Part 6 (1/2)

”Corner of Longridge Road and Templeton Place.”

”How many floors?”

”...three, four, five-Six!”

”Longridge Road, Templeton Place,” I or Naz would repeat to the other; the other would find the intersection on the wall-mounted map, stick a purple pin in it, then enter the particulars-six floors, blue facade and so on-into a spreadsheet Naz had created on the laptop. Sometimes both phones rang at once. Sometimes neither of them rang for several hours.

By five or so on the first day the map had nine purple pins stuck in it.

”Let's go and look at them,” said Naz. ”I'll call us a car.”

”Tomorrow,” I said.

By five o'clock the next day we had fifteen buildings. I'd knocked the car's arrival back to six, but when it came I told Naz: ”I prefer to wait until tomorrow morning.”

”As you wish,” he said. ”I'll send another car round to your flat at nine.”

I phoned him the next morning at eight-thirty.

”I prefer to make my own way there,” I said.

”I'll meet you there, then.”

”No. I prefer to go alone.”

”How will you know which places to look in?” he asked.

”I remember them all,” I said.

”Really?” Naz sounded incredulous. ”All the exact locations?”

”Yes,” I told him.

”That's impressive,” he said. ”Phone me as and when you need me.”

I didn't remember each location, of course. But I'd become increasingly aware of something over the last two days: these people wouldn't find my building. No matter how well I described it to them or how thoroughly they looked, they wouldn't find my building for a simple reason: it wouldn't be my building unless I found it myself. By noon on the second day of their search I'd been certain of this.

Why hadn't I called the search off, then? you might ask. Because I liked the process, liked the sense of pattern. There were people running through the same, repet.i.tive acts-consulting their mobiles, walking up one street, down the next one and up a third, stopping in front of buildings to make phone calls-in six different parts of town. Their burrowing would get inside the city's block and loosen it, start chiselling away at surplus matter: it would scare my building out, like beaters scaring pheasants out of bushes for a Lord to shoot-six beaters advancing in formation, beating to the same rhythms, their movements duplicating one another. As I started out that day I imagined looking on from overhead, from way above the city, picking out Naz's people, each one with a kind of tag on them, a dot like police cars have to help police helicopters pick them out. I imagined looking down and seeing them all-plus me, the seventh moving dot, my turning and redoubling etching out the master pattern that the other six were emulating. I imagined looking down from even higher up, the edges of the stratosphere. I stopped for a moment in the street and felt a light breeze moving round my face. I turned the palms of my hands outwards and felt a tingling creeping up the right side of my body. It was good.

I started with Belgravia. I'd walk up one street, down the next and up a third just like Naz's people had been instructed to do, so as not to miss any out. After two hours of this, though, I realized that my building wasn't in Belgravia. The area's clean, white houses with raised porches and white columns didn't strike any chords with me, even if technically they met the criteria I'd given to the searchers. King's Cross was the same. So was South Kensington. Paddington came closest: several buildings round there looked like mine. They looked looked like mine but weren't mine. Don't ask me how I could tell that: I just could. like mine but weren't mine. Don't ask me how I could tell that: I just could.

In the late afternoon I phoned Naz.

”How were they?” he asked.

”Oh, I didn't go to the ones our people shortlisted,” I told him. ”I decided I should look for it myself.”

”I see,” said Naz. ”I'll tell them to discontinue their searches, then.”

”No,” I said. ”Tell them to carry on. When we've exhausted our original six areas, we'll broaden out.”

There was a pause at Naz's end. I pictured the behind of his eyes, the whirring. After a while he said: ”I'll do that if that's what you want.”

”Good,” I said. Process: it was necessary.

I didn't find my building that day. Or the next. When I got home that evening there were two messages for me: one from Greg and one from Matthew Younger. Greg wanted me to call him. Matthew Younger wanted me to call him too: the sectors we'd bought into had climbed ten per cent in value over the last week, presenting us with a great opportunity to top-slice and diversify. I listened to their messages as I lay on the sofa. All the walking I'd done had exhausted me. I took a bath, put a plaster on a blister that had appeared on my right foot and went to bed.

I had a vivid dream. I dreamt that streets and buildings were moving past me, like the commuters had the day I'd stood still outside Victoria Station asking for spare change. The streets and buildings were moving past me on conveyor belts like those long ones that carry you along the corridors of airports. There were several of these moving belts connected to each other-converging and branching off, criss-crossing, ducking behind or under one another like a giant Spaghetti Junction, conveying houses, pavements, lampposts, traffic lights and bridges past me and around me.

My building was in there, being carried along somewhere in the complex interlacings. I caught glimpses of it as it slipped behind another building and was whisked away again to reappear somewhere else. It would show itself to me then slip away again. The belts were like magicians' fingers shuffling cards: they were shuffling the city, flas.h.i.+ng my card, my building, at me and then burying it in the deck again. They were challenging me to shout ”Stop!” at the exact moment it was showing: if I could do that, I'd win. That was the deal.

”Stop!” I shouted. Then again: ”Stop...Stop!” But I timed each shout just wrong-only a tenth or even hundredth of a second off, but wrong nonetheless. I'd shout ”stop” each time I saw my building, and the system of conveyors would grind to a halt-but this took a few seconds, and by the time it was completely still my building had become submerged again.

