Beyond Good and Evil

by Steve Attridge

  “Ready for the fray, Dr. Rook?” she asked.

  “Ready and willing, Audrey, as ever.”

  I smiled and a nervous tic began below her left eye.

  Chapter Twenty Five

  “But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.

  “Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”

  “How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.

  “You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”

  Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

  The Academic Committee sat behind a long table doing what members of academic committees always do: compose their faces into what they believe to be personifications of profundity; dwell on their inconsequential rivalries and their own importance as if the Second Coming depended solely on them. A dull, cabbegey faced Professor of Something-or-other sat centre, while two pro vice chancellors, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, bookended him. Other instantly forgettable noteworthies attended, all in a self-entranced fug. Procedures were dealt with, during which I thought of the madness of the past week or so, the strange way my own life had interjected with the case, and how utterly unknowable reality was. I was vaguely aware that someone was talking to me, but I was thinking of Andy and Marty, Sam, and the slaughter in the Tunnel.

  “What do you say to that, Dr. Rook?” asked Cabbage head.

  “I can see both sides,” I said, wondering what it was I could see both sides of.

  Audrey cleared her throat significantly. Eyes swivelled to her. She furrowed her brow to suggest she was grappling with some vexing intellectual conundrum.

  “I would like to ask Dr. Rook about his commitment to the Outreach Programme,” she said, producing a notepad from which she was about to read, “given that on June 3rd he said that the catchment areas in question were ghettoes for overweight chavs and drugged offal on legs.”

  Venerable members of the committee coughed and looked at me accusingly. The acrid fumes of manufactured political correctness swirled in the room.

  “Actually I said bloated chavs and drugged offal on legs. But my head of department is right, I was extremely disparaging. I did not want to do it. But once there, I found there was an energy and natural intelligence about those kids that I loved. Perhaps it’s also a natural affinity – I was brought up by my mother, who was a cleaner, in a rough area of London. But I can honestly say it’s been a breath of fresh air and I’m really looking forward to the challenge. Thank you.”

  The venerable members nodded approvingly and Audrey blanched and a moustache of sweat started to glisten on her upper lip. Beware of what you want, Audrey Pritchard, I thought.

  “Dr. Rook, you say you enjoyed your preliminary Outreach teaching session. But how are we to gauge the mutual benefits?” Audrey asked.

  She was clutching at straws. I gave her my mobile phone.

  “Ring the Centre. The number’s there. Ask to speak to the kids. Kev is a good one to start. I think you’ll find he’ll give me a glowing reference.”

  The venerable members looked at Audrey. She smiled acidly.

  “That won’t be necessary,” she said.

  If she telephoned it would make her look suspicious and petty. There was one last move in this charade. I looked at the clock. It was getting late. I’d said 3 p.m. and it was already 3.10 p.m. I had to play for time.

  The Cabbage Prof looked at me.

  “Your Departmental Head also tells us that you have arranged for a replacement lecturer to cover your absence, Dr. Rook,” he said.

  “Yes, I believe he’s already signed the contract. An eminent…” and here, right on cue, a knock on the door. “This is him, I suspect.”

  I opened the door and Freud entered, now wearing Charlie’s three thousand pound Gucci suit, the blood almost sponged off and a bullet hole stitched shut, his matted hair greased back; his eyes danced and glistered, and it was impossible to avoid the smell that assaulted us all. Even dressed up like a Kensington High Street mannequin he had the whiff of insanity about him. He smiled at all in turn.

  “Dr. Freud,” I said. “Meet your new colleagues.”

  Freud bowed elaborately.

  “Delighted, pilgrims. No relation to Sigmund, unfortunately. I thought I might teach the first year Intro to Philosophy with a passing nod at the more ethical adventurousness of Foucault on sexual practices. You know – imaginary suicide festivals and orgies in which sex and death mingle in the definitive anonymous encounter. Partners without names, occasions to die liberated from every identity. Wei la la we are all waving not drowning.”

