The House of Writers (12 page)

Memo: PeteXXX

As if I would dress up as Jesus! What an obvious prank! I should think Thomas Wood might credit me with more skill (considering he was one of the thousand I enslaved—thanks for the butt wax, mate!).

Memo: Gerald Bolt

I never knew we could send memos to the
whole
building! My new book is entitled
Fortune’s Fingers
and is a fantastic thriller about a gambling addict who develops carpal tunnel syndrome and has to utilise other limbs to sate his addictions, until his entire body falls victim. Tough lessons about moderation are learned in this glamorous novel set in the casinos of Monaco and Las Vegas. Five sex scenes included.

[4,928 memos deleted]

Memo: Brian Cray

I spotted Jesus in the canteen. Since he accepted a post writing religious fiction he has been less bothersome around the building. I think we should have more respect for him despite the fact he is here illegally, has no NI Number, birth certificate, or proof of identity, since he did appear from the photocopier in all good faith hoping to rescue mankind from the scourge of evil (ScotCall) and lead us into eternal bliss. I suggest we chip in for a nice card.

Memo: Irene Tomas

No one asked him to come here. I hate to be cruel but that’s the truth. I came here with good intentions hoping to cheer people up writing comedic fiction and I didn’t get a nice card bought for me. . .

Memo: Claire Wilson

Have you read his “novels”? No offence to God-up-above, but the Saviour needs to work on his syntax. His plotting is execrable. All his works are rehashed autobiographies. A “special person” is placed on the planet to help less “special persons.” The hoi polloi treat him like dirt and string him up for being too nice. Please! Could the parallels be more obvious? He means well ... that’s not the point. Doesn’t excuse him from sentences like:
The people on the hill they came to see him and they threw all sorts of things, they threw stones and bricks and things.
Get him a
card?
Get him a copy editor!

Memo: Bill Orange

You do know Jesus can read these memos too?

Memo: Craig Thomas

The last thing the Son of God expected when he rose again was to have to write hack prose in a dilapidated tower block while everyone ignores his message of universal love and kindness and sends bitchy memos about him behind his back (and to his face). We could at least all sign a welcome card.

Memo: Jill Jones

I’m not signing it.

Memo: Nigel Person

Nor am I.

[2,282 memos deleted]

Memo: Richard Arms

I saw Jesus flying outside the building! Where does it say in
The Bible
that Jesus could fly, for Richard’s sake? Is this distracting or what?? It’s not fair that he should be showing off like that simply because he’s the son of God and we’re mere mortals who need engines and wings to get in the air. We’re all equal in The House! Not in terms of success or skill ... but we’re all writers! This is breaking some rule. I propose we sign a petition to stop Jesus flying outside the windows in his spare time.

Memo: Frances Agree

I’d sign that. Who does he think he is? Disgraceful . . .

Memo: Vernon Argue

I saw him disappear into the clouds earlier. I think he must be negotiating with God to return home or something.

Memo: Tim Thurston

Good riddance!

Memo: Bill Gordon

He faded back into the photocopier earlier on today, I saw him while I was printing out my new novel
Big in Brussels,
a heartwarming tale about a tone deaf singer whose home recordings become huge in the Belgian capital. He left a final message for us on a sheet of A4: FUCK Y’ALL ASSHOLES. I think that might have been placed there beforehand by one of the pranksters. PeteXXX?

I
ATE
lunch in the canteen (a choice of prepackaged cress-egg or cress-tomato sandwiches) and returned to the ScotCall bus. I spent the first hour panicking that this man who appeared to have no recollection of me murdering his colleague might snap at any second and denounce me with a theatrical scream of
“Murrrrderrrrer!”
This made devising the requisite strategies for freedom somewhat onerous. The bus headed along the road towards the supposed sea. There were no passengers (there were no stops) so I brooded in the presence of the driver and the blonde zombie whom I had to kill soon before he denounced me and I was clad in chains forever (or clad to a phone—even prisoners had their ScotCall duties, most of them preferred to be hanged). I had no weapons to hand with which to do the killing. I decided to speak to the driver when the future corpse went to piss in the small bus WC. He was an older man, visibly asthmatic, listening to music (audibly Billy Joel) on headphones. I tapped him on the shoulder.

“Can I ask you something?”

“What?” he said in an unbothered manner.

“Do you care about ScotCall?”

“Is this a trick question?” His voice was more refined than I was expecting from whatever pomparse perception I had of the average bus driver.

