by Graham Joyce
A reed had not sprung forth, a tree had not been created,
A brick had not been laid, a brick mould had not been made,
A house had not been built, a city had not been formed.
All the lands were sea then Eridu was created: The holy city,
And with Eridu the first shadow, and within the first shadow
The seed, the egg, of the very first demon.
"What's all that about?" Otto asked sleepily
He didn't get an answer because Wayne Bridges took a bullet through the throat, fired from a Kalashnikov rifle poking out of the rubble of a house in an area previously declared clean of snipers. Otto, seeing the muzzle-flash from the rubble, was up and running and calling for backup.
About twenty minutes later, after several tons of ordnance had been dumped on the lone sniper, Otto returned to inspect the body of his dead comrade. Wayne Bridges still had wedged between his fingers the document from which he had been reading when he was shot. It was a very old pocket guidebook to the archaeological sites of Sumeria, Akkadia, Babylon and Assyria. Otto flicked through the pages, went to return it to his dead comrade's pocket, but the demon spoke gently in his ear: "No. Keep it."
Otto told me all this himself. Except the part about the demon. He was unaware—and still is—of what happened to him in that moment. I never try to tell him, or anyone else for that matter. It's always counter-productive. But, even without the open-jaw hiss and wings-at-full-pinion sudden waking of a slumbering demon, it is immediately obvious to the trained eye.
"Well?"
"Please, Otto, finish serving your customer. I'm in no hurry."
Otto looked back at the customer—a stunning photo-model mum with a baby slung from a rope-like contraption at her breast, tanned legs, gold high-heels and done up for the opera—as if she had just materialised. He appeared irritated by her presence. Then he remembered his manners, assured the lady that the hand-carved tumbling gymnast was free of lead paint, and completed the sale quickly.
I waited until the tiny bell cleared the way for us to talk. But if Otto wanted to dispense with the pleasantries, I didn't. "How's the toy business."
"Up and down. It's hard to compete with the giants."
Otto was one of the very lucky few. With the British government refusing to recognise Gulf War Syndrome, Otto had returned from the Gulf to be diagnosed with degenerative arthritis at the age of thirty-two, accompanied by migraines, asthma, skin disorders and burning-semen syndrome. As I say, one of the lucky ones because he got a war pension and sunk what assets he had into his toyshop. Fifteen years or so after his combat duty had ended, it seemed like the toyshop was a fox-hole and he was still fighting for an escape out of his war experiences.
I liked Otto, and I hoped that instead of ripping him off I would have to disappoint him when he was outbid by the vile poet Ellis. Despite his "up-and-down" maunderings and his "little ol' me" routine, I knew that his toy business was doing very well and that he had a chain of almost a dozen of these neatly crafted toyshops. Otto had spotted that the 1990s had produced a sudden rush of baby-making amongst the well-heeled. The selfish eighties had given way to the caring nineties, we were told. Then the full horror of parenthood had caused a stampede back to work amongst the coiffured mums, frantic to shake themselves free of the clamping jabberwocky jaws of their infant charges; which in turn led to a tide of guilt, flowing more freely than mother's milk. And guilt, where it could, lavished money on finely crafted toys.
Otto saw that he should stock his shop not with the cheap plastic imported playthings that children actually wanted, but the expensive handcrafted toys that reflected so well on the parents who placed them decorously around the nursery. Otto coined it.
And so fed his collecting demon.
Otto was prepared to pay me over £90,000—an intermediate price—for a first edition Pride and Prejudice. Personally I can't abide Jane Austen. Can't read a line without hearing it offered up in the squeaky tones of a spiteful piglet. Emily Brontë I'd want to drag into my house and kiss her thin lips, but Austen, no. I don't think Otto was a great fan either. That's how it goes: you start by collecting the things you admire, then you go on to collect the stuff other people are collecting.
Otto had no wife, no kids, no addiction to drugs, cigarettes or alcohol. Where else might his money go? After the slew of prissy Hollywood costume dramas, Austen collectibles had generated more interest than ever, and here I was, offering an 1813 first edition printed for Egerton. "I'm told I'll have it next week, Otto."
"That's what you said last week." Otto had what you might call poached-egg eyes. He looked at me morosely.
I shrugged. "I think it's reliable. But I have to tell you, there's a third bidder."
"Oh? I suppose you won't tell me who it is."
"Come off it, Otto." I'd revealed to him Ellis's identity on strictest understanding you don't use this information, Otto, but only as part of the confidence. Of course there was no third bidder, but because I'd told him who the other guy was, he'd have to believe there was also a third.
Otto dug his thumbs in the elasticated waistband of his trousers and hoiked them up a little. "Oh well. I can't go much higher."
No businessman can. Unless he wants to. I pretended to be interested in a pair of joke spectacles in which eyes drop forward on springs. I tried on a pair. "These are terrific. You have terrific stuff. I'll take a pair for my nephew. The new bidder has put in ninety-one."
"Sorry. I'll have to chip out at that."
I took off the joke glasses and handed them to him along with a ten-pound note. He took both from me with hands in the grip of a terrible rash—from the chemicals or the depleted uranium, I guessed—and rang up a figure on his till. "Never mind, Otto. You want me to keep you informed of what comes in?"
