Wapping was one stop north, on the other side of the river. Overnight, the cold front had blown itself out. News crawls warned of the poisonous air as a blanket of smog descended upon the city. The Overground platform resembled a scene from a zombie flick, crowded with people wearing face masks.
My eyes watered as I stumbled onto the sidewalk, the inside of my nostrils stinging as though I’d just snorted low-grade crank. Pus-colored haze obscured the tops of cranes and high-rises. The air smelled like burning tires and hand sanitizer. I put on my shades and found a newsstand. In front of it, a plastic sign with the headlines shuddered in the breeze:
NAZIS ON THE MOVE: WHERE WILL THEY GO NEXT?
MAYOR WARNS OF DEADLY FOG
VIRUS DEATHS MOUNT
I bought a couple of papers and wandered aimlessly till I found an American-style diner that was open. I barricaded myself at a table in the far corner, ordered rare steak with a side of bacon and a pot of coffee. The bacon was English bacon, fatty and more like ham. The steak was well done and mostly gristle. In New York, a place like this would last about a week. Here it was packed. Still, I finished everything off, ordered more coffee, and took my last Vyvanse as an eye-opener.
The carbon-based media had nothing about Harold Vertigan’s murder. Either his body hadn’t been discovered yet or the neo-Nazis and toxic fog, the Chinese virus and the most recent terrorist attacks in the U.S., had kept him out of the news, for now.
After the waiter brought more coffee, I furtively poured a slug of whiskey into my mug, set aside the papers, and began scrolling through the online news on Gryffin’s mobile. Within minutes I hit pay dirt—not only news of Harold’s death, but a guy named Nathan Ballingstead.
Harold’s murder had just been made public on a Hampstead news site. His body had been discovered by his cleaning lady around seven that morning. Neighbors claimed to have heard nothing, and police were scrutinizing surveillance video in the area. The police suspected robbery—a year earlier, a man had murdered a bookseller for a first edition of The Wind in the Willows, valued at fifty thousand pounds.
But until someone did an inventory of Harold’s stock and library, there’d be no way of determining if anything had been stolen from the shelves. There was no sign of forced entry, and no mention of the symbol scrawled in blood on his forehead, a detail I assumed the police would keep to themselves as long as they could. The thought of being captured on CCTV footage made my skin crawl, but there was nothing I could do about that now. Another good reason Gryffin and I had parted, anyway.
On the upside, the London book-collecting world was small enough that at least one reporter had already spoken to the guy I’d targeted:
“The world has lost a prince among booksellers,” said Nathan Ballingstead, himself a noted figure in the rarefied sphere of antiquarian book collectors. “This isn’t just a heinous crime directed against a single human being: this is the wanton slaughter of an entire world of literary wisdom and insight.” When asked as to the ultimate disposition of Vertigan’s library, Mr. Ballingstead said that would “depend on how the investigation unfolds, of course. But myself and several others close to Harold are in discussions with his solicitor.”
Based on what I’d seen of high-end dealers at the Strand, Harold’s cronies would be swarming around his shop like great whites butting a shark cage. I found several other articles on the murder. Nathan Ballingstead was quoted in every single one. The guy was a news whore.
I settled up and went back outside, found a quiet side street where I made the call on the burner Quinn had given me. Ballingstead answered after one ring.
“Hello, who’s this?”
“Hi—my name is Shelley Wilson, I’m a journalist with the Tribune.” I tried to smooth the rough edges from my New York accent, which might be recognizable if anyone questioned Ballingstead later. “I wanted to know if you had a few minutes to talk about Harold Vertigan’s death, and maybe a bit about the antiquarian book business in general?”
“Yeah, I thought so—my mobile’s been going all night.” An orotund voice, like a self-satisfied Stephen Fry’s. “What would you like to know?”
“Actually, I wondered if you might be able to meet with me. I’m in London covering another story. I could come by your flat, or we could meet somewhere else if you’d like.”
“Sure, come on by.” He gave me the address and directions. “Ring when you get here, and I’ll buzz you in.”
It took me a while to find his place. I crossed paths with countless dog walkers, then a group of uniformed children, all wearing too-big surgical masks that revealed only their eyes. After a few blocks I realized I’d gone the wrong way. I retraced my steps, brooding.
I knew several runners when I worked at the Strand. All men, they were a vital element of the book trade back when it was part of the city’s creative and sociocultural DNA. They served the same function that a lobster does: bottom-feeders who sucked up dross and repurposed it for folks higher up the food chain as something highly desirable, and more expensive.
Runners spent their days scouring used bookstores, flea markets, estate sales, tag sales, church bazaars, and dumpsters, looking for something to sell. Ace doubles and old paperbacks with lurid cover art; Famous Monsters of Filmland and Black Mask magazines; volumes bound in morocco or vellum or gilt-lettered cloth that were worthless as literature but looked nice on people’s shelves.
The guys I knew were extraordinarily knowledgeable. No one buys crap, no matter how cheap it is. More than once I saw some junkie or wino get the bum’s rush for toting a shopping bag full of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. The best runners could spot a copy of Amazing Fantasy #15—better known as Spider-Man #1—or Poe’s Grotesque and Arabesque on a white-elephant table at a distance of thirty feet, then talk a church volunteer into selling it to them for fifty cents instead of a buck. At the end of a week or month, they’d gather bags full of books and vintage pulps and make the rounds of dealers.
That’s a lost world. Everyone does business online now, and there’s only a handful of runners left. I was about to meet one of them.