In the Absence of Absalon

by Simon Okotie

  And for those who didn’t need any assistance in this area at all, welcome back.

  23

  He flicked the keys – both conventional and electronic – around into the palm of his hand as he approached the central, and therefore the most exposed, part of the area in front of the townhouse. The keys felt warm in his hand and the reason for this was that they had been in his pocket and, more specifically in his left-hand trouser pocket in close proximity to his genital area, an area, moreover, that was often warm or even overly warm, in his experience. Given the conducting nature of most keys, they picked up the natural warmth generated in that area, and that was why, in short, the keys which he had now fished out of his pocket were warm to the touch, warm to his touch that is, no-one else being quite close enough yet to attest to this warmth generated by his genital area and transmitted to the keys that he clutched, remember, in his left hand.

  How had he moved from fishing out the keys to clutching them in the palm of his hand? How, furthermore, would he move from clutching them in his hand to selecting the correct key, that is, the key to the front door of the townhouse in front of him? How, more importantly, would he open that front door in advance of Isobel Absalon, were she in a position to do so, both literally and metaphorically, from the opposite side of the door in question, and before his apprehension by her husband who was, as far as we know, approaching him from the rear?17

  He would move from fishing out to clutching using a man­oeuvre in which the whole hand simply turned, as though it were opening a door. In thinking ‘as though it were opening a door’ he realised that the door in question could be locked, in fact, or unlocked; the action, in short, was one akin to turning a key or a door handle – it didn’t matter which. It was one in which the index finger that had been used to fish out the keys retained, momentarily, its ‘hookishness’ whilst the remaining fingers and thumb opened up, which is to say became less hookish without necessarily being devoid completely of any resemblance to a row of hooks. And the purpose of this opening out of the other fingers was to bring about a clear landing path to the palm of the hand for the keys; were the non-index fingers to retain their hook-like qualities too assiduously they would potentially block the clear passage of the key from the thin (or thick) air to the palm of the hand in question, which, in his case was, remember, the left. The keys, then, on emerging from the pocket had been hanging down on the hook of his left index finger, with the other fingers of his left hand wishing, as it were, to imitate their neighbour, that is, to imitate the left index finger by maintaining a hook-like appearance, and having to resist this wish in order to allow the keys – both conventional and electronic – a clear path through air of whatever thickness to the palm of the same hand, as the palm of that hand rotated from a near-vertical to a near-horizontal, upward-facing, as it were, plane. And it was this revolution of the palm from a near-vertical to a near-horizontal, upward-facing, as it were, plane that he had likened, a short while before, to the hand turning as though it were unlocking a door with a key (note) or opening a door using the door handle expressly designed for that purpose. In both cases – that of key-unlocking or handle-opening of the door – the plane of the key, in the former example and of the handle in the latter mimicked the plane of the palm of the hand executing the respective action in that the key in the former situation moved, with the palm, typically from a near-vertical plane or axis to a near-horizontal one; with the handle – or at least with those handles possessing a clearly identifiable axis or plane, thereby ruling out circular/spherical handles, which were rife in some establishments according to his investigations – the move, typically, was the inverse of the previous example in that the handle would rest, as it were, in the horizontal plane or axis and the palm would, at the outset, adopt this horizontal plane or axis although, note, downwards-facing, as it were, and push the handle to or, at least, towards, the vertical axis (etc), in his experience, as a means of opening the door, as it is known or, at least, as a precursor to so doing and, in doing so, would itself, the palm that is, move from a horizontal or near-horizontal axis – downward-facing, as it were, as before, to a vertical or near-vertical one. In rehearsing these two examples in his mind, he realised that it was the former that provided the closest parallels to the current situation in that, in the case of the left hand being used to unlock a door using a key that was turned in the lock in an anti-clockwise direction then the palm, according to his extensive investigations, would typically move from being vertical, or near-vertical, to being in a horizontal or near-horizontal axis etc and this was very close to what had happened in moving from fishing out the keys to those same keys resting warmly in the palm of his left hand.

  Would he need to take his left index finger from the key ring – would he need to unhook it, in other words – before moving onto the next phase of his operation, namely, selecting the appropriate key to open the front door to the townhouse in front of him? Yes, he thought he would need to unhook the index finger. He would need to move to gripping the key between thumb and forefinger, and he would not be able to complete this action quickly, he thought, unless he first unhooked his left index finger from the key ring. Having done so, would he actually need to transfer the keys from his left to his right hand, given that he was what’s known as right-handed? It could not be ruled out. Given that time was of the essence, he now unhooked his left index finger, leaving the keys resting momentarily in the palm of his left hand and, in so doing, skilfully and efficiently opened up the next phase of his operation, with all of the dangers that that entailed.

  24

  What if the locks had been changed, he thought, as he retrieved his right hand from his right-hand trouser pocket, having deposited the book of matches therein, as a precursor to receiving the keys in that hand? This procedure of lock-changing generally took place under a number of discrete scenarios, the primary examples being in the aftermath of a burglary or when a wife, generally, had uncovered her husband’s infidelity.18 Only in very rare circumstances, he estimated, would both of these situations pertain at once, although the possibility of the husband using the burglary as an attempt to cover up his own misdemeanours in some way could not be completely ruled out.

