by Jeff Noon
Nyquist stopped at a corner to get his bearings, consulting the page he’d torn out of his street atlas. He was about to turn right onto Sackville-West when his eye caught sight of a familiar car parked across the road. He crossed over to it. Officer Monroe was sitting inside, looking at him through the open side window.
“Bella? What are you doing here?”
She climbed out and stood before him. Her skin was puffy looking, her clothes were ruffled and her hair was sticking up in fronds. Black circles surrounded her eyes.
“This isn’t a good idea,” he said to her.
“I disagree.”
“Overseer K ordered you to help me?”
“No. I’m on unofficial compassionate leave.”
Nyquist shook his head in dismay. “Bella, this is dangerous work.”
“I’ve faced danger. The story riots of ’56. You weren’t even here then.”
“I know that. But still–”
“You wouldn’t have lasted ten minutes.”
She started to walk down Sackville-West. Nyquist cursed to himself and went after her. He caught her by the arm. She shrugged him off.
“Leave me alone.”
“Bella. This is stupid. This isn’t the way to do it.”
She looked at him with an intensity he’d never seen before, and he understood just why the Narrative Council employed her. Patrick Wellborn’s death had triggered Monroe’s rage, and a fierce determination now burned in her, even a need for revenge. And he didn’t like the thought of that.
“I haven’t slept,” she said. “I can’t let it go.”
“I’m still not sure, Bella.”
The noise of a typewriter’s keys sounded from the nearest window. “Do you hear that?” she said. “All stories are equally important, mine included.”
There was no argument against it.
They set off walking. The address they were looking for was near the end of the row, one small terrace crammed in among many, roof tiles missing, brickwork crumbling, a missing window pane covered with cardboard. Nyquist rapped on the door continually until it opened up a crack and a pair of eyes peeped out at them.
Monroe said, “We’re looking for Bradley Sinclair.”
It was a woman, her face still obscured: “He’s busy. Writing.”
“I’m sure he can spare us a few sentences.”
“No, no, I don’t think so–”
Monroe thrust her council ID card through the gap in the doorway. Immediately the door was opened fully and the woman in the hallway moved aside, a fearful look on her face. She nodded to the rickety staircase. Nyquist had to admit to himself that working with a council officer had its advantages.
“Upstairs, second on the left.”
Monroe led the way. They reached the landing and stood together outside the bedroom door, listening to the sound that came from within. Nyquist said, “I’ll do the talking,” as he knocked on the door. There was no answer. “Bradley Sinclair?” Still no response. Nyquist tried the door. It wasn’t locked, so he pushed it open and walked through into a brightly lit room. A large desk dominated the space. Sitting at it was the bent-over figure of Bradley Sinclair. His head was lowered so far forward that his nose almost touched the keyboard of his typewriter and his arms worked incessantly, bent grotesquely at the elbows and shoulders and wrists like the limbs of a praying mantis. He was a human machine designed for one purpose only: to write. The keys clattered, up and down, up and down; the carriage clanged and rattled, back and forth. The return bell rang out – Ding! The letters smashed against the paper in a steady rhythm.
“Mr Sinclair?”
Nyquist might as well have not spoken at all, or even be standing there, some few feet away from the writer at his work. Only the story mattered, nothing else.
Monroe moved forward and touched Sinclair on the shoulder. Immediately he jumped from his seat and turned to face them, almost losing his balance in the process. His eyes were blinking rapidly. He backed into the corner of the room, mumbling to himself, most of the words lost in his panic, his quickly drawn breaths.
Nyquist came forward as well, and together he and Monroe managed to calm Bradley Sinclair down a little. Monroe said, “We don’t mean you any harm.”
“But you stopped me, you stopped me from writing.” Sinclair made it sound like a major crime. “Why? Why would you do that?” He spoke in a high raspy voice, perhaps unused to expressing himself out loud, and he couldn’t stop blinking. He rubbed at his eyes with his fingers and his breath came in short, shallow gasps.
