'You said I wasn't going to get anything to eat, then someone brought me food,' I said. 'Was there something in the food?'
'Food?' she asked. She looked at Agent Crosskill. 'I only authorised water. Did you say he could get food?'
Agent Crosskill did a peculiar thing with his lips and shook his head.
'I hope you enjoyed it,' she said. 'Maybe that'll be your last supper.'
I'd hardly noticed the taste. It had been one of those bowls of food that was halfway between soup and stew, and I hadn't even been able to tell if there'd been meat in it.
'The Jigsaw Man,' she said. 'Tell us about the Jigsaw Man.'
Why was it that I didn't want to tell them about the actual Jigsaw Man, the guy who sat at a table in a café doing puzzles and dispensing wisdom? It sounded, somehow, like I was turning him in. I'd feel like a traitor. But why? What was there that I could tell them?
Here I was, consumed by how I'd got off the plane, consumed by how I'd lived for the last six months, kicking myself over the stupidity of how easily I'd walked into their hands, and consumed by how long ago that was, worrying about Brin and how she must be feeling. All the while, the two American agents seemed to be concerned about the Jigsaw Man.
'He was just a guy in a café,' I said suddenly.
I don't think I'd even made the definite decision to say anything. It just happened, like breathing or walking. I was sitting in silence, then suddenly the words were out there, hanging somewhere in space.
'Which café?' asked Agent Crosskill. So he hadn't lost his voice, although it sounded rough.
'In Glasgow,' I said.
'The Stand Alone?' she asked.
I paused before answering, although only because of my surprise. If they already knew that the Jigsaw Man sat in the Stand Alone, quite possibly they already knew as much as I did. And then, suddenly, I realised that they knew a lot more than I did, and they were just looking for anything that might flesh out their knowledge.
'Yes,' I said.
'What was the Jigsaw Man's real name?' she asked.
I'd never known. I shook my head.
'Were you the Jigsaw Man?' asked Agent Crosskill, his voice harsh.
'No.'
'You won't tell us about the Jigsaw Man,' he said. 'You won't tell us why you didn't get on the plane. You're not telling us anything. So, think about your answer. Are you sure you're not the Jigsaw Man?'
Was I the Jigsaw Man? Because I'd sat twice at the Jigsaw Man's table? Did that make me the Jigsaw Man? Was I also to be held accountable for his crimes?
Crimes? Where had that come from?
I wanted to lie down in a warm bed under a thick duvet. It might take me a while to get to sleep, but I'd be able to pull the duvet over my head and shut it all out. Shut them all out.
'Are you the Jigsaw Man?' demanded the woman, her voice suddenly severe.
'No!' I said.
Was I?
'You've been identified as the Jigsaw Man,' said Agent Crosskill. His words came out cold and brutal.
'What?... What?'
'Someone, somewhere, thinks you're the Jigsaw Man,' she said. 'And the Jigsaw Man is wanted in the US on terrorism charges. If found guilty, and there is little doubt that he will be, he will face the death penalty.'
She paused, let those words sink in, then she said, 'Now maybe you might just want to start talking about the Jigsaw Man.'
'The Jigsaw Man's not a terrorist,' I said. I was aware that my voice sounded weak again. Confused. It would have been nice to try to stay on top of the situation, but staying on top of things was not one of my strong points, even when I wasn't sleep-deprived.
'Persuade us otherwise,' said Agent Crosskill.
What were my strong points?
'I don't know what to say,' I said. I felt stupid saying it.
'That's fine. Then we're going to think you're the Jigsaw Man, and we can begin proceedings to get you executed. You ever hear about those people who live on Death Row for over twenty years? You won't be one of them. Death can come very quickly on Death Row when the accused is considered a danger to the state.'
'I'm not the Jigsaw Man,' I said.
'Who's the Jigsaw Man?' snapped Agent Crosskill. 'Tell us about the Jigsaw Man.'
