The Eyre Affair

Jasper Fforde


Thursday Next

The Eyre Affair
1. A woman named Thursday Next
2. Gad’s Hill
3. Back at my desk
4. Acheron Hades
5. Search for the guilty, punish the innocent
6. Jane Eyre: A short excursion into the novel
7. The Goliath Corporation
8. Airship to Swindon
9. The Next family
10. The Finis Hotel, Swindon
11. Polly flashes upon the inward eye
12. SpecOps 27: The Literary Detectives
14. Lunch with Bowden
15. Hello & Goodbye, Mr Quaverley
16. Sturmey Archer & Felix7
17. SpecOps 17: Suckers & Biters
18. Landen again
19. The very Irrev. Joffy Next
20. Dr Runcible Spoon
21. Hades & Goliath
22. The waiting game
23. The drop
24. Martin Chuzzlewit is reprieved
25. Time enough for contemplation
26. The Earthcrossers
27. Hades finds another manuscript
28. Haworth House
29. Jane Eyre
30. A groundswell of popular feeling
31. The People’s Republic of Wales
32. Thornfield Hall
33. The book is written
34. Nearly the end of their book
35. Nearly the end of our book
36. Married
The Eyre Affair
by Jasper Fforde

   For my father John Standish Fforde (1921-2000)
   Who never knew I was to be published but would have been most proud nonetheless—and not a little surprised

1. A woman named Thursday Next

   … The Special Operations Network was instigated to handle policing duties considered either too unusual or too specialised to be tackled by the regular force. There were thirty departments in all, starting at the more mundane Neighbourly Disputes (SO-20) and going on to Literary Detectives (SO-27) and Art Crime (SO-24). Anything below SO-2O was restricted information, although it was common knowledge that the ChronoGuard were SO-12 and Antiterrorism SO-9. It is rumoured that SO-1 was the department that polices the SpecOps themselves. Quite what the others do is anyone’s guess. What is known is that the individual operatives themselves are mostly ex-military or ex-police and slightly unbalanced. ‘If you want to be a SpecOp,’ the saying goes, ‘act kinda weird…’

Millon de Floss. A Short History of the Special Operations Network


   My father had a face that could stop a clock. I don’t mean that he was ugly or anything; it was a phrase the ChronoGuard used to describe someone who had the power to reduce time to an ultra-slow trickle. Dad had been a colonel in the ChronoGuard and kept his work very quiet. So quiet, in fact, that we didn’t know he had gone rogue at all until his timekeeping buddies raided our house one morning clutching a Seize & Eradication order open-dated at both ends and demanding to know where and when he was. Dad had remained at liberty ever since; we learned from his subsequent visits that he regarded the whole service as ‘morally and historically corrupt’ and was fighting a one-man war against the bureaucrats within the Office for Special Temporal Stability. I didn’t know what he meant by that and still don’t; I just hoped he knew what he was doing and didn’t come to any harm doing it. His skills at stopping the clock were hard-earned and irreversible: he was now a lonely itinerate in time, belonging to not one age but to all of them and having no home other than the chronoclastic ether.
   I wasn’t a member of the ChronoGuard. I never wanted to be. By all accounts it’s not a huge barrel of laughs, although the pay is good and the service boasts a retirement plan that is second to none: a one-way ticket to anywhere and anywhen you want. No, that wasn’t for me. I was what we called an ‘Operative Grade I’ for SO-27, the Literary Detective Division of the Special Operations Network based in London. It’s way less flash than it sounds. Since 1980 the big criminal gangs had moved in on the lucrative literary market and we had much to do and few funds to do it with. I worked under Area Chief Boswell, a small, puffy man who looked like a bag of flour with arms and legs. He lived and breathed the job; words were his life and his love—he never seemed happier than when he was on the trail of a counterfeit Coleridge or a fake Fielding. It was under Boswell that we arrested the gang who were stealing and selling Samuel Johnson first editions; on another occasion we uncovered an attempt to authenticate a flagrantly unrealistic version of Shakespeare’s lost work, Gardenia. Fun while it lasted, but only small islands of excitement among the ocean of day-to-day mundanities that is SO-2y: we spent most of our time dealing with illegal traders, copyright infringements and fraud.
   I had been with Boswell and SO-2y for eight years, living in a Maida Vale apartment with Pickwick, a regenerated pet dodo left over from the days when reverse extinction was all the rage and you could buy home cloning kits over the counter. I was keen—no, I was desperate— to get away from the LiteraTecs but transfers were unheard of and promotion a non-starter. The only way I was going to make full Inspector was if my immediate superior moved on or out. But it never happened; Inspector Turner’s hope to marry a wealthy Mr. Right and leave the service stayed just that—a hope—as so often Mr. Right turned out to be either Mr. Liar, Mr. Drunk or Mr. Already Married.
   As I said earlier, my father had a face that could stop a clock; and that’s exactly what happened one spring morning as I was having a sandwich in a small cafe not far from work. The world flickered, shuddered and stopped. The proprietor of the cafe froze in mid-sentence and the picture on the television stopped dead. Outside, birds hung motionless in the sky. Cars and trams halted in the streets and a cyclist involved in an accident stopped in midair, the look of fear frozen on his face as he paused two feet from the hard asphalt. The sound halted too, replaced by a dull snapshot of a hum, the world’s noise at that moment in time paused indefinitely at the same pitch and volume.
   ‘How’s my gorgeous daughter?’
   I turned. My father was sitting at a table and rose to hug me affectionately.
   ‘I’m good,’ I replied, returning his hug tightly. ‘How’s my favourite father?’
   ‘Can’t complain. Time is a fine physician.’
   I stared at him for a moment.
   ‘Y’ know,’ I muttered, ‘I think you’re looking younger every time I see you.’
   ‘I am. Any grandchildren in the offing?’
   ‘The way I’m going? Not ever.’
   My father smiled and raised an eyebrow.
   ‘I wouldn’t say that quite yet.’
   He handed me a Woolworths bag.
   ‘I was in ‘78 recently,’ he announced. ‘I brought you this.’
   He handed me a single by the Beatles. I didn’t recognise the title.
   ‘Didn’t they split in ‘70?’
   ‘Not always. How are things?’
   ‘Same as ever. Authentications, copyright, theft—‘
   ‘—same old shit?’
   ‘Yup.’ I nodded. ‘Same old shit. What brings you here?’
   ‘I went to see your mother three weeks ahead your time,’ he answered, consulting the large chronograph on his wrist. ‘Just the usual—ahem—reason. She’s going to paint the bedroom mauve in a week’s time—will you have a word and dissuade her? It doesn’t match the curtains.’
   ‘How is she?’
   He sighed deeply.
   ‘Radiant, as always. Mycroft and Polly would like to be remembered, too.’

