Dr. Yes (2 page)

    They
both looked at me, the fount of all knowledge.

    'They've
probably eaten a sea cow,' I said.

    'Can
you milk a sea cow?' Jeff asked.

    'Would
the milk be salty?' Alison asked.

    'They're
not like our cows,' I said, although I suspected they probably knew that. 'They're
more like seals.'

    'Can
you milk a seal?' Jeff asked.

    'That's
how they feed their young,' I said.

    'Once
they hatch,' said Alison.

    'We're
getting off topic here,' I said.

    They
both nodded.

    'Okay,'
said Jeff. 'Have we agreed that we can tape a paedophile to a seal and then
release him in shark- infested waters?'

    Alison
pointed out that you would have to catch the seal first. 'I suppose you could
get one from a circus or like a water park. A performing seal. He could keep a
ball up with his nose. He could put on a bit of a show to attract the shark,
because maybe not enough blood would have trickled out of the mince, and even
if it did, it could be carried away by the tides and currents.'

    I summed
up. 'So we're taping the mince to the paedophile, and taping the paedophile to
the seal?' Alison and Jeff both nodded enthusiastically. I smiled. The flaw in
their logic was obvious. 'If this is designed to be a punishment for the
paedophile, and you've taped the mince to him and secured him to the performing
seal and released the performing seal in shark-infested waters, don't you think
the paedophile will have drowned long before the shark hears about the
performance, watches the show, and then gets to tear both the paedophile and
the seal to shreds? Doesn't it seem like an awful lot of trouble to go to if
he's going to drown in less than a minute?'

    Alison
looked rather crestfallen. Jeff was going the same way, but he suddenly
brightened. 'You're forgetting - the seal, and the paedophile, they could quite
easily be caught in nets.'

    'What,
by fishermen, you mean? How would that ... ?'

    'No,
no, no - Atlanteans.'

    'Right.
Atlanteans. They would be the ...'

    'People
of Atlantis. If the Atlanteans spotted a man taped to a seal, they'd want to
rescue him. They'd think we were being quite barbaric, taping mince to a man
and securing him to a seal and releasing him in shark-infested waters. They
already hate us for pollution and dragnet fishing; this would just reinforce
their negative opinions of us.'

    'They
might have negative opinions,' said Alison. 'It doesn't mean they're going to
condone paedophilia.'

    'Maybe
Atlanteans have no laws against it,' said Jeff. 'Maybe they're quite liberal,
like the Dutch. Besides, they wouldn't know he was a paedophile; he's hardly
going to confess, even after he's learned Atlantean. He'll probably tell them
he was the victim of a travesty of justice, like the Birmingham Six and anybody
from Guildford.'

    'Is
Amnesty International protecting paedophiles now?' I asked.

    'No,
I'm only making the point that he's not going to tell them what he has or
hasn't done.'

    'We
would have to brief the seal,' said Alison. 'She could tell them.'

    'She?'

    'Absolutely,
you'd need a sex you could depend on. And the Atlanteans have lived underwater
so long they probably converse with the sea creatures.'

    'Yeah,
the way we converse with cows?'

    'Land
cows?' asked Jeff.

    The
possibility of a customer to interrupt proceedings was remote, so it could have
dragged on for ever. Fortunately it was at precisely this point in our
discussion that I was distracted by a figure walking past the

    No
Alibis front window. In truth I could equally have been distracted by a fly or
a dust mite, such was the level of our conversation, but in this instance, even
though I only had the briefest glimpse of him, there was something familiar,
and yet unfamiliar, about his face, and gait. For several moments I struggled
to place him, but then suddenly the penny dropped, the cash register opened,
and I was out of the door and after him.

    Now,
looking back, after all the trouble that followed, I know that I shouldn't have
moved a muscle, that I should have let him go, and then I would never have
become involved in what became my most difficult and distressing investigation
to date, the
Case of the Pearl Necklace,
a case that would ultimately
put Jeff's life, my girlfriend's life, her unborn baby's life and, much more
importantly, my own life on the line.

    I have
never in my whole life actually physically pursued a case, because any kind of
activity requiring increased motor function is something I have to be wary of,
but I could hardly help myself. Of course I didn't know it was a case
then.
Then
it was just a man walking past my window - but what a man! You see, in
my field of crime fiction, Augustine Wogan was an enigma, a myth wrapped up in
a legend, a barely published novelist and screenwriter who was known to so few
that they didn't even qualify as a cult following, it was more like stalking.
He was, nevertheless, Belfast's sole contribution to the immortals of the
crime-writing genre. His reputation rested on three novels self-published in
the late 1970s, novels so tough, so real, so heartbreaking that they blew every
other book that tried to deal with what was going on over here right out of the
water. Until then, novels about the Troubles had invariably been written by
visiting mainland journalists, who perhaps got most of their facts right, but
never quite captured the atmosphere or the sarcasm. Augustine Wogan's novels
were so on the ball that he was picked up by the RUC and questioned because
they thought he had inside information about their shoot-to-kill policy; shot
at by the IRA because they believed he had wrung secrets out of a drunken
quartermaster; and beaten up by the UVF because they had nothing better to do.
He had been forced to flee the country, and although he had returned since, he
had never, at least as far as I was aware, settled here again. I occasionally
picked up snippets of information about him from other crime- writing
aficionados, the latest being that he had been employed to write the screenplay
for the next James Bond movie,
Titter of Wit,
but had been fired for
drunkenness. There was always a rumour of a new novel, of him being signed up
by a big publisher or enthusiastic agent, but nothing ever appeared in print.
The books that made up the
Barbed-Wire Love
trilogy were never
republished. They are rarer than hen's teeth. I regarded the box of them I kept
upstairs as my retirement fund. In those few moments when I saw him pass the
shop, I knew that if I could just persuade him to sign them, their value would
be instantly quadrupled. They say money is at the root of all evil, but I have
to be pragmatic. I am devoted to crime fiction, but I am also devoted to
eating, and Augustine Wogan was just the meal ticket I was looking for.

