The Grin of the Dark

THIRTY-FIVE - TORMENTORS

As the Shogun halts outside the apartments, Bebe breaks the heavy silence. 'Would you like us to come up with you, Natalie?' 'You head off home. You've done enough.'

Mark wriggles to face me across his mother. 'Can I show you now?'

'Maybe you should catch up on your sleep,' says Warren. 'Your mom and Mr Lester have some issues to discuss.'

'Remember we're as close as your phone,' Bebe assures her daughter. 'Chances are you won't be waking us.'

As the car swerves away up the alley, icy flakes like seeds of Bebe's gaze settle on my forehead. It occurs to me to read the nameplate of the apartment opposite ours, but when I try to clear it of half-melted snowflakes I rub the name illegible. Mark is racing upstairs while Natalie follows him at half the speed. I use both hands to hold my case above the stairs so as not to chip them, and then I blunder with it into Natalie's bedroom. 'You've come back the worse for wear,' she says.

'Better handle me gently, then.'

I'm not sure if she's preparing even the slightest of smiles when Mark calls 'Here it is, Simon.'

'Go on, get it over with,' Natalie tells him or me or both, and steps well aside to let me out of her room.

Mark is sitting at my desk. Has he been using my computer in my absence? He can't have logged online without my password, and in any case I don't know why I should be apprehensive. Perhaps it's simply that the notion that anyone else has used the computer makes my work seem vulnerable – and then I notice the book in front of him. It's Surréalistes Malgré Eux. 'Look what someone did,' he says as he hands it to me.

I can see no difference when I open the book. Did I fancy that the text might have changed somehow? I'm about to give up leafing through it and ask Mark what he's so impatient for me to find when I reach the pages that deal with Tubby Thackeray. The margins of both have been pencilled solid black.

While this may be a suitably funereal tribute, I don't like having a book defaced. 'You did this, did you, Mark?'

'I saw it in a film,' he says with a wide smile that I find wholly inappropriate. I'm about to start by telling him so when I realise that the blackness of the borders isn't total after all. Both side margins contain words so faint they're scarcely legible. Before I've finished straining my eyes I'm unconvinced the additions are worth deciphering.

grate

mind

mined

pourtal

vorpal

portle

trope

troop

troupe

let

it

owt

ownly

con

necked

links

recht

lynx

wrecked

sub

con

shush

first

foot

your

Bill

of

men

tall

health

all

fools!

yer

round

first

for

noll

edge

first

be

last

carol

carroll

itty

bitty

god

I'm opening my mouth when I wonder if the annotations are even more meaningless than they appear. 'Mind out, Mark,' I say and pull the desk drawer open. On top of the small stack of posters is the one signed by Thackeray Lane. The wispy script of the first name, before the signature degenerates into an elongated capital, is indeed the same as the handwriting in the book. This seems capable of scrambling my thoughts until I see the explanation. 'Why did you do this, Mark?'

He looks inexplicably confused. 'I told you – '

'You said you got it from a film. About a forger, was it? Full marks for learning fast but not for what you learned. You'll have me thinking films can turn people into criminals. Maybe you can tell me what all this is supposed to mean.'

Before I've finished speaking, Natalie is in the room. 'What has he done now?'

'All I did was highlight the writing for him,' Mark protests as his eyes grow wider and moister. 'That's how they sent secret messages in a film.'

It doesn't sound like a terribly secure method. Rather than criticise the film I wait for him to meet my gaze. 'Are you telling me you didn't write this?'

'I swear I didn't. I only wanted to make it easy for you to see. I looked through the paper and saw it. I was trying to read about Tubby but I couldn't read much.'

I feel like a clever lawyer for remarking 'I didn't know you could read French at all.'

'My computer helped.'

I'm defeated, not to mention bewildered. 'Well, thank you for this,' I have to say, although gratitude isn't involved. 'I'm sorry I spoke to you like that. Blame jet lag if you want.'

As his grin returns Natalie says 'Now we both really think you should go to bed.'

'I'm glad you're home, Simon,' he says and heads for the bathroom. I hope Natalie may agree with or add to his remark, but she only takes the book out of my hand. With little more than a glance at the inscribed margins she says 'How on earth could you think he wrote this?'

'He might have copied it from somewhere. I know he didn't now.'

I'm hopelessly unsure what else I know. The package was damaged when Joe brought it to me in Egham, but how could he have been the forger? The only other possibility seems to be that the autograph on the poster is fake. I've no idea where this explanation leads; it's as distractingly meaningless as too much else that I've encountered since beginning my research. I'm exhausted enough that I sink onto my desk chair. 'Don't say you're going on your computer now,' Natalie objects.

'I should drop Rufus a quick line. There may be a misunderstanding with the bank.'

'You've got time. We'll talk when Mark's asleep.'

