Once out of Euston Station and its random patterns of swarming, he strolled to the publishers. Buildings glared like blocks of salt, which seemed to have drained all moisture from the air. He felt hot and grimy, anxious both to face the worst and to delay. Hugo Burgess had been ominously casual: “If you happen to be in London soon we might have a chat about things…”
A receptionist on a dais that overlooked the foyer kept Miles waiting until he began to sweat. Eventually a lift produced Hugo, smiling apologetically. Was he apologizing in advance for what he had to say? “I suppose you saw yourself on television,” he said when they reached his office.
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
“I shouldn’t give it another thought. The telly people are envious buggers. They begrudge every second they give to discussing books. Sometimes I think they resent the competition and get their own back by being patronizing.” He was pawing through the heaps of books and papers on his desk, apparently in search of the phone. “It did occur to me that it would be nice to publish fairly soon,” he murmured.
Miles hadn’t realized that sweat could break out in so many places at once. “I’ve run into some problems.”
Burgess was peering at items he had rediscovered in the heaps. “Yes?” he said without looking up.
Miles summarized his new idea clumsily. Should he have written to Burgess in advance? “I found there simply wasn’t enough material in the West Derby case,” he pleaded.
“Well, we certainly don’t want padding.” When Burgess eventually glanced up he looked encouraging. “The more facts we can offer the better. I think the public is outgrowing fantasy, now that we’re well and truly in the scientific age. People want to feel informed. Writing needs to be as accurate as any other science, don’t you think?” He hauled a glossy pamphlet out of one of the piles. “Yes, here it is. I’d call this the last gasp of fantasy.”
It was a painting, lovingly detailed and photographically realistic, of a girl who was being simultaneously mutilated and raped. It proved to be the cover of a new magazine,
“It won’t last,” Burgess said. “Most people are embarrassed to admit to reading fantasy now, and that will only make them more so. The book you’re planning is more what they want—something they know is true. That way they don’t feel they’re indulging themselves.” He disinterred the phone at last. “Just let me call a car and we’ll go into the West End for lunch.”
Afterward they continued drinking in Hugo’s club. Miles thought Hugo was trying to midwife the book. Later he dined alone, then lingered for a while in the hotel bar; his spotlessly impersonal room had made him feel isolated. Over the incessant trickle of muzak he kept hearing Burgess: “I wonder how soon you’ll be able to let me have sample chapters…”
Next morning he was surprised how refreshed he felt, especially once he’d taken a shower. Over lunch he unburdened himself to his agent. “I just don’t know when I’ll be able to deliver the book. I don’t know how much research may be involved.”
“Now look, you mustn’t worry about Hugo. I’ll speak to him. I know he won’t mind waiting if he knows it’s for the good of the book.” Susie Barker patted his hand; her bangles sounded like silver castanets. “Now here’s an idea for you. Why don’t you do up a sample chapter or two on the West Derby case? That way we’ll keep Hugo happy, and I’ll do my best to sell it as an article.”
When they’d kissed good-bye Miles strolled along Charing Cross Road, composing the chapter in his head and looking for himself in bookshop displays. Miles, Miles, books said in a window stacked with crime novels. NIGHT OF ATROCITIES, headlines cried on an adjacent newspaper stand.
He dodged into Foyles. That was better: he occupied half a shelf, though his earliest titles looked faded and dusty. When he emerged he was content to drift with the rush-hour crowds—until a newsvendor’s placard stopped him. BRITAIN’S NIGHT OF HORROR, it said.
It didn’t matter, it had nothing to do with him. In that case, why couldn’t he find out what had happened? He didn’t need to buy a paper, he could read the report as the newsvendor snatched the top copy to reveal the same beneath. “Last night was Britain’s worst night of murders in living memory…”
Before he’d read halfway down the column the noise of the crowd seemed to close in, to grow incomprehensible and menacing. The newsprint was snatched away again and again as if he were the victim of a macabre card trick. He sidled away from the newsstand as though from the scene of a crime, but already he’d recognized every detail. If he hadn’t repressed them on the way to London he could have written the reports himself. He even knew what the newspaper had omitted to report: that one of the victims had been forced to eat parts of herself.
Weeks later the newspapers were still in an uproar. Though the moderates pointed out that the murders had been unrelated and unmotivated, committed by people with no previous history of violence or of any kind of crime, for most of the papers that only made it worse. They used the most unpleasant photographs of the criminals that they could find, and presented the crimes as evidence of the impotence of the law, of a total collapse of standards. Opinion polls declared that the majority was in favor of an immediate return of the death penalty. “MEN LIKE THESE MUST NOT GO UNPUNISHED,” a headline said, pretending it was quoting. Miles grew hot with frustration and guilt—for he felt he could have prevented the crimes.
All too soon after he’d come back from London, the nightmares had returned. His mind had already felt raw from brooding, and he had been unable to resist; he’d known only that he must get rid of them somehow. They were worse than the others: more urgent, more appalling.
He’d scribbled them out as though he had been inspired, then he’d glared blindly at the blackened page. It hadn’t been enough. The seething in his head, the crawling of his scalp, had not been relieved even slightly. This time he had to develop the ideas, imagine them fully, or they would cling and fester in his mind.
He’d spent the day and half the night writing, drinking tea until he hardly knew what he was doing. He’d invented character after character, building them like Frankenstein out of fragments of people, only to subject them to gloatingly prolonged atrocities, both the victims and the perpetrators.
When he’d finished, his head felt like an empty rusty can. He might have vomited if he had been able to stand. His gaze had fallen on a paragraph he’d written, and he’d swept the pages onto the floor, snarling with disgust. “Next morning he couldn’t remember what he’d done—but when he reached in his pocket and touched the soft object his hand came out covered with blood…”
He’d stumbled across the landing to his bedroom, desperate to forget his ravings. When he’d awakened next morning he had been astonished to find that he’d fallen asleep as soon as he had gone to bed. As he’d lain there, feeling purged, an insight so powerful it was impossible to doubt had seized him. If he hadn’t written out these things they would have happened in reality.
But he had written them out: they were no longer part of him. In fact they had never been so, however they had felt. That made him feel cleaner, absolved him of responsibility. He stuffed the sloganeering newspapers into the wastebasket and arranged his desk for work.
By God, there was nothing so enjoyable as feeling ready to write. While a pot of tea brewed he strolled about the house and reveled in the sunlight, his release from the nightmares, his surge of energy. Next door a man with a beard of shaving foam dodged out of sight, like a timid Santa Claus.
Miles had composed the first paragraph before he sat down to write, a trick that always helped him write more fluently—but a week later he was still struggling to get the chapter into publishable shape. All that he found crucial about his research—the idea that by staying in the West Derby house he had tapped a source of utter madness, which had probably caused the original murder—he’d had to suppress. Why, if he said any of that in print they would think he was mad himself. Indeed, once he’d thought of writing it, it no longer seemed convincing.
When he could no longer bear the sight of the article, he typed a fresh copy and sent it to Susie. She called the following day, which seemed encouragingly quick. Had he been so aware of what he was failing to write that he hadn’t noticed what he’d achieved?
“Well, Jonathan, I have to say this,” she said as soon as she’d greeted him. “It isn’t up to your standard. Frankly, I think you ought to scrap it and start again.”
“Oh.” After a considerable pause he could think of nothing to say except, “All right.”
“You sound exhausted. Perhaps that’s the trouble.” When he didn’t answer he said, “You listen to your Auntie Susie. Forget the whole thing for a fortnight and go away on holiday. You’re been driving yourself too hard—you
