Dr. Yes

by Colin Bateman

  'Thank you…thank you ...'

  'Get him a glass of water.'

  Alison was looking at me, knowing how rare it was for me to fawn over anyone. Jeff nodded and turned to the kitchen.

  'Please, no, don't go to any trouble.' Augustine held up his hand. 'Evian if you have it.'

  Jeff hesitated, then looked to me for direction. From behind Augustine I drew a bottle outline in the air, and Jeff got it immediately. We keep a selection of empty designer water bottles in the kitchen for the exclusive use of prima donnas. In his field, Augustine was actually a prima donna, in the best sense of the words, but it didn't mean he could tell branded water from tap. Or as it turned out:

  'Fuck! That tastes like fucking shite!' He grabbed the bottle and examined the label. 'Sell by March 1997 - are you trying to fucking kill me as well?'

  He let out a cry, and hurled it across the shop, spraying water over a display of books that would shortly boast a sign saying Water Damage Sale, though actually I would have increased their price.

  Before I could apologise profusely, he held his hand up again and said sorry himself. He was under a lot of pressure. He appreciated us giving him sanctuary. For the first time he nodded around the shop.

  'I do remember this place. Yes. Did a very good reading in here, didn't I? What did you call that tit used to own it?'

  I cleared my throat. 'I own it now,' I said.

  Augustine nodded at Alison. 'This the missus?'

  'Working on it,' said Alison.

  He turned his gaze upon Jeff, who shrugged and said, 'Jeff - I just do stuff.'

  Augustine shook his head. 'Well, nice to meet you all.' He patted his jacket pocket, and produced a long, thick cigar and snipped the end of it with a small guillotine cutter. He was about to light up when Alison said, 'No.'

  'No?'

  'No.'

  'But somebody just tried to kill me.'

  'No.'

  He looked at me. I gave him my helpless shrug. I was one hundred per cent against smoking, particularly in my shop, but he was Augustine Fucking Wogan!. Fortunately he didn't try to force it. It was just another thing that was going against him. He looked sadly at the cigar, then slipped it back inside his jacket. He shook his head. He sighed. 'How appropriate,' he said, 'that a crime writer should wash up in a mystery bookshop, here, at the end of it all.'

  He stared at the ground. His shoulders began to shake. He cried silently. It was terribly sad to see the great man brought so low, and I would have put an arm around him and given him a hug if I wasn't allergic to people. Alison did the twirly finger thing at the side of her head, asking if he was nuts. Jeff did the mobile phone with his fist, for the emergency services, before miming pouncing with a butterfly net. Their reaction to this first encounter with Augustine Wogan was understandable; they did not know who he was, the giant that he was in his field, nor that his signature, applied to a dusty box of books, would help No Alibis get through the doubtlessly lean summer months. They took him at face value - a head-the- ball I'd dragged in off the street.

  Alison said as much, pulling me to one side as Augustine continued to sob his eyes out. 'Just what this shop needs - another maniac. How are we going to get rid of him?'

  'We aren't. Don't you know who he is? Augustine Wogan? The Times named him amongst their One Hundred Masters of Crime Fiction. At number seventeen. The sixteen above him are already dead. The Daily Telegraph put him in their top ten Fifty Crime Writers to Read Before You Die, despite the fact that his books have never been picked up by a mainstream publisher and they've all been out of print for twenty years!'

  'So?'

  I turned to my trusty assistant. 'Jeff - how many times a week do people come in here asking about Augustine Wogan and how to get hold of his books?'

  'Uhm - once?'

  'Yes, but it's every week!'

  'Uhm - yes, but it's usually the same bloke.'

  'That isn't the point! He wrote the Barbed-Wire Love trilogy; he's a genius!'

  'Well your genius looks mental.' She shook her head. 'Maybe he could be a genius down at Waterstones?'

  'Philistine,' I hissed.

  I knelt before him. He still had the briefcase pinned to his chest by his elbows. I gingerly prodded a knee. 'Mr Wogan. Augustine. Is there anything I can do to help?'

  He rubbed at his eyes with his knuckles. 'Help? I think it's too late for that.'

