The Best Book in the World (21 page)

The locksmith puts his toolbox down. Crosses his arms.

‘Oh really? But it was a bloke what lived here, you know? It said Titus Jensen on the door then. And it still does. Can you see?’

‘Yes sure, the thing is he works for Winchester Publishing. And now he has disappeared. I’ve got to check whether there are any clues inside here.’

‘Yeah but… if I let you in here, you know, it’d be like a break-in. Can’t do that. Very risky, that sort of thing, you know. That’s not what we locksmiths get paid to do, you see. Crime and punishment, you know. Then you need a risk surcharge.’

Astra gets her wallet out of her bag and pulls out a
thousand-kronor
note.

‘Would this work?’

The locksmith grabs the banknote and then produces the largest keyring that Astra has ever seen. He rattles the keys in a
demonstratively
loud manner before finding the right one. Jangle and click. One, two, three and the door is open.

Astra goes through the flat with the guy shadowing her, his muscular arms crossed.

‘For goodness’ sake, leave me alone!’ Astra exclaims, irritated.

He slouches out and stands in the stairwell. Mutters something grumpy about how he perhaps ought to phone his trade union. You know.

The flat looks like your average bachelor pad. Not exactly chaos, but nothing pedantic either. She looks inside the fridge. It doesn’t look as if Titus had planned a long absence. There are opened cartons of milk and some leftovers rather carelessly packed. The little airing window in the kitchen is open. Astra gets the feeling the Titus has left the place all of a sudden.

She goes up to the computer in the living room and blow-starts it, keeping an eye on the door while waiting for the pop-up. She hopes the enzyme program works as promised.

A good job she is one of those people who thinks of everything.

When Titus wakes up he is back in the dark. He isn’t tied up any longer. The last thing he remembers is Lenny putting a rag over his face and becoming incredibly tired. Now he is lying on a mattress, at least that’s what it feels like. With his hands he feels outside the mattress. A cold stone floor. He is back in the earth cellar.

He crawls along the floor to what he intuitively knows is the way out. He comes to a solid door and searches with his fingers for a doorknob which isn’t there. But a keyhole? Is there a keyhole? He touches a bit of metal which feels rough and rusty. He twists it aside. Light! Yes, the bit of metal hung over the keyhole. He bends down and puts his eye against the hole.

Out there it is daytime. He can see a lawn with a large oak tree in front of a little cottage painted red. A little gravel path in front
of the cottage. A porch and a window. No sign of life.

He bangs on the door, which is so thick that his bangs make no impression. It feels like banging on a tree trunk out in the forest. Who is going to hear him?

He puts his mouth up against the keyhole and shouts:

‘Hello! Help! Is anyone there?’

He looks out again. A squirrel scuttles across the yard and up into the oak.

Everything is still.

Titus continues to bang on the door for quite a while. In the end he realises nobody can hear him. The cottage doesn’t even seem to have any neighbours. Are they going to let him die here?

Desperate and snuffling, he crawls back to the mattress.

He huddles up and puts his arms between his thighs and stomach and his forehead against his knees. All his energy and
determination
is lost. He cries and sobs.

Astra is becoming increasingly worried. After a couple of days with no sign of life from Titus, she has a very uncomfortable feeling about it. The book fair is rapidly approaching and she very much wants Titus there when
The Best Book in the World
is going to be marketed to the international agents and Sweden’s booksellers. Since Lenny is the last person she knows talked to Titus before he disappeared, she looks for him too. But he has vanished as well, and Eddie doesn’t answer the phone either. What’s happening with everybody? Can’t they answer the phone?

Eddie is sitting in the little kitchen in the cottage and staring at a half-f can of beer. An old cobbler’s lamp with a broken shade hangs above the kitchen table. The naked light bulb is transparent and the red glowing thread matches the whites of Eddie’s eyes, which are now pink. He has some beard stubble and the usually so shiny hair is un-brushed and matted. He inhales deeply on his cigarette. What has he done to deserve this? Hasn’t he always been so nice to people?

In front of him on the table are three mobile phones. When one
stops ringing, another starts. And all the time it is Astra who is calling: first to Titus, then Lenny and then Eddie. Over and over again. It never stops. But he is unable to talk to her or even listen to her messages. Because what would he say? That she can’t be his publisher until Titus admits his theft? That all his love has come to an end?

Lenny comes into the kitchen.

‘He’s woken up now. He’s banging on the door.’

‘Mmmm.’

