The October Boys by Adam Millard

Author:Adam Millard [Millard, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloodshot Books
Published: 2019-08-01T16:00:00+00:00

FIFTEEN

October 28th, 2016

Redbridge, London

The library was a little busier than the last time he’d been here, which, Tom guessed, might have had something to do with the working computers and the fact it was Saturday. This was where jobseekers came to look for work, where adulterous husbands and wives came to contact their chat-room lovers, where the older generations came to learn how to fill in spreadsheets, save word documents, print manuscripts and type with both hands at the same time, where immigrants new to the country sought to learn a new language so that the next time they were in Starbucks they could order precisely what they wanted without looking like a complete dick and pissing off the irate queue building up behind them. The library was a commune, a kibbutz of wannabe-betters, a gathering of the general populace, from Ahmet the Barber to Sir Steven the cheating Lord.

This was where it all happened.

The library.

“Did you find him?”

Tom turned from the shelf he had been staring blankly at for the past two minutes to find Margaret, the librarian who couldn’t even hold her own water even if the CIA told her it was classified, standing there, smiling thinly. “Oh, Sergeant Wood?” he said. “Yes, I caught up with him in the pub, just like you said I would.”

Margaret slipped a thick hardback book on UFO’s into an empty space on the shelf in front of her. “Hope you didn’t mind me telling him you were looking for him,” she said. “Trevor’s a good man, and I’d only just met you. For all I knew you were going to give him a good hiding.”

Tom laughed at that. “Wouldn’t that have been something,” he said. “And you would have pointed me straight at him.”

It was Margaret’s turn to laugh. “It was only fair I should warn him, just in case,” she said. “Don’t think I would have been able to live with myself if he’d turned up here the next day with a black eye and teeth missing.”

“I’m sure Wood can look after himself,” Tom said, and he meant it. Even though Trevor Wood was now confined to a wheelchair or a mobility scooter, he still had about him a formidability which Tom found quite overpowering. You could take the man out of the police force, it seemed, but you couldn’t take the police force out of the man.

“He’s certainly a tough cookie, that one,” Margaret said, and for the first time Tom wondered if she harboured something for the old copper, a secret love, perhaps, or something more than just friendship. “I see he’s got you into his way of thinking,” she said, motioning to the books sitting on the shelf in front of Tom and frowning. “Is he starting some sort of supernatural club? Somewhere you lads can go to talk about ghosties and flying saucers and things that go bump in the night?”

Clearly, Wood hadn’t shared with Margaret the way she ostensibly did with him. This woman had

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