   They were my aunt and uncle; I loved them deeply, although both were mad as pants. I regretted not seeing Mycroft most of all. I hadn’t returned to my home-town for many years and I didn’t see my family as often as I should.
   ‘Your mother and I think it might be a good idea for you to come home for a bit. She thinks you take work a little too seriously.’
   ‘That’s a bit rich, Dad, coming from you.’
   ‘Ouch—that—hurt. How’s your history?’
   ‘Not bad.’
   ‘Do you know how the Duke of Wellington died?’
   ‘Sure,’ I answered. ‘He was shot by a French sniper during the opening stages of the Battle of Waterloo. Why?’
   ‘Oh, no reason,’ muttered my father with feigned innocence, scribbling in a small notebook. He paused for a moment.
   ‘So Napoleon won at Waterloo, did he?’ he asked slowly and with great intensity.
   ‘Of course not,’ I replied. ‘Field Marshal Blьcher’s timely intervention saved the day.’
   I narrowed my eyes.
   ‘This is all O-level history, Dad. What are you up to?’
   ‘Well, it’s a bit of a coincidence, wouldn’t you say?’
   ‘What is?’
   ‘Nelson and Wellington, two great English national heroes both being shot early on during their most important and decisive battles.’
   ‘What are you suggesting?’
   ‘That French revisionists might be involved.’
   ‘But it didn’t affect the outcome of either battle,’ I asserted. ‘We still won on both occasions!’
   ‘I never said they were good at it.’
   ‘That’s ludicrous!’ I scoffed. ‘I suppose you think the same revisionists had King Harold killed in 1066 to assist the Norman invasion!’
   But Dad wasn’t laughing. He replied with some surprise: ‘Harold? Killed? How?’
   ‘An arrow, Dad. In his eye.’
   ‘English or French?’
   ‘History doesn’t relate,’ I replied, annoyed at his bizarre line of questioning.
   ‘In his eye, you say—? Time is out of joint,’ he muttered, scribbling another note.
   ‘What’s out of joint?’ I asked, not quite hearing him. ‘Nothing, nothing. Good job I was born to set it right—‘
   ‘Hamlet?’ I asked, recognising the quotation. He ignored me, finished writing and snapped the notebook shut, then placed his fingertips on his temples and rubbed them absently for a moment. The world joggled forward a second and refroze as he did so. He looked about nervously.
   ‘They’re on to me. Thanks for your help, Sweetpea. When you see your mother, tell her she makes the torches burn brighter—and don’t forget to try and dissuade her from painting the bedroom.’
   ‘Any colour but mauve, right?’
   ‘Right.’ He smiled at me and touched my face. I felt my eyes moisten; these visits were all too short. He sensed my sadness and smiled the sort of smile any child would want to receive from their father. Then he spoke:
   ‘For I dipped into the past, far as SpecOps twelve could see–‘
   He paused and I finished the quote, part of an old ChronoGuard song Dad used to sing to me when I was a child.
   ‘—saw a vision of the world and all the options there could be!’
   And then he was gone. The world rippled as the clock started again. The barman finished his sentence, the birds flew on to their nests, the television came back on with a nauseating ad for SmileyBurgers, and over the road the cyclist met the asphalt with a thud.
   Everything carried on as normal. No one except myself had seen Dad come or go.
   I ordered a crab sandwich and munched on it absently while sipping from a Mocha that seemed to be taking an age to cool down. There weren’t a lot of customers and Stanford, the owner, was busy washing up some cups. I put down my paper to watch the TV when the Toad News Network logo came up.
   Toad News was the biggest news network in Europe. Run by the Goliath Corporation, it was a twenty-four-hour service with up-to-date reports that the national news services couldn’t possibly hope to match. Goliath gave it finance and stability, but also a slightly suspicious air. No one liked the Corporation’s pernicious hold on the nation, and the Toad News Network received more than its fair share of criticism, despite repeated denials that the parent company called the shots.
   ‘This,’ boomed the announcer above the swirling music, ‘is the Toad News Network. The Toad, bringing you News Global, News Updates, News NOW!’
   The lights came up on the anchorwoman, who smiled into the camera.
   ‘This is the midday news on Monday, 6th May 1985, and this is Alexandria Belfridge reading it. The Crimean peninsula,’ she announced, ‘has again come under scrutiny this week as the United Nations passed resolution PN17296, insisting that England and the Imperial Russian Government open negotiations concerning sovereignty. As the Crimean War enters its one hundred and thirty-first year, pressure groups both at home and abroad are pushing for a peaceful end to hostilities.’
   I closed my eyes and groaned quietly to myself. I had been out there doing my patriotic duty in ‘73 and had seen the truth of warfare beyond the pomp and glory for myself. The heat, the cold, the fear, the death. The announcer spoke on, her voice edged with jingoism.
   ‘When the English forces ejected the Russians from their last toehold on the peninsula in 1975, it was seen as a major triumph against overwhelming odds. However, a state of deadlock has been maintained since those days and the country’s mood was summed up last week by Sir Gordon Duff-Rolecks at an anti-war rally in Trafalgar Square.’
   The programme cut to some footage of a large and mainly peaceful demonstration in central London. Duff-Rolecks was standing on a podium and giving a speech in front of a large and untidy nest of microphones.
   ‘What began as an excuse to curb Russia’s expansionism in 1854,’ intoned the MP, ‘has collapsed over the years into nothing more than an exercise to maintain the nation’s pride.’
   But I wasn’t listening. I’d heard it all before a zillion times. I took another sip of coffee as sweat prickled my scalp. The TV showed stock footage of the peninsula as Duff-Rolecks spoke: Sebastapol, a heavily fortified English garrison town with little remaining of its architectural and historical heritage. Whenever I saw these pictures the smell of cordite and the crack of exploding shells filled my head. I instinctively stroked the only outward mark from the campaign I had—a small raised scar on my chin.
   Others had not been so lucky. Nothing had changed. The war had ground on.
   ‘It’s all bullshit, Thursday,’ said a gravely voice close at hand.
   It was Stanford, the cafe owner. Like me he was a veteran of the Crimea, but from an earlier campaign. Unlike me he had lost more than just his innocence and some good friends; he lumbered around on two tin legs and still had enough shrapnel in his body to make half a dozen baked bean tins.
   ‘The Crimea has got sod all to do with the United Nations.’

