The Dance of the Voodoo Handbag (5 page)

But he
wasn’t.

And nor
were any of the other experts I spoke to that morning. None of them had ever
heard of Johnny Quinn. None of them.

‘But
that’s absurd,’ I told the last in a dismal line. ‘I spent yesterday afternoon
going around Brighton and just about everyone I spoke to remembered Johnny
Quinn. And you blokes are supposed to be experts on the literature of the
Sixties, and none of you have ever heard of him. You’re all a bunch of
tosspots.’

And the
chap put the phone down on me.

Absurd!

But
then it got beyond absurd.

I went
through the
Yellow Pages
and started phoning bookshops. Any bookshop.
All bookshops. High street chains, collector’s bookshops, independents,
weirdos, every kind of bookshop. And though I spoke to some very helpful
people, not a single one of them had ever heard of Johnny Quinn.

I was
truly rattled. How could it be that yesterday nearly everyone had heard of him,
and today nobody had?

I
decided to retrace my footsteps. I went back to Waterstone’s. The chap behind
the counter remembered me from the day before. But when I told him that I had
drawn a complete blank on Johnny Quinn. he told me that he wasn’t in the least
surprised.

‘What?’
I said.

Well,’
he said, ‘after you’d gone I got to thinking, and the more I thought about
Johnny Quinn the less I seemed to remember. And eventually I got to thinking
that probably I didn’t remember Johnny Quinn at all, I only thought I did.’

‘Absurd!’
I said.

‘Not
really,’ he said. ‘You see, it happens all the time in this business. Someone
will come into the shop asking for a book that doesn’t exist, saying that a
friend of a friend of theirs read it and thought it was wonderful. They know,
or think they know, all kinds of details about the book and its author. But the
book doesn’t exist. Even though it seems as if it should. It’s like an urban
myth, someone starts it off in a bar or something and it takes on a life of its
own. I’ve developed a mystical theory about it. I think that the book exists in
some kind of parallel universe and it’s trying to exist in this one too. Like
your Johnny Quinn, perhaps he’s trying to exist here. And if enough people
believed in him, maybe he would. Maybe if enough people believe in anything
strongly enough, it will actually happen. And perhaps Johnny Quinn did exist
here yesterday, sort of. But he won’t exist today. He had his moment, when your
belief spread to others, but that moment’s passed. Not enough people believed
hard enough. Johnny didn’t make it into this reality. Sorry.’

‘What a
load of old toot!’ I said.

But he
might have been right. About some of it anyway. Because all the other chaps in
all the other shops I went back to said pretty much the same thing. They’d all
thought they’d remembered Johnny Quinn yesterday, but the more they thought
about it…

The
chap who’d had the girlfriend with the cat called Toothbrush was not at all
pleased to see me. He said I’d stirred up a lot of unhappy memories and he’d
probably have to go back into therapy. And, for my information, his girlfriend’s
cat had actually been called Steerpike and I should bugger off.

So I
buggered off.

I didn’t see Sean again
for a couple of weeks, and when I did bump into him at the Jolly Gardeners I
thought I’d wait until he asked’ me about the Johnny Quinn books before I told
him about what had happened. But Sean never did ask me. Sean seemed to have
forgotten all about Johnny Quinn. In fact Sean never mentioned the name of
Johnny Quinn ever again.

‘Do you
remember a painter called Karl Bok?’ Sean asked me.

And that might well have
been it for old Johnny Quinn, the author who never was, had it not been for
something decidedly odd that happened to me the next month.

It
happened in the Jolly Gardeners on a Tuesday evening. Andy, the landlord, goes
off somewhere on Tuesday evenings, and Paul the part-timer takes over. Tuesday
.evenings are always slow and Paul is good at slow. He generally spends the
evening doing the
Times
crossword or reading a book. On this particular
Tuesday evening he was reading a book.

