Free Reconstruction by Mick Herron Page A

technique Chapman used himself: repeat the last thing said in a tone somewhere between incredulity and sarcasm. Exactly how stupid would I have to be to believe that? And Malcolm Fredericks didn’t look stupid: he had one of those open, intelligent faces Chapman just naturally wanted to give bad news to.
    ‘What exactly was this witness a witness to?’
    ‘I can’t tell you that.’
    ‘Do you know, that’s the answer I was expecting?’
    Chapman shrugged.
    ‘The gun was lost,’ Fredericks said.
    Chapman nodded.
    ‘And now could be anywhere.’
    ‘It’s pretty clear who has it.’
    ‘And is he dangerous?’
    Well, he has a fucking gun, Chapman thought. Join the frigging dots. But what he said was what he’d practised saying, sitting in that plastic chair: ‘I suspect his intention will be to disappear. Head underground.’
    Fredericks said, ‘Let’s cut to the chase. We’re talking about terrorism, is that right?’
    ‘I can’t answer that.’
    ‘Your fuck-up has put an armed terrorist on the streets of my city. No, let’s get this straight. Your fuck-up has armed a terrorist and put him on the streets of my city.’
    ‘I imagine he’ll leave your city as soon as possible.’
    ‘Well, what a relief. But forgive me if I don’t base the official response to this on what you might imagine.’ He did something with his hands: rearranged some biros, or perhaps shifted a small piece of desk furniture from one side of his blotter to the other. Physical punctuation; the prelude to a new mode of discourse. He was about to deliver instruction. ‘I’ll need a description. I expect it to be a good one.’
    Chapman showed his palms, fingers wide. ‘I didn’t get much of a look, I’m afraid.’
    Fredericks stared long enough that a lesser man would have confessed.
    A police car left the station a couple of storeys below, siren wailing. Traffic stopped to let it out; it zipped round a corner; everything returned to normal.
    Fredericks said, ‘I thought you people kept files on your targets.’
    ‘Witnesses.’
    ‘You’re coming very close to crossing a line you don’t want to cross.’
    Chapman said, ‘It was Ashton’s call. I was along to observe.’
    ‘He was new to the job?’
    ‘I’m not sure he’s in the past tense yet. But either way, no, he’s not.’
    ‘So what are you, his line manager?’
    Chapman said, ‘We’re all slaves to procedure, aren’t we?’
    Fredericks picked up a pencil – he actually had a pencil on his desk. Chapman wondered what he used it for. He rolled it briefly between finger and thumb as if it were a cigar, then put it back. He might have liked to snap it, but had too much control. That was how you climbed the ladder in the Force these days. A big reason Sam Chapman was glad he’d never worn the uniform.
    ‘We’ve got a lorry driver,’ Fredericks said at last, ‘who saw the whole thing.’
    Chapman didn’t answer. It wasn’t, after all, a question.
    ‘When we find this man of yours,’ Fredericks went on, ‘I’m going to have a long talk with him. Personally.’
    Chapman said, ‘Now, there we have a line that you don’t want to cross.’
    Fredericks looked at him, long and hard, and it seemed, for those moments, that this spook looked right back through him – that Fredericks was nothing more than an interruption of the view of an office wall. Chapman’s eyes had a vacancy Fredericks hadn’t often seen. The time that came to mind was a years-old event: an arrest he’d made, his first summer on the Job. The eyes belonged to a sanitation engineer; a binman as was. And the blood on his shirt had belonged to his family, whom he’d just murdered for, as he explained to PC Malcolm Fredericks, ‘a very good reason’.
    When more than enough time had passed, Chapman said, ‘When he turns up, I’ll be informed immediately. Don’t question him. Don’t release him into anyone else’s custody.’
    ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’
    Chapman nodded