Mystery Man (23 page)

I folded my arms and waited. She would be back.

But then I got to thinking that when she did return she would find the passenger window frosted and me with a neatly drilled hole in my forehead, because it might be just the opportunity the assassin was waiting for. The Russian sniper Vasily Zaytsev had shown infinite patience in the maelstrom of Stalingrad; how much easier must it be for my nemesis, nestled into the wild grass on a pleasant summer's morning on the County Down coast? He probably had a flask and sandwiches. It might only be slightly safer, walking along the beach, but at least I would be a moving target, and if I kept on the seaward side of Alison and close to her, there was a fair chance he would hit her by mistake, which would at least give me the opportunity to make a run for it. The sea would be my best chance of escape. I would probably drown, or suffer a stroke because of my morbid fear of jellyfish and riptides and sharks and seaweed, but
probably
was better than
definitely,
which would be the outcome of his second shot ramming into my brain if I stayed on the sand mourning for a lost love, or vainly trying to take shelter behind her lifeless body.

So I
ran
after her, my knees clicking and my calves straining. When I drew level she didn't acknowledge me, but there was definitely a little smile. I thrust my hands into my pockets and said, 'I really don't mind about Brian. Where does he live?'

'Why?'

'Just interested.'

'It doesn't matter. He's history.'

'So why did you say Brian when you answered the phone?'

'I was half asleep.'

'But he must call you sometimes, for you to think it was him.'

'Yes, he does.'

'Did he beat you?'

'No! He's a perfectly normal human being, and I was in love with him when I married him, but it didn't work out, and we still talk from time to time. I don't hate him, there's no reason why he shouldn't phone me, and no reason why I shouldn't think it was him when I answer the phone in the middle of the night, okay?'

I nodded.

'Is he an alcoholic?'

'No!'

We walked on. I kept my eyes on the promenade, about fifty metres away from us. There were dog-walkers there as well, and several of those little electric golf carts that disabled people con out of the government.

She said, 'What are we going to do about
The Case of the Dancing Jews?
'

'I don't know.'

'We're not really any the wiser, are we? We don't know that the burning man in your van is the same man who stole it, and we don't know if he committed suicide or was murdered, or if he was murdered, if he was murdered by the same guy who killed Rosemary and Manfredd and Malcolm Carlyle, or indeed, if they were murdered at all. As I see it, the problem is that each individual death – and we don't even know that Rosemary is dead, really – has a perfectly plausible explanation. Even this guy in your van. Let's face it, they found him in West Belfast, they'd set you on fire there for looking at them the wrong way. There's never a bullet, there's never a witness, it's only when you put them all together that you see a pattern, but maybe there isn't really one.'

'There is. There definitely is.'

There are always patterns. They just aren't always obvious.

'But maybe it's like people's names,' Alison continued. 'You know – there are millions of Smiths, and you could argue that they are all connected, but they're not. They just have a common name. And what do you call that game they play, the Kevin Bacon one?'

'Six degrees of Kevin Bacon. Any actor in Hollywood can be connected to Kevin Bacon because of the number of films he's made and the actors he's worked with, usually in six moves.'

'That's a pattern, but it doesn't mean that Kevin Bacon is responsible for every Hollywood movie. What if
our
Kevin Bacon is just that, someone you can connect to the deaths, but he's not responsible for them?'

'Okay,' I said. I actually quite liked that. But for the fact that we weren't dealing with Hollywood movies. We were dealing with real live dead people. The stakes were infinitely higher. Or lower, depending on what value you put on life or movies. 'What do you suggest? Ignoring the threat? Just go to work as normal, and then if someone comes through the door and blows my head off, at least you'll be able to acknowledge the fact that you were wrong and the pattern was the pattern was the pattern.'

'Well, what do you want to do? Hide in a deep hole until he dies of old age?'

'See, even you're saying there is a he.'

'Just for talk's sake. I don't know if there's a he. It might be a she. It could be
me
.' She raised an eyebrow. 'Or it could be a whole team of them. Or it could be no one, that we're just seeing Kevin Bacons.'

We walked on some more. I wasn't familiar with this or any beach, so it was worth keeping an eye on the incoming tide in case we were cut off and drowned like Chinese cockle-pickers, or stung to death by Portuguese man-o'-war jellyfish.

