SYLVIE'S RIDDLE

by WALL, ALAN

  Inside the Labyrinth

  In the year 200 I Michael Landy took all the possessions he had acquired in his thirty-eight years of life and had them publicly destroyed in what had once been the C&:A store in London's Oxford Street. The items circled around slowly on metal conveyors until finally being cut up or dismantled and fed into shredding machines. Nothing was exempt, neither Landy's Birth Certificate nor his beloved Saab, not even his recordings of David Bowie. If it belonged to Landy then it had to be destroyed. As installation art-works go Breakdown was amongst the purest. You could only watch as the commodities moved slowly towards their extinction inside a mausoleum of commodities. All the images were destroyed. Except that an image had preserved their destruction. Even images of self-destruction left their traces in images, one of which Sylvie was looking at now. It hung on her wall, commemorating the moment when everything it represented disappeared. There was a tap on the door. It was Hamish.

  'I was wondering if we might have that little word. Would you mind? Perhaps we could go over to my office. I have some things there I might need to refer to.'

  And so Hamish walked back to his office, and Sylvie followed him a moment later.

  'Do sit down, Sylvie. Make yourself comfortable.' She looked at the small face, grown tight over the years with unrelenting calculation.

  'You may be aware that next Wednesday there will be an extraordinary meeting downstairs. The meeting has been called by one or two disgruntled members of staff who have taken against me for a gallimaufry of reasons. They plan to pass a vote of no-confidence. To do that requires, according to our rather eccentric constitution, that seven people support the motion. That would have to include you, according to my reckoning. I just wanted to make sure I could count on your support.'

  'You'll have to wait until the meeting. I haven't heard the arguments yet.'

  'No, but you understand the principles, surely. There have been some absurd allegations flying around that I listen in on people's calls, examine their emails or snoop on their communications as one complainant put it. What I actually do, of course, is monitor communications of various sorts.

  'To make sure nothing amiss is happening, or is likely to. There's been a resurgence of racism, even in academic life, and I have no intention of letting any of that happen here.'

  'I can't give you any assurances, Hamish.'

  'That's a shame, because another matter has come up, which I had hoped could be shelved indefinitely, but it's possible, I suppose, that it can't.' He then pulled open the drawer of his desk and took out a sheet of paper. She could see the university letterhead. 'I have here a complaint, of rather grave nature, concerning your behaviour. It comes from Or Thomas Helsey who, in fact, in a matter of a couple of months, will be Professor Helsey.

  'Tell me, Sylvie, do you really think it in order for you to use your special privileges here to seduce a married member of staff, after you have invited him to contribute to one of your lecture courses?'

  'I didn't seduce him.'

  'Well, that's not what Or Helsey says. His allegation is quite specific. A friendly meeting to discuss his part in your lecture course, an invitation to return here so you could lend him a book you thought would interest him. Then, before he'd had much of a chance to consider the matter, since I believe you had both been drinking heavily, events took place which he can now only recollect with shame. He has made a full confession to his wife, apparently, and has explained himself fully to me. He apologised for showing such disrespect to this institution, as to treat it as little more than a brothel, and I have accepted his apology as given in good faith.

  'But as for you, Sylvie, I honestly don't know what to say. I have your husband phoning up here, desperate to find out where you've been all night. At the same time another gentleman, certainly not your husband, phoning through the switchboard to leave coded love-messages, and then within days, hours for all I know, you are using the rooms in this institution to seduce senior members of the academic staff. Married ones too. If all this surfaces, I really can't see how your position here would continue to be tenable for long. '

  Sylvie stared at that face she'd never much liked, and liked even less now that it was imprinted with its smile of victory.

  'I hope we understand one another. I shall put this letter from Dr Helsey away, and sincerely hope I don't have to make it public. I am still jealous of this place's reputation, even if others aren't. Now perhaps you'd like to go, since I have some important work to get on with.'

