By Peter corris
|
C |
raig Minson runs a second-hand book shop in King Street, Newtown. I go in there occasionally to pick up something I’ve noticed in the review sections of the papers. Craig deals with a couple of the writers who flog him books they’ve reviewed. One is a specialist in sports books and the other mostly reviews biographies, so I stand a fair chance of running across something I’m interested in. He also stocks fiction at reasonable prices. Larry McMurtry, Cormac McCarthy, Tim Winton, Bernard Cornwall—my kind of thing. Usually when I go in he has a book set aside as a suggestion for me. Not this time.
Craig beckoned me over to the counter before I could even browse. ‘I’ve got something for you, Cliff,’ he said.
‘Let’s see it.’
He shook his head and his tangled greying locks flew. Craig is stocky, fortyish, with a grey beard and grey hair. He once told me he always wanted to run a bookshop and he was pleased when he went prematurely grey because it was the right look.
‘It’s not like that,’ he said. ‘It’s a mystery—something for you to investigate.’
‘I investigate professionally, Craig. For money.’
‘I think a few of us can come to some arrangement.’
‘Us?’
‘Booksellers. There’s someone stealing books from our shops.’
‘I thought you told me you wrote a certain amount off to pilfering.’
‘I do, we all do. But this is different. Whoever the thief is, he steals the same book from everyone. I’m talking about ten bookshops here in Sydney, one in Canberra, a couple in the country and who knows where else. Could be more but not many because there aren’t many copies around.’
‘That’s strange. Valuable book?’
‘Fairly. Worth three or four hundred dollars in good condition. It’s EB Lyell’s Northern Trekking. Ever heard of it?’
I shook my head. ‘Never heard of him, if it is a him, or it.’
‘Lyell was a him all right. Amazing man. He went looking for the Leichhardt expedition in the 1890s, or said he did.’
‘How’s that?’
A bell rang, signalling that someone had entered the shop. Craig went forward to offer his help and I looked around the book-filled space. The room was lined with bookshelves reaching almost to the ceiling and there were several aisles of shelving down the middle. Footstools and ladders, good lighting, labels written in large type, pull-out reading supports—everything a bookshop should have. Craig got deep into conversation with his customer and I headed for the Australian history section. It covered several metres and was divided chronologically and, within that, alphabetically by author. As with the other categories, there was a collection of books locked inside a glass case. I wondered whether the book in question had been in there and, if so, how the theft had been managed. I was beginning to get interested.
Craig made a sale, wrapped the book and the customer went on her way.
‘Good one?’
‘Pretty good. Nice to see someone who knows what they’re after, and I made a tidy profit. Now, about Lyell. He claimed to have conducted three expeditions in search of Leichhardt. He certainly made one that didn’t get very far. In his book he details two other treks, as he calls them—he was South African, by the way—that got a lot further. And he reckoned he found some relics.
‘But it became pretty clear that these journeys were fantasies, or fabrications. He tried to claim the reward that was on offer for evidence about Leichhardt but some experts pointed out problems with the things he claimed to have seen. He was disgraced, threatened with prosecution for fraud, but before he went back to South Africa he published this book in a signed and numbered limited edition of fifty copies.’
‘Of which you had number ...?’
‘One. It’s a curiosity really, not a significant historical document. Most of the copies have disappeared over the years. I suppose there’re still a few in private hands. As far as I know, none of the libraries, even the Mitchell, holds copies.’
‘I thought they got everything.’
‘There are reasons apart from self-published books being obscure. Lyell included some stuff about him and his men having sexual contact with Aboriginal women, and some drawings. Pornographic, really—the high-minded gentlemen librarians of the time wouldn’t have touched it, even if they’d known about it, which they probably didn’t.’
‘It’s interesting, Craig, but I can’t see what help I could be. Maybe it’s just some nutter of a descendant upset about the sex and wanting to eliminate all the copies as blots on the family escutcheon.’
‘No way. Lyell was an only child and he was drowned when his ship went down on the passage from Australia to South Africa. He was only thirty, unmarried, no issue, as they say.’
I shrugged. ‘Okay.’
‘There’s something else. Whoever stole the book has an accomplice.’
‘How do you figure that?’
‘The Lyell volume was in one of my locked cases. Somehow the glass was cut and the book taken. The thief must have got someone to distract me. I checked with a couple of the other booksellers and much the same thing happened in their places. We had a bit of an email conference and they agreed to let me have a go at... nabbing the culprit and getting the books back. Of course everyone’s interested in why.’
‘Yeah, but how would you, or I, go about doing that?’
