Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite! Read online

  'James Kite,' I said. I'd already answered that question a hundred times.

  'Who were your parents?'

  'I said. Mr and Mrs Kite. My dad was William, William Kite.'

  'Funny,' she said. 'We can't find any trace of your parents.'

  'They're both dead,' I said. 'I said...'

  'Buddy, Hitler's dead, doesn't mean you can't find traces of the guy,' said the moustache, finding the first glib remark of the day. 'Your parents, on the other hand... vamoose.' He leaned forward. I could smell him. I want to say he smelled of cheap aftershave, but maybe it wasn't cheap. I wouldn't know.

  'You want a lawyer?' asked the woman.

  I nodded. My first thought was, how expensive is that going to be? I'm never going to be able to afford a lawyer. Nevertheless, I nodded.

  'You know how many people know you're here?' she asked.

  I shook my head. I looked at the mirror and she followed my gaze.

  'Two,' she said, turning back to me. 'Just me and Agent Crosskill here. There isn't even anyone behind the glass. No one else knows. We can do whatever we like to you, and no one will ever know.'

  Agent Crosskill?

  She paused. Her eyes did not leave me. I withered beneath her stare. I hated that they made me feel like that. I wanted to stand up to her. I wanted to be blasé, I wanted to be like some guy in a film. I don't know, Bruce Willis maybe. Bruce Willis never wilts beneath anyone's stare.

  'You're not getting a lawyer,' she said. 'Ever. Chances are, in fact, that you're never walking out of this room. Start telling us the truth and maybe we'll let you go to the bathroom.'

  Her words crawled into my head. She hadn't shared her partner's increase in tone and tempo. She had spoken slowly, casually almost, like she was a public servant telling me that I needed to renew my driving licence, or that I'd underpaid my council tax by three pounds. And her words crept inside me and wormed their way down into my stomach, and suddenly the nerves and fear that gripped my insides were a transfixing, physical torment.

  I wasn't getting out. I wasn't going to see Brin and Baggins. That was all that mattered. I'd been waiting so long for that.

  'You have to let me speak to my family,' I said. I had to cough just to get the words out.

  'We have to?' she said. 'Did you give the same consideration to all those people on the plane that crashed?'

  'What plane?'

  She never took her eyes off me. Neither did the guy with the moustache. They did not exchange a glance. They were attached to me, as if they had fired a taser into my head.

  'What plane?' I said again. Although, of course, I knew what plane they meant. Of course I knew. I'd been on the plane.

  'You were checked in to travel on a plane that, twelve hours ago, crashed into the side of a mountain, killing everyone on board.' She paused, although there was something in her voice that said she wasn't finished. 'Yet here you are.'

  It wasn't a question, as such, so I didn't know what to say. There was no answer to give.

  'My colleague is right,' said Agent Crosskill. 'Guys like you don't get lawyers. Guys like you disappear and are never heard from again.'

  I held his gaze for a moment and then looked past them to the door. Had they been telling the truth? Was there no one out there who knew about me? Could I, just for a moment, be the action movie hero, the guy who takes out his two interrogators, and then walks calmly from the building, straightening his cuffs as he goes?

  'You're tagged,' she said. The unnamed female agent, with the tightly tied back hair, who could read my thoughts.

  I lowered my eyes. I did not look down at my ankle, but with those words I became aware of the touch of something strapped round the bottom of my leg.

  'Do what you like, but cross that door and you'll set off so many alarms the Marines in Okinawa will hear it.'

  I glanced at her, and then at the door and finally settled my gaze on the mirror. Was there really no one behind the glass? Why bother putting me in a room like this? I might as well be in a stinking basement with rats and spider-infested ancient brick walls.

  I couldn't think. I just wanted to speak to Brin and tell her everything was all right, and then I wanted to lie down.

  How could I tell her that everything was all right?

  'Tell us about the Jigsaw Man.'

