Mystery Man (21 page)

I withdrew to the relative safety of the shop. DI Robinson was now at the counter with his selections. He had chosen W.R. Burnett's
The Asphalt Jungle
from 1950 and Jim Thompson's
The Grifters
from 1963. They were good picks, but it would be hard not to in my shop. I gave him a decent price and we played the old receipt game again.

He said, 'I couldn't help overhearing some of that. Must make you feel good when someone comes in and thanks you. My game, you only ever hear complaints.'

My exchanges with Mark Mayerova had been quite vague, and he had spoken relatively quietly. The two had combined to give the detective only a rough idea of what we'd been talking about, and no indication at all that the case had anything to do with the murder of Malcolm Carlyle.

So DI Robinson went on his way, asking to be kept up to date about any future sales, and pretty soon after that I let Jeff go as well. He was looking thoughtful. He had listened mesmerised to the old man as he talked about life inside the camp, about being separated from his wife, and the joy of their reunion back in Czechoslovakia after the war. Each had been told that the other was dead. With all the chaos at the end of the war, getting back to Prague had been something of a nightmare – yet they both managed to arrive at their old apartment within hours of each other.

That left just me and Alison.

I said, 'You had tears in your eyes.'

'I love a good love story.'

'Usually someone dies in a love story.'

'You're a real the-glass-is-half-empty kind of a guy, aren't you?'

'I'm a realist.'

'Do you think you could have survived a death camp for me?'

'No.'

'Well that's about right. You wouldn't have survived five minutes. You would have freaked when you discovered they didn't serve frappuccino.'

'I wouldn't have
been
in a death camp. I would have been in the resistance.'

She laughed. 'Yes, you would. Conan the Librarian.'

I raised an eyebrow. She raised one back. It was like high-stakes poker, with eyebrows.

'What are you going to do now?'

'Think,' I said.

'About?'

'
The Case of the Dancing Jews
.'

'You mean it's back on?'

'It was never really off.'

'Well I'd love to join you,' she said, 'but I've work to do.'

'At this hour? I thought we might discuss . . .'

She shook her head. She wanted to get drawing. Mayerova's story had inspired her and she wanted to get something down on paper while it was still fresh. I was mildly disappointed but also pragmatic. It wasn't as if she was swanning off with someone else. Yes, I did want to think about the case. But I also wanted Alison to myself. I wanted to pull the shutters down and talk about concentration camps and murder and the who, what, where, when and how of it all with her. But it wasn't to be. Instead, before she left, she kissed me
deeply.

That means, with tongues.

I was in shock.

I sat behind the counter, shutters down, light on. My mind kept flitting back to Mark Mayerova, and his wife, and how romantic it all was and how right Alison was: I
was
a glass-half-empty kind of a guy, and maybe I should take a leaf out of her book and try to look on the bright side. But then the more I thought about it the more I thought, maybe not. Mark Mayerova and his wife had survived the war, they had moved to Northern Ireland, and then after forty years of marriage and two grown-up children they had split up. He hadn't gone into why, and he clearly retained a lot of feelings for her, but it was another practical example of why I was perfectly right to gravitate towards misery. Things always fell apart. It was the nature of life. And death.

I took out a notebook. Beside the serial number that had been tattooed on Anne Mayerova's arm, I wrote her husband's serial number. I had only seen it for a few moments, and the ink was badly faded, but I have become an expert at memorising such sequences. So I now had two concentration camp numbers: it hardly constituted a collection, but at least there was a finite number of them. How much more interesting to find a pattern in those numbers than in the ever-expanding universe of car registrations.

I also wrote down the licence plate number of his Jaguar.

It was MM3.

Personalised.

In a way he had an excuse for it, unlike all those other posers. In the camps almost every facet of life had been designed to remove individuality and personality, to impose anonymity; they had reduced everyone to a number. His personalised number plate was just one way of telling the world that even when a government imposed a number on him, he was determined to stand out.