   He liked to talk about the Crimea with me despite our opposing views. No one else really wanted to. Soldiers involved in the on-going dispute with Wales had more kudos; Crimean personnel on leave usually left their uniforms in the wardrobe.
   ‘I suppose not,’ I replied non-committally, staring out of the window to where I could see a Crimean veteran begging at a street corner, reciting Longfellow from memory for a couple of pennies.
   ‘Makes all those lives seem wasted if we give it back now,’ added Stanford gruffly. ‘We’ve been there since 1854. It belongs to us. You might as well say we should give the Isle of Wight back to the French.’
   ‘We did give the Isle of Wight back to the French,’ I replied patiently; Stanford’s grasp of current affairs was generally confined to First Division pelota and the love life of actress Lola Vavoom.
   ‘Oh yes,’ he muttered, brow knitted. ‘We did, didn’t we? Well, we shouldn’t have. And who do the UN think they are?’
   ‘I don’t know but if the killing stops they’ve got my vote, Stan.’
   The barkeeper shook his head sadly as Duff-Rolecks concluded his speech:
   “… there can be little doubt that the Czar Romanov Alexei IV does have overwhelming rights to sovereignty of the peninsula and I for one look forward to the day when we can withdraw our troops from what can only be described as an incalculable waste of human life and resources.’
   The Toad News anchorwoman came back on and moved to another item—the government was to raise the duty on cheese to 83 per cent, an unpopular move that would doubtless have the more militant citizens picketing cheese shops.
   ‘The Ruskies could stop it tomorrow if they pulled out!’ said Stanford belligerently.
   It wasn’t an argument and he and I both knew it. There was nothing left of the peninsula that would be worth owning whoever won. The only stretch of land that hadn’t been churned to a pulp by artillery bombardment was heavily mined. Historically and morally the Crimea belonged to Imperial Russia; that was all there was to it.
   The next news item was about a border skirmish with the Socialist Republic of Wales; no one hurt, just a few shots exchanged across the River Wye near Hay. Typically rambunctious, the youthful President-for-Life Owain Glyndwr VII had blamed England’s imperialist yearnings for a unified Britain; equally typically, Parliament had not so much as even made a statement about the incident. The news ground on, but I wasn’t really paying attention. A new fusion plant had opened in Dungeness and the Prime Minister had been there to open it. He grinned dutifully as the flashbulbs went off. I returned to my paper and read a story about a parliamentary bill to remove the dodo’s Protected Species status after their staggering increase in numbers; but I couldn’t concentrate. The Crimea had filled my mind with its unwelcome memories. It was lucky for me that my pager bleeped and brought with it a much-needed reality check. I tossed a few notes on the counter and sprinted out of the door as the Toad News anchorwoman sombrely announced that a young surrealist had been killed—stabbed to death by a gang adhering to a radical school of French impressionists

2. Gad’s Hill

   ‘… There are two schools of thought about the resilience of time. The first is that time is highly volatile, with every small event altering the possible outcome of the earth’s future. The other view is that time is rigid, and no matter how hard you try, it will always spring back towards a determined present. Myself, I do not worry about such trivialities. I simply sell ties to anyone who wants to buy one…’

