Tom Harper - The Book of Secrets

‘If anyone comes, stop them,’ he told a by-now utterly bewildered Emily.

He approached the door. Nightmarish visions taunted his imagination. The key slotted into the lock and turned with a whisper. As the door creaked open he felt a shiver, as if a ghost had just passed through him.

He knew at once it must be the right room. The light from the landing that spilled through the door illuminated a scene of utter destruction. The whole place had been torn apart. Floorboards prised off the joists, wainscoting pulled away from the walls, the bed dismantled and the mattress sliced open. His stomach turned over when he saw that. But there was no trace of blood, and the cuts looked too straight and efficient to have been aimed at someone lying on it.

He flicked the light switch but nothing happened. When he looked up, all he saw was a bundle of wires spilling out of the ceiling where the lamp had been unscrewed and taken away.

‘What happened here?’

Nick almost jumped out of his skin. Emily had come up behind him and was peering over his shoulder at the vandalised room. She looked frightened.

‘You were supposed to be keeping a lookout.’

‘You’re supposed to tell me what’s going on.’

‘When Gillian called me, the day she went missing, she left her webcam on.’

He stepped carefully across the room, balancing on the joists like railway sleepers. The bathroom door stood open, cracked from the impact of heavy blows, while the frame around the latch hung loose in splinters. A glance inside confirmed his suspicions.

‘This is where she was. I remember the brown tiles on the walls. The curtain.’ The side panel of the bath had been ripped off, but the Christmas-tree shower curtain still hung from the ceiling. He pulled it back. A small ledge was set in the tiled wall, about shoulder high, with a window behind overlooking a snowy roof.

‘That must have been where she put the laptop.’

He looked around, trying to silence the scream that was echoing in his memory. The linoleum floor had been rolled back to the skirting board, the mirror unscrewed and leaned against the towel rail. A half-used toilet roll had been placed on top of the radiator, still clipped into the plastic holder that had been removed from the wall. Almost as if someone might need a pit stop amid all the destruction.

‘This isn’t random. They were looking for something.’ Emily surveyed the wreckage. ‘They probably found it. If it was here.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Well there’s no point waiting for them to come back and find us instead.’ Emily headed for the door. ‘Seriously, Nick. Everything’s gone.’

But Nick didn’t hear her. He was staring at the radiator, remembering.

Valentine’s Day. Waking up, Gillian snuggled against him, the best Valentine’s morning he’d ever had. He’d brought her waffles and Bloody Marys in bed, nervous in case she thought it was too cheesy. He suspected she’d have no time for Valentine’s Day; wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d suggested visiting a war memorial or a soup kitchen instead. But she’d smiled and rubbed herself against him like a kitten, though when he tried to kiss her she pulled away, spilling tomato juice on the bedclothes.

‘First you have to find my present to you,’ she told him, with a gleam in her eye that said he’d have his work cut out.

He’d turned the apartment upside down. Even Bret had been shocked by the mess. Gillian watched, goading him with hints that seemed completely arbitrary. The waffles went cold. Several times he begged her to tell him, but she just laughed and said love would find a way. Eventually he got so mad he pulled on his clothes and stormed out to the park.

She never told him.

Bret found it four days later. He was sitting on the toilet reading a dirty magazine when he came to the end of the toilet tissue. He came blundering out of the bathroom with his pants around his ankles, a tiny envelope in one hand and a cardboard tube in the other.

‘I think it’s for you.’

Bret had already opened the envelope. There was a card inside with a plastic gold key on the front, under the legend ‘Key to my heart’. Over the flap Gillian had written three words.

‘You got me.’

‘Gillian used to have a trick.’

He went over to the radiator and pulled the toilet roll off its holder. He slid his finger in the cardboard tube. Don’t expect anything, he told himself.

There was a crack. He squeezed his fingernail into it and teased it apart. The cardboard tube coiled back. Instead of a flimsy wad of toilet tissue, he felt the crisp crackle of writing paper. He pulled it out. Two pages, ragged at the top where they’d been torn from a spiral notebook.

A creak sounded from the stair.

Mainz

Devils haunted our house. So many of our crew believed. Over the next autumn and winter, a sullen joylessness overtook our works. They did not speak of their fears in front of me; they knew I did not like it. But I caught snatches in conversations heard through open doors: nervous comments muttered under their breath. I knew some of the men still distrusted the press. They found its power unnatural, felt discomfited by its casual surpassing of human ability. Some ascribed its powers to black magic. I thought these notions must have come from the townsfolk, anxious and ignorant of the goings-on behind our walls, but clearly many who should have known better thought so too.

And – I had to admit – strange things did happen. Sometimes at night I could have sworn I heard the creak and clank of the press in the room below. I thought it must be my cares creeping into my dreams, but gradually I discovered that others heard it too. One night the whole house woke to the sound of a great crash. We rushed to the press and found a fresh ink jar smashed open on the floor. We blamed the cat, or swallows who had come in the window.

Eventually it became something of a joke. When a compositor reached into his case and found an x in place of an e; when a ream of paper was found to be two sheets short; when Götz’s tools went blunt overnight; when a form left in the press was backwards next morning, men crossed themselves and blamed the press devils.

One morning, I found the compositors gathered in a high state of excitement. It was unusual to see them thus: by their nature most were sober and quiet men. They were examining a composing stick filled with type. When they had calmed enough for me to understand, Günther explained that they had found it on the desk when they arrived for work. None knew where it had come from.

I took it through to the proofing room and rubbed ink on the type. I used my thumbs to press a scrap of paper against it. A crude line of text appeared.

tifex is a most curious beast with mouths at

‘That is no verse from the Bible,’ said Günther.

I shot him a cautioning look. I did not want him frightening the others.

‘It’s nonsense – obviously. One of the apprentices must have crept in last night thinking to make himself a compositor.’

‘The room was locked,’ said Günther’s assistant.

‘Then you must have forgotten to take the key out of the door.’

‘Or Kaspar Drach unlocked it.’

I rounded on him in a fury. ‘Drach had nothing to do with this. He is never even in this house.’

‘I saw him skulking by the paper store yesterday afternoon.’

‘You were mistaken.’ I looked for a ruler or a stick to beat him for his insolence, but all I could reach was the composing stick. I overturned it so that the letters scattered over the table. The sentence was broken.

‘You see – gone.’

But I could not scatter my thoughts so easily. When at last they were settled back at their work, I left the house and hurried up the street to the Gutenberghof. I looked in on the press room, where a fresh batch of indulgences were being made, then climbed the stairs to Drach’s attic.