  Special Dispensation

  Ex-Detective-Inspector Patrick Gregory had always been a methodical man, and he was now collating his evidence. The contact at the Inland Revenue had phoned him that morning.

  'She's at the Claymore. Top floor. Been there six or seven weeks.

  Booked in under the name of Smith. Now there's imagination for you. Beverley Smith.'

  He had kept his Detective-Inspector's ID, though it was long out of date, even though employing it as he was about to, would have landed him in serious trouble, were it ever to come to light. He had done this a few times before, and had no intention of being any less competent in his deception this time.

  Any chance of a room on the top floor?' he asked the receptionist over the phone. 'I have happy memories of a delightful weekend there with my wife many years ago. Being a widower now, I like to revive these memories from time to time.' Inspector Gregory was granted his wish. He would have to move quickly, for he would soon be spending serious money staying at the Claymore.

  'You're a widower now, are you?' his wife asked him from the kitchen.

  'Thankfully not.'

  So it was that a neat, middle-aged man in a suit and tie, his shoes polished and his cases trim and tidy, arrived at the Claymore Hotel for three nights. He had chosen a dark suit. That way, should he choose, he could be one of the hotel officials. As the porter carried his case in to the room, Patrick gave him a substantially larger tip than he normally would.

  'Thank you very much, sir,' the porter said. 'Anything else I can do for you?'

  'Yes, there is one thing. An old friend of mine, Beverley Smith, has been staying here. Been here a few weeks now. Do you know which room she'd be in?' The porter pointed.

  'Down the bottom of the corridor. On this side. Keeps herself very much to herself.'

  'Good old Beverley. Hasn't changed much then. See if I can coax her out of herself for an evening.'

  Patrick put away his things and rang room service. He asked for two gin and tonics. When they arrived ten minutes later, he waited until the waiter had disappeared back in to the lift, then he held the tray aloft and made his way down to the bottom of the corridor.

  'Room service, madame,' he said as he knocked. The voice sounded clearly from within.

  'What?' Patrick simply turned the handle and walked in.

  The room was not like his room. It had been draped with muslin sheets. They were everywhere, even across the window. And the woman lay on a sofa, dressed in white and blue. Her face was bronzed, and her body that of a well-fed woman, not plump exactly, but edging in that direction. Her feet were bare and he could see that they had been manicured and the toenails painted. He had a distinct feeling she had not done this herself. And there was a plate beside her, empty.

  'You ordered two gin and tonics, Madame.'

  'I did not.' Her voice was deep and authoritative. She was used to wielding power, he could see that. 'You're not the usual one, either. I told them only to send me Charlie. Please remind them of my instructions, and take the drinks away. I don't drink, as a matter of fact. '

  As he turned to go he caught sight of the book. He knew it well enough. He had now read his daughter's copy three times, making notes. He closed the door behind him, went down the corridor and re-entered his own room. He sat down on the chair by the window and started to drink one of the gin and tonics.

  Alex, if you'd only listened to me on the subject of logic and evidence, you'd still be here, my love.'

/>   From the age of fifteen, she had exasperated him, though the exasperation never cancelled his devotion to his only child. Mystical minerals, astrology, Kabbalah; whatever represented the most radical deviation from the traditions of western science, then that must evidently be where mental health and well-being lay. He could never read more than a few pages of whatever gibberish she'd taken to lately without a small explosion.

  'But Alex, the tradition of thought we've inherited is probably the richest the world has ever seen, whatever its shortcomings. Don't throw it all away for this ... this prattle.'

  Her father the policeman, you see, committed to his archaic notions of deduction and forensic proof. Which he was about to employ again right now. For ex-Detective-Inspector Gregory was indeed a rigorously logical men. Even his colleagues in the force used to remark upon it. He opened his brief-case and took out his pad. He wrote the number One at the top of the sheet and beside that he wrote Sun Tan. This woman who never leaves her suite looks as though she has spent the last month on a Mediterranean beach. He took the hotel brochure from the table and flipped through it. The solarium was in the basement.