I went
in, hung up my hat and cloak and placed my silver-topped cane upon the counter.
‘A pint of Death by Cider, please, Paul,’ I said.

Paul
hastened without haste to oblige me.

What
are you reading?’ I asked, spying the open book on the counter.

‘Book,’
said Paul, viewing the rows of identical pint glasses upon the shelf and
waiting for one to take his fancy.

‘Does
it have a title?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’
said Paul, still waiting.

‘Might I
ask what it is?’

‘You
might.’

I
turned the book towards me and closed it. It was a publisher’s proof copy. It
had a white card cover. The title of the book was
Snuff Fiction,
the
author was Johnny Quinn.

‘Bugger
me,’ I said.

‘No
thanks,’ said Paul.

‘But it’s
a Johnny Quinn novel. You’ve got a Johnny Quinn novel.’

‘No I
haven’t,’ said Paul.

‘Yes
you have, I’m holding it in my hands.’

‘I
haven’t,’ said Paul. ‘It’s not mine. It belongs to a friend. A friend of a
friend, actually.’

‘But
you’ve got it. It exists. Johnny Quinn exists.’

‘He
doesn’t,’ said Paul, who had finally found a glass he liked the look of.

‘He
bloody does,’ I said. ‘This book proves it.’

‘He
doesn’t,’ said Paul, slowly filling the glass from the wrong pump. ‘Because he’s
dead. Committed suicide.’

‘Blimey,’
I said. ‘Poor old Johnny. He really did exist and now he’s topped himself. He
probably got fed up with people not believing in him.’

What?’
asked Paul, presenting me with my pint.

‘Nothing,’
I said. What’s this supposed to be?’

‘Search
me,’ said Paul.

I held
the book very tightly. ‘I want to buy this book,’ I said. ‘I’ll give you ten
quid for it.’

‘It’s
not mine. I can’t sell it.’

‘Twenty
quid, then, and that’s my final offer.’

‘It
will be out in the shops next week for a flyer.’

What?’

‘They’re
republishing all his stuff.
The Million Dollar Dream, Sailing to Babylon.
There’s
been a big revival since he croaked. And
Snuff Fiction
is the last one
he wrote before he blew his brains out. It’s never been published before. It’ll
probably go straight into the bestseller list. You’ll be able to buy it at a
discount.’

‘I don’t
get this,’ I said. When I asked at the bookshops a while back, they couldn’t
trace any of his books.’

‘That’s
because they were all private editions, printed in the States. His books were
never published in this country. People used to say they’d read him in order
to seem hip and well informed.’

‘Hm!’ I
said, giving my chin a scratch.

‘But
that’s what you blokes from the Sixties were all about, wasn’t it?’ said Paul. ‘Always
saying you’d done the Hippy Trail and been to Woodstock and watched the Stones
in the Park and gone to college with Freddie Mercury and taken every drug there
was to take and all the rest of it. A bunch of bull-shitters, the lot of you.
Did
you
ever read any Johnny Quinn novels, then?’

‘Not
me,’ I said, and paid for whatever it was I’d just bought, and sat down in a
corner and drank it.

And what Paul said made a
lot of sense, really. I’d obviously heard of Johnny Quinn, but I’d never
actually read him. But I must have told people that I’d read him in order to
seem hip and well informed. And as the years had gone by, I’d come to believe
that I’d really read him. That had to be it. And it was probably it with all
the other people who’d told me they’d read Johnny Quinn. They were all just a
bunch of Sixties bull-shitters, like me. A lot of tail-story-tellers.

Tall-story-tellers!

That
made me think. That made me think about my dad. I swallowed hard upon my ale.
What if my dad hadn’t considered himself a tall-story-teller at all? What if he’d
actually believed all those tales he’d told to the vicar? Thought he’d really
done all those things? It was all too much to think about. I finished up
whatever it was I was drinking and went home.

