The Swap (11 page)

So he changed his mind and told her. He told her about the swap and the
Superman One
and she was confused and disbelieving: 'No one would pay that much for a comic.' And he told her about Bleeder and she shook her head and whispered, 'That is so cruel.' So he told her about Jeff and Bleeder, at which she nodded with exactly the same expression on her face. And he told her about Mrs Odd and the house and how he used to cycle past it (although he didn't mention the singing). Then, after another Scotch, this one a double, he told her about the last six days. And as he was telling her, as the words were spilling out in a stream driven partly by the need just to hear them in the air, and partly by the need to keep her there, keep her eyes so intently on his, and partly by the Scotch, he became aware of what he was doing. He was giving her his life in exchange for a few more minutes of hers. She could quite easily walk out and call the police from the callbox outside the Boot (actually, she couldn't as it had been vandalised. It usually was, it was that sort of pub. But that wasn't really the point), and he might well go to jail for ever. But he was risking that really just because he didn't want her to tell him that it was too soon to get involved. He wanted her to kiss him and accept the inevitability of his higher drama, and take him back to her place to meet her flatmate, the kindly Lisa, and he wanted to kiss her back and borrow her toothbrush. He didn't want to be told he was very nice and it was she who was missing out. So he gambled on scale. Compared to his predicament, her own marital dilemmas should appear in shadow. He was asking her to shake herself, admit that really what she was going to say didn't matter, what mattered was the big picture, life and death. And when he had finished telling her, telling her all the detail: the scrubbing brush, the duster, the knife, the brambles – although not about finding the comic – she did. She took the hand he held out to her, and when he pulled her against him she didn't resist. She smelled again like warm honey mixed with dew on grass and he got a difficult and embarrassing erection almost at once. And she believed him, that was the point. She didn't mention the police or look at him sideways or carefully take her hand away in case she was touching the fingers of a killer. She let him hold her in his arms, his denim jacket open so she was resting against his chest. And she made a sort of 'phew, eee' sound, as though he had told her something way too big to take in at once, that would need more mulling over and discussion. And it was then that he knew he had done right, that the gamble had paid off. It was only afterwards that he realised her understanding and his desire for her were one and the same thing: that really the gamble had been a sure thing from the start.

But he didn't tell her about finding the comic or about the bottom drawer of his desk. Even in the catharsis of confession it is necessary to be cautious. One step at a time. One set of overwhelmingly troubling revelations at a time. The comic could wait until he had some sense of what it meant and where it came from, some sense of what it was doing in the events of that terrible afternoon and what it was doing in his petty-cash drawer.

After a period of sitting in friendly silence, she lifted her head from his shoulder and looked hard into his face. Momentarily he was aware of how bloodshot his eyes might be and of his breath, which was probably a bit whisky-based . . . and then he saw her eyes, how deep green they were, and he just stayed with that. 'You know,' she said thoughtfully, 'you've had quite a week.' She put her hand to his right eye and touched the black bruising around it. Harvey nodded.

'I know.' He stopped nodding and shook his head. 'I am quite keen for it to be over, actually. I don't think I was cut out for anything like this.'

She smiled. 'Really?'

'Oh, I don't mean this, I mean, you know . . . all this . . . mess.'

'Mmm. I can understand that.' She stopped and turned her head away to look around the bar, as if it was a source of inspiration. 'But, I think a bit of mess is probably what I need just at the moment. Mess kind of makes things seem more sane. You know?' Harvey nodded understandingly but with no sense at all of what she meant. He was simply desperate for order. 'With Jeff,' she went on, 'I think everything had become too . . . I don't know, too neat I guess, too worked-out. We had nothing left to find out.'

'Oh right.' She had looked away and Harvey wanted very much to have those eyes again locked with his own, even though he suspected they still made him blush. 'Yeah, I guess long-term relationships can do that,' he added, 'make you get lost . . . if you see what I mean.' He wasn't used to this. He hadn't had a long-term relationship for eight years and then it had been a mess from start to finish. He shook his head again and felt the tiredness inside it.

