A Man of Shadows Read online

  A Man of Shadows

  A NYQUIST MYSTERY

  Jeff Noon

  Contents

  QUICKSILVER

  Part One

  A Station Called Morning

  Room 347

  Heatstroke

  Guide Book

  Chronostasis

  Scattering Dust

  Clocks and Shadows

  Entre Chien et Loup

  A Room on the Edge of Twilight

  Guide Book

  Limbo Case

  A Ladder to the Sky

  Here Lies a Stranger

  Negative Halo

  Hanging by a Thread

  Mister Tick-Tock is Dancing

  Preparations for Travel

  The Meteorologist

  Waiting on Sunset

  Crossing the Line

  Part Two

  Guide Book

  Nocturne in Yellow, Silver and Cobalt Blue

  Wake-up Call

  The Gates

  A Woman of Unusual Habit

  Private Affairs

  One Rule Only

  A Shadow Passes Over

  The Minute Hand

  Extra Special for Fugitives

  A Few Seconds of Life

  One by One, the Stars

  Blackout

  A Talk Amongst Friends

  Shadowplay

  Full Dark

  The Downshadow Train

  Crepusculia

  Accusations

  The White Curtain

  Part Three

  Guide Book

  Under a Violet Moon

  Broken Crystals

  Unknown and Cruel

  A Lesson from the Shadows

  Of Fog and Sorrow

  Epilogue

  Crawling at the Edges

  Another Sky

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  To Jack

  QUICKSILVER

  It was market time in Fahrenheit Court. Hundreds of people moved along the narrow aisles between the stalls, pressing against each other in their pursuit of bargains: silver cutlery, mirrors, glittering jewels, sequins, crystal jars, lanterns of every size and shape, decorative shards of coloured glass, flame burners, beads, baubles, shiny metal trinkets galore, with every object glittering under the powerful lamps that beamed down from the low ceiling. The temperature was rising steadily and a dense heat haze gathered in the roof space. Customers pushed and shoved. Flesh against flesh. Somebody fainted and was carried out: a common occurrence. A pair of buskers sang the latest street ballad “The Flames of Love”, looking to put even more of a sparkle in the day. Hawkers yelled and cried, vying with each other to sell their wares: parasols, sunglasses, linen jackets and wide-brimmed hats, deodorant, perfumes. The noise was deafening around the stalls of the clocksmiths and horologists, a constant buzz of ticking, chiming and whirring. A recent report had stated that more than twenty million timepieces currently existed in the city, with more being designed, built and sold every day. People were obsessed. Members of the city’s Guild of Chronologists handed out pamphlets detailing the latest timelines. A young man passed among the shoppers dressed as Apollo, the Sun God, and a mighty cry went up at the sight. For this was Dayzone. There was no other place like it, and the citizens were proud of being part of this overheated, overlit paradise.

  One such was Jenny James. Her friends called her Jay Jay. She was twenty-six years old, a reporter for the Beacon Fire, the city’s main newspaper. Married but without children as yet, as she worked hard at furthering her career.

  Amid the noise and confusion, the light and the heat, the last few moments of her life ticked away, unseen, unheard.

  Her husband Leon was by her side. They were shopping for a gift for her niece’s birthday and had stopped at a stall selling kaleidoscopes. Jay Jay picked one up and raised it to her eye. She gazed first at the demonstration lamps on the stall itself, and then upwards towards the ceiling with its brightly lit neon signs and follow spots. The broken beads and fragments of coloured glass inside the tube shuffled into new patterns as she spun the instrument. The effect was hypnotic and she felt a little weak from a sudden intoxicating burst of yellow, red and orange. She lowered her sights onto a new target, a little boy who was carrying a battery-powered lantern in the shape of a star. He was so proud of his toy. The lantern glowed with a silver and blue prismatic light which, seen through the lens of the kaleidoscope, appeared to be a wheel of knives, ever turning.

  Jay Jay felt strange. There was a pain in her side, and she could scarcely react before a similar pain struck her in the back.

  Had she been attacked?

  She couldn’t work out what was happening to her.

