Lee Raven, Boy Thief

by Zizou Corder

  ‘You’re all wet,’ he said. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

  This did surprise me. Then he looked at me again.

  ‘You’re not the lad from the auctioneers, are you?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  He seemed mildly disappointed.

  ‘And why were you here then, in my basement?’ he asked.

  ‘Just keeping out of the rain,’ I said, looking all blue-eyed and innocent. It’s a look I have had to perfect.

  ‘Do your parents know where you are?’

  Uh-oh. Here it comes – the lecture, the load of sympathy, the handing over of the miscreant to the authorities.

  ‘Yeah of course I’d best be on my way then thanks anyway,’ I said hurriedly, and jumped up, and legged it. I was quicker than him and off out of there – or at least I would have been, and I would’ve made it too, only no one but a criking homing pigeon could’ve found his way out of that maze of a building. I thought I’d just gone back the way we came, but one shelf of books looks a lot like another and I think I turned left at the vellum not right, and the next thing I had to go up a skinny little staircase because Mr Whoever-he-was was right behind me, rustling about like a ferret up a hole, because he’d taken some shortcut. Anyway, so I was up these stairs and down a corridor and then pushing through a big, solid, heavy door – and suddenly we’re in another country. Thick green carpets. Reverential hush. High ceilings and a big old chandelier dangling. Windows down to the floor. Bliddy great marble fireplace over there. Swankerama, old-school style. It looked like a historical telly programme.

  I slowed down and tried to look like I belonged, in case there was anyone to see me. Sauntered towards a big pair of double doors, leading I hoped perhaps to the front door back on to the square.

  Suddenly Mr Thing leapt out of a door in front of me. ‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘You can’t get out that way. Come with me.’

  He was making me nervous. I overreacted, I know that now. But he was blocking my way and not letting me out . and it was making me… nervous.

  So I pushed past him.

  And he pushed me back.

  Well I could’ve clocked him, but he was old and I don’t like clocking old people. Doesn’t seem fair. I was about to do it anyway, but he’d got the advantage of my hesitating. With a quick movement, he shoved me through the door out of which he had just popped.

  ‘Now just stay there while I decide what to do with you,’ he said, as he slammed it shut on me.

  It was the sheer surprise of it that let him get away with it. I was taken off guard, otherwise he’d never have achieved such a thing.

  ‘Oi!’ I yelled. ‘Oi! You can’t do that! Oi! Let me out! Let me out, you old sod!’

  Nothing doing. Well, he was going to go to the Authorities, at a guess, wasn’t he? Otherwise he would’ve just let me go. He was going to get somebody in who’d do me for assault and theft and take me home and my mum would cry and my dad would thwack me and I’d be in prison or, worse, back at school and everyone would be criking me out about being Stu Pid Prat just because I can’t read and then I’d run away again. Big deal.

  So I looked around. I was back in skinny-corridor-land by the looks of it. It was a decent-size room, shelves to the ceiling on all the walls, piles of old books everywhere, one lamp hanging on a bit of wire, a rackety ladder thing on wheels, no doubt for climbing up and down the shelves. No windows. Another door, set in among the shelves: locked. In the corner was a little sink, and in the middle a chair in front of a big desk, with a computer on it – the only modern-looking thing in the place. I sat in the chair and whirled it round for a bit, but there’s a limit to how long you can find that amusing. I took out Mrs Asteriosy’s wallet and had a look through it again. I sighed a couple of times and looked round. On the shelf was a safe. I picked it just for fun, for something to do. Honest – I had no intention of nicking nothing. I was just stuck in a boring bliddy room with crike all to do, so I was amusing myself like anyone would.

  Inside, there was a metal briefcase – tigrenium, if I wasn’t mistaken. I recognized the metal because my dad always made me look out for it. It’s very light and very strong. You could bash away for hours and not make a dent, and you can’t cut it. They use it for safes and stuff. Only valuable items get stored in tigrenium. So you notice it.