“We need to talk to you about Patrick Wellborn.”
“He’s not here, is he? You haven’t brought him with you?”
It was a pure outburst of fear.
Nyquist had an idea about how to pacify the man. “No. He’s dead.”
It worked. Immediately Sinclair relaxed and he started to breathe normally again. He collapsed into his chair at the desk and settled his nerves further with a cigarette. He was a feeble man in his middle thirties, underfed, lacking all sense of muscle beneath the clothes and skin. A faint breeze or a bad review might blow him away. His mousy hair was long and greasy and combed forward to almost reach his eyes, which continued to stare at the paper in the typewriter’s platen. His hands were already twitching with the ghosts of stories yet to be written.
Nyquist sat on the edge of the desk. He said, “Wellborn was obsessed with your Joe Creed detective novels, isn’t that true?”
“Yes, very much so.”
Monroe examined the writer’s setup. He typed not onto individual sheets of paper, but onto a continuous roll that was pulled into the machine from beneath and rolled out again as the carriage moved on: it was a system designed to allow the author to never stop working, not until he wanted to. The space behind the desk was billowing with waves of white paper. Monroe said, “This is the technique that Jack Kerouac used when he was writing On the Road.”
“Yes, yes, yes! That’s the method I use!” Sinclair’s eyes sparkled. “The method of spontaneous combustion.”
“I think he means spontaneous composition.”
“Same thing, same thing!”
Nyquist said, “People are falling ill, Sinclair. Even dying. And I think you’re bound up in it.”
The author muttered to himself without answering.
“When did you find out about Wellborn?”
“He came to see me. I don’t know how he found my address, I try to keep it secret.”
“He worked for the council,” Monroe explained. “He could easily find the address of any writer.”
“Wellborn wouldn’t leave me alone. Always asking for more stories, more knowledge, all the secret histories, the notebooks, character biographies, hidden back stories, the plans for the next books. All of it. He never stopped.”
Nyquist pushed on: “What did Wellborn really want from you? What was he seeking?”
“One thing only: to be Joe Creed. To become the private eye, to join in the adventures himself. He was crazy. And then… and then it got even worse.”
“What happened?”
“He stayed away for a while, and I was glad of that. But after about two weeks he came back, and this time he’d changed. I mean he was acting just like Creed does, he moved like him, he talked like him, the same phrases, same intonation, even the same accent. I mean, his voice had changed! He even started to look a little like Creed does, in my mind, as I see him. He started to walk the same crooked path.”
“How did it happen, this change? Do you have any idea?”
“The story took him over. He had stolen Joe Creed’s soul from me. And suddenly, without warning, I could no longer write.”
Monroe spoke to Nyquist. “This must be when Patrick started taking the drug. He was becoming obsessed.”
“He killed her,” Sinclair mumbled. “He killed her.”
“What do you mean?” Nyquist asked, suddenly thinking of Zelda. “Who did Wellborn kill?”
The writer
gazed at his bent fingers, each calloused tip smeared with typewriter ink. “Wellborn killed my muse, he shot her dead!”
Monroe asked, “Are you reporting a murder?”
Sinclair shouted at her: “In here. He killed her, in here.” His fingers pressed against both sides of his skull as though he might force a way inside. “He killed her without mercy.”
Nyquist asked, “So you employed Antonia Linden to erase Wellborn from your life?”
“What else could I do? I needed to sever every single link between myself and him. Only then would I be free.”
Nyquist tried a few more questions, but Sinclair wouldn’t say any more on the subject. He kept glancing at the typewriter, at the roll of paper, the half-finished sentence.
“Sinclair, speak to me.”
“I have to write.”
His hands reached once more for the keys and started to tap out their feverish rhythm, the words springing into life under his guidance. Nyquist looked at the page, at the text that filled it, letter by letter.
