Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite! (31 page)

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I
stood on the steps outside Abbey Road studios, the small car park with the low white wall and black railings in front, and looked across the road. I saw it immediately. Right there, waiting for me.

I turned and looked at the pedestrian crossing. There were Japanese tourists holding up the traffic, having a photograph taken. Must be an occupational hazard of choosing to drive along this road. I wondered if people avoided it for that reason. These four were taking particular pains to make sure they had the pose right. They'd obviously been practicing. They weren't wearing the correct clothes, although one of them was shoeless. There were other tourists waiting in line for the perfect moment, and a queue for five photographers standing in the middle of the road, oblivious to the traffic. A car horn beeped, and that started the mob. The air filled with noise, the picture was taken, and the tourists trotted off the road, giggling and clamouring round the digital camera to get a look at the results.

I looked along the other way. I'd been expecting to see Agents Crosskill and No Name, but I hadn't spotted them on the trip from the hotel, and they were nowhere in sight now. Turning back to the crossing I noticed there was a guy standing on the other side of the road, dressed in a grey suit. He was trying to blend in with the clamour of tourists, but he looked like something from sixty years ago, minus the cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. Hiding in plain sight.

It wasn't as though they had to pretend that they weren't following me. We all knew.

The building across the road was a red brick, residential apartment block. I wondered how much it cost to live across the road from Abbey Road studios. The window frames were all painted white. There were a couple of large entrances, the stone around both painted white. The lower level of the building was set down somewhat from the height of the road. A low hedge ran along the wall that separated the building's boundary from the rest of the street.

The old, battered red door waited for me on the lower level, about midway between the two large entrance doors, in between a couple of basement level windows. Seemed an odd place for a door, but there was little about this whole sequence of events that wasn't odd.

It looked much like the door that had led me to Mr Pike Place Roast and his pals. I was fairly confident that through that door was where I was going to find the Jigsaw Man. He might not be in, of course. After all, he'd spent two years a while back sitting in a café in Glasgow.

Chances were that the guy in the suit wouldn't be able to see the red door, just the same as Crosskill and his partner hadn't been able to see the door in Seattle. But what if he found it by keeping his eye on me and watching me walk through it? I could be leading them straight to the Jigsaw Man, handing him to them on a plate.

But then, that was why I was here, right? Lead them to the Jigsaw Man, get to go home, see Brin and Baggins. However, I knew I needed to talk to him first.

I briefly contemplated attempting to throw the tail off my back, a wild goose chase around London, dashing between Tube lines and platforms, leaping on and off trains. Yet I knew that it was unnecessary. This story that I was part of and that was leading me on, didn't have that kind of narrative. There was no time imperative, no drama to be found. All I had to do was walk across the road, open the door and walk down the corridor. The second I closed the door behind me, I would be lost to the guy in the suit. He would uncomfortably report it to Crosskill, and they would likely be waiting somewhere for me when I emerged.

The traffic was moving slowly, still recovering from the photoshoot, and I nipped between cars and walked quickly across the road. The guy in the suit noticed the movement, positioned himself in amongst the tourists to get a better look at me, then started to walk forwards.

I reached the pavement, walked towards the main entrance, hopped over the wall onto the basement level, quickly to the door, tried the handle and stepped inside, closing the door behind me.

I stood still for a moment waiting to see if anyone would follow. The corridor looked the same as in Seattle. Long and dark, with a red light shining above the outline of a door at the far end. The door behind me did not open, and I briefly pictured the suit guy frantically running up and down this part of the street, wondering where I'd gone.

I walked down the corridor with more confidence than I had in Seattle. Again it seemed to take much longer to get to the door at the far end than it looked like it should.

I hesitated beneath the red light. Was this it? All the travelling around, speaking to old ghosts, falling in love with Jones again, dragging myself out of the other side of the abyss, to walk through this door and find the Jigsaw Man?

Only one way to find out. I pushed open the door, stepped through and closed the door behind me.

