A HAZY SHADE OF WINTER

by Simon Bestwick

  ‘I’ve been expecting you,’ he said at last.

  Lloyd locked the shop door and turned the CLOSED sign around to face outward. Then he took my arm, gently, and led me through to the back of his shop, to a little room where there was a table and a brace of comfy-looking armchairs, together with a kettle, coffee, a bottle of milk, packets of biscuits.

  ‘Do you take sugar?’ he asked, smiling slightly. He moved with slow, careful movements, a little stiffly.

  ‘Two, please,’ I said. I didn’t normally, but I reckoned I deserved it today.

  ‘It’s about the Wesley book, isn’t it?’ he said, as he poured. I didn’t say anything. He looked up at me, smiled, and offered the cup. ‘There you go.’

  I took the cup but didn’t taste it. ‘What do you know about it?’

  He lowered himself into the other chair; I winced as his joints creaked and popped. ‘Well, I know what you know. I know there’s something strange about it. Strange and possibly dangerous.’

  ‘You knew that?’

  He smiled lopsidedly and gave a little shrug, hands folded across his belly. He wore a woolly old beige cardigan with antler-horn buttons straining manfully to hold it shut. ‘There had been a couple of things. Nothing much. I suspected no danger then.’

  ‘But you do now.’

  Lloyd chuckled. ‘You turn up on my doorstep looking like death itself; I remembered you because I’ve a good memory for faces, even now. And because, as I said, I knew there was something about the Wesley book. From the state of you, I guessed that something had been happening, and it wasn’t pleasant.’

  In one way, this was easier than I’d hoped for; I’d envisioned a protracted scene of either producing a convincing excuse or trying to persuade him of the truth in order to get his help, never expecting that he might know something of it already. But in another way, that made it worse; what kind of a man, after all, would knowingly let something like that out into the world?

  ‘What happened?’ I asked him.

  He shrugged. ‘I’d like to ask you the same question.’ He smiled at me, but his eyes glinted as coldly as his spectacle lenses. He looked smug and reptilian, like a gorged lizard sunning itself on a rock.

  I felt my fists clench of their own volition for the umpteenth time in the last few days, though it was the first time my ‘pen-friend’ wasn’t responsible. The old bastard had me over a barrel. Not that the temptation to shake the information out of him wasn’t a strong one, but I wasn’t much for physical violence, especially against an old man. Give me time, though. . . .

  ‘All right,’ I said, and gave him a more or less unexpurgated version of all that had happened. He absorbed it all with little change of expression, that maddening smile fixed firmly to his face throughout. Occasionally he gave a little twitch which tested my self-control even further, because it indicated he was enjoying herself, and the twitch always seemed to occur when I mentioned Alison and Mr Paint-it-Black’s avowed intentions towards her.

  At last I was finished. Mr Lloyd said ‘Hmm,’ and reached across for his mug of coffee. He sipped, delicately and deliberately, with a small slurping noise, his eyes never leaving my face, avid and bright.

  ‘Well?’ I said.

  ‘Well?’ he answered. ‘Well what?’

  I don’t know if the old man ever knew how close he came in that moment. By then I was more than ready to hurl myself on him and beat everything he knew out of him. He may have realised his danger, or perhaps he just tired of the game. Maybe the whole point was to goad me to the absolute safe limit before talking. I really don’t know. I can’t pretend to understand his motives; he remains, still, less comprehensible than what I was facing.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Yes. Well, there isn’t much to tell. . . .’

  He sipped his coffee again. I glared at him in speechless hate.

  ‘All right,’ he said, ‘this is what happened. . . .’

  ‘A man brought me two cardboard boxes of old books. Quite an assortment. I think he said they were his father’s. I can’t quite remember, to be honest. When you get to my age, the memory tends to grow a little hazy. . . .’

  He smiled apologetically. I didn’t believe him for a minute.

  ‘In any case, the books were of varying quality and value. There was no shortage of cheap, pulpy thrillers, most of them by writers you’d never have heard of—long forgotten, and quite deservedly, if I may say so.’

