If I'd had a single customer, he or she would have been embarrassed by the exchange. Fortunately, I did not. And unfortunately. Times were hard and getting harder; I needed to get on with finding the lovely Arabella and start on my quest to ruthlessly exploit Augustine's back catalogue and treasured fourth instalment. No Alibis needed an injection of cash, and I needed to eat. I had to stop swapping insults with this strange impetuous woman from across the road.
I said, 'Bangles?'
She said, 'I'm on flexi. What did she say about Arabella?'
'Pearl said Arabella was learning Portuguese.'
'Pearl?'
'For that was her name.'
'Your granny's called Pearl.'
'My granny's called Frank, but that's another story.'
'I mean, it's an awful old name. Pearl what?'
'Pearl it's-none-of-your-business.' Nevertheless, I took Pearl's business card out of my pocket and briefly examined it. It still said:
THE YESCHENKOV CLINIC
Pearl Knecklass
I slid it across the counter to Alison. She picked it up and read what it said. Her lips moved silently. They were nice lips. I had kissed them before, and since, and told complete strangers that I had. She looked up at me. There was a glint in her eye.
'You're serious?' she asked.
'Always.'
'I mean, Pearl Necklace?'
'Yes. With a K.'
'But nevertheless.'
'Are you feeling some sort of connection to her name because it sounds like jewellery?'
'I'm not feeling any sort of connection to her, and her name doesn't sound like jewellery, it sounds like - you know what it sounds like.'
'I know exactly what it sounds like. A string of pearls. But spelt differently.'
'You know what it sounds like, and it's not that, although spelt differently.'
'I have no idea what you're talking about.'
'You think it's a coincidence that a woman who looks like that has a porn name like that?'
'A porn name?'
'Yes, a porn name.'
'What're you talking about? What's a porn name?'
'Oh for God's sake. A porn name, a porn name. A porn-star name. She has a porn-star name. Pearl Necklace, for frig's sake.'
'How is that a porn-star name?'
'How is it not? Pearl Necklace!' She was laughing, and examining me at the same time, and then abruptly she stopped and shook her head and said: 'You honestly have no idea, do you? You know more irrelevant shit than anyone I've ever met, but you don't know anything important.'
'Like a porn-star name?'
'Yes! Man dear, Pearl Necklace! Even with a K. Come here.' She waggled a finger at me, but actually she was the one who moved nearer, leaning over the counter. I thought she wanted a kiss, but her lips diverted to my ear and she whispered to me what a pearl necklace meant in sexual parlance, and then she stood back and raised an eyebrow. 'You're shocked,' she said.
'I am shocked that anyone would want to do something that wasn't directly linked to procreation. Next you'll be telling me that Pussy Galore has nothing to do with the love of cats.'
'Sometimes I don't know whether you're the world's greatest wind-up artist, or you're slightly autistic.'
'I think you know what the answer to that is.'
She sighed again. 'Bloody hell, you're so infuriating. I'm going to Starbucks.'
'You can't.'
'I can't?'
'I'm their best customer. They saw what you did. I had you barred. It was childish and vindictive but I'm afraid it's irrevocable.'
She glared at me, and then rolled her eyes and said, 'Oh fuck off.'
She returned from Star ten minutes later, and with the correct coffee, which told me that she paid more attention to my requirements than she ever let on. She said, 'You're such a bullshitter.'
I preferred to think of myself as adept at playing people. The way I'd played Pearl. Her name was Knecklass. That there were hitherto unsuspected sexual connotations was just a coincidence. She probably didn't know herself. She wasn't the sort of girl you sniggered at, for she could melt you with a look. Knecklass as a name was probably as common as muck in some godforsaken part of Europe I would never visit. The Czech telephone directory was more than likely crammed with them. It was the equivalent of restaurants in Hong Kong with names like Fuk U. It meant nothing until taken out of context. Bond had enjoyed a run of porn-star names beyond Pussy Galore - Holly Goodhead, Plenty O'Toole, Honey Rider, even Mary Goodnight - but they were fiction; this was uncomfortable fact. And seeing Alison come through the door with the right coffee reminded me how lovely she was, and that although I would never admit it, she was right: Pearl was way out of my league. I'd squeezed her for information even while she flirted outrageously with me. I'd played her, and now I could leave her behind. She'd given me a good lead on where the lovely Arabella might be; now it was just a case of turning up some physical evidence of her departure, something that Augustine couldn't possible argue with.
'Like a bank statement,' said Alison.
'Obviously,' I said.
'Showing that she bought a one-way ticket to Rio.'
'Ditto.'
'But he must have thought of that. The police must have checked.'
'Who knows that they did? Maybe she paid cash. Maybe she used a card and the statement didn't come in for a month afterwards. Augustine's life has been chaotic ever since she ran off. We just need to get him to focus, show us the paperwork; it must be sent somewhere even if they have been living like a couple of gypsies. I'm good with paperwork, you know that.'
'Yes I do.'
'The Resistance - in fact all sides in any war going back to Peloponnesian times - relied on facts, information, patterns and codes.'
'Yes, they did. You accountants are so damn sexy.'
