Linger Awhile Page 6

  My thoughts about Justine change from moment to moment. I was naturally offended by her rejection of me but I no longer am. To be called up out of the dead as she was must be a terrifying experience and her being must be an uneasy construct of shifting realities that might collapse at any moment into nothingness. I can’t imagine her memories.

  19

  Medical Examiner Harrison Burke

  13 January 2004. John Hunter said to me, ‘Harry, what are you saying?’

  ‘What’s in my report,’ I told him, ‘that’s what I’m saying.’

  ‘OK, so Istvan Fallok left saliva on Rose Harland’s neck?’

  ‘I didn’t say that, I only said there was a match with his 10th January sample.’

  ‘So how’d his saliva get on her neck? Did he suck her blood? Is he the murderer we’re looking for?’

  ‘I can’t answer that.’

  ‘And Justine Trimble’s 10th January sample matches Chauncey Lim’s of the same date? What about that? Heavy kissing?’

  ‘I have no explanation for that.’

  ‘So what are you saying?’

  ‘Just what I’ve said.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘That’s it from me.’

  20

  Grace Kowalski

  13 January 2004. I don’t like being mucked about. Istvan Fallok and I aren’t a couple but we sleep together once in a while and we’re intimate in all kinds of practical ways that make people closer than sex does. And now he’s got this dead-meat video creature and Grace is out of the loop. Fine. Great. But maybe I can make him sorry for that. I’m not sure how but I’ll think of something.

  21

  Irving Goodman

  14 January 2004. Somebody once said, ‘You get too soon old and too late smart.’ I’m eighty-three now. Maybe I’ll get smart when I’m dead. Today is Wednesday but it feels like the Sunday evenings of my boyhood. Darkness coming on and tomorrow is Monday and nothing to look forward to but school. Sunday evenings were the death of the weekend and here it is Sunday evening on Wednesday.

  I was playing chess against myself and losing. What did I expect? I’m still opening with the Ruy Lopez just as I did at sixteen. While losing I was listening to Souad Massi’s album deb (heartbroken):

  Oh! My heart, your wound deepens

  Oh! My heart, who is responsible for that?

  There she was on the album cover, young and beautiful with her guitar and her sweet seductive voice full of sadness. Any man hearing her sing would want to cuddle her and make her feel better but I’m pretty sure her heart isn’t broken. Mine is, and who is responsible for that? Justine? Not really. How could I think she would want me, what have I to offer? So here I was in the Sunday evening of my old age with a broken heart, all alone and being beaten at chess. I drank some cask strength with very little water and I felt terrible in a much classier way. Burning all the way down. ‘Parv,’ said the inner Irv.

  ‘I know,’ I replied. Inner Irv says words that are meaningless but I usually know what he means.

  When the phone rang I picked it up and said, ‘At the third stroke, the time will be exactly Sunday evening.’

  ‘Irv?’ said Grace Kowalski.

  ‘Hi, Grace,’ I said. ‘What’s new?’

  ‘It’s Wednesday, Irv.’

  ‘Maybe it is where you are but here it’s Sunday evening.’

  ‘Are you drunk?’

  ‘Yes. Would you like to take advantage of me?’

  ‘Of course, but we have serious things to talk about as well. Can you come over or shall I come to you?’

  ‘I’ll come to you – your place smells strange and beautiful like the things you make and like you.’

  ‘Irv!’ she said. ‘Think serious.’

  ‘I’ll be very serious,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you shortly.’ Feeling almost middle-aged again, I went forth to Fulham Broadway, where millions have been spent to convert the old tube station into a Nowheresville shopping mall with Books Etc., Boots, a Virgin Megastore, Starbucks, Orange and other commercial enterprises set in a brilliantly illuminated desolation that is part of the greater programme to turn London into Noplace. Shaking my head as I do each time, I took the lift down to the District Line platform and got an Edgware Road train to Notting Hill Gate where I took the Central Line to Oxford Circus. The trains were not crowded and none of the passengers were talking into little telephones or smiling as they tapped out text messages. Some were reading books or newspapers. All of the faces, young, old, male, female, white and brown and black, were part of the many faces of the great sad thing that moves itself from here to there and back again in all forms of transport.

