The Body Library

by Jeff Noon

  Nyquist reasoned it was some kind of weird art decoration. But it felt more like he had stepped into a dream world, a separate story from his normal reality.

  He searched the rest of the apartment. There was no one there. In the main bedroom he found five sheets of manuscript paper arranged on a table, set out in a line as though in sequence. Each sheet contained a mixture of text and images. He picked up the nearest one and tried to read the writing it contained, but he couldn’t make any sense of it; the words seemed to be in the wrong order. Yet as he scanned the sheet he felt a pleasant sensation, his skin was tingling all over. He wanted to read more. And then he noticed that a smaller piece of paper had been glued to the first, forming a pocket in which some object was lodged. He felt at it with his fingers, and he started to tear the sheet in two, to reveal the object: it was a tooth, a human tooth. But he hardly had time to process this strange discovery, when a noise disturbed him.

  Someone had cried out in sudden agony.

  Nyquist stood where he was. He shivered, cold. His hands trembled, and when he looked at them a trail of blood ran down his fingers. He couldn’t understand it; where had it come from? It wasn’t his blood. He wasn’t wounded. The red droplets stained the paper.

  And then the painful cry sounded again.

  “Who’s there? Show yourself.”

  The room was plunged into darkness. Nyquist spun, his entire body wired and ready for action, for defense, or attack. Eyes wide, seeking answers.

  But the room was empty. The moonlight through the window painted one wall in a soft, silvery glow, edged with shadow.

  And then a voice spoke. “Who are you?”

  Nyquist turned at the sound to see that a man was standing in the doorway. He stepped forward revealing his face: it was Patrick Wellborn. The man’s eyes were filled with dark intent and he spoke in a fierce whisper: “Why are you hurting me?”

  It was a question that Nyquist couldn’t answer.

  Wellborn’s eyes moved to the sheet of paper that Nyquist held in his hand, and the muscles of his face twitched in irritation.

  “Don’t hurt me.”

  Nyquist still didn’t respond. This was the closest they’d ever been, observer and subject matter, face to face. He braced himself for a fight. Wellborn’s face creased with anger. Rage. Pure rage. Nyquist managed to speak calmly: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” This was the truth, but it was a remark too far. Something snapped in the other man. Wellborn stepped closer, one hand coming out of his jacket, an object held loosely within it. Nyquist couldn’t make it out, not at first, not until the object was raised up, offered, a gift, a prop in a story.

  Moonlight illuminated the knife.

  It flashed forward.

  Turn the Page

  HE WAS lying on the bed in the moonlit dark, hardly breathing. Not daring to move, just lying there. His eyes were tightly shut, his hands clenched at the sheets. Sweat ran down all over his skin so that his clothes stuck to him. The heat barely stirred in the room. There were colors moving behind his eyelids, and his head ached. But he couldn’t open his eyes, not yet. Instead he lay there on the tangled sheets and listened.

  He could hear his heart beating madly, nothing more.

  Nyquist was still in shock, in panic. He had not yet put together the events. He couldn’t think properly.

  Now he heard another sound: the ticking of a clock.

  Most of all he wanted to hear someone talking, or laughing, or a cry of pain even. Any sign of life would be welcome.

  There was nothing.

  He let his eyes come open and the room formed around him. The glow of moonlight through the half-open curtains at the window, a portion of wall and a corner of the ceiling. By turning his head he could make out the dial of the clock on a bedside table, but he couldn’t see the time clearly. How long had passed since the attack? A few minutes, an hour, maybe more? There was no way of telling.

  He lifted his hand up towards his face. The hand was wet, something was stuck to his fingers. It was a clump of hair. Long dirty, greasy hair.

  Wellborn’s hair, torn out at the roots.

  His stomach churned in revulsion and he shook his hand vigorously. But the hair clung to him. He scrabbled at it with his other hand, until at last he was free of it. He managed to sit up and then get to his feet. He stood beside the bed, shivering still, and not knowing what to do next, feeling sick inside. He wanted to scream out loud. What can I do? Help me. It would be a useless cry. Nobody could help him.

