Authors: Colin Bateman
'No?'
'No.'
'But
somebody just tried to kill me.'
'No.'
He
looked at me. I gave him my helpless shrug. I was one hundred per cent against
smoking, particularly in my shop, but he was
Augustine Fucking Wogan!.
Fortunately
he didn't try to force it. It was just another thing that was going against
him. He looked sadly at the cigar, then slipped it back inside his jacket. He
shook his head. He sighed. 'How appropriate,' he said, 'that a crime writer
should wash up in a mystery bookshop, here, at the end of it all.'
He
stared at the ground. His shoulders began to shake. He cried silently. It was
terribly sad to see the great man brought so low, and I would have put an arm
around him and given him a hug if I wasn't allergic to people. Alison did the
twirly finger thing at the side of her head, asking if he was nuts. Jeff did
the mobile phone with his fist, for the emergency services, before miming
pouncing with a butterfly net. Their reaction to this first encounter with
Augustine Wogan was understandable; they did not know who he was, the giant
that he was in his field, nor that his signature, applied to a dusty box of
books, would help No Alibis get through the doubtlessly lean summer months.
They took him at face value - a head-the- ball I'd dragged in off the street.
Alison
said as much, pulling me to one side as Augustine continued to sob his eyes
out. 'Just what this shop needs - another maniac. How are we going to get rid
of him?'
'We
aren't. Don't you know who he is? Augustine Wogan?
The Times
named him
amongst their One Hundred Masters of Crime Fiction. At number seventeen. The
sixteen above him are already dead. The
Daily Telegraph
put him in their
top ten Fifty Crime Writers to Read Before You Die, despite the fact that his
books have never been picked up by a mainstream publisher and they've all been
out of print for twenty years!'
'So?'
I
turned to my trusty assistant. 'Jeff - how many times a week do people come in
here asking about Augustine Wogan and how to get hold of his books?'
'Uhm
- once?'
'Yes,
but it's every week!'
'Uhm
- yes, but it's usually the same bloke.'
'That
isn't the point! He wrote the
Barbed-Wire Love
trilogy; he's a genius!'
'Well
your genius looks mental.' She shook her head. 'Maybe he could be a genius down
at Waterstones?'
'Philistine,'
I hissed.
I
knelt before him. He still had the briefcase pinned to his chest by his elbows.
I gingerly prodded a knee. 'Mr Wogan. Augustine. Is there anything I can do to
help?'
He
rubbed at his eyes with his knuckles. 'Help? I think it's too late for that.'
'Is
there somebody I can call for you?'
'It's
definitely too late for that.'
'Well,
you were rushing somewhere; do you want me to call wherever you were going?'
'No,
I don't think that would be a good idea at all. You see . ..' He let out a
sigh. He looked from me to Jeff to Alison and back. Then he opened his
briefcase and reached inside. He took out a gun. 'I was on my way to kill
someone.'
'Oh,'
I said.
'Bloody
hell,' said Alison.
As
Augustine waved the gun listlessly around, Jeff ducked down behind the counter.
I stood up, and stepped back.
'Oh,
I'm such a bloody fool,' Augustine wailed. 'I have immersed myself in crime
fiction for all these years and convinced myself that I know something about
crime, about murder and how to do it and get away with it, when the truth is
I'm just a ham-fisted, gold-plated old eejit. I was building up a head of
steam, and you interrupted me, and now I don't think I have the strength to
make another run at him. Thank God you stopped me when you did - divine
intervention, that's what it is, that's what it is!'
We
were stunned, we were shocked, we didn't know where to look or what to say. He
was the legendary Augustine Wogan, but reduced to a sobbing, gun-toting wreck.
Alison
already had the phone in her hand.
Jeff
was clutching the mallet I keep for protection just beneath the counter.
'While
you're here,' I ventured, 'do you think you could sign some books?'
Alison
was telling me I had to get him out of the shop, that he was clearly
brain-damaged, that we shouldn't allow him to say anything else because I was
so weak and insipid I was bound to be pulled into something dark and dangerous,
and I would drag her in with me. She was pregnant, and that was scary enough. I
had told her a million times that I was only interested in little itty-bitty
cases, not much more complicated than crosswords or, God help me, Sudoku, but
somehow they never quite worked out like that. There were always gunshots,
bodies, terror, blood, pine trees or stuffed animals, and we just didn't need
it right now; we had to be thinking of little Caspar.
'Just
get the gun off him,' she said, 'and if you don't call the police, I will.'
I met
her halfway. I removed the gun. He didn't put up a fight. He was a broken man.
But I couldn't phone the police. I didn't want my legacy as a bookseller to be
that I had put the greatest crime fiction author ever to come out of Belfast
behind bars, especially as he hadn't even responded to my request to sign my
precious books, and in doing so render them even more precious.
'Look,'
I said, showing her the gun, 'he's disarmed, he's not a danger to anyone now.
The least we can do is let him talk about it if he wants to. What's the harm in
that?'
'You
know exactly what the harm is.'
'I
swear to God we won't get involved. I've had it with danger, you know that; my
blood pressure is worse than yours, and I'm not even pregnant.'
'Your
blood pressure is perfectly normal.'
