Читать книгу Reacher Said Nothing - Andy Martin - Страница 17

It started with a burial. It would have to start with a burial.

Lee types with two fingers only, the index fingers.

The smoke was corkscrewing up from the cigarette in his hand. He stopped to take a drag on it. Looked back at what he had written. Crushed out the cigarette. He was looking intently at the screen.

The first paragraph was five lines long. I could almost make out the first word. An -ing word – a present participle. Something-ing. Ten-point and I’m two yards back. I could see the words, but not read them. Could have been Sanskrit. The suspense was killing me. Next time, I vowed silently, I’m going to bring a telescope. I would have got closer, maybe could have got closer, but I didn’t want to crowd him. I was already nervous about making paper noises as I jotted down largely meaningless notes with a lot of question marks. I was already right on top of a guy in a small room in front of a computer trying to create a novel out of nothing, to conjure it up like a 100,000-word rabbit out of a hat.

Or maybe snake charmer would be a better metaphor – teasing that snake right up out of the basket.

Either way, Lee Child was thinking hard about his second paragraph.

Behind the page, on the desktop – I should have mentioned this sooner – a blue background, plain, no images.

The cigarette went back in the ashtray. The two fingers went back to work. End of second par. He lit another cigarette and then saved the file. For the first time, he was going to give it a name. Stick a label on it. He considered using the title, but then opted for something more neutral. ‘Reacher 19’, he typed.

I leaned forward. I could just make it out. ‘Nineteen?’ I said. ‘Reacher nineteen?’

‘Oh yeah,’ he said. ‘Losing it.’ Deleted 19. Changed it to ‘Reacher 20’. Personal was nineteenth. Make Me is the twentieth. The file was no longer nameless.

‘I’m working up to Make Me. Not quite there yet.’ Make Me was fresh out of the oven – he didn’t want to drop it.

The second par was longer. The onscreen page was slowly bulking up. He went back and slipped another sentence into the first par. Just a short one. So far he hadn’t deleted a thing.

I deciphered another word. ‘Nothing’. No. ‘Nothingness’.

The second par was twice the length of the first. Now he was into the third. The third was only two words long. I could only make out the second: ‘enough’. Good enough? Bad enough? Looked more like a four-letter word than three, though. A tetragrammaton. Was that an S at the beginning?

Lee, stuck in mid-sentence. The cursor flashing impatiently, urging him on, begging for more.

Another cigarette.

That desk: sheet metal all riveted together, made back in England – is that some kind of homage to all those old artisan metal workers of his youth? Back in Birmingham and Sheffield. Under the railway arches. The craftsmen who knew how to make stuff and make it well. No painted jam. No guano peas. Solid. Dependable.

The fifth par. We’re on again! I could make out the beginning: ‘Only one thing went wrong …’ A one-line par.

Other books on the shelf. Encyclopedia of American Police Cars. Websters. Small Arms. Tourist guides to Maine, Oregon, California.

Lee folded his hands together under his chin. His face was about two feet from the screen. He shoved it a little closer, peering into the screen like a crystal-ball gazer. Now leaning back again, hands behind his head. Rubbing thumb and index finger of his right hand together, as if trying to elicit a flame.

Backs off for a maximum of ten seconds at a time, then into it again.

An asterisk – or maybe a hash sign? Centre. Return. We’re into a new section. A couple more lines. Then he stops.

3.07: file saved. Reacher 20.

Lee hit a button and the printer stirred. A page slid out. Lee stood up, went over to the printer, took out the page. Then he came over and handed it to me. ‘There.’

I think my hand was trembling. Just a little.

I leaned back on the couch and looked it over, slowly. The first page – or first couple of pages – of the new Reacher. Fresh off the printer. Straight out of the mind of Lee Child. (Maybe with a detour through the collective unconscious.)

Less than an hour. Five hundred words. Two fingers. ‘I find it’s about the right typing speed for me,’ Lee said. ‘It’s as fast as my brain can keep up with.’

It took a while for the text to come into focus. I think I was too awestruck or moved or something to make any sense of it at first. A labyrinth. Utterly mysterious. Then words. Then sentences.

That -ing word right at the beginning. I was right about that. Turned out to be Moving. This is how the first sentence went: Moving a guy as big as Keever wasn’t easy.