Akdfg kslojf mskh sd ljithjom sd s klsgatw d sljo slkfif s jhs ss skold sda…
He checked the sheets that flowed across the floor; they were all covered in the same chaotic outpourings. Bella bent down to the writer and whispered, “You have to stop now, Bradley. You’re not making any sense.”
Sinclair’s fingers hovered above the keys, convulsing like faulty devices. He murmured and fretted, and sweat beaded his brow. His whole body shuddered into sudden action and with an almighty scream he picked up the typewriter and hurled it across the room. It smashed into the wall, taking out a great chunk of plaster, and then fell down to the floor.
Nyquist waited until the last echo had faded away. Then he asked in a calm voice, “Do you know of a book called The Body Library? A sort of cut-up text?”
“Yes.” A breath of a word. “Yes, I know it. Deadly Nightshade was used in the making of it. They sliced open my books and the words flowed out red with blood on the white page and they took the wounded flesh and re-used it, stitching the pieces together with other parts taken from other books by other writers, all in a jumble. I liken it to Frankenstein’s monster. Born out of an evil desire, created only to destroy.” The speech exhausted him, and he continued in a quieter tone: “Agatha Christie’s second Miss Marple mystery was called The Body in the Library. So you see, even the title is taken from another person’s words. The scissors at work.”
Nyquist thought for a moment, then he said, “You used the word they, when talking about the author.”
“That’s right.”
“I thought it was written by Lewis Beaumont.”
Sinclair bit at his lower lip. “It’s two people. Two writers under one name. Theodore Lewis and Ava Beaumont. They approached me earlier this year to ask about using parts of my work in their own book.”
“So they did ask permission?”
“Yes. I thought they were going to quote a few passages. That’s what I understood, that they were writing a treatise on my work, or on crime fiction in general. But they took the whole book and tore it to shreds.”
Monroe asked, “Do you know where we can find them?”
“They have an office right here in Cleland. I went there once, seeking reparation.” He gave out the address and Monroe wrote it down in her notebook.
“What were they like, Lewis and Beaumont?”
“They were always arguing, I know that.”
“About the book?”
Sinclair frowned. “That’s all they ever talked about. What the book should be, how it should look. They were at odds over it.”
Monroe said in a gentle tone, “We’re really sorry to find you like this, Bradley. I know from my work on the council that your stories have given much to the city.”
The author opened his arms wide, as though to grab and embrace the ghost of his muse.
“Lost. Lost forever.”
Nyquist nodded to Monroe and they made their way to the door. The sound of tearing paper stopped them. Nyquist turned. Sinclair was ripping the long roll of paper in two. He gathered up another portion of the scroll and tore at it. And again, in another place. And again. Over and over, this work continued.
He was laughing.
Place of Birth
IT TOOK them half an hour to find the address, a rickety, tumbledown building in a street where every house looked half abandoned. Across the way was a bombsite, a harsh reminder of the war years. Smoke drifted above a bonfire and two dogs sniffed around a pile of rubbish. Here, Cleland North shaded into the even poorer district of Conrad South. Monroe parked at the roadside and turned off the engine. Nyquist looked out through the window. With its green and red timbers and peeling plaster it looked like a ruined fairy tale house dropped down into reality.
“Let’s put it together,” he said. “It starts with two writers, Beaumont and Lewis.”
Monroe took up the thread. “Together they create The Body Library, using parts taken from other books and magazines and so on, pasting them together to make a new text.”
“Then your friend Wellborn discovers that the pages have a psychotropic quality. He becomes hooked on the word smoke.”
“Through this addiction, one particular character in the book…”
“Private eye, Joe Creed.”
“…starts to take over Patrick’s mind.”
“But Creed was stolen from the work of Bradley Sinclair. So Wellborn seeks out the original author, demanding to know everything there is to know about the character.”
Monroe nodded. “He was seeking total identification.”
“Right. And then Sinclair employs an erasure company to slice Wellborn from his life story. Which is where I come in. Public sucker number one.”
