Read Online The Company of Fellows by Dan Holloway - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Dan Holloway
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far
end, by the window, Tommy sat at his giant desk, which was built on
the root formation of a baobab tree, sliced off and surfaced with
oak that had been inlaid with veneers in the pattern of a
Mandelbrot Set fractal. It was a sampler of every wood and shell
and semi-precious stone he sold. On the desk was a rosewood bowl,
the kind that held the counters in the ancient Chinese game of go.
It contained an ellipsoid piece of basalt that had been rubbed
slick like oil in Tommy’s hands. Alongside it was the row of
extracts and absolutes in their tiny phials that he blended from
time to time and rubbed into the stone. Now the stone glistened
with a fresh blend of jasmine, cedar, lavender, and ylang ylang
that Tommy had fixed in a droplet ambergris that was cut from a
piece washed up on the West African shore.
Tommy had his
nose in his hands, sucking the sebaceous residues into himself,
steadily slowing his heart. He was excited, but he knew that
adrenalin was the manic depressive’s most insidious enemy precisely
because it was so alluring and empowering. It made you do stupid,
impulsive things, and many manic depressives were diagnosed only
when they ended up in hospital or prison. Like Tommy. Stupid and impulsive like stealing a hundred
grand from a dead man , he thought. No,
that wasn’t impulsive. He hadn’t decided yet whether it had been
stupid; but he was fairly sure it wasn’t theft. He is able to provide all you need .
Tommy wondered how much of the money Professor Shaw had asked
Charteris to give him, and how much the lawyer had demanded as a
fee for his unusual errand; he wondered how urgent his mission must
have been for Charles to agree to such a sum. Maybe Charteris had
intended to alter the proportions in his favour. Almost certainly
not, he thought, detecting in himself for the first time a flicker
of guilt. This wasn’t just a puzzle, and John wasn’t just part of
an enigma. He was someone Tommy had known once, someone who had
treated him well for all the bookish gaucheness of his early
twenties. Tommy realised that he didn’t even know if Charteris had
had a wife, a family; a mistress, perhaps, who had been promised
£100,000 when he died to see her good.
No, Tommy
thought. It was right to remember John, but not now. Now there was
another dead person who needed Tommy’s attention more. Not to
mention the living. Tommy’s nostrils flared and the jasmine brought
him back to the happiest places in his memory. Green tea in a tiny Zen garden in the centre of Tokyo, taxis
and buses humming only a few metres away, a monorail suspended
magically just above him, but all the movement unreachable in this
little pool of stillness. A terrace in Seville, tendrils of jasmine
laced over a trellis, cosseting him on every side.
He had the
stack of Shaw’s printed papers in front of him. It seemed like the
easiest place to start. The publications that were intact had dates
or issue numbers. Those that had been cut or torn out were
meticulously labelled in the top right corner with the source,
article title, author, page number, and date. He had arranged them
in chronological order, trying for now to take as little active
interest in the content as he could whilst he did so in order to
let any ideas slip up on him.
Once he’d
finished it was a small pile, only a couple of inches high. It
comprised abstracts of journal articles, pages from monographs,
newspaper clippings, a couple of screen prints of web pages, and
several pages clipped or torn from cultural magazines and auction
catalogues. As he had hoped, there was nothing at this stage that
gave him any real sense of Shaw’s big idea. It was far better to
look at material without being told what to make of it. He would be
far less likely to miss any clues that Shaw himself had failed to
spot.
Top of the
pile, the earliest publication, from 1989, was a brief abstract
outlining an article called The
Anticipation of Gifts , by a Bulgarian
theologian, Dr Krista
end, by the window, Tommy sat at his giant desk, which was built on
the root formation of a baobab tree, sliced off and surfaced with
oak that had been inlaid with veneers in the pattern of a
Mandelbrot Set fractal. It was a sampler of every wood and shell
and semi-precious stone he sold. On the desk was a rosewood bowl,
the kind that held the counters in the ancient Chinese game of go.
It contained an ellipsoid piece of basalt that had been rubbed
slick like oil in Tommy’s hands. Alongside it was the row of
extracts and absolutes in their tiny phials that he blended from
time to time and rubbed into the stone. Now the stone glistened
with a fresh blend of jasmine, cedar, lavender, and ylang ylang
that Tommy had fixed in a droplet ambergris that was cut from a
piece washed up on the West African shore.
Tommy had his
nose in his hands, sucking the sebaceous residues into himself,
steadily slowing his heart. He was excited, but he knew that
adrenalin was the manic depressive’s most insidious enemy precisely
because it was so alluring and empowering. It made you do stupid,
impulsive things, and many manic depressives were diagnosed only
when they ended up in hospital or prison. Like Tommy. Stupid and impulsive like stealing a hundred
grand from a dead man , he thought. No,
that wasn’t impulsive. He hadn’t decided yet whether it had been
stupid; but he was fairly sure it wasn’t theft. He is able to provide all you need .
Tommy wondered how much of the money Professor Shaw had asked
Charteris to give him, and how much the lawyer had demanded as a
fee for his unusual errand; he wondered how urgent his mission must
have been for Charles to agree to such a sum. Maybe Charteris had
intended to alter the proportions in his favour. Almost certainly
not, he thought, detecting in himself for the first time a flicker
of guilt. This wasn’t just a puzzle, and John wasn’t just part of
an enigma. He was someone Tommy had known once, someone who had
treated him well for all the bookish gaucheness of his early
twenties. Tommy realised that he didn’t even know if Charteris had
had a wife, a family; a mistress, perhaps, who had been promised
£100,000 when he died to see her good.
No, Tommy
thought. It was right to remember John, but not now. Now there was
another dead person who needed Tommy’s attention more. Not to
mention the living. Tommy’s nostrils flared and the jasmine brought
him back to the happiest places in his memory. Green tea in a tiny Zen garden in the centre of Tokyo, taxis
and buses humming only a few metres away, a monorail suspended
magically just above him, but all the movement unreachable in this
little pool of stillness. A terrace in Seville, tendrils of jasmine
laced over a trellis, cosseting him on every side.
He had the
stack of Shaw’s printed papers in front of him. It seemed like the
easiest place to start. The publications that were intact had dates
or issue numbers. Those that had been cut or torn out were
meticulously labelled in the top right corner with the source,
article title, author, page number, and date. He had arranged them
in chronological order, trying for now to take as little active
interest in the content as he could whilst he did so in order to
let any ideas slip up on him.
Once he’d
finished it was a small pile, only a couple of inches high. It
comprised abstracts of journal articles, pages from monographs,
newspaper clippings, a couple of screen prints of web pages, and
several pages clipped or torn from cultural magazines and auction
catalogues. As he had hoped, there was nothing at this stage that
gave him any real sense of Shaw’s big idea. It was far better to
look at material without being told what to make of it. He would be
far less likely to miss any clues that Shaw himself had failed to
spot.
Top of the
pile, the earliest publication, from 1989, was a brief abstract
outlining an article called The
Anticipation of Gifts , by a Bulgarian
theologian, Dr Krista
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