'He did jigsaws,' I said, the words suddenly tripping out. They sounded panicky and stupid. 'He owned the café. He just used to sit there, days on end, every time you went in... every time you went in, he was sitting at the table, doing a jigsaw.'
'He never went to the bathroom?'
I was so confused that I wasn't even sure which one of them said it. I just heard the words.
'No. I don't know. He must have, but I never saw him. He must have.'
'And? What else?'
'I don't know. Nothing else.'
'Did he ever talk?
'Sometimes. He usually said hello. Sometimes he'd give you advice.'
'Why did you ask for advice?'
'I don't know, I just... we just said hello to him. He had a knack for knowing what your problems were.'
'He knew about you? How did he know about you? He spearheaded some intelligence network? He had access to surveillance?'
'No!'
'What then?'
'I don't know... I don't know...'
They paused. I suddenly became aware that I'd been leaning forward with my head in my hands and my eyes shut. I sat back quickly and looked at them. They were both still there. Agent Crosskill. His No Name colleague.
'When was the last time you saw the Jigsaw Man?' asked Agent Crosskill.
I stared at him across the table. When was the last time I saw the Jigsaw Man? Was I supposed to know the date? I didn't know the date.
'Years ago. Before I was married. Eighteen years, maybe. No, longer. Twenty. Twenty years. He told me about his wives. That was the last time I saw him. He told me about his wives.'
'What about them?' asked the woman.
'Just... about them. That he'd had wives. That he'd been married four times.'
The two of them stared across the desk. This was the part of the interrogation that was conducted in silence in order to intimidate me. It was working.
'What?' I asked.
'The Jigsaw Man has never been married,' she said.
'He was. He told me.'
'He lied,' said Agent Crosskill.
Once again I felt lost. I didn't know what to say to them. It's a common metaphor to equate one's circumstances to drowning. The sensation of floundering around, unable to breathe, unable to get hold of anything, helpless.
I felt like I was drowning.
'All I know about the Jigsaw Man was that he owned the Stand Alone Café, that he'd been married four times, and that one day he went off travelling and I never saw him again.'
As soon as I had finished speaking, Agent Crosskill rose from his seat, gave me one last harsh, judgemental look, and then walked quickly from the room, closing the door behind him.
I stared at the woman, who did not take her eyes from me.
'That's all I know,' I found myself saying.
'The Jigsaw Man did not own the Stand Alone Café,' she said. 'The Jigsaw Man was never married.'
I shook my head.
'Perhaps it's a different man,' I said. 'You must have them mixed up.'
'Your Jigsaw Man sat in the Stand Alone Café in Glasgow and did jigsaw puzzles?'
She pronounced Glasgow as if it rhymed with Mao or thou.
I swallowed. I nodded. Mouth felt dry. Head felt leaden.
'There's only one Jigsaw Man,' she said. 'And as far as anyone can tell, I'm looking at him right now.'
She got to her feet and followed Agent Crosskill from the room. I watched her go, and then lifted the water, unscrewed the cap, and gulped down the remaining half bottle.
11
The plane wasn't landing. It was crashing. So out of control, being battered and tossed around so much, that it felt like it would break up even before impact. There were screams
. One woman in particular. I think it was a woman. So high-pitched. So consistent, a high tone of despair.
In my head the scream became a seagull, the tone ululated. The sound of the fuselage buckling, of the plane in the storm, became the sound of the waves. Bigger waves, as though a large boat had just passed close to shore. I could hear them. I could hear Brin, chatting amiably. No worries. A beautiful, warm day by the sea. I could hear Baggins laughing. Baggins was laughing. Giggling. Ice cream on the end of her nose.
This was my happy place. This was our happy place. I was there. I could be there. I didn't have to be on the plane if I didn't want to be. The noise of the plane was swallowed up by the waves. I could be wherever I wanted. My whole body curled up into as small a coil as I could manage, every muscle and sinew tensed, my hands pressed hard against the panel in front of me, my head pressed hard against my hands. I was protected. The plane didn't matter anymore. The juddering and the shaking, various items flying around the cabin, the cries of panic. I wasn't there. None of it was real.