  'Is there somebody I can call for you?'

  'It's definitely too late for that.'

  'Well, you were rushing somewhere; do you want me to call wherever you were going?'

  'No, I don't think that would be a good idea at all. You see . ..' He let out a sigh. He looked from me to Jeff to Alison and back. Then he opened his briefcase and reached inside. He took out a gun. 'I was on my way to kill someone.'

  'Oh,' I said.

  'Bloody hell,' said Alison.

  As Augustine waved the gun listlessly around, Jeff ducked down behind the counter. I stood up, and stepped back.

  'Oh, I'm such a bloody fool,' Augustine wailed. 'I have immersed myself in crime fiction for all these years and convinced myself that I know something about crime, about murder and how to do it and get away with it, when the truth is I'm just a ham-fisted, gold-plated old eejit. I was building up a head of steam, and you interrupted me, and now I don't think I have the strength to make another run at him. Thank God you stopped me when you did - divine intervention, that's what it is, that's what it is!'

  We were stunned, we were shocked, we didn't know where to look or what to say. He was the legendary Augustine Wogan, but reduced to a sobbing, gun-toting wreck.

  Alison already had the phone in her hand.

  Jeff was clutching the mallet I keep for protection just beneath the counter.

  'While you're here,' I ventured, 'do you think you could sign some books?'

  * * *

  Chapter 3

  Alison was telling me I had to get him out of the shop, that he was clearly brain-damaged, that we shouldn't allow him to say anything else because I was so weak and insipid I was bound to be pulled into something dark and dangerous, and I would drag her in with me. She was pregnant, and that was scary enough. I had told her a million times that I was only interested in little itty-bitty cases, not much more complicated than crosswords or, God help me, Sudoku, but somehow they never quite worked out like that. There were always gunshots, bodies, terror, blood, pine trees or stuffed animals, and we just didn't need it right now; we had to be thinking of little Caspar.

  'Just get the gun off him,' she said, 'and if you don't call the police, I will.'

  I met her halfway. I removed the gun. He didn't put up a fight. He was a broken man. But I couldn't phone the police. I didn't want my legacy as a bookseller to be that I had put the greatest crime fiction author ever to come out of Belfast behind bars, especially as he hadn't even responded to my request to sign my precious books, and in doing so render them even more precious.

  'Look,' I said, showing her the gun, 'he's disarmed, he's not a danger to anyone now. The least we can do is let him talk about it if he wants to. What's the harm in that?'

  'You know exactly what the harm is.'

  'I swear to God we won't get involved. I've had it with danger, you know that; my blood pressure is worse than yours, and I'm not even pregnant.'

  'Your blood pressure is perfectly normal.'

  'That's just what they want me to think.'

  She glared. I glared back.

  She would win, but I was getting better.

  Fortunately, or unfortunately, given what was to come, fate, or Augustine, intervened.

  'He killed my wife.'

  We both turned.

  'Who did?' Alison asked.

  Augustine shook his head.

  Alison said, 'Sure let me get you a wee cup of tea and you can tell us all about it.'

  She's unpredictable and contradictory, and I suppose it's part of the reason I love her, albeit in an infinitesimally small
way.

  The tea boy brought the tea, and then sat there as if he was somehow entitled to listen in to a deeply personal conversation. I gave him work to do in the stock room, and he made a face, and I made one back, and he was about to respond in kind when Alison gave him one of her looks and he quickly disappeared. I didn't like it. I didn't like that he was more scared of her than he was of me. Or that she thought she could boss him about when she didn't own the shop like I did. I have the deeds. They're secure.

  'I'll be mother,' she said, and I didn't much like that either. Augustine nodded gratefully, but made no move for the cup. 'You were saying, your wife?'

  'My beautiful Arabella. Oh yes. He killed her all right.'

  'Who he?' I asked.

  Augustine sighed. 'Do you remember the days when old people looked like old people? Old and stooped and the women pulled tartan shopping trolleys behind them and wore brown tights like bank robbers, but on their fat varicose legs? Whatever happened to those days?'

