Geoff Dyer - The Search

Back at the station he tried the tape he had found earlier. He listened for a few minutes, turning the volume up and then fast-forwarded to a new section of the tape and listened again. Nothing. He fast-forwarded again, pressed Play and listened to the hiss of the tape moving. He fast-forwarded to the end, turned the tape over and listened again. The same. Blank, the tape was blank. Shit.

Still with time to kill, he called Rachel. When she answered he could hear music playing in the background, a cello or double bass.

‘Walker! I’ve been hoping you would call,’ she shouted. ‘Hang on, let me turn the music down.’

The music stopped and she came back a few moments later. ‘That’s better. Now I can hear you.’

‘What was it, the music?’

‘A Bach cello suite. You know it?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘It’s my favourite piece of music. I’ll play it for you when you come back.’

‘You can play the cello?’

‘I can play the record. We’ll listen to it together.’

Her words triggered a memory that lay far in the future, when they were old and wood-smoke music drifted through the rooms of a home.

‘Meanwhile,’ said Rachel.

‘Meanwhile, any news?’

‘People have been asking for you.’

‘A guy called Carver?’

‘No.’

‘Have you ever come across a man called Carver?’

‘No.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure. Why? Should I have done?’

‘No, it’s — it doesn’t matter. What about the people who called round, did they give any names?’

‘No.’

‘Any idea who they were? Trackers? Finders?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Did you tell them anything?’

‘No.’

‘What about Joanne Malory?’

‘Joanne? She’s Alex’s sister but he hadn’t seen her in ten years. He had no contact with his family. She could have been dead for all Alex knew. Why, have you found her?’

‘No, not really. .’ Walker paused and heard Rachel say, ‘There is something though. A photo of Alex arrived in the post.’

‘In the post?’

‘Yes. This morning.’

‘Where from?’

‘It could be from anywhere. I mean it’s impossible to say. You know sometimes a letter arrives without being franked? There’s a stamp on it but no postmark.’

‘What about the photo?’

‘It’s strange. Blurred, very grainy. It looks like it’s been blown up from a larger photo.’

‘Any sign of where it was taken? Or when?’

‘None, I’m afraid, But you want to see it, yes?’

‘Yes but. . I’ll have to call again. I’ll try and find a place you can cable it to. I’m going to —’ He stopped himself abruptly.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Listen, I’ll call you again, yeah?’

‘Are you OK?’

‘Yes. Anyway, I’ve got to go.’

‘Be careful.’

‘You too.’

They waited for each other to say goodbye and then hung up.

It was a long, slow journey to Iberia. As the grimy landscape slipped past, Walker tried to take stock of what was happening. He was confused by Malory’s apparently random movements across the country. Unless he was fleeing from someone or searching for something they made no sense — and even then they made little. And the trail ahead was fainter than ever. At first he had had addresses, then a phone number, now only a postmark. What next? The rhythm of the train was making him sleepy. He nodded off and woke painfully twenty minutes later, his head lolling from the edge of the seat like a dog’s tongue. Across the aisle a woman had spread a blanket and a pack of Tarot cards over her lap. As far as Walker could work out she was playing a kind of patience. The nearest card to Walker, the one that caught his eye, showed a tower struck by yellow arrows of lightning. Men and masonry tumbling to the ground. Realizing that he was looking, the woman smiled at him and said, ‘It passes the time.’

Walker smiled back. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, looked through his reflection at the nothing-happening landscape.

In Iberia he booked in at the hotel recommended by a taxidriver. He called Rachel, gave her the hotel’s cable number and half an hour later held a copy of the photo in his hands. It was grainy, blurred and in transmission the image had deteriorated still further. As she had said, it was obviously an enlarged segment of a larger picture and from the few background blurs it was impossible to gain any clue as to when or where it was taken. It showed Malory in three-quarter profile: fortyish, short hair, the down-curving mouth of a man who had to make an effort to smile. Although more or less as Rachel had described him, Walker’s initial reaction was one of surprise: he had not pictured Malory like this, this was not the impression he had built up. Almost immediately, though, his impressions began rearranging themselves in accordance with the image in his hand and the harder he tried to focus on this discrepancy between what he had been led to believe — or what he had come to expect — and what the photo showed, the more difficult it became to disentangle what he had imagined from what was revealed.

Even with the photo he was no better off than before in terms of what to do next. Malory could be anywhere for all he knew — another city, another country. He had nothing to go on. Hunting out the woman with the Tarot cards to see if she could give him a few leads seemed as good an idea as any. Or flip through the phone book for a spiritualist who could offer guidance from beyond the grave.

Absurd though they were, these thoughts marked a turning-point — the beginning of a turning-point — in his search for Malory. From then on the nature of the search began subtly to change and he came to rely less on external clues than on his intuitive grasp of what Malory might have done in similar circumstances. He only understood this later. At the time he simply remembered the taxi-driver saying, ‘All tourists stay there,’ when recommending the hotel. Probably this meant the taxi company had a deal with the place and received a percentage on everyone sent there. There was only one train a day from Meridian; no buses. So if Malory had taken the train he would have arrived at the same time of day as Walker and may have been referred to the same hotel. He went down to reception but they had no record of past guests and too many people passed by for them to recognize Malory’s picture. Walker returned to his room and thought about what Malory would have done if he had been here. Probably he would have lain around like Walker was doing now, turning the TV on and off, getting hungry. Gone out to get a bite to eat, found a bar.

Walker looked out of the window. Dark, beginning to rain. He pulled on his jacket, folded the photo of Malory into his pocket and went out in search of a bar. Outside the hotel it was deserted. Across the way was another street which, from the quantity of neon shimmering through the rain, looked more hopeful. The neon, it turned out, was in the window of a shoe repairer’s, a pharmacy and a travel agency. Walker continued to the end and turned into a street crowded with people and cars. Two blocks along was a subway station and a man selling umbrellas. Feeling rain drip down his neck, Walker splashed across the road and bought one, asked if there was a bar nearby — a place where he could get a drink, something to eat. The umbrella-seller directed him to Finelli’s, a couple of blocks away.

Walker took a seat at the bar and ordered a beer, catching glimpses of himself in the mirror behind tiers of spirits. After another beer he ordered a burger and by the time that arrived he was ready for more beer. A sport he had never seen before was on TV. Mainly it involved fouling members of the opposite team and trudging off to the dugouts at the edge of the arena. As far as he could make out the game was divided not into halves or even quarters but into sixteenths and the score — unless he had misunderstood — was 540 to 665.