The Quorum (48 page)

‘Special conditions operate in here. The lighting is calculated not to fade the dustjackets. All my Barkers are mint, Miss Rhodes, mint.’

It was cold. Doubtless, another preservative measure. Three walls were a neutral battleship grey, the fourth consisted of a ceiling-high set of bookshelves. Neon strips hummed on the ceiling. Opposite, the shelves was a divan. She got the impression that he spent a lot of time on the divan, just looking at his collection.

‘Come in, come in.’ She followed him into the Barker room.

He stood by the shelves, and indicated a set of books apart from the rest, on a shelf by themselves.

‘Here I have all the editions of the
Books of Blood.
The first three volumes, of course. The others are down there. To a true collector, volumes four to six are immeasurably less interesting. I have them, but they aren’t quite the thing... aren’t quite special, if you get my drift. The first three books are where the action is. And I have all the action in the field, all the action.’

He was evidently proud of the accomplishment.

‘Surely, there can’t be that many,’ she prompted.

‘Ahh, but there are, Miss Rhodes, there certainly are. These are the original 1984 Sphere paperbacks with the twisted photographs on the cover. The first United Kingdom edition. Signed, of course, in red ink, inscribed personally to me, and dated before the official publication. As it happens, these are the first three copies to roll off the press...’

Gently, he pulled one off the shelf, and opened it to display the inscription. ‘To Dave, thanks for your enthusiasm, Clive Barker,’ it said. There was a picture of a zombie with a pencil moustache and no eyes under it.

‘What’s that smudge?’

He looked again. ‘Ahh, an interesting story. When he was signing, Clive used my pen. I have an antique fountain pen, and the nib slipped a little. He cut his finger and bled onto the page. You’ve no idea how much more collectible that makes this book. No idea at all.’

Sally could have sworn she heard subliminal organ music under the eternal whirring of the extractor fan. This room didn’t feel like a tomb, it felt like a morgue. And Wringhim was displaying his books as one necrophile coroner might show off his latest conquest to another, pulling out the gurney and throwing back the stained green sheet with a magician’s flourish.

‘And here are the reprint paperback editions, with Clive’s own covers. And the Sphere library hardbacks, and the Weidenfeld and Nicolson general issue hardback. This is a set of the 1985 Weidenfeld and Nicolson limited edition, boxed and signed naturally. And the American Berkley editions, paperback and hardback, with variant covers. This is the Berkley uncorrected proof of Volume II, with the plain spine, put out in April 1986. This is the 1988 Sphere trade paperback omnibus volume, and the 1988 Ace/Putnam American equivalent. These are the two variant cover Scream/Press editions, 1985 and 1986. And, of course, there’s Libros Sangrientos from Spain, Das Erste, Das Zweite and Das Dritte Buch des Blutes from Germany, Tunnel van de Dood and Prins van de Duisternis from Holland, Livre de Sang from France, and the ideographed Japanese editions. The one in the can is a special German edition with a warning sign.’

‘And those books to one side?’

‘Ah-hah, my special prizes,’ his eyes shone again, with all the fervour of a scientologist describing the earthly manifestation of L. Ron Hubbard. ‘These are all the special signed, numbered, limited 1985 Scream/Press edition, illustrated by J.K. Potter, bound by Kristina Anderson. Soon after, something horrible happened to the bookbinder and she hasn’t been heard from since. The edition is in full leather red Niger Oasis Goatskin and embossed with gold, signed and dated, with zombie doodle and personalised dead baby joke inscription. The underspine is veined manuscript calf vellum from Germany, dyed red. The signatures are sewn in red linen thread. The endpapers are hand-painted with a Roman horse and English carnival motif, the top edge is stained yellow and painted with a Grand Guignol clown’s head, the endbands are handsewn in red, yellow and black silk on linen cores, there are tissue overlays on all illustrations, and the title and copyright pages are splatted in human blood and red acrylic paint.’

‘Very nice.’

‘But there’s more. Look, here...’

He pulled out yet another copy of the first
Book of Blood,
also leather bound, also embossed, presumably signed, dated, doodled and dead babied.

‘Something must have gone wrong there,’ she said. ‘It looks a little rough.’