  He took the lift down. He walked through the entrance. The woman in the white coat looked up from her magazine.

  'Do you have an appointment, sir?'

  'No, there's been an emergency and I must find Miss Beverley Smith. Is she here at the moment?' The woman clicked her screen and scanned.

  'No, she already had her session earlier.'

  'Thank you.' First problem solved then, without any need for the inner light. He went back up to his room, and wrote the number Two on the page. At the side of this he wrote the word Food. There were a number of possibilities. Either she used room service or she went out herself and brought things back, or she ate out. He couldn't quite see Lady Pneuma coming back with sandwiches in their plastic wrappings. The way she had lain on that sofa made budget indoor picnics seem unlikely. If it was room-service, then it had to be someone she trusted, and if she went out, then how did she make sure no one could recognise her? His contact in the Inland Revenue had told him that she greatly valued her privacy.

  'I mean she lives on air, Mr Gregory, so she obviously likes hiding in clouds.'

  Patrick found the kitchen. There was much coming and going.

  He stopped one of the cooks.

  'Charlie about?' The man in the white hat nodded over to a tall, thin young man, fairly good-looking in a facially-blemished, adolescent way.

  'Charlie, could I have a word?' Charlie immediately looked hunted. Patrick knew that look. He had encountered it thousands of times. 'I just want to ask you a few questions.' They went out to the corridor. Charlie's forehead was damp from the heat.

  'I haven't done anything wrong.'

  'I never said you had.' Patrick pulled his old ID out of his pocket, all the same. Charlie took one look at it and seemed to sweat a little more.

  'Do you do the deliveries for Miss Beverley Smith?' Charlie now started to look very nervous indeed, and Patrick decided this was the moment to use his non-existent position as an officer of the law. 'Look, son, this needn't go any further than you and me if you tell me what I need to know I won't tell your boss.'

  'She said it would be all right?'

  'What would be all right?'

  'What we did up there. I told her I'd get the sack if anyone found out about it.'

  What they did up there. He hadn't even thought of that, what with Lady Pneuma being so free from cravings of the flesh. 'Do you take her food up?'

  'When she has it up there. She usually goes out each day.'

  'What time?'

  'Between five and six. Different places, I think.'

  'Right, now you go back to work and say nothing to anyone, you understand? Got a mobile, have you, in case I need to contact you?' Charlie gave him the number. 'I'll be in touch.'

  At 4.50 Patrick sat in the lobby and watched. He was a good, anonymous watcher, but his watching turned up nothing. All variety of life passed through, Africans, Chinese, the odd Muslim woman in full garb, but there was no Lady Pneuma. At 6.l0 he went back up to the top floor and knocked on her door. He knocked louder and louder, but there was no reply. He went down to the solarium, the restaurant, the bar. Nothing. Obviously she'd vanished into thin air, another trick she'd learnt.

  This happened on the second day too, until a thought struck Patrick. He had been working his way through possibilities and discounting them one by one. But his eye had been caught by a particular shape. He had seen it come and go. He smiled to himself, nodded his head, went back up to his room, and phoned the number marked laundry.

  'Beverley Smith asked me to phone down. Is her burqa ready?' That's the long black number, is it?'

  That's the one, yes.'

  'One of them is. The other one only came in last night.'

  'That's fine. If you could leave it on her door.'

  'There's a note not to do that. To either deliver by hand or return.'

  'From now on, it will be all right on the door. She feels the time has come to make a public statement about her beliefs as a Muslim. Thank you.'

  So it was that on the third evening, Patrick Gregory followed Lady Pneuma, to the small restaurant along Piccadilly, where he watched her eat soup and bread roll, steak and chips, apple pie and ice cream, all washed down with a glass of wine, and a coffee to follow. Having carefully positioned himself two tables down, and set up his trusty old camera, he managed to take at least ten shots of her. She had removed enough of her face-covering, thinking herself safe in the corner, and was entirely oblivious to everyone around her as she ate. He could not remember ever seeing anyone eat with more concentration. At the next table a man and a woman were in dispute.

