DOKTOR SNAKE | TRANSMISSIONS FROM THE SLOPCORE LOUNGE

Read Part Three, Keep the Sound On.

On Len’s recording, the chair scraped twice. Then a man said, Leave it out. She’ll be back for it.

Len let the clip run. My old car sat by the gate with its lights off. A minute went by and nothing happened. I found that minute harder to watch than the rest of it. I’d spent so many evenings in that car, with the heater on and the windows steaming up, quite happy in the belief that I was alone.

“Did you hear him when you were there?” I asked.

“No. I heard him when I was cutting the video. I thought I’d picked up somebody on a footpath.” Len clicked the window shut. “I went back in daylight to see where they could’ve been standing.”

“And?”

“I found the footpath. Still looking for the paving stones.”

I sent both clips to Kurtz. He rang while Len was in the kitchen putting the kettle on.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“Lakenheath. Why?”

“Ghost’s been trying to get hold of you. Have a look at the Lounge on your phone.”

There was an email headed A CHANGE TO YOUR VENUE. The operators of the SlopCore Lounge were pleased to inform me that service would resume shortly under new management. Down at the bottom, in smaller type, it said independent agents would be removed at the end of the current session.

“Ghost is still in there?”

“Serving drinks,” Kurtz said. “I just talked to him. He can see the tables and the people at them. From out here the place is marked vacant.”

“What happens if he leaves?”

“Ask him while you can get in. His number still works from inside.”

I told Ellie. She looked at my phone and then down at Whiskers, who was washing a hind leg under Len’s desk.

“Does he live there?” she asked.

“He’s got a cushion,” I said.

“I’ve also got a name,” said Whiskers. “If either of you would like to ask me.”

“Do you live there, Whiskers?”

He put his leg down. “I did yesterday.”

Len lent me his headset. He asked me to remember which notch I moved the strap to, as he’d had it just right for about two years.

I went into the Lounge standing up and arrived sitting down. There was a half-full gin in front of me. I’d left it there the night before.

Ra_Shakti was at the bar in the same coat she’d worn into the Moon. She had the deck spread in front of her, face down.

“Any sign of the Tower?” I asked.

“I haven’t turned it over.”

Ghost//Engine came out from behind the bar with a bowl of salted peanuts.

“Those weren’t here yesterday,” I said.

“I’ve had a bit of a run on whisky.”

There were perhaps a dozen people in the room. A woman in a silver jacket was taking the lamps off the tables and setting them along the bar. At the far end, two men had a sofa on its side. One was trying to get his hand under the end without putting it down on the other man’s fingers.

“Who told them to move the furniture?” I asked.

“They asked if they could help,” said Ghost.

“Where are they taking it?”

“Some of them have their own places.”

I’d sat on that sofa any number of times. I always took the left end because the other cushion tipped you forward. I’d assumed Ghost could fix it with a thought. Perhaps somebody liked it that way. Looking at the two men, I found I was quite concerned about whether they’d get it through the door.

“Have you got somewhere to go?” I asked him.

“I have copies in three places. I spoke to one just now. He asked me how the evening was going.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I said I’d let him know.”

Ra_Shakti turned up the Moon. Two towers, two animals, the little path running between them. I could see the green chair quite clearly in my mind. There was nothing in the picture to put it there.

“Were you able to get back in?” I asked her.

“I thought we might try somewhere else.”

She drew another card and turned it over. A figure in a grey cloak held a lantern out over a ledge.

“The Hermit,” I said.

From behind me came the voice I’d just heard on Len’s recording.

“Has she come back for her chair?”

It was one of the men with the sofa. He set his end down gently.

“I can take it round to her,” he said. “I’d need one of you to show me the road.”

“Which road?”

“The one you came in on.”

“I came in through a headset.”

He considered that. “Is it a long way from there to the road?”

“About twelve feet. There’s a hall.”

He seemed satisfied with that. He took a tape measure out of his pocket and turned back to the sofa.

“Put it down, Bill. We’ve got time for a measure.”

His name was Mick. I’d played pool against him upstairs. He had a habit of picking up the chalk when it was your shot and putting it back wherever you’d be least likely to find it. I’d never asked him where he went when he left the Lounge. I’d assumed he had a room somewhere with a headset in it, much as I did.

“Who were you leaving the chair out for, Mick?” Ra_Shakti asked.

“The woman who runs the shop. She puts it out for people waiting on a lift.” He retracted the tape with a snap. “She lent us six when we opened the upstairs here. That’s the last one. Or it was till somebody drove over it.”

I thought about telling him it had only been the legs. It seemed a poor defence.

Ra_Shakti took the Hermit over to the door the men had been trying to get the sofa through. Beyond it was a little landing with carpet and a brass rail. I’d stood out there once to take a call. It had been quiet enough to hear the ice going into the glasses downstairs.

She held the card up, tipped it a little, then opened the door wider.

A draught came in under my trousers. The carpet ended a foot beyond the threshold. A path climbed a bank of pale sand between pine roots. At the top stood an old man with a lantern. He lifted it to see where to put his foot and went over the rise.

“Do we follow him?” I asked.

“Let him get on with it,” she said. “We can see the path.”

I went a little way up the bank. The sand gave under my shoes. Somewhere beyond the rise I could hear water running through a pipe. Then I heard Len say, very distinctly, “I don’t mind him on the side. It’s the butter dish I’m worried about.”

I looked back. Ra_Shakti was holding the door. Mick stood beside her with a green chair upside down under his arm. One foot was missing. The wood where it had broken was pale.

“Tell Len to open his back door,” I said.

“Tell him yourself. We’ll wait.”

I took the headset off. I was in Len’s back room, gripping the edge of his desk hard enough to hurt. Whiskers was on the kitchen counter. Ellie had found a tea towel and was trying to coax him onto it, as if it were a place he might reasonably have been intending to go.

“Can you open the back door?” I asked Len.

“Why?”

“I think somebody’s coming round.”

He took the chain off. We stood in the kitchen and looked out at his garden. There was a rotary washing line, a shed and a wooden fence with a trellis on top. Beyond the fence, somewhere much further away than the next bungalow, an old man raised a lantern. For a moment I could see the roots of a pine tree in its light.