“No. I want to kill the operative in the WC. Do you mind?”

“Go ahead.”

“You won’t report me?”

“Nah. Couldn’t care less.”

“You know there’s rumours of some kind of commune near the sea? We could take the bus there.”

“Sounds good. Although.”

“Although?”

“We couldn’t take the bus. We’d have to walk. Microchips.”

“Ah.”

“And chances are if we walked along the road another bus would pick us up.”

“What if I drove the bus to the edge of its route and walked along the road where there are no ScotCall buses?”

“I like it. Let me stop here and I’ll kill that chump in the loo.”

“You
will? Oh ... all right.”

Rob (driver) parked the bus once we heard the toilet flush. He dispatched with the operative in a manner I won’t describe since to do so might stir up inadvertent sympathy for the corpse—this would be irrelevant and insulting to me and all those like me who strive for “freedom.” (In scare quotes since I doubt the concept exists outside the realm of myth). Rob drove the bus for two miles and parked approximately two hours’ walking distance from the hamlet of Arxle where outcast pensioners had set up ScotCall at-home kits to enable their promising futures as operatives from the comfort of their own granite bungalows, free from the persecution of Kirstys, with only the sound of a loud klaxon to discipline them whenever post-lunch sleep beckoned or their hearts stopped. Those unfortunate enough to speak to one of these promising operatives ended up trapped in exchanges such as:

“Hello?”

“What?”

“Is this ScotCall?”

“What?”

“I need help sexing an asparagus.”

“I need what?”

“Um . . .”

“Who is this?”

“I need help sexing an asparagus.”

“I
don
’t
know them.
”

“Sorry?”

“What’s there? Is that there?”

“I don’t follow.”

“Swallow what?”

“No, I—”

“I’m 101 years old,you cunt.”

“Oh, um . . .”

“What?!”

“Can we start again?”

“Bloody hell.”

“My asparagus.”

“Your ass is what?”

“No, my asparagus.”

“What is your point?”

“I don’t know, I—”

“Then why?”

“Um . . .”

“D’you know I’m 101,you mook?”

“Yes, you said.”

“Good.”

“So, can you help?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!”

“Sorry. Should I call back later?”

“Date her? Date who?”

“No, I—”

“I can’t date you, I’m 101 years old.”

“I didn’t want a date.”

“Then why’d you call?”

“Because . . .”

“Exactly. If you don’t want a date, don
’t
waste my time.”

“Hello? Hello?”

We approached the dour slagheap of Arxle. The surrounding fields had been paved over long ago and still-present sheep competed for nibbles on the troughs of grass-substitute made from starch and wet paper. After their lunchtime snacks, the bored sheep tried grazing on the grass troughs or lay sprawled on the ever-warm concrete, blinking into the distance. Artificial bushes dotted the landscape and the sheep champed their bits on the leaves to exercise their champing muscles, despite the impossibility of digestion. I buddied up to Rob as we walked. He had worked as an IT repairman before the meltdown and went into hiding during the witch-hunts of ’39, when bankrupt businessmen went on Revenge Rampages, shooting web designers, content writers, repairmen— all those in the IT industry, including people who sold monitor sprays and mouse-buffing shiners. I had the slight inclination to tweak his nipples myself, having lost thousands in the meltdown, but his sprightliness and enthusiasm for our “freedom” kept me in check. So I decided not to beat the ever-living shit out of him in the end.

Arxle was a post-nuclear pit for pensioners with no sons, daughters, or tender-souled relatives willing to adopt them into the Scot-Call compound with its “perks.” We skulked past their granite shacks as the incoherent sods poured senile slaverings into their phones and their co-incoherent customers begged for the correct reference number for poultry, or the fastest method of annexing a pineapple, or how to buff a never-buffed surfboard, or tips on how to memorise smells. We smiled at their wrinkly sneers of provincial contempt and waved to their windows, making big-kisses-and-hugs gestures. These were people who craved the barrenness of isolation and exacted their revenge via their phones, communing only with their neighbours to borrow a cup or acid or a pint of plutonium. I was well beyond feeling sorry for anyone.

