by Jeff Noon
Now her eyes had returned to his, and he saw her hands clench tightly and her body steady herself; she was fighting it, with the swear words, the spit, the nastiness. Some kind of control against the chaos, against darkness.
His own life was governed by a similar balance: seeking clues, fingerprints in the dust, blood samples, the damning lies, droplets of sweat on the skin of a suspect – and using them all as protection against the nightmares. Weak, fragile, necessary protection.
And so he told her. It just came out. It was the first time he had admitted this to anyone, in so many years.
He said, ‘Beth, I found my mother, just like you found your father. I came home from football and I saw her lying on the kitchen floor. The whole place …’ His voice cracked. ‘The place stank. She’d turned on the gas and stuck her head in the oven.’
He paused. She was staring at him.
‘I was seventeen.’
He was going to say more, but his mind was suddenly empty.
Beth seemed to be holding her breath. Then she asked, ‘Why did she do it?’
‘Because … well, because my dad had left home. She’d kicked him out. He wasn’t … he wasn’t the best of men. And then, it was two days before her divorce was going to be made final … that’s when … that’s when she did it.’ He paused. ‘She took her own life. I guess she couldn’t face it, being alone. That’s all I can think.’
They looked at each other across a few feet of space.
‘She left a note, tucked in a book of poems. I still have it, and I read it now and then. I’m still trying to understand it, I guess.’
Beth drew a sigh. The sneer came back to her face. ‘I hope to God you’re not going to tell me that you know how I feel. Because …’
‘No.’
‘Because I swear, I’ll lamp you one.’
‘I’m thinking you would as well.’ He nodded. ‘Anyway, that’s all I wanted to say.’
She nodded in turn. Recognition. A barely seen movement.
Quietly he said, ‘Come on, let’s go.’ He closed the garage door, locked it, and started to walk along with the girl at his side. After a few steps, she said, ‘I don’t think I’ll ever get over it, the sight of Daddy, like he was …’
He said simply, ‘If you ever need someone to talk to, I’ll always be available.’
She didn’t reply. He could only hope it meant something to her.
They walked on a little way and he said, ‘Can I ask, was the car in the garage, when you found him?’
‘No, Mum had taken it for the night, visiting Grandma and Grandpa. Me and Junior went with her. We stayed overnight. When we came back in the morning, we drove up to the garage and I jumped out to open the door for her. And that’s when …’
‘OK. That makes sense—’
He stopped walking. A sudden thought irritated him.
Oil on the fingertips …
‘What’s wrong?’
He didn’t answer; his mind was entirely elsewhere.
‘What is it?’
‘Go on, Beth, get to school. There’s still time.’
She laughed at the absurdity of the idea. And with that she was gone, jumping over the nearest garden wall and disappearing down the side alley of a house.
Hobbes turned back towards the garage.
No car in the garage, no tools set out, yet oil on the fingertips …
What had Charlie been working on?
He unlocked the garage door and entered for a second time. He went over to the shelf where the cans of motoring oil were kept, all the same brand. The first two were full to the brim and the third half-empty, from the weight of it in his hand. He started with this one, pouring the thick black contents into a metal bucket. His hands were soon covered in the stuff, and his suit was speckled with stains. But when the can was nearly empty, he could hear something rattling around inside. It took him a while to ease it through the opening, using a screwdriver. The object was small, wrapped in black electrician’s tape for protection. He pulled this loose, revealing a plastic evidence bag sealed with even more tape. And inside the bag was a small cellophane packet containing a single strip of photographic negatives.
He held the strip up to the overhead light.
The images were blurred, and too small to see clearly; but he could make out enough to know it was a sex scene.
Seven Years Apart
Hobbes needed to get the photographs developed. He didn’t want anyone in the police force to see them, not until he was sure of the contents, and he certainly couldn’t take them into the local chemist. But there was one person he could ask, so he took the North Circular Road and drove to Notting Hill. Neville Briggs was willing to do the job for him, but he was still reeling from the news of Simone Paige’s death.
‘I should’ve gone down to Hastings with her.’
‘I doubt it would’ve done any good.’
‘How do you know? How can you possibly know?’
