Early Riser_The new standalone novel from the Number One bestselling author

by Jasper Fforde

  ‘You’re done. We’re done. Go.’

  I walked to the door, the heady buzz of comradeship I’d felt so strongly that morning now cracked and forlorn.

  But I had an idea, and turned back.

  ‘You’re still here,’ she said, not looking up from her desk.

  ‘I think you should know,’ I said, ‘I was offered a job at HiberTech this morning.’

  She slowly looked up at me and a red flush spread rapidly across her neck and cheeks. Any last vestige of friendliness she might have had seemed to vanish.

  ‘You wonky-faced piece of crap. You’re kidding me, right?’

  ‘No,’ I said, as innocently as I could. ‘Two-year contract, cash signing bonus, free puddings, apartment facing the quad – and a Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut allocation.’

  ‘I don’t know why they want you there, but it’s not for your charm, looks or experience. They’ll use you, spit you out spent. Working for HiberTech would be the worst career move you’ll ever make – and the last.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I replied, somewhat daringly, ‘I don’t want to work there. I want to stay in Sector Twelve, but if that’s the only option open to me, I’ll take it.’

  Toccata put her pen down, leaned back in her chair and stared at me.

  ‘Well, I’ll be,’ she said, ‘you just played me. No one has ever dared play me.’ She looked almost impressed. ‘Okay, have it your own way: you’ve got a job. Filing duties for the next ninety-one days, inside the Consulate – and demoted from Deputy to Novice. There’ll be latrine duty in it somewhere, and you can do everyone’s washing and ironing. Pretty soon you’ll beg to go and work for Dowager Farnesworth. Okay, now piss off. Hang on, wait, one more thing.’

  She got up, walked around the desk and punched me in the eye.

  ‘That’s for lying earlier.’

  I got to my feet and she punched me a second time in the same place.

  ‘And that’s for bundling this morning with Aurora when you said you wouldn’t.’

  I left the office, head spinning, but at least clear on two points: firstly, that I was getting better at dealing with the Winter, and secondly, that the tongue-coming-out warning had indeed been an empty threat.

  ‘How did that go?’ asked Jonesy when she found me holding a cold compress to my eye in the washrooms.

  ‘I was told to leave, said I didn’t want to, was fired, reinstated then demoted to Novice. But I played her so I think she now respects me.’

  ‘Is that why she punched you in the eye?’

  ‘No, that was for lying and bundling with Aurora.’

  ‘That’s true, then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ she said, patting me on the arm and chuckling. ‘Toccata beat me so hard with a broom handle when I first arrived that I had concussion for a week. It’s just kind of her thing.’

  ‘I wish she would find some other thing.’

  I went to look for Laura in the filing room, and when she saw me she offered me a seat at one of the desks.

  ‘So, tell me about the Gronk,’ she said excitedly, drawing up a chair herself. ‘Did you actually see her?’

  I repeated the story with as much detail as I could, which wasn’t much. I’d been unconscious from the moment she arrived to the moment she left. Laura made notes, and nodded vigorously at the smallest detail, but when I’d finished she looked disappointed. It wasn’t the slam dunk she’d been hoping for.

  ‘So no pictures?’ she asked.

  ‘Not a single one.’

  ‘Treacle has already dismissed it as Hibernational Narcosis,’ she said with a sigh, ‘yours. He thinks you killed Lucky Ned and are now blanking it from your mind.’

  ‘Do I look like the sort of person who would bite off a finger?’

  ‘You bit off Gary Findlay’s ear.’

  ‘You heard about that?’

  ‘No secrets in the Twelve.’

  ‘So I’ve realised.’

  She fell silent for a moment and stared at the floor. I looked around the room. My accelerated course at the Academy hadn’t included filing duties.

  ‘How does this work?’ I asked.

  Laura, who seemed not to be able to feel down for more than a few moments, told me she loved filing owing to its ‘simple elegance’ and instructed me, with a worryingly high level of enthusiasm, how things should be done. Not the best or most logical way, but the SkillZero way – simple enough for everyone to use, yet complex enough to function efficiently as a usable database – and easily understandable by anyone with a pass in General Skills.

