Free Dr. Yes by Colin Bateman Page A

house,
I also keep my other books here, books I have accumulated over the years
to feed my endless quest for knowledge or, indeed, trivia. It is a large house,
with seven bedrooms. Mother, having in recent years largely been confined to
her room at the top, hadn't really noticed the extent to which I had quietly
been filling every available inch with my collection; not on shelves, because I
couldn't afford them, but in teetering piles or sagging cardboard boxes. Even
when she did pass a remark, it was more along the lines of 'Why don't you use
the fucking internet like everyone else, you little shit?' rather than a
concern about the fact that I was transforming her house into my own private
library. She never would understand books. 'They're a fucking fire hazard!' she
yelled more than once, oblivious to the fact that on four out of any five
nights I had to remove a burning cigarette from her lips after she nodded off
and on more than one occasion had to put her head out with a fire extinguisher.
        It
took me until dawn, but I found what I was looking for at the bottom of a box
that was second in a pile of three sitting in the first-floor bathroom. It was A History of Post-Revolution Havana Cigars, an expensive illustrated
coffee-table tome that I'd picked up for a tenner in a second-hand bookshop a
couple of years before. I didn't know for sure that Augustine's cigar was from
Cuba, but I suspected. I lugged the book downstairs and sat at the kitchen
table. It was such a large volume that the cigars illustrated within were
nearly all life-size, so I was able to fairly easily compare and contrast. I
established that it was indeed Cuban in origin, and while being from the hugely
popular Montecristo line, was in fact a rarer sub-brand, an Edmundo, named
after the hero of Alexander Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo, Edmond
Dantes.
        So, I
knew.
        Which
begs the question - so what?
        Reader,
I was born suspicious; I have man's intuition, if you will. When I feel
uncomfortable about something, there is generally a reason for it. Admittedly,
I am generally uncomfortable, and have been since I landed on this
planet. My ill health, my allergies, my profound mental problems, they all
contribute to my state of never quite being relaxed or settled. Big things annoy me, but I can't really control them. The smaller things I can do
something about, even if it's just the gaining of knowledge so that I can say I
found out. I now knew about Augustine's cigar. But I still wasn't happy. There
was something nagging at me.
        
        
        Two
hours later, agitated, excited, worried, slightly creeped out but stunned and
impressed by my own remarkably analytical thought processes, I called Alison.
        'Brian?'
she asked groggily. I remained silent. She very quickly reconsidered. 'No,
there's only one idiot would call me at . . . six fucking forty-five in the
morning. What is it? Has somebody died?'
        'Augustine.'
        'Yes,
I believe I know that.'
        'Augustine.
I don't think he killed himself.'
        She
cleared her throat. I could hear her shuffling, sitting up in bed, a lamp
clicking on. She said, 'Well, he did a pretty good impression of it.' She
sighed. 'You haven't been to bed, have you?' I retained a diplomatic silence.
'Jesus God, man, how do you do it? Well? You may as well spit it out.'
        'Okay,'
I said. And then fell quiet, because I hadn't quite worked out how to put it
into words. 'Well. It's like this. I was researching the cigar he was smoking
just before he died
        'Lord
preserve us.'
        'It
was a Cuban, Edmundo
        'Yeah,
I was just thinking that.'
        '. . .
but it's not about the cigar.'
        'Thank
God for—'
        'It's
about the cigar cutter.'
        'The
what?'
        'The
cutter. You have to cut off the end of the cigar before you can smoke it.'
        She
sighed. 'Yes.'
        'Yes.
You saw Augustine use his in the