wash-stand below the bedroom window, six weeks when Philip would say to him,
'Have you read that book yet?' and he would reply,
'Well, no, not exactly. But I'm getting around to it.'
What Derek normally liked was what the Americans, who had to invent a category for everything, called 'Cosies'. Old-fashioned would have been another way of putting it, but then, what was wrong with old-fashioned?
Craftsmanship, attention to detail, control. Dorothy Bird- well, now, she had long been one of Derek's favourites.
But Philip could be persuasive.
'Cathy Jordan, I do think you'd like her. She's good. The genuine article.'
Since some of Philip's bedtime reading was, well, dubious to say the least, Derek had remained noncommittal. Till, one day, or to be precise, two, he had been laid up in bed with flu. The Patricia Moyes he was rereading for the third time had come to its same, careful ending; Dorothy Birdwell had pottered around in the East Anglian fog to disappointingly little purpose, and there were just so many times you could reread the letters page of the Telegraph.
So, propped up on his pillows and with some Beechams and hot lemon close to hand, he had started Shallow Grave: The first time I saw Anita Mulholland she was a happy twelve-year-old with braces on her teeth and a smile that would have knocked out the angels; next time I saw her was a year later, to the day, and she was dead.
The voice, Annie's voice, had gripped him from that first sentence and hadn't let him go. The story, oh, the story was fine, perfectly fine, though in truth, there was little about it that was particularly original. But there were moments when Derek's skin had tightened about him, moments when the cold of shared fear slid along the backs of his already feverish legs and arms. And there was the disgust and shock of what had happened to that young girl. But without the voice, the sure, buttonholing quality of the voice, none of the rest would have been enough.
He finished Shallow Grave and, when he had recovered, set out to acquire the others. Philip had copies of the book that preceded it.
Sleeping Fools Lie, and the one which came after it. Dead Weight. But now Derek had 82 been well and truly bitten, he wanted to read all five Annie Q. Jones mysteries from the beginning. The second, Uneasy Prey, he finally found in an Any two for 50p box on the market, dog-eared and marmalade-stained, but, as far as he could see, intact. Angels at Rest, the first of the series, proved more difficult. It had been brought out in paperback in Britain by a firm that had rapidly gone into liquidation, and had been published in hardback in a small edition intended primarily for libraries. Derek had finally tracked down a copy through the Books Wanted section of Philip's Guardian.
Derek, of course, was more than a mere reader: he was a collector with a collector's mentality. Completism was his unquestioned faith.
Inside the heavy cardboard box he was carrying were British editions of all five Annie Q. Jones mysteries, five American paperbacks, American first-edition hardbacks the 'true' firsts of everything except Angels at Rest, and, just for fun, a few assorted foreign-language versions he had picked up here and there – German, French, Danish, South Korean, Taiwanese.
A complete English-language set, except that it wasn't, to Derek's eternal chagrin, quite complete. Rumour had it that a mystery bookstore outside Phoenix had a first edition of Angels at Rest for sale at six hundred and fifty dollars, US, but it had proved sadly untrue.
Derek was still searching.
He turned his back towards the glass door into Water- stone' s and eased it open, the box held tight in front of him on aching arms. The queue at the signing table was long, but that didn't matter in the least If Derek only reached Cathy Jordan at the end of her session, so much the better, there would be more time to chat.
Lynn refused the glass of wine which the manager offered her and opted for mineral water instead, sipping it now 83 from a vantage point by the side wall, close to the books on poetry and theatre. She admired the way Cathy Jordan dealt with her fans; a smile for each one, not forced but seeming genuine, to each she offered a palatable slice of conversation; copies of her books she signed in black ink with a nourish, using a fat Mont Blanc pen she carried especially for the purpose: For Emily from Annie Q. amp; me! Cathy Jordan The C was round and deep enough to contain, almost, the rest of her first name; the J swooped towards the bottom of the title page before sweeping through its final curve.
'Well,' Cathy Jordan said, 'it's good to meet you, too. ' Her voice, American, slightly nasal, sounded overlarge within the confines of the store.
Lynn had decided she would buy a copy of Dead Weight for herself, but wouldn't bother, probably, to get it signed. The line was dwindling to an end: a youngish man wearing a black Anthrax T-shirt and with two gold rings in his right ear, one immediately above the other, was having his book signed now, and behind him two women waited together, deep in conversation. The taller of the two was wearing a brightly coloured ethnic dress, a green rucksack slung casually over one shoulder; her companion, several years younger, wore a black shirt over blue jeans, one hand resting on the leather shoulder bag slung from her shoulder. Behind them another man, older, with gingery hair and glasses, stood with an open cardboard box of books at his feet; and finally, a fortyish woman with a Warehouse carrier bag in one hand and a small child, already beginning to grizzle, clinging to the other.
Lynn glanced at her watch; she thought, I can be back at the station by half past two.
The man in the T-shirt moved away and the taller of the women swung the rucksack from her shoulder. The boy at the back of the queue had started to cry and his mother gave his arm a tug, causing him to cry louder. A couple of fourteen-year-olds, arms loose around each other's limber bodies, passed carelessly in front of where Lynn was standing.
'We've read all of your books,' the woman in black was saying.
'They really made an impression.'
'And since it's your first visit,' her friend said excitedly, 'we've brought something for you. '
'Well, that's real nice,' Cathy Jordan said, giving it her best smile.
The woman raised the rucksack high and swung it towards the table: what was inside was a plastic container and what was inside that was blood. A lot of blood. It poured over Cathy Jordan's face and hair and down her front, splashing across what was left of the piles of books.
'We thought,' one of the women was shouting, 'you'd like to know what it was like. '
Lynn pushed the two youths aside and in four paces she was at Cathy Jordan's side; Cathy standing, arms outstretched, blue of her shirt adrift in blood.
'Are you all right?'
'What the hell do you think?'
On his knees, Derek Neighbour was lifting books from their box as deftly and carefully as he could; those that had been lying on top were thickly spotted and stained.
Lynn part-swerved round him, part-vaulted over him; the mother with the Warehouse bag dragged her screaming child towards her and Lynn cannoned into the shelves avoiding him. Ahead of her she could see the two women pushing their way through the doors on to the street.
'Make way!' she called.
'Make way, police!'
Nobody moved.
Lynn ran between them, failing to notice the table opposite the cash desk until she struck it hard, somewhere between hip and thigh, her cry lost in the crash of books against the floor.
Stop! '
They were running full-pelt down the middle of St Peter's Gate, ignoring the traffic, both pavements clogged with lunchtime shoppers, grazing on their take away burgers or baked potatoes.
Police! '
Halfway down, they separated: the one in black continuing on, actually gaining speed, the woman in the dress dodging her way into the arcade of fashionable shops that led towards the square.
Lynn ducked into the narrow alley higher up and emerged on to Cheapside before the woman was in sight; for a moment, Lynn thought she might have doubled back, but no, there she was, pushing between a knot of people outside Saxone's window.
Right! ' Lynn yelled, catching hold of the collar of the woman's dress.
