The Dog Who Came In From The Cold

Chapter 33: Further Examination

“Delicious,” said Richard Eadeston, savouring his peppermint tea. “So delicate.”

“And it helps you concentrate,” said Dee. “You could take it when juggling figures, or whatever it is that you do.”

“Indeed.”

He looked at her over the rim of his teacup. She was not in the usual mould of his clients but she had an interesting face, he thought. Plucky. A risk-taker – in a rather fuzzy Age of Aquarius way, of course. There had been lots of girls like her when he had been an undergraduate at the University of Sussex. It was something to do with the air down there – Brighton and Glastonbury and places like that attracted these people.

“You weren’t at Sussex, were you?” he asked. “At university there, I mean.”

Dee showed her surprise. “Yes, I was, as it happens. How did …?”

“Oh, I just wondered,” said Richard. “There’s a Sussex look. I was there too, you know.”

They sized one another up wordlessly, discreetly computing ages. Yes, they might have been contemporaries.

He broke the silence. “Remember that pub? What was it called again?”

“The Shaggy Dump?”

“That’s the one! I wonder if it’s still there.”

Dee nodded. “Yes. I went down to see somebody there last month. A friend who lives in Kemp Town. And there was the Shaggy Dump – unchanged. That chap with the ring in his nose, remember him? He’s still running it. He had all those kids, each with a ring in the nose as well. I saw one or two of them too. It was just like the old days.”

Richard laughed, and thought, and now I’m a venture capitalist.

“What did you do at uni?” he asked.

“Anthropology and Turkish,” said Dee.

He was not sure what to say. So he smiled, and said, “Cool.” Awesome would perhaps have been a shade too strong.

“And you?”

He had done business studies, although he usually called it economics; now he renamed it development studies.

Dee gestured towards the loaded shelves. “As you can see, now I’m involved in vitamins,” she said.

“And you’ve had an idea, too. Which is why you phoned me, I assume.”

She nodded. “You must get some real crackpots.”

“Oh, we do. Lots of them. Probably nine calls in ten are from nutters of one sort or another. But we take them seriously. That’s why we call ourselves Alternative Vision Capital.”

“Some of them are good ideas then?” She pointed to the teapot. “More peppermint?”

“Yes, please.” He passed her his cup. “Yes, we get some very interesting ideas. And we don’t turn up our noses just because somebody doesn’t look as if they’re straight out of the business pages.”

Dee smiled. “Like me?”

“Well, you’re not … Yes, like you. Why not? Look at Richard Branson. When he started that record shop or whatever it was he could hardly have looked less like the stereotypical capitalist, could he? The beard and the casual clothes and so on. And look what he’s achieved.” He paused, holding out his hands in an all-embracing gesture. “We’re open to ideas. Any ideas.”

Dee nodded. They were seated behind the cash desk and a customer now approached bearing a small bottle of pills. Dee indicated to Richard that she would be a moment attending to the customer. Afterwards he asked, “What did she buy?”

“Just magnesium,” she said.

“Magnesium? Do we need magnesium?”

Dee’s eyes widened. “Do we need magnesium? Boy, do we need magnesium! Did you know that there are over three hundred – yes, three hundred – bodily chemical reactions that require magnesium?”

Richard shrugged. “I didn’t. But I don’t take magnesium pills and I’m still—”

Dee cut him short. “You get it in your diet. Or should do.” She looked at him in a way that suggested she was assessing his magnesium levels. “Do you eat many nuts?” she asked. “Or whole grains?”

Richard shook his head. “Not really.” He patted his stomach. “Nuts are fattening, aren’t they? I love those big fat ones – macadamias. They’re seriously good. But eat too many of those and you begin to look like a macadamia nut yourself – you know, big and fat and round.”

Dee’s answer came quickly. “There are other nuts. Almonds, for example. Pine nuts are full of magnesium too.” She paused. “You’ve probably got a magnesium deficiency, you know. Do you get tired?”

“I suppose so. Who doesn’t?”

She did not register his question. “And do you suffer from sleeplessness? Wake up at odd times?”

He nodded. He had not slept well the previous night. There had been a barking dog somewhere down the road; a magnesium-deficient dog, probably.

“I’ll give you a magnesium supplement,” she said. “Try it for a few weeks and you’ll see the difference.”

He thanked her. “But I think we should talk about your proposition. You said that you had a new product you want to develop.” He took out a notebook. “Tell me about it.”

Dee looked at him doubtfully. “You wouldn’t … take the idea, would you? I’m sorry to sound distrustful, but obviously …”

He held up a hand. “No, don’t apologise. Not for natural caution. Of course you have to be careful. Intellectual property gets stolen every day. You come up with a good idea and the next minute it’s in production somewhere else. And it’s not your name on the packet.”

“Oh.”

“Yes. But I assure you, you’re safe with us. We’d never do something like that.”

There was a silence, another one of those periods of unspoken mutual assessment that occur when we weigh up another person and choose between trust or natural, self-protective suspicion. What do I know about him? thought Dee. The University of Sussex – a shared background there. The Shaggy Dump – a shared pub. What else? He liked peppermint tea and he likely had a magnesium deficiency. That was all the information she had.

She made her decision. “There’s a substance called Ginkgo biloba,” she said. “We sell a lot of it, particularly to people who are worried about memory loss or failing brain power.”

“Who isn’t?” he asked.

“Exactly. And I think that it helps. I really do.”

“And?”

Dee reached for a small bottle from a display on the counter. “See this?” she asked. “This is echinacea. It’s a very common, popular remedy for toning up the immune system. But here it’s being sold as a pill to protect you from germs on aircraft. You take one before you board. People love it. We all know that we’re breathing the same air as a hundred other passengers when we’re on a flight. So we take a pill. And I happen to believe it works.”

Richard was watching her closely. She noticed that he had a slight tic in his right eye. It twitched slightly, almost imperceptibly. “I see where you’re going,” he said quietly. “And I like it. So what are you wanting to sell this Gingko stuff as?”

“A Sudoku remedy,” said Dee. “Improve your Sudoku performance with a pill.”

Richard sat back in his chair. He was beaming.