Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite!

by Douglas Lindsay

  There was a lightness in the air, a sense of relaxation that I didn't recognise. I stayed for a while, watching the warm Polish afternoon go by, and then walked back to the hotel, without walking around the lake into the woods beyond. I thought perhaps I would do that the next day, as the weather forecast was fine for the rest of the week.

  Returning to my hotel I stopped at the front desk. The desk clerk seemed happy to see me, which I took to mean that she'd been able to find the information I'd requested.

  'Good afternoon, sir,' she said, 'I hope you had a nice walk.'

  'Very nice, thank you.'

  'The motion picture you are interested in, is indeed filming in Warsaw at the moment. They will be using several locations, but for the next three days they will be in park Pole Mokotowskie, near the Żwirki i Wigury end of the park. Do you know Warsaw?'

  'I'm afraid not.'

  'We can order you a taxi for the morning.'

  'That'd be great, thanks. Nine o'clock would be perfect.'

  'Thank you, sir. Is there anything else I can help you with?'

  'No, that's everything, thanks.'

  She smiled, I smiled, and then I went back upstairs. I had a room that looked out over the street at the back. It was just a street, with any old buildings across the road. Nothing particularly attractive. I sat on the bed and wondered what I'd say to Jones. I heard you were looking for me, might be an easy opener.

  Perhaps Henderson was right, and she was like the Jigsaw Man. There was more than one of her. Perhaps the one who was looking for me wasn't the one who was appearing in the motion picture Benevolence. And yet, it seemed that the Jigsaw Man was not four different people, but one person split in four. Each one was part of the same. If the same thing was happening with Jones, then she would know what each part of her was doing.

  Best not to think about it.

  At the dying of the day I went downstairs for dinner. I ordered a half bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, had a starter of scallops with ham and pea puree, a main course of roasted fish and potatoes, and a cup of coffee. I sat over a second cup of coffee at the table in the restaurant for some time, watching the diners come and go. Take their time or rush. The secret meetings, the businessmen on their own.

  Would I still find Jones so attractive? It was hard to imagine that I wouldn't. From what I'd seen of her briefly on TV, and from the few photographs on the internet, she looked more or less the same as she'd always done. And I began to think about the fact that she was looking for me. Before all this started, that would have terrified and excited me at the same time. Now I wasn't sure. My trepidation had passed. I just needed to see her and try to progress the narrative I had found myself in the middle of.

  I liked the Warsaw Hyatt. I liked staying near the park. If I did not get anywhere with Jones and had no idea where I should go next in my search for the Jigsaw Man, I began to wonder if I could just stay here, living off the agency's expense account. How long would they let that pass?

  Then I thought of Brin and Baggins, and reminded myself that I actually had something to go home for.

  *

  I woke up lying next to Brin. It was a dream, obviously, but it felt very real at the time. It was at least half an hour before either of us had to get up. She had her back turned to me, and I felt relief that she was there, in bed beside me. I snuggled up behind her, and she pushed her buttocks back against me, then took my hand and placed it on her breast. We made love after a while. Later I had a shower, and went downstairs and made Baggins French toast for breakfast, then gave her a lift to school.

  I woke up as she was saying goodbye, jumping hurriedly out of the car. I opened my eyes and looked at the ceiling. The Hyatt Hotel in Warsaw, that's where I was.

  I thought about Brin and Baggins, the dream that had been right there. Everything that was good about my home life. Lying next to Brin, and all three of us having breakfast, and having a laugh with Baggins listening to the radio on the way into school. I missed them, and wondered what they were doing that morning.

  I got up, had a shower, went downstairs for breakfast, and was waiting outside for the taxi when it arrived at 0859hrs.

  27

  I'd been sitting in the taxi for fifteen minutes when I started to wonder where we were going. The receptionist had shown me on the map the location of the park where the filming was taking place. It had seemed straight from the off that we were heading in the wrong direction, but I had quickly dismissed any thoughts of there being something amiss, as Warsaw was strange to me and I really had no idea.

  However, the receptionist had also said that it should take less than ten minutes to get there, and now we were some way over that time.

  'Where are we going?' I asked.

  The driver didn't even look in the mirror. Deep breath, closed my eyes. Just another curious turn of events. Oughtn't I to have expected it?

  The car stopped suddenly. I opened my eyes, and wondered if I'd fallen asleep. The front passenger door opened and Agent Crosskill's unnamed partner got into the car. The taxi started moving again.

  She didn't look at me. I stared at the back of her head, and felt like I was looking at clouds over Bristol or waves on the Severn. I wasn't surprised.

  'Do you think you're making progress?' she asked.

  I looked past her to the road ahead. Caught the taxi driver's eye in the rear-view mirror, then he looked away. The buildings were getting lower, slightly more spaced out. We were clearly driving away from the centre of the city.

  I had nothing to say to her. Getting to the stage where I was wondering if anything was within my control. Regardless of what decisions I made, things seemed to be happening. To me, rather than because of me. I might as well sit back and shut up.

  We drove in silence for another few minutes, and then the taxi slowed at a set of lights, made a quick u-turn and pulled into a small car park beside an old, disused train station and a small row of shops. It was a beautiful, warm morning and there were a few people milling around, a couple of tourist buses.

