The Swap (23 page)

Paddington looks different when you're rich. The possibilities, always inherent in any railway station, are expanded and brought closer. Yes, you could go home to your small, anonymous flat in Deptford, or to your one-assistant comic shop in Old Street. But you could also go to Mayfair and find the prettiest prostitute in Shepherd's Market and rent a room at the Ritz, or go to Heathrow and fly to Bangkok. Harvey found he had sex on his mind since the incident in the rocks. Another option was to slump in a pathetic and slightly malodorous heap on a bench, nurse an insipid erection, and gaze up at the arches of the roof as if they were the very buttresses of heaven. Harvey selected the last of these choices and lay for a while, breathing heavily and letting salacious thoughts about Maisie drift across his inner vision. She was gone but she might be back. That still seemed, in his mildly inebriated state, a better position to be in than many. And it was the end of this strange journey he had been on. It seemed to have been going on for weeks, although, in fact, it was only a few short days since he found Mrs Odd in the basement. Most of it seemed to have been spent on trains, experienced through the haze of warm ale. Through that same haze he now considered his immediate future. He would talk to Maisie and make her see that Jeff was the past, and he was the future; and they would go to Jarvin and tell him everything Bleeder had said, and Jarvin would smile that slightly unnerving smile that never really went away; and Harvey would sell the
Superman One
for a world-record price at the Toronto comic fair in August; and they would go and live in New York, maybe after a few weeks on an island somewhere. Was Maisie ready to see his stomach in broad daylight? Maybe straight to New York, but the point was that everything was going to be fabulous. It would be hard in some ways to leave his little shop for ever. That was Harvey's thought as he rolled off the bench and fell heavily on the cold tiles of the floor. And Josh, of course, he'd miss Josh, he thought as he got up, rubbing his elbow. But he'd survive. He staggered a little as he made his way towards the tube. He'd go to the shop this time, but from now on the magical possibilities that stations held were going to be explored. The easy options of poverty were coming to an end.

'Of course I'm going to come in with you. But I promise I'll say nothing, do nothing.' Jeff Cooper glanced across at his wife as he drove, and smiled. 'I'll try just to observe.'

'Well, you better.' Maisie had been unsure about letting him come with her, but somehow she knew they were involved in this together. 'But you need to let the anger go, Jeff. Just stop being angry for a while.'

'I know.' Jeff overtook a lorry. 'That's what men are supposed to be: strong and merciless and angry. I learned that from Dad. Then Mrs Odd died and I knew that someone else had done what I'd been thinking about for twenty years. I'd always wanted to kill her. Sounds bad, doesn't it? But she would come into my head at the strangest moments, usually when I was driving like this. I'd be going along and I'd think, I'll turn the car round and drive to St Ives and smash in her skull. I must have had that thought a thousand times. But I never did it. I hope you are aware that that did take a certain sort of courage too, Maisie.'

'Yes.' She considered this thoughtfully. 'I am aware of that, Jeff. And I'm aware that if you'd told me just a little bit of this twelve years ago maybe we would be different now, maybe we would have a future together . . .'

He glanced across, quickly this time, and the car wiggled in its lane.

'You mean we don't?'

'I don't know.' Maisie stared straight ahead and looked at the approaching lights of Hammersmith. 'I don't know. Until yesterday I would have been pretty certain. But now I can't answer that question at all. I suppose it's what I've been saying for a while now – and not just to you – I really do need time to think.'

'I didn't know we had that.' Josh picked up a copy of
Wonder Woman
with interest from where the constable had carefully placed it. 'Heaven knows what it was doing in with the
Vampirella
s. Must have just slipped down there. Well, well.'

'Mr Wylde, please don't touch anything, I have asked you more than once.' Jarvin, who was standing like a minor deity in the midst of the careful ruination of the shop, spoke with severity.

'Sorry, sorry.' Josh put the
Wonder Woman
down and wandered over to the graphic novels pile to perch on the edge of a now empty rack. 'But it's about time we had a spring clean. The last time we did this was . . . what am I saying? We've never done this.'

'We are not here to clean, Mr Wylde.' Jarvin did not really want conversation, there was a lot to think through.

'No, no.' Josh, on the other hand, was eager to chat. 'Harvey might even like this, he might walk in and thank us . . . He might not, of course.' His face fell slightly.