After a while I closed my eyes, my dream-eyes, and tried to sense sense when it was coming up. I sensed the rhythm things were moving at, the patterns they were following, and let my imagination slip inside them. I could sense when my building was about to come by. I waited for it to go by twice, and just before it reappeared a third time shouted: when it was coming up. I sensed the rhythm things were moving at, the patterns they were following, and let my imagination slip inside them. I could sense when my building was about to come by. I waited for it to go by twice, and just before it reappeared a third time shouted: ”Stop!”

I knew even as I shouted it that it would work this time. As the conveyors ground to a halt again, my building came to rest directly in front of me. I stepped forward and entered it. I got to see it all even more clearly than I had on the night of David Simpson's party-got to move around it, relis.h.i.+ng its details: the concierge's cupboard and the staircase with its worn floor, the black-and-white recurring pattern in it, the oxidizing wrought-iron banisters, the black handrail with its spikes. I saw the pianist's door and the door of the lady who cooked liver, the spot beside it where she placed her rubbish as I pa.s.sed her, my own flat above her with its open kitchen and its plants, its bathroom with a cracked wall and a window that looked out across a courtyard to a building with red roof tiles and black cats. I got to fully occupy it-not for long, but for a while, until the scene changed and I found myself inside a library negotiating travel prices with a grumpy waitress who was Yugoslavian.

In the morning, after I'd woken up, I started understanding why I hadn't found my building in the four days I'd been working on it: I'd been rational about it. Logical. I needed to go irrational on the whole thing. Illogical. Of course! I'd probably pa.s.sed it at some point over the last few years already-which meant that it would be recorded somewhere in my memory. Everything must leave some kind of mark. And then even if I hadn't pa.s.sed it already, I'd only manage to stalk it down if I moved surrept.i.tiously: not in straight lines and in blocks and wedges but askew-diagonally, slyly, creeping up on it from sideways.

I cooked myself some breakfast and pondered how best to make my search irrational. The first idea that came to me was to I-Ching the map: to close my eyes, turn round a few times, stick a pin in blindly and then go and look in whatever area it happened to have landed on. The more I thought about that method, though, the less sly it seemed. Random's not the same as sly, is it? I tried it with my A-Z, A-Z, just to see what would happen: Mitcham. I tried it a second time: Waltham-stow Marshes. So much for the Wisdom of the Orient. just to see what would happen: Mitcham. I tried it a second time: Waltham-stow Marshes. So much for the Wisdom of the Orient.

Colours was the next idea I had: following colours. I could decide to go where, say, yellow things went: a van, an advertising h.o.a.rding, someone's clothes. I could start somewhere, anywhere, and walk down the street the yellow van went down, then wait beside a yellow shop front till a woman wearing yellow trousers went by and I'd follow her. It was completely arbitrary-but it might prompt something, get me looking at things in a way I wouldn't normally, open c.h.i.n.ks up in the camouflage behind which my place was hiding.

Then, following on from that idea, I thought of walking jerkily, erratically. I don't mean in my walk itself, my gait: I mean that I would start off down one street, then double back suddenly, like I had when I'd set out to Heathrow to meet Catherine but realized that I'd left her flight details behind. Or I'd pretend to be heading one way, waiting to cross a certain road by a pedestrian crossing-then, when the green man appeared, I'd veer off in some other direction, like a striker when he takes a penalty in football and sends the goalkeeper the wrong way.

I also considered following a numerical system: starting from point zero I'd turn down the first street on the right, then take the second left, the third right, fourth left and so on. The system could be much more complicated than that, of course: I could bring in fractions and algebra and differentials and who knows what else. Or I could devise a corresponding process using the alphabet: go down the first street I came to whose name starts with a, a, then carry on until I find a then carry on until I find a b, b, a a c c etc. Or I could apply numeric principles to an alphabetic process: start on a street that began with an etc. Or I could apply numeric principles to an alphabetic process: start on a street that began with an a, a, then advance along the alphabet by the same number of letters contained in the street's name and find the nearest street whose name began with that new letter. Or I could... then advance along the alphabet by the same number of letters contained in the street's name and find the nearest street whose name began with that new letter. Or I could...

The phone rang while I was in the middle of these deliberations. It was Matthew Younger.

”How are you?” he asked.

”Fine,” I told him. ”I'm looking for a building. What's top-slice top-slice?”

”Ah!” he answered, his voice booming down the line to me. ”Top-slicing is what you do when your shares in a certain company have appreciated-risen-and you slice the profit off by selling some until the value of your holding represents what it did when you bought it.”

”Why would you want to do that?” I asked.

”In order,” he explained, ”to invest the top-sliced money in another company, thus diversifying your holdings. Now your shares in the technology and telecommunication companies we selected recently have risen overall by a staggering ten per cent in little over one week. While I know how much you favour those two sectors, I just felt that if we top-sliced that ten per cent profit we could invest it in another sector while in no way diminis.h.i.+ng your commitment to technology and tele...”

”No,” I told him. ”Keep them where they are.”

There was a pause at his end. I pictured his office: the polished mahogany table, panelled walls and corniced ceiling, the portraits of frail and wealthy men. After a while he came back: ”Fine,” he said. ”Jolly good. Just touching base, really, with a suggestion-but it's your call entirely.”

”Yes,” I answered.

I hung up and went back to pondering methods of looking for my building in an irrational manner. I'd thought up so many by midday that I'd lost track of half of them. By early afternoon I'd realized that none of them would work in any case, for the good reason that implementing any one of them methodically would cancel its irrational value. I started to feel both dizzy and frustrated, and decided that the only thing to do was walk out of my flat with no plan at all in mind-just walk around and see what happened.