Dr. Yes (8 page)

    'I
can't?'

    'I'm
their best customer. They saw what you did. I had you barred. It was childish
and vindictive but I'm afraid it's irrevocable.'

    She
glared at me, and then rolled her eyes and said, 'Oh
fuck off.'

    She
returned from Star ten minutes later, and with the correct coffee, which told
me that she paid more attention to my requirements than she ever let on. She
said, 'You're such a bullshitter.'

    I
preferred to think of myself as adept at playing people. The way I'd played
Pearl. Her name was Knecklass. That there were hitherto unsuspected sexual
connotations was just a coincidence. She probably didn't know herself. She
wasn't the sort of girl you sniggered at, for she could melt you with a look.
Knecklass as a name was probably as common as muck in some godforsaken part of
Europe I would never visit. The Czech telephone directory was more than likely
crammed with them. It was the equivalent of restaurants in Hong Kong with names
like Fuk U. It meant nothing until taken out of context. Bond had enjoyed a run
of porn-star names beyond Pussy Galore - Holly Goodhead, Plenty O'Toole, Honey
Rider, even Mary Goodnight - but they were fiction; this was uncomfortable
fact. And seeing Alison come through the door with the right coffee reminded me
how lovely
she
was, and that although I would never admit it, she was
right: Pearl was way out of my league. I'd squeezed her for information even
while she flirted outrageously with me. I'd played her, and now I could leave
her behind. She'd given me a good lead on where the lovely Arabella might be;
now it was just a case of turning up some physical evidence of her departure,
something that Augustine couldn't possible argue with.

    'Like
a bank statement,' said Alison.

    'Obviously,'
I said.

    'Showing
that she bought a one-way ticket to Rio.'

    'Ditto.'

    'But
he must have thought of that. The police must have checked.'

    'Who
knows that they did? Maybe she paid cash. Maybe she used a card and the
statement didn't come in for a month afterwards. Augustine's life has been
chaotic ever since she ran off. We just need to get him to focus, show us the
paperwork; it must be sent somewhere even if they have been living like a
couple of gypsies. I'm good with paperwork, you know that.'

    'Yes
I do.'

    'The
Resistance - in fact all sides in any war going back to Peloponnesian times -
relied on facts, information, patterns and codes.'

    'Yes,
they did. You accountants are so damn sexy.'

    'You're
the pregnant one. And I'm not an accountant. I'm like a forensic analyser.'

    'Of
paperwork.'

    'What
I'm saying is, we need to ask Augustine to show us what he has.'

    'We?'

    'He
likes you. You can wind him round your little finger.'

    'Like
Pearl with you.'

    'I just
don't want to antagonise him. I don't want to jeopardise . . .'

    'The
Holy Grail.'

    'Exactly.'

    She
gave me a look. 'Where would you be without me?' she asked.

    
Happier
was the obvious answer, but for once I kept it to myself. I was learning a
little self-control. I needed her, for now, but nobody is indispensable.

    After
work, we took the Mystery Machine back to my place, though, technically, while
she clung by her fingernails to this mortal coil, it was still Mother's.

    We
went in, and smelled food, and alcohol, and called his name, but he didn't
respond.

    We
went upstairs, and we stood at his door and called again, and he still didn't
reply. 'He's flown the coop,' I said.

    'He
wouldn't, not without saying,' said Alison, so, for the second time in her
life, she entered Mother's bedroom.

    And
for the second time, she screamed.

    It is
a little-known fact that the lyrics to 'Suicide is Painless', the hit song
featured over the titles of Robert Altman's classic 1970 film
MASH
, were
actually written by the director's fourteen-year-old son Mike. I'm not sure how
he did his research, but judging from the state of my mother's bedroom, and the
fact that Augustine Wogan had blown his brains out in it, and that the
photograph of my late father that hung on the wall behind where he had carried
out said act was now adorned with one of his bloody ears, I would have said
that no matter how brief a passage of time there was between him pulling the
trigger and actually departing this mortal coil, suicide was
pretty fucking
painful.

    Alison
was in some state, but there wasn't much I could do about that beyond patting
her back. I find outbursts of emotion uncomfortable, and I was too busy
hyperventilating myself to be of much use to anyone. Alison was in fact the
first to calm down, and phone the ambulance, which I would have told her was
obviously a complete waste of time if I could have gotten the words out.

