by Tom Holt
Not the slightest flicker of emotion on Mr Gogerty’s face. “Not necessarily,” he said. “Besides, several of my best clients are mad. Absolutely barking. But if they want something found and they can afford to pay…”
Mr Huos got up and crossed to the window. Fantastic view from up here; you could see for miles. Ironic, really. “Stan,” he said, “I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anybody before. Discretion.”
“Of course.”
“Fine.” His neck was itching. He loosened his tie, undid his top button, ran a finger round inside his collar. “Not quite sure where to start, to be honest with you. All right, let’s try this. How long have we known each other?”
Mr Gogerty thought for a moment. “Five years, isn’t it?”
“Something like that.” Mr Huos turned away from the window, caught sight of the Ordnance Survey map on his desk and winced. “I call you Stan, but you don’t know my first name. Well, do you?”
“No.”
Mr Huos nodded. “Neither do I,” he said. “In fact, I’ve got no reason to suppose I’ve even got one. You’ve no idea what a nuisance— I mean, take signatures. I do a sort of doctor’s squiggle. I’ve been told that some of my business rivals hired the world’s leading handwriting expert to study my signature, try and find out from it what makes me tick. I haven’t got a clue what conclusion he came to, but it’s bound to be way off beam. I do the squiggle because I haven’t got any bloody initials. Simple as that.”
Mr Gogerty was frowning – ever so slightly, but that was enough. “You mean you’ve forgotten…”
“Maybe.” Mr Huos shrugged. “Maybe there wasn’t ever anything to forget. Do you know the first thing I can remember, my earliest memory? No, of course you don’t, stupid question.” He sighed, took a deep breath. “My earliest memory is looking at myself in a full-length mirror in the lobby of a two-star hotel in Tshkinvall – that’s a city in Georgia, in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains. I was wearing a rather dusty light grey suit with a pale blue shirt and a blue and green striped tie, plain brown shoes and odd socks. I had one hundred thousand US dollars in large-denomination notes stuffed in my trouser pockets, a galvanised steel earring in each ear, a small brass ring in my shirt pocket and Huos written on the back of my left hand in blue felt-tip marker. That was ten years ago.”
Mr Gogerty’s face hadn’t moved, except for his eyes. They were quite round. “Oh,” he said.
Mr Huos nodded. “I went to the Reception desk – I knew I was in a hotel and what a hotel was – and I had the presence of mind to ask for my key. The clerk gave me one and said the abbot had called while I was out. Luckily, there was a number for me to call. I could understand the desk clerk perfectly. I can understand any language in the world, by the way; I don’t even hear any difference. Chinese, Polish, Congolese, Tamil, to me it’s just someone talking. I could understand the numbers on the bit of paper the clerk gave me – what I mean is, I knew what the figure seven stood for and so forth – but writing was just squiggles. It took me a year to learn to read.”
Mr Huos paused for a while, as though he’d just carried a heavy weight up a long flight of stairs.
“Anyway,” he continued, “I went up to the room. No luggage, nothing at all that belonged to me. I called the number, asked to speak to the abbot. Nice man,” he added, “very sympathetic. Apparently, he ran a very old, very small monastery way up in the mountains – Russian Orthodox. Always had a soft spot for them because of that. They’d found me on a mountain-top, way up high. Twenty kilometres from the nearest road. You could only get there on foot, you couldn’t even get a helicopter in there. But the soles of my shoes were hardly scuffed at all.”
At that, Mr Gogerty lifted his head a whole inch.
“The abbot said I was out cold,” Mr Huos went on. “Not ill or anything, which was odd, because if I’d been there more than an hour I ought to have been suffering from exposure, hypothermia, something of the sort. Just fast asleep. The monks carried me down off the mountain. Really good, kind thing to do; must’ve been a hell of a job. I’ve been back there since, of course, many times. Anyway, when I woke up, they said, all I did for an hour was crouch in a corner making animal noises.”
“Animal noises,” Mr Gogerty repeated.