'So, you don't believe in the long term, Harvey?' She smiled and allowed the eyes to return to his. Like serpent's eyes, he thought, like the jewelled serpents in
Tomb Raider
, with emeralds for eyes. It took a moment before he realised what she had said.

'Oh, I do sometimes. It's just, I guess there has to be something special there to start with, yeah?'

'Mmm.' She nodded and smiled again and this time the emeralds went soft and turned into forest pools like the ones in
Swamp Thing
. 'Yes, I think that's right. And Jeff and I were never special. We had fun sometimes and we helped each other sometimes, but we were never special.' She too shook her head, sat up on her chair and sipped her water for the first time for a while. 'But that seems somehow . . . I don't know, earlier today I would have said it was all that mattered in the world. Now here I am thinking it's a small thing that can wait. What is it the footballers always say: 'It's put things in perspective'? Jeff always takes the piss . . . took the piss . . . when they said that on
Match of the Day
. But actually it's a good line. You've put things in perspective. I feel released from a circle of thinking that I realise has obsessed me for . . . Christ, for years. Am I right with Jeff ? Should I carry on? Should I move on? Can you make right what wasn't fully there from the start? Can new shoots grow in barren ground . . . ? And on and on and on. And now here I am in a strange bar, in a town I hardly know, with a man I just met and everything else seems like such small beer. You know? Small beer. And I need a drink. This is water, Harvey. You can't expect to tell me all this on water. You should have guessed I would need alcohol.' She laughed and made for the bar. 'I'll get you another, shall I? A double, was it?' Jesus. Harvey shook his head again, hard from side to side, and said, 'Er, yeah, cheers.' He was getting drunk and he had given his life away. This was not the sort of date he had envisaged. However, he did seem to be making progress. You never knew, that was going to be his new motto in life, assuming he had a life: when it came to matters of the heart it was all just up in the air.

'But there is one thing I don't understand.' She was back opposite him across the table, and was catching up on the whisky. Not that she had had as many as he had, but she was less used to it. He could tell that from the way she had been giggling and she had taken her orange headscarf out of her hair and put it round his neck. Her hair was streaked with reds and auburns, a cascade of interlacing colours. While Harvey was old enough to realise that this was achieved with a great deal of time, effort and money, he was still young enough to find it irresistible.

'Well, actually, there are lots of things. Like why you were so bloody silly in the first place.' She laughed again, but with a serious look at the end of it. 'I mean, going to steal a comic . . . and then going back . . . but that's just . . . it doesn't make sense.' They were back on the murder and Harvey felt, unexpectedly, on safer ground. Murder might be a new subject to him but he still felt more at home with it than he did with relationships. If there had been time this might have worried him, as it was he had far too many other things to think about.

'What do you mean? Or rather, which bit of what you don't understand don't you understand especially?'

'The murderer.' She sipped her Scotch and ginger. 'How did he do it? I mean, I can see your bit of the whole thing, crazy though it seems, but I don't get him really.'

'Right, right . . . Why not?'

'Well, you say when you went to the house all the boxes were sealed. You opened them with the kitchen knife, even the one in Bleed . . . I mean, Charles Odd's room.'

'Yeah, so?' Harvey knew what she was going to say.

'So, why did the murderer go to the cellar first? I mean, if he was after the comic why didn't he search the house first, just like you did? I mean, you would start in Charles's room, wouldn't you? Indeed, you did start there. And so would anyone else, it's the obvious place. I can't see how he could have been after the comic. The comic must be a red herring. It was probably thrown out years ago. Either Charles Odd did it, which still seems the obvious option, or someone else did it for some other reason. Maybe someone else just decided to burgle the place or something . . . Or maybe someone just hated Mrs Odd . . .' She stopped and Harvey admired the way her nose wrinkled when she was thinking.

