by Simon Okotie
All he was perhaps saying was that, to the extent that Marguerite’s disappearance related to the latter getting too close to the circumstances of Harold Absalon’s disappearance, then, given that he, in turn, felt quite close, now, to unearthing the circumstances surrounding Marguerite’s disappearance and, by extension, the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of the man Marguerite had been pursuing at the point of his disappearance, namely Harold Absalon, the Mayor’s transport advisor,9 then not only would he – Marguerite’s still unnamed investigative colleague – be being pursued (despite us not having seen the start of this pursuit at the moment of his cover having been blown, which may, of course, have taken place between books – not that he could possibly have any conception of this) but that his pursuers, in turn, assuming he had not had the craft or the art to shake them off completely, would be rapidly closing in on him as a means of thwarting his investigation into the disappearance of his investigative colleague and the subject that his investigative colleague had been in pursuit of at the point of the latter’s disappearance, with all this perhaps being underpinned by some universal investigative law involving the interplay of attraction and repulsion that he would, he hoped, sketch out much more fully at his leisure, were he ever to enjoy any given the demands of his role, the assiduousness with which he pursued it and the precariousness of the situation he currently found himself in. That all this was the case was confirmed, for him, by the sound of footsteps indicative of someone (or more than one) walking towards him being heard, by him, and it was partially at least for this reason that he wished to enter, as soon as he could, the relative safety of the area in front of the townhouse if not the interior of the townhouse itself.
14
He was aware, then, throughout these reflections, of the movements of his pursuers, who were now just a few feet away from him to his left, with Harold Absalon converging, he thought, from further away to the right. He had his back to them, as it’s known, as he crouched, opening the book of matches with his right hand to examine its interior, but could adjudge their approach from the sounds of their footsteps, which he could pick out, quite distinctly, from other sounds in his vicinity. He knew that the pursuers approaching from the left were just at the point at which they could turn towards him and apprehend him – either that or they would simply pass behind him and move on a trajectory towards Harold Absalon, perhaps thereby holding up the previously missing transport advisor, not necessarily with a gun, although this couldn’t be ruled out given the perilous circumstances that were unfolding. His pursuers were, then, behind and to one side of him facing in a direction at right angles to the direction in which he was facing: they were facing, in short, back up the road from whence, presumably, he had come, whereas he was facing the townhouse wherein lay the solution, he was certain, to his investigation into the disappearance of his colleague, Marguerite, last seen, as we well know, on the trail of Harold Absalon, the Mayor’s transport advisor. These pursuers were walking briskly, he thought, and, if they carried on in similar vein, as it were, and upon a similar trajectory then they would very shortly pass behind him – they would, in short, move from being pursuers or potential pursuers or even accomplices, were it to emerge that a crime had been committed in relation to the disappearance of his colleague, Marguerite, to being just passers-by or even to being in the category of those who might assist him in his investigation into the disappearance of Marguerite perhaps by holding up Harold Absalon, with or without resort to a firearm, or in some other way, but not literally in the sense of holding him physically aloft. This, then, was the moment that he had come to, crouching, still, examining, now, the interior of the book of matches in his right hand, whilst his left was momentarily prevented, by the constriction in that pocket brought about by the crouch, from entering the equivalent, which is to say the left-hand trouser pocket, to withdraw – or even to contact – a bunch of keys that he knew, now, to be present, keys to a gate and a house that could prove crucial to his investigation.
It was not that he had frozen at that moment. A lesser operative might have frozen even just momentarily, breathlessly, at such a critical juncture in the investigation. He, though, was simply waiting, with the appearance of absolute nonchalance, as he noticed that only one of the matches had been used, to see, just like us, how it would turn out. Unlike us, though, in that moment he had processed the consequences of all of the conceivable outcomes of his pursuers’ actions and was prepared to move to immediate implementation of one of numerous secret, still, to us, plans in response to the next minute movements of same. But none of these plans proved necessary: the pursuers who had been approaching from the left moved, at that moment, from being his potential pursuers to being passers-by or potential passers-by given that some of them were still to actually pass him by. This did not, of course, rule out game-playing by these pursuers; he was well aware that this manoeuvre on their part, as it were, could simply be a ruse to put him at his ease, to take him off his guard, as it were, so that they could then approach him from behind. He was, of course, well aware of this, and, without reducing his level of alertness, processed a number of subsidiary plans dependent on this and other eventualities on their part, plans that we, again, do not seem to have access to, either because they have not yet been declassified or simply because they were being processed at the back of his mind in a place that we, for whatever reason, cannot ‘see’. At the same time he got to his feet, as it’s known, with the book of matches in his right hand and the bunch of keys accessible again to his left (which is to say, within his left-hand trouser pocket, accessible to his left hand). In the next moment his pursuers had all passed behind him, thereby putting themselves in a clear category and allowing him to focus all of his energies on simply passing through the gateway and finally entering the relative safety of the area in front of the townhouse, pursued still, as far as he knew, by Harold Absalon, the Mayor’s transport advisor, who had been missing.
