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
We find the
Phone today for the
(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.
The day was cold and bright, which he liked. He walked across the top of Islington Green, where winos get beaten up, past the site of the old Collins Music Hall which had got burnt down, and through Camden Passage where American tourists get ripped off. He browsed among the antiques for a while and looked at a pair of earrings that he thought Susan would like, but he wasn't sure. Then he wasn't sure that he liked them, got confused and gave up. He looked in at a bookshop, and on an impulse bought an anthology of Coleridge's poems since it was just lying there.
From here he threaded his way through the winding back streets, over the canal, past the council estates that lined the canal, through a number of smaller and smaller squares, till finally he reached Peckender Street, which had turned out to be a good deal farther than he'd thought.
It was the sort of street where property developers in large Jaguars drive around at the weekend