  Nyquist made his way to the bathroom. The strip light buzzed into life. The extractor fan whirred. It sounded like something alive, something caught in a trap. The water dripped from the leaky tap. He turned it full on and washed the blood off his hands.

  The blood. The water swirled with it.

  The color looked unreal, too bright, too vivid. He felt faint.

  The patterns in the water. His own blood and the victim’s, mixed together.

  He glanced upwards to meet his face in the mirror and then turned away quickly from what he saw there, the splashes of red across his skin. He looked terrible, haunted. His eyes were cold. There was a cut on his cheek. He waited until the water ran clear and then he filled his palms and washed his face. For a long time, he remained as he was, bowed down. If only he could stay this way forever, his face cold from the water, his eyes closed. But in the end he had to stand back upright. He wiped his face and hands. There was another cut, deeper, on his left forearm. He shook his head at this. Nothing could get any worse than it already was. He held a wet flannel against the wound, pressing hard. He tried tying it around his arm to no avail; it kept slipping off. He gripped the sink unit with both hands and held himself against the pain, forcing it to the back of his mind. He placed the flannel down on the sink unit, laying his left arm down upon it. He used his right hand to tie a knot, grabbing one end with his teeth, the other with his fingers. He pulled. He pulled it tight.

  His reflection looked back at him one last time.

  Nyquist went back into the bedroom. He saw a splash of blood on the wall. According to the bedside clock it was ten minutes past midnight.

  This room, this terrible situation. How the hell did it turn out like this?

  He rested for a moment as he thought of the task ahead.

  He was afraid.

  John Nyquist was afraid.

  He had killed a man.

  He clicked on the overhead light and moved round the bed and stared down at the dead body that lay on the floor, half in shadow. He took it all in. The dreadfully still form, the knife on the carpet, the torn sheet. The unholy mess of it all.

  The blood was everywhere.

  His one remaining hope – that the whole thing had in some way never happened, that it was all a vision or a nightmare – now vanished. His life seemed to be at an end, as though he had killed himself, and not some other person.

  It came to Nyquist then: he would have to phone the police, he would have to confess. It was self-defense, that was evident. Wasn’t it? Of course. Of course it was. Yes, he would explain to them just what had taken place here. The truth.

  But what was the truth?

  He’d been following Wellborn. It looked bad. And he’d already had a few run-ins with the squad, even in his short time in this city. It was part and parcel of the nature of his job. Could he chance it? And even as he stood there looking down at the body, he found himself changing the details. The truth wasn’t enough, it wasn’t good enough. He was inventing, making up a story. He felt his lips growing wet, a taste of salt in his mouth. His eyes were stinging. He made a promise with himself, that he would sort all this out by his own endeavors. No police. Not yet.

  He knelt down beside the bed. The lower half of the corpse was visible, while the chest area and the face were still partially hidden in shadow. Nyquist had a hope, that the man would suddenly move, that a hand would reach out, the eyes open.

  He touched the skin. It was already cold.


  The spirit had left the flesh.

  Nyquist knelt down to examine the body. Patrick Wellborn had very distinctive features, the look of a 1930s concert pianist: long hair swept back from a high brow, arched eyebrows, bony cheeks. It was easy to imagine him dressed in black jacket and tails, playing a Beethoven sonata. But there was no music in the air, not now, no elegies. The man’s hair was matted where the wound showed, and blood was pasted on the skirting board nearby.

  Nyquist tried to think about the attack. Why had it happened? It had all taken place in the dark of the room, a vicious struggle to survive, a whirl of violence.

  The knife slicing at his arm. A sudden cold electric shock. But he wasn’t ready yet, he wasn’t ready to die. He could remember being trapped in the narrow space between the bed and the wall, holding the other man close, desperate to stop him from taking another swing with the blade. The two bodies struggling. The knife falling to the carpet. Now he had his chance: Nyquist gripped Wellborn’s neck with both his hands and smashed his head over and over against the wall, as they both half-collapsed to the floor, and still he kept on until at last the man lay still within his grasp. And then Nyquist must’ve fallen back onto the bed and lain there, or fainted away. Some other realm took charge of him. He felt that half a funeral veil was drawn across his eyes, holding the full extent of the pain at bay.

