Then Eddie comes up to him. He smiles at Titus. Puts his hands on Titus’ shoulders. Gives them a little pat.
And then he slaps Titus violently on his cheek.
Titus wakes with a start.
But he can still see Eddie before him wearing that friendly smile. What? Isn’t he dreaming? What is this? Uuuuummmmpf!
His cheek is stinging from the slap, and it doesn’t feel any better when Eddie rips off the silver tape from his mouth so that his beard stubble goes with it. Titus opens his mouth and takes some deep breaths.
They stare at each other.
Eddie looks almost as if tears are coming to his eyes when he starts to speak.
‘Hello, Titus.’
Titus stares at Eddie, and at Lenny, who is standing next to him. He lifts his head a little, as if to show that he still has a certain human dignity.
‘Titus, you have forced me into a difficult position,’ says Eddie with a strained voice.
‘What…?’
‘Yes, you have indeed. You can’t deny it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I have read nearly the whole book.’
‘What? What is this?’
Titus gradually starts to realise his predicament. He has been kidnapped. He looks around him. He is in some sort of farmyard out in the country. There is some light coming from a window on a little cottage close to them. A typical old tithed cottage it looks like. Perhaps it’s red, you can’t really tell in the dark. It could be grey, too. It is surrounded by a solid mass of trees except for the yard in front of the house where they are now. He can see an earth cellar with the door open. His prison. He smells damp.
Eddie continues hoarsely.
‘You left the memory card on the coffee table at Astra’s to provoke me. That was how it started. You wanted to make me unbalanced. Show that I couldn’t produce anything any longer.’
‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,’ Titus mumbles, in despair.
Eddie paces back and forth in front of Titus.
‘I did what you wanted. I read the book. As much as you had written, that is. I read the manuscript the night after me and Astra had been out sailing. Fucking hell, Titus. I would never have believed this of you.’
‘What?’
Titus follows Eddie with his gaze as he paces back and forth in front of him. Lenny stands next to them to one side, completely still. He looks almost relaxed, not at all his usual self. He too follows Eddie with his gaze.
‘It’s such a dirty low trick, what you’ve done,’ Eddie goes on in a low voice. ‘To think of all those times I’ve given you a helping hand by arranging readings! Haven’t I given you love? Haven’t I? Answer me!’
‘Love? Do you call this love? Shutting me in a damned earth cellar?’ Titus protests.
‘I was forced to. There are limits to what even I can put up with!’
‘Oh really, so we should feel sorry for you now?’ Titus shouts in resignation.
Eddie comes to a halt in front of Titus and crosses his arms.
‘What you have done is a deadly sin. You have stolen my ideas and drained me of energy. I don’t know how it has happened but you have written almost word-for-word what I was going to write in my manuscript.’
‘You what…?’
Titus can’t believe his ears. This is simply too much, he can hardly take it in. Eddie is claiming that he has stolen his ideas! While in actual fact it is the opposite – that Eddie and Lenny all summer long have tried to spy on him. Just a few seconds ago, Eddie even admitted that he had nicked the memory card at Astra’s. And besides, they have kidnapped him and tied him to a fucking kitchen chair in a pitch black earth cellar in the country!
‘I have read nearly all of it now, even the ending which you had with you today. Sentence for sentence, word for word, letter for letter, you have stolen my text. You have done it skilfully, I’ll give you that. It is an extremely good book, Titus. Incredibly good. You must be clear about one thing: I am the one who has written it. Not you. You have simply stolen everything. Like I said, don’t ask me how you’ve gone about it. But that is what you’ve done. We have to agree on that.’
‘Like hell we do! I’d rather die than go along with something like that! You’re crazy. You have completely lost your grip!’
Eddie puts his hands on Titus’ shoulders and smiles sadly.
‘We’re going to come to an agreement, Titus. We certainly are. That’s what we’re going to do. All in good time, all in good time.’
He strokes Titus’ shoulders.
