Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite! (8 page)

I felt like I was drowning.

'All I know about the Jigsaw Man was that he owned the Stand Alone Café, that he'd been married four times, and that one day he went off travelling and I never saw him again.'

As soon as I had finished speaking, Agent Crosskill rose from his seat, gave me one last harsh, judgemental look, and then walked quickly from the room, closing the door behind him.

I stared at the woman, who did not take her eyes from me.

'That's all I know,' I found myself saying.

'The Jigsaw Man did not own the Stand Alone Café,' she said. 'The Jigsaw Man was never married.'

I shook my head.

'Perhaps it's a different man,' I said. 'You must have them mixed up.'

'Your Jigsaw Man sat in the Stand Alone Café in Glasgow and did jigsaw puzzles?'

She pronounced Glasgow as if it rhymed with Mao or thou.

I swallowed. I nodded. Mouth felt dry. Head felt leaden.

'There's only one Jigsaw Man,' she said. 'And as far as anyone can tell, I'm looking at him right now.'

She got to her feet and followed Agent Crosskill from the room. I watched her go, and then lifted the water, unscrewed the cap, and gulped down the remaining half bottle.

––––––––

T
he plane wasn't landing. It was crashing. So out of control, being battered and tossed around so much, that it felt like it would break up even before impact. There were screams. One woman in particular. I think it was a woman. So high-pitched. So consistent, a high tone of despair.

In my head the scream became a seagull, the tone ululated. The sound of the fuselage buckling, of the plane in the storm, became the sound of the waves. Bigger waves, as though a large boat had just passed close to shore. I could hear them. I could hear Brin, chatting amiably. No worries. A beautiful, warm day by the sea. I could hear Baggins laughing. Baggins was laughing. Giggling. Ice cream on the end of her nose.

This was my happy place. This was our happy place. I was there. I could be there. I didn't have to be on the plane if I didn't want to be. The noise of the plane was swallowed up by the waves. I could be wherever I wanted. My whole body curled up into as small a coil as I could manage, every muscle and sinew tensed, my hands pressed hard against the panel in front of me, my head pressed hard against my hands. I was protected. The plane didn't matter anymore. The juddering and the shaking, various items flying around the cabin, the cries of panic. I wasn't there. None of it was real.

The sea was real. The gulls were real. That was the noise. That was the sound that surrounded me. The cry of the gulls. I had to focus on that. Such an emotive, evocative sound. The gulls. Focus on the gulls.

Some part of me, somewhere, was aware of the sudden ear-splitting crash as the bottom of the plane made impact with something. But just some part of me, that's all.

I heard the gulls.

That's how it happened. And that's all I know.

*

I
woke up. I was sitting at the desk, leaning over it, my head resting on my arms. I sat in that position for a while, barely able to open my eyes. The feeling that I used to have, however long ago it used to be, when I slept normally in a bed for eight hours. That early morning, first awake, sleepy-eyed feeling.

Through partially opened eyes I saw the mirror. I didn't have any confusion. I knew straight away where I was. I must have been dreaming about it, because there was no sitting bolt upright in fear at what I was waking up to. I was being interrogated about a plane crash. I was in a strange room, with a mirror wall and a closed door that was never locked. And they thought I was the Jigsaw Man.

The water bottle was no longer on the desk. Water bottle. Water. I needed to go to the bathroom.

I'd only just begun to hope that they wouldn't be too long in coming back, when I noticed the door was open. Not just unlocked, but wide open. This made me sit up, rub the sleep from my eyes. Had they knocked on the door? I felt like there had been knocking. That was what had woken me. The knocking.

I must have slept a long time. I could feel it. I had no way to tell the time, but I had the sense of having slept for several hours. Why had they kept me awake for so long and then suddenly let me sleep off all that tiredness?

Perhaps I had told them what they needed to know. I tried to think of what I'd said the last time they had been in here. It was all about the Jigsaw Man. But it had seemed at the time that they had been the ones making revelations.