    We
waited downstairs for them to arrive. We had spent less than twenty seconds in
the room. It was eighteen seconds too long. I do not like to look at the dead,
because that is the image you carry with you of that person for the rest of
your life. I had just seen one of the greatest crime writers of his generation
with most of his head missing. He had been sitting in the chair by the window
that Mother used to sit in to spy on the neighbours. He had a bottle of whiskey
by his side, a partially smoked cigar between his fingers, a cereal bowl he'd
been using as an ashtray on the arm of his chair, and a newspaper at his feet.
There was blood all over the wall and in a thick pool on the wooden floor
around him. I was wondering if it would stain. I was wondering if he had done
it deliberately to annoy me, or to cheat No Alibis out of its financial
windfall. I was wondering what this would do to my reputation. I was wondering
if I would no longer be widely revered as the owner of the finest mystery
bookshop in Ireland, but known as the bookshop owner damned by the fact that he
had been the final host of the legendary Augustine Wogan. I knew how these
things went. Even if every fact came out, they would be ignored in favour of
innuendo and rumour. I would be blamed for somehow causing his death. His
suicide would migrate from Mother's bedroom to the bookshop itself. He would
have killed himself because of the pressures of being an author, depressed
because he hadn't been published in twenty years despite the critical plaudits.
Indeed, because he'd blown his head off, conspiracy theorists would speculate
that he wasn't dead at all, that he had staged it to feed his well-known desire
for obscurity.

    'You're
quite the shit magnet, aren't you?'

    That
was DI Robinson's opening line. He had made minor contributions to the solving
of several of my cases, but had also often been more of a hindrance than a
help. He claimed to be a fan of crime fiction and regularly bought rare first
editions from me, but I still wasn't convinced. There was something about him.
A book never seemed to be an end in itself. There were always accompanying
questions. Some might have mistaken it for mere conversation, but I know people
too well. He was never off duty. Never relaxed. Although he was relatively so,
here in the environment where he was clearly most at home, an interview room at
Lisburn Road police station. I'd been told by the police at the scene to call
in and make a statement at my own convenience, which would have been never, if
Alison hadn't insisted. She was waiting outside to make hers. It was normal
procedure for suicides, although made less normal by the method Augustine had
chosen. A simple overdose would have sufficed, or he could have suffocated
himself with a plastic bag, or jumped out of a window, but the mere fact of
using a gun elevated it enough to have someone like DI Robinson involved.

    He
told me to sit; he told me he was taping the interview, but to read nothing
into that, it was merely more efficient than laboriously typing everything I
said. It would be rendered into print by computer software, then checked,
corrected and signed by me.

    He
said, 'Shame, he was a great writer.'

    'You've
read him?'

    'I've
read
of
him. Everyone seems to agree. What did you think?'

    'He
was
a great writer.'

    'How'd
he end up with you?'

    'He turned
up in the shop; he was homeless, needed somewhere to stay, least I could do.'

    He
studied me. I knew what he was thinking. It seemed out of character for me to
be accommodating. And it was. I know what I'm like. There's no sugar on my
almonds. But there was no reason for Robinson to know about my plan to get
rich, or at least eat, on the back of Augustine Wogan's past and future
glories.

    'Did
he seem depressed?'

    'Depressed.
Paranoid.'

    'In
what sense?'

    'In
the sense that he thought someone was trying to kill him; in the sense that his
wife had run off but he thought she'd been murdered.'

    DI
Robinson studied me some more. He clasped his hands. 'And she wasn't murdered?'

    'Not
that I'm aware of.'

    'Because
I know what you're like, and your investigations. The problem is that whenever
you get involved in something, the body count tends to mount. Like I say, shit
magnet.'

    'I
don't think that's very fair.'

    'It
seems that every time I run into you, my paperwork multiplies tenfold.'

    'You
should avoid running into me.'

    'I
would, but there always seems to be a gun involved, and that tends to be my
line.'

    'He
shot himself in the head.'

    'That's
not what concerns me. It's more the gun, like where he got it from, him being
in your house, and you having a history with them. Did you give it to him?'

    'No,
of course not.'

    'Of
course not.'

    'Why
would I give him a gun? That's just stupid.'

    'Were
you aware that he had a gun?'

    'Sort
of.'

    'Sort
of.'

    'He
kind of had one.'

    'Kind
of had one.'

    'He
had one in his briefcase. He took it out in the shop and I disarmed him.'

    Robinson
snorted. 'You disarmed him?'

    'Yes.'

    'Why
did he take it out in the shop?'

    'He was
all fired up about his wife being missing, thought they'd murdered her at this
clinic.'

    'I
heard about that. It was all bollocks.'

    'Yes,
it was. But he'd convinced himself.'

    'You
didn't think to tell us? That he had a gun, that he was threatening murder?'

    'I
disarmed him, so he didn't have a gun, and he was no longer threatening murder.
He was upset; I didn't think it would help to call you lot.'

    'Us
lot?' Robinson shook his head. 'So what did you do with the gun?'

    'I
hid it.'

    'Where?'

    'In
the house.'

    'In
the house where you took him?'

    'Yes.'

    'Did
he see you hide it?'

    'No,
that would defeat the purpose.'

    'But
he knew you had it, and that you must have hidden it in the house, and then you
left him alone in said house for an extended period of time, even though you
knew he was paranoid and depressed. You didn't think there was a fair to
middlin' chance he might have gone looking for it'

    'No.'

    'No,
that would be too sensible.'

    'What's
that supposed to mean?'