‘I talked to her outside the house where she was killed. Lucas Bell’s old house. I think she’d already made her mind up to go inside.’
Briggs closed his eyes, as though picturing the scene.
‘Nothing would’ve stopped her.’
It was enough. Hobbes left the strip of negatives with the photographer and went on his way. He arrived at the station to find the team already working. He brought everyone together and went through yesterday’s findings. ‘OK then, let’s see where we are,’ he said. ‘Meg, is there a match?’
‘I’ll show you.’
Latimer had copied the two items Fairfax had brought in that morning, and now she projected them, blown up, on to a screen. She explained, ‘This is Lucas Bell’s suicide note, borrowed from Mr and Mrs Clarke.’
Hobbes looked on as a slip of paper appeared on the screen, with its scrawled signature and final message to the world.
‘As far as we know, it’s authentic,’ Latimer said. ‘This is the actual piece of paper found in Bell’s car, at the end of his life.’
Fairfax grunted. ‘It’s not much of a suicide note. A slip of paper? Someone should’ve questioned that at the time.’
Hobbes looked across. Fairfax wasn’t his usual self; he slouched at his desk and his lips barely moved when he spoke. And instead of his usual immaculate appearance, he was dressed in the same outfit as last night, which was looking decidedly tatty.
‘Let’s not get bogged down in what should’ve been done in the past.’ Hobbes turned back to the screen. ‘Carry on, Meg.’
‘OK. You can see here’ – she pointed to the top edge of the slip of paper on the screen – ‘the edge is torn. Now then …’ She clicked a button and another, larger sheet of paper appeared on the screen. ‘This is the paper the guv found yesterday, in the glove compartment of Lucas Bell’s car.’
‘It’s a lyric sheet for the song “Backstreet Harlequin”,’ Hobbes explained. ‘The same song that was playing on the record player in Clarke’s bedroom.’
‘That’s right. PC Barlow has compared these lyrics with the ones on the album, and they are different. So we believe this sheet contains the original version of the song, as written by Lucas Bell.’
‘He often changed lyrics,’ Hobbes said. ‘It was part of his creative process.’
Latimer nodded. ‘And if you go to the last two lines, here …’ She spoke the words of the song out loud: ‘I’m just another backstreet harlequin, lost in the afterglow. The line ends abruptly, as you can see.’
‘And the paper’s too short.’
Latimer smiled. ‘And the paper’s too bloody short.’
She clicked again and now both papers appeared one below the other, the lyric sheet and the suicide note. Together they made one A4 sheet.
‘Put simply, the slip of paper was ripped off the bottom of the lyric sheet. So now the complete final verse reads … I’m just another backstreet harlequin, lost in the afterglow. I’ve loved just about all I can love, there’s nowhere else to go.’ She paused
to let Hobbes and Fairfax take this in. ‘And here we have the two pieces of paper magnified, and you can see they fit together exactly.’
Blown-up images of the papers filled the screen, the two items closely aligned to show that every tiny valley and peak of the torn edges corresponded.
The three police officers stared at the screen.
Hobbes took command. ‘OK. So here’s what I think happened. Lucas Bell’s murderer knew where he was living outside Hastings, when he went missing. They met there, in his cottage retreat, and talked. Bell most probably had some of his old lyric sheets with him. The murderer chose an appropriate song and tore the paper in two, using the bottom two lines of the song and the signature to serve as a fake suicide note.’ Hobbes let this sink in. ‘The two pieces of paper then go on their separate journeys, passed from hand to hand, possibly for large amounts of money, we don’t know. Eventually our Lucas Bell obsessive, Brendan Clarke, finds them. First one, then the other. And when he found this second item …’ The inspector touched at the lyric sheet on the screen. ‘He realized that the two pieces belonged together. This, in Clarke’s eyes, is proof that Bell didn’t kill himself, that he was killed, and his suicide faked.’ Hobbes paused. ‘And then a short time later he meets Simone Paige, and tells her he has proof of murder. He invites her round to see the two pieces of paper.’
‘But only photocopies,’ Latimer explained.
