12

 

Covetousness: another of the Seven Deadly Sins.

 

 

9.05 a.m.

 

STILL SMARTING OVER his cowardly behaviour in Mr Bloom’s office, Frank takes a lift from the Basement to the Red Floor, then rides a double-helix strand of escalators, zigzagging up through the levels. As one escalator after another lifts him higher and higher, a vague, dismal dread settles in his stomach. The prospect of the day ahead, with its tedium, its irritations and its unpredictable dangers, is a gloomy one, scarcely alleviated by the knowledge that for him it is going to be the last of its kind. His thoughts start to clot like bad milk, and he literally has to shake his head to disperse them. Eight hours, he tells himself. Less, counting breaks. Less than eight hours of this life to go, and then he is a free man. He can grit his teeth and endure the job for another eight hours, can’t he?

On a whim he gets off at the Blue Floor. There is never any pattern to Frank’s working day once the store opens except the timing of his breaks, which are staggered with those of his fellow Ghosts so that at least eighty per cent of the Tactical Security workforce is out on the shop floor at any given moment. He travels at random, letting impulse and the ebb and flow of events direct him. The difference between the hours leading up to opening time and the hours after is the same as the difference between waking thought and dreaming – a matter of control. Frank surrenders himself to the random.

Finding himself in Taxidermy, he wanders through to Dolls, from there to Classic Toys, and from there to Collectable Miniatures, staying with a knot of customers, then latching on to a lone browser, then hovering for a while beside an open cabinet of temptingly pocketable hand-painted thimbles.

He keeps an eye on customers carrying large shoulder-bags, customers with rolled-up newspapers clutched under their arms, customers with long coats on, customer pushing prams with blanket-swaddled toddlers on board. They could all be perfectly innocent. They could all be as guilty as sin. His job is to hope for the former but always suspect the latter.

He watches a customer engage a sales assistant in conversation, and immediately he starts looking around for an accomplice. It is an old pro trick. While one shoplifter diverts the sales assistant’s attention, his partner makes the boost. In this instance, however, it seems that the customer is on his own, and is genuinely interested in some Meissen figurines.

Then a pair of Burlingtons swan past, and Frank moves off silently in their wake.

The Burlingtons are a cult of spoilt teenage boys who parade their parents’ wealth like a badge of honour, wearing the glaringly expensive designer trainers, the crisp white socks, the tight black trousers, and the gold-moiré blouson jackets that are the unofficial uniform of their rich-kid tribe. These two, it transpires, are on the hunt for rare baseball cards, and Frank dogs them so closely that he could, if he wanted to, raise his hand and stroke the fuzz of their close-shaved hair, half of which has been dyed black, half bleached blond.

The Burlingtons lead him into Showbusiness Souvenirs, where he detaches himself from them in order to circulate among the displays of stage costumes, old props, production stills, foyer cards, autographed publicity shots of long-faded stars, and crumbling movie and concert posters preserved behind clear perspex.

The centrepiece of Showbusiness Souvenirs is a locked, reinforced-glass case that holds, among other things, a pair of incontinence pants soiled by an internationally renowned rock’n’roll star during his drug-sodden twilight years; the polyp removed from a former US president’s lower intestine; the skull of a universally despised yet unfathomably successful blue-collar comedian; the steering wheel from the car fatally crashed by a screen legend; a blunted bullet retrieved from a dictator’s shattered head by a souvenir-seeking soldier at the climax of a successful coup d’etat; the stub of the last cigar ever smoked by an unusually long-lived revolutionary leader; a specimen of blood extracted post mortem from the body of a notoriously bibulous politician and decanted into a phial disrespectfully labelled “100% Proof”; a preserving jar containing the aborted foetus of the love-child begotten by an actress and a prominent member of the clergy; a razor-thin cross-section of a famous theoretical physicist’s brain sandwiched between two plates of glass; and a framed arrangement of pubic-hair clippings from various porn-film artistes. All of the above items are accompanied by certificates testifying to their authenticity.

A ponytailed man in a navy blue suit is loitering beside this cabinet of curiosities, and at the sight of him Frank’s nape hairs start to prickle, as they did at the sight of the girl on the train.