  5

  There was a morning at the Stand Alone. A morning like any other, I suppose someone somewhere might call it. When I arrived Fanque and Two Feet were there, sitting on a sofa. Henderson would have been studying for his accountancy exam, and Jones was otherwise occupied. I might have been feeling all right if I hadn't known what she was doing, or if I'd known she was in Paris with her family or in bed with the flu. However, I knew that she was likely still in bed with the guy she'd met in the bar the night before.

  Jones had been drunk, and had got as close as she ever did to making an actual move on Henderson. When he removed himself from the playing field and left early, I shamelessly decided to try to take advantage of the fact that she was on her sixth vodka and Coke of the night, whereupon she – somewhat ironically, as it turned out – treated me like her gay friend and proceeded to tell me how much she wanted Henderson.

  What she also wanted was to sleep with someone, but I guess I was too close. Or not her type. Or not even on her radar. I went to the men's room at some point and got back to find that I'd lost her to someone else. I didn't get the chance to speak to her again, and she left with the guy not long afterwards.

  I collected my coffee and pain au chocolat from the counter, turned and surveyed the café. Ten tables of various sizes. A couple of comfy sofas to the right of the door as you entered, but we usually didn't sit in those. I preferred to sit at a table. Tables are more conducive to conversation than large sofas.

  Four tables were occupied, plus Fanque and Two Feet at the sofa on the right. They seemed to be having an intimate conversation, which I took as an invitation to ignore them. On my way to sit at a small two-seater table by myself, I passed the Jigsaw Man. He was working on a picture of a map of the world, as viewed some time in the early 17th century.

  So far he'd managed the complete border of the puzzle, with one piece missing at the top left, plus the beginnings of Europe, isolated in the middle of the jigsaw.

  'All right?' I said, stopping as I walked past.

  'You?' said the Jigsaw Man, who was usually so all right that it was taken for granted that he didn't have to answer the question when it was directed his way.

  'Good,' I said, although I really wasn't. I was love sick.

  I watched him for a second as he placed a piece that straddled the Spanish-French border. I always wanted to stand and watch him do the jigsaw. It was so relaxing. Yet it was so relaxing, that I felt uncomfortable.

  It always gave me some weird, inexplicable feeling in my brain. Hard to explain. Well, it would be, wouldn't it, if it was inexplicable? Just a feeling of intense relaxation.

  I never understood it, until I read an article in the Independent. Apparently watching someone do some mundane task for an extended period had a positive, relaxing effect on the brain, and could induce weird, almost tingling sensations in your head. The article was at pains to point out that this wasn't in any way sexual – which was good, because there was certainly nothing sexual about me standing watching the Jigsaw Man do a jigsaw – but then when they gave a name to the phenomenon they called it a braingasm.

  Anyway, I wasn't aware of braingasms or anything else, just that I found it slightly uncomfortable that I enjoyed watching the Jigsaw Man do his puzzle. I was about to walk off when, amongst the collection of nearly five thousand, I spotted the missing perimeter piece.

  I knew he wasn't especially protective of his art, and pointed it out to him.

  'Hmm,' he said. 'Thanks.'

  'You're welcome,' I said, and started to walk off.

  'You want to join me?' he said, just as I turned my back. I stopped, glanced at him. This was unexpected.

/>   'You've got that look about you,' he said. 'Love sick.'

  I hesitated. Really? I looked love sick? Even the Jigsaw Man, sitting there in his silent sagacity, could see it. And he hadn't even looked up.

  'Thanks,' I said, and pulled out the seat opposite him. The table was just big enough for my coffee and small plate. He turned to the counter and nodded at Janine.

  He turned back to me. He was older than all of us. Something of the Alan Rickman to him, yet there was a vagueness about his face. As though you wouldn't recognise him if you saw him elsewhere.

  I wondered how much I was about to blurt out about Jones. I needn't have worried. This was the Jigsaw Man. I didn't have to say anything.

  'She's not for you,' he said.

  We both knew about whom he was talking.

  'That's... you know...' I began, not really sure what to say.

  'I take it you haven't told her?'

  I shook my head.