I'd come through a side door into a small café. There were large front windows looking out onto a London street, although I wasn't sure if it was one adjacent to Abbey Road. There were a few people sitting at tables, a counter with the usual modern day coffee-making apparatus behind, with two people in maroon uniforms chatting and undertaking the kind of general clear up duties that we do behind there when there are no customers. And at the back there was a familiar figure, leaning forward at a table, a large jigsaw before him. Botticelli's
Adoration Of The Magi
. Three-quarters finished. He was clean-shaven except for the moustache, and he was wearing a light blue suit. The jacket had a mandarin collar. It suited him.

He saw me, nodded, then waved a hand in the direction of the counter.

'A flat white, please,' he said, and nodded at the acknowledgement.

I pulled a seat out opposite him and sat down. Had he always worn these clothes? Perhaps he had. I'd forgotten.

He placed a piece of the puzzle near the head of the baby Jesus. All red, a part of Mary's arm.

'Been a while,' he said, without looking up.

'Good to see you,' I said.

'You too. How you been?'

He looked up now, and folded his fingers together, an indication that he was giving me his attention.

'It's been weird. How are you? Been doing jigsaws the past twenty years?'

'On and off.'

'I met... I met the other guys, you know, the other...'

He nodded to cut me off. 'How they doing?' he asked.

'Not great,' I said. 'They seem kind of grumpy.'

'Yeah, I know. I can feel it. Total bummer. You here to bring me in?'

'I don't know. I mean, that's my remit. That's why they let me out. But then, I don't know why I was in there in the first place.'

'So, what are you going to do?' he asked.

'I'm not sure. I'm just hoping to understand what's going on first.'

'Reasonable.'

He looked back at the jigsaw. I watched him for a few moments, and then looked down at the picture. Everything slowed down, and suddenly I realised that I'd been anxious walking in.

There was no rush. There was no desperation on the part of anyone. Only Crosskill and his pal were uptight, and I'd largely been ignoring them. They needed me more than I needed them. I was no threat to them, and without me they had little chance of catching the Jigsaw Man.

'How'd they get the others?' I asked. 'What makes you hard to find when the other three were taken?'

'Took us by surprise,' he said. 'None of us saw it coming. Just after 9/11 when they were bringing in everybody and anybody. I got lucky. Just happened to be in Laos at the time, their operation wasn't so smooth out there. Managed to escape into the jungle. Not, I've got to say, my most comfortable habitat. But once I knew they were looking, they were never finding me.'

'The others have been in that place for like twelve years or so?'

'Yep.'

'Crap. No wonder they're so pissed off.'

He glanced up. The look in his eye showed the hurt he felt at the incarceration of his other selves. His other quarters?

'Sorry,' I said.

'It's all right, it's not like I can't feel how disconsolate they are.'

'The agency said that you're terrorists.'

He glanced up as the flat white approached accompanied by a black coffee, then the drinks were placed on the table.

'Thanks,' he said.

'Enjoy your drinks today,' said the waitress, and she turned with a fabricated smile and headed back towards the counter.

I took a sip of coffee. It was perfect. Of all the flat whites in all the cafés in all the world, I thought, this is the best. It tasted like the coffees at the Stand Alone had tasted. This was what I'd been searching for.

I didn't feel good about asking the Jigsaw Man if he was a terrorist, so I wasn't going to push him, but sure enough, he was happy to talk in any case.

'They don't understand us,' he said. 'They don't like things they don't understand, so they want to lock us up. They know we're not terrorists, that's just been their catch-all since 9/11.'

I nodded. That was something I was more than happy to believe. After all, it was why they had locked me up. I hadn't done anything wrong, they just hadn't understood why I hadn't been on the plane. Not that I'd understood that either.

'So, you four are, in some way, the essence of the album
Sgt. Pepper
?'

'Not how I'd usually describe it, but more or less.'

'How does that work?'