Craig looked pleased with himself. He ran his fingers through his wild hair and tapped the side of his nose in an old-fashioned gesture. Running a bookshop can throw you back to the last century, apparently. He was about to speak when the bell sounded again and he moved away.
I returned to the Australian history section and, sure enough, a glass panel in the locked case had recently been replaced. Not that I doubted Craig’s word, but confirmation is the name of the game in my business. There were plenty of other explorers’ published journals in the bookcase and out on the shelves—Eyre, Stuart, Sturt, Leichhardt himself, Giles and others—and books about them. Some were handsomely leather-bound with gold lettering, collectors’ items. I wondered what could be motivating Craig’s mysterious thief. Some kind of obsession, but what?
This time Craig didn’t make a sale. He closed the door behind the non-customer and swung the ‘Closed’ sign into place.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘This is it. I got hold of a copy of the book. Cost me a bit but I did it.’
‘How?’
‘Don’t ask, trade secret. The thing is, I put out a monthly newsletter-cum-catalogue. Goes out tomorrow. I’m going to include the book in it. Bait, see?’
‘You reckon your thief keeps an eye on such catalogues?’
‘Bound to, mine in particular. I’m ... ahem ... a leading player in the field. What I do is give a date when special items in the catalogue become available. That’ll be next week. The punters turn up on the day. It’s a bit of a rush for a while and then it settles down.’
‘What if someone else wants to buy the book?’
‘I thought of that. I’ll tag it as sold from the word go. I’ve installed video surveillance now—cost a bomb, but it’s worth it. Totally concealed, no warning signs the way shops usually have. You can be up there on the mezzanine in my office and watch it. You see the accomplice distract me and the thief move in. I’ll have the book on display with a card all about its history. No real security. You come down and that’s it—both birds snared.’
‘What makes you think I can snare both birds?’
‘Come on, Cliff. Have you had a look at yourself lately? You scare me and I’m sure there’s some kind of badge you can show. I don’t think you’ll need your gun.’
‘What happens then?’
‘We find out what the hell it’s all about. We hope to get all the books back, maybe get some compensation for the damage done to the bookcases. I’m not the only victim of that. What do you say, Cliff? A day of your time, maybe two if they decide to play it cool, which they won’t because they’ll be scared the book’ll go.’
Craig was almost jumping up and down with excitement as he envisaged the scenario. To me, it was all a bit strange and somehow unreal. I couldn’t fully believe in these two wide-ranging, desperado book thieves, but there was something infectious about his enthusiasm.
‘The main interest for me,’ I said, ‘apart from earning my appropriate fee, is what the fuck they’re playing at.’
‘Me, too.’
‘Set it up, Craig. I’m in.’
* * * *
Craig issued the catalogue and gave Northern Trekking a prominent place with a photograph. It was priced at a hefty four hundred and fifty dollars. The launching of the catalogue, a special evening social event for the regulars to place their orders, would be a couple of days before the items went on sale. I checked on the video surveillance gear. A four-way split screen gave good coverage of the whole shop. Crisp black and white images and a running time clock. The equipment had the capacity to record all four images on a hard disk and transfer them to a cassette or a CD. Must have cost a bomb and was way over the top for a shop like Craig’s, but he was on a mission.
I told Lily, my part-time partner who was staying over at my place that night, about the case and she said it sounded like fun.
‘How’s he going to pay you?’ she asked. ‘In books?’
‘Not a bad idea. Build up a decent credit.’
‘You’ve got an unread pile beside the bed.’
‘That’s because you distract me.’
‘I’m off to Canberra tomorrow for a couple of days. Give you time to catch up.’
* * * *
As Craig had predicted, there was an early rush at the opening and no chance for anyone to do any stealing. I had a chair that was deliberately not too comfortable, and Craig’s office had a coffee machine. I’d brought sandwiches and a wide-neck bottle to piss in. As stake-outs go, it was one of the most comfortable I’d undertaken.
After a while watching the screens became boring, especially as nothing happened. Then something did: a woman wearing a loose, full-length coat took a book from a shelf and dropped it into an inside pocket. Then she browsed for a second or two before unhurriedly leaving the shop. Nothing I could do. The book she took wasn’t one of the pricey items but Craig was still out a few dollars. He was doing a brisk trade, though, taking orders.
After a while the numbers dropped off and there were empty spaces on the shelves, fewer browsers, fewer placing orders. Danger time. I kept a close watch on people coming through the door. Would they come in singly or in a pair? My bet was singly. Overall, there had been more women than men but there was no reason the thief couldn’t be a woman, or a man with a female accomplice or any other combination. I’d have put my money on a woman to do the distracting and a man to do the lifting. Glass cutting isn’t easy, although this time it wasn’t necessary.