Tie seller in Victoria, June 1983


   My pager had delivered a disconcerting message; the unstealable had just been stolen. It was not the first time the Martin Chuzzlewit manuscript had been purloined. Two years before it had been removed from its case by a security man who wanted nothing more than to read the book in its pure and unsullied state. Unable to live with himself or decipher Dickens’s handwriting past the third page, he eventually confessed and the manuscript was recovered. He spent five years sweating over lime kilns on the edge of Dartmoor.
   Gad’s Hill Palace was where Charles Dickens lived at the end of his life, but not where he wrote Chuzzlewit. That was at Devonshire Terrace, when he still lived with his first wife, in 1843. Gad’s Hill is a large Victorian building near Rochester which had fine views of the Medway when Dickens bought it. If you screw up your eyes and ignore the oil refinery, heavy water plant and the ExcoMat containment facility, it’s not too hard to see what drew him to this part of England. Several thousand visitors pass through Gad’s Hill every day, making it the third-most popular area of literary pilgrimage after Anne Hathaway’s cottage and the Brontes’ Haworth House. Such huge numbers of people had created enormous security problems; no one was taking any chances since a deranged individual had broken into Chawton, threatening to destroy all Jane Austen’s letters unless his frankly dull and uneven Austen biography was published. On that occasion no damage had been done, but it was a grim portent of things to come. In Dublin the following year an organised gang attempted to hold Jonathan Swift’s papers to ransom. A protracted siege developed which ended with two of the extortionists shot dead and the destruction of several original political pamphlets and an early draft of Gulliver’s Travels. The inevitable had to happen. Literary relics were placed under bullet-proof glass and guarded by electronic surveillance and armed officers. It was not the way anyone wanted it, but it seemed the only answer. Since those days there had been few major problems, which made the theft of Chuzzlewit all the more remarkable.
   I parked my car, clipped my SO-2y badge into my top pocket and pushed my way through the crowds of pressmen and gawkers. I saw Boswell from a distance and ducked under a police line to reach him.
   ‘Good morning, sir,’ I muttered. ‘I came as soon as I heard.’
   He put a finger to his lips and whispered in my ear: ‘Ground-floor window. Took less than ten minutes. Nothing else.’
   ‘What?’
   Then I saw. Toad News Network’s star reporter Lydia Startright was about to do an interview. The finely coiffured TV journalist finished her introduction and turned to us both. Boswell employed a neat sidestep, jabbed me playfully in the ribs and left me alone under the full glare of the news cameras.
   ‘—of Martin Chuzzlewit, stolen from the Dickens Museum at Gad’s Hill. I have with me Literary Detective Thursday Next. Tell me, Officer, how it was possible for thieves to break in and steal one of literature’s greatest treasures?’
   I murmured ‘Bastard!’ under my breath to Boswell, who slunk off shaking with mirth. I shifted my weight uneasily. With the enthusiasm for art and literature in the population undiminished, the LiteraTec’s job was becoming increasingly difficult, made worse by a very limited budget.
   ‘The thieves gained entrance through a window on the ground floor and went straight to the manuscript,’ I said in my best TV voice. ‘They were in and out within ten minutes.’
   ‘I understand the museum was monitored by closed-circuit television,’ continued Lydia. ‘Did you capture the thieves on video?’
   ‘Our enquiries are proceeding,’ I replied. ‘You understand that some details must be kept secret for operational purposes.’
   Lydia lowered her microphone and cut the camera. ‘Do you have anything to give me, Thursday?’ she asked. ‘The parrot stuff I can get from anyone.’
   I smiled. ‘I’ve only just got here, Lyds. Try me again in a week.’
   ‘Thursday, in a week this will be archive footage. Okay, roll VT.’
   The cameraman reshouldered his camera and Lydia resumed her report.
   ‘Do you have any leads?’
   ‘There are several avenues that we are pursuing. We are confident that we can return the manuscript to the museum and arrest the individuals concerned.’
   I wished I could share my own optimism. I had spent a lot of time at Gad’s Hill overseeing security arrangements, and I knew it was like the Bank of England. The people who did this were good. Really good. It also made it kind of personal. The interview ended and I ducked under a SpecOps Do Not Cross tape to where Boswell was waiting to meet me.
   ‘This is one hell of a mess, Thursday. Turner, fill her in.’
   Boswell left us to it and went off to find something to eat.
   ‘If you can see how they pulled this one off,’ murmured Paige who was a slightly older and female version of Boswell, ‘I’ll eat my boots, buckles and all.’
   Both Turner and Boswell had been at the LiteraTec Department when I turned up there, fresh from the military and a short career at the Swindon Police Department. Few people ever left the LiteraTec division; when you were in London you had pretty much reached the top of your profession. Promotion or death were the usual ways out; the saying was that a LiteraTec job wasn’t for Christmas—it was for life.
   ‘Boswell likes you, Thursday.’

  ‘In what sort of way?’ I asked suspiciously.
   ‘In the sort of way that he wants you in my shoes when I leave—I became engaged to a rather nice fellow from SO-3 at the weekend.’
   I should have been more enthusiastic, but Turner had been engaged so many times she could have filled every finger and toe—twice.
   ‘SO-3?’ I queried, somewhat inquisitively. Being in SpecOps was no guarantee you would know which departments did what—Joe Public were probably better informed. The only SpecOps divisions I knew about for sure below SO-12 were SO-9, who were antiterrorist, and SO-1, who were Internal Affairs—the SpecOps police; the people who made sure we didn’t step out of line.
   ‘SO-3?’ I repeated. ‘What do they do?’
   ‘Weird Stuff.’
   ‘I thought SO-2 did Weird Stuff?’
   ‘SO-2 do Weirder Stuff. I asked him but he never got round to answering—we were kind of busy. Look at this.’
   Turner had led me into the manuscript room. The glass case that had held the leather-bound manuscript was empty.
   ‘Anything?’ Paige asked one of the scene-of-crime officers.
   ‘Nothing.’
   ‘Gloves?’ I asked.
   The SOCO stood up and stretched her back; she hadn’t discovered a single print of any sort.
   ‘No; and that’s what’s so bizarre. It doesn’t look like they touched the box at all; not with gloves, not a cloth—nothing. According to me this box hasn’t been opened and the manuscript is still inside!’ I looked at the glass case. It was still locked tight and none of the other exhibits had been touched. The keys were kept separately and were at this moment on their way from London.
   ‘Hello, that’s odd—‘ I muttered, leaning closer.
   ‘What do you see?’ asked Paige anxiously.
   I pointed to an area of glass on one of the side panels that undulated slightly. The area was roughly the size of the manuscript.
   ‘I noticed that,’ said Paige. ‘I thought it was a flaw in the glass.’
   ‘Toughened bullet-proof glass?’ I asked her. ‘No chance. And it wasn’t like this when I supervised the fitting, I can assure you of that.’
   ‘What, then?’
   I stroked the hard glass and felt the shiny surface ripple beneath my fingertips. A shiver ran up my back and I felt a curious sense of uncomfortable familiarity, the feeling you might get when a long-forgotten school bully hails you as an old friend.
   ‘The work feels familiar, Paige. When I find the perpetrator, it’ll be someone I know.’
   ‘You’ve been a LiteraTec for seven years, Thursday.’ I saw what she meant.
   ‘Eight years, and you’re right—you’ll probably know them too. Could Lamber Thwalts have done this?’
   ‘He could have, if he wasn’t still in hokey—four years still to go over that Love’s Labour’s Won scam.’
   ‘What about Keens? He could handle something as big as this.’
   ‘Milton’s no longer with us. Caught analepsy in the library at Parkhurst. Stone-cold dead in a fortnight.’
   ‘Hmm.’ I pointed at the two video cameras. ‘Who did they see?’
   ‘No one,’ replied Turner. ‘Not a dicky bird. I can play you the tapes but you’ll be none the wiser.’
   She showed me what they had. The guard on duty was being interviewed back at the station. They were hoping it was an inside job but it didn’t look like it; the guard had been as devastated as any of them.
   Turner shuttled the video back and pressed the Play button.
   ‘Watch carefully. The recorder rotates the five cameras and films five seconds of each.’
   ‘So the longest gap between cameras is twenty seconds?’
   ‘Got it. You watching? Okay, there’s the manuscript—‘ She pointed at the book, clearly visible in the frame as the VCR flicked to the camera at the front door. There was no movement. Then the inside door through which any burglar would have to come; all the other entrances were barred. Then came the corridor; then the lobby; then the machine flicked back to the manuscript room. Turner punched the Pause button and I leaned closer. The manuscript was gone.
   ‘Twenty seconds to get in, open the box, take Chuzzlewit and then leg it? It’s not possible.’
   ‘Believe you me, Thursday—it happened.’
   The last remark came from Boswell, who had been looking over my shoulder.
   ‘I don’t know how they did it, but they did. I’ve had a call from Supreme Commander Gale on this one and he’s being leaned on by the Prime Minister. Questions have already been asked in the House and someone’s head is going to roll. Not mine, I assure you.’
   He looked at us both rather pointedly, which made me feel especially ill at ease—I was the one who had advised the museum on its security arrangements.
   ‘We’ll be on to it straight away, sir,’ I replied, punching the Pause button and letting the video run on. The views of the building changed rhythmically, revealing nothing. I pulled up a chair, rewound the tape and looked again.
   ‘What are you hoping to find?’ asked Paige.
   ‘Anything.’
   I didn’t find it.