  Did I even know what day of the week it was? I thought about it and had to admit that I didn't. It was gone. I was sure I'd known yesterday, but today I couldn't remember.

  'You want a coffee, hot chocolate or something?' she asked, finally turning and looking at me.

  'What?'

  'I love this place. Wedel chocolate. Every time I come to Warsaw I come here for a fix. The best hot chocolate, but the coffee's good too if you prefer.'

  I stared at her, then looked round at the café. A regular-looking sort of place, old-fashioned but attractive nevertheless, with a covered seating area outside, a few tables already taken.

  'Come on, I'm buying,' she said, then without waiting for me, she was out of the car and walking across the road. I caught the taxi driver's eye again for a moment, briefly contemplated throwing a few hundred złoty at him and shouting drive! drive! drive! then it finally occurred to me that of course he wasn't actually a taxi driver and that this wasn't actually a taxi, and I got out of the car and followed her across the road.

  I sat down opposite her at a small table. She offered me the menu, took a pair of preposterously chic sunglasses from her coat pocket and put them on, then she sat looking chic in her preposterous way for a few moments while I looked at the menu, not even remotely thankful that it was in English. I didn't care, and quickly closed it again without anything registering.

  She might have been looking at me as we sat in silence, but it was hard to tell. The waitress came. The agent removed her glasses and smiled.

  'I'll have a hot chocolate, please,' she said, and then raised her eyebrows at me. The waitress joined her in expectation, but I didn't feel like speaking.

  'And a coffee with milk, please,' she added.

  The waitress nodded and retreated inside the café.

  'Beautiful spot,' she said, placing the sunglasses in her hair.

  I've always hated women putting sunglasses in their hair. It seems so affected. I gu
ess I hate men doing it as well, but I'm never looking at men and wondering whether or not they might be attractive, so I don't care. It definitely diminishes the attractiveness of a woman.

  I couldn't tell if she was attractive, even when she was sitting right in front of me wearing a light summer coat, shaded from a beautiful morning sun.

  We sat in silence for a while. Her, elegantly silent, me, sitting under a cloud of resentment and annoyance.

  'Looking for this Jones character?' she asked eventually.

  I didn't reply. Was she going to start water boarding me in public if I didn't talk?

  'Tell me about her.'

  Despite wishing to keep up the stern and silent resistance, this just made me laugh and I shook my head and gave her a somewhat bitter and rueful stare.

  'Interesting you knowing Jones,' she said. 'We've been keeping an eye on her for a while, and then out of nowhere, here you are, searching for the Jigsaw Man, and you come looking for her. Which means, presumably, that you believe Jones and the Jigsaw Man are connected in some way, which was something we hadn't been aware of. We hadn't joined the dots that you were all part of the same little collective back in Scotland. I guess we don't know everything,' she added, as some kind of attempted humorous self-deprecation.

  'How do you know I'm looking for Jones?' Couldn't help myself. She was annoying me, and the words got sucked out.

  'Are you serious?' she asked.

  That was equally annoying. I nodded.

  'Fair enough,' she said, and then stopped as the drinks arrived. Cup of coffee, with a small pot of cream on the side, and a glass of water for me. Thick, glutinous hot chocolate for her, also with a glass of water.

  'You could walk on this shit,' she said. 'I love it. Wedel were bought over by Cadburys a while back, which means we own it now, of course. I like that.'

  'How did you know I was looking for Jones?' I asked again.

  'You don't think we're following you?'

  'Expect you are. But what are you doing? Bugging my conversations? Did you speak to Henderson and Two Feet?'

  'Two Feet? I mean, really, what kind of dumbass nickname is that? That the most interesting thing anyone could think to say about the guy?'

  I took a sip of coffee, and then decided to add a spoonful of cream. Strong, and a touch too bitter.

  'He took a gap year after school,' I said. 'Spent some time in Australia. Got the lower part of his right leg bitten clean off in a shark attack.'

  'No fucking way,' she said.

  I hadn't been expecting her to swear, which gave me a moment's pause, but I talked on.

  'When he came back there were problems with infection and what not. He walked around on a crutch for a long time. Then he disappeared for a month or two, and when he came back he was walking, albeit shakily, on two legs. Someone, I don't know who, said, Hey, you've got two feet. Next time he turned up, someone said, Hey, Two Feet, want a coffee? or want a beer? or wherever we were. It stuck.'

  She'd been stirring her drink, then she took a sip, leaving a little line of chocolate on her top lip.

  'Wow,' she said, 'that's a pretty good story.'

  'I suppose.'

  'Hope we don't have to kill him.'

  'What does that mean?'

  'You don't realise. This is a serious business. We're serious people.'

  'You've got chocolate on your lips.'

  She looked harshly at me across the table, then dabbed her lips with the napkin.

  'You are intentionally, I believe, making every effort to not understand the gravity of this. The Jigsaw Man is a danger to our country, and to your country. It probably isn't too much of an exaggeration to say that he's a danger to the world. He needs to be caught. He needs to be brought to justice.'

