Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite! (6 page)

I remember once when Baggins was young and we were flying to Italy. We hit a little spot of turbulence and I jokingly started bobbing about in my seat, trying to make out to her that turbulence was fun. The stupid thing was, of course, that she was three, she already thought that turbulence was fun. I was doing it for my own benefit, thinking that if I had to concentrate on protecting my daughter, I wouldn't be frightened myself. Maybe it would have worked if she hadn't been giggling so much.

The thing I discovered that day, however, was that if you move around in your seat as if there's extreme turbulence, you don't really notice the actual turbulence; or, at least, you lose some awareness of just how bad it is.

There are two problems with this, however. The first is that if you don't have a kid with you, and you start bobbing around in your seat, you look like a mentally unstable freak and are liable to be hospitalised when you reach your destination. The second problem, as I was just discovering, is that when the turbulence is supersized, as it was in that 747 flying over the US, the bobbling about in the seat doesn't work.

I tried it for a second. The plane gave a sudden lurch, and I immediately stopped.

The worst? The worst is the plane crash landing and everybody dying in a blazing fireball. Was that what he'd meant? Had he meant, get on your mobile and say goodbye to your family?

I looked around the cabin. There weren't many others in view. One or two were clinging on with white knuckles. There were a couple chatting. Some people were still watching in-flight entertainment. How could they concentrate? Perhaps that was their way.

A flight attendant staggered past me, knocking against my arm as the plane pitched to the right before straightening. She then quickened up and practically ran back to her seat and strapped herself in.

The plane dipped forward, buffeted by the wind, and then fell sharply. A sudden drop, stomach in mouth, anyone with a drink saw the liquid hit the ceiling. At least three people screamed. I don't think I was one of them.

I was sweating. Cold sweat. Gripping the armrest so hard it might break. They must be designed to withstand the terror of passengers. Another bump, another lurch to the side. Insides so tight. Consumed by the fear. No thoughts allowed, just blazing terror in the centre of my head.

I shifted in my seat, automatically resorting to what I used to do with Baggins. Didn't work, couldn't blank out the horrible movements of the plane. A 747, being tossed around like a leaf in the wind, like a tin can in the sea.

Baggins. I thought of Baggins.

'If things get bad you can always go to your happy place.'

Happy place. God, it would have to be some happy place.

I leant forward, my hands pressed firmly against my face. I tried to think of my happy place. The plane lurched down to the left, and my insides once again ended up in my mouth.

*

'W
hy didn't you get on the plane?'

The female agent kept asking. I had nothing else to say. I'd said that surely Heathrow or British Airways had some proof that I was on the plane. She said that the plane had gone down, killing everyone on board in a massive fireball visible many miles away. Whatever proof that Heathrow or BA had that I'd been on the flight was irrelevant, as obviously I hadn't been on the plane. If I had been, I would be dead.

'Why didn't you get on the plane?'

I didn't answer. I was dog-tired, but that presumably was part of their game. They had left me alone in the room for a length of time I had no real grasp of, but they had not allowed me to fall asleep. While there was nowhere in the room to get comfortable, I was so tired I would have been able to drop off with my head on the desk, or lying flat on the floor, my head on my outstretched arm. Which was what I'd tried to do, until they'd blasted a klaxon in the room and brought me juddering awake, just as I'd been drifting off. Again and again.

'Why didn't you get on the plane?'

I shook my head. Partly because I could barely hold it still. I just needed to lean forward, rest my head on the table. Sleep. Just some sleep. I was so tired, I'd almost stopped worrying about Brin and how worried
she
might be.

'Tell us about the Jigsaw Man,' she said quickly, barely giving me time to answer the previous question, even if I'd had something to say.

I leaned back and tried to get my head into a place that would allow me to contribute to the conversation.

Contribute to the conversation?

Not thinking straight. This wasn't a conversation.

'It's a film script,' I said. 'I wrote a film script. That's why I was flying to LA. To see a guy, a film guy, who was interested in the script.'