  ‘Shamanic Bob mentioned something called Active Control Dreaming,’ I said while we were laboriously updating minor details to the individual cards, and by a complicated series of notches and holes, allowing them to be cross-referenced in an ingenious manner.

  ‘Active Control is like Zebricorns and the missing 14th Ottoman,’ said Laura. ‘Myths with their roots in reality. Sure, Don Hector and HiberTech were looking into dreams you can control, but it’s difficult to gauge what success they had. After all, it’s possible you only dreamed you were controlling them.’

  ‘And Dreamspace?’ I asked.

  ‘Meeting inside dreams? Even more far-fetched. Anecdotally there were a few successes mixed heavily with an abundance of failure, but it’s a difficult area of research. Messing around with the hibernatory subconscious was never a risk-free occupation. There were stories of psychotic episodes, spontaneous sleepdeath, people supposedly trapped in the Dreamstate, stuff like that. Fortean Times talked about little else in the seventies.’

  ‘Trapped in the Dreamspace?’ I asked, and Laura looked at me, then shrugged.

  ‘It’s never been explained how the mind can return from deep hibernation; some say that the personality goes elsewhere. To a Dreamstate somewhere outside the body, perhaps – absorbed into the walls and furniture and plants.’

  ‘A state of displaced consciousness,’ I said, repeating what I’d heard Don Hector say in my dream. He’d been dead for two years, yet I felt part of his personality in me, alive.

  ‘Ghosts could be explained this way,’ said Laura, ‘and Wintervolk. An orphaned consciousness returning periodically using the power of another sleeper’s thoughts.’

  At any other time I would have dismissed this as utter nonsense.

  ‘Lloyd thought the Gronk might be somehow related to Ichabod’s murdered daughter,’ I said.

  ‘I heard that too. Want to see a picture of her?’

  ‘Sure.’

  She pulled open a filing cabinet, rummaged for a moment and then drew out a file. She flicked through the contents, eventually showing me a family photograph. It was of Rhosilli beach in the Gower, the Argentinian Queen behind, recently wrecked. A man, thin and weaselly and with a sour, cruel face, a woman, bluff and optimistic. And Gretl, the daughter, holding a beach ball. I felt a cold chill run up my back. Yesterday – even this morning – I would have dismissed it all as a retrospective memory remapping, but now I wasn’t so sure. It was the same child as the one in the Birgitta dream, the child with the gurgle of laughter. The same gurgle of laughter I’d heard before Lucky Ned was taken.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Laura. ‘You look kind of … ill.’

  ‘The Gronk’s real,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Laura, ‘that’s why I gave you the camera. To take a picture of her. The wager was always sound; it was only the evidence that was going to be a problem.’

  ‘I think she’s in my mind,’ I said quietly. ‘I saw her in the Dreamstate.’

  ‘That could mean she’s either protecting or stalking you,’ said Laura. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but there are plenty more unworthy than you. She’ll pluck the ripest fruit first. You may want to whistle “Some Enchanted Evening”59 when she makes landfall, just to be safe.’

  ‘Good tip. Thanks,’ I said sarcastically.

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  Laura tidied away the picture and
made to leave as Fodder had said he’d take her around to look at some of the folded linen traps she’d set up. She gave me a cheery wave, told me to keep the Instamatic camera close by at all times, and departed.

  I sat for a long time considering the Gronk, then went and made a cup of tea, sat with it until it grew cold, and searched the Sector Twelve Residents filing cabinet until I found Birgitta’s personnel file. Attached were her Spring & Autumn identity mug shots and the usual guff about hibernational intentions, National Insurance records and employment status – in her case ‘freelance’. Aside from a hefty fine for failing to properly register with OffPop and an ongoing investigation for potential childbearing evasion, there was little of note. And there was no mention of marriage, nor any link to Webster.

  I replaced the file, had a thought, then pulled Webster’s file and stared at the contents curiously. Jonesy had pointed out that he and five others had either vanished or been made into nightwalkers, potentially because one of them was conducting some form of industrial espionage. And that got me to thinking that if one of them was claiming to be someone they weren’t, then their file – the one used to conduct background checks – would be fraudulent.

