Mystery Man (3 page)

Otherwise we have had several writers visit to give readings or lectures, with varying degrees of success. The Holy Grail, of course, was Thomas Harris, the author of
The Silence of the Lambs
and any number of preposterous prequels and sequels. I only say preposterous because my polite e-mail invitation for him to be our guest of honour was returned as spam and subsequent attempts to contact him were not successful. His loss. I'm sure he would have found my customers, a heady mix of silent-but-deadly farters, shoplifters, alcoholics and students, endlessly fascinating. Not only would the addition of his scrawl to the slowly yellowing pyramid of my unsold stock of his interminable novels have helped to finally shift them, but he might also have been able to apply his incisive knowledge of the workings of the criminal's sociopathic mind to my most perplexing case so far,
The Case of the Fruit on the Flyover
.

It started, as these things usually do, with a customer hesitantly approaching the cash desk and proffering a book for purchase. Books are precious things, and cannot be selected like tinned peas in Tesco. I had watched him pick it from the shelf without even bothering to read either the sales pitch on the back, which I happened to know gave nine-tenths of the plot away, or the review below, from the
Toronto Star,
which unmasked the killer. He then set it face down on the counter, as if embarrassed to be seen with it. In fact, it was high-end stuff, a Robert B. Parker, and it was within my rights and power and inclination to withdraw it from sale through lack of respect, but then I saw his face, which looked sad, and his eyes, which appeared hollow, so I let him have it, as Spenser is always a good remedy for melancholy, and prepared to listen to his woes.

His name was Albert McIntosh, and as soon as he said it I gave him a second look, because there was something familiar about it. He gave me the usual heartbreaking saga about being let down by the long-closed detective agency next door and that he'd heard (erroneously, I might add – I'm very picky) that I was dealing with their considerable backlog of cases.

He said he was the managing director of a small advertising agency in the centre of town. He employed fifteen people and enjoyed a reasonable turnover and a good reputation. He said, 'We're not exactly cutting edge, more middle of the road. Solid. Dependable. We've had the account for Denny's Pork Sausages for twenty-three years. The problem is, about six weeks ago I was driving to work, same route I've taken all my working life, and I have to pass under the flyover just before you go on to the West Link, and I noticed that somebody had spray-painted . . . well, had spray-painted
Albert McIntosh is a fruit
in very large letters in red paint. This was obviously most upsetting to me. Twenty thousand cars pass under the flyover every morning during the rush hour. Many of them have passengers. Then there's the buses, and God knows if you stretch your neck from the train you can probably see it too.'

He did look truly distraught. I myself pass under this flyover, and it was for exactly this reason that I thought I recognised his name. There were of course facts to be established before I could even contemplate getting involved.

'And is it the use of your name or the accuracy of the statement that most vexes you?' I asked.

'Both! How would you like it if someone did it to you? If something isn't done about it soon, Albert McIntosh will become some kind of grotesque slang for people of that, er, persuasion.'

'Do you have anything against people of that, ahm, persuasion?'

'No! That isn't the point!'

I nodded thoughtfully. 'Have you taken any action, thus far?' I asked.

'Yes,' he replied, rather testily. 'I went to the DoE and the council and between them they sent out some clod to paint over it.'

'And . . . ?'

'And, when I drove to work next day it was back. Except now it said,
Albert McIntosh is still a fruit.
I complained again, but they said it could be as much as three months before they get back to it. I can't wait that long, I'll be a laughing stock. That's why I went to see your pal next door.'

The detective next door had never been my pal, and I wasn't much taken with Mr Albert McIntosh's general demeanour, but the fact that the author of these alleged slanders had struck twice piqued my interest, because this determination seemed to me to elevate the crime into a different league – rather than a one-off act of petty vandalism or vindictiveness, this was clearly someone with a grudge, a serial painter leaving his blood-red mark as a challenge to whoever dared take him on, plus he'd done it with a certain amount of panache. I sensed that he would make for a very worthy foe indeed. He would be
my
Hannibal Lecter, my Moriarty, my minority in the woodpile.

Albert McIntosh wanted the graffiti permanently removed and the perp identified. I wanted a small extension to the back of the store. Truth and justice would meet somewhere in the middle.