There is nothing intrinsically suspicious about what the ponytailed man is doing. Plenty of people linger over the collection, gazing at the rare and expensive mortal mementoes with disgust or fascination or a ghoulish combination of the two. And he isn’t exhibiting any of the tics and mannerisms that usually prefigure an act of store-theft. His casual air seems genuine. He isn’t aiming surreptitious glances at the sales assistants or other customers, one of the “flagging” signs Frank was trained to recognise. His breathing is controlled and steady. But Frank doesn’t always go by visual clues alone.

Frank would be surprised if over the course of his thirty-three-year career he hadn’t developed an instinct about shoplifters. In the same way that older deep-sea fishermen can somehow sense where the big shoals are going to be and experienced palaeontolgists sometimes seem to know that a patch of ground will yield fossils even before the first spade has struck soil, Frank can identify a potential shoplifter almost without looking. It is as if thieving thoughts send out ripples in the air like a stone cast into a pond, subtle fluctuations which he has become attuned to and which set alarm bells ringing in his subconscious. It is not the most reliable of talents, and has been known to mislead him, but as a rough guide it is right far more frequently than it is wrong.

The closer he gets to the ponytailed man, the deeper his conviction grows that the man is planning to steal something. Possibly not from this department, and certainly not from the case in front of him, not unless he is carrying a sledgehammer or a set of skeleton keys, but soon, very soon. The man is pausing here to prepare himself mentally, turning his intentions over and over in his head. Outwardly he betrays not the slightest sign of anxiety or anticipation. A professional.

When the ponytailed man finally moves away from the glass case, Frank falls in behind him and follows him like a silent second shadow.

They proceed out of Showbusiness Souvenirs in tandem, the suspect unsuspecting of his pursuer. Their course takes them away from the centre of the building, and the further from the atrium they go, the less frequented, less splendid, and less brightly illuminated the departments become. Soon they arrive at the dim and dusty perimeter departments known as the Peripheries.

A kind of commercial vortex holds sway on the floors of Days: the closer you get to the centre of the building, the more popular the departments become. The most heavily in-demand departments with the fattest profit margins are clustered around the tiered hoops overlooking the Menagerie, while, at the opposite end of the retail scale, the departments that constitute the Peripheries are consigned to the far-flung edges by the slightness of their sales figures. The only exception to this rule is the Red Floor, which, being the one floor every customer has no choice but to visit, consists of nothing but in-demand departments.

Conditions in the Peripheries are commensurate with their lowly status. You might expect them to enjoy windows and a view to compensate for their remoteness and for the fact that they are accessible from only three adjacent departments – in the case of those at the corners of the building, only two – instead of the usual four, but though the Peripheries possess exterior walls, the exterior walls are solid. No windows on the shop floor of Days means no outside world to distract the customers within from their shopping. The only natural light to be found anywhere in the store enters via the clear half of the dome, a semicircular gift of sunshine to nourish the chlorophyll of the Menagerie.

The Peripheries specialise in commodities that are obscure, exotic, inessential, or just plain arcane. Some of the items on offer are of great value, but buyers are few and far between, hence trade is always slow and sales figures always low.

Quiet, intense, obsessive men and women, all experts in their particular fields, staff the counters here, and so absorbed are they in their daily round of cataloguing recondite items of stock and rearranging merchandise according to abstruse personal systems that they barely notice when the ponytailed man passes. When Frank ghosts by a few paces behind, his rubber-soled shoes padding softly on the carpeted floor, they fail to notice at all.

Through Used Cardboard, through Occult Paraphernalia, through Vinyl & 8-Track, through Beer Bottles, the quiet, leisurely chase continues. If the ponytailed man pauses for a moment to inspect some piece of merchandise, Frank pauses to inspect a piece of merchandise, too. If the ponytailed man slackens or quickens his pace, Frank slackens or quickens his. If the ponytailed man scratches his earlobe or purses his lips, Frank finds himself reflexively copying the action. He becomes the ponytailed man’s doppelgänger, matching him move for move, gesture for gesture, in split-second-delayed symmetry.

At one point, in Nazi Memorabilia, the ponytailed man glances behind him, and catches sight of a man dressed as smartly as you would expect a Days customer to be dressed, a man intently inspecting a display of Luftwaffe uniform insignia, a man in every respect unremarkable, unmemorable. A second after he has glimpsed Frank’s face, the ponytailed man has forgotten it. When, a department later, he happens to look over his shoulder and catch sight of Frank again, he doesn’t even register that this is the very same person he saw before.

