SYLVIE'S RIDDLE (25 page)

'But
I
could only put her together from observation. I didn't make her out of nothing. I made her out of something.'

'In
Dawn in the Cave,
it was simpler, I think. You were making connections. Connections between the paintings on the walls of the caves and Picasso's images of bulls and minotaurs.
Corridas
and labyrinths. The mazes at Knossos and the riddling way that art and ritual complicate things to finally make them simpler, to take us through a necessary passage of darkness back out to the light.'

'That was simpler, yes.'

'But in
Deva,
you took the facts of war as you saw them, and you collated them. You shaped a universal template of the reality of war, a template which had never existed
in any actual war.'

'War is a moveable feast.'

'Or a moveable sacrifice. And then you tested that reality against a number of characters who were fictional. The bereaved old lady, the ruined man, the brutal commander and the girl ... what was her name, Owen?'

'You know what her name was.'

'But I want you to tell me.' For the first time he said it. That name. Very slowly.

'Alex. Alex Gregory.'

And you did something I've seen you do before. To help you find the reality you were searching for, you used her mind. You explored fictional realities through an actual mind and body.'

'It's not unknown.'

'Maybe not. But I've never known anyone else do it to the same extent. To find out how she'd act on a bed, you fucked her first. That shows great commitment to your work, Owen. Your pursuit of the perfect image involved her becoming one.' Owen had now put his head in his hands; John let the lens come slowly into focus.

And to see how she would react to being raped you set the scene up so that she almost was. With the local louts who'd been drinking, and weren't really acting much at all. If the rest of us hadn't been there, then they would have raped her, wouldn't they?'

'Bresson didn't like using professional actors. He preferred people from the shops and the street. '

'You must have known how it would cut into her mind, Owen.

You'd been having an affair with her for a year. Everyone could see she was vulnerable, but you'd got to see her at much closer quarters than the rest of us. Why couldn't you trust me to fake it?' Owen's face now swung up out of his hands.

'Because
I
wanted it real.
I
didn't want it faked.
I
wanted the actual terror in her eyes. That's what we're trying to do, isn't it? Convey some reality in a world so filled with images that no one bothers to look at them any more.'

'Well, you succeeded, all right. Take the newspaper out of your greatcoat pocket. '

'I don't want to.'

And Alex didn't want those boys tearing away her clothes and sticking their hands up her thighs while you held her hand and told her to stay there. You must remember the things we do in search of our truthful image, Owen. Take the newspaper out and turn to the middle pages.'

There was a photograph of Alex, a picture from the family album, with her smiling, her full cheeks bright with sun and nourishment.
And then there was a photograph of the bothie on the headland, the bleak sea beyond, and the headline:
Why
Did This Girl Starve
To
Death Alone?
For the first time in all the hours of footage, John started to zoom very slowly towards Owen's face. Which had frozen. No tears. No expression. Nothing. He held the shot for a full minute before switching the camera off.

Inside the Labyrinth

In the year 200 I Michael Landy took all the possessions he had acquired in his thirty-eight years of life and had them publicly destroyed in what had once been the C&:A store in London's Oxford Street. The items circled around slowly on metal conveyors until finally being cut up or dismantled and fed into shredding machines. Nothing was exempt, neither Landy's
B
irth
C
ertificate nor his beloved Saab, not even his recordings of David Bowie. If it belonged to Landy then it had to be
destroyed. As installation art-
works go
Breakdown
was amongst the purest. You could only watch as the commodities moved slowly towards their extinction inside a mausoleum of commodities. All the images were destroyed. Except that an image had preserved their destruction. Even images of self
-
destruction left their traces in images, one of which Sylvie was looking at now. It hung on her wall, commemorating the moment when everything it represented disappeared. There was a tap on the door. It was Hamish.

'I was wondering if we might have that little word. Would you mind? Perhaps we could go over to my office. I have some things there I might need to refer to.'

And so Hamish walked back to his office, and Sylvie followed him a moment later
.

'Do sit down, Sylvie. Make yourself comfortable.' She looked at the small face, grown tight over the years with unrelenting calculation.

'You may be aware that n
ext Wednesday there will be an
extraordinary meeting downstairs. The meeting has been called by one or two disgruntled members of staff who have taken against me for a gallimaufry of reasons. They plan to pass a vote of no-confidence. To do that requires, according to our rather eccentric constitution, that seven people support the motion. That would have to include you, according to my reckoning. I just wanted to make sure I could count on your support.'

'You'll have to wait until the meeting. I haven't heard the arguments yet.'

'No, but you understand the principles, surely. There have been some absurd allegations flying around that I listen in on people's calls, examine their emails
or
snoop
on
their
communications
as one complainant put it. What I actually do, of course, is monitor communications of various sorts.

