Black Rock Page 3
To compound the mystery, there were numerous spelling corrections, and annotated sentences in a different hand and grade of pencil. Which could mean either of two things. The first was that Martin was suffering from a multiple personality disorder (of which she had seen no sign during their four years together) and the second was that the pages had been written and annotated by someone other than Martin.
The first was implausible, the second, impossible.
When S’n’J was a bright young thing at college in Exeter, she had entertained romantic hopes of becoming a private eye. She knew how to be discreet and she had an almost insatiable curiosity. Some of her friends had called her Parker, as in Nosy. But when she left college for her first two years of work in the real world - as an assistant in a bookshop -her hopes began to fade. The real world had a way of grinding you down and making your once fantastic hopes and dreams become as workaday as everyone else’s. Somewhere between her second year at the bookshop and the job coming up as sales representative for Ace Publishing (Publisher of the Year 1992 and still heading their letters such -without the year, of course - three years on), she’d quit thinking of being an investigator, and started thinking how nice it would be to have somewhere she could call her own. And a dog, maybe, and a car - and if a suitable one happened by, a man too.
And shortly after starting work as Ace’s Western Area sales rep (territory: Bristol to Land’s End and a thousand miles a week to cover), she had all of them except the dog. And since then, she’d thought no more about becoming a private dick (or a private fanny, perhaps, if you wanted to be coarse).
Until she discovered the manuscript in her flat.
When she’d first found the unstamped A4 envelope under the recently departed Martin’s side of the bed, she’d pulled out the contents far enough for a quick glance and had decided that if Martin wanted his manuscript, Martin could damn well phone and ask for it and if she was feeling particularly magnanimous she might send it to him.
Martin had phoned. Oh how he had phoned - every single day for a fortnight. But he’d had other things on his mind than work. Such as what he wasn’t going to do to his little Essen jay if only she would have him back!
But his little Essenjay was not the same girl she’d been when he’d first moved in and brought the sprouting seeds of his nasty little habits with him. His little Essenjay was a good deal more worldly-wise these days. She now understood the wisdom of that old saw, You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear and although not female, Martin was undoubtedly an ear of the porcine variety. She told him this, along with the fact that she didn’t believe his promises of reformation; of how he would become a model partner.
It served him right, of course, but it had also alienated him. Eventually he’d concluded that his days of dominance over this particular little girl - who needed an authoritative father figure to keep her in her place - were well and truly gone and he had ceased calling.
And good riddance to him, Sarah-Jane thought, defiant, even now.
The problem was, that now she’d read the manuscript, she wanted to talk to him about it. Maybe to tell him it was much better than he realized and to encourage him to persevere with it, but mainly to ask him why he’d signed himself as Peter Perfect (Penelope Pitstop’s boyfriend, she thought, from Wacky Races) and why he’d written his address as Black Rock.
So phone him up, she told herself, and looked at the cellnet phone which lay in its leather case on the car’s passenger seat. She doubted that Peter Perfect (and he’d probably chosen the name because he thought he was perfect) would speak to her. And if she left a message she didn’t know if he would return her call.
What Sarah-Jane Dresden did know, was the reason she was hesitating. A conversation with Martin might not turn out the way she wanted it to. Martin wasn’t just going to talk about the weather and the famous twenty-four page sample of an unwritten novel called Black Rock. Martin was undoubtedly going to broach the taboo subject of Me and You and that was something she needed less than a six-inch nail driven between each of the pupils of her eyes.
But today was the last day this week that Martin would be in the office at Ace Publishing. Because he was freelance he only spent Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at Ace.
And Sarah-Jane badly wanted confirmation that he’d written the pages.
Except that what you really want, my girl, is confirmation that he didn’t write it, isn’t it?
But she ignored this because it was absurdly romantic wanting to believe that there was an actual place called Black Rock. And even more ridiculous wanting there to be a man inside it who’d sat down and written accurately about her without even knowing of her existence.
Shaking her head, because when you seriously started to entertain such fancies you had a job to sort out where fiction ended and reality began, she reached for the phone. She had to know.
The Ace switchboard operator completely ignored her request for connection to Martin and plumbed her through to Del Blass, the marketing manager, and for her sins, her boss.
‘Blass, marketing,’ his voice said. ‘Drezy, nice of you to phone. Got a problem?’
‘Only if you’re not answering Martin’s phone,’ Sarah-Jane said. ‘I asked for his office.’
‘How’s tricks?’ Del asked. ‘Any problems down your way?’
‘No Del, none, now look…’
‘The new Kaminsky subbing in okay for Christmas?’
