Chapter Two

He was gone in the morning when I woke, of course, leaving the keys on the dining table. He was never going to let me see him sleeping. He had taken the book, so I wasn't going to be able to search for whatever it was that had unnerved him. Once I was dressed and had shut the stockroom window behind him, I made myself some tea, then sat on the couch, to hug to myself the memory of the night a young man had slept in my apartment. The first time for a long while that a man of any age had slept in my apartment. Well – I assume he had slept at some point. It was always possible that he had disappeared as soon as he thought I was asleep. If he had helped himself to anything in the kitchen, used any crockery or cutlery, it was not apparent. It was almost as if I had imagined him.

'Oh. My. God,' Lacey exclaimed. 'Not only did he take off the cowl, he slept over. The Batman slept over. At yours.'

'Uh-huh.' I smiled, enjoying her astonishment, even though I was not completely certain that he had.

We were drinking coffee down in the store, sitting at the counter on stools.

'And you didn't invite him into bed with you?'

'No.' How could I explain what had actually happened? It sounded quite lame, even to me.

'What are you like?'

'He was wearing the suit! Nothing could possibly have happened. Nothing would have happened anyway.'

'You don't know that. Maybe he likes older women.'

'Maybe he doesn't.' Not this much older, anyway.

Old and dried up. Mother Nature really doesn't like us once we are past child-bearing. Mother Nature – and society.

'Come on, tell – what there is to tell. What's he like?'

'He's . . . ' Edward Scissorhands. Possibly the pop group Kiss – although their makeup was more careful, more extreme.

And . . . ?'

'And what?'

'Didn't you fancy him, even a bit?'

I shrugged. 'I don't know, really. I didn't think about it.'

I didn't tell her I wanted to put my arms round him, that he looked in need of a hug. That I wanted to comfort him.

She expressed her frustration in a shriek.

'If he comes back, you've got to let me come round,' she said.

'It's the middle of the night! It will look weird if you suddenly show up.'

'When he's due round, I'll tell Harry I'm staying over.'

'In a one-bed apartment?'

She shrugged. 'You and the Bat made it work.'

That was true.

'I doubt he'll come back. He stole one of my books.'

'One rule for him, then. Maybe he'll push the cash through your mailbox.'

Life went back to normal. No mysterious notes appeared on the store counter, no envelope containing five dollars dropped through the mailbox. I sat in the store, reading, or I dusted books. Lacey came over for coffee and we amused ourselves working through the history section, pulling out each book and flicking through, looking for secrets, although what form the secret would take, we had no idea – we just assumed we would recognise it when we saw it. Our hands got very dusty and dirty. No new notes, no more riddles hidden away.

The days passed. I had a call to ask if we would remove a library of books from a grand house in Gotham Heights, one of the really posh parts of the city, so I arranged a day and Lacey and I set off. We hired a van, as the photos suggested the contents of the library were quite large. We liked the grand house clearances. It was a chance to see how the other half lived. Sometimes the benefactors provided coffee and very nice cake; sometimes it was just us and a professional caretaker or housekeeper. Sometimes it was the elderly owner themselves, putting their affairs in order, to save their family the trouble. Or perhaps they were just bored with their books, and wanted to make space for something else. Elderly owners were often the chattiest, so it was useful if there were two of us, one to box up and load the books while the other one did the conversation thing. The conversation thing quite often led to a gratuity, like a payment for our time and attention.

'So many lonely old people,' Lacey would remark.

She was better at it than I was, she was endlessly curious and not afraid to ask personal questions. If Lacey did the chat, she came out knowing all about the family. She didn't mind sharing about her own life, which helped. If I did the chat, I came out knowing the history of the books, where they had all come from, and what the owner liked about them – or didn't.

This house clearance was different. The owner of these books had been brutally murdered, fairly recently. When we approached the house, up the sweeping drive, we both recognised it from the news footage.

'Holy shit,' Lacey breathed.

Asmund Larsson, head of a large company in the construction industry, had been murdered in his own office downtown, a month or two previously, and no-one in the building had been aware of a thing. The building CCTV gave no clues as to who might have carried out such an atrocity. For atrocity it was, not just an average opportunistic knifing during a mugging, or a shooting during a burglary gone wrong. This murder was intended, planned. He had been suffocated with a plastic bag, and rumour had it that something had been stuck to his eyes. With something sharp.

'We can't go in there,' she said.

'But someone phoned up, made the booking. We're expected,' I said.