  'I don't just want sex, Jack. I want love. You just want sex, don't you?'

  'Ideally.'

  'Sex without love. Or responsibility.'

  'Whenever possible.'

  *

  It was a special dispensation. She had overcome the urges of the flesh, any carnal longings, so completely that she was now at liberty to indulge them if she chose. Because this would have been so hard to explain to her disciples, she chose to keep all this to herself. She could live without food, drink or sex, and yet she felt it made it easier for her to relate to her growing flock, and their all-too-human appetites, to remind herself continually what those appetites were, how they blocked the light, how they could swallow the air and turn it into dark matter again. For days at a time, she might not eat, since it had long ago ceased to be a requirement, but then at other times she re-joined them - out of choice; out of, if the truth were known, a kind of love and mercy.

  For she was not cruel. Even Charlie would end up more spiritual than he began, for she gave him a little instruction as they went. In any case, she gave him money. Money. They'd have to be making another DVD soon.

  By the time Rachel Askarli had paid her bill, resumed her facial protection and stood up to leave, Patrick Gregory had all the images he needed. He'd nailed her. He put a twenty-pound note in the bemused waiter's hand and followed her out. He was tempted to step up alongside and introduce himself, but he mustn't put pleasure before business. He might frighten her of£ He had one aim, and one only: to expose her for the charlatan she was and make sure nobody else ever suffered the fate of his daughter When he got back to the hotel he phoned Charlie's mobile.

  'Is she expecting you up there tonight?'

  'Ten o'clock. That's when my shift ends.'

  'Get herself dolled up for these little trysts, does she?'

  'I'll say. Suspenders, stockings, the lot. She could make quite a bit of money over in Soho.'

  'Well, you forget it tonight, son, but don't tell her you won't be there. I'm arranging a little surprise for her, and after that you won't see her again anyway. Just count yourself lucky you still have a job, and keep your mouth shut.'

  So it was that evening, when Lady Pneuma, aka Rachel Askarli, heard the knock on the door a
nd heard the name Charlie, she called 'Come in,' and found herself being photographed in a state of contrived deshabille. With a glass in her hand. The stockings attached to her suspender belt were deep blue, Mary's colour. Charlie had liked those. The newspaper was very grateful to Patrick Gregory, and he had made sure they paid him more than enough to recompense him for his stay at the hotel. It was in fact a newspaper he never read, detesting its shallow vulgarity and its relentless appetite for destroying reputations. That was exactly why he had chosen it. That's why its photographer was here tonight.

  Quorate

  'So all we need to do now is vote. Would all those who wish to vote for the motion of no-confidence in the present Director of Studies please raise your hand. Hands went up one by one around the table. Hamish's supporters kept theirs firmly on the mahogany before them. And Alison was counting. There was only one hand still needed to set the proceedings in motion. Sylvie hadn't wanted to stay at the Signum for ever; but she hadn't wanted to go just yet either She had no doubt that Hamish would be able to cut off her funding, and maybe even have her thrown out. And it would all be so sordid. What with the divorce coming on with Owen. Alison was staring hard at her Finally Sylvie smiled, a little fiercely, and raised her hand.

  'Motion carried.'

  They stood up and started gathering their papers. A few condolent hands fell on Hamish's shoulders. As she passed him, he said, though his words were barely audible, 'I do hope you know what this means.'

  'I hope it means that the Signum will be a better place, Hamish, though it's beginning to seem as though it might have to become one without either your presence or mine.'

  Alison grinned her way down the corridor.

  'Coming for a drink at the Phil?'

  'No, I don't think so. Better get back. Stuff to sort out.'

  'All that shit with Owen, I suppose. '