He handed me the joke glasses in a plastic bag emblazoned with his toyshop-chain logo and was about to open his mouth when the bell above the door tinkled. We both turned.
The figure looming in the doorway looked like the Ancient Mariner. The man's face was red as if from exertion and his grey hair hung lank at either side, almost plastered to a grey beard. His teeth were stained with nicotine. He wore an army greatcoat and strong fell-walking boots, one of which was laced with string. He shuffled deeper into the shop, and barely seemed to notice me there.
"Seamus!" said Otto. "How are you, me old mucker?"
"Just came in to say hello." Seamus's voice was crazed in the way of an Old Master painting. "You don't mind?"
"I've told you before I don't mind. Don't mind a bit. William, this is Seamus, an old mucker from Desert Storm. Seamus, have a cup of tea."
"We don't mention Desert Storm," said Seamus. He glanced at me from under huge eyebrows composed of tangled steel wires.
Otto tipped me a salute. "Right. We don't mention Desert Storm."
Christ, I thought, if he was a combatant in the first Gulf War he couldn't be more than about forty or fifty years old: yet he looked like someone who had drowned at sea a hundred years ago and returned as a ghost. "Let's not, then," I said, winking affably at Seamus. I don't know if it was my wink that offended him, but I felt a flash of tension run through his body. A thunderous expression passed across his face. He turned away from me rather obviously.
"Shall I get that kettle on then, Seamus?"
"No. Not stopping. Only came by to say hello." He glanced around the shop as if trying to remember something. Then he darted another look at me, as if I were someone not to be trusted.
"There was a message for you," Otto said, opening his till.
I saw Otto pull out a few large-denomination notes and stuff them quickly in an envelope. Then he came from behind the till and handed the envelope to Seamus, who took it without a word. That was Otto for you: sparing the finer feelings of a tramp who wouldn't have wanted me to witness this handout.
Seamus folded the envelope and stuffed it in his army great-coat pocket. He stared at the floor, as if slightly confuse
d.
"Sure you won't have that cup of tea, Seamus?"
"Ah, that was it!" Seamus was suddenly animated. "That was it! I come to tell you I'm onto something! A secret!"
"Oh, what's that?" said Otto.
Seamus waved his hands in the air as if limply fighting off an aerial attack. "No! No no! I'll tell you when I have it all bang to rights. A secret! But you'll be the first one I tell, you will be! Now I have to be on my way. I've an himportant happointment." He said these last two words as if mimicking the aristocracy. And he laughed. Still chuckling, he turned and shuffled out of the shop.
"Poor fucker," Otto spat angrily after he'd gone. "Far worse than me. Got nothing. Fucking outrage." Otto turned away from me but I could see him thumbing back a tear. Then he turned back to me. "Seen it, have you? The book? With your own eyes?"
"Not yet, Otto. I only know what I've been told. Which is: three volumes from a Victorian collector's library, half-titles supplied, occasional light foxing and offsetting, contemporary green half morocco, spines gilt, marbled sides, red sprinkled edges. Covers worn at spine and edges, joints starting. Modern slip case, of course. What you'd expect. An exceptional copy, they say."
If it wasn't a fake I'd be interested in it myself, I almost added.
"Hell's bells," Otto said. "All right, sod it: ninety-one-and-a-half."
Chapter 4
Yes, of course the Pride and Prejudice was a fake. We should have had it ready there and then but there had been a small technical problem with my printer's nose: he'd pushed too many drugs up it. Then he'd been chased across his workshop by—and I had to laugh when he told me—demons. Not real demons, of course, but drug-induced fancies, which I suppose may at times seem just as terrifying as the real thing.
The consequence of the fray was that a bottle of turpentine substitute got spilled across not the fake, but one of the volumes of a real first edition which we'd obtained—on the pretext of potential purchase—to study in the production of the copy. Whatever the drug-induced phantoms had done to my forger's mind, the turps had done real damage to the morocco leather cover of the original. It left us with a number of options. We could pay the seventy-eight-thousand asking price to the vendor; we could replace and age-simulate the damaged cover before returning it; or we could replicate two copies and keep the genuine but damaged item and retain it for sale in a couple of years' time.
We chose the latter option, even though it set back our trading plans: hence my milk-round visits to Ellis, Antonia and Otto. As a legitimate dealer it was easy enough for me to stall the vendor of the authentic copy; I just didn't want the extra time to allow my buyers to either go off the boil, or even to discover there was "another" copy on the market at the same time. As any salesman will tell you, the art of selling is the art of closing.
Forging rare books is not like forging Art. The original print run for the first edition of Pride and Prejudice is uncertain. Perhaps 1500 copies were produced. Where do all these copies go? Book lovers are notorious hoarders. Even assuming three-quarters of the copies were used for lighting fires and stuffing Victorian dolls, no one is surprised when a house-clearance turns up an extra couple of copies for auction. Unlike a singular painting by Turner, or a Constable.
