Fleming and Chandler. I got home sometime in the early sixties.â
Daubney paused for Watts to laugh and the ex-chief constable obliged.
The next time Daubney paused for breath â by which time heâd run through Amis
père
and
fils
, the two Durrells, Willliam Golding, John Fowles, Muriel Spark, Dylan Thomas and Sylvia and Ted â Watts said, âDid you find out anything about my father and Wheatley, Pearson and Crowley?â
Daubney seemed slightly miffed to be interrupted in mid-flow but he composed himself. âWith Wheatley it was simply a friendship between two fellow writers, I believe. He did a Foyles lunch with Pearson in the sixties but whether the friendship went any further I donât know. Crowley â I couldnât find out anything about that connection.â
âI canât imagine my father spending much time with such an obvious charlatan as Crowley.â
âIâm sure youâre right,â Daubney said, draining the last of the Burgundy.
They parted shortly after. Watts left feeling heâd been sold short but not knowing exactly how. The cobbled courtyard at the front of the museum was, as usual, thronged with tourists. Small and large groups in lines being photographed from too far away so that people walked between photographer and subjects all the time. Anoraks and umbrellas as far as the eye could see.
The paving stones were slippery with rain and even his rubber-soled shoes didnât help. He made his cautious way out on to Museum Street. The Museum Tavern looked appealing, its Victorian lights glowing through the rainy gloom. Watts liked a Victorian artist called Grimshaw who seemed to specialize in gaslight in foggy, rainy dusks. He might have painted this scene, even though it was only mid-afternoon.
Watts walked past the pub to a bookshop on the left. He remembered his father bringing him to the British Museum and walking down this street when it was all second-hand bookshops and quirky art galleries. Now there was only the one bookshop and a range of cafés and tourist souvenir shops. Plastic police helmets and Union Jacks on mugs, tea towels, beer mats and assorted garments proliferated.
The bookshop was theoretically an occult bookshop but, Watts reflected, commerce gets everywhere. Toy witches on broomsticks hung in the window and inside there was the usual gallimaufry of crystal balls, Tarot cards, angel cards, crystals, Ouija boards and general cheap quasi-spiritual tat.
On the bookshelves Harry Potter predominated along with modern young adult vampire novels. There were New Age novels too: Paulo Coelho featured large.
Over by the sales desk â a bureau complete with ink pot and old-fashioned nib pen â there was a more serious-looking bookcase. Old leather volumes behind glass. A man with long, wet, curly black hair, wearing a shapeless raincoat, was standing in front of it, tilting his head to read the spines of the works there.
In front of him, at the bureau, was a large woman in the kind of kaftan Watts hadnât seen since, as a child, heâd watched some hefty Greek man with a falsetto voice perform on the telly.
She smiled at Watts in an inquiring way. He took the book out of his briefcase.
âIâve got this first edition of an Aleister Crowley novel, signed to my father. I wondered if you might be able to value it?â
âIâll buy it,â the man with the wet hair blurted.
Kate had been a bit befuddled for the rest of her shift. After Sarahâs call sheâd been thinking about her new freedom and flashing back to the awful attack on her in the bedroom of her flat.
A smelly man pawing her, hitting her, tearing her clothes off, falling on her with all his weight. Kate scrabbling under the pillow for the feel of the plastic weapon Gilchrist had left her when they first shared flats. Grabbing it, thrusting it at the manâs neck, pressing every button on it she could find. And then
Daubney paused for Watts to laugh and the ex-chief constable obliged.
The next time Daubney paused for breath â by which time heâd run through Amis
père
and
fils
, the two Durrells, Willliam Golding, John Fowles, Muriel Spark, Dylan Thomas and Sylvia and Ted â Watts said, âDid you find out anything about my father and Wheatley, Pearson and Crowley?â
Daubney seemed slightly miffed to be interrupted in mid-flow but he composed himself. âWith Wheatley it was simply a friendship between two fellow writers, I believe. He did a Foyles lunch with Pearson in the sixties but whether the friendship went any further I donât know. Crowley â I couldnât find out anything about that connection.â
âI canât imagine my father spending much time with such an obvious charlatan as Crowley.â
âIâm sure youâre right,â Daubney said, draining the last of the Burgundy.
They parted shortly after. Watts left feeling heâd been sold short but not knowing exactly how. The cobbled courtyard at the front of the museum was, as usual, thronged with tourists. Small and large groups in lines being photographed from too far away so that people walked between photographer and subjects all the time. Anoraks and umbrellas as far as the eye could see.
The paving stones were slippery with rain and even his rubber-soled shoes didnât help. He made his cautious way out on to Museum Street. The Museum Tavern looked appealing, its Victorian lights glowing through the rainy gloom. Watts liked a Victorian artist called Grimshaw who seemed to specialize in gaslight in foggy, rainy dusks. He might have painted this scene, even though it was only mid-afternoon.
Watts walked past the pub to a bookshop on the left. He remembered his father bringing him to the British Museum and walking down this street when it was all second-hand bookshops and quirky art galleries. Now there was only the one bookshop and a range of cafés and tourist souvenir shops. Plastic police helmets and Union Jacks on mugs, tea towels, beer mats and assorted garments proliferated.
The bookshop was theoretically an occult bookshop but, Watts reflected, commerce gets everywhere. Toy witches on broomsticks hung in the window and inside there was the usual gallimaufry of crystal balls, Tarot cards, angel cards, crystals, Ouija boards and general cheap quasi-spiritual tat.
On the bookshelves Harry Potter predominated along with modern young adult vampire novels. There were New Age novels too: Paulo Coelho featured large.
Over by the sales desk â a bureau complete with ink pot and old-fashioned nib pen â there was a more serious-looking bookcase. Old leather volumes behind glass. A man with long, wet, curly black hair, wearing a shapeless raincoat, was standing in front of it, tilting his head to read the spines of the works there.
In front of him, at the bureau, was a large woman in the kind of kaftan Watts hadnât seen since, as a child, heâd watched some hefty Greek man with a falsetto voice perform on the telly.
She smiled at Watts in an inquiring way. He took the book out of his briefcase.
âIâve got this first edition of an Aleister Crowley novel, signed to my father. I wondered if you might be able to value it?â
âIâll buy it,â the man with the wet hair blurted.
Kate had been a bit befuddled for the rest of her shift. After Sarahâs call sheâd been thinking about her new freedom and flashing back to the awful attack on her in the bedroom of her flat.
A smelly man pawing her, hitting her, tearing her clothes off, falling on her with all his weight. Kate scrabbling under the pillow for the feel of the plastic weapon Gilchrist had left her when they first shared flats. Grabbing it, thrusting it at the manâs neck, pressing every button on it she could find. And then
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