Dr. Yes (37 page)

    'Because
you're making this entire thing up and you are, in fact, a nut?' Dr Yeschenkov
asked.

    'Legally,'
said his solicitor, 'you cannot refer to him as a nut, even if he shows all the
characteristics of one.'

    'If
either of you call my son a nut again, I'll fucking brain you,' said Mother.

    I
glowed. Everyone else just looked at her, because with her fairly recent stroke
her diction came and went. It was particularly bad when she was angry. So what
everyone else heard was: 'If etheryoucallthmyson anuth again, I'll
futhingbranoo.' It meant nothing to them, but everything to me.

    I
drew them back to me. I said, 'I don't blame you. It does sound mad. And
actually, you're quite right. We were on completely the wrong path. I realised
that only last night, and like the discovery of penicillin and photography, it
was entirely an accident, yet completely fortuitous. You see, when I entered
Buddy Wailer's house and examined the hatbox on his bed, my hands became
stained with a sticky substance, which I quickly washed off. I believed it was
some bodily fluid secreted by Arabella's head. But last night, in Tollymore
Forest, I also found my hands covered in a similar fluid, but with nowhere to
wash it off, I did what every mother would beat you with a bamboo cane for: I
wiped my hand on my trousers. It was only much later, when I was sifting
through the evidence of the case, looking for something I was sure I'd missed,
that I idly began picking at the dried stain on my trousers, for it had
hardened into a wax-like substance.' I made a point of looking down at Pearl.
'Except it wasn't a wax-like substance. It
was
wax. And with that the
case was solved.'

    Everyone
was looking at me, and then, with furrowed brows, at each other.

    When
I had milked it for long enough, I raised my mobile phone. I made a call. It
was answered on the first ring. I said, 'It's okay to come in now.'

    All
eyes turned to the door.

    'Ladies
and gentlemen,' I said, as the very tall, very thin man appeared in the
doorway, a hatbox in his hands, 'I give you the one and only Buddy Wailer!'

    Knowing
that he was to be my star witness, I had borrowed a bar stool from Madison's
Hotel a few doors down, and now Buddy Wailer was sitting on it, beside me, with
Augustine Wogan looking down on him. Even sitting down, he was as tall as I
was. He kept the hatbox in his lap, and his hands on either side of it,
protectively. After briefly studying Buddy, his height, his thinness and his
nervous disposition, my audience was now completely mesmerised by the box.
I
knew it wasn't empty.
They
had guessed it. They wanted to know, but at
the same time, they didn't.

    I
said, 'Before we get into this, that box is going to be distracting, so the
sooner we find out what's in it, the sooner we can move on. Do you want to tell
us what you have there?'

    'It
contains a head.'

    There
were groans and little cries of disbelief and horror. They also craned their
necks.

    'Now
I appreciate that some of you may be of a nervous disposition, so I'm going to
put this to a vote. Before we hear what Buddy has to say, shall we open the
box?'

    'YES!'

    Dr
Yeschenkov said nothing. Neither did Pearl or Alison or Jeff or Robinson or
Spider-web.

    'Buddy,
if you wouldn't mind?'

    Buddy
removed the lid and angled the box up. There were shouts and yells and
fucking hells!

    It
was definitely a head.

    Buddy
Wailer's head. Staring blankly out.

    My
audience was stunned. They were mouthing:

    
But
that's
. . .

    
How
in hell
...?

    
Fucking
hell, that's creepy
!

    'Just
to clear up any confusion,' I said, 'and particularly for the likes of my
mother back there, who has just crossed herself, even though she's not a
Catholic, will you please tell us whose this head is or was or belongs to.'

    'It's
my head.'

    'Your
head? But you are clearly alive. Did you have an identical twin brother?'

    'No,
this is a three-dimensional wax portrait of my head.'

    There
were gasps and whispers, and all around my shop, the sounds of pennies dropping.

    I
said, 'For the purposes of the webcam record of these proceedings, will you
please tell our audience who you are and what you do for a living.'

    Buddy
cleared his throat. 'My name is Brian Wailer. Until 2005 I was Global Head of
Wax Commissions at Madame Tussauds. Since then I have worked as a freelance
operative.'

    'Which
means . . . ?'

    'I
travel the world selling and making these 3-D portraits. They are, I hope you
will agree, astonishingly lifelike.'

    'And
how much do they cost?'

    'I
will do a portrait for somewhere around eighty thousand pounds.'

    'You're
serious? Who's going to pay . . . ?'

    'With
power, wealth and success, there usually comes a degree of vanity that needs to
be indulged, or exploited. I travel the world with this, my own head, and
believe me, commissions are not in short supply.'

    'And
you make them yourself?'

    'No,
I employ a team of experts, many of whom worked for the Madame. It's a highly
complex process. Hundreds of photographs are taken, colour transparencies of
eyes and teeth are made. The teeth are accurately mapped and an exact set made;
acrylic eyes are built from the iris outwards. I even use silk threads to
reproduce the veins inside the eye. The whole process should take several months,
but my service is not only cheaper, it's much, much quicker.'

    'So
how did you end up on these fair shores?'

