Douglas Adams. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
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... officer," added Richard with a twitch of asmile, "you know how it is. I was contemplating taking the
weekend off."
The police officer seemed to hesitate, balanced on a knife
edge between sympathy and suspicion. His eyes narrowed a little
but didn't waver.
"Been drinking, sir?"
"Yes," said Richard, with a quick sigh, "but very little.
Two glasses of wine max. Er... and a small glass of port.
Absolute max. It was really just a lapse of concentration. I'm
fine now."
"Name?"
Richard gave him his name and address. The policeman wrote
it all down carefully and neatly in his book, then peered at
the car registration number and wrote that down too.
"And who is your employer then, sir?"
"His name is Way. Gordon Way."
"Oh," said the policeman raising his eyebrows, "the
computer gentleman."
"Er, yes, that's right. I design software for the company.
WayForward Technologies II."
"We've got one of your computers down the station," said
the policeman. "Buggered if I can get it to work."
"Oh," said Richard wearily, "which model do you have?"
"I think it's called a Quark II."
"Oh, well that's simple," said Richard with relief. "It
doesn't work. Never has done. The thing is a heap of shit."
"Funny thing, sir, that's what I've always said," said the
policeman. "Some of the other lads don't agree."
"Well, you're absolutely right, officer. The thing is
hopeless. It's the major reason the original company went bust.
I suggest you use it as a big paperweight."
"Well, I wouldn't like to do that, sir," the policeman
persisted. "The door would keep blowing open."
"What do you mean, officer?" asked Richard.
"I use it to keep the door closed, sir. Nasty draughts
down our station this time of year. In the summer, of course,
we beat suspects round the head with it."
He flipped his book closed and prodded it into his pocket.
"My advice to you, sir, is to go nice and easy on the way
back. Lock up the car and spend the weekend getting completely
pissed. I find it's the only way. Mind how you go now."
He returned to his car, wound down the window, and watched
Richard manoeuvre his car around and drive off into the night
before heading off himself.
Richard took a deep breath, drove calmly back to London,
let himself calmly into his flat, clambered calmly over the
sofa, sat down, poured himself a stiff brandy and began
seriously to shake.
There were three things he was shaking about.
There was the simple physical shock of his near-accident,
which is the sort of thing that always churns you up a lot more
than you expect. The body floods itself with adrenaline, which
then hangs around your system turning sour.
Then there was the cause of the skid - the extraordinary
apparition of Gordon throwing himself in front of his car at
that moment. Boy oh boy. Richard took a mouthful of brandy and
gargled with it. He put the glass down.
It was well known that Gordon was one of the world's
richest natural resources of guilt pressure, and that he could
deliver a ton on your doorstep fresh every morning, but Richard
hadn't realised he had let it get to him to such an unholy
degree.
He took up his glass again, went upstairs and pushed open
the door to his workroom, which involved shifting a stack of
BYTE magazines that had toppled against it. He pushed them away
with his foot and walked to the end of the large room. A lot of
glass at lhis end let in views over a large part of north
London, from which the mist was now clearing. St Paul's glowed
in the dark distance and he stared at it for a moment or two
but it didn't do anything special. After the events of the
evening he found this came as a pleasant surprise.
At the other end of the room were a couple of long tables
smothered in, at thУ last count, six Macintosh computers. In
the middle was the Mac II on which a red wire-frame model of
his sofa was lazily revolving within a blue wire-frame model of
his narrow staircase, complete with banister rail, radiator and
fuse= box details, and of course the awkward turn halfway up.
The sofa would start out spinning in one direction, hit an
obstruction, twist itself in another plane, hit another
obstruction, revolve round a third axis until it was stopped
again, then cycle through the moves again in a different order.
You didn't have to watch the sequence for very long before you
saw it repeat itself.
The sofa was clearly stuck.
Three other Macs were connected up via long tangles of
cable to an untidy agglomeration of synthesisers - an Emulator
11+ HD sampler, a rack of TX modules, a Prophet VS, a Roland JX
10, a Korg DWROOO, an Octapad, a left-handed Synth-Axe MIDI
guitar controller, and even an old drum machine stacked up and
gathering dust in the corner - pretty much the works. There was
also a small and rarely used cassette tape recorder: all the
music was stored in sequencer files on the computers rather
than on tape.
He dumped himself into a seat in front of one of the Macs
to see what, if anything, it was doing. It was displaying a±
"Untitled" Excel spreadsheet and he wondered why.
He saved it and looked to see if he'd left himself any
notes and quickly discovered that the spreadsheet contained
some of the data he had previously downloaded after searching
the World Reporter and Knowledge on-line
databases for facts about swallows.
He now had figures which detailed their migratory habits,
their wing shapes, their aerodynamic profile and turbulence
characteristics, and some sort of rudimentary figures
concerning the patterns that a flock would adopt in flight, but
as yet he had orily the faintest idea as to how he was going to
synthesise them all together.
Because he was too tired to think particularly
constructively tonight he savagely selected and copied a whole
swathe of figures from the spreadsheet at random, pasted them
into his own conversion program, which scaled and filtered and
manipulated the figures according to his own experimental
algorithms, loaded the converted file into Performer, a
powerful sequencer program, and played the result through
random MIDI channels to whichever synthesisers happened to be
on at the moment.