'But where is he, Mr Wylde? Where is Harvey Briscow? You say he went to Cornwall but his parents have not seen him and are now in a state of some concern. His mother is considering organising a search for him through St Ives. Why did he arrange to come to a meeting and then disappear to the other end of the country? Do you know, Mr Wylde? Do you realise how important this is?'

Josh, unnerved slightly by these confidences and questions, shook his head. 'I dunno,' he said earnestly, 'but he'll be here in the morning. Harvey's always here in the mornings in case I buy porn. Not that I ever do,' he added quickly, 'but you know, just in case. Porn or Pokemon. I'm not meant to get those. And he doesn't like boxed sets cause they're hard to shift. I got a box set of
Batman Returns
tie-ins once and he hit me with a pencil.'

'Yes.' Jarvin realised that he was now involved in a conversation that was entirely unnecessary to him; he began to move away when there was a knock at the shop door. Being the only policeman unemployed, he sprang forward and opened it.

'Hello, Mrs Cooper, how do you do? And Mr Cooper? Come inside please.' As if he had summoned them himself, as if they were expected guests and he a good host at a casual drinks party, Jarvin let the surprised and potentially querulous new arrivals into the shop, carefully relocked the front door and then took them back into Harvey's office where the search had now been completed. 'We are searching the premises, as you can see, but I would not wish you to read too much into that.' He waved his hand at Harvey's unsanitary sofa and the couple perched awkwardly on the edge of it. 'We have not yet completed our investigations. We are trying to make contact with Mr Briscow, Mrs Cooper, and my understanding was that he was with you.'

This was so forthright and to the point that after a moment's shocked silence Jeff Cooper burst into a guffaw of laughter. 'Well, there you are, Maisie, no point in disguising things, is there? Yes, I believe my wife was with Mr Briscow, Chief Inspector, in what sense she was with him needs as yet to be clarified, but she was with him, but is with him no longer. As you can see, she is at present with me.'

'Yes.' Jarvin frowned and nodded slowly, as though trying to follow a map committed to memory. 'But I wonder if you know where he is, Mrs Cooper? I understood, from Mr Wylde . . . Josh Wylde . . . the shop assistant, yes, from him,' – Jarvin waved vaguely in the direction of the shop where Josh had retrieved the
Wonder Woman
and was reading excerpts aloud to the busy constables – 'that you were travelling to Cornwall together, and yet he had arranged to come to have a blood test performed on Monday afternoon and to have a meeting with me. His non-appearance is troubling to me. I really do need to contact him, Mrs Cooper.'

'Why?' Maisie unexpectedly went on the cautious offensive. 'I mean, I'm sure he could perform the test another time. Yet here you are searching his shop as if you suspect him of more than missing a blood test.'

'Yes, we do have something more.' Jarvin had remained standing and he now walked to a plastic evidence box that had been placed on the desk. Opening it, he extracted the
Superman One
, still in its wrapper, and held it up carefully between the palms of his hands. 'This was found here by Mr Wylde. I wonder if either of you recognise it?'

'Only by reputation.' Jeff Cooper leaned forward with interest. 'This is the legendary
Superman One
, eh?'

Maisie too was leaning forward but her expression was more shock than interest. 'He had the comic? How could he have the comic? That doesn't make any sense. If he had the comic then . . . it wouldn't add up. It's not right. Where did he get it from?'

'That,' said Jarvin, 'is why we'd rather like to see Mr Briscow, to ask him. But I suppose I am wondering why you feel it doesn't add up, Mrs Cooper.' Maisie was suddenly aware that the green eyes were upon her; like green rays from a lasergun she felt them opening her up. She shook her head, her own eyes closing for a moment.

'I don't know,' she said. 'He told me he didn't have it, that it wasn't there . . . Why would he lie?' She frowned in real uncertainty. 'But if he has the comic he can't have killed her, can he? Not that I ever thought he did, but when Charles Odd told me about him getting caught by the mother, I wondered, I really began to wonder . . .'

'But he must have killed her!' Jeff almost shouted it. 'He got caught too, you just said so. Mrs Odd caught him and she beat him, beat the skin off his back if it was anything like my encounter with her. He carried that around, just like I did. Carried the scars and the bitterness, that terrible dull rage. He carried it and then he cracked. He cracked and God knows I don't blame him.' He turned his face away and Maisie, almost without thinking, put her hand on his arm.