Naturally, a book has to cross a certain price threshold before faking becomes lucrative. The Pride and Prejudice edition, like many books from that period, was published in three individual volumes: the materials alone required to replicate and age the paper and to season the binding, not to mention access to museum-effect print machinery, will set you back several thousand pounds. Plus the multiplicity of skills required dangerously expands the number of people who know what you're up to. So you need a genius who can do the lot.
"I'm a donkey. I'm so sorry, William." Ian Grimwood was a remarkable painter, sculptor and printer, and no hee-haw. Sadly no one, or at least no paying person, shared his artistic visions.
"Accidents happen," I said, clearing a space for myself to sit down in his chaotic studio in Farringdon.
He sat rubbing a large, scarred hand across the dome of his shaved head. I'm sure that he would never be the sort of man to apply kohl or eye-liner, but, exaggerated by the baldness of his head, it always seemed that way. His grey eyes had a glitter like a rime of frost on a winter pavement. "I wish you hadn't told me all about those boys and girls."
He meant GoPoint. The homeless. He'd negotiated me down when I told him what I was doing with my share of the loot. I'd tried to get him to stay with his fairly priced original pitch but he wouldn't. He'd been homeless himself once, he told me. I could believe it. He was the working-class hero that Ellis kept pretending to be. Unlike Ellis he carried the wounds, the way an old boxer carries every single punch he took in the ring, the way an old political campaigner carts an economy of hope.
"That's the trouble with this game, Stinx," I said. I held up my hands. I had some dye or paint on my fingers. "It gets you all moral. It's horrible."
He threw me an oily rag. "I hope you keep schtum about my good deeds. I've got my reputation to think about."
"Not back on the marching powder, are you, Stinx?"
"Who you been talking to? It wasn't coke, it was crystal meth. A moment of stupidity. A tiny indiscretion. Won't happen again, Your Honour. And I mean it."
"You serious?"
"Serious. I 'ad a dark night of the soul, William." He looked out of the big, dirt-smeared windows of his studio. It was a converted Gothic warehouse and we could see the roofs and chimneys of Clerkenwell sweeping away from us. "Lucy left me again."
That lacerated old heart of his. He was in love with a woman who left him on average once every three years. Seems she couldn't stand living with a genius. Last time she left him it was for a commodities broker. The time before that it was a wine importer. Before that I can't remember, but the pattern was clearly to swing from the bohemianism and chaotic brilliance of Stinx to the ultra-conservative; then after six months of life in the twin-set-and-pearls lane she would rediscover his virtues, returning to give him another spin like a favourite but chipped and scratched psychedelic album from the 60s.
We belonged to an unofficial club, Stinx and I. A society of abandoned men. We called ourselves the Candlelight Club, I can't remember why—something to do with W. B. Yeats. There was one other member, Diamond Jaz, who'd been dumped by his male lover. The circumstances of our meeting some three years ago was strange, not to say auspicious.
It was the sixth of June when Fay told me she would be leaving me. The date is burned in my brain because I'd returned early from work—no, the book thing is a hobby, not my principle employment—after an angry exchange with a government junior minister. Luckily for everyone involved I was only early enough to see a man whom I vaguely recognised leaving my house in Finchley to climb into a shiny blue soft-top BMW. Well, I did recognise him, didn't I? He was on the telly.
Confrontation, admissions, recriminations, tears. The full shopping-list. "It doesn't matter," I tried to tell Fay. "I've been inattentive. It doesn't matter."
Oh, but it did matter. Even my trying to take the blame was part of the problem, apparently. I was stunned to discover how over it was between us already.
I wanted to avoid facing the children so I left the house and walked. I walked blindly until I came to my senses in Kentish Town. Then I slithered inside the Pineapple, which was pretty quiet at that time of the day. I sat at the bar and ordered a glass of wine. I must have made short order of it, because I very quickly asked for another.
"That first one didn't touch the sides," said a gruff voice from two barstools away.
I didn't pay him much attention. The Pineapple attracts an odd mix of trade—that's where I later met Ellis—and this hunched, tattooed brute with a shaved head was like a scary species of genie behind his cloud of curling, blue cigarette smoke.
He tried again. "You look like how I feel," he said. He held his cigarette with the cone pointing in towards the palm of his hand, like a scho
olboy smoking behind the bike-sheds. His knuckles were tattooed, old-style. I could see "LOVE" on one hand; I only guessed at "HATE" on the other.
I met his gaze from behind the wreathing smoke. I was sure he wasn't about to grant me three wishes, but there was a sympathetic cast to his eye. I don't know why, but I blurted it out: "My wife's left me for another man."
He sat upright and wafted a hand through all this curling smoke, as if to look at me better. "My life!" he said. "My life!"
I thought it an odd remark. I mean, it must happen to lots of men somewhere every day. I took another nip of wine.
"Same here exactly!" he said. "When?"
"About an hour ago."
"Stone me!" He chuckled. "Well, stone me!" He rotated his stool away from me, checked out the bar and sucked hard on his ciggie, still shaking his head.
I wasn't feeling companionable, but I felt obliged to ask. "What about you, then?"
He turned back to me. Now, as he regarded me steadily, his eyes looked sad. Huge skin-folds hung from under them, each like a miser's pouch. "What I'm saying. About an hour ago."