  Well, because it was tigrenium, and in a safe, I opened it. Course I did. Inside was lined with soft red furry velvety stuff, and lying on the stuff like a movie star in her bath was – the Beano Annual.

  Well, I like the Beano. The only time we ever had anything like books at home was when Mum decided one time when we were little that she should read us bedtime stories, so she got this copy of the Beano and read Dennis the Menace to us. She read that same copy over and over, and we all laughed at the stupid dad running round with his stupid slipper and Dennis getting one over on him the whole time.

  I picked it up. On the cover was the Bash Street Kids, with a big picture of Plug, who my brothers always said looked like me. Or I looked like him. Plug Ugly. I like Plug.

  There was a sort of honey and oranges smell in the office.

  I opened it. The first strip was Dennis the Menace. There he was in his black and red stripy jumper, and there was Gnasher jumping up, and Dad… I smiled, and followed the pictures.

  My heart kind of bounced.

  How extremely peculiar.

  It was the same story. The same strip my mum used to read, over and over…

  I followed it with a strange sad kind of warmth growing up inside me. It was so lovely to see it. It made me feel like a little kid again, with Mum with her arm round me, and all of us being quiet and not fighting each other for once…

  Dad burned our old Beano. He came in one time while we were looking at it for the ninety-ninth time with Mum and he thought we were laughing at him – well, we were – so he tore it in half and chucked it in the fire.

  And here it was again. The exact same story. I started laughing – a little hiccuppy laugh that might bring a tear with it if you were girly. Which I ain’t. But I was really happy to see that Dennis the Menace story again.

  And then I heard a whispering at the keyhole.

  I whipped round, in one movement shoving the book under my jacket and twitching the lid of the box shut.

  ‘Boy!’ it said. It was the old geezer.

  ‘What,’ I said crossly. I swung the safe door shut with my elbow.

  The key rattled. The book slipped as of its own accord into my thieves’ pocket. The door opened. The old guy slid in and shut it behind him again.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Joe English,’ I said. It ain’t. My name is Lee Raven. Joe English is what I use.

  ‘And you’re what – twelve? Fourteen?’

  ‘That kind of thing,’ I said.

  ‘Well, Joe, my name is Edward Maggs, and this is my family business, and I can’t help noticing that you are dreadfully grubby and quite possibly a street child – are you?’

  ‘I live my own life,’ I said, with some dignity, though I say so myself.

  ‘Are you in trouble?’

  I was a bit surprised by this. How could he tell?

  ‘Those men who were approaching who caused you to enter my basement – were they after you?’ He almost hissed this bit, though there was no one to overhear us.

  ‘Certainly not,’ I said.

  ‘I thought so. They don’t belong around here. I assume you have some skill in nefarious activity,’ he said.

  I just looked at him.

  ‘The kind a person of tender years might have to acquire to survive on these mean streets…’

  His square didn’t look very mean to me, I can tell you. Not compared with some of the bailiwicks around which I’ve lurked.

  ‘Could be,’ I said.

  He stared at me. I knew the expression on his face. I get it all the time. He was a decent old sod and didn’t know whether to pity me or call security. Was I a poor boy
struggling to get by as best he could in a wicked world, or was I a wicked boy who ought by rights to be locked up toot sweet?

  And suddenly, as if he’d made up his mind, he announced, ‘Off you go, young fellow, off you go, and don’t come round my basement again. Don’t know what you’re up to, don’t need to, not my business.’

  He’d opened the door, and lugged me out into the hall, and was opening the front door. ‘Off you go,’ he said again, and chucked me down the stairs.

  The blokeys, and just as well, had gone. I was all alone, stumbling out of the garden and collapsing on the pavement, picking myself up, brushing my knees and controlling a very strong urge to rush back up there and shout, ‘Oi! What’s all that about! First you lock me in, then you chuck me out… What’s your problem?’

  But he was right. We were not each other’s business. My business was to get rid of this flamin’ wallet –

  Oh.

  Patting myself down, the flaming wallet was not where it had previously been and should still be, i.e. in my thieves’ pocket.

