The Last Second-Hand Bookstore in Gotham

Welcome to Gotham City in 2017.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if a superhero got tangled up in your life? Then this is for you.

This is the story of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events.

If you are Robsessed, this is for you.

To borrow a sporting analogy, I picked up the first trailer for The Batman (2022) and ran with it. I have added a few details after the second trailer. The whole story was written before the release of the second trailer. So details will be inaccurate or missing, or just my interpretation of character or place.

The Batman, Bruce Wayne, Alfred Pennyworth, Edward Nashton, Commissioner Gordon, Thomas Wayne and Gotham City (its districts and institutions) belong to DC comics and Warner Brothers. Some of the ideas belong to Matt Reeves and the script team. All other characters, events and ideas are original.

The whole story is written and will be published in chapters (15 plus epilogue) on Tuesdays and Fridays.

This is not written for profit, but only for pleasure, and the enjoyment of you, the reader.

Chapter One

It was a small sound, but it was enough to wake me. My heart started pounding before I had even

consciously registered what I had heard. I sat up slowly. I never expected anyone would want to break in to the bookstore; I didn't have any stock that was really valuable, really worth stealing.

I crept downstairs, the cricket bat in my hand. I was vaguely aware it was probably a bad move, that it would be used to stove my head in, but I didn't want to descend empty-handed. I wanted to look like I meant business. The stairs down from the apartment creaked in way I had never noticed before. I made more noise than I would have liked, unlocking the door from the passageway into the store. I came into the store behind the counter, my heart thumping loudly.

Apart from the small uplighters in the window, there was a faint light in the store, towards the back. It had to be the reading desk, between the tall shelving units. I stepped cautiously out from behind the counter, into the room, inching my way towards those particular stacks. The desk was at the far end, a book lay open on it, illuminated by the reading light. But there was no-one sitting at the desk.

A leather-clad arm went across my chest, grabbing my shoulder, at exactly the same moment as a leather-gloved hand clamped itself across my mouth. My heart nearly stopped with shock. The cricket bat clattered to the floor. My hands went up to clutch the arm.

'Don't scream,' a husky voice almost whispered in my ear. 'Don't call out. I don't intend to hurt you. I'm going to let go. Nod if you understand.'

I nodded as best I could with his hand holding the lower part of my face. Surprisingly tightly.

'Oh my God. Oh my God,' I gasped as soon as he removed his hand. I desperately sucked in a lungful of air.

He didn't move his arm from my shoulders. I clung on to it, to stop my legs giving way. I was pinned back against him, but I couldn't feel anything of him. He was solid.

'You're not American.' The voice was still low, almost growly. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I shivered.

'No. No. I'm British – English.'

I tried again.

'If you've never been here, if you don't know anyone British, there is a good chance I don't know you. It won't matter if I see you. I won't recognise you.'

He relaxed his arm, and I felt him step back. I bent double, hands on pounding heart, for a couple of breaths. He must have thought I was going to collapse. Suddenly there was a strong arm under mine, a hand holding my forearm, helping me to stand up.

'What the hell – what the hell d'you think you're. . .' I started to turn, and my voice trailed off.

I could not have prepared myself for what I saw.

He was head and shoulders taller than me, looking all the bigger because of his costume. It was

a black suit, a black suit that fitted round him like armour, contoured to look like a body with muscles. It wasn't metal or leather: it looked moulded in some way. I put out a hand to touch it, without thinking, eyes and mouth open in shock. On his chest was a symbol which was in metal, catching the light in places: some sort of bird, perhaps, with wings outstretched. He caught my hand in his gloved one. Only then did I dare look up at his face.

He wore a mask, a cowl, in some sort of expensive leather, which covered most of his face. Only the lower part and his jaw were visible. A strong, young jaw. His eyes, barely visible through the thick, reinforced eye holes, studied me intently. It was difficult to meet that gaze.

'I'm sorry,' I said. 'I just wondered – what it feels like. Your – suit.'

He let me put my hand on his arm. It was unlike anything I had ever touched before. Not leather, but not plastic. They were not gloves he was wearing, but gauntlets, with ridges running up the arm part. I touched the suit just above the gauntlets.

'You don't recognise me, then. You have no idea who I am.'

The penny dropped. That was not a bird on his chest: that was a bat. He nodded as my mouth dropped open and my eyes widened in surprise.

'But what are you doing here? At – ' I checked my watch ' – two o'clock in the morning?'

'Just looking for information.'

'About what?' This was a tiny, second-hand bookstore. I liked to call it antiquarian, but I was kidding myself. There was unlikely to be anything of any use to the Batman here. 'All you had to do was call in and ask – I would have helped you.' At least, I thought so. What did he look like in daylight? More, or less, scary?

