The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (15 page)

"Yes."
"Ha!" he said and drove on.
A second or two later a Peugeot stopped by them.
"Who was that just now?" the driver asked them, in reference to the previous driver who had just stopped.

"I don't know," said Dirk.
"Oh," said the driver. "You look as if you've bad a crash of some sort."
"Yes," said Dirk.
"Thought so," said the driver and drove on.
"You don't get the same quality of passers-by these days, do you?" said Dirk to Kate.
"You get hit by some real dogs, too," said Kate. "I still want to know why you were following me. You realise that it's hard for me not to see you in the role of an extremely sinister sort of a person."
"That's easily explained," said Dirk. "Usually I am. On this occasion, however, I simply got lost. I was forced to take evasive action by a large grey oncoming van which took a proprietorial view of the road. I only avoided it by nipping down a side lane in which I was then unable to reverse. A few turnings later nnd I was thoroughly lost. There is a school of thought which says that you should consult a map on these occasions, but to such people I merely say, `Ha! What if you have no map to consult? What if you have a map but it's of the Dordogne?' My own strategy is to find a car, or the nearest equivalent, which looks as if it knows where it's going and follow it. I rarely end up where I was intending to go, but often I end up somewhere that I needed to be. So what do you say to that?"
"Piffle."
"A robust response. I salute you."
"l was going to say that I do the same thing myself sometimes, but I've decided not to admit that yet."
"Very wise," said Dirk. "You don't want to give away too much at this point. Play it enigmatic is my advice."
"I don't want your advice. Where were you trying to get before suddenly deciding that driving seventeen miles in the opposite direction would help you get there?"
"A place called the Woodshead."
"Ah, the mental hospital."
"You know it?"
"I've been driving away from it for the last seventeen miles and I wish it was further. Which ward will you be in? I need to know where to send the repair bill."
"They don't have wards," said Dirk. "And I think they would be distressed to hear you call it a mental hospital."
"Anything that distresses 'em is fine by me."
Dirk looked about him.
"A fine evening," he said.
"No it isn't."
"I see," said Dirk. "You have, if I may say so, the air of one to whom her day has not been a source of joy or spiritual enrichment."
"Too damn right, it hasn't," said Kate. "I've had the sort of day that would make St Francis of Assisi kick babies. Particularly if you include Tuesday in with today, which is the last time I was actually conscious. And now look. My beautiful car. The only thing I can say in favour of the whole shebang is that at least I'm not in Oslo."
"I can see how that might cheer you."
"I didn't say it cheered me. It just about stops me killing myself. I might as well save myself the bother anyway, with people like you so keen to do it for me."
"You were my able assistant, Miss Schechter." "Stop doing that!" "Stop doing what?"
"My name! Suddenly every stranger I meet knows my name. Would you guys please just quit knowing my name for one second? How can a girl be enigmatic under these conditions? The only person I met who didn't seem to know my name was the only one I actually introduced myself to. All right," she said, pointing an accusing finger at Dirk, "you're not supernatural, so just tell me how you knew my name. I'm not letting go of your tie till you tell me."
"You haven't got hold of - "
"I have now, buster."
"Unhand me!"
"Why were you following me?" insisted Kate. "How do you know my name?"
"I was following you for exactly the reasons stated. As for your name, my dear lady, you practically told me yourself."
"I did not."
"I assure you, you did."
"I'm still holding your tie."
"If you are meant to be in Oslo but have been unconscious since Tuesday, then presumably you were at the incredible exploding check-in counter at Heathrow Terminal Two. It was widely reported in the press. I expect you missed it through being unconscious. I myself missed it through rampant apathy, but the events of today have rather forced it on my attention."
Kate grudgingly let go of his tie, but continued to eye him with suspicion.
"Oh yeah?" she said. "What events?"
"Disturbing ones," said Dirk, brushing himself down. "Even if what you had told me yourself had not been eoough to identify you, then the fact of your having also been today to visit the Woodshead clinched it for me. I gather from your mood of belligerent despondency that the man you were seeking was not thene."
"What?"
"Please, have it," said Dirk, rapidly pulling off his tie and handing it to her. "By chance I ran into a nurse from your hospital earlier today. My first encounter with her was one which, for various reasons, I was anxious to terminate abruptly. It was only while I was standing on the pavement a minute or two later, fending off the local wildlife, that one of the words I had heard her say struck me, I may say, somewhat like a thunderbolt. The idea was fantastically, wildly improbable. But like most fantastically, wildly improbable ideas it was at least as worthy of consideration as a more mundane one to which the facts had been strenuously bent to fit.
"I returned to question her further, and she confirmed that a somewhat unusual patient had, in the early hours of the morning, been transferred from the hospital, apparently to the Woodshead.
"She also confided to me that another patient had been almost indecently curious to find out what had become of him. That patient was a Miss Kate Schechter, and I think you will agree, Miss Schechter, that my methods of navigation have their advantages. I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be."
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 caf, 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 nead or not.
The pub combined all the traditional English quatities 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 comer 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 pcrfectly 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 h e 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 recendy 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 Aristey'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 arnund 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 nave.
"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."