I attempt not to find this too ominous. Dozens of emails are waiting: reports that messages I never sent have been returned, offers of Viagra and other drugs, requests for me to help Nigerians or Gulf War veterans in secret financial transactions by sending every detail of my bank account. I delete them all before informing Rufus that I've gathered plenty of material about Tubby and that the bank has made a decidedly unauthorised donation. 'Maybe they mistook me for our friend Tickell,' I add, though it doesn't feel much like a joke.

I'm supposed to be writing to the bank. I log onto the site for their address and grin with the opposite of humour at my balance, which is still flourishing a minus sign. Could Tess of the bank have told me that they weren't able to restore my credit until I wrote to them? It's her job to make herself clear. By the time I've finished emailing, Mark has said good night from the hall. Instead of checking for Smilemime I switch off the computer. 'Can we talk now?' I say. 'I'm pretty shagged.'

I must be, otherwise I would have avoided the word. Natalie lets me interpret her gaze before she relents, if she does. 'What would you like to say, Simon?'

'I didn't know about Willie Hart, and that's the truth.'

'What didn't you?'

'She's no more a man than I am a woman, but what's anyone expected to think with a name like that?'

'Maybe you ought to have looked a bit closer.'

'I'm not saying she didn't look female. She certainly did,' I say with, to judge by Natalie's expression, too much enthusiasm before I understand her remark. 'I swear it didn't say she was short for Wilhelmina when I read it.'

'We've had quite a lot of swearing tonight, haven't we.'

'Not as much as I feel like.' I visualise this as an intertitle but say aloud 'I believed Mark, didn't you? I hope you'll believe me.'

'Why didn't you tell me while you were there?'

'I wanted to face to face.'

'I'd rather have heard it from you than from my parents. They made it sound like some grubby little secret they were ashamed to have to tell me.'

'I hadn't met her then.'

'How do you – ' Natalie's mouth stiffens around the last word. 'You've discussed it with them, have you?'

'Disgust is more like it. Theirs, I mean.'

Natalie shakes her head as if too many words have settled on it. 'Just tell me. Leave the random stuff where it belongs.'

'All right, they did their best to make me betray myself.'

'What did you have to betray, Simon?'

'Not a thing,' I say, fending off a memory of three naked girls with Tubby's gleeful face. 'I'm saying they tried. Are we happy now?'

'I couldn't say what you are. Maybe you can tell me.'

I might object that she wanted me to rid the conversation of this kind of tangential link, but I say 'I mean is there anything else you want to know? Anything at all.'

'How was she?'

'As professional as they come.' Hastily I add 'The time I didn't spend watching her grandfather's films she was telling me about him and his career.'

'Poor you,' Natalie says with, I suspect, at least as much mockery as sympathy. 'Sounds as if you never went to bed.'

'Oh, I did quite a bit of that too.'

Natalie makes for the door, and I'm afraid that language has tripped me up again until she says 'That's where I'm going. You're not the only one in need of sleep.'

'Sorry. I didn't realise wondering about me would keep you awake.'

She halts with her hand on the doorknob. 'Mark has been.'

'You should have told me. What's been wrong?'

'I hope he's just been missing you. Perhaps whatever's kept waking him up will go away now you're home, since he won't tell me what he's been dreaming.'

At least her hope is encouraging. 'I'll let you get in first, shall I?'

'I'd appreciate it.' As she opens the door she murmurs 'I'm glad not to be on my own again.'

'I'll be here,' I promise and switch on the computer.

She bolts the bathroom door as I reach the newsgroups. Perhaps the splash of water in the sink would deafen her to any other sound, but I grab my mouth to trap whatever noise I might emit. I clutch my face hard enough to bruise it while I stare at Smilemime's latest message. I minimise the image and don't restore it until I hear Natalie switch off the bedroom light, by which time I've thought to let go of my aching face. Various members of the groups have already responded – 'Nobody cares who any of you are' and 'Why don't you all go forth and multiply, in other words fuck off' and 'I'd like to meet you and separate your head' – but nobody has on my behalf. It makes me feel spied upon by more people than I want to imagine.

So the other one of Mr Questionabble wants me to meet him somewhere now and if I don't it shows I'm not telling the truth, except everyboddy can see it's beccause I'm telling it he wants to meet me and shut me up. Here's what I'll prommise. I'll meet him if someboddy who can prove who they are comes allong to keep the peace, but it has to be somewhere I sellect. I wonder how many of us there'd be then. Less than he wants us all to think. His name's nearly Less, which gives him away again, and Colin Vernon's his CV, he'd like us to believe. If you want an idea of his real CV and the kind of films he's mixed up in, have a look at the site where he's performming with three girls. They do things you couldn't dream of. He looks like he's dreamming himself. Dream on, Mr Questionabble. Just don't bother dreamming of tricking me. That's me in the middle of the web, and I've got tricks I havven't even thought of yet. Better get off it while you can, beffore you're stuck. You wouldn't want that for Christmass.