Falling Sideways

by Tom Holt

  ‘There’s a painting in the National Gallery that looks exactly like you,’ David said grimly. ‘Absolutely identi­cal. Care to explain that?’

  ‘How absolutely fascinating!’ She smiled. ‘So, do tell. Who’s it a painting of? Anybody famous?’

  ‘I just told you, a seventeenth-century witch. Her name was Philippa Levens—’

  Her smile broadened a little; and now he wasn’t wading through snow, he was a snowman, and the sun had just come out. He could feel everything he’d always thought he was melting away.

  ‘Ah, right,’ she said. ‘That painting. Yes, I suppose I do look a bit like her. After all, she’s my — what, great-great-great-several-more-greats-aunt. Mummy always said I’ve got the family nose (which sounds rather revolt­ing if you ask me).’ She shrugged her slender shoulders. ‘There’s a slight resemblance, I’ll give you that. Sorry, you threw me off track there by saying the picture looks just like me, that’s why the penny didn’t drop for a second.’ Her stare was cutting into him like a plasma torch. ‘So,’ she said, ‘was that your Big Deal Number Two?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Fine.’ She was silent for a moment, then added, ‘I’m sorry if I sounded a bit snappy just then, I didn’t mean to. I should be more sympathetic, because I do know, it can feel really strange sometimes when you’ve breathed in those fumes.’

  ‘The poly whatsit?’ He fumbled for the right word, but it slipped away. ‘The green stuff in the tank?’

  ‘That’s right, yes. But it does go away, I promise. No harmful effects.’

  ‘Ah. Right. So in a few hours it’ll all be back to

  normal and I should start remembering all this stuff you’ve told me. It’ll all start making sense, I mean.’

  ‘That’s it. You’ll be just fine, you wait and see.’ She looked over his shoulder. ‘Gosh, look, isn’t that the bus coming down the road?’ She stood on tiptoe and waved at it, for all the world as if it was a ship and she’d spent the last ten years marooned on a desert island. ‘Would it be all right if we ride up on the top deck, at the front? We’ve only got single-decker buses where I come from.’

  Another curious thing: the bus was a Number 17 and the sign on the front said it was going to Ruislip. Once they boarded it, however, it seemed to undergo a road-to-Damascus conversion, abandoning its misguided intentions and taking them to the Broadway non-stop. ‘Now then,’ she announced, heading for the Bentalls centre like an iron filing drawn by a magnet, ‘we’ll start with Principles and take it from there. After all, I’m not really in any position to be fussy. A potato sack with three holes cut in it would probably do me, right now. Tell you what,’ she went on, ‘I’ll be taking a look round while you just nip over to Sainsbury’s and get the food shopping. I’ll meet you back here in, say, an hour and a half. By then I should’ve found a few things I could bear to be seen dead in, and you can buy them for me.’

  At various times in his life, David had thought how great it would be to find a nice old-fashioned girl. When he staggered back from the supermarket ninety minutes later, his arms feeling as if they’d stretched two inches and had their bones replaced with overboiled spaghetti, he decided that nice, old-fashioned girls were a menace and a hazard to sentient life; what he wanted was a nice modern girl, the sort who carries her own shopping and pays for it with her own money. Anything else belonged on History’s scrapheap, along with slavery and dinosaurs.

  ‘There you are,’ said a vision of radiant loveliness from behind a pillar. ‘I was beginning to wonder where you’d got to.’

  David didn’t know much about clothes, particularly the female variety, so he couldn’t bring to mind any of the technical terms. The net effect, however, was quite simply described: stunning — and horrendously expen­sive.

  ‘They were awfully sweet about it,’ she explained. ‘I told them you’d gone off with all the cards and money, and you’d be back soon, and they said go ahead, no need to wait till he gets back. What do you think?’

  ‘It’s, um, very nice,’ David replied. He knew that wasn’t the right answer, but he was too preoccupied with yet another impossible miracle to try very hard. They’d let her walk out of the shop, wearing the clothes, without paying for them? Sure, all the clone stuff and the three identical uncles and all the weird coincidences were enough to stretch his credulity. But this was way beyond stretching: it was industrial-spec extrusion.