  There was a stunned silence. This should not be happening, they were all thinking, yet what to do? Like all good academics, they opted for doing not much at all. Shuffle papers, wait for the moment to pass, hope someone else takes the initiative. Freud scratched his head vigorously and walked the length of the table, eyeing them all.

  “I see conferences, multimedia events. Suicide, the forbidden erotic, sadomasochism. Stuff for students to grapple with in the dark that awaits us all. I long to know you all more… intimately,” he said, taking a brown envelope from his pocket with a cavalier flourish and putting it on the desk. “My references are embarrassingly impeccable. Berkeley, Cambridge, the Sorbonne.”

  “Excellent, Dr. Freud,” said Professor Cabbage. “The University will, of course, as a matter of routine procedure, vet you… I mean, we now have to take CB checks. All very tiresome… but…”

  “Vet!” said Freud leaping on the word. “Of course, you gather the whiff of my aromatic joie de vivre and you think – animal! Slip of the tongue. An interest in word play. Sign of mental instability. The world is fixed by words. Love. Work. Home. Country. Vagina. God. Money. Bowels. Once words become unstable – then all meaning and safety crumbles. Is a cow an animal or an arsey woman? Is a prick the male member or a cunt you don’t trust? Is a Nokia Lumia a phone or a Spanish whore? Words fall apart and so does the world. The life falls apart, then the mind. We live in a world that has the merest echoes of myth and the distant whiff of sex. Why did Branson call his company Virgin? And what is Apple but a gesture to Eden and the forbidden – the beginnings of illicit sex in the world? Let us reclaim these words in the real slush and goo of biology. Can’t tell you how I look forward to staff meetings where we can tease out these little gobshites. We must encourage students to explore the creative potential of unbridled narcissism and disorder, the ecstatic possibilities of chaotic bathhouse sex and the freedom of death.”

  Tweedledum and Tweedledee both had their mouths open. No one knew what to do. Freud had come up trumps and exceeded all my hopes. Professor Cabbage huffed and puffed a little, then asked if I could wait outside with Freud while they discussed the details of the replacement with Professor Pritchard. It was all over, bar the hatred and revenge fantasies. Audrey would be admonished. The Outreach trip would be cancelled, either by the Committee or by Audrey herself – she wouldn’t be able to bear the thought of me doing something I enjoyed. I was almost sorry. I liked Kev. But I had other things to do. The university post did allow Rook Investigations to continue almost on my own terms.

  Freud walked me to my office. I moved to open my wallet, but he put up his hand.

  “To be the agent of such disquiet and horror was a pleasure beyond reward. Farewell pilgrim. I think the Ferryman has moved on for now, but he has an eye for you.”

  We shook hands and he ambled away, oblivious to or delighting in the looks of confused distaste he excited all the way down the corridor and back into his tumultuary life. In my office Mrs. Simpson was fussing over Alfred, who was preening himself.

  “Dr. Rook, I never took you for a gambling man. Think it’s cruel meself, but each to his own.”

  What the hell was she talking about? She pointed with her duster at a post-it on my PC. On it – the word sugartop. She registered my puzzlement.

  “Don’t you know?” she asked.

  I told her
a friend had used the word and I didn’t know what it was.

  “It’s a dog. A greyhound. Racer. Me brother bets on ‘em. He lost a packet on this one. Poor old thing. Shouldn’t race ‘em. They give ‘em mush to eat ‘cos it’s easier to digest so their teeth go. Do terrible things when they’re past their racing use. Hang ‘em and all sorts.”

  A dog. Of course. We were at the races. I checked and that day Sugartop was running and, in fact, won. Sam must have put a bet on and his last thought in the world was to collect his winnings. To die with a winner in your pocket must be every sporting man’s idea of heaven.

