‘Ada?’

  He’d writhed through the preceding night, mentally tabulating everything preferable to meeting Ada Benson, stage name Lowell, ever again. The list was mostly modes of death that could conceivably claim either of them before dawn. Or both, although it might look like a lover’s pact, but better that than face, the knowing glint in those urinal cakes that his landlady had for eyes. Such, anyway, had been his thoughts during the shame-racked hours of dark, but as she swivelled her meringue-topped skull to look up at him now, it wasn’t scorn or lewd amusement nestled in those fissured sockets. If it had been anybody else but Coffin Ada, he’d have said that she looked scared.

  ‘Cough cough cough. Dennis, love, sit down. I think we might be in a bit of trouble.’

  Wishing suddenly that this could instead be a conversation about his misguided masturbation aids, he dragged a wooden stool into Ada’s proximity and perched precariously, leaning forward with his elbows propped between The Secret Glory and The Hill of Dreams. ‘What’s up?’

  Her gaze was fixed once more on the scored tabletop and its array of books. He had the worrying impression that his boss was making a considerable effort to remain calm, so much so that she was hardly coughing. Staying calm, though, was for Ada hugely out of character, and Dennis realised with awakening dread that unlike any other exchange that the two of them had ever had, this time she was attempting not to frighten him.

  ‘I want you to cough cough cough tell me how you bagged this lot for five quid. And don’t say that it’s your gift for bargaining, because we both know that you haven’t cough cough got one. What was it that happened, between you and Harrison?’

  He started chattering about the book-dealer’s pretence at being an old lady and the fluffy fighter planes suspended from Harrison’s ceiling, trailing off abruptly as she closed her eyes and raised one crinkled palm towards him, wagging it from side to side in weary refutation.

  ‘Dennis, I don’t give a cough cough fuck what he had hanging from the rafters. You just tell me how you cough cough cough cough talked him down.’

  Himself not fully understanding how he’d managed his impressive price reduction, Dennis shook his head and frowned in the direction of the Oxydol box as he struggled to remember.

  ‘He was asking twenty when I got there, like you’d said. Then when I told him that there’s not much call for Machen these days, he dropped straight down to fifteen. I kept on looking through the books, then when I got to one that wasn’t on your list and asked about it, he said I could have the lot for five. For five quid, well, I thought I couldn’t go far wrong.’

  Ada sighed heavily.

  ‘Yes, cough cough cough. Yes, I expect you did. And this book where he dropped his price, the one not on my list – am I cough cough cough right in thinking it was this one here?’

  The tallow spearhead of an index fingernail tapped twice on the dilapidated cover of the dullest-looking book in what was otherwise a sumptuous display. This was A London Walk, the Reverend Thomas Hampole’s Meditations in the Streets of the Metropolis, a title so monotonous that Dennis hadn’t bothered reading to the end of it. He nodded apprehensively. ‘Yeah, that’s the one.’

  Her saddlebagged eyes now regarded him with something close to sympathy. He was uneasy about all the unfamiliar expressions Ada’s face was trotting out. Dennis had known exactly where he stood with caustic and perpetual disdain, but found these new configurations troubling.

  ‘And I don’t suppose it cough cough cough occurred to you that this might be the item he was trying to get shot of all along, the shifty little cough cough bastard? No, of course it didn’t. I don’t cough cough cough know why I’m even asking.’

  Dennis screwed his eyes up and stared hard at the unprepossessing volume, brown and battered as though bound in a punchbag, waiting for it to explain itself.

  ‘So … is there something wrong with it, then?’

  His employer didn’t answer for a moment, studying the Hampole oddity in quiet deliberation before looking back at him with an expression that he couldn’t even guess at.

  ‘Dennis, love, this isn’t a real book.’

  The sentence hung there in the draughty kitchen air, and nobody knew what to do with it. Dennis would later realise that these few words had allowed the more-than-natural into his life, but at that moment he could only turn them over in his mind uncomprehendingly, this way and that, a baffled monkey with a loaded gun.

  ‘You mean it’s, like, a forgery?’

  Wearily, Ada shook her floss-encrusted head.