'It doesn't make any sense actually,' he said. 'My thinking is, if Blee . . . Charles Odd didn't do it then someone else that he spoke to at the reunion did. Maybe he told this other person more than he told me. Maybe he told him where the comic was packed. Maybe he did find it and ran off with it. That was the motive for the murder. Maybe Charl . . . Bleeder, sod it, knew where it was but didn't tell me. Maybe talking to me triggered some memory of where it was . . . You can't have too many coincidences without seeing a pattern. It was the reunion, he was there for the first time, his mother was moving house, all her stuff was in boxes, she got killed. "Add that shit up", as Dr Dre would say, it has to make some sort of sense.'

'Yes, and then along comes Harvey Briscow. Are you saying you are not a part of the pattern?'

'Hey! That's not fair.' He looked at her, genuinely aggrieved. 'I thought you believed me?'

'Oh I do, Harvey, really I do. No one could make up a story like yours. And why on earth would anyone bother? I just think maybe you are part of the picture, the logic of the thing, too, just like Charles and his mother and this mysterious other person if there is one.'

'But how could anyone know I'd do what I did? I mean, whoever they were would surely expect me to go to the police, straight away. Surely no one could guess that I would behave so ...'

'Stupidly?'

'Er, well, you know . . . well, I guess.'

'No, that's true. But you must fit the picture somehow. As you say, there can't be that many coincidences.'

Harvey didn't get to use Maisie's toothbrush that night. His flesh was quite up for it – although late at night, after drink, had never been his favourite time for sexual endeavours – but his spirit was definitely flagging. She might have said yes. He didn't know her well enough to really tell, and that of course is what made it interesting to ask. But he didn't press the point and when she said maybe it was too soon, he just nodded, pulled what he hoped was a disappointed face, kissed her with everything he had and then stumbled home to bed and twelve hours' solid sleep.

Maisie left him with a sense of having passed through something unexpected and unprepared for. What had she intended when she called him and arranged to meet? Thinking, on the last overground train from London Bridge, she looked out at the darkness and surprised an unusual expression on her reflection in the window. There was a contemplative quality to her face, her nose wrinkled in consideration, but her eyes were shockingly alert. Had she really meant to say goodbye to Harvey tonight? Or was that just her fall-back position in case he wasn't the same in London, the same now she was single? She looked again at her own face but the expression had gone, replaced by her familiar mirror-look: pretty and prim, or that's how she characterised it tonight. Even that could be reassessed. That was the thing about life changes, even how you looked in the darkened window of a train could be rethought. The orange of her dress was dulled by the darkness and she looked down at it, rather tawdry against the grubby blue of the seat. She had got it on a trip to Morocco with Jeff. That was a lifetime ago, before things went wrong. Had he liked it even then or had he just humoured her when he bought it for her? Certainly she had understood, with all the covert knowledge that had become central to their relationship, that she could never wear it when they returned to England. Jeff would have laughed that laugh without a trace of communion in it, and he would have made jokes about joints and communes and all the things he hated. Jeff would have been ashamed of her. And so it had been the right thing to wear to meet another man. Harvey hadn't said a word. No comment at all. For a while she thought about that and then she thought about the murder. There were things she didn't understand. Quite a few things, actually, that didn't add up. She frowned for a bit and then smiled. It seemed weird to think that she could be happy about murder. But it meant they were going to be together. She could sense that. Harvey had been right, though she didn't know it. We are all the playthings of the god of scale: this was simply too big for either of them to get out of.

Thursday was delivery day at Inaction Comix and Josh's favourite day of the week. Throughout the week, new stock would arrive in a variety of vans and private cars from a bewildering array of sources, but Thursday was the day the lorry came from their main supplier, the racks would fill up with back issues of comics they had improbably had a run on. But more excitingly, especially towards the end of the month, all the new issues would start to appear and Harvey and Josh would be the first people, perhaps the first in the whole country, to read them. This job didn't have very many perks, but that sense of being slightly ahead of other comic obsessives was definitely one of them. So in the past, Thursday had been Harvey's favourite day too. But this week he could have done with a day off and some time to think. However, taking a day off would have meant leaving Josh in charge and they were still trying to clear the shop of the specialist products Josh had decided to try the last time he was alone on a Thursday.