She was clearly thinking hard and Jarvin let her think, watching her face, watching her try to work it through. 'But why . . . ?' It was as if Maisie was trying to open a jam jar with her mind, her head twisting from side to side, as though loosening something with the motion. 'Why the comic? If he went for revenge . . . if he went to kill her . . . then he didn't go to steal. And if he went to steal he wouldn't kill. He wouldn't kill if he has this. He can't have done. Unless . . .' She stopped and looked at Jarvin. 'I will tell you everything I know, Inspector. And I will tell you the truth. But I need to believe that you will listen with sympathy.'

Jarvin nodded slowly. 'Everything about this case has made me require that quality, Mrs Cooper,' he said softly. 'I think perhaps I will feel it for Mr Briscow without needing to try.' And then, again slowly, he moved to the door and called Allen who came and sat neatly on his unstable chair with every appearance of the living rock, apart from his right hand, which crossed and recrossed his notepad.

'In the Liverpool slums. In the Liverpool slums. They look in the dustbin for something to eat, they find a dead rat and they think it's a treat. In the Liverpool slums,' Harvey sang as he walked from the tube. The train had been full of Scousers down for a midweek evening game with Arsenal and Harvey was happy to sing one of his favourites in their honour. It was past six and he knew that Josh would have gone, and this only improved his mood. He was late, so Maisie would be waiting outside the shop, looking a little bit forlorn possibly, a bit lost and small in the big roaring quiet of the closing city. But he would warm her with a hug. Not too much kissing, his breath must smell like Oliver Reed – after he died – but a nice long sexy hug. And then he'd take her inside and sit her on the sofa and tell her everything and she would be so impressed and then he'd open the drawer and show her the comic and she would be so thrilled that there was a future for them both, that she'd roll back on the sofa and he'd climb aboard and . . . shit. He stopped for a moment and took a few deep breaths and then tried walking again, yes that was better. Perhaps keep the thinking to a minimum. So he sang another chorus or two and peered ahead of him to see if he could see her.

When he arrived outside Inaction Comix two things struck him. First she wasn't there and that meant he hadn't kept her waiting, which he'd kind of hoped he would so as to give her a little punishment for leaving him behind in Cornwall. And second the shutters were up and the lights still on, which meant that Josh was here. Bugger. He stepped back from the window, not wishing to be seen. Perhaps he'd just wait outside for her, she wouldn't be long. But that would mean that she kept him waiting, even though he was meant to be punishing her. Was that fair? What if Josh had let her in? Maybe she was inside. What would Josh be doing to entertain her? Hurriedly Harvey fumbled for his keys and with unprecedented speed found the right one, opened the shop door and stepped inside.

'Um.' He looked round with interest. 'Ah.' Jarvin and the Coopers were just emerging from his office so nine faces simultaneously turned to look at him. 'Right.' He shut the door carefully behind him and came rather slowly into his shop. 'So, er . . . how's it going?' he asked.

There was a long silence, long enough for Harvey to wonder if this was pregnant. He felt fairly sure that it was. Pregnant with twins and ready to drop was how he had characterised it before Jarvin spoke.

'Mr Briscow,' is what he said. Harvey wasn't sure this really added anything much to the silence, not containing any real information that wasn't obvious to everyone present. Except perhaps the four uniformed policemen who stood watching silently from around the room. Perhaps Jarvin said it to sort of introduce him to them. He wondered what their names were. But something else was niggling at him, something he couldn't place.

'We have been trying to find you, Mr Briscow,' Jarvin added and Harvey was aware of Allen going off into the office, presumably to call off a search party. Had they really been hunting for him? Was there an APB out? He felt rather thrilled and also very slightly amused, as well as shitting his pants, of course.

'Er, well, here I am.' Again this didn't really seem to bring much to the occasion but Harvey felt it right to speak. 'I went to Cornwall, but now I'm back.'

'You had a blood test booked, Mr Briscow.' Jarvin spoke gently, sounding like a Harley Street specialist.

'Yeah, sorry. Bad one that. I just kind of got mixed up and stuff.' Harvey was taking in the room more now, rather than just the faces. It was almost bare. He'd never realised how small it was before. Really it might be better if they turned the comic stands the other way and then had aisles running across . . . He caught Josh's eye and Josh looked instantly hangdog. Harvey wondered what he'd done. He looked round hastily to check for new purchases but there were piles of comics and boxes everywhere and it was hard to tell if he'd bought anything. He gave Josh a long frown but still felt that niggling feeling: something was amiss. Apart from all the obvious things, of course.

