Blood on the Tongue (Ben Cooper & Diane Fry) (24 page)

15

Today there seemed to Cooper to be even more books in Lawrence Daley's shop, if that were possible. Could they have been secretly breeding overnight? Or was it only a different arrangement that made the stacks look dangerously unstable?

'It seems to me these book are just taking up space,' said Cooper when Lawrence emerged from the back of the shop. 'You said yourself you don't have enough room to get new stock in.'

'That's not the point at all.' Lawrence sighed and wiped his forehead with a sleeve. He sat down on a wobbly pile of ageing volumes. Near the top were
Observations in the Field from the Lower Derwent Valley
and
A Comprehensive Record of Bird Migration in Western Derbyshire 1925–1930
. Lawrence had a coating of brown dust on the lenses of his glasses, which must have made the books all around him look mustier than ever.

'So what
is
the point, then?' said Cooper.

'The point is that the old books are the ones my customers expect to see in the shop. They come for the character of the place, don't you see? The ambience. They like to touch the books and soak up the feel and the spirit of them. Do you think that customer yesterday would have come in here at all if I were selling Harry Potters instead of this stuff?'

'No, but …'

'It's all about targeting. Finding your niche. You've got to identify the needs of your own unique marketplace and cater for its specific requirements.'

'You've been reading magazine articles,' said Cooper.

'Yes, there was a feature in last week's issue of
The
Bookseller
about the survival of independents,' said Lawrence. 'Basically, it said I had to identify my niche market or die. Unfortunately, it seems the people who constitute
my
niche market don't actually want to buy books. They just want to browse among dusty old tomes, with handwritten prices that say "three shillings and sixpence". It's part of the visitor experience.'

Cooper picked up one of the booklets published by the Edendale Historical Society. It was called 'Folk Customs of the Eden Valley'. 'Marketing strategies, eh? We get those sort of articles in the
Police Gazette
, too,' he said.

'Oh? And what are customers in
your
niche market looking for, pray?'

'Pretty much the same, I suppose – image and no substance.'

Lawrence laughed. 'Do you want a coffee? That's something else I provide free, along with the ambience.'

'Yes, as long as it comes with a bit of information on the side.'

The bookseller rolled his eyes. 'Well, fancy that – a policeman wanting information. You're sure a chocolate digestive wouldn't do instead?'

'No.'

'I could stretch to a jammy dodger, if you smile at me nicely, young man.'

'White with no sugar, thanks,' said Cooper.

Lawrence passed him a roll of adhesive labels and a ballpoint pen. 'Make yourself useful then, while I put the kettle on.'

'What do you mean?'

'You can price up some of these books.'

'Wait a minute, Lawrence … I don't know the first thing about the price of antiquarian books.'

'For heaven's sake, put what you like. It's bound to be more accurate than three shillings and sixpence, isn't it?'

Lawrence trotted through into the back of the shop in a sudden waft of body spray. Cooper caught a glimpse of a tiny kitchen area. He looked at the labels and the nearest pile of books. He shrugged. Then he began to stick labels on the covers of the books, adding handwritten prices. He varied the amount between £1 and £5, according to the size and thickness of the volume. Cooper had a vague idea that the age and rarity of the book ought to count towards the price, too, but it was too complicated for him. He hoped that some poverty-stricken book-lover might benefit one day by discovering a terrific bargain in the Natural History section of Eden Valley Books. Perhaps he could suggest to Lawrence that it would be a selling point. He could put a sign in the window –
Books priced by Ben Cooper. Don't miss this sensational opportunity while stocks last!
On the other hand, putting anything at all in the bare windows of Eden Valley Books might spoil the ambience.

He priced a tattered copy of
The Natural History of Selborne
at £2.50 and added 'Or Near Offer' for a bit of variety. His attention began to wander, and he looked around the shop. On the floor, between two sets of shelves, he noticed a telltale scattering of black mouse droppings. In a pigeonhole behind the counter there was a half-drunk tumbler of whisky. So that was how Lawrence kept himself from dying of boredom during the day.

'How are we doing?' called Lawrence.

'We're doing fine,' said Cooper. 'With a bit more practice, I could get a job filling shelves in Somerfield's supermarket.'

'I like a man with ambition.'

The bookseller manoeuvred a tray carefully along the passage, swaying his hips to dodge some of the unsteady stacks of books. He looked approvingly at the newly priced labels.

'There – wasn't that worth coming in for? You've learned a new skill.'

'I want to ask you about a woman called Marie Tennent,' said Cooper, when he had his coffee in his hand.

'Do I know her?'

'That's the question, Lawrence.'

Lawrence had brought a plate of biscuits, too, but he didn't seem to mind eating them all himself. In fact, he was stuffing them into his mouth absent-mindedly, the automatic movement of somebody used to snacking all day long.

'Oh, I see,' he said. 'Marie … what was it?'

'Tennent. She'd be aged about twenty-eight, medium height, dark hair, a little on the plump side maybe. She could have been buying books by Danielle Steel.'

'Oh, a customer? That would be a novelty.'

In between biscuits, Lawrence began to fiddle with his glasses, leaving crumbs on the frames and a large thumbprint on one of the lenses.

'Do you remember her coming in here, Lawrence?'

'Would this have been recently?'

'I'm not sure. It could have been any time. She bought a few modern novels, fitness books, autobiography.'

Cooper's phone rang. He found it in his pocket, looked at the display, and sighed as he pushed the button to end the call. There was always another job waiting for him.

