At last the recording got underway. As Hoffer had hoped he would, Bridger turned to him first.

'So, Mr Hoffer, what's one of New York's toughest private detectives doing here in England?'

Hoffer shifted in his seat, leaning forward towards Bridger. ; 'Well, sir, I think you're confusing me with this gentleman : beside me. See, I'm the gay NFL player.'

There was a desperate glance from Bridger to his producer, the producer shaking his head furiously. Then Bridger, recovering well after a slow start off the blocks, started to laugh, taking the audience with him. They were so out of it, they'd've laughed at triple-bypa.s.s surgery. The interview went downhill from there. They'd probably edit it down to a couple of minutes by tomorrow.

Afterwards, Hoffer didn't want to b.u.mp into Bridger.

Well, that was easily arranged. Bridger stuck around the j studio, signing autographs and kissing more old ladies.

Hoffer moved with speed to the 'green room', as they called I their hospitality suite. It was a bare room lined with chairs, a bit like a surgery waiting room. Those still waiting to do their shows were like patients awaiting biopsy results, while Bridger's guests had just been given the all-clear. Hoffer tipped an inch of Scotch down his throat.

T thought he was going to pee himself,' said the gay footballer of Hoffer's opening gag.

'That audience would have lapped it up,' Hoffer said. 'I 200.

mean, literally.' He downed another Scotch before collaring the production a.s.sistant.

'Forget the video,' he told her. 'You can spring it on me when I'm on This is Your Life. What about the other stuff?'

'I've got Mandy from Research outside.'

'Great, I'll go talk to her.'

'Fine.' And don't bother coming back, her tone said.

Hoffer blew her a kiss, then gave her his famous tongue- waggle. She looked suitably unimpressed. This was in danger of turning into an all right day.

Mandy was about nineteen with long blonde hair and a fashionably anorexic figure.

'You could do with a meat transfusion,' Hoffer said.

'What've you got there?'

He s.n.a.t.c.hed the large manila envelope from her and drew out a series of xeroxed map grids.

'I've run over it with green marker,' she said.

Hoffer could see that. Grewelthorpe: marked in green. The hamlets nearest it were Kirkby Malzeard and Mickley. These were to the south and east. To the west, there were only Masham Moor and Hambleton Hill, some reservoirs and stretches of roadless grey. Further south another hamlet caught his eye. It was called Blubberhouses. What was it with these comedy names? More relevantly, the nearest sizeable conurbations to Grewelthorpe were .Ripon and Thirsk, the Yorkshire towns where Mark Wesley had made cash withdrawals.

'Any help?' Mandy said.

'Oh, yes, Mandy, these are beautiful, almost as beautiful as you, my pale princess.' He touched a finger to her cheek and stroked her face. She began to look scared. 'Now, I want you to do one more thing for me.'

She swallowed and looked dubious. 'What?'

'Tell Uncle Leo where Yorkshire is.'

It wasn't really necessary to clean the Smith & Wesson, but 201.

Hoffer cleaned it anyway. He knew if he got close enough to the D-Man, it wouldn't matter if the a.s.sa.s.sin was state-ofthe-art armed, Hoffer would stick a bullet in his gut.

With the gun cleaned and oiled, he did some reading.

He'd ama.s.sed a lot of reading this trip: stuff about haemophilia, and now stuff about the Disciples of Love. He didn't see anything in the Disciples' history that would unduly ruffle the red, white and blue feathers of the CIA or NSC. Yet Kline was over here, so someone somewhere was very worried about something. He imagined the a.s.sa.s.sin reading the same notes he was reading. What would he be thinking? What would be his next step? Would he take up the investigation where his victim had left off? That sounded way too risky, especially if the Disciples were the ones who'd set him up in the first place.

But then again, the D-Man had taken a lot of risks so far, and every risk brought him closer to the surface. Hotter had a name and a description, and now he had Max Harrison.