On they go, shadower and shadowee, possible perpetrator and Ghost, until they reach Cigars & Matchbooks.

As the ponytailed man passes through the connecting passageway to this particular department, there is an all but imperceptible stiffening of his spine, and Frank knows in his gut that this is where the suspect is going to make his play.

He utters a subvocal cough to activate his Eye-link.

Eye, says a male screen-jockey.

Hubble.

Mr Hubble! What can I do for you?

The connection is so clear that Frank can hear other voices in the background, keyboards rattling, the trundle of chair-wheels across linoleum, a muted but urgent warble of activity underpinned by the cicada whine emitted by hundreds of heated cathode-ray tubes – the ambient hubbub of the Eye leaking through into his ear.

I’m on Blue, trailing a possible into Cigars & Matchbooks.

Cigars & Matchbooks? Cor, strike a light, guv! The screen-jockey giggles at his own joke. Eye employees and their tiresome sense of humour are aspects of the job Frank will definitely feel no nostalgia for in his retirement.

He’s a white male. About a metre eighty. Medium build, I’d say seventy-five to eighty kilos. Early thirties. Suit, tie. Ponytail. Two small hoops in right earlobe.

Hang on. A ferocious tapping of keys. Cigars & Matchbooks, Cigars & Matchbooks... OK, got him. Corporate non-conformist type.

If you say so. I think he’s a professional. I don’t recognise the face, but that doesn’t mean a thing.

Early bird, isn’t he?

The early bird catches the worm unawares. Or so he hopes.

Nice one, Mr Hubble. That was almost funny.

Eye, please just get on with what you’re supposed to be doing.

Actually, says the screen-jockey with a school-playground inflection, I’ve already triangulated him.

A quick upward glance confirms this. The security camera above Frank’s head is locked on to the ponytailed man, following his every movement. In another corner of the ceiling a second camera also has a fix on him. Swivelling on their armatures, the two cameras track his progress like a pair of accusing fingers.

I can’t see you yet, Mr Hubble, the screen-jockey adds.

I’m about ten metres behind.

Oh yes. It’s so easy to miss you lot. Want me to start recording?

Yes, I do.

Okey-doo. Smile and say cheese.

Please, says Frank, striving to inject a note of impatience into his ventriloqual drone.

Sor-ree, says the screen-jockey, and mutters to a colleague, off-mic but loud enough for Frank to hear, I’ve got old Hubble Bubble, Toil and Trouble.

His colleague offers a sympathetic groan.

Frank says nothing, and two seconds later the short-wave automatically cuts the connection in order to conserve its tiny lithium cell.

The Cigars portion of Cigars & Matchbooks resembles the smoking room of a gentlemen’s club, with magazine-strewn coffee tables and green-shaded lamps, dark-framed etchings on the oak-panelled walls and bookcases lined with old volumes of the kind bought by the metre. Lounging on the buttoned-leather furniture, their feet resting on footstools, customers – predominantly male – make their selections from humidors held open for them by liveried sales assistants. Some, unable to wait until they get home to sample their purchases, have lit up and are sitting back contentedly puffing out plumes of smoke, idly leafing through a periodical or admiring the shine on their toecaps.

The Matchbooks portion, which once boasted the floorspace of an entire Violet Periphery department to itself, now occupies a partitioned-off area roughly a tenth of the size it used to enjoy. When the Day brothers took over the Violet Floor for themselves, Matchbooks was merged with – though perhaps the correct phrase should be absorbed by – Cigars, and in order to adapt to its reduced circumstances, most of its existing stock was sold off and its staff whittled down to one. It could have been worse. Those displaced Violet departments that could not be found a natural lodging on a lower floor, which constituted the majority, were simply closed down and deleted from existence.

The smells of cigar smoke, cardboard, and sulphur mingle and tingle in Frank’s nostrils as he trails the ponytailed man towards the burnished mahogany rolltop desk that serves as Matchbooks’ sales counter. Along the way the ponytailed man pauses to admire several of the matchbooks mounted in clear vinyl wallets on the partition walls. He’s a cool one all right; so relaxed and confident Frank could almost believe that this is one of the occasions when his instinct has let him down.