The sea was real. The gulls were real. That was the noise. That was the sound that surrounded me. The cry of the gulls. I had to focus on that. Such an emotive, evocative sound. The gulls. Focus on the gulls.
Some part of me, somewhere, was aware of the sudden ear-splitting crash as the bottom of the plane made impact with something. But just some part of me, that's all.
I heard the gulls.
That's how it happened. And that's all I know.
*
I woke up. I was sitting at the desk, leaning over it, my head resting on my arms. I sat in that position for a while, barely able to open my eyes. The feeling that I used to have, however long ago it used to be, when I slept normally in a bed for eight hours. That early morning, first awake, sleepy-eyed feeling.
Through partially opened eyes I saw the mirror. I didn't have any confusion. I knew straight away where I was. I must have been dreaming about it, because there was no sitting bolt upright in fear at what I was waking up to. I was being interrogated about a plane crash. I was in a strange room, with a mirror wall and a closed door that was never locked. And they thought I was the Jigsaw Man.
The water bottle was no longer on the desk. Water bottle. Water. I needed to go to the bathroom.
I'd only just begun to hope that they wouldn't be too long in coming back, when I noticed the door was open. Not just unlocked, but wide open. This made me sit up, rub the sleep from my eyes. Had they knocked on the door? I felt like there had been knocking. That was what had woken me. The knocking.
I must have slept a long time. I could feel it. I had no way to tell the time, but I had the sense of having slept for several hours. Why had they kept me awake for so long and then suddenly let me sleep off all that tiredness?
Perhaps I had told them what they needed to know. I tried to think of what I'd said the last time they had been in here. It was all about the Jigsaw Man. But it had seemed at the time that they had been the ones making revelations.
The open door had to be some sort of test. Did I pass the test by sitting here waiting for something to happen? Or by going out into the corridor, engaging the guard, testing out my surroundings? Perhaps there was no test, there was neither pass nor fail; it was just an experiment, with someone watching through the mirror to record their findings.
I looked at the mirror, wondering whether anyone was behind there at this particular moment. Had they been watching me sleep? Was someone paid to watch me sleep? That had to be at the low end of the spectrum on career fulfilment.
I was suddenly gripped by the notion that it was time to move, and not just because I needed to pee. Whoever these people were, they were in complete control. I couldn't just sit there until I dropped dead. At some stage, if they never came in, I would be drawn out, so I just had to get on with it.
I was nervous going to the door. In a strange environment such as this, a closed door can also be a comfort. It's keeping things out, it's enclosing you in your cocoon. An open door let's you out, but it's also a portal to uncertainty.
That phrase came to me as I stood beside the door. A portal to uncertainty. It sounded so utterly preposterous that it had me pulling the door fully open, so that I could face the guard with as much annoyance as determination.
The guard wasn't there. I hesitated, and then stepped out into the corridor. There were no guards at all.
Deep breath, then I walked to the middle of the corridor, leaving my door open – was I worried that I wouldn't be able to find my room again? – and looked up and down the hallway. Door upon door, in either direction, all of them on the same side of the passage as my room. The opposite wall, the wall where the guards should be standing, was completely blank. A long grey wall of nothingness.
Now facing my room, I looked along the corridor to the left. That was where they'd taken me to the bathroom. A couple of times now, but I had been too discombobulated to think, or to count. It wasn't too far. Five, six or seven doors.
With a glance in the other direction, I started walking. One unmarked door followed on from another. I was wearing flat, simple, grey plimsolls, which made no sound on the floor.
I got to the sixth door along and stopped. I looked at the door, and the ones either side, to see if there might be some sort of clue. How did the agents and the guards tell the difference?
I stepped forward and opened the door. The room was identical to mine, and there was a single man sitting at a desk. His hair was short, his cheeks were hollow, his eyes dark. He had a moustache, but hadn't shaved for a few days so it blended into the rest of his facial growth. He was wearing an old worn and dirty suit, so rundown that it was hard to tell what colour it had once been. Yellow? Lime green perhaps. We stared at each other. There was something about him I recognised.