He knew Bob Broome wasn't stupid; he'd make the connection too before long. But Hotter had a start. The only problem was, it meant driving. There were no rail stations close to his destination, so he'd have to hire a car. He'd booked one for tomorrow morning, and had asked for his bill to be made up. He knew that really he should make a start tonight, but he wasn't driving at night, not when he was heading into the middle of nowhere on the wrong d.a.m.ned side of the road.

He needed a clear head for tomorrow, so confined himself to smoking a joint in his room and watching some TV. Then he took a Librium to help him worm his way into the sleep of the just. After all, no way should he be there on merit.

'Don't be so hard on yourself, Leo,' he muttered. 'You're the good guy. You're the hero, you must be ... Jimmy Bridger told you so.' He finished the gla.s.s of whisky beside his bed and switched off the TV.

On his way to the John, he got a sudden greasy feeling in 202.

his gut, and knew what it was. It wasn't cancer this time, or liquefaction of the bowel. It wasn't something he'd eaten or something he hadn't, a bad gla.s.s of tap-water or too much hooch.

It was the simple realisation that another day or two would see this whole thing finished.

The car rental firm had the usual selection of cramped boxes, each with as much soul as a fast-food carton.

'So which is the cheapest?'

"The Fiesta, sir.'

Hotter tried to haggle over the Fiesta, but the a.s.sistant couldn't oblige. There wasn't even the chance of a blank receipt, since the whole system was computerised, so Hoffer couldn't hike his expense sheet. He quickly got the hang of driving on the left: it was easy if you stuck to one-way streets. But getting out of London was more pain than he'd bargained for. Twice he had to get out of his car at traffic lights and ask the driver behind for help, then suffer the drivers behind sounding their horns when the lights changed.

He got lost so often that after punching the steering wheel a few times he just stopped caring. He didn't study roadsigns, he just took whichever route looked good. When he stopped for lunch, he yielded to temptation and asked somebody where he was.

'Rickmansworth.'

So he'd reached his cab driver's northern frontier.

Cheered by this, he reneged and bought a map book, finding that he would have to cut across country a bit to get on to the right road. The whole UK road network looked like a kid had taken a line for a walk. There seemed no order, no sense to it. Driving was easy in the States, once you'd negotiated the cities. But here the cities didn't seem to end, they just melted each into the other, with preserved blobs of green in between.

203.

As he moved north, however, he changed his mind a little. There was some green land between London and Yorkshire; it was boring green land, but it was definitely green. He relaxed into the driving, and even remembered to ask for petrol and not 'gas'. It was late afternoon before he got past Leeds. He came off the Al and into Ripon, where he stopped for a break and a mental council of war.

If Max Harrison was like any gun dealer Hoffer knew, then he would have an a.r.s.enal like something from Desert Storm. And what did Hoffer have? A .457 and a pocket knife. All he had going for him was the element of surprise.

That meant he'd have those few initial moments to size the situation up. If Harrison was toting heavy artillery, it was no contest. Likewise, if the man was not alone, Hoffer would be compelled to hold back. He realised too late that he'd drunk a whole pot of tea while mulling this over. The caffeine started its relentless surge through his bloodstream. He took a downer to balance things out, and regretted it immediately: he'd need to be sharp, not dopey.

So he took an upper as well.

But Max Harrison didn't actually live in what there was of Grewelthorpe. He lived somewhere on the outskirts. It was almost dark by the time Hoffer made his approach to the farm. Foresight had warned him to bring a torch, and he stuck it in his pocket after killing the engine. There was no other sign of habitation, and Hotter had stopped the car half a mile from the house. He was going to walk that final half mile ... Or was he? If Harrison had already heard or seen him, then why make himself an easy target? Better to arrive wrapped in steel than leave wrapped in a coffin. He turned the ignition back on and drove sedately up the track and into the yard.

He killed the engine and looked around. There was no sign of life. He sounded the horn tentatively, but got no response. Maybe the guy was a real farmer, out somewhere with his favourite sheep or cow. He opened his door and 204.

eased himself out. He couldn't hear any animals, not even a dog.

