Dr. Yes (23 page)

    We
had been down some murky roads since we'd taken on this investigating lark, and
DI Robinson was usually there or thereabouts. I didn't really think of him as a
detective. He was more like a traffic cop, pointing us down one road, or
closing off another, or giving us a severe warning for going too fast. He
didn't seem very adept at anything apart from insinuation. In the beginning we
were a little scared of him, but that faded with each case we solved and his
role in their solution became smaller and more insignificant. He gave us
titbits of information and prayed that we could make sense of them, because he
couldn't. He knew that we paid no heed to paperwork or warrants or forensics,
and that therefore we would never physically be required to give evidence at a
trial, which meant that he could step in and try to make a provable case from
what we had discovered, and in the process claim the glory for himself.

    He
left us with a warning not to get involved, not to interfere with the official
police investigation, and to get a deadbolt for the front door because the
current locking mechanism was useless; what he had actually done was present us
with the little evidence he had and basically told us to see what we could do
with it because he didn't have a clue.

    When
he had gone, Alison sat over her coffee, and I sat over my Coke and Twix. It
was a balanced diet, in its own way.

    She
said, 'Liam Benson. A crack on the back of his head? If he smacked his head
while throwing himself in, wouldn't it be to the front?'

    I
nodded, but I was thinking, not necessarily. I had tried to commit suicide
during a swimming lesson in primary school by putting inflated armbands on my
feet and throwing myself into the pool. There were many ways to do it.

    I
said, 'He meets with Buddy, Buddy whacks him.'

    'If
they wanted him whacked, shouldn't it have been the other way round? Buddy
texts him and arranges a meet?'

    'Not
necessarily. Liam is worried, thinks for whatever reason that he can trust Bud.
Bud lets his handlers know Liam wants the meet; he's told to find out what
Liam's worried about, and if he needs to whack him, whack him.'

    'Liam
gay?'

    'Maybe.
He had a ponytail.'

    'Buddy
gay?'

    'Maybe,
they'd obviously met there before. Cigars are quite phallic. The cigar cutter could
represent circumcision and be a code for a preference for cut penises.'

    Alison
studied me. 'I'm not even going to ask.'

    'I
just know stuff. I know ten million things about murder, but I've never killed
anyone.'

    'You're
killing me.' I smiled. She said: 'Do you think we need to penetrate the gay
community, or that section of it that would hang out along the Lagan on a dark
night on the off chance of a quickie; see if they know anything about Liam or
Buddy?'

    'Maybe.
Although I can't. I'm allergic.'

    'To
gays?'

    'To
towpaths. Moss, mostly'

    'Well
not me. Not in my condition, and anyway, a man would have more chance, surely?'

    'It's
another one for you-know-who, isn't it? I'll call him as soon as I get into
work. We should be getting ready, unless, of course, you have a craving?'

    Alison
shook her head. 'Someone has just been murdered, we're trying to track down a
killer and expose a conspiracy, and you're still interested in getting your end
away. Man dear, before I met you, you wouldn't go within twenty paces of a
woman, and now you're rampant.'

    'Is
that a no?'

    'Yes,
that's a no. But if you're that desperate, why don't you pop down to Boots?'

    'Boots.'

    'Boots.
Ask them if they have something for a moss allergy.'

    She
winked. She left. I stewed. She was so stupid. There was
nothing
for a
moss allergy. I was destined never to tread a towpath in search of illicit
homosexual sex.

    We
drove. I stopped off at home to pick up my medication.

    Alison
said again, 'One day I'm going to get you off all that shit.'

    Inside
I checked my messages. There was a succession of increasingly frantic ones from
the Sunny D. The final one said, 'There's only so much shit we can take,' which
could be interpreted in several ways.

    Alison
went into work, and I opened up the shop. She was already sitting looking out
of the window with a fresh coffee in her hand by the time I opened the shutters
and undid all the locks. I waved back. I'd barely taken up my position when the
door opened and Jeff came in. He had an ugly swelling on the side of his face,
right about where I'd struck him with Jim Thompson's
Pop. 1280.

    I
said, 'I knew you'd come crawling back.'

    He
said, 'I'm not crawling anywhere. I came for my nunchucks.'

    I
took them from under the counter and held them out. 'Take them. Frankly I'm
embarrassed to even have them in the shop. Bruce Lee is so 1970s.'

    'Who's
Bruce Lee?'

    'You're
serious? How old are you?'

    'Twenty-three.'

    'And
you've never heard of Bruce Lee? I presumed that's why you had them. You were
emulating Bruce in
Fist of Fury.'

    'No,
I'm emulating Michelangelo in
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.'

    'Ah.
Right. That makes more sense.'

    I
nodded. He nodded.

    I said,
'That eye looks sore.'

    He
said, 'What happened to your nose?'

    'A
couple of heavies did me over. Usually you'd be here to protect me.'

    'Yes,
I would. But you attacked me for no reason.'

    'I
didn't attack you for no reason. I attacked you because you were being an
idiot.'

    'Violence
is the last resort of the scoundrel.'

    'That's
blatantly bollocks,' I said. 'If you're here to apologise, you're going the
wrong way about it.'

    'I'm
not here to apologise. I'm here for my nunchucks.'

    'Well
you appear to have them.'

    'Yes,
I do.'

    'Okay
then.'

    'Okay
then. See you around.'

