by Jeff Noon
It was Pearce.
Nyquist had one split second of recognition, and then shock. And then a hand came round from behind, holding a cloth. This was clamped hard over Nyquist’s mouth. The smell of petrol. And something else. A doctor’s surgery, when he was a child. He couldn’t process it. His heart was racing, the lights going out in his eyes, getting smaller and smaller, until a deeper shade of the night veiled him, like a mist that he fell into endlessly.
Blackout.
A Talk Amongst Friends
All was darkness, and in the darkness a woman singing.
La le laa la lele la…
Nyquist was roused slightly by the sound and his eyes came open, tiny slits, just enough to let him know he was slumped in the backseat of a car.
A moving car.
A neon sign shimmered in the night sky. Colours melting into other colours. Passing by. Sounds from an open window: laughter, cries of delight, car horns.
The world was blurred, at a distance.
Le lea la le la le laa…
The woman’s voice came from the dashboard radio.
Nyquist was aware of a figure up front, driving, and somebody sitting to his side on the backseat. Now he could hear a voice, voices, the words muted.
“Take his gun off him.”
“I am doing.”
And then a hand covered Nyquist’s face, closing his eyes once more and returning him to darkness. Where the song lived.
La le laa le lela le laa…
“Wake up. There’s a good boy.”
Nyquist’s eyes came open a second time. He was sitting in a wooden chair, that much he knew. His mind raced: I should most probably move on now, make a start on whatever it is I’m supposed to be doing, if I could only remember what that was exactly…
A man lurched into view, just for a second, before a cold weight of water hit Nyquist in the upper body and face, rousing him, almost knocking him back, drenching him. He heard the sound of a metal bucket being thrown away, tumbling over. Hard echoes on a concrete floor.
Silence. Water dripping from his body, his clothes.
Somebody slapped Nyquist on the side of the face, and then again, on the other side. He slumped down, his head falling into his chest. He could not move his arms.
Now he realised: his arms were tied to the chair behind his back.
He was helpless, trapped.
Nyquist tried to focus, to get a grip on the situation he was in, seeing dust in the air, and spotlights working in one corner, the rest in gloom. Hearing: what was that noise? Generator hum? Think. Where are you? Some kind of workplace, or a warehouse, something like that. Two figures moved by, their shapes indistinct. Another lamp came on, casting a circle of light over Nyquist.
And then the two people moved forward.
One of them was Pearce.
She walked up close to Nyquist, bending down to his level. “You little prick. Where is she?”
Nyquist could hardly move his lips. “Uh…”
“Where’s the girl? Eleanor?”
“Don’t…”
“Speak up.”
“I don’t…”
Nyquist couldn’t hear himself properly, so the words had to be trusted from their feel in his mouth.
“I don’t know.”
The other person came into view suddenly, and carried the movement straight on to hit Nyquist hard around the face with a bunched fist. He was knocked to the side, the chair falling with him, his right shoulder smashing against the floor.
Sudden taste of blood in the mouth.
Pearce saying, “Go easy on him, Jacob. We need answers.”
Jacob? Where had he heard that before? Memories pulled up: the Bale household, the maid Melissa speaking to one of the security guards. It’s all right, Jacob. I’ll be fine here.
Pearce was lighting a cigarette. “That’s all we want, one little answer.”
Nyquist spat out the blood, saying, “Go to hell.”
“Now let’s be reasonable. Just tell us where Eleanor is, and then we’re done.”
“I don’t know. I really don’t know.”
Nyquist was wet and shivery, in pain, lying on his side on a hard stone floor. The chair was still attached to him by the ropes, making his position even more painful and awkward. It was humiliating. He was ashamed.
Pearce knelt down to his level, saying, “How much does the girl know?”
“About what?”
“About the drug supply.”
“Kia?”
“What does she know?”
“Nothing. She’s innocent.”
Pearce sighed, her cigarette tip glowing. She stood up again, walked away. There was some kind of commotion, people talking. Nyquist turned his head to see the powerfully built Jacob dragging a large object across the floor, a dead weight of some kind, a human form. The body was dumped directly where Nyquist could see the face.