Eddie looks at Lenny with tired eyes. Is Lenny really on his side? Or does he just feel forced to help him? Does he even understand what Titus is guilty of? It really is a bit steep to have the whole world against you. There is just no gratitude!

‘Can I phone Malin?’ Lenny asks. ‘She’ll be wondering where I’ve got to.’

‘No, not now. Not one call is going to be made from here. They are hunting us. She is trying to find us. You can do it later. When he has admitted his guilt.’

‘But please. It won’t take a second.’

‘NO!’

Ought she to ring the police and report him missing? How credible is it to issue a description of a middle-aged single man who has only been gone a couple of days?

Perhaps she ought at least to discuss it with Evita? Evita is always interested to know everything about Titus. You’d almost think that he makes her feel a bit horny. Mind you, there’d be a hell of a fuss about jeopardising the success of the book fair and that she isn’t focusing on the right issues. No, she can’t talk to Evita, not yet.

But can it really be a coincidence that all three have disappeared? Could Titus have been right after all with his nutty ideas about Eddie and Lenny? Have those two cooked up some mischief?

She must get hold of them.

Who might know something?

Hang on a moment, isn’t Lenny with that pretty girl who works at the Moderna Museet café? What’s her name? Lena or Linda? Something like that. Lina… Malin…? Yep, Malin, that’s it! Definitely.

Astra calls directory enquiries and asks to be connected to the restaurant at Moderna Museet. There is a murmur from the guests in the background when they answer.

‘Hello, could I speak to Malin please?’

‘One moment.’

Astra takes a deep breath. Why the hell hadn’t she thought of Malin earlier?

‘Hello, Malin here!’

‘Hello, Malin. My name is Astra and I’m a friend of Eddie X and I know Lenny too a bit.’

‘Yeah, hi.’

‘I need to talk to them about something. Have you any idea where they could be?’

‘Yeah, I think they were going to the country to rehearse something.’

‘Ah, so that’s it! The country… whereabouts?’

‘Well, I haven’t a clue where it is. It’s sort of an abandoned cottage deep in the forest in Sörmland. It’s sort of always empty. In the middle of fucking nowhere. Like for real. I haven’t the faintest where the place is!’

Astra tries to press her a bit more about where this abandoned cottage might be, or if she knows anything more about what they were going to do there, if Malin had heard that the author Titus Jensen was going to go with them. No, she hadn’t. She knows nothing about anything. Lenny had simply said they were going to take it easy and rehearse a few days. Then they went off. That’s all she knows.

Titus wakes out of his torpor when something that sounds like an old radio starts crackling.

‘Hello, are you awake Titus?’

It’s Eddie’s voice, on a speaker. Perhaps Eddie is sitting inside
that cottage and talking to him from there? With a walkie-talkie or some such apparatus? Maybe its one of those baby monitors he’s seen on the TV ads.

‘Have you thought about my offer?’

Titus isn’t sure whether there is a microphone in the earth cellar. Can Eddie hear him if he swears? He’ll try speaking in a low voice:

‘What? Which offer?’

‘My offer to you. If you admit that it’s my book, then you’ll be free. You must sign the contract. I’m the one who wrote the book and you know that. You have stolen it. You have nicked every single idea from inside my head, and pretended to Astra and Winchester Publishing that you are the one who has written it. That’s what you must sign. Then you’ll be released.’

‘No fucking way!’ Titus shouts for all he is worth. ‘It’s my book. I have written every single word in it! I have put my soul into it. You don’t know what you are talking about!’

‘Oh yes I most certainly do!’ Eddie yells back through the speaker. ‘I know very well what I myself have thought up! They are my ideas, straight off. I said all of that already during that evening at the festival. But you were so drunk you’ve chosen to forget!’

‘You didn’t at all! You’re lying!’

For a moment, silence reigns. Titus can hear Eddie breathing into the microphone. He seems upset.

‘Titus?’

‘Yes, what do you want?’

‘Do you confess?’

‘No, I’ve told you! Never!’

Silence again. A moment’s heavy breathing.

‘Then I’ll have to turn the lights on.’

‘What?’

‘If you don’t confess, then I’ll turn the lights on!’

‘Yeah, right.’

Is he joking? Is this candid camera? Will they come any moment and open the door and throw confetti and shout that it’s all over and laugh at him for falling for everything? No, hardly.

The only alternative is that Eddie is in the midst of a severe psychosis. Titus has never come across such extreme obsessive-compulsive behaviour in anybody else before. It is decidedly unpleasant.

‘Do you confess? Will you sign it?’

