There seemed to be a great eruption of emotion in the air near to him. A wave of something surged through the room, causing the furniture to flutter in its wake. Dirk watched where it seemed to go, towards a shelf near the door on which, he suddenly realised, stood Richard's own telephone-answering machine. The machine started to jiggle fitfully where it sat, but then sat still as Dirk approached it. Dirk reached out slowly and calmly and pushed the button which set the machine to Answer.
The disturbance in the air then passed back through the room to Richard's long desk where two old-fashioned rotary-dial telephones nestled among the piles of paper and micro floppy disks. Dirk guessed what would happen, but elected to watch rather than to intervene.
One of the telephone receivers toppled off its cradle. Dirk could hear the dialling tone. Then, slowly and with obvious difficulty, the dial began to turn. It moved unevenly round, further round, slower and slower, and then suddenly slipped back.
There was a moment's pause. Then the receiver rests went down and up again to get a new dialling tone. The dial began to turn again, but creaking even more fitfully than the last time.
Again it slipped back.
There was a longer pause this time, and then the entire process was repeated once more.
When the dial slipped back a third time there was a sudden explosion of fury — the whole phone leapt into the air and hurtled across the room. The receiver cord wrapped itself round an Anglepoise lamp on the way and brought it crashing down in a tangle of cables, coffee cups and floppy disks. A pile of books erupted off the desk and on to the floor.
The figure of Sergeant Gilks stood stony-faced in the doorway.
«I'm going to come in again,» he said, «and when I do, I don't want to see anything of that kind going on whatsoever. Is that understood?»
He turned and disappeared.
Dirk leapt for the cassette player and hit the Rewind button. Then he turned and hissed at the empty air, «I don't know who you are, but I can guess. If you want my help, don't you ever embarrass me like that again!»
A few moments later, Gilks walked in again. «Ah, there you are,» he said.
He surveyed the wreckage with an even gaze. «I'll pretend I can't see any of this, so that I won't have to ask any questions the answers to which would, I know, only irritate me.»
Dirk glowered.
In the moment or two of silence that followed, a slight ticking whirr could be heard which caused the sergeant to look sharply at the cassette player.
«What's that tape doing?»
«Rewinding.»
«Give it to me.»
The tape reached the beginning and stopped as Dirk reached it. He took it out and handed it to Gilks.
«Irritatingly, this seems to put your client completely in the clear,» said the sergeant. «Cellnet have confirmed that the last call made from the car was at 8.46 pm last night, at which point your client was lightly dozing in front of several hundred witnesses. I say witnesses, in fact they were mostly students, but we will probably be forced to assume that they can't all be lying.»
«Good,» said Dirk, «well, I'm glad that's all cleared up.»
«We never thought he had actually done it, of course. Simply didn't fit. But you know us — we like to get results. Tell him we still want to ask him some questions, though.»
«I shall be sure to mention it if I happen to run into him.»
«You just do that little thing.»
«Well, I shan't detain you any longer, Sergeant,» said Dirk, airily waving at the door.
«No, but I shall bloody detain you if you're not out of here in thirty seconds, Cjelli. I don't know what you're up to, but if I can possibly avoid finding out I shall sleep easier in my office. Out.»
«Then I shall bid you good day, Sergeant. I won't say it's been a pleasure because it hasn't.»
Dirk swept out of the room, and made his way out of the flat, noting with sorrow that where there had been a large chesterfield sofa wedged magnificently in the staircase, there was now just a small, sad pile of sawdust.
With a jerk Michael Wenton-Weakes looked up from his book.
His mind suddenly was alive with purpose. Thoughts, images, memories, intentions, all crowded in upon him, and the more they seemed to contradict each other the more they seemed to fit together, to pair and settle.
The match at last was perfect, the teeth of one slowly aligned with the teeth of another.
A pull and they were zipped.
Though the waiting had seemed an eternity of eternities when it was filled with failure, with fading waves of weakness, with feeble groping and lonely impotence, the match once made cancelled it all. Would cancel it all. Would undo what had been so disastrously done.
Who thought that? It did not matter, the match was made, the match was perfect.
Michael gazed out of the window across the well-manicured Chelsea street and did not care whether what he saw were slimy things with legs or whether they were all Mr A. K. Ross. What mattered was what they had stolen and what they would be compelled to return. Ross now lay in the past. What he was now concerned with lay still further in it.
His large soft cowlike eyes returned to the last few lines of «Kubla Khan», which he had just been reading. The match was made, the zip was pulled.
He closed the book and put it in his pocket.
His path back now was clear. He knew what he must do. It only remained to do a little shopping and then do it.
CHAPTER 22
«You? Wanted for murder? Richard what are you talking about?»
The telephone wavered in Richard's hand. He was holding it about half an inch away from his ear anyway because it seemed that somebody had dipped the earpiece in some chow mein recently, but that wasn't so bad. This was a public telephone so it was clearly an oversight that it was working at all. But Richard was beginning to feel as if the whole world had shifted about half an inch away from him, like someone in a deodorant commercial.
«Gordon,» said Richard, hesitantly, «Gordon's been murdered — hasn't he?»
Susan paused before she answered.
«Yes, Richard,» she said in a distressed voice, «but no one thinks you did it. They want to question you of course, but» —
«So there are no police with you now?»
«No, Richard,» insisted Susan, «Look, why don't you come here?»
«And they're not out searching for me?»
«No! Where on earth did you get the idea that you were wanted for — that they thought you had done it?»
«Er — well, this friend of mine told me.»
«Who?»
«Well, his name is Dirk Gently.»
«You've never mentioned him. Who is he? Did he say anything else?»
«He hypnotised me and, er, made me jump in the canal, and, er, well, that was it really» —
There was a terribly long pause at the other end.
«Richard,» said Susan at last with the sort of calmness that comes over people when they realise that however bad things may seem to be, there is absolutely no reason why they shouldn't simply get worse and worse, «come over here. I was going to say I need to see you, but I think you need to see me.»
«I should probably go to the police.»
«Go to the police later. Richard, please. A few hours won't make any difference. I… I can hardly even think. Richard, it's so awful. It would just help if you were here. Where are you?»
«OK,» said Richard, «I'll be with you in about twenty minutes.»
«Shall I leave the window open or would you like to try the door?» she said with a sniff.
CHAPTER 23