Then he pushes lightly with his thumbs into the hollow between Titus’ shoulders and collar bone. Applies pressure. Harder and harder. As hard as he can, for a long time.
‘Owwww! Stop!’
As soon as Astra wakes up, she tries to phone Titus. No answer.
She phones the locksmith that she arranged when he had a break-in during the summer and had to get a new lock. Even though ‘things are pretty busy right now, you know’ she manages to get him to agree to a special turn-out charge and they arrange to meet at Titus’ flat in half an hour.
She only has to wait there ten minutes before he turns up. Although the guy is just a mountain of muscles, she can’t help wondering how he can carry such a big toolbox in just one hand.
‘Hi there, lady! Yeah, this is it. And this, this is a really good door. I installed this lock myself, I remember that distinctly, you know.’
‘Yeah, right,’ says Astra. ‘It was me who phoned from Greece if you remember. Then you sent a rather padded bill to Winchester Publishing. Perhaps you remember that?’
‘No, it’s not me who sends the bills, you know. Ellen does that, she’s married to the boss.’
Astra realises that she shouldn’t get involved in a discussion about prices at this juncture. That was stupid. He mustn’t start making difficulties now.
‘Okay. But I need to get in here.’
The locksmith puts his toolbox down. Crosses his arms.
‘Oh really? But it was a bloke what lived here, you know? It said Titus Jensen on the door then. And it still does. Can you see?’
‘Yes sure, the thing is he works for Winchester Publishing. And now he has disappeared. I’ve got to check whether there are any clues inside here.’
‘Yeah but… if I let you in here, you know, it’d be like a break-in. Can’t do that. Very risky, that sort of thing, you know. That’s not what we locksmiths get paid to do, you see. Crime and punishment, you know. Then you need a risk surcharge.’
Astra gets her wallet out of her bag and pulls out a thousand-kronor note.
‘Would this work?’
The locksmith grabs the banknote and then produces the largest keyring that Astra has ever seen. He rattles the keys in a demonstratively loud manner before finding the right one. Jangle and click. One, two, three and the door is open.
Astra goes through the flat with the guy shadowing her, his muscular arms crossed.
‘For goodness’ sake, leave me alone!’ Astra exclaims, irritated.
He slouches out and stands in the stairwell. Mutters something grumpy about how he perhaps ought to phone his trade union. You know.
The flat looks like your average bachelor pad. Not exactly chaos, but nothing pedantic either. She looks inside the fridge. It doesn’t look as if Titus had planned a long absence. There are opened cartons of milk and some leftovers rather carelessly packed. The little airing window in the kitchen is open. Astra gets the feeling the Titus has left the place all of a sudden.
She goes up to the computer in the living room and blow-starts it, keeping an eye on the door while waiting for the pop-up. She hopes the enzyme program works as promised.
Hello, Astra! If you want a back-up, then you must stick the memory card in the socket on the right-hand side of the computer.
A good job she is one of those people who thinks of everything.
When Titus wakes up he is back in the dark. He isn’t tied up any longer. The las
t thing he remembers is Lenny putting a rag over his face and becoming incredibly tired. Now he is lying on a mattress, at least that’s what it feels like. With his hands he feels outside the mattress. A cold stone floor. He is back in the earth cellar.
He crawls along the floor to what he intuitively knows is the way out. He comes to a solid door and searches with his fingers for a doorknob which isn’t there. But a keyhole? Is there a keyhole? He touches a bit of metal which feels rough and rusty. He twists it aside. Light! Yes, the bit of metal hung over the keyhole. He bends down and puts his eye against the hole.
Out there it is daytime. He can see a lawn with a large oak tree in front of a little cottage painted red. A little gravel path in front of the cottage. A porch and a window. No sign of life.
He bangs on the door, which is so thick that his bangs make no impression. It feels like banging on a tree trunk out in the forest. Who is going to hear him?
He puts his mouth up against the keyhole and shouts:
‘Hello! Help! Is anyone there?’
He looks out again. A squirrel scuttles across the yard and up into the oak.
