Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite! (21 page)

And there I was. Mr James Kite.

Dear God. What a peculiar feeling ran through me. I had died. The other me had died in the plane crash. It was right there. The list of those who had died, and I was on it.

I don't know what I'd been expecting, but since I didn't know, I hadn't been thinking about it. Now, however, I immediately thought of my girls. Brin and Baggins, thinking I was dead, all this time. Four-and-a-half months. How terrible it must have been for them.

I wanted to call them, right there. I looked round the lobby, round to the reception desk. My eyes fell on the phone. Any phone. I could pick it up, let them know.

Yet, even as those desperate thoughts were running through my head, I knew I couldn't. They'd warned me. Don't contact your family.

There was nothing I could do, and anyway, they'd had all this time to get used to me not being there, another day or two or three wouldn't make any difference. All I could do was try to make those few days as short as possible. I needed to find the Jigsaw Man, and in order to do that, I somehow knew that first I would have to find Jones.

I needed to go on the offensive. I needed to find Jones before she found me. I'd Googled her often in the past, of course, followed her career around the standards of British TV, but I'd never actually tried to find out where she was at any particular point in time.

It was funny how none of us ever used her first name, and she never used it herself. But it was there on IMDb. The acting profession probably wouldn't let her away with just a single name; at least, not one as straightforward as Jones at any rate.

A football team arrived in the lobby, shirts and ties and young players carrying kit. I watched them for a moment, then turned back to the monitor.

Pretty quickly I found details of the acting agency with which Jones was a client. I spent a little longer trying to see if there was any mention on Twitter or some such about where she might be right now, what she might be filming, but made no further progress.

I went back into the bar and ordered another gin and tonic, my fourth, while I thought of my story. I had to be convincing right off the bat, and it really wasn't the kind of thing with which I was comfortable.

I called the agency. I set out to not ask much, in fact, to ask very little. To tell, rather than ask. I got someone on reception, didn't ask to speak to anyone else. I gave full details of the independent film I was making, and how Jones would be perfect for it. Not the lead. She hadn't played the lead in anything so far, so I didn't want to sound too outlandish. I talked a lot, as if I was the one giving the information, explaining the story and the concept and the shooting schedule and the funding, all at some length. We would be getting going in early summer, however, and I needed to know that Jones would be available soon.

There had been nothing on IMDb to say that Jones had been currently filming, but after I had talked for some time, I was informed that she was in Warsaw making a Polish movie, and would be there for another week at least.

I gave the receptionist three different false phone numbers, and hung up, then I went to the restaurant and sat down for dinner. It was only just after five, but I hadn't eaten much all day, and I'd drunk far too much alcohol for so little food. I drank water, and ate a large steak with a small salad and French fries.

I didn't seem to have any option. I had no idea where to find the Jigsaw Man. Jones was in Warsaw. I was going to have to go to Poland. Did she speak Polish? Perhaps she did. I really knew very little about her.

I wondered how closely Agent Crosskill and his partner – who I had decided to refuse to believe would be called Jones – would be following me, and if they would stop me getting on a plane out of the UK. I presumed they wouldn't. They could obviously follow me wherever I went.

Given that I was working off an agency account, after dinner I went to the reception and asked that they book me on a flight the following day to Warsaw, business class if possible, and that they make a reservation in a hotel in the centre of town for two nights. I didn't ask that they book a return flight, as I knew that I was now finished with Glasgow.

After that I went back to my room and sat on the bed, waiting for reception to call. Half an hour later she let me know that I was on a BA flight, via Heathrow, leaving at eleven a.m. the following day. I cleaned my teeth and went to bed at just after seven pm, and slept for eleven hours.

The following morning, I showered, cleaned my teeth again, and headed out for breakfast. I walked to the Stand Alone. I felt that not only was I leaving Glasgow for the last time in this search for the Jigsaw Man, but that perhaps I was leaving for the last time ever.