  The flaming wallet was not on the pavement, not in the gutter. Nor on the stairs.

  I scrabbled myself across the road and back under my preferred bush. I took off my jacket, checked all pockets and down the seat of my pants, and in my shoes, where I sometimes hide things, though it was pretty obvious it wasn’t there as it was too darn big.

  Nothing – except that Beano book, which I hadn’t even meant to nick.

  I knew all along where the wallet was. It was where I had left it – on Mr Maggs’s desk.

  So I swore for a bit, and I tightened up my mouth so it probably looked like a bumhole which is how it goes when I am really criked off, and I breathed hard and thought.

  I had the caio at least. That was good.

  But the old guy would find the wallet and realize it was Asteriosy’s and realize I had left it and call the Authorities and they’d get a cracking description of me and my life would not be worth living, plus he’d see the Beano Annual was missing, with like my signature practically written all over the crime, and even though it was only a Beano Annual it had been in a tigrenium case, in a safe, so someone thought it was worth something, and the public police and Asteriosy’s security would be all over me.

  My first thought, which lasted a while, was I had to get back in there to Maggsland and nick back that wallet before he found it.

  I groaned.

  I hate housebreaking now. Too complicated.

  I used to do it when I was little but I never thought about it then. It was just what we did. Normal. It was always the littlest kid’s job in our family – going through the window and opening up for Dad to come through the door. I was the youngest in our family so it stayed my job for longest. I’d been proud at first when Finn got moved on for being too big. Dad talked it up like it was a real honour. There’s only three things Ravens are any good at, toshing, flushing and nicking, and Dad made us proud.

  But it was scary when you were only a tyke, and it’s all dark in front of you and you don’t know what’s there, dogs maybe or alarms, or people – and Dad behind shoving yer and saying… what he said… and you go head first on the floor if you’re not lucky.

  But I was good at it. It’s like falling off a bicycle – you don’t forget how.

  So I’d just go round and nick the wallet back.

  I still had the peculiarly precious Beano Annual as well. Stupid bliddy instinct I got for pocketing stuff. Now what was I going to do with it?

  CHAPTER 2

  The Story According to Mr Maggs,

  the Bookseller

  I have to say that the presence of the boy in the basement confused me. I assumed he had come from Christie’s to pick up the copy of Johnson’s General History of the Pyrates for Mrs Netherby. True, he wasn’t the usual boy, but they could have employed a new one. True, he didn’t, once I had a proper look at him, resemble a Christie’s boy: he was so pale, with his pale sticky-up hair and the bags under his eyes. He looked as if in his entire life he’d consumed nothing but chips and cheap lemonade. I was discombobulated by his presence, to tell the truth, particularly as it followed on so swiftly from my other two unusual visitors.

  But I run ahead. My name is Edward Maggs, of Maggs Brothers Antiquarian Booksellers of Berkeley Square. I am absolutely accustomed to handling rare and valuable items. We have vaults for humidifying and dehumidifying, to rehydrate a brittle book or dry out a damp one. We have contraptions with dry-glove fingers which will turn the pages of ancient documents so that the paper is not damaged by contact with the chemicals and moisture of human skin. We have volumes worth thousands, millions of dirhams. We have lights that cast no light, so that exquisite illuminations made by monks a thousand years ago can be rendered visible without being harmed by the presence of actual light. We can salvage ancient leathers and vellums, redeem shattered spines with new strength, reattach prodigal pages. My confidence in all of this is unshakeable. My family has been doing these things since 1721.

  But this news… this latest arrival… and the consequences… I was deeply perturbed.

  A man had come only the night before.

  It was late when he knocked at the door. It had been a bright spring day but with evening a fog had drawn in, and the street lamps gave a sulphurous gloomy light to the square, through which the blossoming trees glowed and loomed like ghosts. Nobody was about. I would normally have retired by that hour to the rooms on the top floor where I make my habitation, but on this evening I happened to be studying the accounts in my office downstairs.