‘Yes. Copies, only. The originals are kept in safekeeping in the family home. But then his murderer turns up, another woman who, I believe, was also very close to Bell. Now, given Clarke’s obsession, he was probably fascinated by this woman, as he was by Nikki Hauser, as he was by Simone Paige. Clarke explains to her about the fake suicide note, and he mentions that Simone Paige is coming to see him later on. At which point the murderer seduces him, and they go upstairs to the bedroom. She asks him to set up the song on the record player and to move the bed across the room, into the light. Clarke by this point is totally in her power. He probably thinks this is some kind of sex game …’
He stopped speaking. They all knew what happened next.
Latimer spelt it out: ‘And then she kills him.’
Hobbes carried on: ‘When it’s over, the murderer leaves a note for Simone Paige to find, a taunt, a message across the years. And she leaves Brendan Clarke there for Simone to find, his mutilated face on view, the song playing on the music centre. Hours later, young Morgan Yorke turns up, covers Brendan’s face with the bed sheet and steals the note left for Simone. And later still, Simone arrives and discovers the body.’
Hobbes turned back to the screen and pointed at the two pieces of paper. ‘And now, after seven years apart, the two halves of the song are finally joined together.’
He looked at his two colleagues. Latimer was keen-eyed, happy to be in the middle of a case. But Fairfax had said very little, and it was almost impossible to read his expression.
‘What’s next, guv?’
‘We keep looking, Meg. The same person killed Bell, Clarke and Simone Paige. But the Paige case is different, it’s an act of desperation. Whereas the two men were killed as part of a ritual. Something to do with the King Lost mask.’
‘But we don’t know what the ritual is,’ Latimer added. ‘And there was no attempt to cover up Brendan Clarke’s murder, no attempt to make it look like suicide.’
‘Something has changed over the years, in the murderer’s thinking. The second murder was planned. Clues were left. A definite point was being made.’ Hobbes turned to Fairfax. ‘Tommy, I want you to continue looking for Nikki Hauser. She knows more than she’s told us up to now, about this secret society.’
The detective constable didn’t reply to the request.
‘Fairfax. I need you to concentrate on this case, and this case alone.’
Fairfax grunted and looked away.
‘He’s been like this all morning,’ Latimer said. ‘Acting like a complete moron.’
Fairfax rose to his feet and walked out of the room without another word. DS Latimer shook her head in despair and said, ‘Wanker.’
Hobbes watched the retreating figure. ‘I agree. But he’s got his problems.’
They walked out into the corridor. Along the way, Hobbes looked in on PC Barlow, who was sorting through the Edenville box. Every inch of wall space was covered in sheets of paper, some of them typewritten, others handwritten, and even more showing drawings or photographs of people and places. Barlow sat at a cramped table, which was also covered in notebooks, sketchpads and yet more papers.
‘Making progress, Constable?’
‘Yes, sir, but it’s a long job.’
‘All I want is the names of the real people behind the nicknames.’
Hobbes rejoined Latimer. They walked outside, where they spotted Fairfax leaning against the bonnet of his car. He was staring at Hobbes as he smoked a cigarette.
‘Give us a second, Meg.’
He walked over to Fairfax. ‘Now look—’
‘What did you find out?’
‘Fairfax …’
‘You went to see Lisa, right? Did she give you any clues?’
‘It isn’t like that.’
‘So what is it like? Did Charlie kill himself? Or not?’
Hobbes didn’t answer. Fairfax was too close to anger – he could so easily go crazy and hurt somebody. That terrible look was back in his eyes; it was almost evil in its intent.
A Woman’s Journal
Hobbes used Simone Paige’s house keys to enter the ground-floor flat. DS Latimer followed him inside. She said, ‘I hate entering dead people’s homes – when they’ve just died, I mean.’
‘I know. They still seem present, somehow.’
Their voices echoed in the empty flat.
Hobbes led the way into the bedroom. It was well appointed, with burgundy walls and spherical paper lanterns and a great stretch of white gauze forming a lowered ceiling. The smell of perfume and cigarette smoke was still evident, a ghost in the air.
‘What are we looking for, exactly?’