3. Back at my desk

   ‘Funding for the Special Operations Network comes directly from the government. Most work is centralised, but all of the SpecOps divisions have local representatives to keep a watchful eye on any provincial problems. They are administered by local Commanders, who liaise with the national offices for information exchange, guidance and policy decisions. Like any other big government department, it looks good on paper but is an utter shambles. Petty in-fighting and political agendas, arrogance and sheer bloody-mindedness almost guarantees that the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing.’

Millon de Floss. A Short History of the Special Operations Network


   Two days of fruitless hunting for Chuzzlewit had passed without even the slightest clue as to where it might be. There had been ‘whispers’ of reprimands, but only if we could figure out how the manuscript was taken. It would seem a bit ludicrous to be chastised for leaving a loophole in the security arrangements but not know what it was. Now slightly despondent, I was sitting at my desk back at the station. Recalling my conversation with Dad, I phoned my mother to ask her not to paint the bedroom mauve. The call backfired slightly as she thought this a grand idea and hung up before I could argue. I sighed and flipped through the telephone messages that had accumulated over the past two days. They were mostly from informers and concerned citizens who had been robbed or cheated and wanted to know if we had made any headway. It was all small beer compared to Chuzzlewit— there were a lot of gullible people out there buying first editions of Byronic verse at knock-down prices, then complaining bitterly when they found out they were fakes. Like most of the other operatives, I had a pretty good idea who was behind all of this, but we never caught the big fish—just the ‘utterers’, the dealers who sold it all on. It smacked of corruption in high places but we never had any proof. Usually I read my messages with interest, but today none of it seemed terribly important. After all, the verses of Byron, Keats or Poe are real whether they are in bootleg form or not. You can still read them for the same effect.
   I opened the drawer of my desk and pulled out a small mirror. A woman with somewhat ordinary features stared back at me. Her hair was a plain mousey colour and of medium length, tied up rather hastily in a ponytail at the back. She had no cheekbones to speak of and her face, I noticed, had just started to show some rather obvious lines. I thought of my mother, who had looked as wrinkled as a walnut by the time she was forty-five. I shuddered, placed the mirror back in the drawer and took out a faded and slightly dog-eared photograph. It was a photo of myself with a group of friends taken in the Crimea when I had been simply Corporal T.E.Next, 33550336, Driver: APC, Light Armoured Brigade. I had served my country diligently, been involved in a military disaster and then honourably discharged with a gong to prove it. They had expected me to give talks about recruitment and valour but I had disappointed them. I attended one regimental reunion but that was it; I had found myself looking for the faces that I knew weren’t there.
   In the photo Landen was standing on my left, his arm around me and another soldier, my brother, his best mate. Landen lost a leg, but he came home. My brother was still out there.
   ‘Who’s that?’ asked Paige, who had been looking over my shoulder.
   ‘Whoa!’ I yelped. ‘You just scared the crap out of me!’
   ‘Sorry! Crimea?’
   I handed her the photo and she looked at it intently. ‘That must be your brother—you have the same nose.’
   ‘I know, we used to share it on a rota. I had it Mondays, Wednesd—‘
   ‘—then the other man must be Landen.’
   I frowned and turned to face her. I never mentioned Landen to anyone. It was personal. I felt kind of betrayed that she might have been prying behind my back.
   ‘How do you know about Landen?’
   She sensed the anger in my voice, smiled and raised an eyebrow.
   ‘You told me about him.’
   ‘I did?’
   ‘Sure. The speech was slurred and for the most part it was garbage, but he was certainly on your mind.’
   I winced. ‘Last year’s Christmas bash?’
   ‘Or the year before. You weren’t the only one talking garbage with slurred speech.’
   I looked at the photo again. ‘We were engaged.’
   Paige suddenly looked uneasy. Crimean fiances could be seriously bad conversation topics.
   ‘Did he—ah—come back?’
   ‘Most of him. He left a leg behind. We don’t speak too much these days.’
   ‘What’s his full name?’ asked Paige, interested in finally getting something out of my past.
   ‘It’s Parke-Laine. Landen Parke-Laine.’ It was the first time I had said his name out loud for almost longer than I could remember.
   ‘Parke-Laine the writer?’
   I nodded.
   ‘Good-looking bloke.’
   ‘Thank you,’ I replied, not quite knowing what I was thanking her for. I put the photograph back in my drawer and Paige clicked her fingers.
   ‘Boswell wants to see you,’ she announced, finally remembering what she had come over to say.
   Boswell was not alone. A man in his forties was waiting for me and rose as I entered. He didn’t blink very much and had a large scar down one side of his face. Boswell hummed and hawed for a moment, coughed, looked at his watch and then said something about leaving us to it.
   ‘Police?’ I asked as soon as we were alone. ‘Has a relative died or something?’
   The man closed the Venetian blinds to give us more privacy.
   ‘Not that I heard about.’
   ‘SO-1?’ I asked, expecting a possible reprimand.
   ‘Me?’ replied the man with genuine surprise. ‘No.’
   ‘LiteraTec?’
   ‘Why don’t you sit down?’
   He offered me a seat and then sat down in Boswell’s large oak swivel chair. He had a buff file with my name on the cover which he flopped on the desk in front of him. I was amazed by how thick the file was.
   ‘Is that all about me?’
   He ignored me. Instead of opening my file, he leaned forward and gazed at me with his unblinking eyes.
   ‘How do you rate the Chuzzlewit case?’
   I found myself staring at his scar. It ran from his forehead down to his chin and had all the size and subtlety of a ship-builder’s weld. It pulled his lip up, but apart from that his face was pleasant enough; without the scar he might have been handsome. I was being unsubtle. He instinctively brought up a hand to cover it.
   ‘Finest Cossack,’ he murmured, making light of it.
   ‘I’m sorry.’
   ‘Don’t be. It’s hard not to gawp.’ He paused for a moment.
   ‘I work for SpecOps 5,’ he announced slowly, showing me a shiny badge.
   ‘SO-5?’ I gasped, failing to hide the surprise in my voice. ‘What do you lot do?’
   ‘That’s restricted, Miss Next. I showed you the badge so you could talk to me without worrying about security clearances. I can okay that with Boswell if you’d prefer—?’
   My heart was beating faster. Interviews with SpecOps operatives farther up the ladder sometimes led to transfers—
   ‘So, Miss Next, what do you think about Chuzzlewit?’
   ‘You want my opinion or the official version?’
   ‘Your opinion. Official versions I get from Boswell.’

