by Oliver Tidy
I spent most of the day in the shop scouring the shelves, fussing over the books, selecting, cross-referencing, matching, ordering and wrapping protectively titles and editions. It didn’t seem to matter how many boxes I filled, how many of the books on the list I ticked off, the stock seemed not to get any smaller. In the morning I left the building only for take-away food and milk.
I kept an ear out for trouble. I didn’t really expect Pike to make a house call looking for retribution but I wouldn’t have put it past him. He was that sort. Better to be prepared. It’s why I moved my old cricket bat into the shop to keep me company.
I turned the stereo on and played some Chopin waltzes and Beethoven sonatas. They helped.
By late afternoon I’d had enough and needed some fresh air. I felt like a run and I had an ulterior motive. In all the excitement of my last outing to St Mary’s Bay I had neglected to take a look at the railings around the outfall, the place my aunt’s floating dead body had apparently become caught up. It was a factor that still bothered me keenly about the circumstances of her death.
*
Thirty minutes later I was standing on top of the outfall, panting, sucking in the clean fresh air off the sea. It was another glorious afternoon on Romney Marsh and I felt a twinge of regret at having kept myself inside most of the day.
The high tide of the early afternoon was receding. Gulls were swooping and shrieking around something that interested them in the swell. It was warm still and there was no breeze to speak of. The sky was a rich cobalt blue and clear apart from a thin band of dirty cloud on the horizon towards the Normandy coast and the ever present bisecting vapour trails of the jets in the stratosphere. The air quality was giving a good idea that the spring of daffodils, lambs and more temperate weather was hanging up its coat for a visit.
The shell of the outfall resembled a sturdy concrete box. It sat proud of the beach about ten feet from the sand at its highest point. A fall from there would have been unpleasant whether the tide was in or out. Fixed around the outer edges were galvanised tubular railings to help prevent that: three horizontal tubes supported by vertical posts of the same material about every six feet. There was a similar arrangement at foot level fixed around the outside of the big box. Simple, economical, functional, enough.
I spent the next ten minutes inspecting every inch of the metalwork trying to understand how someone floating in the sea could randomly get snagged on it. I tried and failed several times, quite determinedly, to puncture the fabric of my sweatshirt and attach myself to the railings. It couldn’t be done.
I ran home grimly satisfied.
I showered, went into the lounge with a glass of wine and for something to do picked up the book I’d been struggling with. I wanted a cigarette but I didn’t want to smoke inside and I couldn’t be bothered to traipse downstairs.
I read a few pages before other more urgent and important thoughts started shuffling out of my subconscious to crowd my immediate thinking and make reading for pleasure impossible. I went downstairs to smoke.
The building and everything in it was going to be mine now. Five days before I hadn’t had a pot to piss in. I’d never been one to think about the future regarding anything I earned. Easy come, easy go typically summed up my economic affairs. I had suddenly become quite well-off.
The property itself was a bit rundown but it was substantial. Being in the south-east of Kent didn’t hurt its value. It was big, well-positioned and my relatives had owned it outright. With a bit of investment it could look great. But what would I do with it? I didn’t want to be lumbered with commercial premises, and the warren that was the living space above it could shelter a fertile Catholic family without seeming crowded.
More pressingly, funeral arrangements would need to be made. I would have to find out who the family solicitors were and contact them regarding the process of probate. There would be bank accounts too and I remembered my uncle speaking of investments a couple of times.
With all that suddenly raised in my consciousness I couldn’t hope to escape reality through a book or a fix of nicotine.
I went back inside, stopped by the fridge, refilled my glass and climbed the steep narrow staircase to the room on the second floor that my relatives had turned into an office space for their domestic affairs.
The single pendant energy-saving light bulb barely illuminated the room in a depressing weak light. My aunt had been a well organised person. She’d been the one who managed the book-keeping, invoicing, accounts and everything else paper-related to do with the business, which left my uncle free to engage in what he did best: buying and selling books. I was sure she would also have handled the paperwork of their domestic existence and because of her meticulous care I was grateful for that.
The room contained an old battered metal filing cabinet, a couple of shelves of box files and a beautiful Victorian roll-top desk with matching Captain’s chair.
I sat down and randomly pulled open a couple of drawers: pens, paper-clips, rubber bands, loose staples, envelopes and stationery; all the usual detritus of a working desk. I stood up and pulled down the box file with the current year’s date on the spine. I sat down again at the desk and flipped it open, flicked through a few sheets of paper and came to something that caught my eye. It was a letter with the heading script of Flashman Builders embossed on it. Knowing the history between Flashman senior and my uncle I couldn’t see that they would have much to communicate about. I removed it and turned on the little desk lamp.
The letter was from old man Flashman himself and was handwritten. He was asking my relatives for first refusal on the purchase of their property if, now that they had made it public knowledge they were retiring from business, they were also thinking of selling up and moving on. He mentioned a price that made me read it three times to make sure the decimal point was in the right place. Flashman must have been very sure of his plans for the place.
