Blood Bonds: A psychological thriller (9 page)

He carefully slid the white gloves onto the pale stick-like pegs of his slender, manicured fingers. The action was unhurried, measured, the cotton smoothed around individual digits. So intent was he on the process that he noticed with delight every microscopic piece of cotton that tore itself free to float from the gloves, circling in the vortex created by his languorous movements. Finally he held the dazzlingly white gloves before his eyes, searching for creases, the fingers swaying to and fro, as if the shrouded dead were stirring. He positioned his hands before him, as he’d seen the surgeons do on television prior to an operation, clinically clean, kept away from potential contamination, and made his way to the bookcase.

This always gave him a thrill. As good as anything sexual. As good as foreplay. Not that he could remember much of that. He faced the Regency mahogany breakfront bookcase, with its ebony linings, its ebony mouldings, its reek of polish and quality, of something long-lived and precious. His eyes scrutinised the details, as they always did, as if seeing them for the very first time. The pleasure rushed into him like a shot in the arm, and he was aware of the distorted figure that was himself reflected in the glowing grain and the slightly distorted, rippled glass, aware of the smile of utter gratification that lingered on the reflection’s thin lips pasted onto the book spines beyond. He allowed himself to bask in the feeling, even closing his eyes momentarily to savour the subtleties of the sensations that washed over him.

He imagined that it was a pleasure, too, for the bookcase, this ritualised meeting. After all, he’d saved her, hadn’t he? He’d been the one that saw her tucked away in amongst old fridges, Formica tables, racing bikes and frayed settees. His was probably the first loving hand to have stroked the wood with anything like tenderness in God knows how many years. The poor old girl, he’d thought. You poor, poor thing! Grease and dust caked the surface, scars, fresh and old, were carved into its once proud body, a pane of glass was cracked; and he touched each place of hurt in turn, the agony of the piece tearing through his fingers and into his chest like an electric shock. “How much?” he remembered asking the man with the fat face and wet lips when he saw the bookcase for the first time.

“It’s old,” the man replied, his tongue pushing into the side of his mouth, avaricious eyes looking over him. He knew there was money to be made here.

“I know it’s old,” he’d replied tersely. “How much do you want for it?”

“What’ll you give?”

“Fifty pounds.”

The man laughed, but his eyes didn’t laugh along with him. “Bugger off!” he said. “I ain’t that stupid!”

“One hundred,” Carl offered quickly.

The fat face grinned a carp’s grin. “It’s a beauty,” he said.

“It’s a mess. I’ll have a lot of work on my hands getting this anything like decent. And it isn’t that old either,” Carl said.

“Oh yeah? I know it’s old.”

“How old?”

The fat man’s face crumpled up in thought, one eye closing and the other looking at him suspiciously. He rubbed the stubble on his numerous chins, the sound grating. “’Bout hundred years old,” he ventured, though with uncertainty. Almost a question.

Which was wrong, of course. “You’re right. About a hundred years old. But that isn’t old. I’ll give you one hundred and fifty quid for her, that’s all she’s worth.” He took out his wallet, thumbed through the notes that he always kept in reserve, for just such occasions.

Fat face groaned, like he was having a limb twisted or something. But his eyes had settled on the small wad of twenties and he was hooked. It almost always worked, Carl thought. One look at a few notes was all it took, like a woman flashing her knickers. Eventually he grunted an affirmative. The deal was struck.

She was worth ten times that even then.

The immaculate whiteness of his glove stood in sharp contrast to the reddish-gold blush of the wood as he lifted his thin fingers to take the tiny ornamented gold key that stood proud from the lock. He twisted it and there was a satisfyingly soft ‘thunk’ as the lock clicked open. The cabinet doors swung slowly apart, like the gentle unfolding of a butterfly’s translucent wings. The familiar smells rushed out to greet him, children racing to a long-absent father. Old paper, old ink, old leather. If the smells had a colour, he thought, they would be shades of grey. He could smell grey. His lips stretched as the smile became a grin, and his eyes all but disappeared, sinking into folds of baggy, age-creased skin.

