Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite! (30 page)

There was going to be nothing obvious, of course. I wasn't going to see the Jigsaw Man standing there, permanently positioned at the heart of the crossing, holding up traffic for all eternity.

But it was obvious that this was where I needed to go, and all the other places I'd visited had been leading me there. It wouldn't have worked if I'd gone straight to Abbey Road, so I wasn't kicking myself that I hadn't been earlier.

It had also been obvious to Agent Crosskill and his female buddy, of course, which was why they were disappointed that I was finally going. They had always been ahead of me, all along, not telling me much, waiting for me to work it out for myself. Possibly they thought of going to Abbey Road as some kind of last ditch attempt. I, however, knew something they didn't. All I had to do now was work out what that was.

I drank half a bottle of wine and ate snacks. Some olives, a bit of cheese, nuts. Didn't feel like a meal. At just before eleven I had my last cup of coffee in the home of the coffee revolution. Drinking coffee late has never had any effect on me, I can still be asleep two minutes after I put my head on the pillow.

At 11:14 I looked out at the Seattle night one last time, and then went back downstairs to my bedroom, bag already packed and ready to get up again at 4am.

*

'W
hen are you coming home, Daddy?'

'I'm trying,' I said. 'Soon.'

'I miss you.'

'That's nice. I miss you too. How's mum?'

Baggins looked a little unsure, uncertain about whether I'd just asked if her mum was also missing me, or whether it had been a more general question.

'Oh, she's all right. Watching a lot of soaps.'

I nodded. Nothing new there then.

We sat in silence for a while, looking out at the Seattle night. It felt a little strange, because I was sure that I'd looked out at the Seattle night for the last time from the bar on the top floor, but here I was, still looking out at the Seattle night, sitting in a comfy chair at the window of the hotel room. Baggins was sitting beside me in a similar chair. There were no lights on in the room, so that we could see through the window without looking back at ourselves. I looked down at the table in front of us. Laid out were nachos and dip, with just the dregs remaining. Baggins had a Coke, and I had what looked like a gin and tonic, but could have been any clear sparkling drink with a slice of lemon.

I didn't remember eating any nachos. I searched my mouth for the taste, but there was nothing there. Perhaps a hint of toothpaste.

'What have you been up to?' I asked.

'School's rubbish,' she said.

'What's your favourite subject?'

'Don't have one.'

That was familiar. Since the age of five, she had maintained a succinct and consistent policy that school was pointless and that she'd be leaving at the first opportunity.

'What's your least favourite subject?'

'Art,' she said, investing the word with a child's disdain. 'I mean, really? What is the point of them making us do art? I'm rubbish at it. I'm always going to be rubbish at it. It's just a total waste of time. And it's even worse because of Sauron.'

She called her art teacher Sauron. I'd met the art teacher a couple of times. I called her Sauron too.

'Maybe you'll get a different art teacher next year,' I said.

'I'm thinking of paying one of the sixth formers to have sex with her so she gets sacked.'

'Nice,' I said. 'Where did you get that idea?'

'You told me,' she said.

'No I didn't!'

'Yes you did. I was saying that I hoped someone would murder her, and you said that's not very nice, but if I could find a sixth former to have sex with her she'd get sacked.'

I looked at her, and she turned her gaze from the Seattle night and nodded.

'It's a good plan,' she said.

'I never said that.'

She licked her fingers and then reached down and dabbed up the dregs of the nachos.

'Well, all right, it wasn't you. But it was the other you.'

I snapped awake. Looked at the clock. 3:59am.

––––––––

'S
o what did you say the band was called?'

I was standing in Abbey Road Studio 1. Where the Beatles came. There's not a tour you can do of the recording studios. I'd phoned ahead, told some enormous fat lies and made an appointment.

I needed a recording studio for a band I was putting together. Abbey Road would be perfect, and I'd like to come down, meet the engineers, start sorting everything out.