  At Oxford Circus I came up to the surface and the squalor of Argyll Street and people buying things they’d be better off not eating. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was playing at the Palladium, starring Michael Ball. Well, I thought, it’s nice that he has the work. Long ago I read somewhere that all of the visible world is maya, illusion, but whatever you call it, it’s what you have to deal with. I carried on to Great Marlborough Street, then over to Berwick where I went well past Grace’s place to buy a bottle of Stolichnaya at Nicolas, then back to All That Glisters.

  ‘Yo, Grace,’ I said as I pressed the intercom button.

  ‘Yo, Irv,’ she said, and came down to let me in. A hug and a kiss and I gave her the latest Justine news as we went up to the studio and its professional smells. The unfinished piece on her workbench was a three-legged toad in green and orange stones with an I Ching coin in its mouth.

  ‘I got the idea for the I Ching coin from A2 Feng Shui on the internet. I don’t know what’s on theirs.’

  ‘What’s the hexagram on yours?’

  ‘Number forty-two, I, Increase , SUN CHEN, with nine at the beginning, so it changes to number twenty, Kuan, Contemplation , SUN K’UN.’

  ‘That’s a very hopful toad, Grace.’

  ‘Where there’s life, there’s hop,’ she said, and we drank to that and sighed a little. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Talk seriously to me.’

  ‘Form is emptiness and emptiness is form,’ she said. ‘You know what I’m saying?’

  ‘Of course, ça va sans dire, ’I said. ‘It walks without talking.’

  ‘That’s what I like about you, Irv, everything doesn’t have to be spelt out.’

  ‘So tell me, I’m all ears. Tell me while we’re still coherent.’

  ‘I think,’ she said, ‘it’s time for me to stop getting mad and start getting even.’

  ‘Every woman’s right,’ I said.

  ‘Justine,’ she said, ‘was put together from an image on videotape, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Got any more Justine on tape?’

  ‘Oho!’

  ‘Righty-oh,’ said Grace, and we drank to that.

  ‘But from the video to a walking-around Justine is a whole big project,’ I said, ‘and I have no idea where to start. Do you?’

  ‘No, but I know a man who does and I’ve got keys to his place. All I need is a little time alone in Hermes Soundways and I’ll find his notes. Now that Justine’s up in Golders Green he’ll probably drop in on her and that’s when I’ll do it.’

  ‘OK, say we get the whole thing figured out and we end up with Justine Number Two, have you any idea what to do next?’

  ‘If we build her it will come. When we’ve got her standing in front of us the next thing will make itself known. Do you think you’ll fall in love with this one too?’

  ‘I’ve done that particular folly once already; I’m not likely to do it again. Besides, she’s not as amazing as you are, Grace.’

  ‘You silver-tongued seducer,’ she said, and we retired to the bedroom with the Stolichnaya.

  ‘Don’t ever say you’re not a player,’ said Grace as we freshened our drinks. She’s very gracious.

  ‘Well, I don’t do the full orchestra,’ I said, ‘but if you like chamber music, I’m your man.’

  ‘I’ll drink to that,’ said Grace.
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br />   Mutiny on the Bounty, the one with Clark Gable and Charles Laughton, was on TV that evening and we both enjoyed seeing it yet again. ‘Every now and then,’ I said, ‘I come across some mention of Bligh in the papers where they say he wasn’t all that bad.’

  ‘He was a hell of a navigator,’ said Grace. ‘Thirty-six hundred miles in an overloaded open boat!’

  ‘And he had no charts and there were only about a week’s rations,’ I said, ‘but he got them all to Timor safely.’

  ‘Well,’ said Grace, ‘he suspended his disbelief and all that remained was the belief that he could do it.’

  ‘Plus his practical knowledge and his seamanship,’ I said. ‘If I had to be cast adrift in that longboat I’d rather have Bligh at the tiller than Fletcher Christian.’

  ‘He was the man,’ said Grace. ‘No doubt about it.’