'
When Amazons Rule the Earth
ring a bell, Josh?' Harvey asked as his assistant suggested for the third time that he could manage on his own. 'No? What about
Hidden Camera, the European edition
? Anything happening?'

'Manara's a genius,' Josh muttered, 'and anyway we sold all that, didn't we?'

'Yes, we did, Josh, and for weeks afterwards we had strange old men wandering in to check the graphic novel section. But we are still left with
Silent Flow the Tears: a Pictorial of Pain
. I don't call myself a prudish man, Josh, but you test even my liberality, you really do.'

'It's very good. I'd buy it myself if I hadn't read it.'

'Excellent. Well, all we need do is find someone exactly like you. That shouldn't take too long, should it? Maybe we'll start with Broadmoor and go on from there.' Harvey had been saying things like this since they opened and Josh was already dispirited.

'You are a miserable bastard,' he said, not for the first time. 'All you do is criticise. But you buy some weird stuff too. What about
Whiphand of the Marquis
? You bought that. I feel sorry for bloody Maisie, I can tell you that. A miserable, bad-tempered sadist. She'd be better off with Jeff.'

'You know you are so right, Josh. Oh, and by the way . . .'

'Yes?'

'Fuck off.'

Harvey stomped off to the back room and took out the petty-cash box. The
Superman One
was still sitting underneath it and he wondered vaguely where he had put the envelope that it had come in because it was looking naked and incriminating. Glancing back into the shop to check that he was unwatched, Harvey found a plain A4envelope, slipped the comic inside, sealed it and locked the drawer again.

'Harv,' Josh called as Harvey was opening the cash box.

'What?' He put some spin on that. When he went to the back room to sulk he expected to be left in peace. That was the law of the shop. He wasn't a terribly demanding or, in truth, very generous employer. But this one rule he expected to be honoured.

'Er, it's the cops.'

'Right. Don't be a twat, Josh, I'm busy.' Harvey got up and stalked through into the shop. 'Is it Mary, by any chance?'

'No. It's the cops.' Josh said again, this time with a little more emphasis and a slightly stronger American accent.

There were two men in suits standing neatly in front of the counter. They looked about as right and fitting surrounded by the comics and the posters as a social worker at an orgy and Harvey felt his head lift off from his shoulders, circle the room and return in time for him to say: 'Ahhh. OK. Whatever. Why didn't you say? Problem, officer? Traffic outside a problem or have we got a shoplifter?' He stopped, ran a hand over the stubble on top of his head and took two deep breaths. 'Please come through to the back.' He moved forward himself to lift the flap separating him and Josh from the rest of the world and it was as if he was inviting wild animals into his house, evil into his home. It reminded him of a horror movie but he couldn't for the life of him remember which one.

'You are Mr Briscow?' It was the shorter, neater and more friendly-looking of the two who spoke to Harvey once they were all seated in the back room.

'Yeah, that's me.' He wanted to say 'I'm Briscow' but it sounded weird in his head, like 'I'm Batman'. So he nodded and grinned instead.

'My name is Chief Inspector Jarvin and this is Inspector Allen. We are part of the team of officers investigating the death of Mrs Hilda Odd of St Ives in Cornwall. I am told that you were in St Ives at the time of her death and may have known her. Is that correct?'

Well, of course Harvey wasn't expecting a parking ticket or a discussion about a missing dog, but even so it was shocking to hear the words spoken aloud. This was a real policeman, not one of the ghouls that had been haunting his dreams, black and snarly, but a real policeman, a nice one, who was here with the ridiculous excuse that he was investigating a murder case. The police officer's quiet manner made Harvey instantly confidential. If confessing the murder was what it took to allow this decent fellow to go about his important business in the same quiet fashion, then surely it was a small price to pay. Harvey didn't do that. But it was a close thing.