What was I expecting? That the Jigsaw Man would be here, beavering away at some project or other? I didn't really think that. Somehow I knew it was going to be straightforward, but just not this straightforward. If he'd been coming to work every day at Abbey Road, Agents Crosskill and No Name would have nabbed him by now. And anyway, he'd spent at least two years sitting in a café doing jigsaws in Glasgow, so whatever part he'd played in the recording of
Sgt. Pepper
, it wasn't necessarily a job he was still doing now.

All the thinking I'd been doing since meeting Mr Pike Place Roast had got me wondering whether or not the Jigsaw Man was the Fifth Beatle after all. It didn't, for example, explain how there came to be four of him. I suspected that his part in proceedings was going to turn out to be much more esoteric.

'Still with the marketing people,' I said.

'Cool.'

I was being shown round by a woman in her mid-twenties. I was probably only about fifteen years older than her, but there was some youthful quality about her that made me feel we were separated by at least two generations.

'Boy band?' she asked.

I'd thought it out the previous night, sitting in the hotel room. I knew I'd find what I was looking for when I found it, and getting ejected from Abbey Road wasn't exactly a disaster, but I was still keen not to embarrass myself. I also knew that I couldn't mention the Beatles.

'Yep,' I said. 'Five piece.'

'X-Factor?'

'Steering well clear of that stuff. We're doing it all ourselves. Got a lot of money to invest in the project. Clean start, indie label stuff, but aiming to go mainstream and take everyone by surprise. Give Syco a run for their money at Christmas.'

'Awesome.'

'Totally,' I heard myself say.

'What producer are you using?'

'Speaking to a couple of guys,' I said. 'Just been to Warsaw and Seattle, met a few people. Narrowed the list down. We want to make sure we've got the right people on board.'

'Epic,' she said. 'Warsaw, Poland?'

I nodded, as we moved on and walked along a short corridor.

'My boyfriend recorded there once. At SoundandMore. D'you take a look at that?'

I shook my head, chose my words before saying anything. I was looking for an airhead conversation, of generalities, soundbites and inanities. Surely that wasn't too much to ask in this day and age?

'Studio wise, we're very Abbey Road focussed,' I said. 'You know, it's going to give the boys a great kick start. The whole Abbey Road vibe.'

'Awesome,' she said.

I stopped myself saying anything and walked on behind her.

*

S
he left me in a small control room, with a large window looking out onto a studio floor. There wasn't much equipment currently in the studio, although there was a grand piano in the corner.

The vast mixing desk stretched out before me. I found myself doing the multiplication to count the knobs, then stopped.

It was all a mystery to me. I hadn't been near a musical instrument since I'd persuaded my mum to let me give up piano lessons when I was seven. I had never given a second's thought to how songs were produced, music made, albums recorded. I just listened to them. The little I did know came from this place and involved the Beatles, although that had been over forty years ago.

The door opened and the old engineer I'd been promised entered carrying two mugs of tea. He handed me one, and then placed his own on the edge of the control desk.

'Might need to let it cool a bit,' he said.

I nodded. By now I ought to have been feeling extremely uncomfortable, what with my visit having been based on such a lie, but suddenly, with the old chap's entrance into the room, I realised that the lie didn't matter.

'Happy with what you've seen?' he said.

'Looks great,' I said. After all, it did.

'You think it'll be right for this boy band of yours.'

I held his gaze for a moment, during which it felt like there were several sentences of unspoken conversation exchanged.

'There's no band,' I said.

He shook his head, but the few sentences of unspoken conversation had prepared him for it.

'And no money...' he added ruefully, although I wouldn't have thought that that particularly mattered.

'Actually, there's an endless supply of money. Nevertheless, no band.'

'Beatles fan?' he said.

I wondered how often this happened, and was suddenly surprised that I'd even been allowed through the door.

'Well, that's not what brings me here,' I said.

He took a loud sip of tea, sucking the liquid through his lips, then indicated with the cup for me to continue.

'You've been here a long time?' I asked.

'That I have.'

'You were here for
Sgt. Pepper
?'

'I was here all right. Working on other things. I was the office boy back then, didn't have nothing to do with the likes of the Beatles. But I was here.'

'Have you heard a story of the fifth Beatle?'

'There are a lot of fifth Beatles.'