The result was a short burst of the most hideous
cacopttony, and he stopped it.
He ran the conversion program again. this time instructing
it to force-map the pitch values into G minor. This was a
utility he was determined in the end to get rid of because he
regarded it as cheating. If there was any basis to his firmly
held belief that the rhythms and harmonies of music which he
found most satisfying could be found in, or at least derived
from, the rhythms and harmonies of naturally occurring
phenomena, then satisfying forms of modality and intonation
should emerge naturally as well. rather than being forced.
For the moment, though, he forced it.
The result was a short burst of the most hideous cacophony
in G minor.
So much for random shortcuts.
The first task was a relatively simple one, which would be
simply to plot the waveform described by the tip of a swallow`s
wing as it flies, then synthesise that waveform. That way he
would end up with a single note, which would be a good start,
and it shouldn't take more than the weekend to do.
Except, of course, that he didn't have a weekend available
to do it in because he had somehow to get Version 2 of
Anthem out of the door sometime during the course of the
next year, or "month" as Gordon called it.
Which brought Richard inexorably to the third thing he was
shaking about.
There was absolutely no way that he could take the time
off this weekend or next to fulfil the promise he had made to
Susan's telephone-answering machine. And that, if this
evening's dиb[a^]cle had not already done so, would surely
spell the final end.
But that was it. The thing was done. There is nothing you
can do about a message on someone else's answering machine
other than let events take their course. It was done. It was
irrevocable.
An odd thought suddenly struck him.
It took him by considerable surprise, but he couldn't
really see what was wrong with it.
Chapter Thirteen...
A pair of binoculars scanning the London night skyline,
idly, curious, snooping. A little look here, a little look
there, just seeing what's going on, anything interesting,
anything useful.
The binoculars settle on the back of one particular house,
attracted by a slight movement. One of those large
late-Victorian villas, probably flats now. Lots of black iron
drainpipes. Green rubber dustbins. But dark. No, nothing.
The binoculars are just moving onwards when another stight
movement catches in the moonlight. The binoculars refocus very
slightly, trying to find a detail, a hard edge, a slight
contrast in the darkness. The mist has lifted now, and the
darkness glistens. They refocus a very, very little more.
There it is. Something, definitely. Only this time a
little higher up, maybe a foot or so, maybe a yard. The
binocuiars settle and relax - steady, trying for the edge,
trying for the detail. There. The binoculars settle again -
they have found their mark, straddled between a windowsill and
a drainpipe.
It is a dark figure, splayed against the wall, looking
down, looking for a new foothold, looking upwards, looking for
a ledge. The binoculars peer intently.
The figure is that of a tall, thin man. His clothes are
right for the job, dark trousers, dark sweater, but his
movements are awkward and angular. Nervous. Interesting. The
binoculars wait and consider, consider and judge.
The man is clearly a rank amateur.
Look at his fumbling. Look at his ineptitude. His feet
slip on the drainpipe, his hands can't reach the ledge. He
nearly falls. He waits to catch his breath. For a moment he
starts to climb back down again, but seems to find that even
tougher going.
He lunges again for the ledge and this time catches it.
His foot shoots out to steady himself and nearly misses the
pipe. Could have been very nasty, very nasty indeed.
But now the way is easier and progress is better. He
crosses to another pipe, reaches a third-floor window ledge,
flirts briefly with deБth as he crawls painfully on to it, and
makes the cardinal error and looks down. He sways briefly and
sits back heavily. He shades his eyes and peers inside to check
that the room is dark, and sets about getting the window open.
One of the things that distinguish the amateur from the
professional is that this is the point when the amateur thinks
it would have been a good idea to bring along something to
prise the window open with. Luckily for this amateur the
householder is an amateur too, and the sash window slides
grudgingly up. The climber crawls, with some relief, inside.
He should be locked up for his own protection, think the
binoculars. A hand starts to reach for the phone. At the window
a face looks back out and for a moment is caught in the
moonlight, then it ducks back inside to carry on with its
business.
The hand stays hovering over the phone for a moment or
two, while the binoculars wait and consider, consider and
judge. The hand reaches instead for the A-Z street map of
London.
There is a long studious pause, a little more intent
binocular work, and then the hand reaches for the phone again,
lifts it and dials.
Chapter Fourteen...
Susan's flat was small but spacious, which was a trick,
reflected Richard tensely as he turned on the light, that only
women seemed able to pull off.
It wasn't that observation which made him tense, of
course= he'd thought it before, many times. Every time he'd
been in her flat, in fact. It always struck him, usually
because he had just come from his own flat, which was four
times the size and cramped. He'd just come from his own flat
this time, only via a rather eccentric route, and it was this
that made his usual observation unusually tense.
Despite the chill of the night he was sweating.
He looked back out of the window, turned and tiptoed
across the room towards where the telephone and the answering
machine stood on their own small table.
There was no point, he told himself, in tiptoeing. Susan
wasn't in. He would be extremely interested to know where she
was, in fact - just as she, he told himself, had probably been
extremely interested in knowing where he had been at the
beginning of the evening.