'You're the pregnant one. And I'm not an accountant. I'm like a forensic analyser.'
'Of paperwork.'
'What I'm saying is, we need to ask Augustine to show us what he has.'
'We?'
'He likes you. You can wind him round your little finger.'
'Like Pearl with you.'
'I just don't want to antagonise him. I don't want to jeopardise . . .'
'The Holy Grail.'
'Exactly.'
She gave me a look. 'Where would you be without me?' she asked.
Happier was the obvious answer, but for once I kept it to myself. I was learning a little self-control. I needed her, for now, but nobody is indispensable.
After work, we took the Mystery Machine back to my place, though, technically, while she clung by her fingernails to this mortal coil, it was still Mother's.
We went in, and smelled food, and alcohol, and called his name, but he didn't respond.
We went upstairs, and we stood at his door and called again, and he still didn't reply. 'He's flown the coop,' I said.
'He wouldn't, not without saying,' said Alison, so, for the second time in her life, she entered Mother's bedroom.
And for the second time, she screamed.
* * *
Chapter 9
It is a little-known fact that the lyrics to 'Suicide is Painless', the hit song featured over the titles of Robert Altman's classic 1970 film MASH, were actually written by the director's fourteen-year-old son Mike. I'm not sure how he did his research, but judging from the state of my mother's bedroom, and the fact that Augustine Wogan had blown his brains out in it, and that the photograph of my late father that hung on the wall behind where he had carried out said act was now adorned with one of his bloody ears, I would have said that no matter how brief a passage of time there was between him pulling the trigger and actually departing this mortal coil, suicide was pretty fucking painful.
Alison was in some state, but there wasn't much I could do about that beyond patting her back. I find outbursts of emotion uncomfortable, and I was too busy hyperventilating myself to be of much use to anyone. Alison was in fact the first to
calm down, and phone the ambulance, which I would have told her was obviously a complete waste of time if I could have gotten the words out.
We waited downstairs for them to arrive. We had spent less than twenty seconds in the room. It was eighteen seconds too long. I do not like to look at the dead, because that is the image you carry with you of that person for the rest of your life. I had just seen one of the greatest crime writers of his generation with most of his head missing. He had been sitting in the chair by the window that Mother used to sit in to spy on the neighbours. He had a bottle of whiskey by his side, a partially smoked cigar between his fingers, a cereal bowl he'd been using as an ashtray on the arm of his chair, and a newspaper at his feet. There was blood all over the wall and in a thick pool on the wooden floor around him. I was wondering if it would stain. I was wondering if he had done it deliberately to annoy me, or to cheat No Alibis out of its financial windfall. I was wondering what this would do to my reputation. I was wondering if I would no longer be widely revered as the owner of the finest mystery bookshop in Ireland, but known as the bookshop owner damned by the fact that he had been the final host of the legendary Augustine Wogan. I knew how these things went. Even if every fact came out, they would be ignored in favour of innuendo and rumour. I would be blamed for somehow causing his death. His suicide would migrate from Mother's bedroom to the bookshop itself. He would have killed himself because of the pressures of being an author, depressed because he hadn't been published in twenty years despite the critical plaudits. Indeed, because he'd blown his head off, conspiracy theorists would speculate that he wasn't dead at all, that he had staged it to feed his well-known desire for obscurity.
'You're quite the shit magnet, aren't you?'
That was DI Robinson's opening line. He had made minor contributions to the solving of several of my cases, but had also often been more of a hindrance than a help. He claimed to be a fan of crime fiction and regularly bought rare first editions from me, but I still wasn't convinced. There was something about him. A book never seemed to be an end in itself. There were always accompanying questions. Some might have mistaken it for mere conversation, but I know people too well. He was never off duty. Never relaxed. Although he was relatively so, here in the environment where he was clearly most at home, an interview room at Lisburn Road police station. I'd been told by the police at the scene to call in and make a statement at my own convenience, which would have been never, if Alison hadn't insisted. She was waiting outside to make hers. It was normal procedure for suicides, although made less normal by the method Augustine had chosen. A simple overdose would have sufficed, or he could have suffocated himself with a plastic bag, or jumped out of a window, but the mere fact of using a gun elevated it enough to have someone like DI Robinson involved.
He told me to sit; he told me he was taping the interview, but to read nothing into that, it was merely more efficient than laboriously typing everything I said. It would be rendered into print by computer software, then checked, corrected and signed by me.
He said, 'Shame, he was a great writer.'
'You've read him?'
'I've read of him. Everyone seems to agree. What did you think?'
'He was a great writer.'
'How'd he end up with you?'
'He turned up in the shop; he was homeless, needed somewhere to stay, least I could do.'
He studied me. I knew what he was thinking. It seemed out of character for me to be accommodating. And it was. I know what I'm like. There's no sugar on my almonds. But there was no reason for Robinson to know about my plan to get rich, or at least eat, on the back of Augustine Wogan's past and future glories.
'Did he seem depressed?'
'Depressed. Paranoid.'
'In what sense?'
'In the sense that he thought someone was trying to kill him; in the sense that his wife had run off but he thought she'd been murdered.'
