Dr. Yes (13 page)

    This
is the calibre of my staff.

    While
he was gone, I turned to my occasionally loyal database of customers. They had
become more communicative in recent weeks, now that my annual bombardment of
e-mails beseeching them to join the No Alibis Christmas Club had lessened
somewhat - a breather, really, before the campaign started anew in July - and
had been sharing with me their piss-poor insights and opinions on recent crime
fiction and boring me rigid with the sad facts of their personal lives. I had
been doing my best to act the genial host, but it is such a chore. Sometimes
when I just can't handle their cheeriness any more I tell them all to f-off,
and they laugh as if I'm having a joke, but I'm really not. However, at that
moment my relations with them were relatively good, so it was precisely the
right time to ask for a favour, and as an added incentive I offered a signed
copy of Eric Ambler's
The Mask of Dimitrios
- albeit signed by Jehovah's
Vengeance Grisham - to anyone who either worked in the travel industry or knew
someone they could lean on who did.

    As I
waited for that e-mail to circulate, I studied the blood-spotted newspaper
featuring the photograph of

    Dr
Yeschenkov with the lovely Arabella taken at the Xianth art gallery in Dublin.

    The
paper was published on the day Augustine was murdered, but while there was an
implicit suggestion that the picture had been taken the night before, it wasn't
actually stated. I checked the gallery's website and discovered that the launch
had actually been three days prior to its coverage in the paper. They were
showcasing a further seven photographs taken at the opening. One of them
featured Dr Yeschenkov, but there were no others of Arabella. Working on the
theory that Dubliners couldn't tell one Belfast accent from another, I phoned
the gallery and asked to speak to the owner. I introduced myself as Dan
Starkey, the editor of
Belfast Confidential,
a local magazine that had
started out as a champion of hard news but had recently re-imagined itself into
a web-based scandal sheet, and explained that we were interested in running
something on Dr Yeschenkov's visit to Xianth, and on the basis that I didn't
name my source, and the understanding that he never talked about clients, he
said ask away.

    'Well,
did he buy anything?'

    'He
bought a Corcoran. Ex-prisoner, IRA I believe, but hot stuff.'

    'How
much?'

    'That's
private.'

    'Ball-park?'

    'You
wouldn't get much change out of a ten-grand note.'

    'Would
you get any change out of a nine-thousand- pound note?'

    'None.'

    'What
about out of a nine-thousand-nine-hundred- and-forty-pound note?'

    'About
a tenner.'

    'What
sort of a painting?'

    
'It's
called
Fields, Trees and Bushes outside Lisburn.'

    'Uhuh.'

    'It's
really quite wonderful; it features a wildebeest . . .'

    'What's
he like, Dr Yeschenkov, regular client?'

    'Occasional
rather than regular. He has a good eye.'

    'What's
he like?'

    'Charming,
rich.'

    'And
the lady who was with him on the night?'

    'Mrs
Yeschenkov was unable to attend.'

    'But
there was a photograph of him in

    'Yes.
I saw that. He wasn't happy.'

    'He
looked happy.'

    'He
always does, it's the teeth.'

    'He complained?'

    'Yes.
It gave the impression he was with that woman. I think his wife didn't like it
or something.'

    'Is
that why it's not on your website?'

    'No -
we took the ones on our website. The one in the paper must have been taken by
the
Irish Times
themselves.'

    'This
woman, Arabella Wogan, what did you make of her?'

    'Can't
say that I spoke to her. In fact, that picture in the paper is the first time I
laid eyes on her. It said she was a socialite, but I've never heard of her.'

    'You
must have invited her to the opening?'

    'Nope.
I mean, she was probably someone's plus- one. We were chock-a-block so there
were a lot of people I never got to meet. I just know I didn't speak to her and
she certainly didn't buy anything.'

    When
I hung up, having promised to give the gallery a glowing mention, I took
another look at the newspaper photo. Their smiles looked slightly forced, but
only in the way that most posed photographs do. Their shoulders were touching.
His left arm was hidden, giving the impression that it was around her, but it
might only have been his way of holding a glass of wine out of shot. Perhaps he
didn't believe it was a good idea for a surgeon to be seen drinking in public;
all those droopy-faced potential clients wouldn't want to have to worry about a
shaky hand. At the base of the picture, just above the caption, there was a
single line of black type:
Photo - Liam Benson.

    Still
working according to my thread theory, I pulled this one as well. I called the
Irish Times
and asked to be put through to their photographic department. I
asked for Liam Benson, but was told there was no one of that name on staff. I
used the Dan Starkey cover story again, but this time said I wanted a copy of
the Xianth photo to use in our next issue. A hassled- sounding manager called
Donny said that wouldn't be possible because Liam was a freelance photographer
and the copyright belonged to him. I asked where I could contact Liam and he
said, 'He's from your neck of the woods, not mine, but I'm not his fucking
agent.'

    He
hung up. I was not unduly miffed. I had met Irish people before. Many of them
spoke like this.

    I
typed Liam Benson's name into Google and was rewarded with a link to his
website. He was
Liam Benson, freelance photographer - news, corporate and
public relations.

    Under
his list of satisfied public relations clients:

    The
Yeschenkov Clinic.