'To make sure nothing amiss is happening, or is likely to. There's been a resurgence of racism, even in academic life, and I have no intention of letting any of that happen here.'

'I can't give you any assurances, Hamish.'

'That's a shame, because another matter has come up, which I had hoped could be shelved indefinitely, but it's possible, I suppose, that it can't.' He then pulled open the drawer of his desk and took out a sheet of paper. She could see the university letterhead. 'I have here a complaint, of rather grave nature, concerning your behaviour. It comes from Or Thomas Helsey who, in fact, in a matter of a couple of months, will be Professor Helsey.

'Tell me, Sylvie, do you really think it in order for you to use your special privileges here to seduce a married member of staff, after you have invited him to contribute to one of your lecture courses?'

'I didn't seduce him.'

'Well, that's not what Or Helsey says. His allegation is quite specific. A friendly meeting to discuss his part in your lecture course, an invitation to return here so you could lend him a book you thought would interest him. Then, before he'd had much of a chance to consider the matter, since I believe you had both been drinking heavily, events took place which he can now only recollect with shame. He has made a full confession to his wife, apparently, and has explained himself fully to me. He apologised for showing such disrespect to this institution, as to treat it as little more than a brothel, and I have accepted his apology as given in good faith.

'But as for you, Sylvie, I honestly don't know what to say. I have your husband phoning up here, desperate to find out where you've been all night. At the same time another gentleman, certainly not your husband, phoning through the switchboard to leave coded love-messages, and then within days, hours for all I know, you are using the rooms in this institution to seduce senior members of the academic staff. Married ones too. If all this surfaces, I really can't see how your position here would continue to be tenable for long. '

Sylvie stared at that face she'd never much liked, and liked even less now that it was imprinted with its smile of victory.

'I hope we understand one another. I shall put this letter from Dr Helsey away, and sincerely hope I don't have to make it public. I am still jealous of this place's reputation, even if others aren't. Now perhaps you'd like to go, since I have some important work to get on with.'

Special Dispensation

Ex-Detective-Inspector Patrick Gregory had always been a methodical man, and he was now collating his evidence. The contact at the Inland Revenue had phoned him that morning.

'She's at the Claymore. Top floor. Been there six or seven weeks.

Booked in under the name of Smith. Now there's imagination for you. Beverley Smith.'

He had kept his Detective-Inspector's ID, though it was long out of date, even though employing it as he was about to, would have landed him in serious trouble, were it ever to come to light. He had done this a few times before, and had no intention of being any less competent in his deception this time.

Any chance of a room on the top floor?' he asked the receptionist over the phone. 'I have happy memories of a delightful weekend there with my wife many years ago. Being a widower now, I like to revive these memories from time to time.' Inspector Gregory was granted his wish. He would have to move quickly, for he would soon be spending serious money staying at the Claymore.

'You're a widower now, are you?' his wife asked him from the kitchen.

'Thankfully not.'

So it was that a neat, middle-aged man in a suit and tie, his shoes polished and his cases trim and tidy, arrived at the Claymore Hotel for three nights. He had chosen a dark suit. That way, should he choose, he could be one of the hotel of
ficials. As the porter carried
his case in to the room, Patrick gave him a substantially larger tip than he normally would.

'Thank you very much, sir,' the porter said. 'Anything else I can do for you?'

'Yes, there is one thing. An old friend of mine, Beverley Smith, has been staying here. Been here a few weeks now. Do you know which room she'd be in?' The porter pointed.

'Down the bottom of the corridor. On this side. Keeps herself very much to herself.'

'Good old Beverley. Hasn't changed much then. See if I can coax her out of herself for an evening.'

Patrick put away his things and rang room service. He asked for two gin and tonics. When they arrived ten minutes later, he waited until the waiter had disappeared back in to the lift, then he held the tray aloft and made his way down to the bottom of the corridor.

'Room service, madame,' he said as he knocked. The voice sounded clearly from within.

'What?' Patrick simply turned the handle and walked in.

The room was not like his room. It had been draped with muslin sheets. They were everywhere, even across the window. And the woman lay on a sofa, dressed in white and blue. Her face was bronzed, and her body that of a well-fed woman, not plump exactly, but edging in that direction. Her feet were bare and he could see that they had been manicured and the toenails painted. He had a distinct feeling she had not done this herself. And there was a plate beside her, empty.

'You ordered two gin and tonics, Madame.'

'I did not.' Her voice was deep and authoritative. She was used to wielding power, he could see that. 'You're not the usual one, either. I told them only to send me Charlie. Please remind them of my instructions, and take the drinks away. I don't drink, as a matter of fact. '