'I didn't want to disturb you.'

'Well, that bit of your plan didn't work.'

I didn't say that he very nearly killed me; that I had feared I might die of a heart attack.

'Sorry.'

I wrapped my dressing gown tighter round me. I was starting to shiver, this time from the cold. I also knew that I wouldn't go straight back to sleep if I went to bed, the adrenaline was racing too much, so a cup of tea was calling.

'Was it anything in particular you were looking for?'

'A book.'

Obviously.

'Behind Closed Doors: The Secret Societies That Built Gotham.'

I didn't know all of our titles off by heart, but I was sure I would have remembered that one. I would have wanted to read it myself.

'And they don't have it in the central library?'

'No.'

'Or the university?'

'Not that I can find.'

I nodded. If the university library didn't have it, it was either extremely rare or complete rubbish. But it might be on an academic's personal bookshelf somewhere.

'Why here?'

'You are the last second-hand bookstore in Gotham. It was a long shot.'

A very long shot. Curious, I walked down to the reading desk, partly to give my racing heart a chance to calm down. He followed me, but only so far, still keeping an eye on the rest of the store. Was he expecting someone?

'Did you find it?'

I closed the book, to look at the title. An old history of Gotham City, its pages yellowing, its spine cracking.

'No. I was hoping to find something in this one.'

'Which section did you look in? History?' I racked my brain to think how I would have classified the book he was searching for.

'History. Sociology. Political geography. Anything like that.'

Political geography. Wow. Had he memorised the entire Dewey decimal system? I didn't think we had ever had a political geography book.

'Is it important?'

'I don't know yet. It might just help solve a murder. Or prevent another one.'

Nothing serious, then. A little light reading for those nights when there's nothing to watch on cable. Another shiver went up my spine. The sooner he left, the better.

'It's cold, it's a little late to be searching the shelves,' I said boldly. 'Call in tomorrow – later today – and I will do my best to help you. If you let me know specifically what sort of information you are looking for. '

Unlikely that I would be able to deliver on that, though. I half-hoped he wouldn't take me up on it.

Didn't he have a home to go to, a roost somewhere, I wanted to ask, but he didn't look like he had much of a sense of humour.

He nodded, and turned. I watched him leave, curious to know how he had got in. He went into the stockroom, and out through the window. I realised he had been able to open it because I had failed to shut the fanlight. I hadn't even noticed it was open. An important security lesson for me.

After he had gone, I closed the fanlight, then went to get the book from the reading desk. I took it upstairs with me, and browsed through it as I sipped my tea. My heart rate was slowing, but my brain was still buzzing. When I closed it, almost without thinking I reached for a piece of paper to act as bookmark. A habit formed many years ago, at school, when we were told off if we turned down the corner of the pages to mark our place.

I had been living in Gotham City for a few years now. I first moved here when my husband was transferred here by the multi-national company which employed him. I didn't like it particularly. It was a grim, dark city. Anyone would think it was Seattle, the amount it rained. It had no attractions worth speaking of, unlike New York or Chicago or another of America's great cities. It seemed to have a high crime rate, and it attracted strange criminals with a flair for the bizarre. And they in turn attracted men who wanted to sort it all out: men like the Batman. Who on earth dressed like a bat to deal with criminals, which was the job of the police? I tended to keep my head down, and keep out of the way. On wet, cold days, alone in the store for hours on end, tired of reading, I would fantasise about moving back to the UK, back to a life that I understood much better. But for the moment, for the foreseeable future, I was stuck here while the wheels of American civil justice turned at a glacial speed.

My friend Lacey's mouth also dropped open when I told her.

'What – the actual Batman?' she exclaimed.

'Well, I don't know for sure, but if he's a copycat, it's cost him a lot of money. That suit – it's Kevlar, or something similar. That won't have been cheap.'

'But what the hell did he want?'

'Information, so he said.'

She shook her head in disbelief.

'I know,' I said. 'But apparently the City Library and the university couldn't help him. And he thought that we could.'

'Seriously? With the load of crap we have on our shelves?'

It wasn't all rubbish, but I knew what she meant – out-of-print, obscure books that no-one was interested in anymore, for the most part.

'I can't get my head round that – the Batman, the actual Batman, sitting at our reading desk at two o'clock in the morning. Reading,' she continued.

'I know. Weird.'

'Doesn't he use Google, like the rest of us? About what?'

I shook my head. 'Some secret society or other, I don't know. Something to do with Gotham's history.'

