White Matter

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On the plane ride home, I tried to make sense of all that had happened to me over the last few weeks, tried to crystalize it as a single encompassing thought that would bring together all its disparate parts. I failed. Wherever I directed my attention, some vital element or other would fall off the back. Focus on one part and the rest would disappear. The situation was just too abstract. It wasn't something you could paint. Or perhaps some crucial organizing principle was missing, and of course I had no idea what it was. I was like an antiquarian artist from before the invention of perspective, looking at my work and wondering what it was that wasn't quite right.

Waiting to disembark, I watched as the passengers in front of me unpicked themselves, row by row, emptying out like a crocheted scarf unravelling. When my turn came, I took my place in the queue and filed out from cabin to tunnel to open concourse. My home town is a major city, with a busy airport. Faces from my Tokyo flight slowly diluted as passengers from other flights came in among us. I ceased to be the blond exception, becoming once more an indistinguishable one in the cosmopolitan many.

Until, that is, the security gate singled me out with its evil eye. A red crossed circle flashing on the kiosk screen. Moments later, a voice was at my shoulder, "Sir, if you would just accompany me this way please ..."

Around me people looked up from their queuing, their pattern recognition skills detecting the anomaly of a tidily dressed Caucasian male being led off for special attention. The exception was duly noted and ignored. Not their problem.

Two minutes later I was seated in an interview room, facing a crew-cut in a dark suit.

"You reported a Mr Graeme Williams as having been kidnapped."

"No I didn't. I helped my employer investigate Graeme's disappearance and told him what I found out. He was the one who made the police report."

"Has Mr Williams been kidnapped?"

"No. He's in Japan."

"From where you have just returned."

"That's right."

"If you believed Mr Williams had been kidnapped, why did you go to Japan?"

"Personal business."

"And did this business involve Mr Williams?"

"No. He was waiting for me at the airport."

"You're not making sense."

"He was waiting for me at the airport. I hadn't been expecting him."

"But he, presumably, had been expecting you."

"Yes."

"Wasting police time is an offence, you know."

"What about my time? I could save us both by leaving now."

"What was Mr Williams doing in Japan?"

"Personal business."

"Really? The same personal business as took you there perhaps?"

"No, ... I don't think so." I shrugged. The interview room was austere, our chairs and the desk between us the only furniture.

"Let me be clearer. What was Mr Williams' business in Japan?"

"I think you would be better to put that question to him."

"Alright then, what was your business in Japan?"

"There wasn't any. I had been misinformed."

"Misinformed by who?"