Kate tried to maintain her furious glare, but it simply couldn’t be kept up for very long in the circumstances.
“OK,” she said at last, “how do we get to this place?”
“There are as many ways as there are tiny pieces.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Tiny things.” He held up his thumb and forefinger again to indicate something very small. “Molecules,” he added, seeming to be uncomfortable with the word. “But first let us leave here.”
“Will I need a coat in Asgard?”
“As you wish.”
“Well, I’ll take one anyway. Wait a minute.”
She decided that the best way to deal with the astonishing rigmarole which currently constituted her life was to be businesslike about it. She found her coat, brushed her hair, left a new message on her telephone answering machine and put a saucer of milk firmly under the table.
“Right,” she said, and led the way out of the flat, locking it carefully after them, and making shushing noises as they passed Neil’s door. For all the uproar he was currently making he was almost certainly listening out for the slightest sound, and would be out in a moment if he heard them going by, to complain about the Coca-Cola machine, the lateness of the hour, man’s inhumanity to man, the weather, the noise, and the color of Kate’s coat, which was a shade of blue that Neil for some reason disapproved of most particularly. They stole past successfully and closed the front door behind them with the merest click.
23
THE SHEETS WHICH tumbled out onto Dirk’s kitchen table were made of thick heavy paper folded together, and had obviously been much handled.
He sorted them out one by one, separating them from each other, smoothing them out with the flat of his hand and laying them out neatly in rows on the kitchen table, clearing a space, as it became necessary, among the old newspapers, ashtrays and dirty cereal bowls which Elena the cleaner always left exactly where they were, claiming, when challenged on this, that she thought he had put them there specially.
He pored over the papers for several minutes, moving from one to another, comparing them with each other, studying them carefully, page by page, paragraph by paragraph, line by line.
He couldn’t understand a word of them.
It should have occurred to him, he realized, that the green-eyed, hairy, scythe-waving giant might differ from him not only in general appearance and personal habits, but also in such matters as the alphabet he favored.
He sat back in his seat, disgruntled and thwarted, and reached for a cigarette, but the packet in his coat was now empty. He picked up a pencil and tapped it in a cigarette-like way, but it wasn’t able to produce the same effect.
After a minute or two he became acutely conscious of the fact that he was probably still being watched through the keyhole by the eagle, and he found that this made it impossibly hard to concentrate on the problem before him, particularly without a cigarette. He scowled to himself. He knew there was still a packet upstairs by his bed, but he didn’t think he could handle the sheer ornithology involved in going to get it.
He tried to stare at the papers for a little longer. The writing, apart from being written in some kind of small, crabby and indecipherable runic script, was mostly hunched up toward the left-hand side of the paper as if swept there by a tide. The right-hand side was largely clear except for an occasional group of characters which were lined up underneath each other. All of it, except for a slight sense of undefinable familiarity about the layout, was completely meaningless to Dirk.
He turned his attention back to the envelope instead and tried once more to examine some of the names which had been so heavily crossed out.
Howard Bell, the incredibly wealthy best-selling novelist who wrote bad books which sold by the warehouse-load despite—or perhaps because of—the fact that nobody read them.
Dennis Hutch, record-company magnate. Now that he had a context for the name, Dirk knew it perfectly well. The Aries Rising Record Group, which had been founded on Sixties ideals, or at least on what passed for ideals in the Sixties, grown in the Seventies and then embraced the materialism of the Eighties without missing a beat, was now a massive entertainment conglomerate on both sides of the Atlantic. Dennis Hutch had stepped up into the top seat when its founder had died of a lethal overdose of brick wall, taken while under the influence of a Ferrari and a bottle of tequila. ARRGH! was also the record label on which “Hot Potato” had been released.
Stan Dubcek, senior partner in the advertising company with the silly name which now owned most of the British and American advertising companies which had not had names which were quite as silly, and had therefore been swallowed whole.
And here, suddenly, was another name that was instantly recognizable, now that Dirk was attuned to the sort of names he should be looking for. Roderick Mercer, the world’s greatest publisher of the world’s sleaziest newspapers. Dirk hadn’t at first spotted the name with the unfamiliar “ . . . erick” in place after the “Rod.” Well, well, well . . .
Now here were people, thought Dirk suddenly, who had really got something. Certainly they had got rather more than a nice little house in Lupton Road with some dried flowers lying around the place. They also had the great advantage of having heads on their shoulders as well, unless Dirk had missed something new and dramatic on the news. What did that all mean? What was this contract? How come everybody whose hands it had been through had been so astoundingly successful except for one, Geoffrey Anstey? Everybody whose hands it had passed through had benefited from it except for the one who had it last. Who had still got it.
It was a hot potato.
You better not have it when the big one comes.
The notion suddenly formed in Dirk’s mind that it might have been Geoffrey Anstey himself who had overheard a conversation about a hot potato, about getting rid of it, passing it on. If he remembered correctly the interview he had read with Pain, he didn’t say that he himself had overheard the conversation.
