The Gigantic Shadow Read Free Page A

the arcs. Three or four people began talking to him at once. Would he sit down in his special chair, raise his head, raise his hand, lean forward. He did all that. While the make-up men were working on his face, brushing his jacket, he saw Charlie Cash hovering in the background, and raised a hand.
    Charlie came over. ‘You’ve got everything?’
    ‘In here.’ Hunter tapped his head.
    ‘Got a line to work on?’
    ‘I put my trust in God.’
    ‘You believers.’ Charlie turned down the corners of his mobile comedian’s mouth, went away.
    Jerry Wilton walked over to an inner room, opened the door, spoke to somebody there, came back.
    ‘We’re on in one minute. Quiet, please.’
    There was silence. Hunter could feel sweat trickling down the back of his neck. He wanted to wipe his forehead, but didn’t dare to do so. The green light showed and he heard a voice full of synthetic excitement and enthusiasm saying:
    ‘And now we bring you again our News Behind the News programme, with Personal Investigator Bill Hunter in another candid, unscripted, no-holds-barred interview with one of the most interesting personalities in London this week, with –’
    Now on more than a million television screens the announcer’s face was replaced by Hunter’s, and he began to talk: ‘–a modern mystery man, Mr Nicholas Mekles. To many of us Mr Mekles is a name. We know of him as the owner of a shipping fleet. He is lucky enough to have a fabulous villa on the Riviera and an equally fabulous yacht. He is reputed to exercise control over a dozen different organisations. Some people say he is the richest man in the world.’ Hunter paused, so that his next words should take on an emphasis that was not in his voice. ‘How has Mr Mekles reached his present position? Where did the money come from? Those are two of the intriguing questions I propose to ask this man of mystery. Mr Mekles is paying one of his occasional visits to London – he has taken the whole fourth floor of the Park Lane Grand Hotel, and it’s from a room in his suite that I am talking to you. And now, let’s meet the man of mystery.’
    The cameras followed him as he walked across the room and tapped on the inner door. This door opened and Mekles came out, a man like a very elegant lizard, olive-skinned and sweetly smiling, with small snapping dark eyes.
    The two men sat down, Hunter with his back to the cameras so that the audience looked past him at Mekles. For the rest of the programme the watchers would never see Hunter’s face. The effect had been adapted from an American programme, to give the impression of a man being judged rather than questioned. The cameras shifted occasionally to give a glimpse of Hunter’s shoulder as they looked over it, or to show the back of his head. Mekles, beyond him and in a lower chair, looked like a criminal undergoing interrogation.
    Open mildly. ‘Can you tell me, Mr Mekles, how this man-of-mystery label got attached to you?’
    The little man in the chair below him shrugged. His tongue shot out, briefly licked narrow lips. His voice was low, musical, the words perfectly comprehensible but the stress on syllables foreign. ‘I am a businessman. What is there mysterious about that? This man of mystery, you know, I think he does not exist. He has been invented by newspaper reporters looking for a story.’ His smile broadened. ‘Perhaps by television interviewers too.’
    The victim should not answer back. Hunter said sharply, ‘A businessman. What kind of business?’
    ‘Any kind that is offered. I buy things cheap, I sell them at a profit. That kind of business.’
    ‘Three years ago your name was mentioned in connection with an international report into the control of prostitution in Europe, and the shifting of prostitutes from one country to another.’ Mimicking Mekles’ accent slightly, Hunter asked, ‘That kind of business?’
    It was his belief that the only way in which the interview could take on some sort of