Espionage: A Jigsaw in 500 Pieces [part six]

by Peter Wild

[ 1-10 ] [ 11-22 ] [ 23-30 ] [ 31-49 ] [ 50-59 ]

[ 60 ]
Ah yes. It is Hal Ashby, is it not? Here is a death, another death, that we shall have to look at two times. Consider yourself well-prepared. You're not squeamish, are you? Don't worry if you are. We won't linger. I just want you to look, quickly, just look quickly, into the dying embers glistening in the back of the old man's eyes. Here he is, a corpse floating face-up in a small perhaps overly elaborate fountain in the middle of a pretty common or garden municipal square in the middle of Manchester and yet, can you see? There? Glinting like the cold hard edge of flint in the back of his eyes. It's the memory of a girl he once loved. You've heard about that already, haven't you? He spent his last precious few seconds on this Earth remembering someone he knew and loved a long time ago. That happens, doesn't it? Or so I've heard tell. I've heard tell how, in your last few moments, as you approach and hesitantly draw your final breaths, you cling, you clutch at, those moments that meant the most to you in your life. And Hal Ashby? He clung to the memory of a girl he loved, a sweetly pretty French girl whose name, whose real name at any rate, he never even knew. It was many years previous. There was a storm. The rain came down like the rain in a Kurosawa movie. Hal Ashby sheltered in a barn, saw he wasn't alone, made a friend. A friend who looked like Ali McGraw.

[ 61 ]
But we cannot linger overlong in the refined compass of an eye, now, can we? There are rituals to observe, performances. Look at you, holding first this piece and then that. You are like a - I don't know. I can't think. I look to my wife and she, without even looking up, says, He is like a myopic Jewish diamond dealer. Which distracts me, of course. Is that the best you can do? This is what I ask of my wife. Is that the best you can do? A myopic Jewish diamond dealer? (Between you and me, there is some truth to the statement. I can see what she means. You do hold each jigsaw piece as if it was something precious, your finger and thumb acting like a precarious pair of tweezers. She's right. But how clumsy, her articulation.) You get on with your cooking, I say. Leave the words to me. I was talking about the rituals to observe, the performances. The wheels and cogs of the machine grind into asthmatic action. Someone, a stranger, we needn't dally, produces a mobile phone and calls the police. There is a dead body after all, floating in a paltry fountain in the middle of St Anne's Square. Someone else, another stranger (keep up!), wonders if the person floating face up is in fact dead. A small crowd gathers. His eyes are open, a woman says. Would his eyes remain open if he was alive? Certain of the crowd shrug. Somebody replies, says How should I know? Do I look like a doctor to you? A brave young man unbuttons his shirt cuffs (who can say why), steps across the low marble wall and into the water, ruining a good pair of shoes.

[ 62 ]
He's dead, the young man with the wet feet says. Dead, the crowd echoes. Did you hear that? There is a thrill, a vicious ripple of unease. Certain of the crowd fold their arms, cupping elbows in the palm of their hands. Perhaps one or two of them think: how strange it is to be standing here in the middle of the day with my elbow in my hand looking at an old man who has died in a fountain in the middle of Manchester? A policeman appears. He didn't receive a call or anything. He just happened to be happening by. Coincident with the arrival of the policeman, someone notices that the water in the fountain has darkened. The water in the fountain was pretty dark to begin with but, all the same, the tone has shifted. He's bleeding[/b], someone - the perennial someone of the crowd - says. A dozen people shove their neighbour and repeat the news. The young man who checked the pulse steps out of the fountain, as if repulsed, as if the fact of a death has only just occurred to him. He stands on the flagstones by the fountain pinching the thighs of his trousers in order to better examine the hems. The trousers are fucked. They look like they've been on a day's tour of the nearest Bauxite mine. [i]Shit, the young man says. The policeman (who had in all honesty until this point been somewhat nonplussed by the whole situation) turned suddenly to the young man and said, in what it is fair to say was an antagonistic tone of voice, What is your relationship to the deceased?

[ 63 ]
What is my relationship to the deceased? the young man says. He laughs nervously and looks around at the faces he can see. He's just a young man, he thinks. Anyone can see that. This is what his nervous laugh hopes to convey. I am just a young man who happened by, as you did, Officer. I am just a young man having my lunch break and walking about the city. In a short while I will have to return to my terrible job in order to continue sacrificing my soul at the altar of obscure finance. I am not anyone. All of this, the young man hopes to convey in a brisk nervous burst of laugher. Already, however, he can see that the crowd is turning mean. Eyes are narrowing, lips are pinching, judgements are being made. He tries to head things off at the pass, as it were. I don't have any relationship to the deceased, he says. Other than the fact that I was the one who - he gestures with his hand (it is a strange gesture, worthy of note, a curious flick of the hand, as if the young man is a riverboat gambler throwing his last chips down on the table) - I was the one who stepped into the - (he blanks, can't think of the word for 'fountain', finds he has to gesture once again) - to see if he was dead, or not. Many of the crowd don't listen beyond the young man's stuttering Other than. He says he didn't have a relationship with the deceased but if that were true would he employ the words Other than?