He was a good talker – spare with his words, but the ones he chose had been evocative. He was obviously grateful for what I'd done on behalf of his wife and didn't seem to think that we were wrong to be concerned for her safety. The Odessa, he said, was a very real organisation, and even though he had not heard of it being active in recent years, it might very well still be. But he certainly couldn't throw any light on what his ex-wife's big secret might be.

'And perhaps now we never will know,' he had said, with a sad shake of his head. 'She really is not well. The periods when she is lucid, they grow shorter and shorter.'

'We were lucky then,' I said. 'Hearing her story first-hand.'

He looked at me for a while. 'Sometimes,' he said, 'I think it should all be forgotten. We saw too many things.'

I asked him if he thought she would be able to attend the launch of her book, and he seemed surprised that it was happening at all. 'I had thought they had decided not to publish.'

'No, no – the publisher has bounced back. He sees it as a bit of a tribute to his dead . . . his
missing
wife. But it should be a good night. If Anne can't make it, you should absolutely come in her place, perhaps say a few words?'

Mr Mayerova nodded slowly. 'Perhaps, perhaps. Though what I know about dance - very little!'

He chuckled.

It was only after he'd gone that I realised he'd left his Auschwitz Bible behind. I had a phone number for him: he said he could never remember his home number, but if I looked up Smith Garages in the Yellow Pages one of his sons would pass on any updates I had on the launch of
I Came to Dance.

'I came here in 1946,' he said proudly, 'and with what little money I had I bought a car. Sold it the same day and made a nice profit. Been doing it ever since. But I only work one day a week now – the boys think I . . . how do you say it . . .
cramp their style
?'

So I could have phoned him. But did not. The Bible was probably worth a few thousand pounds, but twice that wouldn't make up for even half of the stress I'd experienced because of
The Case of the Dancing Jews.

I would deny all knowledge.

We book-collectors have an expression:
finders keepers, losers weepers.

Not long after ten o'clock I switched off the computer and the lights in the front of the shop, and took my empty Diet Pepsi can and Twix wrappers into the kitchen. If I'm working late, and particularly in the summer months when it's still bright, I slip out the back way and down the alley to the No Alibis van. I had a box of books under one arm and a bag of rubbish for the bins in the other. I'd just dumped the rubbish and was turning into the alley proper when a voice to my left said, 'Hey.'

I turned into a blur of movement and a sudden impact on my left cheek. I flew backwards, books in the air, and landed hard on the glass-strewn lane. Knees thumped into my back, pinning me to the ground, and a hand pushed my face roughly into the gravel.

'Got you now,' the same voice hissed.

I was so
stupid.
I'd protected myself against a perceived threat just a few hours before, only to discover it was a harmless old man. And now I was alone, and walking dangerous back alleys without a care in the world, and suddenly the real killer had me. He had just bided his time until he could get me alone to finish me off.

But it is never too late to beg.

'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry . . . please don't . . . please don't hurt me . . . please don't . . . I'm sorry . . .'

'You will be, you fucking . . .'

The load lightened, for just a moment, and then I was flipped over on to my back. He sat on me again. A rough-looking character, younger than me, his eyes fired up, his face thunderous, his breathing adrenaline-fuelled. No obvious German accent, but that meant nothing. Probably he was a master of accents and disguise and surprise and
death.
His fist closed again, but as he aimed another punch at me I cried out: 'Please don't! Not my face! I'm a haemophiliac! If you break my nose they won't be able to stop the blood!'

He hesitated for just a moment, which I took to be a good sign, before redirecting the punch to my arm. But before he could land it I cried, 'Please don't! I have brittle bones! They'll never be able to repair it . . .'

Again he delayed. 'Shut your fucking mouth!'

'I can't,' I cried, 'I have verbal diarrhoea . . .'

It was a whine too far. He punched me in the chest. He slapped me in the face, my head moving left, right, left again as the slapping continued. Tears in a grown man are not particularly cool, but I had no option. I was not in a position of strength.

'Please, I'm
really
sorry . . .'

He pulled me up by my shirt collar. 'What're you sorry for?' he demanded.