He realised he was still tiptoeing. He hit his lУg to make
himself stop doing it, but carried on doing it none the less.
Climbing up the outside wall had been terrifying.
He wiped his forehead with the arm of his oldest and
greasiest sweater. There had been a nasty moment when his life
had flashed before his eyes but he had been too preoccupied
with falling and had missed all the good bits. Most of the good
bits had involved Susan, he realised. Susan or computers. Never
Susan and computers - those had Iargely been the bad bits.
Which was why he was here, he told himself. He seemed to need
convincing, and told himself again.
He looked at his watch. Eleven forty-five.
It occurred to him he had better go and wash his wet and
dirty hands before he touched anything. It wasn't the police he
was worried about, but Susan's terrifying cleaner. She would
know.
He went into the bathroom, turned on the light switch,
wiped it, and then stared at his own stanled face in the bright
neon-lit mirror as he ran the water over his hands. For a
moment he thought of the dancing, warm candlelight of the
Coleridge Dinner, and the images of it weIled up out of the dim
and distant past of the earlier part of the evening. Life had
seemed easy then, and carefree. The wine, the conversation,
simpIe conjuring tricks. He pictured the round pale face of
Sarah, pop-eyed with wonder. He washed his own face.
He thought:
"... Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating
hair!"
He brushed his own hair. He thought, too, of the pictures
hanging high in the darkness above their heads. He cleaned his
teeth. The low buzz of the neon light snapped him back to the
present and he suddenly remembered with appalled shock that he
was here in his capacity as burglar.
Something made him look himself directly in the face in
the mirror, then he shook his head, trying to cIear it.
When would Susan be back? That, of course, would depend on
what she was dotng. He quickly wiped his hands and made his way
back to the answering machine. He prodded at the buttons and
his conscience prodded back at him. The tape wound back for
what seemed to be an interminable time, and he realised with a
jolt that it was probabIy because Gordon had been in fulI
flood.
He had forgotten, of course, that there would be messages
on the tape other than his own, and listening to other people's
phone messages was tantamount to opening their mail.
He explained to himself once again that all he was trying
to do was to undo a mistake he had made before it caused any
irrevocable damage. He would just play the tiniest snippets
till he found his own voice. That wouldn't be too bad, he
wouldn't even be able to distinguish what was being said.
He groaned inwardly, gritted his teeth and stabbed at the
Play button so roughly that he missed it and ejected the
cassette by mistake. He put it back in and pushed the Play
button more carefully. Beep.
"Oh, Susan, hi, it's Gordon," said the answering machine.
I "Just on my way to the cottage. It's, er..." He wound on for
a couple of seconds. "...need to know that Richard is on the
case. I mean really on..." Richard set his mouth grimly
and stabbed at the Fast Forward again. He really hated the fact
that Gordon tried to put pressure on him via Susan, which
Gordon always stoutly denied he did. Richard couldn't blame
Susan for getting exasperated about his work sometimes if this
sort of thing was going on. '
Click.
"... Response. Make a note to Susan would you please, to
get an `Armed Response' sign made up with a sharp spike on the
bottom at the right height for rabbits to see."
"What?" muttered Richard to himself, and his finger
hesitated for a second over the Fast Forward button. He had a
feeling that Gordon desperately wanted to be like Howard
Hughes, and if he could never hope to be remotely as rich, he
could at least try to be twice as eccentric. An act. A palpable
act.
"That's secretary Susan at the office, not you, of
course," continued Gordon's voice on the answering machine.
"Where was I? Oh yes. Richard and Anthem 2.00. Susan,
that thing has got to be in beta testing in two..." Richard
stabbed at the Fast Forward, tight-lipped.
"... point is that there's only one person who's really in
a position to know if he's getting the important work done, or
if he's just dreaming, and that one person. ." He stabbed
angrily again. He had promised himself he wouldn't listen to
any of it and now here he was getting angry at what he was
hearing. He should really just stop this. Well, just one more
try.
When he listened again he just got music. Odd. He wound
forward again, and still got music. Why would someone be
phoning to play music to an answering machine? he wondered.
The phone rang. He stopped the tape and answered it, then
almost dropped the phone like an electric eel as he realised
what he was doing. Hardly daring to breathe, he held the
telephone to his ear.
"Rule One in housebreaking," said a voice. "Never answer
the, telephone when you're in the middle of a job. Who are you
supposed to be, for heaven's sake?"
Richard froze. It was a moment or two before he could find
where he had put his voice.
"Who is this?" he demanded at last in a whisper.
"Rule Two," continued the voice. "Preparation. Bring the
right tools. Bring gloves. Try to have the faintest glimmering
of an idea of what you're about before you start dangling from
window ledges in the middle of the night.
"Rule Three. Never forget Rule Two."
"Who is this?" exclaimed Richard again.
The voice was unperturbed. "Neighbourhood Watch," it said.
"If you just look out of the back window you'll see..."
Trailing the phone, Richard hurried over to the window and
looked out. A distant flash startled him.
"Rule Four. Never stand where you can be photographed.
"Rule Five... Are you listening to me, MacDuff?"
"What? Yes..." said Richard in bewilderment. "How do you
know me?"
"Rule Five. Never admit to your name."
