Litro #123 Mystery Teaser

Mystery Issue, March 2013 | 44

FeaturingMazin Saleem . Thomas Binns Anniken Blomberg . Oli Belas Elishia Heiden . Helen Jukes

123

Poland

MYSTERY

Have you ever had anything published?

A book perhaps, or an article in a magazine like this one.

If you have then the Authors’ Licensing & Collecting Society Ltd (ALCS) could be holding money owed to you.

ALCS collects secondary royalties earned from a number of sources including the photocopying and scanning of books.

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Mar iko MoriRebir t h

Book now

13 December 2012– 17 February 2013

www.royalacademy.org.uk

Mariko Mori, Tom Na H-Iu II (detail), 2006. Glass, stainless steel, LED, real time control system, 450 x 156.3 x 74.23cm. Courtesy of: Mariko Mori Studio Inc. © Mariko Mori. Photo: Richard Learoyd

‘A super seductive art world enigma’ The Guardian

Have you ever had anything published?

A book perhaps, or an article in a magazine like this one.

If you have then the Authors’ Licensing & Collecting Society Ltd (ALCS) could be holding money owed to you.

ALCS collects secondary royalties earned from a number of sources including the photocopying and scanning of books.

Unlock information about ways of benefi tting by visiting

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Litro Magazine Mystery

EDITORIAL

I have a friend who loves mystery movies. For her, and I suspect many other fans of the genre, the appeal lies in the challenge—working out whodunit, whytheydunnit, and sometimes even whattheydun in the first place—as quickly as they can. And, evidently, letting me know at the first possible opportunity.

Personally, I’ve never really been a subscriber to this strategy. I’m fairly con-tent to let my sleuths grind through the motives and the alibis and come to an eventual, inevitable conclusion on my behalf. I respect the process.*

Of course, it might be that I’m just lazy, but I think what appeals to me about mysteries is not so much the solutions as the questions, the gaps in our knowledge, the state of uncertainty. Mysteries are quantum events, occurring but only existing for a time, until they are resolved and disap-pear. Those gaps appear literally, too, as dark spaces—shadowy alleyways between buildings, secret gardens, misfiring amygdalae in amnesia victims. They are where mystery thrives—in novels, films, plays, and online, too, in mystery’s paranoid, internet-friendly offspring, conspiracy.

It’s these gaps that we celebrate in this month’s Mystery-themed issue of Litro. There’s the fantastically sinister tooth that appears in Mazin Saleem’s Meaningless Number, “tilted as though it belonged in the mouth of someone yawning or screaming,” just an ordinary tooth, but missing the mouth, head and body that we would otherwise expect to exist around it; there are a series of mundanely out of place objects in Working Tech-niques of the Amateur Detective by Thomas Binns, though the narrator is preoccupied throughout by a much more significant absence in his life; Across the Border by Anniken Blomberg contemplates not just a journey into one of those gaps, but the things you return with; Somebody Else’s Second Chance by Elishia Heiden deals with a frustrating gap of memory, and the stories that others are compelled to fill it with; and The Land & The Sea by Helen Jukes, which features a man caught not on one nor in the other, but somewhere between the two. Finally, Oli Belas, in his essay The Enduring Appeal of the Mystery Story, focuses on the figure of the detective—the character who steps into the shadowy spaces of the narrative, the character we willingly follow, some of us alongside, some of us behind.

Either way, we’re on the case. Care to join us?

Andrew Lloyd-Jones Editor

March 2013

*Columbo would be a notable exception to this rule, since he always seems to know right from the start who’s responsible. It’s like he’s passively lording his superiority over us for the best part of each episode. I’m not a fan.