'h.e.l.lo, anyone home?' he called. Only the wind whistled a reply. Hoffer walked to the house and peered in through a couple of windows. He was looking into a large clean kitchen. He tried the door and it opened. He went inside and called out again.

The house didn't feel empty. There was a television or radio on somewhere. He touched the kettle, but it was cold.

He came out of the kitchen into an L-shaped hallway. At the other end of the hall was the front door of the house, obviously not much used. A rug had been pushed against it to stop draughts. Halfway along the hall were stairs up. But the sounds were coming from behind a door in the hall.

There were two doors. The first was wide open, leading into an empty dining room. Three chairs sat around a four- cornered table. The second was closed, and must presumably lead to the living room. Hoffer's fingers tightened around the b.u.t.t of his gun. Harrison couldn't have fled: where was there to go? Just the barns or the fields beyond.

But he could be hiding. He touched the door handle, then turned it and let the door fall open.

Max Harrison had been beaten to a pulp.

His face was almost featureless, just a mess of blood and clots and tissue, like red fruit after a kid had been playing with it. Barney had told him Harrison was suffering from face cancer. A sort of cutaway plastic mask lay on the floor, and there was a large blackish hole cut deep into one of Harrison's cheeks. Sure, beat up a dying man, why don't you? Hoffer felt rage inside him, but then Harrison wasn't his problem.

He was seated on a dining chair in the centre of the room.

His hands had been tied behind him and around the back of the chair, and his feet had been tied to the chair-legs.

'Hey, you Max Harrison?' Hoffer said.

The room was messy too. There'd been a fight here, or 205.

some serious ransacking, or more probably both. A lot of broken ornaments and gla.s.s were lying underfoot. Hoffer went over to the chair to take a pulse. As he touched the body, the head rolled from the shoulders and fell on to the carpet.

'Son of a b.i.t.c.h!' Hoffer roared, half-turning his head to spew up tea and cake and scones. He spat and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. 'd.a.m.n,' he said, 'I paid good money for that meal.' He coughed a couple of times and turned back to the headless corpse. He was no pathologist, but he'd seen a few autopsies during his time on the force. The dead man's throat had been cut through so deeply and thoroughly that practically nothing had been holding it on. Whoever had left Harrison sitting like that had known what would happen when someone finally touched the corpse.

'Nice touch, dude,' Hoffer muttered. He thought of his own knife: it wouldn't do to be caught here by the police. He had some quick thinking to do. He took another look at the corpse, then around the room. He couldn't glean much here, so headed upstairs. Could it have been the D-Man's work?

Maybe the gun dealer had double-crossed him in some way, and the D-Man had murdered him.

The first bedroom Hoffer walked into belonged to a man.

There were no women's things lying around, no dresses in the wardrobe. But there were a lot of framed photos, mostly of a man Hoffer a.s.sumed to be Max Harrison with a girl Hoffer took to be his daughter. There were photos of her as a baby, and all the way up to what looked like her 20s. Not a bad looker either. Fair hair, prominent cheekbones, beautiful eyes.

There were two other bedrooms, one of them obviously a guest room, which didn't stop Hoffer looking around for any signs of weapons. The other belonged to a woman, a young woman judging from the magazines and make-up and a few of the ca.s.sette tapes lying around.

206.

So Harrison's daughter lived at home ...

'Whoa!' Hoffer said, sitting down on the bed. 'Hold on there.' He was thinking of the description he'd been given of 'DC Harris', the D-Man's accomplice. He went back to Harrison's bedroom and picked up the most recent-looking photo. Too close to be coincidence.

'Son of a b.i.t.c.h,' he said quietly.

This changed things. Because if the D-Man had killed Harrison, then he'd also taken the daughter with him. Had he taken her under duress? If so, then she was hostage rather than accomplice, which would make a difference when it came time to confront the a.s.sa.s.sin.

