A little cottage stands at the foot of the nearest mountain, half lost in the damp, grey air. It has a red chimney and a new roof of green slate. The two sash windows are big inquisitive eyes above the astonished mouth of the black lacquered door. It has been built of the same grey stone as the low wall which encircles it.
A sign hangs above the doorframe: white letters on black wood. Bilberry Byre.
A thinnish, darkish man stands in the doorway, squinting up at the grey clouds. He is barefoot: his mud-grimed feet turning slowly white from contact with the cold grey stone of the front step. He wears dirty jeans, the knees stained. He is wrapped, toga-like, in a tartan blanket, its folds lying across his shoulders and gathered around his waist. His skin is a gallery: a turmoil of intricate words and pictures.
Rowan Blake, fortyish, is glaring at the world as if he would like punch it in the throat. He flicks his head back and forth: a deranged horse swatting at a wasp. He lowers himself into a crouch. Squats. Moves cautiously forward, braced …then swings: his head a wrecking ball. Something red and brown flutters up elegantly from the overhanging branches, and Rowan leans on the wall for support. He’s sure he just heard his brain strike his skulclass="underline" a damp splat, as if a squid has been hurled at a wall.
Rowan sags, beaten and sore.
“Give it a rest,” he growls, feebly. He squints in the general direction of the bird that has been driving him to distraction with its song. He can’t see the little bastard.
Probably laughing at you, Rowan, says the voice in his head. Gonna take shit from a tit? You gonna stand for that, son?
Temper breaks like a flung glass. “You’re shit! You’re a shit fucking singer. Your parents are embarrassed, your kids won’t admit they know you! You’re a shit bird in a shit nest. And that’s a shit fucking tree!”
He stops, out of breath. Listens as the echo disappears into the damp swaddling clothes of mist and mountain and Autumn air. He permits himself a small, half-mad laugh. “Come to this, has it?” he mutters to himself. “You’re a joke, mate. An embarrassment. If they could see you now….”
Rowan forces himself to stop. Unchecked, he could well berate himself for ever.
He closes his eyes. Slumps back against the brickwork. Feels gloom settle upon him like ash. The unfairness of it all! Three great steps up the career ladder and each has taken him closer to the bottom. From journalist to writer. Tick! From writer to TV presenter. Tick! And from TV presenter back to square bloody one. Dick! A reporter without a story; a journalist without a journal. Self-employed bordering on full-time unemployed. He feels his disappointment, his resentment, like a physical pain; some herniated lump of gristle right behind his heart. He’d served his time, hadn’t he? 20 years in newspapers, man and boy. He’d been right to take the money from the posh publishers down by the Thames. A two-book deaclass="underline" two true-crime books, the first to be delivered inside 12 months. That wasn’t a problem, considering he’d already written it. He got most of his money in one go. The agreed fee was supposed to be paid out in different stages – the signature of contracts, the acceptance of the manuscript, the hardback publication and finally the paperback. Rowan was struggling with some old debts and having outright fistfights with some new ones. He agreed to a slightly lower fee, if he could have the bulk of the cash up front. He’d quit his staff job at The Mirror before the transferred cash hit his account.
This is it, lad, he’d told himself, full of pride. You’re going to be a writer. You’ve made it!
The book was a critical success and a commercial failure. His series of interviews with serial killer Gary King were found to be illuminating and repulsive in equal measure. Critics said he had an uncanny skill for letting people believe they were speaking to a confidante. Rowan gave his all to the marketing campaign, writing endless blogs about his poor-but-honest childhood and his sense of journalistic responsibility to the truth. Writers whom he’d admired gave admiring quotes for the front cover and three serial killers wrote to him asking if he would like to poke around inside their heads. Trouble was, not enough people bought it. That’s what it came down to, in the end. There were posters and promos and appearances at every bookshop and library he was willing to attend. It just didn’t do very well. King wasn’t a proper household name and his victims were all middle-aged white men, which meant little public sympathy. If he’d favoured young blonde girls or vulnerable women, King would have made Rowan a fortune. Rowan had come to the conclusion that there is almost nothing more expendable than a bland, white male. If he ever fancied becoming a serial killer himself, he would definitely make them his targets. After teenage runaways and long-term addicts, there is little in society as replaceable as a man.
The publishers expect something more commercially appealing for book two. The brief has been maddeningly broad. Perhaps something from a victim’s perspective, they’d said. A confession, perhaps. Or an unsolved mystery, like those ones on Netflix. Rowan recalls one tall, blonde, frightfully Oxbridge twenty-something looking at him over her chai latte and asking, quite seriously, if he knew of any unsolved cases that he might be able to solve. Preferably one with a personal angle…
Rowan raises his hands as if to push back a loop of hair, looking afresh at the things on the end of his wrists – the things that now pass for hands. His palms and fingers are entirely mummified in bandages and polythene. They hide the grisly mass of peeling skin and yellow pus beneath. Last time he was permitted to look, some of the skin grafts were starting to look a little healthier. In other places he was still just blood and bone. He feels as though he has been wrung out like a damp cloth. Something inside him feels fractured; broken. He looks as if he has been drained; juiced - as if the right gust of wind could carry him away.
Maybe those bastard producers were right after all, he thinks, looking at the mess of cloth and plastic and skin. He sinks in on himself. You couldn’t appear on camera anyway now. Not like that.
He snarls at the memory – at the unfairness of the cards that Fate had dealt him not so long ago. As he’d dug around for a new story, Rowan had been thrown another seemingly golden opportunity when a production company in Manchester approached him to present the pilot episode of a new true crime series on a digital channel. Rowan had given the role his all, convinced this was going to be a permanent gig and a truly life-altering moment. Three months after they finished shooting, Rowan was replaced by a former soap actress. She was going to present, to film the links, to be credited as ‘star’. Rowan was reduced to a ‘talking head’, a named onlooker offering a journalist’s perspective, filmed in front of a wall of old books. Rowan had told them to shove it. None of his old contacts took him back. Nobody wanted to give meagre freelance budgets to somebody who had left on a megabucks publishing deal. And his book publishers were starting to ask for updates. For some pages or an outline at least. If he failed to deliver a manuscript before December 31, he would be in breach of contract. He would have to give a great chunk of money back. And he didn’t have the money any more. He’d drunk it and smoked it and snorted it benevolently from bellies both fleshy and taut. He’d had a wonderful time. Now it was gone. He found himself having to do late night subbing shifts at right-wing tabloids; missing from his girlfriend’s London flat for such long periods that she presumed they’d broken up. In her distress, she’d turned to a handsome gym-bunny called Donnie for emotional support.