Richard stood silent, breathing hard.
"I run a little course," said the voice, "if you're
interested..."
Richard said nothing.
"You're learning," continued the voice, "slowly, but
you're learning. If you were learning fast you would have put
the phone down by now, of course. But you're curious - and
incompetent = and so you don't. I don't run a course for novice
burglars as it happens, tempting though the idea is. I'm sure
there would be grants available. If we have to have them they
may as well be trained.
"However, if I did run such a course I would allow you to
enrol for free, because I too am curious. Curious to know why
Mr Richard MacDuff who, I am given to understand, is now a
wealthy young man, somethfng in the computer industry, I
believe, should suddenly be needing to resort to
house-breaking."
"Who -?"
"So I do a little research, phone Directory Enquiries and
discover that the flat into which he is breaking is that of a
Miss S. Way. I know that Mr Richard MacDuff's employer is the
famous Mr G. Way and I wonder if they can by any chance be
related."
"Who -?"
"You are speaking with Svlad, commonly known as `Dirk'
Cjelli, currently trading under the name of Gently for reasons
which it would be otiose, at this moment, to rehearse. I bid
you good evening. If you wish to know more I will be at the
Pizza Express in Upper Street in ten minutes. Bring some
money."
"Dirk?" exclaimed Richard. "You... Are you trying to
blackmail me?"
"No, you fool, for the pizzas." There was a click and Dirk
Gently rang off.
Richard stood transfixed for a moment or two, wiped his
forehead again, and gently replaced the phone as if it were an
injured hamster. His brain began to buzz gently and suck its
thumb. Lots of little synapses deep inside his cerebral cortex
all joined hands and started dancing around and singing nursery
rhymes. He shook his head to try and make them stop, and
quickly sat down at the answering machine again.
He fought with himself over whether or not he was going to
push the Play button again, and then did so anyway before he
had made up his mind. Hardly four seconds of light orchestral
music had oozed soothingly past when there came the sound of a
key scratching in the lock out in the hallway.
In panic Richard thumped the Eject button, popped the
cassette out, rammed it into his jeans pocket and replaced it
from the pile of fresh cassettes that lay next to the machine.
There was a similar pile next to his own machine at home. Susan
at the office provided them - poor, long-suffering Susan at the
office. He must remember to feel sympathy for her in the
morning, when he had the time and concentration for it.
Suddenly, without even noticing himself doing it, he
changed his mind. In a flash he popped the substitute cassette
out of the machine again, replaced the one he had stolen,
rammed down the rewind button and made a lunge for the sofa
where, with two seconds to go before the door opened, he tried
to arrange himself into a nonchalant and winning posture. On an
impulse he stuck his left hand up behind his back where it
might come in useful.
He was just trying to arrange his features into an
expression composed in eyual parts of contrition, cheerfulness
and sexual allurement when the door opened and in walked
Michael Wenton= Weakes.
Everything stopped.
Outside, the wind ceased. Owls halted in mid-flight. Well,
maybe they did, maybe they didn't, certainly the central
heating chose that moment to shut down, unable perhaps to cope
with the supernatural chill that suddenly whipped through the
room.
"What are you doing here, Wednesday?" demanded Richard. He
rose from the sofa as if levitated with anger.
Michael Wenton-Weakes was a large sad-faced man known by
some people as Michael Wednesday-Week, because that was when he
usually promised to have things done by. He was dressed in a
suit that had been superbly well tailored when his father, the
late Lord Magna; had bought it forty years previously.
Michael Wenton-Weakes came very high on the small but
select list of people whom Richard thoroughly dislikeu.
He disliked him because he found the idea of someone who
was not only privileged, but was also sorry for himself because
he thought the world didn't really understand the problems of
privileged people, deeply obnoxious. Michae!, on the other
hand, disliked Richard for the fairly simple reason that
Richard disliked him and made no secret of it.
Michael gave a slow and lugubrious look back out into the
hallway as Susan walked through. She stopped when she saw
Richard. She put down her handbag, unwound her scarf,
unbuttoned her coat, slipped it off, handed it to Michael,
walked over to Richard and smacked him in the face.
"I've been saving that up all evening," she said
furiously. "And don't try and pretend that's a bunch of flowers
you've forgotten to bring which you're hiding behind your back.
You tried that gag last t.ime." She turned and stalked off.
"It's a box of chocolates I forgot this time," said
Richard glumly and held out his empty hand to her retreating
back. "I climbed up the entire outside wall without them. Did I
feel a fool when I got in."
"Not very funny," said Susan. She swept into the kitchen
and sounded as if she was grinding coffee with her bare hands.
For someone who always looked so neat and sweet and delicate
she packed a hell of a temper.
"It's true," said Richard, ignoring Michael completely. "I
nearly killed myself."
"I'm not going to rise to that," said Susan from within
the kitchen. "If you want something big and sharp thrown at you
why don't you come in here and be funny?"
"I suppose it would be pointless saying I'm sorry at this
point," Richard called out.
"You bet," said Susan, sweeping back out of the kitchen
again. She looked at him with her eyes flashing, and actually
stamped her foot.