  Speaking to the police seemed even less of a possibility.

  He went through the man’s pockets. There was nothing of interest except for a wallet with a little cash inside it. No driving license, no photographs, no items of a personal nature. And then he found, tucked in an inside jacket pocket, a folded sheet of paper. Nyquist opened this and saw it was similar to the pages he had tried to read earlier, a mass of words all mixed up together. Again he felt his skin tingle slightly as he read a few lines of text. He placed the paper in his own pocket and rubbed at his eyes to clear them of sweat, of grit. There was something lying on the floor just to the side of the corpse: a key. It must’ve fallen out of Wellborn’s jacket. The fob was printed with the number 66. Nyquist made his decision. It was time to turn the page, to see where the story led. He walked through to the hallway and opened the front door and stepped out. The corridor was empty. He locked the door with the key the young boy had given him. Then he walked to the next apartment along. Number 66. He leaned in and pressed the side of his head to the door panel.

  He listened.

  Silence. The door was firmly locked. He knocked lightly and waited a few more moments. Then he slipped the key into the lock. The door clicked opened and he walked through into the hallway.

  For a moment he was worried: exactly whose story was he stepping into?

  He looked into the living room, but could see nothing of interest. A jazz ballad played quietly from a radiogram in the corner. Nyquist moved down the hallway, glancing in the bathroom, also empty. He pushed open the bedroom door and was searching for the light switch when a voice called out from within. A woman’s voice.

  “Patrick. Is that you?”

  Far-Off Longing

  NYQUIST STAYED where he was, more than halfway through the door, his hand resting on the wall. He could hear someone moving about inside, the rustle of linen sheets. And then the bedside lamp came on.

  In its muted glow, they stared at each other, the man and the woman.

  Her face was cast in soft red light, her voice slurred.

  “Where’s Patrick?” she asked.

  Nyquist entered the room. “Patrick?”

  “Where is he?”

  The woman was lying in the bed. She gathered the sheets around her and cried out, “Get out of here!”

  Nyquist closed the door. He turned on the main light. The woman covered her eyes.

  “Hey. That hurts. Turn it off.”

  She was partway drunk, he could tell that. Nyquist went over to her. Despair made him angry. He grabbed her by one wrist, pulling her up.

  “Hey!”

  “Who is he?”

  “What? Leave me–”

  “This guy. This Patrick. Who is he?”

  “I don’t–”

  “Tell me!”

  “I don’t know! He’s just–”

  “Just what?”

  “He’s just some guy…”

  Her voice trailed off. Nyquist let go of her. She fell back. He could see the look in her eyes. Desperation. He could sense the need, the need to live. The way she slumped down, the way she moaned to herself and rubbed at her eyes. He looked round the room. A half empty bottle of booze stood on the bedside cabinet. The woman’s clothes were strewn across the bed. The suitcase resting on a small table next to the wardrobe was the same case he’d seen Wellborn carrying, when he’d entered the tower block.

  Nyquist tried to breathe more easily. His voice softened. “What’s your name?”

  “Zelda.”

  “You’re his girlfriend?”

  She laughed. “Me? I’m nobody’s girl.”

  “I see.”

  “Oh, is that right?”

  “You’re a hooker.”

  “Well that’s a very nice thing to say, I’m sure.”

  Nyquist laughed. It was all he could do.

  “What’re you laughing at?” she asked. “Creep.”

  “Wellborn tried to kill me.”

  “Oh.” Her eyes opened in shock and she started to ramble, the words tumbling out like she was trying to purge herself of bad feelings:

  “You can’t trust anyone. Right? That’s the trouble with this town, everyone’s got at least five or six or more stories they’re involved in, all at the same time. It’s crazy, I mean how am I supposed to know who I’m dealing with? This name, that name. Character arcs, roles, aliases. Oh, it gets so confusing! Sometimes I wake up and I don’t know who I am, like, what’s my part today, what do I say, when and where and how, in which accent? Don’t you ever get like that, mister? You must do.”

