Питер Робинсон - Seven Years

Feeling that much better and strangely more confident after my purchase, I entered into the labyrinth again. It had started to rain rather heavily by then. Just as I was about to give up and return when the weather improved, I found the shop. No wonder it had been hard to locate again. Its facade was narrow and humdrum, its green paint flaking and faded. No hand-painted sign hung over the door; the grimy windows were small, more like those of a terrace house than a shop. When I stood outside, I saw three or four books on display, but there was nothing interesting about them — one had something to do with steam trains, another with numismatics and a third was a coffee-table book on Holy Island. The name over the window was hardly legible, but with a bit of effort, I worked out that it said “Gorman’s Antiquarian Bookshop,” which was a bit of a cheek, I thought, eyeing the box of tatty paperbacks on a trestle by the door at fifty pence each. Peter Cheyney, Sax Rohmer, Hammond Innes, Erle Stanley Gardner, and “Sapper” do not an antiquarian bookshop make.

Inside, this particular establishment consisted of a warren of small anterooms, connected by narrow passages and short staircases of dry creaking wood, each room stacked from floor to ceiling with books, either upright on shelves or in piles that rivalled the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The uneven floors seemed to meet the walls at odd angles, and I remembered that my footsteps had sounded loud on the uncarpeted floorboards of warped, worn and knotted wood. It was a miracle the whole place didn’t just fall down. The smell was not unpleasant, an old bookshop smell of dust and paper, mostly, with an undercurrent of old pipe tobacco and rich leather, like a fine Cabernet, and just a hint of mildew. Gorman kept his stock in decent condition, but with all the will in the world, you can’t avoid the rising damp and occasional leaks in an old building like this one. The foistiness was not at all unpleasant, at least not to a habitué like me; it merely adds to the ambience.

I had considered showing Gorman the book I had bought and decided against it. Instead, I had noted down the particulars, including the ISBN number and condition. As he read the sheet of paper I handed him, Gorman scratched his head. A few flakes of dandruff drifted like snow on to the shoulders of his grey pullover. His hair was thin, and what there was of it was uncombed and long unwashed. He clearly hadn’t shaved for several days, either.

“Browning?” he said finally, handing back the sheet and pushing his old National Health glasses up on his nose. “Not much call for Browning these days. His literary stock’s gone right down, you might say.” His chuckle sounded like an automatic coffee maker in its death throes. “Now, your Metaphysicals and your Romantics, that’s a different story. Donne, Marvel, Keats and Shelley, they all sell like the proverbial hotcakes. Even old Willie Wordsworth and his daffodils. And your Victorian novelists — Dickens, George Eliot, Hardy, Mrs. Gaskell, and don’t forget your Brontë sisters — I can’t keep ’em on the shelves. Not that anyone who buys them actually reads them, you understand. I put it down to telly, myself. BBC drama.” He shook his head as if pronouncing a verdict on BBC drama. “But your Victorian poets? You can’t give ’em away. I don’t know why. I quite enjoy a bit of Tennyson myself every now and then. ‘Onward, onward, rode the six hundred’ and all that. Stirring stuff. Can’t say I care much for Browning, though. Bit of a pervert, wasn’t he? All that rot about murder and adultery. Take ‘My Last Duchess.’ Didn’t the duke in that one have his wife done away with just because she looked at other blokes?”

“‘I gave commands; / Then all smiles stopped together.’” I quoted.

“Yes... er... well, quite. Like I said, not much call for that sort of thing.”

“Yes, but would you have any idea from whom you bought this particular volume?” I tapped the sheet of paper in my hand.

“Whom?”

“That’s right.”

He scratched his head again. “Well, I don’t rightly know. I mean, I get a lot of people coming in here.”

We both cast a glance around the shop when he said that, and when I turned back to him, he continued, “On a good day, like. There’s good days and there’s bad days.”

There had been no-one else in the place the last time I had been there, either, but I saw little point in mentioning that to him. “So there’s no possible way you can tell me who sold you this book?”

“I didn’t say that, did I? Keep perfectly good records, I do. There’s no taxman can fault me on that. You’re not—”

“No,” I said firmly. “I am not a tax auditor. As a matter of fact, I’m a retired Professor of Classics. Cambridge.”

He didn’t seem quite as impressed as most people do when I mention the hallowed name of the university. “Professor, eh?” he said. “That explains it, then.”

“Explains what?”

He pointed to the sheet of paper. “Browning. I’ll bet he knew his classics, didn’t he? All those artists and Renaissance stuff. Plenty of fellow perverts back then.”

“These records you keep,” I said. “Would it be at all possible for you to consult them and try to find out for me who brought this book in?”

“I suppose I could,” he said without moving. “But I don’t ask customers for their names and addresses. No one likes that. Smacks too much of the police state, being asked for your name and address and telephone number. I mean, you wouldn’t like it if I asked you for your personal details when you came in here to buy or sell a book, would you? I think a person should be allowed to buy and sell things in perfect anonymity. That’s one of the freedoms our fathers fought for. Within reason, of course. I mean, when it comes to guns or explosives or drugs, that’s a different matter. Need a redchester for that sort of thing.”

Redchester ? I realized he probably meant “register.” My heart sank. “Are you telling me,” I said slowly, “that you can’t do as I ask? I thought you said you could help.”

“Up to a point. That’s what I meant. Up to a point. I was just explaining that I can’t you give you a name and address. Or telephone number. Not that I would if I could. I mean, you say you’re not a tax investigator, that you’re some sort of professor, but you could be a policeman, for all I know.”

“Do I look like a policeman?”

To my dismay, he took my question seriously and studied me from head to foot.

“Well, no,” he said. “If you ask me, you rather resemble George Smiley. You know, from the John le Carré books. Not the Alec Guinness version, you understand, or Gary Oldman, but George Smiley as you might imagine he’d look if you didn’t see him as Alec Guinness or Gary Oldman, if you follow my drift.”

I thought the only thing I had in common with Smiley was that I sometimes appear invisible. People tend not to notice me, or if they do, they mark me down immediately as uninteresting and harmless, then pass me by without a second glance. When some people walk into a room, everyone turns to look at them; when others walk in, no-one bats an eyelid. That’s me.

“I suppose you could be a spy,” Gorman added. “Like Smiley was.”

“Oh, for crying out loud, man,” I said. “What would a spy be doing asking for the identity of someone who bought a second-hand book from you?”

“I could think of any number of reasons.” He paused. “Why do you want to know?”

Here it was at last, the question I had prepared for but still dreaded. I told him about finding the envelope of money in the book. To my surprise, he took my explanation at face value.

“Well, I must say, sir, that’s very honest of you,” he said. “Very honest, indeed. And honesty’s a quality I appreciate. There’s not many as, coming across a twenty pound note, like, wouldn’t simply put it in their pocket and spend it down the pub. But you want to return it to its rightful owner.”