  As his right hand started moving towards his left to enable the keys to be transferred from the latter to the former, he reflected further on the difference between changing the locks on the house and changing the lock to the gate, feeling certain that this would assist him in his inquiries. The difference did not just lie in the use of the plural in the former, classic case (that is, ‘changing the locks’) compared to the latter, which used the singular (that is, ‘changing the padlock’), although there was something in this difference; the difference had more to do with the ease with which one could change a padlock securing, say, a gate, compared with the ease with which one could change the locks securing a house, other dwelling or establishment, to refer to this whole class provisionally in that way just for the moment. And that term ‘establishment’ did point more fully towards the difference between the two situations: the word suggested, by extension, as it were, more established practices, procedures and infrastructure for locking and unlocking those premises. This was certainly the case with the locks that had confronted him – the padlock and, a little way ahead of him, across the remainder of the area in front of the townhouse that is, the locks to the house itself, an establishment, remember, that he knew was the key, in a metaphorical sense this time, to unlocking the whole Marguerite mystery, if indeed that was what it was i.e. a mystery. In short, then, padlocks were used to secure less well-established premises, or open areas such as the area that he was currently traversing, via gates, doors or other hinged or slotted barriers (and he hoped that this last phrase would act as a catch-all, as it were, for cases where the entrance/exit-way to a bounded open area did not consist of a door or gate, although he was not clear to what specific cases this referred).

  Leaving aside bounded ope
n areas for the moment, he brought to mind instances of the former case, that is, less well-established premises traditionally secured by padlocks, and came up with the following preliminary list: sheds, warehouses, lock-ups and outhouses. Granted the first example could be encompassed by the last – that is, one could class the shed as a type of outhouse if one wished – he wouldn’t stand in the way of that. And note, also, that the archetypal outhouse – the outdoor privy – probably didn’t lend itself, as it were, to being secured by padlock for the simple reason, he thought, that there was nothing really to steal from such an outbuilding. Still, he felt sure that if one were to require a secure outdoor privy then the means that one would use to secure it would be the padlock. This was in the case, note, of said privy being unoccupied of course; in the case of it being occupied then it would be secured from the inside in the usual way, with, in more advanced models, perhaps an exterior indication of its occupied status; in less advanced models the view through a gap in the perhaps dilapidated wooden door, or the sound of a newspaper rustling or the smell of cigarette or pipe smoke partially masking other less savoury odours would perhaps have to suffice as that indicator. Where there was a requirement for these less well-established premises – and he was not pretending to have presented an exhaustive list of them – to be secured from the outside they would typically – or not unusually – be secured using a padlock, with a chain, bracket or other means of attachment such that the means of entry or exit was barred, so to speak, when the door was closed and the padlock secured in the appropriate position.

  Leaving aside his inappropriate use of the word ‘appropriate’, he returned to the main thrust of his argument, which was, remember, the relative ease with which a padlock could be changed compared to what is known as changing the locks: in the former case one simply had to go to pretty much any hardware store and buy a new padlock, which could be used as a replacement for an existing padlock provided one had the key for the existing padlock and that the key was still able to unlock that padlock, which is to say that the padlock hadn’t become rusted up, say, to the extent that it couldn’t be unlocked even with the correct key, or hadn’t been damaged or tampered with in some way such that it could no longer be used for the purpose for which it had been designed, namely securing an outbuilding (etc). These are just examples of course – there was a myriad of other reasons why the correct, as it were, key may no longer be able to unlock its, so to speak, padlock. Of course that might be the very reason why the padlock needed to be replaced, in order to secure again, for example, an outhouse that had lapsed in use due, say, to modern innovations or – a more urgent case this – to release someone locked inside; in these latter cases the padlock would have to be broken, but, this difficulty aside, it was still easier to change even these seized-up padlocks than it was to change the locks to an establishment such as the house that he hoped soon to enter.

  The relative ease related, in short, to being able to do it oneself; that is, one could generally replace a padlock oneself, especially if one had the appropriate tool along with the brawn and brains to release an existing seized-up padlock, if required. In the case of changing the locks, one generally had to bring a man in – and it was generally a man, regardless of the gender of the person desiring to change the locks. The man in question – the one who was brought in in such cases (and there is obviously more than one of these men) – is called a locksmith. In the case where the door itself has been damaged – by the burglar or cuckolded husband19 to give the contrary side of the earlier example – it may be necessary to have the door repaired before calling in the locksmith; depending on the extent of the damage – and of his abilities – the locksmith may be able to render the repair himself as well as changing the lock(s). In the case where the wife was cheating on the husband by seeing a locksmith, a discounted or free fitting might be provided.