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Oli Belas

Thomas Binns

Mazin Saleem

Anniken Blomberg

04

07

14

19

MEANINGLESS NUMBER

WORKING TECHNIQUES OF THE AMATEUR DETECTIVE

ACROSS THE BORDER

CONTENTSLitro Magazine Mystery

Helen Jukes

Events

31

38THE LAND & THE SEA

Elishia Heiden

27THE ENDURING APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY STORY

SOMEBODY ELSE’S SECOND CHANCE

4 | Litro Magazine

BOOKS Murder in the LibraryBritish Library 96 Euston Rd, NW1 2DB Sun Feb 24 – Sun May 12 A chance to immerse yourself in the history of the whodunnit as the British Library takes a quirky look at crime fiction. Fea-turing familiar and loved writers, such as Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle, alongside the unknown and unexpected, this exhibition showcases manuscripts, books, rare audio record-ings, artworks and intriguing artefacts from the library's British and North American collections.

AlchemyScience Museum Exhibition Rd, SW7 2DDMon Feb 25 – Tue Apr 30A display of 20 rare books and two illustrated manuscripts relat-ing to alchemy from the museum’s library and archives, on show alongside objects from the Wellcome and Chemistry collections including an alchemical scroll.

5x15Bush Theatre Old Shepherd’s Bush Library, 7 Uxbridge Rd, W12 8LJ, Wed Mar 13

This month’s ever-enjoyable 5x15 event, in which five speakers each speak for 15 minutes on a chosen topics, is co-presented with Notting Hill Editions. The line-up features author Debo-rah Levy responding to George Orwell, and poet and novelist Lavinia Greenlaw.

How to Write Successfully for Children & Young AdultsBloomsbury Publishing 50 Bedford Square, WC1B 3DPSat Mar 2Authors Nick Lake, Nicholas Allan and Jon Mayhew take on this all-dayer to help workshop your writing, divided by the age groups you want to appeal to, from 0-7, 8-12 and 13+.

The Big Write Festival of Children’s LiteratureDiscover Children’s Story Centre 383-387 High St, E15 4QZSat Mar 9 – Sun Mar 17, Day tickets £7, children £6.50, concs £6.Children, Festivals, Things to do, Kids’ activities, Children’s books. Discover’s 5th annual festival of children’s literature has a packed programme of story sessions, workshops, book signings and other events. The closing weekend sees a range of events and activities with illustrators and authors such as Polly Dunbar.

EVENTS THIS MONTH


THEATRE, FILM AND COMEDY

Playing Cards 1 – SpadesRoundhouse Chalk Farm Rd, NW1 8EHMon Feb 25 – Sat Mar 2, £15-£45The great Canadian physical practitioner Robert Lepage returns to London with the first in a projected series of four plays based around the suits on a deck of cards.

The Double R ClubBethnal Green Working Men’s Club 42-46 Pollard Row, E2 6NB, Thu Mar 21This evening of mystery and nightmares inspired by the films of David Lynch is a dark and twisted treat, often groping into terri-tory where other cabaret nights fear to tread. The reliably sinister Benjamin Louche presides over a mix of comedy and crooning.

War Child Comedy Night 2013O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire, Shepherd’s Bush Green, W12 8TT, Fri Mar 8The very first annual comedy benefit gig for War Child has a very impressive line-up. The bill includes comedy god Stewart Lee, crazed Canadian Tony Law, observationalist Seann Walsh, Aisling Bea, Alistair Barrie, and Hal Cruttenden.

Chris Addison – The Time Is Now, AgainSouthbank Centre Belvedere Rd, SE1 8XXThu Mar 28Chris Addison, star of 'The Thick of It', 'In the Loop' and 'Lab Rats' is a superb stand-up comedian with one of the sharpest com-edy minds around. Addison is seen as the thinking man's comic, with sharp observations and a scholarly approach to his varied subject matter. However, this erudition never halts the flow of laughter. He's bringing his 'The Time is Now, Again' tour back to the capital for its final London date.

Hot Tub CinemaFactory 7 7-11 Hearn St, off Curtain Rd, EC2A 3LSWed Feb 27 – Tue Mar 5, £220 per tub (up to eight people)The latest outdoor cinema experience invites viewers to watch a film while sitting back in hot tubs, with waiter service, on the Netil House rooftop. Tubs, which hold up to eight people, must be booked in advance. like a sweet afternoon tea pick-me-up with a glass of champagne or a lavish pudding, the Winter Club Sand-wich is a new alternative to traditional London afternoon teas.

