Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite! (20 page)

'Looking for the Jigsaw Man,' I said.

'Shit,' said Two Feet at the mention of his name, as though he hadn't given him any thought in two decades.

'You been to the Stand Alone?' he asked.

'Sure,' I said. 'He still owns the joint, but hasn't been there in a while.'

'Me neither. Been a long time. You speak to Henderson?'

'Yep. He gave me your number.'

'He's all right?'

'Still working at the same place, wearing a suit, living with some guy in the west end.'

'He's living with a guy? You mean...?'

'I thought you spoke to him a few years back?'

'Sure thing, man, but he didn't tell me he was an arse bandit.'

That was Two Feet.

'Well... he's living with a guy. Married.'

'Shit.'

'So, you never went back to the Stand Alone? Never saw the Jigsaw Man after that time he left for Laos?'

'The Jigsaw Man went to Laos? Jesus. There was all kinds of shit going on that I didn't know about.'

He was shaking his head, looking out over the city. The grey city. The oppressive weight of it was dragging me down, as if it wanted to push me off this beam, so that I'd fall with such speed that I'd descend into the ground, become part of the city itself.

'Talked to Jones a few days ago,' he said. 'That's what was so weird about you calling. First Jones, then you. Weird.'

'What she want?' I asked.

'She was looking for you.'

'What'd you say?'

'That I hadn't heard from you since Fanque pegged it.'

I looked at him, and then, having decided that I could no longer look at the view, stared into the steaming coffee.

So Jones had been to see Janine and Two Feet. I wondered if she'd also been to see Henderson and he'd decided not to tell me. That was one of the reasons why he was worried. Jones, or some part of her, was searching.

'You get her number?' I asked.

'Nope.'

'Did you see her, or just speak to her on the phone?'

'Well,' he said.

He thought about something, and then dismissed it with a minimal head shake.

'What?' I asked.

'Doesn't matter,' he said.

'Really,' I persisted. 'I'm pretty desperate for information here. Anything will do.'

'All right,' he said. 'She called on my mobile while I was here. Was over there, up by what's going to be the bowling alley.' He turned and pointed, but I didn't follow his directions.

'If she called on your mobile, how come you don't have her number?'

'Didn't show up on my phone. Don't know anything about that kind of shit. Is that weird? I mean, it might be. The whole thing was weird.'

I shrugged.

'Spoke to her for about five minutes,' he continued. 'There wasn't a lot to say really. Wasn't as though she and I had ever been close. You and me, me and Henderson, we'd been friends, then you two were friends with her, and Fanque mucked in with everybody, but she and I.... whatever, we were different sorts of fish.'

'Did she ask about the Jigsaw Man?'

'Man, what is it with that guy? No, she wasn't interested in him, just you. You didn't break her heart or nothing, did you? I mean, if you and Jones got it on, no offence or nothing, but you'd have seriously oversnagged. She was fit.'

I continued to look into the coffee. I wasn't going to answer that, or question his assessment.

'You were going to tell me something,' I said.

'Aye, right. So we talk for about five minutes. I got the feeling that something wasn't right. Then the conversation ended, and I put the phone away and turned and looked out over the site. And there, up by the entrance, there was a woman in, you know, hard hat and high-visibility at least, and she was putting something in her pocket, turning away. Could have sworn it was her. Felt it, right down to my boots. She'd been watching me the whole time we'd talked. I really have no idea what that was about. None. But I'm sure it was her.'

I kept looking at my coffee. I was no nearer finding the Jigsaw Man, but I was pretty sure that Jones was about to find me. I'd just have to hope that when it happened, it was going to be on my terms.

'Anything else?' I asked.

He stared away out over the bleak cityscape, and I knew that there was indeed something else coming. I just had to wait until he was ready to say it. He was finding the words, I guessed, as I could feel it was another one of those things that really didn't make sense. He wasn't comfortable.

Eventually he shook his head and said, 'I don't know, man...'

I was steadfastly looking at my cup of coffee, which was quickly cooling.

