The Paperback Sleuth - The Ashram Assassin E-Book

Andrew Cartmel

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 427

Beschreibung

Humorous cosy-crime caper in which a feisty, amoral book dealer uses her unique skills to catch a murderer, desperate to hide the secrets kept by the yoga-obsessed staff and students of a West London ashram.When a set of rare, impossible-to-find yoga books are stolen from a West London ashram, its leaders turn to Cordelia, the paperback sleuth, to recover them – a set-up that's a little awkward as they've previously barred her from yoga classes for selling marijuana to their students. But what begins as a hunt for missing paperbacks soon becomes a murder investigation as those involved with the ashram can't seem to stop dropping down dead – murdered with a whisky bottle to the head or a poisoned curry. Can Cordelia work out who the killer is and bring them to justice before they bring an end to her sleuthing for good.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Also by Andrew Cartmel and available from Titan Books

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Copyright

Dedication

1: At Least One

2: Set a Thief

3: Chatting Shit

4: Bad Penny

5: Avram Silverlight

6: The Corpse Position

7: Blunt Force Trauma

8: Pigeonholes

9: Cat and Mouse

10: Hospital Visit

11: Stalin

12: Like the Computer

13: Killer Dildo

14: Free Lesson

15: Spinner

16: Foraging

17: Dog-Friendly Pub

18: Popcorn

19: Robot Pasta

20: Your Place or Mine?

21: Frozen

22: Drop The Body

23: Dead Letter

24: Fireworks

25: River Smell

26: Saffron Rice

27: Killer Bees

28: Wet Shoes

29: Back at the Ashram

30: Grass Widow

Epilogue: Poirot and Walkies

Acknowledgements

About the Author

PRAISE FOR THE PAPERBACK SLEUTH

“Packed with Andrew Cartmel’s customary wit and cleverness, the Paperback Sleuth novels make a splendid successor to the Vinyl Detective.” Stuart Douglas, author of Death at the Dress Rehearsal

“Tightly plotted and hugely enjoyable. I raced to the end to find out whodunnit.” Nev Fountain, author of The Fan Who Knew Too Much

“An intriguing mystery with an amoral protagonist. Who knew the world of paperback books could be so deadly?” Ben Aaronovitch, author of Rivers of London

“A quirky crime yarn bound to hit the sweet spot for mystery lovers.” Kirkus Reviews

“Cartmel has never been better than in this darkly funny series… Fans of Lynne Truss’s Constable Twitten novels will find much to love.” Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

“Devilishly clever… richly suspenseful… readers will be primed for more.” Booklist

Also by Andrew Cartmel and available from Titan Books

THE PAPERBACK SLEUTH

Death in Fine Condition

THE VINYL DETECTIVE

Written in Dead Wax

The Run-Out Groove

Victory Disc

Flip Back

Low Action

Attack and Decay

Noise Floor

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The Paperback Sleuth: Ashram Assassin

Print edition ISBN: 9781803367927

E-book edition ISBN: 9781803367934

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: June 2024

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organisations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© Andrew Cartmel 2024

Andrew Cartmel asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

For Kelsey Short,superb actor and steadfast ally.

“Resentment is like drinking poisonand waiting for the other person to die.”

—St Augustine

1: AT LEAST ONE

You might have thought Cordelia would have become accustomed, perhaps even acclimatised, to being confronted with sudden death.

After all, in the course of her young life she had already seen two men die in front of her.

(And at least one of those she had killed herself.)

But none of this did anything to lessen the abrupt, deep thrill of horror she felt when she stepped out of the gentle autumn sunlight into the cool shadows of the trees and saw the body lying there on the ground in front of her.

Admittedly, she did also think, Oh shit. Here we go again.

That was on the Saturday.

2: SET A THIEF

On the preceding Wednesday, Cordelia was thinking, Set a thief to catch a thief.

It was a cliché, all right, but an apt one.

And it amused her to reflect on it. Not least because the people who wanted to hire her didn’t realise this was exactly what they were proposing.

Edwin did, though.

Edwin was Cordelia’s landlord. And he’d lined up this job for her—potentially a juicy lucrative job, thank you very much, Edwin—through one of his girlfriends. Although “one of his girlfriends” made Edwin sound considerably more exciting than he actually was; perhaps “latest girlfriend” would be more accurate.

But even that made him sound undeservedly exciting. Edwin was pretty much dullsville… except in one spectacular regard.

And it was that aspect of him which guaranteed Cordelia made damned sure she paid her rent on time every month.

Anyway, Edwin’s latest dreary girlfriend was into yoga. His paramours were always into something like that—growing biodynamic vegetables in their gardens, performing Tai Chi as the sun rose over the village green, going on long boring bicycle rides (Edwin’s own special passion) or, in this case, doing lots of yoga.

Lorna, for that was the girlfriend’s name, was a regular attendee at the local ashram or, as Cordelia preferred to think of it, mantra-chanting clipjoint. To wit, the Silverlight Yoga Centre on Abbey Avenue.

Cordelia knew it well because she had once been a regular attendee there herself, before being booted out for dealing weed—an activity that had not amused the ashram fascists. As soon as they’d found out about it, they’d summoned Cordelia upstairs to the meeting room for a thorough scolding before drumming her out of the place for good.

As they warmed up to her ejection they’d taken pains to explain it wasn’t the fact that she’d been dealing weed per se that they found so objectionable. Oh no, they were far too hip for that. What they really couldn’t tolerate was the degrading exploitation of their premises for purposes of rapacious money-grubbing capitalist transactions.

