by Simon Okotie
How, though, firstly, had he failed to notice this room until now, and, more importantly, perhaps, to his investigation, what did it mean to have noticed an open door in the manner described? More specifically, how, he wondered, could one suddenly become aware of an absence, as in the situation from a few moments before of becoming aware of the open door through which he continued, still, to peer, whilst continuing to reach in a number of different directions as before? In his case it was not that he had expected to see a closed door behind Isobel Absalon. He had, he realised, expected to see a continuation of the wall which he sensed to be present to Isobel Absalon’s left without having actually looked directly at that wall, focused, as he had been at that moment, on the foot (etc) of the stairs and, more latterly, on the telephone table and the contents contained thereon. It was only now that he had actually passed Isobel Absalon that he was in a position to notice the absence of what he had expected to be present i.e. the absence of the continuation of the wall and, more specifically, that this absence was not an oversight by the builder or architect (or both) but was designed-in, as it is known, to the extent that without this aperture, it would have been extremely difficult to enter the room in question (although there were, of course, the windows). Rather than an oversight, then, the presence of this absence showed considerable foresight, one could say, on the part of the architect, probably, and possibly also on the part of the builder in question in actually following the plans given to him, no doubt by the architect. That the door in question was painted a similar shade to the surrounding wall and that it opened inwards from a fulcrum on the left side of the doorway were the main considerations in accounting for the fact that someone as observant as he was – and there were few, if any, who were more observant than him, he thought (although he would, of course, include his missing investigative colleague, Marguerite, in this category) – had failed to appreciate that, rather than continuing behind Isobel Absalon, the wall in question contained this open aperture, this absence that he had so recently noticed; in other words, although it had been possible for him to have noticed the open doorway had he cast his eyes above Isobel Absalon’s head and in the direction of that doorway as he had crossed the threshold into the house in question, the fact that from that angle, or thereabouts, he would have seen the top of the door itself, which was a similar shade to the wall surrounding it, even though the door was in fact open (had it been open when he’d first entered the townhouse?) and even though the doorway was demarcated by a frame in the traditional manner, the similarities of the shade involved and the fact that his mind had been focused on other more pressing matters had meant that he had not made that observation at that time but was only making it now. That he was making it only now at least had the advantage to him of being able to take in, in one go, as it is known, all of the salient features of the doorway, the door and of the items contained in the room itself: two suitcases, perched, as it were, upright on the carpet between settee and coffee table, one of the suitcases larger than the other and, lying flat on the coffee table itself, a shiny briefcase, closed, alas, which meant that he could not catch a glimpse of what it contained, whether it be used notes, a pistol plus silencer – housed, as is so often the case, as it were, in shaped slots in a bespoke foam interior – gold bullion, the key to a safety deposit box or simply the office equipment and accoutrements required by Richard Knox in fulfilling his functions and responsibilities in the project office – and, in the latter case, that equipment and those accoutrements, presumably, that needed, for whatever reason, to be carried back and forth between place of residence and place of employment in fulfilling that particular employment role.
Tempted as he was to divert his investigation in the form of his actual physical presence towards this newly discovered room and the most noteworthy items contained therein he retained the discipline for which he had become justly renowned and, whilst starting to turn his head back towards the stairway to which he was headed, noting that the third ring of the telephone had just come to an end leaving open the possibility of the cutting or clicking in of the answerphone at any moment, his right hand made contact with the cool, dark wood of the ornamentally carved finial at the top of the banister post.
35
With his hand still on the finial, his head still turning back to face the stairs, his right foot flying through the air just above the hallway floor towards the first of those stairs, and his eyes not quite facing forwards, although he had sufficient peripheral vision to feel confident that this foot would land safely on that stair, he heard a sound which was unmistakable: he heard, in short, a baby crying somewhere in the house, which immediately brought into question whether the baby was, in fact, the offspring of Isobel Absalon and Richard Knox, rather than being Harold Absalon’s.
The crying was coming, he surmised, his head continuing to swivel back, his foot continuing to fly, from behind a closed door on that very ground floor. He concluded that he would have to amend his mission parameters at his earliest opportunity – that is, perhaps, as soon as his right foot had found a firm footing on the first stair, or thereabouts – and that it was in the direction of the crying baby that he would need to head, as it’s known. At the same time he knew that, rather than in the first-storey bedroom, it was within the room from which the crying was emanating that he would unearth the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of his investigative colleague, who had been on the trail of Harold Absalon, hitherto purported to be the baby’s father.
