a few bent gun dealers around,’ Hoffer suggested.
‘Yes, but even they wouldn’t deal in an L96. I mean, half of them wouldn’t even know how to begin getting hold of one. This thing fires a thousand yards, who needs that? And the sight he had on it, this was quality gear, must’ve cost a fortune.’
‘Someone must’ve been paying a fortune,’ Edmond added.
‘Question is, who?’ Hoffer got in another round. ‘I’ve looked into assassins, guys, I mean the whole tribe of them. Leaving out the one-off crazies who go blast their local burger joint with an Uzi, they tend to come from a military background. Makes sense, right? I mean, that’s where they get the training, that’s where they first taste what a gun can do.’
Both men nodded, too busy drinking to interrupt.
‘But this guy is a haemophiliac, or at least we think he is, and the doctors assure me the military won’t accept haemophiliacs.’ Hoffer’s own words hit him: military background. Maybe he was on to something. He thought about it for a minute. Edmond and Barney didn’t seem to notice. They started up a conversation about some cricket match. Eventually Hoffer drifted back to the real world. It was the tap of empty glass on wooden table that did it. Not that his companions were hinting or anything.
‘This’ll have to be the last round, guys. We’re all busy people.’ So he got them in again, and decided the balance was all wrong. He was shelling out, and not getting back much of a dividend.
‘So, Barney, what about these gun dealers? The bent ones, I mean. Are they on a list or anything? I’d appreciate a look-see.’ What else could Barney do but nod and say he’d see what he could do? Hoffer turned to Edmond.
‘Now, Dave, you were going to tell me about Eleanor Ricks ...’
The Army camp wasn’t such a bitch to find after all. Hoffer had been expecting a hellhole in the middle of nowhere, but this was just north of London, on the edge of a commuter town and slap next-door to a housing estate.
When he’d spoken to the camp
by telephone, they’d said he could take a mainline train up there, it only took half an hour. So that’s what he did. The people were kidding themselves if they thought they lived in the ‘country’. They weren’t living in anything, they were living on something, and that something was borrowed time. London was snapping at their shoelaces. They worked there, earned their living there, and London wanted something back in return. It wanted them.
They tried to look prosperous and talk differently, but they were pale, almost ill-looking, and their cars only made traffic jams. Hoffer, who had considered taking a cab all the way, was relieved he’d gone by train. The roads he saw were crammed. Someone mentioned a nineteen-mile tailback on the M25. They called the road an ‘orbital’. You could orbit the globe in less time. The train wasn’t quite perfect though. It had been late leaving London, and it hadn’t been cleaned or aired since depositing its rush-hour cattle in London. It smelt bad and there was trash on the floor.
The cab Hoffer took from the station didn’t smell much better, and there was only slightly more room in the back than in a British Rail seat. He stuffed his legs in a diagonal and made do like that. He got the cab to drop him at the camp entrance. He was surprised to see armed guards on the gate. One nodded him in the direction of the gatehouse.
‘What’s the problem, chief?’ Hoffer asked, as the guard on the gatehouse phoned him in.
‘Terrorists,’ the guard said. ‘We’re on constant alert.’
‘I thought they’d stopped bothering you guys, started bothering the rest of us instead?’
‘You never know.’
Armed with this philosophical nugget, Hoffer was pointed in the direction of the office he wanted.
He was met halfway by a young soldier whose face looked to have been pressed the same time as his shirt and pants.
‘Mr Hoffer? The Major’s expecting you.’
‘It’s good of him to see me at short notice.’ Hoffer almost had to jog to keep up with the man. Somewhere along the route, Hoffer was supposed to catch the guy’s name, but he was too busy catching his own breath. He was led into a building and told to take a seat. He was glad to. He tried focusing his eyes on the recruiting posters and glossy brochures. You’d think you were booking a holiday for yourself rather than a bruising career. The soldiers in the brochures looked tough and honest and Christian. You just knew democracy and the free world would be safe in their hands, even if you were dropping them into a country where they couldn’t speak the language and the distant hills were full of mortar and Mullahs.
Hoffer caught himself whistling ‘God Bless America’ and checked it just in time.
A door opened along the hall. ‘Mr Hoffer?’
Hoffer walked along the hall to meet the Major. His name was Major Drysdale, and he had a cool dry handshake, a bit like a Baptist minister’s. ‘Come in, please.’
‘I was telling your ... ah, I was saying I appreciate you seeing me like this.’
‘Well, your call was intriguing. It’s not every day I get to meet a New York detective. Speaking of which, there are certain formalities ... Could I see your identification?’
Hoffer reached into his pocket and produced his detective’s ID, which had been unfortunately mislaid at the time of his resignation from the force. It came in useful sometimes. People in authority would often prefer to speak to a real police officer than a shamus. Hoffer reckoned this was one of those times. Drysdale took down a few details from the ID before handing back the wallet. That worried Hoffer, but not much. He might go on to an Army file, but he doubted they’d go so far as to phone his supposed employers in the States. He kept reading about military cutbacks, and phone calls cost money.
‘So,’ said Major Drysdale, ‘what can I do for you, Detective Hoffer?’
It was a small plain office, lacking any trace of personality. Drysdale might have just moved in, which would explain it. But Hoffer thought the man looked comfortable here, like he’d sat in the office for years. He wasn’t much more than PR, a public face for the Army. The camp’s real muscle was elsewhere. But Hoffer didn’t need muscle, he just needed a few questions answered. He needed a friendly ear. He was on his best behaviour and in his best suit, but Drysdale still treated him with just a trace of amusement, like he’d never seen such a specimen before.