  'Well ...' Alison began.

  'They all want to fight time, don't they? My Arabella was the most beautiful girl in the world, but you could tell her it until you were blue in the face and she still wouldn't believe you. And now, of course, she is blue in the face. I'm sixty-two years old. Arabella was sixty. She looked forty-five. But she wanted to be twenty- five again. Oh, the price of vanity!'

  'So who do you think killed her?'

  Tenacious is my middle name. I had recently changed it from Trouble.

  He looked me straight in the eye and said, 'You.'

  He paused.

  Whether he meant it to be dramatic or not, it was.

  Alison looked at me, already prepared to accept that I was guilty.

  'You know what it's like for a crime writer like me, don't you?' Augustine eventually continued. 'My name is known, the critics love me, but I haven't made a red cent from my books. I scraped by for a while writing screenplays, but that was twenty years ago. All this time I've been writing; I've a room full of manuscripts, but I've never sent them out, never been happy with them. But all these years, my Arabella has been supporting me. She's from landed folk, inherited money, and we've lived well, but we whittled most of it away travelling. Once the Troubles were over, we talked about coming back here, we looked at houses. Arabella's a social girl, she likes the parties and the theatre and cocktails, so when she came back, she wanted to look her best. That's where he comes in: the Yank, Dr Yes, Dr Chicago, whatever the hell you want to call him.'

  The names meant nothing to me, but Alison was on it straight away.

  'I know exactly who you mean. Dr Yeschenkov; he's yummy, all the girls would have his babies. With the exception of me, obviously.'

  I raised my hands, helplessly. 'Will someone elaborate? Please?'

  'He's a plastic surgeon,' said Alison. 'He has his own private clinic, he runs a programme called

  'The Million-Dollar Makeover,' said Augustine. 'Nothing would do Arabella but she had to have it.'

  'He takes you away for like six weeks . . .'

  'He's cut it down to four.'

  'He puts you up in a swanky hotel . . .'

  'It wasn't that swanky.'

  'And he does a whole series of procedures, brings in the top guys in their field

  'So he says.'

  'You've seen it on TV: eyes, teeth, tummy, boobs, keeps you away from prying eyes for six weeks

  'Four.'

  'And then does a grand reveal, and you look stunning.'

  'He's a butcher!' Augustine shook his head. There were tears in his eyes again.

  'Did it all go hideously wrong?' I asked, as gently as I could.

  Augustine glared at me. 'What do you think?'

  'In what way?' Alison asked. There was something about the way she said things that just seemed nicer. More sympathetic. I was pretty glad I hadn't voiced my first thought, which was to tell him he should have been wary of anyone offering to make a silk purse from a sow's ear.

  'I don't know, that's the point. They wouldn't let me near her the whole time . . . and I know that's what you sign up for . . . but I just missed her so much. We tried to speak on the phone every night, but she was tired and in pain and all bandaged up. She sounded miserable. But she was determined to go through with it. I spoke to her on the Wednesday night and she sounded more positive; she had one more procedure to go through, then they'd start taking off the bandages and showing her what they'd done. After that they'd do hair and make-up, new clothes, then I'd be invited up for the big reveal. Except the call never came.'

  'Because?' I asked.

  'Because buggery to fuck, she was dead, wasn't she?'

  'On the operating table?'

  'Yes! No! I don't know. They deny it. They say she was fine when she left them, she looked great. Dr Chicago, Dr Yes, Dr Fucking Scissorhands says she signed her cheque, signed herself out and went on her merry way. He says it's a sad fact that sometimes his programme gives women a new lease of life; they want to recreate themselves, start afresh and so they disappear and sometimes they go to extraordinary lengths to cover their tracks.'

  'And . . . could she not . . . have?' I asked tentatively, although obviously not tentatively enough, judging by the look Alison gave me.

  'No, absolutely not.'

  He would have left it at that, but I persevered.

  'You're sure? Women are unpredictable, they change with the

  Alison snorted.

  'Do you know how I know?' Augustine asked. 'I know she didn't just disappear because of the last words she said to me in our final phone call.'