“Quite. Woof, grunt, bark, snuffle, that sort of thing. The monks reckoned I was possessed by devils. Can’t say I blame them, really. Anyhow, after about an hour of that I went back to sleep, and when they checked up on me a bit later, I was sitting up in bed asking for acorns. They sent for a doctor, but there wasn’t anyone who could come out to them, so they took me down into town in their donkey cart. I can’t remember any of that. I guess they’d found the money in my pockets, so they booked me into the hotel. Told the clerk I was American. And that,” Mr Huos said, with a sigh that seemed to start in his socks and pick up momentum along the way, “is all I remember. The finest Harley Street specialists reckon I’m somewhere between forty and sixty years old, can’t be more specific than that; perfect health, except some of my internal organs are in very unusual places – they work just fine, though, so what the hell – and I’ve never had more than a cold since. I came to this country after I made my first million – dollars, of course, not pounds. Since then, I haven’t looked back. You can read all about it in the financial papers.”
He stopped, and Mr Gogerty looked at him in silence for about ten seconds. Then he said, “Acorns?”
“So they told me. I’m sure they were telling the truth. Monks don’t lie, in my experience. I offered to build them a new monastery, the year before last, but they wouldn’t have it. They like the old one, they said. Wouldn’t take any money, but they finally accepted a golf cart. Only sort of vehicle that can handle the terrain,” he explained.
Mr Gogerty nodded. “So presumably you’re Russian,” he said.
“No idea. I don’t feel Russian. Don’t feel anything. I’ve got a Russian passport, of course. Cost me a thousand dollars, and it’s full of spelling mistakes. I keep it for sentimental reasons.” Mr Huos grinned. “I should think this is where you say that was the weirdest story you ever heard.”
“No, actually,” Mr Gogerty replied. “Far from it, in fact.” He rubbed his chin with his fingertips, then asked, “The earrings, you still got them?”
“Of course. I’ve had a team of forensic scientists working on them for the past two years, cost me half a million dollars. Result: they’re galvanised steel earrings. Why?”
“No inscription? Letters, numbers…”
“Completely plain.”
Mr Gogerty made a doesn’t-matter gesture with his hands. “And the other ring.”
“Probably a curtain ring, but they didn’t want to commit themselves.”
“Worn?”
Mr Huos frowned. “Sorry?”
“Was it worn down at all? Like it had been rubbed hard against something.”
Mr Huos was impressed. “Slightly,” he said. “On one side. What made you ask that?”
“Just a hunch,” Mr Gogerty said dismissively. “And brass, you said.”
“Yes.”
“And that’s what you’ve lost.” Mr Gogerty steepled his fingers.
“Yes. How did you—”
Mr Gogerty raised a hand for silence. Very polite, the way a bishop would have done it. “But you said it could be anything.”
Mr Huos sighed. “This is where it starts to get profoundly screwy,” he said. “It changes.”
“Changes.”
“Turns into things, yes.” Mr Huos paused. “You don’t seem…”
A slow, thoughtful smile crept over Mr Gogerty’s face, changing it almost out of recognition. “When I said I worked for a lot of mad people,” he said, “I didn’t mean to imply I don’t believe them. Except when I know they’re lying, of course. It turns into things.”
“Yes.” Mr Huos nodded vigorously. “In fact, I only know it’s really the brass ring because I’ve always kept it in a little b
ox – you know, a jewellery box, with a catch you press to open it. I know it couldn’t have got out of there, and nothing else could’ve got in. But when I open it, well, pot luck, you might say. No idea what I’m going to find in there. As long as it’s brass or gold and it fits in the box, it can be any damn thing.”
Mr Gogerty looked down at his hands. “Sooner or later,” he said, “one of us is going to have to use the M-word.”
“I’d rather we didn’t.”
“As you wish. We both know, though. It’s that stuff, isn’t it?”
Mr Huos said nothing, and nodded.
“Good,” Mr Gogerty said, “that’s that out of the way. Tell me, do you like apples?”
“Love ’em.”
“This business of not having a first name.” Mr Gogerty’s eyebrows twitched together. “I can see what a pain that must be. So, why didn’t you simply give yourself one? Make one up?”
