Dr. Yes (32 page)

    Jeff
cowered down. 'I hear! Okay! Sorry! There was no need to . . .' He looked
wistfully after the joint. His eyes flitted up to me. 'Where were you? I waited
and waited

    'Jeff,'
said Alison, lowering herself on to the log beside him, 'tell us what
happened.'

    He
nodded. He looked at me again.

    Alison
snapped: 'Do you think you could sit? You're making him nervous.'

    There
was another log. I rolled it closer with my foot, and then positioned it more
carefully with my hands. I wanted the heat from the fire, but I didn't want to
be so close that a spark could set my hair alight. I have precious little of it
as it is. When I took my hands away they were smeared with gunk. Being short of
my usual packet of baby wipes, I wiped them on my trousers. The countryside is
disgusting.

    Jeff
stared into the fire. As I sat, I said, 'Jeff . . .

    Jeff?'
His eyes didn't move. 'Did you see Pearl? Was Pearl here?' I was aware of
Alison's eyes upon me, but the question had to be asked. It was no time for
jealousy. I had a case to crack.

    'Pearl?'
Jeff answered vaguely. 'Pearl the singer?'

    'No .
. . Pearl from the clinic . . .' I was trying to remember if he had ever
actually laid eyes on her. 'Pearl . . . she's like a model, really
good-looking.'

    'Will
you just let him tell us what happened?' Alison snapped.

    'I'm
trying to

    'Then
shut up and let him do it in his own words. Jeff? Do you want to tell us? Was
Buddy here? Buddy Wailer?'

    'The
long tall thin man . . . yeah . . . Bunny was here . . .'

    'Buddy,'
said Alison.

    'Yeah,
Bunny. I followed Bunny.'

    'Buddy,'
I said.

    'Shhhhh,'
scolded Alison. 'You followed . . . ?'

    'I
followed Bunny. He was dragging the bags, I followed him into the trees. The
trees. Like giant Ents, but . . .
trees.
I couldn't get too close ... He
was gathering wood . . . wood for a fire . . . wood for
this
fire . . .
and I had to hide 'cos he couldn't get it lit and he went back to his car for
petrol . . . and he nearly saw me . . . the big, tall, thin man nearly stepped
on me . . . but he didn't and he came back and he lit his fire and he threw the
bags on it and some more petrol and up they whooshed .. . and the sparks just .
. .

    fizzled
up into the trees and the branches . . . and the hair of the Ents . . . but
then, but then there was someone else there . . .'

    'Pearl?'
I said.

    'No .
. . no . . . not the singer ... a fella, a man . . . I couldn't really see ...
I knew it was the big tall thin fella because I'd followed him, but in here, in
the dark, but with the fire, it was all kind of brighty-dark so it was hard to
tell . . .'

    'Silhouettes,'
suggested Alison.

    'That's
the one

    'Was
it Dr Yeschenkov?' I asked.

    'Didn't
you just hear him say he couldn't see because of the brighty-dark?'

    'Okay,
keep your hair on. Go on, Jeff, before you were so rudely

    'She
wasn't rude, she means well; she's really quite lovely, aren't you?'

    'Yes,
Jeff . . . you were saying . . . ?'

    'Oh
yeah, the fight . . .'

    'What
fight?' I asked.

    'Between
him and him. The longy tally fella and the newy fella ... I wasn't close enough
to hear . . . but they were arguing . . . and then there was ... it . . . you
know ...
it . .
. and I knew I had to get out of there

    
'It,
Jeff?' I said.

    'Yes,
exactly, a gunshot ... so I went back to the van and waited there . . . and
after a bit I saw lights coming towards me, so I keep my head down and a car
drives past . . . but I don't see who it is . . . and then everything's dead
quiet, and kind of spooky, and so I light up my gear just to chill a bit, you
know, and then when I'm chilled enough I wander back over here, and sit by the
fire, and have another one, and think about things, you know, and how pointless
it all is and how we should all just love each other, you know? I might have
had an E as well.'

    He
began to look around his feet, thinking that he'd dropped his spliff. Alison
prodded him and said, 'Jeff . . . if someone was shot . . . and someone drove
off . . . was there not a body?'

    'What
. . . ?'

    'Was
there no body when you got back here?'

    'Oh,
body, yeah . . . there's one kind of over there a bit . . .' He waved his hand
somewhere behind him.

    'Jeff!
Who is it?'

    'Did
I drop . . . ?'

    He
was, as they say, away with the fairies. And as far as I was concerned, they
could keep him.

    Alison
flicked the flashlight back on. I pointed down. There were drag marks through
the moss and twigs, leading up a short rise, and then down the other side. At
the bottom, someone, the killer, had made a half- arsed attempt to cover up the
body with fallen pine branches, but even without the torchlight, the size and
shape of his ad hoc burial mound would have made it stand out from its
surroundings.

    Alison
said, 'We should leave it to Forensics.'

    'Yep,
or we'll be contaminating a crime scene.'

    'Poor
Bunny,' said Alison. 'Don't you start. Anyway, it might not be him.' 'Who is it
then, Pearl in man drag?' 'Stranger things.'