Except the man’s eyes are unfocused. He doesn’t look at the matchbooks he is supposed to be examining, only goes through the motions of looking, his thoughts elsewhere. Another giveaway sign, obvious if you have been trained to recognise it.

At last he approaches the mahogany desk. The sole remaining Matchbooks sales assistant is a man whose white hair and sallow, wrinkled features put him somewhere in the same age bracket as Frank. The name on his ID badge is Moyle, and at present his attention is absorbed by the matchbook he is examining through the jeweller’s loupe screwed into his right eye-socket. The ponytailed man ahems to attract his attention. He ahems again, and this time Moyle notices. He looks up, the loupe dropping expertly into a waiting cupped hand.

“Sir,” he says. “How may I help you?”

“I’m looking for a birthday present for a friend of mine. He’s into matchbooks.”

“Well, you’ve certainly come to the right place. What did you have in mind?”

“I’m entirely in your hands.”

“Avid collector is he, this friend of yours?”

“Oh yes, very.”

“Then I suggest the easiest thing to do would be for you to name a price range, and I can tell you what we have that fits the bill.”

The ponytailed man mentions a figure that causes Moyle to raise his chin and purse his lips in a silent whistle.

“A most generous birthday present, sir. A close friend of yours, I take it?”

“Very close.”

“Well then, let’s see what we’ve got, shall we?” Moyle turns to the baize-covered board behind him to which are pinned several dozen more of those vinyl wallets containing matchbooks of various colours and sizes – prime specimens all. He plucks three down.

“This is no less than a Purple Pineapple Club matchbook,” he begins, holding the first wallet up delicately by the corner for the ponytailed man to view its contents at close quarters. “As your friend will no doubt be able to tell you, the Purple Pineapple Club was shut down three days before it was due to open when the principal member of the backing consortium filed for bankruptcy and took his own life. Fifty specimen promotional matchbooks were printed up, but only about half that number are believed to be currently in circulation. Note the use of purple metallic ink for the logo and the cheerful cartoon illustration.”

“All of your matchbooks have had the matches removed.”

“Oh, sir, one never leaves the matches attached. Oh no.”

“Why not?”

“For one thing, the phosphorus discolours the card. Mainly, though, it’s because matchbooks are better stored and displayed flat.”

“I didn’t know that. All right, how much?”

Moyle picks up a scanning wand from the desk and runs its winking red tip over the barcode sticker attached to the back of the vinyl wallet. The price appears on the readout of the credit register linked to the scanning wand by a coil of flex. He draws the ponytailed man’s attention to the figure.

“I see,” says the ponytailed man. “Anything slightly more expensive?”

“More expensive,” says Moyle, with poorly disguised eagerness. “Well, there’s this one.” He picks up another of the wallets. “A special edition released to coincide with the official coming-out of a member of the royal family. Note the coat-of-arms motif featuring a pink crown and an entwined pair of human bodies. Rampant, as a heraldry expert might say. The story behind this one goes that the royal in question got cold feet at the last minute, hence the public proclamation of his sexual proclivities was never made, but a small number of the special edition matchbooks were pocketed by an equerry and thence made their way into the hands of private collectors. Naturally the palace press office denied there ever was going to be a coming-out announcement of any description and implied that the matchbooks must have been issued by an anti-royalist faction in order to discredit the royal family.”

“Like they need discrediting.”

“As you say, sir. Regardless, palace-authorised or not, a tiny quantity of these matchbooks exist, and the story attached lends them a certain novelty, don’t you think?”

“I don’t suppose there’s any way of guaranteeing its provenance?”

“None at all, I’m afraid, sir. That’s the trouble with what we call curio matchbooks.”

“Pity. My friend’s a stickler for provenance.”

“All the best phillumenists are.”

Frank, hovering close by, observing all this unnoticed, makes a quick check of the security cameras. Every one he can see is trained on the ponytailed man. Good.

Eye?

Still here, Mr Hubble.

Is there a guard on standby?

I’ve alerted one. He’s two departments away. Name of Miller.

Well done.

You see? We’re not all incompetent idiots down here.

I wish I could believe that.

There is a spurt of sarcastic laughter. You’re on form this morning, Mr Hubble!

Thinking thunderclouds, Frank returns his attention to the scene being played out at the counter.

“What about that one?” says the ponytailed man, pointing to the third matchbook Moyle has selected.