   ‘I think it’s too early to tell. If ransom is the motive then we can assume the manuscript is still in one piece. If it’s stolen to sell or barter we can also consider it in one piece. If terrorism is the game then we might have to be worried. In scenarios one and three the LiteraTecs have sod all to do with it. SO-9 get involved and we’re kind of out of the picture.’
   The man looked at me intently and nodded his head. ‘You don’t like it here, do you?’
   ‘I’ve had enough, put it that way,’ I responded, slightly less guardedly than I should. ‘Who are you, anyway?’
   The man laughed. ‘Sorry. Very bad manners; I didn’t mean all the cloak-and-dagger stuff. The name’s Tamworth, head field operative at SO-5. Actually,’ he added, ‘that doesn’t mean so much. At present there are just me and two others.’
   I shook his outstretched hand.
   ‘Three people in a SpecOps division?’ I asked curiously. ‘Isn’t that kind of mean?’
   ‘I lost some guys yesterday.’
   ‘I’m sorry.’
   ‘Not that way. We just made a bit of headway and that’s not always good news. Some people research well in SO-5 but don’t like the fieldwork. They have kids. I don’t. But I understand.’
   I nodded. I understood too.
   ‘Why are you talking to me?’ I asked almost casually. ‘I’m SO-2y; as the SpecOps transfer board so kindly keep telling me, my talents lie either in front of a LiteraTec desk or a kitchen stove.’
   Tamworth smiled. He patted the file in front of him.
   ‘I know all about that. SpecOps Central Recruiting don’t really have a good word for “No”, they just fob. It’s what they’re best at. On the contrary, they are fully aware of your potential. I spoke to Boswell just now and he thinks he can just about let you go if you want to help us over at SO-5.’
   ‘If you’re SO-5 he doesn’t have much choice, does he?’
   Tamworth laughed.
   ‘That’s true. But you do. I’d never recruit anyone who didn’t want to join me.’
   I looked at him. He meant it.
   ‘Is this a transfer?’
   ‘No,’ replied Tamworth, ‘it isn’t. I just need you because you have information that is of use to us. You’ll be an observer; nothing more. Once you understand what we’re up against you’ll be very glad to be just that.’
   ‘So when this is over I just get thrown back here?’
   He paused and looked at me for a moment, trying to give the best assurance that he could without lying. I liked him for it.
   ‘I make no guarantees, Miss Next, but anyone who has been on an SO-5 assignment can be pretty confident that they won’t be SO-27 forever.’
   ‘What is it you want me to do?’
   Tamworth pulled a form from his case and pushed it across the table to me. It was a standard security clearance and, once signed, gave SpecOps the right to almost everything I possessed and a lot more besides if I so much as breathed a word to someone with a lesser clearance. I signed it dutifully and handed it back. In exchange he gave me a shiny SO-5 badge with my name already in place. Tamworth knew me better than I thought. This done, he lowered his voice and began:
   ‘SO-5 is basically a Search & Containment facility. We are posted with a man to track until found and contained, then we get another. SO-4 is pretty much the same; they are just after a different thing. Person. You know. Anyway, I was down at Gad’s Hill this morning, Thursday—can I call you Thursday?—and I had a good look at the crime scene at first hand. Whoever took the manuscript of Chuzzlewit left no fingerprints, no sign of entry and nothing on any of the cameras.’
   ‘Not a lot to go on, was there?’
   ‘On the contrary. It was just the break I’ve been waiting for.’
   ‘Did you share this with Boswell?’ I asked.
   ‘Of course not. We’re not interested in the manuscript; we’re interested in the man who stole it.’
   ‘And who’s that?’
   ‘I can’t tell you his name but I can write it.’
   He took out a felt tip and wrote ‘Acheron Hades’ on a notepad and held it up for me to read.
   ‘Look familiar?’
   ‘Very familiar. There can’t be many people who haven’t heard about him.’
   ‘I know. But you’ve met him, haven’t you?’
   ‘Certainly,’ I replied. ‘He was one of the lecturers when I studied English at Swindon in ‘68. None of us were surprised when he switched to a career of crime. He was something of a leech. He made one of the students pregnant.’
   ‘Braeburn; yes, we know about her. What about you?’
   ‘He never made me pregnant, but he had a good try.’
   ‘Did you sleep with him?’
   ‘No; I didn’t figure sleeping with lecturers was really where I wanted to be. The attention was flattering, I suppose, dinner and stuff. He was brilliant—but a moral vacuum. I remember once he was arrested for armed robbery while giving a spirited lecture on John Webster’s The White Devil. He was released without charge on that occasion, but the Braeburn thing was enough to have him dismissed.’
   ‘He asked you to go with him yet you turned him down.’
   ‘Your information is good, Mr Tamworth.’
   Tamworth scribbled a note on his pad. He looked up at me again.
   ‘But the important thing is: you know what he looks like?’
   ‘Of course,’ I replied, ‘but you’re wasting your time. He died in Venezuela in ‘82.’
   ‘No; he just made us think he had. We exhumed the grave the following year. It wasn’t him at all. He feigned death so well that he fooled the doctors; they buried a weighted coffin. He has powers that are slightly baffling. That’s why we can’t say his name. I call it Rule Number One.’
   ‘His name? Why not?’
   ‘Because he can hear his own name—even whispered—over a thousand-yard radius, perhaps more. He uses it to sense our presence.’
   ‘And why do you suppose he stole Chuzzlewit? ’
   Tamworth reached into his case and pulled out a file. It was marked ‘Most Secret—SpecOps 5 clearance only’. The slot in the front, usually reserved for a mugshot, was empty.
   ‘We don’t have a picture of him,’ said Tamworth as I opened the file. ‘He doesn’t resolve on film or video and has never been in custody long enough to be sketched. Remember the cameras at Gad’s Hill?’
   ‘Yes?’
   ‘They didn’t pick anyone up. I went through the tapes very carefully. The camera angle changed every five seconds yet there would be no way anyone could dodge all of them during the time they were in the building. Do you see what I mean?’
   I nodded slowly and flicked through the pages of Acheron’s file.
   Tamworth continued: ‘I’ve been after him for five years. He has seven outstanding warrants for murder in England, eighteen in America. Extortion, theft and kidnapping. He’s cold, calculating and quite ruthless. Thirty-six of his forty-two known victims were either SpecOps or police officers.’
   ‘Hartlepool in ‘75?’ I asked.
   ‘Yes,’ replied Tamworth slowly. ‘You heard about it?’
   I had. Most people had. Hades had been cornered in the basement of a multi-storey carpark after a botched robbery. One of his associates lay dead in a bank nearby; Acheron had killed the wounded man to stop him talking. In the basement, he persuaded an officer into giving him his gun, killing six others as he walked out. The only officer who survived was the one whose gun he had used. That was Acheron’s idea of a joke. The officer in question never gave a satisfactory explanation as to why he had given up his firearm. He had taken early retirement and gassed himself in his car six years later after a short history of alcoholism and petty theft. He came to be known as the seventh victim.
   ‘I interviewed the Hartlepool survivor before he took his own life,’ Tamworth went on, ‘after I was instructed to find… him at any cost. My findings led us to formulate Rule Number Two: If you ever have the misfortune to face him in person, believe nothing that he says or does. He can lie in thought, deed, action and appearance. He has amazing persuasive powers over those of weak mind. Did I tell you that we have been authorised to use maximum force?’
   ‘No, but I guessed.’

