The Swap Read online

  'You have.' Josh was beaming like a lighthouse.

  'So what is in the box?'

  'Bargain.'

  'A bargain?'

  'Yeah, you are going to flip.' Josh made no move to open the box and indeed was slowly backing behind the nearest comic rack.

  'OK,' Harvey put his hands to his face for a moment and closed his eyes. 'Show me.' He slid the hands away.

  Josh reached round the rack for the lid of the box with the air of a conjuror about to perform his greatest trick. Indeed, when he flung back the lid he even said: 'Voilà! '

  Inside were two thousand packs of Pokemon game cards.

  'You won't believe what I paid for these, Harvey.' He chuckled with delight and then slipped quickly round the rack and ran for the door. 'Pokemon's coming back, Harv, we'll clean up.'

  He just made it out and away down the street before Harvey could reach him. 'Bastard, bastard, bastard, bastard!' Harvey stalked back to the box, grabbed a handful of cards and hurled them into the air. Fucking Pokemon. All these years of resistance, of battle, of denial. And all that time like an insidious voice of temptation had been Josh: 'We need to move with the times, Harv'; 'We need to know what the kids want, Harv'; 'It's Japanese modern art, Harv.' And now he'd done it. One Monday morning and all Harvey's principles were shot to shit. And it was almost certainly a fait accompli. Josh would have paid cash for these. They always paid cash to the travellers who came on days other than Thursday. He'd have paid cash. Harvey leaned against the Ninja Turtle section and lit a cigarette. Then he walked through into the back room and unlocked the bottom drawer of the desk. The petty-cash box was at the bottom with the envelope containing the Superman One lying neatly on top of it. Had Josh opened it? It was hard to imagine Josh not opening a private letter. But Josh would also have been desperate to do the deal and get the salesman away before Harvey arrived. Harvey swore and smoked for a few moments. Surely even Josh would have mentioned it if he'd found a stolen copy of one of the rarest comics in the world in the bottom drawer? Relocking the drawer, Harvey sat for a while in his office, glad of the peace. Perhaps he should allow Josh to buy ludicrous things at great expense more often, then he might have some time to rest and to think. He had a cup of tea and thought about Maisie and wondered if she had got back to Croydon all right and whether she was now on her way to meet him. It was some time before he ambled rather aimlessly back into the shop again and he was startled to find he had a customer.

  'Oh hello,' he said. He hadn't heard the door and he spoke more in surprise than in any desire to engage in conversation. The man, who had been leafing through the Incredible Hulks, turned and grinned.

  'Hello, Harvey.'

  'Oh. All right?' Harvey said.

  It was Jeff Cooper.

  *

  There was a long silence broken, for Harvey at least, only by the sound of a small, low fart of fear that escaped him as he stood rooted behind the counter. The last time he had seen this man was from a prone position as Jeff 's trainered foot connected with his stomach. Was this to be a repeat performance? Had Jeff returned to finish the murderous work that he had begun only one week ago? To Harvey's mind came the nightmare thought that things were moving in weekly cycles – Sundays: clean up; Mondays: get shitkicked. Fuck, what happened on Tuesdays? Before he could really work this new theory through, Jeff, who had been contemplating him as a cannibal might consider a missionary, now approached the counter and put both hands down flat on its grubby surface.

  'Harvey Briscow,' he said and he smiled again. Harvey nodded nervously and attempted a grimace in return.

  'Er, yeah,' he said, 'that's me.' Where was Josh? That was the question. Not that Josh would be any use in a fight but at least he might be a distraction, or at worst a witness. Would Jeff assault him in front of Josh? What if Harvey threatened to sue if he did? Jeff had done it in front of a whole party full of people in Cornwall . . . why hadn't Harvey sued him already? How did you sue people when they beat you up? He was sure he'd heard about it on television. His thoughts began to wander to afternoon advertisements for compensation lawyers, and to Ally McBeal, but Jeff 's voice dragged him back to the moment.

  'And here I am. You and me, Harvey. Old friends reunited and with no need for a special website. You and me back together again.'

  'Yeah, lovely.' Harvey was unsure that there was much to celebrate. He peered hopefully past Jeff 's visibly muscular shoulder in the unlikely fantasy that a customer might come in.