  All in all, a very pleasant evening and we fell asleep talking about DIY Justines.

  22

  Detective Inspector Hunter

  18 January 2004. Harry Burke and I were drinking London Pride at The Anchor & Hope by the River Lea. A cold winter evening but we took our pints outside and sat down on a bench under the street lamp to enjoy the peacefulness of it. Across the river a train clattered with its windows all lit. It went over the bridge and the Sunday quiet moved in again behind it. Four murders, two suicides, three rapes and assorted burglaries this past week. Life goes on.

  We didn’t say much for a while, drinking in the quiet with the London Pride. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘we’ve had nothing new in the vampire line.’

  ‘Early days,’ said Burke.

  ‘You’re still expecting another one?’

  ‘You’re the detective, not me. What do you think?’

  ‘I think I’d feel a lot better if we could catch whoever killed Rose Harland.’

  ‘Have you made any progress with your suspects?’ He was looking at me the way he looks when he’s waiting for me to catch up with his mental processes.

  ‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘I’m pretty sure Istvan Fallok didn’t kill her.’

  ‘How do you explain his saliva on her jacket?’

  ‘I think you know what’s in my mind about that, don’t you?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Burke.

  ‘Go on,’ I said, ‘say it.’

  ‘You’re wondering if someone else left Fallok’s saliva on Rose Harland’s jacket?’

  ‘That’s right. How could that have happened?’

  ‘And you’re wondering why Justine Trimble’s saliva on the 10th of January was a match with Chauncey Lim’s?’

  ‘OK, why was it?’

  ‘This is as new to me as it is to you, but what if Justine has no cellular identity of her own?’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘What if she needs blood in order to survive, and Istvan Fallok gave her some before she killed Rose Harland? And Chauncey Lim topped her up before we took her saliva on the 10th of January? Tell me, am I talking nonsense?’

  One of the locals came out of the pub and nodded to Burke. ‘All right, Harry?’ he said.

  ‘All right, Mick?’ said Burke.

  ‘Inspector,’ said Mick. I’m known there because Burke is local and we always go to The Anchor & Hope when I visit.

  ‘Good evening to you,’ I said.

  ‘Terrible, that vampire case,’ said Mick.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I said.

  ‘That woman as didn’t have no blood left in her,’ said Mick.

  ‘Don’t believe everything you read in the tabloids,’ I said.

  ‘Didn’t read it,’ said Mick. ‘My wife works at the mortuary and she saw the body when they brought it in. Proper drained, it was. Have you got any leads?’

  ‘I’m not able to say anything at this time,’ I said.

  ‘Right you are, guv,’ said Mick. ‘Mum’s the word.’ He nodded again and left.

  ‘What can I say?’ said Burke. ‘His wife does work in the mortuary.’

  ‘Small fucking world,’ I said.

  ‘To get back to Justine, what do you think you’ll do?’

  ‘I think I’ll have to talk to her and Fallok and Lim again and this time I’ll ask better questions.’

  ‘I’m looking forward to the answers,’ said Burke. And on that note we finished our last pints and went home.

  23

  Grace Kowalski

  29 January 2004. When Irv went home I felt kind of low. I dragged myself into the morning with black coffee and a stale bagel, then I sat looking at the three-legged toad on my workbench. It was commissioned by a man in his thirties who’s an investment broker in the City. He makes a lot of money and wants to make a lot more. His eyes are like rivets that keep his brain in place but the rivets are a little loose by now. He showed me a drawing of Liu Hai and the toad in a book, Chinese Symbolism and Art Motifs . Liu Hai was a tenth-century Minister of State who hung out with this toad. Sometimes it would hide from him in a well and he’d tempt it out by lowering a string loaded with gold coins. ‘This toad attracts wealth,’ said Mr Rivet-Eyes, ‘and I’m going to put it in a corner diagonally opposite my front door for the best Feng Shui effect.’

  ‘Do you need more money than you have now?’ I asked him.

  ‘You always need more money,’ he said.

  I said, ‘I think in cases of greed the toad might work against the one who asks for its help.’