The open door had to be some sort of test. Did I pass the test by sitting here waiting for something to happen? Or by going out into the corridor, engaging the guard, testing out my surroundings? Perhaps there was no test, there was neither pass nor fail; it was just an experiment, with someone watching through the mirror to record their findings.

I looked at the mirror, wondering whether anyone was behind there at this particular moment. Had they been watching me sleep? Was someone paid to watch me sleep? That had to be at the low end of the spectrum on career fulfilment.

I was suddenly gripped by the notion that it was time to move, and not just because I needed to pee. Whoever these people were, they were in complete control. I couldn't just sit there until I dropped dead. At some stage, if they never came in, I would be drawn out, so I just had to get on with it.

I was nervous going to the door. In a strange environment such as this, a closed door can also be a comfort. It's keeping things out, it's enclosing you in your cocoon. An open door let's you out, but it's also a portal to uncertainty.

That phrase came to me as I stood beside the door.
A portal to uncertainty
. It sounded so utterly preposterous that it had me pulling the door fully open, so that I could face the guard with as much annoyance as determination.

The guard wasn't there. I hesitated, and then stepped out into the corridor. There were no guards at all.

Deep breath, then I walked to the middle of the corridor, leaving my door open – was I worried that I wouldn't be able to find my room again? – and looked up and down the hallway. Door upon door, in either direction, all of them on the same side of the passage as my room. The opposite wall, the wall where the guards should be standing, was completely blank. A long grey wall of nothingness.

Now facing my room, I looked along the corridor to the left. That was where they'd taken me to the bathroom. A couple of times now, but I had been too discombobulated to think, or to count. It wasn't too far. Five, six or seven doors.

With a glance in the other direction, I started walking. One unmarked door followed on from another. I was wearing flat, simple, grey plimsolls, which made no sound on the floor.

I got to the sixth door along and stopped. I looked at the door, and the ones either side, to see if there might be some sort of clue. How did the agents and the guards tell the difference?

I stepped forward and opened the door. The room was identical to mine, and there was a single man sitting at a desk. His hair was short, his cheeks were hollow, his eyes dark. He had a moustache, but hadn't shaved for a few days so it blended into the rest of his facial growth. He was wearing an old worn and dirty suit, so rundown that it was hard to tell what colour it had once been. Yellow? Lime green perhaps. We stared at each other. There was something about him I recognised.

I thought of the haunted man who had stuck his head into my room. Perhaps he had awoken to find the same thing I'd just found. An open door. It was likely that everyone was subjected to the same experiment. How did you pass? How did you win?

Except, when the haunted man visited my room, he had been shot shortly afterwards. As far as I could tell, there were no guards out here to shoot me. Perhaps that was what the haunted man had also thought.

'You all right?' I asked.

He stared at me. I knew he wasn't going to speak.

'There are no guards out here,' I said.

There was a slight twitch of his mouth. Maybe he was an old hand. He knew what no guards meant. No guards was worse than a guard on every door for some reason, although I couldn't imagine what that would be.

I held his eyes for a while longer, and then pulled the door closed as I backed out into the corridor. I looked both ways to see if anyone had appeared. There was still no one. I moved along to the next door. It wasn't terribly comfortable intruding into a prisoner's private hell like this, but I did really need to go to the bathroom.

This was the right one. I entered. There were two toilet cubicles and no urinals. I peed for a long time, washed my hands, splashed cold water on my face for about a minute, then took a drink, cupping water in my hands. Dried my face and stood looking in the mirror.

Were they behind there, recording my every move?

Back in the corridor, I took another look in both directions. It was literally so long that I could see neither end. However, it was a building. It couldn't go on forever. I set off to find the very end of the passageway, and hopefully a door or stairs to some other part of the building.

––––––––

A
nd that was how it happened. The cry of the gulls.

I leapt out of my seat. Instant, total confusion. I wasn't in the seat. I was on East Beach at Nairn. The water's edge. I'd been curled up in a ball. The waves had splashed against my face. I'd jumped up.

Breathless, desperately breathless. Struggling to get air. Panicking. Spinning around and around. Frantic. Trying to work out what had happened. What
had
happened?