  ‘And why would anybody forge a cough cough fucking piece of junk like that? No, Dennis, you’re not listening. When I say this book’s not real, I mean it don’t cough cough cough cough exist. It’s not in catalogues. It’s not in libraries. Arthur fucking Machen made it up in a cough cough cough novel, then used it again in a short story, and there’s not a trace of it past that, not fucking anywhere. Cough cough. This shouldn’t be here. This comes from cough cough cough somewhere else.’

  Having comprehended none of this, but at an age where it was crucial Ada think he had, Dennis raised one eyebrow professorially and made what he thought sounded like a pertinent enquiry.

  ‘Where’s it from, then?’

  This elicited another weighty sigh.

  ‘I don’t know as I can explain it in a way you’d cough cough understand. I don’t mean this unkindly, Dennis, but you’re a cough cough cough fucking halfwit. I don’t reckon you can hear a fucking word I’m saying half the cough cough time.’

  He nodded faux intelligently, stroking his as-yet-unshaven chin. She went on anyway.

  ‘Look, let me cough cough put it this way. There’s another London, Dennis, that nobody knows is there, and that most people never get to cough cough cough cough see.’

  At last he had the gist of what Ada was saying, was his dangerous assumption.

  ‘Right. The London underworld. I’m with you now.’

  For slightly too long, she gave him a look that held no rancour, but was without hope.

  ‘Mm. Yes, that sort of thing. All that you need to know is that we’ve got to get this back to where it come from, and then everything will be alright cough cough cough possibly.’

  ‘What, back to Harrison?’

  She thought about it.

  ‘If he’s still an option, that would be cough cough ideal. It’s a good place for you to start, at any rate. Just make sure cough cough cough I never see the fucking thing in here again.’

  Dennis had registered her pronoun shift from ‘we’ to ‘you’, and, realising that this irksome nonsense was now his responsibility, he did his best to weasel out from under it.

  ‘Couldn’t we just, y’know, throw it away, or stick it on the fire?’

  ‘No, Dennis. No, you fucking couldn’t. This is from a different part of cough cough London, and it doesn’t work like that. Just knowing that it’s there is bad enough, without trying to cough cough cough cough burn a bit of it, or flush it down the bog. I’ve seen this happen once before, to cough cough Teddy Wilson with that Soames book, fucking Fungoids, and cough cough cough trust me, you don’t want to do that.’

  Noticing belatedly that she’d not lit her first snout of the day yet, Dennis was both startled and distracted, failing thus to absorb much of this precautionary advice past the initial ‘no’. He’d already decided to interpret everything she said as an old woman’s superstitious quirk or mad compulsion which, unfortunately, he would have to humour. He’d do what she told him, to the letter, but he wasn’t being paid enough to get caught up in Ada’s mental cobwebs.

  Ada Benson, for her own part, was of course aware that her employee’s rapt attention was a lame pretence, but thought it only proper she should persevere. In what was left of Ada’s conscience she felt, well, not bad exactly, but not pleased, put it like that, about what she was getting him involved with. To be fair, it wasn’t as if she were sending Dennis to his certain death – uncertain death at very worst, in her experience – but still she thought she should provide him with the basic safety lecture, even though he clearly wasn’t taking a blind bit of notice.

  ‘What you’ve got to do is cough cough cough get Harrison to take this back of his own cough cough cough accord. You can’t just shove it through his letterbox. Break all his cough cough fingers if you have to, just so long as he states clearly that he takes it back. Now, if for any reason Harrison is cough cough cough cough no longer available, I’m sure that cough cough something will turn up. Although, if something should turn up, it would be better if the book was back with Harrison before that cough cough happened, if you follow me.’

  Obviously, Dennis didn’t, but was in too deep by that point to admit as much. He did, however, notice Ada’s tone of mounting urgency, and asked if he’d got time for a quick wash and shave. Not only did she acquiesce to this without dispute, she also said she’d find him a clean shirt and fry him up some sausage, egg and bacon, ‘for a cough cough cough cough treat’. He hadn’t been awake long, and found this both touching and appreciative, rather than ominous.