The lights went down and the screens went blank. I’ll swear it was only for a split second, the blink of an eye, but it happened. As soon as the screen was active again I homed in on the stand that held the book. It was still there. I breathed a sigh of relief and went on with my watch. Coffee and sandwiches. The crowd thinned away to almost nothing, and Craig must have told the few people remaining that he was closing because they filed out obediently.
I came down the stairs. ‘Did you see the lights flicker?’ I said. ‘What was that?’
‘Something to do with the grid, I guess. It happens, but I’ve got generator backup because of some manuscripts that have to be kept at a set temperature. You didn’t lose picture, did you?’
‘Blink of an eye only. Anyway, the book’s still there.’
‘That’s disappointing. I felt sure they’d try on day one.’ He drifted over to the display stand. ‘Jesus H Christ!’
I was snooping at the credit card slips. I practically hurdled the counter to get to him. ‘What?’
He held the book in his hand. ‘This is a dummy—a fucking fake.’
* * * *
We pieced it together. Somehow, someone had tripped the fuses located near the front of the shop. In the time the power was off the book had been switched. Craig was cursing himself for not thinking about the power supply and I was telling him it was my fault for not checking on it. That was true.
‘Shit, I’m out six hundred bucks and we learned nothing.’
‘That’s what you paid for it?’
‘I told you not to ask.’
‘Okay. But when we play back the video we should be able to see who was near the fuse box and who was near the display stand.’
We replayed the footage captured on the hard disk. At the time there were four people in the shop. One stood between two big shelves, spectacles hanging from his mouth, peering at the titles. One was Craig, busying himself behind the counter. Two were on the move, one towards the fuse box, the other towards the display stand. The trouble was, they must have known exactly how the cameras were placed because they kept their backs to them both on the approach and on the retreat. They wore coats and hats and were medium-sized. Impossible to tell their ages and my feeling that the one who’d dealt with the fuses was a woman was just that, a feeling, a guess, based on the way the person moved.
The browser took a book from the shelf, replaced his glasses and went to the counter.
Craig took the order with less than his usual enthusiasm. ‘Picked Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden,’ Craig said when the door closed, shaking his head in disappointment.
‘Good taste.’
‘Yeah, but we learned bugger-all from the exercise.’
‘Not quite. They knew about the cameras and exactly where they were placed. How would they know that?’
‘Search me. I had it done when the shop was closed for the Easter break. Never showed it to anyone except you.’
‘And they knew about the fuse box, although I suppose that’s fairly easy to spot. But it means they’ve spent some time in the shop and checked things out. And had that dummy copy all prepared. Meticulous.’
‘Bastards! What can we do now?’
I replayed the footage. Another person had entered the shop as the thieves were leaving. I froze the frame.
‘Who’s that? She might have seen something about them that could be useful.’
Craig riffled through the order slips. ‘She chose something. Here it is—Oscar, Picture of Dorian Grey—MasterCard.’
‘Give me the number. I can track her down.’
‘How?’
‘Trade secret. You know how to operate that equipment. Pick out a couple of the clearest shots and blow them up. Could be something we’ve missed. I’ll get back to you if I turn up anything useful.’
I was mostly humouring him, but he seemed to take a little heart. He scribbled down the credit card number.
‘Thanks anyway, Cliff.’
‘We ain’t done yet.’
* * * *
At home, with Lily away on her journalistic assignment, I poured a solid scotch over ice and was ready to turn on Lateline when there was a knock at the door. I opened it, drink in hand. A medium-sized man wearing a long coat and a hat and carrying an overnight bag stood there.
‘Mr Hardy,’ he said, ‘my name is Sylvester Browne— Browne with an e.’ He dug in the bag and held up a book—Northern Trekking. ‘I think we should have a talk, don’t you?’
I ushered him through to the living room. He opened the bag and stacked a number of the books on a chair.
‘Fourteen copies. The total in Australia.’ He opened his wallet and laid three one hundred dollar notes on top of the pile. ‘Payment for the damage to three glass cases.’
My jaw must have dropped. All I could think to do was offer him a drink.
‘Thank you. Whatever you’re having. May I take off my hat and coat?’
I nodded and he draped the coat over the stair rail and put the hat on the post. I recovered my wits and asked him to sit down.
I came back with his drink and the bottle and a bowl of ice and sat opposite him.
‘Cheers,’ he said.
