The Left-Handed Booksellers of London Page 3

  Susan clamped her lips on a sob. Holding the precious fluid in, she reached over and pulled both halves of the broken arrow out, front and back. Throwing them away, she bent down close and spat into the wound. Pale blue-green light spilled from her mouth, like burning brandy on a Christmas pudding, but without heat, the cold flames licking about the hole in the coat before sinking into the flesh beneath.

  Susan sat back and wiped her mouth, but there was no light in her saliva now. Whatever the strange fluid had done, it hadn’t brought Merlin back to consciousness. As gently as she could she laid him down and stripped off his coat. Taking the pocket square from it, she folded a pad and held it against the exit wound on his back, while she kept direct pressure with the palm of her other hand against the hole in his chest.

  It was hard to see, but she thought he was still bleeding, and she couldn’t tell if his chest was moving.

  She bent closer, hoping she would catch the sound of breathing, but instead she heard heavy footsteps behind her, and the white beam of a flashlight suddenly lit up the area, sending her shadow across Merlin’s body.

  “Stop! Armed Police! Show me your hands!”

  Chapter Three

  No sorcerer can compare

  For such magic strange and rare

  As in the glov’d bookseller’s lair

  But secrets, nay, they will not share

  HALF AN HOUR LATER, SUSAN WAS UNDER THE HARSH FLUORESCENT lights in an interview room at Highgate Police Station, having at first been arrested for suspected murder by a rather excited armed constable and then five minutes later informed by a passive-aggressive sergeant that maybe that wasn’t right but now that it had been done they had to go through the motions at least, which apparently was her fault as well. At least they’d taken the handcuffs off before the short walk to the station, and once there had let her wash the blood off her hands, and given her tea and biscuits.

  The uncertainty about her status centered around Merlin, as far as she could tell from the muttered conversations that started once the sergeant got a look at a black leather case from the elegant young man’s suit pocket, which contained an identification card that sent the sergeant straight on the radio to higher authorities. Merlin was being worked on by two ambulance attendants at that stage, and Susan was relieved to hear them talking as if he was still alive and, surprisingly, not too seriously injured.

  “Hello, you all right, then? Need another tea? Biscuit?”

  This was the constable who’d arrested her, popping his head around the door. A large, black-haired young man in his middle twenties, with a surprisingly lighter-colored moustache, his relaxed face looked quite different from the stressed, super-hyped visage she’d seen over his Smith & Wesson as he’d ordered her to show him her hands, edge on her knees away from Merlin, and then put her hands behind her—upon which she’d been cuffed by his partner and everyone had relaxed slightly.

  “I’m fine,” said Susan. “But what’s going on? Am I still arrested or what?”

  The constable blushed.

  “No, sorry, that was my mistake. We’re waiting for Inspector Greene now, to sign you out.”

  “Inspector Greene?”

  “Special Branch. You’re Box 500, right? Do you normally work with someone else?”

  “I don’t . . .” Susan started to say, but then stopped, as her weary and rather disturbed mind caught up. Being signed out sounded a lot better than being arrested for murder. “Um, can I get my backpack from the Frank Thringley house?”

  “Oh, I’ll check with the local jumbos. I’m not from here. I’m D11.”

  He said that proudly, as if it meant something significant. Belatedly, Susan realized he was trying to impress her; this was some weird kind of flirting.

  “Speaking of firearms, that Smython .357!” He whistled. “I didn’t know what it was; Sergeant Bowen recognized it. Very tasty. Not that I want to say anything against that little Beretta of yours, miss. Easily concealable, I’ll give you that.”

  “Yeah, right,” agreed Susan. She was suddenly feeling very, very tired. She looked at her watch, one of the very new newfangled plastic ones called a Swatch that her mother had bought her as a going-away present. It was a few minutes to six, so probably only just light outside.

  “Well, if you need anything, knock on the door,” said the constable. “Sorry we have to keep you in here, but out of sight, out of mind, hey?”

  “Hey,” replied Susan. She let her head fall forward, cradling it on her arms, and went to sleep.