  The kaleidoscope fell to the ground. She tried to scream, but the sound caught in her throat. She could hardly breathe. Her stomach burned and when she put her hand to the pain her fingers came away smeared in blood. She stared at the redness, so bright under the myriad flickering lights and flames of the market hall. Her body jerked instinctively in order to escape her attacker. It was no good, there was no escape.

  She collapsed to the ground.

  Her husband stood there frozen for a few moments, still in shock at Jay Jay’s sudden violent movement. Then he bent down to her. He saw the blood, the cuts in her flesh, and could hardly believe it. She was shaking badly. Her clothing was stained crimson in many places. She cried out for him, for his help, and her hands reached for him. Her fingers tightened around his. He felt he was holding onto everything that was dear and precious. And then Jay Jay’s body convulsed one final time and lay still.

  His wife was dead, Leon knew that. He could sense it.

  The market hall was silent around him; nothing else existed. His entire world had closed down to this tiny space where the love of his life lay, unmoving. He touched her face gently. By some means he thought this would rouse her from sleep. The silence continued. And then a carriage clock chimed on a nearby stall, which set all the other timepieces in motion, and the noise of the market rushed into the vacuum.

  People gasped and moved away a step or two. An older woman cried out in alarm. The little boy with the lantern hugged his father’s legs in fright at the scene before him.

  The word went out, whispered at first.

  Quicksilver. Quicksilver.

  And then louder, passing from person to person in the crowd, spoken in fear.

  Quicksilver, Quicksilver, Quicksilver…

  The autopsy revealed five separate stab wounds in the victim’s flesh. And yet, out of the many people they interviewed, the police could not find a single person who had seen anything at all out of the ordinary. Leon James could only state that one moment his wife Jennifer was alive and well and laughing happily at his side, and the next she was lying on the ground, the blood flowing from her. No one had seen her being attacked. No one had seen her attacker. The weapon was never found: only its evidence, the wounds it had made. Here, in this city devoted to light and light only, where no shadows existed, no darkness, a murderer had struck in the middle of a crowded space and slipped away undetected. It didn’t seem possible. Yet it wasn’t the first such incident. Quicksilver, Quicksilver! The terrifying word travelled through the streets as the news spread. Another victim, another killing.

  The city’s clocks ticked on as ever.

  Part One

  Dayzone

  A Station Called Morning

  Nyquist stepped down from the train. His fellow travellers either stared at him or avoided him completely as they hurried along the platform, leaving him there, a man alone in a crumpled blue suit and a slanted hat. Smoke from the steam engine filled his lungs. The sky burned fiercely, magnified by the glass panels of the station’s roof. Close by, a team
of workers were sluicing the carriages down with hosepipes, creating a rainbow effect as the water met the streams of light from above. The air sparkled and danced. Nyquist was feeling the heat already as he made his way to the ticket barrier. It had been a while since daylight had touched him. It was difficult to tell how long precisely, difficult to count the days and the nights because of the way he lived, the nature of the jobs he took on, the way that the city worked. It was easy to get confused.

  A soft mechanical voice intoned from a nearby speaker column: “On your arrival in Dayzone please ensure that all necessary precautions are taken. We hope you…” Nyquist had heard it all too many times. He strode on, pausing only to look up at the large clock in the central dome of the concourse. It was twenty-five to nine. His own wristwatch read twenty-two minutes past eight. Thirteen minutes slow. He shivered a little before adjusting his watch. He felt better just doing this simple act. Fixed. In place.

  Many people around him were doing exactly the same thing, changing their watches to the station’s time: it looked like a ritual, so many fingers turning so many winders on so many dials, simultaneously.

  Nyquist got himself cleaned up in the gentlemen’s washroom. Braving the mirror, he pressed at the bruise on his face, causing the skin to move around the cut, a livid purple. He thought about covering it up with a sticking plaster but decided against it. The mark was all he had to show for the case: the only payment received. He walked back out onto the concourse and bought a three-shot coffee from a kiosk, most of which he had drunk by the time he got to the car park behind the station. It took him a while to remember where he had left his vehicle. A ticket for overdue stay was stuck under the windscreen wiper. He tore it loose and threw it on the backseat along with his jacket and his hat. The car was baking hot and even with the engine going and the fan sending out cool air, there was little relief. It was an old model in need of repair, or better still replacement. Nyquist felt the ache in his ribs where the punches had landed.