  “No.”

  Nyquist went to the suitcase. It was old and tatty, a faded green. The two locks clicked open. “This is Wellborn’s case?”

  Zelda nodded. She was getting out of bed. “That’s right. He brought it with him.”

  There wasn’t much inside: a few items of clothing, a paperback novel, a gentleman’s wash bag. He rummaged through the clothing and emptied out the wash bag. There was nothing suspicious, nothing that would give him knowledge. He looked at the lurid cover of the book, a pulp detective thriller called Deadly Nightshade. Nyquist riffled through the pages, searching for anything between the leaves: a motorbus or train ticket, a dry-cleaning stub, a parking ticket, a clue of some kind.

  But there was nothing.

  “What’re you looking for?” asked Zelda.

  “Answers.”

  “Why, what is it? What’s happened?”

  She was getting dressed, pulling on a tight cotton dress, a pair of heels. The dress was decorated with red and yellow flowers. She pinned a brooch to her collar.

  “Where’s Patrick?” she asked. “What have you done to him?”

  He threw the suitcase across the floor. Zelda looked scared. She froze.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Just shut the hell up!”

  He felt faint, he had to press one hand against the wall to steady himself. His sight blurred, the room growing hazy. And then he moved suddenly, his fist slamming into the wardrobe door. The wood splintered, buckled.

  Zelda cried out.

  It was all happening at once, all going wrong.

  He stood there, helpless, waiting for his breath to steady. The knuckles of his right hand stung, the skin was ripped open.

  Zelda watched him. She was fully sober by now, the shock cleansing her. And when he’d finally settled, she said, “Another tough guy. Just what I need.”

  Nyquist slid down the wall, further, until he was sitting on the floor, one hand covering his eyes. He was whispering to himself, reciting the story that had led him here, to this place, his back
cold from the damp in the wall. It was pitiful.

  Zelda came over to him. She knelt down at his side and put her hand on his shoulder, and she spoke in a tender voice.

  “What is it, darling? What’s wrong?”

  Nyquist answered quietly. Zelda had to lean in real close to catch his words.

  “I’ve killed him.”

  “Patrick, you mean?”

  “Yes. He’s dead. I smashed his head against the wall.”

  She took a breath and held it.

  Now he looked at her. He was shivering. “He attacked me. I had to defend myself.”

  “Of course. It’s always that way.”

  “Always?”

  “When a man kills someone. Every story in the newspapers, or the radio, on the street, there’s always some reason or other. Nobody ever admits to the simple pleasure.”

  Her face loomed over his, her makeup smudged, her eyeshadow lime green in color, her lips smeared with red. He could smell the alcohol on her breath. It sent a jet of desire through his heart, both for women, and for drink. The various combinations.

  “There must be something,” he said. “Something you can tell me about Wellborn. Who is he? What’s he doing here?”

  “Come on, let’s get you up. You’re in shock.”

  She reached out a hand and Nyquist took it. She helped to pull him up. He was still trembling, his body seeking release or shutdown after the fight, the giving out of death. She sat him on the bed.

  “You’ll need a few minutes. To calm yourself.”

  “I’ve got none to spare.”

  “Minutes?”

  “No time at all.”

  “Ah well, you know what they say…” She was checking her face in the dressing table mirror. “The road is a long tongue. I shall never reach the end of it.”

  Typical bloody Storyville sentiment, he thought. And he said, “I’ll get there, don’t you worry.”

  Her eyes glanced sideways at him as he continued:

  “There’s always a way.”

  He stood up from the bed. At the window he looked out over the city, which seemed a place of far-off longing. Lights were still gleaming on the main streets even at this late hour: the Festival of Words was still going on. He pictured all the various stories of the night being told, his own among them: himself, this room, the prostitute, the dead body lying beside the bed in the room down the corridor.