I
AN
Rankin entered. “Between you and me, I’m secretly pleased about the end of those publishers. I have been creating vital work in the crime field for decades, work on a par with Dickens, Zola, and Dostoevsky for its brutal exposé of the urban underworld, and people have panned me as a hack. Because I sold. Because I packed used bookshops to bursting with old Rebuses and kept charity shops alive. I should have been fucking worshipped. I
was
the Scottish economy, and those highbrow bastards refused me their Bookers, Oranges, James Taits, Lannans, all because I wrote about hard-drinking mavericks who solved murders. Because I had a mansion. Let me tell you, if people think rich men can’t pen book after book of classic fiction, they are living in a loony soap opera. I set my ninety-fourth Rebus,
Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out,
in the seedy enclave of Cramond where twelve bodies had been found along the beach. Rebus was working through the twelve steps for the twelfth time (see that symmetry, motherfuckers?) and had one last chance to prove himself to the Lothian PD. The reviews were excrement. ‘Rankin continues to ring the last desperate drop from his neverending cash sponge with this tiresome crime procedural where the body count is high and the entertainment value is low.’ Cash sponge?! Call that book reviewing? Hacks are failed novelists. My ninety-fifth Rebus,
Got Live If You Want It!,
I set in the murky cluster of Blackford, where an opera singer had been found cut open outside a newsagents, and Rebus had to overcome his instinctive working-class loathing of opera to solve the case. More predictable reviews. ‘Rankin continues writing his novels via an algorithm used in Windows 98 with expected hilarious results.’ Hilarious results?! I have a comedic touch sometimes, I can make sides split if I want to. I prefer the fucking truth to making tourists snigger in airports. Pardon me for having loftier ambitions. My ninety-sixth Rebus,
Jamming with Edward!,
I set in the slimy borough of Holyrood, where a politician had been accused of killing a teenage backpacker. The twist of that fucking masterpiece was there was no murder: the first Rebus without a murder. The fans went nuts. I wrote another nine murderless Rebi after that, including one where no one is accused of anything and the book is long descriptions of Rebus rolling around in bed with one of his lovers, failing to make a cup of tea because he’d never done that before, walking to the newsagent to pick up
The Sun
and teasing his lover with the tits on page three, shouting abuse at the misfit dolts on ITV talk shows, ordering a Chinese takeout at four in the afternoon, refusing to pick up for the Detective Inspector despite hints of an impending case, and hitting the pubs for a cheeky half-pint or twelve (that number again, mofos). Hacks hated these, except one who wrote: ‘Rankin revitalises his franchise with this superb subversion of the novel that owes more to
Oblomov
than
The Big Sleep.’
I have no idea what that means, but at least one hack spoke sense for a change,” Ian said while on the pavement, walking in the door, and storming around the supermarket. “Hi Ian,” I said. In the same vein, an enraged Jodi Picoult arrived. “I wrote #1
New York Times
bestsellers, in case you weren’t aware (sometimes the font displaying this fact was only in 14pt on the covers). I wrote about families. People were envious of me because I dared to tackle emotions head-on. I wrote about families in the midst of tragedies. Lost or dead twins, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, there was no familial tragedy that remained unexplored by me, in one of my many very emotionally charged (readers say my books are better than therapy, they teach people how to love again) and long novels. Snobs and unfeeling dweebs were envious that I had the brass neck to tackle families using the sentiment at the root of human experience, as opposed to their obfuscating literary nonsense, hiding emotions in thickets of unreadable verbiage. If a person feels their fucking heart breaking then you fucking write, ‘Jane’s heart was fucking breaking,’ except you don’t use the swears, they reduce the readership! Be universal. Write about ruptured families all the time, that’s what I say, there’s no other topic that will place you on the
New York Times
bestseller list, except maybe child abuse, but I already have that covered in my ten-book
Leave Her Alone
series, so bad luck, suckers!” Jodi said as she drank all the cola and ate the three remaining chocolates. “I wrote a novel once,
The Heartsplitters
—left the entire University of Pennsylvania in tears. There was this scene with the two sisters, Jane and Julie. Julie had shagged Jane’s boyfriend and accidentally set his house on fire, killing him and his entire family. Julie was pissed at Jane for three decades until a chance encounter at a skiing lodge in Aviemore, Scotland when Julie had the chance to save her sister and her entire family from a ski-related death (do you notice my clever callback there, you literary lords and ladies?), and afterwards the sisters reconciled. ‘I cannot believe we remained silent for so long,’ Julie said with actual tears in her eyes (you hear that, obfuscators?), and the two hugged with tears streaming down their faces, tears that melted the entire ski lodge. The university was soaked after that reading! Flooded like the ski lodge. How’s that for creative mirroring!” Jodi had addressed this last section to the rustle in a bag of sweetcorn.