Trowchester Blues

by Alex Beecroft

  See how fast he slipped back into lying. What he wanted to say was Don’t go! Fuck you if you go. I want you to stay! He wanted to find some words that would put the desperation and the need in his own heart out there to change the world and make Michael stay.

  But he hadn’t even finished the thought in the privacy of his own mind when Michael made a strangled noise halfway between sob and laugh and lunged forwards to wind both arms around Finn. He pulled Finn in so close he had to scramble into Michael’s lap and lock his legs around Michael’s waist to keep from being bent like a bow. Crushed against the wall of muscle that was Michael May, he was not going to complain.

  This close, he could feel Michael’s semihysterical laughter in his own bones. He let his head fall into the hollow of Michael’s shoulder and rubbed silent circles on the man’s back.

  Gradually, Michael’s ragged breathing smoothed out into peace. They softened into relaxation against one another again, as Finn’s desolation rose like a fog and wisped away. His body hummed with satisfaction, telling him that this was where he wanted to be. More than anything, this was where he wanted to be for the rest of his life.

  “We’ll tell the police.” Michael was saying some things that might have disturbed him more if he hadn’t just found his Valhalla. “They’ll deal with Benny and Lisa for you. Tell them who you sold the book to; they can restore it to its owner, and then it’s all over. It’s all over and you’re in the clear forevermore.”

  “Until the next ‘old friend’ turns up on the doorstep.” Finn got a hand under Michael’s T-shirt, pushed the material up, exposing the soft skin over the hard muscle of Michael’s belly, flanks, and pecs. Sitting in this position, prick to prick with the other man, he was rapidly losing the will for further debate.

  “And I’ll be here to punch them in the teeth for you.” Michael gave Finn’s old, well-washed, semitransparent pyjama top a critical examination, and flashed a grin Finn had never seen before but wanted very much to see again. He took hold of Finn’s collar and ripped through the buttonholes in one long, tearing yank.

  Finn’s breath stopped. He looked up in astonishment as all rational thought fled in the face of a wave of pure yes. “Oh God!” There were things he had to say about Michael’s plan—caveats, fears—but Michael had already taken him by the hair and bent his head back and was biting him. Not hard enough to draw blood, but enough so the sharp pain and the slow sucking ache that followed convinced him he had far more important things to be concentrating on right now.

  Yes, yes, oh God. It could all wait.

  “Bed?” he managed, as Michael snapped the waistband of his trousers and shoved his hands inside to cup Finn’s arse and pull him even closer.

  Michael pressed him back against the sofa cushions. “I was thinking ‘couch.’”

  Finn woke slowly, warm and more relaxed than he could remember being for years. His body glowed with satisfaction, and the hinterland of slumber was like lying on clouds saturated in sunshine. He was tucked up against Michael’s back, with an arm under the man’s neck and the other around his waist, hand resting on his belly, feeling the slow rise and fall of his breathing. He opened his eyes to a shock of dark curly hair and the nape of Michael’s neck, which he kissed.

  “Are you awake?”

  “Hmm.” Michael stretched, turned over. “I am now.”

  He had quite a range of smiles that Finn had never seen before. Last night’s had been roguish, sexy. This was sweet and perhaps a little shy. You should smile more, Finn thought. It suits you. I’ll get working on that.

  “Good morning. What time is it?”

  Finn extricated an arm from the refuge of the bedclothes and picked up the alarm clock to peer at it. Dim light behind the curtains at this time of year said it was later in the morning than it should have been. “Oh fuck,” he said. “I forgot to set it last night. It’s half eight already and the shop has to be open at nine.”

  Michael pulled him in close to land a gentle kiss on the most tender of his love bites. Although sore, he found himself amenable to the thought of fitting a quickie into the half hour he had to make himself presentable and fed, but Michael rolled away even as he was reaching for him. “You shower, I’ll make breakfast. No problem.”