  Day and night, it was getting worse.

  The stale air inside the car started to move around a little. He looked at the dashboard; the dial read sixteen minutes past one. Nyquist groaned, wondering where all the hours kept going to. He checked his own watch again and used it to change the dashboard clock. Seven minutes to nine. That was better. Everything synchronised. Time to get the day started. He had one more job on the cards, searching for a missing teenager. He had to hope this one came good. The family had told him that the girl had lately become terribly afraid of the dark. Well, there were a lot of them around, these sufferers, and Dayzone was the place for them.

  Nyquist drove out of the station’s car park.

  Room 347

  The sky dazzled, alive with heat and light and colour, painful to look upon directly. Nyquist steered the car slowly along the dirt road. The radio churned out the latest dayside tunes, all major chords and bright sweet harmonies and lyrics about how the light of Apollo will shine on our love one day, one lovely day, one lovely dreamless day.

  Ahead, the old hotel came into sight.

  Really, he should’ve called in at his office on the way over, but the thought of that lonely place was too much to bear: dead messages, unpaid bills, and a lazy ceiling fan with a bullet hole in one blade. Earning some money was more important. So he’d spent the last couple of hours making calls, seeking out his usual contacts and checking out the known hideouts, hoping for a lead on the girl. He’d kept his eyes turned away from any clocks he passed on the streets, trying to keep to his own personal timeline. And coming up with zero hits, nothing, not until he’d spotted a gang of youths hanging around the doorway of a sunlamp emporium. One of them, Ricardo, responded to the photograph but said that he couldn’t be sure: “Maybe yes, maybe no.” The boy’s eyes were hidden behind the purple lenses of a pair of swimming goggles, and his teeth shone a sparkling white against his vivid bronze skin. Money passed from hand to hand, information was exchanged. So Nyquist had driven further north towards Burn Out. Precinct Eleven. This was a shanty town situated on the far edge of the city, one of the hottest and brightest regions of Dayzone – and fear of the dark often led people to take refuge here.

  Nyquist parked the car. He stepped out and looked across toward the rundown hotel. The old sign had been covered up with a large white banner and a new name given to the place, a single word written in red paint: AMUSEMENTS. Nyquist adjusted his shades and settled his fedora onto his head. A patchwork of avenues and courtyards lay on either side of the hotel: all these sales offices, car showrooms, workshops, moneylenders, all victims of the last time crash, their premises long abandoned and taken over by poorer, more persistent and less fearful inhabitants. Many people had erected tents between the low buildings. Plumes of smoke rose into the glare of the low-lying sky to show the places where the new tribes of the sun resided. The street was covered in dust, a cloud of which had already collected over his car. Nyquist felt his lungs start to ache after taking even a few steps. Colours fizzled and popped in his sight, while his body prickled all over with tiny electrical charges. He was hot, sweaty and uncomfortable. His shirt was clinging to him like a second layer of skin.

  A gang of children were sitting on the steps of the former hotel playing a game, each of them attempting to do absolutely nothing at all for a longer time than any of the others. He threw them a coin. The kids watched it where it lay. The brass sparkled in the parched soil. The children’s mouths hung open, their eyes blinking beneath the shade of their peaked caps. Not one of them moved.

  Nyquist pushed through the revolving doorway. He was a big man, tough looking. There was a certain quality to his features, with so many raw edges; it gave the impression he wasn’t quite completed. It was scary. He had been through some troubles, that was for certain, and you would think he was more than capable of handling himself. Until you got up close that is, too close, and maybe then you saw something different in his eyes, a giving away, a loneliness. But first you had to get close. And that wasn’t easy.

  The heat barely stirred inside the old hotel. Some years ago he had been here on a previous case; back then, this main room had been the lounge bar of a halfway decent establishment, where middle-aged executives sat together around polished tables. All of that was gone now, the furniture ripped out, the central bar turned into a food and drink counter, the entire surrounding floor space taken over by fruit machines and pinball games, hundreds of each. Colours blazed around the room, every bright shade seeming to melt around Nyquist’s body as he moved along the main aisle. The arcade was crowded with players. There was a smeared quality to the air, a shimmering, a wetness. The noises made by the games sounded like so many hot glowing objects dropped into a pool of cold water. The silver balls zinged from post to post. Mechanical songs could be heard. Everything blurred together: the heat, the noise, the music, the machines and the kids working the levers and the light that pulsed between them, glistening, thick with moisture. Images of spaceships, ghosts, racing cars and tigers danced madly on the panels.