"Honestly, Richard," she said, "You're just going to say
you forgot again. How can you have the gall to stand there with
two arms, two legs and a head as if you're a human being? This
is behaviour that a bout of amoebic dysentery would be ashamed
of. I bet that even the very lowest form of dysentery amoeba
shows up to take its girlfriend out for a quick trot around the
stomach lining once in a while. Well, I hope you had a lousy
evening."
"I did," said Richard. "You wouldn't have liked it. There
was a horse in the bathroom, and you know how you hate that
sort of thing."
"Oh, Michael," said Susan brusquely, "don't just stand
there like a sinking pudding. Thank you very much for dinner
and the concert, you were very sweet and I did enjoy listening
to your troubles all evening because they were such a nice
change from mine. But I think it would be best if I just found
your book and pushed you out. I've got some serious jumping up
and down and ranting to do, and I know how it upsets your
delicate sensibilities."
She retrieved her coat from him and hung it up. While he
had been holding it he had seemed entirely taken up with this
task and oblivious to anything else. Without it he seemed a
little lost and naked and was forced to stir himself back into
life. He turned his big heavy eyes back on Richard.
"Richard," he said, "I, er, read your piece in... in
Fathom. On Music and, er..."
"Fractal Landscapes," said Richard shortly. He didn't want
to talk to Michael, and he certainly didn't want to get drawn
into a conversation about Michael's wretched magazine. Or
rather, the magazine that used to be Michael's.
That was the precise aspect of the conversation that
Richard didn't want to get drawn into.
"Er, yes. Very interesting, of course," said Michael in
his silky, over-rounded voice. "Mountain shapes and tree shapes
and all sorts of things. Recycled algae."
"Recursive algorithms."
"Yes, of course. Very interesting. But so wrong, so
terribly wrong. For the magazine, I mean. It is, after all, an
arts review. I would never have allowed such a thing, of
course. Ross has utterly ruined it. Utterly. He'll have to go.
Have to. He has no sensibilities and he's a thief."
"He's not a thief, Wednesday, that's absolutely absurd,"
snapped Richard, instantly getting drawn into it in spite of
his resolution not to. "He had nothing to do with your getting
the push whatsoever. That was your own silly fault, and you..."
There was a sharp intake of breath.
"Richard," said Michael in his softest, quietest voice -
arguing with him was like getting tangled in parachute silk -
"I think you do not understand how important..."
"Michael," said Susan gently but firmly, holding open the
door. Michael Wenton-Weakes nodded faintly and seemed to
deflate.
"Your book," Susan added, holding out to him a small and
elderly volume on the ecclesiastical architecture of Kent. He
took it, murmured some slight thanks; looked about him for a
moment as if he'd suddenly realised something rather odd, then
gathered himself together, nodded farewel! and left.
Richard didn't appreciate quite how tense he had become
till Michael left and he was suddenly able to relax. He'd
always resented the indulgent soft spot that Susan had for
Michael even if she did try to disguise it by being terribly
rude to him al! the time. Perhaps even because of that.
"Susan, what can I say... ?" he started lamely.
"You could say `Ouch' for a start. You didn't even give me
that satisfaction when I hit you, and I thought I did it rather
hard. God, it's freezing in here. What's that window doing wide
open?"
She went over to shut it.
"I told you. That's how I got in," said Richard.
He sounded sufficiently as if he meant it to make her look
round at him in surprise.
"Really," he said. "Like in the chocolate ads, only I
forgot the box of chocolates... " He shrugged sheepishly.
She stared at him in amazement.
"What on earth possessed you to do that?" she said. She
stuck her head out of the window and looked down. "You could
have got killed," she said, turning back to him.
"Well, er, yes..." he said. "It just seemed the only way
to... I don't know." He rallied himself. "You took your key
back remember?"
"Yes. I got fed up with you coming and raiding my larder
when you couldn't be bothered to do your own shopping. Richard,
you really climbed up this wall?"
"Well, I wanted to be here when you got in."
She shook her head in bewilderment. "It would have been a
great deal better if you'd been here when I went out. Is that
why you're wearing those filthy old clothes?"
"Yes. You don't think I went to dinner at St Cedd's like
this?"
"Well, I no longer know what you consider to be rationai
behaviour." She sighed and fished about in a small drawer.
"Here," she said, "if it's going to save your life," and handed
him a couple of keys on a ring. "I'm too tired to be angry
anymore. An evening of being lobbied by Michael has taken it
out of me."
"Well, I'll never understand why you put up with him,"
said Richard, going to fetch the coffee.
"I know you don't like him, but he's very sweet and can be
charming in his sad kind of way. Usually it's very relaxing to
be with someone who's so self-absorbed, because it doesn't make
any demands on you. But he's obsessed with the idea that I can
do something about his magazine. I can't, of course. Life
doesn't work like that. I do feel sorry for him, though."
"I don't. He's had it very, very easy all his life. He
still has it very, very easy. He's just had his toy taken away
from him that's all. It's hardly unjust, is it?"
"It's not a matter of whether it's just or not. I feel
sorry for him because he's unhappy."
