The book would be a novel, but based on the real characters of Price and Mayer. He was sure it would do better than his own series of crime novels with Edwardian settings, and the critics might take an interest for once, because Price was under-chronicled. There had been no biography. (There wasn’t enough material to generate one – just a few letters threatening his various literary mentors, the couple of dozen stories, and now this document unearthed by Peter. No photograph of Price had survived.) The core of reality would give legitimacy to Anthony’s novel. People generally couldn’t be persuaded to take an interest in the imaginings of an obscure individual like himself. Pure fiction by the non-famous was regarded as whimsy and that was that.
Anthony looked at his watch: five o’clock. Not late enough, on the whole, to justify the darkness of the sky. He wanted a pint but he stayed on by the window, watching the rain. He saw now that it fell on a policeman on a horse. The copper wore one of those big capes that covered not only his own body, but much of the horse’s. They were both in it together, stoically receiving the rain at the corner of the Square.
Anthony turned back towards the chair and picked up the manuscript. He had been thinking he might write his book from the point of view of Mayer. He imagined that Mayer had originally regarded Price in the same way that he himself did: with appalled fascination. But the trouble with this plan was that Mayer had been found battered to death in the West End (just on the borders of Mayfair, in fact) in 1907, three years before the end of the story of Price. Obviously, Price had done it. Anthony was sure of that, and he would make the case in his novel.
He walked through the empty Reading Room, and through the double doors, where he saw Peter at the book desk. He found that he was relieved to see him.
“Thanks for that, Peter,” he said, handing back the document.
“What was it?” asked Peter.
“Oh, just… Descriptions of how he broke into various jewellery shops.”
“Charming,” Peter said, and he laughed.
Collecting his coat, which was the last one left in the cloakroom, Anthony thought: he wouldn’t laugh if he knew anything about Price. There was nothing funny about him. He was no gentleman thief, and the robberies had sometimes lead to violence. Newspaper cuttings mentioned one associate of Price’s who had been found murdered – a known receiver of stolen goods. Price had missed a court appearance to attend the man’s funeral, which was ironic in several ways. For a start, he’d killed the man. Anthony was certain of that, and the killing would make a scene for his novel.
Anthony walked out into the Square. The policeman had gone, and the place was deserted, the rain coming down on the trees alone. They were – what? – twenty times taller than a man. Seemed unreasonable somehow. They were rocking in the warm wind that was blowing through the rain, looking restless.
Anthony left the Square by the first available street, but that was all right because it led to one of the best pubs in Mayfair. He walked quickly along the street of distinguished, reserved buildings, moving in the opposite direction to the water flowing along the gutter. All other pedestrians seemed to have retreated in the face of his advance. Anthony took his mobile phone out of his pocket. He pressed the “on” switch and white light seeped between the number keys, but there was a worrying, restless little display on the screen: dots in a line groping after something, like an ellipsis. It was a new phone and he’d not seen this before. Then the display went all still and sullen, and the message read: “No signal.” Was it to do with the rain?
The pub, The Unicorn, glowed in the rain like a little blue lantern, cosily framed by antiquarian bookshops. With the bulge at the front, and the flagpole that came out over the doorway, it looked sea-going somehow. Opposite was a block of flats: Horace Mansions. Anthony had earmarked Horace Mansions for when he became successful. It was Edwardian, which was his period.
A century away was a perfect distance of time: distant enough to be strange, near enough to be comprehensible. Anthony had set all of his thrillers in that period, and this was why he would be able to do justice to an Edwardian maverick like Price. Also he spoke the lingo: Anthony knew that the Edwardians called a jacket a coat (a coat in the modern sense was a “top-coat”); a weekend, to the Edwardians, was a “week-end”; and when they were tired they were “all-in”. Anthony aimed always to wear a suit like Edwardian men; he wore boots rather than shoes, wrote with a fountain pen. He would in time become a full, flamboyant Edwardian dandy rather than the muted dandy he was at present.
There were three or four people inside the pub, all turned away from him. A clock ticked. Anthony liked the fact that there was no piped music in The Unicorn, but that clock was loud and couldn’t be turned down. And there was no barman to be seen. Anthony was joined at the bar by one of the silent customers. The pub was all buckled wood, as though the ceiling was too heavy, pressing down. There didn’t seem to be much air.
The man next to him wore a black suit, and it was muddy – mud splashes up the trouser legs. Mud in Mayfair. Anthony nodded at him nonetheless, and he didn’t nod back. His eyes were a very pale blue in the thin red face; his hair was black and pulled back with grease or oil that smelled like lemon, but another smell came off him at the same time: a bitter smell of a small room in which a dozen people have been smoking cigars around the clock. But the man now took cigarettes out of his pocket. He kept them in a tin. Anthony had once thought of doing that, but he’d stopped smoking a year ago. The Unicorn, actually, was a non-smoking pub. The man opened his mouth to put in the cigarette, and it went into a mass of blackness – no teeth.
Anthony didn’t have to put up with this; there were plenty of other pubs in Mayfair. He walked through the open door of The Unicorn, and straight into a new noise: spattering rain in the gathering darkness, and a metallic rumbling and grating. He noticed a countrified smell, which was almost pleasant, until he looked down and saw that he was standing in horse manure. Had the police horse been this way? He looked over the road, and the block of flats was being dismantled. They had started dismantling the block of flats within the past five minutes. No, on the contrary: scaffolding, a tarpaulin sheet, lanterns, a wheelbarrow dangling from a pulley… the block of flats was being built. Anthony both knew, and didn’t know, what was happening, He felt that he was about throw up. He looked up at the sky, searching for an aeroplane – there were always jets above Mayfair – or the helicopter growling away. But the sky was clear, apart from the falling rain, and the drifting smoke. Who was having a fire? On the rooftops all around, chimneys were smoking. Hundreds of chimneys were smoking.
The man from the pub was behind him, and there were two others with him. The man from the pub was talking fast, the blackness coming and going as he opened and closed his mouth. Anthony couldn’t make out the words. Was it English? Anthony thought to himself: I have been caught in a landslide, and removed to another place. The rain fell more softly now, but it seemed to be the same rain; it made him wet in much the same way as before, and even though he knew he was in terrible trouble, Anthony was trying to take comfort from this as one of the men – not Price – approached him and spoke out in a voice of the kind you didn’t hear much any more. He was unquestionably addressing Anthony. “Paul,” he said, “… come here Paul. The governor wants a word.”
POPPING ROUND TO THE POST by Peter Lovesey
Nathan was the one I liked interviewing best. You wanted to believe him, his stories were so engaging. He had this persuasive, upbeat manner, sitting forward and fixing me with his soft blue eyes. Nothing about him suggested violence. “I don’t know why you keep asking me about a murder. I don’t know anything about a murder. I was just popping round to the post. It’s no distance. Ten minutes, maybe. Up Steven Street and then right into Melrose Avenue.”