  Soon, after Dennis had replaced the bristles on his jaw with grease and yolk, wiped clean by an unlovely handkerchief, he was close to presentable. On the back doorstep, he was much relieved to learn that it was only the presumably cursed Hampole book she wanted taking back to Harrison, and that the Oxydol box wouldn’t be required. Instead she let him have a serviceable carrier bag, brown paper and string handles, in which she’d secreted both Hampole’s A London Walk and, for some reason, Arthur Machen’s book The Cosy Room, wearing its wraps like an embroidered waistcoat.

  ‘That one’s not for cough cough Harrison. It’s more for you. It’s all short cough cough cough cough stories, and there’s one called “N” that you might want to take a butcher’s at, if you cough cough cough get the chance. It might give you a clue what’s going on for once, if things should cough cough cough cough cough cough come to that. Oh, and I want you to have this.’

  It was the change he’d brought her home, or at least half of it. She pressed five pound notes, velvety and limp from handling, into his palm.

  ‘I said you could have half the change’ – she’d actually said all of it, but Dennis wasn’t going to bring that up – ‘and I’m a woman of my cough cough word. A bit of lolly might be handy, if the job should end up taking longer than you’d cough cough cough expected. Good luck with all this, love. Alright, I make fun of you behind your back with all the cough cough customers, but underneath it all, I know that being cough cough cough cough useless is a thing that you can’t help. You’re not a bad lad, Dennis, and I’m sure that you’d have cough cough been a fine young man. Just don’t tell anyone about this different London stuff. You’d be as good as cough cough cough cough cough cough dooming the poor fuckers.’

  Dennis had tripped over Ada’s inconvenient flowerbed, squeaked through the back gate and was already on Virginia Road before it struck him that, despite her last stern warning with regard to secrecy, she hadn’t seemed that bothered about telling him the ins and outs of everything. These inconsistencies were why he took Ada’s admonishments about as seriously as instructions not to step on any cracks between Gibraltar Walk and Oxford Street. She’d never worn a bonnet to his knowledge, but this business was quite evidently just another bee in the old woman’s rigid hive of hair. His confidence thus buoyed by his contempt for the opinions of the elderly, he Winston Smithed his way into the city, thinking how oppressive cameras and screens everywhere would be. It was the most horrific situation Dennis could imagine, but that was at twenty-five to eight. The day was young.

  He’d taken no more than a lungful of the subdued air in Berwick Street, and he already knew things had gone badly wrong. The first thing, unsurprisingly, had been Dennis himself: lost in plans to avoid the Thought Police by the expediency of not thinking, he had automatically repeated his route of the previous morning and was halfway down Charing Cross Road before remembering that he no longer had to find Harrison’s bookshop. Forced thus once more to intrude on that congested byway from its lower end, he came upon the second wrong thing, which was Berwick Street.

  Braving a spill of broken crate and spoiled tomatoes as he angled through the press of market goers, his immediate impression was that someone had switched off the sound. He could still hear the scuff of feet, the hum of nearby motorcars, the rustling of paper bags, but all the people had gone quiet. No one was saying anything above a murmur. No one was promoting whelks. The customers and traders whispered over purchases, and conversation was conducted through meaningful glances that he didn’t know the meaning of. It was as if the motions of the world in this specific stretch of Soho had been paused, or had announced an intermission. It felt wrong.

  Whatever its source might be, this uncanny atmosphere had permeated the steep street down to its last subsiding kerbstone, so that every face and every detail seemed to radiate uneasy portent. A dog, perhaps dragging something Dennis couldn’t see, was walking backwards. A Radio Times front cover, laterally torn, bounced the cold eyes of Arthur Askey down a choking gutter, and from under the striped canvas overhang of M. Blincoe & Son Fresh Fruit and Vegetables, a retinue of Soho apparitions was observing Dennis silently and with apparent interest.

  He clocked the watchers straight off but pretended that he hadn’t, being already engaged with quite enough activities he didn’t understand. One of the group, he thought, had been the disproportioned fellow in the built-up shoe who’d given him the evil eye yesterday morning, while the man beside him looked a bit like Maurice Calendar. He had the brief impression of at least one other figure, standing there beneath the awning with the two of them, but looked away too quickly to be certain. Rattled by the street’s prevailing mood, still wondering how he’d make Harrison take back a thing that the book dealer clearly couldn’t stand the sight of, Dennis’s ability to worry was at full capacity without this cryptic scrutiny. His bag’s string handles slithering in a suddenly damp fist, he tucked his head between hunched shoulders and went on up the hushed gradient, insisting to himself that this was just an ordinary thing that he was doing, on an ordinary day.