It was Sumak, the drug dealer from the Noonday Underground club. His pink suit was torn and dirty and his black hair had fallen forward over his gaunt features. At first, Nyquist thought he was dead, but then he saw that the man was breathing, only just. There were no obvious injuries, although his eyes were open wide and filled with a dreadful fear. He looked like a man who had seen a ghost, and found the ghost to be himself. His mouth was stained with the bright orange colour of the kia drug.
Pearce nodded. “One more application, and this man’s dead meat.” She bent down beside the dealer’s limp form. “You see how it is, people are given jobs to do, and they don’t do them. Instead, they steal the product off you. Now that’s just not right. It’s bad business practice.” Grinning, she stubbed her cigarette out against Sumak’s cheek. “Salesmen, eh? They can’t be trusted.”
The dealer hardly responded at all to the burn.
So Bale was involved in the drug trafficking: that part of Eleanor’s story was true, at least. Behind the executive suit and the title, he was just a grubby little criminal in hiding.
Pearce came over to him. “You see what we do to those who betray us?”
Whispered: “I see it.”
His interrogator smiled. “That’s good.”
Nyquist could feel Pearce’s breath on his face and he cringed, expecting his skin to be burned. Instead, he felt himself being lifted up by Jacob, as Pearce said, “Now let’s get you more comfortable.” Lifted, chair and all, until he was sitting upright once more. And then Pearce reached down to lay a gentle hand beneath Nyquist’s chin, to raise the half-broken face directly into the thin beam of light. Now the voice had a measured lilt to it. “You’re in a right old state, aren’t you? You look a mess, Nyquist. Dirty, filthy. And that’s because you’re going around sticking your face in other people’s excrement. You have been warned all along that these were private matters.”
Nyquist was confused. He murmured some words.
“What’s that? Speak up.”
“Patrick Bale employed me.”
“That’s right. We had it on good authority that you were good for a simple task, and nothing more. Boozed up, living in fear of yourself. This is what we heard. Perfect for the job in hand. To find Eleanor. That’s all. No police involved. Nothing. Just you. The poor burnt-out, no-good, junked-up failure of a man.”
Pearce moved away slightly.
Nyquist’s head fell back into his chest. He was moving in and out of awareness, his skull still fuzzy from whatever he’d been given to make him blackout, and his arms and legs ached from where he had fallen. He groaned.
“What’s wrong?” Pearce asked. “Don’t tell me you’re scared? Here, look. Look at me!” This last was shouted out with such vehemence that Nyquist had to respond, to turn his face towards his interrogator, to listen to Pearce’s tirade: “I know you by now, Nyquist, I know the kind of man you are. Creepy, uh? You wake up, what’s that in the mirror? Is that really me, you ask? This face, this body, how the hell did I get like this? How did I get so ugly? So corrupted? How come I’m so twisted and
bitter all the time? Why can’t I look myself in the eye anymore?”
“I’m not like that.” It hurt to speak; his lips were cut open.
Pearce laughed. “You’re amongst friends here. How long are you going to deny your own true nature?”
Nyquist felt alone, alone in the world, abandoned. He was angry at himself, that he’d lost control and fallen into this trap. Angry. And weak. At the very end of all that he could do. Was he going to die here, in this place, in this cold and lonely place? He screamed out for help, for anybody anywhere to help him but the sound coming from his lips was a wordless noise to which only his own echoes made reply, his own voice coming back to haunt him with his helplessness.