"Well, of course he's unhappy. AI Ross has turned
Fathom into a really sharp, intelligent magazine that
everyone suddenly wants to read. It was just a bumbling
shambles before. Its only real function was to let Michael have
lunch and toady about with whoever he liked on the pretext that
maybe they might like to write a little something. He hardly
ever got an actual issue out. The whole thing was a sham. He
pampered himself with it: I really don't find that charming or
engaging. I'm sorry, I'm going on about it and I didn't mean
to."
Susan shrugged uneasily.
"I think you overreact," she said, "though I think I will
have to steer clear of him if he's going to keep on at me to do
something I simply can't do. It's too exhausting. Anyway,
listen, I'm glad you had a lousy evening. I want to talk about
what we were going to do this weekend."
"Ah," said Richard, "well..."
"Oh, I'd better just check the messages first."
She walked past him to the telephone-answering machine,
played the first few seconds of Gordon's message and then
suddenly ejected the cassette.
"I can't be bothered," she said, giving it to him. "Could
you just give this straight to Susan at the office tomorrow?
Save her a trip. If there's anything important on it she can
tell me."
Richard blinked, said, "Er, yes," and pocketed the tape,
tingling with the shock of the reprieve.
"Anyway, the weekend -" said Susan, sitting down on the
sofa.
Richard wiped his hand over his brow. "Susan, I..."
"I'm afraid I've got to work. Nicola's sick and I'm going
to have to dep for her at the Wigmore on Friday week. There's
some Vivaldi and some Mozart I don't know too well, so that
means a lot ofextra practice this weekend, I'm afraid. Sorry."
"Well, in fact," said Richard, "I have to work as well."
He sat down by her.
"I know. Gordon keeps on at me to nag you. I wish he
wouldn't. It's none of my business and it puts me in an
invidious position. I'm tired of being pressurised by people,
Richard. At least you don't do that."
She took a sip of her coffee.
"But I'm sure," she added, "that there's some kind of grey
area between being pressurised and being completely forgotten
about that I'd quite like to explore. Give me a hug."
He hugged her, feeling that he was monstrously and
unworthily lucky. An hour later he let himself out and
discovered that the Pizza Express was closed.
Meanwhile, Michael Wenton-Weakes made his way back to his
home in Chelsea. As he sat in the back of the taxi he watched
the streets with a blank stare and tapped his fingers lightly
against the window in a slow thoughtful rhythm. Rap tap tap
a rap tap a rap a tap. He was one of those
dangerous people who are soft, squidgy and cowlike provided
they have what they want. And because he had always had what he
wanted, and had seemed easily pleased with it, it had never
occurred to anybody that he was anything other than soft,
squidgy and cowlike. You would have to push through a lot of
soft squidgy bits in order to find a bit that didn't give when
you pushed it. That was the bit that all the soft squidgy bits
were there to protect.
Michael Wenton-Weakes was the younger son of Lord Magna,
publisher, newspaper owner and over-indulgent father, under
whose protective umbrella it had pleased Michael to run his own
little magazine at a magnificent loss. Lord Magna had presided
over the gradual but dignified and well-respected decline of
the publishing empire originally founded by his father, the
first Lord Magna.
Michael continued to tap his knuckles lightly on the
glass. A rap tap a rap a tap. He remembered the
appalling, terrible day when his father had electrocuted
himself changing a plug, and his mother, his mother,
took over the business. Not only took it over but started
running it with completely unexpected verve and determination.
She examined the company with a very sharp eye as to how it was
being run, or walked, as she put it, and eventually even got
around to looking at the accounts of Michael's magazine.
Tap tap tap. Now Michael knew just enough about the
business side of things to know what the figures ought to be,
and he had simply assured his father that that was indeed what
they were.
"Can't allow this job just to be a sinecure, you must see
that, old fellow, you have to pay your way or how would it
look, how would it be?" his father used to say, and Michael
would nod seriously, and start thinking up the figures for next
month, or whenever it was he would next manage to get an issue
out.
His mother, on the other hand, was not so indulgent. Not
by a lorryload.
Michael usually referred to his mother as an old
battleaxe, but if she was fairly to be compared to a battleaxe
it would only be to an exquisitely crafted, beautifully
balanced battleaxe, with an elegant minimum of fine engraving
which stopped just short of its gleaming razored edge. One
swipe from such an instrument and you wouldn't even know you'd
been hit until you tried to look at your watch a bit later and
discovered that your arm wasn't on.
She had been waiting patiently - or at least with the
appearance of patience - in the wings all this time, being the
devoted wife, the doting but strict mother. Now someone had
taken her - to switch metaphors for a moment - out of her
scabbard and everyone was running for cover.
Including Michael.
It was her firm belief that Michael, whom she quietly
adored, had been spoiled in the fullest and worst sense of the
word, and she was determined, at this late stage, to stop it.
It didn't take her more than a few minutes to see that he
had been simply making up the figures every month, and that the
rnagazine was haemorrhaging money as Michael toyed with it, all
the time running up huge lunch bills, taxi accounts and staff
costs that hewould playfully set against fictitious
taxes. The whole thing had simply got lost somewhere in the
gargantuan accounts of Magna House.
She had then summoned Michael to see her. Tap tap a
rap a tappa. "How do you want me to treat you," she
said, "as my son or as the editor of one of my magazines? I'm
happy to do either."
