The Queen v. Karl Mullen Read Free Page A

might be able to provide us with most important information.”
    “There you speak like a professional, Trevor. You weigh up the pros and cons. You think matters out.”
    “It’s a good thing someone does.”
    “Certainly. And the results of your thinking – I say this unreservedly – have been excellent. You have taken hold of our organisation – or should I say, of our disorganisation – and you have turned it into an effective machine. One which becomes daily more and more effective. Nevertheless, to you it is partly a business and partly, perhaps, a game. Yes?”
    “A little more serious than that, I hope.”
    “But to us, Trevor – I speak for all of us – it is neither a business nor a game. It is a religion. Not a contest against opponents, but a fight against evil. Against the devil. He is a very strong and crafty opponent. Therefore we have to use every weapon to our hands, legal or illegal. There are no rules in such a fight. No limits, no holding back. That is what our young warriors think when they fight the casspir armoured cars with pea-shooters and stones. When you are in the middle of it, when you can see what is happening, even death is immaterial.”
    “And you’re implying,” said Hartshorn drily, “that since I’m not in the middle of it, since I can only read about it and see doctored television films, I can’t feel strongly about it.”
    “Please don’t think that I’m criticising you. But was it not the same thing with some people in your country before the war? You know what our great satirist, Pieter Dirk Uys, called them – ‘Yes butters’. People who said, ‘I never knew it was so bad, but if I had—’ People who’d heard rumours of the sort of treatment the Nazis meted out to their opponents, but didn’t, or wouldn’t, believe it. It was only after the war, when they could see the dead and living skeletons, when they could smell the death camps for themselves, that they realised the truth.”
    Hartshorn shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He was a post-war child, but he could still feel the sting of the years of appeasement.
    “Can’t argue against that,” he said, “but I still think we’re on the right track here. Feeling our way forward, carefully.
    Avoiding pointless publicity. We can leave that to the cordon in Trafalgar Square. And the way things are going now, I’ve a feeling that soon, if we play the cards which are given to us, we shall land an arrow plumb in the middle of the target.”
    “Your metaphors are a little mixed, but I agree heartily with the sentiment.”
    Both men laughed.
    “Speaking of which, one step we must take. We must have this new man – Karl Mullen – discreetly followed.”
    “City Detectives.” Mkeba made a note. “Their men are all ex-policemen. A bit expensive, but very reliable.”
    “No shortage of cash,” said Hartshorn. “Particularly after that concert. By the way, why did you call him the pencil man?”
    “It was a nickname.”
    “Because he was always writing things down?”
    “Not exactly. No. It was something else.”
    “From the way you’re hedging, I guess it was something unpleasant.”
    “Not very pleasant. Certainly not the sort of thing I could have discussed with your daughter here. The fact is that he was an expert interrogator. He liked to used methods that left no outward mark.”
    “Electricity.”
    “Sometimes. But electricity was not brutal enough to appeal to the animal in him. So he used this implement. It was something he had copied from the methods of one Gestapo chief in the South of France. It was made of polished wood and looked like a pencil, but thicker and much longer. It was sharpened at one end. His victim was stripped and fastened, face downwards, on a bench. The pencil was pushed into him, slowly and carefully, right up until the point was several inches into the intestine.”
    “Obscene,” said Hartshorn. “And horribly painful.”
    “Painful, yes. But that was not the