  ‘Very nice,’ she repeated. ‘Oh, well. Come on, I’m starving. Or had you forgotten that?’

  After he’d been round and paid for all the clothes (he was very good about it, only sobbed out loud once) he followed her into a small, impractical-looking sort of-café place, the kind that springs up like skeleton warriors from dragons’ teeth and fades away before the mayfly’s even started thinking seriously about sensible pension-planning. He made it as far as the corner table before the carrier-bag handles prised apart his cramp-crippled fingers and sunk to the floor. Meanwhile she was at the counter, ordering authentic Moravian cherry torte.

  ‘That’s better,’ she said a little later, with her mouth full. ‘Now then, I almost forgot to mention. Alex is coming over this afternoon to pick me up.’

  So what? yelled a small but vocal faction inside his brain, the one he’d started thinking of as the People’s Front for the Liberation of David Perkins. In fact, we’ll go further. Hooray, yippee and good riddance. Alex can take her away and you can get back to real life. Hey, what the hell are you cribbing about now?

  Like most PFLDP statements, it was hard to argue with. After all, hadn’t he made a serious error of judge­ment, and wasn’t he, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, being let off the consequences for the laughably cheap price of £12,750 (plus buyer’s premium and VAT) and the cost of a few groceries and frocks? It was perfect; not only was she about to walk out of his life for ever, she was also going to visit her unique blend of bewilder­ment and financial haemorrhage on the person he liked least in the whole world. Couldn’t have turned out more pleasingly if he’d written the script himself.

  Except that . . . He lifted his head, catching sight of her profile, and realised that he was still in love with her. God alone knew why: force of habit, masochism, a hidden strand of lemming DNA buried deep in his genetic matrix. Whatever it was, the thought of never seeing her again was more than he could bear.

  Idiot, screamed the PFLDP, or words to that effect. He thanked them politely for their entirely helpful and sensible suggestions, and dismissed them from his con­scious mind. Love, after all, made the world go round; one of many things it had in common with severe con­cussion. ‘Oh,’ he said.

  ‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘thanks for all your help. It was very kind of you.’

  ‘Not at all,’ David grunted into his torte shrapnel.

  ‘And I think it’d be really, really nice if you’d be Alex’s best man at the wedding,’ she went on, remorseless as a slender, golden-haired young Sherman tank. ‘I’ll have a word with him as soon as I see him and remind him to ask you. You will do it, won’t you?’

  ‘Oh, sure.’

  ‘That’s splendid. Would you mind awfully if we got a taxi back? Only, we might be late for meeting Alex if we wait for the bus.’

  Before he could point out that her chances of finding a taxi at this time of day were on a par with stumbling on the secret of the philosophers’ stone on a wet Thursday in Stockport, she’d skipped to the door and hailed one, and it was waiting outside, its door obligingly open. There was just enough room for him in it, along with all the shopping.

  All this fancy food. The insight came down on PFLDP headed notepaper. The Normandy butter and quails’ eggs and ricotta cheese. It’s not for her, it’s for him. Alex. You know what a pig he is about food. David closed his eyes and managed not to make a groaning noise.

  ‘Would it be all right if I used your kitchen when we get back?’ she was saying. ‘Only, I did tell Alex I’d fix him some lunch.’

  Bloody hell, David thought. ‘Fine,�
�� he said. ‘Please, go ahead. I won’t be joining you, I’m afraid. Got some work I really should be getting on with.’

  ‘All right.’

  All right? Is that all you’ve got to say for yourself, all right? ‘That’s fine, then,’ he said. ‘Oh, good, we’re here.’

  He’d never previously thought of his flat as excessively small; quite the opposite, in fact, since he had to clean it himself. It had a fair-sized bedroom, a modest but ade­quate living room, more than enough kitchen for someone whose philosophy of cooking was centred around a holy trinity of microwave, tin-opener and elec­tric kettle, and a functional bathroom with deceptively good acoustics. Plenty big enough for one hermit geek; too small to accommodate two people trying to keep out of each other’s way (though of course the same could be said of the Albert Hall or the Mojave Desert). All the computer stuff was in the living room, so he couldn’t get any work done. He was tempted to go out and not come back till she’d gone, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to do that. So he took a laptop into the bedroom, shut the door and played Blood Frenzy III in a listless manner, hoping that Alex wouldn’t want to see him when he arrived.