6 | Litro Magazine

EXHIBITIONS

Codebreaker: Alan Turing’s Life and LegacyScience Museum Exhibition Rd, SW7 2DDMon Feb 25 – Sun Jun 2 An exhibition to mark the centenary of the birth of Alan Turing (1912-1954). The show looks at the achievements of the man whose wartime codebreaking helped to shorten WWII by years and whose influence on computer science is still felt today. On display are arte-facts including machines devised by Turing, such as the Pilot ACE computer (the fastest computer of its time), along with the electro-mechanical 'bombe' machines which were used to crack codes during the war.

Doctors, Dissection and Resurrection MenMuseum of London 150 London Wall, EC2Y 5HNSun Feb 24 – Sun Apr 14 ‘I have only got a leg and thigh,’ wrote a disgruntled William Hamilton in 1878, referring to his difficulty in finding enough material to complete his surgical training. Hamilton was relatively lucky.

Amongst Heroes: The Artist in Working Cornwall2 Temple Place, London, WC2R 3BDUntil Sun Apr 14Two Temple Place stages its second winter exhibition with a major survey of work by Cornish artists. Created in partnership with the Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro, the show continues Two Temple Place’s aim to showcase collections from outside central London while providing opportunities for emerging curatorial talent – this year’s show has been curated by Courtauld Institute student Roo Gunzi, who is completing a PHD on Newlyn painter Stanhope Forbes

A Room for LondonQueen Elizabeth Hall, South Bank, London, SE1 8XXPerched on top of the Queen Elizabeth Hall, with a command-ing view of the river, this wonderfully whimsical temporary hotel room was designed by David Kohn Architects in collaboration with artist Fiona Banner in response to a competition organised by Living Architecture.

The Huguenot LegacyBank of England Museum, Threadneedle St (entrance in Bartho-lomew Lane), London, EC2R 8AH, Until Fri May 10The achievements and legacy of the Huguenots, the French prot-estant refugees who came to Britain during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, are celebrated in this exhibition, which takes a look at Huguenot contributions to British culture –including banking. Figures explored include the first Governor of the Bank of England, Sir John Houblon, who was the grandson of the Huguenot refugee. Nearby Spitalfields is the ideal place to continue an exploration of Huguenot London.


What happens when an impossible object meets a disbelieving public?

by Mazin Saleem

MEANINGLESS NUMBER

The second to notice were the paramedics because the cyclist’s blood stood out on the enamel; at her speed, she must have felt like she’d ridden face-first into a nail. Others stopping to help or watch also noticed and entered history. It was a cold, wet morning on a quieter side of Victoria Park.

Even so there was soon a crowd too large to be explained by just that ambulance. Black cabs started pulling over en masse. Dog-walkers were ignoring their dogs. Above the unconscious woman, in mid-air, was what looked like a tooth—an upper incisor, tilted as though it belonged in the mouth of someone yawning, or screaming.

Most people’s reaction was to squint then laugh, rubbing their jaws. But against expectations, no TV pranksters or illusionists came out of their hiding places. Ignoring the gasps, a paramedic moved closer to it with an eyebrow raised. When he chopped his hand above and below, the second eyebrow joined the first, and he squirmed a little where he stood. Flicking it produced a familiar tap. He next tried wobbling it, and when he finally removed his aching and briefly warped fingers everybody could see that it hadn’t moved an inch.

Within minutes, photos and videos had spread around the coun-try and—thanks to a couple of tourists—around the world. The media assumed that all the emails and phone calls were part of some ad campaign. It was only towards late afternoon that the first news vans arrived, playing chicken with one another at the gates. By then, several of the original crowd were staring into the distance or had left, heads shaking, as if someone had told a joke in bad taste.