He was pale, thin-faced, with sandy hair neatly parted. Horn-rimmed glasses. He wore a fawn v-neck sweater with a collar and tie, brown trousers and black Oxfords—not a good look. He took a solid swig of the scotch and let out a contented sigh.
‘I’m glad you brought the bottle in, Mr Hardy, because I have a peculiar tale to tell and it may take some time.’
I guessed him to be in his fifties. There was an accent, South African or thereabouts, and the slight clicking of false teeth. I drank, nodded, indicated my willingness to listen.
‘I am a bookworm, Mr Hardy ...’
He told me that he was South African, an academic historian who specialised in nineteenth-century history. During his researches he had come across a letter written by EB Lyell to a friend in Cape Town. Lyell’s vessel, the Esmeralda, was held up for repairs in Mauritius and Lyell had sent a letter home by another ship that would get there earlier. This friend was a mining engineer of no importance until he went into politics and became a minister in the post Boer War government. The letter was included among his papers, which Browne was studying.
‘The letter was discursive, rambling even, and I have a suspicion that Lyell may have been under the influence.’ Browne raised his glass. ‘He alluded to his book and said that he had arranged to send some copies ahead of him and some to England and left some in Australia in the care of a man named Carter whom he described as his agent. He said that he had discovered a rich reef of gold while on his expedition in northern Australia and that he’d marked the spot on a map in one of the copies of the book, which he’d intended to keep with him at all times.’
‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘I’ve been told that he faked those expeditions.’
‘Not the first one. That was genuine. May I continue?’
I topped him up and he went on. ‘Lyell was in distress when he wrote this letter. He’d found, to his dismay, that the three copies of the book he had with him did not have the marked map. He’d been drinking a good deal after being exposed as a fraud in Australia, something he freely admitted to his friend, and now he didn’t know where the marked book was. Possibly still in Australia, or on its way to England or South Africa.
‘I took early retirement from the university on a generous settlement and I’ve devoted the last few years to tracking down the copies of Lyell s book. Fifty, as you know. I found twenty-three copies in South Africa and fourteen here in Australia. Three went down with the Esmeralda, leaving ten.’
‘Always assuming some haven’t just been lost or are mouldering away somewhere.’
‘Remarkably, that’s not the case. I located the papers of Richard Carter, Lyell’s agent, in the Oxley Library in Brisbane. They clearly show that he dispatched ten copies to his agent in England.’
‘You’ve been thorough.’
‘It’s something I pride myself on.’
‘Also criminal. Why didn’t you just buy up the copies as you found them here? You say you’ve got the money.’
‘I haven’t had a lot of excitement in my life, Mr Hardy. I was a dud at sport, which was all that counted when I was at school. I’m a bachelor with no children and only a few relatively insignificant books to my credit. I did it to see if I could do something out of the ordinary. I did it for fun, and now I’ve made recompense.’
I poured us some more scotch and asked him how he’d known what was going on at Craig’s shop. He said he smelled a rat when Craig’s catalogue came out and he conducted a careful surveillance of the shop. He’d seen me arrive, followed me to my office and knew my profession. He knew where the cameras were positioned and he found someone to help him disable the power supply.
‘Who?’ I asked.
He smiled. ‘Just a friend. Someone who’s helped me in my little escapade.’
He was determined to construct the whole thing as a sort of goofy adventure and I couldn’t blame him. It was, and Craig and I were both going to come out of it okay. Craig could restore the books to his colleagues and I could take credit for having resolved the matter. He read my mind.
‘Mr Minson will be satisfied with your efforts, won’t he?’
‘I guess so.’
‘You can imagine my disappointment when this last volume turned out not to be the one. I had high hopes of it. I always intended to return the books or to pay handsomely for the right one if I found it. But seeing that Mr Minson took the matter so seriously and went to some expense, it seems only fitting to return them to him.’
‘He’ll be grateful.’
‘Yes, but it would embarrass me to do it in person and his reaction might be problematical. I thought it best to ask you to do it.’
‘How did you know I wouldn’t be problematical?’
‘I’ve observed you. You strike me as someone with a sense of humour and of course what I’m doing is comical, ridiculous. You’ve been hospitable and patient, bearing out my judgement. I have a favour to ask. Could you please not reveal what I was about until you next hear from me? I’m off to England tomorrow. I don’t know how long the search will take me, could be months or years. But I’d be glad if you could keep it a secret until I let you know the result, one way or another.’
He was obsessed, more than a little mad, but somehow likeable. I thought of El Dorado and Lasseter’s lost reef. ‘It’s a deal,’ I said. ‘And good luck to you, Mr Browne with an e.’