  He was going to whether I liked it or not, so I didn’t object. Besides, it was his story, and he was going to tell it in his own way and in his own time. This was his moment of glory, his fifteen minutes, paltry though they might be, where he had his chance to spin a yarn, instead of just selling them. So I bore with him, interrupting him only once throughout.

  ‘But of course there were a few diamonds among the dross. Yes, of course. Hmm. . . .’ He sipped his coffee and smiled. ‘Sorry. The old throat does get a little bit dry. You’ll find that, young man, as you grow older. Anyway. Where was I? Oh, yes. There were a few little gems. Among them the Raymond Wesley book you saw as so lucky a find. Of course, I flicked through it, to ensure it was intact, and found the previous owner’s . . . defacements of the text. Rather sad, I thought. Reflected a life mostly unfulfilled. A sad state to find yourself in. Hmm. Yes.’

  Now he took a long, deep swallow of coffee and set down his mug. ‘Well, I could see that there would be no small amount of work to do . . . but that was a problem for another day. Like yourself, I have a spare room beside mine where I often keep books awaiting restoration or pricing. I left—what was it called?—Old Bones there to work on.’

  Mr Lloyd made a steeple of his fingers and rested them against his chin. ‘Something else you’ll find you have to put with in old age is less and less sleep. Rather as if your body knows that time is growing short and seeks to limit the amount wasted in bed. In more ways than one, eh?’ He gave a dry, reedy little chuckle, coughed briefly and drained the last of his coffee. Even his laugh reminded me of him. ‘Well, that night, I was lying in bed. And that was when I heard it. Somebody . . . humming.’ He spread his hands apologetically. ‘Some tune or another. I’m afraid I was unfamiliar——’

  That was when I made my one and only interruption. ‘Was this it?’ I asked, and hummed a few bars of ‘Paint it Black’.

  Mr Lloyd’s face brightened; he nodded delightedly. ‘Yes. That’s exactly right. You know the tune too, do you?’

  ‘It’s quite a well-known one,’ I said coldly. ‘Among the young.’

  I regretted that as soon as the words were out of my mouth, fearing that offence would shut him up, but Mr Lloyd only chortled merrily and wagged an admonitory finger at me. ‘Touché, Mr Mitchell, touché. Anyway, this humming continued for some time.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m an open-minded man. You’ll find that as you approach my age, it’s not a bad idea. My shop is protected by good security; my stock is reasonably valuable and one hears of such terrible things being done to the old by’—he smiled and inclined his head my way—‘the young. So I knew it couldn’t be burglars. I would have been suitably forewarned. And so in due course I realised that there was a . . . presence . . . in my shop.’

  ‘Just like that?’ I asked woodenly.

  ‘Just, as you say, like that.’ He pushed out his lower lip. ‘It isn’t the first time something of that nature has come into my hands. Like the protagonist of your Mr Wesley’s book, much of what I handle comes to me from the dead.’

  I rocked back in my chair. ‘You knew?’

  ‘People leave their marks on the things they handle, Mr Mitchell. A great deal of bitterness had poured into that book. So often, it’s such emotions that persist. Happiness and fulfilment are buoyant; they carry us away when our lives are done. But failure, regret, vengeance, hatred, fear—they weigh us down. Anchor us to earth through the objects to which they attach themselves. That book was one such object. But he wanted something. Something that would grant him substance, and form, and I don’t think I gave
it to him. You obviously did. Fear, perhaps. I have little of that left in me now.’ He said the last quietly, with no element of boasting to it, and for a moment his eyes seemed to turn inwards, on himself, into his past. Then the moment’s introspection was done and he was smiling sunnily at me again.

  ‘Where was I? Oh, yes. I placed the book on the shelves, reasonably priced. I heard him humming now and again at nights, and the occasional footstep. But it quickly faded. No sustenance from me, as I said. You, on the other hand . . . you appear to have fattened him up quite nicely.’ He beamed at me.

  ‘You knew what he was going to do,’ I said. ‘You knew what you were turning loose.’

  His smile vanished, and just for a moment, God help me, I think I saw the real Mr Lloyd looking out.

