'Oh. You. Just thinking about the great cow uprising.'
'What great cow uprising?'
'Exactly. They are a secretive herd, but poised and ready to strike.'
She shook her head, set a Starbucks on the counter for me and said, 'I just thought I'd pop over and thank you.'
'For what?'
'For waking me up, and then keeping me awake thinking about you and your bloody cigar thingy for the little time I had left before I had to throw up.'
'I detect that your thanks have a basis in sarcasm.'
'No shite, Sherlock.' But she was smiling, and the coffee was the correct coffee. She was definitely getting better, although she still had a long way to go and an ulterior motive. Everybody does. It did not take long to manifest itself. I was thinking about your cigar thingy, and I suppose there's a remote possibility that you could be right.' I raised an eyebrow. 'Just remember, pally, I was the one wanted this case in the first place; you were the one who wanted to get rid of him because he was too much of a hassle to have around. I always knew there was something suspicious about this, and it's you who're just coming round to my way of thinking.'
'If you say so.'
'I do. So, any further along?'
I shrugged.
She sighed. 'Okay. Here's what I'm thinking. It's your fault.'
'Good start.'
'I'm thinking that Augustine was at your house, and the only people who knew he was at your house were you, me, Jeff and your beloved Pearl.'
'Pearl?'
'Listen, I've been around, I'm a girl, I know what you guys are like. Pearl is gorgeous and she played you like a fiddle.'
'That's bollocks. I played her like a fiddle. In fact I played her like a string quartet, with a bassoon and a trombone thrown in.'
'Uhuh. How, exactly?'
'I found out she was interested in crime fiction, I lured her to Starbucks, I plied her with coffee and found out all about Arabella, and the fact that she was learning Portugese and was bound for Brazil or Portugal or Cape Verde.'
'Uhuh. The same Arabella who turns out to be Dr Yes's new girlfriend?'
'We don't know that ...'
'They looked pretty bloody chummy in that photo, and she isn't, you may have noted, in Brazil.'
'She may be by now.'
'Uhuh. Let's look at it another way. Pearl lured you to Starbucks. Dazzled by her great beauty, you told her all about Augustine, particularly the fact that he was living in your house.'
'What're you saying, that Pearl killed him?'
'Possibly.'
'That's just ridiculous. I called her, remember? I brought up Augustine, not Pearl.' Alison mimed playing a fiddle. 'You're not funny,' I said, 'you're just jealous.'
'That's right. Or, wait a minute - yes, that's bollocks. Oh, think about it! You brought Augustine into the shop, laughing at him behind his back because he thought he was being shot at. Well what if he really was? What if they were trying to kill him because he keeps asking awkward questions about Arabella? What if whoever it was saw him come in and put two and two together, because you haven't been backward about getting publicity for your investigations, and deserved or not, you're getting a reputation for solving crimes, and so he, she or they thought they better find out what you were up to.'
'But I called them.'
'Exactly. They were expecting it; you merely confirmed that you were investigating them. Augustine had gone to ground, but they knew you could lead them to him. You told Pearl, and a few hours later he was dead.'
'And you're always complaining about Jeff and his lunatic conspiracy theories? You're the one quoting Neil Armstrong and giant leaps for mankind.'
Alison raised her coffee cup and tapped it against mine. 'The thing is, Mystery Man, Neil Armstrong did make a giant leap for mankind.'
The fundamental flaw in her analysis of Augustine's murder was the fact that Arabella was still alive, and therefore there was no reason to kill him. Why would they murder someone just because he was annoying? All businesses attract paranoid weirdos from time to time, but those businesses rarely concoct complicated plans to rub them out. If that was the case, I would have been dead years ago.
But the fact remained that he was dead, and murdered, and someone had done it, someone who had entered my house and splattered his brains all over my walls.
