The Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul

Chapter 14

After about half an hour a hefty man from the local garage arrived with a pick-up truck, a tow-rope and a son. Having looked at the situation he sent his son and the pick-up truck away to deal with another job, attached the tow-rope to Kate's now defunct car and pulled it away to the garage himself.

Kate was a little quiet about this for a minute or two, and then said, “He wouldn't have done that if I hadn't been an American.”

He had recommended to them a small local pub where he would come and look for them when he had made his diagnosis on the Citron. Since Dirk's Jaguar had only lost its front right indicator light, and Dirk insisted that he hardly ever turned right anyway, they drove the short distance there. As Kate, with some reluctance, climbed into Dirk's car she found the Howard Bell book which Dirk had purloined from Sally Mills in the café, and pounced on it. A few minutes later, walking into the pub, she was still trying to work out if it was one she had read or not.

The pub combined all the traditional English qualities of horse brasses, Formica and surliness. The sound of Michael Jackson in the other bar mingled with the mournful intermittence of the glass-cleaning machine in this one to create an aural ambience which perfectly matched the elderly paintwork in its dinginess.

Dirk bought himself and Kate a drink each, and then joined her at the small corner table she had found away from the fat, T-shirted hostility of the bar.

“I have read it,” she announced, having thumbed her way by now through most of Run Like the Devil. “At least, I started it and read the first couple of chapters. A couple of months ago, in fact. I don't know why I still read his books. It's perfectly clear that his editor doesn't.” She looked up at Dirk. “I wouldn't have thought it was your sort of thing. From what little I know of you.”

“It isn't,” said Dirk. “I, er, picked it up by mistake.”

“'That's what everyone says,” replied Kate. “He used to be quite good,” she added “if you liked that sort of thin. My brother's in publishing in New York, and he says Howard Bell's gone very strange nowadays. I get the feeling that they're all a little afraid of him and he quite likes that. Certainly no one seems to have the guts to tell him he should cut chapters ten to twenty-seven inclusive. And all the stuff about the goat. The theory is that the reason he sells so many millions of copies is that nobody ever does read them. If everyone who bought them actually read them they'd never bother to buy the next one and his career would be over.”

She pushed it away from her.

“Anyway,” she said, “you've very cleverly told me why I went to the Woodshead; you haven't told me why you were going there yourself.”

Dirk shrugged. “To see what it was like,” he said, non-commitally.

“Oh yes? Well, I'll save you the bother. The place is quite horrible.”

“Describe it. In fact start with the airport.”

Kate took a hefty swig at her Bloody Mary and brooded silently for a moment while the vodka marched around inside her.

“You want to hear about the airport as well?” she said at last.

“Yes.”

Kate drained the rest of her drink.

“I'll need another one, then,” she said and pushed the empty glass across at him.

Dirk braved the bug-eyedness of the batman and returned a minute or two later with a refill for Kate.

“OK,” said Kate. “I'll start with the cat.”

“What cat?”

“The cat I needed to ask the next-door neighbour to look after for me.”

“Which next-door neighbour?”

“The one that died.”

“I see,” said Dirk. “Tell you what, why don't I just shut up and let you tell me?”

“Yes,” said Kate, “that would be good.”

Kate recounted the events of the last few days, or at least, those she was conscious for, and then moved on to her impressions of the Woodshead.

Despite the distaste with which she described it, it sounded to Dirt like exactly the sort of place he would love to retire to, if possible tomorrow. It combined a dedication to the inexplicable, which was his own persistent vice (he could only think of it as such, and sometimes would rail against it with the fury of an addict), with a pampered self-indulgence which was a vice to which he would love to be able to aspire if he could ever but afford it.

At last Kate related her disturbing encounter with Mr Odwin and his repellent minion, and it was as a result of this that Dirk remained sunk in a frowning silence for a minute afterwards. A large part of this minute was in fact taken up with an internal struggle about whether or not he was going to cave in and have a cigarette. He had recently foresworn them and the struggle was a regular one and he lost it regularly, often without noticing.

He decided, with triumph, that he would not have one, and then took one out anyway. Fishing out his lighter from the capacious pocket of his coat involved first taking out the envelope he had removed from Geoffrey Anstey's bathroom. He put it on the table next to the book and lit his cigarette.

“The check-in girl at the airport...” he said at last.

“She drove me mad,” said Kate, instantly. “She just went through the motions of doing her job like some kind of blank machine. Wouldn't listen, wouldn't think. I don't know where they find people like that.”