'Okay,' Alison said, '
if
there's a he – and let's call him . . .'

'Fritz,' I said.

'. . . Fritz, for now, let's think about what he might do next. If he's got some kind of hit list, if he's intent on wiping out whoever might know Anne Mayerova's secret, even if they're not aware of it, who's actually left? You – but at the moment he thinks you're dead. Me? Well I'm about twenty-eight degrees of Kevin Bacon, an afterthought at best. So we don't really need to be so jumpy, at least for a little while. Then there's Anne Mayerova herself. But not only is she reasonably secure in a mental hospital, she's also fifty per cent do-lally and getting worse every day. She's no real threat. What about her ex-husband?'

I thought about that for a moment before shaking my head. 'He's been with her all these years and hasn't spilled the beans.'

'Okay, so it's whoever Fritz believes knows the contents of the book that's in the real danger right now . . .'

'A book that will never be written.'

'. . . and that can only mean . . .'

'Daniel Trevor.'

'Exactly.' She stopped. She gave me a
look.

'Why are you giving me a
look
?'

'Isn't it obvious? If Fritz is ticking boxes, and the only one left to be ticked is Daniel Trevor's, then if we want to identify Fritz, if we want to stop him, if we want to prove one way or another whether he exists or not, and we don't want to call in the police because we'll look like idiots and might yet be arrested for hanging pine trees on Malcolm Carlyle, then we have to go down to his stupid bloody artists' retreat ourselves. We have to confront Fritz. We have to unmask him. The only way we're going to solve
The Case of the Dancing Jews
is by going down there and setting a trap for him.'

'Fuck
off
,' I said.

I didn't like the way she was
moving in.
Mother had warned me about women who used their siren lure to get their way, to steal your wallet, your heart, your soul, who parlayed hormones into lifelong commitment, and I think she was speaking from the perspective of having done it herself. Father had nothing much to offer beyond straight laces and a Lambeg drum, but she devoured him nevertheless, and afterwards he was never the same, he was harder, colder, and I think some small part of her regretted it. Alison was a nodding acquaintance who had propelled herself into position as my sidekick, but she was like a one-legged black lesbian greasing her way up the promotional ladder not because of her talents, but because she ticked all the right boxes and there was nobody with the gumption to stand up and pull the ladder from under her, causing her to fall and break her neck or at least cause the kind of spinal injury that would require a body cast. She had been my sidekick for barely a week, yet instead of being content to nod mindlessly along, looking to me for direction and instruction, she now thought she could decide how cases would be dealt with, where we would go, who we would talk to; she thought she had the experience, the insight and the courage to deal with the criminal masterminds when it was me who had the knowledge, who had read all the books. She sold bangles.

She had needlessly complicated my life, and all because I had taken pity on her being excluded from a creative writing course. Everything that had followed had followed because of her. I was all for dumping
The Case of the Dancing Jews
at its very earliest stages, while she was the one who'd led us deeper and deeper into the mire. She had forced me to go to Purdysburn to interview Anne Mayerova, to break into Malcolm Carlyle's next door, and now she had kidnapped me and was driving me to the Beale Feirste Books retreat in the wilderness of County Down knowing
full well
I was incapable of using public transport to return to No Alibis. At least there I would know my surroundings. I knew the escape routes. There were always civilians passing by or occasionally actually in the shop to deter assassins. I could call on the protection of my Botanic Avenue Irregulars, or my friend DI Robinson, or the Traders Association, or I could harness the power of the internet to track down and expose the killer. There was no risk of being attacked by a cow
there.
Or a goat. Or a pig. Or a donkey. Or a bee. On Botanic Avenue I could not suffer a catastrophic wheat allergy or lose my arms to a combine harvester.

She had turned my head. How had I solved my previous cases? By a cool appraisal of the facts, by using my customers as my eyes and ears, by the application of logic. Had I ever previously thrust myself into danger? Once or twice, perhaps, but only by accident. I hadn't
hurled
myself towards it, the way I was now, travelling at speeds in excess of thirty miles an hour on twisting roads around the corners of which we might at any moment plough into tractors driving two abreast, or sheep.