  Inspector Greene was a woman. Which was a little surprising to Susan, though it shouldn’t have been, since it was 1983. But the Metropolitan Police, more than the regional forces, had always been one of the great holdouts against gender equality, right back to the postwar reforms of Prime Minister Clementina Attlee’s radical government. Paradoxically, Britain’s second woman PM was now in power, but Margaret Thatcher was an old-school Tory and was working hard to roll back many of the changes brought in by Attlee and later Labour governments, equal opportunity legislation being on her hit list.

  Susan, like almost everyone under thirty who wasn’t a banker or hereditary lord, disliked Thatcher and her government. The previous year’s war over the Falklands had turned that dislike into near hatred, while boosting Thatcher’s popularity with far too many older people, and like all her friends, Susan had a permanent sick feeling in her stomach at the likely outcome of the forthcoming election in a few week’s time, the first in which she was old enough to vote. She’d already put in her postal ballot, for the Social Democrat candidate, but the Conservative, Chris Patten, would almost certainly win in the Bath electorate.

  According to Susan’s Swatch, she’d slept for an hour when Inspector Greene tapped her on the shoulder, not very gently. The police officer was thirtyish, tough-looking, and dressed like Sergeant Carter in The Sweeney—the television show, not the real Flying Squad—leather jacket over shirt and jeans. She even looked a bit like Denise Waterman—a subcontinental version of her, anyway.

  “Miss Arkshaw. Time to go.”

  “Go where?” asked Susan muzzily. “Who are you?”

  “Mira Greene, inspector with Special Branch. I handle liaison with your bookselling friends.”

  “Uh, they’re not . . . um . . . is Merlin okay?”

  “I believe so,” said Greene. “They came and retrieved him from Whittington Hospital half an hour ago. I wouldn’t worry. The left-handed types are very, very tough. But I guess you already know that.”

  “Uh, no,” said Susan. “I only met Merlin last night. It was all an accident. I don’t know anything.”

  “You know more than’s probably good for you,” said Greene. “Luckily for you, with anything involving those booksellers, the official unofficial policy is that the less everyone knows—or heaven forbid, writes down—the better. We act as if they’re from the security services and sweep it under the carpet.”

  She swung her car keys around her finger and said, “Where do you want to go?”

  “Go? Uh, I need to get my backpack from—”

  “Already in the car. How about Paddington, train back to Bath? We’ll buy you a ticket. Go home to mum, lie low.”

  Susan was tempted for a moment. She had three months until the Michaelmas term started. Her student accommodation wasn’t available until a few days before the start of term, so she had nowhere particular to go and a limited supply of money to find a place to live.

  But she had come to London early for a reason, and though it had started badly, and become very strange indeed, she wasn’t going to give up.

  “No, thanks,” she said. “I’ll find somewhere to stay. I can go to a youth hostel to start, I guess. Or some cheap . . . very cheap . . . hotel. Till I get a job. In a pub or whatever. I am eighteen.”

  Greene stared at her. Her eyes were fierce, penetrating. She looked like she might favor the Sweeney school of physical interrogation as well, and was definitely someone Susan wouldn’t like
to cross.

  “Seriously, you’d almost certainly be better out of London. Not that you’d be entirely safe back home. But somewhat safer.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Greene shut the door behind her and sat on the desk.

  “You’ve been in the Old World. You’ve been seen and marked by things from the Old World,” she said slowly, and with emphasis. “You’ll find yourself there more easily now, or it will come to you. But geographically speaking, word travels slowly in the Old World; there are many borders to cross between Highgate Wood and the entity that lives in the spa waters of Bath, or any of the other . . . things. Or so the booksellers tell me, because to be honest I know sweet FA myself. If you go home it could be years before anything else weird happens, if ever. Stay here, everything you’ve already met is much closer.”

  “I want to stay,” said Susan. “I’ve got something I need to do.”