I walked down Brown Street, past the old Ministry of Defence building, to the Clyde, then turned left and walked along to where I'd find the Stand Alone, the small building standing alone looking out over the water, impervious to the developments that had gone on around this area in the last twenty years.

I could tell as I approached that it wasn't open yet, which seemed strange. It had always been open from 6 a.m. in the old days. Times had changed; the Stand Alone had evolved. There were barely any customers in the middle of the morning or afternoon, so why open at 6 a.m.?

It wasn't until I was only twenty yards or so away that I realised that it wasn't just that the Stand Alone had yet to open that morning. It was closed down. The darkened windows were the same, the faded lettering was just as faded, but one of the windows was broken, and there was graffiti on another. The door was boarded up and triple locked. The windows were taped in places.

I stood as close as I could get and peered inside. This wasn't a café that had closed in the previous day or two. It had been closed for some time. I peered in to try to see as much as I could, but there was darkness in there, a darkness that more than overcame the meagre, grey daylight of an early spring morning.

The Stand Alone was shut. Henderson was right. He'd said he'd thought it had closed down, and here was the proof.

I looked around at the area, which had completely changed since our day. It had all been a bit run down back then, and the Stand Alone had stood out amongst the decay. Now it was the other way round, with new office blocks and apartments built around it, the Stand Alone standing alone in rundown, closed doors melancholy.

Checked my watch. 0714hrs. I looked up and down the street, but right at this moment there was no one around. I crossed the road and went on to the riverbank, leant against a railing and looked at the water. There was the smell of spring in the air. Today was going to be a good day, a nice day. I hadn't looked at the weather forecast.

I stood against the railing for nearly half an hour. The river flowed by. There was the occasional boat. Not much river traffic, of course, not in a long while. When I finally turned and looked back at the Stand Alone and the small street lined with new office blocks, there were a few more people around.

I returned to the front of the café and peered in once again, hoping that the slightly brighter day would afford me a better look inside.

I looked for the Jigsaw Man's table, and saw the space that I'd seen the other day. And there, high on the wall – and maybe something which I could find only because I knew exactly where to look – was the
Sgt. Pepper
album cover, with George, John and Ringo crossed through.

I turned. There was a woman in a grey suit, slightly older than me perhaps, walking up from the river on the other side of the road. I crossed and addressed her at some distance.

'Excuse me.'

She slowed, looked up from her mobile, enquired with her eyes.

'Sorry, there's no reason you should, but d'you know when this place closed its doors?’

'The Stand Alone?' she said, finally stopping beside me and looking across the road.

'Yes.'

'Yes, we used to go in there for lunch. Sometimes met a client over coffee. It's a shame. Closed about three years ago, I think. Maybe four. Been a while.'

'You ever see the Jigsaw Man?'

She had been about to walk on, the busy businesswomen, but the name seemed to stop her, although it wasn't through recognition.

'The Jigsaw Man?' she said, smiling. 'You mean a guy doing jigsaws?'

I smiled with her. It always did sound kind of stupid.

'Pretty much. The owner. He used to sit in the far corner...'

'And do jigsaws?'

I nodded.

'Sorry, never saw anyone do that.'

'Was Janine still there?' I asked. 'The waitress?'

She paused for a moment and looked back at the café. Something passed across her face, although I wasn't sure what.

'No, no she... she left I think. Not sure when. She used to be there, but not for a while. I think that was why it closed.'

I followed her gaze over to the café. It looked back at us, empty and tired, the opposite of the bright welcoming place that the gang and I had had trouble staying away from.

'You need to find someone?' she asked. She had lost the urgency with which she had been striding towards me.

'No,' I said. 'You know... I feel sure I was in there... I came here two days ago, as soon as I arrived in Glasgow, and I came here. It was open, kind of rundown, but open.'

She looked at me without judgement and then back across at the café.

'You saw this man doing jigsaws?'