  'If you tell her, then maybe you might get somewhere, for a while. But it wouldn't last long, and it would never be right. She sees you as her brother, or as her gay friend maybe, which is ironic given Henderson.'

  We stared at each other across the jigsaw. Janine appeared at his side, knowing from the nod that he had wanted a black coffee. Janine left, stage right, having given me a slight smile. In her eyes I had just been elevated in status.

  'You mean Henderson's gay?' I said.

  The Jigsaw Man said nothing and added a piece of northern Spain.

  Which was how I found out that Jones was in love with someone who would never want her. And although Jones herself obviously wasn't gay, there was a clear parallel in the hopelessness of my affection.

  6

  'There's a guard outside the door,' I said. There were guards all along the corridor.

  I'd been walked along to the bathroom and returned to the small cell with the large mirrored wall. Agent Crosskill had gone. The female agent had walked me back.

  'Of course there's a guard outside the door,' she said.

  The door was open, and the guard would have been able to hear the conversation.

  'You said you two were the only ones who knew I was here.'

  'We have some idea of who you are, and who your family are, your name and where you're from. We don't know how you managed to be on that plane and how you caused it to crash. The...'

  'I didn't...' I began, but then let the sentence vanish.

  '...guard at the door,' she continued, 'is a man with a gun. He knows nothing about you. He has a brain, but he might as well not have. He does not need to know anything about you, and neither does he care. If you step one foot beyond the area outside your door unaccompanied, he will shoot you. He will shoot you in such a way that you will be in a lot of pain, but will not die. You must be hungry?'

  I suddenly realised I was. I had no idea how long it was since I'd eaten or drunk anything. I hadn't been able to think about food, but nevertheless, when the possibility of it was placed in front of me, my stomach ached and I felt very, very dehydrated.

  'Yes,' I said.

  'You're not getting any food,' she said, re-using her highly effective lawyer scam of earlier on.

  She left. I waited for the click. The juddering crash of locks turning and bolts being thrown across the door. There was nothing.

  I stood in the middle of this small room. Even if there wasn't someone watching me at that very moment, I was going to assume that there was. Even if there hadn't been the huge mirror, then I would have presumed there was a camera in the corner of the room.

  I stood still for upwards of ten minutes. Completely frozen. I don't know what I thought was going to happen if I moved. Perhaps there would be a tannoy in the room, a detached voice ready to cut me down.

  I looked around. The room was a perfect square, each side perhaps sixteen feet. There was the small desk, nothing more than a table top with four legs. Two chairs on one side, and one chair on the other. The chair that I had sat on was slightly more elaborate, with loops of metal that would facilitate the fastening of bonds. They had obviously thought that bonds were not something that needed to be facilitated in my case.

  Finally deciding to move, I tested something that I'd thought when I'd been sitting there previously. The table and chairs were all fixed. They were happy to leave me in a room with these, because they were effectively part of the floor. There was no way that they could be lifted or taken apart to be used as a weapon.

  Two of the walls were plain. The third wall was largely made up of the mirror. The fourth wall had the door in the middle. One might have expected the door to have no handle, but there was a round knob right there where it should have been.

  Having made the movement to check whether the chair and desk were affixed, and having not been shouted at, I felt a little more confident. I walked to the door and tried the handle. I felt my stomach jump, a real physical sensation of needing to swallow something back down, as the knob turned and the door clicked open. I hesitated for a second, then pulled the door ajar.

  The guard was standing on the opposite side of the wide hallway. He had his back against the wall, hands held together and resting somewhere around his crotch. He was holding a handgun and looking straight at me, which was, I believe, because previously he'd been looking straight at the door.

  He was about eight feet away. I looked along the corridor. There were doors down one side every fifteen yards or so. It was so long in either direction that I couldn't see the end of it. Opposite each door there was a guard standing in exactly the same position as my guard.

  How many rooms did they have? Why did they have a guard standing outside each room like this? Why not just have the doors locked, and fewer guards?

  I looked at my guard. He was so still he barely seemed to be breathing.

