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Three rather awkward thoughts then struck him in fairly quick succession.
Whoosh, thud!
First, the only sharp knives in the place, assuming Nobby's removal people had left him with any at all, were in the kitchen.
Whoosh, thud!
That didn't matter so much in itself, because he could probably find something in the house that would do.
Whoosh, thud!
The second thought was that the actual envelope itself was in the pocket of his coat which he had left lying over the back of a chair in the kitchen.
Whoosh, thud!
The third thought was very similar to the second and had to do with the location of the piece of paper with Kate's telephone number on it.
Whoosh, thud!
Oh God.
Whoosh, thud!
Dirk began to feel very, very tired at the way the day was working out. He was deeply worried by the sense of impending calamity, but was still by no means able to divine what lay at the root of it.
Whoosh, thud!
Well, he knew what he had to do now . . .
Whoosh, thud!
. . .so there was no point in not getting on with it. He quietly pulled the table away from the door.
Whoosh--
He ducked and yanked the door open, passing smoothly under the eagle as it hurtled out into the hallway and hit the opposite wall. He slammed the door closed behind him from inside the kitchen, pulled his coat off the chair and jammed the chair back up under the handle.
Whoosh, thud!
The damage done to the door on this side was both considerable and impressive, and Dirk began seriously to worry about what this behaviour said about the bird's state of mind, or what the bird's state of mind might become if it maintained this behaviour for very much longer.
Whoosh . . .scratch . . .
The same thought seemed to have occurred to the bird at that moment, and after a brief flurry of screeching and of scratching at the door with its talons it lapsed into a grumpy and defeated silence, which after it had been going on for about a minute became almost as disturbing as the previous batterings.
Dirk wondered what it was up to.
He approached the door cautiously and very, very quietly moved the chair back a little so that he could see through the keyhole. He squatted down and peered through it. At first it seemed to him that he could see nothing through it, that it must be blocked by something. Then, a slight flicker and glint close up on the other side suddenly revealed the startling truth, which was that the eagle also had an eye up at the keyhole and was busy looking back at him. Dirk almost toppled backwards with the shock of the realisation, and backed away from the door with a sense of slight horror and revulsion.
This was extremely intelligent behaviour for an eagle wasn't it? Was it? How could he find out? He couldn't think of any ornithological experts to phone. All his reference books were piled up in other rooms of the house, and he didn't think he'd be able to keep on pulling off the same stunt with impunity, certainly not when he was dealing with an eagle which had managed to figure out what keyholes were for.
He retreated to the kitchen sink and found some kitchen towel. He folded it into a wad, soaked it, and dabbed it first on his bleeding temple, which was swelling up nicely, and then on his nose which was still very tender, and had been a considerable size for most of the day now. Maybe the eagle was an eagle of delicate sensibilities and had reacted badly to the sight of Dirk's face in its current, much abused, state and had simply lost its mind. Dirk sighed and sat down.
Kate's telephone, which was the next thing he turned his attention to, was answered by a machine when he tried to ring it. Her voice told him, very sweetly, that he was welcome to leave a message after the beep, but warned that she hardly ever listened to them and that it was much better to talk to her directly, only he couldn't because she wasn't in, so he'd best try again.
Thank you very much, he thought, and put the phone down.
He realised that the truth of the matter was this: he had spent the day putting off opening the envelope because of what he was worried about finding in it. It wasn't that the idea was frightening, though indeed it was frightening that a man should sell his soul to a green-eyed man with a scythe, which is what circumstances were trying very hard to suggest had happened. It was just that it was extremely depressing that he should sell it to a green-eyed man with a scythe in exchange for a share in the royalties of a hit record.
That
was what it looked like on the face of it. Wasn't it?
Dirk picked up the other envelope, the one which had been waiting for him on his doormat, delivered there by courier from a large London bookshop where Dirk had an account. He pulled out the contents, which were a copy of the sheet music of Hot Potato, written by Colin Paignton, Phil Mulville and Geoff Anstey.
The lyrics were, well, straightforward. They provided a basic repetitive bit of funk rhythm and a simple sense of menace and cheerful callousness which had caught the mood of last summer. They went:
Hot Potato,
Don't pick it up, pick it up, pick it up.
Quick, pass it on, pass it on, pass it on.
You don't want to get caught, get caught, get caught.
Drop it on someone. Who ? Who ? Anybody.
You better not have it when the big one comes.
I said you better not have it when the big one comes.
It's a Hot Potato.
And so on. The repeated phrases got tossed back and forward between the two members of the band, the drum machine got heavier and heavier, and there had been a dance video.
Was that all it was going to be? Big deal. A nice house in Lupton Street with polyurethaned floors and a broken marriage?
Things had certainly come down a long way since the great days of Faust and Mephistopheles, when a man could gain all the knowledge of theuniverse, achieve all the ambitions of his mind and all the pleasures of the flesh for the price of his soul. Now it was a few record royalties, a few pieces of trendy furniture, a trinket to stick on your bathroom wall and, whap, your head comes off.
So what exactly was the deal? What was the Potato contract? Who was getting what and why?
Dirk rummaged through a drawer for the breadknife, sat down once more, took the envelope from his coat pocket and ripped through the congealed strata of Sellotape which held the end of it together.
Out fell a thick bundle of papers.
22
* * *
At exactly the moment that the telephone rang, the door to Kate's sitting-room opened. The Thunder God attempted to stomp in through it, but in fact he wafted. He had clearly soaked himself very thoroughly in the stuff Kate had thrown into the bath, then redressed, and torn op a nightgown of Kate's to bind his forearm with. He casually tossed a handful of softened oak shards away into the comer of the room. Kate decided for the moment to ignore both the deliberate provocations and the telephone. The former she could deal with and the latter she had a machine for dealing with.
