Slow Motion Ghosts

by Jeff Noon

  Bo Dazzle

  King Lost

  Lady Minerva

  Luna Bloom

  Miss Caliban

  Mood Indigo

  It struck Hobbes with a force he could barely comprehend: the murderer of both Brendan Clarke and Simone Paige lay hidden behind one of those names.

  Through Unreal Streets

  The Hastings CID team took over the case. Hobbes asked only that he be allowed to take the Edenville box from the attic. He went back to DC Palmer’s house, empty at this time of day, and he lost himself in work, trying not to think about Simone Paige and his failure to protect her. He spent a good few hours going through the material: fake biographies, designs for fictional buildings, accounts of political factions, religious cults, failed revolutions, battles, and many other items from the imagined town’s history. Much of it was handwritten in differing styles; not the work of a single person but of a group, in all likelihood the six founding members working together. It was an incredible feat. Lucas Bell would’ve been fifteen years old in 1963, the date given on the first sheet of paper. Hobbes imagined the other members would be of similar age, apart from Miss Dylan. Here was an entire world conjured up from the depths of the adolescent mind. What made them create and describe in such detail this fantasy realm? He thought back on his own youth, the hours spent alone in his bedroom, listening to his parents arguing. He’d lost himself in books, in war stories, westerns, adventures in space. Perhaps Edenville came from a similar impulse to escape, but magnified beyond all sense of reality.

  The level of detail was mind-boggling. Bus timetables, designs for flags and coats of arms, descriptions of books in the town’s library, street maps, match reports for football games played by Edenville United, recipes, poems, folk song notations, graffiti, mottos, news items and reviews from the local newspaper, and on and on and on. The sketchbooks contained paintings and drawings of prominent buildings, extensive parks and tree-lined avenues, winding pathways through a labyrinth of narrow streets. Many images showed the darker aspects of the town: broken windows, shadowy men and women peering from unlit doorways, smoking guns, knives, dead bodies in alleyways. This wasn’t any normal idea of paradise.

  The real mystery was Miss Dylan’s part in this creative process. He could just about picture a group of adolescents producing such a work, but a fully grown woman, a librarian, a part-time teacher? It didn’t seem right, somehow. Didn’t she have enough in her adult life, without having to invent such fantasies? And of course, the most important question of all remained: how did this imaginary village from nearly twenty years ago connect to the deaths of Lucas Bell and Brendan Clarke?

  He had already found a drawing of King Lost in one sketchpad. The picture was dated October 1963. So that moment in the restaurant which Simone Paige had described, when Bell first invented King Lost, all that was a lie: Bell was in fact remembering a mask and a character he’d invented, and adopted, ten years before.

  Hobbes started to feel light-headed, thinking about it all. Every so often Simone’s face would intrude, the look of surprise still caught in her features, frozen in death. He had to fight down the impulse to feel shame, or guilt, or indeed sadness; he had to keep working, investigating.

  DC Palmer came in at three o’clock, with an update on the murder. She’d interviewed Mrs Saunders, and found out that there had been no break-ins at Fair Harbour, as far as she could recall. ‘I thought that maybe someone had broken in,’ Palmer said, ‘and stolen a key, or made an impression of the key. But now, I don’t know.’

  Hobbes thought about this. ‘Actually, I think the woman in the attic had a house key all along. Probably the back-door key, to make it easier to come and go as she pleased.’

  ‘Where did she get it from?’

  ‘From Lucas Bell himself, on the day he died. I think she took it off his key ring.’

  Palmer whistled. ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘I’ll bet the locks on Fair Harbour have never been changed in all this time.’ He pinched at the bridge of his nose with two fingers. ‘Did Mrs Saunders remember anything more about the intruder?’

  ‘No. Though she did say that she and her husband sometimes heard noises from the attic, but they’d put it down to mice, or pigeons.’

  ‘I imagine the intruder’s been paying visits for a number of years. Waiting until the Saunders are out, sneaking in, heading for the attic, pulling the ladder up after her.’

  ‘She’d stay there a few days, do you think?’

  ‘An hour, a day, long enough to do whatever had to be done. And then she’d sneak out again when the house was empty.’

  Palmer groaned. ‘But why?’

  ‘Because of this.’ Hobbes pointed to the cardboard box and its contents, spilled out over the table. ‘Edenville.’ He explained to her, as best he could understand it, about the imaginary village.

  Palmer took it all in. ‘Maybe the woman in the attic was protecting Edenville in some way, that’s all I can think.’

  Hobbes agreed. ‘The attic itself must have some personal or psychological significance. In fact, Simone Paige told me that Lucas used the attic as a den, when he was young. He and his friends would hold secret meetings up there. So maybe that’s where Edenville was founded.’

  ‘The centre of the world.’

  ‘So the material has to remain there.’

  ‘It’s like keeping the Crown Jewels in the Tower of London.’

  Hobbes nodded at this. ‘Yes, that’s good. They’re symbolic objects.’

  ‘Otherwise Edenville will fall.’

  They both stared in wonder at the array of material on the tabletop. ‘So where does this take us?’ Palmer asked.