Eealaaaleiiiialaaaeia…
“That’s right,” Pearce said. “Let it all out. Here, maybe this will help.” She threw down a few small objects which landed around Nyquist’s legs, some of them falling onto his lap. He made them out as capsules of the drug, kia. The liquid sparkled with glints of orange and gold. Pearce held one vial in her hand. “I hear the kids are taking this in ever stronger doses. They’re actually injecting it. When we fed it to Sumak here, I swear I could hear his brain explode. Can you imagine that, Nyquist, having such an intimate, physical knowledge of your own future? It must seem like the days to come are rushing through your veins, as though death itself were accelerating towards you. Like a steam train hurtling through the night. Can you dodge it, can you escape? No, I don’t think so.” Here, she kicked idly at the drug dealer’s body. “Oh my, what a feeling that must be! What a thrill.” She raised the glass vial higher, into the beam of the light. “And then bam, there’s your head smashed up against the brick wall of tomorrow. And all the time you know precisely what’s going to happen. Bang! No wonder your body gives up on you.”
“Let me go.” Nyquist spat out blood from his mouth. A tooth moved in its socket. “Please. Just let me go.”
Pearce turned to face him. “I can’t do that. I’ve got my orders.”
Nyquist found a voice that burned directly from his anger. “Pearce, you bitch. Bale is stringing you along. He’s playing you.”
“Really?”
“He’ll use you. He’ll set you up.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You do know Eleanor isn’t his daughter.”
“What do I care? The boss wants her back, and that’s it.”
“He doesn’t love her. It’s because of what she knows, about Kinkaid, and the drug deal. I swear, he’d kill her if he could get away with it. Instead, he’s trying to control her.”
Pearce grinned. “You poor sod. You couldn’t be more wrong.”
A noise then. A door opening.
“Now what?” Pearce moved aside.
Nyquist looked over, seeing the light that came through an open doorway, and a figure standing there.
Voices. Pearce talking to the new arrival.
Nyquist could not hear properly.
The voice again, louder now, familiar. “See to it.”
It was Bale.
The door closing once again, as Pearce walked back into the circle of light. She leaned in close and said, “Last chance. Tell me where precious little Eleanor is.”
Nyquist rocked on the chair. He felt all his bile rising, his eyes glinted with spots of red light. He’d had enough. “Keep your hands off her.”
“Tell me!”
Nyquist held his interrogator’s stare. He kept his breath steady, controlled, the one word coming out clean and cold: “No.”
And suddenly it was all too much for Pearce; she nodded, and Jacob instantly appeared at her side. Without warning, he smashed his fist against the side of Nyquist’s head with a hard vicious blow, worse than before. Again, the chair was knocked over, taking Nyquist with it. He felt his lights go out, blood bursting inside his skull, down his face. He hit the concrete floor, crying out in pain. Pearce followed him down. She grabbed hold, one hand around his shirt collar, the other wrapping itself around his face, pressing tight.
Nyquist had one chance left.
He sank his teeth deep into whatever flesh he could find.
Pearce leapt back in shock, screaming, grabbing her injured hand with the other. Blood had splattered onto her blouse, her jacket.
Jacob moved in.
A boot came down on Nyquist’s shoulder.
There was a cracking sound.
Then darkness.
He lay there for a time, drifting in and out of consciousness. He heard a chair scraping, a door opening. Footsteps. Pearce was speaking, and then Jacob replying, but nothing was coming through clearly, nothing solid. Only mumbles, the rustle of clothing.
“He’s a wreck.”
Was that Bale speaking?
Pearce laughed. She said, “Let’s tidy up.”
“Yes. Good. You know the drill.” Yes, definitely Bale speaking now. “As though no one’s to blame, only himself.”
“Sure. Just like the dealer. We’ll handle it.”
Nyquist tried desperately to make his eyes come open, to stay open.
Pain, somewhere distant in his body.
And then a white lamp shining, hot against his skin. Nyquist squinted, moving his head aside, but the harsh beam followed him. Pearce was seen as a shadowy form. One of her manicured hands entered the lamplight, holding a vial of kia. She said, “I really don’t want to do this, you know?”
Jacob sniggered.
The liquid glistened in the light. Pearce’s other hand appeared, holding a syringe. She slowly inserted this into the top of the vial.
The syringe filled up with orange fluid.