Instead, he said: 'Yes. Yes, I was down there when it happened, actually. I just got back the day before yesterday. I hadn't met Hilda for many years, since I was at school really. In fact, until now I never knew her name was Hilda.' And in truth it brought him up short. Bleeder Odd's mum had a name. And it was an 'H': one of us, in fact.

'Can I ask the purpose of your visit to St Ives, Mr Briscow?' So polite, so gentle. Harvey was charmed.

'Yes, of course.' He smiled happily and waited for the nice man to ask him another. Then he frowned. 'Er, yes. Yes, I went for the reunion, at the school. We've been meeting on and off for twenty years. I go down and see my mum and dad as well, bit of a family do.' Policemen liked families, he felt sure of that.

'And did you meet Mrs Odd's son Charles at the reunion?'

Harvey admitted that he had.

'It is just that we have received some information that we were wondering about. It regards a comic that Mr Odd is said to have had. A . . .' Here he consulted his notes. 'A
Superman One
?'

'Oh yes.' Harvey looked at the wall, the ceiling and the door instead of looking at the bottom drawer of his desk. 'The
Superman One
. The famous
Superman One
.' He felt his smile becoming a rictus and forced himself to stop grinning and do the sigh. 'Someone told you about the
Superman One
.' Jeff Cooper. Had to be. Bloody snitch.

'Perhaps you could tell us about it, Mr Briscow.' So nice.

'Well, OK. It was just a comic. I swapped it years ago with Charles Odd, when we were twelve. When I had it it wasn't worth much, but it has gained in value and become rather rare. I believe it is quite valuable today.'

'How valuable? Do you know?'

'I'm not sure . . . I suppose it would be worth about two hundred thousand pounds if it was in perfect condition.'

Jarvin raised his eyebrows in a rather vague attempt to look impressed. 'That much?'

'But only if it was perfect,' Harvey stressed.

'And did Mr Odd know this?'

'I don't know,' – God knows he'd wondered – 'but I doubt it. I don't think he was very interested in comics.'

'Did you talk about comics at the reunion?'

What had Bleeder told them? 'Er, yeah. I think it was mentioned. I think I sort of made reference to the swap, reminiscing, yeah? To be honest, I hadn't seen Charles for years and we hardly knew each other at school, so . . . there wasn't much else to talk about.'

'One or two of the people we've spoken to mention that he was badly bullied at school. Is that your recollection too?'

'Er, yeah. Maybe. I don't really know. He was kind of different, I guess, and you know what boys are like?' Inspector Jarvin looked like a man's man to Harvey.

'Some of our informants have suggested that you were one of those who bullied Mr Odd.'

'What?' Now that wasn't fair. If anything Harvey had always thought of himself as kinder to Bleeder than most, one of the ones who gave him a chance. 'No way!' He spoke with genuine hurt. 'It wasn't me that picked on him, it was other people, especially the rugby crowd, they used to kick him all the time, every day. I was never like that.' Did Inspector Jarvin like rugby?

'Mr Odd himself suggests that you were very cruel to him. That on the day of the comic swap you called him an effing freak. Would that be right?' The chief inspector was watching Harvey closely. Harvey didn't like that so much.

'Bleeder said that?' Then he covered his mouth with his hand. 'I mean, Charles said that? I don't think that's fair . . . I mean, everyone called him a freak, all the time . . .' He could feel the beautiful friendship with Chief Inspector Jarvin slipping away. How could you argue that you didn't bully someone twenty years ago when they say that you did? Especially when you called them Bleeder.

'Bleeder.' The chief inspector jotted something on his pad and Harvey became aware that the other policeman, Allen, had silently been making notes throughout, recording his words. Shit. 'That is what you called him, is it? Was that his nickname?'

'Yeah, Bleeder, Bleeder Odd. But I didn't call him that.'

'You did just now.'

'No, I mean, I didn't invent the name, it was just what he was called. I was called "H", yeah? Everyone has a nickname.'

'You were called "H"?'

