The Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul

The man was wearing an Italian suit, which was also quiet. He had quiet glasses, quietly cut hair, and though a bow-tie is not, by its very nature, a quiet object, the particular bow-tie he wore was, nevertheless, a very quietly spotted example of the genre. He drew a slim wallet from his pocket and also a slim silver pencil. He walked without fuss to the rear of Dirk's Jaguar and made a note of the registration number.

"Do you have a card?" he enquired as he did so, without looking up. "Here's mine," he added, taking one from his wallet. He made a note on the back of it. "My registration number," he said, "and the name of my insurance company. Perhaps you would be good enough to let me have the name of yours. If you don't have it with you, I'll got my girl to call you."

Dirk sighed, and decided there was no point in putting up a fight on this one. He fished out his wallet and leafed through the various business cards that seemed to accumulate in it as if from nowhere. He toyed for a second with the idea of being Wesley Arlott, an ocean-going yacht navigation consultant from, apparently, Arkansas, but then thought better of it. The man had, after all, taken his registration number, and although Dirk had no particular recollection of paying an insurance premium of late, he also had no particular recollection of not paying one either, which was a reasonably promising sign. He handed over a bonafide card with a wince. The man looked at it.

"Mr Gently," he said. "Private investigator. I'm sony, private holistic investigator. OK."

He put the card away, taking no further interest.

Dirk had never felt so patronised in his life. At that moment there was another quiet click from the other side of the car. Dirk looked across to see a woman with red spectacles standing there giving him a frozen half smile. She was the woman he had spoken with over Geoffrey Anstey's garden wall this morning, and the man, Dirk therefore supposed, was probably her husband. He wondered for a second whether he should wrestle the m to the ground and question them rigorously and violently, but he was suddenly feeling immensely tired and run down.

He acknowledged the woman in red spectacles with a minute inclination of his head.

"All done, Cynthia," said the man and flicked a smile on and off at her. "It's all taken care of."

She nodded faintly, and the two of them climbed back into their BMW and after a moment or two pulled away without fuss and disappeared away down the road. Dirk looked at the card in his hand. Clive Draycott. He was with a good firm of City solicitors. Dirk stuck the card away in his wallet, climbed despondently back into his car, and drove on back to his house, where he found a large golden eagle sitting patiently on his doorstep.

Chapter 20

Kate rounded on her guest as soon as they were both inside her flat with the door closed and Kate could be reasonably certain that Neil wasn't going to sneak back out of his flat and lurk disapprovingly half way up the stairs. The continuing thumping of his bass was at least her guarantee of privacy.

"All right," she said fiercely, "so what is the deal with the eagle then? What is the deal with all the street lights? Huh?"

The Norse God of Thunder looked at her awkwardly. He had to remove his great horned helmet because it was banging against the ceiling and leaving scratch marks in the plaster. He tucked it under his arm.

"What is the deal," continued Kate, "with the Coca-Cola machine? What is the deal with the hammer? What, in short, is the big deal? Huh?"

Thor said nothing. He frowned for a second in arrogant irritation, then frowned in something that looked somewhat like embarrassment, and then simply stood there and bled at her.

For a few seconds she resisted the impending internal collapse of her attitude, and then realised it was just going to go to hell anyway so she might as well go with it.

"OK," she muttered, "let's get all that cleaned up. I'll find some antiseptic."

She went to rummage in the kitchen cupboard and returned with a bottle to find Thor saying "No" at her.

"No what?" she said crossly, putting the bottle down on the table with a bit of a bang.

"That," said Thor, and pushed the bottle back at her. "No."

"What's the matter with it?"

Thor just shrugged and stared moodily at a corner of the room. There was nothing that could be considered remotely interesting in that comer of the room, so he was clearly looking at it out of sheer bloody-mindedness.

"Look, buster," said Kate, "if I can call you buster, what - "

"Thor," said Thor, "God of - "

"Yes," said Kate, "you've told me all the things you're God of. I'm trying to clean up your arm."

"Sedra," said Thor, holding his bleeding arm out, but away from her. He peered at it anxiously.

"What?"

"Crushed leaves of sedra. Oil of the kernel of the apricot. Infusion of bitter orange blossom. Oil of almonds. Sage and comfrey. Not this."

He pushed the bottle of antiseptic off the table and sank into a mood.