It would have been too easy to say, This time it's personal. In truth it was a wee bit personal, even if that doesn't have quite the same ring to it. I wasn't intent on blazing a trail of violence across the city chasing the killer, and the truth is that Mother's room had needed redecorating anyway. I was, at best, mildly annoyed. Intrigued. Someone had not only tracked Augustine down to my house, but had gone to the trouble of making it look like a suicide, and done a sufficiently good job of it to throw the police off the scent. The question was why? Yes, Pearl could have given his location away. Yes, Dr Yeschenkov might have ordered the hit. But how likely was either scenario? Since being dumped by Arabella, Augustine had been penniless and drunk. Surely it was much more likely that he had other enemies? He had gotten hold of a gun, and how else would you do that but by rubbing up against lowlifes? Or, severed from Arabella's money, perhaps he'd taken truck with loan sharks and couldn't pay it back. People who didn't accept IOUs but settled debts the old-fashioned way. It could even have been a random murder. Or the killer hadn't been looking for him at all. What if I was the intended victim? In fact that was much more likely. I had made many enemies through my investigations - not to mention the Christmas Club. I was the scourge of the criminal underworld. Rubbing me made a lot more sense.
'Did anyone ever tell you you've a very high opinion of yourself?' Alison asked, and by so asking I became aware that I had said at least some of that out loud. I just gave her the kind of pitying look I reserve for my least favoured customers, those who just come in to use the toilet or to fold back the covers of the books while sheltering from the rain.
She shrugged it off and said, 'Look, I'm with you on this. He's been murdered; now we have to work out who did it, and why.'
'We?'
She sighed. 'Yes, we.'
'But you're ...'
'Yes, I'm with child. I'm not disabled.'
'Well I think the jury's still out on that one.'
She fixed me with a look, and I fixed her with one, even though I knew there could only be one winner, what with my malfunctioning tear ducts.
She said, 'Look, we've dealt with murders before
'Not out of choice.'
'... and the way you're getting on it's almost like you're blasé about it. Augustine was murdered in your mother's house; you should be fired up, you should be like a bloodhound on the trail of whoever did it.'
'I am.'
'Well, forgive me, it's difficult to tell. But if you're in, then I'm in, and we can crack this one. It could be your greatest case yet, and I want to be there with you.'
'Even in your condition.'
'I am one hundred per cent committed to solving this. I feel like I owe it to him. He trusted me.'
'Okay.'
'Okay?'
'Okay, we'll solve it then.'
'Together?'
'Together.'
'Brilliant! Okay! Gotta run.'
'You what?'
'Hello? I do have a job, unlike you.'
She was already halfway to the door.
'I thought you were one hundred per cent committed?'
She paused, and thought about that for the briefest moment. 'I may have exaggerated,' she said.
She winked, pulled the door open and went out. As she passed across the front window she gave me a little wave and blew a kiss. I ignored that and pointed at myself. I cupped my hands and shouted, 'At least he can depend on me. I'm one hundred per cent committed!'
'You should be!' she yelled back.
She'd barely disappeared from view before Jeff appeared at my elbow.
'I offer one hundred and ten per cent commitment,' he said.<
br />
'That's good to know. There are boxes upstairs that need unpacking.'
'That's not what I meant,' he said.
'I know,' I replied. As he turned away I said, 'Jeff?'
He stopped and gave me a hopeful look. I take a particular delight in dashing such hopes. He's a student, and worse, a member of Amnesty International, and worse still, a budding poet, so he should get used to disappointment. 'Jeff, you heard what we were talking about there?'
'Kind of.'
'Kind of all of?'
He nodded. 'I couldn't help it.'
'Well, you know the way we were debating who might have let slip that Augustine was staying in my house, and Alison thinks it's Pearl only because she's devastatingly attractive . . . ?'
'Yes?'
'It wasn't you, was it? Because you've ratted us out before.'
'No it wasn't, and I didn't, and I wouldn't.'
I gave him the Death Stare. For some reason I can do it with him for considerably longer than I can do it with Alison. Perhaps it is because she is a reincarnation of the Gorgon.
'I swear to God,' said Jeff.