The fact that the meeting room in which they reprimanded Cordelia was situated above the ashram’s gift shop, where you could buy yourself sustainably farmed hemp yoga mats in a variety of attractive colours for—wait for it—300 quid a pop did not escape Cordelia, and she didn’t scruple to point this out to the admonitory morons, along with a few other home truths along similar lines.

This drove them batshit crazy with rage because, of course, Cordelia was right and they knew it. But hell hath no fury like a hypocritical yoga capitalist in loose-fitting orange pyjamas when you call him out. And, as satisfying as Cordelia’s tirade had been (delivered at volume and well spiced with profanity), it didn’t prevent her from being booted out.

Ever since then, she had nursed a grudge against the Silverlight Yoga Centre. It wasn’t so much that she missed the opportunity to deal weed there—she’d phased that out anyway, as she was earning enough from her vintage paperback hustle—but she missed the yoga itself, not to mention the regular festive feasts provided at the ashram. These were really spectacular curry banquets that caused her mouth to water even now.

How dare the orange-pyjama-wearing bastards tell her to leave and never come back?

Well, as luck would have it, Cordelia now had a chance to make them eat humble pie. To eat crow. To eat humble crow pie. Possibly curried.

Because Edwin’s girlfriend, the aforementioned Lorna, had told him about a robbery at the yoga centre. A robbery of, wait for it, books. And not just books—paperbacks.

Who would steal paperbacks? you might well ask. And the answer would be Cordelia, for a start.

Not that she’d robbed the yoga centre. Indeed, she’d known nothing about the heist until Edwin told her about it. But she had, once upon a time, stolen some paperbacks herself. Rather a lot of rather rare and valuable paperbacks.

That theft had landed her in a good deal of trouble. Potentially terminal trouble. But good old Edwin had helped her get out of that trouble. Thank you, Edwin. And because he’d provided this assistance, it had been unavoidable that he should learn all about the cause of the trouble: Cordelia’s bijou book burglary.

So when Edwin heard through Lorna that the Silverlight Yoga Centre had suffered a break-in and were desperate to get the books back—were, in fact, willing to pay a tidy sum to get them back—he’d thought…

Set a thief to catch a thief.

“You didn’t think I might have done the robbery myself?” said Cordelia when he told her about it.

“Of course not,” said Edwin. He spun the wheel of the bicycle he was repairing, or maintaining, or something, and smiled at Cordelia through the spinning spokes.

Edwin was a tall, lean bloke with untidy sandy hair. He was almost good-looking… if you liked goofy types who did the Guardian crossword puzzle with the tip of the tongue slightly protruding from the corner of the mouth in concentration, and whose idea of a good time was listening to the opera on Saturday night on Radio 3.

“I know there’s no love lost between you and the Silverlight Yoga people,” said Edwin. “But they weren’t your sort of books. The sort of books you were likely to pinch, anyway.”

The two of them were standing outside the house they shared in the leafy London suburb of Barnes—Edwin ensconced in the flat at the back of the ground floor, Cordelia in the attic room at the very top of the house—accompanied by Rainbottle, Edwin’s dog.

Cordelia had become Edwin’s lodger soon after she left university, when she was starting her vintage paperback business. Edwin seemed suitably gratified to have a gorgeous (in all modesty) young babe in his attic room—though, very much to his credit, he’d never have dreamed of hitting on her. Which was just as well, because Cordelia couldn’t see herself accompanying him on long bicycle rides or helping ponder the Guardian crossword.

Rainbottle was sprawled on the grass beside Edwin’s beloved bicycle, which was upside down, resting on its saddle and handlebars while Edwin crouched over it and worked on the wheels. He had a specially designed contraption he could have used that would have held the bike handily in place while he ministered to it but, as was the way with these things, it was too much trouble to set it up and he generally ended up doing his bicycle work in a manner similar to this. (It really was remarkable how little trouble something had to be to be too much trouble.)

“They weren’t crime novels,” continued Edwin, pausing to wipe the sweat of honest labour from his brow. Rainbottle whined in agreement and gave his tail a few experimental whacks against the lawn.

It was true, crime fiction was Cordelia’s forte. Or was it her métier? Anyway, it was her thing. “Any idea what sort of books they were?” she asked. “Yoga stuff, I suppose?”

“They said they’d provide a list. They’ll email you to arrange a meeting and then they’ll give you all the details.”

*   *   *

But the thing was, Cordelia wasn’t hurting for money and she didn’t especially need the work. And, that being the case, it was just too tempting to get her own back on the ashram idiots by bluntly telling them “no” and leaving them in the lurch. After all, who else could they turn to?

So, with cool cordiality and consummate professionalism, she turned the job down flat. She pushed send on the email politely rebuffing them, with a wonderful sense of satisfaction and old wrongs finally righted. Take that, you orange-pyjama-clad fuckers.

And that was that.

Or, at least, that would have been that if fate hadn’t then taken a hand.

And shown a considerable dry sense of humour into the bargain.

Because, within minutes of her emailing the ashram and telling them to get lost, a message pinged into her inbox from Murder Silhouette Books.

Murder Silhouette Books was an elegant and well-stocked shop located above a trendy café in Soho. And, as their name suggested, they specialised in crime fiction.

It should have been just the sort of place for Cordelia, except for two factors…

Firstly, their prices were astronomical. True, they had a splendid vintage paperback section that often featured rare titles, in exemplary condition, but they expected you to pay through the nose for them. And if, like Cordelia, you were operating on a margin—attempting to buy low to sell high, hopefully very low and very high—there was no chance of turning a profit on anything purchased there. In fact, their prices were so extortionate that she even hesitated to buy stuff for her own collection.