  Chapter Twenty Six

  I got blood in my eyes for you

  Bob Dylan

  The next day Cass and I drove to a bungalow in Essex with a large yard at the back. A gruff man with a mop of black hair viewed us both suspiciously, but ten minutes later the deal was done. A thousand pounds for Sugartop, an ageing greyhound who deserved a loving retirement. He got in the car quietly, submissively, his black eyes a quivering host of wonder – what now?

  The answer came in the form of Mrs. Simpson, who was delighted with her new companion, fussing over him even as she shut the door. Cass kissed me on the cheek and told me I must be getting sentimental in my old age, but it wasn’t sentiment, it was tying up loose ends. I hate a case to finish raggedly and need full stops and underlining where it is due. Now I had one last thing to do before I gave myself the day off to plan my long neglected intention of writing a biography of Nietzsche, drink a lot of Rioja, and drown the barbed memories of the past week.

  Lizzie opened the door in her dressing gown. She looked slimmer. My first instinct was to rip it off and kiss her all over. There was a flicker of irritation in her eyes, then a thin weary smile. I knew David wasn’t there because his car, a silver new BMW, wasn’t outside. He was probably in his parliamentary office, trying to dig up scandal on his superiors in order to advance his sordid little career. I didn’t say this to Lizzie.

  “Hi. Listen, I’m sorry the Greek meal wasn’t a great success.”

  “It was a total disaster. No more than I expected,” she said.

  This was a hopeful start – we were talking. I waited to be invited in – it was still half my house, after all – but clearly that wasn’t going to happen.

  “I saw my father,” I said.

  Her eyes widened.

  “What? Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “My God. After all these years. It’s incredible. How was he? What happened?”

  I wanted to say: he stalked me and then it transpired that he was a hitman with a contract to kill me because it appealed to the warped sense of humour of a psychotic criminal, but my father then shot him instead, we exchanged less than a dozen words, and then he disappeared from my life again.

  Instead I said: “It was a social situation. We barely spoke. He disappeared again. Look, that wasn’t why I came. I wanted to say that if you really want a divorce, then OK, but come away with me first. A week somewhere exotic and peaceful, so that we can at least have a last chance to talk. An Indian summer.”

  “And on this exotic and peaceful Indian summer what would we talk about, Paul?”

  “Everything. Deep space. Roses. Mozart.”

  “David?”

  “If you like.”

  “And what would you say about him?”

  “I’d explain, in a grown up fashion, that he’s a greasy little turd who needs a wife as an appendage so that he can continue to brown nose his way up a nasty little career ladder, whereupon he will probably leave you for a twenty five year old researcher in order to make himself feel younger. Actually I think he’s probably gay. He patted my knee once in a very suggestive manner. Made my flesh creep. Liz, it’s me you should be with. You know that. Please.”

  The door closed in my face. Not for the first time. Seeing Lizzie always ignited my invective towards David and my mouth leapt in where my heart should be. My Rook Investigations phone rang. What deranged little drama awaited me now? I wondered, as I walked back to my car. There was a lot of day to get through.

  If you enjoyed Beyond Good and Evil you might be interested in Philosophical Investigations by Steve Attridge, also published by Endeavour Press.

  Extract from Philosophical Investigations by Steve Attridge

  Chapter I

  ‘When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks into you.’

  Nietzsche

  I walk around the supermarket, dividing things into three categories: fatal, near fatal and tasteless. I also plan the murder of my best friend, David, and invent a new illness to avoid going to work. I call it moroniphobia – a fatal aversion to idiots. My head of department, Jeremy, a man of few parts, none of them working, will use it as another spanner to try and lever me out. It’s hard to sack an academic, especially one who does so little, like me – how can they find fault with what doesn’t exist? Our horns are locked and I am now determined he will fail which will drive him closer to the breakdown he so deserves, and even this will be an indifferent, mousey affair. Travel back with me three months and you’ll understand the vehemence of my Jeremy project. He asks me to resign. I refuse. A week later I am summoned to a disciplinary hearing where Jeremy accuses me of propositioning a young female student. She is so anxious, he says, growing dewy eyed and sincere, that she does not wish to appear herself, or even be named, and as Head of Department, he must protect her confidentiality. Of course, she doesn’t exist. I am given a formal warning, nothing more, but mud sticks, as Jeremy knows. That was the moment I decided to destroy him.