DI Robinson studied me some more. He clasped his hands. 'And she wasn't murdered?'
'Not that I'm aware of.'
'Because I know what you're like, and your investigations. The problem is that whenever you get involved in something, the body count tends to mount. Like I say, shit magnet.'
'I don't think that's very fair.'
'It seems that every time I run into you, my paperwork multiplies tenfold.'
'You should avoid running into me.'
'I would, but there always seems to be a gun involved, and that tends to be my line.'
'He shot himself in the head.'
'That's not what concerns me. It's more the gun, like where he got it from, him being in your house, and you having a history with them. Did you give it to him?'
'No, of course not.'
'Of course not.'
'Why would I give him a gun? That's just stupid.'
'Were you aware that he had a gun?'
'Sort of.'
'Sort of.'
'He kind of had one.'
'Kind of had one.'
'He had one in his briefcase. He took it out in the shop and I disarmed him.'
Robinson snorted. 'You disarmed him?'
'Yes.'
'Why did he take it out in the shop?'
'He was all fired up about his wife being missing, thought they'd murdered her at this clinic.'
'I heard about that. It was all bollocks.'
'Yes, it was. But he'd convinced himself.'
'You didn't think to tell us? That he had a gun, that he was threatening murder?'
'I disarmed him, so he didn't have a gun, and he was no longer threatening murder. He was upset; I didn't think it would help to call you lot.'
'Us lot?' Robinson shook his head. 'So what did you do with the gun?'
'I hid it.'
'Where?'
'In the house.'
'In the house where you took him?'
'Yes.'
'Did he see you hide it?'
'No, that would defeat the purpose.'
'But he knew you had it, and that you must have hidden it in the house, and then you left him alone in said house for an extended period of time, even though you knew he was paranoid and depressed. You didn't think there was a fair to middlin' chance he might have gone looking for it'
'No.'
'No, that would be too sensible.'
'What's that supposed to mean?'
'Whatever you want it to.'
He got up and left the room. He came back in. He had a see-through plastic bag in his hands, which he set down on the table. 'There's a lot more I need to look into. I want to know how he came by the gun; they're not supposed to be easy to get any more, not round here. But in the meantime, these are his personal possessions. For the moment you seem to be the closest he has to a next of kin; you may hold on to them until we can track down his wife, wherever the hell she is.'
'Brazil,' I said.
His eyes lingered on the bag. I don't know why he didn't just come out and say it: I think there's something odd about this and I want you to look into it. Why else would he give me Augustine's personal possessions, so quickly? A hospital might, if there was no relative present, because they have a high turnover. But the police? They let cases fester for years, and they hold on to possible evidence for ever.
Or, I was misreading him, and he didn't think there was anything suspicious at all and the quicker he could write Augustine off the better.
There was never a right answer to anything, just more questions.
It was life, and life was such.
DI Robinson nodded at the bag and its contents.
'Looks kind of sad,' he said.
I nodded too, but I was thinking that inanimate objects can't actually be sad.
He tutted, which made me think that I'd said it out loud.
The forensics people had to do their stuff. They had to photograph and scrape. Since things had turned peaceful in Belfast they didn't have much to do, so they took their time. It was a couple of days before they gave us the all-cl
ear to bring the cleaners in so that Mother's bedroom could be turned back into something approaching habitable. When the cleaners were packing up to leave they said that they thought they'd 'gotten most of it', which wasn't very reassuring. I didn't want to be tidying one day and pull back a chair to find Augustine's other ear.
As far as I could tell, they'd done a good job. There was a definite reddish tinge to the wallpaper, but it was actually a slight improvement on its previous nicotine hue. The wooden floors were stain-free and the actual chair where he'd shot himself was, amazingly, looking as good as new.
Alison and I stood in the middle of the room. The sun was coming through the window, but there were no dust motes to be caught in its rays, which appeared perfectly pure and life-giving. I stayed well out of them. Alison couldn't take her eyes off the chair.
She said, 'He was such a nice man.'
I grunted.
She said, 'Don't blame yourself.'
'I wasn't.'
'Well just in case you were, just in case you were thinking you shouldn't have left the gun in the house and Augustine by himself, it wasn't your fault; you didn't actually put the gun to his head and shoot him, no matter what Robinson thinks.'
'He said that?'
'Yes, he did. But we all know what he is.' She gave the international sign for wanking. 'And all this time Arabella is probably cavorting around Rio with some toyboy and hasn't a clue. God, it didn't even make the local news, let alone CNN.'
As far as anywhere other than the mysterious world was concerned, he was just another suicide. Despite having been feted in his lifetime by The Times and the Daily Telegraph, there had been no obituaries, no contact from reporters wanting to know the circumstances under which he had died. He was an obscure writer in a largely ignored genre. Maybe there was stuff on the internet about it, but I didn't check. I was off Augustine Wogan. He had promised me big things, and backed out. His whole life, in fact, was about unfulfilled promise.
Alison said, 'Will I throw this out?'
She was holding the blood-spattered Irish Times that Augustine appeared to have been reading prior to his death and which the cleaners had folded and set to one side.
Dr. Yes Page 5