by Ben Okri
That evening, after a long spell at the station, he left late.
His thoughts had gone off the map of indirection. He had taken so many side streets that he did not recognise where he was. He didn’t mind. His best intuitions came while waking and while walking. In an odd way he seemed to be doing both now. He seemed to be waking from the sleep of his thoughts. Where was he? He looked around. He had gone off the main road that led to his flat in Kensal Rise.
The street where he now stood looked decidedly strange. He searched for the street name, and found that he did not even recognise that. He walked on till he came to a barber’s shop. There were no customers. When he went in, he startled the barber who was reading a newspaper.
‘Can you please tell me where I am?’
The barber stared at him with his mouth half open.
‘Is anything wrong?’
‘You came in here about five minutes ago,’ the barber said. ‘And you asked the very same question.’
Detective Draper looked at the round clock on the wall with its Roman numerals. It was 6.35 p.m.
‘So I did, so I did,’ Detective Draper murmured, and he hurried out.
He went back the way he had come. A glance told him that the barber had come out of his shop and was watching him. He walked faster, aware that the faster he walked the faster walked all the events connected to him. If he sped up, things would speed up too. The web of connected events responded to his every deed. Suddenly in his mind he could see the lines that linked him to the victim and the murderer and the woman. Except that these lines had multiplied in ways he could only guess at. He was walking aimlessly now, following the vectors of his thought. He conjectured that if he had arrived at this strange place by getting lost, then only by getting lost again could he return to a familiar world.
He was thinking fast and walking fast, as if something unknown were stalking him. The linking lines moved faster in his mind. Then he suddenly stopped. In the middle of all that wandering, a clear thought, distilled and pristine, dropped into his mind. Why hadn’t he thought of it before?
There was now only one way to solve the murder. The past was closed to him. There was only one path left. He had to arrive at a future place before the murderer did. He had to outwit him in all the vectors of time. At this point the murderer had a time advantage over him. He had to overturn that advantage. He had to anticipate the murderer in the future.
He walked home much more slowly. He noticed the council estates and the silver birches and the uneven pavement. It did not surprise him that he now knew where he was. He walked slowly and breathed evenly. As he turned into his street someone brushed past him. The detective caught a confident smile on the face of the man who had jostled him. He was at his front gate when he realised that the smile belonged to the murder suspect. But when he turned to look the man was gone. There was an envelope pinned to his front door. Inside the envelope was a message composed of letters cut out of newspapers and magazines. The message read:
All alternative realities are true.
The detective let himself into his flat, shut the door behind him and poured himself a glass of Argentinian Altamira. He sat down at a table near a window to contemplate the letter. After a while he brought out a worn book of Escher drawings. Leaving the doors in his mind open, he contemplated the drawings. But in the other rooms in his mind, he was thinking.
In his research he had discovered that the murder suspect had an unusual interest in a branch of speculative physics. In one room in his mind he realised that the solution to the crime was not to be found in the real world, but in an unreal space, a speculative realm. In another room, he pondered the message he had received. All alternative realities are true. He contemplated the ramifications of the message while leafing through the drawings. Calmly, he began charting out the clear lines of the case. Soon he came to a dead end. He paused, and put down the book.
He knew that all dead ends are an illusion designed to bring motion to a halt. To those who can see beyond the illusion, dead ends are portals into unknown possibilities. He paid more attention to dead ends than to open highways. He knew now that a leap of faith was required. Then he remembered the cat that was both seen and not seen. He realised he was going to have to work backwards. He went to sleep that night with the feeling that he had at least stopped the multiplication of the problem.
3
The next morning, an envelope was posted through his letter box. Before he opened it he knew that he would find letters cut out of newspapers and magazines composing an elusive message.
The envelope contained a single sheet of white paper with the words:
The world is still here.
He had a shower, got dressed, and regarded his face in the mirror. The mirror had a slight warp that morning. He was not sure that the world was still there.
Outside, the weather had changed. The sun shone intermittently through dark masses of clouds. A cool wind, with a deceptively icy core, blew from the south. He went down side streets towards the café where the victim, Barrett, had been seen reading a cat.
The café was run by a long-haired Italian who combined obsequiousness with a mildly intrusive personal charm. Sitting in the same seat where the victim had been seen reading a cat, Detective Draper saw the canal beyond the balcony. There were boats moored on both sides. The detective drank his hot water slowly. He had given up drinking coffee years ago and had now settled for the digestive refinements of hot water. Outside, birds were wheeling over the canal.
While sipping, he had a singular thought. He knew that entertaining it would create realities that would only blur the case further, so he pushed the thought to a corner of his mind. He caught a taxi back to the office.
To test his theory he had his contact at the Evening Standard plant a report that the police were draining an obscure canal in Richmond in their search for the missing body. To lend this deception the veneer of plausibility, he had two amateur frogmen busily explore the canal. They were to pretend to pull something out of its shallow depths.