She snorted. 'Men and their secret societies. Their silly clubs. He should just ask Harry. Harry or his father are bound to know.'

Harry's father, Harrington Johnson-Brown the Second, was extremely well-connected. What he didn't know about the city and its families wasn't worth knowing, apparently. Their family was one of Gotham's oldest.

And this was information the Bat appeared to be interested in.

'Did he say why?' Lacey asked.

'He was trying to crack on that it was to do with solving a murder.'

She laughed. 'I'll bet. Can we work it out before he does? That would be funny.'

'We have no idea what he's looking for.'

'We can still look for a hidden map or letter or something. Something to do with their silly clubs. What if it was? It's exciting, isn't it?'

Define exciting. Nothing normally happened in our quiet corner of Gotham. Enough people came into the store to make it break even, but that was mostly on the weekend. The week was quiet; so quiet, I could probably close for three days out of the five. My customers were often students, seeking out-of-print texts, or collectors, seeking first editions or rare books. People from the poorer districts might call in, looking for a discarded copy of a popular novel at a rock-bottom price. Sometimes, if it was a child, I might give the book away. We had a regular customer, a young man with a supercilious expression, well-dressed (dandy was the adjective that we liked to use about him) with large, clear-rimmed spectacles, who was looking for joke books, something that rarely came through the doors. He came every Saturday afternoon, just after lunch, sat at the reading desk and wrote, what, we were not sure. Sometimes he told us a joke: he was extremely annoyed if we guessed too quickly, or didn't laugh. Annoyed to the point where we started to wonder if we needed to ban him. He liked to give the impression that he was much cleverer than we were, and didn't like it if we showed any hint that we might have minds. He made us feel uncomfortable, but I couldn't really say why. If it was just him and me in the store, which was most Saturday afternoons, I would talk to him from time to time, hoping to build some sort of connection. Sometimes he welcomed the interaction, more often than not he gave me to understand I was interrupting important work, so on those occasions I would give up.

We did get shifty men, nothing like our regular young man, usually of a certain age, and yes, in rain coats, browsing the shelves and reluctant to ask for what they were looking for. We knew, though, and we didn't stock books like that. The occasional Aubrey Beardsley that came our way, I passed on to a bookseller I knew in another city who wasn't so – puritan, as I had been called. We also offered a clearance service, where people paid us to take away the book collections of deceased relatives.

'Do we know who he is?' I asked, meaning the Bat.

'No, not for certain,' Lacey said. 'He's got to be loaded, though. Have you seen the car? That won't have been cheap.'

I made a note to find out what I could about the wealthy citizens of Gotham, but it was a large city: no doubt there would be quite a few, my landlords among them. I never seemed to see anyone from the Wayne Foundation. I understood that property was not their main business, but I did feel I was a neglected corner of their empire. There were improvements to the apartment that would make my life more comfortable.

It was two days before he came back, but he couldn't come in through the door, like a normal person. A note appeared on the counter, asking me to leave the window open, and requesting that I place on the desk any other books I might have on the history of Gotham City. Lacey wanted to come round and wait for him, but I said no. I couldn't have him thinking I was talking about his business all over town.

'And don't you tell anyone,' I cautioned. 'You don't know what that might bring down on our heads.'

'True. God knows what he gets up to.' She sighed. 'I'd still like to see him, though. Did he take off the mask?'

'No. I was only with him for a minute or two, if that.'

'Shame. Invite him upstairs, get him to take it off.'

'It's not a social call, you know. And I'm old enough to be his mother. He looked quite young.'

'He can still be polite, though, can't he? I mean, he did break in and nearly give you heart failure.'

She was my age, Lacey, but she was still lively, still looking at young men, even though she knew they wouldn't look back at her the way she wanted them to. She put it down to exercise, and the blood rushing to parts it hasn't visited for years. I cultivated the librarian look, which I thought complemented the store: the pencil skirt, the cardigan, the sensible shoes, the glasses perched on top of my short, choppy, messy, beach hair (some colour in there, as I was vain enough to want to hide some of the grey, but it was true, if I was honest, I had let myself go a bit since my husband died). Somewhere out there – when I was ready to look, and I didn't know when that would be – was my Mr Rochester, my Mr Darcy, who would appreciate that look, and my qualities. I could run – a bit – if I needed to, but since James died, stranding me here, I kept myself to myself. I didn't need to compare myself to the teeth 'n' bum beauties in the gyms or the latest exercise classes.

'I'll think about it,' I said, smiling.

The idea of the Batman and me sharing a whisky and a chat was amusing, and just a fantasy in Lacey's head. A fantasy I knew she would want to muscle in on if I let her.