  It was probably for the best, given that sitting on the edge of the bed was uncomfortable. “Can you cook?” he asked, not bothering to restrain a fierce smile at the memories of being well used. “You don’t seem the sort.”

  “What does that even mean?” Michael climbed back into yesterday’s clothes. “Is this some kind of gender stereotyping bullshit you’re pulling on me? I make a mean plate of bacon and eggs.”

  Finn located his dressing gown on the sitting room floor, hung it on the back of the bedroom door, and walked to the shower nude. There was no point now in being coy. “Maybe I’ll keep you after all.”

  With November, the golden days of autumn had finally given way to heavy overcast skies and lightless days that dragged through as if underwater, but today the electric light in the bathroom seemed enough to dispel the gloom. He turned the radio on and sang along to Studio Killers with great self-satisfaction as the burst of water against his back flushed his skin pink.

  A day without shaving would do him no harm. He dried himself, cleaned his teeth, and wandered out in search of clothes. Something comfortable seemed called for. Michael had made a game effort at giving him some of the pain he liked alongside his pleasure, and he wanted something soft on his scratches. A brushed-cotton shirt, moleskin trousers, and a nice Aran sweater would do the trick, with a cravat to hide the purpling of his throat.

  Quarter of an hour later, he was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee at his hand as Michael put down a plate of bacon and eggs and hot buttered toast in front of him.

  “I could get used to this.” He smiled up at Michael, who had sadly lost his smile in favour of a more common look of worried guilt.

  Michael sat down with his own plate but didn’t eat. “Are you all right this morning? I know you were enjoying yourself, but I didn’t hurt you for real?”

  “You’re the one who’s ridiculous.” Finn leaned in to kiss the man on his overly earnest cheek. “But you’re very sweet. I’m fine.” He wasn’t sure if it would seem too clingy, too much like demanding commitment to ask, but he had the feeling Michael wouldn’t mind either of those things. “You can check me out tonight and salve my wounds, if you like?”

  Michael relaxed. “Sure.” He ate his toast, and every so often the little shy smile would break over his face as they finished breakfast in silence.

  Finn waited until he was ushering Michael out of the door to venture, “You should bring some essentials with you. Toothbrush, changes of underwear. That kind of thing.”

  “I will.” Michael broke into a grin, picked him up off his feet, and kissed him properly, then walked away into the morning drizzle with a light step. Finn watched him go until the low clouds swallowed him, then he turned all the lights on in the bookshop, and bit his lip against the urge to whistle. Moving things in. Moving things in. This was getting serious!

  Kevin arrived soon after, took one look at him, and said, “Oh well, we know what you were doing last night. How about a raise?”

  He was tempted to give the boy what he asked just for his cheek, but bought them both lunch instead, when the time came.

  The day managed to be perfect without being anything much out of the ordinary, and though his legs and heels were burning by the end of it, from preferring not to sit down, the fact gave him the same pleasing glow as the knowledge that everyone who saw him could tell at once that they should envy him.

  He ushered the last customer out on the dot of five. Switching off the lights in the shop, he went out to leave a thermos of hot chocolate and a covered plate of sandwiches and cake for his ghost, feeling guilty that he had completely forgotten to put out food last night, and when he returned, there was a hard rat-tat-tat at the knocker, and Michael was sta
nding outside.

  Finn’s smile fell from his face because Michael had brought two policemen with him. The fuzzy warmth in which he’d spent the day froze in an instant of betrayal, and Finn ground to a halt in the doorway, as if Michael had shot him with a freeze ray.

  “Finn?” Michael stepped forwards and took his arm, turning him around and marching him inside. “You okay? I did say we should tell them what’s been going on. You agreed, remember?”

  “I didn’t agree!” The filth closed the door behind themselves, a young black woman with a keen expression and an older jowly fellow who looked like a restaurant candle—one of those ones that had been artfully melted. “I don’t want them in my house. I don’t want to talk to them. I don’t know how you could have . . .”

