Dr. Yes (15 page)

    'I
don't . . .'

    'He
was a solicitor's clerk and a
part-time clown.'

    'I
didn't know

    'Which
funnily enough is exactly what you are.'

    'I've
never worked in a solic—'

    'You're
a prat and a clown! And do you know how I know Mr Pratt the part-time clown
designed Cluedo in 1944?'

    'Did
you look it up on the—'

    'I
read it in a fucking book, you halfwit!'

    I
turned and swiped the first book that came to hand off the shelf behind me, the
shelf I used for special orders. I don't have much strength in my

    muscles,
due to my wasting disease, but I summoned up enough to hurl it at him, and it
caught him just above the eye, and he stumbled backwards into the
Buy one
and get one at exactly the same price
table, scattering the books, upsetting
the table and ending up lying amongst them on the floor. But only for a moment.
He immediately jumped to his feet. There was blood streaming down the side of
his face.

    'Jeff,
I . . .'

    'Did
anyone ever tell you you were fucking mental?'

    He
bolted for the door before I could give him a truthful answer. He yanked it
open, and stormed out, with the theme from the
Rockford Files
failing to
soothe his tortured and bleeding brow
at all.

    Immediately
overcome with worry and concern, I hurried across to the overturned table and
carefully righted it. The books, thank God, were not damaged, that is, apart
for the one Jeff had assaulted with his forehead. The blood on the cover could
easily be wiped off, but it had also soaked into the pages themselves, staining
them for ever. I turned it over. It was a rare copy of Jim Thompson's
Pop.
1280.

    It
was a sign.

    No,
literally
a sign. The population announcement and road sign design on the
cover of my 1964 signed first edition of his
noir
classic. Albeit signed
by I'm a Zebra Grisham.

    It
would be a mistake to say that there were any other parallels between Jim
Thompson and Augustine Wogan beyond the fact that they were both dead. Although
none of the American's books were in print when he exited this mortal coil in
1977 either, he had in fact experienced much success earlier in his career (the
Steve McQueen movie
The Getaway
was based on his novel), before his eventual
decline into alcoholism. In recent years his books have experienced quite a
revival. The French in particular have embraced him, with the director Bertrand
Tavernier turning
Pop. 1280
into the acclaimed
Coup de Torchon
in
1981. There's nothing like a set of subtitles to improve one's cultural
standing. Augustine, on the other hand, was never successful in the first place
and thus couldn't qualify for a revival. Discovery, perhaps. But if he was ever
to grace the shelves of any bookstore beyond my own it would probably only be
because of the public interest aroused by my unmasking of his murderer.

    I am
like the sun. The planets align around me. Some are gas giants. Like the vision
coming through the shop doorway.

    'Was
that Jeff I saw running away with blood on his face?' Alison asked.

    'He
had an accident,' I said. 'Paper cut.'

    'To
his head?'

    'He
was showing off.'

    'He's
a buck eejit. Is that it?' She was nodding down at the V-shape. 'It was a stroke
of luck you asking if the hotel had a museum.'

    'Luck,
genius, it's a fine line.'

    'So
what are we thinking this means?'

    'What
are
you
thinking it means?'

    She
smiled. 'I'm not playing that game.'

    'What
game?'

    'Where
you ridicule my ideas, or steal them for your own. Why don't you tell me what
you're thinking, Mystery Man?'

    'I'm
thinking you have a very poor opinion of me. But if you insist.'

    It
was like the sun being asked to prove why it is the dominant force in the solar
system, despite it being so fricking obvious.

    I
moved the V-cutter to the centre of the counter and began to slowly rotate it.
The best sunlight a spring day in Belfast could manage barely raised a glint
from its shiny surface. As it turned I began to summarise what we knew of the
circumstances surrounding the disappearance of Arabella Wogan and the death of
her husband. How she had checked in to the Yeschenkov Clinic, and either died
as a result of the procedures she underwent or blossomed because of them,
having a brief affair with Dr Yes himself before skipping the country.
Augustine was convinced she was dead, and that the clinic was covering it up to
such an extent that they had taken legal action to warn him off, and then,
finally, when he would not desist, he had been found murdered, by person or
persons unknown, for reason or reasons unknown.

    Alison
put her hand on mine, stopping the revolution of the V-cut. She said, 'Stop turning
that, it's annoying. And stop telling me stuff I already know. I'm not stupid,
I have the capacity to retain information. Tell me what you actually think is
going on.'

    'No.'

    In
truth, I surprised myself.

    'No?'

    'Yes.'

    'Yes?'

    'Yes,
no, I'm not going to say.'

    'You
have to say. We're partners.'

    I let
that one stand.

    'What
I mean is - we don't have enough information yet for me to form an opinion, and
an uninformed one will just lead us down too many blind alleys. Let's find out
more. Do you know something, Alison? I've read ten thousand crime novels

    'This
year alone. Are we going to get into the McGuffin thing again? Because it
didn't work out too well last time.'

