Idea in Stone (26 page)

“Depends,” she answered.

Stefan held up the newspaper.

“Oh no,” she said. “If it’s a suspicious death, the police get involved. Och, it’s such a hassle.” She stopped to think. “But that was back in June. They normally would have contacted us by now.”

“Yeah,” said Stefan, “here’s the funny thing: someone’s still making calls on the phone.”

“So the police—?”

“Didn’t find the phone on him. Someone else must have found it.”

“Oh help,” sighed Jenny.

“Can I take this case?” he asked. “My numbers are way up. I’ve processed enough cases for the next month.”

“Well,” said Jenny, “I don’t know. The supervisor’s away. You’d have to ask—” She stopped and shook her head. “I can’t.”

“What?”

“I’d have to go before the directors,” she said. “And I don’t want to do that.”

“I’ll do it,” said Stefan.

Jenny looked at him, surprised. “If you want to. But I can’t go with you.”

Stefan didn’t understand what the issue was. “Okay. Just tell me where to go.”

“I’ll take you,” she said, “but I won’t go in.”

He nodded, collected the file from his desk, and followed her. She led them down several halls, up a grand old staircase, then to a door.

“They’re up there,” she said.

“What should I do?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen them myself. Few people have. I hear they brought them here when the company bought the property, and they’ve never been down from there since. Other people say they used to belong to the last company that was in this building. Nobody knows how old they are.”

“What do they do?”

“Nobody knows that, either. But it’s very important. It’s very expensive to keep them.”

“Okay,” said Stefan, straightening his tie and organising his files, “I’m going up.”

“Good luck,” said Jenny.

Stefan opened the door, revealing a small, narrow staircase. The stairs were old, worn wood, with a green carpet running up their middle. The door closed behind him, leaving him in the pale light of the oil lamps fixed to the walls. The air was cold. He climbed for what seemed like an especially long time. Eventually, he reached a thick wooden door covered in intricate carvings of stags, armour, crowns, unicorns, and twisting, snakelike creatures.

With effort, he opened the door and stepped into the semi-darkness of what he took for an attic or a chapel. He shivered, and squinted, trying to get his bearings. Something across the room moved slowly. A lone lamp lit, and a tall man with a long face and white hair turned a key to raise the flame slightly. He sat at a long, heavy wooden desk with eight other figures. Some were short, some average, others round and fat, but they all wore the same white hair and dusty grey clothes of no discernible age or fashion. Before them were opened huge books, and each had a pen beside him, rested in an inkwell.

The tall man pursed his lips and took an eternity to wheeze the word “What?”

“I was working on my files this morning—I work on the Outstanding Team, I’m new here—and I came across this case,” said Stefan. His words felt like they were coming out at a hummingbird’s pace. “It might be a suicide. See, the police didn’t find the mob—”

The tall man held up his hand, and Stefan stopped speaking. The man turned his head to one side then the other, looking at the other directors, who returned his gaze. He turned back to Stefan. “Investigate,” the man articulated carefully.

“Myself? Thanks. I’ll let you know what I—”

The man raised his hand again. “Go.”

“Right,” said Stefan. “Thanks. I’ll, um, I’ll go now. Thanks.” He turned, slipping on the dusty floor, and exited through the door, which was still closing. He ran down the stairs, back to Jenny.

“They asked me to investigate!” he said.

“Look at you,” she said. “I’m proud. You’re one of those ambitious types. You won’t be in our section for long. So what are you going to do first?”

Stefan’s face fell. “I have to call the number.”

~

The next afternoon, Stefan still hadn’t made the call. He sat at his desk, looking at the phone in front of him. He’d managed not to make any calls so far, but now it was inevitable. He reached for the phone and noticed his hand shaking. He’d made telephone calls before. It was awkward, trying to hear and speak with the constant interruption of the second voice, and he was embarrassed that he came across badly, but he managed nonetheless. He wasn’t sure why he felt so nervous now.

He pulled his arm back, then lunged, picking up the handset. He looked at the number, which by now he’d memorised, and dialled it. He pressed the handset to his head, ready to listen carefully.

The line rang several times, and he exhaled. Perhaps there wouldn’t be an answer. Then he heard a click. “Hello?” he said.

“Hello?” said a voice.

One single voice.

“Hello?” he asked again.

“Hello,” replied the other voice. He knew the sound of it intimately. “It’s you,” he said. He was about to launch into all the questions he’d bottled up for years, but the phone started to buzz, then to feed back, until the sound became an unbearable screech. He had to slam the phone into its cradle to stop the noise.

~

On the weekend, Stefan grew restless. He was determined to make the best of a rare sunny day. He caught a bus to Portobello, and spent the afternoon walking along the shore of the Firth of Forth, an offshoot of the North Sea that jutted into Scotland’s east coast.

The days were getting shorter. The sun lowered, turning the water into molten bronze. Stefan left the shore, his face still warm and his lungs full of sea air, and walked back toward his bus stop. He detoured into a chippy next to the stop and ordered a fish supper. “Salt and sauce?” asked the man behind the counter. Stefan agreed, and the man slapped a large piece of fish like a battered tie onto a square of paper, shovelled chips onto it, waved a can-like salt shaker over the meal, then squirted vinegary brown sauce back and forth over it. He deftly wrapped the corners up, twisted them, made it all into a hot packet, and gave this to Stefan in exchange for a few pound coins.