'Go on,' I said, without looking at him.

'You know,' he said, then waved a slightly bemused hand, 'you know, I never got what was going on. I knew I was missing so much that I didn't even try to think about it.'

'There was just the five of us hanging out in a café,' I said. I glanced at him, but didn't enjoy the movement, and quickly looked back at my cup. Took a drink. 'And Henderson was gay.'

'If you really think that was it, you were even more detached than me. I mean, how did we end up together? It just happened? You guys, how did you end up as friends? Kite, Fanque and Henderson, like you'd all walked out of the damned Beatles song. Did you get friendly with them because they'd been mentioned in the only song with your name in it?'

'We talked about that at the time. You were Henry the Horse,' I added, laughing uncomfortably.

'And who was Jones?'

'What d'you mean?'

'There was never a jokey name for Jones.'

'I don't know...' I said, the sentence drifting off. I tried to remember the café, and the relationships between the five of us. All those years ago. Fanque and Henderson and me, it had been funny, but not in a weird way. It hadn't seemed weird to me, at any rate. It was like the time in the '80s when the Welsh rugby team just happened to have a Holmes and Moriarty in the same team. A peculiar coincidence.

Two Feet stared straight ahead, while his right hand rustled in his bag and produced a packet of biscuits. He distractedly took a milk chocolate digestive, offered the packet in my direction, and then laid it back down on his bag at the slight shake of my head.

'I wondered,' he said. 'Always used to wonder... I felt out of it. I knew I wasn't really one of you, but what about Jones? Where did she come into it, 'cause it seemed to me like she was one of you and not one of me? Mr Kite, the Hendersons, Pablo Fanque, all characters in that stupid song, and yep, there's no Jones – and there sure as Hell ain't a Two Feet – but I knew there had to be something. Then one day, I don't know, a few years ago, I'm at this girl's house. Ended up staying the night. Great tits. Nearly got a shag again in the morning, then she got a whiff of my breath and went off the idea. Anyway, while I'm lying there in bed, waiting for her to get out the shower, I notice the poster on the wall. A copy of the original poster for the Benefit of Mr Kite, the one Lennon used as the influence for the song. So I get out of bed and take a closer look. And I know, know even before I start looking, that somewhere on there I'm going to find the name Jones, and I also know that I'm not going to find the name Two Feet. Or Norman.'

'And did you?'

I glanced round again, and this time I managed to continue to look at him.

'Sure,' he said, his voice suddenly lighter. 'Right on down there at the bottom. The name of one of the two printers. Jones. Knew I'd find it.'

'Seriously? The printer? That's a total coincidence.'

He shrugged. Wiped a digestive crumb from the corner of his mouth.

'Maybe,' he said. 'But I knew it was going to be there, and it was, which, in my book, means it ain't a coincidence.'

He glanced at me and shrugged again.

'There was just something about you four, man, and I wasn't part of it. And there, on that poster, was the proof. And you know what it means?'

I shook my head.

'Me neither,' he said. 'Haven't a clue.'

I breathed out and turned away. Suddenly I found myself looking out over Glasgow and my stomach didn't immediately fly into my mouth, my heart didn't immediately explode out of my chest.

'Completely confused,' I said.

'Join the club.'

In the distance a plane was emerging from the cloud on its way, directly over the city, to the airport. We couldn't hear it. That would be the moment when I would be relieved, when the plane stopped being tossed in the cloud, and would be coming in for a smooth landing.

'What was the name of the other printer?' I asked.

'What?'

'On the poster. You said that Jones was one of two printers. Who was the other one?'

'Oh,' he said. 'Crosskill. Jones and Crosskill. No idea who Crosskill is. You ever meet a Crosskill?'

––––––––

I
t was clear that Jones was coming, and I started to see her round every corner. I liked her, I loved her, there was barely a day in the previous seventeen years when I hadn't thought about her, yet now that I knew she was out there it seemed as though I feared her.

