Dirk said that, yes, he knew that, that he would be there at about five, was looking forward to it and would see him later; but Thor, of course, could hear none of this from where he was standing, and was beginning to get angry and shout a lot.
Dirk had at last to give up and hesitantly put the phone down, hoping that Thor would not do too much damage in Kate’s small flat. She had, he knew, managed to persuade the big god to try to crush packets of crisps in his rages rather than actual sofas and motorbikes, but it was sometimes touch-and-go when he really couldn’t get the hang of what was going on.
Dirk felt oppressed. He looked up. Oh yes.
“No,” he said. “Go away. I can’t deal with any more of this stuff.”
“But, Mr. Gently, I hear you have something of a reputation in this area.”
“And that’s precisely what I want to get rid of. So please get out of here and take your bifurcated feline with you.”
“Well, if that’s your attitude ...”
She picked up the cat basket and sauntered out. The half-cat made a pretty good go of sauntering out as well.
Dirk sat at his desk and simmered for a minute or two, wondering why he was so out of sorts today. Looking out of his window, he saw the extremely attractive and intriguing client he had just rudely turned away out of sheer grumpiness. She looked particularly gorgeous and alluring as she hurried across the road towards a black London taxicab.
He hurried to the window and wrenched it up. He leant out.
“I suppose dinner’s out of the question, then?” he yelled.
Chapter 3
“You just missed Thor, I’m afraid,” said Kate Schechter. “He suddenly went off in a fit of Nordic angst about something or other.”
She waved a hand vaguely at the gaping, jagged hole in the window that overlooked Primrose Hill. “Probably gone to the zoo to stare at elks again. He’ll turn up again in a few hours, full of beer and remorse and carrying a large pane of glass that won’t fit. So he’ll then get upset about that and break something else.”
“We had a bit of a misunderstanding on the phone, I’m afraid,” said Dirk. “But I don’t really know how to avoid them.”
“You can’t,” said Kate. “He’s not a happy god. It’s not his world. Never will be, either.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Oh, there’s plenty to do. Just repairing things keeps me busy.”
It wasn’t what Dirk meant, but he realised she knew that and didn’t probe. She went into the kitchen to fetch the tea at that point anyway. He subsided into an elderly armchair and peered around the small flat. He noticed that there was now quite a collection of books on Norse mythology stacked on Kate’s desk, all sprouting numerous bookmarks and annotated record cards. She was obviously doing her best to master the situation. But one book, buried about four inches into the wall, and obviously flung there by superhuman force, gave some idea of the sort of difficulties she was up against.
“Don’t even ask,” she said, when she returned bearing tea. “Tell me what’s going on with you instead.”
“I did something this afternoon,” he said, stirring the pale, sickly tea and suddenly remembering that, of course, Americans had no idea how to make it, “that was incredibly stupid.”
“I thought you seemed a bit grim.”
“Probably the cause rather than the effect. I’d had an appalling week, plus I had indigestion, and I suppose it made me a bit ...”
“Don’t tell me. You met a very attractive and desirable woman and were incredibly pompous and rude to her.”
Dirk stared at her. “How did you know that?” he breathed.
“You do it all the time. You did it to me.”
“I did not!” protested Dirk.
“You certainly did!”
“No, no, no.”
“I promise you, you ...”
“Hang on,” interrupted Dirk. “I remember now. Hmm. Interesting. And you’re saying I do that all the time?”
“Maybe not all the time. Presumably you have to get some sleep occasionally.”
“But you claim that, typically, I’m rude and pompous to attractive women?”
He wrestled his way up out of the armchair and fished around in his pocket for a notebook.
“I didn’t mean you to get quite so serious about it, it’s not exactly a major ... well, now I come to think about it I suppose it probably is a major character flaw. What are you doing?”
“Oh, just making a note. Odd thing about being a private detective—you spend your time finding out little things about other people that nobody else knows, but then you discover that there are all sorts of things that everybody else knows about you, which you don’t. For instance, did you know that I walk in an odd way? A kind of strutting waddle, someone described it as.”
“Yes, of course I do. Everybody who knows you knows that.”
“Except me, you see,” said Dirk. “Now that I know I’ve been trying to catch myself at it as I walk past shop windows. Doesn’t work, of course. All I ever see is myself frozen mid-stride with one foot in the air and gaping like a fish. Anyway, I’m drawing up a little list, to which I have now added, ‘Am always extremely rude and pompous to attractive women.’”
Dirk stood and looked at the note for a second or two.
“You know,” he said, thoughtfully, “that could explain an astonishing number of things.”
“Oh come on,” said Kate. “You’re taking this a bit literally. I just meant I’ve noticed that when you’re not feeling good, or you’re on the spot in some way, you tend to get defensive, and that’s when you ... are you writing all this down as well?”
“Of course. It’s all useful stuff. I might end up mounting a full-scale investigation into myself. Damn all else to do at the moment.”
“No work?”
“No,” said Dirk, gloomily.
Kate tried to give him a shrewd look, but he was staring out of the window.
“And is the fact that you don’t have any work connected in any way to the fact that you were very rude to an attractive woman?”
“Just barging in like that,” muttered Dirk half to himself.
“Don’t tell me,” said Kate, “She wanted you to look for a lost cat.”
“Oh no,” said Dirk. “Not even as grand as that. Gone are the days when I used to have entire cats to look for.”
“What do you mean?”
Dirk described the cat. “See what I have to contend with?” he added.
Kate stared at him.
“You’re not serious!”
“I am,” he said.
“Half a cat?”
“Yes. Just the back half.”
“I thought you said the front half ...?”
“Oh no, she’s got that. That was there alright. She only wanted me to look for the back half.” Dirk stared thoughtfully at London over the raised rim of his china teacup.
Kate looked at him suspicously.
“But isn’t that ... very, very, very weird?”
Dirk turned and faced her.
“I would say,” he declared, “that it was the single most weird and extraordinary phenomenon I have witnessed in a lifetime of witnessing weird and extraordinary phenomena. Unfortunately,” he added, turning away again “I wasn’t in the mood for it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I had indigestion. I’m always bad tempered when I’ve got indigestion.”
“And just because of that you—”
“It was more than that. I’d lost the piece of paper, too.”
“What piece of paper?”
“That I wrote down her appointment on. Turned up under a pile of bank statements.”
“Which you never open or look at.”