The Dance of the Voodoo Handbag

3

The ambition of every tall-story-teller is to create an urban myth. One of those '˜it happened to a friend of a friend of mine' stories that enters the collective consciousness and takes on a life of its own.

You hear them all the time: at work, in the pub, at a party. Told to you by folk who'll swear they're true. And the thing about a really good one is it can make you feel that even if it isn't true somehow it ought to be.

For instance, does anyone remember Johnny Quinn? Yes, no, maybe. Well, about a year ago I was in the Jolly Gardeners drinking Death by Cider and chatting with my good friend Sean O'Reilly. William Burroughs had just died and Sean was saying that Old Bill had been one of his favourites. I said that he had been one of my favourites too, and although I never really understood what he was on about most of the time, it didn't seem to matter, because I just loved the way he was on about it.

And then Sean asked me whether I'd ever read anything by Johnny Quinn, who had apparently been a mate of Burroughs and was somewhat easier to understand. I said I was sure that I had, but I couldn't remember what. And then I said, yes I could, and wasn't it Johnny Quinn who wrote The Million Dollar Dream? And Sean said he thought it was, and also Sailing to Babylon, and something about tears.

'˜Tomorrow's Tears,' I said. '˜I've got that book somewhere.' And we talked a bit about what we could remember of Johnny Quinn, which didn't seem to be much, and his books, which seemed to be even less. And at the end of the evening Sean said that he'd really like to read Tomorrow's Tears again and I said, '˜Let's go back to my place and I'll see if I can find it.'

And we did. But I couldn't.

We searched through all my paperbacks, but Tomorrow's Tears was nowhere to be found. '˜Never mind,' I said. '˜I'm going into Brighton tomorrow, I'll see if I can pick up a copy at Waterstone's.' Sean said to get whatever Johnny Quinn books they had in stock and he'd pay me for them next time he saw me. And we both got quite excited about the prospect of reading some Johnny Quinn again.

Which turned out to be a pity, really.

The chap at Waterstone's was very helpful. I asked him if he had any Johnny Quinn books in stock and he said the name rang a bell and he'd have a look. He had a look and said that no, sadly, they didn't. So I asked him if I could order some and he said he didn't see any reason why not and cranked up his computer. But he couldn't find a mention of Johnny Quinn. '˜Are you sure it's Johnny Quinn?' he asked. And I said I was sure that it was, and he said he felt sure that it was too. But we couldn't find him although there were several books with similar sounding titles to the ones I was looking for.

'˜They must all be out of print,' said the very helpful chap. '˜Perhaps you should try the library.'

The lady at the library was also very helpful and she employed her computer. But she couldn't find any Johnny Quinn books either. '˜That's odd,' she said, '˜because I'm sure I remember reading one of his books when I was at school.' But she couldn't find him and eventually she got tired of looking and suggested I try one of the specialist bookshops in the area.

So I did. In fact I went to each and every one of them. The chaps who ran these shops were also very helpful and although they all felt certain they could remember old Johnny and had enjoyed reading his books, none of them had a single one in stock.

I must confess that by mid afternoon I was beginning to feel a little stressed.

At the very last shop I visited, the proprietor, a very helpful chap, grew quite lyrical over the recollection of Mr Quinn. He'd once had a girlfriend, he said, who had named her cat Toothbrush, after a character in one of his novels.

Toothbrush? I didn't remember any character called Toothbrush!

'˜Are you still in touch with this old girlfriend?' I asked.

'˜No,' said the proprietor with a sigh. '˜She died.' And his face became sad, and he said he was going to close up early and he hustled me out of his shop. And I too became sad and went home.

But by now the search for a Johnny Quinn novel was becoming something of a crusade. I was determined that I would lay my hands upon one, come what may. By fair means or foul.

I decided to try the fair means first.