‘Ah yes,’ he said, his eyes shining again, spittle clinging to the ends of his moustache. ‘This is a special special edition. It’s bound in human skin.’

‘Human skin? Isn’t that illegal?’

‘Not in Tijuana. The publishers found a doctor who could recommend locals who, although young enough to have unblemished skin, were dying of incurable diseases. By offering to pay a sum to the survivors of these poverty-stricken unfortunates, they were able to convince the patients to have the title, author’s name and publication information tattooed on their chests and backs while they were still alive. Then, after the inevitable took its course, the grateful families handed over the corpses for a surgical flaying, and a skilled bookbinder was brought in to prepare a special special edition of five sets of the
Books of Blood.’

This was beginning to sound both unhealthy and suggestive. He opened up the book at random, and she saw red printing on thick pages.

‘They found several reams of unmarked papyrus from the Museum of Antiquities in Cairo. They were reckoned to come from the tomb of a High Priest of Seth who was expected to write his memoirs in the afterlife. There’s supposed to be a curse on anyone who defiles its whiteness, but Clive Barker is a notorious iconoclast and the reams were used in the preparation of these volumes. The tooling is done in gold melted down from an Aztec sacrificial idol that miraculously survived the conquistadores. The top edge is stained with the hymenal blood of an Arab princess, kept fresh in a phial after her seduction by Sir Richard Burton, and traced with blasphemies in Sanskrit, Hebrew, Coptic script and Pig Latin. It’s signed, inscribed, and doodled on, of course...’

‘For the text, did they use...?’

‘Human blood? No, it clots too quickly. This, sadly, is just red ink. Although, funnily enough, by some strange coincidence, when he was signing his zombie drawing...’

He turned to the page with the picture, and Sally saw the familiar stain.

‘Would you care...?’

He handed the book to her. Gingerly, feeling it in the soft meat of her fingertips, she took it. The unique binding gave slightly as she squeezed. It was deeply tanned, and she saw a scattering of moles. The title and author’s name stood out. She expected it to smell, somehow, but it was perfectly cured.

‘The bookbinder unfortunately had his eyes put out shortly before the volumes were complete, and was therefore unable to appreciate the wonder he had created. One of life’s tragedies, Miss Rhodes.’

‘You have all five sets?’

‘No,’ he replied, ‘only three. The other two are in the hands of...’ he spat unconsciously, ‘another collector. Thus far, he has resisted all my offers. But I am certain that I shall eventually prevail on him to part with them.’

‘But I see five sets in that section.’

‘Ahh, yes. These two are different. An even more special special special edition.’

She saw now that these two sets, three uniform volumes each, were lighter in colour.

‘What could be more special than human skin?’

‘Blood, Miss Rhodes, blood...’

She remembered her research. ‘“Everybody is a book of blood; wherever we’re opened, we’re red.”’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Wringhim looked astonished.

‘The epigraph. The epigraph of the
Books of Blood.
Remember?’

He looked faintly irritated. ‘Oh, yes, of course, I was forgetting.’

‘I’d have thought you would have known the books backwards by heart by now.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘sadly not. I have no reading copies of the
Books of Blood
. Each of these is unique, a collectible. I couldn’t risk reading them, turning the pages, breaking the spines. Ugh! I took the books out of the library once, and read most of the stories. Very good, I thought.’

His fingers strayed along the shelves to the lighter volumes.

‘Blood,’ he whispered. ‘Blood.’

Sally was shivering in the cold now. Even the dead skin of the book in her hand had gooseflesh. Being Mexican, the former owner probably wasn’t used to the chill. That organ she couldn’t hear was playing Tequila now.

‘This set, Miss Rhodes, is a unique prize, unique by virtue of blood.’

‘Go on,’ she said, knowing she couldn’t stop him, ‘tell me about it.’

‘A cousin of Clive’s, a distant connection, of course, but related by blood. I happened upon this fellow in a Cardiff pub one night. Evidently, he was something of a black sheep of the family. Always cadging drinks by the virtue of his name, and trying to impress barmaids with his relationship to a distinguished author. Clyde Barker, he was called. In his cups, he made the mistake of falling from a dock. He drowned.’

‘Drowned?’

‘From my point of view, most fortunate. If he had walked under a bus, he would have been no use at all, don’t you see?’

