The Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul

"Right," she said, and led the way out of the flat, locking it carefully after them, and making shushing noises as they passed Neil's door. For all the uproar he was currently making he was almost certainly listening out for the slightest sound, and would be out in a moment if he heard them going by to complain about the Coca-Cola machine, the lateness of the hour, man's inhumanity to man, the weather, the noise, and the colour of Kate's coat, which was a shade of blue that Neil for some reason disapproved of most particularly. They stole past successfully and closed the front door behind them with the merest click.

Chapter 23

The sheets which tumbled out on to Dirk's kitchen table were made of thick heavy paper, folded together, and had obviously been much handled.

He sorted them out, one by one, separating them from each other, smoothing them out with the flat of his hand and laying them out neatly in rows on the kitchen table, clearing a space, as it became necessary, among the old newspapers, ashtrays and dirty cereal bowls which Elena the cleaner always left exactly where they were, claiming, when challenged on this, that she thought he had put them there specially.

He pored over the papers for several minutes, moving from one to another, comparing them with each other, studying them carefully, page by page, paragraph by paragraph, line by line.

He couldn't understand a word of them.

It should have occurred to him, he realised, that the greeneyed, hairy, scythe-waving giant might differ from him not only in general appearance and personal habits, but also in such matters as the alphabet he favoured.

He sat back in his seat, disgruntled and thwarted, and reached for a cigarette, but the packet in his coat was now empty. He picked up a pencil and tapped it in a cigarette-like way, but it wasn't able to produce the same effect.

After a minute or two he became acutely conscious of the fact that he was probably still being watched through the keyhole by the eagle and he found that this made it impossibly hard to concentrate on the problem before him, particularly without a cigarette. He scowled to himself. He knew there was still a packet upstairs by his bed, but he didn't think he could handle the sheer ornithology involved in going to get it.

He tried to stare at the papers for a little longer. The writing, apart from being written in some kind of small, crabby and indecipherable runic script, was mostly hunched up towards the left-hand side of the paper as if swept there by a tide. The righthand side was largely clear except for an occasionai group of characters which were lined up underneath each other. All of it, except for a slight sense of undefinable familiarity about the layout, was completely meaningless to Dirk.

He turned his attention back to the envelope instead and tried once more to examine some of the names which had been so heavily crossed out.

Howard Bell, the incredibly wealthy bestselling novelist who wrote bad books which sold by the warehouse-load despite - or perhaps because of - the fact that nobody read them.

Dennis Hutch, record company magnate. Now that he had a context for the name, Dirk knew it perfeetly well. The Aries Rising Record Group which had been founded on Sixties ideals, or at least on what passed for ideals in the Sixties, grown in the Seventies and then embraced the materialism of the Eighties without missing a beat, was now a massive entertainment conglomerate on both sides of the Atlantic. Dennis Hutch had stepped up into the top seat when its founder had died of a lethal overdose of brick wall, taken while under the influence of a Ferrari and a bottle of tequila. ARRGH! was also the record label on which Hot Potato had been released.

Stan Dubcek, senior partner in the advertising company with the silly name which now owned most of the British and American advertising companies which had not had names which were quite as silly, and had therefore been swallowed whole.

And here, suddenly, was another name that was instantly recognisable, now that Dirk was attuned to the sort of names he should be looking for. Roderick Mercer, the world's greatest publisher of the world's sleaziest newspapers. Dirk hadn't at first spotted the name with the unfamiliar "...erick" in place after the "Rod". Well, well, well. . .

Now here were people, thought Dirk suddenly, who had really got something. Certainly they had got rather more than a nice little house in Lupton Road with some dried flowers lying around the place. They also had the great advantage of having heads on their shoulders as well, unless Dirk had missed something new and dramatic on the news. What did that all mean? What was this contract? How come everybody whose hands it had been through had been so astoundingly successful except for one, Geoffrey Anstey? Everybody whose hands it had passed through had benefited from it except for the one who had it last. Who had still got it.

It was a hot potato. .