  Greene stared at her for a moment longer, then got off the desk and paced around, pausing to loom over Susan. “Okay. Remember this. Nothing you think happened last night happened. If you talk about it to anyone, anywhere, but particularly the newspapers, the best that can happen is you’ll be locked up in a mental asylum and we’ll throw away the key.”

  “I understand you’re threatening me,” said Susan slowly. She’d been arrested—though not ultimately charged—with her mother twice at CND antinuclear demos. She knew what was going on. “But I know my rights—”

  “No, you obviously don’t understand,” said Greene. “This isn’t a police thing, it’s not a legal matter, it’s not part of British law. All the ancient weird shit, the living myths and walking legends and so on, they’re restricted, bound, held down, contained within boundaries by agreements and oaths and bindings and rituals and custom. And some of these can be broken or unraveled once people become aware of them, decide to reenact a bit of harmless old folklore or whatever. So we try to nip anything like that in the bud, stop people even thinking this stuff might be real. Usually, in minor cases, we put people away in a mental hospital, convince them they went gaga for a while, and everything works out. But you’re a special case, you’re already in too deep. We’d have to hand you straight over to the booksellers.”

  “That doesn’t sound so—”

  “Capital punishment doesn’t exist in the United Kingdom anymore, but the booksellers have an exception,” said Greene bleakly. “When they deal with someone who’s delved too deep, no one ever sees them again. And I understand from the booksellers that even that’s a better option than some of the things that happen to people who get in too far.”

  There was silence in the room, save for the annoying hum of the fluorescent tubes overhead.

  “Okay, I do kind of understand. . . . I mean, I get there’s stuff I don’t understand,” said Susan wearily. “I know I was lucky to survive last night. I have no intention of talking about it to anyone.”

  “All right. You’re being sensible. Cooperative. So I’ll help you out, too. If you’re positive you’re going to stay, there’s a boardinghouse, not exactly a safe house, it’s simply somewhere we keep a bit of an eye on. We’ll put you up there—paid for by HM government—until you go to your student housing. The house is in Islington, so pretty handy for everything.”

  “You know about my place at the Slade?”

  “I’d like to think we know everything about you,” said Greene. “Since I’ve had five officers scouring all possible records since I got the call about ‘some of your MI5 agents’ rampaging about the North London shrubberies. But I’m sure there are things we missed. That’s the nature of it and one of the reasons I’ll be happier if you’re staying with Mrs. London in Islington. In case we find out something we should already know.”

  “Mrs. London?”

  “Yes. It is her real name, though she’s from Glasgow originally. God knows why she moved here. We have a deal?”

  “What’s the place like?”

  “Bedsit, but quite big. Gas ring if you want to cook, though Mrs. L does meals. Bathroom each floor, you only share with two others,” said Greene. “Place is hardly ever full anyway, so you might get lucky with the bathroom. Better than anywhere you could afford.”

  “You’ve seen my bank account?”

  “Like I said. Five officers. Two hundred and sixty-two pounds, fifty-five p as of close of business yesterday, and your bank manager was as cross as fire at being woken up too early in the morning to look that up for us, till I said we’d send him a letter of commendation from the deputy commissioner. Anyway, two-hundred-fifty-odd pounds is not a lot to last until term starts. Did I say breakfast is included at Mrs. London’s? And not skimped, none of your two Weetabix and half a cup of powdered milk. She does a fry-up and all.”

  Susan was suddenly ravenously hungry. But then, she realized, she’d only eaten two slightly stale biscuits since lunch yesterday. “Uncle” Frank had invited her to dinner, but she claimed to feel unwell, planning to sneak out at the first opportunity. Though he’d been pleasant to her, she’d figured it was better to stay in her room and keep her door locked.

  “What was Frank Thringley involved in?” she asked.

  “What did the bookseller tell you?” asked Greene.

  “No, I don’t mean . . . him being a . . . what did he call it . . . a Sipper . . . I mean as a criminal,” said Susan. “I saw some of his . . . minions . . . I guess. One of them had a sawn-off shotgun in a Sainsbury’s bag. I mean, it was obvious, it stuck out.”