His cheeks had coloured somewhat, and he quickly turned and hurried back up the stairs, ostensibly to finish unpacking the books. But he knew that I would be watching him. And I knew that he knew that I would be watching him, and he knew that I knew that he knew that I would be watching him. I didn't believe for one moment that he had actually told anyone. He had merely flushed the flush of the innocent man accused, but it is good to keep the staff on their toes.
* * *
Chapter 12
Let me explain why I took Pearl for coffee again.
What had hurt me most was Alison's assertion that Pearl had somehow played me, rather than the other way round. It hurt because, on reflection, I realised that there was a remote chance that there could be some infinitesimal grain of truth in what she had said. I didn't want to give Alison the satisfaction of being right, but I did wish to address the previously unrealised possibility that there was a microscopic flaw in my professional armour and/or personality. If Pearl had played me, she had played a player, and now this player would play her better than she had played me in the first leg. And this time I would play her away from home, where away goals counted double. Playing her on unfamiliar territory would take me out of my comfort zone, sharpen my Spider sense and, most importantly, make it less likely that we would be interrupted by a jealous girlfriend wielding coffee.
I phoned her at the Yeschenkov clinic and said, There's a brilliant new Bernie Rhodenbarr I think you should read, and by the by, did you hear about Augustine Wogan?'
'Yes, I did! My God, how terrible! I love Bernie Rhodenbarr's books!'
And just like that, I had exposed her as a fraud. Now it was important to press home the advantage.
'Listen, I'm up your way shortly; can I buy you a coffee? I can tell you all the grisly details.'
'I'm not sure I can . . .'
'Did you see your boss in the paper with Arabella?'
'Yes I did. Would you believe it?'
'She's not off to Brazil yet, then?'
'I think she is, I think that picture was from the night she went
'That's unfortunate.'
'Why?'
'The funeral, of course. And when the police couldn't track her down, they gave me his personal effects. I really wanted to hand them over to her; I feel a bit odd having them around. His diary, a lot of e-mails Arabella sent him I'm sure she'd like back even if she has dumped him.'
I had baited the trap anew.
'You know something, maybe I could sneak out for ten minutes. There's a cafe just round the corner? Singing Kettle? And will you bring the Block?'
'Yes, of course.'
I put the phone down. She was smart, that was for sure. In the midst of our conversation she must have Googled Bernie Rhodenbarr and realised her mistake: that he was a character, not an author. Alternatively, her familiarity with crime fiction was such that she had understood exactly what I had meant when I mentioned Rhodenbarr instead of Block. You can read so much into so little, and I generally do, but one thing was clear: once I had mentioned Augustine's fictional diary and Arabella's makey-uppy e-mails, she had very quickly changed her tune about going for coffee. Or, she had genuinely changed her mind, because she fancied a bit of gossip or found me irresistible, just as Alison did. You can read so much into so little, and I generally do, repeatedly.
The Singing Kettle was just around the corner, at least to a normal person with functional legs, but I made it there with time to spare and just a few stops for my inhaler and an energy-giving lick of a Twix. It was an old-fashioned cafe with a common name which appeared to be family-run. The most exotic thing on the menu was a German biscuit. I have a lot of time for German biscuits, not only because they are nice, but because they are living evidence that political correctness does not always win out. Although not actually living, or the public health inspectors would need to get involved. A German biscuit is, ostensibly, two biscuits with jam in between them, and white water icing on top, usually decorated with a glace cherry. It is derived from the Austrian Linzer Torte or Linzer biscuit, which was more generally known in the UK as a German biscuit until the First World War came along and the PC brigade insisted on renaming it the Empire biscuit with the same flag-waving hysteria that later saw sauerkraut renamed Liberty cabbage and French fries rechristened Freedom fries. That is, except in Northern Ireland, where Empire biscuit had an even greater political connotation, and so it remained, defiantly, a German biscuit here, the locals even preferring that name while the Nazis were bombing the hell out of them during the Second World War.