15
The area railings enclosed, as is to be expected, the area in front of the townhouse in question, yet they did not, in fact, separate that area from the townhouse itself. This he realised – or understood more fully – only as he passed into the area in question. And the way in which the area railings enclosed the area in front of the townhouse without excluding the townhouse itself related to the fact that, once one had entered the area enclosed by the railings, as he had now, of course, done, one was, in fact, free to move directly through it, as he was doing, and into the townhouse, particularly in the situation that he found himself in where he had a key that would literally unlock, he thought, the front door to that townhouse. In other words, and quite simply, the townhouse itself acted, effectively, as the fourth and perhaps final side of the area railings in that those railings terminated at points at the extreme left and right of the demesne of the house and were affixed thereon such that there was no gap between them and the wall that formed that façade whilst simultaneously acting, as it were, as the fourth and perhaps final side of the square or rectangle that was the shape of the perimeter around the area in front of the townhouse in question. He realised that perhaps the cardinal points would explicate the point most efficiently, but was not clear enough about the orientation of the townhouse in space to feel confident using these, so he put them to one side for now. Instead he relied, once again, on the fact that, given that the whole mass of us are following in his footsteps and, as has been established previously must, for that reason, be facing in the same direction as he is (or was), then he could, without jeopardising the clarity for which he hoped, like his investigative colleague and mentor, Marguerite, he was renowned simply use the descriptors ‘left’, ‘right’, ‘in front of’, and ‘behind’, to indicate which section of the area railings (and their surrogate – the façade of the townhouse itself) he was referring to (and leaving aside the question of whether the area in front of the townhouse was – or is – big enough to accommodate all of us or whether some of
the more tardy investigators amongst us would be left outside the area bounded by the area railings simply because, with so many of us potentially crowding in here, or there, following, he hoped, in his footsteps, that they – perhaps even we – would, in fact, find ourselves, some of us, excluded from that area).
The section, then, of the area railings that was behind him and (some if not all of) us contained, of course, the gate leading into that area, a gate, remember, that was open and which had not, in fact, been locked whilst giving the appearance, even to an investigator of his calibre, of having been padlocked shut as he, and we, had approached it; nevertheless, it was this potential lockability, to call it that, that enabled that section of the area railings to function in the intended fashion, which is to say, as a barrier that, when connected up effectively with other similar sections of barrier, enclosed an area and, more specifically, enclosed the area in front of the townhouse that some if not all of us would find ourselves within.
Similarly with the railings to the left and to the right of us: those to the right were connected to the section behind him (and some if not all of us) to form one corner in the secure square or rectangular perimeter that was the area railings, although finding a precise description for that corner was hampered, partly, by uncertainty as to our precise geo-location within that area – even if we assume we are among the fortunate few to have found ourselves within it, a conundrum that can, perhaps, be solved by referring to the corner formed by the sections of the area railings that were behind us and to our right as being diagonally opposite the corner formed by the façade of the townhouse in front of us and the section of area railings to our left; this would, he thought, be satisfactorily precise, if somewhat redundant geometrically speaking; similarly, he thought, for the corner that was behind us to our left: this was, by definition, diagonally opposite the corner formed by the façade of the townhouse in front of us and the section of area railings to our right. By extension, then (and he felt pleased that he had set up the conditions for describing this, now, adequately well, he hoped), he could say, for completeness, that the corner formed by the intersection (was the word) of the area railings in front of us to our right with the façade of the townhouse proper was diagonally opposite the corner formed by the sections of the area railings to our left and behind us, and that the corner formed by the intersection (was still the word) of the area railings to our left with the façade of the townhouse proper was diagonally opposite the corner formed by the sections of the area railings to our right and behind us; furthermore, at the instant, which was still some way off, when one of us passed through the dead centre of that area then that person could say, if they wished, that: the corner formed by the sections of area railings behind them and to their right was diagonally behind them to their right; the corner formed by the sections of the area railings behind them and to their left was diagonally behind them to their left; the corner formed by the intersection of the area railings to their right with the façade of the townhouse in front of them was diagonally in front of them to their right; and the intersection of the area railings to their left with the façade of the townhouse in front of them was diagonally in front of them to their left.
It was, then, these two corners in front of us, to the left and right, that were, in fact, the end points of the area railings; at those points, quite simply, the front façade of the townhouse took over as the means of bounding the area in front of same; something similar no doubt happened at the rear of the property, assuming that there was some outside space at that rear. Satisfied that the point had been made adequately clearly, even when judged against his more than exacting standards, he terminated this illuminating interlude so as to engage, once again, more directly, with his investigation into the disappearance of his investigative colleague, Marguerite, last seen on the trail of Harold Absalon, the Mayor’s transport advisor, who had been missing.