    By
the time I caught up with him, I was gasping for breath. It was only twenty
yards, but if God had intended me to be a long-distance athlete, he wouldn't
have given me a collapsed lung and rickets.

    'Mr
Wogan?'

    He
stopped, he turned. It was indisputably Augustine Wogan, though he had dropped
a hundred pounds and lost several chins since we had last spoken. He was gaunt
now; he looked twenty years older when it should only have been five; he wore a
long, thin beard and clasped a leather briefcase to his chest with a defiance
that made him look as if he'd taken a job amongst the Hasidic Jew diamond-sellers
of Antwerp and run off with the merchandise.

    'What?'

    Irritated,
distracted, paranoid.

    That's
just me, so it's always nice to meet a brother in self-harm. You can tell. It's
in the eyes. I'm good with eyes. I had recently been unmasked as a charlatan by
the Support Group for People Depressed Because They Have Been Rejected by their
Cornea Transplants. I kept telling them that I was seeing ghostly images of
murder victims during those brief weeks before rejection set in, and that the
dead man's eyes I wore were those of a killer. But they refused to believe me,
mostly because the paperwork showed they had belonged to a traffic warden from
Sion Mills. It was a small group, but torn by power struggles. Not so much a
case of the blind leading the blind as the hazy leading the indistinct. As it
turned out, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man truly was king, and he
had me out on my arse.

    'What
do you
want?'

    I had
drifted. I shook myself. 'Mr Wogan, it's me . . .' I turned and pointed back at
the shop. 'From No Alibis? You did a reading about five years ago?'

    'What
of it?'

    He
was glaring at me.

    'Sorry
- I didn't realise you were in a rush.'

    'Why
not? Wasn't I
rushing?'

    'Yes,
you were, but ...'

    'What
do you
want?'

    'I
was hoping you might sign some—'

    He
was all set to growl something else at me, and I was all set to sink to a new,
lower level of grovel, when there was a little
ping
off to his left,
nothing more than the tiniest piece of gravel rebounding off a car windscreen,
but by his reaction, ducking down and scurrying towards me for protection, you
would have thought, and he clearly did, that someone had taken a shot at him.
It was
not
a shot. Or if it was, Action Man was on the loose. But for
the purposes of getting what I wanted, I was quite prepared to accept that it
was
a gunshot, and I quickly ushered him towards the safety of Belfast's leading
crime emporium.

    To
their eternal discredit, Alison and Jeff were still discussing the taping of
mince to a paedophile and the paedophile to what had now become a dolphin -
without apparently noticing that I had left the building. They certainly
noticed my return, but only because I was bustling a terrified-looking Rasputin
through the door and ordering Alison to get him a chair.

    Alison
blinked at me.

    I
next ordered Jeff, who, being an employee, of sorts, was much more compliant.

    'Have
a seat, have a seat,' I said as Jeff put it in place.

    'Thank
you…thank you ...'

    'Get
him a glass of water.'

    Alison
was looking at me, knowing how rare it was for me to fawn over anyone. Jeff
nodded and turned to the kitchen.

    'Please,
no, don't go to any trouble.' Augustine held up his hand. 'Evian if you have
it.'

    Jeff
hesitated, then looked to me for direction. From behind Augustine I drew a
bottle outline in the air, and Jeff got it immediately. We keep a selection of
empty designer water bottles in the kitchen for the exclusive use of prima
donnas. In his field, Augustine was actually a prima donna, in the best sense
of the words, but it didn't mean he could tell branded water from tap. Or as it
turned out:

    'Fuck!
That tastes like fucking shite!' He grabbed the bottle and examined the label.
'Sell by March 1997 - are you trying to fucking kill me as well?'

    He
let out a cry, and hurled it across the shop, spraying water over a display of
books that would shortly boast a sign saying
Water Damage Sale
, though
actually I would have increased their price.

    Before
I could apologise profusely, he held his hand up again and said sorry himself.
He was under a lot of pressure. He appreciated us giving him sanctuary. For the
first time he nodded around the shop.

    'I do
remember this place. Yes. Did a very good reading in here, didn't I? What did
you call that tit used to own it?'

    I
cleared my throat. 'I own it now,' I said.

    Augustine
nodded at Alison. 'This the missus?'

    'Working
on it,' said Alison.

    He turned
his gaze upon Jeff, who shrugged and said, 'Jeff - I just do stuff.'

    Augustine
shook his head. 'Well, nice to meet you all.' He patted his jacket pocket, and
produced a long, thick cigar and snipped the end of it with a small guillotine
cutter. He was about to light up when Alison said, 'No.'