  He dropped in that pause again. He was definitely good at the dramatics.

  'Yes?' Alison asked, unable to contain herself.

  I was expecting something dark and suspicious, some prescient hint that things were not as they seemed.

  'She said, "I love you, honey bun.'"

  And just like that, he drew Alison into the trap, and like a fool, I followed.

  * * *

  Chapter 4

  I phoned Alison at three a.m. Obviously, I wasn't sleeping. She answered groggily. 'Brian?'

  In days gone by, the presumption that it was her ex-husband might have driven me insaner with jealousy, but I was now well used to her wicked ways. She was like Bennett Marco in Richard Condon's The Manchurian Candidate, perfectly normal for ninety-nine per cent of the time, but secretly brainwashed to say something cutting and nasty at a subconscious trigger, in this case her bedside telephone ringing.

  She said, 'What? Who is this?'

  'Who do you think?'

  'Oh. Sorry. Asleep. What?'

  'I just wanted to say .. .'

  And having learned the art of the dramatic pause from a master, I gave her exactly that.

  'What?'

  And kept it going.

  'What?'

  And kept it going.

  'Oh for fuck—''

  'I just wanted to say, if you think we're calling our son Caspar, you've another think coming.'

  And then I hung up.

  Sometimes it's the little things that give the greatest pleasure.

  I never truly sleep, but I do occasionally venture into the half-awake Land of Nod, where I have timeshare. But this night I endured a nightmare about Mother. I had finally consigned her to a pre-funeral home several weeks previously because since her stroke she was just too much trouble, but now as I twisted and turned I imagined that she was back in her bedroom at the top of the house. I heard the clump of her footsteps on the floor above, their creak on the stairs as she descended, and then heavy breathing outside my door. I screamed at her to leave me alone, that I hadn't been bad, but I was sorry and would be a better boy. I buried myself under the quilt and prayed for her to go away, and eventually drifted off.

  I was up at the first light of dawn, angry for foolishly terrifying myself when I knew all along that the sounds were not born of a feverish nightmare, but were very real, and belonged to the gaunt, red-eyed and destitut
e author Alison had invited to sleep in my big, empty house without so much as a by-your-leave and who was already sitting at my breakfast table, gorging himself on Rice Krispies. She was so wrong about my house. You're never alone with a personality disorder. And sometimes it's preferable to having an actual, real-life guest, one whose emaciated chest is exposed by a barely tied borrowed dressing gown last worn by my incarcerated mother and who is happily slobbering down the last of the skimmed milk.

  I knew why Alison had done it, and I could understand her reasoning. She wanted to help this heartbroken man, and I had the space. In a way I liked the idea of him being there, because I could pump him for information about his writing, and I could engage him in conversation while quietly passing him copies of his exceedingly rare books to sign. But the reality was different. He was barely through the door before he was ordering pizza, and I had to pay for it when it arrived, an outrageous price considering the size of it, the thinness of it, and the fact that everything he had chosen to top it with was liable to set off my allergies. And also, he wolfed it without offering me any. He washed it down with Mother's sherry. He must have had two pints of it. In pint glasses. One might argue that he was drowning his sorrows. But he held his drink with the expertise of a professional mourner. When I tried to talk to him about his work, he never quite managed to answer any question I put to him, opting instead to launch into a preamble, then transferring to a tangent before settling on something completely irrelevant. I had some very detailed questions to ask about his Barbed-Wire Love trilogy. In fact one question alone took me fifteen minutes to deliver. He ought to have been flattered that I was so interested in his work, but he chose instead to roll his eyes, puff on his cigar, which he lit safe in the knowledge that Alison was no longer present, gulp his sherry and then say at the very end, I'm sorry, could you repeat the question? Even my attempts to get him to sign his own books were thwarted. When I produced the box, he marvelled at their pristine condition and then proceeded to bend their spines as he began to read them as if he had never seen them before. I literally had to prise them loose from his fingers and put them away for safe keeping. I was just trying to do some business, and he was being a nightmare. My plan to quadruple my investment disappeared as fast as the pizza.