Ivoria, Tanith Lee [popular ebook readers .TXT] 📗

looks back at him. The man frowns sheepishly. “I was - er - staying with my girlfriend, Flat 14. Moved a few of my things in. Then we had a bit of an argument. While I was away - it seems she slung my gear out - some of my clothes, my computer - well, that’s gone, obviously. General bits. But I had a desk drawer with stationery - paper, envelopes, paper clips, pens, a few books - that kind of stuff. I didn’t really think anyone would be that keen on any of it but it looks as if they were - either that or she dumped it in one of the bins.” The man now appears embarrassed. “Well, win some, lose the lot. There we go.”

Nick says, “There were some books on that table. They were there a couple of days. I took them. Chekov stories, and Katherine Mansfield. Were they yours? I still have them, would you like them back?”

“Oh - no, that’s OK.”

“You’re sure? Can I pay you for them?”

“No, no. Yeah, I’ve got them in hardback somewhere anyway. It’s the notebooks that were the thing really, some schedules and dates for work, nothing vital - just a nuisance.”

“I’m sorry,” says Nick. He is regretful. He knows he would hate to lose his own notebooks, with their ideas and fragments.

“Oh well,” says the stranger. “C’est la vie.”

Nick buys some cut ham and Greek bread at the deli, some green and red fruit, and Brazilian coffee. He lunches at the pub on the corner.

He has now forgotten the ousted man in the lobby, though at the time Nick felt rather sorry for him. He looked the sort of guy who often gets a raw deal, and for whom nothing very good ever happens, who is used to it, accepting, mostly bored with life’s callousness and lack of imagination. Years ago, about 1970, he might have said ‘mustn’t grumble’. Now he said C’est la vie. But that didn’t improve anything.

Even so, walking back into the lobby, Nick has an abrupt sense that the stranger is still there. He even glances about, to see if the man is sitting on the polished bench near the side corridor, but he is not.

Nick goes up the stairs. There has never been a lift here, nor has Nick ever needed one, despite the complaints of the removal men years before, lugging up the dismantled bed and couches.

When he comes out on his own landing, the top one, Nick finds he is completely unsurprised to discover the stranger again, now sitting in the window embrasure outside Nick’s door. Deep within Nick’s body, the very sluggish yet seldom, in humanity entirely quiescent muscle of unease, flexes itself. Then Nick sees this is not the stranger with the lost drawer. It is another stranger, nondescript in rather the same manner, resigned-looking, standing up now to show he is a little more stocky and a fraction taller and a touch more hard than the previous model.

“Mr Lewis?” asks the Mark 2 Stranger.

And Nick thinks, Ah. A policeman.

4

The policeman, (plain clothes) if so he is, gives his name as Pond.

For a moment Nick thinks he says Bond.

Luckily Pond seems unaware of any possible filmic audial dysfunction. He simply stands quietly by the door, and when Nick says nothing and makes no further move, Pond adds, noncommittally, “Perhaps, sir, if this is your flat, we might go in.”

No ID has been shown.

Nick, he is uncertain why, does not demand any. Perhaps Pond’s credentials are utterly self-evident. He unlocks the door, and he and Pond enter.

Pond flicks a look round the big room. “An impressive window.”

“Yes.”

“My wife would love a place like this. I suspect too pricey for us. And too small. Maybe once we boot the kids out.”

Chat, to put the civilian at his ease?

Nick goes up to the kitchen and slides the ham and fruit into the fridge.

“Would you like a drink, Mr Pond? Or a coffee?”

“Very kind, sir. Not just now.” Pond stands there, awaiting Nick’s return. He has made no correction to the title ‘Mr’. Nick takes a small bottle of Volvic, opens it, and comes back. “Water. Very healthy,” says Pond.

Nick thinks, aslant as it were, that with such a name, (assuming it is real) Pond might not care to drink much water.

After this Nick stands, relaxed enough, looking at Pond. In point of fact, Nick is not relaxed, but somehow, having had a mother who was an actress, observing so many actors, even acting in front of cameras, not to mention those brief excursions around drama schools, has given him a subcutaneous lesson or two.

Nor does he speak. He will let Pond tell him what Pond wants. Anyway, presumably it is to do with the madwoman who called. And surely not with the book-and-drawer man.

“I believe,” says Pond, “you have a brother, a Mr Laurence Adrian Lewis. The writer and TV personality.”

Nick is startled.

“Yes.”

“When did you last see Mr Lewis, Mr Lewis?”

Nick stares at Pond, stupidly fixated on the weird syntax Pond has just used, so that what he has actually said makes no sense. But in those moments Nick hears the madwoman’s voice in his inner ear again, and Nick realises something he consciously had not known, not recalled, either yesterday or earlier today.

“Angie. Angela called me,” Nick says, more to himself than Pond.

“Yes, sir. Mrs Angela Lewis did indeed call you. Seven times, according to Mrs Lewis. About her husband, Mr Laurence Adrian Lewis.”

“Why?”

“Your brother, sir, seems to have disappeared.”

“Christ.” Nick does not know why he said that. It is as if he has had to make a reply, and with a suitably shocked emphasis.

Pond says, “Mrs Lewis called several of Mr Lewis’s contacts, including the BBC studio, but everyone assured her Mr Lewis caught the London train on Friday afternoon. This is even backed up by a guard who checked his ticket, and identified Mr Lewis from the repeat of a TV programme on the - let