"Your magazines? Well, I am your son, but I don't see..."
"Right. Michael, I want you to look at these figures," she
said briskly, handing over a sheet of computer printout. "The
ones on the left show the actual incomings and outgoings of
Fathom, the ones on the right are your own figures. Does
anything strike you about them?"
"Mother, I can explain, I-"
"Good," said Lady Magna sweetly, "I'm very glad of that."
She took the piece of paper back. "Now. Do you have any
views on how the magazine should best be run in the future?"
"Yes, absolutely. Very strong ones. I-"
"Good," said Lady Magna, with a bright smile. "Well,
that's all perfectly satisfactory, then."
"Don't you want to hear -?"
"No, that's all right, dear. I'm just happy to know that
you do have something to say on the matter to clear it all up.
I'm sure the new owner of Fathom will be glad to listen
to whatever it is."
"What?" said a stunned Michael. "You mean you're actually
selling Fathom?"
"No. I mean I've already sold it. Didn't get much for it,
I'm afraid. One pound plus a promise that you would be retained
as editor for the next three issues, and after that it's at the
new owner's discretion."
Michael stared, pop-eyed.
"Well, come now," said his mother reasonably, "we could
hardly continue under the present arrangement, could we? You
always agreed with your father that the job should not be a
sinecure for you. And since I would have a great deal of
difficulty in either believing or resisting your stories, I
thought I would hand the problem on to someone with whom.you
could have a more objective relationship. Now, I have another
appointment, Michael."
"Well, but... who have you sold it to?" spluttered
Michael.
"Gordon Way."
"Gordon Way! But for heaven's sake, Mother, he's-"
"He's very anxious to be seen to patronise the arts. And I
think I do mean patronise. I'm sure you'll get on splendidly,
dear. Now, if you don't mind "
Michael stood his ground.
"I've never heard of anything so outrageous! I "
"Do you know, that's exactly what Mr Way said when I
showed him these figures and then demanded that you be kept on
as editor for three issues."
Michael huffed and puffed and went red and wagged his
finger, but could think of nothing more to say. Except, "What
difference would it have made to all this if I'd said treat me
as the editor of one of your magazines?"
"Why, dear," said Lady Magna with her sweetest smile, "I
would have called you Mr Wenton-Weakes, of course. And I
wouldn't now be telling you straighten your tie," she added,
with a tiny little gesture under her chin. Rap tap tap rap
tap tap. "Number seventeen, was it, guv?"
"Er... what?" said Michael, shaking his head.
"It was seventeen you said, was it?" said the cab driver:
"'Cause we're 'ere."
"Oh. Oh, yes, thank you," said Michael. He climbed out and
fumbled in his pocket for some money.
"Tap tap tap, eh?"
"What?" said Michael handing over the fare.
"Tap tap tap," said the cab driver, "all the bloody way
here Got something on your mind, eh, mate?"
"Mind your own bloody business," snapped Michael
savagely
"If you say so, mate. Just thought you might be going mad
or something," said the cabbie and drove off.
Michael let himself into his house and walked through the
cold hall to the dining room, turned on the overhead light and
poured himself a brandy from the decanter. He took off his
coat, threw it across the large mahogany dining table and
pulled a chair over to the window where he sat nursing his
drink and his grievances. Tap tap tap, he went on the
window.
He had sullenly remained as editor for the stipulated
three issues and was then, with little ceremony, let go. A new
editor was found, a certain A. K. Ross, who was young, hungry
and ambitious, and he quickly turned the magazine into a
resounding success. Michael, in the meantime, had been lost and
naked. There was nothing else for him.
He tapped on the window again and looked, as he frequently
did, at the small table lamp that stood on the sill. It was a
rather ugly, ordinary little lamp, and the only thing about it
that regularly transfixed his attention was that this was the
lamp that had electrocuted his father, and this was where he
had been sitting.
The old boy was such a fool with anything technical.
Michael could just see him peering with profound concentration
through his half moons and sucking his moustache as he tried to
unravel the arcane complexities of a thirteen-amp plug. He had,
it seemed, plugged it back in the wall without first scnewing
the caver back on and then tried to change the fuse in situ.
From this he received the shock which had stilled his already
dicky heart.
Such a simple, simple error, thought Michael, such as
anyone could have made, anyone, but the consequences of it were
catastrophic. Utterly catastrophic. His father's death, his own
loss, the rise of the appalling Ross and his disastrously
successful magazine and... Tap tap tap. He
looked at the window, at his own reflection, and at the dark
shadows of the bushes on the other side of it. He looked again
at the lamp. This was the very object, this the very place, and
the error was such a simple one. Simple to make, simple to
prevent.
The only thing that separated him from that simple moment
was the invisible barrier of the months that had passed in
between.
A sudden, odd calm descended on him as if something inside
him had suddenly been resolved. Tap tap tap.
Fathom was his. It wasn't meant to be a success, it was
his life. His life had been taken from him, and that demanded a
response.
Tap tap tap crack. He surprised himself by
suddenly punching his hand through the window and cutting
himself quite badly.
Chapter Fifteen...
Some of the less pleasant aspects of being dead were
beginning to creep up on Gordon Way as he stood in front of his
"cottage."
