Free Upright Piano Player by David Abbott

hire a private security firm—the implication being that he could afford it.
    “Saw you on the box the other night, sir. Nice suit.”

    So far, life had never given Henry the chance to find out if he was brave. He had been a child during World War Two and had kept his satchel on long enough to escape National Service and the skirmishes of the fifties. At school he had avoided violence, was always adept at talking his way out of trouble. Hewas nervous of heights, but that did not necessarily make him a coward, though he suspected that he might be. When the runaway horse threatens to flatten the child, would he spring forward and scoop the infant up in his arms, or would he be transfixed, too petrified to act? Why does one man’s adrenaline go to his legs and another’s to his fists? Faced with danger, would he be a runner or a fighter?
    Once, at Cambridge, Henry had been involved in a nocturnal prank when, for a bet, he and a group of friends had climbed into a neighboring college to steal their first eight’s oars from the Porter’s Lodge. They had been blacked up, and tanked up, too, but they did manage to remove the oars, and later deliver a juvenile ransom note to the Warden. But what Henry remembered most clearly of that night had happened earlier.
    They had been crossing the main quad, commando-style, running low, one at a time, across the lawn into the safe shadows of the cloister. The last of them had just made his ground when a triangle of light spilt out onto the grass—a porter had come out of one of the staircases for a smoke. Henry had hidden behind a pillar, his heavy torch poised to hit the porter if necessary. It would have been a gross overreaction. Even now he shuddered to think what might have happened had he felled the poor man. Henry would certainly have been sent down; he might well have gone to prison. Yet in the heat of the moment, he had been tempted. It would not have been courageous. The porter had been armed only with a Woodbine and Henry had been in no danger. What would he do now if confronted by the vandal? He had no idea.

    The night after the police stopped their patrols Henry’s car was vandalized. A can of white paint had been emptied onto the bonnet of his Mercedes. It made no sense. A few days later, Henry received a letter. Inside the envelope on a single sheet of paper someone had scrawled the letter P with a blue felt-tip pen. The postmark showed that the letter had been posted in Clerkenwell. The following day another envelope came, postmarked S.E.3, with the letter E inside. By the third day and the arrival of the letter R (posted in Hampstead) Henry had a good idea where the correspondence was heading. The next letter, again posted in a different part of London, confirmed his suspicion; someone not short of first-class stamps was calling him a pervert.
    “I’ve found with this kind of muck, sir, the victim often has an idea who might be sending it; I mean, pervert is a pretty specific kind of insult—you know, there’s usually some incident that gives us a lead. You’re sure you can’t remember any sort of unpleasantness?”
    “No, I’m afraid not.”
    Henry had never been a convincing liar and the detective sergeant did little to disguise his skepticism.
    “See, my theory is: someone saw you on the television and was able to put a name to your face and then track you down.”
    “I’m ex-directory.”
    “But Henry Cage & Partners isn’t, is it? I rang them—pretended to be a friend from New York who wanted to send you a book. They gave me your home address right off. And I don’t even have a good American accent.”
    Henry had not wanted to tell him about the head-butting and the incident in the brasserie. He sensed that the detective already half believed that the letters must have been justified. No one is called a pervert without reason. It’s not like “Rich bastard” or “Wog.” It’s not just a piece of name-calling, there’s a narrative attached to