Stefan carefully unwrapped part of the package and ate chips as he walked to the bus stop. As he waited, a group of young men walked into the chip shop. One of them talked animatedly, dominating the conversation. Stefan’s bus pulled up as the men left the shop again. He stepped onto the bus and dropped his coins into the collection box, just as another of the men spoke. “No, no, no,” the man argued with the loud friend, “that’s not true. That wasn’t how it happened.”
The voice from the phone.
Stefan turned to look as the door closed behind him and caught a glimpse of the speaker—tall, slim, with a wild brush of black hair.
Ask the driver to stop!
he thought. But he hesitated, and they pulled away from the kerb. Stefan rushed to the back of the bus, balancing his supper in his hand, and watched the figures recede from sight.
What if that was The One,
he thought,
and I just missed him?

That night, he lay awake in his small bed, waiting anxiously to get back to work.

Fourteen

Peter Hailes

Stefan wondered if showering would have any effect, he was doing it so quickly. Bubbles flew onto the tiles as he slicked the soap from his body. He jabbed his finger at the shower’s “On/Off” button and ripped his towel in half as he yanked it from the hook on the wall. Today, that didn’t bother him. He scrubbed himself with both halves as he walked through the flat, dropping them when he reached the clothes he’d thrown on his bed for today. His shirt was wrinkled terribly, so he held it over the kettle while it boiled, then dressed and poured half of the boiling water into a cup of instant coffee and the other half into a bowl of instant porridge.

He gave up on breakfast. This morning his stomach was not suited to food. It was a zoo’s butterfly room during mating season. He swung a tie over his neck (
Did I wear this tie yesterday? Do I care?),
cinched it tight, and headed out the door.

The bus arrived at glacial speed then stopped every four feet as it travelled. Stefan tried to be patient. He looked out the top floor windows. He looked around at the other riders. The children in blazers with posh accents didn’t intimidate him today. They weren’t smarter or more important than him, they just had accents. He spoke quietly to himself, finally having a hang of the sound of their voices. “Mummy, Mummy, my pony is dead!” The kids in the back seats with the rougher dialect measured drugs into bags for the day’s deals, and Stefan found it cute.
Tomorrow’s entrepreneurs today.

At the next stop the youngsters stampeded out, and the bus continued on to the edges of the city. Stefan shot his finger like an arrow, ringing the bell as soon as the office came into sight. He raced down the stairs and leapt out the door, saying “Thank you, Driver,” as he’d heard others say (adopting the accent, too).

“Morning, Jenny,” he said as he jumped into his chair.

“You’re early today,” she said.

“Just anxious to get started on my investigation.”

“Ah, right, The Case of the Missing Mobile.” She sat one half of her round bum on his desk. “So how are you going to find out who has it?”

Stefan blinked.

“I imagine you’re going to want to talk to Tech.”

“Yes, right. That’s what I was thinking.”

Jenny laughed. “And how are you going to get them to respond to you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I put in for a new keyboard last winter. I got an e-mail back saying they were busy this year.” She stood up. “I’m sure you’ll think of something. After all, you’re the only person I know who’s ever seen the directors.”

“Where’s their office?” he asked.

“There’s a steel door at the back of the building. They’re behind that.”

Stefan thanked her. He logged onto the company e-mail system, found the Tech department in the directory, and sent a message to them. They didn’t reply. He sent another message, asking if they’d received his first one. Again, no reply. He wrote a third time, mentioning that the directors has asked him to investigate, and asked if they would help him. No reply. He sent another: “Hello?”

Half an hour later, he received a reply: “Bugger off.”

He went outside to look for the door to the Tech department. He had to punch out to leave the building, but he didn’t care about that. He followed one wall around to the back, where he found a steel panel about the size of a door, but with no markings and no handle. He knocked, timidly at first, then harder and harder, but the door was too dense to convey any sound to the other side. There also seemed to be a distinct lack of anyone listening.

“Excuse me,” said someone behind him, startling him. The man wore matching blue work trousers, jacket, and cap. In his arms was an open cardboard box containing a big silver bag marked “Coffee”. The man stepped up to the door, putting his hands on his hips, which made an imposing shape of his broad, muscular frame.

“What?” said a voice from no discernible direction.

“Catering,” answered the man, unbothered by the abruptness of the voice.

“Can I give you a hand with this?” Stefan asked the man.

“Sure, if you want to get one of those canisters,” said the man, nodding his head toward his truck. Stefan went to it and found several fountain drink refill canisters like small torpedoes. He tried to lift one marked “Irn-Bru” , but it was too heavy. He rolled it on its end to the open door, then down a steeply sloped corridor. The only direction sign he saw was marked “Bomb shelter” in vintage lettering. He followed that, passed several times by the delivery man, who carried a canister under each arm, then made more trips with boxes of coffee, followed by boxes of candy bars, sugar packets, and cartons of irradiated milk. Stefan continued rolling his canister and reached the Tech room at the same time the delivery man made his last trip, carrying a single bunch of bananas. They stood with the supplies in a small pool of light under a lone bulb.

A tall person entered the light and signed the delivery man’s clipboard. Stefan wasn’t sure if it was a man or a woman, this person with a large beak of a nose on a tiny head. Its colourless skin and bulging eyes gave it the look of a deep-sea anomaly. The figure had long, slicked-back, bleached yellow hair, and wore a floor-length black leather coat. Looking up, it saw Stefan. “What is
he
doing here? Why did you let him in?”

“He was helping me,” said the man, tearing off a receipt. “Gotta go.”

“Take him with you!” shrieked the blond creature, showing long, stained rodent teeth.

“Sorry. He’s not with me. I think he works with you. See ya.”

“No!” it yelled, but the man was gone. It turned to Stefan. “Get out! You can’t be in here.”

“Actually, I think I can,” said Stefan, annoyed now. He held out a printed copy of the case details. “The directors told me to investigate.”

The blonde thing grabbed the paper and examined it. It pondered something for a moment. “You can reach the number?” it asked.

“I’ve only called once.”