He took a sip of coffee, sighed and stared at the floor. I couldn't decide whether he was fed up having to explain this to people, or whether this was the first time he'd ever done it and he wasn't quite sure how to word it so that it wouldn't sound completely insane.

'Every time the human race... whenever people, anyone, creates something beautiful, something massive, something epoch-changing or whatever, at the same time the essence, as you put it, is recreated in human form. Comes into being. Exists from that time onwards. At least, until the thing, whatever has been created, loses relevance or is supplanted in some way.'

'That's preposterous,' I said.

He shrugged. 'Maybe. But life is full of unexplained hooded crows. You never know what's going to turn up.'

Hooded crows? I stared at him curiously, then thought of the two hooded crows that had appeared in our attic. How did he even know about that?

My head was exploding with questions, but I had to strip it back, not try to understand everything at once. Maybe it would be easier to not understand anything.

Follow the coffee. That's what had brought me here.

'But Starbucks?' I said. 'Really?'

'What about them?' he asked.

'I met Mr Pike Place Roast.'

He laughed. 'No kidding? That's pretty funny.'

'But how do they fit into your thing-of-beauty theory?'

'I don't know... Look around you, around any city in the western world. Here in the UK. Thirty years ago everyone sat in pubs, or they sat in grimy little cafés drinking washed-out tea and eating stale cake. Like 'em or loathe 'em, but Starbucks changed all that. They swept in, a café culture came with them, and now it's everywhere. People drinking coffee, chatting, recognising the difference between an espresso con panna and an espresso macchiato. You can't say that they haven't helped redefine what the high street of any town in the western world looks like. Like 'em or loathe 'em, they've changed society.'

'And McDonald's? There's a McDonald's guy?'

'Probably,' he said. 'Never thought about it.'

I wanted to say that it was the weirdest thing I'd ever heard, but then I'd thought myself off a plane, so I was hardly one to talk.

'What about you? There are four of you guys for each of the Beatles albums?'

He shook his head.

'As I said, they can be supplanted. I guess they'd have started with
Please Please Me
, or maybe not until
A Hard Day's Night
, but each of the four guys was supplanted each time a new album appeared with four new guys. So there are only four of us.'

'But the Beatles didn't finish with
Sgt. Pepper
. What about
The White Album
,
Magical Mystery Tour
?
Let It Be
?
Abbey Road
? That's like, I don't know, two more years of total genius.'

He took another drink while he thought about it. It was as though no one had ever asked him the question before.

'
Sgt. Pepper
was their absolute apotheosis.'

'I prefer
The White Album
,' I said.

He nodded.

'Fair enough, but too patchy to be considered truly great. "Why Don't We Do It In The Road”? "Wild Honey Pie"? "Revolution 9"? Seriously?'

'
Abbey Road
then...'

He shrugged.

'That's got three decent songs on it. There's a reason all those bits and pieces are slung together in the medley on side two. Individually they're all crap, but put together like that, it kind of covers up the inadequacy.'

I briefly thought about each of the Beatles albums that came after
Sgt. Pepper
. Normally I could have mounted a stout argument on how at least two of them were miles better. Now, however, it felt like the Jigsaw Man had crushed me in seconds, and there just wasn't an argument to be had.

'And this works for all sorts of other artists too?' I asked, ceding the argument.

He shrugged. Now that he'd imparted the basic concept to me, he seemed lured back to the jigsaw.

'There's a
Bat Out Of Hell
?' I asked.

'Sure.'

'Wow. I'd love to meet that guy.'

'He's a dick.'

He didn't look up, placing a piece to complete the head of the self-portrait of the artist, standing at the forefront of the picture.

'So who decides?' I asked.

'Who decides that guy's a dick? Ask anyone.'

'No. Who decides if a work of human endeavour results in this kind of human manifestation?'

'No one
decides
,' he said. 'That's like asking who decides if a volcano erupts. It either happens or it doesn't.'