‘No. You can let me out anyway. Let’s forget all this. Perhaps you aren’t feeling very well, Eddie?’

‘Last chance: sign or I’ll turn the lights on.’

What a bizarre threat, thinks Titus. He would much rather be imprisoned in a lit-up earth cellar than in one that is pitch dark.

‘Eddie, I’d rather die than give up the copyright to that book!’

Eddie breathes into the microphone for quite a while. Then he says:

‘Okay. I’m turning the lights on.’

Quite a few seconds pass. Still dark. Then there is a buzzing sound in an electric cable. A fluorescent lamp up on the ceiling starts to crackle and blink. Titus puts his hand over his eyes, not having seen any light for a couple of days. When his eyes have acclimatised he looks around him.

He sees a portable loo with a large container in green plastic in one corner. In the other there is a little camping table and a folding chair. The walls have shelves fixed all around the earth cellar. From floor to ceiling.

But there aren’t any jam jars or sacks of potatoes on the shelves.

They are full of bottles and cartons.

Titus realises what he is looking at.

The shelves are packed with wine, spirits and beer. Several cartons of cigarettes. Lots of multi-packs of tobacco. Smoked sausage, crisps and cheese puffs.

The earth cellar is all kitted out for a party.

‘
H
ello dear, everything under control?’

Evita is radiantly happy and drums with her long nails on Astra’s doorpost when she looks into her room. Her hair is even more jet black than ever. She pouts her red lips at the little mirror just inside the door and gives herself an appreciative wink. There is always plenty of room for humour and self-mockery in Evita’s life. Presumably that is why people feel so comfortable in her presence.

Astra twirls around on her office chair. She looks rather concerned.

‘What? Oh, hi Evita. Under control… Yes, yeah. I suppose it is,’ says Astra in a more tired voice than she usually has.

Evita goes in and sits on the chair opposite Astra’s desk. She crosses her legs and supports one arm on the back-rest. She is one of those women who always look just as relaxed regardless of whether she is sitting in an armchair or hanging from a trapeze. Nothing can dent her self-confidence.

‘The book fair will be starting soon. It is going to be really great.’

‘Yes, well…’

‘I’ve just been to Micha’s and got my hair done. Did you know that it’s his niece who does the shampooing? She can’t be very old. Fourteen at the most. It can hardly be okay to work full-time when you’re so young.’

‘You look really lovely. Have you had some colour added? There’s a nice glow.’

Evita stretches her head back and gently shakes her hair over her neck.

‘Thanks. I’ve just done the usual. I don’t really know what’s in those dyes but I don’t suppose they are particularly organic,’ Evita
laughs and goes on. ‘Did you get Titus’ manuscript? Did he get it finished on time? He must be very pleased with himself now, don’t you think?’

Astra avoids looking Evita in the eye when she formulates her vague answer.

‘I’ve got it. It looks really good. I’ve sent some selected chapters to be translated too. The printers at the book fair will arrange everything. All the sales materials will be waiting when we get down there on Thursday morning. So, yes, it should all be ready…’

Evita is a tough lady. But she hasn’t reached her position because she is thick skinned. On the contrary, she is extremely receptive and considerate. She immediately cottons on that something isn’t quite right and fastens her green eyes on Astra.

‘But…? I can feel that there is a big “but” here…’

Astra takes a deep breath. She looks at Evita. Take the bull by the horns, she thinks. Sink or swim.

‘Evita, I don’t know where Titus is. He’s disappeared.’

‘Disappeared?’

‘I don’t know where he is…’

‘What do you mean? A grown-up man can’t just go up in smoke. Have you tried the Association Bar? Perhaps he’s “had a relapse” now that he’s finished the book,’ says Evita, adding quotation marks with her fingers as she borrows the alcoholics’ own terminology.

‘No, it isn’t like that. Titus has disappeared. For real…’

Astra’s eyes shine all shiny when her tear ducts can’t withstand the pressure any longer. But they never overflow.

‘Astra, my friend. Tell me what’s happened. I’ll help you of course.’

Astra takes a deep breath and recapitulates the events and
non-events
of the last few days. She tells how Titus has all the time had an inexplicable worry that Eddie was going to steal his book idea. That she had come to the conclusion that it must be that Titus hasn’t told her everything about how he got the idea for the book because every time Eddie’s name is mentioned then Titus adopts an extremely defensive position. There is something fishy about Eddie and
The Best Book in the World,
that’s all there is to
it. Titus has not been completely candid. She also tells how Titus has accused Tourette’s-Lenny of a break-in at his flat, instigated by Eddie, and how all three of them have disappeared. None of them answers the phone. Nobody has heard from them for days. Perhaps they are in an abandoned cottage somewhere, but nobody knows where it is situated.

