I was halfway through saying, 'But what about snipers?' when she slammed the door shut and started walking.
I folded my arms and waited. She would be back.
But then I got to thinking that when she did return she would find the passenger window frosted and me with a neatly drilled hole in my forehead, because it might be just the opportunity the assassin was waiting for. The Russian sniper Vasily Zaytsev had shown infinite patience in the maelstrom of Stalingrad; how much easier must it be for my nemesis, nestled into the wild grass on a pleasant summer's morning on the County Down coast? He probably had a flask and sandwiches. It might only be slightly safer, walking along the beach, but at least I would be a moving target, and if I kept on the seaward side of Alison and close to her, there was a fair chance he would hit her by mistake, which would at least give me the opportunity to make a run for it. The sea would be my best chance of escape. I would probably drown, or suffer a stroke because of my morbid fear of jellyfish and riptides and sharks and seaweed, but probably was better than definitely, which would be the outcome of his second shot ramming into my brain if I stayed on the sand mourning for a lost love, or vainly trying to take shelter behind her lifeless body.
So I ran after her, my knees clicking and my calves straining. When I drew level she didn't acknowledge me, but there was definitely a little smile. I thrust my hands into my pockets and said, 'I really don't mind about Brian. Where does he live?'
'Why?'
'Just interested.'
'It doesn't matter. He's history.'
'So why did you say Brian when you answered the phone?'
'I was half asleep.'
'But he must call you sometimes, for you to think it was him.'
'Yes, he does.'
'Did he beat you?'
'No! He's a perfectly normal human being, and I was in love with him when I married him, but it didn't work out, and we still talk from time to time. I don't hate him, there's no reason why he shouldn't phone me, and no reason why I shouldn't think it was him when I answer the phone in the middle of the night, okay?'
I nodded.
'Is he an alcoholic?'
'No!'
We walked on. I kept my eyes on the promenade, about fifty metres away from us. There were dog-walkers there as well, and several of those little electric golf carts that disabled people con out of the government.
She said, 'What are we going to do about The Case of the Dancing Jews?'
'I don't know.'
'We're not really any the wiser, are we? We don't know that the burning man in your van is the same man who stole it, and we don't know if he committed suicide or was murdered, or if he was murdered, if he was murdered by the same guy who killed Rosemary and Manfredd and Malcolm Carlyle, or indeed, if they were murdered at all. As I see it, the problem is that each individual death – and we don't even know that Rosemary is dead, really – has a perfectly plausible explanation. Even this guy in your van. Let's face it, they found him in West Belfast, they'd set you on fire there for looking at them the wrong way. There's never a bullet, there's never a witness, it's only when you put them all together that you see a pattern, but maybe there isn't really one.'
'There is. There definitely is.'
There are always patterns. They just aren't always obvious.
'But maybe it's like people's names,' Alison continued. 'You know – there are millions of Smiths, and you could argue that they are all connected, but they're not. They just have a common name. And what do you call that game they play, the Kevin Bacon one?'
'Six degrees of Kevin Bacon. Any actor in Hollywood can be connected to Kevin Bacon because of the number of films he's made and the actors he's worked with, usually in six moves.'
'That's a pattern, but it doesn't mean that Kevin Bacon is responsible for every Hollywood movie. What if our Kevin Bacon is just that, someone you can connect to the deaths, but he's not responsible for them?'
'Okay,' I said. I actually quite liked that. But for the fact that we weren't dealing with Hollywood movies. We were dealing with real live dead people. The stakes were infinitely higher. Or lower, depending on what value you put on life or movies. 'What do you suggest? Ignoring the threat? Just go to work as normal, and then if someone comes through the door and blows my head off, at least you'll be able to acknowledge the fact that you were wrong and the pattern was the pattern was the pattern.'
'Well, what do you want to do? Hide in a deep hole until he dies of old age?'
'See, even you're saying there is a he.'
'Just for talk's sake. I don't know if there's a he. It might be a she. It could be me.' She raised an eyebrow. 'Or it could be a whole team of them. Or it could be no one, that we're just seeing Kevin Bacons.'
We walked on some more. I wasn't familiar with this or any beach, so it was worth keeping an eye on the incoming tide in case we were cut off and drowned like Chinese cockle-pickers, or stung to death by Portuguese man-o'-war jellyfish.
'Okay,' Alison said, 'if there's a he – and let's call him . . .'
'Fritz,' I said.