The other factor that militated against Murder Silhouette Books, in Cordelia’s view, was the shop’s owner, Duncan Fairwell. A short, hairy, bearded man with an unfortunate passion for argyle tank tops, Fairwell had earned Cordelia’s enduring enmity one murky winter afternoon of smoky skies and intermittent rain, several years ago, on her very first visit to the shop.

She had found Fairwell himself sitting behind the counter and manning the till (she would later learn this was a task more usually delegated to a series of vacuously comely young bimbos). Cordelia, excited to have discovered this very promising new bookshop that specialised in her favourite genre, eagerly asked the owner if he had any British Sleuth Hound paperbacks in stock. These vintage beauties were a veritable passion of hers and, at the time, she’d only managed to collect a handful of them. Duncan Fairwell had looked up from his reading matter—a glossy brochure for the estimable Hard Case Crime imprint—and had snapped the single abrupt and very final syllable, “No.”

He’d then returned to checking out the Hard Case goodies.

Chastened and disappointed, Cordelia had also been a little angered by his rudeness. But not nearly as angry as she was a couple of minutes later when, feeling it was too much of a defeat to just slink back out of the shop, she’d been half-heartedly poking around, wandering among the rows of bookshelves, and had turned a corner to find herself face to face with an entire section labelled in big and highly legible sans-serif letters: British Sleuth Hounds.

It was too implausible to suggest that Fairwell didn’t know his own stock. No, he was perfectly aware this rack of books was here. He had just, for some inexplicable hairy, tank-topped reason of his own, taken one look at Cordelia and instantly conceived a dislike of her, such a dislike that he didn’t even want to sell her any of his overpriced books.

Baffled, offended and above all pissed off, Cordelia had then and there conceived her own profound and permanent distaste for Duncan Fairwell, esquire.

Hence it was with somewhat mixed emotions that she now read the email that had just arrived.

It was addressed to all previous customers of Murder Silhouette Books (despite herself, Cordelia had been compelled to buy the occasional, irresistible, item from them over the years) and signed by Betty Fairwell, wife of you-know-who.

It began:

Due to the recent loss of my husband, Duncan, I am now contacting you to let you know…

Given how much she’d hated his (argyle-clad) guts, Cordelia now felt a little bad and retroactively guilty about the dear departed Dunc. She realised she might even miss his hairy, bearded little face frowning at her whenever she dared enter his shop.

But there were no mixed emotions whatsoever when she read further down the email and learned why his widow was contacting all former customers.

As you won’t be surprised to learn, Duncan has a huge library of crime fiction, including many very rare and valuable collector’s items, at our house in Richmond. Since he no longer has any need for these books, and since I have no interest in them, I will be selling them, on a first come, first served basis, here at our home…

Cordelia had barely read these words before she was out the door.

First come, first served.

*   *   *

Despite racing straight to Richmond as fast as she could, Cordelia wasn’t the first to arrive at Betty Fairwell’s very large and luxurious house.

It was just over half an hour from the moment Cordelia had received the email to when she hurried through its street entrance, a solid black steel gate set in a white stucco wall, normally designed to keep people firmly out, but currently invitingly wide open.

She went up the winding driveway, trotting along the band of decorative grey-blue gravel, between neatly manicured swathes of lawn, up gleaming black steps through the front door (also invitingly wide open) and into the softly carpeted Georgian splendour of the house itself, only to discover there were several people from the trade already there, including her nemesis, the Mole.

The Mole, not actually his real name, which was Bertrand Huckvale—so it was hardly surprising that Cordelia stuck with “the Mole”—was a myopic, pot-bellied, secondhand book dealer, always clad in the same stultifying ensemble of grubby jeans, green waxed-cotton jacket and Coke-bottle-bottom glasses. Despite his bumbling appearance, he had a ruthless knack of getting to the bargains just before Cordelia and stuffing them into his omnipresent rucksack. This was currently a pink-and-white-checked Powerpuff Girls rucksack. But if you were to assume, on the basis of this, that he was either a harmless idiot or possessed a sense of humour, you’d be sadly wrong on both counts.

Right now, the Mole and the rest of the book-buying buzzards were to be seen through a doorway to the left of the high-ceilinged entrance hall in which Cordelia had paused.

The buzzards were in what was clearly the dining room, jostling each other as they moved around a large, highly polished antique walnut table on which was spread a vast array of books. Cordelia didn’t even bother going into the room, because she could see that all the books on that table were hardback editions.

Unlike Cordelia, the Mole didn’t specialise in paperbacks. Which was good news for her. It meant that while he was happily hoovering up the hardbacks, she could be profitably plundering the paperbacks.

But before she did that, there was one piece of protocol to be attended to.

Through another doorway, on the opposite side of the entrance hall, in a sparsely elegant sitting room, was a woman, standing all alone. Cordelia surmised this person to be Betty Fairwell. The widow was a petite, stylish woman. Her face had a distinctive catlike beauty which was yielding somewhat to the relentless erosion of the years, but still possessed a saucy, benevolent allure.

She was wearing a lavender cashmere sweater, black jodhpurs and lavender Doc Marten boots with black laces. Around her neck was a string of pearls, softly and expensively luminous against the cashmere. It looked as though her bottom half was dressed to go out into the country for a sporty weekend while her top half was planning to stay in town and drink cocktails.