   ‘SO-5 has a shoot-to-kill policy concerning our friend—‘
   ‘Whoa, whoa, wait a sec. You have the power to eliminate without trial?’
   ‘Welcome to SpecOps 5, Thursday—what did you think containment meant?’ He laughed a laugh that was slightly disturbing. ‘As the saying goes: If you want to get into SpecOps, act kinda weird. We don’t tend to pussyfoot around.’
   ‘Is it legal?’
   ‘Not in the least. It’s Blind Eye Grand Central below SpecOps 8. We have a saying: Below the eight, above the law. Ever hear it?’
   ‘No.’
   ‘You’ll hear it a lot. In any event we make it our Rule Number Three: Apprehension is of minimal importance. What gun do you carry?’
   I told him and he scribbled a note.
   ‘I’ll get some fluted expansion slugs for you.’
   ‘There’ll be hell to pay if we get caught with those.’
   ‘Self-defence only,’ explained Tamworth quickly. ‘You won’t be dealing with this man; I just want you to ID him if he shows. But listen: if the shit hits the fan I don’t want any of my people left with bows and arrows against the lightning. And anything less than an expanding slug is about as much good as using wet cardboard as a flak jacket. We know almost nothing about him. No birth certificate, not even a reliable age or even who his parents were. He just appeared on the scene in ‘54 as a petty criminal with a literary edge and has worked his way steadily upwards to being number three on the planet’s most-wanted list.’
   ‘Who’re number one and two?’
   ‘I don’t know and I have been reliably informed that it’s far better not to know.’
   ‘So where do we go from here?’
   ‘I’ll call you. Stay alert and keep your pager with you at all times. You’re on leave as of now from SO-27, so just enjoy the time off. I’ll be seeing you!’
   He was gone in an instant, leaving me with the SO-5 badge and a thumping heart. Boswell returned, followed by a curious Paige. I showed them both the badge.
   ‘Way to go!’ said Paige, giving me a hug, but Boswell seemed less happy. After all, he did have his own department to think about.
   ‘They can play very rough at SO-5, Next,’ said Boswell in a fatherly tone. ‘I want you to go back to your desk and have a long, calm think about this. Have a cup of coffee and a bun. No, have two buns. Don’t make any rash decisions, and just run through all the pros and cons of the argument. When you’ve done that I would be happy to adjudicate. Do you understand?’
   I understood. In my hurry to leave the office I almost forgot the picture of Landen.

