Free The New Uncanny by Etgar Keret, Ramsey Campbell, Hanif Kureishi, Christopher Priest, Jane Rogers, A.S. Byatt, Matthew Holness, Adam Marek Page B

motorway heading north-west. The occasional church spire in the distance piercing the dark grey wadding of the clouds. The monotony is relieved by a fizzing spot of fluorescent yellow up ahead. You squint, peer through the windscreen, rub with your sleeve at a stubborn patch of fog on the glass. The view clears. The fluorescent spot grows, elongates, becomes a figure.
    The motorway narrows from three lanes down to two. The traffic slows accordingly. The man in the high-visibility clothing moves his left arm up and down, telling you to slow down further. He’s standing hard by the crash barrier on the central reservation. He’s either suicidal or insane or both. There has to be a better way to warn drivers of impending hazards, you think. Sure, he’s completely covered in hi-vis gear, from the hood of his jacket to the turn-ups of his trousers, but you can’t imagine this man’s UK counterpart happily standing that close to moving traffic on the M1. Maybe the Belgians pay danger money, or perhaps, as seems likely from the standard of the driving, all Belgians are clinically insane. Admittedly this may be the birthplace of surrealism, but still.
    You twist your head for a closer look as you roll past. The planes of his face seem abnormally severe, his skin unnaturally smooth. Do motorway maintenance workers really shave every morning?
*

    ‘Tell me where it comes from, this love of our country.’
    Asking the question was a striking young woman of slender build and average height, her irregularly cut mahogany-coloured hair framing a face shaped like a warning sign. Eyes that glittered; a short, sharp nose, pointed like the bill of a goldfinch; lips painted a vivid red. When she leaned forward across the hotel breakfast table, peripheral vision gifted me a view down the front of her top.
    ‘What’s not to love about it?’ I said, careful not to let my eyes drop. ‘Beer, chocolate, medieval architecture.’
    ‘In that order?’
    She flashed her teeth; one was chipped at the corner. Either her lower lip was uneven or she twisted it unconsciously while she spoke. I remembered reading somewhere that beauty was all down to symmetry. I’d thought it was rubbish at the time and now here was proof.
    ‘Definitely.’
    ‘No, but…’ she started, signalling the switch to serious interview mode by picking up a sachet of sugar and turning it end on end on the tablecloth. ‘The Eddy De Groot novels are bestsellers. You’re not telling me his creator is inspired by nothing more than a desire to sit drinking Duvel at pavement cafés in the Grote Markt.’
    ‘With a view of the Stadhuis.’
    ‘Exactly.’
    ‘No. In fact, just between you and me,’ I said, lowering my voice to a conspiratorial whisper, ‘I don’t actually like Duvel.’
    She sat back, eyes wide.
    ‘I know, I know,’ I said, hands in the air. ‘The man who didn’t like Duvel. I don’t like tripels either. I like blond beers. I’ve always been partial to blonds.’ I gave her my winning grin.
    ‘Only blondes?’ she asked, sitting forward again.
    ‘As you probably know if you’ve read the books, I like the brown beers best.’ My eyes flicked down momentarily. ‘Westmalle, Ename, Chimay – but only the red or the blue.’
    Around us, hotel staff were discreetly clearing tables.
    ‘So, Eddy De Groot, your Flemish detective, is you?’ she asked, bending the sugar sachet in half.
    ‘It’s easier than making stuff up.’
    ‘Your alter-ego?’
    ‘If you like. All I know is he’s not Poirot and he’s not Maigret, but he’s not Van der Valk either. I saw a gap in the market for a Dutch-speaking Belgian detective. Written by an Englishman.’
    Now it was my turn to sit back in my chair. I took my eyes off her for a moment and looked around the breakfast room. She had described my Eddy De Groot novels as bestsellers. Which of course they weren’t, not in the UK, but they did OK in Dutch translation. In addition, they probably sold as many English