  'Old friends, Harvey,' Jeff went on. 'Old friends who grew up together, went to school together. Old friends who meet for a reunion. Old friends who steal each other's wives, Harvey. Old friends, that's what we are.' Jeff was pausing between each line in frankly Pinteresque fashion.

  Troubled by this rhetorical style, Harvey put his hand to his mouth for a moment. 'Look, Jeff . . .' His middle finger was under his nose and he noticed a pleasant aroma; he sniffed more closely and realised it was Jeff 's wife. 'Look . . .' He whipped the hand away. 'I think we need to discuss this. I mean, I haven't stolen anyone. I hardly know Mais . . . your wife. Yes, we were under a tree at the party but she was upset, I don't know what about, but I expect you do, and I put my arm round her. I shouldn't have but I did. The next thing I know you are going after me like Mike Tyson after a lamb kebab and I'm still bearing the scars.' He risked putting his hand up again – reasoning that Jeff was unlikely to vault the counter and sniff his finger – and indicated the still purpled patch round his right eye. He looked closely at Jeff and considered his options: run into the back room and lock the door was probably his best move, the counter being too high for him to jump and get out the front. But the office door was troublingly thin, even if he could lock it in time. Would Jeff break down a door? He looked again at the shoulder muscles and tried another smile. 'We are old friends, Jeff. You're right. And as such we shouldn't be fighting. We should talk. Look, would you like a cup of tea?' Once he was in the back room he could phone the police. How long would they take? Knowing this area it would be quicker to ring the undertaker direct. Jeff didn't move. He remained with his hands planted on the counter, spread unnaturally wide, neck forwards. He resembled a bird of some kind and Harvey filled the pause by speculating as to which breed. He had settled on an African vulture when Jeff spoke again.

  'Who said anything about fighting, Harvey? Did you think I had come here to fight?' Some people can do melodrama and some can't. Harvey had never been much good at it and tended to mumble his lines, but Jeff was obviously a professional. He spoke with a clear and ringing menace that reminded Harvey of James Mason. There was just enough of the psychotic in the tone to make him return his hand to his face and bite at the skin around his thumbnail.

  'I'm not here to fight. If I wanted to hurt you I would have done so at the party. I would have given you a few more playful slaps . . . but I thought you might die of it. You should at least have put up some sort of fight. I mean, I don't mind losing Maisie to another man, but to you . . . it's amazing . . . women are unknown quantities, aren't they, Harvey? So what do you think of her?'

  Harvey had been considering Jeff 's suggestion that he should have hit him back, which hadn't actually occurred to him before. It had about it something of the idea of punching a force of nature, smacking a landslide, kicking a flood. 'Er, well, like I said . . .'

  'She's good in the sack, I will say that. Like a little animal she is, or rather was, with me. Is she like that with you, Harvey? I must say it's hard to imagine it. Perhaps she takes pity on you, does she? Pretends? Makes you feel good? Maisie would probably do that for a poor lost soul, eh?' Harvey frowned in thought for a moment; had Maisie been faking last night and again this morning? Hard to tell. He was slightly shocked that he didn't really mind if she was: sex had never seemed to him a suitable arena for competitive sport and if she was faking then frankly he appreciated the kindness. He gazed at the ceiling for a while thoughtfully, and then glancing back at Jeff realised that his cold grey eyes were watch
ing him like a vulture watching a tortoise on its back.

  'Er, I wouldn't know, Jeff. Like I said, we only really met in Cornwall. I haven't seen Maisie since then. I assumed you were still together, actually, but I suppose she's left you, yeah?' He tried not to give a little grin as he said this but failed and saw the eyes slint.

  'So we are not enemies then, Harvey? That's a relief. I would hate to have a man of such substance for an enemy.' The bird-eyes circled round the shop and Harvey remembered vaguely the claims to grandeur that he had made at the reunion. Then the eyes returned to hold his. 'We can talk as friends, eh? Not enemies, but allies?' Jeff turned suddenly and began to pace down the central aisle, both hands held out at the sides, riffling his fingers over the soft plastic of the comic sleeves. 'We can talk about it all. What happened, the past, we can talk about it all, Harvey, get it out in the open, eh? Get everything out in the open?'

  'Oh yeah. Absolutely.' Harvey moved back towards the door to his office. 'We can talk about everything.'