  25

  He wanted the front door key to be primed for use, then, at the moment when he was faced, as it were, by the front door of the house in question. Perhaps an open doorway would await him, contrary to his earlier pontifications and predictions, when he arrived at the threshold in question. He could not rely on his. This was why he continued moving his left hand towards his right as a precursor to transferring the keys from the former to the latter, as he traversed the area in front of the townhouse. This transfer would have the obvious disadvantage of tying up his favoured right hand as it were. Note (especially to the rookie detectives) that this tying up should not be taken in a literal sense. This was not to say that literal tying up had no place in the private or even a public investigator’s armoury, as it were. It was one of a number of investigative techniques of which he was a master.20 No, the sense in which his right hand would be tied up, rather than being literally bound up with twine, rope or other binding (a noun which somewhat begged the question, he thought), related to that right hand being otherwise engaged, would be one way of thinking about it, engaged, that is, in holding the keys – both conventional and electronic – to the front door of the house in question and to other premises, whether established or otherwise, to bounded areas and to vehicle(s) unspecified, and manipulating those keys, as he would need to do, so that he was gripping the appropriate key between thumb and forefinger of his right hand as he approached the front door and, more specifically, as the key in question approached the appropriate lock in that very door. He took, then, the phrases ‘otherwise engaged’ and ‘tied up’ to be synonymous in the situation described, namely the situation in which he referred to his own right hand, which, remember, he favoured over his left, as being effectively tied up at the moment of its carriage and manipulation of the keys in question. Being otherwise engaged got closer to what he was trying to express to himself and, somehow, to others, which was that, in judging that it was appropriate for him to move the keys in question from his left to his right hand for the short journey, by foot, as it is known, from his current location to the front door in question, this meant that his right hand would not be available for other operations, whether covert or overt. For those of a lewder mindset he wanted to distance himself from what ‘covert right-handed operations’ might be taken to mean. He reflected on how little control he had over how his thoughts were interpreted or, indeed, over how those mysterious trainees were acting at that very moment – for all he knew, for example, they could be engaged in covert right- (or, granted, in rarer cases, left-) handed activities in the sense alluded (or allewded) to whilst at the same time apprehending his thoughts, following in his footsteps, as it were, and this was a well-established21 practice, he knew, in relation to certain publications. He could not be held responsible for that or for anything else that these characters were engaged in – he wanted this to be taken as a general disclaimer. His own right hand would not be available for such activities or for any activities once it had received the keys, both conventional and electronic, from his left hand given that it would be manipulating those keys such that, to address those of a lewder mindset more directly this time, the front door key, as representing the male organ, could be slid into the appropriate lock, taken as representing the female organ, such that he could gain a wider access, as it were, into the house that held the key in a different sense to the disappearance of his colleague, Marguerite, who was missing, and of Harold Absalon, the Mayor’s transport advisor, who had been missing. That, in short, was what he had been trying to say (to think rather). And if the point still remains obscure to the less experienced investigators amongst you then you will have to follow it up in your own time, since he needed, at that moment, to re-engage with the situation unfolding before him given that the door within that front façade had swung open to reveal Isobel Absalon dressed in a blue silk bath robe that he knew belonged to Richard Knox. Instead of looking at the investigator standing almost on the doorstep (although note that there was no step, in this instance, to or at the door in question) her eyes widened and her lips unstuck as she looked past him towards the gate to
the area in front of the townhouse. Without turning around, he knew that this must be because her husband was now at that gate; he knew, too, that they were entering the final phase of the investigation into the disappearance of Marguerite, last seen on the trail of same.

  26

  It was not glue that had momentarily stuck Isobel Absalon’s lips together, he thought, as he let his still-empty right hand fall precipitously away from his left. If that had been the case she may not have been able to part them in the straightforward way that she had; she might, indeed, have needed to be admitted to casualty in that instance. The reason they had stuck together but were so easily parted was that she was wearing crimson lipstick, although the colour, note, was incidental to the adhesiveness (if not to his interest in them and her).

  As the name suggests, lipstick22 is a substance that sticks to one’s lips thereby giving them colour; not that one’s lips are entirely devoid of colour before one applies one’s lipstick to them: many people’s lips are, in any case, a pinkish colour, for instance, although this is far from universal; conversely, when one was on the verge of death, say, or of keeling over, then one’s lips were said to turn blue, although he preferred to refer to this pre-death or pre-keel hue as blue-grey since he felt that reflected the reality much more closely. The blue-grey colour could also be descriptive of hypothermia or extreme cold, as had been the case with Harold Absalon at a certain stage since his disappearance. These, then, were just two of the many naturally occurring, as it were, lip colourings. And note here the distinction that he had made between the natural and the artificial – he consciously avoided the pejorative term ‘unnatural’ – which he was using to differentiate between those lip colours that one’s own body produces, so to speak – that is, consciously or unconsciously – and applies – without application, that is – internally but which are, of course, visible externally otherwise, of course, they could not count as ‘colourings’, and those lip colours which are artificially produced by others but generally applied to oneself by oneself. However, this did not exhaust the meaning of the term ‘natural’ in relation to lip colourings, since included within it are all substances found in nature lending themselves to lip colouration, such as the secretions of certain flowers, and it was in this sense that the crimson colouring on Isobel Absalon’s lips could be taken to be natural – in other words it had been produced from mostly naturally occurring products but not internally (i.e. not by her).