  Webster’s name would have come back clean, but if he was an impostor, his likeness might very well show up a different result.

  I unclipped the photograph from his file, attached it to a sheet of paper, wrote a request that purported to be from Toccata using a signature on another document I’d found, and sent it via fax to Central Records in Aber. I watched as the paper was slowly drawn into the machine. Sixty miles and a short time lag away it would be doing the same thing, only coming out.

  As soon as it had vanished, a cold panic seized me. What was I doing? There was nothing to link Webster to, well, anything. A traitorous Don Hector mixed up with deep-cover Campaign for Real Sleep operatives battling to retrieve a missing wax cylinder existed only in my imagination. They were dreams. Fancies. Nonsense. Narcosis.

  And even more stupidly, I’d just forged the Chief’s signature on an information request. A felony during the Summer, potential Frigicution in the Winter. I stared at the dormant fax machine forlornly, wondering how I could have been so stupid. I considered sending another fax countermanding the first, but thought that would probably make it worse.

  But, I told myself optimistically, it was entirely possible Central Records were busy, and checking photographs could take days.

  It took all of eight minutes. And I only knew that because I got a personal visit from Toccata, who arrived with Jonesy into the filing room. Toccata didn’t look very happy, but then she never looked very happy.

  ‘Well, Gronk’s dung in a piss-pot,’ said Toccata as soon as she saw me moving in a guilty fashion away from the fax machine, ‘I should have known it was you.’

  I defaulted to stout denial, as Sister Placentia had done when eighteen empty gin bottles were found under her bed.

  ‘I have no idea at all what you’re talking about.’

  Toccata raised an eyebrow. Oddly, over her non-seeing eye.

  ‘Then let me enlighten you: I just got a call from Central Records, thanking me for the very interesting picture I sent to be identified. I was surprised about the call, Wonky. Do you know why I was surprised?’

  ‘I’ve got a feeling you’re going to tell me.’

  ‘Because I never sent any picture ID request, and that must be me having a serious memory lapse, because it had my signature on it.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘really?’

  ‘Yes, really. Then they asked me who the man in the picture identified himself as, because they’ve been after him for twelve years and he’s on their Campaign for Real Sleep watch list. And you know what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I couldn’t answer that question, either. Because I hadn’t sent it and didn’t know what they were talking about. Isn’t that totally weird?’

  ‘Very weird – but I still have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  Jonesy picked up the actual fax that I had carelessly left on my desk and showed it to Toccata, then to me.

  ‘You are so busted,’ said Jonesy with a smile. ‘I think you’d better tell us everything.’

  Charlie Webster

  * * *

  ‘… The Josephine III was built on the Clyde and launched in 1936. After a long career plying the North Atlantic route she was sold to a Southern shipping line and renamed the Argentinian Queen. Captured while blockade-running in 1974, she was consigned to Newport to be scrapped in 1982. Her tow parted during delivery and she was swept onto Rhosilli beach …’

  – Wrecks of the Gower – Welsh Tourist Office

  ‘So before I even start getting to work on you,’ said Toccata, ‘whose details are about to come back via the fax?’

  There didn’t seem much point in lying – they’d find out soon enough.

  ‘You’ll know him as Charles Webster.’

  ‘Webster the orderly at HiberTech?’

  I nodded, and Jonesy and Toccata looked at one another. They were surprised, or perhaps shocked, or perhaps both. I could feel my eye start to puff up where Toccata had hit me earlier, but resisted the urge to touch it.

  The fax machine began to hum and we waited without speaking until the message had fed out of the printer. Jonesy picked it up before I could see and showed it to Toccata.

  ‘How did those idiots at HiberTech Security miss this?’ said Toccata. ‘They let a known RealSleep agent right into the heart of their organisation.’

  ‘That’s actually quite amusing,’ said Jonesy.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ agreed Toccata, and they both stared at me for some time in silence.

  ‘Can you feel that empty pause, Wonky?’ said Toccata. ‘It’s where you tell us why you were investigating Charles Webster. How you knew he wasn’t who he said he was. Let’s hear it.’