The gulls were overhead, crying out. As I staggered I became aware of the sea, the waves, the huge expanse of beach. In the distance there were people. It was warm. Why was it warm? It was December. How did I know it was December? It had been December ten seconds ago, but then ten seconds ago I'd been on a plane.

I thought of the plane. The crashing plane. The impact. The start of the impact. The fear of it grabbed harshly at my stomach. But then I wasn't on the plane.

I stopped spinning, stopped moving around in a jumbled attempt to find my bearings. I stopped. Stopped still. Tried to control my breathing.

My clothes were wet, my muscles were starting to come down off the desperate, feverish tension. Breathing. That was the important thing. Steady breaths. Steady.

I took a slow look around. I was on the far end of the beach. Away from the tourists and dog walkers. The nearest people were a good hundred yards away. There was a light breeze. The tide was about midway, too early to tell which way it was heading. Across the Moray Firth the hills of the Black Isle were green and clear in the sunlight. There was a large tanker at the entrance to the Cromarty Firth.

The tide, as it always does at Nairn, had created one of the ever-changing sandbanks some distance out into the sea, and there was something there. A seal perhaps, or a cormorant with its wings outstretched, drying out in the sun. Too far away to tell.

So I was on Nairn beach, our happy place, the place where Baggins and Brin had decided I should go during a bumpy plane ride.

Another sharp breath, and I tried to control it before it got out of hand. I looked around again, another long, slow gaze at the beach and the sea and the hills. The sea touched my feet and I realised I wasn't wearing any shoes. I'd taken them off on the plane.

I looked down. Wearing the same clothes. Quickly I dabbed at my pockets. Money, keys, credit card, where they always were. And phone.

I took it out and switched it on. My phone. I could phone someone. Phone Brin. Then I'd know this was real. But how could it be real?

The phone wouldn't turn on, but I stood there pressing the little red button for over a minute.

Phone back in pocket, another deep breath. A couple of women walking a dog were getting closer. I looked down at myself again. I felt like I shouldn't be there, like I was standing naked in public. But there was nothing to see, nothing different about me.

Why wasn't I on the plane?

As the dog walkers approached I bent down and quickly removed my socks, stuffed them together in my hand. I stepped away from the gentle incoming waves so that my trousers wouldn't get any wetter.

'Morning,' said one of them. The other smiled.

'Have you got the time?' I asked.

Check of the watch. 'Just after eleven,' she said.

I smiled and nodded a thank you. They started to walk past.

'Sorry, don't mean to sound weird. Could you tell me the date?'

She hesitated.

'It's the seventeenth of June,' said the other.

Weirdly that seemed right. At least, within the bizarre narrative in which I found myself. I had somehow been transported from the crashing plane to the beach in Nairn. That, in itself, seemed utterly bizarre. However, within that, I had been imagining being at the beach in June, not December, so having made the leap – in time and space? – it made sense.

'Thank you,' I said to their backs, as they walked off, their golden retriever skipping in and out of the sea.

Time and space. That made me think. Which June? I looked around. Was there any kind of clue to be had from the beach? The only readily distinguishable changing features were the sand banks, but I couldn't tell the difference from year to year. I could just tell that it never quite looked the same.

I watched the dog walkers go and decided not to shout after them to ask what year it was. Do that and I would be getting into standing-naked-in-a-crowd territory.

I walked towards the town. At the end of the beach, just over the sand dunes, there is a caravan park, with a large administration building with a shop and café. I headed there in a daze, no longer trying to think about the situation, as it was so utterly inexplicable.

Like the time those two hooded crows turned up in the loft. There really was no way for a bird to get into the loft. No gaps in the eves, no window left open. I checked everywhere. We'd lived in that house for over five years, and at no other time had anything ever got in that shouldn't have. It was a bright loft, a couple of large windows, easy to see into corners. There was nowhere to get in, and yet one afternoon, out of nowhere, two crows had turned up. There had been no rational explanation, so I'd stopped thinking about it.