  He wanted to be angry, angry in a brisk, joyous way that led to fighting and making up, but instead he felt only a kind of sick dismay. “You distracted me. I didn’t agree to anything.”

  Finn had many faults, but being unfair was not one of them. If he cast his mind back, he could see how Michael could have interpreted his assertion of going straight as an assertion of being willing to cooperate with the police. He had been too busy at the time to correct Michael’s assumptions.

  “You should have fucking talked to me about this. You can’t just spring the filth on me like a ‘congratulations, you’re in a relationship’ present.”

  “To be fair, sir,” said the WPC, “we were planning to come round today anyway to investigate the fire brigade’s reports of arson at these premises.”

  “Your, um, partner said you had some information on some burglaries in the area,” said the man. “Are we to presume that you don’t want to cooperate with us anymore? Because we can take you in anyway if we think there’s cause.”

  “Never. I’m never fucking opening this door ever again outside office hours. Nothing good ever comes of it.” Well, there went Finn’s good mood, skewered and dead on the floor. He acceded to the inevitable, grudgingly. “I suppose you’d better come upstairs.”

  The police took the seats at the kitchen table, leaving Michael to lean against the wall by the fridge, and Finn to make tea. He put down a pot on the table. Let the coppers pour for themselves. When they had done so, Michael brought a mug over to Finn and stood in front of him like a dog that knows it’s been bad. He took Finn’s hands, bowed his head.

  “I honestly thought you’d agreed. I’m sorry.”

  And despite everything, Finn couldn’t keep up a decent level of resentment towards Michael today. He didn’t want his puppy to be sad. It was that nauseating.

  “I suppose I did. Or I would have, given time to think about it. Like she said, I’d an idea they were coming anyway.”

  Stiffly, against his own reluctance, he leaned by the cooker and cleared his throat. They had been politely pretending not to listen. They stopped that at once and gave him matching attentive looks.

  “I suppose I do wish to cooperate. At any rate, I’d be glad to help you catch the terrible twins. Benny and Lisa burnt my books. They deserve whatever’s coming to them.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.” Melted-man smiled, drawing his face up and taking ten years off his age for a few seconds. “I’m PC Davis, by the way and this is WPC Clarke, and we’re here to help you with that. But first of all, we understand you know where to find a certain valuable book, stolen from Lady Harcombe’s collection on the night of the thirteenth of October?”

  That was the rub, wasn’t it? He’d always had good relations with his customers, felt a certain kinship to the few other people who appreciated beautiful things enough to risk reputation and safety for them. He’d hoped to get out of the business without burning all those bridges, making enemies of all those less than scrupulous people.

  He pressed the heels of both hands into his eye sockets, felt Michael come close and slip arms around his waist, taking some of his weight, saying nothing, just being confident that he would do the right thing.

  Michael’s respect on one hand, Dr. Whinnery’s on the other. Was it really much of a contest? Whinnery’s unhappy books recurred to him, drenched in blue light, unread, hoarded like jewels that would never be worn. At least Lady Harcombe shared a single page of hers with the general public. At least she would put it back in a library. And perhaps now she’d felt the lash of his tongue, she might consider keeping it better, scanning it for posterity and the peasants.

  The abbot himself would surely want her to have it, kin down a long line of blood to the man who valued it enough to give away part of his estate for it. Finn rested his head against Michael’s throat and sighed in surrender. “It’s at 1358 Colstone House, Canary Wharf, in a hidden vault that opens out of the living room wall, with a fingerprint and a retinal scanner. I saw it there when I visited her recently. She showed it to me to make me jealous.”

  He allowed himself an inner smirk at a believable explanation for having seen the book that did not implicate him in having sold it to her in the first place.

  “All right.” WPC Clarke was keying the number in on her mobile. “Let me phone this in and then we’ll set up some surveillance cameras to try to catch your Benny and Lisa the next time they try to sell you something.”

  That was a better thought. He was really very fucking ready to get some revenge on those toerags for trying to force him into something he didn’t want to do. “Should I actually buy it? I mean, better to get them on ‘selling stolen goods’ than ‘attempting to,’ right?”