Nyquist tried to back away, but there was nowhere else to go. He was lying on the floor, his wrists still knotted tight behind his back. And then Jacob grabbed him by the shoulders, holding him tight, as Pearce bent down close. She pushed Nyquist’s head to one side and pressed the tip of the syringe against the clammy, exposed neck.
Pearce whispered, “This is the kind of thing makes a man go crazy.”
Nyquist struggled against the hold, against the ropes. It was no good. He cried, “I don’t know! I don’t know where she is! She ran off. I was looking for her!”
“It’s too late, my friend. Your time’s up.”
The needle entered flesh, finding a vein, and within seconds the mists of dusk were travelling through Nyquist’s body. His vision clouded over and he groaned one last time. And then he was slipping away from the warehouse, from his bonds, his captors, from the night, the city, and finally from himself. Until he was aware of only thing: a clock ticking. The slow, steady noise came from inside his skull, deep inside.
Tick tick tick tick tick…
Shadowplay
…Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.
There is only the present moment in time, and then the next, one moment following on from another, all in darkness.
No past, no future, only this…
One tiny pinprick of light, flickering.
He tries to concentrate on it.
Where is he?
Focus!
A medium-sized hotel room, blandly furnished, the walls and bed linen coloured in the same washed-out shade of grey. He can’t remember how he got here. Everything seems distant from his touch. A pale beam of neon light shines through the only window. It stutters like a cheap, faulty lamp. Shadows dance. He looks around, noting the mirror on the adjacent wall, a clock just above it. He can hear the mechanism ticking, the sound of it far too loud. His face in the mirror is wreathed in smoke.
He turns again at the sound of a voice and sees a teenage girl moving swiftly across the room. Her name is Eleanor Bale. He knows that, yes, he remembers that.
He tries to call her name out but only silence leaves his lips.
Yet she answers him. “You’re scaring me,” she says. “Leave me alone.”
He walks towards her. Eleanor backs away, terrified, until she bumps into the bed and falls down onto it.
“Keep away. Keep away
from me!”
Now he sees her face in closeup, framed against the sheets. He’s caught in a task he cannot escape from, no matter what he does. And so he picks up a pillow, soft and grey, one hand on each end, tightly held, and he presses it down on the girl’s face, causing her to struggle, to snatch at whatever breath she can find. He imagines a mouth filled with mud, with soil, with feathers, with salt, with dust. She’s choking. The pillow presses down, harder now, harder, holding the head of the girl in place until, until…
Stillness. The body lies at rest.
She’s dead. Hollow flesh. The spirit has departed.
Yes. It’s done.
The murderer steps away. The pillow falls to the floor. The room is cold, distant. He looks at the wall clock, noting the time. It’s seven minutes past seven. Good. That’s correct. Yes, he’s done well. The mirror beckons and now he sees himself as he really is, as the smoke clears from his features at last.
His name is John Nyquist. John Henry Nyquist. He knows that now.
His face is devoid of any real feeling, yet his body is tense. He’s shivering.
And his hands are trembling still, from the crime.
In sudden fear and disgust he turns away from his own reflection…
Full Dark
He could not see properly, he could not open his eyes. All was darkness. Silence. His own breath, nothing more. And then his mouth was opening, closing, the tongue moving, words being formed, broken, mumbled and then lost in the cold, cold air.
Uh. No. No. Ah no. Please. No, no, no…
Nyquist reached out, touching flesh. His eyes opening just enough.
Cold, shivering.
Here in the dark with him, another person. A face next to his. Dead eyes, hollow mouth, orange stained. Freezing skin, unshaven.
Recognition.
The drug dealer. Sumak. Once a dandy king ruling his realm in the daytime club full of light and heat and music, now a corpse: a stilled heart and lonely flesh and matted hair and the devil’s bright lipstick.
And Nyquist thought he too had died here, and been left to rot. But he flinched away from the idea of his own demise; he clambered to his feet somehow and set off walking, his feet dragging along, moving, moving without thought or direction, his lungs dragging in harsh breaths. His head throbbed with pain. He could feel the poison inside his body, in his blood, still moving through him. It scared him. He wanted to run, to outrun death.