'Let me know how you get on. Ask him if he wants to meet your friend. I know a lot about the history of Gotham.'

Mainly through Harry, although her own family was Gotham middle-class. Harry had been my husband's best friend at work. He and Lacey had been kind and welcoming when we had first moved to Gotham.

I arranged the stock according to the Dewey Decimal system, so I knew where the history and the local history books were. There were surprisingly few on Gotham City. I put the two or three I found on the reading desk.

While I sat behind the counter with a cup of tea, the afternoon rain drizzling down the windows, I considered the Bat. Did I want to help this strange, self-appointed vigilante do goodness knows what? He claimed to be solving a murder, but why weren't the Gotham City Police Department on that? Why didn't he trust them to do their jobs? Did he think he was Sherlock Holmes? It wasn't really wise to allow strange men into the store after hours, but he had offered no threat or violence towards me, so I thought maybe I would take the risk. I wondered if I dared to drip feed him my books, to get him to keep coming back. For some curious reason, I wanted to understand the man behind the mask, even if I couldn't know his name. I wanted to know why he did it. I didn't know, however, how I was going to engage him in conversation. He hadn't seemed the chatty type. He had come into the store on a mission, but I had interrupted him and deflected him from it. I didn't know if he had finished with the first book, so I decided to leave it out for him, with one other. I would leave him a note, telling him I was upstairs in the living room if he had any questions.

I didn't go to bed, but sat in the armchair, my feet up on a stool, my legs wrapped up in a blanket, to wait for him. I was confident I would hear him, having left open the door to the stairs, and the door into the store. I started reading one of the history books I had withheld, a whisky and water on the coffee table beside me. It wasn't long before my eyes were closing and my head was nodding.

I jerked awake with a start, feeling cold. Before I could look at my watch, I realised he was opposite me, perched on the edge of the other armchair, staring sternly at me. I sat up hurriedly.

He held up the book I had been attempting to read. He had taken it from my lap, and I had been completely oblivious, undisturbed by his walking up the stairs, his entry into the room, his approach.

'How long . . .?' I asked.

'Long enough.' He waggled the book. 'You were holding things back from me.'

'I'm sorry.'

'What were you hoping to achieve?'

How could I explain? That I wanted him to come upstairs, take off his mask and talk to me? I could have conversations with women, sometimes with their husbands, but it had been a while since a man had sat where he was, sharing a drink and confidences. I had not put the world to rights with a man since my husband died. I couldn't remember the last time I had had a serious conversation with a young man. Probably not since I stopped working. Not counting conversations about books with earnest young students.

'Did someone ask you to do it?'

'No-one knows,' I lied. 'No stranger has approached me, to talk about you.' That bit was true.

'Good.' He pulled off the gauntlets, revealing bandages on his hands like a boxer's, like a poor Dickensian character, so he could unfold a piece of paper: the piece of paper I had used as a bookmark in the first book he had been dipping into. 'What's this?'

I knew what was on it – a not-very-good joke:

Why couldn't the Gotham City Police Department arrest the crooked building contractor?

'Where did it come from?' he asked.

'I just found it in the store – wedged between a couple of books.'

But I couldn't remember which two books. I had assumed someone had found it, probably on the floor, and just shoved it there, at face level. I guessed it had been dropped by the supercilious guy, but I had not got round to offering it back to him.

'They had no concrete evidence.'

'What?'

'That's the answer – they had no concrete evidence.'

He was looking at me intently, like he expected that to mean something to me. When I didn't respond, he folded the paper and secreted it somewhere before starting to relax a bit, sitting properly in the chair, flicking through the index of the book. I rose, to close the door to the stairs.

'No. Leave it open,' he said.

I left it.

'Can I get you anything?' I asked. He looked up, curious. 'Tea? Coffee? Something stronger? Are you hungry?'

'I don't get your obsession with tea.' The strange husky growl was starting to relax a little. I didn't understand how he could have a conversation, speaking like that. Maybe that was the point. Maybe he didn't intend to talk much.

'It's what we are brought up on. You Americans, you just don't know how to make it properly.'

'I tried it in London. Your coffee is awful, by the way. Your English coffee. You don't know how to make that properly. I'm fine, thank you.'

His tone said, shut up and let me work. I sat down. It was one-thirty in the morning. Watching him read, flicking back and forth from index to page, was soporific. My eyes started to close, then my head would jerk up. He looked up.

'Why don't you go to bed?' he said. 'I'll be all right.'

'I won't feel safe till I have shut the window behind you.'

He shrugged. 'Lie down on the couch, then. I'll wake you when I leave.'

