Page 15 of The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (Dirk Gently 2)

She had originally tried the direct approach but had been rebuffed by a mere telephone receptionist on the grounds that she didn't have a name to ask for. Simply asking if they had any tall, well-built, blond men in residence had seemed to create entirely the wrong impression. At least, she insisted to herself that it was entirely the wrong impression. A quick phone call to Alan Franklin had set her up for this altogether more subtle approach.

"Good!" A look of doubt passed momentarily over Mr Standish's face, and he summoned Miss Mayhew from out of her cupboard again.

"Miss Mayhew, that last thing I just said to you--"

"Yes, Mr Standish?"

"I assume you realised that I wished you to make a note of it for me?"

"No, Mr Standish, but I will be happy to do so."

"Thank you," said Mr Standish with a slightly tense look. "And tidy up in here please. The place looks a--"

He wanted to say that the place looked a mess, but was frustrated by its air of clinical sterility.

"Just tidy up generally," he concluded.

"Yes, Mr Standish."

The psychologist nodded tersely, brushed a non-existent speck of dust off the top of his desk, flicked another brief smile on and off at Kate and then escorted her out of his office into the corridor which was immaculately laid with the sort of beige carpet which gave everyone who walked on it electric shocks.

"Here, you see," said Standish, indicating part of the wall they were walking past with an idle wave of his hand, but not making it in any way clear what it was he wished her to see or what she was supposed to understand from it.

"And this," he said, apparently pointing at a door hinge.

"Ah," he added, as the door swung open towards them. Kate was alarmed to find herself giving a little expectant start every time a door opened anywhere in this place. This was not the sort of behaviour she expected of a worldly-wise New Yorker journalist, even if she didn't actually live in New York and only wrote travel articles for magazines. It still was not right for her to be looking for large blond men every time a door opened.

There was no large blond man. There was instead a small, sandy-haired girl of about ten years old, being pushed along in a wheelchair. She seemed very pale, sick and withdrawn, and was murmuring something soundlessly to herself. Whatever it was she was murmuring seemed to cause her worry and agitation, and she would flop this way then that in her chair as if trying to escape from the words coming out of her mouth. Kate was instantly moved by the sight of her, and on an impulse asked the nurse who was pushing her along to stop.

She squatted down to look kindly into the girl's face, which seemed to please the nurse a little, but Mr Standish less so.

Kate did not try to demand the girl's attention, merely gave her an open and friendly smile to see if she wanted to respond, but the girl seemed unwilling or unable to. Her mouth worked away endlessly, appearing almost to lead an existence that was independent of the rest of her face.

Now that Kate looked at her more closely it seemed that she looked not so much sick and withdrawn as weary, harassed and unutterably fed up. She needed a little rest, she needed peace, but her mouth kept motoring on.

For a fleeting instant her eyes caught Kate's, and the message Kate received was along the lines of "I'm sorry but you'll just have to excuse me while all this is going on". The girl took a deep breath, half-closed her eyes in resignation and continued her relentless silent murmuring.

Kate leant forward a little in an attempt to catch any actual words, but she couldn't make anything out. She shot an enquiring look up at Standish.

He said, simply, "Stock market prices."

A look of amazement crept over Kate's face.

Standish added with a wry shrug, "Yesterday's, I'm afraid."

Kate flinched at having her reaction so wildly misinterpreted, and hurriedly looked back at the girl in order to cover her confusion.

"You mean," she said, rather redundantly, "she's just sitting here reciting yesterday's stock market prices?" The girl rolled her eyes past Kate's.

"Yes," said Standish. "It took a lip reader to work out what was going on. We all got rather excited, of course, but then closer examination revealed that they were only yesterday's which was a bit of a disappointment. Not that significant a case really. Aberrant behaviour. Interesting to know why she does it, but--"

"Hold on a moment," said Kate, trying to sound very interested rather than absolutely horrified, "are you saying that she is reciting--what?--the closing prices over and over, or--"

"No. That's an interesting feature of course. She pretty much keeps pace with movements in the market over the course of a whole day. Just twenty-four hours out of step."

"But that's extraordinary, isn't it?"

"Oh yes. Quite a feat."

"A feat?"

"Well, as a scientist, I have to take the view that since the information is freely available, she is acquiring it through normal channels. There's no necessity in this case to invent any supernatural or paranormal dimension. Occam's razor. Shouldn't needlessly multiply entities."

"But has anyone seen her studying the newspapers, or copying stuff down over the phone?"

She looked up at the nurse, who shook her head, dumbly.

"No, never actually caught her at it," said Standish. "As I said, it's quite a feat. I'm sure a stage magician or memory man could tell you how it was done."

"Have you asked one?"

"No. Don't hold with such people."

"But do you really think that she could possibly be doing this deliberately?" insisted Kate.

"Believe me, if you understood as much about people as I do, Miss, er--you would believe anything," said Standish, in his most professionally reassuring tone of voice.

Kate stared into the tired, wretched face of the young girl and said nothing.

"You have to understand," said Standish, "that we have to be rational about this. If it was tomorrow's stock market prices, it would be a different story. That would be a phenomenon of an entirely different character which would merit and demand the most rigorous study. And I'm sure we'd have no difficulty in funding the research. There would be absolutely no problem about that."

"I see," said Kate, and meant it.

She stood up, a little stiffly, and brushed down her skirt.

"So," she said, and felt ashamed of herself, "who is your newest patient? Who has arrived most recently, then?" She shuddered at the crassness of the non sequitur, but reminded herself that she was there as a journalist, so it would not seem odd.

Standish waved the nurse and the wheelchair with its sad charge on their way. Kate glanced back at the girl once, and then followed Standish through the swing-doors and into the next section of corridor, which was identical to the previous one.

"Here, you see," said Standish again, this time apparently in relation to a window frame.

"And this," he said, pointing at a light.

He had obviously either not heard her question or was deliberately ignoring it. Perhaps, thought Kate, he was simply treating it with the contempt it deserved.

It suddenly dawned on her what all this Here you see, and And thising was about. He was asking her to admire the quality of the decor. The windows were sashes, with finely made and beautifully painted beads; the light fittings were of a heavy dull metal, probably nickel-plated--and so on.

"Very fine," she said accommodatingly, and then noticed that this had sounded an odd thing to say in her American accent.

"Nice place you've got here," she added, thinking that that would please him.

It did. He allowed himself a subdued beam of pleasure.

"We like to think of it as a quality caring environment," he said.

"You must get a lot of people wanting to come here," Kate continued, plugging away at her theme. "How often do you admit new patients? When was the last--?"

With her left hand she carefully restrained her right hand which wanted to strangle her at this moment.

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A door they were passing was slightly ajar, and she tried, unobtrusively, to look in.

"Very well, we'll take a look in here," said Standish immediately, pushing the door fully open, on what transpired to be quite a small room.

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