'It's – too soon. We'll be intruding – won't we?'

'They can always send us away if we are. Besides – I bet the family aren't here. I bet there will only be staff or security guards.'

There was a sweep of driveway in front of the house. We parked to one side, near a door that looked like it could be the tradesmen's entrance. We presented ourselves, carrying collapsible crates, at the front door, and were admitted by a member of staff, flanked by an armed security guard. Even after my years in America, guns still made me uneasy. And this was licensed open carry – like the Wild West, as far as I was concerned.

The staff member, a butler-type, possibly of Hispanic origin, in brown overalls, showed us into the library. There was a whole wall of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.

'Oh my,' I said. 'I wasn't expecting so many.'

'You can take them all?' the butler asked.

'We'll do our best.'

While he went to fetch us coffee, Lacey discovered the ladder that ran along the length of the shelves, to allow you to reach the highest ones.

'Oh wow, look at this! I have never used one of these before.'

It was indeed the biggest collection of books we had ever been asked to clear. She went up the ladder and started dropping them down on to a convenient couch we dragged into the right position. She was a little too high up for me to take the books from her hand. I packed them as fast and efficiently as I could. The security guard, obviously bored and pleased to have something to do, carried the crates out to the van. We moved it nearer to the front door, as the family weren't at home and that was the shortest route. There was no time to sort the books; they had to go into the crates in the order they came off the shelves. Eventually we ran out of crates. The butler managed to find us some battered cardboard boxes from one of the garages, but after that the security guard, Lacey and I were just taking piles from the shelves and carrying them to the van. Although we stacked them, we knew they wouldn't stay like that once the van was moving.

'This is going to be one unholy mess when we get back,' she said.

'And the van has to go back,' I said.

'Annoying.'

The butler kindly made us sandwiches before we left, and we sat on the couch to eat them. Lacey tried to engage him in conversation, but he was very reluctant to chat about the family and his late boss.

'Maybe he's still too traumatised,' I said.

'Mm, maybe. But you'd think he would want to talk about something like this, wouldn't you?'

'Not necessarily. You don't know what his instructions are from the family. He doesn't know if we will sell any information we get to the press.'

'You're so practical,' she sighed.

There were too many books for the store room, so we had to put some of the crates and boxes between two of the stacks. I called the shelving units stacks, pretending, I supposed, that I was in a university library, and not a dingy second-hand bookstore. I usually booked clearance appointments for one of the quiet days in the store, so once we had unloaded and returned the van, we retired upstairs for a gin and tonic. It was late afternoon, but Lacey's husband Harry would not be home for another three hours at least, so she had time to sit down.

'We've earned it,' she said.

One gin and tonic turned into two or three, and those on an empty stomach, so I was feeling a bit fragile the next morning when I came down to open the store and was confronted by the boxes. It was Wednesday, not usually busy, so I wound up the window blinds, turned over the closed sign and unbolted the door. I couldn't really afford to turn away business, however small the transaction. I parked my mug of tea by the till and dragged out the first of the boxes, to start investigating our haul. It was too heavy to lift up, so I started to unpack the contents on to the counter.

The box was almost empty when the door opened and the bell jangled. A young man, followed by an older man, entered. The young man had long, lank dark hair and a very expensive overcoat over a no doubt very expensive suit. I had seen many coats and suits like that at James's company. We were great believers in value for money, so he had never bought designer or bespoke, always off the peg. Once or twice I wished he had: he looked so smart in a suit. The older man was smart, but not so expensively dressed, and carried a clipboard. It was obvious who was the senior person.

The young man surveyed the store from his position by the door. Then he looked towards me, at the counter, with my untidy sprawl of books.

'Mrs Emma Rossingdale? I am from the Wayne Foundation. We – ' he indicated the other man ' – have come to do a survey of the store, to see if you need a security update.'

'I hate to ask,' I said, 'but do you have any ID?'

'Very sensible.'

They fished in their inside pockets and produced photo IDs.

'Mr . . . Williams,' I said.

'My colleague, Mr Walker, will go round the premises, if that's okay.'

I nodded my assent. Mr Walker pulled a pen from his inside pocket and disappeared purposefully into the stacks.

Mr Williams strolled over to the counter and started to sift casually through the pile of books. He was young to be so well-dressed. And impertinent. He did not make eye contact with me, and appeared to have no intention of engaging with me. It was like he had another agenda.

'So . . . does this mean if the Foundation make improvements, my rent will go up? That's what usually happens, isn't it?' I asked.