What was also open to being questioned, he conceded, as he removed his now empty left hand from his left-hand trouser pocket, was the convenience with which the baby’s cries, which were currently being masked by the telephone in its fourth ring-cycle, had emerged. Was he simply trying, now, to avoid further stairs, given that Marguerite, his investigative colleague, who had disappeared, had spent such a large and recent part of his own investigation already scrutinising these rudimentary elevatory devices? Was Marguerite’s successor, then, using the advent of the baby’s cries as a means of justifying his avoidance of what might be considered old ground, as it is known? If so, was it his judgement that he felt would be questioned, which is to say his firm, now, resolution not to ascend but to remain on the same level as the child whose cries he could barely still hear given the other elements in the sonic environment? In other words, would he leave himself open to the accusation that he had refrained from ascending the stairs, using the crying as an excuse so as not to bore, through further painstaking stair-analysis, those following in his footsteps, even though he knew that such an ascent was the best and most appropriate means of unearthing the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of the very colleague who had undertaken such insightful analysis? Or was he concerned that he would be accused of an even graver charge: of somehow conspiring with the powers that be, whoever they were and however contact with them could possibly have been made, to put the child in that room and to have the child start crying at that very moment to avoid those stairs? ‘Did you conspire, in short, to place a child in a downstairs room in that house and for that child to start crying just at the moment when you were about to start climbing the stairs to the first storey of that house and, if so, did you conspire in that way so that your investigation might remain of interest and would not be too repetitive or boring to those who were somehow following your investigation of your colleague’s disappearance whilst also having followed his investigation into the disappearance of Harold Absalon, the Mayor’s transport advisor?’ would be the question, he feared.
But he has no means of hearing this question, or apprehending it in any other way. At least he has no way, in his current predicament, of hearing such a question from us. The reason he has no way of hearing such a question from us is because we have no means of access to him, no means of transmitting such a question to him despite following in his footsteps all this while, and this is not just because he is located within an unnamed townhouse in an unnamed city. If
he had provided an address, or even a description of the former – that is, of the townhouse in question – then we might have a chance of gaining access to him since it would provide a starting point in helping us to narrow down the options regarding which city he is located in (and notice the assumption inherent in the use of the present tense there), whereas the latter – the city state in question – would only assist in broad terms and, given that there are many more townhouses per city than there are townhouses of a given description in all of the world’s cities then that latter situation would be less helpful to us. If, then, we had access to a description of the townhouse, or its address, even, then we could perhaps start to go about trying to locate the city in question; if successful, we might be able to gain access to our hero, perhaps with the assistance of legal advice on his situation provided by a ‘brief’, as they are known in certain circles. But the foregoing questions of city and townhouse and legal briefs (so to speak) are, remember, resting on very unstable foundations – in fact, some would say that the foundations are non-existent. It was established early on in these conjectures that the reason that he has no way of hearing such a question from us (‘Did you conspire, in short, to place a child in a downstairs room in that house and for that child to start crying just at the moment when you were about to start climbing the stairs to the first storey of that house and, if so, did you conspire in that way so that your investigation might remain of interest and would not be too repetitive or boring to those who were somehow following your investigation of your colleague’s disappearance whilst also having followed his investigation into the disappearance of Harold Absalon, the Mayor’s transport advisor?’) was because we had no means of access to him, was how it was put, and this is not just because he is located within an unnamed townhouse in an unnamed city – there are, in other words, other reasons why we cannot gain access to him, reasons that should be immediately apparent to most; so, even if we could pinpoint the city and townhouse in question and find and appoint an appropriate legal brief then this would be, quite simply, futile (at least it would be futile to the extent that we are undertaking these activities as a means to the end of being able to ask him our question – the activities may be useful for other, secondary reasons). It is just not worth the effort.