It was as though Mr Huos couldn’t grasp the concept. “I couldn’t do that,” he said.
“Because?”
Frown. “It wouldn’t be right. I mean, it’s not my place.”
“To give yourself a name? Surely you’ve got every right.”
Maybe it had never occurred to Mr Huos before to see it in that light. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I wouldn’t feel comfortable. Like I was lying all the time. Pretending to be someone I’m not.”
Mr Gogerty frowned, but all he said was, “Interesting.” It was one of his key words, and he practised saying it in front of the mirror every night before going to bed. He knew thirty-six different inflections for the word interesting. On his lips, it was practically a language in itself. On this occasion, however, it didn’t seem to have its usual sedative effect.
“Well?” Mr Huos barked.
“Like I said, interesting.” (Number twenty-four: in-teresting.) “Now then, where do you last remember seeing it?”
Mr Huos smiled, a rather grim, sinister-circus-clown sort of effort. “It was in its box, in the right outside pocket of my lightweight navy-blue overcoat.”
Mr Gogerty’s left eyebrow twitched. “That’s quite precise.”
“I remember it distinctly.”
“Excellent. Any idea when?”
Mr Huos nodded. “About a quarter to five, day before yesterday. Before you ask, Asquith Street.”
“That’s just off Clevedon Road, isn’t it?”
“That’s right. I remember it clearly because I made a mental note not to forget to take it out of my pocket before I took the coat in to be cleaned.”
“But you forgot.”
Mr Huos looked puzzled for a moment. “That’s right,” he said. “Bloody odd, actually. All the years I’ve had the thing, I’ve developed a sort of sixth sense about it. No matter where I am or what I’m doing, I always know, at the back of my mind, exactly where it is. Sort of like a mum and her toddler, I suppose you could say.”
“Well, you would,” Mr Gogerty said, “since it’s clearly very important to you. I’m like that with my car keys.”
Mr Huos shook his head. “No, you’re not,” he said. “No offence, but there’s no comparison. You may be careful with stuff. I spend a huge proportion of my life making sure I know where that box is. It’s no exaggeration to say it’s an obsession.”
“But not this time,” Mr Gogerty prompted him.
“That’s the weird thing,” Mr Huos replied with a sigh. “I left the bloody thing in my coat pocket. I simply can’t account for it.”
“All right.” Mr Gogerty shrugged gracefully. “Be that as it may,” he said, “I can’t see there’s much of a problem. If it was in your pocket when you took the coat in, then presumably it’s still there. In the coat, at the cleaners.”
Mr Huos’ creepy smile burst out again. “Quite possibly,” he said. “But that’s fuck all help to me.”
“Why?”
“The cleaners. Gone.”
“Ah.” For a fraction of a second, Mr Huos flattered himself that he might finally have fazed Stan Gogerty. No way of proving it, of course. “Gone as in…”
“Not there any more. And that’s not all. I asked, and the woman in the shop where it used to be reckoned there never had been a cleaners there. Well?”
In the depths of Mr Gogerty’s Hovis-brown eyes a tiny spurt of light flickered. Then the ARP warden of self-control made him put it out, and he nodded. “And wherever it’s gone, it’s taken your coat with it.”
“I couldn’t give a stuff about the coat.”
“Well, of course not.” Perish the thought, added the line of Mr Gogerty’s jaw. “You don’t happen to remember the name…”
Mr Huos took a little green ticket from his shirt pocket and handed it over. Mr Gogerty reached for it, checked himself, took a pair of dentists’ forceps from inside his jacket and used them to lower the ticket carefully into a little clear plastic bag, which he then sealed before putting it away. “Thanks,” he said. “That could be very important. But you didn’t answer my question. The name over the door …”
“I don’t know,” Mr Huos said feebly. “Never occurred to me to look. I’ve only ever thought of it as the dry cleaners in Clevedon Road. Just human nature.”
Mr Gogerty smiled primly. “That’s assuming you’re human,” he said. “I can’t afford to make presumptions like—”
“Not human?” Mr Huos’ eyes were large, perfect circles. “What in hell’s that supposed to mean?”