Harrison's bedroom showed no signs of having been searched, and the daughter's bedroom was tidy too. There were paperback books on a shelf above her bed. Hoffer opened one and found her name written in the corner of the prelim page: Bel Harrison. Bel, short for Belinda. Hoffer spent a little more time in her room, trying to find out more about her. She hadn't taken away many clothes; her drawers and wardrobe were more than half full. As he usually did given access to a woman's bedroom, he lingered over the underwear drawer. You could tell a lot about a woman from her underwear. They should turn it into a police discipline, like psychological profiling. He picked up various items, sniffed their detergent smell, then put them back.

There were no posters on the walls, no clues to any hobbies. Her room gave away less than most. He looked under the bed and even under the carpet, but didn't find any dope. There didn't seem to be any contraceptives around either.

'A clean-living country girl,' he said to himself. 'Except, sweetheart, that your daddy dealt in illegal firearms, and now you're running around with the enemy.'

Downstairs again, he checked the cellar. It contained a few bottles of wine and spirits, plus a deep freeze and some DIY tools and materials. He selected a bottle of Scotch and 207.

brought it up to the kitchen. He poured from it, then wiped it clean with a cloth, and he held his gla.s.s with a piece of kitchen towel. After he'd had the drink, he went around wiping the doorhandles and all the other surfaces he'd touched with his fingers. Then he switched on his torch and headed for the outbuildings. He found the indoor range straight away. From the length of it, it could be used for both rifles and handguns. He still hadn't found any weapons.

There had to be a cache somewhere. If he could find it, he could help himself. He looked for twenty minutes without success, and returned to the kitchen.

He had another drink and sat down at the table. The extravaganza in the living room was not the D-Man's style.

The D-Man liked to keep his distance. He'd never killed a close range. And for a skilled shot suddenly to revert to i knife or a razor or whatever had been used ... No, it hadn'

been the D-Man. Which left two questions. Who'd done it; And what was Bel Harrison doing with the D-Man?

There was a telephone in the kitchen, hooked to ari'

answering machine. He played the tape but there were np messages. Several choices presented themselves. He could phone for the police, then wait for them. He could phone them anonymously and then get out. He could get the h.e.l.l out without telling anyone. Or he could hang around and see if either the killers or the D-Man came back. It stood to reason that the daughter would return some time. Maybe the body would have been found by then. There had to be a.

mail service, even to this outpost of civilisation. The body!

was still fairly fresh. Hotter didn't like to think about Be

Harrison stumbling upon it a few days or even weeks hence Then again, did he really want another police for involved? What if they scared off the D-Man?

Hotter didn't know what to do, so he let another drii decide for him.

Then he drove back towards Ripon, seeking a bed for the night.

208.

16.The first thing I saw after breakfast was Leo Hotter.

That may sound crazy, but it's true. When I got back to my room to do some final packing, I must have left the TV on. I'd been watching the early-morning news. Now there was a chat show on, and one of the guests was Hotter. Not that he stole much airtime, a few minutes, but he was omnipresent, coughing offscreen, twitching and interrupting when other guests were speaking. I told Bel to come and see.

They'd got round to the question and answer segment. The host was moving around the audience, his mike at the ready.

'That's Jimmy Bridger,' said Bel. T watch this sometimes.'

A middle-aged lady was standing up to ask her question.

Ts Mr Hotter married?' The camera cut to Hotter, who was wearing an expensive suit but wearing it cheaply. The cloth shone but he didn't.

'No, ma'am,' he said. Then, creasing his face: .'Was that an offer?' Everyone thought this very funny. Someone else asked him it he found his weight a problem. He agreed that it was.

'I've got to put on a few more pounds before I can Sumo wrestle, and you know those last few pounds are the toughest.'

This had them practically rolling in the aisles.

'A question for another of our guests,' said the host, making it plain that he wasn't going to let Hotter hog proceedings. It looked to me like they must have had a disagreement along the way.