When Astra tells her of the mess, Evita sits there quietly. She looks pensive and decisive at the same time. Astra observes her to try to ascertain what her reaction is going to be. Angry? Resigned? Will she scrap the project now? Say ‘What was it I said?’ about placing so much responsibility on an old alcoholic like Titus?

But setbacks have never stopped Evita Winchester before. They rather serve as spurs which make life worth living. A determined smile spreads across the Amazon’s face.

‘Now it’s war! This is what we shall do. I’ll put the legal department on it straight away. We’ll protect the title all over the world. The day after tomorrow when the book fair opens we’ll issue a press release in which we present the book, synopsis and the entire campaign for marketing it in Scandinavia. We’ll do a worldwide press release; the press office will fix that. There will certainly be some notices and small articles here and there. That will help to protect us in future copyright actions. We were first, there’s never going to be any doubt about that. The others haven’t got a chance. I’ll stamp Babelfish back into the same earthen floor that they have crept up out of.’

‘Babelfish?’ says Astra, surprised.

‘Yeah, it’s obvious there must be another publishing house behind this. I ought to have thought of it before. And they will be running Eddie X as a poster name.’

‘Poster name…?’

‘Yes. He’s the author. The front man, so to speak. They will have got a whole team of editors to write the actual manuscript, I guess. Eddie X couldn’t put together a book like this, but he’ll look heavenly on the cover, I’m sure that’s what they’re thinking.’

‘But do you really believe…?’

‘That’s how it is. No doubt. Now it’s war. And we’re going to
win,’ says Evita and breaks out into a big smile. ‘There’s just one thing you must do, Astra. You must find Titus. You must find out where that abandoned cottage is and go and fetch him. Titus Jensen – he is going to the book fair, dead or alive. Sure, there isn’t much time. But you’ll manage it. You know I rely on you one hundred per cent.’

Evita abruptly gets up from her chair and gives Astra a hug where she is sitting. She looks if anything even happier than when she turned up at the door a little while ago.

‘God, what a fun job we have! Now to work! See you in Gothenburg!’

Astra is relieved by Evita’s reaction. She ought to have told Evita several days earlier. It was incredibly stupid of her to wait so long, but what’s done is done. Now she must look ahead. There was still time to fix this. She feels her energy return. Evita is the best boss one could imagine. Oh, how lovely it feels finally to have told her.

She gets up and paces back and forth in the room, strokes her hair with both hands and massages her scalp. Think, think!

The cottage, the cottage, the cottage. She must find out where that cottage is.

She decides to seek out Malin again. It was admittedly almost impossible to get any sense out of her last time, but she can’t think of anything else at the moment.

She takes the lift down to the garage where she has her large SUV parked. The parking space is a company perk and more often than not the car remains unused for weeks on end. Astra prefers the underground or a taxi when she only has to transport herself short distances in the city, then she can avoid the wretched parking situation in Stockholm. But today she is going to travel a bit further. She really hopes so, anyway.

She drives the short stretch across the Old Town, past Nationalmuseum and across the bridge to the Skeppsholmen Island and Moderna Museet. There aren’t many visitors today so it is easy enough to find a space below the museum.

In the restaurant there are just a few mothers with small children and the odd pensioner sitting beside the panorama windows, enjoying one of Stockholm’s most beautiful views. Calm has once again settled in Stockholm. The cries from the attractions at the Gröna Lund amusement park have died away and the queues to the children’s Junibacken have disappeared. Across the water at the Vasa Musuem some guys in colourful protective clothing are rigging up scaffolding. A couple of green-clad museum pedants are standing behind Nordiska Museet, busily raking even though only a few leaves have fallen so far. It is autumn, so one uses the rakes.

Malin is sitting with nothing to do in her black-and-white waitress-style uniform behind a cash register. Her long hair is deliberately matted and she has put it up into a loose bun round a fork. Bored, she barely manages to hide a yawn with her hand when Astra approaches her.

‘Oops, excuse me.’

‘Hello, do you recognise me?’

‘Yes, you’re Astra, aren’t you?’

‘Exactly, we’ve met a few times in the crush. And we talked on the phone the other day…’

‘Yeah…’

Astra looks around to be sure nobody can hear her. She lowers her voice and whispers.