  'Will he get justice?' I asked.

  'Oh, yes,' she said darkly. 'He'll get justice all right.'

  'Are you Jones?' I asked quickly.

  'What?'

  'Is your name Jones? Jones and Crosskill, is that who you are? You and your pal?'

  She looked amused.

  'You think everyone's called Jones?'

  'What does that mean?' I snapped. 'It's a common enough name. It wouldn't be the weirdest thing on earth for me to be looking for someone called Jones, and for you to be called Jones.'

  'Hmm,' she said, with a shrug, then added, 'You don't get to know my name.'

  'And you didn't tell me how you knew about Jones, just because you followed me around. Are you bugging me?'

  'Of course.'

  'How?'

  'There's a chip implanted in your head.'

  At least I can say this for her; she had managed to rouse me from my stupor.

  'Thanks for the coffee,' I said, standing up. Not the greatest put down, I know, but words imparted with the right amount of contempt. It didn't matter what I actually said. I'd had enough of her, and enough of all the spurious subterfuge.

  She smiled, but I was way beyond trying to read what kind of smile it was.

  'An implant in your head sounds melodramatic,' she said. 'Maybe I just made that part up.'

  I looked down at her for a few moments, then said, 'And maybe Two Feet never got his leg bitten off by a shark,' and turned and left. The waitress caught my eye as I whirled by in full dramatic annoyance, and I nodded at her apologetically.

  I headed to the car park, feeling the gaze of the agent on my back as I went. Where was Crosskill, I wondered? Agent Crosskill, of the broad New York accent and the snappy one-liner.

  There were a couple of taxis waiting in the car park, taxis possibly that were the real thing and not part of some elaborate cover up, so I headed straight for one, said, 'Pole Mokotowskie,' the driver nodded and I climbed in the back.

  As we drove from the car park, I glanced back at the café. She was sitting there, behind her preposterously chic sunglasses, sipping her hot chocolate, possibly watching me go, but it was impossible to tell.

  28

  Even though they were some distance away, Jones stood out a mile in the crowd.

  The taxi dropped me in the carpark beside a place called Pub Lolek, a building standing on its own at the corner of another large park in the middle of the city. The film production crew were obvious, a couple of hundred yards away, a great gaggle of people and equipment, with a few trailers nearby.

  Jones was just there, part of the crowd, but she was the first person I saw.

  Jones. Jones. Jones. The name played over in my head as I walked towards this conflagration of film people. It was a still morning, and the sounds of the production carried across the grass and round the trees. They presumably weren't filming at that moment.

  Jones was standing on her own, holding a drink in both hands, a warm coat draped over her shoulders. Her whole bearing suggested that it was a chill December morning, but it was now almost ten o'clock and it must have been twenty degrees already.

  Rising above the throng, there were two cranes with cameras for overhead shots, but at the moment there were no cameramen in position. There was a general hubbub of conversation and activity, but there was one voice louder than all the others. A man, shrill and high-pitched, but not shouting.

  She turned and looked my way when I was still fifty yards from her. Could she sense me looking at her, nervously thinking about her, my eyes burrowing into the back of her head? She didn't come to meet me. She stood there, the merest of smiles on her face, and a glint in her eye that I could have seen from the International Space Station.

  The clamour around us vanished. I stopped in front of her.

  'Jones,' I said.

  It was as if the last seventeen years hadn't happened. It felt like we'd seen each other the previous day, and she looked exactly the same, hair done the same way, slightly beyond shoulder length, that long fringe coming down over her eyes. She didn't look a day older, as if she'd skipped forward this decade and a half.

  'I thought you'd come,' she said.

  I wasn't even going to bother asking
whether she had actually thought that, and if she had, why she had. It was hardly the strangest thing of the past few months.

  'You look great,' I said.

  She nodded and didn't return the compliment. Having looked at myself in the mirror that morning, I'd have known she was lying if she had.

  'You picked the perfect morning,' she said. 'I'm not needed around here until late afternoon. Thought I'd just be stuck here all day in this dreadful city with nothing to do.'

  'I thought it was nice. I mean, the city.'

  She laughed. 'God, you were always so positive. That's what I love about you. Come on, I found this great little café the other day and they do a killer breakfast. I'll get one of the production drivers to take us.'

  She turned to someone standing close by, handed them the cup, then shrugged off the coat and let them catch it as it fell. I didn't even notice if this other person, who seemed to exist in order to catch things as Jones dropped them, was male or female. Jones was the centre of everything that happened, her opalescence blocking out everyone and everything around her.

  'Look out for dog shit,' she said. 'These people have absolutely no idea.'

  I trailed after her, staring at the grass.

  *

  She took me to Café 6/12, a restaurant with high ceilings and fans and plants with huge leaves, and a few absurdly attractive waitresses in black. The place was busy, the fashionable crowd. I couldn't hear anyone else speaking in English, but I imagined the other customers were talking about literature and liberalism and art. I felt out of place. I felt like I should be back in my comfortable Starbucks talking about last night's television and where we were thinking of going on holiday in the summer and the likelihood that after months of discussion we'd end up back on Nairn beach.