I explained all of this to Pearl within moments of her sitting down, and she blinked at me for a while and said, 'Actually, I might have a Paris bun.'
That was a whole different barrel of fish and one I chose not to climb into. I bought her one without passing comment, and a coffee for each of us, although obviously I didn't touch mine, having sworn a blood allegiance to Starbucks. I was to Starbucks what the Knights Templar were or are to the Holy Grail: champion and protector.
I passed the Block across as she took her first sip, and she immediately put her cup down and examined it with apparent excitement, opening the front cover and starting to read the synopsis and then quickly changing her mind and closing it and setting it down and running her hands over the back of the book as if it was silk, which it was, in a way. 'I shouldn't read that bit, it always gives the plot away,' she said.
She was beautiful. She had a little crumb of bun in the corner of her mouth, and I just wanted to reach across and lick it off. I mean, pick it off. She saw me looking, I'm sure, for her tongue flicked out, touched the crumb, seemed to play with it for an eternity, and then drew it back across her scarlet lips and into the warm cavern of her voluptuous mouth.
'So, that writer, my God, in your own house!'
'It wasn't pretty. How'd you find out? I don't think it made the news.'
'Kind of roundabout. Our legal people phoned and told us, something to do with the restraining order we had against him being rendered null and void. I mean, he was a pain in the arse, but what a thing to do.'
'To do?'
'Kill himself!'
'Well, that hasn't been established.'
'Really? You mean, like an accident?'
'Possibly. Or murder.'
I fixed her with my look.
I'm not sure that she noticed.
But she did move forward, leaning on the table between us, exposing the wonderful craftsmanship that goes into a brassiere. Or, not to put too fine a point on it, an over-shoulder boulder-holder.
'Seriously? Who would do that? Why? What do the police say?'
T really don't know.'
'Someone must have said something.'
I gave a little shrug. Sometimes less is more. Her eyes widened. She sat back. Her mouth opened. It closed again. She sat forward, close enough for me to kn
ow that despite the bra she wasn't making mountains out of molehills, near enough for her to whisper, and for me to catch the mix of mouthwash, coffee and Paris bun on her breath: 'My God ... I know what you're doing, I read about you on the net: you're investigating this, aren't you? That's what you do. You think he was murdered; you're the only one who does, and you're determined to prove it.'
I gave an even littler shrug. Lesserer was morerer.
Her hand went to her mouth. 'That's . . . fantastic . .. All the stuff you know about crime, you put it to good use. I read that in an interview you gave. Do you, you know, have like a crime-fighting partner?'
'No,' I said.
'I'd love to be your partner.'
'Okay,' I said.
Just in case you get the impression that she was playing me again, that I was under the sway of her hypnotic eyes and perfectly high cheekbones and luxuriant Harmony hair, it was in fact the other way round. I had drip-fed her information and sucked her in. In order to be my partner she would have to divulge everything she knew about Arabella and her time at the clinic; she would be able to find out from Dr Yes exactly where Arabella was going and why. While there clearly couldn't be anything to Augustine's claims that she had died in the clinic, maybe he had unwittingly stumbled on something else, some darker secret that had required his liquidation. By letting Pearl think she was my partner, I would actually be gaining an inside track on the case.
She seemed genuinely excited. She moved from sitting opposite to pulling her chair round beside me. Our shoulders touched as she looked into my eyes. 'Where do we start?' she purred. 'Or have you started already? What have you found out? You have his diaries and e-mails; can I see them? Sorry, tell me if I'm being too forward. I'm just so excited, my job is so dull and this is . . . oh!'
'It's fine, don't worry about it. Yes, of course you can see them. I just don't have them with me.'
'Brilliant! What else do you know? Why do you think he was murdered?'
'Let me turn that around - why do you think he was murdered?'
'I didn't say I thought he was murdered.'
'But you're very keen to help me investigate; you must have some reason for thinking that he might have been.'
Dr. Yes Page 7