  ‘Prove it,’ he said, so softly that a candle’s flame wouldn’t have stirred at his lips.

  We looked at each other for long seconds after that. Finally I spoke again. ‘Why didn’t you burn it?’

  ‘Burn it?’ He looked horrified. ‘Mr Mitchell! Books are my livelihood! And this one was a rare piece!’

  ‘But you still priced it pretty damn cheaply,’ I said. ‘Didn’t you think for a minute about what you might be doing?’

  He leant back in his chair and spoke in that soft, soft voice. ‘With so many sins on my soul already,’ he told me, ‘I hardly felt one or two more would make a difference. And, I suppose, I was . . . curious.’

  He just smiled up at me, his smug, lizardy smile. I rose. The smell of dust and old pages clogged my nose and throat. I had to get out of that place. Out of it, now.

  ‘Mr Mitchell?’

  I looked down and the spell broke; an inoffensive, bespectacled old man in a cardigan smiled up at me. ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t you want the name and the address of the man who sold me those books?’

  Lloyd creaked to his feet without waiting for an answer and went back into the shop. He opened the cash register and fumbled around in the drawer, finally taking out a tiny rectangle of stiff cardboard.

  ‘I told him that if he had any more books he should bring them to me,’ the old man said. ‘And he offered me his professional services at any time I should require them.’

  He passed me the card. I took it from him quickly; I realised I was even afraid of his touch. I turned it over and looked at it. The card read: R. FULLER, GLAZIER: BLACKPOOL.

  IX. Beside the Seaside, Beside the Sea

  Blackpool—for those of you unacquainted—is a seaside town on the northwest coast of Britain, and not one of my favourite places on earth. I’ve always found it loud and tacky, not to put too fine a point on it. And now I had to spend a day there. Not really my idea of a good time.

  On the train, I wished there was still such a thing as a smoking compartment and gazed longingly at the beer on the buffet trolley as it passed. But I needed my head clear, and so contented myself with a can of Pepsi instead.

  There wasn’t much else to do on the ride but think. About Mr Lloyd and his cold-eyed lizard’s grin, and about the white, faceless thing I was trying to hunt instead of being hunted by. I turned the card Lloyd had given me over and over in my hands. There was never anything new there. R Fuller. R Fuller. R Fuller. Glazier. Blackpool. And a phone number.

  I thought about Alison too. And I thought about the thing that wanted her, that must not have her. I tried to ring her mobile, but there was no reply, other than a recorded message stating It has not been possible to connect your call; please try again later. I cursed to myself. Perhaps she was in the library by now and had had to switch off her phone. I tried sending a text message—no better luck there either, which worried me a little more. A problem with reception, perhaps? I rang, on the off-chance, the phone at her flat in Whalley Range, and got the answering machine. Better than nothing. I left a message telling her what I’d learned and to call me as soon as she played it.

  So after that I could only sit and stew on the train, watching the stops pass, until at last it slid into Blackpool North.

  I shouldered my way through the noisy, milling crowds, squeezed past bars blaring out vacuous and deafening pop ‘hits’ (a more accurate description could have been produced by moving one letter to the opposite end of the word), and found my way to a payphone. I dropped coins in, then dialled the number on the card.

  The phone was answered on the third ring. ‘R. Fuller.’

  ‘Mr Fuller?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  I’d already decided to spin him a yarn, and gave him the address of an apartment block near the North Pier. ‘I could really use you popping round today, if you could.’

  He sighed, heavily. He must have been hoping for a quiet afternoon with his feet up and a cold can of lager. ‘All right. I’ll see you there in about an hour’s time.’

  ‘Thanks. Much appreciated.’

  I hung up and settled down to wait.

  Among Blackpool’s few saving graces are some halfway decent Chinese restaurants, but it being early afternoon, none of them were open yet and I had to content myself with a late lunch in Burger King. That done, I consulted my watch and sauntered down the seafront. The multitudes jostled me as I went. The air was full of noises; the forlorn cries of gulls were soundless as they arced over the glittering sea, bright and crinkled and stippled like frosted glass, blue in the sun.

