He had concluded a long time ago that it was his mind inventing these just-heard noises. They correlated with moments of anxiety. He had mentioned the phenomenon to people, and though some had reacted with alarm, many told some anecdote about horripilation or twitches when they were under pressure, and Billy remained fairly sanguine.
In the tank room the forensic team was still dusting, photographing, measuring tabletops. Billy folded his arms and shook his head.
“It’s those Californian sods.” When he returned to where most of the staff were waiting he joked quietly about rival institutes to a workmate outside the tank room. About disputes over preservation methodology that had taken a dramatic turn. “It’s the Kiwis,” Billy said. “O’Shea finally gave in to temptation.”
HE DID NOT GO STRAIGHT BACK TO HIS FLAT. HE HAD A long-standing arrangement to meet a friend.
Billy had known Leon since they had been undergraduates at the same institute, though in different departments. Leon was enrolled in a PhD course in a literature department in London, though he never talked about it. He had since forever been working on a book called Uncanny Blossom. When Leon had told him, Billy had said, “I had no idea you were entering the Shit Title Olympics.”
“If you didn’t swim in your sump of ignorance you’d know that title’s designed to fuck with the French. Neither word’s translatable into their ridiculous language.”
Leon lived in a just-plausible rim of Hoxton. He camped up his role as Virgil to Billy’s Dante, taking Billy to art happenings or telling him about those he could not attend, exaggerating and lying about what they entailed. Their game was that Billy was in permanent anecdote overdraft, always owed Leon stories. Leon, skinny and shaven-headed and in a foolish jacket, sat in the cold outside the pizzeria with his long legs stretched out.
“Where’ve you been all my life, Richmal?” he shouted. He had long ago decided that blue-eyed Billy was named for another naughty boy, the William of Just William, and had illogically rechristened him for the book’s author.
“Chipping Norton,” said Billy, patting Leon’s head. “Theydon Bois. How’s the life of the mind?”
Marge, Leon’s partner, inclined her face for a kiss. The crucifix she always wore glinted.
He had only met her a few times. “She a god-botherer?” Billy had asked Leon after he first met her.
“Hardly. Convent girl. Hence tiny Jesus-shaped guilt trip between her tits.”
She was, as Leon’s girlfriends were more often than not, attractive and a little heavy, somewhat older than Leon, too old for the dilute emo-goth look she maintained. “Say Rubenesque or zaftig at your peril,” Leon had said.
“What’s zaftig?” Billy said.
“And fuck you ‘too old,’ Pauley Perrette’s way older.”
“Who’s that?”
Marge worked part-time at Southwark Housing Department and made video art. She had met Leon at a gig, some drone band playing in a gallery. Leon had deflected Billy’s Simpsons joke and told him that she was one of those people who had renamed herself, that Marge was short for Marginalia.
“Oh what? What’s her real name?”
“Billy,” Leon had said. “Don’t be such a wet blanket.”
“We’ve been watching a weird bunch of pigeons outside a bank is what we’ve been up to,” Leon said as Billy sat.
“We’ve been arguing about books,” said Marge.
“Best sort of argument,” said Billy. “What was the substance?”
“Don’t sidetrack him,” said Leon, but Marge was already answering: “Virginia Woolf versus Edward Lear.”
“Christ Alive,” said Billy. “Are those my only choices?”
“I went for Lear,” said Leon. “Partly out of fidelity to the letter L. Partly because given the choice between nonsense and boojy wittering you blatantly have to choose nonsense.”
“You obviously haven’t read the glossary to Three Guineas,” said Marge. “You want nonsense? She calls ‘soldiers’ ‘gutsgruzzlers,’ ‘heroism’ equals ‘botulism,’ ‘hero’ equals ‘bottle.’”
“Lear?” Billy said. “Really? In the Land of the Fiddly-Faddly, the BinkerlyBonkerly roams.” He took off his glasses and pinched the top of his nose. “Alright, let me tell you something. Here’s the thing,” he said at last and then whatever, it stalled. Leon and Marge stared at him.
Billy tried again. He shook his head. He clucked as if something were stuck in his mouth. He had at last almost to shove the information past his own teeth. “One of… Our giant squid is missing.” Saying it felt like puncturing a lid.
“What?” Leon said.
“I don’t…” Marge said.
“No, it doesn’t make any more sense to me.” He told them, step by impossible step.
“Gone? What do you mean ‘gone’? Why haven’t I heard anything about it?” Leon said at last.
“I don’t know. I’d have thought it would have… I mean, the police asked us to keep it secret-oops, look what I did-but I didn’t expect that to actually work. I’d thought it would be all over the Standard by now.”
“Maybe it’s a what-d’you-call-it, a D-Notice?” Leon said. “You know, one of those things where they stop journalists talking about stuff?”
Billy shrugged. “They’re not going to be able to… Half that tour group have probably blogged the shit out of it by now.”
“Someone’s probably registered bigsquidgone dot com,” Marge said.
Billy shrugged. “Maybe. You know, when I was on my way, I was thinking about maybe I shouldn’t… I almost didn’t tell you myself. Obviously put the fear of God in me. But the big issue for me’s not that the cops didn’t want us to telclass="underline" it’s the whole ‘totally impossible’ thing.”
THERE WAS A STORM THAT NIGHT AS HE HEADED HOME, A HORRIBLE one that filled the air with bad electricity. Clouds turned the sky dark brown. The roofs streamed like urinals.
As he entered his Haringay flat, precisely at the second he crossed the threshold, Billy’s phone rang. He stared through the window at the sodden trees and roofs. Across the street, a twirl of rubbishy wind was gusting around some klaggy-looking squirrel on a rooftop. The squirrel shook its head and watched him.
“Hello?” he said. “Yeah, this is Billy Harrow.”
“… somethingsomething, ’bout damn time you got back. So you’re coming in, yeah?” a woman on the line said.
“Wait, what?” The squirrel was still staring at him. Billy gave it the finger and mouthed Sod off. He turned from the window and tried to pay attention. “Who is this, sorry?” he said.
“Will you bloody listen? Better at shooting your mouth than listening, ain’t you? Police, mate. Tomorrow. Got it?”
“Police?” he said. “You want me back to the museum? You want-”
“No. The station. Fuck’s sake clean your ears.” Silence. “You there?”
“… Look, I don’t appreciate the way you’re-”
“Yeah, I don’t appreciate you gabbing away when you was told not to.” She gave him an address. He frowned as he scribbled it on some takeout menu.
“Where? That’s Cricklewood. That’s nowhere near the museum. What’s…? Why did they send someone from up there down to the museum…?”
“We’re done, mate. Just get there. Tomorrow.” She rang off and left him staring at the mouthpiece in his chilly room. The windows made sounds in the wind, as if they were bowing. Billy stared at the phone. He was annoyed that he felt obliged to acquiesce to that last order.
Chapter Three
BILLY HAD BAD DREAMS. HE WAS NOT THE ONLY ONE. THERE WAS no way yet he could know that night sweats were citywide. Hundreds of people who did not know each other, who did not compare their symptoms, slept harried. It was not the weather.
It meant a trek, that meeting to which he had been ordered, that he pretended to himself to consider ignoring. He considered, or, again, pretended to consider, calling his father. Of course he did not. He started to dial Leon’s number but again did not. There was nothing to add to what he had said. He wanted to tell someone else about the disappearance, that strange theft. He auditioned recipients of that phone call in his mind, but his energy to do so, to say anything, kept spilling out, left him repeatedly.