Whatever Happened to Harold Absalon?

by Simon Okotie

  17. My confidence returned. I felt able to hold my own in the monthly meeting, perhaps for the first time. Granted, people did start to look at me somewhat askance, as though they suspected I was somehow implicated. But no-one voiced anything directly to me. And some of those who had shunned me whilst he’d been around actually started laughing at my jokes.

  18. Once I’d reestablished my career, then I started following her. And once I started following her, I went at it like a maniac, couldn’t help myself.

  33

  Fixated, as he had been, momentarily, by the flash of brightness that had appeared at the top of the stairs, Marguerite had failed to notice something that was perhaps even more troubling to him: another double decker bus had appeared in the rear window of the bus that they were travelling upon. Not only had it appeared, but it appeared, momentarily, to be about to career, as it is known for some reason, into the back of the bus that they were travelling upon. Furthermore, there were three passengers at the front of the top deck of this second bus who had clocked, as it was known, Marguerite’s imminent, now, disembarkation and who were making ready to disembark themselves so as, he suspected, to apprehend or otherwise prevent him from continuing his investigation into the disappearance of Harold Absalon, the Mayor’s transport advisor. Such was the situation as it was unfolding on the ground, so to speak.

  The apparent imminent collision between the two large passenger vehicles did not deter Marguerite from reflecting in a measured, calm and clear way, as was his wont, on the circumstances surrounding the recent acquisition of this second bus within what he thought of at that moment as his sense domain. To express it more simply, as those cross-examining him would no doubt duly ask him to do in the courts, why was it only then that he noticed this second bus in his field of vision? Surely, given his standing posture – indeed, given his walking vantage point atop the bus – he would have had a reasonably clear view of any trailing bus prior to the moment of descension, if that is the word, by the gentleman that they were following behind, despite the distracting flash of brightness at the top of the stairs. Or was Marguerite to make the same move as he had most recently made in relation to that gentleman by contending that all of his attention had hitherto been focused on the woman in the pinstriped suit whom, lately, he had taken to including in the plural personal pronoun ‘they’, to the exclusion of all others, as though their relationship had suddenly developed intimately? Marguerite’s response to this irritatingly persistent line of questioning would, he thought, be fourfold: i). yes, it was true that initially the allure of the woman in the pinstriped suit had been such that it had sucked, so to speak, all of his attention towards her to the extent that, even though he was taller than she was, which meant that if he held himself fully erect, he might, in theory, if he’d so wished and if he’d had his surveillance wits about him, so to speak, have been able to peer above her head and out of the rear window of the bus to see the second bus still in the distance, comparatively, but there none the less and gaining on the bus that they were currently travelling upon; but he had decided not to peer, fully erect, above her head in the manner described. That accounted, in Marguerite’s mind, for part of his journey along the aisle. ii). Secondly (as has already been indicated by the Roman numerals) and most importantly, to Marguerite’s mind, was that the gentleman who was continuing to descend, as far as Marguerite could tell, step by step towards the lower deck, happened, as it happens, to be a tall, upright fellow. In other words, that was this man’s general disposition; Marguerite could, when the mood took him or when required for operational reasons, make himself erect, as referred to in i. but it was not his general physiological demeanour, so to speak, whereas with this fellow it was. His observations of the fellow were, Marguerite conceded, somewhat contrary to the training that he had received in this area at cadet school, which indicated that tall people tended to stoop rather like an apology for their increased height in relation to most of the remaining populace. That was just a guide, of course, and when in the field it was imperative to amend one’s views based on the circumstances that actually presented themselves. In this case, one of the circumstances was that despite being quite tall, but not to the extent of having to duck to pass along the aisle on the top deck of the bus, and broad-shouldered, but not to the extent that he needed to pass sideways down said aisle, the gentleman that they’d been following behind and continued to follow behind, was not apologetic about his height or width (his girth, note, was about standard given his height and width, Marguerite had judged, as best he could, from the rear, so to speak). That is to say that his general demeanour was not one of apology, nor did he more vocally express his condolences to his fellow passengers for the somewhat larger space that he inhabited compared to most if not all of them. The point that Marguerite was quite plausibly making here was that, given the fact that the man was taller and wider than Marguerite, that it was not until the man had vacated the aisle, a word that takes on a somewhat different connotation now that Marguerite had started referring rather familiarly to himself and the woman (etc, as before) as ‘they’ or, if he were to be addressed directly about it, which was not possible in the circumstances, as ‘we’, that Marguerite had not been able to see the full extent of the rear window of the bus – the height, specifically and, to a lesser extent, the width of the man in front of him had prevented him from being able to see the central section of that window. It was only now, with the man off to one side continuing to descend before his eventual disembarkation that, taking his eyes off the shorter, narrower, but much more enticing frame of the woman in the you-know-what, and no longer being distracted by any flashes at the top of the stairs, Marguerite was able to take in the full extent of what was taking place behind the bus, which was that another bus looked, still, as though it was going to career into it, that is, into the bus that they, to put it cosily once again, were travelling upon. This was not to say that the man was wider than the bus. Of course not. It was all a question of perspective.

