Dr. Yes (12 page)

    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 know
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.'

    'Well,
no, not really. But you clearly do, and I'm just anxious to help. It's very
exciting. Why do
you
think he might have been murdered?'

    'I
have an open mind. But I think it might be connected to your clinic.'

    'Really?
Why?'

    'Because
he was so convinced that Arabella died there, and he was kicking up such a fuss
. ..'

    'But she
didn't die, she's alive and kicking.'

    'You
know that for sure?'

    'I
saw the same photograph you did.'

    'But
you didn't speak to her?'

    'No,
but Dr Yeschenkov did; they bumped into each other at that exhibition in
Dublin. He was furious because the caption sort of encouraged you to read
between the lines, and I know his wife wasn't happy. Normally she goes with him
to all his social events, but she couldn't go to that one.'

    'You
talked to him about it?'

    'Just
in passing. He was saying guess who I saw in Dublin, and she was in great form,
very pleased with the clinic, her treatment, the result. She was going to
Brazil, all excited about it.'

    'Definitely
Brazil.'

    'Definitely.
I think so. It's what he said.'

    'And
she didn't say anything about dumping her husband?'

    'If
she did, he didn't say.'

    'Do
you think there's something going on between them?'

    'No,
definitely not.'

    'Definitely?'

    'She's
much older. She looks fifty per cent better now than when she came to us, but
she still isn't exactly ... well, she has an unusual look one would hesitate to
call beautiful. Dr Yeschenkov goes for youth and beauty.'

    'Has
he ever gone for you?'

    There
was not even a hint of colour to her porcelain skin as she said, 'You're very
blunt.'

    'It's
the nature of the business. Bookselling, I mean.'

    'He's
not my type,' she said, and her eyes held mine, and I didn't need a reader of
eye language to tell me what she was implying. She broke it off and played with
the crumbs of her bun. Her eyes flitted up again. 'So that's all I know. You
must know something else to make you think what you think?'

    Ninety-eight
per cent of me wanted to tell her about the cigar cutter. It was a perfect
illustration of how clever I was. But that minuscule two per cent was tougher
than it had any right to be. It took a very strong grip on my throat and
wouldn't let the words out. I had a name for that two per cent.

    Alison.

    I had
a vision of her striking me across the nose with a hard-backed book and calling
me a tit for even considering giving up the only fact we had. So despite this
almost overwhelming inclination to reveal everything, I nevertheless gave a
slight shake of my head.

    Pearl
said, 'We're partners, but you're playing your cards very close to your chest.'

    'And
you're playing your chest very close to your cards.'

    And
it was at this very moment that her spell over me was broken, because her
natural reaction was to furrow her brow in bafflement, but she couldn't because
it had been so heavily Botoxed. Her eyes moved up, but the corrugation that
should have rippled across her forehead failed to materialise. There was no
movement in it at all, and I suddenly knew that all of her was just as fake,
that she was an actress and a bewitcher of men's souls, a landlocked siren who
had employed flattery, innuendo and lipstick to try and suck me into her
clutches, but I had resisted, and triumphed, as I always do.

    I had
established that Pearl was attempting to play me, but beyond that her motives
remained unclear. She could just be curious. She could be seeking to protect
the reputation of her employer. She could be a femme fatale. She looked like a
femme fatale, she got on like a femme fatale, she had the suggestive name of a
femme fatale, although that might have been just as fake as her serene forehead
and impressive chest. I myself had not noticed that she had a fake chest, but
Alison had nailed it at once. 'Anyone whose waist is that skinny should not
have tits that big,' she said. 'That girl,' she said, 'gets paid in kind.' It
was a fair point. If you worked in a fruit shop, you would expect to get the
occasional free pear.

    Deep
down I knew that I had been foolish. Because of Pearl's beauty I had allowed
myself to believe that meeting her was vital to the case, whereas it was only
vital to my ego. The actual solving of Augustine's murder would require a very
different but much more obvious approach. I would examine the detritus of his
life, the minutiae of his existence, and I would re-create his world, and in
doing so I would uncover fresh evidence that would lead me to the man or woman
who had killed him. I did not doubt it. I have a certain pedigree in this line
of work, and when women don't get in my way, I am usually very quick and
efficient at bringing a case to a satisfactory conclusion. I have been aided in
this by my obsession with and addiction to crime fiction. Those tens of
thousands of novels have been my education, in a way that my very short
attendance at the nearby Queen's University was not. Being asked to leave that
seat of learning might have held someone else back, but not I. Being accused of
what I was accused of might have driven others into hiding, but not I. I hasten
to add that nothing was ever proven, in a court of law. In a way it was a
blessing in disguise - I might easily have followed a different career path,
perhaps into academia, or joined the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or become a
mercenary, but no, my immediate removal in handcuffs from halls of residence
was fortuitous in that it caused me to focus on what I really wanted to do, and
that was to open my own mystery bookshop, and the tenacity with which I pursued
that dream has been the making of me. Not only do I now operate the finest
mystery bookstore in Belfast, but my investigative talents are second to none.
I am practically the fourth emergency service.

    The
depressing detail of Augustine's last days was here in the shop: the receipts,
the business and credit cards, the invoices and ticket stubs. They were a story
in themselves, and all I was looking for was the plot. I started with the bill
from the Europa Hotel. He had stayed there for the two nights preceding his
appearance outside No Alibis. The great thing about the phone or e-mails is
that you don't have to appear in person. You can be as impressive as your word
power allows, you can give yourself whatever fancy title you want and nobody
questions you, whereas if I turned up at the front desk of the Europa and said
I wanted to know what they had on Augustine Wogan they'd tell me to take a run
and jump. On the phone my wonderful facility for creating believable characters
and personas served me well. I became Donald West- lake, the executor of
Augustine Wogan's estate. I had a bill the hotel had issued; I wanted to know
if his account had been settled and if not whom I should send the cheque to,
and incidentally, did he leave anything behind, because anything he left
belonged to said estate. I had a notion that Augustine had fled from the hotel
without settling, and I was entirely correct. He had indeed left items behind, but
the hotel manager assured me that they were only articles of clothing,
toiletries and the suitcase they had once fitted into. I then explained that we
were having some difficulty tracking his movements prior to his unfortunate
demise, and asked if an itemised record of his phone calls could be made
available. The manager said yes, of course, and where should he send it, and I
told him I wanted it in a hurry so if he didn't mind I would arrange to have it
biked round. On hanging up, I immediately dispatched Jeff to retrieve it. He
said, 'But I don't have a bike.'