  Davis’s smile was obviously taking considerable effort to maintain. His face was trembling. “I think that might be best for many reasons, sir. Better not to risk another incident like—”

  A knock on the door. He was starting to recognise it now, the pattern of three quick raps and two long. His heart hit the roof of his mouth and his trepidation abandoned him in favour of the thrill of the hunt. “I think that’s them.”

  “So.” Davis took stock of the situation. “No surveillance cameras. We’ll have to make do with mobile phones. Is there somewhere WPC Clarke and myself can hide that will also allow us a good view of the transaction? Ideally you should keep them in a lighted room, allowing us to watch from the dark.”

  “We can do that.” Finn discovered that cooperating with the police could be rather fun after all. “I always keep them downstairs. If I take them into the main room of the bookshop, where the till is, there’ll be open doors on either side onto dark rooms—that way you can get different camera angles, which will make it harder to say you faked the footage at the trial.”

  “You think of everything.” Clarke gave him an approving smile as she followed him silently down the stairs, but it didn’t do nearly as much for him as Michael’s look of pride.

  “I’ll stay up here until you’ve got them in the book room.” Michael’s brisk tone contrasted with the warmth in his eyes. “Then I’ll come down and see if I can get a third angle from the hall. I’ll be right outside if you need reinforcements. Good luck.”

  It was a real buddy-cop moment. Their eyes locked, and Finn felt like he’d finally found someone who would walk through explosions in slow motion for him. “Thanks.”

  He waited until they were all hidden. The knocking at the door had become louder, more relentless by then, and from the sound Benny was pounding on it with something heavy.

  “What!” Finn shouted through the letter box. “What the fuck do you want this time?”

  It had the desired effect—the battering stopped, and Lisa’s high-pitched voice called sweetly, “Let us in or we break down the door.”

  “You burned my books, you fucking skanks. You nearly fucking burned me with them.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe you realise now—”

  “What a bad idea it is—”

  “To tell us no.”

  “So fucking open the door, or else.”

  It was quite possible this entire conversation had been caught on the discreet CCTV camera that monitored the front of the crystal and massage s
hop next door. Finn judged that not much more could be gained by stalling them any longer, so he turned his key in the deadlock, snicked the Yale lock open, and stood well back.

  “It’s open.”

  His poor front door! Benny kicked it in, it bounced off the wall, and Lisa walked inside like a Russian mafia boss. She had exchanged her hoodie for a pure-white fake fur coat, and wore bright-red lipstick, like the spilled blood in the tale of Snow White. Finn glanced down. She had not yet succumbed to the lure of high heels—still practical enough to appreciate a shoe in which it was easy to run away—but he thought it was only a matter of time.

  Benny by contrast was shabbier than ever in a quilted skiing coat from which the stuffing was beginning to leak.

  “All right.” Finn gave them both a practised long-suffering sigh, while the soles of his feet thrilled with pain, and his hands stung, “Come in here and say what you’ve got to say.” He snapped the light on in the main room and led them inside, to where the pedestal once occupied by Pegasus was piled high with wrinkled water-damaged volumes on sale for 50 pence each.

  “What’s to say?” Lisa smiled at the evidence of damage. “We said it all—”

  “Last time.”

  “So what we want now is to have you—”

  “Have a look at this.”

  Benny unwrapped the parcel beneath his arm from its bin bags. White marble, a sculpture of a veiled woman carrying a water jug and leaning on a wall, its heavy square base marked with smears of torn bin bag and paint from his door.

  “You fucking philistines! Did you just use a Cesare Lapini as a battering ram? I swear it’s the utter lack of beauty in your souls that vexes me most about you, burning my bookshop notwithstanding.”

  Benny made a gesture as though he intended to drive the sculpture into Finn’s stomach. “Yeah, well, we can always do that again if you don’t—”

  “Shut up and tell us what it’s worth.”