Blood on the Tongue. Stephen Booth
a shame,’ she said.
Cooper felt as though he had been summed up and found wanting. He watched Morrissey walk briskly across the reception area, looking like a smart business executive with her black suit and briefcase. Frank Baine stopped in the doorway.
‘Take my business card,’ he said. ‘In case I can help.’
Cooper took the card almost absent-mindedly. ‘Thanks.’
Then Baine leaned towards him, nodding slyly towards the disappearing figure.
‘And remember – there’s no stopping a woman when her passion is roused,’ he said.
Eden Valley Books was in Nick i’ th’ Tor, one of the cobbled passages running between Edendale market square and the Eyre Street area. The bookshop was a high, narrow building that looked as though it had been jammed between two much wider ones as an afterthought, or a mere space-filler – something to use up all the leftover oddments of stone when the builders had finished work on the Yorkshire Bank next door. But it was three storeys high, with books on the first two floors, and from the tiny windows set into the gabled roof, it looked as though there were attic rooms, too. Ben Cooper recalled there was even a cellar that ran under the street, full of more books.
There were bookshops in Edendale that were more modern, but Cooper had browsed in Eden Valley Books many times, and he was hopeful he would find what he wanted here, even during the half-hour he could spare during his lunch break. The owner, Lawrence Daley, seemed to specialize in gathering together obscure books on esoteric subjects.
The concept of a window display hadn’t reached Eden Valley Books yet. All Cooper could see through the streaked glass were the ends of some wooden bookshelves plastered with fliers advertising local events which had taken place several months ago. A concert by a folk group, a psychic evening at the community centre, an autumn fair in aid of the Cats Protection League.
The snow in Nick i’ th’ Tor was rapidly turning to slush, and water ran down the cobbles into the square. The front door of the bookshop was narrow, and it stuck in the frame when he tried to open it, so that he had to lean his weight against it before it gave way. It reminded him more of a defensive bastion than of an entrance – especially when a warning bell jangled above his head, causing a nervous stirring somewhere inside the shop.
Immediately, Cooper was surrounded by books. They were crammed on to shelves right in the doorway, so that he couldn’t get past without brushing against them. Further in, the tiny rooms had been stuffed with books from floor to ceiling. They were piled on the floor and on the bare wooden stairs, and no doubt they filled the upper rooms as well. On a table, Cooper saw a set of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five stories and a 1935 almanac with board covers mottled with mould. There was an overwhelmingly musty smell of old paper – paper that had soaked up the damp from many decades spent in unheated stone houses on wet hillsides.
‘Hello?’ called Cooper.
Lawrence Daley wore a silk waistcoat with a fancy pattern that was none too clean, and his brown corduroy trousers had become baggy at the knees from hours of crouching to reach the lower shelves. On occasions, Cooper had seen Lawrence wearing a bow tie. But today he had an open-necked check shirt, with his sleeves rolled back over pale forearms. His hair was uncombed, and he looked dusty and sweaty, as if it were the height of summer outside with the temperature in the eighties, rather than creeping up from zero towards another snowfall.
‘I’ve been trying to sort out the Natural History section,’ said Lawrence when he saw Cooper appear round the stacks. ‘Some of these books have been here since Granny’s day. They’re still priced in shillings, look. A customer brought one to me yesterday and insisted on paying fifteen pence for it. I couldn’t argue, because that was what the price on the label converted at in new money.’
‘Are you throwing them out?’ asked Cooper, wrinkling his nose at the musty smell and the cloud of dust that hung in the air.
‘Throwing them out? Are you kidding? I can’t throw them out. They just need re-pricing.’
‘But if they’ve been here since your grandmother ran the shop …’
‘I know, I know. They’re not exactly fast sellers. But if that were all I was interested in, I’d stack the place to the ceiling with Harry Potters, like everyone else does. It’s Detective Constable Cooper, isn’t it?’
‘Ben Cooper, yes. I wondered if you had any books on aircraft wrecks. There are so many wrecks around this area – there must be something published about them.’
‘If you go right to the back and through the curtain on the left, then down a few steps, you might find something halfway up the shelves,’ said Lawrence.
‘Thanks.’
Cooper made his way through the aisles of books. He passed Poetry and Literature, Biography and Philosophy, until he reached a dead end at Geography. He turned left at Art and found Music lurking in a curtained-off alcove at the head of a flight of stairs leading down into a cellar. The sides of the stairwell had been filled with more bookshelves. A few creaky steps down, Cooper came across Air Transport. It seemed a curiously modem subject for Eden Valley Books, and he wasn’t surprised that it was hidden away. He looked down into the darkness at the bottom of the stairs and wondered what Lawrence had chosen to confine to the cellar. Probably something like Computers and Information Technology.
But there, sure enough, were two slim volumes on Peak District aircraft relics, exactly what he wanted. He wondered if this place was really some kind of Aladdin’s Cave where you could find anything you truly wanted, if you wished hard enough. Lawrence Daley made a strange genie, though.
‘Just the thing, Lawrence,’ he said, when he had made his way back to the counter. ‘I found two.’
‘Amazing,’ said Lawrence. ‘And is there a price on them?’
‘Well, no actually.’
Lawrence sighed. ‘Then I can’t charge you anything at all, can I?’
‘Of course you can.’
‘Not if there’s no label. It’s against the Trade Descriptions Act.’
‘I’m not sure that’s how it works,’ said Cooper. ‘Anyway, I can’t take them without paying you for them.’
‘Well, fifty pence then.’
‘If you say so.’
Cooper began to go through his pockets. He found the estate agent’s leaflets and pulled them out of the way while he felt at the bottom for some change. His pager was vibrating again, but it could wait.
‘Hello,’ said Lawrence, ‘have you fallen into the company of conmen and thieves?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Estate agents,’ he said, pointing at the leaflets. ‘Are you buying a house?’
‘I can’t afford that,’ said Cooper. ‘I’m just looking for a place to rent for a while.’
‘Ah. Striking out on your own? Or is there a live-in partner involved somewhere?’
‘On my own.’
‘Oh. And have you not found anywhere yet?’
‘No.’
Cooper handed over his fifty pence, and Lawrence rattled it into the drawer of his till, then found a striped paper bag from somewhere under the counter. Cooper stood looking at some postcards and fliers stuck to a board near the counter. Most of them were advertising the services of typing agencies, clairvoyants and aromatherapy specialists, but there was one that caught his eye.
‘There’s a furnished flat advertised here,’ he said. ‘It’s in Welbeck Street, by the river.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Lawrence.
‘That’s handy for town. I could walk to work from there. And it sounds quite a reasonable rent,