  To continue upon the fourfold root of his inability to see the pressing nature of the bus following them: iii). Such perspective meant that, even were this upright, tall and wide gent to have been in place further along the aisle, in front, that is, of the woman in the pinstriped suit, that given the proximity, now, of the bus behind the one they were travelling upon, Marguerite would have been able to see this following bus, given that that bus now much more fully occupied the visual space afforded by the window at the rear of the top deck of the bus, a window that Marguerite continued to approach despite this looming within it of the trailing, but rapidly gaining, bus. In still other words, the upright man, when Marguerite and the woman had been following him along the aisle, had only hidden the central portion of the rear window, leaving the window’s extremities exposed. Had there been anything extreme to observe through these exposed areas then Marguerite would have observed and duly reported it.

  iv).ly, and finally, this being a fourfold defence of his actions in that split second between glimpsing what he thought was Isobel Absalon’s still quite newly bleached hair19 and glancing over the head of the woman he was following to see, through the rear window, the double decker bus bearing down on them, was a more hypothetical analysis of whether, even if he’d had a clear view through the rear window, he’d have been able to see the other double decker bus. His reasoning ran quite straightforwardly as follows. It may have been that the rear window was too low down, given the relative positions of the two buses, to see the rear bus until it was nearly upon them, especially in the case where a valley was involved and the front bus, if it can be referred to in that way, which clearly it can be, were to be moving uphill, as it is known, with the rear bus still moving downhill, as it is known, behind it, having not yet reached the valley’s nadir, as it were. In that situation not only the valley itself but also the rear of the front bus could obscure the rear bus: all that would be viewable through the rear window might be the r
oad surface with its various markings, say, or a man or woman on a bike behind the first bus. Even in the absence of the valley, whether shallow or quite deep, it might have been that the rear window was placed at such a lowly position in relation to the rear bus that the latter would not in any case have been visible from the upper deck of the former until the latter was virtually upon the former, as with the preceding three circumstances. However, given that the previous three conditions did in fact pertain, namely and in summary that Marguerite had been focusing on the woman in the pinstriped suit and then on what he took to be Isobel Absalon at the critical moments, that the man was partially in the way of the rear window and that the bus had still been sufficiently distant to be completely obscured by the man, then Marguerite could not judge whether the fourth condition pertained, except to say that there was no valley involved in the scenario on the ground, as it were, and that the actual window was indeed quite low down in the rear of the top deck of the bus. Neither could he reconstruct the necessary circumstances at that moment, given that the trailing bus now completely filled the rear view from the top deck, hence Marguerite’s insistence on the word ‘hypothetical’ in relation to this final condition.

  At that moment the bus that they were travelling upon came to an abrupt halt, as it is known, as, much to his relief, did the bus behind it, just a few inches separating them at rest. He had a clear view of those standing up on the top deck prior to disembarkation from the latter now and, even though a collision had been averted, his mind had not been put to rest regarding the collection of unsavouries (which, as before, was not to say that they were sweet) standing up on the top deck in preparation, he assumed, to exit that bus, a number of whom, he was sure, earpieces in ears, had clocked, as it was known, his own imminent disembarkation. It made the next few moments in Marguerite’s pursuit of Harold Absalon, the Mayor’s transport advisor, perilous indeed.

  19. Why was I eventually so zealous in my pursuit of her? Now that my career was back on track, I wanted her, quite simply, along with the rest of Harold’s lifestyle, and I thought that any dirt I could find on her would help successfully to bring that about.

  34

  Marguerite noticed that the agents on the other bus had only started moving once his way was clear to see them, sight, in his experience, generally being a reciprocal arrangement; that is, to his mind, him seeing them implied that they had also seen him; they had seen him, more-over, attempting to disembark; and it was this, Marguerite thought, that had precipitated their action against him.

