'Yes, so it would appear. And so it would appear, at the moment, are you.'
'But I didn't do it, for God's sake!'
'You are talking to someone who has spent time in prison for something he didn't do, remember. I told you that coincidences are strange and dangerous things. Believe me, it is a great deal better to find cast-iron proof that you're innocent, than to languish in a cell hoping that the police - who already think you're guilty - will find it for you.'
'I can't think straight,' said Richard, with his hand to his forehead. 'Just stop for a moment and let me think this out -'
'If I may -'
'Let me think -!'
Dirk shrugged and turned his attention back to his cigarette, which seemed to be bothering him.
'It's no good,' said Richard shaking his head after a few moments, 'I can't take it in. It's like trying to do trigonometry when someone's kicking your head. OK, tell me what you think I should do.'
'Hypnotism.'
'What?'
'It is hardly surprising in the circumstances that you should be unable to gather your thoughts clearly. However, it is vital that somebody gathers them. It will be much simpler for both of us if you will allow me to hypnotise you. I strongly suspect that there is a very great deal of information jumbled up in your head that will not emerge while you are shaking it up so - that might not emerge at all because you do not realise its significance. With your permission we can shortcut all that.'
'Well, that's decided then,' said Richard, standing up, 'I'm going to the police.'
'Very well,' said Dirk, leaning back and spreading his palms on the desk, 'I wish you the very best of luck. Perhaps on your way out you would be kind enough to ask my secretary to get me some matches.'
'You haven't got a secretary,' said Richard, and left.
Dirk sat and brooded for a few seconds, made a valiant but vain attempt to fold the sadly empty pizza box into the wastepaper bin, and then went to look in the cupboard for a metronome.
Richard emerged blinking into the daylight. He stood on the top step rocking slightly, then plunged off down the street with an odd kind of dancing walk which reflected the whirling dance of his mind. On the one hand he simply couldn't believe that the evidence wouldn't show perfectly clearly that he couldn't have committed the murder; on the other hand he had to admit that it all looked remarkably odd.
He found it impossible to think clearly or rationally about it. The idea that Gordon had been murdered kept blowing up in his mind and throwing all other thoughts into total confusion and disruption.
It occurred to him for a moment that whoever did it must have been a damn fast shot to get the trigger pulled before being totally overwhelmed by waves of guilt, but instantly he regretted the thought.
In fact he was a little appalled by the general quality of the thoughts that sprang into his mind. They seemed inappropriate and unworthy and mostly had to do with how it would affect his projects in the company.
He looked about inside himself for any feeling of great sorrow or regret, and assumed that it must be there somewhere, probably hiding behind the huge wall of shock.
He arrived back within sight of Islington Green, hardly noticing the distance he had walked. The sudden sight of the police squad car parked outside his house hit him like a hammer and he swung on his heel and stared with furious concentration at the menu displayed in the window of a Greek restaurant.
'Dolmades,' he thought, frantically.
'Souvlaki,' he thought.
'A small spicy Greek sausage,' passed hectically through his mind.
He tried to reconstruct the scene in his mind's eye without turning round. There had been a policeman standing watching the street, and as far as he could recall from the brief glance he had, it looked as if the side door of the building which led up to his flat was standing open.
The police were in his flat. /In/ his flat. Fassolia Plaki! A filling bowl of haricot beans cooked in a tomato and vegetable sauce!
He tried to shift his eyes sideways and back over his shoulder. The policeman was looking at him. He yanked his eyes back to the menu and tried to fill his mind with finely ground meat mixed with potato, breadcrumbs, onions and herbs rolled into small balls and fried. The policeman must have recognised him and was at that very moment dashing across the road to grab him and lug him off in a Black Maria just as they had done to Dirk all those years ago in Cambridge.
He braced his shoulders against the shock, but no hand came to grab him. He glanced back again, but the policeman was looking unconcernedly in another direction. Stifado.
It was very apparent to him that his behaviour was not that of one who was about to go and hand himself in to the police.
So what else was he to do?
Trying in a stiff, awkward way to walk naturally, he yanked himself away from the window, strolled tensely down the road a few yards, and then ducked back down Camden Passage again, walking fast and breathing hard. Where could he go? To Susan? No - the police would be there or watching. To the WFT offices in Primrose Hill? No - same reason. What on earth, he screamed silently at himself, was he doing suddenly as a fugitive?
He insisted to himself, as he had insisted to Dirk, that he should not be running away from the police. The police, he told himself, as he had been taught when he was a boy, were there to help and protect the innocent. This thought caused him instantly to break into a run and he nearly collided with the proud new owner of an ugly Edwardian floor lamp.
'Sorry,' he said, 'sorry.' He was startled that anyone should want such a thing, and slowed his pace to a walk, glancing with sharp hunted looks around him. The very familiar shop fronts full of old polished brass, old polished wood and pictures of Japanese fish suddenly seemed very threatening and aggressive.
Who could possibly have wanted to kill Gordon? This was the thought that suddenly hammered at him as he turned down Charlton Place. All that had concerned him so far was that he hadn't.
But who had?
This was a new thought.
Plenty of people didn't care for him much, but there is a huge difference between disliking somebody - maybe even disliking them a lot - and actually shooting them, strangling them, dragging them through the fields and setting their house on fire. It was a difference which kept the vast majority of the population alive from day to day.
Was it just theft? Dirk hadn't mentioned anything being missing but then he hadn't asked him.
Dirk. The image of his absurd but oddly commanding figure sitting like a large toad, brooding in his shabby office, kept insisting itself upon Richard's mind. He realised that he was retracing the way he had come, and deliberately made himself turn right instead of left.
That way madness lay.
He just needed a space, a bit of time to think and collect his thoughts together.
All right - so where was he going? He stopped for a moment, turned around and then stopped again. The idea of dolmades suddenly seemed very attractive and it occurred to him that the cool, calm and collected course of action would have been simply to walk in and have some. That would have shown Fate who was boss.
Instead, Fate was engaged on exactly the same course of action. It wasn't actually sitting in a Greek restaurant eating dolmades, but it might as well have been, because it was clearly in charge. Richard's footsteps drew him inexorably back through the winding streets, over the canal.
He stopped, briefly, at a corner shop, and then hurried on past the council estates, and into developer territory again until he was standing once more outside 33, Peckender Street. At about the same time as Fate would have been pouring itself the last of the retsina, wiping its mouth and wondering if it had any room left for baklavas, Richard gazed up at the tall ruddy Victorian building with its soot-darkened brickwork and its heavy, forbidding windows. A gust of wind whipped along the street and a small boy bounded up to him.
'Fuck off,' chirped the little boy, then paused and looked at him again.
''Ere, mister,' he added, 'can I have your jacket?'
'No,' said Richard.
