Authors: Colin Bateman
Dr
Yeschenkov finally let go of her hands and stood up. He shook his head sadly. 'Pearl,
I created you . . . you were an experiment, a project, you were my Eliza . . .
I fell, I fell in lust with you. But I did something wrong, I went too far. You
weren't my Pygmalion, you were my . . . Frankenstein's monster. I could see it
in you, but
this
... I never suspected you would go this far. I'm sorry,
Pearl, I'm so sorry.' And then he looked at me. 'I'm truly sorry.'
I
said, 'I always knew you couldn't judge a book by its cover.'
Alison
stepped up beside me and hooked her arm through mine. 'And I always knew you
couldn't polish a turd.' And then she whispered lovingly in my ear, 'Although
I'm doing my best.'
When
someone dies, all sorts of parasites emerge to feed on the mouldering corpse.
It's disgusting. I was obviously only interested in securing Augustine's legacy,
but once word got out about the murders, and Pearl's arrest, and Spider-web's
arrest, and Brian Wailer's arrest, and Dr Yeschenkov being taken in for
questioning, suddenly there were nephews, cousins and second cousins crawling
all over Augustine's
oeuvre
and claiming rights. The prospect of No
Alibis ever republishing his
Barbed-Wire Love
trilogy receded with each
solicitor's letter. As for his fabled fourth book in the series, there was no
evidence that it had ever existed. It was, it appeared, truly Augustine's final
work of fiction.
Spring
turned into a lengthy summer, with the sun high in the skies, and customers
rarer than hen's teeth. I tried to spend as little time as possible with
Alison, because she had grown from being just unpleasantly plump to the size of
a Zeppelin. She said she understood, that she was happy with her few hours in
the jewellery shop across the road, and with spending more time on her
comic-book art, and I mean that in the disparaging sense, even though it was,
literally, comic-book art. Jeff was on a ridiculously long break from college
and had chosen to go travelling rather than help out in the shop, while Mother
was now permanently back home and behaving, up to a point. I tried to get her
to cover the till for me while I did essential stock-taking and reading, but
ultimately I had to sack her from all duties in No Alibis. It wasn't just her
insistence on continuing to smoke in the shop. It was her habit of using
Augustine's urn as an ashtray. She had to mount stepladders and unscrew a lid
in order to hide the evidence of her guilty habit, and was only discovered when
she accidently knocked the urn off its shelf and spilled the contents over the
floor. This, unhappily - or happily, depending on your point of view - coincided
with the front door opening and one of those hen's teeth entering, bringing
with him a draught of polluted summer breeze, which wafted essence of Augustine
all over the shop, where it settled on books and shelves. One might look on it
as the last macabre act of the
Case of the Pearl Necklace,
an ironic
climax of fate, with Augustine moving from being Exhibit No. 1 to becoming part
of the very fabric of No Alibis. I was naturally furious. One should never have
to hoover up one of one's favourite authors.
On a
late August morning, about five minutes after I opened up, Alison called and
said, 'Guess what?'
'No,'
I said.
'Waters
broke. Driving to hospital.'
'Oh,'
I said.
I
didn't like the way I was suddenly feeling.
Clammy.
I am
allergic to hospitals. They are breeding grounds for
everything.
'Well?'
At
that moment the shop door opened and DI Robinson entered. I hadn't seen him in
months. Not even my two per cent off summer sale had tempted him through my
doors.
I
said, 'I'm going to have to put you on hold.'
I put
her on it before she could respond. I nodded at Robinson. He nodded back.
'How's
business?' he asked.
'Slow,'
I said.
'Thought
you'd want to know, we found Arabella Wogan's body. Pretty bad state. Lenny
McNulty led us to it, eventually.'
'Lenny
...?’
'The
fella with the tattoo on his hand?'
'Oh
yeah. So. What about Pearl?'
'She's
changed her tune. Apparently the murders were all Rolo's idea. They were lovers.
He was blackmailing her. She has a different version every week. But we'll nail
her eventually.' 'And what about Buddy?'
'Buddy
will be fine. Outside chance of a manslaughter charge, but I'm fighting it.'
'Well,'
I said, 'everything turned out okay in the end.'
'Once
again. You know, you're very lucky.'
'It's
not luck.'
'You
have your day in the sun, and you don't have to worry about the paperwork.'
'It's
the way I like it.'
'Well
I'm just telling you, you are very lucky, but one day your luck is going to run
out. If I were you, I'd quit while you were ahead. You have a baby on the way,
don't you?'
I
glanced at the phone.
'Yeah,'
I said.
'Well
maybe now's the time to get out, leave it to the professionals.'
'Well
maybe if you introduced me to one, I could hand over the reins.'
'You're
funny,' he said.
'So's
your face,' I said.
He
left. I took out a Twix and a can of Coke. The morning was warming up. It felt good
to be alive, although, obviously, all such feelings are temporary.
I am
not entirely without feelings or consideration. Of
course
I went to the
hospital. But it had to wait. I had customers. Three more that morning and two
after lunch. In the early evening I took the phone off hold, and locked up the
many locks that keep No Alibis safe and secure. I drove to the maternity wing
at the Ulster Hospital. I took the stairs. One at a time. I lingered in the
corridor until a nurse asked me what I wanted. She showed me to a private room.
I looked through the glass in the door at Alison, pale, holding my son in her
arms.
I
entered the room. Alison smiled. There were tears in her eyes. She showed me
our baby.
She
held him up for me to take.
My
arms would not move.
Instead
I said, 'Where'd you get the monkey, love?'