She wasn’t drinking a cocktail now, though. She was holding a chic tubular glass that looked as though it might have come from a mad scientist’s laboratory, and contained what was, or had been, a half pint of lager, which she was sipping at frequent intervals with evident pleasure.

Cordelia went in and introduced herself, confirming that this was indeed the bereaved Betty. “I’m so sorry to hear about your husband,” she told her, not entirely insincerely as, since learning of his departure from this mortal coil, the deceased Duncan had lost his place in Cordelia’s personal black museum of shit-heels and time wasters, and begun to seem a little less disagreeable. Not least because his demise had opened up the possibility of a jackpot for Cordelia.

The widow Fairwell took these condolences with equanimity. “Oh, please…” she said, and began to make an expansive gesture of dismissal with her right hand. But then, realising this was the hand that held her lager and that she was likely to slop it all over her sparsely elegant sitting room, she lifted the other and made the gesture with that one instead. “I’m just pleased you could spare the time to come for a visit.”

“My pleasure,” said Cordelia, “So… where are the paperbacks?”

*   *   *

The paperbacks, it turned out, were up the thickly carpeted stairs and through a door to the left on the second floor, in what had once been the late Duncan’s combined library and study, an impressively large room that ran the entire length of the back of the house and had tall windows that looked out on the river. Looking out there herself, Cordelia realised she was in a riverside house and there was even what looked like a dock and some kind of a houseboat moored to it down at the far end of the lawn.

She only wasted a fraction of a second registering this (though she did mentally add a couple of million to her estimate of what the Fairwell family home was worth) and then focused on the books. Which pretty much filled the room.

The wall space between the windows, and the entire wall on the other side of the room, had fitted bookshelves. A number of these were now empty, with books dispersed to other rooms for viewing by prospective customers, like the mob in the dining room downstairs.

But the paperbacks were all still in situ.

Cordelia didn’t waste any time; she knew exactly what she wanted. The late lamented Duncan had been much given to bloated blog posts, some of which had contained the occasional useful nugget of information. For example, Cordelia had learned that—like herself—Duncan was a massive fan of John D. MacDonald.

Largely forgotten these days, except perhaps as the author of the novel The Executioners, which went on to become the film Cape Fear, MacDonald had been a towering figure in his time. And, as far as Cordelia was concerned, he was the greatest American crime writer of them all. What’s more, almost all his books had originally been published in paperback. It was a long-term aim of Cordelia’s to obtain first, or early, printings of everything by John D.

And it just so happened that Duncan Fairwell had a library full of such items.

Aware of her heart beating rather quickly, she went straight to ‘M’ in the usefully and scrupulously alphabetically ordered bookshelves on the far wall and began to pull handfuls of books out immediately, which was just as well, because it felt like she’d hardly embarked on this enterprise when she heard the sound of someone padding along in a sinister fashion, approaching inexorably in the carpeted hall outside. And who should step through the door and violate her peace and privacy, but the Mole himself. How the hell had he got finished downstairs so quickly?

The Mole was now carrying, in addition to his pop art rucksack, two large Sainsbury’s shopping bags with cartoon squirrels on them, all presumably full of loot. He looked at Cordelia—daylight from the high windows flashing across the lenses of his spectacles—and then, without bothering to utter a greeting, plunged right in to sacking the shelves. Cordelia accelerated her own pillage, snatching fat handfuls of books off the shelf in front of her.

She ignored all British editions (with a certain amount of regret because some of these, especially the Pan “handcuff” versions, were really quite nice) and anything printed later than about 1980—easily identifiable because the cover price went above two dollars. Even so, this left a hell of a lot of books since John D. MacDonald had been a prolific and hugely popular writer and his books had gone through many reprintings. And Duncan Fairwell, in true obsessive-collector fashion, had felt compelled to obtain not only every variant he came across but also was quite fond of out-and-out duplicates.

All of which meant that, by the time Cordelia had strip-mined the John D. MacDonald section, even though she’d done her best to restrict her terms of reference, she had more books than she could carry.

It took several trips to transfer them from the carpet immediately beneath the bookshelf where she’d first deposited them to the floor on the opposite side of the room. She put them beside an armchair that was usefully positioned in front of one of the tall windows, with excellent daylight for reading.

In this case, for reading the fine print and other textual clues that allowed Cordelia to identify the earliest editions of all the books. Sometimes it was the cover price that was the clue—the lower the price, the earlier the date of printing. Obviously. But what to do when faced with several different variants, all with the same price?

Luckily, Cordelia had done her homework. All the books she’d chosen had been published by Gold Medal, the folks who had invented the paperback original, and ground zero for almost all of MacDonald’s publications. Gold Medal had a number of eccentricities and oddities in its printing designations, and Cordelia knew them all.

She knew, for instance, that in 1964 and 1965 they had used the “bullet” system. This consisted of putting dots on the copyright page, so a second printing was identified by two so-called bullets, a third printing by three and so on.

Whereas, from 1965 to 1970, they’d used something called the End Print Number, whereby on the last page of the text there would be a string of numbers like this: “66-6-1” (a fairly devilish example, true) which meant the book was published in the year of 1966, in the month of June and that it was the first printing.

Using these and other criteria—always looking for copies in fine condition, favouring those with cover art by the likes of the redoubtable Robert McGinnis—she went through the stacks of books like an expert casino dealer distributing cards, selecting some, discarding others, and had soon reduced the pile of books from enormous to merely mammoth.