Although as far as Albert McIntosh was concerned time was of the essence, I have learned not to rush in where angels fear to tread. A possible first step was to arrange for the removal of the offending graffiti and to then stake out the flyover and catch the phantom artist literally red handed if he or she dared to strike again, presumably in the middle of the night like all ne'er-do-wells, villains and uhm, charlatans. However, it is not a particularly salubrious part of town, and the heating in the No Alibis van has been on the blink for some time, also my night vision is not great and my antidepressants dictate that I get to bed early and at least attempt to catch up on my sleep. Besides, I was not seeking a physical confrontation with my nemesis, more a psychological contest. My weapon was deduction, his a hairy brush, and what I couldn't deduce myself – well, it was another opportunity to employ my valued and varied clientèle as my eyes and ears around the city, some modicum of payback for all the countless man hours I've wasted on them.

This is all still quite new to me, so I am not above seeking wiser counsel. When that isn't available I occasionally consult my assistant Jeff. I would say that he works for me Tuesdays and Thursdays, but it would be more accurate to state that he appears in the store twice a week and manages to spend most of that time on the phone calling disinterested parties on behalf of the local chapter of Amnesty International. Jeff has been rather subdued since the death of General Pinochet. Human rights violations under his regime had been Jeff's area of expertise, but now that the General was gone, the spotlight had shifted on to more recent abuses in the Middle East, leaving him marginalised. He had committed the cardinal sin of failing to move with the bleeding-heart-liberal times, he was yesterday's man clinging to the vain hope that someone even more despotic would come to power in Santiago and rescue him from his do-gooding isolation. I thought drawing him into helping me with the case might rescue him from his doldrums in a way that my humming of 'Don't Cry for Me, Chile' every time I passed him hadn't.

So I outlined the facts of the case to Jeff. He then asked a series of pertinent questions. He wanted to know the exact location of the flyover, and if there was any other graffiti on it (none); he asked about Albert
McIntosh
's personal life (married, three children), his social life (golf club, rugby club), the state of his business (profitable) and his religious beliefs (always relevant in this city, Protestant atheist). He wanted to know about disgruntled employees (not aware of any), unsatisfied clients (difficult to be sure) and if Mr
McIntosh
was prepared to admit to harbouring any skeletons in the closet (literally the closet) – but no, to all intents and purposes Albert
McIntosh
was a model citizen and nobody had a bad word to say about him, apart, obviously, from the phantom graffiti artist.

I asked Jeff in the light of all of this information what our next move might be, while also reminding him to bear in mind that I occasionally suffer from stress-induced bouts of agoraphobia.

Jeff nodded for several long moments before giving me the benefit of his wisdom.

'It's a big flyover,' he said, 'so I would go up there in the dead of night, and right beside what he's written, I would spray in even bigger letters –
Whoever wrote this is a cunt
.'

I thought about this for a while before responding. 'Jeff, if you wrote
whoever wrote this,
you'd be calling yourself . . . that.'

'Ah . . .
right.
Then I'd write –
Whoever wrote that is a cunt,
and have a little arrow pointing at
Albert
McIntosh
is still a fruit
.'

It seemed to me that he was merely matching one derogatory statement with another and that might only antagonise our target.

'Exactly,' Jeff replied, 'it might flush him out into the open. And it may not even be a man. It might be a woman. In which case she might not only be one but also has—'

'Yes – okay, Jeff, I think I get your point.' I had to cut him off because that rare breed of human being known as a customer had entered the store.

Jeff, however, was not easily deterred. 'She may not only be a metaphorical . . .'

'No "c" words,' I said, indicating the new arrival.

'. . . but also literally. And now that I think about it, maybe even figuratively as well. So actually, what I'd have to spray next to
Albert
McIntosh
is still a fruit
is
Whoever wrote that is a cunt, literally, metaphorically and figuratively.
And I suppose I'd also have to spray,
By the way, no he isn't
.'

We were going to need a bigger flyover.

Having wasted half of my life discussing the affair with Jeff, it was time to get down to business. With Jeff's cavalier approach to using my phone, and his lackadaisical approach to apprehending shoplifters, and his habit of giving his friends free books, and selling his own secret supplies of ethical coffee to the customers and pocketing the proceeds – thus making it unethical, I suppose – closing the shop over lunchtime and bringing him with me actually saved me money. Besides, he works out once a month, which is once more than I do, and when he's thinking about something intensely his brow furrows up and his eyes cross slightly, which makes him look quite threatening, so it was good to have him along to offer me at least some semblance of protection as I crossed from the oasis of south Belfast into the Wild West.