“Ah, this one. The Raj Tandoori, an upscale Indian restaurant. First printing. Lovely design but, as you can see, there was a typographical error. ‘The Rat Tandoori.’ Unfortunate oversight or malicious printer’s prank? Who can say? Either way, the restaurateur felt, understandably, that the association of rodent and food might not encourage repeat custom and ordered a new batch printed up and the originals pulped. A few, however, survived. Much sought-after. Almost unique. But there is some slight damage to the striking pad, as you may have noticed, and the cover hinge has a tiny split in it.”

“May I take it out and have a look anyway?”

“Certainly. Just be careful with it, I beg of you.”

“Of course.”

The ponytailed man slips the matchbook out of its wallet and looks it over. Moyle watches with a concern that is not wholly proprietorial, which is almost that of a parent for a child, his hands poised to catch the matchbook should it happen to drop, but the customer seems to know how to handle precious artifacts such as this, holding it by the corners only, touching it with his fingertips alone, treating it with the kind of awed respect usually accorded a venerable, crumbling religious relic.

Satisfied that the man isn’t about to damage the matchbook, Moyle turns back to the baize-covered board. Tapping a thumb against his lips and humming, he casts an eye over the stock, then reaches up decisively and unpins two more wallets, which he lays in front of his customer just as the ponytailed man is resealing the “Rat Tandoori” matchbook into its wallet.

“Interested?” Moyle enquires.

“Not in that one, no.”

“Any particular reason why, might I ask?”

“My friend has a penchant for the immaculate.”

“For a mint-condition ‘Rat Tandoori’ original you’re looking at a price considerably higher than the admittedly handsome sum you mentioned, sir, but I could try to track down one in slightly better health if you like. One’s bound to turn up at an auction sooner or later.”

“Bound to,” agrees the ponytailed man. “But in that case, I’d rather buy it myself and avoid your outrageous mark-up.”

“Then I’m afraid neither of these will suit you,” says Moyle, puzzled by his customer’s sudden bluntness.

“They both look a bit tatty,” the ponytailed man agrees, glancing briefly at the new offerings.

“Remember, we’re dealing with ephemera here,” Moyle points out. “The appeal of matchbooks as collector’s items is their very lack of durability. I’m sure that’s the way your friend feels about them.”

“I’m beginning to think I’d be better off spending my money on something else for my friend,” the ponytailed man says. “Thanks for your time anyway, but no sale.” He turns to go.

Moyle’s shrug doesn’t adequately hide his obvious dismay.

Eye?

Yup.

Get Miller to intercept. He’s heading back out of the Peripheries into Oriental Weaponry.

He boosted? I didn’t see a thing.

Let’s hope one of the cameras did.

Cunning devil, thinks Frank as he dogs the ponytailed man out of the department.

 

 

9.19 a.m.

 

THE PONYTAILED MAN has stopped to admire a pair of katana in beautiful black-lacquered scabbards when a hand grabs his upper arm, fingers digging into his biceps with a polite but insistent pressure.

“Excuse me, sir.”

The ponytailed man looks round into a crinkled, saturnine face into which are embedded a pair of eyes the colour of rainy twilight. He fails to recognise a man he has seen at least twice already in the last quarter of an hour.

“Tactical Security,” says Frank. “Would you mind if I had a word?”

The ponytailed man immediately starts looking for an exit, and in doing so catches sight of a security guard ambling towards them. The guard is over two metres tall and as broad at the waist as he is at the shoulders, packed densely into his nylon dollar-green uniform like minced meat into a sausage skin.

The ponytailed man tenses. With a weary inward sigh Frank realises he is going to make a run for it.

“Please, sir. It’ll be so much better for everyone if you stay put.”

Miller, the guard, is still ten metres away when the ponytailed man wrenches his arm out of Frank’s grasp and makes his bid for freedom. Miller moves to intercept him, and the man blindly dashes right, running headlong into a rice-paper screen on which has been mounted an array of shuriken. The screen folds around him and collapses, and the ponytailed man collapses with it. Throwing stars fly off in all directions, spinning like large steel snowflakes.

Miller rushes forward, but the ponytailed man scrambles to his feet, snarling and brandishing one of the shuriken like a knife.

“Get away! Get away from me!”

Shrugging, Miller raises his hands and backs off a few paces.

“False arrest!” the ponytailed man shouts. “I haven’t done anything! False arrest!”