16
Note that, if the padlock had been unlocked, he would not have needed the keys had he wished to relock it. The reason he would not have needed the keys was because the padlock was of the conventional type such that once it was unlocked, which is to say once it was open, then any fool could lock it, which is to say that any fool could close it again. Such was the conventional padlock’s mechanism. In fact, it was only what was known as the ‘dead lock’ that didn’t lend itself to this mode of operation; in the case of the dead lock any fool needed a key to both lock and unlock it. This was a different sort of deadness, note, to the deadness of dead matches. In fact it was so different that he thought more than once about following up this lead, as, moving through the area in front of the townhouse, he slid his left hand into his left-hand trouser pocket whilst continuing to scrutinise the book of matches which he held between the thumb and index finger of his right hand. However, given the critical juncture that he had now entered upon in his investigation (etc), he felt that he must proceed with this lead; he felt, in short, that he must, as the training manuals put it, leave no stone unturned in investigating the circumstances surrounding the disappearance (etc).
The primary difference in ‘deadness’ between dead matches and dead locks was what? He brought in a third category to assist him: that of the dead leg. The dead leg was the closest of the examples to actual deadness, if one thinks of this term, as one traditionally does, as the opposite of aliveness. Quite simply a dead leg, or a dead arm for that matter, seemed, to its owner, so to speak, which is to say, to the person whose body it was a part of, and possibly to others observing that person, to have become momentarily lifeless; at least that person and any observers perceiving this deadness hoped, traditionally, in his view, that the lifelessness in that limb was momentary and, furthermore, brief. Leaving aside the reasons why the limb’s owner wished the lifelessness of that limb to be momentary and brief, he turned his mind to what this lifelessness consisted in, as he moved purposefully through the area in front of the townhouse whilst noticing that the book of matches had scribbled, in ballpoint, inside it, a sequence of two- and three-digit numbers arranged geometrically, in a hopscotch pattern. What he came up with in this regard was that lifelessness consisted, quite simply, in a lack of animation or the potential for animation. Could this definition of lifelessness be applied, he wondered, in the case of the dead match and the dead lock as a means of teasing out the difference between them? Certainly it was clear to him that a dead match, in its inability to bring forth flame when struck against a rough surface (including, in the case of the cowboy or, in rare cases, -girl, the sole of the boot) could be defined as dead in the sense of lack of fiery animation or the potential for such animation. But in the case of the dead lock? Locks of whatever kind, being of a man- (or, granted, woman-) made, mechanical mien almost by definition were unanimated – indeed, were inanimate. They did not, then, lend themselves to being alive. There was, then, at least one difference between the dead lock and the dead match – and indeed the dead leg: the dead lock did not have an alternative ‘live’ disposition whereas the dead match and the dead leg did. The sense of lifelessness in the case of the dead lock was not, to restate or reformulate, in comparison to a latent potentiality for life in that type of lock, that is in the dead lock. Rather the adjective referred, he thought, to another category of lock altogether and not one, to his disappointment, that could simply be dubbed ‘the live lock’. Even though this category of lock could not be labelled in this way it was still clear, he thought, which locks fell into which category, in that a lock was either dead or not, so to speak. Given that this was the case, in what sense of aliveness or liveliness does the category of lock that is not a dead lock refer? And how does that sense of aliveness or liveliness differ from that sense as applied to the leg or the match, both in their non-dead, as it were, state? Was a building taken to mimic something inert when it was in a deadlocked state and, if so, how did this inertness differ from that of the dead match or the dead leg?
He felt that the word ‘deadlock’ mi
ght be of some assistance in this matter, if he could only focus his mind on it rather than on the sound of his pursuer’s footsteps that he thought he could hear just behind him. When talks were deadlocked it implied, to his mind, that there was no movement and, with that word he came, perhaps, upon the unifying feature of the dead lock, leg and match, viz, the lack of movement. Granted the movement of which the deadness signified a lack came in different guises in the three instances: in the case of the leg it might most simply be a lack of movement in the leg itself (although he realised that it was more to do with a lack of feeling in that leg, rather than a lack of movement per se, but he left that objection to one side for the moment); in the case of the match, the lack of movement could be taken to relate to the flickering of the flame; and in the case of the lock the lack of movement could relate to the lock itself, when deadlocked, or to movement through the door or other aperture that had been deadlocked in this way. So far, so unsatisfactory, he thought, as he tried to fathom the meaning of the geometric arrangement within the book of matches. For it was only really the dead lock itself that fully exemplified this lack of movement when in its moribund, as it were, state. At least to that extent it resembled the dead body itself; the dead match and the dead leg, given that they both lent themselves to movement could not be compared in the same way to what must be taken as the defining example of something that was dead and to which all other dead things must surely be compared. Perhaps it was to other features of the dead body that the dead match and the dead leg referred – say lack of warmth in the former case and lack of feeling in the latter? Promising though this new angle on this branch of his inquiry was, he had to bring it to an abrupt close given that a partially clad woman had appeared, momentarily, at a first-floor window of the townhouse before abruptly disappearing again, a woman, moreover, that he knew to be Isobel Absalon, the wife of Harold Absalon, the Mayor’s transport advisor whose disappearance Marguerite had been investigating prior to his own disappearance.