  I reached the apartment block with a quarter of an hour to spare. I lit a cigarette and waited. Soon enough, a small Bedford van rolled down the road and pulled into the kerb beside the block. R. FULLER GLAZIERS was stamped on the side. (Why, Watson, I thought, I do believe that this may be our man.)

  A man in his forties or fifties climbed out, sweltering in his overalls. As he neared the door, I came up behind him. ‘Mr Fuller?’

  He turned around. He had thinning salt-and-pepper hair, horn-rimmed glasses, and a thin, ferrety face. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I’m the one who called you,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry to have you here under false pretences. I’ll make it worth your while.’

  ‘Yeah?’ He looked at me suspiciously; he had quick grey eyes that never stopped in the same place for too long, but which were forever darting to and fro, like tiny insects. ‘What’s this about, then?’

  ‘Is there somewhere more private we can go?’ I asked.

  His eyes narrowed. ‘Why?’

  I watched him closely. ‘I’ve just come down from Lloyds’ bookshop in the Lake District.’

  He’d gone very still, his head cocked to one side, lips parted, drawn back from his yellow, crooked teeth. His face was worn and weather-beaten, like leather, a leather mask. I couldn’t read what might be going on behind it. I took a deep breath and spoke again: ‘I think it’s about your father.’

  ‘Is it now?’ he said, and looked away from me, first out to sea and then along the promenade, before taking a deep breath of his own. He swallowed hard, Adam’s apple bobbing in his wattled throat. The skin there looked far, far older than the rest of him. Finally he looked at me directly. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Get in the van.’

  X. Robert

  The R, I discovered, stood for Robert; he drove rather unsteadily up through the backstreets until he found a small, grimy-looking pub. ‘Not much to look at,’ he said as we climbed out of the van, ‘but at least we don’t get any bloody tourists in.’

  I had to sympathise with that. I followed him inside to the bar. ‘Eh, Emma. Pint of mild and——’ he looked my way.

  ‘Same again,’ I said, handing the barmaid a note. ‘Keep your hand out of your pocket, Robert,’ I told him. ‘These are on me.’

  ‘Ta very much.’

  I wanted to keep him sweet, because I suspected he liked his father no more than I did. He drained half his pint at a gulp as we sat down, then took a deep breath and looked me in the eye. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘what do you want to know?’

  ‘Everything,’ I said.

  ‘And why do you want to know?’

  I took a deep breath and tol
d him.

  ‘My dad were a teacher,’ Robert began. ‘His name were George. George Fuller. He wasn’t a happy man. Or a very pleasant one. Couldn’t tell you how much the one had to wi’ t’other.’

  I sipped my pint in silence. A fly buzzed. The place was almost deserted; there were maybe three other customers—a middle-aged couple and an old man who looked as though he’d nodded off and might pitch headlong into his brown ale at any moment—plus the barmaid. A speaker played above the bar, low and muted; Herman’s Hermits, bright and brash and coming from a world where all was light and love and laughter, a world as alien as Mars. A fruit machine flashed and glowed, its wheels spinning at random. Robert toyed with his glass; he’d shown no surprise at what I’d told him, as if he’d been expecting to hear it for years.

  ‘He wanted to write,’ the glazier said. ‘I think he had a story or two published, when he was younger. I never saw any of them. By the time I was old enough to think about that, he’d thrown them all out. He didn’t want to be reminded.’

  He raised the glass to his lips and took a small, almost delicate sip, a sudden contrast to his former gulping. I was reminded suddenly of Mr Lloyd, drinking his coffee. The association wasn’t pleasant. Robert swilled the beer around his mouth as though to clean away a foul taste. He spoke of his father with difficulty; every word made it clearer how much hate had been between them.

  ‘He started teaching before I were born, just after the war,’ he went on. ‘It were never supposed to be more than a stop-gap, something to make a few bob from so he could get set up. He were young, had a lot to look forward to—as he thought, anyway. He wanted to write and to enjoy himself with the ladies. Those were his ambitions. He never got far with either. Or owt else he tried.’