She left the ones she’d spurned on the floor by the chair instead of putting them back on the shelf. This was simple pragmatism rather than bad manners because, as she’d predicted, as soon as she got up and headed for the door with as many books as she could carry, the Mole immediately pounced on the ones she’d left behind. He knew Cordelia’s taste in paperbacks was so exemplary that, even among her rejects, there would be some choice items.

Cordelia headed downstairs, treading carefully, hardly able to see over the pile of books she was carrying.

They say that a successful transaction is the one in which both parties think they’ve swindled the other. This was more or less true of Cordelia’s negotiation with the cashmere-clad, lager-sipping, pearl-bedecked widow. While it was true that Betty Fairwell didn’t want any of her late husband’s books for herself and was eager to clear the house of them, that didn’t mean she was going to let them go for a pittance. On the other hand, she wasn’t an expert in evaluating old paperbacks and probably ultimately didn’t give a damn. And although she ended up asking a great deal of money for Cordelia’s books (as Cordelia had already begun to think of them), it was vastly less than they were actually worth.

Cash talked in situations like these, and Cordelia had paused on the way to Richmond to visit a bank machine and effectively empty her account. This stake wasn’t remotely enough to pay for all the books, but it would cover a decent deposit so that Betty would hold them for Cordelia and no one else, especially the Mole, would be able to get his grubby mitts on them.

Once they’d struck their bargain, shaking hands on it (the widow’s palm cool from the glass of chilled lager she’d been holding), Cordelia forked out the cash and they carefully wrapped her purchases. She was ecstatic about these. They included a complete set of MacDonald’s Travis McGee series, plus key standalone novels, among them The Drowner, Clemmie and One Monday We Killed Them All. Not to mention the amazingly rare Weep for Me, in both its 1951 and 1959 printings (Gold Medal 200 and Gold Medal 884).

Together they sealed these wonderful items in bags, affixed Post-it notes with Cordelia’s name on them and stored them in a cupboard. Cordelia was sad to see the door close on her lovely bags of lovely books.

“When do you think you might be able to pay the rest?” asked Betty, all business despite her pearls.

“Not long at all,” said Cordelia. “As it so happens, I’ve just had some paying work come in.”

Then she rushed home. There was no way she could un-send the email she’d sent to the ashram, turning down the potentially lucrative job they’d offered her. But the situation might still be salvageable. It had better be, because she needed that money now. Badly.

When Cordelia explained the situation to Edwin, he just smiled and said, “Leave it to me.”

3: CHATTING SHIT

It turned out that the folks at the ashram were as desperate to give Cordelia another chance as she was to be given one.

She was swiftly booked for a meeting with the yoga centre’s big kahunas as soon as the place opened the following morning. And it opened early, both because—obviously—it was essential to greet the beginning of each new day with appropriate meditation, breathing exercises and yoga practice to guarantee suitable spiritual harmony and balance, and so the ashram could do a lucrative and booming trade in people on their way to work. Cue the sound of cash registers.

But, even though the ashram opened early, Cordelia made sure she arrived a good half an hour earlier, while the centre was still silent and dark and empty, and proceeded to perform certain measures.

When the staff did eventually turn up, along with zealous early-bird customers, Cordelia was first in line, waiting at the door to be let in like an eager mutt. The door had a wide glass panel in it—quite easy to smash through if you wanted to break in, Cordelia reflected, though clearly no one had done so because it was untouched.

The view of the interior was obscured by an orange blind with a dark red Om symbol on it. This disappeared from view as the blind was rolled up and a vaguely visible figure in orange unlocked the door then hurried away as if fearing the flood of humanity that was about to pour through the entrance.

Cordelia was the first of the flood. She stepped into the shop (of course you had to enter the ashram, and leave it too, through the gift shop) and went up to the counter.

The girl behind the counter said, “Namaste.” She looked familiar to Cordelia; a mousy little thing… her name was Jan or Jane or Jenny or something. “Welcome to the Silverlight Yoga Centre.”

Cordelia wasn’t surprised to see the girl working in the shop. She’d been a student here at the same time as Cordelia, but unlike Cordelia, she had always been sucking up to the staff and volunteering to do things. Now here she was, having graduated to orange pyjamas.

“Your first lesson is free,” said Jan or Jane or Jenny or something. Then her face fell. She’d recognised Cordelia. “You,” she said, managing to pack a fair amount of accusation into that single syllable.

“Yup.”

“You’re banned from the Silverlight Centre.”

“Was banned,” corrected Cordelia. Though she might still be as far as lessons were concerned. She’d have to check on that. Why not insist on reinstatement of her yoga privileges as part of her deal? In fact, how about a year of free lessons? Or even two years? So long as the bastards were willing to throw them in as a bonus that didn’t in any way erode her fee.

“I’m here for a meeting in the meeting room,” she said. “Right about now.” She glanced pointedly up at the clock high on the wall behind the till. It was fashioned from a smiling bronze sun face, was emphatically ethnic and, like everything else in here, was for sale for a hefty price.

“A meeting?”

“Yes. In the meeting room,” said Cordelia, starting to get fed up with the tautological nature of this utterance. “Now.”

“I will just confirm that,” said Jan or Jane or Jenny or something with a prim pursing of her lips. She picked up the phone beside the till—which, disappointingly, wasn’t emphatically ethnic or apparently for sale, though Cordelia was sure they’d be open to offers—and dialled a number.

“It’s Joni in the shop,” she said as someone answered at the other end.

So, it was Joni, not Jan or Jane or Jenny.