[ 64 ]
The crowd don't trust the young man. I tried to do the right thing, the young man pleaded but, for all the good that it did, he might as well have confessed to the murder. The policeman places a restraining hand upon the young man's arm. I'd like to have a few word with you, sir. If I may. The young man took a step away from the policeman (away from the hungry crowd, away from the seemingly forgotten dead man floating in the fountain). He was deeply intimidated by the policeman's politesse, by the fact that the policeman felt the three words - If I may - required a sentence in their own right. The young man was alarmed. He had every right to be. The policeman was thinking about citations. Not only was there a dead body - a presumably murdered dead body slap bang in the middle of his normally (relatively) quiet beat - he'd also snagged the murderer, without so much as a by your leave. Days like this didn't roll around every day. The policeman had the whole thing worked out. Citations. Promotions. Newspaper coverage. His wife would be proud. And his mother. His wife and his mother. They would both be proud. The day he snagged a murderer. His mother would more than likely start a small scrap book. He fancied she would cut the newspaper clippings out of the newspapers and fix them in the scrap book with an old fashioned pot of glue and one of those green glue spreaders you got in school.

[ 65 ]
Such dreams didn't last very long, however. The real police - the police that tend to be arraigned and consigned when a phone-call of this magnitude is made - arrived and the first policeman (who shall forever remain nameless) was sent off and on his way, but not before he had a quick word in the shell-like of the commanding officer. Keep an eye on that one, he said, indicating the young man with the ruined hems. The young man in question placed a hand upon his chest. He considered whether it was appropriate to start feeling pissed off about the treatment that was being meted his way. But, before he could arrive at an adequate decision, the commanding officer started barking orders to all and sundry in the immediate vicinity, and things, variously, started to happen. The crowd was shoved rather unceremoniously back. A perimeter was established. A morbid and obese coroner arrived in order to offer the benefits of science to the proceedings. The young man with the ruined hems was taken to one side and issued with a cautious caution. A young police woman was tasked with taking down the details of everyone close by. Certain of the crowd chose this moment to slip away. The McDonalds not fifty feet away experienced an unexpected rush. Hal Ashby, serenely floating beneath an overcast Manchester sky, was frisked.

[ 66 ]
That's right. Frisked. The overweight coronary type of which we spoke not so many moments previously straddled the floating body and patted first one pocket and then another. Remarkably, all of the pockets were empty save for one. This may not seem all that remarkable, but one thing the overweight coronary type had learned during the course of his seven years, eight months and nineteen days on the job was - even tramps had some form of ID about their person. An actual John Doe type was pretty rare. But, saying all of that, the overweight coronary type further posited, it actually made a nice change to find someone who presented a challenge. He was building up quite an image bank in his own head (fancying himself as some British version of Jack Klugman as Quincy) prior to plunging the aforementioned chubby fingers into the left hand jacket pocket. Here was something. The overweight coronary type's heart fell. His fingers briefly explored the hard edges of the as yet unidentified object prior to tugging it free of the sodden denim. It was a laminated card. It was a laminated library card. It was a laminated library card with a photograph and a name emblazoned upon it. But the photograph was not of the old man currently floating face up in the fountain. The photograph was of a much younger man. A man who went by the name of Ed Bamyasi.

[ 67 ]
Oblivious, Ed Bamyasi was home. When the girl, the girl whose name he didn't even know (why the hell had he not at least asked her name?), blew him out, all the wind left his sails. All the plans he had for the day (reading books, drinking coffee, eating lunch, watching movies) disappeared in a sickly cloud of smoke. His enthusiasm wavered. Or faltered. Either way, he no longer wanted to face or deal with Manchester. Manchester was suddenly too much. It was full of people. There were people everywhere, getting in his face. Ed Bamyasi wanted peace and quiet. Ed Bamyasi wanted to go home, climb the stairs to his room, unock the door, enter and pull the door shut behind him. Beyond that, he could imagine his bed. His bed was very inviting. Especially when he was feeling blue. Which he was. Ed Bamyasi felt totally and utterly pissed off. He wanted to be in his bed. In his bed and maybe listening to music. Away from people. The thought of a bus journey home was awful. The thought of the walk to the bus stop was awful. Ed Bamyasi wanted to throw up. But it had to be done. Just standing there, at the top of the stairs in Easy Everything, staring gormlessly into the space where once she had been was likely to send him stark staring mad. So he shook his head and took off, putting one foot in front of the other all the way home. Like one of the little pigs.

