AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He had not gone. He was still here.
He sat facing one cupboard that he hadn't managed to open yet because its handle was too stiff, and that annoyed him. He grappled awkwardly with a tin of tomatoes, then went over again to the large cupboard and attacked the handle with the tin. The door flew open and his own missing bloodstained body fell horribly forward out of it.
Gordon hadn't realised up till this point that it was possible for a ghost to faint.
He realised it now and did it.
He was woken a couple of hours later by the sound of his gas cooker exploding.
CHAPTER
16
The following morning Richard woke up twice.
The first time he assumed he had made a mistake and turned over for a fitful few minutes more. The second time he sat up with a jolt as the events of the previous night insisted themselves upon him.
He went downstairs and had a moody and unsettled breakfast, during which nothing went right. He burned the toast, spilled the coffee, and realised that though he'd meant to buy some more marmalade yesterday, he hadn't. He surveyed his feeble attempt at feeding himself and thought that maybe he could at least allow himself the time to take Susan out for an amazing meal tonight, to make up for last night.
If he could persuade her to come.
There was a restaurant that Gordon had been enthusing about at great length and recommending that they try. Gordon was pretty good on restaurants--he certainly seemed to spend enough time in them. He sat and tapped his teeth with a pencil for a couple of minutes, and then went up to his workroom and lugged a telephone directory out from under a pile of computer magazines.
L'Esprit d'Escalier.
He phoned the restaurant and tried to book a table, but when he said when he wanted it for this seemed to cause a little amusement.
"Ah, non, m'sieur," said the maitre d', "I regret that it is impossible. At this moment it is necessary to make reservations at least three weeks in advance. Pardon, m'sieur."
Richard marvelled at the idea that there were people who actually knew what they wanted to do three weeks in advance, thanked the maitre d' and rang off. Well, maybe a pizza again instead. This thought connected back to the appointment he had failed to keep last night, and after a moment curiosity overcame him and he reached for the phone book again.
Gentleman...
Gentles...
Gentry.
There was no Gently at all. Not a single one. He found the other directories, except for the S-Z book which his cleaning lady continually threw away for reasons he had never yet fathomed.
There was certainly no Cjelli, or anything like it. There was no Jently, no Dgently, no Djently, no Dzently, nor anything remotely similar. He wondered about Tjently, Tsentli or Tzentli and tried Directory Enquiries, but they were out. He sat and tapped his teeth with a pencil again and watched his sofa slowly revolving on the screen of his computer.
How very peculiar it had been that it had only been hours earlier that Reg had asked after Dirk with such urgency.
If you really wanted to find someone, how would you set about it, what would you do?
He tried phoning the police, but they were out too. Well, that was that. He had done all he could do for the moment short of hiring a private detective, and he had better ways of wasting his time and money. He would run into Dirk again, as he did every few years or so.
He found it hard to believe there were really such people, anyway, as private detectives.
What sort of people were they? What did they look like, where did they work?
What sort of tie would you wear if you were a private detective? Presumably it would have to be exactly the sort of tie that people wouldn't expect private detectives to wear. Imagine having to sort out a problem like that when you'd just got up.
Just out of curiosity as much as anything else, and because the only alternative was settling down to Anthem coding, he found himself leafing through the Yellow Pages.
Private Detectives--see Detective Agencies.
The words looked almost odd in such a solid and businesslike context. He flipped back through the book. Dry Cleaners, Dog Breeders, Dental Technicians, Detective Agencies...
At that moment the phone rang and he answered it, a little curtly. He didn't like being interrupted.
"Something wrong, Richard?"
"Oh, hi, Kate, sorry, no. I was... my mind was elsewhere."
Kate Anselm was another star programmer at WayForward Technologies. She was working on a long-term Artificial Intelligence project, the sort of thing that sounded like an absurd pipe dream until you heard her talking about it. Gordon needed to hear her talking about it quite regularly, partly because he was nervous about the money it was costing and partly because, well, there was little doubt that Gordon liked to hear Kate talking anyway.
"I didn't want to disturb you," she said. "It's just I was trying to contact Gordon and can't. There's no reply from London or the cottage, or his car or his bleeper. It's just that for someone as obsessively in contact as Gordon it's a bit odd. You heard he's had a phone put in his isolation tank? True."
"I haven't spoken to him since yesterday," said Richard. He suddenly remembered the tape he had taken from Susan's answering machine, and hoped to God there wasn't anything more important in Gordon's message than ravings about rabbits. He said
, "I know he was going to the cottage. Er, I don't know where he is. Have you tried--" Richard couldn't think of anywhere else to try--" . . . er. Good God."
"Richard?"
"How extraordinary..."
"Richard, what's the matter?"
"Nothing, Kate. Er, I've just read the most astounding thing."
"Really, what are you reading?"
"Well, the telephone directory, in fact..."
"Really? I must rush out and buy one. Have the film rights gone?"
"Look, sorry, Kate, can I get back to you? I don't know where Gordon is at the moment and--"
"Don't worry. I know how it is when you can't wait to turn the next page. They always keep you guessing till the end, don't they? It must have been Zbigniew that did it. Have a good weekend." She hung up.
Richard hung up too, and sat staring at the box advertisement lying open in front of him in the Yellow Pages.
DIRK GENTLY'S
HOLISTIC DETECTIVE AGENCY
We solve the whole crime
We find the whole person
Phone today for the whole solution to your problem
(Missing cats and messy divorces a speciality)
33a Peckender St., London N1 01-354 9112
Peckender Street was only a few minutes' walk away. Richard scribbled down the address, pulled on his coat and trotted downstairs, stopping to make another quick inspection of the sofa. There must, he thought, be something terribly obvious that he was overlooking. The sofa was jammed on a slight turn in the long narrow stairway. At this point the stairs were interrupted for a couple of yards of flat landing, which corresponded with the position of the flat directly beneath Richard's. However, his inspection produced no new insights, and he eventually clambered on over it and out of the front door.
In Islington you can hardly hurl a brick without hitting three antique shops, an estate agent and a bookshop.
Even if you didn't actually hit them you would certainly set off their burglar alarms, which wouldn't be turned off again till after the weekend. A police car played its regular game of dodgems down Upper Street and squealed to a halt just past him. Richard crossed the road behind it.