My relatives had never mentioned this to me. There was no reason why they should but they had talked about one day leaving Dymchurch and buying a small place in Canterbury where they could sell the car, have everything they would ever need on their doorstep – the shops, the theatre, a cinema, train and coach travel and for my uncle Kent County Cricket ground – and whenever they felt like it they could take off for the sun.
Flashman’s offer seemed extremely generous and it didn’t take much figuring out why he’d made it – the right of way that went with my relatives’ property and snaked down the side of the village hall car park to Orgarswick Avenue. It might well have been the answer to the access problems that had seen his residential development plans for the yard out the back turned down time after time by both the local and the district councils. I thought that the price he was offering for the property was all about the right of way: a pot-holed strip of land a couple of hundred yards in length and fifteen feet wide. It had the potential to unlock his own patch of development land and knowing that the local council were not averse to infilling with residential property development would probably net him a very good return on his original investment.
The offer was dated two months previously. There was no record of a reply but I could guess what it had been: a flat no if my uncle was feeling polite.
There was no way my uncle would ever have considered selling to Flashman, even if the man was offering well over the market value. Twenty years before, the empty paddock out the back had been offered to my uncle. He had wanted it for a long time: coveted it. He had wanted the room to garden, grow a few vegetables, have a couple of greenhouses, keep a donkey and a few chickens, maybe a pig and just generally indulge himself in something he had a hankering for. The deal was as good as done when Flashman stepped in and unscrupulously hijacked it. He had paid a little more to get the land because he thought he could develop it to make a quick profit. When he had seen those development plans fall foul of the council planners he left it to become the eyesore it was today. Every day that my uncle had looked out of the
back window and been forced to consider what could have been had hurt. He wouldn’t ever sell to Flashman – not even if the man offered double what he had. Not if his life depended on it.
As I sat thinking this over and wondering whether it should be something I would now have to consider, my eye fell on the spine of the desk diary. It was tucked into one of the wider pigeonholes of the desk. For something to do, I pulled that out and flicked through it. It quickly had my puzzled attention.
The diary had fallen open at the current month. There were no entries other than the jottings of what looked like times on dates and one word written large in block capitals – PLUTO. That meant two things to me, neither of which made any sense. I looked back through the diary. The entries had started a few weeks previously – once a week without an obvious pattern. The entries consisted of what I assumed were times based on the twenty-four hour clock. If that was correct then every entry recorded times when normal people were in bed. I shut it and put it back.
I had a quick rifle through the filing cabinet and found a folder for my relatives’ solicitors in Hythe. Feeling like I’d achieved something at last, I turned out the light and went downstairs.
I was hungry, but I didn’t feel like cooking. I thought I should avoid the pub for a few days. In the kitchen, my eye settled on the calendar from the Chinese take-away in the village. I shrugged on a jacket and went to get some.
*
The Chinese woman behind the counter recognised me with a friendly smile. Each visit I made back home, my uncle, aunt and I would treat ourselves to one Chinese take-away. I smiled back, said hello and prepared to order.
‘You not come for your dinner on Wednesday.’ She looked a little put out.
‘Sorry, I don’t understand.’
‘Your uncle tell me you eat Chinese on Wednesday. You not come.’
‘When did he tell you?’
‘Last week. No problem. What you like to order.’
I had to tell her about their deaths. She hadn’t known. As an ethnic minority in the village, she probably wouldn’t have been part of any gossip network. She seemed deeply and genuinely shocked and saddened by my news. In her broken English, she told me how sorry she was and then disappeared into the kitchen looking uncomfortable and upset.
I waited for my meal for one, but in truth I was no longer hungry.
***
18
Monday. A little after nine o’clock I got a call from Detective Cash. She was probably giving me a lie in. I hadn’t had one. I’d risen early, run, showered, breakfasted and I was back in the shop packing up books listening to Schubert’s unfinished symphony and wondering, not for the first time, why he’d left it that way.
After we’d provided our good mornings, Detective Cash started her questions: ‘What’s that in the background?’
‘Music.’
She ignored it. ‘I didn’t have you down as a classical music enthusiast, Mr Booker.’
‘What do you have me down as, Detective?’
She paused. ‘A Chaz and Dave fan, perhaps.’ She had to be joking, but before I could call her on it she said, ‘My DI wants to talk to you again.’
‘He knows where to find me.’
‘You sure about that?’
‘Positive.’
‘Don’t want to come in and show some good faith. Be a good citizen.’
‘Been there. Done that. Didn’t make me feel like a good citizen. Made me feel like a murderer.’
She wasn’t to be drawn. ‘Suit yourself. I can’t force you to come here, unless I arrest you, of course.’
‘Is that likely?’
‘Never say never, Mr Booker.’
‘I’ll be in all day if he wants me. I’ve got work to do. Jellied eels need bottling and my pearly king suit needs mending.’
‘Expect us when you see us, Mr Booker.’ She rang off.