'We have been searching your shop, Mr Briscow, as you can see,' Jarvin continued. 'Of course, we would rather have done so with your permission and in your presence but unfortunately we could not contact you.'

'No. Never liked mobiles – fascist,' Harvey muttered. But his attention was elsewhere. He'd worked out what had been niggling him: what the fuck was Jeff Cooper doing here? Why wasn't Maisie jumping into his arms and what in fuck was Jeff doing with her? When you invite your lover for a rendezvous prior to running away to New York to start a new life together you don't expect her to bring her husband. What the fuck?

'Er, hi, Maisie,' he said.

'Hello, Harvey.' Shit. Her voice was low and sad, like his mother's that time he swore at the vicar.

'You all right?'

'Yes, I'm all right. Are you all right, Harvey?'

'Er, yeah, yeah, no problem. All right, Jeff?'

'Hello, Harvey, how are you?'

'Good ta. Yeah. Nice one. Right, so . . . you OK, Inspector?'

'The reason we are searching your shop, Mr Briscow,' – Jarvin refused to enter into the spirit of the reunion – 'is that something was found here that we are having trouble explaining.' He turned and pointed. Moving with eerie silence, Allen had returned from the office, unnoticed by Harvey, and was standing behind the counter. Like an auctioneer's assistant he was holding a
Superman One
in a gloved hand, its plastic slip cover still smudged with Mrs Odd's blood.

Harvey nodded. He felt very relieved, actually. That must be what Josh was looking guilty about: squealing on him to the pigs. While a dubious thing for a shop assistant to do, it was at least better than more Pokemon, or for that matter the
Whip Dancers Trilogy
.

'Yeah, the
Superman One
.' He tried to sound airy, although in fact he could feel his bowels tightening to the point where he badly needed the toilet. 'You found that, yeah?'

'Yes, we did, and of course we don't know this, but we are assuming it is the same one that Charles Odd owned and that was missing from the house in St Ives after his mother was murdered.'

'Right, yeah, good call.' Harvey nodded.

'Now, Mrs Cooper has told us an interesting story, Mr Briscow, about you visiting the house after the murder was committed, intending to steal this comic. However, since then it has been suggested that perhaps you had a motive for murder; that you carried a grudge against Mrs Odd; that you killed her and then returned later to steal the comic and to clean up your tracks. I wonder what you think about that, Mr Briscow.'

What Harvey thought was that it was a bit of a public place for such a deeply humiliating statement to be made. Couldn't they do this in private somewhere? He was aware of Maisie trying to catch his eye with what he feared was a look of deepest concern. But for some reason he was thinking about Josh. All the showing-off he'd done about having a girlfriend and now this. He did the sigh, which involved closing his eyes for a moment. When he opened them he became aware that two of the uniformed constables had quietly moved behind him to block the door. He shook his head hard to clear the Watneys a bit. If ever there was a moment for clarity, this was it.

'Look,' he said, 'let's get this straight. I did go to the house, yeah? I saw the body; I did a bit of cleaning up, OK I admit that. But I didn't steal the comic, I just happen to sort of have that and I'll explain that in a minute, and I didn't kill Mrs Odd for reasons that I will go into. And I don't have a motive – Maisie, you can't really believe that.' He looked at her; did she believe that? She was sort of shaking her head but in a way that seemed dangerously non-committal under the circumstances. He shook his in return. 'Look, honestly, everything is OK.'

Harvey noticed two things at once. One was that Allen's radio had crackled and he had repaired to the back office once more. The other was that Jeff Cooper was moving towards him. He tried to step backwards but trod on the toe of one of the policemen who was standing rather too close behind him.

'Um, sorry.' He stepped forward again, but Jeff was still approaching. Were all these policemen just going to let him be assaulted? He began to panic, Jeff was looking bigger than ever in a threatening pink polo shirt. 'No, no.' Harvey put his hands up to his face as Jeff moved in. Then he felt Jeff 's arms go round his neck. He was going to throw him. Harvey braced himself and waited to be wrestled to the ground. But instead he was simply squeezed.

'Let it out, Harvey. Let it go.' Jeff was speaking.

