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“Then who?” Anna demanded, still with a soft, knowing tone. “Who is this problem of?”
“Right,” said Nicky. “It’s up to us, then.”
“The hell it is,” I said.
“Mate—”
“No, Nicky, listen to me for a second. This is a very bad guy, whoever he is. He’s killed a couple hundred people. What is it you think we can do?”
“Stop him,” Nicky said stubbornly.
“Okay, stop him, great. How?” He was quiet and I went on. “Because first you have to find him. We don’t even know it’s him—it could be her. Or them, or it. Where do we look? Rent a helicopter and hover over the Gulf Stream until we see bodies, then follow them back to the source?”
“You know how to find somebody, Billy. You were a cop.”
“Sure. You want to know how a cop would do it? Put it out on the wire to all the other cops. Wait for a clue. Hope somebody sees something. Wait some more. Dig through the files and try to find somebody with a past history of similar crimes. Tell the newspapers, set up an anonymous tip line. And then wait, for one of the thousands of other cops or citizens to call with a hint. We can’t do any of that.”
“All right, Billy.”
“And then, let’s jus
t suppose a miracle happens and we find him anyway. Then what?”
“What do you mean, then what? We stop him, mate! We make sure he never does it again!”
“How?”
Nicky opened his mouth, then closed it again. He looked like the silence hurt. “I don’t know,” he mumbled.
“Good. I do know. There’s only two ways to stop him. First, we could set him up to get caught by the cops. Have you had any luck getting the cops interested?”
“You know I haven’t.”
“Well, we can’t just grab him, tie him up and hand him over. Because then we’re guilty of piracy, kidnapping and who knows what. We’ll go to jail and he’ll go back to business as usual.”
“All right, mate, you made your point. What’s the other way to do him?”
“The other way is to kill him.”
There was a long silence.
“And if you’re not ready in your heart to look him in the eye and kill him dead there’s no point in even trying to find him. Which we can’t do anyway. Because sure as hell, he’ll kill us without blinking.”
I felt the pressure of Anna’s hand on me. “There is other way,” she said. I looked at her. She had been quiet while Nicky and I slugged it out, but she hadn’t quit on the idea of justice.
“In this country,” she said slowly, carefully, “are the people controlled by the television. If we are making the television interested, then are the police coming so as not to look bad, yes?”
“It’s not that easy,” I said.
“But what is easy to do with this? Is necessary. You are saying other way is impossible, so not easy is an improve, yes?”
“Fair is fair,” Nicky said. “Let’s have a go.”
“You two still don’t get it,” I said. “This isn’t some kind of Johnny Quest adventure. This is the big game. For keeps.”
“I think so too,” Anna said. “No one is saying to these dead people, ‘Get up, game is over.’”
“We know what we’re about, mate,” Nicky added.
