How to Be Bad by David Bowker Page B

best to take time out, go for a walk, do something else. As long as I remained reasonably relaxed, my unconscious mind could usually be relied upon to lead me to the missing volume.
    So I locked up and went across the road to Jeff’s café. I ordered pancakes and hot chocolate and waited for my unconscious to do its thing. Jeff, who had bought a few gardening books from me, wandered over to discuss the worsening international situation. “What about the Middle East, eh? Wouldn’t want to go there for me holidays, would you? And what about them United Nations? Eh? Eh? Name me one bloody nation they ever united. Just one…”
    When I left I saw two teenaged boys coming out of a local driving school called the Passmore School of Motoring. I didn’t pay much attention, but as I was unlocking the shop, one of the boys spoke to me. He was about sixteen, tall and wiry with a complexion like a fully detonated mine field. Although I couldn’t understand a word Spotty was saying, something about his diction was horribly familiar. “You torch ma bruddy agen yera ded man.”
    â€œI beg your pardon?”
    I looked around and saw that the spotty kid was standing next to Hitler Youth, son of Wuffer. “Yeh? Yeh?” taunted Spotty. He and Hitler Youth were evidently brothers.
    I entered the shop as quickly as possible and closed the door behind me. The boys pressed their faces against the window, scowling and pointing. Then, abruptly, they got bored and walked away. I waited a while, then checked up and down the road. The two brothers were nowhere to be seen.
    I went back inside but, as a precaution, locked the door. I sat down at my desk, logged on to the Madden Books Web site, and trawled through the orders and inquiries. After about ten minutes, someone hammered belligerently on the door. The two boys had returned with their father.
    Wuffer, face pressed to the shop window, pointed in turn at me and his feet, inviting me to venture outside for a confrontation. What deterred me, apart from common sense, was that Wuffer was holding a loaded crossbow.
    Seeing that I was unwilling to accept the challenge, Wuffer tried the door again, confirming that it was indeed locked. Then he and his sons embarked on a truly bizarre war dance. They started prancing and jumping past the window. Wuffer took off his T-shirt, exposing a torso that was the color and texture of lard. He bounded back and forth past the window, flexing his biceps, shouting and pointing. His sons imitated him, spitting on the window and beating their chests.
    This went on for about fifteen minues. Finally, slowly, my tormentors moved off down the road, still pointing, shouting, and dancing.
    *   *   *
    N O SOONER had I washed the spit off the window than Caro turned up. She was extremely agitated. Two police officers had been round to see her about Warren. Someone had reported seeing him being pushed off the platform into the path of the train that had killed him. There was even a likeness of the suspect, which looked so unlike me that Caro had been able to say, quite truthfully, that she had never seen the man in the picture before. But the experience had shaken her up quite badly.
    â€œDid they act like they suspected you?” I said.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œDid you tell them Warren had been hounding you?”
    â€œNo.” She looked at me with contempt. “Of course I fucking didn’t!”
    â€œSo they don’t know anything. What are you in such a state about?”
    â€œI didn’t like the way they looked at me.”
    I closed the shop for lunch. Holding hands, we walked into Sheen, not because we wanted to or because there was anything in Sheen worth seeing, but because walking helped me to think. We sat on a bench outside Woolworth’s, watching the filthy traffic roar by.
    â€œI’ve been thinking about what my own dad would do,” I said.
    â€œI remember your dad,”