The Day of the Jack Russell (Mystery Man) (16 page)

‘Listen to me, I’m not messing around. I want you to go to your window, tell me if you see anything unusual.’

‘Like what, aliens?’

‘Just look. Please.’

‘Okay. Okay.’ I heard the creak of the mattress on aged springs. ‘All right. I see . . . dark. What am I looking for again?’ She yawned.

‘They’ve taken Jeff.’

‘Who . . . what?’

‘Jeff. They were outside the shop. I got Jeff to follow them. They’ve taken him, captured him, murdered him, I don’t know! Christ, why do I always get myself in hot water? What do I know about detection? I like books. I love books. Books don’t do anyone any harm, what the hell was I thinking . . .’

‘Okay – just
calm down
. . . What about Jeff? Who’re
they
?’

‘I don’t know!’

‘But they have Jeff?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you phoned the police?’

‘It might
be
the police!’

‘It can’t be
all
the police.’

‘Yes it can.’

And then I told her what they’d said, about murder is our business, and she agreed that that wasn’t good, and that they may have followed us from William Gunn’s, and that it made sense to take a really proper look out of her window. Then she said no, there didn’t appear to be anyone watching the house, no BMWs in either direction, though of course that didn’t include the one earlier.

‘The one . . .’

‘When I came home, this car stopped beside me and asked directions. It may have been a BMW; I’m a girl, what do I know?’

I started to go into some detail about chassis and manifolds and horsepower, but soon gave up. ‘Directions? Where to?’

‘University. She was miles off.’

‘She?’

‘Yeah. Nice woman.’

‘And that was all?’

‘Yes. No.’

‘No?’

‘Well I pointed which way to go and my bangle caught her attention and she said it was very pretty, where did I get it. And I said I worked part time in . . .’ She trailed off then, and sighed. ‘In retrospect, that may not have been a good idea.’

‘Christ.’

‘How was I to know? So they’re watching both of us, they know where we live and work . . .’

‘And they have Jeff. They may have killed him.’

‘You only think that because they said murder is our business.’

‘And because they’ve killed two already.’

‘We don’t know it was them.’

‘Chances are.’

‘It could have been, like, whatsername, who sang that song, whaddyacall it?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You know, the ironic one. Isn’t it ironic? Sheryl Crow. Where she was saying everything was ironic, but actually, none of it was. She had a fundamental misunderstanding of the meaning of irony. Maybe they were being ironic? Murder is our business, when actually they’re the good guys and they’re only looking out for Jeff and he’ll wander through your door in the morning wondering what all the fuss is about.’

‘That’s bollocks,’ I said, and she agreed.

Normally I favour plans of inaction. I am not pro-active, I am inactive. I prefer sloth. I like books. My detections are about observation and deduction. It’s all I have.

I opened up as normal at nine. I worked the computer with one hand and rested the other on the meat cleaver beneath the counter.

It was my father’s.

He had an interest in cleaving meat.

Which was unusual, for a vegetarian.

Alison arrived. I did not like to put her in the way of danger, but I didn’t see what difference it made; they already knew all about her. Alison, bless, came up with useless suggestions for what we might do. Our situation was not helped any by what I found out on-line about the registrations of the two BMWs I had observed outside the shop. They read as if they were normal, but in fact they were impossible; they were a series of numbers and letters that would not come into use for another three years.

Alison said, ‘Perhaps they are from the future.’

She wondered sometimes why I did not think of her as an equal partner in the detection business when really it was plain for all to see.

‘We can’t just sit here and do nothing.’

‘I’m not,’ I said, the number plate breakthrough being clear, if unsettling, evidence of such.

‘I mean, they have him, dead or alive; we have to tell someone. Won’t his mother be looking for him?’

Ah, the concept of a mother who would look for one.

I wasn’t aware that Jeff had any kind of a family. He was just someone who stacked books. God knows I was burdened with enough of my customers’ troubles, but at least there was a remote prospect of squeezing some money out of them. I was
paying
Jeff, I didn’t need to know anything at all about him. In fact I realised that I only knew one absolutely concrete fact about him, but it was the only one I needed.

‘I know exactly who to call.’