  Outwardly he gave nothing away, as it were – not even a flicker of recognition: his pursuers knowing that he had seen them would have made shaking them off even more problematical. The reason that his pursuers knowing that he’d seen them would have made shaking them off even more problematical related to the fact that whilst the pursuer remained undetected20, to that extent they had what was known as ‘the upper hand’, meaning that they were in the driving seat, so to speak, as far as the pursuit was concerned. Now the same applied to the pursued: to the extent that they could maintain a facade, at least, that they had not noticed that they were being pursued, then, to that extent, they would have the upper hand unless, of course, the pursuer knew that the pursued had noticed them, despite the pursued’s best efforts in terms of restraining changes in facial expressions, mainly, in which case the pursuer would maintain the upper hand provided they, in turn, did not volunteer any facial expression or any other indication to the pursued that they, the pursuer, knew that the pursued knew that they were being pursued, that the pursued, in short, knew that they could refer to themselves, at that moment, as ‘pursued’. Of course if the pursuer and pursued were both aware of each other (and the pursuer couldn’t fail to be aware of the pursued of course; were he, or exceptionally she, not aware then the whole situation would fall down) and were both aware that their counterpart – that is the pursuer in the case of the pursued and the pursued in the case of the pursuer (and the latter could, of course, have been more succinctly expressed, or thought, by Marguerite, as ‘vice versa’) – was aware of them, that is the pursuer was aware that the pursued was aware that the pursuer was pursuing them and the pursued was aware that the pursuer was aware that the pursued knew that the pursuer was pursuing them, then no-one had the upper hand, which meant, by logical extension, that no-one had the lower hand either. The situation that pertained, as Marguerite continued to move towards the stairs, was one in which, to the best of his knowledge, as it was often referred to, he thought, given all of his experience, that he would not have vouchsafed to his pursuers that he knew that they were pursuing him; equally, though, if they had done their research on him then they would know that, given his level of experience of such pursuits, he would be unlikely to vouchsafe such knowledge in such a situation, in which case them merely clocking him clocking them as he had done through the rear window of the bus upon which he was travelling without, of course, showing outwardly that he knew that they were pursuing him, would have been sufficient for them, if they had their wits about them, to know that he knew that they were pursuing him, in which case neither of them had the upper or, as before, the lower hand as was the case in the previous scenario and, as before, neither was in the driver’s seat nor, by extension, in the passenger seat. In short, then, Marguerite judged that he could not simply give them the slip on the basis that they didn’t know that he knew that they were pursuing him – he assumed that they did in fact know that he knew that they were pursuing him. He had to pit what he took to be his superior knowledge of pursuits in general, then, against what he took, by implication, to be their inferior knowledge of such pursuits to shake them off in the full knowledge by both parties that a pursuit was taking place at that moment and that both parties were involved in that pursuit. That was the situation Marguerite found himself in as he continued to approach the stairs at the rear of the top deck of the bus, with all of the potential threats that they entailed.

  20. After a while, I managed to enter the marital home. I used every device and undercover gizmo I could lay my hands on to track her. I put cameras in the bedrooms, and at other places she frequented. I left, as they say, no stone unturned.

  35

  Marguerite had not failed to notice that the bus upon which his pursuers were travelling was a much newer model than the bus upon which he was travelling. This was no idle observation. In fact, none of Marguerite’s observations was idle, to his mind. How, though, was it germane to his investigation that the pursuing bus was a newer model than the bus upon which he was travelling? Well, in this way: it made the starting positions for him and for his pursuers more evenly matched. Marguerite knew, essentially, that on the more modern buses, such as the one that his pursuers had travelled upon, the stairs were located towards the middle or front of the vehicle, whereas on the bus upon which he was travelling, the stairs were located towards the rear of the vehicle, as has long been established. This was germane, then, since, were the stairs on the pursuing vehicle to have been at the rear, were it, in other words, to have been of the same, or similar, make and model as the bus that Marguerite was travelling upon, then this would have given Marguerite an extra few seconds in which to make his escape, an escape, that is, back undercover, from where he could operate much more effectively in unearthing the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of Harold Absalon, the Mayor’s transport advisor.

  Despite this relative disadvantage on Marguerite’s part in relation to bus exit points, he deduced that the risk of his pursuers storming the top deck of the bus that he was travelling upon was still low, given that the stairwell was blocked – partially, but sufficiently to Marguerite’s mind – by the gentleman who was slowly using it, together with the handrail, to descend to the lower deck. This meant that it would be difficult for anyone to ascend at that moment; certainly it would be difficult for a number of people to ascend at speed, as would probably need to be the case for those people to be
effective in apprehending Marguerite, the speed being required in order to take Marguerite by surprise, something that happened rarely, and the crowd scene, as it was known, being required to overwhelm him physically, given that his close-contact, hand-to-hand combat skills were likely to be far too dextrous and crafty for any single individual, whether male or female, to deal with.

  He had established in his mind, then, that his pursuers, were there any, would have to wait for his descent at least to the lower deck and probably to the pavement or sidewalk, in order to try to apprehend him – this is what the gentleman and, imminently now, the woman in the pinstriped suit had achieved and were achieving for him in preceding him in descending the curved flight of stairs at the rear of the bus. In short, they were buying him time.

  He didn’t need much time, however, to ascertain that what he needed was much more time than the gentleman and the woman in pinstriped suit would provide for him. It wasn’t as though his pursuers would be thwarted simply by having to wait a few extra seconds for Marguerite to emerge rather than being able to storm the upper deck as they might have hoped to do. It was not as though they would simply lose interest in the pursuit in those few elapsed seconds or fractions of seconds. What, then, would the additional time bought for him, in effect, by the gentleman and the woman in the pinstriped suit, mean for him in terms of eluding his pursuers whilst attempting, of course, to continue to follow the woman in the pinstriped suit? How, in other words, could he most usefully use the time generously bought or inadvertently bequeathed to him by the gentleman and the woman in the pinstriped suit?