  Perhaps it was the same psychology as the offer of a lawyer or food. They were leaving the door open, as if they were offering you freedom, but in fact there was nothing.

  I wondered what would happen if I just walked off down the corridor, but I didn't have the confidence to try to find out. She had said I'd be shot. Maybe the thought of a bullet somewhere non-fatal was enough to put me off. Whatever it was, I wasn't yet ready to walk casually along the corridor to see where it led.

  I went back into the room and closed the door. I stood for a second in silence, and then I walked to my seat at the table and sat down. I leaned forward and put my elbows on the table and my head in my hands. Right there, I thought it might all come out. The stress of the last few months; the plane crash, turning up in Nairn, the relief that it would all be over and I could go home; the thought that I was going to walk back in and see Brin and Baggins, snatched from me; the interrogation, the hunger, the thirst and the fear.

  I didn't think about who might be watching. I'd let it all out. I'd sob, sobbing for those standing behind the mirror, sobbing for myself, sobbing for the family I missed.

  Except nothing came.

  *

  I don't know what I'd been expecting from the First Class cabin on a BA 747. I think I still had it in my mind that there'd be side-by-side seats in rows like they had in the old days, and that I'd be sitting next to someone who may, or may not, ruin my flight by engaging me in conversation. I don't think I was quite ready for the amount of room offered, and the fact that there's no need to even remotely engage with anyone that you don't want to.

  I sat in my lonely little piece of upcoming airspace, as the 747 sat on the runway, on a beautiful, clear, chill afternoon in London. Not a breath of wind. Perfect flying conditions. I didn't even have any nerves. I sent my final texts to Brin and Baggins, waited for the replies, then turned my phone off.

  The first thing I intended doing was having another read-through of the script. Try to predict what problems Marion Hightower might hone in on with the project and come up with suggestions on how we'd deal with them. It felt like preparing for a job interview.

  The script was in my lap, but I hadn'
t looked at it yet. Plenty of time.

  A flight attendant stood over me, holding a small tray with glasses of orange juice and glasses of champagne.

  'Good afternoon, James,' she said.

  'Good afternoon.'

  She smiled. Her teeth were white and her skin was plastered thick with make-up. Underneath it all she was probably quite attractive, but it was impossible to tell. When the warm, damp facecloths were handed round at some point, I'd be tempted to leap up, pin her down and scrub her face. It was likely that I wouldn't follow through on that.

  'My name's Jade, and if you need anything just ask. Would you like a glass of Dom Perignon?'

  'What year is it?' I asked.

  She looked a little nonplussed, and for a moment I thought she was going to give me today's date, then she realised that I was asking about the vintage of the wine. Of course, she was never going to realise that I was being facetious, because I've never had Dom Perignon in my life and I couldn't tell between a 1966 and an April 1st 2000BC.

  Or maybe people always make that joke and she was actually thinking, 'Oh dear... First time in First Class, is it?'

  'I'm not sure. I can find out,' she said.

  I smiled. 'It's all right, I don't mind. I'll have the Dom Perignon, please.'

  And there I was, asking for the champagne, even though I don't like champagne, just because I'd made a stupid joke. And having asked for it I was going to have to drink it.

  Thereafter I kept my interaction with the cabin crew to monosyllables and polite smiles. A snack came not long after take off. The in-flight entertainment was turned on. I had a quick check and nothing grabbed my attention, so I plugged my headphones in, the Beatles on, and had another look through the film script.

  My Jigsaw Man was a warrior philosopher right enough. He did jigsaws, in his corner, in a small café. He didn't own the café, he just owned the space in which he existed. When trouble came to town, he dealt with it, and people were in awe of his awesomeness.

  Yep, it was that awful. I knew, sitting there on that plane, that it was a complete clunker of a script. It seemed weird that someone would actually want to buy it, but then it seemed even weirder that several years earlier I had sent the script to a series of screen agents, and one of them had come back to me to say how wonderful it was and that she felt sure that she could get the script optioned.