'Yes I was. But not because of drugs! I never took heroin, never have, actually, although I've often thought I should just like to try it once, you know . . . or rather I'm sure you don't and I never have and never will.' Jesus.

'Why was he called Bleeder, do you know?'

'Um. No, I don't think I do. Maybe 'cause of the nosebleeds and he had a lot of scabs and stuff. He was always bleeding, you know. So it was kind of descriptive.'

'Yes. But not very nice?' It was said to sound like a question but Harvey took it as the statement it actually was.

'Well, no,' he said rather desperately, 'no, not very nice. But then children aren't nice, are they? Or rather, they can be . . .' Did Inspector Jarvin have children? 'But they can not be, if you see what I mean. And we weren't. Or I was but they weren't. The rest of them.'

'Yes, I see.' Chief Inspector Jarvin sucked the end of his pen for a moment. 'So you swapped this comic with him, this
Superman One
? What did he give you in return?'

'Um, God, I don't know. Some length of rope or something, a bit of plastic stuff that he was carrying. I think I felt a bit sorry for him.' I'm nice, I'm nice, I'm nice! 'So I let him have the comic even though really it was worth a lot more than what he gave me: this piece of plastic. I mean, in truth, I shouldn't have swapped. It was an act of kindness more than anything.'

'So, in fact, you might have felt that the comic was really yours more than Charles Odd's, even after the swap?'

Hell yes. 'No, no, not at all, a swap was a swap.'

'I mean it must have rankled: that he had this comic, which became more and more valuable?'

'No, not really. I hardly thought about it. I mean, we did the swap, yeah? You don't go back on a swap.'

'Not even one that is worth two hundred thousand pounds?'

'No, no.' Harvey could feel the hairs on his neck standing up and tickling him, as if trying to comfort him in his moment of crisis. 'No, I mean, I never really thought about it. It was so long ago anyway.'

'Yes, although several people we've interviewed have mentioned that you attached a lot of significance to the comic, even though it was a long time ago. And it was not found at the scene. Mr Odd is vague at the moment about whether it was there or may have been destroyed in the past. But if it was there and was stolen . . . well, you see the connection?'

'Yes, I do.' Harvey could feel his face wet with sweat. How clichéd, to sweat under interrogation. 'But I don't see any connection to me. I mean OK, I've mentioned it a few times to people, but that doesn't mean I was going to steal it . . . If that's what you meant . . .'

'No. We are, of course, not accusing you of anything at all. But some people have suggested that you've done more than just mention the comic. That it had become a virtual obsession with you, that you talked of little else.'

Who the fuck had said that? Who would squeal on him? The potential list, he realised, was troublingly long.

'I did not. I talked of lots of things, all the time. Of course the comic interested me, as a collector. But there was never any question of me doing anything criminal.'

'No. No, I'm sure.' The chief inspector's voice was gentle and without any sarcasm. Harvey looked at him hopefully. 'And of course you run a comic shop, which is a coincidence too, I suppose if you did have this
Superman One
you would know what to do, how to sell it and so on?'

'Well, yes, of course. But I haven't got it.' Harvey could feel the tip of his nose itching. Was it growing, he wondered, was he becoming a cartoon himself?

'Ah, right, that was my next question.'

'What, whether I'd got the
Superman One
?' Harvey was outraged, were they going to accuse him of murder?

'Yes. Or whether you had heard anything of it. I thought if there was a burglar and if the comic was stolen, then he might have made the same connection and tried to contact you.'

'No. Oh no. I would, of course, have informed the police at once of anything like that. I would never handle stolen goods.' Harvey thought uncertainly about the
Batman Returns
complete set he had bought for £12only two weeks ago . . . but he put that out of his mind. These weren't the comic police.

'So, is there anything else you can tell us about the time you spent in Cornwall that stands out for you, anything out of the ordinary?'

What, apart from scrubbing up blood for an hour or two? No, not really. 'No, I don't think so. Nothing really. Just a typical reunion: see the old crowd. Nothing special.'