'What guy?'

I had to concentrate. For a second the name was completely gone, and then it juddered back in.

'Marion Hightower,' I said. 'He worked for an independent... can't remember the name.'

'Marion Hightower?' she repeated.

'Yes.'

She turned to Agent Crosskill who had sat silently beside her throughout the interview. From somewhere, I have no idea where, he produced a tablet. He typed quickly and briefly, waited a few moments with his fellow agent's eyes on him the whole time, and then looked up and shook his head.

'There's no Marion Hightower in the film business,' he said.

She turned back to me and said, 'There's no Marion Hightower in the film business.'

'I... yes, yes there is. I checked. He was on...' and then I struggled to remember the name, before saying, 'Internet Movie Database. He was there. There were a bunch of films under his name.'

Agent Crosskill pushed the tablet over to me so that I could see the search results for Marion Hightower on IMDb.com. There was a long list of approximate matches. There was no actual Marion Hightower.

I shook my head.

'Tell us about the Jigsaw Man,' she said.

I wanted to think about Marion Hightower. I wanted to try to work out how it was that he could have had a page on IMDb every time I'd looked during the week before I'd flown to America, but that it was no longer there. I couldn't think, though. It would have been a tough enough one to work out in any case, but it was impossible being this tired. Being this tired.

I just wanted to sleep.

'Tell us about the Jigsaw Man.'

––––––––

A
fter he was gone, I sat at the Jigsaw Man's table in the Stand Alone only twice. The first time, the day after he left, I was trying it out for size. I placed a few pieces of the jigsaw. I drank coffee. I exchanged some words with Janine, although I don't think I managed to say anything particularly erudite or sage. I occasionally looked around the café to see if anyone was staring at me. They didn't seem to be, but there was no escaping the fact that I felt self-conscious.

I avoided the café for a couple of days because I felt that when I went back, I ought to once more sit at the jigsaw table to see if I would get used to it. I felt this insane pressure about it. Stress. The day after, and the day after that, it was the first thing I thought of when I awoke in the morning. What was I going to do about the jigsaw table? What were the other regular customers going to think? Perhaps they thought badly of me for sitting at it in the first place, but then perhaps they would think me weak for only sitting at it once and not being able to handle the pressure.

Then some part of me would want to point out that I wasn't sitting in the Prime Minister's chair or filling in for the IBF World Heavyweight Champion. There was no pressure. There was no inherent weakness in not sitting at the table.

Except I felt the pressure.

I was nervous when I returned a few days later. Forced myself to go on an afternoon when I didn't really have the time, and didn't really feel like drinking coffee. Facing up to my trepidation.

It felt like a big event. I don't think anyone else in there shared my anticipation. I sat in the seat. I drank coffee. I placed two pieces of the jigsaw and was disconcerted (and relieved) to find that someone else had been at it in my three-day absence.

I wasn't alone. I had a rival for the position of Jigsaw Man. Was there someone in particular, or had a variety of people sat in this chair? Was there some sort of open competition, or was no one else fretting about it in the way that I was?

Looking back, it was one of those moments in my life when I spent far too much time fretting over something of absolutely no consequence. I was never going to be the Jigsaw Man. For a start, I didn't have the time to sit there all day, every day. Funny how things consume you at various points, and then they pass and some time later you wonder why you ever got worked up about them in the first place. (If only I'd been able to apply the same kind of perspective to my feelings for Jones.)

I cleared my following afternoon and determined to go to the Stand Alone and be the Jigsaw Man. If there was going to be a competition, I was going to win it. I'd sit there until I'd finished the on-going jigsaw, and when it was done I'd speak to Janine about organising a replacement puzzle, and if necessary – and I presumed it would be – I'd buy it and that would help cement my place as incumbent Pursuivant of Jigsaw.