'The one who helped put together the
Sgt. Pepper
concept. The Jigsaw Man.'

He took another loud sip of tea, then looked at me curiously over the top of the cup.

'The Jigsaw Man?'

'Yes.'

Shook his head, laid the cup back down.

'Doesn't mean anything. There've been a lot of fifth Beatles, starting with young Sutcliffe, right up to Billy Preston. On
Sgt. Pepper
, sure there was the orchestra, all sorts of orchestral musicians, but none that you'd have said were the fifth Beatle. George Martin, if anyone.'

'The Jigsaw Man is said to have had the basic idea of turning the song "Sgt Pepper" into this great colourful concept, of giving the whole album its eclectic, vaudeville-type feel.'

'Didn't happen. That was Paul,' he said. 'All Paul's work. John hated it.'

I realised I'd been sitting forward, eagerly listening, but now I sat back. Still didn't lift the mug of tea. I wasn't disappointed, having already realised there was going to have been no fifth Beatle involved in the recording of the album. Had needed to ask though.

'You're asking,' he said, 'but you don't believe it. There were a bunch of fifth Beatles, but all you guys, the fans, you know about them already. There's rarely anything lurking beneath the surface, and if there is... well, it ain't going to be some guy controlling the album that you've never heard of before. You don't like tea?'

I shook my head and took a sip. He was right. It was still too hot.

'Prefer coffee,' I said, putting the cup back down.

'Should have said.'

'I was trying to be someone else.'

He laughed, and this time took a longer and even louder slurp.

'What now?' he said, when he'd lain the cup back down.

'I need to work things out. The Jigsaw Man has something to do with
Sgt. Pepper
, but he's not actually a guy who worked on the album. So what else is there going to be? I thought this would be the automatic place to come.'

'Marketing, promotion, something like that? Maybe helped put the album cover together? I don't know much about that side of the potato. You could speak to Peter Blake.'

'No,' I said, 'it's more intrinsic to the recording of the album than that. It relates to the album in the way that Mr Pike Place Roast relates to Starbucks.'

'You're losing me, son.'

'Yet, Starbucks produce those thirteen basic types of coffee and there are thirteen guys working in a laboratory. The equivalent of Starbucks producing coffee is the Beatles producing songs. There were thirteen songs on that album, which would imply that there should be thirteen Jigsaw Men. And it could be that there's more than a coincidence with the number thirteen, but there are only four Jigsaw Men, which implies that the Jigsaw Man relates to the Beatles themselves, of course. Which I knew already. Those guys in Seattle just threw me off with the talk of the fifth Beatle. But what's the correlation between the Beatles and the coffee? Surely the correlation would be between the Beatles and the guys who started Starbucks?'

'Who started Starbucks?' asked the old fella. I shook my head. He nodded. 'Exactly. Sure, you could look it up on Wikipedia, but in general, who knows? Ask anyone in the street what they can tell you about Starbucks, and it'll be the type of drinks they sell, particularly coffee. Ask anyone what they can tell you about
Sgt. Pepper
, they're not necessarily going to start with the fact that "Fixing A Hole" follows "Getting Better". They're going to start with the Beatles themselves. John, Paul, George and Ringo. The essence of Starbucks is the coffee, the essence of
Sgt. Pepper
is the Beatles.'

This guy had no idea where I was coming from or what I was talking about, but what he'd said made sense. It was coming together, but in a way that transcended rationality. Yet hadn't that always been the case? Since this whole thing had begun, had there been any rationality? Had there even been any rationality to a guy sitting in a café all day, every day, doing jigsaw puzzles?

'I need to go,' I said, getting to my feet. 'Sorry about the tea.'

'That's all right, son,' he said. 'You know where you're going?'

'Not entirely,' I said. 'But I'm going to walk out the front door and find what I'm looking for.'

'Sure you are. Mind if I have your tea when I'm finished this one?'

'You go ahead,' I said.

I shook his hand and walked to the door.

'OK to see myself out?'

'Roger that,' he threw over his shoulder without turning. Before the door closed behind me, I heard one last loud slurp.