I'd been curious after hearing about her at the Stand Alone, but it was Henderson who had instilled the trepidation. Now it turned out she had been to see Two Feet. Yet all of those had been the previous week. She'd been in Glasgow, and none of them had been able to give her any intelligence on where to find me. Even if they'd had my home address, and I don't think any of them did, I wasn't there a week ago.

So what had Jones been searching for? Was she really looking for me, or, despite what she'd said to the others, was she also searching for the Jigsaw Man and thought that I might be her best bet for information? For the first time in a while, I felt like I had when I'd been living up north for those long six months. Thinking about what had to be done – trying to work out what was going on and what was the best way forward – only seemed to make things worse.

This general feeling of confusion and discomfiture had been further enhanced by Two Feet and his talk of Jones and Crosskill. I don't think I could remember ever having heard of anyone called Crosskill before, and now the name had popped up twice in quick succession. Two Feet was right about the lack of coincidence in all this.

Yet the idea of my two interrogators having the same name as the printers of the poster that influenced the writing of a song with my name in it seemed to go some way beyond coincidence, although, of course, I didn't know if the female agent was actually named Jones. Her name could have been anything. At the moment it was nothing more than another potential layer of mystery to by filed away with all the others.

I went back to the hotel and sat in my room for a while. I flicked on the TV and almost immediately turned it off. I never watch TV, and mid-afternoon is not the time to start. I sat at the small desk and looked through the hotel brochure. There was a swimming pool, pictured in perfect, shimmering blue. In the picture there were two people swimming and no one else standing at the side. I wondered if the pool was always that quiet.

I went downstairs to the leisure complex area. From the reception there was a view of the pool. It was deserted. I bought myself a pair of trunks and went for a swim.

The water was warm, relaxing. I didn't know what to do other than swim lengths, up and down, up and down. As I started I thought I might swim for an hour, but every time I dipped my head beneath the water in the middle of a breaststroke, I imagined that when I looked up Jones would be standing there, having appeared from nowhere. A dark, tall presence at the far end of the pool.

I started not dipping my head, which not long afterwards became looking over my shoulder. The swim didn't last so long.

'Everything all right for you today, Sir?' asked the woman at reception, as I retreated towards the body of the hotel.

'Of course,' I replied. 'Thank you.'

'Have a nice day,' she tossed casually at me as I pushed open the double doors.

I went to the bar, checked the time – not yet two – and decided to order a gin and tonic anyway. I sat with my back to a wall and a good view of the bar, the entrance and what I could see of the street outside. I had a second gin and tonic, and ate a small bag of peanuts with each drink.

Customers came and went, the bar never getting busy. I sat there for over an hour. At first, it was almost as if I was expecting Jones to walk in the door at any moment, but the longer time went on I knew that wasn't going to happen. For all the apprehension I could manage to instil in myself, it didn't feel right. Jones had been here a week ago. She would never have hung around all that time in the vague hope that I might turn up. Why should I have? A week ago I was in a cell, who knows where in the world. It was almost arbitrary that I was here now.

That was how it seemed anyway.

The thing that started to nag at me, the longer I sat there, was why none of them had heard that I had died. Yes, I'd lost touch with them all. There had been a lot of British people on that plane, and it was impossible that any news item would ever have listed them all. There were too many even for it to be unlikely that a newspaper would print one of those mawkish double page spreads with individual photographs of everyone who'd died. So, there was some sense that they hadn't heard, yet it still seemed strange. I still had some distant family back here, someone somewhere would have known, I would surely have been included in the body count at least.

During my third gin and tonic I began to wonder if there had even been a plane crash. There was a small bank of four computers in the lobby. I finished off the third drink, left the place with a small nod to the barman, and sat down at a monitor. Since checking in, I hadn't seen any of them used.

I Googled “plane crash December 17
^th
”, and images of the plane before and after were coming up even before I'd finished typing the date. The crash had at least happened. That was a start. Every report I looked at stated that, passengers and crew combined, three hundred and six people had died. There had been no survivors. Then I found the full list of names, all three hundred and six of them.