  ‘Greed? What are you talking about? I’m not greedy – all I want is a fair share of the action.’

  ‘OK,’ I said. I went to the V & A to check it out and there they were on the fourth floor, Liu Hai about seven inches high in brown clay and the toad buff with brown spots. Liu Hai trying to catch the toad which was looking very sly and sneaking away with a coin in its mouth. I copied down everything on the card because you never know. It said:

  Liu Hai with the three-legged toad. Mark: Made by Xu Xiutang, Autumn of Chengshen Year [Yixingy] 1980 FL32-1984

  I liked that toad, it looked as if it had seen wealth-seekers come and go over the centuries and was not much impressed by them.

  Another version of the three-legged toad story is that it exists ‘only in the moon, which it swallows during the eclipse. It has therefore come to be a symbol of the unattainable.’ That version made more sense to me than the wealth one, and I wondered if I wasn’t helping my client to delude himself with fantasies of wealth that he would never possess. The look on the toad’s face suggested that Mr Rivet-Eyes might well end up with a wealth of unattainable.

  But there was the matter of Justine to be considered. Irv was waiting for me to get Istvan’s notes and I was waiting for Istvan to leave his place. On Friday the 23rd I kept a close watch and I saw him go out. I waited a while to make sure it wasn’t only a local errand, then I read my bit of The Heart Sutra, which I always do at the start of any serious enterprise:

  Here, O Sariputra. Form is emptiness and the very emptiness is form; emptiness does not differ from form, form does not differ from emptiness; whatever is form, that is emptiness, whatever is emptiness, that is form, the same is true of feelings, perceptions, impulses and consciousness.

  I’ve never read the whole Heart Sutra but if form is emptiness, then not reading it is the same as reading it, so I’m all right with that one bit. It always seems to do me good, and as soon as I say, ‘Here, O Sariputra,’ I’m up for whatever I need to do.

  I let myself into Hermes Soundways and stood there listening for a few moments. Then I got to work. Istvan’s filing system was simple: he just piled the most recent thing on top of the one before it. That was the main system which included invoices, receipts, and newspaper cuttings as well as notes. There were several lesser ones consisting of backs of envelopes, various scraps of paper with writing on them and the odd matchbook cover. I separated what seemed to be Justine material from everything else, put it into what I thought might be chronological order and bundled it into the bag I’d brought with me.

  Hoping not to run into Istvan I wen
t down Dufour’s to Broadwick and over to Berwick. When The Blue Posts pub and red-and-yellow Nicolas and the Fine Crêpes wagon with its yellow scallop-edged canopy came into view I was on my home turf and I breathed easier. GOOD NEWS, said the sign above the red Newsweek awning at the start of my stretch of Berwick. At Nicolas I bought a bottle of Stolichnaya, then paused at the blue canvas-roofed flower stand diagonally opposite for some yellow and mauve crysanthemums. For a moment the smell of roast chestnuts came back to me from long-gone Decembers. Careful not to step on the cracks in the pavement I made my way back to All That Glisters past my many competitors in the jewellery line and my various landmarks: Reckless Records; then Badge Sales which looks like a message drop in a thriller; above it is a tailor with a blue plaque on his window:

  TOM BAKER

  1966–2041

  BESPOKE TAILOR

  Works here but lives

  around the corner

  How did he calculate his life span? Will he top himself at seventy-five or what? One day I’ll ask him but I keep putting it off. The Cotton Café, The Maharani Indian Tandoori Restaurant with its splendid yellow sign (Maharani in red), followed after a decent interval by the Raj Tandoori Restaurant, also with a yellow sign like a beacon of Eastern heat in the English winter. Then I was home.

  Up in the studio I poured myself a drink and sat down on the floor with my load of whatever it was. As I held the papers in my hand an invoice fell out. I took that as a sign that something was trying to tell me something. The invoice was from Thierson & Bates Biologicals in Surrey for Rana temporaria (3), £33. I rang up Thierson & Bates and said I was Mr Fallok’s secretary. ‘I’m going through invoices for his VAT return,’ I said, ‘and I’m not sure about this one from you. What are three Rana temporaria?’