A small crowd of spectators swiftly gathers.

“I haven’t stolen anything!” The man gesticulates frantically with the throwing star.

Frank is by Miller’s side. “Can you take him?” he asks.

“Course I can,” Miller growls. “When I was inside, I used to kick seven shades of shit out of blokes like him all the time. Just for fun.”

“What about the throwing star?”

“He doesn’t know what he’s doing with it. You get ’im on disc?”

Eye?

I’m searching, I’m searching. Hang on. Yeah, there it is. Shit. That was fast.

Frank nods to Miller, and the guard breaks into a huge, humourless grin.

He moves swiftly for a man of his bulk. Three brisk strides, and he is inside the arc of the ponytailed man’s arm. Before the man can bring his weapon around, Miller’s hand flashes out, encloses the fist holding the shuriken, and squeezes. The ponytailed man shrieks as the star’s points pierce his palm. He falls to his knees, and Miller twists his arm behind his back, still squeezing. Blood streaks the ponytailed man’s wrist and smears the back of his jacket. He tries to writhe his way out of the hold Miller has him in, but the guard only tightens his grip on the shuriken-wielding hand, forcing the throwing star’s points further into the flesh of the ponytailed man’s palm until they grind bone. The man bends double, snivelling with the pain, unable to think about anything except the pain, the riveting, sickening pain.

Frank has his Sphinx out. He hunkers down beside the agonised shoplifter and recites the Booster’s Blessing.

“For the record, sir,” he says, “at 9.18 a.m. you were spotted removing an item from the Cigars & Matchbooks Department without having purchased it and with no obvious intent to purchase it. For this offence, the penalty is immediate expulsion from the premises and the irrevocable cancellation of all account facilities. If you wish to take the matter to court, you may do so. Bear in mind, however, that we have the following evidence on disk.”

Frank holds the Sphinx’s screen up before the man’s face and the Eye duly transmits a recording of the theft.

It was a skilful piece of sleight of hand, one no doubt practised countless times until it was honed to perfection. While Moyle’s back was turned, the ponytailed man whipped out a duplicate of the “Rat Tandoori” matchbook from his pocket, simultaneously palming the original into a slit cut in the lining of his jacket. It was the duplicate he was reinserting into the vinyl wallet when Moyle turned back to the counter, and were it not for Frank the substitution would most likely have gone unnoticed until the day a genuine matchbook aficionado with money to burn chose to add that particular rarity to his collection.

The crime is replayed on the Sphinx’s screen in two short clips from two different angles. The first clip shows the fake matchbook coming out but not the real one going in. The second leaves little room for doubt, although, even when slowed to half-speed, the exchange seems to take place in the blink of an eye. Much as he hates to, Frank has to admire the shoplifter’s dexterity. Just as he thought: a professional.

“Do you understand what I’m showing you?”

Frank isn’t certain the ponytailed man was looking, but when he repeats the question, the man nods and says yes.

“Good. Now, I need to see your card.”

“Come on, you, on your feet,” says Miller, hoisting the ponytailed man upright. “Get your card out. Slowly. No tricks.”

His face is livid and streaked with tears but the ponytailed man’s eyes are still defiant as he reaches into his inside pocket with his uninjured hand and produces a Silver.

“Cheap sod,” mutters Miller. “Couldn’t score better than that?”

“Fuck off,” says the ponytailed man, without too much enthusiasm.

Having extracted the shuriken from the ponytailed man’s palm, the guard proceeds to handcuff him. Frank, meanwhile, runs the card through his Sphinx. Central Accounts has no record of the card being reported as stolen, but when the account-holder’s picture appears on the Sphinx’s screen it doesn’t take Frank long to deduce that the man standing in front of him is not Alphonse Ng, aged 62, a balding, jowly, pugnacious-looking Korean.

“How much did you pay this man Ng?” he asks the shoplifter.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“And how long did he agree to wait before reporting it missing? A week? Two weeks?”

The man does not answer.

“OK, fine. We’ll have a word with Mr Ng, see what he says.”

But Frank and the shoplifter both know what Mr Ng is going to say. He is going to say either that he lost the card or that it was stolen from him, and he will express delight at having it back, and he will swear to look after it more carefully in the future, and nothing further will be done about the matter. The store’s policy is always to reunite cards with their owners, whatever the circumstances, no questions asked. To do otherwise would not make commercial sense.