'No,' I said, 'just the gap in the corner where he used to sit. You can see it, a space without a table, if you look in the through the window.'

She nodded.

'I remember. I thought it was odd, wondered why they didn't use the space. But then, they hardly needed to.'

I glanced at her and then looked back at the café. I'd been going to mention the album cover, but there was no reason. She didn't need to know about that.

'Maybe you dreamt it,' she said.

'Maybe.'

'Funny place,' she said. 'A lot of people didn't know it was there. That was probably why it closed in the end.'

We stood in silence looking across the road, and then, with nothing more than a small nod, she turned and walked quickly into the building next to us, already looking at her phone before she reached the front door.

––––––––

I
t was a beautiful spring day in Warsaw, mid-afternoon by the time I checked into the hotel. I was staying at the Hyatt, an '80s building next to the gigantic Russian embassy and about a mile walk into the centre of the city. A short walk and across the road from the hotel was Łazienki Park, which the in-flight magazine had said was Warsaw's Hyde Park, containing the Palace on the Water, with a lake and miles of walks through woods, and ice cream and red squirrels and a large Chopin Monument.

I didn't know what to make of the strange instance of the Stand Alone Café. Perhaps the woman with the phone had been right. Perhaps I had dreamt it, the first night in my hotel. All I could do was to keep going forward until this whole drama had played out. Then, perhaps, life might return to normal.

Whatever was going on, I had a self-confidence to ask questions and to ask for help that I'd never before felt. Having checked into my room, and decided that I would go out to enjoy the rest of the afternoon walking in the park, I asked at the front desk if they could find out for me the location of the shooting of the motion picture
Benevolence
. I gave no details on why I might be interested, but I must have looked more like I might be involved in the project, rather than a fan wishing to stalk any of the actors involved, because the desk clerk seemed eager to help.

The park was beautiful. It did not remind me of Hyde Park, other than that it was a large park in a large city. I stood for a long time by the Palace, looking out over the small lake. There was a boat on the water, taking tourists on a short trip, ending up back where they started. I'd decided to buy coffee rather than ice cream, even though it was a warm afternoon, like a Scottish summer's day. There were women in light summer dresses, children in shorts. Nevertheless, there were also some older locals determinedly wearing thick coats, because it was still April and obviously not supposed to be this warm yet.

There was a lightness in the air, a sense of relaxation that I didn't recognise. I stayed for a while, watching the warm Polish afternoon go by, and then walked back to the hotel, without walking around the lake into the woods beyond. I thought perhaps I would do that the next day, as the weather forecast was fine for the rest of the week.

Returning to my hotel I stopped at the front desk. The desk clerk seemed happy to see me, which I took to mean that she'd been able to find the information I'd requested.

'Good afternoon, sir,' she said, 'I hope you had a nice walk.'

'Very nice, thank you.'

'The motion picture you are interested in, is indeed filming in Warsaw at the moment. They will be using several locations, but for the next three days they will be in park Pole Mokotowskie, near the Żwirki i Wigury end of the park. Do you know Warsaw?'

'I'm afraid not.'

'We can order you a taxi for the morning.'

'That'd be great, thanks. Nine o'clock would be perfect.'

'Thank you, sir. Is there anything else I can help you with?'

'No, that's everything, thanks.'

She smiled, I smiled, and then I went back upstairs. I had a room that looked out over the street at the back. It was just a street, with any old buildings across the road. Nothing particularly attractive. I sat on the bed and wondered what I'd say to Jones.
I heard you were looking for me
, might be an easy opener.

Perhaps Henderson was right, and she was like the Jigsaw Man. There was more than one of her. Perhaps the one who was looking for me wasn't the one who was appearing in the motion picture
Benevolence
. And yet, it seemed that the Jigsaw Man was not four different people, but one person split in four. Each one was part of the same. If the same thing was happening with Jones, then she would know what each part of her was doing.