I put my phone down, trying to work out whether Detective Cash liked me or not. It didn’t really matter one way or the other, but she had an enigmatic quality that I found quite unusual and appealing. She also came across as detached and superior, attributes that weren’t particularly charming or endearing and made me feel I didn’t want to be bested by her in any banter.
Then I thought I should be more interested in why Sprake wanted to see me again. But I’d find that out and worrying about it wouldn’t help. I went back to work.
The jewel in the crown of my uncle’s collection – and something that had been more of his individual bibliophile’s passion than part of the business – was his Booker Prize collection, although he would often remark that every book he owned, no matter how attached he was to it, had a price. It did not take a great stretch of the ordinary imagination to understand where his particular collecting interest had originated.
The Booker Prize had been running since 1969 when it had been known as the Booker-McConnell Prize after the company that had originally sponsored the competition. The prize, the money and the prestige are awarded to the book the judges consider to be the best original full-length novel written in the English language by a citizen of the Commonwealth, Ireland or Zimbabwe. Since 2002, when administration of the prize had been transferred to the Booker Prize Foundation, it had been known as The Man Booker Prize, again, after the company that stepped in to sponsor it. If they had reduced the prize’s title to The Man Prize maybe I’d have had less work.
From the prize’s inception it had become a thing of my uncle’s to build a collection, not simply of the winners or even the winners and shortlisted books but of every title ever even longlisted. These titles were all first editions, first impressions in excellent condition and signed by their authors. As a small library documenting the history of one of the literary world’s most prestigious and lucrative prizes it could well have been unique. Judging from the American’s offer it was also clearly very desirable.
Over forty years of winners and losers; the best novels of nearly five decades as judged by those who believed they knew.
Until 2001 there had only ever been a shortlist from which the winning entry had been selected, typically half a dozen books. Since 2001 a longlist had also been published, which upped the collecting ante for my uncle. Numbers in these years could range from twenty-four books in total to a mere thirteen.
It had been a labour of utter devotion for him to keep up with it and something that, once started, he felt honour-bound by some curious bibliophile’s code to continue.
I remembered and smiled at the memory of my uncle’s colourful language when, in 2010, the people in charge had decided to hold a retrospective competition for the Lost Booker of 1970.
Because of a change in the rules at the time, books published in 1970 had not been eligible for the prize. Until 1970 the prize had been awarded to books published the year before but in 1971 it was decided to award the prize to books published in the same year as the award. Therefore, books published in 1970 had been ineligible for competition entry.
Having collected meticulously and as a completist, my uncle had been forced to scour the Internet, flex trade contacts and still pay an eye-watering price for the six books that completed the collection.
I was engaged in packing these when the police arrived. They signalled their arrival with a loud knock at the rear door. I answered it with my cricket bat to hand. Sprake stood glowering at me. Over his shoulder and a few paces back Detective Cash waited.
Sprake made no attempt to commiserate with me for the loss of another family member. I invited them into the shop because I had to.
‘What happened to your face, Mr Booker?’
I’d forgotten about that. ‘Would you believe an unfamiliar door?’
‘No.’ Quickly, he took hold of my hands in his and with a surprisingly determined grip held them up to inspect my knuckles. As the only blow I’d landed with my fists had been into Pike’s well-padded middle there was nothing for him to see. He dropped my hands, smiled without humour and left it. He couldn’t make me t
ell him and he probably had more important things on his mind. Cash stared harder at the colouring around my eye. She looked freshly dissatisfied with me and I didn’t like that.
Sprake had a little wander around, letting me know he was still important, and I followed him closely. He didn’t look like the kind of man who could be trusted to pick up a thousand-guinea book, know it and then treat it accordingly. He stopped at the boxes I’d already packed. ‘Is this your doing?’
I explained the order and the responsibility I felt to honour it.
He looked seriously at me. ‘Do you have that legal right, Mr Booker? Shouldn’t you wait for their estate to go to probate before you start meddling in their affairs? Shouldn’t you consult with other surviving relatives with a legal claim on their estate?’
‘There are no other surviving relatives. It’s just me.’
He gave me a long cold look then, no doubt calculated in his policeman’s thinking to unsettle me.
‘So all this is yours now?’ He flapped an arm like he was directing traffic.
‘Just so you know, Inspector, it’s all this – the mortgage-free freehold of the building – their car, the contents of their bank accounts – which incidentally I don’t have the first idea about – and possibly there will be an insurance policy or two. Again, I really don’t know about that but I’m sure with what you’re thinking you’ll be able to tell me fairly soon.’
He actually smiled at me.
Eventually, he arranged himself in one of the leather wingback chairs. I sat too. Cash remained standing. I could not tell from his expressionless cod-face whether he was still regarding me as a serious suspect or not.
‘The pathologist’s report for your uncle states two things we don’t like.’
‘Apart from him being dead?’
He stared blankly at me before saying, ‘Your uncle did not die from drowning.’