The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 19

awake. Here was his file on Mick Bett, the thriller writer whose first two novels, Black Iris and One Man on His Own, published in the early 1960s, had been turned into quirky cult films starring George Kennedy. Bett had killed himself in 1967 when he had become blocked on his third novel, working title The Mummer, at a time when the James Bond franchise had hit its stride and a year after Adam Hall's first Quiller novel, The Berlin Memorandum, had been turned into a successful film. Mantle wondered if the Sunday Times encomium on the front cover of the Pan paperback of One Man on His Own ('The best, after Deighton and Le Carre') might have contributed to Bert's decision to leap from the Golden Gate Bridge.

Mantle owned a signed first edition, first printing of Black Iris that he had bought at a Brighton book fair in 1976 for a wallet bruising thirty pounds. The very same book was now worth ?7,000. Mantle's assessment of a book's future worth was rarely off the mark. He had no compunction about spending a lot for a Fine/Fine now if his hunch whispered that there'd be a few more noughts on its value a decade hence. Heaton's digging had led to this evening's revelation; a copy of OMOHO sitting on a shelf in west London, its spine having probably never known any strain.

The traffic was snarled around Marble Arch; Mantle felt blisters of sweat rise on his forehead. He couldn't relax despite the knowledge that the book, having occupied its place on the Aubrey Road shelf for the last twenty years, wasn't going anywhere in the next ten minutes. His gaze was snagged on a criss-cross of scaffolding clinging to the face of an Edwardian house facing Hyde Park. Light snaked along the tubes and died on the dirty orange plastic netting. The house seemed diminished by the complexity, the aggressive sprawl of the construction. Scaffolding bothered him, it pulled at his vision like a scar.

'What are you reading?' Mantle asked the driver as he shoved the notebook back into its nest. A thrillerfat paperback rested open-bellied on the dashboard. Mantle had learned to quell his disgust at the way other people treated their reading matter, forced into supine positions they did not deserve.

'That Dan Brown guy,' the driver said, eventually, predictably. Mantle could dismiss him now. Him and his Very Poor, his Reading Copy. But it was something he had to know. He had to know what was on the cover, what was being sucked up into the eyes. On the tube he would crick his neck to catch a glimpse of any title. He was about to return to his notes, to trace the latest leg of his years-long journey through the capital on his OS map, when the driver came back with a question of his own.

'No,' Mantle said, trying to keep the bristling from his voice. 'I've never read The Da Vinci Code. It's… not my thing.'

He'd been offered a signed Mint in April, but he wouldn't have forgiven himself, could never have allowed it to rub shoulders with his Lovecrafts and Priests, his M. R.s and his M. Johns. It was snobbery, to be sure, but the very act of collecting, serious collecting, was snobbery anyway. Mantle was too old, too alone to care what anybody thought of him or his obsession. All that mattered to him were the pencil webs he span across his map of London, the treasure he was tracking from Shepherd's Bush to Shoreditch.

The taxi disgorged him on the corner of Aubrey Road. A light rain, so insubstantial as to be barely felt, breathed against him. He looked back at the Bayswater Road and saw it ghosting across the harsh sodium lighting like the sheets of cellophane he wrapped around the jackets of his hardbacks, to further protect them. He darted away from the main drag, patting his pockets, fretting over the corners of reminders, receipts, appointments, all the clues that frothed dangerously at the lips of his pockets.

He found the address he needed and rapped hard on the front door. He smoothed down his hair and hoped the occupants wouldn't be able to smell his odour, a mix of stale sweat and old paper, not really that bad, but perhaps offensive to those who were not used to it.

A well-dressed woman with professionally styled hair answered the door. She was in her late fifties, it seemed to Mantle, although the way she was turned out made her appear quite a bit younger. Her expression was cold; she was chewing something, a chicken leg, nub of white gristle gleaming, clutched in her hand. He cursed himself. She had been drawn from dinner. She wanted him gone; no amount of charm would work now.

'I apologise for disturbing your dinner,' he said.

'Quite all right,' she snapped. 'What is it?'

'A book.'

'A book?' Now her expression did change, to one of bafflement.

'My name's Henry Mantle. I'm a collector, a diviner of text. I've got friends call me Sniffer.'

'You've got friends,' she said.

Mantle's smile faltered as he wondered if she were belittling him, but he pressed on. 'Anyway, I understand you have a copy of Mick Belt's novel, One Man on His Own, published in 1962. I'd like to make you an offer for it.'

A further change. The woman, consciously or not, closed the door a fraction. 'How did you know I had that?'

'A receipt in a ledger in a Bloomsbury hotel. A book fair in the 1980s. A purchase traced to you.'

'But this is… this is invasive,' she said.

'Not at all, Mrs Greville,' he said. 'I can assure —»

'How do you know my name?' Needle in the voice now. An aspect of threat.

'The receipt. The book fair.'

'I'm sorry, but I don't like this. Please leave.'

She was making to shut the door and in his desperation he shot out his hand to block it.

'I'll give you ?1,200,' he said. 'In cash, right now, if you say yes.'

She paused, just as it seemed her anger would overflow and she would start shouting. The breath seemed knocked from her. Mantle refrained from smiling; he knew he had won.

'Twelve hundred? For a book?'

'I'm a big fan of his work. And copies — nice, well-looked after copies — are scarce.'

She seemed to change her mind about him. Maybe she was thinking of all the other unread copies of books on her shelves, perhaps the result of buying sprees by a dearly departed, or something inherited that she couldn't be bothered to take to the charity shop. She drew the door open wider and ushered him in, insisting sharply that he could have five minutes of her time, no more.

He barely took any notice of the hallway he was walking along; the smell of books was in his nostrils. He patted his pockets, felt the comforting scrunch of bus tickets, pencilled symbols and hints, directions and directives etched on paper napkins, beer coasters, cigarette packets. His whole life was in these pockets; he couldn't bear to throw anything away. He supposed it described a weakness in him, a form of psychosis, but he was helpless. He felt emboldened by these layers, these graphite and ink leylines. His wallet was fat underneath all of this. He ached for something to happen.

She introduced him to a room whose darkness was penetrated only by a soft, low lozenge of orange light; a cat was curled around the base of the lamp, glancing up unimpressed at Mrs Greville's guest.

'Here's the book,' she said, reaching up to tip a volume into her left palm.

He winced as she handled the book. She wouldn't pass it to him quickly enough, and kept hold of it, turning it around in her fingers as if searching for some clue as to why it was worth what he had offered. She gave him a look; her tongue worked at some shred from her rapidly cooling and forgotten dinner.

'You know, this was my husband's, my late husband's, favourite novel. I really don't think I would feel happy letting it go. It's become something to remember him by.'

Mantle smiled. He had prepared himself for this. It always happened. 'I fully understand. I'm willing to go to sixteen hundred. Which is way over the odds for a book of this sort.'

He could see her scrutinizing him, wondering if she could wring out another hundred, wondering how to play the game. But she didn't know anything. She was sold.

'I suppose there's no point in hanging on to the past,' she said. 'My Eddie would want his books to be appreciated by readers rather than gather dust on the shelf.'

Mantle pursed his lips. His mobile phone went off, vibrating against his leg.

'Then you'll take the sixteen hundred?'

'I will,' said Mrs Greville, in a voice of almost comical reluctance.

She passed him the book once the bills were in her hand. He was hastily wishing her good night, wrapping