You better not have it when the big one comes.
The notion was a horrible one and ran on like this: Geoffrey Anstey had been pathetically naive. He had overheard this conversation, between—who? Dirk picked up the envelope and ran over the list of names—and had thought that it had a good dance rhythm. Anstey had not for a moment realized that what he was listening to was a conversation that would result in his own hideous death. He had got a hit record out of it, and when the real hot potato was actually handed to him he had picked it up.
Don’t pick it up, pick it up, pick it up.
And instead of taking the advice he had recorded in the words of the song . . .
Quick, pass it on, pass it on, pass it on.
. . . he had stuck it behind the gold record award on his bathroom wall.
You better not have it when the big one comes.
Dirk frowned and took a long, slow thoughtful drag on his pencil.
This was ridiculous.
He had to get some cigarettes if he was going to think this through with any intellectual rigor. He pulled on his coat, stuffed his hat on his head and made for the window.
The window hadn’t been opened for—well, certainly not during his ownership of the house, and it struggled and screamed at the sudden unaccustomed invasion of its space and independence. Once he had forced it wide enough, Dirk struggled out onto the windowsill, pulling swathes of leather coat out with him. From here it was a bit of a jump to the pavement since there was a lower ground floor to the house with a narrow flight of steps leading down to it in the front. A line of iron railings separated these from the pavement, and Dirk had to get clear over them.
Without hesitating for a moment, he made the jump, and it was in mid-bound that he realized he had not picked up his car keys from the kitchen table where he’d left them.
He considered as he sailed gracelessly through the air whether or not to execute a wild midair twist, make a desperate grab backward for the window and hope that he m
ight just manage to hold onto the sill, but decided on mature reflection that an error at this point might just conceivably kill him, whereas the walk would probably do him good.
He landed heavily on the far side of the railings, but the tails of his coat became entangled with them and he had to pull them off, tearing part of the lining in the process. Once the ringing shock in his knees had subsided and he had recovered what little composure the events of the day had left him with, he realized that it was now well after eleven o’clock and the pubs would be shut, and he might have a longer walk than he had bargained for to find some cigarettes.
He considered what to do.
The current outlook and state of mind of the eagle was a major factor to be taken into account here. The only way to get his car keys now was back through the front door into his eagle-infested hallway.
Moving with great caution he tiptoed back up the steps to his front door, squatted down and, hoping that the damn thing wasn’t going to squeak, gently pushed up the flap of the letter box and peered through.
In an instant a talon was hooked into the back of his hand and a great screeching beak slashed at his eye, narrowly missing it but scratching a great gouge across his much-abused nose.
Dirk howled with pain and lurched backward, not getting very far because he still had a talon hooked in his hand. He lashed out desperately and hit at the talon, which hurt him considerably, dug the sharp point even further into his flesh and caused a great, barging flurry on the far side of the door, each tiniest movement of which tugged heavily in his hand.
He grabbed at the great claw with his free hand and tried to tug it back out of himself. It was immensely strong, and was shaking with the fury of the eagle, which was as trapped as he was. At last, quivering with pain, he managed to release himself, and pulled his injured hand back, nursing and cuddling it with the other.
The eagle pulled its claw back sharply, and Dirk heard it flapping away back down his hallway, emitting terrible screeches and cries, its great wings colliding with and scraping the walls.
Dirk toyed with the idea of burning the house down, but once the throbbing in his hand had begun to subside a little he calmed down and tried, if he could, to see things from the eagle’s point of view.
He couldn’t.
He had not the faintest idea how things appeared to eagles in general, much less to this particular eagle, which seemed to be a seriously deranged example of the species.
After a minute or so more of nursing his hand, curiosity—allied to a strong sense that the eagle had definitely retreated to the far end of the hall and stayed there—overcame him, and he bent down once more to the letter box. This time he used his pencil to push the flap back upward and scanned the hallway from a safe position a good few inches back.
The eagle was clearly in view, perched on the end of the banister rail, regarding him with resentment and opprobrium, which Dirk felt was a little rich coming from a creature which had only a moment or two ago been busily engaged in trying to rip his hand off.
Then, once the eagle was certain that it had got Dirk’s attention, it slowly raised itself up on its feet and slowly shook its great wings out, beating them gently for balance. It was this gesture that had previously caused Dirk to bolt prudently from the room. This time, however, he was safely behind a couple of good solid inches of wood, and he stood, or rather, squatted, his ground. The eagle stretched its neck upward as well, jabbing its tongue out at the air and cawing plaintively, which surprised Dirk.
Then he noticed something else rather surprising about the eagle, which was that its wings had strange, un-eaglelike markings on them. They were large concentric circles.
The differences of coloration which delineated the circles were very slight, and it was only the absolute geometric regularity of them which made them stand out as clearly as they did. Dirk had the very clear sense that the eagle was showing him these circles, and that that was what it had wanted to attract his attention to all along. Each time the bird had dived at him, he realized, as he thought back, it had then started on a strange kind of flapping routine which had involved opening its wings right out. However, each time it had happened Dirk had been too busily engaged with the business of turning around and running away to pay this exhibition the appropriate attention.