I thought of the haunted man who had stuck his head into my room. Perhaps he had awoken to find the same thing I'd just found. An open door. It was likely that everyone was subjected to the same experiment. How did you pass? How did you win?
Except, when the haunted man visited my room, he had been shot shortly afterwards. As far as I could tell, there were no guards out here to shoot me. Perhaps that was what the haunted man had also thought.
'You all right?' I asked.
He stared at me. I knew he wasn't going to speak.
'There are no guards out here,' I said.
There was a slight twitch of his mouth. Maybe he was an old hand. He knew what no guards meant. No guards was worse than a guard on every door for some reason, although I couldn't imagine what that would be.
I held his eyes for a while longer, and then pulled the door closed as I backed out into the corridor. I looked both ways to see if anyone had appeared. There was still no one. I moved along to the next door. It wasn't terribly comfortable intruding into a prisoner's private hell like this, but I did really need to go to the bathroom.
This was the right one. I entered. There were two toilet cubicles and no urinals. I peed for a long time, washed my hands, splashed cold water on my face for about a minute, then took a drink, cupping water in my hands. Dried my face and stood looking in the mirror.
Were they behind there, recording my every move?
Back in the corridor, I took another look in both directions. It was literally so long that I could see neither end. However, it was a building. It couldn't go on forever. I set off to find the very end of the passageway, and hopefully a door or stairs to some other part of the building.
12
And that was how it happened. The cry of the gulls.
I leapt out of my seat. Instant, total confusion. I wasn't in the seat. I was on East Beach at Nairn. The water's edge. I'd been curled up in a ball. The waves had splashed against my face. I'd jumped up.
Breathless, desperately breathless. Struggling to get air. Panicking. Spinning around and around. Frantic. Trying to work out what had happened. What had happened?
The gulls were overhead, crying out. As I staggered I beca
me aware of the sea, the waves, the huge expanse of beach. In the distance there were people. It was warm. Why was it warm? It was December. How did I know it was December? It had been December ten seconds ago, but then ten seconds ago I'd been on a plane.
I thought of the plane. The crashing plane. The impact. The start of the impact. The fear of it grabbed harshly at my stomach. But then I wasn't on the plane.
I stopped spinning, stopped moving around in a jumbled attempt to find my bearings. I stopped. Stopped still. Tried to control my breathing.
My clothes were wet, my muscles were starting to come down off the desperate, feverish tension. Breathing. That was the important thing. Steady breaths. Steady.
I took a slow look around. I was on the far end of the beach. Away from the tourists and dog walkers. The nearest people were a good hundred yards away. There was a light breeze. The tide was about midway, too early to tell which way it was heading. Across the Moray Firth the hills of the Black Isle were green and clear in the sunlight. There was a large tanker at the entrance to the Cromarty Firth.
The tide, as it always does at Nairn, had created one of the ever-changing sandbanks some distance out into the sea, and there was something there. A seal perhaps, or a cormorant with its wings outstretched, drying out in the sun. Too far away to tell.
So I was on Nairn beach, our happy place, the place where Baggins and Brin had decided I should go during a bumpy plane ride.
Another sharp breath, and I tried to control it before it got out of hand. I looked around again, another long, slow gaze at the beach and the sea and the hills. The sea touched my feet and I realised I wasn't wearing any shoes. I'd taken them off on the plane.
I looked down. Wearing the same clothes. Quickly I dabbed at my pockets. Money, keys, credit card, where they always were. And phone.
I took it out and switched it on. My phone. I could phone someone. Phone Brin. Then I'd know this was real. But how could it be real?
The phone wouldn't turn on, but I stood there pressing the little red button for over a minute.
Phone back in pocket, another deep breath. A couple of women walking a dog were getting closer. I looked down at myself again. I felt like I shouldn't be there, like I was standing naked in public. But there was nothing to see, nothing different about me.
Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite! Page 6