'Um, OK'. Harvey nodded hard and peered over Jeff 's shoulder, looking for assistance.

'It's over. Don't hold it in any more. Just be free of it, free for ever.' Jeff pulled back and looked Harvey full in the face. 'Just let it be, Harvey.'

'Er, right you are, Jeff.' Jesus, what the fuck was going on? He was being handled by a maniac and the police were just standing around watching – in Jarvin's case with the hint of an indulgent smile on his face. Jeff stood for a moment and Harvey saw to his horror that tears were beginning to streak down his face until with a wrench of his head he turned away and was folded in what looked like a deeply erotic embrace by Maisie. Had the world gone mad? Jeff Cooper, THE Jeff Cooper had just burst into tears and was now being caressed by Harvey's girlfriend. His shop was a ruin and he was being patronised by a policeman who looked like a dolphin. He shook his head again and looked at Jarvin with desperation in his eyes.

'Look, I don't know what the fuck is going on,' he said, 'but I can tell you everything, and everything is going to be fine. I didn't kill anyone, honest. I just broke a window, that's it. And the comic is mine. It really is. I can tell you who did it: it was Bleeder, I mean Charles Odd, sorry. It was him. He killed his mum and then he sent the comic to me as a present. So it belongs to me, for real. After all these years it is finally mine and we can go off to New York and open a coffee shop.' He looked uncertainly at the continued embrace of the Coopers and frowned. 'Well, I can anyway. You can ask Charles, oh sod it, Bleeder, that's what he's called. You can ask Bleeder Odd, he'll tell you everything.'

Harvey had hoped to have the attention of the room at this point: it was, after all, rather momentous information that he was imparting, and while he had never been terribly good at storytelling or anecodotage, preferring the sardonic rejoinder to holding the floor, he did rather expect everyone to pay attention on this occasion. However, Allen had come to the door of the office and was signalling to Jarvin and that man, while not actually stopping Harvey, was moving away and leaning over the counter to listen to what Allen had to say. Harvey paused and waited and tried to prevent his heart from pounding in a way that felt dangerous to his health. He was fine, he told his heart. He was A-OK. He had taken the risk and he had saved the heroine from certain death and he was back in Metropolis, back in civilian clothes. The cape was off. Taking deep breaths he felt himself slowly relax. He even shut his eyes again for a moment but the Watneys was still swirling, making him feel sick, and he had to open them again. Jarvin was returning to stand in the middle of the shop – Harvey's shop as it happened – as if he owned the place. But Harvey didn't complain. He just listened.

'I have very sad news,' said Jarvin, and Harvey wondered vaguely about other people being sad. It seemed hard to believe really, surely all the sadness in the world was pretty much saved for him. 'My colleague in Cornwall has just contacted us to say that Mr Charles Odd was found dead at the bottom of the cliffs in St Ives just moments ago. It is believed that he took his own life by throwing himself from the rocks at the end of Porthminster Point.' He looked round at the assembled company: at the shocked faces of the Coopers who had both come up for air.

'Dead?' It was Jeff who spoke. 'Charles is dead?' He shook his head and began to pant very hard, as if he couldn't breathe. 'She did that. It's still happening . . . Jesus, we did that. Oh shit, this has gone further . . . I can't stand this, I just can't . . . it needs to stop!' And then he was back with Maisie.

'Bad one.' Josh, forgotten until now, had been surreptitiously flicking through the
Wonder Woman
, but now felt moved to speech. But Jarvin did not turn to him, for his eyes were fixed on Harvey. That man's eyes had moved up to the ceiling and his lips were moving as if he was reading from the peeling, nicotine-coloured paintwork.

'He's dead.' Harvey's eyes came down with a bump and collided with Jarvin's. The chief inspector nodded.

'Yes, I'm afraid he is.'

'No. But hang on . . .' Harvey put his hand up as if about to make a rhetorical point but then it fell by his side. 'If he's dead . . .' He stopped again, gazing round wildly. Maisie surfaced over Jeff 's shoulder and looked at him.

'It's all right, Harvey,' she said, 'just tell the truth, whatever that is. It's time to tell the truth.'

'Oh fuck!' Harvey stepped forward with both hands up. 'But look, I didn't, honestly I didn't, it was Bleeder, he told me, he told me! It was Bleeder fucking Odd!' And then he spun and dived for the door but was enfolded in the arms of the waiting policemen.