‘Like hot cakes, surprise, surprise,’ Sarah-Jane said. Lulu Kaminsky’s already sky-high sales had trebled since someone had pushed her down one of London underground’s tallest escalators and killed her. Aided by Melvyn Bragg and a South Bank Show special entitled, ‘Who Killed Kaminsky?’ Lulu’s first posthumous book, Clarissa, was set to break all sales records since God was a kid. Lulu Kaminsky was already the world’s numero uno shopping and fucking novelist; now she would be a record-breaking dead one.
‘Good,’ Del said, and Sarah-Jane could picture his huge head nodding slowly. Del was one of those people you crashed into full speed ahead and hyped up and bounced off feeling mellow and cool.
‘Now look, Del, can you put Martin on the line please?’ Sarah-Jane said, quickly before he could calm her any more.
‘I’m not in his office, I’m in mine,’ Del said. ‘How you feeling Drezy? Okay?’
‘I’m fine, Del. Just put me through to Martin, and I’ll feel a damn sight finer.’
‘Is it work related?’ Del asked.
‘Yes Del,’ Sarah said.
‘Oh,’ Del said sounding disappointed. ‘Thought there might be a chance, y’know…’
‘Of a reconciliation?’
The trouble with the publishing industry was that the fuel that ran it was intrigue and s
candal. Everyone knew everyone else and word spread like wildfire, not just through the publishing house you worked for but all the others too. Almost everyone in the industry knew Martin Dinsey the country’s most respected science fiction editor, and everyone now knew that he’d been blown-out by some jumped up bitch of a sales rep.
‘Absolutely no chance,’ Sarah-Jane said. ‘Will you put me through to him now?’
Del hesitated. ‘The switchboard has been instructed to divert your calls to me,’ he said. ‘I’m… uhh… supposed to explain to you that Martin doesn’t want any contact with you.’
‘Well, I have a question I want to ask him about one of his books,’ Sarah-Jane lied, ‘and I’d like him to answer it for me.’
Del sighed. ‘Hold on Drezy, I’ll see if he’ll speak to you.’
The line went dead and Sarah-Jane waited.
When it clicked into life again, she’d already said, ‘Look Martin, I want to talk to you about Black Rock,’ before the person on the other end cut in.
‘It’s me, Janie,’ Janie Sanderson said. ‘Martin’s gone to lunch with Mike Sharland. Something to do with a telly deal for Gray Eliot’s Replicant book.’
‘Shit,’ Sarah-Jane said.
‘What’s up? You weren’t pining, surely?’
‘No.’
‘He’ll be disappointed if he finds out. He’s convinced you’re a shadow of your former self since he left you,’ Janie said.
‘Sounds like him all over, that does. Since he left me?
‘He wants you back y’know. He’s stricken.’
‘He can stay stricken.’
‘I think it did him some good. Not that I’m advertising him or anything. I certainly wouldn’t want to live with him.’
‘You’re slurring my character!’ Sarah-Jane said. ‘Everyone’s entitled to one mistake.’
‘Yeah, but I wouldn’t like to see you making it again. What did you want to talk to him about, anyway? Something about a rock, wasn’t it? It must have been urgent for you to have phoned him’
‘Black Rock,’ Sarah-Jane said. ‘I found this twenty-four page sample of a book called Black Rock in my flat after Martin left. It’s a haunted house story, apparently and I… well, I just wanted to ask if he wanted it back.’
‘Uh-huh,’ Janie said, ‘I’ll give him the message. Okey-dokey?’
‘Fine.’ Sarah-Jane said, quickly weighing up the odds. If she told Janie she would phone Martin back, the Ace bush telegraph would be afire within seconds. She and Martin had apparently become the literary world’s equivalent of Charles and Di.
Sod it! she thought. ‘Look, Janie, I’ll ring him back this afternoon,’ she said.
‘Ohhh-kay,’ Janie said, presumably already searching under her desk for her tabla drums or whatever they used to spread the word.
‘Speak to you soon,’ Sarah-Jane said, and rang off.
And that was yesterday. Sarah-Jane had not called Martin back as she had promised, because for one thing she thought she might inadvertently be sending him signals which he would undoubtedly interpret to read ‘she wants me back’, and for another, the private dick in her had decided to take action.
There was a very easy way of finding out if ‘Peter Perfect’ was Martin or someone else. Last night she had actually dreamed of Black Rock - as a windblown, godforsaken place, shining like a beacon in the eye of a storm. And this morning she had woken, knowing she was going to travel miles out of her way in order to visit the spot where Black Rock was set.