4. Acheron Hades

   ‘… The best reason for committing loathsome and detestable acts—and let’s face it, I am considered something of an expert in this field—is purely for their own sake. Monetary gain is all very well, but it dilutes the taste of wickedness to a lower level that is obtainable by anyone with an overdeveloped sense of avarice. True and baseless evil is as rare as the purest good—and we all know how rare that is…’

Acheron Hades. Degeneracy for Pleasure and Profit


   Tamworth didn’t call that week, nor the week after. I tried to call him at the beginning of the third week but was put through to a trained denialist who flatly refused to admit that Tamworth or SO-5 even existed. I used the time to get up to date with some reading, filing, mending the car, and also—because of the new legislation—to register Pickwick as a pet rather than a wild dodo. I took him to the town hall where a veterinary inspector studied the once-extinct bird very carefully. Pickwick stared back forlornly, as he, in common with most pets, didn’t fancy the vet much.
   ‘Plock-plock,’ said Pickwick nervously as the inspector expertly clipped the large brass ring around his ankle.
   ‘No wings?’ asked the official curiously, staring at Pickwick’s slightly odd shape.
   ‘He’s a Version 1.2,’ I explained. ‘One of the first. They didn’t get the sequence complete until 1.7.’
   ‘Must be pretty old.’
   ‘Twelve years this October.’
   ‘I had one of the early Thylacines,’ said the official glumly. ‘A Version 2.1. When we decanted him he had no ears. Stone deaf. No warranty or anything. Bloody liberty, I call it. Do you read New Splicer?’
   I had to admit that I didn’t.
   ‘They sequenced a Stella Seacow last week. How do I even get one of those through the door?’
   ‘Grease its sides?’ I suggested. ‘And show it a plate of kelp?’
   But the official wasn’t listening; he had turned his attention to the next dodo, a pinkish creature with a long neck. The owner caught my eye and smiled sheepishly.
   ‘Redundant strands filled in with flamingo,’ he explained. ‘I should have used dove.’
   ‘Version 2.9?’
   ‘2.9.1, actually. A bit of a hotchpotch but to us he’s simply Chester. We wouldn’t swap him for anything.’
   The inspector had been studying Chester’s registration documents.
   ‘I’m sorry,’ he said at last, ‘2.9.15 come under the new Chimera category.’
   ‘What do you mean?’
   ‘Not enough dodo to be dodo. Room Seven down the corridor. Follow the owner of the pukey, but be careful; I sent a quarkbeast down there this morning.’
   I left Chester’s owner and the official arguing together and took Pickwick for a waddle in the park. I let him off the lead and he chased a few pigeons before fraternising with some feral dodos who were cooling their feet in the pond. They splashed excitedly and made quiet plock plock noises to one another until it was time to go home.
   Two days after that I had run out of ways to rearrange the furniture, so it was lucky that Tamworth called me. He told me he was on a stakeout and that I needed to join him. I hastily scribbled down the address and was in the East End in under forty minutes. The stakeout was in a shabby street of converted warehouses that had been due for demolition two decades before. I doused the lights and got out, hid anything of value and locked the car carefully. The battered Pontiac was old and grotty enough not to arouse suspicion in the grimy surroundings. I glanced around. The brickwork was crumbling and heavy smears of green algae streaked the walls where the down pipes had once been. The windows were cracked and dirty and the brick wall at ground level was stained alternately with graffiti or the sooty blackness of a recent fire. A rusty fire escape zigzagged up the dark building and cast a staccato shadow on the potholed road and several burnt-out cars. I made my way to a side door according to Tamworth’s instructions. Inside, large cracks had opened up in the walls and the damp and decay had mixed with the smell of Jeyes fluid and a curry shop on the ground floor. A neon light flashed on and off regularly, and I saw several women in tight skirts hovering in the dark doorways. The citizens who lived in the area were a curious mix; the lack of cheap housing in and around London attracted a cross-section of people, from locals to down-and-outs to professionals. It wasn’t great from a law-and-order point of view, but it did allow SpecOps agents to move around without raising suspicion.
   I reached the seventh floor, where a couple of young Henry Fielding fanatics were busy swapping bubble-gum cards. ‘I’ll swap you one Sophia for an Amelia.’
   ‘Piss off!’ replied his friend indignantly. ‘If you want Sophia you’re going to have to give me an Airworthy plus a Tom Jones, as well as the Amelia!’
   His friend, realising the rarity of a Sophia, reluctantly agreed. The deal was done and they ran off downstairs to look for hub-caps. I compared a number with the address that Tamworth had given me and rapped on a door covered with peeling peach-coloured paint. It was opened cautiously by a man somewhere in his eighties. He half hid his face from me with a wrinkled hand, and I showed him my badge.
   ‘You must be Next,’ he said in a voice that was really quite sprightly for his age. I ignored the old joke and went in. Tamworth was peering through some binoculars at a room in the building opposite and waved a greeting without looking up. I looked at the old man again and smiled.
   ‘Call me Thursday.’
   He seemed gratified at this and shook my hand.
   ‘The name’s Snood; you can call me Junior.’
   ‘Snood?’ I echoed. ‘Any relation to Filbert?’
   The old man nodded.