‘Uhuh?’ She was rearranging books in the window in a frankly unconvincing attempt to persuade passing customers that the sale had been expanded.

‘Amnesty International. He’s wasted the best part of his adult life working for them; now it’s payback time. If they can get excited over some blabbermouth in Africa whining about freedom of speech, just think what they can achieve here with one of their own! There’ll be protest marches and hunger strikes and sit-ins; they’ll cause so much trouble, they’ll have to let him go.’ I was quite excited by my plan. I even had the phone in my hand. I was just waiting for praise from Alison before I set the campaign in motion. But she was distracted. ‘Alison, are you even . . .?’

Then I saw what she saw, the BMW parked across the road, and the doors opening, and the suit coming towards us.

Instinct whispered
lock the door
,
dive for cover
, but I just stood there, stuck in a no-man’s-land between being paralysed with fear and looking gormless. He came in, in his grey suit and black brogues, and short hair, and cursory nod, and began to look at the books. My hand recovered enough strength to curl around the handle of the meat cleaver beneath the counter. Sometimes, in the wee small hours, I have practised with it, fighting invisible enemies. But this was different. He wasn’t imaginary. At least I didn’t believe he was imaginary – with all the medication, you never can really tell. Hallucinations are rarely communal – unless the Virgin Mary is involved – so the fact that Alison was also watching him suggested that he was real enough.

I was about to say, ‘Please don’t kill us, we’ll do anything you want,’ when Alison butted in.

‘Is there anything I can help you with, sir?’ she asked as she clambered out of the window and moved around behind him to stand with me.

The man in grey selected a book, and turned to the counter. ‘I’ll take this,’ he said. His accent was English, Home Counties.

My heart raced, my foot was drumming and God, my blood pressure. This was the man who had either kidnapped Jeff – or killed him. And here he was in my mystery bookstore, and here was I, defenceless apart from my meat cleaver and my girlfriend, who had once told me she could kill people with her feet, though I’d yet to see any evidence of it. He had chosen Horace McCoy’s
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
. I could have read a lot into the fact that it ended with a murder rather than started with one, but he had selected it way too fast to be making a deliberate point. Anyone who chooses a book that quickly either is a phoney or has been brainwashed by a crime-writing franchise.

‘Six ninety-nine,’ I said. My voice sounded as weak as my knees felt. Alison put a hand on my back and rubbed in a circular movement. She needed me to be strong.
I
needed me to be strong. God damn it, this was my shop, my living, and this was just a man in a suit. I had faced down greater foes before, including Mother.

Just . . . stand . . . up to him.

‘Let’s cut the bullshit,’ he snapped. ‘How much do you want for it?’

I cleared my throat. ‘It’s not in the sale, but six ninety will do.’

‘I said cut the bullshit. You know what I’m talking about.’

‘I’m not sure that I do.’

‘We have your friend.’

‘I don’t have any friends.’

‘You’re pretty cool, considering.’

‘Considering what?’

‘That we have your friend.’

‘You can keep him.’

‘Don’t try and play the tough guy.’

Alison snorted. We were a good team. I relaxed a smidgen. We were behind the counter, but it could have been a portcullis or a rampart or something, repelling boarders.

The grey man responded with a snarled: ‘He told us everything.’

‘He doesn’t know everything.’

‘So there is something to know?’

‘There’s always something to know,’ I said.

‘About the thing?’

‘About what thing?’

‘You know what I’m talking about.’

‘I’m not sure that I do.’

‘He broke like a twig.’

‘You better not have hurt him,’ Alison said.

The man in grey shook his head. ‘You shouldn’t have gotten involved in this, either of you. You don’t know what you’re dealing with. This isn’t for amateurs.’

‘Yet here you are,’ I said, ‘dealing with amateurs.’

‘I’m not dealing, I’m giving you a chance.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘we’re giving you a chance.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘You want the thing, you better let Jeff go.’

‘Jeff? He said his name was Marcus.’

‘Was that before or after you broke him like a twig?’ Alison asked.

‘Let him go,’ I said. ‘He knows nothing about this or anything.’

‘Then hand it over and that’ll be the end of it.’

‘A minute ago you were asking how much.

‘Sands shift.’

‘Quicksand doesn’t.’