    I was
mulling over the significance of this, and trying to decide if there was any,
when Jeff cycled past the window. When I say he cycled, he was actually miming
cycling, much in the manner of the Knights of the Round Table pretending to
ride horses in
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
and using coconuts to
replicate the sound of hooves.
They
were quite funny. Jeff just looked
like a prick. He lacked coconuts. I was thinking about what he could have used
to achieve the desired sound effect but the only satisfactory answer I could
come up with was a bike.

    Jeff
came in and I said, 'Any problems?'

    He
grinned. 'None whatsoever.' He put an envelope on the counter and I took out
Augustine's phone records. 'I asked them if he'd had any visitors they were
aware of, anything suspicious.'

    'Did
I ask you to ask them that?'

    'No.
I was using my initiative.'

    'I've
warned you about that. You think of it as initiative; I think of it as you
blundering into what is none of your business.' He looked at me, and I looked
at him. After a while I said, 'Well?'

    'Well
what?'

    'Did
he have any visitors?'

    'Not
telling.'

    I
sighed. I studied the list of calls.

    Jeff
said, 'No.'

    He'd
made six calls. They were all to the same number. I called it. It was the Forum
International Hotel on Bedford Street. It isn't far from No Alibis. Not much in
central Belfast is. You could skim a stone to it.
You
could; I couldn't,
what with my wasting muscles and arthritic wrists. The Forum is a converted
linen mill. Five stars. Not cheap. The calls lasted for between seven and
thirty-five minutes. I'd a fair idea whom he was calling. I asked for the
manager and did my executor-of-the-will routine and confirmed that yes indeed,
Mrs Arabella Wogan had been a guest for four weeks and that there was no need
to worry about the bill as the hotel had an arrangement with Yeschenkov and all
accounts were settled directly with the clinic. I explained that we were having
trouble tracking the lovely Arabella down and asked if he or his staff had
spoken to her about her future plans. He said he hadn't, but asked for a moment
so that he could speak to his staff. He was very efficient. Five stars will sometimes
get you that. He came back on and said that her departure was via their express
check-out service, which was really just dropping the keys in a box, so nobody
had actually seen her leave, but it was understood that she was catching an
early flight and had travelled to Dublin in the late evening. He wasn't sure
how
it was understood. I said it would be helpful if I could get Arabella's
itemised phone records and he said absolutely, where should I send them, and I
said I needed them quite quickly, is it okay if I have them biked round? He was
most accommodating. I told Jeff to get back on his imaginary bike and warned
him about using his initiative.

    I
glanced across the road and saw Alison, in behind her counter, selling bangles,
and slightly overweight, even at this distance. She was hard work, but probably
just about worth the effort. I hoped when the baby came out it had none of my
ailments and all of her looks, minus the chins. But it should have my smarts. I
would read him
Emil and the Detectives
in the crib. He could play with a
pair of plastic handcuffs in a way that Alison had thus far refused to. He
would inherit No Alibis, if there was still a No Alibis to inherit. This
thought returned me to my work. It is amazing what you can get done when you
apply yourself. I called Liam Benson and identified myself as Dan Starkey and
said I was looking for a copy of the photo from the show at the Xianth gallery,
and he said, 'You don't sound like Dan Starkey,' and I hung up. It was an
abject lesson in the dangers of getting too cocky.

    A few
moments later the phone rang, but I was wise to that one. I allowed it to go to
answer machine, and then regretted it immediately, for he would know who I was,
and where I was. His message however was: 'Sorry, must have got a wrong . . .'
And then he hung up. But maybe somewhere, further down the line, he would
remember, or make a connection, or mention it to someone who would.

    I sat
and thought about what it meant, Liam Benson being employed by the Yeschenkov
Clinic. It was too much of a coincidence that he should just happen to travel
to Dublin and end up photographing Dr Yes at the gallery. He must surely have
been there at the doctor's request; it was therefore unlikely that the
photograph had been submitted to the
Irish Times
without the doctor's
knowledge and approval. Why then had he complained to the gallery about the
photo, if he had known they hadn't taken it and had himself actually paid
someone to be there for that purpose? Was he laying down some kind of a
smokescreen? Or had he miscalculated - what he thought of as handy PR had
backfired when his wife had seen him with Arabella and he had been forced to
act aggrieved to cover his tracks? More importantly, did it have anything to do
with Augustine's murder?

    Not
obviously.

    I
checked my e-mails and found that one of my idiot customers had finally
admitted to having a deadend job in a travel agent's. I asked him to see if he
could find out if Arabella Wogan had booked and taken a flight out of Dublin,
and gave him the day after the Xianth gallery event as the most likely, but to
check further ahead as well. He came back to me in twenty minutes and confirmed
that Arabella had been booked on a flight the next day to Rio de Janeiro via
Paris. It was a one-way ticket. He had no means of checking if she had actually
travelled. That wasn't particularly satisfactory, so I responded with something
sarcastic and clicked off. A proper 3-D customer wasted another twenty minutes
of my time asking for my advice on a book for his fifteen-year-old daughter;
wasted only because my insights were roundly ignored. I knew exactly what he
was doing: he was using my expertise to select the correct book, and then he
would leave without buying it and make his way down to Waterstones where he
would get it cheaper. I gave him the international sign for wanking as he
passed the shop window, but he misinterpreted and waved cheerily back.