  ‘There are six founding members. I believe that one of them is our killer – responsible not only for the murder of Simone Paige, but also Lucas Bell, and Brendan Clarke back in London.’ He showed her half a dozen sheets of paper. ‘These are potted biographies on each member, taken from the box. Here, read the one for King Lost. It’s very similar to the persona that Bell sang about on his final album.’ Hobbes pointed out several passages. ‘The ragged outsider figure who comes into town a stranger, and changes everyone’s lives. The doomed hero struggling to withstand the cruelties of the world. Some of these passages actually end up as lyrics in his songs. It’s all here, this is the starting point.’

  ‘Who else have we got?’

  He pointed to another sheet. ‘The only other name I know is this one. Lady Minerva.’

  ‘Danny Webster told us about her. The name that the kids gave to the leader of their group, Miss Dylan.’

  ‘There was also a letter found at the Brendan Clarke crime scene, signed by the same name.’

  ‘But Miss Dylan died a few years ago, we know that. Drowned.’

  ‘Well, either she survived and was washed ashore elsewhere. Or someone has taken over her persona.’

  Palmer read out loud a few lines from Lady Minerva’s biography: ‘Through unreal streets she wanders, our goddess of wisdom, seeking companions for the dream. The five waifs come to her.’

  Hobbes said, ‘There’s a lot of stuff like that. Real adolescent outpourings.’

  ‘What about the other kids involved?’

  He shuffled through the remaining papers. ‘Bo Dazzle, Miss Caliban, Luna Bloom and Mood Indigo.’

  Palmer sighed. ‘Well, Miss Caliban and Lady Minerva are female. And Luna Bloom as well, from the sound of it. So any of those could be our perpetrator. Mood Indigo could be either a boy or girl, I guess.’

  ‘What about Bo?’

  ‘It’s usually a boy’s name, isn’t it? Like Bo Diddley.’ She thought for a moment. ‘I take it that no real names are given for these people?’

  ‘None that I’ve encountered yet. But there’s a lot of material to go through.’

  Together they gathered up all the Edenville papers and notebooks and placed them in the cardboard box. Hobbes stored it in the cupboard under the stairs, and then left the house. He needed
some air. He walked along Braybrooke Road, eventually heading down towards the seafront. After staring at the sea for a few minutes he turned back inshore and walked up Claremont Road until he reached the Brassey Institute, the building which housed the town’s library. Hobbes asked at the desk for help, and then made his way over to the photocopying machine, where he made copies of all six Edenville biographies. After that, he found a seat in front of a microfiche viewer. A librarian brought him a set of folders holding scanned pages of the Hastings and St Leonards Observer. He started on the 1974 editions first, zipping through the pages on the screen until he found those relating to the discovery of Lucas Bell’s body. The very first mention was brief: the corpse of an unknown man had been found in the early morning, in a field six miles outside of town, not far from the village of Westfield. Police were investigating.

  The national press quickly picked up on the story, once the dead man’s identity had become known, but Hobbes was more interested in how the local press had viewed the death. He went on to the next week’s edition of the Hastings Observer. They made a big show of it, giving it full coverage on the front page. It was the kind of event that hardly ever happened in the town, that was obvious. Inside, pages four and five contained photographs of Witch Haven field, with the original Ford Capri still in place. The shots were taken over a stone wall and the barred gate. A few policemen stood around. It was eerie, seeing it like this in shades of grey on the microfiche, as though covered in a mist. Hobbes looked for the name of the photographer, in case he needed to look at the originals for any reason; he was called Jack Lyndhurst. A photograph of Lucas Bell was placed to one side. The paper’s editor had chosen the most brooding image possible.

  Hobbes skimmed through the various articles, but there was nothing he didn’t know already. Mention was made of Neville Briggs, the ‘fashion and rock music photographer’ who had found the body. The following week’s edition told of the coroner’s verdict: ‘Death by his own hand.’ And that was that. Hobbes leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms over his head. His eyes were starting to ache, but he had to keep going. He moved on to another folder, which held the newspaper’s editions for 1978. He recalled Danny Webster mentioning that Miss Dylan had died in that year. It took a while to find what he was looking for, because Webster had got the date wrong; she’d died in late 1977.

  The front page of the relevant issue displayed a photograph of a massive wave crashing over the town’s promenade. The headline read, ‘Woman Missing as Storms Batter Hastings’. The date of publication was 11 December 1977. The article related how, ‘On Tuesday evening at approximately nine o’clock, 51-year-old former librarian Miss Eve Dylan was washed out to sea during the terrible storms that lashed the town throughout the night.’ Miss Dylan’s body was never found, only the remnants of her red sequinned evening gown tangled in a moored fishing boat’s cables. It was a strange thing to be wearing, Hobbes thought, in the dead of winter. Had she been to a dance or a formal event of some kind? He found an article published a week later which offered a portrait of the drowned woman. Mention was made of a difficult, isolated life. Twice in the same article she was called a ‘spinster’. Eve had lost her job as a librarian a few years earlier, dismissed, it said, for ‘conduct unbecoming’, which made Hastings library sound more like the British Army. But there was no indication as to the nature of the conduct that led to her dismissal.