Latimer explained her idea. ‘I read Barlow’s notes of your interview with Simone, where she told you that she kept journals from the early seventies. They might well have details of Lucas Bell, the things he said to her, the things he did.’
‘Clues to Edenville?’
‘Let’s hope so.’
It didn’t take them long to find the battered suitcase under the bed. Hobbes clicked open the two latches.
‘Here we are.’
Inside were a number of journals, each one marked with the year: 1970, 1971, 1972 and 1974. Latimer sat on the bed and started on the earliest one, while Hobbes began with the final volume. These words were never meant for anyone else’s eyes, that was obvious, yet here and there a strange turn of phrase would appear, as though Simone could never quite stop being a professional writer, a journalist reporting on her own life.
Lucas came round. He looked bad. Drinking again. Me and him, I wonder now why we ever got together. We met one day on a narrow ledge, and had nowhere else to go, no one else to fall in love with. Yet another argument. I wonder how long now, before we fall apart? And who will tumble first?
‘How are you getting on?’ Hobbes asked.
Latimer didn’t take her eyes off the journal in her hands. ‘She’s nineteen, just arrived in London, started work at the Melody Maker. Her first job.’ Now she looked at him. ‘She’s full of life, but nervous, scared of messing up. It’s painful, seeing this, and thinking of what will happen to her and Lucas later.’
‘I know. I’m reading about just that.’
Hobbes had skipped to the later pages of the 1974 journal, the part that related to Lucas Bell’s death. Here the writing broke down completely, the handwriting a barely readable scrawl in places, the images fragmented.
Can’t sleep. His face, always there. Why? WHY? No answer, there’s no answer. Only the dark outside. A little light in a window opposite, a life. I feel numb, words frozen. Da
ys now. Days. Endless …
The final pages were written in the private clinic where Simone Paige ended up, after Bell’s suicide. They detailed her attempts at becoming clean, the return to some kind of normal life, if such a thing was possible.
I have spoken to the doctor. Neville will pick me up later today. My only friend, now. I’m suddenly afraid of what he might think of me, of how I look. Will he see the same person as before, or will he look upon a stranger?
These were the last words. A return to a certain style, a coherent language. Yet nothing more was said, the journals abandoned. No more talking to herself.
The two officers read on. The room was quiet around them: the turning of the pages, a sigh, an occasional comment. Hobbes read Simone’s description of the meeting with Bell where he first drew the King Lost mask for her. It was very close to how she’d told it at the interview, and there was nothing at all in the recollected language that implied that Lucas Bell had already created King Lost, years and years before. Why did he delude her about the mask’s origins?
He skipped on a few pages to find a mention of Edenville.
Lucas doesn’t usually speak of his childhood. There’s a door, and it closed, it’s locked. But we’d been drinking and smoking, and out of the blue, he said, ‘One day, Simone, if the time is ever right, I’ll tell you the story of Edenville. That will surprise everyone.’ He laughed (bitterly, I think) and said it would make me famous, as a writer. ‘It’s a crazy, fucked-up story.’ Of course, I asked what he meant. But he would say no more. And his eyes, when he looked at me, held such darkness within them, such sadness.
Hobbes read the passage a second time. He’d been hoping for more of a revelation and couldn’t help feeling disappointed. He turned to the other items in the suitcase. The linen napkin was there, with its painted face. He found a batch of photographs: Lucas alone; Simone and Lucas at the seaside, smiling at each other; Simone standing with a group of other young people, the staff of the Melody Maker – long hair, hippie clothes, everybody smoking and drinking. One set of snapshots fascinated Hobbes. They were taken at the King Lost album cover shoot. There was no sign of Simone Paige in any of these, so he assumed that she’d taken the photographs herself. But he recognized Neville Briggs in the background of one image, camera in hand; and Lucas Bell, of course, in many of the shots, the mask already painted on his face. The singer wasn’t posing, he was just hanging around with his friends and colleagues, enjoying a joke with an older man and woman, perhaps his manager and publicity assistant. In another image, a few other hangers-on stood with them. Johnny Valentine was also present, sharing a joke with Lucas. It was strange to see Bell laughing so wildly in that stark mask, it made for a bizarre contradiction.