‘What’s the idea behind this flagrant waste of public funds on sham frogmen in a remote canal?’ asked his superintendent who had summoned him to lunch. ‘You are aware that I have gone out on a limb for you too many times…’
‘And I have never let you down, have I?’ Detective Draper replied, calmly buttering his roll.
‘No, you haven’t, I grant you that, but there are many people after your job. They will use anything to get at you. God knows you have enough disadvantages as it is.’
‘Do I?’ Detective Draper said, while the glimmer of a new thought flitted through a door in his mind.
‘You know you do. You are not an Oxbridge man.’
‘Neither are you…’
‘You are…’
‘Black?’
‘I wasn’t going to say that.’
‘But you thought it.’
‘Look, we run the most…’
‘Colour-blind department in the country.’
‘You took the words right out of my mouth.’
‘But I am the only one that is…?’
‘We have to face the realities of the world.’
Detective Draper suddenly stiffened. He held his head at an angle. A new thought had come through.
‘Do we?’ he said absent-mindedly.
‘Yes, we do,’ replied the superintendent, puzzled by Draper’s behaviour.
‘Have you had this conversation with me before?’
‘That’s what I was getting to.’
‘About an hour ago?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘We don’t have any time. We have to stop it now.’
‘Stop what?’
‘There will be another murder unless we act fast.’
‘Murder? Of who?’
‘The woman. She’ll be murdered and there will be no evidence of it.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because she would have been murdered yesterday.’
Detective Draper stood up.
‘You’re not making sense, man,’ the superintendent exploded. ‘Sit down, and explain yourself.’
‘I really must dash, sir. I’ll have a full explanation for you tomorrow afternoon, if all goes well.’
‘But tomorrow is Saturday!’ the superintendent said to the departing figure of the detective. ‘Yorkshire are playing Middlesex at the Oval.’
‘I know,’ Draper said, before he disappeared through the door, ‘and the score will be seventeen for one.’
‘What?’ cried the superintendent.
Detective Draper was already out on the street.
4
From the Kensal Rise police station, Detective Draper requisitioned three frogmen. Early on Saturday morning he had them dive into the canal at Little Venice, right near the café. The area was cordoned off. The frogmen, in their dark wetsuits, began their mysterious exploration. There was a unit of police there, with an unmistakable police van. Detective Draper watched from a distance. If his intuition was correct, in the next hour a number of things would happen. Their precise order interested him. He knew he was in the realm of a speculative space now, where actually seeing what was sought made its existence real. The time, the opportunity, were limited. Things were in mutant formation. Events were hovering between two realms, between being and non-being. From here on the operation would be delicate.
The frogmen in the obscure canal at Richmond found nothing, as was the intention. But the story planted in the Evening Standard had its desired effect, as far as the detective could tell. He kept looking at his watch. The frogmen here at the Little Venice canal took turns going in. One of them would stand on the edge of the canal and then flip over backwards. He would root around below for a while and then emerge. For an hour now they had been exploring and had found nothing. The cricket game had begun at the Oval. The heat was beginning to rise. It was a bright day and people had begun to stop to watch the strange proceedings on the canal. This too had been factored into Detective Draper’s complex calculation of events. Only by the frogmen diving, verifying, and bringing up, could there be anything to dive for, verify, and bring up. The detective knew this. Something will be found only because something is looked for. The looking creates the finding.
In just the same way, only the presence of onlookers created the event. The onlookers were essential. The detective had surmised that what was needed was a weighting of events towards a more dense reality, to counterbalance the ambiguous reality between worlds which had so far bedevilled the investigation. He intuited that all worlds had to come together here. That was why even before he had full permission, he’d arranged for the frogmen to make a public exhibition of excavating the muddy depths of the canal.
The ruse had worked. The item planted in the Evening Standard had caught the lively interest of Londoners and soon everyone was talking about it. The crowd around the canal observing the frogmen grew in number. The trap sprung had yielded multi-dimensional fruit. An off-duty policeman had spotted the suspected murderer near the Little Venice canal and had reported the matter to the local police station. The station chief had relayed the message to Detective Draper. With a nonchalant expression, he continued to observe the frogmen at work.
Twice the frogmen claimed to have found nothing. They had said it was just mud and rotting bicycles and broken paddles down there.
The detective, with his keen awareness of the power of numbers, said:
‘Twice does not make anything conclusive. The canal conceals secrets which must be exposed. My career depends on it. Maybe even my life.’
He sent the frogmen down a third time. He suggested they look not so much in the deeper parts, but in the parts no one would think of looking.
‘What part is that, sir?’ one of the frogmen said.
‘You will know when you find it.’