Fortunately we do not have to go to the lengths listed above. The reason we do not have to go to those lengths is that the foregoing was all taking place in his mind. Granted, it was a different type of reflection than those which had gone before; this does not rule out the possibility of its having occurred in his mind rather than someone else’s – who else is there, indeed? It occurred in his mind as, in a sense, did this sentence. Thorny issues indeed. Suffice to say, for the time being at least, that his predicament had precipitated a new means of reflection in which he put himself to one side or (to use, instead, the vertical axis) he sees himself from above, from a god’s (or bird’s) eye view. This is not to rule out the other eye of the god or bird in question, it is just a figure of speech. Note, also, that that the bird’s eye view rules out the bird walking past him down the corridor – the bird, in other words, must actually be in flight to be a candidate for the expression ‘bird’s eye view’; the gods or, simply, God, is always, he thinks, taken to reside in the heavens, so is always, he thinks, taken to be looking down on us (although, given the evidence of what he is looking down on, many justifiably doubt this or even deny it) and so the caveat is not required in that case. He (not He) was engaged, then, in a form of objective mental reflection, seeing himself as a character in a novel, momentarily; and maybe this form of reflection had been brought about by the impending end of his investigation – he wasn’t sure why that would be the case but one can’t deny it as a possibility. In other words, there is no ‘we’ in his mind, at least not one that he can rely upon or be sure about. So when, in the foregoing, the question ‘Did you conspire, in short, to place a child in a downstairs room (etc),’ that was, in a sense, just a form of mental play in his mind, play that perhaps arose given the pressure he is (or was) increasingly under. Perhaps he’d just started to wonder how it would feel to have a friend or friends watching him do this. It is fortunate, then, that we don’t have to find a way of asking him this question – it has already been asked (several times, in fact, now) and we can simply sit back (whoever ‘we’ are) and wait for an answer to it.
Having somehow been asked the question, he would retort, he thought, with a further question: in what sense was he being accused of placing the child in the room and making them cry – an objectionable accusation for anyone to face, but especially so for someone of his standing? Was he being accused of placing an actual child in an actual room and making them actually cry, he wondered? If so, he would ask the judge and jury to kindly show him where this actual room and actual child actually were so that he, judge and jury could actually hear the actual crying. If in response to that retort the judge, jury or both asserted that because these actions took place in the past tense, as it were, it was not possible to go to the room and find the child still crying within it, he would respond, in turn, by asking judge and jury to at least locate the room within which he was being accused of placing said child and making them cry. He knew that they would not be able to locate the room – if they tried to locate an actual room and travel there to show him and each other then they would be travelling to as many locations as there were jurors/judges. Nor would they be able to identify the baby, even taking into account that the baby might now, with the passage of time, be an adult or even an old person – they may even have died, unsuspiciously. In short, under this dispensation both the room and the baby would be figments of their collective and individual imagination(s) – that was what he would hope to prove under cross-examination.
And if he was being accused of placing an imaginary child in an imaginary room then in what sense was it imaginary, he would ask, he thought, as the shadow of his right foot became smaller and smaller – he imagined – as that foot approached its landing point on the first stair? Were they, whoever they were, accusing him of imagining the child and the tears? Were they also, in fact, accusing him of imagining the room within which the child was crying?
Given the foregoing, in what sense could he be accused of conspiring to place the baby in the ground-floor room and at the key moment making them cry, just to avoid a repetitious and potentially boring stair ascent? Had he arranged for a man or woman, whether real or imagined, to take the child to that room and prod them at the key moment or make them cry at that moment in some other way? He had no doubt, as his foot touched down on the soft stair carpet, that the case against him would fall apart under the weight of such considerations. Freed of a sense of needing to respond to his accusers, with a final thought that maybe those accusers were themselves a figment of his own imagination, he paused, momentarily, to wait for the fourth ring-cycle to complete itself so that he could apprehend more accurately from where the crying arose before the answerphone cut (etc) in to potentially mask, in a different way, the sound of Isobel and Harold Absalon’s child, or Isobel Absalon and Richard Knox’s child, crying in a closed but hopefully unlocked and ventilated room on the ground floor of that very establishment.