  Hobbes wondered if she might be the mystery woman seen driving Lucas Bell out of town on the night of his death? It was certainly possible. And he remembered Webster’s claim that the librarian had slept with Bell when he was younger. What dark, twisted passions had been stirred up over the years?

  The only photograph of her had been taken a year or two before her disappearance into the sea. It was a grainy newspaper image, showing a woman of brooding aspect, with a severe haircut and angular cheekbones. Her eyes were circled by black rings, either from lack of sleep, or age, or some natural colouring. And a blemish of some kind marred the left-hand side of the chin, just below the edge of the lips. A large mole, or even a birthmark. It was an identifying mark that the eye was drawn towards.

  Hobbes stood up from the desk and looked around until he spotted the oldest employee in the place. He went over to her and introduced himself as a police officer, and asked about Eve Dylan, and whether anyone here remembered working with her. The librarian’s name was Doreen. Her rheumy eyes peered over a pair of bifocal spectacles. At the mention of her former colleague’s name she immediately stopped what she was doing, and said, ‘That woman! It was disgusting.’

  ‘What did she do?’

  Her voice lowered: ‘Eve was found in one of the study rooms, interfering with a young man.’

  ‘You mean engaged in sexual contact?’

  ‘Whatever you want to call it. Anyway, we were all glad to see the back of her.’

  ‘Do you know anything about Edenville?’

  ‘What is it, a novel? A film? I’ve never heard of it, I’m afraid.’

  ‘What about Minerva? Lady Minerva?’

  The librarian’s eyes blinked rapidly. ‘That was the name of the literary and arts society that Miss Dylan started. The Minerva Club. We thought it was a splendid endeavour at first, a way of introducing young people to higher culture. Of course, as we now know, it was all a ruse to get herself close to her prey.’ She roused herself to a higher pitch. ‘And they were involved in occult practices.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Tarot cards. Fortune telling. Aleister Crowley. All kinds of witchcraft.’

  ‘Crowley?’ Hobbes remembered Morgan Yorke mentioning the magician’s name.

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ Doreen continued. ‘In fact, that wicked man lived out the final years of his life in Hastings, in a house called Netherwood. That area’s been developed into a housing estate now, but for years people would visit, to pick up on the supposed magical energies of the place. Can you believe such nonsense?’

  ‘What kind of thing was Miss Dylan teaching the kids, do you know?’

  ‘The doctrine of the True Will.’

  ‘Which is?’

  The librarian’s face lit up at the prospect of sharing knowledge. ‘Crowley’s central idea was that each individual possesses a “true will”, their destiny, the one desire they were born to express. Society, habit, tradition, the law, and so on, all these combine to suppress such feelings. But, according to the doctrine, we must all strive to uncover our true will, and give it expression in the world.’

  ‘And if this true will turns out to be of evil intent?’

  ‘Well, there’s the rub, Inspector. Can you imagine those poor young people being taught such irresponsible ideas.’

  Hobbes nodded to let her know he was taking it seriously. ‘Tell me, Doreen, do you have any records of the club, membership, minutes of meetings. Anything like that?’

  ‘No. Everything was destroyed after the scandal. It was all hushed up, I’m afraid.’

  ‘No charges were brought against her?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Was the young man a teenager? Over the age of consent, I mean?’

  ‘Oh yes. If barely. But that’s not the point, is it?’

  Hobbes thought about Lucas Bell’s confession to Nikki Hauser. ‘Tell me, was the Minerva Club involved in any other trouble?’

  ‘Of what kind?’

  ‘They didn’t attack people, injure them? Or worse?’

  ‘No, nothing like that, not that I remember.’

  Hobbes thanked the librarian and headed for the exit. He was thinking about the relationship between Bell and Miss Dylan. He wondered about the power this woman might have held over the teenager. Was it as simple and as nasty as molestation, or some other form of abuse? Or did she have real feelings for him? At any rate, Eve was a perfect name for someone who would invent and set up Edenville. Maybe, in some perverted way, Lucas Bell had acted as her Adam?

  And between them, had they concocted som
ething evil, had they killed together?

  And was that impulse continuing, down the years?

  A Talk on the A229

  He got back to the Palmer household around half past five. Jan opened the door for him, and said, ‘A friend’s come to see you.’

  Straight away, Hobbes thought of PC Barlow. He was gladdened by the idea, but a very different face greeted him as he entered the living room. Detective Constable Fairfax was sitting in an armchair, bouncing young Kevin Palmer on his knees.

  ‘All right, guv? You look like you’re in need of help.’

  The five-year-old laughed wildly as Fairfax started to tickle him. Mr and Mrs Palmer looked on, smiling at the scene.

  ‘Fairfax. It’s good to see you.’

  ‘I’ll bet. I hear those Lucas Bell girls gave you a walloping.’

  ‘It wasn’t—’

  ‘Never mind, we all have to take a punch now and then, in the line of duty. Don’t we, Kevin? Yes, we do!’

  The boy squealed with delight.

  Hobbes started to gather his things together. He handed the photocopied biographies of the Edenville founders over to Jan. ‘If you get a chance, could you study these, and see if it brings up any connections to people currently living in Hastings?’