    'I
was invited here by the Yeschenkov Clinic.'

    I
looked to Dr Yes. 'Is that right?'

    'No.
Yes. It is true that I invited this man to the clinic after hearing about his
work, but on the day he visited I was unexpectedly called away. One of my
fellow directors oversaw his visit and liked his work, but believed it was too
expensive, and to tell you the truth, somewhat . . . unsettling. That is the
extent of my dealings to date with Buddy Wailer and if he says otherwise, he is
misrepresenting both himself and the clinic.'

    'And
we won't hesitate to take legal action,' said the rotund solicitor.

    'Mr
Wailer?' I said.

    'It's
true I have not met Dr Yeschenkov until today, but, nevertheless, I have
completed seven portraits for clinic patients, and I've been paid for them.'

    'That's
impossible!' cried Dr Yes.

    'As a
hit man,' I said, 'you probably wouldn't have much in the way of paperwork, but
as a creator of wax portraits, you probably do?'

    'Yes.
Of course. Not with me, but obtainable.'

    'And
you were paid directly by the clinic?'

    'Yes.'

    'And
the director who you met when you visited, who lined up the clients, who paid
you with money transfers from the Yeschenkov Clinic was . . . ?'

    Buddy
kept his eyes on me. But he said, 'Miss Knecklass.' 'This woman, in the front
row?'

    Buddy
nodded. Eyes still on me.

    Dr
Yes turned to Pearl. They were separated by four chairs, three Augustine fans
and a towpath regular. 'Pearl . . . this isn't true?'

    She'd
joined Buddy in staring at me.

    'Pearl!'

    Her
eyes slowly moved towards him, like a sniper scoping no-man's-land.

    'You
made me promises you couldn't keep.'

    Dr
Yes looked at his solicitor. 'That's simply not

    'I
had to look out for myself. And you were too busy gazing at yourself in the
mirror to notice.'

    'It's
simply not true!'

    It
was, of course. They'd been screwing in the Forum.

    I
said, 'Buddy, you didn't suspect something was amiss?'

    'No -
at least, not until Miss Knecklass called about Arabella Wogan. That's when it
all started to come out.'

    It
had been weighing heavily on Buddy Wailer, so heavily that it had brought him
back from the airport, brought him to my home in the middle of the night for a
long, tearful confession.
Then
it had been rambling and panicked.
Now
he was calm and collected.

    Arabella
had been introduced to Buddy by Pearl as a potential client; they had discussed
and agreed a fee and the work began. The photographs were taken by his regular
local photographer, Liam Benson, as soon as the bandages came off her face.
Arabella still had several medical procedures to undergo, but getting her face
done first enabled the work on the portrait to get under way, with the idea
being that it would be ready for her when she checked out of the Forum. But
then Buddy received a call from Pearl in the middle of the night, ordering him
to the hotel. She met him in the foyer and took him up to Arabella's room -
where she was lying dead. Pearl said she'd suffered an extreme reaction to her
medication; it was an accident, but if word got out, the clinic would not only
be sued for millions, its reputation would be irredeemably tarnished.

    'She
already had it all worked out,' Buddy told me that night, him with his hand
shaking as he held his glass of whiskey, mine with the shakes that come with
the medication I take to stop me having seizures. 'She wanted me to complete
work on the portrait, double- quick time, and also to provide a full torso so
that we could mock up photographs to show that Arabella was still alive.'

    'Did
nobody else know that she was dead? Doctors? The staff at the hotel?'

    'No.
Several different doctors and surgeons were treating her, but if she had any
problems, she had to go through Pearl to get to them. She called Pearl
complaining that she wasn't well, but by the time Pearl arrived and let herself
in, Arabella had passed away.'

    'You
didn't think at the time it was a rather extreme way of dealing with it?
Patients die after surgery. It's a fact of life.'

    'Sure
I did, and I kick myself now for going along, but I was in a bind - Pearl
controlled the money, and I needed it. All those trips to Vegas have turned
what used to be a hobby into what you might call an addiction. I owe, big
time.'

    In
the shop, Buddy looked out at the audience. They weren't a jury, but they were
as good as one.

    'She
had two guys come in remove the body.'

    'How
did they do that?'

    'Brazenly.
They came in with a large cardboard box, loaded her into it, put it on a
luggage cart, and I left with them via the service elevator.'

    'Had you
ever seen them before. Or since?'

    'Sure.
One of them's standing over there.' He raised a very long, very thin finger,
and pointed towards the back of the store. 'That man, with the spider's-web
tattoo.'

    Spider-web
gazed calmly back.

    'And
the other one?'

    'I
shot him dead last night.'

    When
the buzz died down, Buddy said he'd been out of the country for several weeks
and only returned to his rented house the day before Augustine died. He
immediately thought there was something suspicious about Augustine's death and
confided his suspicions to his friend Liam Benson. Liam had already worked out
that neither of them were actually working for Dr Yes, but for Pearl, and that
she had made herself so essential to the running of the clinic, and had so much
power vested in her, that she could run her scam right under Dr Yes's nose
without fear of discovery.