“She used to be my secretary, in fact,” said Dirk. “They don't seem to know where to find her now, either.”

“Oh. I'm sorry,” said Kate immediately, and then reflected for a moment.

“I expect you're going to say that she wasn't like that really,” she continued. “Well, that's possible. I expect she was just shielding herself from the frustrations of her job. It must drive you insensible working at an airport. I think I would have sympathised if I hadn't been so goddamn frustated myself. I'm sorry, I didn't know. So that's what you're trying to find out about.”

Dirk gave a non-committal type of nod. “Amongst other things,” he said. Then he added, “I'm a private detective.”

“Oh?” said Kate in surprise, and then looked puzzled.

“Does that bother you?”

“It's just that I have a friend who plays the double bass.”

“I see,” said Dirk.

“Whenever people meet him and he's struggling around with it, they all say the same thing, and it drives him crazy. They all say, ‘I bet you wished you played the piccolo.’ Nobody ever works out that that's what everybody else says. I was just trying to work out if there was something that everybody would always say to a private detective, so that I could avoid saying it.”

“No. What happens is that everybody looks very shifty for a moment, and you got that very well.”

“I see.” Kate looked disappointed. “Well, do you have any clues — that is to say, any idea about what's happened to your secretary?”

“No,” said Dirk, “no idea. Just a vague image that I don't know what to make of.” He toyed thoughtfully with his cigarette, and then let his gaze wander over the table again and on to the book.

He picked it up and looked it over, wondering what impulse had made him pick it up in the first place.

“I don't really know anything about Howard Bell,” he said.

Kate was surprised at the way he suddenly changed the subject, but also a little relieved.

“I only know,” said Dirk, “that he sells a lot of books and that they all look pretty much like this. What should I know?”

“Well, there are some very strange stories about him.”

“Like what?”

“Like what he gets up to in hotel suites all across America. No one knows the details, of course, they just get the bills and pay them because they don't like to ask. They feel they're on safer ground if they don't know. Particularly about the chickens.”

“Chickens?” said Dirk. “What chickens?”

“Well apparently,” said Kate, lowering her voice and leaning forward a little, “he's always having live chickens delivered to his hotel room.”

Dirk frowned.

“What on earth for?” he said.

“Nobody knows. Nobody ever knows what happens to them. Nobody ever sees them again. Not,” she said, leaning even further forward, and dropping her voice still further, “a single feather.”

Dirk wondered if he was being hopelessly innocent and naïve.

“So what do people think he's doing with them?” he asked.

“Nobody,” Kate said, “has the faintest idea. They don't even want to have the faintest idea. They just don't know.”

She shrugged and picked the book up again herself.

“The other thing David — that's my brother — says about him is that he has the absolute perfect bestseller's name.”

“Really?” said Dirk. “In what way?”

“David says it's the first thing any publisher looks for in a new author. Not, ‘Is his stuff any good?’ or, ‘Is his stuff any good once you get rid of all the adjectives?’ but, ‘Is his last name nice and short and his first name just a bit longer?’ You see? The ‘Bell’ is done in huge silver letters, and the ‘Howard’ fits neatly across the top in slightly narrower ones. Instant trade mark. It's publishing magic. Once you've got a name like that then whether you can actually write or not is a minor matter. Which in Howard Bell's case is now a significant bonus. But it's a very ordinary name if you write it down in the normal way, like it is here you see.”

“What?” said Dirk.

“Here on this envelope of yours.”

“Where? Let me see.”

“That's his name there, isn't it? Crossed out.”

“Good heavens, you're right,” said Dirk, peering at the envelope. “I suppose I didn't recognise it without its trade mark shape.”

“Is this something to do with him, then?” asked Kate, picking it up and looking it over.

“I don't know what it is, exactly,” said Dirk. “It's something to do with a contract, and it may be something to do with a record.”

“I can see it might be to do with a record.”

“How can you see that?” asked Dirk, sharply.

“Well, this name here is Dennis Hutch, isn't it? See?”

“Oh yes. Yes, I do,” said Dirk, examining it for himself. “Er, should I know that name?”

“Well,” said Kate slowly, “it depends if you're alive or not, I suppose. He's the head of the Aries Rising Record Group. Less famous than the Pope, I grant you, but — you know of the Pope I take it?”

“Yes, yes,” said Dirk impatiently, “white-haired chap.”