  I am not naturally bleak; it’s a view I worked hard to attain and constantly fine tune, a view emanating from a settled conviction that the darkest thinkers are the most joyful: we have no illusions and can gleefully dissect the world with our cynical little scalpels. I settle on a bottle of Rioja, another of Famous Grouse and some Applewood cheese and grissini. At the checkout a bleached angel with bad skin, a lip piercing that makes her look like a hooked herring, and a nametag that says her thin chest is called Stacey, asks if I need help.

  “I think I’m beyond it,” I say.

  “With packing,” she says, no flicker of irony or recognition.

  I know what she is looking at. A middle aged man with circles under his eyes, scuffed leather jacket, tallish, thin. I could add: rakishly attractive, enigmatically self-destructive, oozing sex, but even I wouldn’t believe it. Some things I am very good at, but they don’t endear me to the human race. Then I get a call that distracts me from my self-obsessing. Not just any call, but from the most dangerous man in England. Psychotic, unwired, voice like a South London box of pins, the charm of a tarantula in a children’s party hat. God is in his coffin and all is wrong with the world. His name is Tony Steele, or Tony the Blade as he likes to be called, and he is a son in the principal crime family in South England. They make the Borgias look like soap fairies. Tony once nailed an enemy to motorway tarmac. It was the only corpse in police records to be found in three different counties.

  “Five o’clock. The Castle. Directions follow in an email. Don’t be late. It’s about an hour away from you.”

  Leave at four. That means cutting my three o’clock seminar down to half an hour. Bliss. On the drive into the discount warehouse that thinks it’s a university I ponder what the Steeles would want with me. No point in wondering if it is safe to go to the Castle, their family home; that would be like asking if it is safe to invite a pyromaniac to a firework party. You need to know why they would even ring me in the first place – a disgruntled, self-pitying middle aged man lost in the past and drowning in the present, more inert coward than action hero. I am like a bat: my real life is in the dark. I am ostensibly a disgruntled philosophy lecturer, but I am also Rook Investigations – a private investigator. Look me up in the Yellow Pages and you won’t find me. I only work for those who don’t want the police involved, and that usually means criminals, or at least people with secrets. But here’s another co
ntradiction – I am addicted to danger. It is one of the side effects of a path I chose some years ago. Nothing comes for free. I thought that by becoming a shadow in the underworld I would find someone I desperately need to meet – my father – but so far I have only found other shadows, and like reaching for the bottle I need a constant fix of danger. An odd and pathetic addiction for a coward, but then consistency was never my forte. Perhaps that’s why my wife Lizzie skewered my love on a kebab stick. I shouldn’t blame her, but I do. It’s easier.

  I finish the seminar early by upsetting a student – always a good ploy. On the whiteboard I scrawled “GOD IS MY FAVOURITE FICTIONAL CHARACTER” and asked who said that. No one got it. Homer said it. Homer Simpson. A girl with a pinched face and a mouth like a hairpin looked upset, and asked why I said something derogatory about Christianity every week. I said that I must be slipping if it was only weekly, and that if God was upset with me then he should complain in person and not send sad teenage envoys. It isn’t Christianity that upsets me; it is religious piety that makes me want to gun down baby ducks.

  “Do you want to be a myrmidon all your life?” I ask her.

  “I don’t even know what that means,” she says, her neck flushing behind her silver cross.

  “Then spend less time in church and more thumbing through a dictionary. It’ll do your soul more good.”

  I am being a complete bastard but it has to be done. Ultimately it’s an act of Mercy. The atmosphere soured and I sent everyone off to the library, which means they’ll all sit in the refectory gawping at apps on their smart phones.