The police arrived next, though not as some excitedly thought because of a cover-up—they were there to disperse the crowd (it heaved back and forth but always with a held-back clearing in the middle; now and then a child would break free, jump up to try get a touch, then run back giggling, as if having narrowly avoided being bitten). In fact, the police were just as confused as everyone else. A drunk was swear-ing and making threats, pushing others down to get closer. People started shouting that they couldn’t move or breathe.

The police had to call for help to pacify the situation. The military arrived, imposing a no-fly zone to ground the news helicopters and putting up tents that could be seen from all the nearby tower blocks. This did not help dispel people’s suspicions.

All they were left with were photos and videos, most too shaky or taken from too far away—but everyone’s reactions looked real enough; and

14 | Litro Magazine

WORKING TECHNIQUES OF THE AMATEUR DETECTIVE

30th November 2001

Back of a mobile phone found in the gutter on Crossleigh Street. Mugging gone wrong? Half mile radius searched for any further items, handbag, purse, searched bushes in Crompton park, nothing found. Serious damage identified to some of the lower branches in brambles, vandals no doubt. Will be making regular trips to hedges to monitor situation.

3rd December 2001

Spoke to Lizzy Cooper. Reports of a single foot print in the snow in the middle of her lawn. Lizzy is confused and frankly, so am I. Had lengthy discussion about possible solutions, Lizzy suggested a one legged Tigger type of garden hopper, conversation lasted three cups of tea, became fatigued, went home, tried to explain to Mother, she was busy pulling hairs from the bath, not much time for me.

NB—One large ginger hair found in Bath. No ginger haired people known to use that Bath. Investigation to follow.

4th December 2001

Busy day today. A new Missing Dog poster in 34 locations. Dog is a Mastiff, much loved family pet. Spent the first five hours door knocking asking to check garages and Sheds, was chased by Neil Grampton’s son, fell on a Rabbit Hutch in the Garden of 32 Trinade Street, Rabbit escaped, lost two hours chasing it. Rabbit found. Day light Lost.

5th December 2001

Auntie May called me to look at a single black glove she found under-neath her living room window, she’s quite shaken. The glove appears to belong to a male, medium size hand, palm worn out. I went to Tesco to pick her up some Calms. Removed the glove, placed it in a sandwich bag and stored it in my filing cabinet underneath ‘Single Black Glove Found Underneath Aunty May’s Window’.

He’s the detective we deserve. But not the one we need.

by Thomas Binns


A logger discovers there’s more to the forest than will ever be made clear.

by Anniken Blomberg

ACROSS THE BORDER

1.

At dawn the light trickled between the trees, seeped into the dark like a milky liquid. The hues and shapes that appeared in its wake were always the same. Black-green branches, grey moss curled up like old women’s hair, blood-red lichen clinging to grey boulders.

The strangeness of the landscape comforted him. Every morning he felt relief to see it emerge into its separate components. At night it was as if it united with itself, contracted and expanded at the same time, became a thing; breathing and waiting for him outside the thin walls of the logger’s cabin.

He was able to separate the unease from the man who prepared his supper from the contents of tins and bags of foil, smoked his cig-arettes, slept for seven hours every night, put on his work clothes in the morning and walked along the path to the logging site. The man who operated with confidence and skill amongst whining, hum-ming machinery and the hard-soft swoosh of falling trees.

The last bit of forest fringing the path to the logger’s cabin had been left to maintain itself. Young pale trees pushed up at random next to black tree stumps that looked as if they had blown over in some primeval storm.

They had offered him the logger’s cabin when it emerged that he slept in his car the nights he didn’t sleep with Bodil, which was more than half the nights of the week. Since he moved in, he’d confined his stays in her house to the weekends.

He carried with him a not-quite-acknowledged feeling that some-thing or someone was lurking at the edge of his shadow. Something that would keep still as long as he was in motion, but start moving in once he settled for too long.

But after the Change and the Ravage there was less space in the world to move around in. This new world didn’t really suit people like him. One day he would find himself held in a pocket of activity he couldn’t leave so quickly.

