Ben Aaronovitch - Broken Homes

‘I supposed it never occurred to you to just phone them up and ask,’ I said.

‘That’s an operational matter, so nothing to do with me I’m afraid,’ said Postmartin. ‘And besides we didn’t think it was necessary.’

It had been an article of faith amongst the post-war survivors of British wizardry that the magic was going out of the world. You don’t need to establish bilateral links with sister organisations if your raison d’etre was melting away like the arctic icepack.

‘And besides, Peter,’ said Postmartin, ‘if this book did come from the White Library then there’s a good chance the Germans may want it back and I for one have no intention of letting it out of my grasp.’ He laid his white gloved hand gently on the cover as emphasis. ‘However did Arts and Antiques come by it in the first place?’

‘It was handed in by a reputable bookseller,’ I said.

‘How reputable?’

‘Obviously,’ I said, ‘reputable enough. Colin and Leech in Cecil Court.’

‘The thief must have been blissfully unaware of what he had,’ said Postmartin. ‘That’s like trying to flog ,’ he rolled the word around, obviously enjoying the sound of it, ‘a Picasso down the Portobello. How did they wrest the book from him?’

I told him that I didn’t know the details and that I was following that up as soon we were finished.

‘Why hasn’t that been done already?’ asked Postmartin. ‘Leaving aside its more esoteric qualities, this is still a very valuable item. Surely an investigation has already begun?’

‘The book hasn’t been reported stolen,’ I said. ‘As far as Arts and Antiques are concerned, there’s no crime to investigate.’ And what with the Met currently being seriously mullered by spending cuts, nobody was in a hurry to find an excuse for more work.

‘Curious,’ said Postmartin. ‘Perhaps the owner doesn’t realise it’s been stolen.’

‘Perhaps the owner is the guy who tried to sell it,’ I said. ‘He might want it back.’

Postmartin gave me a horrified look. ‘Impossible,’ he said. ‘I have a security van coming to whisk this book and myself away to Oxford and safety. Besides, if he is the owner, he doesn’t deserve what he’s got. To each according to his abilities and all that.’

‘You’ve hired a security van?’

‘For this?’ said Postmartin, looking fondly at the book. ‘Of course. I even considered coming out with my revolver.’ He checked to make sure I was suitably horrified. ‘Don’t worry. I was a crack shot in my day.’

‘What day was that?’

‘Korea,’ he said. ‘National Service. I still have my service revolver.’

‘I thought the army had switched to the Browning by then,’ I said. Clearing out the Folly’s arsenal the year before had been an education in twentieth-century anti-personnel weapons and just how many decades you could leave them to rust before they became dangerously unstable.

Postmartin shook his head. ‘My trusty Enfield Type Two.’

‘You didn’t, though? Bring it.’

‘Not in the end. I couldn’t find my spare ammo.’

‘Good.’

‘I searched high and low.’

‘That’s a relief.’

‘I think I must have left it in the shed somewhere,’ said Postmartin.

Charing Cross Road was once the bookselling heart of London and disreputable enough to avoid the multinational chains in their unceasing quest to turn every street of every city into a clone of every other. Cecil Court was a pedestrianised alleyway that linked Charing Cross to St Martin’s Lane where, if you ignored the upmarket burger restaurant at one end and the Mexican franchise at the other, you could still see what it might have been like. Although, according to my old man, it’s a lot cleaner than it once was.

Amidst the specialist bookshops and galleries was Colin and Leech, established 1897, current proprietor Gavin Headley. He turned out to be a short burly white man with the sort of smug Mediterranean tan that comes from having a second home somewhere sunny and sufficient Mediterranean genes to stop your skin going orange. The inside of the shop was warm enough to grow pomegranates, and smelt of new books.

‘We specialise in signed first editions,’ said Headley and explained that authors were persuaded to ‘sign and line’ their freshly published books — ‘They write a line from their book at the top of the title page,’ he said — and his customers would then buy these and lay them down like a fine wine.

The shop was tall, narrow and lined with modern hardbacks on expensively varnished hardwood shelves.

‘As an investment?’ I asked. It seemed a bit dodgy to me.

Headley found that funny. ‘You’re not going to get rich investing in new hardbacks,’ he said. ‘Your kids maybe, but not you.’

‘How do you make your money?’

‘We’re a bookshop,’ said Headley, shrugging. ‘We sell books.’

Postmartin had been right. The thief would have to have been unbelievably stupid to try and sell a properly valuable antique on Cecil Court, particularly in Colin and Leech. Headley hadn’t been impressed.

‘He had it wrapped up in a bin-bag for one thing,’ he said. ‘As soon as he unwrapped it, I thought “fuck me”. I mean, I may only be at the contemporary end of the market but I know the real thing when it’s plonked down in front of me. “Do you think it’s valuable?” he asks. Is it valuable? How could he be kosher and not know? Okay, I suppose he could have found it in his granddad’s attic but is that likely when it was in such good nick?’

I agreed that this was a low probability scenario and asked how he’d managed to separate the book from the gentleman in question.

‘Told him I wanted to keep it overnight, didn’t I? So that I could get someone in to make an accurate valuation.’

‘And he fell for that?’

Headley shrugged. ‘I offered him a receipt and asked for his contact details but he told me he’d just remembered that he was parked on a double yellow and he’d be right back.’

And off he went, leaving the book behind.

‘I reckon he must have realised he’d fucked up,’ said Headley. ‘And panicked.’

I asked if he could give me a description.

‘I can do better than that,’ he said and held up a USB. ‘I saved the footage.’

The problem with the so-called bloody surveillance state is that it’s hard work trying to track someone’s movements using CCTV — especially if they’re on foot. Part of the problem is that the cameras all belong to different people for different reasons. Westminster Council has a network for traffic violations, the Oxford Street Trading Association has a huge network aimed at shop-lifters and pickpockets, individual shops have their own systems, as do pubs, clubs and buses. When you walk around London it is important to remember that Big Brother may be watching you, or he could be having a piss, or reading the paper or helping redirect traffic around a car accident or maybe he’s just forgotten to turn the bloody thing on.

In a proper major investigation team there’s a DC or DS whose job it is to arrive at the crime scene, locate all the potential cameras, gather up all the footage and then scan through however many thousands of hours there is, looking for anything relevant. He or she has a team of as many as six detectives to help with the job — muggins of course had himself, Toby and the dogged determination to see justice done.

The book had been turned over to Arts and Antiques in late January and most private premises keep less than forty-eight hours’ worth of footage but I managed to scrape some up from the traffic camera and a pub which had recently installed their system and hadn’t yet figured out how to delete the old stuff. In the old days, when a gigabyte was a lot of memory, I would have been lumbered with a big bag full of VHS tapes but now it all ended up fitting on the USB that Headley had provided.