As to the Major himself, he was tall and skinny with arms you could have snapped with a Chinese restaurant’s crab-crackers. He had short fair hair and blue eyes out of a Nazi youth league, and a moustache which could have been drawn on his face with ballpoint. He wasn’t young any more, but still carried acne around his shirt collar. Could be he was allergic to the starch.
‘Well, Major,’ Hoffer said, ‘like I said on the telephone, it’s a medical question, and a vague one at that, but it’s in connection with a series of murders, assassinations to be more accurate, and as such we would appreciate any help the Army can give.’
‘And you’re working in tandem with Scotland Yard?’
‘Oh, absolutely. I have their full backing.’
‘Could you give me a contact name there?’ Drysdale poised his pen above his notepad.
‘Sure. Uh, Chief Inspector Broome. That’s B-r-o-o-m-e. He’s the man to talk to. He’s based at Vine Street in central London.’
‘Not Scotland Yard?’
‘Well, they’re working together on this.’
‘Orange, isn’t it?’
‘Sir?’
‘Vine Street.’ Hoffer still didn’t get it. ‘On the Monopoly board.’
Hoffer grinned, chuckled even, and shook his head in wonder at the joke.
‘Do you have a phone number for the Chief Inspector?’
‘Oh, yessir, sure.’ Goddamned Army. Hoffer gave Major Drysdale the number. His skin was crawling, and he had to force himself not to scratch all over. He wished he hadn’t taken some speed before setting out.
‘Maybe before we start,’ Drysdale was saying now, not stonewalling exactly, just following procedure, ‘you could tell me a little about the inquiry itself. Oh, tea by the way?’
‘Yes, please.’
Drysdale picked up his phone and ordered tea and ‘some biccies’. Then he sat back and waited for Hoffer to tell him all about the D-Man.
It took a while, but eventually, two cups of strong brown tea later, Hoffer got to the point he’d wanted to start with. Drysdale had asked questions about everything from the assassin’s first error to the sniper rifle he’d used in London. And he’d kept on scribbling notes, though Hoffer wanted to say it was none of his goddamned business, tear the pad from him, and chew it up with his teeth. He was sweating now, and blamed tannin poisoning. His throat was coated with felt.
‘So you see,’ he said, ‘if the man we’re looking for hasn’t exactly been in the Army, well, maybe he’s been or still is connected to it in some way. The most obvious connection I can think of is family.’
‘You mean a brother or sister?’
‘No, sir, I mean his father. I think it would have to be his father, someone who might have instilled in him a ... relationship with weapons.’
‘We don’t normally allow children to train with live ammo, Detective Hoffer.’
‘That’s not exactly what I’m saying, sir. I mean, I’m sure the Army’s probity is above ... uh, whatever. But say this man was good with firearms, well, wouldn’t he want to pass that knowledge and interest on to his son?’
‘Even if the son could never join the Army?’
‘The kid could’ve been a teenager before anyone found out he was a haemophiliac. Mild sufferers, sometimes they don’t find out till they’re grown up. It takes an operation or something before anyone notices they have trouble getting their blood to clot.’
‘This is all very interesting,’ said Drysdale, flicking through his copious notes, ‘but I don’t see where it gets us.’
‘I’ll tell you, sir. It gets us a kid who’s diagnosed haemophiliac by an Army doctor, sometime in the past, maybe between twenty and thirty
years ago. You must have records.’
Drysdale laughed. ‘We may have records, but do you know what you’re asking? We’d have to check every Army base here and abroad, every medical centre. Even supposing they held records from so long ago. Even supposing the child was treated by an Army doctor. I mean, he might easily have gone to a civilian doctor. Putting aside all this, he would have taken his records with him.’
‘What?’
‘When you change doctors, your new doctor requests from your old doctor all your medical notes. You don’t keep them yourself, your doctor keeps them. Your present doctor.’
‘Are you sure? Maybe if I spoke to someone from your medical — ’
‘I really don’t think that’s necessary.’
Hoffer considered his options. He could whack the guy. He could wheedle. He could offer some cash. He didn’t think any of these would work, so he decided to be disappointed instead.
‘I’m real sorry you can’t find it in yourself to help, Major. You know how many innocent people this man has murdered? You know he’ll keep on doing it till he’s caught? I mean, he’s not going to give it up and move jobs. I can’t see him waiting tables at IHOP or somewhere.’
Drysdale smiled again. ‘Look, I know what you’re saying. I appreciate that you — ’
Hoffer got to his feet. ‘No, sir, with all due respect I don’t think you do know. I won’t waste any more of your time.’ He turned to the door.
‘Wait a minute.’ Hoffer waited. He turned his head. Drysdale was standing too now. ‘Look, maybe I can initiate a few general inquiries.’
Hoffer turned back into the room. ‘That would be great, sir.’
‘I can’t make any promises, you understand.’
‘Absolutely. We’re all just trying to do what we can.’
Drysdale nodded. ‘Well, I’ll see what I can do.’
‘I really appreciate that, sir.’ Hoffer took Drysdale’s hand. ‘I’m sure I speak for us all.’
Drysdale smiled a little sheepishly. Then he said he’d get someone to escort the detective back to the gate.