    'It's
Buddy all right; look at the length of him.' 'Lived by the gun, died by the
gun.' 'If he has a phone on him, it may contain vital evidence. Who set him up.
Who the killer was.' 'All sorts of shit,' agreed Alison. 'And meanwhile the
killer is getting away.' 'Time is of the essence.' 'So we'd be within our
rights.' 'And we'll only contaminate it a little tiny bit.' We were in
agreement. We looked down at the branches.

    Alison
said, 'So?'

    I
looked at her. 'With these allergies?' She sighed. She crouched down and began
to remove the covering. In a few moments there was only one branch remaining,
the one obscuring his face.

    'Well,
are you ready for your big reveal?' Alison asked.

    'Just
do it,' I said. She did it.

    We
gazed at his still, pale face.

    And
then Alison said, 'Who the fuck's that?'

    'Rolo,'
I said.

    Alison
led, and sped, and I brought up the very distant rear. I had to cope with the
oncoming lights and an inability to go above thirty. Jeff lay snoring in the
back of the van, only emerging from his dope sleep on particularly sharp bends
for long enough to tell me how much he loved me. We had decided to get out of
Tollymore fast and thus reduce the risk of being framed, blamed, seized or
ambushed. We agreed to leave the metaphorical post-mortem until we got back to
my place.

    By
the time I arrived, Alison had been pacing about in front of the house for some
considerable time.
Obviously
I have not given her a key, but the front
door was
already open
and there were lights on within.

    I
joined her. 'Did you . . . ?'

    'No!
I've learned my lesson. This one you can do by yourself.'

    Jeff
clambered out of the back of the van and stumbled across to us. He put his head
on my shoulder and went back to sleep. I moved to one side and let him slump to
the footpath.

    The
door did not look as if it had been forced. Equally, nobody else has access to
the nineteen keys required to gain entrance. The lights were on upstairs
and
downstairs, something I would never be guilty of.

    ‘If
it's a trap,' I said, 'they, he or she wouldn't have left the door open. Or
maybe that's what they, he or she want us to think.'

    'A
double bluff.'

    'No,
just a bluff.'

    Alison
nodded. 'You're right. We use double bluff too easily. It's just a bluff. But
we can argue semantics all night; they don't get us in there to find out.'

    'They're
not semantics,' I said.

    There
was, of course, an obvious solution, and it was so apparent that we didn't even
have to say it; we only had to look at each other and nod.

    We
hauled Jeff to his feet.

    'Jeff,
honey,' said Alison, 'go on in and have a wee lie-down.'

    He
mumbled, 'Okay ... okay ... thank you . . . just a wee ...' and made his way
groggily up the steps and through the open door.

    He
disappeared from view. No shot rang out. There were no obvious sounds of a
struggle, though a squirrel with a peashooter could have felled him without
much of a problem.

    'What
now?' Alison asked. 'Could still be a bluff. They, she or he might be holding
him down, covering his mouth, or they, she or he could have just slit his
throat.'

    'We
could call Robinson.'

    'It
might be Robinson.'

    'Could
be Buddy'

    'Maybe
Buddy wasn't the problem; maybe your mate Rolo was the problem, and they
decided to kill two birds with one stone. Burn Arabella and shoot Rolo.'

    'Then
why not bury them both? Or burn them both?'

    'I don't
know.'

    'There's
something we're not getting.'

    'There's
a lot we're not getting.'

    'Maybe
the answer's waiting in there.'

    'Maybe
it is.'

    We
both stared at the house.

    Alison
said, 'I'm not going in, I'm pregnant.'

    'It's
not a disability, you know. You lot spend long enough whining for equality, but
when it's presented to you on a plate, you complain about the plate.'

    'You're
such a coward.'

    'It's
my heart.'

    'Your
heart will still be beating long after I'm gone.'

    'That
would be the pacemaker.'

    But
then there was a blood-curdling scream.

    And
all the more blood-curdling for being from a familiar source.

    'GET
OUT OF MY BED, YOU FUCKING RAPIST!'

    Mother
was home.

    She
said she'd escaped from the Sunny D, but I thought it was altogether more
likely that they had dumped her back whence she came. Her clothes were in bin
bags in the hall beside her wheelchair. She had dragged herself up three
flights of stairs to climb into her bed, she claimed, though I thought it more
likely that she had walked up quite normally, as I knew she was capable of it.
Judging from the ash and butts, she had stopped on each of the landings for a
cigarette. Beside her bed was a half-drunk bottle of sherry, and on the floor,
out cold, was Jeff.

    'I
didn't push him,' she said unconvincingly. 'He fell. Is he another one of your
sex partners?'

    'Mother,
I don't have any .. .'

    'And
what sort of a state have you left my house in? Everything's everywhere. It's disgusting.'

    Mother
knew all about disgusting, but this time she was wrong. 'Mother, you know I
have ASD; everything is the opposite of everywhere.'

    'That's
you all over, always contrary. Look at the state of you: dirty stains
everywhere, tramping them into my lovely house .. .'

    She
had a point. I'd wiped my hands on my trousers out in the forest but not
noticed in the dark the mess I was making. The gunk had dried into a waxy
substance that I could have scraped off with my fingernail, if I'd had any. I
would have to burn the trousers. They were infected now.