It was in fact a rather large house by anybody else's
standards but he had always wanted to have a cottage in the
country and so when the time came for him finally to buy one
and he discovered that he had rather more money available than
he had ever seriously believed he might own, he bought a large
old rectory and called it a cottage in spite of its seven
bedrooms and its four acres of dank Cambridgeshire land. This
did little to endear him to people who only had cottages, but
then if Gordon Way had allowed his actions to be governed by
what endeared him to people he wouldn't have been Gordon Way.
He wasn't, of course, Gordon Way any longer. He was the
ghost of Gordon Way.
In his pocket he had he ghosts of Gordon Way's keys.
It was this realisation that had stopped him for a moment
in his invisible tracks. The idea of walking through walls
frankly revolted him. It was something he had been trying
strenuously to avoid all night. He had instead been fighting to
grip and grapple with every object he touched in order to
render it, and thereby himself, substantial. To enter his
house, his own house, by any means other than that of opening
the front door and striding in in a proprietorial manner filled
him with a hurtling sense of loss.
He wished, as he stared at it, that the house was not such
an extreme example of Victorian Gothic, and that the moonlight
didn't play so coldly on its narrow gabled windows and its
forbidding turrets. He had joked, stupidly, when he bought it
that it looked as if it ought to be haunted, not realising that
one day it would be - or by whom.
A chill of the spirit gripped him as he made his way
silently up the driveway, lined by the looming shapes of yew
trees that were far older than the rectory itself. It was a
disturbing thought that anybody else might be scared walking up
such a driveway on such a night for fear of meeting something
such as him.
Behind a screen of yew trees off to his left stood the
gloomy bulk of the old church, decaying now, only used in
rotation with others in neighbouring villages and presided over
by a vicar who was always breathless from bicycling there and
dispirited by the few who were waiting for him when he arrived.
Behind the steeple of the church hung the cold eye of the moon.
A glimpse of movement seemed suddenly to catch his eye, as
if a figure had moved in the bushes near the house, but it was,
he told himself, only his imagination, overwrought by the
strain of being dead. What was there here that he could
possibly be afraid of?
He continued onwards, around the angle of the wing of the
rectory, towards the front door set deep within its gloomy
porch wnathed in ivy. He was suddenly startled to realise
that there was light coming from within the house. Electric
light and also the dim Hicker of firelight.
It was a moment or two before he realised that he was, of
course, expected that night, though hardly in his present form.
Mrs Bennett, the elderly housekeeper, would have been in to
make the bed, light the fire and leave out a light supper for
him.
The television, too, would be on, especially so that he
could tum it off impatiently upon entering.
His footsteps failed to crunch on the gravel as he
approached. Though he knew that he must fail at the door, he
nevertheless could not but go there first, to try if he could
open it, and only then, hidden within the shadows of the porch,
would he close his eyes and let himself slip ashamedly through
it. He stepped up to the door and stopped.
It was open.
Just half an inch, but it was open. His spirit fluttered
in fearful surprise. How could it be open? Mrs Bennett was
always so conscientious about such things. He stood uncertainly
for a moment and then with difficulty exerted himself against
the door. Under the little pressure he could bring to bear on
it, it swung slowly and unwillingly open, its hinges groaning
in protest. He stepped through and slipped along the
stone-flagged hallway. A wide staircase led up into the
darkness, but the doors that led off from the hallway all stood
closed.
The nearest door led into the drawing room, in which the
fire was burning, and from which he could hear the muted car
chases of the late movie. He struggled futilely for a minute or
two with its shiny brass door knob, but was forced in the end
to admit a humiliating defeat, and with a sudden rage flung
himself straight at the door - and through it.
The room inside was a picture of pleasant domestic warmth.
He staggered violently into it, and was unable to stop himself
floating on through a small occasional table set with thick
sandwiches and a Thermos flask of hot coffee, through a large
overstuffed armchair, into the fire, through the thick hot
brickwork and into the cold dark dining room beyond.
The connecting door back into the sitting room was also
closed. Gordon fingered it numbly and then, submitting himself
to the inevitable, braced himself, and slid back through it,
calmly, gently, noticing for the first time the rich internal
grain of the wood.
The coziness of the room was almost too much for Gordon,
and he wandered distractedly around it, unable to settle,
letting the warm liveliness of the firelight play through him.
Him it couldn't warm.
What, he wondered, were ghosts supposed to do all night?
He sat, uneasily, and watched the television. Soon,
however, the car chases drifted peacefully to a close and there
was nothing left but grey snow and white noise, which he was
unable to turn off.
He found he'd sunk too far into the chair and confused
himself with bits of it as he pushed and pulled himself up.
I-ie tried to amuse himself by standing in the middle of a
table, but it did little to alleviate a mood that was slidirlg
inexorably from despondency downwards.
Perhaps he would sleep.
Perhaps.
He felt no tiredness or drowsiness, but just a deadly
craving for oblivion. He passed back through the closed door
and into the dark hallway, from which the wide heavy stairs led
to the large gloomy bedrooms above.
Up these, emptily, he trod.
It was for nothing, he knew. If you cannot open the door
to a bedroom you cannot sleep in its bed. He slid himself
through the door and lifted himself on to...
