Work Text:
The sun stole stealthily into an Islington flat via the crack of an ill-fitting Venetian blind. It stumbled over a discarded pizza box, fell face-first onto some cloth garments that it chose not to dwell on (so we shan't either), and snuck like a naughty child towards the rumbling, snorting lump in a grey duvet that was fetchingly adorned with tomato-paste stains at one end. The sun – quite wisely – beat a hasty retreat from the horrors of the bedroom and went back to dappling pretty patterns of light and shade in park far, far from the poky first-floor Islington flat.
It was a beautiful June day outside, with the kind of sky that appeared on postcards from the Algarve, the sort your smug friends send to you while you're still trapped at work for the summer. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and birds were happily screeching ornithological abuse at each other, but Dirk Gently was aware of none of it, because Dirk Gently was asleep.
He was not meant to be asleep. He was meant to be staying awake at all costs and monitoring himself for concussion and he was meant to be explaining to his wealthiest client why he had billed her for an acupuncture session from a nice Romanian girl; after the day he'd had yesterday, however, Dirk had felt that it was in the best interests of the universe as a whole that he went to bed with half a bottle of Teacher's and some paracetamol.
The events of the previous day had involved – in a manner which was inextricably interlinked even to a non-holistic thinker – a four-slot toaster, a fake cheque for fifty pounds, a slice of pizza comprised largely of sardines, and an incandescently angry Welshman. They had culminated in a visit to the North Middlesex Hospital A&E to have his head bandaged up and to receive the injunction which he was currently ignoring.
This happy, if unhealthy, state of affairs did not last.
The klaxons of hell bellowed through the flat, and Dirk Gently – private detective, pizza addict, and congenitally sleazy thirty-seven-year-old – stirred as slowly as the break-up of continents. The doorbell went again, and Dirk tripped on a grime-encrusted coffee cup.
When he opened the front door he was not particularly surprised at the disgruntled face that met him. "Detective Sergeant Gilks – " he began with the closest thing to an affable smile that he could find.
"Lieutenant," Gilks corrected, peering into the hallway.
"Detective Lieutenant Gilks, to what do I owe the inestimable honour of this personal visit so early in the morning?" Dirk continued without a pause.
"It's half past three in the afternoon. Invite me in."
Dirk smiled. "But if I do that, Detective Lieutenant, you'll be able to come and go through my private affairs any time you please."
"You're thinking of vampires," Gilks grunted and folded his arms.
"You see, Gilks, this is the folly of making assumption about what I might be thinking at any given moment. I am a very complicated and intelligent man, and this time I was thinking of bailiffs." Somehow Dirk managed to give this speech without wavering or sounding as though he was tootling rather heavily on his own horn, and this was because the St. Ced's not-exactly-alumnus believed every single word of it, which was a deal more than could be said for Gilks.
Gilks wiped his feet on Dirk's unpaid bills. "Impressive bandage you have there, Gently," he said with a loaded nod.
"One does one's best," Dirk said modestly.
"You wouldn't happen to have acquired it after being stuck in the head with a Delonghi Deluxe four-slot toaster, would you?" Gilks asked without guile, suspicion or anything other than heavy resignation.
"My dear Gerald – can I call you Gerald?"
"No."
"My dear Gerald – "
"A deluxe standard," Gilks persisted.
"Why ask a question that you already know the answer to?" Dirk said, opening his flat door. "I would apologise for the mess but I'm not sorry for it. I ask again, to what or whom do I owe the unexpected pleasure of your always-invasive company?"
"The Metropolitan Police," Gilks said, making the name of the constabulary sound like a curse, staring with undisguised disgust at Dirk's idiosyncratic living quarters, "heard your name mentioned in connection to the deceased and immediately called me up from a pleasant weekend away in the Norfolk Broads, in order to interrogate you, under the belief that if anyone else was to engage in conversation with you they would leave possessed by the notion that they were a stoat. I wonder," Gilks went on with a deepening scowl and absolutely no indication that he wondered anything of the sort, "where they might have acquired this idea, Gently?"
"As you are already aware, a number of fanciful and entirely untrue rumours are in circulation about me at present – "
"And as I am already aware, you started most of them," Gilks growled.
"Wait – 'deceased'? 'interrogate'?" Dirk pinched the bridge of his nose thoughtfully. "Am I to understand that I'm under arrest here?"
Dirk Gently cut a dashing figure on his grey carpet; naked but for a pair of dubious silk underpants, overweight, hirsute, bent of nose and swathed of head, his toes unfortunately squelching deep into a forgotten slice of anchovy-and-olive. He still contrived to convey a sense of wounded dignity, although it was the dignity of one who has just sat down hard on a whoopee cushion.
"We can do this one of two ways," Gilks said, narrowing his eyes. "Either we can have a friendly informal chat here in which you will assure me to my satisfaction that you have an airtight alibi, and you can go back to – " he looked a little disturbed, " – whatever it was I've so carelessly interrupted. Or you can be your usual uncooperative self, and I can drag you down to the station in your … underpants … and make you sit in a very uncomfortable and cold interview room for a long time while I have some tea and decide what sort of invasive and awkward questions to ask about your expenses claims, and whether to start using harsh words like 'fraud' in connection to your name again."