[ 68 ]
The girl's face wouldn't go away. He could see her, clear as day. Ed Bamyasi couldn't draw for toffee but, if he was asked, he felt, in that moment, as he curled, apostrophe-like, beneath his tented duvet, breathing in the same air expunged from his lungs mere moments before, he could probably draw a passable likeness from memory. Her beautiful face would not leave him be. But it was actually okay. The girl's face was okay. It was a sort of salve. Ed Bamyasi's house mate Syd - who was called Syd despite the fact that his name was Roger, was called Syd, in point of fact, because his name was Roger, Roger Barrett to be precise, that being Syd Barrett's real name, hence the sobriquet of Ed Bamyasi's housemate - was playing music. But he wasn't just playing any music. Syd was playing Bug Powder Dust, an old Bomb the Bass tune. This was meant to inform Ed Bamyasi (and anyone else who happened to chance by) that Syd was in fact having sex at that very moment. Bug Powder Dust was code. Do not come near, the song said. Do not knock on my door. I am in the midst of that which should not at any cost be interrupted. As far as Ed Bamyasi was concerned, it was almost the final insult. Or perhaps it was worse than the final insult. Perhaps - Ed Bamyasi thought as he sullenly climbed the stairs to his attic room - it was, rather, the final injury.

[ 69 ]
But, of course, it wasn't. Injuries can be piled atop insults hither and thither. For example. Ed Bamyasi was curled up, apostrophe-like, in his bed beneath his tented duvet thinking about the girl he managed to love and lose in the space of five short minutes when it occurred to him that he had in fact either lost, misplaced or otherwise disposed of his wallet. The penny took a wee while to drop. He thought about how he'd been blown out as a result of his failure to buy coffee. This failure arose from a lack of money, a turn of events linked to the missing wallet. Those words - the missing wallet - twinkled in the firmament for a full minute before Ed Bamyasi said Shit! and leapt clear of his bed. His wallet was missing! He had to report the cards as being lost and/or stolen. He had to call people. He had to alert his bank. He had to work out how he was going to get some fucking money before his cards arrived because that always took fucking ages. Shit shit shit, Ed Bamyasi said as he made his way down the stairs to the hall. Bug Powder Dust seemed to throb through the very particles of the air. Ed Bamyasi tried not to think about it. The ramifications of Bug Powder Dust were unpleasant. The idea of Syd having sex at all, never mind at this particular minute... He shuddered. Was in fact shuddering as he reached the foot of the stairs and saw, through a panel of glass, two police people poised in the act of determining how best to alert the inhabitants of the house (given that there wasn't an obvious doorbell of any kind).

[ 70 ]
Ed Bamyasi opened the door. Is this about my wallet? he said. The police-man, who stood on Ed Bamyasi's left, turned his head and looked at the police-woman, who was stood on Ed Bamyasi's right. Ed Bamyasi affected the disinclination of a tennis crowd, looking from left to right to left once again. Wallet? the police-man said. There was an ugly hiccup of silence. Yes, Ed Bamyasi said. Wallet. I've lost my wallet. Or it's been stolen. I thought perhaps you knew where it was. Or were returning it. The police-man laughed. Or rather, the police-man snickered. The snicker wasn't quite grown up enough to qualify for laughter status just yet. We don't make house visits for lost wallets just yet, the police-woman said in a cigarette-y voice that was laced with the honey of a deep and abiding sarcasm. No, the police-man chirrupped. We don't make house-calls for lost wallets just yet. Ed Bamyasi looked from one of the police personnel to the other. Good, Ed Bamyasi said. Right, the police-people replied. I'm glad we've got that settled, Ed Bamyasi said. Was there anything else? The police-man cleared his throat. Oh yes, he said as if he was really enjoying himself. I don't suppose you'd know whether this was the residence of a gentleman called Edward Bamyasi? Ed Bamyasi swallowed. I'm Edward Bamyasi, Ed Bamyasi said. What do you want?

© Peter Wild 2006 / 2007

Peter Wild is the co-founder of Bookmunch. He is the editor of a forthcoming series of books for Serpent's Tail, the first two of which - Perverted by Language: Fiction inspired by The Fall and The Empty Page: Fiction inspired by Sonic Youth - will be published in 2007. His writing and fiction have appeared in various outlets including Scarecrow, NOO Journal, Word Riot, Laura Hird, Nude Magazine, Thieves Jargon, Dreams That Money Can Buy and Eyeballkid.