Dr. Yes (5 page)

    'And
he suspects conspiracy.'

    'Obviously.'

    Alison
took a sip of her coffee. A little bit dribbled down and nestled in her extra
chin. She saw me looking at it and wiped it away. I stared at her hand.

    She
rolled her eyes but lifted one of the napkins that came with the coffee and
wiped the back of it. I nodded appreciatively. She balled the napkin and
chucked it over her shoulder.

    'It
doesn't mean he's wrong,' she said. 'We shouldn't underestimate the bond there
is between a man and his wife and the instinctive knowledge that brings.'

    'Or
you could be talking bollocks.'

    'All
I'm saying is that short of speaking to Arabella herself, Augustine is probably
the one other person in the world who knows her best. That last phone call was
so full of love

    'According
to him.'

    '. .
. and there was no indication that she was unhappy or planning to take flight.
She would have been on a high knowing the big reveal was coming; why would she
suddenly disappear?'

    'It
doesn't matter
why.
There is no evidence of foul play, but there is
evidence that she's alive and well and spending her money. She went to Dublin,
she probably caught a flight somewhere. Augustine Wogan is an alcoholic,
paranoid wastrel; she's had enough of him. All we need to do is get him to sign
some books and then get him the hell out of here.'

    'You're
wrong. He's in love, and he knows something is badly wrong, but nobody will
listen to him. His wife is dead and Dr Yes is pulling strings to cover his
tracks and get away with murder.'

    'God,
you're turning into a conspiracy theorist as well! Have you by any chance
swallowed Jeff?'

    'Not
recently.'

    'You're
funny.'

    'So's
your face. Look, you've been championing Augustine for years; don't let him
down now. I have a feeling about this. And we're his last hope.'

    We
locked eyes across the table, each of us unaware that Augustine was standing in
the doorway, arms folded, immaculately dressed in one of my father's
long-mothballed suits, at least until he said, 'Of the two of you, I think I
prefer you, princess.'

    Alison
glowed.

    Of
course
I backtracked. It is my default mechanism. I assured him I was
merely playing devil's advocate, and of course we were going to look into his
case. But I had no intention of it. The truth was that the trauma of having him
at such close quarters, in my mother's bed and dressing gown, in my father's
suit and eating me out of house and home, had somewhat dulled my enthusiasm for
persuading him to sign my stash of books. I could just forge it and nobody
would be any the wiser. I had already taken pictures of him on my mobile phone
while he dozed sherry-drunk in one of my armchairs, with me posing beside him
like we were great mates; pinning those above the signed books would be
authentication enough, at least for your average mug amateur or lower-level
dealer.

    I
just wanted rid of him. But Alison, who knows a thing or two about eggs and how
to exploit them, sat him down at the table and scrambled the only two left in
the house. As he shovelled them in, I made faces at her across the table, but
she ignored me. When he had finished scoffing them down, he wiped his mouth
with the back of his hand. Standards were slipping
everywhere.

    He
said, 'Thank you, Alison, that was lovely.' She smiled demurely. 'Now, what are
we going to do about my Arabella?'

    'Do?'
I said.

    'We're
going to find her, or find out what happened to her,' said Alison. I made a
kind of choking sound. 'In our spare time we do investigate certain cases.
We've had quite a lot of success. My partner here is a bit of a genius.'

    I
made another face. She
would not
win me over.

    'Well
that would be . . .
fantastic . . .
I've really nowhere else to turn ..
. but I'm afraid I've nothing to pay you with.'

    'That
won't be necessary. We don't do it for the money.'

    I
grrrrrred
.

    'It
would mean the world to me. And do you know something?' He was looking at me
now. 'Even though I was rather flustered yesterday, I was looking at your shop,
and it's really quite wonderful. You obviously have a great love of books and
writing. I was wondering if you've ever thought of publishing your own books,
you know, limited editions maybe?'

    'Done
that,' I said. 'There's bugger-all money in it.'

    'Really?
Because, as it happens, I have a little manuscript sitting around. Maybe we
could work something out, you know, in lieu of payment; you could publish
that?'

    The
first faint stirrings.

    'Yeah,
maybe.'

    I
didn't want to get too excited. Yes, he was critically acclaimed, but his only
known works were more than twenty years old. If he had written it recently, it
was probably as mad as he was.

    'And
you should know,' said Alison, at which point I realised that I'd said it out
loud.

    I
laughed and said, 'Sure we're all a bit mad. What's the book?'

    'Well,
you know this
Barbed-Wire Love
trilogy you're so enamoured of?'

    'Yes?'

    'There
were always actually four parts to it. Because it was self-published, and it
didn't sell at all, I didn't have enough money to put the fourth one out. So
it's been gathering dust all these years, which I've always thought was a great
pity, because it throws a whole new light on the rest of it.'

    He
nodded thoughtfully.

    Alison
gazed at me across the table, probably wondering why I appeared to be suffering
a stroke.

    I
wasn't convinced of the wisdom of leaving him in the house by himself, but it
was either that or bring him with me to No Alibis, and I could do without that.
He was just a stress to have around. And besides, I wanted to dive head first
into solving what would become the
Case of the Pearl Necklace,
because
in my head I was already formulating ambitious plans for the first publication
of
Fire in the Sky,
the fourth book in what was now no longer a trilogy
but a
cycle
of novels, and beyond that persuading Augustine to let me
reprint the other books as well. I would be acclaimed throughout the mysterious
world for not only discovering the unknown fourth book, but also rescuing the
original trilogy from obscurity. And if I kept them to limited editions, I
could charge an absolute fortune and secure No Alibis' future as well. I was on
such
a high, although part of that may have been down to my extensive list
of medication, which I seemed to have taken twice that morning by mistake.

