CHAPTER ONE
Balls in the air. Juggle juggle
juggle.
These people, these places, these
projects. Each has its own mass, its own weighting. Subtle variance
of spin and velocity.
Arcing back over each other, in and
out of turn.
The light and the air and the grease
and the gumption.
One thing you could say about being a
lifestyle guru/private investigator – it's a test of your
co-ordination.
August had already intervened with
flash floods that dismantled a long-term house makeover. Bloody
Boscastle. One ball down. Another had gained mass with reports of
animal skeletons turning up in the Highlands.
It was with research in mind that
Johnny visited his local corner shop to buy his Sport, Mail,
Independent, Murder Casebook and Crochet partwork.
It was animal butchery he was
pondering as he sauntered around Lidl grabbing all the bargains,
virtually on autopilot.
It was corruption in sport that tested
him during his tour of Victoria Park, zig-zagging around virtually on
autopilot.
It was malfunctioning software that
bored him to sleep.
August 20th. Two things of
note happened to Johnny that dark, muggy day. Firstly, he chanced
upon a wrongly-placed book in the Humour Dept. Secondly, an
unexpected visitor rang his doorbell.
The misplaced volume was Secrets of
Core Pulse Tone Love, by Bruin.
The unexpected visitor was a man in a
karate suit.
Gaunt, sweating disgustingly, glasses
slipping down his bony nose, he propped himself up against the alcove
as Johnny cautiously pulled the door back.
A painful intake of breath. Two
words: “Help me.”
Johnny's features softened into a
fatherly smile.
Five words: “Help me kick his arse.”
An eyebrow duly raised.
The volume had regained Johnny's glance
as, having skimmed around the section, he found himself trying to
make out what the hell that title meant. Picking it off the shelf,
he scanned the blurb and was none the wiser. It was clearly a
double-espresso read, if not triple. The pages thick with
gobbledygook. Back on the shelf it went.
The man gulped back his second hi-ball
of water while Johnny took notes.
When the words came they were thick
and fast and garbled. There were slogans and retreats and deadlines
and mocking laughter. And for Johnny, there was a lightbulb
switching on in his head as he connected the man now dampening his
cheapest armchair with something that had happened back in May.
It had been a light, tantalising early
Summer day and JC was in SoHo amassing material for a show about
alternative lifestyles. The kind of thing they lap up on Blighty.
He was filming a bunch of Koreans wrapped in dayglo bulbous cartoon
costumes, when his attention snapped onto a hubbub nearby in
Leicester Square. A group of men in light karate outfits performed
stunts and poses for an appreciative female audience. One chap was
handing out broken bits of slate together with calling cards.
Intrigued, Johnny took one and frowned at its message:
“You seek the truth through all
these things. You call 0898 800 1800. Zen Zen UK UK”.
He found a payphone and dialled the
number, ignoring the stale urine stench.
“Hello? I was wondering if Zen was
around … I've got lots of questions about the meaning of life and
I've heard that Zen has all the answers … Hello? I want to talk to
Zen!”
That day Johnny had been forced to
give up, the card left to languish in a jacket pocket stuffed with
sandwich receipts and ladies' scrawled addresses. He had never found
out who this Zen was, or why he wrote his own name twice.
Now he understood.