Joni turned away and made a big thing of talking in an undetectable whisper with her back to Cordelia.

While she was waiting for her bona fides to be confirmed, Cordelia had a quick snoop around the gift shop. Mostly she wanted to check on the hemp yoga mats. Did they really cost so much or had she dreamed it? No dream at all. Indeed, they now were priced considerably north of their old price.

“Watch out,” said a voice behind her.

It was a cheery voice and Cordelia turned around to see a cheery face—red cheeks, blue eyes, red-lipped mouth shyly revealed in a large white beard.

The man was big in both senses, tall as well as fat, and was dressed in a blue-and-green Black Watch tartan shirt, yellow silk neckerchief and faded jeans secured with a broad brown leather belt that had a large bronze peace symbol for a buckle. He was shod in shabby pink espadrilles and was sockless, revealing bony, blue-veined ankles.

Altogether, he looked like a bohemian lumberjack gone badly to seed. Alternatively, if you dressed him in a hooded red garment trimmed with white, he might have made a very useful department-store Santa Claus.

“Those things aren’t cheap,” he said, nodding at the exorbitant yoga mats.

“I’d noticed,” said Cordelia.

The man grinned at her and Cordelia found herself grinning back at him as if they shared an amusing secret. Perhaps the secret of the idiots who might actually spend that much money on a yoga mat, sustainable hemp or no.

“My name’s Alfie,” said the man.

“Nice to meet you, Alfie,” said Cordelia. “I’m Cordelia.”

Alfie took her hand and, for a foolish but not entirely unpleasant instant, Cordelia thought he might be about to kiss it. But instead he just shook it. “And nice to meet you, Cordelia,” he said.

“You can go upstairs now,” said Joni from across the room. Actually, she shouted. In fact, you might almost have said she screamed the words, but that would have been a weird thing to do. Scream, that is.

*   *   *

“It was an inside job,” said the Silver Shrew.

Cordelia was sitting with the Shrew and Howdy Doody. The latter was the head honcho of the ashram, the former was in charge of its finances. They were in the meeting room, a long rectangular space mostly filled with a long rectangular table. There were also fitted shelves, including bookshelves, wall hangings (orange), wood panelling, lots of framed photos and thick but worn carpeting (also orange).

The Silver Shrew was known at the ashram by the Sanskrit name of Gunadya, which meant “full of virtues” (her real name was probably Gwendolyn Blort). She was a small, pinch-faced woman of at least middle age (it was sometimes hard to judge with yoga devotees, it certainly did seem to keep them young—young-looking, that is—as advertised). She possessed beady dark eyes, a long, pointed nose and short, cropped hair that had gone quite silver, all of which made Cordelia feel she had come up with an excellently accurate nickname for her.

Howdy Doody, officially Harshavardhana—“creator of joy”, real name unknown and Cordelia didn’t care to hazard a guess—was a big guy, well over six foot tall. Slim, rangy and probably quite muscular under all that orange cotton (yoga was also surprisingly good for building useful muscle), he towered over the Shrew. He had a jug-eared, goofy, freckled face and short ginger hair, which was why Cordelia had given him the name of a puppet in a wildly popular American children’s TV show of the 1950s. Cordelia had never seen this, but she’d read a parody of it in the comic book Mad, as reprinted in paperback form (Ballantine Books U2103, 1955).

“An inside job,” repeated the Shrew.

It was a decisive declaration that brooked no disagreement. So Cordelia set about disagreeing. “What makes you say that?”

“All major crime is. All major crime is an inside job.”

“True enough,” said Cordelia. “But this is minor crime.”

The Silver Shrew’s face darkened agreeably and Howdy Doody didn’t look too pleased, either.

“This is a serious crime,” said the Shrew.

“These are immensely valuable books,” said Howdy.

They’d apparently picked up the habit of emphasising certain words through years of giving yoga instruction to dullards.

“How valuable?” said Cordelia.

“In terms of their sentimental, emotional and historical value, they’re priceless,” snapped the Shrew.

“How about in terms of money?”

“We are still making an assessment.”

“Well, when you’ve made an assessment, let me know,” said Cordelia.

“Why?” said the Shrew, instantly suspicious. “Why do you need to know how much the books are worth?”

Cordelia smiled. “Well, for a start, so I know how much to bill you when I recover them.”

She could see Howdy and the Shrew were torn between being offended by her greed and impressed by her confidence.

“I still maintain it was an inside job,” said the Silver Shrew. She seemed to have latched on to the term “inside job” and wouldn’t let go of it.

“But that would imply it’s someone associated with the ashram,” said Howdy.

“Yes,” said the Shrew, rolling her eyes. “That’s what ‘inside’ means.”

“Surely no one who comes here would do such a thing.”

“Comes here or works here,” said the Shrew.

Now Howdy looked genuinely shocked. “Why would any of our people do something like that?”

“Who else could it be?” said the Shrew, looking him in the eye. “How else could they get inside without leaving any signs of breaking in?”

Cordelia cleared her throat to remind them she was there. “You feel confident this place is totally secure?”

“Total…” began the Shrew and then, not wanting to echo Cordelia, changed it to, “Absolutely secure.”

“Absolutely,” said Howdy.

“There’s no way anyone could just come in off the street?” said Cordelia.

“Not without leaving clear signs of a break-in,” said the Shrew.

“And there were no such signs,” said Howdy.

“They couldn’t just… climb in through an open window?” suggested Cordelia.

“Absolutely not,” said the Shrew.