Carl hurriedly moved to a small round table and an armchair that sat in the centre of the room. They were the only pieces of furniture remaining from when his parents owned the house. Three massive bookcases, each one just about filled to capacity, taking up three walls. There was no need for anything else, he felt. He glanced idly at the place where the sofa had been, where his father had spent untold hours in front of the TV, and where he’d finally gasped his last in front of Kojak. The curtains had been closed then, in mourning; the curtains were still closed, the room kept in permanent dusk for fear of fading the book spines. His father would have choked in disbelief if he’d seen what use he’d put the room to. “A bloody library?” he’d have blurted.

Carl lifted the book that lay on the table, admiring the way the yellow light from the hundred-watt bulb bounced off the plastic dust jacket protector. He opened it and looked once again, for the umpteenth time, at the scrawled signature of Gavin Miller. A cotton-wreathed index finger traced the pen lines, even the strong dash that underlined the signature. Closing the book up, Carl looked over the volume in minute detail, searching for the slightest scuff, a closed tear, chipping, dirt smudges on the page ends. Of course there was nothing to see, no defects, because it was perfect. Mint. That’s how he liked them, mint. But with some it just wasn’t possible. Having said that, there was no crap in his collection – no ravaged dust wrappers, sprung and cocked spines, no soiling of front end papers by previous owners’ signatures, or
‘Merry Xmas from…’
That kind of shit just wasn’t given the room, not even as fillers. He was very particular.

His mother had called it an obsession, the way he fussed over his first editions and scolded her for touching them, rearranging them when she dusted, or for the way he squealed with delight when he could add another to his collection of Billy Bunter firsts. His father had, quite simply, thought he was queer, gay, bent, that way inclined. He never came out and actually said it, not directly to his face. But he strongly implied it, like when he took to imitating a woman’s voice when mocking him -“Don’t you dare touch my books, mummy!”- or when he looked sneeringly at him, disgusted, for simply being who he was, for not bothering to like ale, for not reading The Daily Mirror,  for not seeing girls.

Hell, even girls – women – must have had the idea he was queer, too. Why else would they avoid him? Why else would they not take his tentative advances seriously? So he wore specs and read books – was that really such a bad thing? Why did they have to stereotype him like that? He might look the part, but he was as thick as pig shit, coming away from school with hardly anything but sore pride. So much for the wise owl. And unfortunately he’d been called Carl Douglas – the same as that geezer that sang ‘Kung Fu Fighting’. The kids had really loved that one. They pounced on that, no trouble. Did she know what she’d done, the stupid bitch, calling someone Carl Douglas? No, she didn’t. Bet she didn’t know what it was like to be surrounded by kids bigger than you, being kicked the shit out of as they practiced their playground Kung Fu on Carl Douglas, singing as they beat the hell out of the skinny kid with glasses, “Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting…” Laughing, like it was real funny. So Andrew Motion said “Thank you” did he? Not me. I called them silly bastards through a mouthful of blood and loose front teeth, he thought acidly. But I guess that’s the working class for you. No crap. Say it as it is. Beat up the Carl Douglases of this world.

Friends. Carl never really had what you’d call friends. So he’d made friends with his books. He sat upstairs in his room clutching at the pages of a paperback, letting it take him by the hand and transport him to another altogether safer world, where he was in control, where he was the hero, where he was finally someone. He trod the Moon with H.G. Wells, became a hero of the Remove with Frank Richards, and imagined that those who once beat him up were being eaten alive by killer rats through the pen of James Herbert. And like special friends they had to be protected, looked after, given a special place. Firstly a shelf near his bed, then small a cupboard, then, as his collection and interest in first editions grew, a larger glass-fronted cabinet bought from MFI. Charity shops, flea-markets, antique fairs, later on car boot sales – he knew how to sniff them out, and he gradually amassed a collection many people would now die for.