Disgruntled, they returned to work. They flipped over backwards, and disappeared beneath the muddied surface. Detective Draper, aware of the proximity of the murderer, knew that it was now a race against time. The frogmen had to find something before the murderer found him. He remained calm. He ordered a cup of hot water from the café. The café manager, the insouciant Italian, brought the water himself. His dishevelled locks fell across his face. The Italian handed the detective the cup of hot water and held onto the pot.
‘So what is going on, sir?’ the café manager asked.
Detective Draper turned to look at him. The Italian had the eyes of an insomniac.
‘It’s best you don’t know. We don’t want you entangled in the multiple webs of the problem.’
‘I might be able to help.’
‘How?’
‘I hear things. People tell me things.’
‘I’m sure that’s true. I’ll contact you if your help is required.’
‘Any time,’ said the Italian. ‘It would be an honour to be of service.’
The café manager stood there watching the first frogman emerge from the murky canal. The detective turned to him with a furrowed brow and the Italian immediately understood that his presence had become redundant. He filled the detective’s cup and retreated into his café.
Detective Draper felt the murderer moving closer, but he sipped his hot water with perfect calm. It is not the number of encounters in the numberless realms that count, it is the world in which the encounter is fixed, thought the detective grimly. A flurry among the frogmen told him that the nature of the game had shifted at last. He drank what was left of his hot water and went towards them.
One of the frogmen had pulled out from the depths of the canal a black plastic bag. Dripping with muck, it was placed on the ground. The frogmen hosed it down and then the detective had it brought to the back of the van. A casual glance at its form told him what he needed to know. There was no need to expose the contents. The first stage of the duel had been fought. It might have been difficult to fix the reality of this black dustbin bag, but now that it was fixed the rest were sure to be found. It was at that moment, perhaps delayed by the variable factors in the calculations of time, that a shadow moved into sight.
Jorg fired two shots. One shot pierced the metal of the white van, the other grazed Detective Draper’s shoulder. Then Jorg was wrestled to the ground by the plainclothes policemen who had been drinking cups of innocuous tea in the café. Before the detective fell, he was heard to cry out:
‘On no account are the frogmen to cease their exploration!’
He passed out for only a few moments. An act of will wrenched him back into consciousness. Detective Draper allowed the paramedics to bandage his shoulder, while he surveyed the scene before him. The frogmen had persisted and eventually they had dredged up three black bin liners from diverse parts of the canal. They were hosed down and kept in the back of the van that the bullet had pierced. The detective had no need to inspect their contents. He knew what they were.
The afternoon sun played on the water of the canal, making its surface shine like gunmetal. The light came through the trees on both sides of the metal fences. Detective Draper could see the church through the leaves. He felt tired. He made a signal to one of the men. They bore him to a waiting car, but instead of being taken to the hospital for further treatment, he insisted on being taken home.
6
The next morning, with his arm in a sling, Detective Draper was at the police station. Out of respect for the part he had played in the investigation, he was allowed the first conference with the man who had shot him. They were in a soundproof room. The detective sat on a chair at the table and the murderer sat opposite.
‘Something puzzles me,’ said Jorg.
There was nothing repentant about his expression. He stared at the detective intensely.
‘You want to know how I knew where to look?’
Jorg smiled. It was a thin smile, sustained by something resembling a twitch. Then he nodded faintly.
‘My question to you is why?’
‘Why what?
’
They were still duelling. It was not over yet.
There was still the chance for further multiplications. He had to be careful.
‘Why did you kill him?’
‘Are you sure it is why and not when?’
‘I know when.’
‘You do?’
‘You are not going to trap me that easily again.’
‘I have no idea what you mean.’
‘Of course you do. All alternative realities are true.’
‘I see. You got the clue.’
‘It was designed to throw me off the scent.’
‘You went against your own psychology.’
‘Like you, I have many psychologies,’ the detective said, leaning back. ‘But why did you kill him?’
‘He was after my woman.’
‘She was not your woman. She told the police that you were just her neighbour and that you had misunderstood her friendship.’
‘She was a whore and he deserved to die. He was not even one of us.’
‘You killed him out of jealousy.’
‘Not jealousy. Revenge.’
The detective stood up. He felt weary. He was at the door when Jorg fired the last question at him.
‘How did you know?’
The detective at that moment felt a throb of pain in his shoulder.
‘The world is still here,’ he replied, and went out.
7
Three hours later he was sitting with the superintendent in the Scotland Yard canteen. They had window seats looking out over the river.
‘The facts don’t make sense. Can you make sense of them for me, so I can explain it to the board?’
‘I don’t recommend an explanation.’
‘What then?’
‘Leave them with the facts. Sometimes people need to be brought face to face with the incomprehensibility of the world.’
The superintendent stared at him.
‘Now you know why you will never make department head.’
‘It never was my ambition.’
‘You have ambitions?’
