Leslie was standing in front of the desk with his back to the Meissen girl and the wall where Pegase Noir had hung. He had his drink in his hand and a reckless smile on his face.
‘What?’ said Klein.
‘You the cool one, ain’t you, Prof,’ said Leslie. ‘You the man with the plan — get us both moved in here and then throw my black ass out in the street and gobble that Melissa pussy night and day. Oh yes, you the man.’
Klein was looking at Leslie but he saw beyond him, on the blank wall, Lucifer rising out of the inkblot, transcendent, pale green and high above him. ‘I didn’t have a plan,’ he said, ‘but I want you out.’
‘You want, Prof? Lemme tell you something, old numb-nuts …’ He reached behind him to put his drink on the mantelpiece and knocked over the Meissen girl. The porcelain figure fell to the hearth and shattered, and in that same moment the Paxos stone appeared in the middle of Leslie’s forehead with blood streaming from it.
Leslie disappeared from view. ‘O God!’ said Klein. ‘What have I done?’ He stood up, peered over the edge of the desk, and saw Leslie lying on the floor, his face and chest covered with blood. He looked down at his right hand that had held the stone and saw that it was empty. He was breathless, the usual leadenness was travelling down his left arm and he felt as if a heavy fist had punched him in the heart. He reached for the glyceryl trinitrate, squirted it under his tongue, and waited for things to settle down.
You got the action, said Oannes. You got the motion.
What about rest? said Klein. To Leslie, not visible from where he sat, he said, ‘I’m really sorry! I had no idea …’
Melissa appeared. ‘What happened?’ she said.
‘Up jumped Lucifer,’ said Klein, watching the inkblot soar high above the world into the infinity of the blank wall.
‘What are you talking about? Where’s Leslie?’
Klein pointed. Melissa came round the desk, knelt by Leslie, felt for a pulse. ‘He’s dead, Harold.’
‘I can’t believe that I killed him, it doesn’t seem real.’ His mind was singing:
Pack up all my care and woe,
Here I go, singing low,
Bye-bye, blackbird.
Melissa was looking at the bloody stone and the fragments of porcelain. ‘What happened?’ she said again.
‘He came up here and he was all worked up about whatever you said to him. He was ranting about his black ass being thrown out into the street and he knocked over the Meissen girl and I killed him with the Paxos stone.’
‘Jesus, Harold! You killed him for breaking a porcelain figure?’
‘The stone was in my hand and when I heard the figure shatter my arm went back and suddenly there was the stone in the middle of his forehead. It was nothing I’d intended — it just happened.’
Leslie fucked with the wrong guy this time, said Oannes.
‘I wouldn’t have thought you were strong enough to throw that hard,’ said Melissa, shaking her head.
‘I wouldn’t have thought so either but there it is.’
‘Poor old Leslie,’ said Melissa. ‘What a way for him to go.’ She was silent for a few moments, then, ‘We’ve got to get him out of the house.’
‘Why don’t we just dial 999?’
‘And say what? That you killed a man because he broke your dolly?’
‘It was almost an accident, really.’
‘Whatever it was, it’s the kind of thing they lock you up for. Maybe that’s how you’d like to spend the rest of your days but I really don’t want police all over this house investigating us and the computers — I need to stay respectable.’
‘What do you want to do?’
‘He told me Labyrinth had been doing some location work around King’s Cross, so it’s plausible that he might have gone back there on his own — he’d sometimes talked of doing a documentary off his own bat. We’ll put him in the van with his camcorder and his other gear and we’ll drive to King’s Cross and leave him and it there with the doors open. Somebody’ll steal the video gear and that should keep the police busy for a while.’
‘Whose name is the van registered under?’
‘Leslie’s. Shit.’
‘That’s right. They’ll trace him back to the Camberwell address and from there to here so there’ll still be police knocking on the door.’
‘Right. But if we just leave him somewhere without any ID it could be quite a while before they find out who he is and by then I’ll have cleaned up the computers and installed some dummy programmes for them to look at if they want to.’
‘What about the extra phone lines I ordered?’
‘I can say I’m just starting a study of the politics of language — that would need the same kind of technology as Angelica’s Grotto and I can fake it up from material I already have from the course I teach. So I can make all of that look kosher.’
‘What about the van?’
‘That fucking van! I’ve had too much to drink but I need another drink and the bottle’s empty.’
‘There’s another bottle in the larder under the front steps; I’ll get it.’
When he returned with a fresh bottle of Glenfiddich Melissa was sitting in his TV chair with her black-stockinged legs stretched out and her feet up on another chair. Her eyes were closed.
All yours, said Oannes, but first …
I know, said Klein. The body — we’ll think of something.
He refilled the glasses. Melissa opened her eyes and he put her drink in her hand. ‘Here’s to whatever,’ he said.
‘Whatever. Dirty old man. Now it’s just the two of us in this house, so you got what you wanted.’
‘There are still three of us here, remember? We were talking about the disposal of the defunct member of the group.’
‘Poor old Leslie! Here’s to you, Les, hung like a horse and always ready! You had your limitations but none below the waist. In the mist of, midst of Death we are in life. Or vice versa, whichever. To Les, Harold!’
‘He was Les but he was more,’ said Klein, and the glasses seemed to be empty again so he refilled them. ‘I’m sorry for your horse, Melissa, but his next erection will be rigor mortis and we want him out of here by then. Try to focus on the matter at hand.’ There was a pause of several minutes while they shook their heads and drank.
‘The matter at hand,’ said Melissa, ‘is all bloody. We’ll have to put him in a couple of dustbin liners so we don’t get it all over ourselves. Got to clean the floor as well, pick up all your broken dolly bits. With her Virgin Mary face all smashed. This is more whisky than I usually drink, or have I said that?’
‘Me too but it’s an emergency, it has emerged. The Staxos pone, Paxos stone — that’s bloody too. Did I ever tell you about the olive tree?’
‘Smother time, Harold — trying to concentrate on the defunct member. Rest of him as well, all of him’s defunct. Excuse me while I abseil from felicity awhile. Just close my eyes for a moment.’
‘No prob, Melissa, we’re all in this together. Maybe if we both close our eyes the world will go away.’ He sat down on the floor by her chair, leant his head against her thigh, and fell asleep.
5 °Catching The Bus
Klein woke up with a headache, a dry mouth, and a crick in his neck. At first he didn’t know who he was nor where he was. Melissa was snoring in the TV chair, and seeing her he recognised the room and himself. It was dark outside, the street lamps were lit, and it was raining. He looked at his watch: twenty past eight. Morning? Evening? ‘Haven’t we already done evening?’ he said. He felt his face but learned nothing — the unbearded part of it was overdue for a shave most of the time. He went to the front door and saw the papers lying on the mat. ‘Morning,’ he said. ‘Oh shit.’