“No way,” said Howdy.

Cordelia took out her phone and showed them the photo she’d taken outside the centre before it had opened this morning. It showed an upstairs window, quite clearly ajar. It was a long window, about two metres wide and half a metre high. Large enough for a person to climb through. Large enough for any number of people to climb through.

Howdy and the Shrew stared at it with matched expressions of disgust, as though she was showing them some vile porn on her phone. “That’s an open window,” said Cordelia, not scrupling to point out the obvious.

“When did you take that photo?” said the Shrew.

“This morning, just before I came in to see you,” said Cordelia. “The point is, someone could easily have got in through that.”

“Nonsense,” said the Shrew. “It’s far too high off the ground.”

Howdy nodded in agreement.

“There’s a tree growing beside it,” said Cordelia.

“Nobody could climb that tree,” said the Shrew.

Howdy nodded again.

Cordelia showed them another photo, this time a close-up shot of the open window, with her hand in fact touching it. Taken when she’d climbed the tree.

Howdy and the Shrew looked at it and looked at each other, then fell gratifyingly silent.

Cordelia wished she could have got someone, perhaps a helpful passer-by, to have taken a photo of her up in the tree, cheerily waving, after she’d climbed it. But you couldn’t have everything.

While Howdy and the Shrew were digesting this titbit, Cordelia went and inspected the actual scene of the crime. One wall of the room consisted of bookshelves that went all the way from the ceiling down to waist height. Below that it was just attractive wood panelling. Presumably because it was too uncomfortable to bend down and get at books situated any lower. A damning indictment of the efficacy of yoga, perhaps.

The bookshelves weren’t evenly spaced. Instead, they were set at varying heights, to accommodate books of different sizes. Cordelia appreciated the good sense of this. It maximised how many volumes you could pack in and, as someone who was always trying to find enough room for her own books, she thoroughly approved.

There was only one shelf designed for paperbacks—a shallow space because proper classic, pocket-sized paperbacks weren’t at all tall—and it was now completely empty, a narrow blank band of pale wood in the wall of books, like an archaeological stratum in a bank of sediment that indicated some primordial catastrophe.

Interestingly, the shelf was just below shoulder height. The most comfortable shelf to get at. Which led Cordelia to speculate that perhaps the thief hadn’t specifically targeted paperbacks but had simply gone after the books that were most easy to access.

She turned to Howdy Doody and the Silver Shrew. “Can I have a list of the missing books?”

“Stolen books,” Howdy corrected her.

“We have a list for you,” said the Shrew, somewhat grudgingly. She made no move to produce it, though.

Cordelia felt the Shrew was still reluctant to hire her, even though she and Howdy had summoned Cordelia here urgently and had now reached the point of actually briefing her for the job.

“The books we’re most anxious to retrieve are those by Avram Silverlight,” said Howdy Doody.

“Avram Silverlight?” said Cordelia.

“Yes. They are signed by Avram Silverlight himself.”

“Avram Silverlight?” persisted Cordelia. The more often the name was repeated, the more preposterous it sounded. “That’s a person?”

“Yes,” said Howdy Doody and the Silver Shrew simultaneously in identical tones of contemptuous sarcasm.

“The Silverlight Yoga Centre is named after a person?”

“Yes.” More synchronised sarcasm.

“Of course it is,” added the Shrew. She marched over to a framed photograph that hung on the wall and tapped it, as if to wake up the people depicted in it.

Cordelia went and looked at the picture. It was in black and white, and showed a group of young men and women standing in front of what was recognisably the ashram. The photo had evidently been taken at least half a century ago, judging by the clothes and other accoutrements the people were wearing (bell-bottom jeans and beads were the least of it).

In the centre of the group was an imposing, powerfully built young man with shoulder-length hair. He was bare chested, and across that chest was a large lotus flower tattoo. It was distinctive and would have been even more so at the time, in the late 1960s, when only sailors and nutcases got tattooed. And this guy didn’t look like a sailor.

“That is Avram Silverlight,” declared the Shrew, peering at Cordelia beadily.

“Good grief,” said Cordelia.

“Where did you think the name came from?” asked Howdy.

Cordelia turned away from the photo and looked at him. “I just thought it was some kind of fatuous reference to a mystical yogic thing. Now, is there anything else you can tell me about the burglary?”

This question had an odd effect. Both Howdy Doody and the Silver Shrew fell profoundly silent. They looked at each other, then looked away and remained silent some more. Cordelia decided to remain silent herself and see who would give way first. Clearly she was on to something here, though she had no earthly idea what it might be.

Finally, Howdy Doody and the Silver Shrew broke the silence as a kind of double act.

“The thief didn’t just steal some books,” said the Shrew.

“They defaced the room,” said Howdy.

“Defaced it?” Cordelia looked around. There was no sign of anything like that now.

“Using a very particular material,” said the Shrew.

“What material?” said Cordelia, her interest now well and truly piqued.

More silence.

“Their own excrement,” said Howdy Doody, finally and abruptly.

“We assume it was their own excrement,” said the Silver Shrew.

Howdy gave her a look of annoyance. “What are you suggesting? That the thief came equipped with someone else’s? With a bag of human faeces?”

“I’m not suggesting anything…”

“As a bonus accessory for their break-in?” persisted Howdy. “Along with their bag of burglary tools?”

Cordelia, who knew a thing or two about burglary tools (she still possessed a useful set of her own), did some breaking in herself now and interrupted the bickering.

“Are you sure it was human faeces?” she asked.