'. . . Fritz, for now, let's think about what he might do next. If he's got some kind of hit list, if he's intent on wiping out whoever might know Anne Mayerova's secret, even if they're not aware of it, who's actually left? You – but at the moment he thinks you're dead. Me? Well I'm about twenty-eight degrees of Kevin Bacon, an afterthought at best. So we don't really need to be so jumpy, at least for a little while. Then there's Anne Mayerova herself. But not only is she reasonably secure in a mental hospital, she's also fifty per cent do-lally and getting worse every day. She's no real threat. What about her ex-husband?'
I thought about that for a moment before shaking my head. 'He's been with her all these years and hasn't spilled the beans.'
'Okay, so it's whoever Fritz believes knows the contents of the book that's in the real danger right now . . .'
'A book that will never be written.'
'. . . and that can only mean . . .'
'Daniel Trevor.'
'Exactly.' She stopped. She gave me a look.
'Why are you giving me a look?'
'Isn't it obvious? If Fritz is ticking boxes, and the only one left to be ticked is Daniel Trevor's, then if we want to identify Fritz, if we want to stop him, if we want to prove one way or another whether he exists or not, and we don't want to call in the police because we'll look like idiots and might yet be arrested for hanging pine trees on Malcolm Carlyle, then we have to go down to his stupid bloody artists' retreat ourselves. We have to confront Fritz. We have to unmask him. The only way we're going to solve The Case of the Dancing Jews is by going down there and setting a trap for him.'
'Fuck off,' I said.
33
I didn't like the way she was moving in. Mother had warned me about women who used their siren lure to get their way, to steal your wallet, your heart, your soul, who parlayed hormones into lifelong commitment, and I think she was speaking from the perspective of having done it herself. Father had nothing much to offer beyond straight laces and a Lambeg drum, but she devoured him nevertheless, and afterwards he was never the same, he was harder, colder, and I think some small part of her regretted it. Alison was a nodding acquaintance who had propelled herself into position as my sidekick, but she was like a one-legged black lesbian greasing her way up the promotional ladder not because of her talents, but because she ticked all the right boxes and there was nobody with the gumption to stand up and pull the ladder from under her, causing her to fall and break her neck or at least cause the kind of spinal injury that would require a body cast. She had been my sidekick for barely a week, yet instead of being content to nod mindlessly along, looking to me for direction and instruction, she now thought she could decide how cases would be dealt with, where we would go, who we would talk to; she thought she had the experience, the insight and the courage to deal with the criminal masterminds when it was me who had the knowledge, who had read all the books. She sold bangle
s.
She had needlessly complicated my life, and all because I had taken pity on her being excluded from a creative writing course. Everything that had followed had followed because of her. I was all for dumping The Case of the Dancing Jews at its very earliest stages, while she was the one who'd led us deeper and deeper into the mire. She had forced me to go to Purdysburn to interview Anne Mayerova, to break into Malcolm Carlyle's next door, and now she had kidnapped me and was driving me to the Beale Feirste Books retreat in the wilderness of County Down knowing full well I was incapable of using public transport to return to No Alibis. At least there I would know my surroundings. I knew the escape routes. There were always civilians passing by or occasionally actually in the shop to deter assassins. I could call on the protection of my Botanic Avenue Irregulars, or my friend DI Robinson, or the Traders Association, or I could harness the power of the internet to track down and expose the killer. There was no risk of being attacked by a cow there. Or a goat. Or a pig. Or a donkey. Or a bee. On Botanic Avenue I could not suffer a catastrophic wheat allergy or lose my arms to a combine harvester.
She had turned my head. How had I solved my previous cases? By a cool appraisal of the facts, by using my customers as my eyes and ears, by the application of logic. Had I ever previously thrust myself into danger? Once or twice, perhaps, but only by accident. I hadn't hurled myself towards it, the way I was now, travelling at speeds in excess of thirty miles an hour on twisting roads around the corners of which we might at any moment plough into tractors driving two abreast, or sheep.
She was talking about setting a trap for Fritz. I couldn't set a trap for a mouse. Did she think we were going to camp out there until he just showed up? I had a shop to run. A mother to support. How could we ever trap an assassin, unless we challenged him to some kind of trivia quiz? She had no idea. The only trap she'd ever set was the one that ensnared me.
She said, 'Why are you holding on to the door handle?'
I let go of it. 'I'm not,' I said.
'Do you know the address of this place?' I shook my head. 'We can ask.'
