Carte Blanche - Jeffery Deaver [114]
Hydt continued, his dark eyes sparkling, ‘I was intrigued. After tea we continued on our rounds, but without the others knowing I hid the rubbish from that flat nearby. I went back at night and collected the bag, brought it home and went through it. I did that for weeks. I examined every letter, every tin, every bill, every condom wrapper. Most of it was useless. But I found one thing that was interesting. A note with an address in East London. “Here,” was all it said. But I had an idea what it meant. Now, in those days I was supplementing my income as a detectorist. You know about them? Those folks who walk along the beach at Brighton or Eastbourne and find coins and rings in the sand after the tourists have gone for the day. I had a good metal detector and so the next weekend I went to the property mentioned in the note. As I’d expected, it was a vacant lot.’ Hydt was animated, enjoying himself. ‘It took me ten minutes to find the buried gun. I bought a fingerprint kit and, though I was no expert, it seemed that the prints on the gun and the note matched. I didn’t know exactly what the gun had been used for but—’
‘But why bury it if it hadn’t been used to murder somebody?’
‘Exactly. I went to see the Clerkenwell man. I told him that my solicitor had the gun and the note – there was no solicitor, of course, but I bluffed well. I said if I didn’t call him in an hour he would send everything to Scotland Yard. Was it a gamble? Of course. But a calculated one. The man blanched and immediately asked me what I wanted. I named a figure. He paid in cash. I was on my way to opening a small collection company of my own. It eventually became Green Way.’
‘That gives a whole new meaning to the word “recycling”, doesn’t it?’
‘Indeed.’ Hydt seemed amused by the comment. He sipped his wine and gazed out at the grounds, the spheres of the burn-off flames glowing in the distance. ‘Did you know that there were three man-made phenomena you could see from outer space? The Great Wall of China, the Pyramids . . . and the old Fresh Kills landfill in New Jersey.’
Bond did not.
‘To me discard is more than a business,’ Hydt said, ‘It’s a window on to our society . . . and into our souls.’ He sat forward. ‘You see, we may acquire something in life unintentionally – through a gift, neglect, inheritance, fate, error, greed, laziness – but when we discard something, it’s almost always with cold intent.’
He took a judicious sip of wine. ‘Theron, do you know what entropy is?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Entropy,’ said Hydt, clicking his long, yellow nails, ‘is the essential truth of nature. It’s the tendency towards decay and disorder – in physics, in society, in art, in living creatures . . . in everything. It’s the path to anarchy.’ He smiled. ‘That sounds pessimistic, but it isn’t. It’s the most wonderful thing in the world. You can never go wrong by embracing the truth. And truth it is.’
His eyes settled on a bas-relief. ‘I changed my name, you know.’
‘I didn’t,’ Bond said, thinking: Maarten Holt.
‘I changed it because my surname was my father’s and my given name was selected by him. I wished to have no more connection with him.’ A cool smile. ‘That childhood I mentioned. I chose “Hydt” because it echoed the dark side of the protagonist in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, which I’d read at school and enjoyed. You see, I believe we all have a public side and a dark side. The book confirmed that.’
‘And “Severan”? It’s unusual.’
‘You wouldn’t think so if you’d lived in Rome in the second and third centuries AD.’
‘No?’
‘I read history and archaeology at university. Mention ancient Rome, Theron, and most people think of what? The Julio-Claudian line of emperors. Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero. At least they think so if they read I, Claudius or saw Derek Jacobi in brilliant form on the BBC. But that whole line lasted a pathetically