A full set of Fleming - a copy of
‘Casino Royale’
bought for only 50p from an Oxfam charity shop before the days when they checked over most things. The rest in near enough mint condition. Huxley’s
‘Brave New World’
, Chandler’s
‘The Long Goodbye’
, Golding’s
‘Lord of the Flies’
, Miller’s
‘Death of a Salesman’
– the list had grown. “Crap!” said his father, his whole frame shaking like a plate of obscene jelly as he jerked his body. “Crap!” when he gathered up an armful of his books after one of those dreadful slanging matches between he and his mother. “Crap!” when he took it out on young Carl and hurled the lot into the bin, not without tearing up a few to begin with. So he played it safe after that, kept his best ones stashed away. Safe. Protected.

Carl had the last laugh now, though. Better than all those mindless days plugging at the damn football pools, wasn’t it? His few quid had seen a better return than all those his father had frittered away on Spot the Ball. Spot the Loser, more like.

He took the Gavin Miller book by the spine and threaded it into its allotted place beside the other Miller novels. It was like penetration, he thought, and he slid it out to reinsert it, pursing his lips as he did so. Then his lips lowered and he sighed. Shame. He had everything Miller had written for
‘The Eilean Mor Chronicles’
, from his first highly acclaimed
‘Stephen de Bailleul’
novel through to the last, for there would be no more, if what Miller had said was true. He thought of having sex without the orgasm, and gazed dolefully at the final book in the series. Miller’s first novel was fetching £500 these days – a couple of hundred more because Miller had inscribed it to him. ‘To Carl Douglas, for all your help’. He’d signed them all. Naturally. He and Miller were on close terms. He thought they should become closer now that he knew what he knew about high-and-mighty Gavin Miller.

Overton Hall had been good to me, Carl thought, up to a point. That point being he’d had a secure, steady job there for years. He started out cleaning up the piss and shit and sick. Of course, it was your high-class piss, shit and sick. They paid good money to house their family screwballs there. Not that you’d know that from the pay they gave to the carers. Tight bastards. But that’s par for the course in those places. There were advantages. He got to see some of the country’s most famous people and their relatives in various stages of mental decay. It was an impressive building, Overton Hall; had once belonged to some wealthy family or other for generations, with grounds that Capability Brown did something or other to. They died off, one by one, till there was a single dotty old man living there, Lord such-and-such, on his own, with three or four servants, the last of a long line of inbred lunatics, till he finally kicked the bucket. Then the developers moved in and filled the place with even more high-class madness. Ironic, really.

That’s how he got to meet Miller. How else would the two of them have gotten to talk to a famous novelist? In Tesco’s over the minced beef? Hardly. Carl was manager now, got someone else to clean up the mess. He’d been happy to sign at first. Delighted, even, and the event suited them both, he the obsessive book collector, and Gavin Miller the vain novelist. He got close to him, as close as he could, given the circumstances.

And then Miller had asked him for the favour. A big favour.

And hadn’t he complied all these years? Hadn’t he kept his mouth shut and done as he was told in return for a few simple favours in return? The odd-book signed by big-name novelists Miller came into contact with? That sort of thing?

There was no need for Miller to talk to him now as if he’d been dirt, not after all he’d done for him. When he signed the last book there had been a definite reluctance, a badly disguised sneer of contempt. His tone was hurtful. There was no need whatsoever to treat him like that. He was just the same as all those other people who’d looked down their noses at him over the years, and Carl had thought that somehow Miller had been different, that they even shared something special. Well now that there were no more books from the Miller camp there was no reason to keep going on like this. Things could change.

There might be thousands of pounds flowing through the building every month, but none of it found its way into Carl Douglas’ pockets. Manager he might be, but he was underpaid all the same. One step up from the piss, shit and sick scrapers. And he had his eyes on a few first editions that cost real money now. Far more than his meagre wage could afford, even though he lived on his own, no kids, no wife, no dog, even. Maybe it was time to think of his old age and a real pension, not the thinning crap they doled out by the government. You couldn’t rely on that.