Hatch motioned him to the desk.
“What do you make of this?”
Amis turned the letter about in his hand before reading. It was a sheet of common wrapping paper, roughly torn into a square. The message was made up of pencilled capitals, irregular in size and shape, childishly formed.
“From some kid, is it?” Amis asked. He held the paper fastidiously, as if suspecting stickiness.
Hatch shook his head. “Read it.”
Amis did so, aloud but very softly, halting and frowning at the least legible words and repeating a phrase here and there in an effort to make the message sound coherent.
He looked up. “Do you know what it means?”
“No idea.” Hatch thoughtfully scratched the back of his neck, then looked at his finger nails and said: “But I don’t like it.”
Amis again examined the letter.
“Payments?” he queried. “Behind in what payments?”
“How the hell do I know?” Hatch kept his voice low, but on the pale, paper-like cheek annoyance had suddenly printed a small patch of red.
“Do you know anyone in New York who could have some sort of grudge against you?”
“Of course I don’t.”
“But somebody there knows your name, obviously.”
Hatch made mumbled reference to mailing lists, but his expression suggested thoughts that already had hastened ahead. He jabbed the air with his finger. “Listen, does that bastard Crispin ever get over to the States?”
“Oh, come now...”
“Well, does he? I’m asking you.”
Amis shrugged. “I very much doubt it. Anyway, would he threaten to murder you just because of some trivial neighbourhood jealousy?”
“Not so trivial as you might think,” Hatch murmured. He started. “Murder me? What do you mean, murder?” He grabbed back the letter.
Amis pointed to a line.
“ ‘Hit’,” Hatch read out. “ ‘You are going to get hit’. Somebody’s threatening to beat me up. Nothing there about murder.”
There was a pause.
“Well, is there?” Hatch persisted.
Amis gave a nervous little laugh. “Perhaps I’ve been reading too many gangster stories. You could be right. I hope so. But ‘hit’ does happen to be an American euphemism for kill. I thought you’d know that.”
Hatch scowled. “There are so many damn silly expressions nowadays.” He stared at the letter. “Oh, to hell with it. Some bloody lunatic...”
The paper was gathered suddenly into Hatch’s bony fist. Amis gripped his arm.
“No. I think you ought to take it seriously. Just in case.”
Hatch looked at him, then slowly relaxed his fingers. The balled letter dropped to the desk, rolled a few inches, and began jerkily to expand as if taking quick little breaths of relief.
After a while, Hatch smoothed out the letter and read through it once more.
Amis watched him.
“I’d take it to the police, if I were you,” he said quietly.
“You think so?” Hatch did not raise his eyes.
“I do.”
Inspector Purbright did not tell Arnie Hatch in so many words that he was glad that afternoon to see him and his letter in combination. One does not, after all, congratulate the recipient of a threat to murder. But he did feel a sense of relief that at least the prospective victim had now been identified. At the same time, he was not a little pleased, privately, to reflect that Hatch had been one of his own three favourite candidates.
“Has anyone ever threatened you before, Mr Hatch?”
“Never.”
“You have never been—how shall I say—subjected to pressure? In hopes of getting money out of you, I mean.”
“Only by people I owe it to.”
Purbright acknowledged with a smile the businessman’s joke. Hatch looked at him impassively. “I suppose you mean blackmail, do you?”
“It’s a generally understood term, Mr Hatch.”
“Aye, well, if this letter’s blackmail, it’s a funny way of going about it. According to my private secretary, it just says I’m going to get done in. No ifs. No how much. The chop.”
Purbright mentally noted the privacy of the secretary. He tried out my private sergeant. No good. Not Sidney Love. He said to Hatch:
“The letter refers to your being behind in certain payments, sir. It is, in fact, a dunning letter. Now, I don’t suggest for a moment that physical assault—much less murder, as implied here—is a tolerable form of debt collecting, but if you do owe money to someone you must tell me.”
Hatch waved the suggestion away impatiently. “No, no, no. Nothing outside the ordinary business commitments. Bills come in, they get paid, and that’s that.”
“This,” said Purbright, “is certainly not an invoice in the accepted sense. It would seem to refer to dealings outside your normal commercial field.”
“Never mind what it refers to, inspector. It’s a threat, and a damned nasty threat. All I want to know is what you’re going to do about it.”
“Everything we can, sir, obviously. But you can help us in the first place by answering some questions. For example, I should like to know to what extent you are acquainted with America.”
“I make the trip occasionally. Not often. It’s necessary for anybody who wants to keep up with trends in club management.”
“Las Vegas—places like that?”
“That’s right.”
Purbright flicked through his meagre geographical knowledge for a suitably inept suggestion. He turned up the blameless domicile of his wife’s cousin, a lecturer at Princeton.
“Metuchen?” he prompted with a man-of-the-world smirk.
Hatch’s “I’ll say” was a low-keyed ça va sans dire that immediately populated that unexceptionable borough with a colourful horde of gamblers, saloon keepers and pimps. It convinced the inspector that Hatch’s connections with the transatlantic vice industry, if he had any, would be at second or third remove.
“If you have never put yourself under an obligation,” Purbright said, “during one of your visits to America, it is difficult to see why you should now receive a letter of this kind.”
“Aye, it is difficult,” said Hatch, in obtuse agreement. He was beginning to suspect in Purbright a certain deficiency of respect. He leaned forward and added sharply: “But I have received it, haven’t I?”
Purbright got up and walked to the window and back. He stretched and then sat again, not in his chair but on the corner of his big, dilapidated desk. He gazed thoughtfully at Hatch.