Blood on the Tongue (Ben Cooper & Diane Fry) by Stephen Booth Page A

board covers mottled with mould. There was an overwhelmingly musty smell of old paper – paper that had soaked up the damp from many decades spent in unheated stone houses on wet hillsides.
    'Hello?' called Cooper.
    Lawrence Daley wore a silk waistcoat with a fancy pattern that was none too clean, and his brown corduroy trousers had become baggy at the knees from hours of crouching to reach the lower shelves. On occasions, Cooper had seen Lawrence wearing a bow tie. But today he had an open-necked check shirt, with his sleeves rolled back over pale forearms. His hair was uncombed, and he looked dusty and sweaty, as if it were the height of summer outside with the temperature in the eighties, rather than creeping up from zero towards another snowfall.
    'I've been trying to sort out the Natural History section,' said Lawrence when he saw Cooper appear round the stacks. 'Some of these books have been here since Granny's day. They're still priced in shillings, look. A customer brought one to me yesterday and insisted on paying fifteen pence for it. I couldn't argue, because that was what the price on the label converted at in new money.'
    'Are you throwing them out?' asked Cooper, wrinkling his nose at the musty smell and the cloud of dust that hung in the air.
    'Throwing them out? Are you kidding? I can't throw them out. They just need re-pricing.'
    'But if they've been here since your grandmother ran the shop …'
    'I know, I know. They're not exactly fast sellers. But if that were all I was interested in, I'd stack the place to the ceiling with Harry Potters, like everyone else does. It's Detective Constable Cooper, isn't it?'
    'Ben Cooper, yes. I wondered if you had any books on aircraft wrecks. There are so many wrecks around this area – there must be something published about them.'
    'If you go right to the back and through the curtain on the left, then down a few steps, you might find something halfway up the shelves,' said Lawrence.
    'Thanks.'
    Cooper made his way through the aisles of books. He passed Poetry and Literature, Biography and Philosophy, until he reached a dead end at Geography. He turned left at Art and found Music lurking in a curtained-off alcove at the head of a flight of stairs leading down into a cellar. The sides of the stairwell had been filled with more bookshelves. A few creaky steps down, Cooper came across Air Transport. It seemed a curiously modern subject for Eden Valley Books, and he wasn't surprised that it was hidden away. He looked down into the darkness at the bottom of the stairs and wondered what Lawrence had chosen to confine to the cellar. Probably something like Computers and Information Technology.
    But there, sure enough, were two slim volumes on Peak District aircraft relics, exactly what he wanted. He wondered if this place was really some kind of Aladdin's Cave where you could find anything you truly wanted, if you wished hard enough. Lawrence Daley made a strange genie, though.
    'Just the thing, Lawrence,' he said, when he'd made his way back to the counter. 'I found two.'
    'Amazing,' said Lawrence. 'And is there a price on them?'
    'Well, no actually.'
    Lawrence sighed. 'Then I can't charge you anything at all, can I?'
    'Of course you can.'
    'Not if there's no label. It's against the Trade Descriptions Act.'
    'I'm not sure that's how it works,' said Cooper. 'Anyway, I can't take them without paying you for them.'
    'Well, fifty pence then.'
    'If you say so.'
    Cooper began to go through his pockets. He found the estate agent's leaflets and pulled them out of the way while he felt at the bottom for some change. His pager was vibrating again, but it could wait.
    'Hello,' said Lawrence, 'have you fallen into the company of conmen and thieves?'
    'Sorry?'
    'Estate agents,' he said, pointing at the leaflets. 'Are you buying a house?'
    'I can't afford that,' said Cooper. 'I'm just looking for a place to rent for a while.'
    'Ah. Striking out on your own? Or is there a live-in partner