  'Everything?' Jeff swung round and looked piercingly in his direction. 'We can talk about everything now? Yes, I suppose we can. Now she's gone we may as well. It's all over now anyway. I guess you sort of hold it together . . . But when it falls apart it all comes back . . . I knew when we went down to the reunion. I knew then that it had all fallen apart . . . it was like everything that had been holding it up just collapsed. We sat around in that bloody hotel room like two strangers, two people who had never known each other, but she was mine, Harvey, she's been mine for twelve years, you have to understand that. It's hard to give that up. To let it all slip. When it's meant so much . . .'

  'Of course it is, of course it is.' Harvey was still inching backwards, his mind filled with a new thought: he shouldn't call the police, he should call the vet: Jeff was barking.

  'We can talk about the past, about Bleeder, about the murder, about everything. I guess I didn't think you had it in you, Harvey: I guess I doubted that I did. But now it's done I don't know what to think, don't know what I think of you. I guess that's why I had to hit you, you took something away as well as giving something. You know what I mean?'

  'Er, yeah. Sure thing, Jeff, but like I say I didn't shag . . . I mean, I haven't seen your wife since Cornwall, so, you know, this is a bit pointless . . .'

  'I'm not talking about Maisie, Harvey.' Jeff had returned to the counter now and his face was changed. There was a wistfulness, an eerie gentleness that Harvey had not seen before. It made him even more nervous than the menace. 'I'm talking about Hilda Odd.'

  'Right, yeah. What?'

  'Hilda Odd, Harvey. I'm talking about Hilda Odd and I'm talking about the murder and I'm talking about you. We said we could talk about everything, didn't we? Well, I want to talk about that.'

  He was going to confess to murder. Jeff was going to confess to him and then he was going to kill him. Harvey had backed as far as he could go and was standing now in the doorway, his fingers on the handle. 'Um, look, Jeff, we don't need to do this, yeah? Whatever you've done, whatever's happened, it's in the past, OK, I don't hold anything against you.'

  'No!' Jeff had straightened up and was back in the vulture position. 'And I don't hold anything against you, Harvey. What she did, what she did . . . it's funny the past, isn't it? You think it will fade but it never really leaves you, you still carry it, you just shore things up, use other things, marriage, sex, houses, cars, all that stuff, all that stuff . . . and then one day it all falls away and there you are. Back there in that room, that basement in that fucking house, that terrible, terrible house, with that woman standing over you . . .'

  Harvey glanced quickly behind him; where were his keys?

  'Standing over you with that length of plastic wire in her hand. And you are being held down and she's laughing, she's laughing . . .'

  'Eh?' The keys were on the desk and Harvey had measured the leap and planned the run back to slam the door, ram the key home, turn it . . . but he paused. 'You what?'

  'You know, Harvey. You know as much as I know. You've been there too. We've always carried that knowledge with us. We carry it but we can't leave it and in the end we face it . . . we face it.'

  'What do you mean, I know? What do I know? I don't know anything.' He was still considering the leap, he could still make it. It was simply a matter of timing.

  'Jeff?' He had been so startled by what Jeff was saying that Harvey hadn't registered the sound of the shop door opening, and now Maisie was standing directly behind Jeff, gazing at the scene as if she had entered the stage set of a Russian play. Harvey could see her hair, lit by the weak sunlight from the open doorway like a messy halo, as if she had floated in from some safer, better, holier place, rather than from Croydon. 'Jeff,' she said again, 'what are you doing here? What is this, Harvey?' Why did everyone ask him?

  Jeff turned round slowly, his eyes half closed as if he had taken a blow to the face. He turned and faced his wife and she caught for a moment a look she had never seen in his eyes before. But the eyes closed and then reopened and there was Jeff, just as she had left him.

