The Kill Artist

smile, then slipped below the water.
    "The phone is made by British Telecom."
    She was sitting in the cracked club chair, her body covered in a thick white robe. She rattled off the name and model number as she worked a towel through her damp hair.
    "There's no telephone in the bedroom, but he does have a clock radio."
    "What kind?"
    "A Sony." She gave him the model number.
    "Let's go back to the telephone for a moment," Gabriel said. "Any distinguishing marks? Any price tags or stickers with telephone numbers on them? Anything that would give us a problem?"
    "He fancies himself a poet and a historian. He writes all the time. It looks as though he dials the telephone with the tip of a pen. The keypad is covered with marks."
    "What color ink?"
    "Blue and red."
    "What kind of pen?"
    "What do you mean? The kind of pen you write with."
    Gabriel sighed and looked wearily at the ceiling. "Is it a ballpoint pen? Is it a fountain pen? Perhaps a felt-tipped pen?"
    "Felt-tipped, I believe."
    "You believe?"
    "Felt-tipped. I'm sure of it."
    "Very good," he said as though he were speaking to a child. "Now, is it fine point, medium, or bold?"
    She slowly raised the long, slender middle finger of her right hand and waved it at Gabriel.
    "I'll take that to mean bold point. What about the keys?"
    She hunted through her handbag, tossed him the silver mascara case. Gabriel thumbed the release, lifted the lid, looked at the imprints.
    She said, "We may have a problem."
    Gabriel closed the lid and looked up.
    Jacqueline said, "I think he may have seen me with his keys."
    "Tell me about it."
    She recounted the entire chain of events for him, then added cautiously, "He wants to see me again."
    "When?"
    "Tonight at six-thirty. He's meeting me at the gallery."
    "Did you accept?"
    "Yes, but I can-"
    "No," Gabriel said, interrupting her. "That's perfect. I want you to meet him and keep him entertained long enough for me to get inside his flat and plant the bugs."
    "Then what?"
    "Then it will be done."
    Gabriel left the building through a back service door. He slipped across the courtyard, scaled a cinder-block wall, and leaped into an alleyway strewn with beer cans and bits of broken glass. Then he walked to the Maida Vale Underground station. He felt unsettled. He didn't like the fact that Yusef had asked to see Jacqueline a second time.
    He rode the Underground to Covent Garden. The bodel was waiting in line for coffee at the market. It was the same boy who had taken Gabriel's field report at Waterloo Station. A black, soft-sided leather briefcase hung on his back from a shoulder strap, a side pocket facing out. Gabriel had placed the silver case containing the imprints of Yusef's keys in a brown envelope-standard size, plain, no markings. He sat at a table drinking tea, eyes working methodically over the crowd.
    The bodel bought coffee, started to walk away. Gabriel got up and followed him, slicing through the crowded market, until he was directly behind him. Gabriel bumped the bodel as he was taking the first sip of coffee, spilling some of it down the front of his jacket. He apologized and walked away, the plain brown envelope now residing safely in the outside pocket of the bodel's briefcase.
    Gabriel wound his way through St. Giles, across New Oxford Street, then up the Tottenham Court Road, where there were several shops specializing in electronic goods. Ten minutes later, after visiting two of the shops, he was back in a taxi heading across London to the listening post in Sussex Gardens. On the seat next to him was a bag containing four items: a Sony clock radio, a British Telecom phone, and two felt-tipped pens, one red, one blue, both bold.
    Karp sat at the dining room table, studying the exposed internal components of the clock radio and telephone through a lighted magnifying glass. As Gabriel watched Karp work, he thought about his studio in Cornwall and imagined he was peering through his Wild microscope at the surface of the Vecellio.
    Karp said, "We call it a hot mike. Your outfit calls it a glass if I'm not mistaken."
    "You're correct as usual."
    "It's a wonderful little piece of equipment, coverage of his flat and his telephone with the same device. Two for the price of one, you might say. And you never have to worry about replacing the battery because the transmitter draws its power from the telephone."
    Karp paused for a moment to concentrate on his work. "Once these go in, the monitoring operation is basically on