‘Pushed between the very page…’
‘Uh…The very next page,’ Garry corrected her, inspecting it.
‘The very next page…’ Kelly echoed (still equally impressed). She removed the article and silently entrusted it to Garry’s care, then slowly ran her finger down the verses.
‘Here it is,’ she said, finally, ‘2 Corinthians, Chapter twelve, Verse nine…’
She cleared her throat: ‘And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.’
She frowned, then read it out again, ‘And he said unto me…’
Garry held the article loosely in his hand as he listened to her. His eye rested on it, idly, as she read. But it wasn’t actually the AIDS orphans article he was staring at. It was the article on the flip-side of the page, an article about a charity dedicated to bringing solar power to Africa.
Most poor, African households (the article said) were dependent on Calor Gas for their day-to-day power needs, and this was not only ruinously expensive (thereby increasing the cycle of poverty) but environmentally unsound. The only rational way to approach energy provision in the third world (the article continued) was to exploit their greatest natural resource: the sun. By fitting solar panels to people’s homes, not only could all their energy needs be fulfilled (and virtually free of charge), but the environmental impact would be all but negligible…
‘A bit complicated, huh?’ Kelly scowled.
‘I think what it means,’ Garry reasoned, ‘is that you don’t necessarily have to be some kind of a saint to be a good Christian. It’s sayin’ that you can sometimes learn more when you’re weak – or when you fail – because the experience of failin’ at somethin’ is what makes you into a better person…’
‘Wow.’
Kelly gazed over at him, full of admiration. ‘You always did have an amazin’ way of puttin’ things…’ she murmured.
Garry shrugged. Kelly continued to stare at him, her cheeks slightly flushed. ‘An’ I’m really sorry about before,’ she added.
‘About what?’
‘About sittin’ on your hand back then. An’ about punchin’ your arm. An’ about callin’ you a runt. I was just – you know – havin’ a bit of fun.’
Garry cleared his throat, nervously. ‘Don’t stress yourself out about it.’
Kelly continued to stare at him. ‘I’ll tell you somethin’ for nothin’, Gaz,’ she said, finally.
‘What?’ he peered at her, long-ways.
‘If it turns out that all this crazy stuff that’s been happenin’ to me lately was just so much pie in the sky, yeah? – just a shower of shit – then I won’t actually care. Because at the end of the day I’ll just be really chuffed – really stoked – that I’ve bumped into you again.’
‘But I never went anywhere, Kell,’ Garry maintained.
‘I know that,’ Kelly smiled.
Garry looked down at the article, but he didn’t focus in on it. ‘I’m thirty-two years old,’ he eventually murmured.
‘So what?’ Kelly scoffed. ‘I don’t give a flyin’ fig what age you are.’
Garry folded the article in half and tried to pass it back to her.
‘An’ I certainly hope,’ she observed, haughtily lifting her small chin, ‘that you’ll afford me the same courtesy.’
‘Yeah, well…’
Garry didn’t sound too sure on this point.
Kelly finally took the article from him, placed it back into her Bible and slapped the Bible shut.
‘Pals?’ she asked, offering him her outstretched palm.
‘So d’you reckon that heating’s workin’ yet?’ Garry suddenly enquired, leaning over to peer – with an almost bewildering intensity – into the nearest air vent.
After sitting – completely stationary – for fifteen or so minutes, Kane had been unable to resist snatching up the set of photocopied sheets again. He was especially taken by the anecdote about the fleas (‘You should have taken every flea by the neck, and then they would gape, and then you should have cast a little of the powder into every flea’s mouth, and lo you would have killed them’). It was the same anecdote – he was certain – that the young boy Fleet had told him. But where the boy might’ve actually heard it (when the document in his hands was almost 400 years old and only readily avaliable from the British Library) was anybody’s guess.
There was other stuff, too. Stuff he’d come across himself, stuff he’d experienced first hand – the chapter in which John Scogin was banished – for persistently tormenting the queen – and strictly commanded never to set foot on British soil again (and he’d promptly responded – with typical hubris – by journeying to France, filling his shoes with French soil, then returning, in triumph, and smartly informing the enraged king that he wasn’t actually contravening the rules of his exile – the soil that he stood on was French after all).
There was a story about a pair of goose wings (John tied them – Icarus-like – to his shoulders, pretending he was going to launch himself from a high tower), and the story in which he bled his wife, by force (under the foot, arm and tongue) after she dared to criticise him to a neighbour. And finally, of course, there was the cruel story which Winnie had taken such interest in – where Scogin had set fire…
Kane was suddenly flashed by the van behind him –
Eh?
He glanced up. The long queue of traffic in front had recently inched forward while he’d been engrossed in his reading. Kane harrumphed, took off his handbrake, accelerated, and slowly made up the distance.
He returned to the document…Yeah – setting fire to the barn. John had been living in Oxford at the time, and his wife had complained to him about the pushy, local vagrants…
The van behind honked its horn. Kane started and peered up. The car directly in front of him (a new Volkswagen) had just crept forward by a total distance of approximately 3 measly feet. Kane wound down his window – with some effort (the car had manual winders) – stuck out his hand into the frosty, afternoon air and showed the bolshy driver his middle finger –
So fuck you, too –
Idiot.