We drove directly to the flyover and found a parking spot just a few yards short of it. The No Alibis van is a black Volkswagen with the chalk outline of a corpse on both sides and the words
Murder Is Our Business
below. Given our location, I was rather worried about a rush of volunteers. However, much to my relief, we were left alone, possibly because of Jeff's furrowed brow and crossed eyes, which perhaps allowed him to be mistaken for a local. I jest, of course, because since they came to power their brows have been smooth as silk and their eyes straight and triumphant.

Albert
McIntosh
is still a fruit
was written in red paint, at least a metre high, right across the flyover. The letters were well formed, which suggested that they hadn't been sprayed or painted in a rush, which surely would have been the case if it had been done from below, as the height of the flyover would have certainly required an extended ladder to be placed on the road, and then moved from left to right across it. Even late at night there would be too much traffic to make this practical. Also, the 'r' in Albert was reversed – an imperfection that didn't so much suggest dyslexia as the probability that the painting had been done from above, with the artist hanging over the edge of the flyover and, in effect, painting upside down.

We repaired to the top of the flyover and in studying the footpath there were rewarded with a trail of red paint drops leading away across the bridge and stopping abruptly just short of a small triangle of fenced-off waste ground. By pressing our faces against the wire we could clearly see, nestling amongst torn bin liners, a red-splashed pot of discarded paint. I immediately directed Jeff to climb the fence to retrieve it. I would have done it myself, but my back had not been good for several days, mostly through shifting unsold copies of
Hannibal Rising
from the front of the shop to the rear. Also, I have a morbid fear of rats, and mice, and nettles and wasps and jagged cans and rotting food and damp newspapers and the unemployed.

Obviously our budget does not stretch to fingerprints or DNA testing, so if we were to track down the culprit our clues would have to come from the information on the pot itself. Fortunately for us the man – or woman – we were seeking, perhaps never dreaming that one day he or she would have one and a half of the finest detectives in the city on his or her trail, had neglected to remove the price sticker from the pot of Dulux Red Devil Matt Finish, which not only revealed that it had been purchased from a wholesale paint supply company called, with typical Northern Irish resistance to excessive verbiage, The Wholesale Paint Supply Company, but at a brushstroke reduced our field of suspects from the entire population of the city down to just its many thousands of painters and decorators. And working on the premise that women give the orders and men do the painting, it was also hugely likely that we were looking for a man rather than a woman. We were barely twenty minutes into the case and we were already closing in for the kill. However, we were unable to immediately pursue our evidence further due to our pressing need to get back to the shop and open up after lunch. It was, in effect, a commercial break.

Or would have been, if there had been any customers waiting on our return. However, one must be open to the
possibility
of customers, so I flipped the
Closed
sign, paid Jeff for his assistance and sent him on his way back to college.

I took my place behind the counter and stared for a while at the empty paint pot on it. The question was, had he bought it as part of a job lot for a client or this single pot purely for use as a phantom graffiti artist? If it was the latter, then the fact that the pot was empty suggested that it may have been used elsewhere for possibly similar nefarious purposes. I don't have that many customers, but the ones I do have, that is, the ones who actually buy books as opposed to those who merely browse for three minutes so that they won't feel guilty about asking to use my toilet, represent such a broad cross-section of our society, ranging across all class, political, religious and intellectual boundaries, that I was confident that they could help me establish if the serial painter had struck previously or indeed since. The simplest and most direct route was via the No Alibis internet newsletter, through which I more usually bombard them with once-in-a-lifetime offers for books they could easily purchase on Amazon for much less money and actually receive through the post the very next day, as opposed to my own more idiosyncratic service, which might take several weeks, or months, or, in one case, a year and a half. But I think they appreciate the human touch; instead of receiving some corrugated, machine-stamped package plucked from a mile-high shelf by a bibliographic robot, they receive a crumpled, torn and reused envelope personally licked closed by a fading member of Amnesty International. So it was that I sent out an appeal to my customers asking that they keep an eye out for other possible instances of name-and-shame graffiti painted in Dulux Red Devil Matt Finish.