Dirk Gently didn't smoke. It was a source of constant disappointment to him – as a private detective he felt that he ought to smoke, but his asthma didn't agree – and had been a smoker at that moment he would have lit up a cigarette in a quizzical fashion and smoked it insolently while waiting for Gilks to stop being so irritatingly there without providing him with details of what it was Dirk was supposed to be involved with this time.
As he didn't smoke, and as chewing on pizza rarely conveyed the same effect, he simply squinted and put his hands on the general area of flesh that covered his long-forgotten hipbones.
People had this inconvenient habit of dying in connection to Dirk which, to the great chagrin of various constabularies and the unceasing annoyance of Detective Lieutenant Gilks, was never actually his fault but which was usually closely enough linked (because, Dirk had patiently and repeatedly explained to no avail, of the holistic nature of the universe) to keep the police involved for a good two or three days. As a result of this, Dirk was now on first-name – if not entirely friendly – terms with the wives, girlfriends, mothers and children of several police officers in the Metropolitan, Cambridgeshire and, unexpectedly, Lothian police forces.
"Who," Dirk asked eventually, "is dead?"
Gilks folded his arms and drummed his fingers over his forearm. It was one of his Stock Policeman Poses. Dirk would have liked to respond with one of his Stock Handsome Private Eye Poses, but they all rather depended on him having his hat (ruined by the toaster) and his coat (hanging up in the bathroom) and having been awake for a little longer than five minutes.
"Your assailant," Gilks said, his voice flatter than a supermodel's stomach, "was discovered this morning with his head perched carefully on his buttocks. His wife was less than enthusiastic about this situation."
"I can well imagine," Dirk said, "though I suppose it was as well that said head wasn't actually inserted between his buttocks."
"Thank you for that sensitive thought, Gently," Gilks muttered, "Apparently I am to conclude that you'd have placed it there were you his murderer?"
Dirk gave the Detective Lieutenant another mild and pleasant smile which rather belied the irritation at having his flat invaded so early in the afternoon. "I have no idea what you are to conclude, Detective Lieutenant. Having never killed anyone, I can't say for sure what I'd have done with the man's head. Why was it placed on his buttocks, we ask ourselves – well, I ask myself, I would assume that any intelligent investigator would do the same – if not with some specific message-bearing intent? The holistic investigator, of course, knowing the interconnectedness of all things makes that an uninteresting question, instead asks himself, where was the toaster?"
Gilks glared at him. "The Delonghi was not in evidence at the scene of the crime," he said eventually, narrowing his eyes.
"My dear Detective Lieutenant," Dirk said generously, patting Gilks on both upper arms at once like a Mafia don, "I will take your baffling case. My fee is five hundred a day, plus non-negotiable and entirely necessary expenses."
"Such as," Gilks said, taking his notebook from his breast pocket and flipping it open, "Lunch at Balans. Five large pizzas delivered from the Upper Street Pizza Go-Go. A leather trenchcoat with satin lining. A bespoke trilby from a well-regarded milliners in the vicinity of Saville Row. Fifteen pairs of black silk underpants from Harrod's. An 'acupuncture' session with Miss Mariutza Popescu –"
"- entirely necessary to clear my head."
" – fourteen tins of milkshake mix, a weekend in Blackpool – "
"- it's hardly the case that anyone would go there for fun – "
" – a shoe-shine, a bacon sandwich from Pret a Manger and forty-nine different brands of whiskey, some of which we had to look up on the intranet to make sure they weren't actually controlled substances," Gilks finished with a sour twist of his lips. He flipped the notebook shut again. "Yes, thank you, I am well aware of your expenses. And last time we had this conversation you were charging two hundred a day."
"Inflation," Dirk said promptly, "and my landlord is, alas, the most unfeeling and devoted of capitalists. He demands that I pay my rent on the same day every month, to an amount which he will brook no haggling over. And so I am forced to adjust my prices accordingly."
"Gently," Gilks said, raising an eyebrow, "are you going to explain your fascination with the toaster or am I going to arrest you?"
"You cannot arrest me for tardiness surrounding toasters. It won't hold up in court."
"At the moment," Gilks said with grim satisfaction, "I could drag you into that nick on a charge of Being An Annoying Prat With An Awful Hat and paperwork or no I'd be good for a round in every copper's pub in London for the next six months." He tapped his fingers on his forearm again, "Nowadays we have this helpful ability to detain without charge for longer than I suspect you want to be inside a prison cell, too, not to mention the music-to-my-ears charge of wasting police time."
"You want to know about the toaster?" Dirk asked, sitting down on his bed.
"Get up."
"I'm much more capable of telling you about toasters while sitting down, and I haven't had breakfast," Dirk persisted.
"Bit late for that," Gilks muttered. "Get up."
Dirk got up. "So," he said, brushing his palms on his thighs, momentarily perplexed by his lack of trousers, "you want to know about the toaster?"