Everything is still.
Titus continues to bang on the door for quite a while. In the end he realises nobody can hear him. The cottage doesn’t even seem to have any neighbours. Are they going to let him die here?
Desperate and snuffling, he crawls back to the mattress.
He huddles up and puts his arms between his thighs and stomach and his forehead against his knees. All his energy and determination is lost. He cries and sobs.
Astra is becoming increasingly worried. After a couple of days with no sign of life from Titus, she has a very uncomfortable feeling about it. The book fair is rapidly approaching and she very much wants Titus there when The Best Book in the World is going to be marketed to the international agents and Sweden’s booksellers. Since Lenny is the last person she knows talked to Titus before he disappeared, she looks for him too. But he has vanished as well, and Eddie doesn’t answer the phone either. What’s happening with everybody? Can’t they answer the phone?
Eddie is sitting in the little kitchen in the cottage and staring at a half-full can of beer. An old cobbler’s lamp with a broken shade hangs above the kitchen table. The naked light bulb is transparent and the red glowing thread matches the whites of Eddie’s eyes, which are now pink. He has some beard stubble and the usually so shiny hair is un-brushed and matted. He inhales deeply on his cigarette. What has he done to deserve this? Hasn’t he always been so nice to people?
In front of him on the table are three mobile phones. When one stops ringing, another starts. And all the time it is Astra who is calling: first to Titus, then Lenny and then Eddie. Over and over again. It never stops. But he is unable to talk to her or even listen to her messages. Because what would he say? That she can’t be his publisher until Titus admits his theft? That all his love has come to an end?
Lenny comes into the kitchen.
‘He’s woken up now. He’s banging on the door.’
‘Mmmm.’
Eddie looks at Lenny with tired eyes. Is Lenny really on his side? Or does he just feel forced to help him? Does he even understand what Titus is guilty of? It really is a bit steep to have the whole world against you. There is just no gratitude!
‘Can I phone Malin?’ Lenny asks. ‘She’ll be wondering where I’ve got to.’
‘No, not now. Not one call is going to be made from here. They are hunting us. She is trying to find us. You can do it later. When he has admitted his guilt.’
‘But please. It won’t take a second.’
‘NO!’
Ought she to ring the police and report him missing? How credible is it to issue a description of a middle-aged single man who has only been gone a couple of days?
Perhaps she ought at least to discuss it with Evita? Evita is always interested to know everything about Titus. You’d almost think that he makes her feel a bit horny. Mind you, there’d be a hell of a fuss about jeopardising the success of the book fair and that she isn’t focusing on the right issues. No, she can’t talk to Evita, not yet.
But can it really be a coincidence that all three have disappeared? Could Titus have been right after all with his nutty ideas about Eddie and Lenny? Have those two cooked up some mischief?
She must get hold of them.
Who might know something?
Hang on a moment, isn’t Lenny with that pretty girl who works at the Moderna Museet café? What’s her name? Lena or Linda? Something like that. Lina… Malin…? Yep, Malin, that’s it! Definitely.
Astra calls directory enquiries and asks to be connected to the restaurant at Moderna Museet. There is a murmur from the guests in the background when they answer.
‘Hello, could I speak to Malin please?’
‘One moment.’
Astra takes a deep breath. Why the hell hadn’t she thought of Malin earlier?
‘Hello, Malin here!’
‘Hello, Malin. My name is Astra and I’m a friend of Eddie X and I know Lenny too a bit.’
‘Yeah, hi.’
‘I need to talk to them about something. Have you any idea where they could be?’
‘Yeah, I think they were going to the country to rehearse something.’
‘Ah, so that’s it! The country… whereabouts?’
‘Well, I haven’t a clue where it is. It’s sort of an abandoned cottage deep in the forest in Sörmland. It’s sort of always empty. In the middle of fucking nowhere. Like for real. I haven’t the faintest where the place is!’