They got out of the car. Nyquist looked up at the house. “I doubt if anyone’s home. It’s too much of a ruin.”
Monroe agreed, but added, “Maybe they’re hiding from us.”
Nyquist rang the doorbell and waited. He tried again with the same lack of response.
“What now?”
“Now, Bella, we break in.”
It took him no more than five minutes to locate the weakest window at the side of the house, and to smash the pane. Bella said nothing. He climbed through the window and opened the back door for her. Together, they searched the premises top to bottom, finding no evidence of life.
“Beaumont and Lewis have moved out,” Monroe said. “Or maybe Sinclair made the whole thing up, just to get rid of us.”
“Possibly.”
Nyquist found a ladder leaning against the wall on the top landing, directly below an attic door. He propped the ladder on the lip, climbed up and pushed open the door. He popped his head through the gap.
“What can you see?”
“This is it, Bella.”
“Tell me.”
“Their workspace.”
They climbed up. The entire space beneath the eaves was filled with the detritus of artistic endeavor. Thousands of torn-out pages lay scattered everywhere in ragged piles, some of them reaching high up the walls like snow drifts. A workbench was filled with tools and accessories: pens, scissors, modeling knives, steel rulers, pots of glue and ink, needles and thread, ribbons, even a vise for some reason. The empty covers of novels, both hardback and soft, lay around in a tumble of cardboard: their printed innards had been torn out. Paper slid against paper as Nyquist moved deeper into the attic. Monroe picked up a pair of scissors from the bench and pointed out the dried red substance on the blades. “Please tell me this isn’t blood.”
Nyquist couldn’t answer. He had recognized the cover image of Deadly Nightshade – not one copy, but many, their pages sliced and torn open for material. He picked up one sheet of paper with a handwritten poem on it. The style seemed vaguely familiar to him, and he liked to think of it as being one of Zelda’s, although, with no name or signature on display, he couldn’t be certain. Other items he saw included a cookery manual, a spy novel, a street atlas of St
oryville dated 1917, a children’s book called The Brightest Star in the Sky, a romance pamphlet entitled The Wayward Bride, a number of science fiction story magazines, a spotter’s guide to the birds of Great Britain. One half page contained lines of Latin text with diagrams of pentagrams and other magical symbols, probably taken from a book of spells, or a demonology. But he was no expert, and the atmosphere of the room overwhelmed him. This was a private library after a bomb had fallen, a disaster area where stories lay in shreds and tatters.
From all these things and probably from many other sources as well, the authors Lewis and Beaumont had constructed The Body Library.
Monroe had fallen silent. She lowered herself to the floor and moved her hands through the scattered pages like a helpless nurse on a battlefield. Nyquist knew how she felt. There was too much pain in this room, too many wounded tales. The officer was weeping now, weeping. And he knew it wasn’t only for the mutilated books, but for Patrick Wellborn as well, her fiancé, whose life had also been torn apart by the strange novel created in this attic room.
Nyquist went over and knelt beside her. The ever-moving pages made a whispering sound, like a choir of ghosts. So many words, so many lost half-spoken phrases – he was aware of them, his every sense tuned to the slightest shifting of the layers of paper. And Monroe’s sobs were another part of the soundscape of the room. Her own trembles set the papers trembling. He asked if she wanted to leave and she replied, “No. Not yet. We need to find out what happened here, John. This is the starting point of all the troubles these last few months.” She picked up a few of the papers. “I think Patrick was buying or stealing some of these discarded pages. This was his main supply.”
Nyquist agreed. “But why would an author, or a pair of authors, create a book that’s unreadable?”
“It’s the search for new ways of telling stories.”
“I get that, Bella. But it doesn’t explain why The Body Library seems to affect people so deeply.”
The papers shifted around them and the room sighed. Monroe’s hands searched through the off-cuts and found a stack of large index cards. “These were taken from the Grand Hall. A whole section of stories went missing, a few months back.”