So that evening I went through my personal telephone book and called everyone that was listed in it. I called all my friends, and old friends too, some of whom I hadn't spoken to for years. And I called business acquaintances and even the doctor and the dentist, as I had their numbers. Some of them felt sure that they had read Johnny Quinn, and I waited anxiously while they looked through their bookshelves before returning to the phone with the reply I was coming to dread.

Gilly, an old friend from college days, rather put the wind up me when I spoke to her. She said that she'd had a Johnny Quinn book but she'd lent it to a friend and never got it back. Apparently this friend had lent Gilly's book to another friend and never got it back from her.

A friend-of-a-friend that would be then, wouldn't it!

By midnight I had run up a very large phone bill and worn out my friendship with quite a few people, but I was absolutely no nearer to finding what was now acquiring the status of a literary Holy Grail.

I went off to bed in a very bad mood!

But I was up bright and early the next morning.

Because I'd had an idea.

I'd remembered that there are companies in London that specialize in finding books for collectors. That's what they do. You pay them' a finder's fee and they seek out the book. Mind you, I'd heard that this can take years, but I felt it was certainly worth a try.

Directory Enquiries put me on to the most famous one. I'm not allowed to mention their name here, but you've probably heard of them, they do posh auctions, too.

The chap I spoke to first was very helpful, and very posh. Was it Jonathan Quinn?' he asked. '˜The contemporary of Beau Brummel and the Prince Regent?'

'˜No,' I said. '˜Just plain Johnny, mucker of Billy Burroughs back in the Swinging Sixties.'

'˜Ah,' said the chap, '˜then you will need to speak to our Mr Hiemes, who specializes in books from the 1960s. He's our resident expert on the period.'

'˜Splendid,' I said.

He put me through to their Mr Hiemes and I told their Mr Hiemes that I was looking for any book by Johnny Quinn.

'˜Johnny who?' asked their Mr Hiemes.

'˜Quinn,' I said, '˜surely you've heard of him?'

Their Mr Hiemes said no, he hadn't.

I said to their Mr Hiemes that I'd been told he was the resident expert on the period.

'˜I am,' said their Mr Hiemes, '˜and I've never heard of Johnny Quinn.'

'˜You have to be joking!'

But he wasn't.

And nor were any of the other experts I spoke to that morning. None of them had ever heard of Johnny Quinn. None of them.

'˜But that's absurd,' I told the last in a dismal line. '˜I spent yesterday afternoon going around Brighton and just about everyone I spoke to remembered Johnny Quinn. And you blokes are supposed to be experts on the literature of the Sixties, and none of you have ever heard of him. You're all a bunch of tosspots.'

And the chap put the phone down on me.

Absurd!

But then it got beyond absurd.

I went through the Yellow Pages and started phoning bookshops. Any bookshop. All bookshops. High street chains, collector's bookshops, independents, weirdos, every kind of bookshop. And though I spoke to some very helpful people, not a single one of them had ever heard of Johnny Quinn.

I was truly rattled. How could it be that yesterday nearly everyone had heard of him, and today nobody had?

I decided to retrace my footsteps. I went back to Waterstone's. The chap behind the counter remembered me from the day before. But when I told him that I had drawn a complete blank on Johnny Quinn. he told me that he wasn't in the least surprised.

'˜What?' I said.

Well,' he said, '˜after you'd gone I got to thinking, and the more I thought about Johnny Quinn the less I seemed to remember. And eventually I got to thinking that probably I didn't remember Johnny Quinn at all, I only thought I did.'

'˜Absurd!' I said.

'˜Not really,' he said. '˜You see, it happens all the time in this business. Someone will come into the shop asking for a book that doesn't exist, saying that a friend of a friend of theirs read it and thought it was wonderful. They know, or think they know, all kinds of details about the book and its author. But the book doesn't exist. Even though it seems as if it should. It's like an urban myth, someone starts it off in a bar or something and it takes on a life of its own. I've developed a mystical theory about it. I think that the book exists in some kind of parallel universe and it's trying to exist in this one too. Like your Johnny Quinn, perhaps he's trying to exist here. And if enough people believed in him, maybe he would. Maybe if enough people believe in anything strongly enough, it will actually happen. And perhaps Johnny Quinn did exist here yesterday, sort of. But he won't exist today. He had his moment, when your belief spread to others, but that moment's passed. Not enough people believed hard enough. Johnny didn't make it into this reality. Sorry.'

