'Liam O'Rorke's notes were stolen,' I began.
'I know that,' he said impatiently. 'Have they turned up?'
'Not his notes, no. But computer programs made from them, yes.'
He frowned. 'Mrs O'Rorke has these programs?'
'No. I have. On her behalf. To offer to you.'
'And your name?'
I shrugged. 'Jonathan Derry. You can check with her, if you like.' I gestured to the rank of telephones. 'She'll vouch for me.'
'Did you bring these… programs with you?'
'No,' I said. 'I thought we should make a deal first.'
'Humph.'
Behind his impassive face, a fierce amount of consideration seemed to be taking place, and at length I had a powerful feeling that he couldn't make up his mind.
I said, 'I wouldn't expect you to buy them without a demonstration. But I assure you they're the real thing.'
It produced no discernible effect. The interior debate continued; and it was resolved not by Gilbert or myself but by the arrival of someone else.
A car door slammed outside and there were footsteps on the polished parquet in the hall. Gilbert's head lifted to listen, and a voice outside the open door called 'Dad?'
'In here,' Gilbert said.
Gilbert's son came in. Gilbert's son, who had come to my house with his pistol.
I must have looked as frozen with shock as I felt: but then so did he. I glanced at his father, and it came to me too late that this was the man Sarah had described – middle-aged, ordinary, plump – who had gone to Peter's house asking for the tapes. The one to whom she had said, 'My husband's got them.'
I seemed to have stopped breathing. It was as if life itself had been punched out of me. To know what not to do…
For all my instinct that ignorance was dangerous, I had not learned enough. I hadn't learned the simple fact that would have stopped me from walking into that house: that Mr Bingo Gilbert had a marauding Italian-looking son.
It was never a good idea to pursue Moses across the Red Sea…
'My son, Angelo,' Gilbert said.
Angelo made an instinctive movement with his right hand towards his left armpit as if reaching for his gun, but he wore a bloused suede jerkin over his jeans, and was unarmed. Thank the Lord, I thought, for small mercies.
In his left hand he carried the package I had sent to Cambridge. It had been opened, and he was holding it carefully upright to save the cassettes from falling out.
He recovered his voice faster than I did. His voice and his arrogance and his sneer.
'What's this mug doing here?' he said.
'He came to sell me the computer tapes.'
Angelo laughed derisively. 'I told you we'd get them for nothing. This mug sent them. I told you he would.' He lifted the package jeeringly. 'I told you you were an old fool to offer that Irish witch any cash. You'd have done better to let me shake the goods out of her the minute her old man died. You've no clue, Dad. You should have cut me in months ago, not tell me when it's already a mess.'
His manner, I thought, was advanced son-parent rebellion: the young bull attacking the old. And part of it, I suspected, was for my benefit. He was showing off. Proving that even if I'd got the better of him the last time we'd met, it was he, Angelo, who was the superior being.
'How did this creep get here?' he demanded.
Gilbert either ignored the peacockery or indulged it. 'Mrs O'Rorke sent him,' he said.
Neither of them thought to ask the very awkward question of how I knew Mrs O'Rorke. I'd have given few chances for my health if they'd worked it through. I reckoned that this was one exceptional occasion when ignorance was emphatically the safest path, and that in prudence I should be wholly ignorant of the life and death of Chris Norwood.
'How come he still has the tapes to sell,' Angelo said cunningly, 'if he's already sent them to me?'
Gilbert's eyes narrowed and his neck stiffened, and I saw that his unprepossessing exterior was misleading: that it was indeed a tough bull Angelo was challenging, one who still ruled his territory.
'Well?'he said to me.
Angelo waited with calculation and triumph growing in his eyes and throughout his face like an intoxication, the scarifying lack of inhibition ballooning as fast as before. It was his utter recklessness, I thought, which was to be feared above all.
'I sent a copy,' I said. I pointed to the package in his hand. 'Those are copies.'
'Copies?' It stopped Angelo for a moment. Then he said suspiciously, 'Why did you send copies?'
'The originals belonged to Mrs O'Rorke. They weren't mine to give you. But I certainly didn't want you and your friend coming back again waving your gun all over the place, so I did send some tapes. I had no idea I would ever see you again. I just wanted to be rid of you. I had no idea you were Mr Gilbert's son.'
'Gun?' Gilbert said sharply. 'Gun?'
'His pistol.'
'Angelo-' There was no mistaking the anger in the father's voice. 'I've forbidden you – forbidden you, do you hear, to carry that gun. I sent you to ask for those tapes. To ask. To buy.'
'Threats are cheaper,' Angelo said. 'And I'm not a child. The days when I took your orders are over.'
They faced each other in unleashed antagonism.
'That pistol is for protection,' Gilbert said intensely. 'And it is mine. You are not to threaten people with it. You are not to take it out of this house. You still depend on me for a living, and while you work for me and live in this house you'll do what I say. You'll leave that gun strictly alone.'
God in Heaven, I thought: he doesn't know about Chris Norwood.
'You taught me to shoot,' Angelo said defiantly.
'But as a sport,' Gilbert said, and didn't understand that sport for his son was a living target.
I interrupted the filial battle and said to Gilbert, 'You've got the tapes. Will you pay Mrs O'Rorke?'
'Don't be bloody stupid,' Angelo said.
I ignored him. To his father I said, 'You were generous before. Be generous now.'
I didn't expect him to be. I wanted only to distract him, to keep his mind on something trivial, not to let him think.
'Don't listen to him,' Angelo said. 'He's only a mug.'
Gilbert's face mirrored his son's words. He looked me up and down with the same inner conviction of superiority, the belief that everyone was a mug except himself.
If Gilbert felt like that, I thought, it was easy to see why Angelo did. Parental example. I would often at school know the father by the behaviour of the son.
I shrugged. I looked defeated. I let them get on with their ill-will. I wanted above all to get out of that house before they started putting bits of knowledge together and came up with a picture of me as a real towering threat to Angelo's liberty. I didn't know if Gilbert would stop his son- or could stop him- if Angelo wanted me dead: and there was a lot of leafy Welwyn Garden City lying quietly in the back garden.
'Mrs O'Rorke's expecting me,' I said, 'to know how I got on.'
'Tell her nothing doing,' Angelo said.
Gilbert nodded.
I edged past Angelo to the door, looking suitably meek under his scathing sneer.
'Well,' I said weakly, 'I'll be going.'
I walked jerkily through the hall, past the attendant golf clubs and out of the open front door, taking with me a last view of Gilbert locking psychological horns with the menace that would one day overthrow him.
I was sweating. I wiped the palms of my hands on my trousers, fumbled open the car door, put a faintly trembling hand on the ignition key and started the engine.