'Danielle Steel, did you say? I don't have many customers who buy Danielle Steel novels. They're a bit too popular, if you know what I mean.'

Cooper was starting to get irritated by Lawrence's constant fiddling with his glasses. He found it distracting not to be able to see someone's eyes when he was talking to them.

'You don't stock them, then?'

'I didn't say that, quite,' said Lawrence. 'Down at the end there, I do have a few boxes of books that I've bought at auctions and never bothered sorting out. People can have a rummage in there, if they want to. Anything they find, they can have for 10p. There might have been some Danielle Steels. There was a Jeffrey Archer found in there once.'

'You would remember Marie Tennent, if she'd been a frequent customer, I suppose?'

Lawrence picked up the last biscuit and broke it in half, then into quarters, scattering crumbs on the desk and on to the floor. More food for the mice tonight.

'Yes, of course. I know my regular customers pretty well – I can usually guess what they're looking for.'

'But you don't remember her?'

Lawrence shook his head, then clapped his hand over one side of his glasses as if he were testing the eyesight in the other eye. 'Sorry. Local, is she? Not a tourist?'

'Local. She had a baby recently. You might have noticed her if she came in when she was pregnant?'

Finally, Lawrence took his hand away from his face. Cooper noticed that one of the bookseller's eyes was looking rather strange behind the lens of his glasses. It was slightly drooping and lop-sided. He wondered if Lawrence had suffered a minor stroke recently, which had left the muscles weak on that side of his face. But then the lens of Lawrence's glasses dropped out and landed on one of the books in front of him on the desk, and his eye looked normal again. Cooper realized it had been working loose for the past few minutes.

'Damn and blast,' said Lawrence. 'They're a real bugger to get back in once they come out. Especially when you can't see what you're doing properly because your lens has fallen out.'

'Haven't you got a spare pair?'

'Somewhere,' said Lawrence vaguely. He peered around the shop with his other eye, and Cooper began to worry that the bookseller was going to ask him to look for his spare glasses among the mountains of books. But Lawrence was prepared – he carried a tiny screwdriver on a little chain round his neck.

'What's the problem with this Tennent woman?' he said. 'What has she done?'

'She's dead,' said Cooper.

Lawrence laid his glasses on the counter and bent over them short-sightedly as he tried to tighten the screws holding them together. Watching him, Cooper thought the job might take him a long time. His hands were too unsteady to either to keep the screw in position or to fit the screwdriver on to it.

'Ah, well,' said Lawrence. 'So that's another customer gone, then.'

Cooper hadn't held out much hope of Lawrence. Even with so few people visiting his shop, it was asking a lot to expect him to remember a particular one. It was painful to watch him struggling with the screw, and it meant talking to the top of his head. But Cooper wasn't going to volunteer to help.

'I forgot to go and see your aunt about the flat,' he said.

'Not to worry,' said Lawrence. 'It probably isn't your sort of place.'

'No, I'm sure it's fine. I meant to give her a call last night, but I was busy.'

'There will be somewhere a lot better waiting for you. Have you tried the estate agent on Fargate? They've got some nice properties.'

'I can't afford them.'

'Aunt Dorothy is getting a bit eccentric anyway.'

'No, I'll go.' Cooper looked at the board. 'I see you've taken the postcard down.'

'Oh, yes. The flat has probably been let by now.'

'Has it?'

'I don't know.' Lawrence was mumbling over his counter, so that Cooper could hardly hear what he was saying.

'Sorry?'

'I just thought the card was getting a bit faded.'

'It's worth a try then. I'll call round at Welbeck Street tonight.'

It was in that moment of saying it that Cooper knew he had committed himself. If the flat was even half habitable, he wouldn't be able to find a reason to get out of taking it – not without long and impossible explanations to make.

He left the bookseller still trying to fit the lens of his glasses back in. Near the counter, he saw a set of illustrated Thomas Hardy novels:
Far from the Madding Crowd, Under the Greenwood Tree
,
Jude the Obscure
. Cooper had loved Thomas Hardy as a teenager.
Jude
had been one of his A-level set books, and he'd read all the rest one after another, drawn into the evocation of a remote yet familiar world. These editions were in gold covers with coloured panels, protected in a cardboard slipcase, and they were priced at £45. Cooper wondered what the profit on that was for Lawrence Daley. Assuming that he ever sold them, of course.

*    *    *    *

It had already been dark for over an hour by the time Cooper got to the house in Welbeck Street. It was across the river from the Dam Street area where Marie Tennent lived. If it hadn't been for the houses behind, he might have been able to see the roof of the heritage centre in the old silk mill.

Dorothy Shelley stood in the hallway of the ground-floor flat at number 8 and looked him over. She was a slender woman wearing a cashmere cardigan, with another slung over her shoulders. The cardigans looked a bit frayed round the edges, and they gave her an air of decayed gentility, which might have been natural, but could just as easily have been the image she was aiming to present. Cooper was initially pleased with the look of the flat, which comprised the ground floor of a stone-built semi-detached house, solid and sympathetically converted, with the occasional incongruity of stud wall and plastic coving.

'If you could perhaps tell me what's included in the rent,' he said. 'What about Council Tax and water rates?'

'Do you have any objections to cats?' said Mrs Shelley.

'None at all. We have several back home. Well, they're farm cats really. They're supposed to be outside, but they spend as much time in the house as they do in the outbuildings.'

'That's good,' said Mrs Shelley 'Only, there's a sort of a lodger, you see.'

'Oh?'

'She stays in the conservatory, except to go out in the garden to do her duty. She's no trouble at all.'