The Not Knowing [Paperback]

"'I haven't been as excited by a new writer since I first read Ellroy or stumbled across the very first James Sallis... it's like picking up the first novel of a master. She is that good and better, that dark' Ken Bruen; 'The Not Knowing is gutters full of blood and moon, bodies and dreams, streets full of cries and whispers, secrets and lies - fiction every bit as fraught as the nightmares from whence it came' David Peace; 'Cathi Unsworth has long been an accomplished writer. With The Not Knowing she weaves together all her passions; music, cultural journalism, hip London, crime novels and edgy films - to give us, in the tradition of Derek Raymond and Ken Bruen, anglographies of contemporary London and of lives gone all edge' James Sallis"

London, March 1992. Nearly a year after the release of Brit noir sensation, Bent, the capital is still in the grip of its cultural and stylistic impact. Diana Kemp, journalist on the alternative arts magazine Lux, is dismissive of the film?s cult following but admires the technique of its debut director, Jon Jackson. In fact, some of her admiration has a more personal nature and when Jon disappears following a triumphant Guardian lecture, she feels the loss, acutely. Two weeks? later, Jackson?s body is found in a condemned lock-up in the arches behind Camden market. A victim of his own success? Perhaps - the murder site resembles the particularly bloody final scene of Bent. But why would anyone want to destroy the golden boy in such a way? Attempting to put a lid on the past, Diana buries herself in work. But an assignment, at the ICA?s Crimewave festival, leads her on a voyage of discovery where not knowing might be the only thing that saves her.

Cathi Unsworth began her journalistic career at 19 while still studying at the London College of Fashion. Headhunted by Melody Maker, she worked there as a freelance feature writer/reviewer for several years before joining Bizarre magazine. Her own writing is inspired by the late Derek Raymond, whom she met when she interviewed him for Melody Maker and who encouraged her to follow the crime-writing path. She is the editor of London Noir, a collection of London crime stories published by Serpent's Tail. Her debut novel, The Not Knowing, was published by Serpent's Tail in 2005 and her second novel, The Singer, will be published in 2007. She lives in London.

The Not Knowing by Cathi Unsworth Leadtext: The moon was in the gutter... Reflected in the sky. Casting its sickly light through a thin smudge of cloud over the dark end of the street. Tonight's revellers, even the most woozy and determined of them, even the drifters with no doorway to call their home, had long since left this part of town. All that remained on the twisting curve of Agar Grove was detritus: discarded fast food wrappers, crumpled cigarette packets, waste paper fluttering and skittering across the lonely road, hustled along by the wind. And something else. Around the corner, footsteps came, a brisk pace, workmanlike. Accompanied by a low whistle, a repetitive little refrain, workmanlike too, but devoid of anything you could actually call a tune. The tall, hunched figure in the black Crombie coat wasn't really aware he was making this noise, his mind was far away, on other things. He was aware of the plastic bags he'd wound around his hands to keep any last vestiges of blood away from the inside pockets of his coat. It had happened in a bit of a rush, and maybe he was being excessively cautious, but it had seemed a reasonable thing to do at the time. What was it they had said? The Freshest Food Daily? Fresher Than The Rest? Fresh Cut Today? A Porky Prime Cut? A nervous giggle escaped like a sneeze. His mind was going off track again. No, it was good this part of the city. Railway arches and the empty stretch of the Grand Union canal, the disused York Way tube station and the squat gin palaces all boarded up and empty. An industrial estate to his right and beyond, the vast iron gasworks, bleak against the sulphurous sky, the abandoned crescent of railway houses no one ever got round to redeveloping, the great gothic spires of St Pancras like a monstrous fairy tale castle, and the lines of track, that rumbled out trains to the North. Behind him was Camden; party town, a place to be easily anonymous among the easily inebriated of all ages. He appreciated Camden. For all its bright lights and distractions, overflowing pubs full of rackety loud bands, its market and its colony of winos and tramps, it had its secret places. Lock-ups used by the market traders, railway arches used as rehearsal spaces and makeshift speakeasies, boarded up places that were easy to break into, once you nosed around a bit you could find them. Underneath, the rattling locomotives constantly hauling commuters here and there, out of the orange glow of the street lights. But on the other side, the side he had to navigate now, was King's Cross. He hated King's Cross. It was Sodom. Hell on Earth. A portal had opened here, spewing out the sick and depraved, the whores and pimps and junkie scum, clawing and clamouring their way out into the filth-clogged streets, shivering and sweating their way around the gaudy strip opposite the station and the carcinogenic ventricles of roads that surrounded it. He could smell its foetid stink as he walked down the long, lonely, slow motion stretch of York Way. No longer calmed by the nearness of water, images raced in fast-forward through his mind. He didn't know it, but his whistling got faster, his feet slapping harder on the pavement. Red gouts of blood. A bloody fountain. Flesh falling, yielding to the sharp smile of steel, carving a smile in white flesh. Flesh flapping open, so easily, quivering, soft as butter, all yellow and red inside. Screams contained by swathes of tape: a gurgling, rattling cacophony. Reminding him of pigs dying. And the beautiful arc of silvery steel. Now sleeping at the bottom of the Grand Union Canal. A lot of secrets buried there, under a sickly yellow moon. The noise of his feet was drowned out by the passing traffic, his round-shouldered, skinny frame momentarily illuminated by sweeping headlights. Just another anonymous drifter, alone in the London night, winding his way along the edge of the main road, the lonely streets of 4am. Down, down and down towards Sodom, blurring into the red, green, yellow lights, the confusion of automobiles and human traffic, disappearing in the crowd.