  He knocked at the front – I thought at the time, why did he not use the bell? – and I turned to the security camera, wondering who had come so late. Seeing a reputable-looking gentleman in his forties, in a hat, with a metal briefcase, I went to the front and spoke to him through the communication system.

  His name was Ernesto de Saloman. He was sorry to call so late. He had, he said, arrived recently from Paris. He had, he said, a book so valuable that it could not be kept at home, even in a safe. It was under his arm. Could he come in?

  I was accustomed to keeping items of value on behalf of their owners. His name was familiar to me as a biblio-phile, one who bought and sold and loved books, although I was not acquainted with him personally. I admitted him.

  Once within, he removed his hat and shook from it the vestiges of damp and fog. His dark hair lay flattened to his handsome head, and his sallow complexion told of weariness and worry. I led him to my study – the rest of the emporium being closed up for the night – and asked him what it was he had.

  ‘An old French manuscript,’ he said, ‘dealing with the myths and legends of Mesopotamia.’

  ‘What date?’ I asked, eyeing the briefcase, which was made of metal and seemed very large and strong for one old French manuscript.

  ‘1799,’ he replied, and perhaps I looked surprised. I could not imagine how such a thing could be so valuable. It was not my area of specialist knowledge but – well, there were many books published in French at that time. It may be worth several thousand, but it was not, at first description, a priceless item.

  ‘May I look?’ I asked – and he stopped me.

  ‘This book may not be looked at,’ he said.

  I raised my eyebrows.

  ‘Look instead at this letter, which accompanies the book.’

  He placed it on my desk – a yellowed, dry fold of paper. I did not lower my eyebrows.

  ‘Even I, its owner, have never looked at this book,’ he said, as if by way of reassurance. I could hardly believe anything so peculiar, but his dark, tired eyes showed nothing but sincerity.

  I went to the basin I keep in the corner of my study for just such a purpose, and washed and dried my hands carefully. Opening a small drawer, I found a pair of reading gloves and put them on before picking up the letter and delicately unfolding it.

  In a spidery hand typical of the date, faded and brown, it read thus:

  ∗ Sirs, Becau
se of this book, my aunt is dead and my mother mad. It is a thing full of tears, of sadness, of danger and of despair. It cannot be destroyed – it must not be read. Believe me, one who knows.

  It was signed with a grand illegible flourish, and the name written out beneath was Marianne de la Roche Lambert Limonov.

  I folded the letter again and returned it to Mr de Saloman.

  ‘Most bizarre,’ I commented. ‘Have you respected the stipulations of this letter?’

  ‘I have,’ he replied.

  ‘Why?’ I had to ask, although it was scarcely polite.

  ‘Because I respect the woman who passed the instruction on to me,’ he said firmly. ‘My grandmother.’

  ‘And are you asking me to keep this book for you?’

  ‘I am,’ he replied courteously. ‘It has been in danger – it is in danger! and must stay somewhere safe.’

  ‘Can you not keep it at home?’

  ‘At home!’ he laughed shortly. ‘Least of all there…’ And a look of great sadness passed across his face.

  ‘Take it to the bank,’ I said, I fear a trifle curtly. ‘I cannot offer a home to a book I may not examine.’

  His face was troubled. ‘I know,’ he said urgently, ‘that under normal circumstances you would need to collate the book, to make sure that it is complete, so that you can record exactly what it is you have accepted. But please…’ Here he glanced briefly over his shoulder in a nervous fashion, a gesture which seemed to me – how wrong I was! – to be of calculated melodrama. ‘Please, take this book. I will write you a letter absolving you of any responsibility for the number of pages. I trust you. My father dealt with your father, and his father with his. All I ask is that you place it between other books, keep it, and tell no one.’

  Though he was by complexion a sallow man, his face was almost moonlight pale, with a light sheen of feverish sweat over it. Something was frightening him.

  ‘If this book is so important to you,’ I asked, ‘why do you not take it to someone you know? Or, as I said, to a bank, designed specifically for guarding items of value?’