Russell Hoban - Angelica's Grotto

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.

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.’

You can say that again, said Oannes, Action Man.

Along with the headache Klein felt lightheaded and wobbly, hypoglycaemic. He went to his desk, got out the test kit, pricked his finger, and got a reading of 3.3. He ate lumps of sugar until he felt steadier, then he said, ‘OK, I’m going to do it now.’ He stood up, looked over the far edge of the desk, and saw Leslie lying among the fragments of the Meissen girl. His eyes were shut; he must have done that at the moment of impact. The blood by now looked sticky. ‘You wouldn’t figure Leslie for a thin skull,’ said Klein, still speaking aloud from force of habit. ‘Maybe his fontanelle never closed up properly.’ The bloodstained Paxos stone lay on the floor like an egg from which something bad would shortly hatch.

‘What do I do now?’ he said.

Time, unless you come up with something clever, said Oannes.

Melissa, open-mouthed, continued to snore. Klein wanted to solve the problem alone if possible. ‘Bruno Schulz’s little guy never took out the stallion; this is a whole new ballgame. Cop films — think. Internal Affairs: Richard Gere’s partner shoots an unarmed man. “I thought he was going for a weapon,” he says. “It’s OK,” says Richard Gere, “it happens.” He takes a knife out of his sock, wipes it carefully, and puts it in the dead man’s hand. “It’s cool,” he says. “Don’t worry.” Knives and guns never fall out of people’s socks when they’re running in those films. Do they do it with Velcro or what? Matter at hand, must take care of.’

Klein found a pair of gloves, put them on, went down to the kitchen and got the knife Leslie had used when he made the coleslaw. He took hold of Leslie’s right hand and found it stiff. ‘He dropped the knife when the stone hit him,’ he said, and laid it on the floor where it might have fallen.

‘Yes,’ he said to the police inspector in his mind, ‘I was at my desk when he came up from the kitchen and began to shout at me. We’d all been drinking but he seemed out of control. He smashed the Meissen figure that was on the mantelpiece and then I saw there was a knife in his hand. He lurched towards me and I had this stone in my hand that I use as a paperweight. I threw it without even thinking and he went down. I’d no idea at first that he was dead, I expected him to get up and come after me again, the way the bad guy does in the movies.’

‘Mr Klein, you say this happened between eight and nine o’clock last evening. When you saw that this man was dead, why didn’t you contact us immediately?’

‘I was in shock, the balance of my mind was disturbed. I was temporarily insane. I had post-traumatic stress. I was drunk and fell asleep.’