'I'm going to be honest, Mrs Rossingdale.' At last he looked up at me. 'The Foundation had kind of forgotten we had this building. It's – ah . . . the Foundation had this idea, a while ago, that we would get into social enterprise. We acquired the building and made a start. Then the project fell by the wayside.'

'So . . . have you decided to sell the building?'

'No, we haven't. And we won't be putting up the rent. Just to reassure you.'

There was something strangely familiar about his voice. I didn't recognise his face.

'I have read your – ah – notes. I understand you're a widow?' he continued.

'Yes.'

'My condolences.'

'Thank you.'

He was still sifting through the books while he talked to me, occasionally running his fingers through his hair to flick it out of his eyes. He asked where they came from, so I told him we did house clearances: only books, though. He wandered to the stacks and saw the boxes; then he followed Mr Walker into the stock room.

'All from one house?' he asked.

'I can't possibly say.'

Idly he picked up a book. He turned it in his hands, elegant hands, opening it to look at the fly leaf, before putting it down and turning his attention to another one. I could have done with him asking to buy some of them.

Mr Walker indicated he was finished. Mr Williams asked if they could go upstairs. Hurriedly I flipped over the open sign to closed, flicked the latch down and followed them up into the apartment. I couldn't let strangers wander unaccompanied round my home.

It was not a comfortable experience, even if it meant improvements and made my life nicer. I became acutely aware of the piles of books and papers stacked haphazardly everywhere, the breakfast things not washed up in the kitchen, the packets and gadgets on the work surfaces, such as they were. Mr Walker moved round without comment; Mr Williams took more of an interest in my personal stuff. He held up a framed photo.

'Your husband?' he asked.

'Yes.'

His direct way of speaking also seemed familiar, but perhaps he was a New Yorker: they had the reputation in the UK of being reluctant to waste words, including please and thank you. I could only identify a few regional American accents if they were broad. I was not very good at differentiating among upper- or middle-class East Coast ones. He studied the photo, nodding, lips slightly pursed, before carefully replacing it. He could see from the dust marks exactly where it went.

He followed Mr Walker and I followed him into the small kitchen. Mr Walker made a show of inspecting the window. I pointed out a problem with the electrics and a fault in the cooker. They exchanged glances: they looked like the sort of Americans who tended not to cook much, but to eat out. Tricky when you were on a tight budget. In the bathroom, thankfully not draped with my underwear, I brought the inadequate shower to their attention. Then Mr Walker indicated my bedroom door with a gesture.

'May we go in?' Mr Williams asked.

I nodded, but I blushed, remembering the unmade bed, the heap of worn clothes on a chair. Mr Walker appeared to ignore all of that, heading straight for the window, outside which was the fire escape for the building. Mr Williams, however, appeared to take it all in, the whole untidy mess of it. I bit my lower lip in embarrassment.

'I wonder if shutters would work on the windows, given there is the fire escape outside,' Mr Williams said to Mr Walker.

'I need to be able to open the windows,' I said. 'I don't have air conditioning.'

Gotham summer nights could be stifling.

'Wooden shutters would do it. Much nicer than metal. Shutters would give you more privacy, as well.'

Mr Williams turned his gaze on me for a moment.

Without a word being spoken, the two men were able to agree that they were finished, and descended to the store. Mr Williams said that they would be in touch when arrangements had been made for the work to be done.

'Will you notify me what work that is going to be?' I asked. Not a word had been said about any work, apart from shutters.

'Would you like us to put it in writing?' Mr Williams asked.

'Yes, please.'

Then I would have a contact address and phone number. They had not been the most present of landlords up to now.

He nodded. He held out a hand. I shook it.

'Thank you, Mrs Rossingdale.'

'No, thank you.'

In the doorway, he turned to ask how long it would take me to sort through all the books from the clearance. I said a week, perhaps longer. I asked if there was something he was interested in, that I could keep an eye out for, but he said no. Then they were gone. I stood in the doorway and watched them walk up the road to a black SUV. It looked very much like Mr Walker got in the driver's seat, while Mr Williams got in the back. I remembered the Batman's warning, about being careful who I let into the store. Despite the seemingly genuine IDs, had I made a serious error of judgment? I had also forgotten to ask about CCTV, but the Wayne Foundation had turned up quite quickly after the Batman said he would try to contact them. Perhaps they already had a note of CCTV. And the Batman clearly had a more powerful connection than he had let on.