Then, the following afternoon on the way to the Stand Alone, I decided to further this cause, and stopped off at WH Smith's and bought a jigsaw, just to get ahead of the game. The biggest I could find was only 1,500 pieces, and it was of a steam train rather than the required four-hundred-year-old artwork, which wasn't really in keeping with what had gone before, but I was convinced of the need to stamp my authority on the position.

When I arrived, there were three people sitting at the table. They were drinking coffee and chatting. Occasionally one of them would do a piece of the puzzle. I left my jigsaw in its bag and put it down at the side so that Janine wouldn't see it, having first briefly contemplated starting the jigsaw at my own table, a rebel, insurgency jigsaw table, in direct opposition to the establishment. I would sit in my own breakaway corner, traducing the competition, and their out-dated 17
^th
century artworks.

My nerve failed me. I tried not to stare at the people at the table. Determined to wait them out – which I thought oughtn't to be too hard as they had obviously arrived before me – I wondered how obvious and perhaps sad it would look if I moved table once they'd left.

Perhaps
sad? I can only shake my head in embarrassment when I think of my few obsessive days.

I drank three cups of coffee, when I had felt like none. They left. I thought I'd wait a couple of minutes, so as not to be too blatant. A woman came in on her own and immediately sat at the table. She glanced at the jigsaw once, then took out a magazine and paid the picture no more attention.

When I went back to the café the next day, another couple were sitting there. Some time, at some point, my obsession faded. I arrived at the café a couple of weeks later, the table was free, the jigsaw had been replaced by another. I sat by the window, my back to the puzzle, and watched the rain sweep across the river, the steam from the coffee rising into the cool café air.

The day came when I no longer went to the Stand Alone.

*

T
he door to the room opened. I lifted my head from the table where it had been resting on the backs of my hands. I was tired, hadn't slept, but was feeling slightly better than I had done, however much earlier it was when they'd been interviewing me.

The sound of the door was enough to spark a little more life into me. The door opening could be bad, but then so was sitting in that room in complete silence. I still dreamed of being released, of them realising that I had nothing to do with their plane going down, and that I would be allowed to go home. None of that was going to happen without the door first opening.

The man looked curiously and nervously at me. He was in his early sixties. His hair was thin, his face was thin, his eyes were shallow and weak. Anxiety sat upon him like a fresh fall of snow.

We looked at each other for a few moments, neither of us entirely sure what the other was doing there. Suddenly I realised that he must have been from one of the other cells. It was obvious, but had taken me a while to get there. He was from one of the other cells and was doing what I had wondered about doing as I'd stood out in the corridor.

He was inspecting the other rooms to see what was going on. To see if there were others like him. To see if there might be a way out.

Even if he was from the room next to mine, why had they let him get this far?

He shook his head, although it seemed to be in reply to some internal conversation rather than aimed at me, and then he started to pull the door closed.

'Wait!' I managed to say. He was already out of sight as he hesitated, and then the door closed.

I sat staring at it, wondering if I ought to go out after him. I knew right there, however, that the reason I wasn't moving, the reason I didn't want to have anything to do with him, was that he was weaker than I was. However lost and alone and desperate I might have been, he was worse, and I didn't want to be responsible for him.

There was a gunshot, and then the man with the thin face cried out. A horrible wail. I stayed where I was, listening, not wanting to move. The initial howl was replaced by the most pathetic moaning, the most desperate sound you could imagine. Crying out, pleading for help.

To whom was he pleading? The guard who had shot him?

Finally I lifted myself out of the seat. I glanced over at the mirror, wondering if there was anyone in there, and then tentatively opened the door. Out here the cry was much, much louder.

He was curled up on the floor, clutching his right kneecap, pressing hard against it. It couldn't have been doing him any good in trying to relieve the pain. The guard had shot him from close range in the knee. The bone and flesh had exploded.

There was a tremendous splatter of blood and body matter across the floor and the walls for a single gunshot.

I looked at my guard and then along the corridor in either direction at the other guards. They were all standing in the same position, gun in hand, hands held together at the groin. I wondered who'd shot him. I wondered which direction that haunted man had come from.