When they’d first spoken, some weeks previously, she’d asked for his memories of the room; whether he had clues to offer about the books’ arrangement. “You don’t have a photograph, by any chance?”
“I might. I’d need to poke around in my phone. Or, tell you what, we could hire a hypnotist? See if he could prod me into recalling what went where?”
“Maybe as a last resort,” she’d said, her tone suggesting she was used to humouring oddballs. Well, an Oxford college.
“Or I could send you this short video which pans the whole room, bookshelves included.”
“. . . Yeah, that might work.”
He had rewatched the clip several times since. The shelves were captured, but the books remained largely anonymous: so fleetingly observed, you’d need to be a speed reader to catch a title. His grandfather, he’d sometimes thought, had absorbed printed material; cloistered in his study, he’d been party to their dialogue. All those words, dancing in the air. With a little effort he could see the O.B. before dementia carried him off; leaning back, eyes closed, glasses on a chain. His hands conducting the melodies the books were making; his mind translating it into information. But it was too easy for the image to corrupt. Stare for long and you’d see David Cartwright alone and frightened in his ruined memory palace, its beams and rafters collapsing around him. River shook his head. Let the old man be.
Erin had the clip running on her laptop. He leaned forward, suddenly conscious of the soap she used. The shot panned as he remembered, ending just short of the sleeping Sid.
“The book’s on the bottom shelf of the second stack. A white spine with red lettering. Block caps. Let’s get a little more focus and a little less speed.” She magnified the screen so only the bottom shelves showed and ran the clip again in slo-mo, making River dizzy. When she hit the space bar the scene froze, and the writing on the spines—already enlarged beyond decipherability—became a ghostly buzz, as if the lettering had suffered an electric shock. What had been blurred furry letters were now ornate but inscrutable patterns; the claw prints of wading birds awaiting the tide’s erasure.
“I’m not sure I can read that,” River admitted. Not sure: He was damn sure. All he could make out was a calligraphic soup. He knew this was writing, but he’d have been hard-pressed to determine which alphabet.
“No, we had to run it through a motion-capture program to read the titles. But you just need to see it’s there.”
“It’s there.”
“And trust me, it says
“Okay.”
“And there’s no record that a book with that title exists. And the author’s untraceable.”
“So you said on the phone. And the book’s now missing.”
“If it was included in the boxes that arrived, it’s disappeared since. It’s the only book I can identify onscreen which isn’t here.”
River looked again at the frozen image on her laptop. It had been there when he shot the video; was part of his grandfather’s library, so he must have seen it countless times. But he couldn’t pretend that, even in its vague and fuzzy form, it was ringing any bell.
He said, “I don’t remember it. I mean, obviously, yes, it’s there. But the title means nothing to me.”
“He never mentioned it?”
River gestured around the room. “He had a few books. As you’ve discovered.”
“But this one wasn’t real. So maybe it weighed on his mind more than others.”
A nerve was pulsing in his neck and he pressed a palm to it. Then took a step back so Erin wouldn’t notice. She might think he was hiding something: guilty knowledge? All he wanted was to keep presenting as healthy and untroubled.
He said, “A fake book. You’re thinking it was a box.”
“One he made himself, it would seem.”
“Or borrowed from stores.”
“Which would make it antique. The Park stopped making cute little hidey-places about the time they gave up equipping agents with jetpacks.”
“And it doesn’t read like an antique title.”
“My thoughts too. No, this wasn’t a work souvenir. I think Cartwright—I mean, your grandfather—I think he was using it. And now it’s gone.”
“Along with whatever was inside.”
Erin pushed her chair back and stood. “Yes.” She’d removed her hat and her hair was making a statement of sorts, possibly a declaration of independence. “Which is why I thought you ought to know about it.”
“Thanks. Have you told the Park?”
“I used to work for First Desk, did you know that?”
“For Taverner?”
“Well, it was hardly going to be Ingrid Tearney, was it? How old do you think I am?”
River wasn’t going anywhere near that. “And was it a joyous experience?”