'We're bound to come across it.'
'We'll stop and ask someone. It'll save time.'
'There'll be signs.'
'Okay,' she said, 'I'll stop and ask.'
When we came to the outskirts of Banbridge, Alison pulled into a Shell garage. While she was in the Mace shop asking directions, I realised that she'd left the keys in the ignition. I could just drive off. I would be saving my own skin. Self-preservation is man's primal instinct, although it seems rare in women. So as not to totally rule out the possibility of having some kind of sexual relationship with her at a later date, I could claim it was an emergency, that Mother had fallen and was lying bleeding and needed my help. Or that I had a migraine. That voices had told me to drive off. But as I computed these possibilities she bounced back into the car and said, 'It's not far.'
We drove on. I sneezed.
'You okay?' she asked.
'Hay fever,' I said.
I had been expecting some kind of garage-based business with a ramshackle B&B attached, but the Beale Feirste Books office and retreat was entirely different – a huge mansion with a dangerous-looking lake out front.
'Golly,' Alison said, 'I know this place.' I was still getting over her saying golly when she added: 'I came here when I was a girl. It was open to the public. Whatchamacallhim used to live here, you know, the actor . . . ? Irish actor.'
'Give me a clue,' I said.
'Sir Terence something . . . way back in the fifties . . . I think he left it to the National Trust or something . . .'
'So Daniel Trevor doesn't own it?'
'Maybe he's like the custodian. Or he could have bought it, maybe it wasn't paying its way. I mean we can't remember the actor's name, so maybe nobody else can either. Does it make any difference?'
I shrugged. Probably not.
We parked facing the house, and were just discussing what we were going to say to Daniel when he flew out of the front door and across the gravelled courtyard towards us, waving excitedly.
'Well, someone's pleased to see us,' said Alison, rolling down her window.
But when the publisher bent down to us, he didn't look happy at all. 'You can't park here!' he cried, his face engorged. 'The poets have to be able to see the lake! Take it round the back!'
He turned on his heel and stamped back towards the house.
Alison turned to me and performed the universal sign for wanking.
By the time we eventually made it inside, having parked in a bog of a field, and tramped mud through an open-plan olde worlde kitchen heavy with beams and dominated by a cream Aga, Daniel had calmed down a bit. 'Sorry about all that,' he said, vigorously pumping my hand, 'but the poets . . . any distraction and there's hell to pay. Come in, come in, welcome to Beale Feirste Books. To what do I owe the privilege? Have there been any developments? You will stay for dinner? We always have great craic.'
If there's anything that can freeze my blood, it's the notion of great craic. I abhor the word. It conjures Tourist Board images of beefy men in white Aran sweaters downing pints of Guinness and roaring on dense rugby players and some soup-voiced harlot inviting you to come to Ireland to enjoy a bit of it. Craic was disparate strangers being forced together for no good reason and being pressurised into having a good time.
'Sounds like a plan,' said Alison.
'Love to,' I added, 'but we have to get going.'
'What? You've only just . . .'
Alison laughed. 'He's only winding you up.'
I looked at her. I was not. No Alibis had been shut all day. I had none of my medication with me because I had not expected to go on a safari into the wilderness. And what if Mother even now was lying on the kitchen floor, her head split open and the grey matter spilled across the linoleum? What was Alison thinking of? She wanted to warn Daniel about Fritz? Fair enough. She wanted to check out the house, survey the surrounding land for camouflaged enemies? Okay. But in the name of God get me home before nightfall. I could not cope with widespread dark. I could not handle forced bonhomie or watching strangers eat food at close quarters. If she wanted to save Daniel Trevor she could do it by herself, on her own time. Good Jesus Christ, it was an old enough house to have bats. They had radar, they could find you in the fucking dark.
Daniel clapped his hands together. 'Excellent! You settle yourselves in there, get yourselves a wee drinkypoo, I've some paperwork to finish off, and then once the poets knock off around six, we can have a chat, then after that maybe we'll get this party started!' He smiled enthusiastically and punched me lightly on the arm, caring not one iota that I was a borderline haemophiliac and could easily have bled to death right there on that spot. 'Be good for you to get a little culture in your life, eh?'
He sauntered off out of the kitchen. I stared after him, seething.
Then from behind, a different voice said: 'Every time I hear the word culture, I reach for my revolver.'
We turned. Brendan Coyle, writer, teacher, was framed in the back door. Cocksure. Or just cock.