  'Ah. So you haven't seen her since Cornwall, Harvey? Interesting.' Jeff 's back was to the counter and he did not appear to be about to spring but Harvey jumped and grabbed the keys anyway, then shot backwards and slammed the door, dropped the keys, swore, fumbled, tried the wrong key in the lock, swore again, found the right one, forced it in, turned it and then stood panting with his back against the door. It was only after he had stood there for several moments that he became aware of two things: one was that he was not pursued, indeed he could hear the mumbled trace of what sounded like a rather civilised conversation proceeding in the shop; the second was that this was perhaps the most cowardly thing he had done in his life. This did not prevent him feeling deeply relieved to have done it. Jeff wouldn't kill Maisie, they would talk through their differences and then Jeff would go and he and Maisie could go to Cornwall and solve the murder, although really there seemed very little to solve, Jeff was clearly raving bonkers. It occurred to Harvey how very close this was coming to his fantasy: Jeff in prison, and Maisie in his bed. Cool. Maybe all the pain and suffering he had been through was in a good cause. For a moment he was almost religious in his thinking: maybe it was all for a purpose, to finally bring him some semblance of meaning and reward in his otherwise inexplicable existence. He was very happy now that he hadn't thrown out the Superman One. Who knows, maybe he could sell it and they'd live happily ever after on the proceeds, sharing some of it with Bleeder, of course. Perhaps they could open a superhero-themed coffee shop together in New York . . . He shook himself physically to pull back into reality. Then he moved to the phone but couldn't think of anyone to ring. So he sat down beside it at his desk and tried to hear what was going on in the shop.

  They seemed to be speaking with great solemnity. That was the word that came to his mind. A feeling of solemnity and even of serenity, almost as if they were conducting some sort of religious ritual, a rite. The voices rose and fell, without seeming to falter, as if a script was being followed. This sense was added to by the fact that they rarely seemed to overlap each other, as if politely waiting for each other to finish before speaking. It was rather restful and Harvey, though more than usually happy about it, had had an abbreviated sleep. He settled back in his chair and was just beginning to eye the couch, when the telephone rang. It was Jarvin.

  'Mr Briscow? After much work, our forensic team in St Ives believes that it has found some DNA evidence that might be relevant to the case. And I wondered if you might come down to the station for a chat this afternoon? We would also need to take a blood sample from you, as from everyone involved.'

  'This afternoon?' Harvey felt his stomach tighten – something it rarely did. 'I'm not sure this afternoon is possible, I . . . I have a lot to do this afternoon.'

  'Well, it is fairly important, but perhaps we could come to you ...'

  'Of course, of course . . . Let me think. What if I came to you this a
fternoon? That would probably be the best, yes, give me the address where you want me to come. I could come at about four, would that be all right?' Harvey carefully wrote down the address of a police surgeon in Kensington on the back of an envelope and hung up the phone. Then he carefully tore the envelope into twenty-six pieces and threw them up in the air. For a long time he sat in silence. It was only after the long time had become almost unbearable that it struck him the silence was significant. Why had they stopped talking? Perhaps Jeff had murdered her while he was on the phone. With the air of a mouse in a cattery, Harvey gently re-turned the key in the lock and pulled the door an inch towards him. The silence continued and he dared a fraction more. Maisie was sitting on the counter facing him, with her legs swinging in front of her and a look of thoughtful sorrow on her face. She had been crying. Stepping carefully in case of hidden rugby players, Harvey ventured out.

  'Hello, Harvey.'

  'Um, hello. You OK?'

  'Mmm. Jeff 's gone.'

  'Oh, right.'

  'Yes. Thanks for leaving us alone like that just now, it was very discreet.'

  'Er ...'

  'In fact, it was the fastest bit of discretion I think I've ever seen.' She smiled a bit crookedly and brought the tissue in her hand to her face.

  'Yeah, sorry, but I thought, well, you know, you'd maybe be better just sort of thrashing it out, yeah?'

  'Yeah. And we did sort of thrash it out. We are going to get divorced. Jeff 's going back to Cornwall. I think he might even move back there to live. I think he should. We both grew up in small towns, but where I stayed and dreamed of escaping, Jeff moved away without ever really leaving. It was one of our many incompatibilities.' She shook her head, no longer framed in light, but still, to Harvey's eye, angelic.

  'Cool. I mean, difficult, but cool, you know? It may be hard but when it's over you'll be yourself again, yeah? I mean, you'll be sad and stuff but it'll be you being sad and that's got to be worth it, because you are really worth it.' It didn't sound very much to Harvey, indeed it had the deathly ring of a shampoo advertisement, but it had the effect he'd intended. She beckoned him towards her and then climbed off the counter into his arms. And when she wept now it was into the thick roll-neck of his red fisherman's sweater with the holes in the sleeves.