“Now,” Frank tells the ponytailed man, “the guard is going to take you downstairs for processing and eviction. If at any time you attempt to resist him or to escape, he is within his rights to subdue you using any means necessary, up to and including lethal force. Do you understand this, sir?”

The shoplifter gives a short, weary nod.

“Very good. Don’t come back.”

Yet even as he utters those last three words, Frank knows it is useless. The shoplifter will be back just as soon as his hand heals, if not sooner. The ponytail will be gone, as will the earrings and the blue suit, and he will be disguised – as a Burlington, perhaps, or a foreign diplomat, or a priest (it has happened) – with yet another black-market card in his pocket and yet another legerdemain tactic for obtaining goods without payment. If only the Days administration didn’t cling to their belief that permanent banishment from the store is suitable punishment for any crime committed on the premises and didn’t refuse to prosecute shoplifters through the courts, professionals like this one wouldn’t exist and Frank wouldn’t feel as if he is trying to bale out a leaky boat with a sieve. As it is, all he can do is make the arrests, have the thieves thrown out, and catch them at it again the next time. The most he can hope for is that one person in the now-dispersing crowd of onlookers, just one, having seen how shoplifters are treated when they are caught, will think twice before succumbing to the temptation in the future. It’s a slim hope, but what is the alternative?

None of this, of course, will matter after today, and that is why Frank is calmer than he might have been as he pulls back the flap of the shoplifter’s jacket and fishes out the purloined matchbook from the slit in the lining. It gladdens him to think that tomorrow he will no longer have to be stoically playing his part in this cyclical exercise in futility; that tomorrow he will be free.

 

 

9.25 a.m.

 

“OH MY,” SAYS Moyle. “Oh dear.” He holds up the two matchbooks side by side for comparison, switching them over, switching them over again. “That’s a skilful piece of forgery, that is, and no mistake. He must have had it made up from the picture in the catalogue. A perfect copy right down to the split in the cover hinge. You can see why I was fooled, can’t you?”

“Yes, I can,” says Frank, “but what I can’t see is why you turned your back on him. That was negligent in the extreme.”

“He seemed legitimate.”

“They all seem legitimate, Mr Moyle.”

“True. And you know, now that I think about it, the way he suddenly changed his mind about buying a matchbook was rather odd, wasn’t it? It was as if he couldn’t wait to get out of here.”

“He couldn’t.”

“Well, you’ve caught him, that’s the main thing,” Moyle says. “You’ve caught him and I get my Raj Tandoori original back. All’s well that ends well, eh?” He raises his eyebrows hopefully.

“It’ll have to go down in my report that you turned your back on him.”

Moyle nods slowly to himself, digesting this information. “Yes, I thought as much. That’s the sort of mistake that can cost a chap his job, isn’t it?”

“I’m sure it won’t come to that. A few retirement credits docked. A slap on the wrist.”

Moyle gives a resigned laugh. “That I can live with, I suppose. The main thing is that you recovered the matchbook, for which I and all other genuine phillumenists thank you, Mr Hubble, from the bottom of our hearts.”

“Just doing my job.”

Moyle carefully slots the genuine matchbook into its wallet and tosses the replica contemptuously into the waste-paper basket.

“It must seem rather odd to you, my interest in these little cardboard trifles,” he says with a self-deprecating smile. “Most people find it incomprehensible. My former wife, for one. Though that surely says more about her than it does me.”

“I must admit the fascination is rather lost on me.”

“You obviously don’t have the soul of a collector.”

“I do accumulate objects. Possessions. By accident, mostly.”

“And then, without realising it, you find your possessions have come to possess you?” It is more of a statement than a query.

“I try to keep things in perspective.”

“Then you aren’t a collector,” says Moyle. “A collector’s perspective is entirely skewed. He sees only that which obsesses him. Everything else is relegated to the background. I speak from experience.” He sighs the resigned sigh of a man too set in his ways to change. “But I mustn’t keep you. I know your job prohibits you from fraternising at length with other employees. Thank you again, Mr Hubble. I am in your debt, and if there is any way I can repay the favour, I will. I mean it. If I ever have the chance to do something for you, I’ll do it. Anything you need, anything at all.”

“Just keep a closer watch on your stock,” says Frank.