The car honked its horn again.
Kane gritted his teeth. He slapped the steering wheel. He gazed into his rearview mirror, cursing under his breath. Then –
Screw it
– he caved. He lifted the handbrake and moved the car gently forward –
There!
Happy now?
The car flashed him –
Yeah. I should think so, too.
Kane glanced into his side-mirror, then back down at his reading matter –
The barn…
He began to read. He stopped reading. He closed his eyes –
Now just hang on one…
He opened his eyes and peered into his side-mirror –
Cigar
The driver of the van behind was smoking a cigar. And he was –
No, she…
Her
– she was holding it regally aloft, her dainty hand neatly encased in a soft, white glove.
Kane laughed to himself, wryly. He slowly shook his head. Then he jumped out of the car and strolled over to the van.
‘I have a train to catch, Kane,’ Peta informed him with a caustic look. ‘So if you could just bring yourself to actually concentrate…’
‘Are you leaving for good?’ he demanded.
‘For the better, I hope,’ she responded smartly.
‘Was it a sudden decision?’
‘I suppose all decisions are,’ she mused, ‘when you finally make them.’
He frowned at her.
‘So how are you warming to The Commissar?’ she wondered. ‘Pretty well,’ he conceded. ‘Although the handling…’
‘Urgh, the handling,’ Peta interrupted him, scandalised, ‘quite shocking, isn’t it? So clunky and unyielding…’
‘Although I love the stickers on the back,’ Kane admitted, ‘the Jamaican flag was a
master-stroke.’
‘I thought you might give the car to your friend,’ Peta told him. ‘Did you find the registration documents in the glove box?’
‘My friend?’
‘Yes. Your crazy friend. The friend who worships peacocks.’
‘Sorry?’ Kane frowned. ‘Do I actually have a friend like that?’
‘Yes. You know…the Kurd. The one who’s terrified of salad.’
‘Gaffar?’
‘That’s him. Gaffar. I thought you could give it to Gaffar. I thought it might quite suit him.’
‘Or perhaps I could give it to Beede,’ Kane volunteered.
‘Oh really?’ Peta didn’t seem especially taken by the idea. ‘But d’you think it’s entirely Beede’s style?’
She raised a single, perfectly etched brow at him, then took a puff on her cigar.
‘I suppose he could always sell it,’ Kane suggested, ‘and use it to pay off some of the interest on his huge debt.’
Peta turned to look at him in mock-surprise. ‘Beede’s hugely in debt?’
‘Beede’s problem,’ Kane cordially informed her, ‘is that he’s developed this strange, little habit. It involves paying a professional forger to duplicate random objects…’
‘An artist,’ Peta interrupted.
‘What?’
‘He’s been paying an artist, not a forger.’
She paused for a moment. ‘Do you think it might be a good idea,’ she abruptly changed the subject, ‘to turn the engine off?’
‘Pardon?’
‘The Commissar…’ she pointed. ‘You appear to have left the engine running.’
Kane peered over at the car (his expression one of studied indifference). ‘So what happened to your friend?’ he wondered.
‘My friend?’
‘Yes. Your friend with the incomprehensible accent. The woman you claimed to have – now what was the word you used…?’ He deliberated for a moment. ‘Ah yes, collected.’
‘You mean Ann?’
‘Was that her name?’
‘Still is,’ she said, tartly.
‘So how many other people do you have?’ Kane enquired.
‘Have? In what sense?’
‘Well a collection can never be just one, can it?’
Peta merely smiled at this.
‘Did you collect Beede I wonder?’ Kane continued, silkily. ‘Did you collect Dory, perhaps?’
‘Did I collect you?’ Peta asked, with a smirk. She offered him a puff on her cigar, but he refused.
‘So let me get this straight…’ Kane continued.
‘Don’t you just adore this song?’ Peta interrupted him. She reached into the van and turned up the volume on her scruffy, old cassette player. A cacophonous horn cut through the icy air around him.
Kane scowled. ‘Who is it?’
‘It’s Bird, you ignorant boy…’ she leaned in again and turned it up still louder. ‘Charlie Parker. “Steeplechase”. It’s based on the chords from “I Got Rhythm”. Miles is in the mix there too, somewhere…’
She tapped her cigar ash, rhythmically, on to the tarmac. ‘This was actually one of the first recordings Bird made after seven months in Camarillo Sanatorium. Before that he’d been living like a tramp, in a garage, subsisting on charity handouts. He’d developed schizophrenia…’ she shrugged. ‘Although the booze was his real problem…’
She took another puff on her cigar, then coughed and tapped at her chest, impatiently.
‘When he finally came out,’ she continued, her eyes watering slightly, ‘he got a regular gig at the Hi De Ho Club, and apparently, each night, before he’d even blow a note, he’d sink eight double whiskies, back-to-back.’
She leaned in and adjusted the volume again.
‘Miles left shortly after they recorded this session. They say Charlie never got over it. Miles was like his adopted son…’
They both listened to the music for a while, in silence.
‘Anyhow,’ Peta frowned (changing the subject, on a whim), ‘it was all totally above board. There was nothing remotely dubious in it.’
