She had a point, though. Shooting wasn't cheap, and I wouldn't have been able to do as much as I did without support from indirect sponsors. The sponsors expected in return that I would not only go to the international competitions, but go to them practised and fit: conditions that until very recently I'd been happy to fulfil. I was getting old, I thought. I would be thirty-four in three months.
I drove home without haste and let myself into the quiet house which was no longer vibrant with silent tensions. Dumped my case on the coffee table in the sitting-room with no one to suggest I take it straight upstairs. Unclipped the lock and thought of the pleasant change of being able to go through the cleaning and oiling routine in front of the television without tight-lipped disapproval. Decided to postpone the clean-up until I'd chosen what to have for supper and poured out a reviving scotch.
Chose a frozen pizza. Poured the scotch.
The front doorbell rang at that point and I went to answer it. Two men, olive skinned, dark haired, stood on the doorstep: and one of them held a pistol.
I looked at it with a sort of delayed reaction, not registering at once because I'd been looking at peaceful firearms all day. It took me at least a whole second to realise that this one was pointing at my midriff in a thoroughly unfriendly fashion. A Walther. 22, I thought: as if it mattered.
My mouth, I dare say, opened and shut. It wasn't what one expected in a moderately crime-free suburb.
'Back,' he said.
'What do you want?'
'Get inside.' He prodded towards me with the long silencer attached to the automatic and because I certainly respected the blowing-away power of hand guns, I did as he said. He and his friend advanced through the front door and closed it behind them.
'Raise your hands,' said the gunman.
I did so.
He glanced towards the open door of the sitting-room and jerked his head towards it.
'Go in there.'
I went slowly, and stopped, and turned, and said again, 'What do you want?'
'Wait,' he said. He glanced at his companion and jerked his head again, this time at the windows. The companion switched on the lights and then went across and closed the curtains. It was not yet dark outside. A shaft of evening sunshine pierced through where the curtains met.
I thought: why aren't I desperately afraid? They looked so purposeful, so intent. Yet I still thought they had made some weird sort of mistake and might depart if nicely spoken to.
They seemed younger than myself, though it was difficult to be sure. Italian, perhaps, from the south. They had the long straight nose, the narrow jaw, the black-brown eyes. The sort of face which went fat with age, grew a moustache and became a godfather.
That last thought shot through my brain from nowhere and seemed as nonsensical as a pistol.
'What do you want?' I said again.
'Three computer tapes.'
My mouth no doubt went again through the fish routine. I listened to the utterly English sloppy accent and thought that it couldn't have less matched the body it came from.
'What… what computer tapes?'I said, putting on bewilderment.
'Stop messing. We know you've got them. Your wife said so.'
Jesus, I thought. The bewilderment this time needed no acting.
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.