'˜What a load of old toot!' I said.

But he might have been right. About some of it anyway. Because all the other chaps in all the other shops I went back to said pretty much the same thing. They'd all thought they'd remembered Johnny Quinn yesterday, but the more they thought about it'¦

The chap who'd had the girlfriend with the cat called Toothbrush was not at all pleased to see me. He said I'd stirred up a lot of unhappy memories and he'd probably have to go back into therapy. And, for my information, his girlfriend's cat had actually been called Steerpike and I should bugger off.

So I buggered off.

I didn't see Sean again for a couple of weeks, and when I did bump into him at the Jolly Gardeners I thought I'd wait until he asked' me about the Johnny Quinn books before I told him about what had happened. But Sean never did ask me. Sean seemed to have forgotten all about Johnny Quinn. In fact Sean never mentioned the name of Johnny Quinn ever again.

'˜Do you remember a painter called Karl Bok?' Sean asked me.

And that might well have been it for old Johnny Quinn, the author who never was, had it not been for something decidedly odd that happened to me the next month.

It happened in the Jolly Gardeners on a Tuesday evening. Andy, the landlord, goes off somewhere on Tuesday evenings, and Paul the part-timer takes over. Tuesday .evenings are always slow and Paul is good at slow. He generally spends the evening doing the Times crossword or reading a book. On this particular Tuesday evening he was reading a book.

I went in, hung up my hat and cloak and placed my silver-topped cane upon the counter. '˜A pint of Death by Cider, please, Paul,' I said.

Paul hastened without haste to oblige me.

What are you reading?' I asked, spying the open book on the counter.

'˜Book,' said Paul, viewing the rows of identical pint glasses upon the shelf and waiting for one to take his fancy.

'˜Does it have a title?' I asked.

'˜Yes,' said Paul, still waiting.

'˜Might I ask what it is?'

'˜You might.'

I turned the book towards me and closed it. It was a publisher's proof copy. It had a white card cover. The title of the book was Snuff Fiction, the author was Johnny Quinn.

'˜Bugger me,' I said.

'˜No thanks,' said Paul.

'˜But it's a Johnny Quinn novel. You've got a Johnny Quinn novel.'

'˜No I haven't,' said Paul.

'˜Yes you have, I'm holding it in my hands.'

'˜I haven't,' said Paul. '˜It's not mine. It belongs to a friend. A friend of a friend, actually.'

'˜But you've got it. It exists. Johnny Quinn exists.'

'˜He doesn't,' said Paul, who had finally found a glass he liked the look of.

'˜He bloody does,' I said. '˜This book proves it.'

'˜He doesn't,' said Paul, slowly filling the glass from the wrong pump. '˜Because he's dead. Committed suicide.'

'˜Blimey,' I said. '˜Poor old Johnny. He really did exist and now he's topped himself. He probably got fed up with people not believing in him.'

What?' asked Paul, presenting me with my pint.

'˜Nothing,' I said. What's this supposed to be?'

'˜Search me,' said Paul.

I held the book very tightly. '˜I want to buy this book,' I said. '˜I'll give you ten quid for it.'

'˜It's not mine. I can't sell it.'

'˜Twenty quid, then, and that's my final offer.'

'˜It will be out in the shops next week for a flyer.'

What?'

'˜They're republishing all his stuff. The Million Dollar Dream, Sailing to Babylon. There's been a big revival since he croaked. And Snuff Fiction is the last one he wrote before he blew his brains out. It's never been published before. It'll probably go straight into the bestseller list. You'll be able to buy it at a discount.'