  “Why didn’t you leave then? Back off and run away?” asked Greene. “Why were you still there last night?”

  “I wanted to ask Frank some questions about his relationship with my mum, and about her other friends at that time,” mumbled Susan. “Frank told me he’d tell me in the morning, offered me the spare room for the night; it had a lock and everything. I didn’t have anywhere to go, and the guy with the shotgun left. Frank himself didn’t feel threatening, to me, anyway. It seemed . . . well, not safe . . . but not immediately dangerous. But then I changed my mind, I was going to leave, but I heard the commotion upstairs and . . . went to look.”

  “Must have been some pretty important questions,” said Greene. “Looking for your dad, right?”

  “That obvious?” asked Susan. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

  “Maybe,” replied Greene. “But I reckon you knew it wasn’t Frank straight away.”

  “I felt he couldn’t be,” said Susan. She frowned. “I don’t know why. . . .”

  “Because he was a Sipper,” said Greene. “Humans instinctively feel there’s something ‘off’ about some of the mythic types like a Sipper. Handy for criminal bosses, makes it easy for them to put the frighteners on people.”

  “But I still thought Frank might have known my dad; he could have told me something useful. What kind of criminal was Frank?”

  “The usual,” said Greene with a shrug. “Protection, drugs, stolen goods. You name it. He was the boss of a big territory, everywhere north of Seven Sisters Road to the North Circular.”

  “Why did Merlin turn him into dust?”

  “Ah, now you’re asking,” said Greene. “I wish I knew. The booksellers usually tell us if someone . . . something . . . from the Old World is causing problems with ordinary people and that they’re going to deal with it. Particularly if there’s an overlap with ordinary crime.”

  “But they didn’t.”

  “Nope. You ready to go?”

  “Yes,” said Susan.

  “Forget all this,” said Greene. “Put it behind you. Move on.”

  “I’ll try,” said Susan as they went to the door.

  “But if some weird shit does happen, don’t forget to call,” added Greene, handing her a business card. “Our duty officer’s on the first number, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The handwritten one is my home number. I hope that after I drop you at Mrs. London’s you go on to have a nice, normal life. But just in case . . .”

 
“Okay,” said Susan. “What exactly do you mean by weird shit?”

  The constable with the strangely pale moustache was in the corridor outside, loitering as if he wanted to say something. But before he could open his mouth, the expression on Greene’s face—as if she’d spotted a dog turd a step away—made him turn around and flee.

  “You’ll know,” said Greene quietly. “Believe me, you’ll know. There is also a chance . . . slim, in the opinion of my colleagues over at Serious Crime, that you might be contacted by your ‘uncle’ Frank’s entirely human criminal associates, since some of them will know you were there on the night of his . . . well, let’s call it death. But provided you stay out of seedy pubs and betting shops north of Holloway, you should be safe enough. Most ordinary criminals steer clear of the weird shit. There are the Death Cults, but . . . I trust you’ll never need to know about them.”

  Susan nodded slowly. She didn’t want to be involved in anything to do with anything Greene had mentioned.

  “What about the whatever-handed booksellers?”

  “They should leave you alone, too,” said Greene. “But stay away from their shops.”

  “They have actual shops?” asked Susan in disbelief.

  “Two in London. Big one in Charing Cross Road for new books and a smaller one in Mayfair for the collectors,” replied Greene, opening a side door to the car park and going out ahead of Susan. She paused to look carefully around and then beckoned. “Watch the steps.”

  Chapter Four

  Most strange dreams I had, and

  Waking, had them still

  Of storied creatures, good and ill

  Under the bookseller’s right hand

  MRS. LONDON’S BOARDINGHOUSE WAS INDEED FAR BETTER THAN anything Susan could have afforded by herself. A four-story early Victorian town house on Milner Square, it was clean, immaculately maintained, and everything worked. Susan was even allowed a choice of rooms and took one at the top, which—though she didn’t say so—was considerably larger than her bedroom in her mother’s very old and rambling farmhouse. It was certainly cleaner and tidier and it came furnished. Even the bed was more comfortable.