Astra tries to press her a bit more about where this abandoned cottage might be, or if she knows anything more about what they were going to do there, if Malin had heard that the author Titus Jensen was going to go with them. No, she hadn’t. She knows nothing about anything. Lenny had simply said they were going to take it easy and rehearse a few days. Then they went off. That’s all she knows.
Titus wakes out of his torpor when something that sounds like an old radio starts crackling.
‘Hello, are you awake Titus?’
It’s Eddie’s voice, on a speaker. Perhaps Eddie is sitting inside that cottage and talking to him from there? With a walkie-talkie or some such apparatus? Maybe its one of those baby monitors he’s seen on the TV ads.
‘Have you thought about my offer?’
Titus isn’t sure whether there is a microphone in the earth cellar. Can Eddie hear him if he swears? He’ll try speaking in a low voice:
‘What? Which offer?’
‘My offer to you. If you admit that it’s my book, then you’ll be free. You must sign the contract. I’m the one who wrote the book and you know that. You have stolen it. You have nicked every single idea from inside my head, and pretended to Astra and Winchester Publishing that you are the one who has written it. That’s what you must sign. Then you’ll be released.’
‘No fucking way!’ Titus shouts for all he is worth. ‘It’s my book. I have written every single word in it! I have put my soul into it. You don’t know what you are talking about!’
‘Oh yes I most certainly do!’ Eddie yells back through the speaker. ‘I know very well what I myself have thought up! They are my ideas, straight off. I said all of that already during that evening at the festival. But you were so drunk you’ve chosen to forget!’
‘You didn’t at all! You’re lying!’
For a moment, silence reigns. Titus can hear Eddie breathing into the microphone. He seems upset.
‘Titus?’
‘Yes, what do you want?’
‘Do you confess?’
‘No, I’ve told you! Never!’
Silence again. A moment’s heavy breathing.
‘Then I’ll have to turn the lights on.’
‘What?’
‘If you don’t confess, then I’ll turn the lights on!’
‘Yeah, right.’
Is he joking? Is this candid camera? Will they come any moment and open the door and throw confetti a
nd shout that it’s all over and laugh at him for falling for everything? No, hardly.
The only alternative is that Eddie is in the midst of a severe psychosis. Titus has never come across such extreme obsessive-compulsive behaviour in anybody else before. It is decidedly unpleasant.
‘Do you confess? Will you sign it?’
‘No. You can let me out anyway. Let’s forget all this. Perhaps you aren’t feeling very well, Eddie?’
‘Last chance: sign or I’ll turn the lights on.’
What a bizarre threat, thinks Titus. He would much rather be imprisoned in a lit-up earth cellar than in one that is pitch dark.
‘Eddie, I’d rather die than give up the copyright to that book!’
Eddie breathes into the microphone for quite a while. Then he says:
‘Okay. I’m turning the lights on.’
Quite a few seconds pass. Still dark. Then there is a buzzing sound in an electric cable. A fluorescent lamp up on the ceiling starts to crackle and blink. Titus puts his hand over his eyes, not having seen any light for a couple of days. When his eyes have acclimatised he looks around him.
He sees a portable loo with a large container in green plastic in one corner. In the other there is a little camping table and a folding chair. The walls have shelves fixed all around the earth cellar. From floor to ceiling.
But there aren’t any jam jars or sacks of potatoes on the shelves.
They are full of bottles and cartons.
Titus realises what he is looking at.
The shelves are packed with wine, spirits and beer. Several cartons of cigarettes. Lots of multi-packs of tobacco. Smoked sausage, crisps and cheese puffs.
The earth cellar is all kitted out for a party.
CHAPTER 34
Renewed Efforts
‘Hello dear, everything under control?’
Evita is radiantly happy and drums with her long nails on Astra’s doorpost when she looks into her room. Her hair is even more jet black than ever. She pouts her red lips at the little mirror just inside the door and gives herself an appreciative wink. There is always plenty of room for humour and self-mockery in Evita’s life. Presumably that is why people feel so comfortable in her presence.
The Best Book in the World Page 21