‘Sorry?’
Kane was still thinking about Miles and Charlie.
‘The work I did for Beede. I charged him, per hour, at my standard rate. If he’d been anyone else I’d’ve charged him double – the work itself was soul-destroying; stupid, pointless, incredibly tedious…’
‘Did you ever think to ask why?’ Kane asked.
‘Why what?’
‘Why he wanted you to duplicate those objects?’
‘Of course not,’ she snapped, ‘I already told you, it isn’t my place to ask questions like that. It wouldn’t be polite.’
‘Polite?’ Kane snorted. ‘Maybe you just didn’t bother asking because you didn’t actually need to. You’d hired a detective. You already knew…’
‘Oh really?’ Peta delivered him a droll look. ‘And what did I know, exactly?’
‘That it was all part of some kind of crazy vendetta against Tom Higson.’
‘Why?’
‘Because Higson was behind the theft of those tiles from the old mill, and to pay him back Beede resolved to duplicate his life. To turn everything he touched – everything he cared about – into a lie…’
‘But it wasn’t just a straightforward duplication,’ Peta expanded, helpfully, ‘I was instructed to build a tiny fault into each piece. Something to help generate this indefinable sense of unease…’
‘Did he say that was why?’
Kane was shocked.
‘He didn’t need to. It was obvious.’
‘Okay,’ Kane scowled, ‘so here’s the part I don’t get…’
He reached out and took Peta’s cigar from her, then inhaled on it, deeply. ‘What I can’t understand,’ he exhaled, then passed the cigar back, ‘is why he came to you, when you were the very person Higson had stolen the tiles for.’
Peta inhaled on the cigar herself. She didn’t speak.
‘I guess you must’ve wanted me to know…’ Kane reasoned.
‘The photo in the barn,’ Peta interrupted wistfully, ‘a bit of a giveaway, huh?’
Kane nodded.
‘What can I say?’ she smirked. ‘I just love to dance on the razor’s edge.’
‘But what you still haven’t explained,’ Kane persisted, ‘is why Beede came to you…’
‘That’s simple,’ she shrugged, ‘because I’m the best.’
‘But didn’t he know about your involvement? Didn’t he have the slightest inkling?’
‘Ah. The million dollar question,’ Peta sighed. ‘Did he or didn’t he?’
Kane was quiet for a while, and then, ‘Beede’s hardly famed for his great sense of humour,’ he mused, ‘but is it remotely possible that he might’ve commissioned you as…I dunno…almost as some weird kind of joke?’
‘Don’t think it hasn’t dawned on me,’ Peta grimaced. ‘My passion – my reason – is to celebrate beauty…’
‘But Beede transformed you into the queen of the ceramic donkey, the chipped coffee pot, the mug-tree…’
Kane sniggered. ‘Perhaps the real mug here…’
‘Was me. Yeah,’ Peta growled. ‘Hilarious.’
‘But if you suspected as much up front,’ Kane frowned, ‘then why didn’t you simply turn him down – refuse the job?’
Peta gave this question some serious consideration.
‘I suppose because I was intrigued – at least to begin with…amused, tantalised, seduced. And maybe there was a small element of guilt…’
‘Guilty?’ Kane chortled. ‘You?!’
‘And I wanted to keep an eye on him,’ Peta persisted, ‘I wanted to see how it might play out. I wanted to…’
‘Collect him?’
‘No. Protect him, if you must know. From himself, in the main.’
‘Wow,’ Kane slowly shook his head. ‘Well you’ve certainly done one helluva job.’
Peta shot him a sour look. Kane glanced over at the traffic. The
re was now a space in front of the Lada of about 10 or 12 feet.
‘So what did you make of the scheme?’ he wondered, turning back.
‘Beede’s scheme?’ Peta rolled her eyes. ‘What do you think I thought? It was ludicrous. It was idiotic. I couldn’t make head or tail of it…I mean Tom’s a law unto himself. He’s brash. He’s totally unsentimental. He lacks integrity. He lacks empathy. What could Tom be expected to understand about the essence of a thing? The heart of a thing?’
She paused. ‘Although Pat – Tom’s poor wife…’
‘But you went ahead with it, just the same…’
‘Uh…’ Peta inspected the glowing tip of her cigar, ‘well, yes and no…’
She tried to repress a smirk.
Kane frowned. ‘You duplicated the objects…’
‘Absolutely,’ she nodded, ‘I did a grand job. In fact I did such a grand job…’
Peta pondered something for a while. ‘Are you much of a poker player, Kane?’ she wondered.
‘Sure. I play the odd hand…’
‘Then you’ll be familiar with the concept of a double-bluff?’ Kane nodded, slowly.
‘Well let’s just say,’ Peta grinned, ‘that if there was a joke played, then I wasn’t the only victim of it.’
Kane stared at her, bemused. Then the coin dropped. ‘You swapped the things back?’
She shrugged, coyly.
‘But…’ Kane scratched his head, confused. ‘When? How?’ ‘Urgh,’ she waved her hand, airily. ‘Let’s not get into all of that. It wasn’t difficult, trust me…’
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