Of Lights and Shadows (Book 4)

29) All is Well on the Home Front

As soon as Silence's shift in the van had finished he grabbed a cab to take him to his bookstore. He hadn't opened it in a couple of days and he could imagine the amount of work he had lost spending the time with Dastardious. Things had just been so busy he hadn't been able to go there; he also didn't have an assistant to help him. He managed everything himself and as he unlocked the front door and walked in, he regretted not hiring one before as he saw the dust. It would have been a wise choice seeing as he wasn't earning anything from Dastardious.

Two hours were spent dusting and rearranging books, in between helping a couple of his faithful customers who had stopped by the moment they had seen that the store was opening.

'I haven't seen anything of you for a few days, I was worried. You been sick?' an elderly Greek gentleman by the name of Melvin Palaemon asked. He was in his late seventies, white haired and grey eyed, with glasses so large and thick that his eyes seemed the size of saucers. He was a great connoisseur of old books, or books in general. Silent Books was his first stop when he was on the hunt for a new book to read, and would pay top dollar for ones of particular interest.

And whenever his shelves ran out of room, or he found a book in his library that he thought Silence might enjoy, he would bring them over for his friend to have a look at. If Silence liked them he would take them for himself and any that he didn't have an interest in he would buy from Melvin and sell in his store.

No, no, Mr Palaemon, I have been quite well. Thank you for noticing my absence.

'The whole street has noticed your absence, Mr Mourner! I been by often in past couple of days to see if you been back.' His accent was rich, still strong from his time in Greece, and thick and hard to understand at times. 'What you been doing?'

I have been helping a friend. He has been requiring my assistant in a particular case he has been working on.

'Case?' Mr Palaemon asked, intrigued as he set the book he had found down on the counter.

My friend is a police detective, Mr Palaemon. But I am afraid that the case in hand and what I have been required to do is somewhat confidential. The less that you know about it the better, you understand. I am sorry that I haven't been here to open the store, time hasn't permitted. I am however thinking of hiring an assistant so that the store will be open even in my absence.

'Ah, I see,' Mr Palaemon replied, nodding his head in understanding. 'It's a tricky business police work, dangerous too. Be careful out there, Mr Mourner,' he said gravely. 'And as for an assistant to the store, that is good idea! I see people stop to peek inside window and no one to open door for them. Very good idea. I wish you best in finding the right man.'

Thank you for your understanding, and for your best wishes. Now, before we sign the deal with this book, I have a certain something in the back I have been saving for you...

After a very happy Melvin Palaemon left the shop at four, Silence spent another hour cleaning and ordering in new stock to fill the gaps that had been left by the recent visits. The hour passed quickly, which was unusual as cleaning and ordering stock was something that always felt tedious to him. As he stacked a shelf of Swedish cookbooks in alphabetical order, he supposed that any slow and boring job such as cleaning and ordering books would pass the time quickly compared to sitting in a van and watching nothing happen on a screen.

 He wasn't looking forward to his work the next day, there was only so much you could do to pass the time in a van and he had done it all with Dutch already. And the boredom wasn't just nagging at him; it was nagging at his partner too. When you saw in movies or TV shows the men sitting watching in the van, it normally wasn't long before something happened so they had something to respond to. That was what it showed; it skips forwards through the long, long hours of nothing to jump out at the actions. If that were possible for them, Silence had no doubt that Dutch would have pressed the button the first moment he could. But it wasn't, he reflected sadly.