‘How much do you want?’

‘How much do you have?’

‘You’re not making this easy on yourselves. We can go round and round, but at the end of the day you’ll hand it over, because the alternative – you don’t want to think about the alternative.’

‘Maybe it’s you that doesn’t want to think about the alternative.’

Alison looked at me. And then at him. She shook her head. ‘Jesus Christ, you’re like two big kids.’

So much for being a great team.

‘Alison, please keep out of this, I can—’

‘No! God, we’re getting nowhere! Let’s all just be calm and talk about this and I’m sure we can work something out.’ She put her hand out. ‘I’m Alison. You are?’

‘Greg.’ They shook.

‘Good. Let’s do business. Who do you work for, Greg? Police?’

‘No.’

‘Billy Randall?’

‘No.’

‘Are you a paramilitary, or a gangster?’

‘No.’

‘Are you a painter and decorator?’

‘No.’

‘Alison,’ I said, ‘this could go on all day.’

‘I can tell you that I work for the Government.’

‘My auntie works for the Government,’ said Alison. ‘She sends out dole cheques.’

‘I can’t talk about what I do.’

‘She’s not supposed to either, but it doesn’t stop her.’

He was thinking that Alison was the brains. I had to take hold of the reins again.

‘Let’s talk about the thing,’ I said.

‘No,’ said Alison, ‘let’s not talk about the thing, or at least let’s not talk about it until we’re all agreed what the thing is, and who has it, and why anyone bloody wants it in the first place. All we want is Jeff back.’ She turned slightly, and spoke directly to me: ‘If he has him, then we just need to help him get what he wants and he’ll hand Jeff over. It shouldn’t be a problem.’

That got me spluttering. ‘Yeah, right, we give him what he wants, next thing you know we’ve two neatly drilled holes in our foreheads and Jeff’s face down in the Lagan, if he isn’t already, and this guy has the thing and he’s laughing all the way to wherever he’s laughing all the way to.’

But she
would not
be spoken to.

‘You are
so
fucking paranoid.’

Needless to say, she wasn’t massaging my back any more. She turned back to the grey man.

‘Listen, Greg,’ she said, ‘sorry about this – we’re worried about Jeff. You just want the thing, right? I’m sure you’re not going to harm Jeff, are you? Or us? I mean, that would be stupid, you working for the Government, and our cameras filming every second of this, streaming it all on to our website. Can you imagine, people all over the world tune in specific ally to find out what’s going on in a wee mystery bookshop in Belfast? Twenty-four hours a day! Even when we’re closed! If you ask me, the half of them are fucking crackers, but at least in this case it’s working in our favour. I mean, anything happens to us or Jeff, people will know it’s you and whoever you work for.’

To give him credit, Greg’s eyes did not even flicker or attempt to seek out the cameras, which was a good job.

Alison smiled sweetly. ‘So, Greg of the Government, here’s how I see it. You’ve been watching us for God knows what reason, but we spotted you and tried to follow you and then you turned the tables on us and picked up Jeff. All I can guess is it has something to do with the fact that we’ve been hired by Billy Randall to prove that he didn’t kill those two painters in East Belfast. We’re getting nowhere with it, but we must have ruffled some feathers to have you so interested. So, Greg, tell us, what’s this thing you’re talking about? Animal, vegetable or mineral?’

‘I’m talking about a dog,’ said Greg.

‘A Jack Russell?’

‘A stuffed dog.’

‘A Jack Russell dog that belonged to the Chief Constable?’

‘Yes, a stuffed dog that belonged to the Chief Constable.’

‘A Jack Russell.’

‘I would prefer to refer to it as the Chief Constable’s stuffed dog. It is less breed-specific.’

‘Is it
not
a Jack Russell?’

‘There is some confusion in the breeding community as to exactly what constitutes a Jack Russell. If I refer to the thing as a Jack Russell, then somebody else who doesn’t recognise it as such, well, there might be a mis-understanding. We might end up with the wrong dog. We prefer what we prefer. Either way, we want it back.’

‘For the Chief Constable.’

‘We want it back.’

‘We don’t have it,’ said Alison.

‘Then we don’t have Jeff,’ said Greg.