  So enthralling was the game that he fell asleep. When he woke up, his watch said four-thirty. He closed down the laptop, tiptoed over to the door and opened it cau­tiously. Nobody to be seen in the living room, just a scatter of dirty plates and glasses on the table. (That figures, he thought bitterly.) He checked the kitchen and, being thorough, the bathroom. Nobody there. She’d gone. No note, or anything like that. Never mind, he said to himself, it’s undoubtedly just as well. He made a start on clearing up the abandoned crock­ery, asking himself as he did so whether his experiences over the last twenty-four hours could be considered as coming under the heading of getting a life, as every­body had kept urging him to do for years and years; if so, at least it had proved to his satisfaction that he was far better off without one, and that at least was a com­fort.

  The phone rang as he was carrying plates into the kitchen. He had one of those hands-free phones, the ones you can wedge between collarbone and ear and talk into while walking about and doing useful stuff. ‘Hello?’ he said.

  ‘David Perkins?’

  ‘That’s me.’ He dumped one consignment of plates and went back for another. ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘You don’t know me,’ said the voice, ‘but I believe you’ve met my brother John. Possibly my brothers Bill and Oliver, too.’

  Bloody hell, he thought, four of them. ‘John as in Honest John?’

  ‘That’s right. My name’s Arkwright. Jason Arkwright.’ A likely story, David said to himself, lifting a plate and noting with disgust a spreading pool of ketchup on the table top. He’d need to get a wet cloth on that, before it made everything sticky and yuck. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘So, what can I do for you?’

  ‘Can you tell me, have you by any chance come across a young woman, possibly calling herself Pippa Levens and claiming to be my niece? Or John’s niece, or Ollie’s, or Bill’s?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ David replied, absent-mindedly wiping ketchup off onto his trousers as he lugged the next stackful of china through the doorway. How on earth had two people managed to use so many plates? At the very least, it was a staggering tribute to their ingenuity and resourcefulness. ‘She was here earlier, but she’s gone.’

  ‘Gone. Damn.’ Short pause. ‘When was this?’

  ‘Not sure,’ David said. ‘I was asleep when she left.’ A very brief moment later, about as long as it takes light to travel two yards, he realised what that last remark could have sounded like. ‘She was having lunch with a friend,’ he added quickly. ‘I was in the next room, all the time, and I sort of nodded off.’

  ‘A friend.’

  ‘Yes. Well, her fiancé, actually.’ As he was saying the words, a thought nudged him. Possibly calling herself Pippa Levens. Claiming to be my niece. Note the emphases. ‘Excuse me, but are you saying—?’

  ‘Fiancé,’ the voice repeated, with palpable distaste. ‘Sorry to interrupt. Do you happen to know this man’s name?’

  ‘Sure,’ David replied. ‘He’s my cousin. Alex Snaithe.’ A sharp intake of breath from the other end of the line, like an imploding heavy breather. ‘You’re sure about that? The name.’

  ‘Well, yes, of course. I’ve known him all my life. Is there—?’

  The phone went dead. David took it out from under his chin and scowled at it, then turned it off and put it back in its cradle. Four of these crazy brothers. Jason Arkwright. Claiming to be my niece.

  Ah, well; all gone now, and good riddance. Somehow he had the feeling that once the raucous clatter of the wedding bells had faded away, cousin Alex was going to be getting the kind of family Christmases with the in-laws that he deserved. Best man? Not if he had anything to do with it.

  There was a knock at the door, and David winced. Spoke too soon, he muttered to himself; what’s the bet­ting that that’s Alex and his bird, his paramour, returned to collect something they’d negligently left behind? That’d be so typical.

  As it turned out, he was being unduly pessimistic. It wasn’t Alex, or Philippa Levens. Nor was it Uncle Oliver, Uncle Bill or even Uncle Honest John.

  It was the police.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Honestly,’ David said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  The policeman leaned back in his chair and looked at him as if he’d just found him crawling about in his salad. ‘Really,’ he said. ‘You know what time it is?’