And here he was. Caught, held. Filling the hole after another’s absence.

He had just completed a short contract in another logging area nearby when the request came. Someone had disappeared and they were under pressure to clear that particular area of forest within two months. Would he be willing to step in and help?


THE ENDURING APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY STORYJust why do readers find mystery and detective stories so popular?

by Oli Belas

The critic Tzvetan Todorov once suggested that the trick to writing a successful detective story was being sure not to innovate. The great genre work is that which best and most closely follows the “rules” of its genre; to refine the genre, he cautioned, would be “to write 'literature'” rather than a mystery. But surely this is wrong-headed; a nonsense—logically, let alone critically—to separate Literature and detective fiction, as if they constitute mutually exclusive genres. For there is no “the” in “the mystery story.” Use of the definite article here is a cheap yet time-honoured trick: a red herring. “The” mystery story is as rich a tradition—or, rather, set of entwined traditions—as any other in the literary network. To paraphrase and doctor the Law, or Revelation, of the great science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon: if much mystery and crime writing is “crud,” then this is only because ninety percent of everything is; what matters is mystery writing's other ten percent, and its enduring appeal. It matters, amongst other reasons, because such consideration as we can afford this ten percent may help us to keep broad and alive our sense of what counts as “liter-ature” and “the literary.” To do this at a time when the political model being handed down to educators offers an ever narrower conception of art and culture—well, perhaps it would be a modest achievement, but not an unimportant one.

Before we move any further, though, let me make it clear that I do not intend to use these opening comments as a way into defending

“the” mystery story as Art. So tired is the question “but is it art?” that it barely seems worth the asking these days—though it would make a fine and willing corpse in a crime story. “But is it art?” is always dead on arrival, having been fully exsanguinated, and there is little hope of finding the truly guilty party, for so many have and so many others will continue to execute it: death by utterance.

***

Why do mystery stories and other branches of crime fiction con-tinue to engage us? Were we to trace the roots of crime writing to the popular Newgate Calendar—from which we get the so-called

“Newgate novel"—of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, one might be tempted to suggest that crime writing's success records nothing more nor less than our inveterate fascination with violence and antinomy. The philosopher Gilles Deleuze once defended crime fiction for sharply presenting society's endless cycles of


SOMEBODY ELSE’S SECOND CHANCEA granddaughter attempts to understand the choices that lead to a death in the family—one that leaves a terrible legacy.

by Elishia HeidenI died before I was born.

My slate wasn’t clean but marred with half-erased sentences and distorted images. I’ve tried to smooth the etchings, but it’s difficult to repair a damaged surface. All I know for certain is that my grand-mother chose to date a serial killer who eventually murdered her. And that’s not the kind of event a family gets over.

It’s difficult being the only daughter of a man who lost his mother to poor choices he wishes he could’ve controlled. All I know is it’s difficult to be someone’s second chance—to feel like a symbol of all that ever went wrong.

As a child, I tried to imagine it all—the murder—in my mind. I still do.

I look for any semblance of a resolution, so I can avoid a similar outcome.

I picture myself at the crime scene. I find her body in the midnight blue dress with the crimson piping that drips around the edges of her neck. That's what she wears in the picture on my parents’ piano. A single bobby pin holds her dark brown hair back on one side of her skull like in the picture, but she doesn't pose for pictures in my imagi-nation. Instead, her body lies limply in the backseat of her vintage Volkswagen van. Sometimes, I see her in the van on the abandoned mountain road in the middle of the summer. I scuff my feet along the gravel, and the man with the horse waves at me to walk faster. He hops off his horse and looks through the window and yells, “Oh, no. Get over here.”

I pick up my pace, and as I start to get closer to the van, an odor of baked fleshed overtakes me. The man looks at me. He wears a plaid button-up flannel like the one my father wore in the seventies. I saw the shirt in pictures, and my mind puts all the pieces together—tries to make a seamless narrative to explain this all away.

The horse swishes its tail from side-to-side, the way my real pony used to.