I went back to the Jolly
Gardeners the following Tuesday evening. I wanted Paul to lend me that copy of
Snuff
Fiction.
All right, it would be out in the shops the next day. But I wanted
his
copy. Because I wanted to be able to say to people,
‘Snuff
Fiction?
Oh yes, I read that
before
it came out.’

But
Paul wasn’t there.

Andy
was behind the pump.

Where’s
Paul?’ I asked Andy.

‘Not
turned in,’ Andy said. ‘I’ve telephoned, but there’s no answer. I can’t think
what’s happened. This isn’t like Paul at all.’

‘Damn!’
I said. ‘Do you have Paul’s address?’

‘No,’
said Andy. ‘Do you?’

Wednesday
morning found me back at Water-stone’s, and there behind the counter was the
chap I’d spoken to before.

‘Remember
me?’ I asked him.

‘No,’
he said.

‘Come
on now, you do, you know.’

‘I don’t,
you know.’

‘Well,
never mind. I’ve come to buy a book.’

He
looked at me. Questioningly.

‘It’s a
Johnny Quinn book,’ I said. ‘The
new
Johnny Quinn book. And it comes out
today. Although I don’t see it anywhere on your shelves.’

‘That’s
because there’s no such book,’ he said. ‘Oh yes there is. I’ve seen a copy. It’s
called
Snuff Fi—’

But I
didn’t get the second word out, because he lunged at me and clamped his hand
across my face. And then he shinned over the counter, forced my arm up my back
and sort of frog-marched me away to the store room.

What
the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ I shouted, once I’d got myself free.

‘Keep
your voice down,’ he said, in a menacing tone. ‘Who sent you, anyway?’

‘Nobody
sent me. What are you talking about?’

‘How do
you know about that book?’

‘Because
I’ve seen a copy.

‘Nonsense.
You wouldn’t be here if you had.’

What?’

‘Just
go away,’ he told me. ‘Forget all about it.’

‘I
certainly won’t. I’m not leaving here without a copy of
Snuff Fic—’,
and
his hand was all over my face again.

‘Stop
doing that,’ I said, once I had prised it free.

‘Stop
saying that title, then.’

What,
Snuff
Fic—
Get your hands off me!’

‘Then
don’t say the title again.’

‘Then
sell me a copy.’

‘I can’t.
We don’t have any.’

‘I don’t
believe you. I want a copy and I want it now.’

‘You
can’t have one.’

‘But
you do admit there’s such a book.’

‘Of
course I do. But I’ll only admit it in here. With you. As you’ve actually seen
a copy.’

‘Tell
me what’s going on,’ I said, ‘or I will go out into the shop and shout very
loudly. I will shout “Give me
Snuff Fic—”‘

‘All
right. All right. I’ll tell you. But you have to promise. Promise that you’ll
never pass on what I tell you here.’

‘All
right,’ I said. ‘I promise.’

‘Really
truly, cross your heart and hope to die.’

‘Cross
my heart and hope to die.’

‘It’s a
nightmare,’ he said. ‘It’s Quinn’s revenge. ‘What?’

‘It
seems that he was famous in the Sixties but the world forgot about him. His
books went out of print and he became more of a myth than a living person. He
blamed the publishers and the booksellers and the public. He blamed everyone.
He was a paranoid schizophrenic, voices in the head, the whole bit. And he
vowed to take his revenge on everyone. So he wrote his final novel,
Snuff
Fiction.

And he
paid for it to be printed and published himself. Millions and millions of
copies, to be distributed to booksellers all over the world. He ran up debts of
millions of dollars, then he committed suicide.’

‘I’m
not getting this,’ I said. ‘So he publishes his own book, runs up millions of
dollars of debt and commits suicide. But that’s a big story. That alone should
make the book a bestseller.’

‘That’s
exactly what he planned, yes.’

‘So
what’s the big deal? Why aren’t you selling the book?’

‘Because
it’s snuff fiction.’ He whispered the words. ‘It really
is
snuff
fiction.’