  There was a large mechanical calendar on the far wall, another fixture from the hotel’s glory days. The current year was 1959. This puzzled Nyquist; he’d had in mind that it was still 1958. He stared at the clock above the calendar. The time inside the building was exactly half past five. Now his head buzzed with irritation. He was suddenly hours out of step. There was no way to resist; his fingers automatically went to his wristwatch and he twirled the hands around the dial until they matched the arcade’s timescale.

  Reassured a little, he walked on, studying the clientele. The players were either locals, older kids from the families that had moved out this way, or else just middle-class boys and girls looking for a few hours of fun in a danger zone. A few had the look of longtime daylight fanatics: bleached hair, peeling skin, glazed eyes. Only their hands moved, fluttering like trapped birds on the flipper buttons or gripping the fruit machine levers in white-knuckled fever. Nyquist turned down another aisle, keeping his e
yes open for trouble. The town of Burn Out was notorious for its carefree attitude to illegal activities, and he had no doubt at all that this place had its fair share on offer. Yet there appeared to be just two security guards on patrol, well-built specimens not that much older than the players themselves. In his early thirties, Nyquist was just about the oldest person in the room.

  Ricardo had given him the name of this place, telling him to look out for a young man going by the name of Miles: greasy haired, tall and thin, distinguished by the burn marks on his face. Just such a figure was standing alone at a pinball game. Nyquist went up to him, trying to get his attention, but the player would not look away from the machine, his fingers working at the flippers continuously as they sent the silver balls into action, again and again. The bells and buzzers surrounded the machine in a halo of noise.

  Nyquist peered around for sight of the guards, and then he pulled one of Miles’s hands off a flipper button, followed by the other hand, and the young man let him do it easily, a mannequin being arranged into a new pose. Maybe there wasn’t a single good solid muscle left in his body. The game died. Miles blinked a few times. His fingers trembled, caught in nervous patterns. Nyquist told him what he was after, pressing a couple of notes into a damp palm. The player’s eyes caught a sparkle at the sight of the money, more fuel for more games, and he had Nyquist bend in close to hear a whispered message, a simple three-digit affair.

  “Are you sure?” Nyquist asked, displaying the girl’s photograph.

  Miles smiled and shrugged, and he went back to his beloved machine, his face covered in game glow.

  It was enough. The room number. Nyquist made his way over to the twin elevators at the rear of the arcade. One of the guards had spotted him by now, so he carried on past the elevator doors over to where a clutch of players were bunched round a bright pinball adventure. He bent down behind the machine, pulled the plug from the socket and then walked right on. The kids started badmouthing the establishment. One player banged his fist on the glass cover of the machine, over and over, and the others cheered him on. They tried to take over the next game along, and a fight broke out. Nyquist glanced back to see both of the guards moving in on the trouble. He took a flight of stairs, climbing up three floors to a long, silent corridor. He was exhausted, out of breath. The walls were clammy, patterned by green mould. An electrical supply box, fixed low on the wall, was patched with crocodile clips and wires. Sparks flickered from bad contacts. Further along, strands of a viscous white fluid dripped down from an air vent. Nyquist took out a linen handkerchief to wipe his brow. Tingles ran down his spine. He didn’t like the feel of this broken-down hotel. Most of the rooms were empty as he passed, the doors hanging open to reveal one interior after another. He felt he was viewing a series of abandoned theatre sets where the despairing scenes of executive life had once been played out. Nothing of that time remained, but for the furniture and fittings, covered over now by layers of dust. A number of the doors had actually been smashed open, the wooden frames gouged out where the locks had been torn away. Room 347 was halfway down the corridor, one of the few with its door still closed, still intact, a tray of uneaten food sitting on the carpet nearby. Voices could be heard from within, some kind of chanted refrain that stopped the moment Nyquist tried the door. It was locked. He banged a fist against the panelling.