  He kept this up until he saw the ordinary ambulance and the prosaic police cars gathered outside E. J. Tate ~ Knitting Supplies, thereby completely blocking the street’s upper reaches. Slowing to a halt, his shoes refused to take him any further and he stood there staring, in amongst a mute and morbid peer of onlookers. The rear doors of the blood bus were wide open and the object being loaded was identifiable, despite a covering sheet, by the taut dome raised from its middle. It was either a scale model of St Paul’s or it was Harrison. The ambulance men didn’t look as if they were in a terrific hurry. The attending police officers appeared more purposeful, however.

  There were half a dozen bobbies, mostly keeping back the subdued crowd with only stillness and an absence of expression, and there were two obvious CID men in grey mackintoshes questioning a badly shaken woman – E. J. Tate, presumably – inside the downstairs wool shop. Also present were what looked like higher-ranking rozzers, one in a superintendent’s uniform and two in an expensive cut of plain-clothes, standing back from the near-silent action and conferring grimly. Dennis thought that these might represent Inspector Capstick’s Ghost Squad, the new London anti-crime initiative he’d heard about, and reasoned that they weren’t there to investigate the death from natural causes of a sickly-looking man in middle age whose intimates knew him as Flabby. As he stood there wide-eyed, trying to take in what he was seeing and what he was meant to do about it, Dennis’s shoes came to a decision before he did. Pivoting on worn-through soles, they bore him out of harm’s way back down Berwick Street, his gait that of those weighted plastic novelties that seem to walk down slopes but are in truth only obeying gravity.

  His adolescent mind, attempting to escape its circumstances in nine ways at once, was paralysed. What did this mean? What was he going to do? Had Harrison been done in? Stomach dropping, he remembered Ada saying that this ‘other London’ she’d been on about was London’s underworld or, anyway, that’s what he’d thought she said. This surely wasn’t anything to do with the dilapidated volume dangling currently in his brown paper carrier bag, was it? No, it couldn’t be, because that would mean he was now entangled in a petrifying murder drama, and he wasn’t having that. Like nearly everyone he knew, he much preferred to play his life as a light comedy and didn’t think that he could take a shift of genre. Frightened, in internal uproar, Dennis thudded downhill amid speechless shoppers, staring fixedly ahead and trying furiously not to look at anyone. The street blurred past in a peripheral haze of windows, doors and unread hoardings; became an alarming landscape that he desperately didn’t want to be a part of or acknowledge. This was why he failed to see the pyrotechnic body hurtling through the market throng until it was on top of him.

  ‘Whoh-hoh-hoh-hoh! White man for pluck, black man for luck!’

  The voice was an explosion in the dumbstruck thoroughfare, raucous and prehistoric. In the startle of the moment, Dennis couldn’t differentiate between the thunderous sound and equally loud visual appearance of the spectacle confronting him. All of it, the experience, was a terrifying detonation of the inconspicuousness that he imagined he’d achieved.

  Blocking his path was an outrageously clad coloured chap, as tall as Dennis but with a good foot of ostrich plumes exploding from his tight-bunched hair that made him seem a giant. Tipping and tilting on the dross-jewelled pavement, zodiac robes constantly in motion, his broad smile invited – or perhaps obliged – observers to delight in simply his existence. Having seen pictures in newspapers, so only black and white ones, Dennis realised, with a mounting sense of all this turning out to be a dream, that he was in the company of auto-legendary racetrack oracle, Prince Monolulu.

  Stopped dead by astonishment, Dennis perceived that all around them Berwick Street had come once more to normal, noisy life. People were chattering again as if the self-styled African’s stentorian voice somehow permitted theirs. The hapless young man moved his mouth as he attempted to ask questions he could neither formulate nor comprehend, at which the tipster leaned in close with a conspiratorial grin and nodded towards the activity up behind Dennis, at the top end of the street.