    'No,
not at all. In fact, I'm not talking specifics at all, I'm looking at the
bigger picture, what we're doing here. What it all boils down to is nothing
more than a big grown-up game of Cluedo. Who did what to who, where and what
with. It's all guesswork. We need to get away from punts in the dark and
establish the facts, then I, we, can sit down and work out the truth.'

    She
was smiling at me.

    'What?'

    'You
know something, kiddo? I do believe you're getting older and wiser. You're
going to make a wonderful dad, in spite of yourself. Once we get the visitation
rights sorted out.'

    But
she was still smiling.

    I
don't know why. I had no intention of visiting at all.

    'Or.'

    'Or?'

    She
lifted the cigar cutter. 'One could argue that you haven't a baldy notion what's
going on, and that this V-cutter—'

    'What
do you mean, baldy notion?' 'Excuse me?'

    'Baldy.
There's no need. Receding is—'

    'Would
you get over yourself and stop taking everything personally, you twit. You
don't get it, do you? You phoned me up in a state of great excitement about the
V-cutter, not because you wanted to involve me, but to show off, to boast about
the fact that you'd discovered this supposedly crucial piece of evidence. You
didn't even think about what I could bring to the table ...'

    'What
can you bring to the . ..'

    '. .
.even though I work in an
effing
jewellery store that sells these
effing
things. Even though I ...'

    'I'm
not a child, you can say fucking if you ...'

    '. .
.make part of my living being able to talk knowledgeably about these fucking
things ...'

    '. .
.want to, though that said, it's not very ladylike and I wouldn't suggest
speaking like that in front of ...'

    '. .
.and I at least know that I only have to flip the fucking thing over to find the
hallmark, which not only tells us the type of metal, but who made it ...'

    '. .
.the children ...'

    '. .
.and when they made it, and look at this, the serial number, which will allow
us to track down where it was sold. I have my fucking uses, Mystery Man, and
did you say
children?'

    'Slip
of the tongue.'

    'You're
usually pretty precise about what you say.'

    I was
looking at her and thinking, my God, with your knowledge of bangles and
whatnot, you actually have a use after all, which gave me a brief moment of
elation, but this rapidly collapsed into a resigned depression, because the
likelihood of me having to call again on such expertise in the future was on
the anorexic side of slim, which meant that at her very moment of triumph she
had actually rendered herself useless, like a wasp dying after it has stung,
although she hadn't stung, but only provided me with some technical information
I could quite easily have looked up in a book.

    'In
this instance, I was not.'

    She
was still smiling. Sometimes I want to wipe that stupid grin off her face. With
a big mallet. Just keep hitting her right in the mouth with it until her teeth
are flying all over the shop, embedding themselves in the walls.

    Alison
picked up the V-cutter. From her pocket she produced a magnifying glass. She
had come prepared. It was a jeweller's magnifying glass. Compact. Not like the
big Sherlock Holmes one I kept under the counter. I had never had the nerve to
take it out of its box, at least after that first time. I had ordered it over
the internet in my initial flush of excitement after solving the
Case of the
Musical Jews.
When Jeff saw it he couldn't stop laughing. I told him I was
thinking of increasing the stock of crime-fiction- related merchandising we
kept in the store, a move I had long contemplated but bravely resisted. But he
knew. Jeff knew, and even when he stopped laughing, he smirked, and even when
he stopped smirking, it was in his eyes. Alison wasn't the first person in my
immediate circle whom I had contemplated battering with a mallet.

    'Well?'

    'Hold
your horses.' And then, after another ten seconds, 'Mmmm. Not as
straightforward as I thought.'

    'In
what...'

    'Lemme
go check across the road.' She lifted the V- cutter. 'Back in five.'

    'Could
you ... you know, just leave the V-cutter here?'

    'Why?
Do you think I'll lose it?'

    'No.
Of course not. But you know . . .'

    'Oh,
right. It's a crucial piece of evidence, and what if I trip outside the shop and
it falls down a drain? Or I drop it crossing the road and a lorry flattens it
and renders the serial number indistinct.'

    'I
just . . .'

    'Do
you want me to sign for it? That's what they'd do at the cop shop if they were checking
out evidence for expert evaluation. Better still, why don't I just make a note
of the serial number, and then maybe if you have some tracing paper I could
make a tracing of the hallmark, and maybe a pencil drawing of it from several
different angles, or maybe if you have CAD software I can render a 3D
impression of the fucking thing?'

    'Why
don't you just take it with you?'

    'Good
idea. I will.' She grabbed it and stormed to the door. 'Back in five,' she
snapped, and then added, 'Arse.'

    She
wasn't smiling now.

    Chalk
one up to me.

    She
was gone longer than five. More like seven and a half. Her ledger was soon
going to require a second volume. I would have killed the time reading, or
further investigating and probably solving the case at hand, but I was
distracted by a phone call. They are rarer than hen's teeth and my business is
in a constant state of peril, so I was more or less obliged to answer. With the
benefit of caller ID flashing up, I was able to at least establish that it
wasn't Liam Benson calling back, so I was happy to pick up. Not happy, given
that it meant some kind of interaction with a human being, or possibly a
dolphin, but resigned.