“Have you got the money for a cup of tea, mate?”
“Er, yes, thank you,” said Dirk, “I’m fine.” His attention was fully occupied with the eagle, and he didn’t immediately look around.
“No, I meant can you spare me a bob or two, just for a cup of tea?”
“What?” This time Dirk looked around, irritably.
“Or just a fag, mate. Got a fag you can spare?”
“No, I was just going to go and get some myself,” said Dirk.
The man on the pavement behind him was a tramp of indeterminate age. He was standing there, slightly wobbly, with a look of wild and continuous disappointment bobbing in his eyes.
Not getting an immediate response from Dirk, the man dropped his eyes to the ground about a yard in front of him, and swayed back and forth a little. He was holding his arms out, slightly open, slightly away from his body, and just swaying. Then he frowned suddenly at the ground. Then he frowned at another part of the ground. Then, holding himself steady while he made quite a major realignment of his head, he frowned away down the street.
“Have you lost something?” said Dirk.
The man’s head swayed back toward him.
“Have I lost something?” he said in querulous astonishment. “Have I lost something?”
It seemed to be the most astounding question he had ever heard. He looked away again for a while, and seemed to be trying to balance the question in the general scale of things. This involved a fair bit more swaying and a fair few more frowns. At last he seemed to come up with something that might do service as some kind of answer.
“The sky?” he said, challenging Dirk to find this a good enough answer. He looked up toward it carefully, so as not to lose his balance. He seemed not to like what he saw in the dim, orange, street-lit pallor of the clouds, and slowly looked back down again till he was staring at a point just in front of his feet.
“The ground?” he said, with evident great dissatisfaction, and then was struck with a sudden thought.
“Frogs?” he said, wobbling his gaze up to meet Dirk’s rather bewildered one. “I used to like . . . frogs,” he said, and left his gaze sitting on Dirk as if that was all he had to say, and the rest was entirely up to Dirk now.
Dirk was completely flummoxed. He longed for the times when life had been easy, life had been carefree, the great times he’d had with a mere homicidal eagle, which seemed now to be such an easygoing and amiable companion. Aerial attack he could cope with, but not this nameless roaring guilt that came howling at him out of nowhere.
“What do you want?” he said in a strangled voice.
“Just a fag, mate,” said the tramp, “or something for a cup of tea.”
Dirk pressed a pound coin into the man’s hand and lunged off down the street in a panic, passing, twenty yards farther on, a builder’s skip from which the shape of his old fridge loomed at him menacingly.
24
AS KATE CAME down the steps from her house she noticed that the temperature had dropped considerably. The clouds sat heavily on the land and loured at it. Thor set off briskly in the direction of the park, and Kate trotted along in his wake.
As he strode along, an extraordinary figure on the streets of Primrose Hill, Kate could not help but notice that he had been right. They passed three different people on the way, and she saw distinctly how their eyes avoided looking at him, even as they had to make allowance for his great bulk as he passed them. He was not invisible, far from it. He simply didn’t fit.
The park was closed for the night, but Thor leaped quickly over the spiked railings and then lifted her over in turn as lightly as if she had been a bunch of flowers.
The grass w
as damp and mushy, but still worked its magic on city feet. Kate did what she always did when entering the park, which was to bob down and put the flats of her hands down on the ground for a moment. She had never quite worked out why she did this, and often she would adjust a shoe or pick up a piece of litter as a pretext for the movement, but all she really wanted was to feel the grass and the wet earth on her palms.
The park from this viewpoint was simply a dark shoulder that rose up before them, obscuring itself. They mounted the hill and stood on the top of it, looking over the darkness of the rest of the park to where it shaded off into the hazy light of the heart of London which lay to the south. Ugly towers and blocks stuck yobbishly up out of the skyline, dominating the park, the sky and the city.
A cold, damp wind moved across the park, flicking at it from time to time like the tail of a dark and broody horse. There was an unsettled, edgy quality to it. In fact, the night sky seemed to Kate to be like a train of restless, irritable horses, their traces flapping and slapping in the wind. It also seemed to her as if the traces all radiated loosely from a single center, and that the center was very close by her. She reprimanded herself for absurd suggestibility, but nevertheless it still seemed that all the weather was gathered and circling around them, waiting on them.
Thor once more drew out his hammer and held it before him in the thoughtful and abstracted manner she had seen a few minutes before in her flat. He frowned and seemed to be picking tiny invisible pieces of dust off it. It was a little like a chimpanzee grooming its mate, or—that was it!—the comparison was extraordinary, but it explained why she had tensed herself so watchfully when last he had done it. It was like Jimmy Connors minutely adjusting the strings of his racquet before preparing to serve.
Thor looked up sharply once again, drew his arm back, turned fully once, twice, three times, twisting his heels heavily in the mud, and then hurled his hammer with astonishing force up to the heavens.
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency Box Set Page 42