‘Malin, I’ve been thinking about that cottage. I think that Eddie and Lenny have gone there together with Titus Jensen. And I must get hold of Titus. So now I must find out where the cottage is situated. Are you absolutely certain you don’t know where it is?’

‘Well, I
know
where it is,’ says Malin gesticulating with her hands as if to defend herself.

Astra notices the tattoos on Malin’s forearms. Strange entwining letters. Quite attractive, but Astra can’t recognise the alphabet. She thinks Malin is a bit weird.

‘What? You know where the cottage is? Why didn’t you say so?’

‘Listen. I don’t know
where
it is. But I know what it
looks like
there, I mean. I don’t know how to get there. I’ve been there for
parties several times but I’ve always been in the back seat when we’ve driven there.’

‘Would you be able to find it if I drove?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. Perhaps, perhaps not.’

Astra feels herself becoming irritated by Malin, but it would be daft to get angry at this juncture. Now she must play her cards right. Malin can’t know how serious the situation is. Astra decides instead to get Malin to cooperate by quickly confiding to her selected portions of the story.

Malin listens, all ears, and nods, as Astra tells how Lenny and Eddie might have some dirty business in the offing. At any rate Eddie, she thinks, and perhaps he has lured Lenny into trouble too.

‘I knew it!’ says Malin. ‘Lenny hasn’t been himself at all this summer. He has ground his teeth every single time we have slept together, and several times he’s said that Eddie is so fucking weird and a pain. What on earth, I thought. Eddie isn’t weird in the slightest, is he? He is always the nicest guy in the world. But Lenny says that he is different sometimes.’

‘Different in what way?’ Astra wonders.

‘Yeah, well, he’s become sort of jealous. He doesn’t think that anybody likes him any more, that everybody thinks his poems are ridiculous, that when he says something funny then they laugh at him instead of with him, if you get what I mean. And that he’s started drinking rather a lot. All the time.’

Malin goes on to say that Lenny doesn’t want to talk about Eddie any longer. The week before they went off to the cottage, he didn’t say much at all. As soon as she tried to ask him what was wrong, he just wanted to change the subject, became irritated and swore even more than usual. It was as if his tics got worse as soon as she entered the room.

Now she has tried to phone him loads of times the last few days, but he doesn’t answer. And nor does Eddie X.

Astra and Malin talk for a while. They are agreed that
everything
is not as it should be and that they must do somthing. Now. The question is – what? Perhaps they can try to find the cottage by
just driving around. It ought to be somewhere in Sörmland, because Malin is pretty certain they passed Södertälje when they drove there. And then they sort of went off to the right. What would that be? West? There was a lake somewhere near. Perhaps Malin could find the way if they just set off in that direction. But probably not. No, it wouldn’t work.

‘But Astra!’ Malin suddenly exclaims.

‘Yes…?’

‘We’ll talk to Lenny’s dad. I know where he hangs out. We’ll go there!’

‘Why?’ Astra wonders.

‘Yeah, well listen. It’s Lenny’s dad who owns the cottage. He is there in the summer.’

‘What? Does somebody own it? You said it was an abandoned cottage.’

‘Well nobody lives there… it’s, like, an abandoned cottage,’ Malin says defensively.

‘It might not be permanently inhabited, but that doesn’t make it an abandoned cottage! An abandoned cottage is a house that has been forgotten, that just stands there. It isn’t an abandoned cottage if somebody owns it and goes there in the summer. It isn’t abandoned just because it’s in the middle of nowhere. Oh, why didn’t you say so from the start? Then I would have been able to find it immediately!’

‘Well, I’m very fucking sorry then,’ says Malin and rolls her eyes. ‘Hello, how should I know…’

‘But isn’t Lenny’s dad dead?’ Astra breaks in when her brain has worked out what Malin has actually told her. ‘Eddie said he was dead.’

‘No, he isn’t dead! Did Eddie say that? He and Lenny don’t keep in touch any longer. He is alive and well from what I’ve heard, but I’ve never met him. Lenny knows where his dad hides the key to the cottage, above the outdoor lamp in the porch. It’s the same place as when he was little. So he has, like, done a break-in at his dad’s house. But then we have always cleaned up after us. His dad has no idea we’ve been there. It has always been at weird times,
like in the middle of the week or a weekend when it’s been pissing with rain all the time, when no normal person would ever think of going off to the country, like. Shall we go and find the old guy? I know where he is.’

Astra puts her hand on Malin’s.

‘Come along, let’s go. Can you take time off?’

‘Of course,’ says Malin gravely. ‘It is up to us now.’