He says to me, “Look in here.” I lean closer into the backseat window with my hands around my eyes and jerk back when my bare skin barely touches the car. The summer heat is almost unbearable to me, so I look at the man. He says, “No, go ahead, look.”

38 | Litro Magazine

In the mornings the fishing boats collect. In the grey-blue mist of the nearly-light they arrive at the harbour mouth, their decks heaped (or not) with last night’s catch. Here the fishermen’s voices practice themselves again, calling out a ‘hey-ho’ or a ‘bring ‘er in’ in the dry-throated singsong of men who live and breathe with the sea.

As the mist disperses the boats become distinguishable from each other. New and old, poor and less so. There is the difference between a high-heaped good catch and a meagre one, and some of this is down to luck. There are the telltale marks written upon the boats by the fishermen: patches repainted, storms smoothed over, boards fixed. Inside the boats there are magazine pages and old photos taped to walls. There are tin plates, paintbrushes and woolen clothes stowed into cupboards where a storm won’t pull them away.

And as the grey-blue light gathers a green to it, lets in a yellow just appear-ing over the flat-out waters, the men are throwing ropes to the shouts and jumps of harbour workers who are peeling from their houses, pulling on their overalls, swigging dregs of coffee and stamping down their boots. Gulls lift with a caw-caw, and smoke whispers up from the chimneys of houses as the hot smell of toast is forgotten with the incoming stench and promise of the sea.

And upon the heavy stones of the harbour wall the men of the sea exchange fish and a few words with the villagers. News is passed on, necessary repairs are made. And before long the fishermen’s eyes begin to wander. They will notice the hardness and stillness of the stone, and listen to the lapping and teasing of the water at the wall, and soon they will return to their boats, pausing again at the harbour mouth before dipping and nodding their way on.

This is how it is and how it has always been in places where land-people live with the constant crash of wind and waves, the comings and goings of the seafolk and the rhythm of the tides. In these places the villagers look out not with longing but foreboding, and the tides (and so perhaps the fishermen) are a mystery few have the time or inclination to understand. Interested only in what the ocean brings and takes with it, they are dependent upon it, and fearful of how it shakes them. So there is always an air of restraint, a guardedness to the exchanges between the fishermen and the villagers along the hard stonewalls where land and sea collide.

But this was the morning that—among the ropes and the dry throats and the caw-caws—a fisherman stepped down from his boat,

There’s a place that exists between land and sea, though you won’t find it on any charts.

by Helen Jukes

THE LAND & THE SEA

Litro Magazine is published by Ocean Media Books Ltd.General inquiries: contact [email protected] or call 020 3371 9971.

Litro Magazine is a little lit mag with a big worldview, pocket-sized so you can bring it anywhere. Our mission: to discover new and emerg-ing writers and publish them alongside stalwarts of the literary scene. We also publish regular features on literature, arts and culture online at www.litro.co.uk. Please keep this copy of Litro safe or pass it on to someone else to enjoy—we like to think of Litro as a small, free book.

Publisher & Editor-in-Chief: Eric Akoto [email protected]

Magazine Short Fiction Editor: Andrew [email protected]

Online Short Fiction Editor: Katy Darby [email protected]

Contributing Editor: Sophie Lewis

Contributing Editor & Web Designer: Emily [email protected]

General Online Editor : Emily [email protected]

Book Reviews & Interviews Editor: David Whelan

[email protected]

Magazine Layout & Design: Laura Hannum

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43 | Litro Magazine

LITRO | 123Mystery

There was soon a crowd too large to be explained by just the ambulance. Black cabs started pulling over en masse. Dog-walkers were ignoring their dogs. Above the unconscious woman, in mid-air, was what looked like a tooth—an upper incisor, tilted as though it belonged in the mouth of someone yawning. Or screaming.

Meaningless Number by Mazin Saleem

Cover Art: René Daigle

www.litro.co.uk

ISBN 978-0-9554245-5-7

Litro #123 Mystery Teaser

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