    'See
you.'

    He
went to the door. It was still open.

    I
said, 'I suppose we could both apologise.'

    He
hesitated. 'I suppose.'

    'Okay.'

    'Okay.'

    'Okay.
You go first.'

    He
sighed. 'Okay. I'm sorry for being an idiot.'

    'All
right. Apology accepted.'

    'And?'

    'And?'

    'Your
apology?'

    'What
have I got to apologise for? You've just admitted to being an idiot.'

    'Fucking
hell! You're impossible!'

    'Do
you want your job back or not?'

    'Yes!'

    'Okay,
then come in and shut your face. There's books need shifting.'

    He
came in.

    I'm
good.

    I'm
damn
good.

    Every
ten minutes or so, Jeff would pull down the passenger-side mirror and examine
his reflection. 'I'm scarred for life,' he'd say, then repeat it over, and
over, and over. He was such a moaner, particularly when it was
obvious
that I was the one with the much more serious injury. My nose was swollen, it
was split, I had difficulty breathing, if I had ever been able to sleep it
would have affected my sleeping, my looks were ruined, I couldn't wash what was
left of my hair for fear of the chemicals in the shampoo infecting my injury,
my sense of smell was compromised and when I sneezed, due to my allergy to
unleaded petrol, blood corpuscles peppered the windscreen because it was too
sore to use a handkerchief.

    'It's
not a competition, you know,' Jeff said, and I became aware that I had said all
of it out loud. 'But now that you mention it, my eye is
throbbing
, it's
full of pus, I think I have blood poisoning. If I die from this it will all be
your fault.'

    'Yeah,'
I said.

    We
were in the No Alibis van, parked down a bit from the Yeschenkov Clinic. We
weren't exactly inconspicuous, but it was the only vehicle we had access to.
Alison's Volkswagen Beetle was in for its MOT and she felt the need to babysit
it despite her favourite mechanic volunteering to take it through for her.
Anyone would think she didn't want to sit in a car alone with me. It was dark
and the engine was off and neither Jeff nor I smoked, so there were no lights.
I had filled him in on much of what had happened since his bizarre flight from
my shop, and then we had moved on to discussing current trends in crime
fiction.

    'Stop
lecturing me,' said Jeff, after forty-three minutes. 'Can we not turn the radio
on or something?'

    'It's
stuff you need to know, Jeff. I'm educating you, free of charge.'

    'I
know enough.'

    'You
don't know shite from Shinola.'

    He nodded
in the darkness. Then said: 'I've no idea what that means.'

    'Shite
from Shinola?'

    'From
what?'

    'Shinola.
It's an old American brand of shoe polish. People would say it when—'

    'I
get it,' he snapped, and gingerly touched his swollen eye.

    'Okay.
Never mind. I'm only trying to help. It's always good to know about the books,
Jeff.
Prose.'

    'Yeah.'

    'I
hear you've been hanging out with poets again.'

    'Who
told you that?'

    'Little
birdie.'

    'What
of it?'

    'I warned
you about that. You'll be led astray.'

    'I'm
old enough to look after myself.'

    'You
think you are, but you've a lot to learn. You hang around with them, you'll be
sucked into stuff you can't handle.'

    'I
can handle it.'

    'You
think that. They suck you in with easy rhymes, but pretty soon that's not
enough, you're into it harder and harder; you'll hear talk of villanelle,
you'll want to try it, and then you'll be able to think about nothing else.
Take my word for it, once you go down the v-road, you'll be hanging from the
rafters. I know I was.'

    'Hanging
from the rafters?'

    'Yup.
And do you know what I learned from it, Jeff?'

    'No.
What did you learn from it?'

    'Use
rope, not string.'

    I
drummed my fingers on the wheel. Up ahead, the coming and goings at the
Yeschenkov Clinic had slowed and a number of lights had winked off, although it
was still, very obviously, a twenty-four- hour facility. Time doesn't stand
still. Although it can bend, in certain dimensions. Alison and I had taken up
position in the early afternoon and had been rewarded with our first glimpse of
Dr Yes himself at around three p.m., rolling up in a black Porsche convertible,
top down and teeth bright. It had personalised number plates.
DOC 1.
It
was now nine fifteen and his car was still in position in the small private car
park for which the front garden had clearly been sacrificed. The plan, insofar
as we had one, was to follow him. We were trying to establish his habits and
his haunts, and from there decide on the best place to isolate and confront
him, that is when we had something to confront him with. Evidence of any
wrongdoing remained very thin on the ground. I had invested a lot of faith in
Rolo, but I'd heard nothing; in retrospect I realised it was a mistake to give
him the Parker; he was probably so engrossed in it that he had forgotten his
mission. My e-mail appeal to my database of customers had yielded nothing
at
all.
I had contacted a fellow collector who ran a mystery bookstore in
Denver, Colorado, and asked him to check what his FBI contacts had on Buddy
Wailer. He got back to me pretty quick and said that they'd never heard of
Buddy Wailer, or any Wailer for that matter. I wasn't unduly surprised. If
Buddy was as good as people seemed to think he was, then he would have a whole
string of identities and multiple bank accounts. He could only operate
efficiently if he remained below the radar. He was an international assassin,
anonymous, faceless, free to travel without fear of being hauled in at passport
control. That or my contact in Denver was a bullshit artist who wouldn't know
an FBI agent from a plumber.