Something Rotten (Thursday Next 4)

Victor grimaced.

'I really don't want to hear this, Bowden. If you get caught we'll all be for the high jump!'

'Some things are worth going to jail for, Victor,' replied Bowden in an even tone. 'As LiteraTecs we swore to uphold and defend the written word – not indulge a crazed politician's worst paranoic fantasies.'

'Just be careful.'

'Of course,' replied Bowden, 'it might come to nothing if we can't find a way to get the books out of England – the Welsh border shouldn't be a problem since Wales aligned itself with Denmark. I don't suppose you have any ideas how to get across the English border post?'

'I'm not sure,' I replied. 'How many copies of banned books do you want to smuggle anyway?'

'About four truckloads.'

I whistled. Things – like cheese, for instance – were usually smuggled in to England. I didn't know how I'd get banned books out.

'I'll give it a shot. What else is going on?'

'Usual stuff,' replied Bowden. 'Faked Milton, Jonson, Swift . . . Montague and Capulet street gangs . . . someone discovered a first draft of The Mill on the Floss entitled The Sploshing of the Weirs. Also, the Daphne Farquitt Specialist Bookshop went up in smoke.'

'Insurance scam?'

'No – probably anti-Farquitt protesters again.'

Farquitt had penned her first bodice-ripping novel in 1932 and had been writing pretty much the same one over and over again ever since. Loved by many and hated by a vitriolic minority, Farquitt was England's leading romantic novelist.

'There's also been a huge increase in the use of performance-enhancing drugs by novelists,' added Victor. 'Last year's Booker speed-writing winner was stripped of his award when he tested positive for Cartlandromin. And only last week Handley Paige only narrowly missed a two-year writing ban for failing a random dope test.'

'Sometimes I wonder if we don't have too many rules,' murmured Victor pensively, and we all three sat in silence, nodding thoughtfully for a moment.

Bowden broke the silence. He produced a piece of stained paper wrapped in a cellophane evidence bag and passed it across to me.

'What do you make of this?'

I read it, not recognising the words but recognising the style. It was a sonnet by Shakespeare – and a pretty good one, too.

'Shakespeare – but it's not Elizabethan; the mention of Basil Brush would seem to indicate that – but it feels like his. What did the Verse Metre Analyser say about it?'

'Ninety-one per cent probability of Will as the author,' replied Victor.

'Where did you get it?'

'Off the body of a down-and-out by the name of Shaxtper killed on Tuesday evening. We think someone has been cloning Shakespeares.'

'Cloning Shakespeares? Are you sure? Couldn't it just be a ChronoGuard "temporal kidnap" sort of thing?'

'No. Blood analysis tells us they were all vaccinated at birth against rubella, mumps and so forth.'

'Wait – you've got more than one?'

'Three,' said Bowden. 'There's been something of a spate recently.'

'When can you come back to work, Thursday?' asked Victor solemnly. 'As you can see, we need you.'

I paused for a moment.

'I'm going to need a week to get my life into gear first, sir. There are a few pressing matters that I have to attend to.'

'What, may I ask,' said Victor, 'is more important than Montague and Capulet street gangs, cloned Shakespeares, smuggling Kierkegaard out of the country and authors using banned substances?'