'That's
just what they want me to think.'
She
glared. I glared back.
She
would win, but I was getting better.
Fortunately,
or unfortunately, given what was to come, fate, or Augustine, intervened.
'He
killed my wife.'
We
both turned.
'Who
did?' Alison asked.
Augustine
shook his head.
Alison
said, 'Sure let me get you a wee cup of tea and you can tell us all about it.'
She's
unpredictable and contradictory, and I suppose it's part of the reason I love
her, albeit in an infinitesimally small way.
The
tea boy brought the tea, and then sat there as if he was somehow entitled to
listen in to a deeply personal conversation. I gave him work to do in the stock
room, and he made a face, and I made one back, and he was about to respond in
kind when Alison gave him one of her looks and he quickly disappeared. I didn't
like it. I didn't like that he was more scared of her than he was of me. Or
that she thought she could boss him about when she didn't own the shop like I
did. I have the deeds. They're secure.
'I'll
be mother,' she said, and I didn't much like that either. Augustine nodded
gratefully, but made no move for the cup. 'You were saying, your wife?'
'My
beautiful Arabella. Oh yes. He killed her all right.'
'Who
he?' I asked.
Augustine
sighed. 'Do you remember the days when old people looked like old people? Old
and stooped and the women pulled tartan shopping trolleys behind them and wore
brown tights like bank robbers, but on their fat varicose legs? Whatever happened
to those days?'
'Well
...' Alison began.
'They
all want to fight time, don't they? My Arabella was the most beautiful girl in
the world, but you could tell her it until you were blue in the face and she
still wouldn't believe you. And now, of course,
she
is blue in the face.
I'm sixty-two years old. Arabella was sixty. She looked forty-five. But she
wanted to be twenty- five again. Oh, the price of vanity!'
'So
who do you think killed her?'
Tenacious
is my middle name. I had recently changed it from Trouble.
He
looked me straight in the eye and said, 'You.'
He
paused.
Whether
he meant it to be dramatic or not, it was.
Alison
looked at me, already prepared to accept that I was guilty.
'You
know what it's like for a crime writer like me, don't you?' Augustine
eventually continued. 'My name is known, the critics love me, but I haven't
made a red cent from my books. I scraped by for a while writing screenplays,
but that was twenty years ago. All this time I've been writing; I've a room
full of manuscripts, but I've never sent them out, never been happy with them.
But all these years, my Arabella has been supporting me. She's from landed
folk, inherited money, and we've lived well, but we whittled most of it away
travelling. Once the Troubles were over, we talked about coming back here, we
looked at houses. Arabella's a social girl, she likes the parties and the
theatre and cocktails, so when she came back, she wanted to look her best. That's
where he comes in: the Yank, Dr Yes, Dr Chicago, whatever the hell you want to
call him.'
The
names meant nothing to me, but Alison was on it straight away.
'I
know
exactly
who you mean. Dr Yeschenkov; he's yummy, all the girls
would have his babies. With the exception of me, obviously.'
I
raised my hands, helplessly. 'Will someone elaborate? Please?'
'He's
a plastic surgeon,' said Alison. 'He has his own private clinic, he runs a
programme called
'The
Million-Dollar Makeover,' said Augustine. 'Nothing would do Arabella but she
had to have it.'
'He
takes you away for like six weeks . . .'
'He's
cut it down to four.'
'He
puts you up in a swanky hotel . . .'
'It
wasn't that swanky.'
'And
he does a whole series of procedures, brings in the top guys in their field
'So
he says.'
'You've
seen it on TV: eyes, teeth, tummy, boobs, keeps you away from prying eyes for
six weeks
'Four.'
'And
then does a grand reveal, and you look stunning.'
'He's
a butcher!' Augustine shook his head. There were tears in his eyes again.
'Did
it all go hideously wrong?' I asked, as gently as I could.
Augustine
glared at me. 'What do you think?'
'In what
way?' Alison asked. There was something about the way she said things that just
seemed
nicer.
More sympathetic. I was pretty glad I hadn't voiced my
first thought, which was to tell him he should have been wary of anyone
offering to make a silk purse from a sow's ear.
'I
don't
know,
that's the point. They wouldn't let me near her the whole
time . . . and I know that's what you sign up for . . . but I just missed her
so much. We tried to speak on the phone every night, but she was tired and in
pain and all bandaged up. She sounded miserable. But she was determined to go
through with it. I spoke to her on the Wednesday night and she sounded more
positive; she had one more procedure to go through, then they'd start taking
off the bandages and showing her what they'd done. After that they'd do hair
and make-up, new clothes, then I'd be invited up for the big reveal. Except the
call never came.'
'Because?'
I asked.
'Because
buggery to fuck, she was dead, wasn't she?'
'On
the operating table?'
'Yes!
No! I don't know. They deny it. They say she was fine when she left them, she
looked great. Dr Chicago, Dr Yes, Dr Fucking Scissorhands says she signed her
cheque, signed herself out and went on her merry way. He says it's a sad fact
that sometimes his programme gives women a new lease of life; they want to
recreate themselves, start afresh and so they disappear and sometimes they go
to extraordinary lengths to cover their tracks.'