“We have no idea,” said the Silver Shrew tersely.

“You didn’t have it analysed?” said Cordelia. “Because, if it was human, you could…”

“Yes, yes, DNA, identify the culprit, et cetera et cetera,” said Howdy Doody. He really did have some annoying conversational habits.

“So?” said Cordelia.

“We did not have it analysed,” said the Silver Shrew curtly. “We cleaned it up.”

“You didn’t think to retain a sample?” said Cordelia, with a hint of condescending reprimand. She was rather enjoying this little chat. Chatting shit, so to speak.

“No, we didn’t,” snapped the Silver Shrew.

“With hindsight, we realise that was something of a mistake,” said Howdy Doody. “We should have retained a sample, instead of scouring the whole place with bleach and removing any possible trace of evidence. That was a somewhat foolhardy course of action.”

“Well, if it was foolhardy, who was the fool who issued the orders?” The Shrew was glaring at Howdy now. “You demanded we clean it up immediately.” She turned to Cordelia. “You should have heard him shriek when he saw it.”

“I smelled it before I saw it,” said Howdy diffidently, lost in reminiscence. “Perhaps I should have been more measured in my response. You’re quite right. But in the heat of the moment…”

“Of course,” said the Shrew, conciliatory now. “It was only natural to respond the way you did.”

“Perhaps, but still, I should have thought…”

“No one can think of everything,” said the Silver Shrew comfortingly.

“Still, it’s a pity,” said Cordelia.

The Shrew turned to her, becoming combative again. “Well, it’s a moot point. There’s nothing we can do about it now.”

“Yes,” said Howdy. “No point crying over spilt—”

“Poo,” said Cordelia helpfully.

“—milk,” concluded Howdy, wrinkling his nose. Speaking of noses, Cordelia couldn’t help giving the place a surreptitious sniff with her own, but all she could detect was the smoky, spicy perfumed hint of old incense.

“Is there anything else you want to tell me before I get started?” she said.

“I think that’s all you need to know,” said Howdy Doody.

“I think it’s more than she needs to know,” said the Silver Shrew, turning towards Howdy. “I still say we shouldn’t have told anyone about the… dirty protest.”

“There was no way we could keep it quiet,” said Howdy. “It was the day after our anniversary celebration, which made it so much worse. Everyone in the ashram knew what happened. Half of them helped clean it up.”

“I still think it’s bad for our reputation.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” said Cordelia with magnificent insincerity. She literally couldn’t wait to get home and tell Edwin. Odd that Lorna hadn’t already told him. But maybe she didn’t know. But wasn’t that odd, too?

“When are you going to start your investigation?” asked the Shrew, with heavy quotation marks around the word investigation.

“As soon as you give me that list of the missing books,” said Cordelia. “And pay me a hundred-pound advance on my fee.” This last bit she just threw in for the hell of it. It would be fun to see their response.

“A hundred pounds?” said the Shrew.

“In cash,” said Cordelia.

“But you haven’t done anything yet,” said Howdy Doody, a plaintive note creeping into his voice.

“And I’m not likely to if I don’t get an advance.” Cordelia, who hadn’t even thought of asking for an advance until a few seconds ago, now found herself prepared to stubbornly defend the principle.

“Oh, let her have it,” said the Shrew, surprisingly. She gave Cordelia a sharp look. “This will be deducted from any eventual fee.”

“Hence the term ‘advance’,” said Cordelia.

“I suppose you want it now,” said the Shrew, sighing heavily.

“Yes, please,” said Cordelia, suddenly all cordiality. The thought of money always cheered her up.

The Shrew took a laptop out of a drawer in the side of the table and opened it, then began to type briefly onto what Cordelia assumed was a spreadsheet, and then type at greater length into what Cordelia assumed was some sort of memorandum (“Paid the evil bitch one hundred pounds at her insistence”). When she finished, she closed the laptop and left it out on the table.

“Now, you’ll get started right away?” said Howdy Doody.

“Right away,” said Cordelia.

“And you’ll report back as soon as you make any progress,” said Howdy.

He certainly sounded anxious.

“Yes,” said Cordelia. “In the meantime, might I suggest you start keeping your windows shut and locked?”

“We need the windows open when we use the shala,” snapped the Shrew. The shala was the studio or “yoga space” where lessons took place. “We need to have access to a constant flow of fresh air for our students during their instruction, for their breathing exercises.”

“Do you need to have access to a constant flow of fresh air during the night when they’re not here?” said Cordelia, making no effort not to be snotty. “If not, then close the windows and lock them after the last lesson of the day or before the last member of staff goes home.”

“Thank you for the benefit of your expert advice,” said Howdy Doody, also not sparing the snottiness.

“You need to take your security a lot more seriously around here,” said Cordelia.

“We do take our security seriously.”

“Really? By just leaving stuff lying around?”

“We don’t just leave stuff lying around,” said the Shrew. “Anything valuable is locked in the safe.”

The safe? What safe? thought Cordelia.

As if in answer to her unspoken question, the Silver Shrew went to the wall hangings. These consisted of two large pieces of saffron silk with Sanskrit words embroidered on them. On the left-hand side, previously unnoticed by Cordelia, a gold-braided cord hung half-concealed. The Shrew pulled on this and the pieces of silk swept apart like curtains to reveal a cylindrical metal safe recessed in the middle of the wall, like the third eye in the unwrinkled brow of an enlightened yogi.

Having opened the curtains, the Shrew scurried to a corner of the room and came back with a folding set of bright purple plastic