Jake Arnott - The House of Rumour

‘I don’t, um. I don’t understand.’

She lets go of his hair and slaps him across the face, sending him sprawling onto the floor.

‘Concentrate!’

She pulls on the leash and he is up on his knees once more.

‘You have to concentrate. This is a thought experiment.’

‘Mistress?’

‘Until you look at it,’ she goes on, adjusting the straps on her satin cache-sex, ‘it really does exist in two different states at once. It’s Schrödinger’s pussy. Now close your eyes and see what’s real.’

Eric Judd ran an antiquarian bookshop in Coptic Street. He had worked for Trevelyan in the Service as a senior art-worker in Technical Operations, and was an expert in handwriting and typography. Judd had been recruited in 1966, from Wormwood Scrubs, when he still had six months of an eighteen-month sentence to serve. For forgery. He had quite the genius for it.

He had worked in Trevelyan’s section, creating fake political pamphlets that could be used to discredit left-wing groups, forging letters from Eastern Bloc organisations to militant trade unionists and other documents essential for state security. When Trevelyan was posted to Ulster in the 1970s, Judd went with him.

Together they disseminated black propaganda, mostly aimed at undermining Republicans. One of their more obscure operations had been in disseminating disinformation that the IRA and other paramilitary groups had become involved in witchcraft and demonology. They circulated counterfeit literature on the occult throughout the province; black magic ritual sites were fabricated in derelict houses and on waste ground near army observation posts; animal blood and ceremonial objects were left on altars decorated with arcane symbols; and rumours were generated that some sectarian killings had actually been instances of human sacrifice. Judd became obsessed with the project, meticulously researching every detail of liturgy and sacrament, reading widely on the occult and the unseen. In the end, much to Trevelyan’s bemusement, he started to believe in it himself, which culminated in some sort of mental breakdown. He was given early retirement from the Service in 1979.

Eric Judd was now a book dealer specialising in the esoteric. As Trevelyan entered his shop, Judd was at the counter with white gloves on, carefully examining a battered incunable.

‘So.’ Trevelyan leaned over Judd’s shoulder. ‘What do we have here?’

‘Careful.’

‘A book of spells. Some ancient grimoire , is that it?’

‘Nothing of the sort. An early bound version of Otto von Friesing’s Gesta Friderici I Imperatoris .’

‘Oh.’

‘It’s extremely rare, so keep your grubby mitts to yourself.’ Judd began to wrap the book in cloth. ‘So, shall we get down to business?’

‘It’s good to see you too, Eric.’

‘The pleasure’s all mine, I’m sure.’

‘Now, don’t get tetchy.’

‘I’m not. Just want to get on with it. Besides, you were never one to stand on ceremony. I’d better close the shop.’

Judd put down his shutters and locked up, then they both went out the back to a small workshop. With a magnifier he showed Trevelyan how he had compared the suicide note with other samples of Prisoner Number Seven’s handwriting.

‘It’s considerably distorted, of course. That’s to be expected. The bastard’s old, ill, about to kill himself. But see? The shape, the integrity of the signature, it’s still there. Now, any old fucker can copy shape. Getting the dynamics right, that’s the difficult thing, the movement of a line, acceleration, deceleration. If you’re copying something, the chances are you’re going to lose speed and make a coastline.’

‘A coastline?’

‘Even with the smallest loss of flow, you can end up with tell-tale little crenellations. That’s a coastline and you know it’s a copy. Look, the hand may be unsteady here and there, and there’s a natural jerkiness to it. There are vibrations that tell us all kinds of things. But no coastline. I mean, we could enlarge it even further and do an analysis in terms of fractal dimension.’

‘Do you think we should?’

‘I think I’ve seen enough, Marius.’

‘Your eye’s still good enough, is that it?’

‘Well—’

‘All those years of kiting cheques. So, what does Eric’s clever little eye tell us?’

‘It’s a bloody good job, or…’ Judd shrugged.

‘It’s genuine?’

‘Could be. Or a very good copy of an earlier suicide note.’

‘I told you, he never left any notes on other attempts.’

‘Well, I’ve got a feeling that he did with this one.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. It’s just that—’ Judd sighed. ‘There’s another way of looking at whether or not this thing is true.’

‘How?’

‘The emotions.’

‘The emotions?’

‘Yeah. I can read the emotions from this.’

‘Oh for goodness’ sake.’

‘I knew you’d be like this.’

‘What, your extrasensory intuition or something?’

‘Do you want to know what I think or not?’

‘Go on, then.’

‘Because whether you like it or not, handwriting can tell you most of what you need to know about the writer’s personality. Their state of mind. And as I said, I got a feeling from this one.’

‘What kind of feeling?’

‘That whoever wrote this was sure that they were going to die.’

‘Eric—’

‘It’s all there in the hand. I can feel a vibration there, a shake to it that isn’t just illness and old age. A strange tremor of intent.’

‘Right.’

‘Look, you wanted my analysis.’

‘Yes, I did. Thank you.’

‘Still the unfeeling old bastard, aren’t you?’

‘Now, Eric, you’re not being very fair.’

‘Cold, that’s what you are, Marius. I might have been the one that went a bit doolally, but you—’ Judd stood up and opened a cabinet. ‘We’ll have a drink, that might warm you up.’

He produced a bottle of scotch and two glasses and poured them both a measure.

‘Cheerio.’ Judd toasted his old boss and nodded at the papers scattered on the work surface. ‘Curious business, the Hanged Man.’

‘What?’

‘Hess. That’s what we should call him. You know, the Hanged Man hangs upside down. An invert. Is it true that the KGB file of Hess is code-named Black Bertha?’

‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised. The Russians were always a bit petulant over Prisoner Number Seven.’

‘They thought the Service lured him over, didn’t they?’

‘Eric, there’s been so much nonsense over this affair. Negritude of the highest order.’

‘Is it true that astrologers were used to convince him to make the flight?’

‘Rumour and disinformation.’

‘So why did the Gestapo round up all those astrologers afterwards?’

‘Because they fell for all that mumbo-jumbo. All those Nazis, many of them fell for that New Age stuff, just like you.’

‘I’m not into New Age stuff.’

‘No?’

‘No. Nothing new about it. I’m into the Western Mysteries. Traditions that we’re all part of, whether we like it or not. I’ve tried explaining it to you, Marius, but you never listened.’

‘Well, try me now.’

‘Influence can be brought to bear on events. Especially in moments when probabilities are so finely balanced. It’s known as sympathetic magic.’

Trevelyan laughed.

‘So, we put a spell on him, is that it?’

‘That’s not what I’m saying. You know that all sorts of things were played with. And they have an effect: we saw that in Ulster.’

‘A psychological effect, yes.’

‘That’s all magic has to be, Marius. A psychological effect. If you believe in something, it has power over you.’