I had to think about that. Lying down and going to sleep would leave me vulnerable, but I was vulnerable that first night, when I came down to the store to investigate, and he had not harmed me then. I had also invited him into my space. I was too tired; I had no idea how long he would stay, so I lay down, draping the blanket over my legs. I dozed.

Something roused me. The brief rustling sound of a pile of paper crashing to the floor. My eyes were open and I was sitting up almost before my brain had registered what was happening. His chair was empty, the book he had been reading steepled on the carpet. He was over by the dining table, leaning on it with both hands. He had removed the cowl, finally. When he realised I had woken up, he turned his face towards me, looking at me over his shoulder.

He had a shock of dark hair, quite long, that stood out around his head, as if he had put his fingers in a socket. Strands fell down over his forehead. His face was white, as if covered in some sort of make-up, with black smudges round his eyes. The look that he turned on me was full of pain. I swung my feet to the floor.

'Are you okay?' I asked. 'What's the matter?'

Without thinking, I went over to him. I placed a hand on his hand, looking up into his face. Beautiful grey eyes. He took a step or two away, breaking eye contact and the physical link between us.

'I'm – it's – I'll be okay. In a minute.'

He paced up and down for a while, hands on hips, occasionally on his head. While he was doing this, I picked up the book, smoothing the ruffled pages and placing it, closed, on the coffee table. When, after a few minutes, he passed close to me, I again put a hand on his arm. He stopped and became still. This time he didn't shake me off, although how he could feel my touch through his armour, I had no idea.

'You look like you've had a shock,' I said.

'I found something – I wasn't expecting.'

'Bad news?'

He didn't answer. I fixed him a whisky and passed him the glass. He took it, a little suspiciously.

'For the shock,' I said.

He sipped it then pulled a face. 'Wow, that's . . . what is it?'

'Whisky. Scotch whisky.'

'That's rough.'

'Seriously? It's fifteen year old single malt. But you're too young to drink whisky.'

'An old man's drink, is it?'

'It's a drink for a fireside. Young men don't usually sit by firesides.'

They are usually out, doing and dying.

We sat and drank in silence. He gazed into the middle distance, lost in his own thoughts. Then he turned back to me.

'Do you recognise me?' he asked.

I shook my head. 'It's the make-up. No, seriously, I don't know who you are. I assume that means you don't have to kill me.'

He didn't smile. Not that funny, then.

'Best you don't know who I am. You don't want to attract the wrong sort of attention.'

'You're frightening me now.'

'I don't mean to. But you must be very careful who you let into the store. Does it have CCTV?'

'No. I can't afford to put in something like that. You see how I live – ' I gestured to the small, cramped room.

'Who's your landlord?'

'The Wayne Foundation.'

'Really?'

He seemed surprised that the Wayne Foundation had property. It wasn't what they were known for. He said he vaguely knew someone who worked there, so he would try to make contact and see if they would help.

'That – would be amazing,' I said. 'Thank you. Look, it's late – '

'I need to go.'

'I was going to say, you can crash here. On my bed.'

'I couldn't possibly.'

'It's fine.'

'Deprive you of your bed, I mean.'

'I often fall asleep out here. I – don't like going to bed much.'

He looked at me quizzically, but I told him that was a story for another time, if there was one.

He followed me into the bedroom, with (for once) the neatly-made bed. Sliding past me, he went to the window. Outside was the fire escape for the building, and the service alley behind. He took it all in.

'I can't,' he said. 'You sleep here. I can crash on the couch if I need to. But I need to read.'

'Can I shut the stockroom window? I don't feel safe with it open.'

He nodded.

As I set off towards the stairs, he went into the kitchen.

'Help yourself,' I called. 'Whatever you can find.'

Outside the stockroom window, in the service alley, there were strange rustling noises and possibly the sound of feet running away. God only knew what people got up to at night round the back. I shivered as I closed the window, as tight as it would go. Perhaps he could get the Wayne Foundation to put on some locks. I hurried upstairs to the warmth and the lamplight, closing and locking the door to the store behind me.

He was already seated back in his chair, the book open in his hands. He looked up as I put the key in the lock of the stair door, holding out a hand for the keys. Strangely, inexplicably, I gave them to him.

Getting ready for bed with a stranger in the living room was a slightly unnerving experience. I had to remember to lock the bathroom door, and I dithered about deciding what to wear to sleep in, although I did not really believe I was at risk of being assaulted. I just felt vulnerable in night clothes. But eventually I did put my nightwear on and climbed into bed. I could hear nothing from the living room, and I did not dare attempt to peek in, to see what he was doing. Lying in bed, my heart racing a little, I was resigned to being awake for most of the night.