  It felt like I was in front of Mother Fallopia, being harangued about some dumb prank we’d played back at the Pool. I knew one thing, though: I couldn’t tell them I’d seen it all in a dream.

  ‘Because,’ I began, ‘Birgitta had said she was married to someone named Charlie and I was trying to figure out … figure out … think, think … probate.’

  ‘Probate?’

  ‘Yes, probate. Who to give all her paintings to when she died.’

  Toccata stared at me, her one eye unblinking. It was a heavy stare like treacle, which seemed to pour heavily down my neck and pool in my armpits.

  ‘What are you, her executor or something?’

  ‘It’s a hobby,’ I said, ‘sort of like that TV programme where they look for relatives who have been left stuff. What’s it called?’

  ‘Heir Hunters?’

  ‘That’s the one. Heir Hunters.’

  ‘You’re lying again,’ said Toccata, ‘but I’ve no idea why. Birgitta married to Webster, you say?’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, flushing a deep shade of crimson.

  Jonesy had pulled her file as I had been stammering out my pathetic attempt to extricate myself from the jam.

  ‘If they were,’ she said, ‘it was off grid – which might point towards her being Campaign for Real Sleep, too. He must have been made of pretty stern stuff to not give her up, and Hooke must have gone seriously to town to reduce him to little more than a nightwalker.’

  ‘Hooke’s an animal,’ agreed Toccata. ‘No one I know has ever withstood a prolonged Dreamspace attack.’

  I think I knew that, too, through the memory I shared with Webster: that Birgitta had been RealSleep too, and that, yes, Webster didn’t give her up and instead of legging it off-sector she had stayed, her cover burned, in a scuzzy out-of-the-way corner of nowhere, waiting for an instruction that might never come out of loyalty to the cause she loved. Hoping, perhaps, to make a difference if the need arose.

  ‘Okay, then,’ said Jonesy, turning to Toccata, ‘but what do we do?’

  Toccata sucked her lip and tapped the fax that had just come in.


  ‘They’ll probably have cc-ed this to HiberTech Security,’ she said, ‘but unlike us, they don’t know Webster’s connection to Birgitta.’

  ‘We should check her room,’ said Jonesy, ‘in case there is anything incriminating to be found there.’

  The words didn’t register at first. I had to ask her to say them again.

  ‘I said,’ she repeated in a testy fashion, ‘that we should check Birgitta’s room. It might throw up something of interest.’

  It would throw up a lot more than just something of interest. It would throw up Birgitta, exactly where I’d left her: clean and tidy and fed and oh-so-obviously harboured.

  ‘Any objections, Wonky?’

  I tried to look like the sort of person who wasn’t about to be professionally, legally and socially destroyed before the hour was out.

  ‘Me? None at all.’

  ‘I can’t make up my mind about you,’ said Toccata, staring at me intently, head on one side, her lone eye unblinking. ‘Most Novices we get are either burned-out ex-military with a thousand-yard stare, gung-ho idiots or saddos who might as well have Kill Me Now printed on their forehead. You’re not any of those. But I can’t figure out if you’re a clever person pretending to be thick, a thick person pretending to be clever, or just a chancer stumbling through the Winter without any sort of plan or thought at all.’

  ‘Can I vote for option “C”?’ I asked, trying to lighten the mood.

  ‘But one thing we do know,’ added Toccata, ignoring me, ‘is that we can’t let you out of our sight.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said; my only plan – running away when their backs were turned, but details not yet worked out – was now tattered and broken. ‘Can I ask a question?’

  ‘A question?’ said Toccata. ‘Of course – actually, no. Be quiet and do as you’re told or I’ll make good on the tongue-coming-out promise. Don’t think I’ve forgotten.’

  In less than a minute I was driving Jonesy towards the Siddons in the falling snow, Toccata having elected to stay in the Consulate. The light was muted by the coming storm, and aside from the occasional street light that glowed a yellowy-orange, the sky had an angry blackness about it. I was fifteen minutes away from arrest, and no amount of talking would get me out of the charges that would undoubtedly follow.