    Even
Jeff noticed, and he's an idiot. When he brought me the wrong coffee from
Starbucks, I did not even shout at him, merely sent him back for the right one.
When he returned I told him to man the till, and trusted him with its key, and
he smiled as if he was in seventh heaven; when he enquired if he might advise
any customers on their choice of book, I said not if he valued his life. But he
seemed content with two out of three.

    With
Jeff busy - well, not busy, but removed - I consulted the internet. It was not
so much a case of know your enemy, because I was far from convinced that Dr Yes
was
my enemy, or anyone's, apart from Mother Nature's, but by finding out
as much as I could it would at least enable me to talk knowledgeably about him
to anyone else I came across in the course of the investigation.

    This
information was not difficult to find. His whole business was built around his
good looks and personality - the perfectly coiffured hair, the permanent tan,
the gleaming teeth, the wrinkle-free brow, the buff frame, the suggestion of a
six-pack through a thin T-shirt; he was fifty-five years old and looked twenty
younger, and you might have said he was a great advert for his youth-giving
procedures, save for the fact that apart from diet and exercise, it would have
been impossible for him to operate upon himself. Someone else had fixed his
teeth or debagged his eyes or pinned back his lugholes. Buying into his image
was buying into someone else's handiwork. He was born and bred in Chicago,
Illinois, of Ukrainian extraction. I found a Google image of him that appeared
to be lifted from his high-school yearbook. He hadn't changed much. Maybe he
hadn't needed any of the work done to start with, he just had good genes. He
had flown through Brown University and Washington University, and was a
board-certified plastic surgeon and celebrated fellow of the American Society
of Plastic Surgeons. In the mid-nineties he had married one of his patients, an
Irish girl who'd gone to the States for some relatively minor plastic surgery
that nevertheless hadn't been available at home; they'd fallen in love, and
he'd also spotted a gap in the market. Within six months he'd set up his first
clinic in Belfast, bringing a healthy dose of American chutzpah to the
advertising of his services, and before very long he was the go-to man for
women, and some men, throughout the island who wanted something tucked, trimmed
or drained. He'd gone from strength to strength, particularly during the boom
years of the Celtic Tiger, when his ultra-expensive but
very
quick
multi-part makeovers had proved such a boon to those who felt themselves too
fat, too droopy or too old to compete in the hectic Dublin social scene and
didn't have time to hang around. Very soon there were competing services in the
southern capital, but at least by coming to Belfast you were out of the country
and less likely to bump into your social rivals while swathed in weeping
bandages that kept your new ears on or screaming blue murder every time you
went upstairs because your fresh tits were killing you while they bedded in.

    'Why
are you looking at pictures of boobies?' Jeff asked, peering over my shoulder.

    'It's
work,' I said.

    I was
trying to put myself in Augustine's shoes, even while he was probably trying to
put himself in my father's. He loved his wife and she had disappeared. She had
undergone a number of relatively minor procedures at a clinic owned and run by
Dr Yeschenkov and nobody had seen her since, apart from disputed CCTV footage
from a bank cashpoint in Dublin. He had jumped to the conclusion that she had
died in the clinic because to him it was the only one that made sense; he could
not conceive of her running off to start a new life. He clearly did not know
women as well as I did, and I hardly knew them at all. He was too emotionally
involved to make a rational judgement on the likelihood of some grand
conspiracy swinging into place to cover up his wife's death.

    I
found a photo of the lovely Arabella on the web.

    She
wasn't that lovely.

    Contrary
to what I might say or do, I was, somewhere in the back of my mind, trying to
be a better man for the coming trauma that constituted childbirth. It was okay
for Alison; she only had to bear some extra weight and undergo a little
straining that would mostly be covered by painkilling injections. She was
designed for it. But I certainly wasn't. I was about to go through the kind of
upheaval that rid the earth of dinosaurs. I did want to contribute something to
the whole process, and part of that was showing her that I was capable of using
my initiative without being prompted. She was always in favour of me dealing
with a problem by physically confronting it, not seeking a solution through a
third party. She knew that I believed that if I looked pathetic enough for long
enough, somebody else would do it for me. Now I was going to prove that I could
do things off my own bat. I'd gotten

    on
perfectly well before Alison, and I'd continue to get along well after her. It
was just this sticky bit in the middle I had to get through.

    I
lifted the phone. I looked down at the number I'd written on the notepad before
me. I punched it in. Although, obviously, what with my brittle bones, I didn't
really. I pressed gently. After a few moments a bright, upmarket voice, but
with a hint of Eastern Europe, said, 'Good morning, the Yeschenkov Clinic.'

    I
needed to satisfy myself that Dr Yes wasn't hiding anything. The medical
records that had been released to Augustine were still with his last solicitor,
who wouldn't release them until he paid his bill. Obviously I wasn't going to
pay it for him, and the clinic wasn't going to release them to me, a bookshop
owner, or issue fresh ones to Augustine, whom they had a restraining order
against, so I would have to find out what there was to find out by doing what I
did best - I was a criminal proctologist, shining a light into dark places
where nobody really likes to look.