The Melting Man

'I know how drunk anyone can get if they really set their mind to it. You've been sacked?'

'I handed in my notice.'

'Same thing. Can I get into that room?'

'Not unless they let you in.'

'But you've got some way of communicating with them — or they with you, surely?'

'Yes.'

'Lead me to it.'

'I'm not doing anything for you. You're as bad as they are. Money, that's all you're interested in. You never stop to think about anything else but that. Just money — and to hell with what happens to anyone else. People don't mean anything to you.'

I said, 'I seem to remember a coloured number called Joseph Bavana that you helped once — to something very unpleasant.'

That wasn't me. That was O'Dowda's personal secretary carrying out orders.'

'Same thing.'

He swung round from his pile of candy-striped pants and shouted, 'It is not! He's gone! Now — this is me! A different man!'

I said, 'Work it out any way you want. I'm not going to argue. But I want to talk to them and you're going to show me how. If you don't, I'll just tell the police what I know about Bavana, and the new Durnford won't get very far. It's not something I want to do, but push me and I will.'

He looked at me in silence for a while and then he said bitterly. 'Yes, you'd do it. You'd do anything to get what you want. Just for a while I thought that you might have something that a man could respect. But I know better now. You're like them. You'd put up any front, tell any lie that would help you to get what you want.'

'It's an interesting point, but I haven't time to discuss it. Just show me how to talk to them.'

For a moment or two I thought he was going to refuse. He just stared belligerently at me, hating me, hating himself more probably, and his mind all twisted up with memories of the woman he had loved who had been drowned in the lake; a mind that had been warped and commanded by O'Dowda to the point of revolt. Beyond that in fact. At this moment he wasn't sane. He was capable of anything. If he refused to show me, I knew that I could never make him.

With a slow, cunning look, he said, 'What are you going to say to him.'

'That's my business. I've got to have a talk with him. Come on, show me how.'

He gave me a nasty little smile and said, 'You're still trying to make something for yourself, aren't you? Still after a profit — no matter who else suffers?'

'I've got things to do. For my own personal satisfaction.'

'Quite.' He snapped the word at me. Then, abruptly, he turned and walked from the room. I followed him.

We went through a rabbit warren of corridors and finally fetched up at the foot of the main staircase. He went up ahead of me and down the wide upper hallway to the tall leather-covered steel doors of the waxwork room and halted in front of them.

I said, 'Can't they be opened from this side? I'd like to go in unannounced.'

He shook his head. 'Not if they've got the trip over on the inside. And they will have. Always do when they have a drinking bout.'

He went to the side of the doors and opened a small recess let into the wall. He pulled out a microphone speaker, flicked a switch in the recess somewhere, and said, 'O'Dowda!'

The way he said it must have given him great pleasure. He put into it everything he disliked about the man and worked off just a little of the years of servitude behind him.

There was no reply.

'O'Dowda!' Louder this time, and knocking off a few more years.

This time there was a reply.

From a concealed loudspeaker over the top of the doors O'Dowda's voice boomed, 'Who the hell is that?'

'Durnford.'

'Then get the hell off my property!' O'Dowda boomed, and roared on, 'Try to steal my wife, would ya, you rabbit-eyed bastard! Get to hell with ya!'

He'd been drinking all right, not yet drunk but expansive.

I saw Durnford's face tighten as he held on to his control. He put the microphone to his mouth and said, 'Carver is here. Wants to see you. And one of these days I'll prove you murdered her, you black-hearted bog-trotter.'

'Carver!' The voice boomed, and then a great gust of laughter came over the speaker. He said, 'Well now, is he? Clear off, the both of ya.'

I said to Durnford, 'All right, you've done your bit, I'll take it from here.'

He handed me the microphone, and said, 'If you're wise you'll get out of this place. He's not drunk yet but he's in a mad mood. Whatever you want from him, you'll never get it.'

'You're damned right about that, boyo,' O'Dowda roared.

'Make yourself scarce,' I said to Durnford 'When they do open up you might find Kermode at your throat. Go on.'

He hesitated for a moment and then said, 'Even if you can, I advise you not to go in there.'

'Don't worry.'

'I'm not. If you don't want my advice, don't take it.'

He turned and went away down the gallery. I watched him go and then walked down to the head of the stairs to check that he was really gone. I went back to the microphone.

As I picked it up, O'Dowda's voice yelled, 'Are you still there, Carver?'

I said, 'Why should I not be? I'm going to take at least five thousand pounds off you.'

There was silence. There had to be. I'd mentioned money, and money to O'Dowda was important, so important that any mention of it aroused his curiosity.

'And why would you be taking five thousand pounds off me?' His voice had lost some of its kick.

'In a straight sale. That's excluding my fees, of course.'

'And what would you have for sale, boyo?' He was coming back a bit, but I knew that I had him hooked.

I said, praying it would be so, 'Don't tell me that you just collected that parcel from Evian and stuck it straight in your safe without checking it?'

There was silence, a long one, and a heavy one for me. It was the kind of thing he could have done. It was what I wanted him to have done, because it was the one thing which would give me the little edge over him that I wanted, the one thing which gave me the remotest chance of getting Julia back. The silence went on. I let it. The longer it went on the better it was for me. I let it run until I knew that I was betting on a certainty.

I said, 'Don't tell me that a careful man like you put it away without checking it?'

He tried to bluff. It was clear in his voice.

'Of course I checked it.'

I laughed. 'You're a bad liar, O'Dowda. You think I'm such a fool that I wouldn't keep one ace up my sleeve? Dealing with types like you, Najib and Interpol? And anyway, I'm like you, O'Dowda, I don't trust the mails. That parcel at Evian was a phoney. Sent there to give me a breathing space if things went wrong — which I'll admit they damned nearly did at the lake. Are you with it? Are you listening good and hard? You haven't got what you think you've got, O'Dowda. If the safe's in there, check it and see — and then we'll talk.'

I sat down on an Empire chair by the door and lit a cigarette, blew smoke, and prayed. Hard. That his safe was not in the banqueting room. If it were my bluff was called.

I sat there, pretending to myself to be cool, knowing the runners were coming up to the last fence and mine leading, knowing that anything can happen at the last fence — and usually the thing you're praying will not happen. I blew a smoke ring and watched it spin up towards the loudspeaker over the door and then fade away like a grey dream.

Suddenly the big double-doors whined and slid back on their runners. Kermode stood just inside the threshold and he was holding a gun on me.

He said, 'Come in slowly and keep your hands out in front.'

I gave him a beaming smile. Why not? I'd won the first round. I was feeling good, but being careful not to be overconfident.

I went in and he halted me. Holding the gun at my navel, he ran his hands over my pockets. Aristide wouldn't have thought much of the job he made, or Najib, I guessed. I'd got the compressed-air pistol stuck barrel first into the inside of my left ginger suede shoe and the turn-up of the suit trousers came well down, hiding it. The pistol was ten inches long, three or four inches of barrel in my shoe and the butt just above my ankle. The only thing I had to be careful about was fast movement because it weighed just under two pounds and could be shaken loose unless I watched it. I wasn't worried. I wasn't going to make one fast movement until I reached for the gun. Kermode's hand came down my leg, over my calf and stopped short a couple of inches above the pistol. He stood back.