‘Braeburn; yes, we know about her. What about you?’
‘He never made me pregnant, but he had a good try.’
‘Did you sleep with him?’
‘No; I didn’t figure sleeping with lecturers was really where I wanted to be. The attention was flattering, I suppose, dinner and stuff. He was brilliant—but a moral vacuum. I remember once he was arrested for armed robbery while giving a spirited lecture on John Webster’s The White Devil. He was released without charge on that occasion, but the Braeburn thing was enough to have him dismissed.’
‘He asked you to go with him yet you turned him down.’
‘Your information is good, Mr Tamworth.’
Tamworth scribbled a note on his pad. He looked up at me again.
‘But the important thing is: you know what he looks like?’
‘Of course,’ I replied, ‘but you’re wasting your time. He died in Venezuela in ‘82.’
‘No; he just made us think he had. We exhumed the grave the following year. It wasn’t him at all. He feigned death so well that he fooled the doctors; they buried a weighted coffin. He has powers that are slightly baffling. That’s why we can’t say his name. I call it Rule Number One.’
‘His name? Why not?’
‘Because he can hear his own name—even whispered—over a thousand-yard radius, perhaps more. He uses it to sense our presence.’
‘And why do you suppose he stole Chuzzlewit? ’
Tamworth reached into his case and pulled out a file. It was marked ‘Most Secret—SpecOps 5 clearance only’. The slot in the front, usually reserved for a mugshot, was empty.
‘We don’t have a picture of him,’ said Tamworth as I opened the file. ‘He doesn’t resolve on film or video and has never been in custody long enough to be sketched. Remember the cameras at Gad’s Hill?’
‘Yes?’
‘They didn’t pick anyone up. I went through the tapes very carefully. The camera angle changed every five seconds yet there would be no way anyone could dodge all of them during the time they were in the building. Do you see what I mean?’
I nodded slowly and flicked through the pages of Acheron’s file.
Tamworth continued: ‘I’ve been after him for five years. He has seven outstanding warrants for murder in England, eighteen in America. Extortion, theft and kidnapping. He’s cold, calculating and quite ruthless. Thirty-six of his forty-two known victims were either SpecOps or police officers.’
‘Hartlepool in ‘75?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ replied Tamworth slowly. ‘You heard about it?’
I had. Most people had. Hades had been cornered in the basement of a multi-storey carpark after a botched robbery. One of his associates lay dead in a bank nearby; Acheron had killed the wounded man to stop him talking. In the basement, he persuaded an officer into giving him his gun, killing six others as he walked out. The only officer who survived was the one whose gun he had used. That was Acheron’s idea of a joke. The officer in question never gave a satisfactory explanation as to why he had given up his firearm. He had taken early retirement and gassed himself in his car six years later after a short history of alcoholism and petty theft. He came to be known as the seventh victim.
‘I interviewed the Hartlepool survivor before he took his own life,’ Tamworth went on, ‘after I was instructed to find… him at any cost. My findings led us to formulate Rule Number Two: If you ever have the misfortune to face him in person, believe nothing that he says or does. He can lie in thought, deed, action and appearance. He has amazing persuasive powers over those of weak mind. Did I tell you that we have been authorised to use maximum force?’
‘No, but I guessed.’
‘SO-5 has a shoot-to-kill policy concerning our friend—‘
‘Whoa, whoa, wait a sec. You have the power to eliminate without trial?’
‘Welcome to SpecOps 5, Thursday—what did you think containment meant?’ He laughed a laugh that was slightly disturbing. ‘As the saying goes: If you want to get into SpecOps, act kinda weird. We don’t tend to pussyfoot around.’
‘Is it legal?’
‘Not in the least. It’s Blind Eye Grand Central below SpecOps 8. We have a saying: Below the eight, above the law. Ever hear it?’
‘No.’
‘You’ll hear it a lot. In any event we make it our Rule Number Three: Apprehension is of minimal importance. What gun do you carry?’
I told him and he scribbled a note.
‘I’ll get some fluted expansion slugs for you.’
‘There’ll be hell to pay if we get caught with those.’
‘Self-defence only,’ explained Tamworth quickly. ‘You won’t be dealing with this man; I just want you to ID him if he shows. But listen: if the shit hits the fan I don’t want any of my people left with bows and arrows against the lightning. And anything less than an expanding slug is about as much good as using wet cardboard as a flak jacket. We know almost nothing about him. No birth certificate, not even a reliable age or even who his parents were. He just appeared on the scene in ‘54 as a petty criminal with a literary edge and has worked his way steadily upwards to being number three on the planet’s most-wanted list.’
‘Who’re number one and two?’
‘I don’t know and I have been reliably informed that it’s far better not to know.’
‘So where do we go from here?’
‘I’ll call you. Stay alert and keep your pager with you at all times. You’re on leave as of now from SO-27, so just enjoy the time off. I’ll be seeing you!’
He was gone in an instant, leaving me with the SO-5 badge and a thumping heart. Boswell returned, followed by a curious Paige. I showed them both the badge.
‘Way to go!’ said Paige, giving me a hug, but Boswell seemed less happy. After all, he did have his own department to think about.
‘They can play very rough at SO-5, Next,’ said Boswell in a fatherly tone. ‘I want you to go back to your desk and have a long, calm think about this. Have a cup of coffee and a bun. No, have two buns. Don’t make any rash decisions, and just run through all the pros and cons of the argument. When you’ve done that I would be happy to adjudicate. Do you understand?’
I understood. In my hurry to leave the office I almost forgot the picture of Landen.
4. Acheron Hades
‘… The best reason for committing loathsome and detestable acts—and let’s face it, I am considered something of an expert in this field—is purely for their own sake. Monetary gain is all very well, but it dilutes the taste of wickedness to a lower level that is obtainable by anyone with an overdeveloped sense of avarice. True and baseless evil is as rare as the purest good—and we all know how rare that is…’
Tamworth didn’t call that week, nor the week after. I tried to call him at the beginning of the third week but was put through to a trained denialist who flatly refused to admit that Tamworth or SO-5 even existed. I used the time to get up to date with some reading, filing, mending the car, and also—because of the new legislation—to register Pickwick as a pet rather than a wild dodo. I took him to the town hall where a veterinary inspector studied the once-extinct bird very carefully. Pickwick stared back forlornly, as he, in common with most pets, didn’t fancy the vet much.
‘Plock-plock,’ said Pickwick nervously as the inspector expertly clipped the large brass ring around his ankle.