'Mr Goebbels, I believe,' I said.
'Actually,' Brendan responded, coming fully into the kitchen, 'that's a bit of a misconception. He said it, but he was misquoting the Nazi poet laureate Hanns Johst. What he actually wrote was, Whenever I hear of culture, I release the safety catch of my Browning. Although on the whole, I prefer the Goebbels version.'
He smiled pleasantly and came towards us with his hand outstretched. I glanced at Alison. I could tell exactly what she was thinking. How come an Irish writer like Brendan Coyle knows so much about Nazi poets?
I reluctantly shook Brendan's hand; it was fleeting. He took much longer to welcome Alison. He took her hand between two of his.
'How absolutely lovely to see you again,' he purred. 'Didn't we have a mighty joust last time?'
'Actually,' Alison purred back, 'it was a bit of a walkover.'
He looked pretend shocked and winked at me.
'Isn't she the feisty one?' He laughed uproariously, released her hand, and passed on through the kitchen.
I did not much like Brendan Coyle. Or Daniel Trevor. Or poets. Or old houses. Or the countryside. Or my sidekick. But it seemed that for the next few hours at least, I was stuck with them, come hell or high water. And with my luck, it would be both.
34
Even before I started taking my medicine, I never had any sort of capacity for or predilection for alcohol. I simply cannot handle it. People do not understand this. They will say, 'Go on, just have one. Let your hair down. Stop sitting in the corner like a sour-faced shit.' But I'm a stubborn soul and I would rather remain in the kitchen at parties, with the stacked plates and the dried-out chilli, than force myself to become what I am not. Besides that, with the regime of medication I'm on, even the merest sniff of alcohol can make me extremely ill. I had, for obvious reasons, like complete frickin' ignorance of what lay in store for me, neglected to bring my pills and potions and lotions and salts and suppositories and rubs and powders and sachets, although there was probably enough in my system to see me through to the autumn. But at least half of my medicines were liable to make me drowsy if I so much as sniffed alcohol. If there was a party starting and Fritz showed up halfway through it, and I had to make a break for it, the mere act of breathing in amongst drunks would rule me out of attempting to drive a getaway car or even a piece of heavy farm machinery.
The 'party' Daniel Trevor had predicted was in fact four poets, a sculptress, a screenwriter, a composer, a passing novelist in Brendan Coyle, a jewellery shop assistant/sidekick with ideas above her station, Daniel himself and me. There were many bottles of wine, candlelight and some kind of a casserole deposited in the middle of a long oak table by a cook called Emer, whom everyone referred to as Fanny, who quickly got off-side. Far from being the cultural oasis Daniel had predicted, the talk seemed to be mostly of football and tax evasion. Alison sat beside me, Brendan on her other side. She talked to him a lot. Although she barely spoke to me, once in a while she subtly elbowed me, to what end I wasn't quite sure. If she meant it to be somehow inclusive, she was failing miserably. Why not turn to me and talk? She could have probed my unknown depths instead of wallowing in the shallows of Brendan Coyle's suggestive banter. To distract myself, and at the insistence of the oversized sculptress, whom I was attempting to talk into making a life-size sculpture of Kojak for outside No Alibis, for free, obviously, I accepted a glass of wine. One of the poets suggested that he write a sonnet based on The Murders in the Rue Morgue, which I could have stitched by a stitcher and framed and hung in No Alibis, and I said no, I didn't think so. He poured me a second glass of wine, red this time, and asked if I didn't agree that poetry was proof that God existed, and I said no, that nettles probably were. The screenwriter asked what my favourite films were and I told him that this changed on a weekly basis, but that if he was interested I could show him the charts of my favourite films that I had maintained since 1978, and he seemed to think I was joking. The composer said she would put the Poe poem to music and then when it was hung in my shop I could play a tape of her composition at the same time and it would be very Zen. I wanted to head-butt her and say, 'Stitch that.' I drank some more wine and watched the back of Alison's head as she nodded and giggled. I hated Brendan Coyle. He was the type of man women said they hated, they absolutely hated, they absolutely and categorically hated, and then they went to bed with him. I was the type of man women said they hated, and then they went home. I could not for the life of me understand the difference between us, apart from his good looks and celebrity, although it was literary celebrity and therefore tiny. I was pretty sure if he was asked what his favourite film was in March 1983 he wouldn't have had a baldy notion.
Mystery Man Page 18