You’re obsessed, the Girl Guide voice of her conscience informed her.
There’s nothing wrong with a little obsession, now and again, Sarah-Jane thought back. Just look at … just look at … and was unable to bring to mind any great historical figure who hadn’t paid the price of their obsession. There had to be some, but she couldn’t quite bring them to mind.
In fact, if she was truthful with herself, she was having trouble bringing anything to mind since she’d found the manuscript. Except the manuscript itself, of course. She was suckered, just as the writer had intended. She really did want to know what happened to Snowy. Wild goose chase or not, she had planned her whole day so that she could get some work done and still have time to drive over to Tintagel and check out the location.
She’d last been to see the ruins of King Arthur’s Castle when she was a little girl, and she certainly didn’t recall seeing any spooky houses nearby. The rock - Barras Nose it was called in the manuscript - might be there, but there would be no house upon it. It was all National Trust land there anyway.
So I’m going to be disappointed. So what? I can stand in the Castle and look at the empty piece of rock where Martin set his haunted house and wonder how he suddenly became so inspired.
Sarah-Jane turned over page twenty-four’s cliff hanger (where Snowy was about to be violated by an extremely nasty apparition), tidied up the thin stack of pages and fed them back into their envelope.
But you’d like it better if Black Rock really turned out to be standing there on top of Barras Nose, wouldn’t you? her Girl Guide voice chipped in. You’d like to walk up that shingle drive with that house crouching before you and lay your fingers on that solid gold door knob, wouldn’t you? You’d like to meet Mr Winter, too. Very much.
‘And I wouldn’t be frightened, either,’ she muttered.
Just like Snowdrop.
‘Because there are no such things as ghosts,’ she said, starting the car.
As she drove out of the car park, Sarah-Jane’s stomach filled with butterflies.
3 - Martin’s Confession
Martin Louis Dinsey, renowned and respected editor of science fiction, fantasy and a couple of hack horror writers that he preferred not to talk about, threw the office door open, yelled, ‘Hiya gorgeous!’ at Janie Sanderson, flung himself down in his chair and began to pull off his tie.
From where Janie sat, it looked as if the lunch had been a good one. She scowled at him, touching her two loose front teeth with her tongue. Drunks were not her favourite animals today.
Martin smelled like a distillery. Which was a change from the reek of Tennent’s Extra she was used to at home, but still not good. It was still booze.
For the last hour, Janie had been trying to write a cover blurb for a romance and it wasn’t going well. An epic saga of a noble nineteenth century family’s fall from riches to the gutter, she’d written, and of the youngest daughter’s climb back into society. Kitty’s path from kitchen maid to lady of the night, to companion of the Prince Consort, is a marathon struggle against the tide of the times. Betrayal, jealousy, lust and here Janie had run out of steam: and broken dreams… bugger bugger shit bum bollocks, I’m crap at this. Get the author to send in a draft.
She considered reading it out to Martin and asking him what he thought, then changed her mind. He would say it was a piece of shit, just like he always did.
; Martin swung round in his chair. Janie could feel his eyes boring into the back of her head. She turned to face him and realized there was a certain truth in the expression ‘tanked-up’. Her colleague looked like a hollow man, almost filled with liquid. You could all but see the booze slopping about behind his eyes. His face was swimming - there was no better way of describing it.
Janie’s husband, her own personal drunkard, and presently her number one worry, never looked like this, no matter how much he drank. And he drank a lot.
‘Busy?’ Martin asked.
Janie nodded. The action made her lip hurt and she mentally cursed her husband and thought, No more, Billy-]oe.
‘Yeah,’ she said wondering if Martin had noticed anything about her - like her fat lip or the slight bruise on her right cheekbone. ‘You?’
‘Gotta cut twenty per cent outta this turkey Davy Rosenburg just delivered,’ Martin said, pointing at the pile of pages on his desk. ‘Horror crap. S’called Lucy’s Birthday. Nearly half a million words. Dunno why anyone buys his stuff. S’crap an’ full of padding. Any calls, darling?’
Janie, who was most certainly not his darling, looked at her pad. There were three calls. The first was from Davy Rosenburg threatening violent retribution if Martin didn’t phone him immediately. The second was from an agent setting up an auction for a first novel from an sf writer who was ‘going to be bigger than William Gibson’. And there was the one for which Martin had been waiting for over two months. From Drezy.
When she told him that Rosenburg had threatened to kill him, Martin shrugged and grinned and said, ‘He’s a pussycat’. But he sobered up inside two seconds when he heard that Sarah-Jane had phoned.