36
That the caller left no message but instead chose to replace the receiver at their end with a heavy click – even before the recorded voice had come in – was of keen interest to our investigator, in his continued reversal from a position of having been about to ascend the stairs to the first floor of Richard Knox’s home. What was of even more interest to him was that the phone started ringing again almost immediately after the caller had hung up, as it is known, such that the answerphone had not even finished its whirrings and re-windings before this new ringing had started. Why this immediate recall, he wondered, the tips of the thumb and index finger of his right hand still just touching the finial in their passage away from it? He knew, of course, that he was making an assumption in using the word ‘recall’ i
n the foregoing passage of thought; more specifically, he knew he was making an assumption in his use of the prefix ‘re-’ in the foregoing passage of thought, with its implication that the previous caller – the immediately prior, preceding one to those moments unfolding just inside the front door of Richard Knox’s house, if that was what that property was – had immediately redialled Richard Knox’s house (etc), perhaps using the ‘Redial’ button on their phone for this very purpose. The two questions that came to his mind at that moment, as every part of his right hand lost contact with every part of the finial so that the former was now floating free through the air, as it were, with Harold Absalon now, he was sure, standing behind and to one side of him in the doorway within that very property, were (a) why had he made the assumption that it was the previous caller, which is to say the immediately preceding caller, who had called back so soon after their previous call and (b) assuming that it was the previous, immediately prior caller who had called back, then why had they done so?
The caller, on encountering an answerphone message, immediately replacing the receiver, lifting it again immediately and immediately calling back, as it is known, perhaps with the assistance of a ‘Redial’ button on their own phone for this very purpose was a form that was very familiar to him. But its familiarity to him was not the only reason that he took it that the same caller in this instance had immediately called back in the manner described. He would not have got where he was in his profession, if one could call it that, by observing an incident and simply fitting it to previous similar incidents that he had observed, assuming that it was of their ilk, as it were. That was not to say that he was unaware of the resemblance of this particular instance of the caller, on encountering the answerphone, hanging up and immediately calling back, with the general form of such instances. He was well aware – or simply just aware – of this resemblance, as is perhaps clear. What further evidence, then, had he added to his pattern-matching, if we (he) can call it that, between the particular and general instances to conclude, or rather, to assume, that the caller in question had redialled? The further evidence in question was his very presence in that property, a fact he felt sure had precipitated the redialling in some way and it just re-confirmed for him that he was indeed on the right track in his investigation into the disappearance of his colleague, Marguerite, last seen on the trail of Harold Absalon, the Mayor’s transport advisor, and that he should redouble his efforts to move towards the room in that house occupied by a crying baby who may, in fact, be the offspring of Isobel Absalon and Richard Knox, rather than of Isobel and Harold Absalon. The caller, he felt sure, must be trying to warn Isobel Absalon of our investigator’s approach and it was for this reason that they had redialled, perhaps fearing that he was already within the house and was within hearing range of the answerphone, as was, of course, the case, and refrained from leaving a message for this reason, that is not wanting to alert him that he or she – the caller, that is – had been wanting to alert Isobel Absalon of the imminent arrival of our investigator at that location. But why, if that were the express purpose of the call, had they in fact hung up and then, of course, redialled in the manner described? Had they suddenly found out somehow that he was already in the property and, for that reason, refrained from leaving a message? The very fact that Isobel Absalon had not answered the phone was sufficient, he thought, as the heel of his right foot elevated with the sliding passage of that foot backwards towards the edge of the bottom stair, to indicate to the caller that they were too late with their call – that he had already entered the house, meaning that the call alerting Isobel Absalon to his imminent arrival was already too late. But, if this were the case, would the caller immediately call back, he wondered, rhetorically? The reason, he held, that the caller would call back immediately was that the caller hoped that by the very insistence of the immediate call-back Isobel Absalon would intuit the urgency of the call and would, in spite of his presence within the demesne of the house, choose to ignore this presence for the duration of the time that it took her to answer the phone and, more explicitly, would use that duration to actually answer the phone. The caller had, in short, redoubled their efforts to warn Isobel Absalon about him just at the moment that he had redoubled his own efforts to move towards the room containing the crying baby and, he hoped, the solution to the conundrum of the disappearance of Marguerite, his investigative colleague. And note that this redoubling on his part was the same redoubling as previously; he had not, in other words, now increased his efforts by a factor of eight; no, his efforts remained quadrupled, this quadrupling implied by the attachment of the prefix ‘re-’ to the word ‘doubling’, implying, as it did, a previous doubling, just as in the case of the redial implying a previous dialling.