'˜I don't get this,' I said. When I asked at the bookshops a while back, they couldn't trace any of his books.'

'˜That's because they were all private editions, printed in the States. His books were never published in this country. People used to say they'd read him in order to seem hip and well informed.'

'˜Hm!' I said, giving my chin a scratch.

'˜But that's what you blokes from the Sixties were all about, wasn't it?' said Paul. '˜Always saying you'd done the Hippy Trail and been to Woodstock and watched the Stones in the Park and gone to college with Freddie Mercury and taken every drug there was to take and all the rest of it. A bunch of bull-shitters, the lot of you. Did you ever read any Johnny Quinn novels, then?'

'˜Not me,' I said, and paid for whatever it was I'd just bought, and sat down in a corner and drank it.

And what Paul said made a lot of sense, really. I'd obviously heard of Johnny Quinn, but I'd never actually read him. But I must have told people that I'd read him in order to seem hip and well informed. And as the years had gone by, I'd come to believe that I'd really read him. That had to be it. And it was probably it with all the other people who'd told me they'd read Johnny Quinn. They were all just a bunch of Sixties bull-shitters, like me. A lot of tail-story-tellers.

Tall-story-tellers!

That made me think. That made me think about my dad. I swallowed hard upon my ale. What if my dad hadn't considered himself a tall-story-teller at all? What if he'd actually believed all those tales he'd told to the vicar? Thought he'd really done all those things? It was all too much to think about. I finished up whatever it was I was drinking and went home.

I went back to the Jolly Gardeners the following Tuesday evening. I wanted Paul to lend me that copy of Snuff Fiction. All right, it would be out in the shops the next day. But I wanted his copy. Because I wanted to be able to say to people, '˜Snuff Fiction? Oh yes, I read that before it came out.'

But Paul wasn't there.

Andy was behind the pump.

Where's Paul?' I asked Andy.

'˜Not turned in,' Andy said. '˜I've telephoned, but there's no answer. I can't think what's happened. This isn't like Paul at all.'

'˜Damn!' I said. '˜Do you have Paul's address?'

'˜No,' said Andy. '˜Do you?'

Wednesday morning found me back at Water-stone's, and there behind the counter was the chap I'd spoken to before.

'˜Remember me?' I asked him.

'˜No,' he said.

'˜Come on now, you do, you know.'

'˜I don't, you know.'

'˜Well, never mind. I've come to buy a book.'

He looked at me. Questioningly.

'˜It's a Johnny Quinn book,' I said. '˜The new Johnny Quinn book. And it comes out today. Although I don't see it anywhere on your shelves.'

'˜That's because there's no such book,' he said. '˜Oh yes there is. I've seen a copy. It's called Snuff Fi-'

But I didn't get the second word out, because he lunged at me and clamped his hand across my face. And then he shinned over the counter, forced my arm up my back and sort of frog-marched me away to the store room.

What the fuck do you think you're doing?' I shouted, once I'd got myself free.

'˜Keep your voice down,' he said, in a menacing tone. '˜Who sent you, anyway?'

'˜Nobody sent me. What are you talking about?'

'˜How do you know about that book?'

'˜Because I've seen a copy.

'˜Nonsense. You wouldn't be here if you had.'

What?'

'˜Just go away,' he told me. '˜Forget all about it.'

'˜I certainly won't. I'm not leaving here without a copy of Snuff Fic-', and his hand was all over my face again.

'˜Stop doing that,' I said, once I had prised it free.

'˜Stop saying that title, then.'

What, Snuff Fic- Get your hands off me!'

'˜Then don't say the title again.'

'˜Then sell me a copy.'

'˜I can't. We don't have any.'

'˜I don't believe you. I want a copy and I want it now.'

'˜You can't have one.'

'˜But you do admit there's such a book.'

'˜Of course I do. But I'll only admit it in here. With you. As you've actually seen a copy.'