As soon as Mr Huos raised his voice, it was as though some kind of shutter had come down over Mr Gogerty’s face. That one-way glass they use for identity parades, maybe. “No offence,” he said, “but given what you’ve just told me about yourself, it’s not something I can take for granted.”
Mr Huos was grappling with the implications of that like a one-armed man assembling a flat-pack wardrobe. “So you’re saying there’s people out there who look human, but really…”
Mr Gogerty nodded, an I’m-glad-you-asked-me-that- question look. “You’d be surprised,” he said.
Mr Huos, serious expression: “No, I wouldn’t.”
Mr Gogerty, total lack of expression: “Yes, you would. But let’s not get sidetracked. You’re right, it is odd, you forgetting like that. Interesting.” He produced a little spiral-bound notebook. It had yellow roses on the cover. “Nothing else unusual, out of the ordinary?”
“Nothing that springs to mind.”
Mr Gogerty found that interesting too, but he knew better than to say so. “Well,” he said, “you’ve given me plenty to go on.”
“I have?”
“Oh yes. Several promising leads.” He paused, clearly considering something. “Mind if I ask you a personal question?”
“Fire away.”
Mr Gogerty took a moment to choose his words. “Would you call yourself a tidy person? Fastidious in matters of cleanliness, that sort of thing.”
“I guess so,” Mr Huos replied. Then he added, “Very much so, actually. In fact, that’s probably the main reason my wife left me.”
“Really?”
Mr Huos pulled a sad face. “She had a problem with me washing up the pots and pans before we’d actually eaten the meal,” he said. “And colour-coding her wardrobe.”
“Excuse me?”
Shrug. “I’d go through her clothes putting them in colour order. All the blues, then the greens, then the yellows…”
“Ah,” Mr Gogerty said.
“In rainbow order,” Mr Huos went on. “You know, the order in which they appear in the spectrum.”
“And she didn’t like that.”
Another shrug. “Made perfect sense to me,” Mr Huos said. “After all, that’s the order colours are supposed to be in, in nature.”
Mr Gogerty looked at him for a moment, then wrote something in his notebook. “Married long?”
“Six weeks.”
“Anyway.” Mr Gogerty stood up. “As soon as I’ve got anything, I’ll let you know.”
“Thanks.” Mr Huo
s was looking past him, at the wall. “If you can hurry it along, I’d be very grateful.”
“It’s my top priority,” Mr Gogerty said.
Out in the street, Mr Gogerty found a substantial-looking lamp post and leaned against it while he pulled himself together. He’d had to put in an enormous amount of effort to keep his professional cool during the interview. Now his legs felt weak and his brain was seething like a saucepan of pasta, full of strange shapes moving at random.
Fifteen years in the trade, and he’d never heard the like; never from a client, not from his college tutors, not even after closing time at the 666 Club, when the old-timers like Ricky Wurmtoter and Kurt Lundqvist used to huddle in the darkened back room over a bottle of triple-distilled kvass and tell the stories they never told anywhere else. But they were all dead now, or gone to strange, dark places even he didn’t like to think about, and there was no one left he could ask, not about something like this.
Mr Huos liked apples…
Prising himself off the lamp post, he straightened his back, fished out his mobile and fired off a terse text message to the Regius professor of Ancient Greek at Oxford, who owed him a favour. Circumstantial evidence, even if his memory was correct. But there was so much of it. Acorns. Signs of wear on one side only of a plain brass ring. Galvanised steel, no numbers, but Schliemann and Chang, in their 1976 paper for the Nairobi conference, had postulated that data would inevitably be lost in the metempsychotic flux inversion. If he was right, if he was right…
He put his phone carefully back in his pocket. I am not an academic, he reminded himself; I’m a practitioner, which means I carry out the instructions of my clients. His mission was to find a misplaced object, nothing more. It was an inviolable rule of the profession: no conducting pure research into the customers without their express permission (which in this case might be forthcoming, but then again it might not; he could always ask, he supposed, but a refusal would probably bring with it a cancellation of his retainer, and Mr Huos paid so very, very well).