'Everything!' And I meant it. It was about survival.
Everything
covered everything. 'I don't care what you did or what your secret is, I don't care about the war or the camp or what happened . . . just don't kill me. I just sell books, I can keep my mouth shut, I—'

'SHUT UP!'

He shook me, hard. 'I ought to smash your fucking face in. It took a lot of organising to get those fucking trousers, you hear me?'

I nodded, but my mind was racing.

Trousers?

'And now she's dumped me as well, and the boss has sacked me, and it's your fucking fault for sticking your fucking nose in. Where the fuck are they anyway?'

He gave me another shake. 'Where are
what
?' I cried.

'The leather
fucking
trousers!'

I stared at him. It wasn't the assassin! It was the
boyfriend. The Case of Mrs Geary's Leather Trousers
back to haunt me. I couldn't help myself. I laughed right in his face.

'Nobody wanted them! I threw them out! They cut the hole off me!'

He slapped me again, but it didn't matter! He wasn't going to kill me over a pair of bloody trousers. I was alive! I had a future!

'You fucking little shit! Where's your wallet?' He pulled open my jacket and reached inside. He pulled out my leather wallet and opened it. 'Is that
it
?' he growled.

'I live frugally,' I said.

'Into the fucking shop, open the fucking till or I swear to—'

'There's nothing there! I went to the night drop at the bank hours ago!'

'You're a fucking liar!'

'I'm not, I'm not, you can check if you want!'

He let out an anguished yell. 'I've lost my girl, I've lost my job, and now you've no fucking money?' He grabbed suddenly at my other pockets. 'Tell you what I'm going to do,' he spat, pulling out my van keys. 'I'm going to take your fucking wheels, man. Now they're my wheels. And if you go near the cops with this, if you squeal to anyone, I'm going to come back and I'm going to burn your fucking shop out with you fucking in it, do you hear me?'

'Yes! Take it!'

He pushed himself up and off me. I turned to one side, coughing. He could
have
the wheels. I was alive. The No Alibis van was three years past its MOT date and its tyres were threadbare. It was a death trap.

He jabbed a farewell finger at me. 'I'm fucking warning you!'

I just smiled stupidly at him. As he disappeared round the corner I lay back on the gravel and glass, breathing hard, and laughed and laughed.

I like the night, always have. I've never been scared of the dark, and quite often prefer it. I particularly like the streets at night. I like the idea of being able to walk and not be seen, or if seen, not in detail. People examine people too much. My creative writing guru Brendan Coyle thought he'd come up with something unique in describing
the writer's muscle,
but he was just putting into words what everybody does every second of every minute of every day anyway: they look at other people and they judge. The sexy girl, the old man, the fat thighs, the dodgy hairstyle. I don't like people looking at me and thinking
anything.
The night suits me: hood up; nail out; I walk for miles.

I stand behind trees.

Just stand.

This city has changed so much. It used to be divided, now it's divided into quarters. War zone to gentrification. T.B. Sheets to continental quilts.

In the night I have watched badgers snuffle and foxes quest. Sleeked cats. I have listened to lovers' tiffs and secret singers. I have haunted deserted mansions and paced wet-plastered new builds. I have written
Please Clean Me
in the grime of white vans and put nuts on neglected bird tables. I have imitated Spitfires on manicured lawns and pruned roses while gardeners slept. I have felt the dew settle.

Never once arrested for loitering with intent, for Peeping Tomness, never once threatened with an exclusion order, or probation, or made the subject of a curfew or community service.

Lately I have stood in the shadows close to Alison's house and watched her move from room to room. I have seen the effort she puts into her art. I have watched her lose herself in thought while cooking and then listened to her tantrum at her burned dinner. I have watched for her lovers and found none, and I have pondered for hours why she chose me.

That night, after the attack, I could easily have knocked on her door. I bruise up easily and well. And I had my story prepared. As soon as Alison finished peppering my poor face with kisses I could give a blow-by-blow account of my battle to hold on to the No Alibis van.
I look bad, but you should see the other guy. I would have made a citizen's arrest but the sneaky bastard blindsided me; before I could recover he had the keys and was away.