“That's him. He seems to be about the only person of note this envelope hasn't been addressed to at some time. Here's Stan Dubcek, the head of Dubcek, Danton, Heidegger, Draycott. I know they handle the ARRGH! account.”

“The...?”

“ARRGH! Aries Rising Record Group Holdings. Getting that account made the agency's fortunes.”

She looked at Dirk.

“You have the air,” she stated, “of one who knows little of the record business or the advertising business.”

“I have that honour,” said Dirk, graciously inclining his head.

“So what are you doing with this?”

“When I manage to get it open, I'll know,” said Dirk. “Do you have a knife on you?”

Kate shook her head.

“Who's Geoffrey Anstey, then?” she asked. “He's the only name not crossed out. Friend of yours?”

Dirk paled a little and didn't immediately answer. Then he said, “This strange person you mentioned, this ‘Something Nasty in the Woodshead’ creature. Tell me again what he said to you.”

“He said, ‘I, too, have the advantage of you, Miss Schechter.’” Kate tried to shrug.

Dirk weighed his thoughts uncertainly for a moment.

“I think it is just possible,” he said at last, “that you may be in some kind of danger.”

“You mean it's possible that passing lunatics may crash into me in the road? That kind of danger?”

“Maybe even worse.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes.”

“And what makes you think that?”

“It's not entirely clear to me yet,” replied Dirk with a frown. “Most of the ideas I have at the moment have to do with things that are completely impossible, so I am wary about sharing them. They are, however, the only thoughts I have.”

“I'd get some different ones, then,” said Kate. “What was the Sherlock Holmes principle? ‘Once you have discounted the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’”

“I reject that entirely,” said Dirk, sharply. “The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbable lacks. How often have you been presented with an apparently rational explanation of something which works in all respects other than one, which is just that it is hopelessly improbable? Your instinct is to say, ‘Yes, but he or she simply wouldn't do that.’”

“Well, it happened to me today, in fact,” replied Kate.

“Ah yes,” said Dirk, slapping the table and making the glasses jump, “your girl in the wheelchair — a perfect example. The idea that she is somehow receiving yesterday's stock market prices apparently out of thin air is merely impossible, and therefore must be the case, because the idea that she is maintaining an immensely complex and laborious hoax of no benefit to herself is hopelessly improbable. The first idea merely supposes that there is something we don't know about, and God knows there are enough of those. The second, however, runs contrary to something fundamental and human which we do know about. We should therefore be very suspicious of it and all its specious rationality.”

“But you won't tell me what you think.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because it sounds ridiculous. But I think you are in danger. I think you might be in horrible danger.”

“Great. So what do you suggest I do about it?” said Kate taking a sip of her second drink, which otherwise had stayed almost untouched.

“I suggest,” said Dirk seriously, “that you come back to London and spend the night in my house.”

Kate hooted with laughter and then had to fish out a Kleenex to wipe tomato juice off herself.

“I'm sorry, what is so extraordinary about that?” demanded Dirk, rather taken aback.

“It's just the most wonderfully perfunctory pick-up line I've ever heard.” She smiled at him. “I'm afraid the answer is a resounding ‘no’.”

He was, she thought, interesting, entertaining in an eccentric kind of way, but also hideously unattractive to her.

Dirk felt very awkward. “I think there has been some appalling misunderstanding,” he said. “Allow me to explain that — ”

He was interrupted by the sudden arrival in their midst of the mechanic from the garage with news of Kate's car.

“Fixed it,” he said. “In fact there were nothing to fix other than the bumper. Nothing new that is. The funny noise you mentioned were just the engine. But it'll go all right. You just have to rev her up, let in the clutch, and then wait for a little bit longer than you might normally expect.”

Kate thanked him a little stiffly for this advice and then insisted on allowing Dirk to pay the 25 he was charging for it.

Outside, in the car park, Dirk repeated his urgent request that Kate should go with him, but she was adamant that all she needed was a good night's sleep and that everything would look bright and clear and easily capable of being coped with in the morning.

Dirk insisted that they should at least exchange phone numbers. Kate agreed to this on condition that Dirk found another route back to London and didn't sit on her tail.

“Be very careful,” Dirk called to her as her car grumbled out on to the road.

“I will,” shouted Kate, “and if anything impossible happens, I promise you'll be the first to know.”

For a brief moment, the yellow undulations of the car gleamed dully in the light leaking from the pub windows and stood out against the heavily hunched greyness of the night sky which soon swallowed it up.

Dirk tried to follow her, but his car wouldn't start.