A Zed & Two Noughts Page #6

- That's his name!

- Who's name?

- The surgeon's.

- Pardon?

Van Meegeren.

He's the cousin of the faker

who painted fake Vermeers.

What's his speciality?

Vermeer women.

Van Meegeren says, I look like

the lady standing at a virginal.

I suspect it's because

you never see her legs.

She's not standing really.

She's strapped and stitched

to her music stool.

Van Meegeren has a great reputation

for stitching.

Stitching?

Suturing. Sewing up wounds. Operations.

He's made a beautiful job on me.

- Look.

- No, I can't.

- Why not?

- Because...

You see what I mean?

I can see more than that.

Oh! That, well...

That's pretty redundant now, isn't it?

I mean, except to pee through.

I want you to make sure

those two brothers don't

get too close to Alba Bewick.

How do I do that?

Distract them.

As only you know how.

What's in it for me?

My patients...

Our patients that'd be.

And a continuing place

in my operating theatre,

and in my bed.

Oliver!

I was thinking, at the crash,

which way was the wind blowing?

Was it blowing off the buildings

at the north side,

or the buildings on the south side?

Stop, Oliver, enough.

You've got to stop!

What difference does it make?

You exhaust me with your obsessions.

Both of you!

You're our only witness.

What sort of witness was I?

In searing pain?

A face full of feathers? An egg yolk?

My leg smashed to pulp, bleeding.

And you ask me for wind directions.

Sorry.

- Where's Beta?

- She's with Oswald.

Look, it was an accident.

5,000 accidents happen every day.

- This one's...

- Bizarre, tragic, farcical!

- This one is different...

- They're acts of God!

Fit only to amaze the survivors

and irritate the insurance company.

This one is different, for God's sake!

Is it?

The wives of two zoologists die in a car

driven by a woman called Bewick,

who's attacked by a swan on Swan's Way!

You are already beginning to build

yourself a case for the supernatural.

But another set of details,

from the same crash,

could produce something

completely different!

And what about me?

Don't I deserve some consideration?

With a daughter, who can't sit still,

and why should she?

Take her out for me, will you?

Van Meegeren is going to fit me

with an artificial leg tomorrow.

Kiss me.

I haven't been kissed since your wife

kissed me a month ago.

Kiss me on the cheek.

Here, where she did.

And the ostrich eats anything at all.

And buries its head in the sand

when it's afraid.

- And the elephant lives to be 100.

- And never forgets a face.

So, you see between us,

we know everything.

You don't know everything.

Between us, we do.

All right, then.

You see that woman over there?

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