She was talking about setting a trap for Fritz. I couldn't set a trap for a
mouse.
Did she think we were going to camp out there until he just showed up? I had a shop to run. A mother to support. How could we ever trap an
assassin,
unless we challenged him to some kind of trivia quiz? She had
no idea.
The only trap she'd ever set was the one that ensnared me.

She said, 'Why are you holding on to the door handle?'

I let go of it. 'I'm not,' I said.

'Do you know the address of this place?' I shook my head. 'We can ask.'

'We're bound to come across it.'

'We'll stop and ask someone. It'll save time.'

'There'll be signs.'

'Okay,' she said, '
I'll
stop and ask.'

When we came to the outskirts of Banbridge, Alison pulled into a Shell garage. While she was in the Mace shop asking directions, I realised that she'd left the keys in the ignition. I could just drive off. I would be saving my own skin. Self-preservation is man's primal instinct, although it seems rare in women. So as not to totally rule out the possibility of having some kind of sexual relationship with her at a later date, I could claim it was an emergency, that Mother had fallen and was lying bleeding and needed my help. Or that I had a migraine. That
voices
had told me to drive off. But as I computed these possibilities she bounced back into the car and said, 'It's not far.'

We drove on. I sneezed.

'You okay?' she asked.

'Hay fever,' I said.

I had been expecting some kind of garage-based business with a ramshackle B&B attached, but the Beale Feirste Books office and retreat was entirely different – a huge mansion with a dangerous-looking lake out front.

'Golly,' Alison said, 'I
know
this place.' I was still getting over her saying
golly
when she added: 'I came here when I was a girl. It was open to the public. Whatchamacallhim used to live here, you know, the actor . . . ?
Irish
actor.'

'Give me a clue,' I said.

'Sir Terence something . . . way back in the fifties . . . I think he left it to the National Trust or something . . .'

'So Daniel Trevor doesn't own it?'

'Maybe he's like the custodian. Or he could have bought it, maybe it wasn't paying its way. I mean we can't remember the actor's name, so maybe nobody else can either. Does it make any difference?'

I shrugged. Probably not.

We parked facing the house, and were just discussing what we were going to say to Daniel when he flew out of the front door and across the gravelled courtyard towards us, waving excitedly.

'Well, someone's pleased to see us,' said Alison, rolling down her window.

But when the publisher bent down to us, he didn't look happy at all. 'You can't park here!' he cried, his face engorged. 'The poets have to be able to see the lake! Take it round the back!'

He turned on his heel and stamped back towards the house.

Alison turned to me and performed the universal sign for wanking.

By the time we eventually made it inside, having parked in a bog of a field, and tramped mud through an open-plan olde worlde kitchen heavy with beams and dominated by a cream Aga, Daniel had calmed down a bit. 'Sorry about all that,' he said, vigorously pumping my hand, 'but the poets . . . any distraction and there's hell to pay. Come in, come in, welcome to Beale Feirste Books. To what do I owe the privilege? Have there been any developments? You will stay for dinner? We always have great
craic
.'

If there's anything that can freeze my blood, it's the notion of great
craic.
I
abhor
the word. It conjures Tourist Board images of beefy men in white Aran sweaters downing pints of Guinness and roaring on dense rugby players and some soup-voiced harlot inviting you to come to Ireland to enjoy a bit of it.
Craic
was disparate strangers being forced together for no good reason and being pressurised into having a good time.

'Sounds like a plan,' said Alison.

'Love to,' I added, 'but we have to get going.'

'What? You've only just . . .'

Alison laughed. 'He's only winding you up.'

I looked at her. I was
not.
No Alibis had been shut all day. I had none of my medication with me because I had not expected to go on a safari into the wilderness. And what if Mother even now was lying on the kitchen floor, her head split open and the grey matter spilled across the linoleum? What was Alison
thinking
of? She wanted to warn Daniel about Fritz? Fair enough. She wanted to check out the house, survey the surrounding land for camouflaged enemies?
Okay.
But in the name of God get me home before nightfall. I could not cope with widespread dark. I could not handle forced bonhomie or watching strangers eat food at close quarters. If she wanted to save Daniel Trevor she could do it by herself, on her own time. Good Jesus Christ, it was an old enough house to have
bats.
They had
radar,
they could find you in the fucking dark.