'˜Tell me what's going on,' I said, '˜or I will go out into the shop and shout very loudly. I will shout 'њGive me Snuff Fic-'ќ'˜

'˜All right. All right. I'll tell you. But you have to promise. Promise that you'll never pass on what I tell you here.'

'˜All right,' I said. '˜I promise.'

'˜Really truly, cross your heart and hope to die.'

'˜Cross my heart and hope to die.'

'˜It's a nightmare,' he said. '˜It's Quinn's revenge. '˜What?'

'˜It seems that he was famous in the Sixties but the world forgot about him. His books went out of print and he became more of a myth than a living person. He blamed the publishers and the booksellers and the public. He blamed everyone. He was a paranoid schizophrenic, voices in the head, the whole bit. And he vowed to take his revenge on everyone. So he wrote his final novel, Snuff Fiction.

And he paid for it to be printed and published himself. Millions and millions of copies, to be distributed to booksellers all over the world. He ran up debts of millions of dollars, then he committed suicide.'

'˜I'm not getting this,' I said. '˜So he publishes his own book, runs up millions of dollars of debt and commits suicide. But that's a big story. That alone should make the book a bestseller.'

'˜That's exactly what he planned, yes.'

'˜So what's the big deal? Why aren't you selling the book?'

'˜Because it's snuff fiction.' He whispered the words. '˜It really is snuff fiction.'

'˜I don't understand what you mean.'

'˜You know what a snuff movie is?'

'˜Of course. Although it seems to be an urban myth. Nobody you meet has ever seen one themselves, but they've all got a friend whose friend has seen one.'

'˜Well, this is the real thing. If you read this book, you die.'

What, someone comes round and kills you?'

'˜The book kills you.'

'˜How can a book kill you? I've read a few that have put me to sleep. But how can a book kill you?'

'˜The pages are impregnated with poison. It comes off on your fingers while you're reading the book. Enters your bloodstream and kills you.'

'˜I don't believe it. There's no such poison.'

'˜There is. It comes from the Amazon.'

Who told you that?'

'˜A friend.'

'˜And who told your friend? A friend?'

'˜Look, it's true. There have already been deaths. Book reviewers, people like that. The books have all been pulped now, so it's OK. But the whole thing is a nightmare.'

'˜I've never read anything about this in the papers.'

'˜And you won't. It's all being hushed up. Can you imagine the implications of a thing like this? If people thought that books could kill them-?'

But I was way ahead of him there. A thing like that could bring down the whole British book publishing industry.

And I could imagine quite clearly how it might start.

Rumours on the conspiracy pages of the Internet. A big publisher was pulping books under mysterious circumstances. A mention of the word virus. Which is always a great word to start a panic with. And then the tall stories told in the pub. A friend of a friend's mum had been found dead in her armchair with a paperback book clutched in her hands. Another friend of a friend's dad had gone likewise, but he had been reading the Sunday Sport. And blokes in radiation suits had bagged up his body and torched his house.

It was the eco-warriors, some said, out to save the rain forests. Or that Japanese bunch who had put the chemical warfare bombs in the Tokyo Underground. Or it was the Discordians, or the Church of Euthanasia, or J. Bob Dodds. Or it was the evil French or the New Age Travellers.

And the rumours would spread and the panic would grow and newspapers would deny it. Then one newspaper would come out in a cling film wrapper, demanding that government health warnings be put on rival newspapers. And people would freak out and say that it wasn't safe to read any book or newspaper unless you were wearing rubber gloves. And there would be a lunatic rush to buy up rubber gloves, at any price.

I left Waterstone's that day with my head spinning. The implications were indeed terrible, and it was a very good thing that all the Johnny Quinn books had been pulped and the matter could be laid to rest. The chap at Waterstone's made me take a solemn vow that I would never reveal a word of anything he'd told me.

'˜Trust me,' I told him. '˜I won't mention it to another living soul.'

And I have of course remained true to my promise.

Well, apart from mentioning it to my Uncle Brian.

Just in passing.