"I want to know why you think the location of the toaster is more important than the location of Mr. Pryce's severed head, or indeed of Mr. Pryce's killer," Gilks corrected, with leaden pedantry. "Without your usual mystical nonsense."
"Detective Lieutenant – "
"Alright, you can call me Gerald. Just stop repeating my rank every five minutes."
"My dear Gerald – "
"I didn't say you could 'my dear' at me," Gilks said warningly.
"Then would you mind if I returned to using Detective Lieutenant?"
"Yes," Gilks said with a very heavy sigh.
"It's just that Gerald lacks a certain beat which – "
"Makes you sound like a patronising pain in the posterior," Gilks pointed out. "Get to the point or it's handcuff time and don't – " he raised his finger warningly, " – make any funny remarks about that."
"I wouldn't dream of it," Dirk said. His underpants had become stuck in the crack of his arse, but he didn't feel that he could maintain an acceptable level of gravitas if he tried to remove them in full view of the Detective Lieutenant. "The point I was so gallantly struggling towards despite your many unmannerly and unnecessary interruptions, Gerald –"
Here Gilks interrupted again with a snort of disbelief.
" – is that I am as desirous as you to avoid entanglements of a mystical nature in my work. Alas, the explanation for this is unavoidably, as you say, mystical. Although I prefer the term paranormal."1
"Get on with it," Gilks growled.
A plane passed low overheard. An intrepid fly bobbed over a discarded pizza slice with the happy buzz of a fly that knows it has found more food than it could ever possibly need and has no competition for such prime rubbish. Dirk Gently rubbed his tender and swollen nose. "What would you say if I were to tell you that the toaster was in fact a magical artefact of some considerable power from a parallel and altogether weirder dimension which was protectively transfigured on arriving in our world, and which was the property of the strange but not entirely hostile elder god which lives in my fridge?"
Gilks sighed. "I would say you were a loony," he said bluntly, "and then I would arrest you for being a pain in the neck. So I would advise that you don't advance that explanation."
"Unfortunately," Gently said, lacing his fingers together over his naked, hairy stomach, "it's the truth."
"Gently," Gilks groaned, "stop it."
"It is!" Dirk protested, spreading his hands again. He padded slowly and with some unsightly chafing towards the door to the kitchen, and pointed at the fridge, which was coated in luminous slime down the door-jamb side. "A giant, tentacled monstrosity of incredible size and inhumanity dwelleth within. Apparently, after my last refrigerator became a health hazard no one could tolerate and was mercifully towed away, my new refrigerator has become a portal to a very dark and alarming dimension." Despite being deprived of hat, coat, and moody lighting, Dirk still managed a short pensive brood. "Frankly I don't think Smeg's reputation as a high-end electrical goods manufacturer is entirely deserved."
Gilks frowned. If his arms had not already been folded he would have folded them.
"It's quite convenient in some respects," Dirk went on, "although it does lead to the perishables perishing somewhat faster than I would have liked. He cleans up after himself and … well, all those tentacles. It's like having a live-in sex toy."
Gilks' face went blank and solid as a slate. "Please tell me I misheard you."
"I'm afraid – "
"I don't care if you have to lie. Just tell me you didn't just say what I thought I heard," Gilks said in a white-faced kind of voice, apparently frozen to the spot. "In fact, no. Change the subject. Completely. Now."
There was a pause as Dirk shrugged and scrambled for a subject, "How, er, how is the delightful Mrs Gilks?"
"Applying for a divorce," Gilks said, still frozen to one spot. "It's no good. The mental images will not leave."
"Unlike Mrs. Gilks," Dirk said cheerfully.
"Quiet, you. That situation is your fault." Gilks unfolded his arms and squeezed the bridge of his nose. "Please, for the love of all that's holy, never, ever mention the contents of your fridge again."
"It takes a lot of people like that," Dirk observed. "But really, he's no troub-"
Gilks held up his finger, "I said, don't mention it again."
"I'm quite sure Mrs. Gilks' decision to abscond from the enviable position of being… well, Mrs Gilks, is her own decision and nothing to do with me," Dirk added, backing away from the kitchen door and making overtures towards sitting back down again.
Still lost in a painful internal world that involved squidlike gods, Dirk Gently and the phrase "live-in sexy toy" in no comforting combination, Gilks took a moment to respond. "Oh no," he said with finality, "no no, Gently. This is all your doing. No one else would have set up a camera and taken the pictures and sent them to my wife."
"… pictures?" Dirk asked, going rather pale.
"Don't pretend you didn't kn- you didn't know?"
Dirk's surprisingly round eyes said that he didn't. There was a moment in which the universe held its breath and two or more probable futures spun away into the void, ribbons of possibility flowing out from Gilks' next words:
"Sod it."
Dirk's smile was calculatedly nonchalant. "You … well. I'm sure you couldn't be interested in a re-match."
"Just as long," Gilks said with a resigned sigh, undoing his tie, "as you don't mention that thing in your fridge again."