  David looked up at the clock on the wall behind the policeman’s head. ‘It’s a quarter past seven,’ he said.

  ‘A quarter past seven,’ the policeman repeated. ‘In other words, I’m missing the end of the snooker. The final, Wayne Digley versus Snapping Dan Melznic, best of fifteen frames. I’ve been following it since the start of the tournament. And instead, I’m in here with you. Lucky me.’

  David shrugged. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘You’re sorry.’ The policeman sighed. ‘Of course, I asked her to tape it for me, but will she? Will she hell as like, not if it clashes with her soaps. Obsessed with her bloody soaps, she is. She watches the BBC one and tapes the ITV, so I might as well have saved my breath. What’s so bloody fascinating about a load of randy Australian teenagers I really couldn’t say. I like Brookside, mind. You watch Brookside?’

  David admitted that he didn’t.

  ‘Thought not,’ the policeman said. ‘All right, let’s try again. First, may I remind you that you have a right to have your solicitor present. You have chosen not to avail yourself of that right. Right?’

  David nodded. His solicitor was Alex Snaithe.

  ‘Fine,’ the policeman went on. ‘It’s bad enough being stuck in here without one of them sarky buggers looking down his nose and being difficult.’ The policeman lit a cigarette. ‘Mind if I smoke?’

  David coughed. ‘Go ahead,’ he said.

  ‘Now then,’ said the policeman. ‘Do you admit that at some time between ten and eleven a.m. yesterday morn­ing, you were in the National Gallery standing looking at a painting, Portrait of Philippa Levens by—’ He looked down at his notes. ‘By William de Stevens or something like that, can’t read my own writing. Anyway, that one.’

  ‘Yes,’ David said.

  ‘All right. But you claim that you know nothing about the break-in between one and one-thirty a.m. or the dis­appearance of the said picture, even though you were stood there like a prune gawping at it and making funny noises for over an hour.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Do you admit that after leaving the gallery you pro­ceeded to meet with one Oliver Dean, a professional criminal with several convictions for fine-art theft, in a pub round the corner?’

  David bit his lip. ‘I met a man in a pub, yes. And he said his name was Oliver Dean.’

  ‘So you’d never met him before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘All right. Do you agree that after leavin
g the pub, you took a train to Ravenscourt Park and visited premises owned by a John Spooner, otherwise known as Honest John, a dealer in stolen artworks well known to the police, and Dean’s stepbrother?’

  David winced. ‘I— Yes, that’s right.’

  The policeman nodded. ‘Fair enough. Furthermore, do you admit that you live in the same block of flats as one William Van Oppen, alias William Oppenheimer, alias Bill the Shiv and something else in German I’m not even going to try and pronounce, also a notorious fine-art thief and Spooner and Dean’s stepbrother?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Thank you so much.’ The policeman sighed. ‘Let’s just run through all that one more time, shall we? You spent yesterday morning closely examining a certain priceless art object — fifteen photographs of which, by the way, we found in your flat — and the rest of the day hanging out with three brothers who make their living nicking old paintings. Late last night, somebody breaks into the gallery, bypasses all the alarms, steals the price­less art object and buggers off. And you had nothing at all to do with it.’

  ‘That’s about the shape of it, yes.’

  ‘Listen, sunbeam.’ The policeman leaned across the table at him. ‘For two pins I’d arrest you right now on charges of attempting to murder an Old Bailey jury by inducing them to laugh themselves to death.’ He shook his head. ‘Go on, then,’ he said. ‘You tell me your version, and we’ll see what it sounds like. I mean, maybe you’ve got a perfectly reasonable explanation, and as soon as I hear it I’ll be doing Homer Simpson impres­sions and wondering why the hell I didn’t spot something so pathetically bloody obvious. Try me.’

  David took a deep breath. ‘Well,’ he said.

  ‘Hang on.’ The policeman was staring at David’s leg. ‘What’s that on your trousers?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘There’s a sort of reddish-brown mark on your trouser leg, just above the right knee. You care to tell me what it is?’

  David glanced down. ‘Oh, that,’ he said. ‘That’s just tomato ketchup.’