‘The skin...’

‘Would have been irreparably damaged, yes. Clyde Barker died without means, and so I took the liberty of arranging for his funeral. I had to settle outstanding bills with several bookmakers and drinking establishments. I saw to it that he went to his grave in as good a suit of clothes he could hope for. Of course, I wanted something in exchange. But the skin is perishable. It goes first. A good suit will outlast the skin in the ground, any week of the year. So, this edition is bound in the skin of a blood relative of the author’s, printed on the palimpsest parchment of a twelfth century black magician’s grimoire, signed in red ink, with a watercolour self-portrait of the author as a rotting zombie on the inside front cover, personally inscribed to me, an original still-unpublished sixty-line poem called ‘Rotting Love’ scribbled on the title page, endbands handsewn in hemp thread pulled from the noose used in the execution of Dr Crippen, a spine of weapons-grade plutonium sealed in lead, a book-lock that was once part of the famous Iron Maiden of Nuremberg and finally bled on in a Rorschach pattern by Clive Barker himself. The bookbinder accidentally had his hands severed in an accident with a printer’s guillotine, and will sadly never work again.’

Sally had to take charge of the situation now. Wringhim was raving, too far gone for the police to deal with. She produced her licence. ‘I’m a private investigator,’ she said. ‘The Australian hired me. He’s expecting four more books and three movies...’

He turned at last to the final set of the
Books of Blood,
edged in gold, bound in what she knew to be human skin.

‘...a lot of people want to know where Clive Barker is, Mr Wringhim...’

He pulled out the first volume, and presented the cover to her. The nose was flattened, the lips and eyelids sewn shut with thick black thread, but the face was still recognisable.

‘And this, is the special special special edition of the
Books of Blood.’

She pointed her little ladylike gun at him. He ignored it and opened the book to the redly blotched title page.

‘The hard part, Miss Rhodes,’ he said, ‘came after the books were bound. The hard part was getting the author to sign them.’

‘A
thousand a day,’ she told them. ‘And my train fare down from Victoria. Where else are you going to find a private detective with qualifications in child psychiatry?’

They didn’t really have a choice. She leaned back in the hotel’s idea of an easy chair, and took a few tactical sips of Perrier water. They looked at each other. General Jones wanted to tough her price down, but R.J. Woolavington was more than ready to cave in.

‘Miss Rhodes, do you mind if we confer?’ snapped the General, waving a wet-end cigar. He still sounded like a US Marine Drill Instructor, although his gut would strain a dress uniform more than it was straining his lightweight tropical suit. He had never been more than a non-com in the service, but now he was in charge of the largest, most diversified private army in the world.

‘Not at all. Take your time. This meeting will be included in my bill. And there’s a wasting-my-time fee to cover even if you don’t want to hire me.’

The General glared at her, and dragged Woolavington into the suite’s bathroom for a final browbeating. Sally looked at the glossy brochures on the coffee table. Gung-Ho Jones had an undersea outfit now, complete with spring-loaded speargun and an octopus whose arms could constrict automatically. On the cover of his pamphlet, Gung-Ho ($14.99) was grappling with the octopus ($19.99) in a sunken Spanish galleon ($74.99), grinning his one-sided grin (free, but copyrighted) and posing dramatically. Actually, thanks to the awkwardness of his hips and shoulder-joints, Gung-Ho could barely stand up straight, let alone assume a dramatic pose.

Sally was more intrigued by the Woolavington Train Set she had seen downstairs. It was an idealised lay-out modelled on the Home Counties in the thirties, complete with genuine miniature steam engines, an entire village, a tunnel through a hill and over three miles of tracks. As a child, she would rather have had one of Woolavington’s trains, but her parents had given her a Sandie Doll (one of the General’s products) instead.

The General and Woolavington were back, an agreement reached. Neither of them were happy: the General because he was going to have to accede to Sally’s terms, and Woolavington because the General was going to screw him into putting up more than half her fee.

‘One K is okay,’ growled the General, ‘but we’ll want results quickly. Before the convention is over.’

‘That gives me a week? Easy.’

‘Don’t be so sure, we’ve had our best men on it for a year. Nada.’

‘I’m better than most. Now, why don’t you and Mr Woolavington tell me your troubles.’