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Dr Stoddart made to open the door he said "Father gave it me."
    He had his back to Fairman, who could almost have imagined that the doctor had borrowed someone else's words. Perhaps they betrayed how local he was, much as Fairman's accent seemed to place him. "Do you know your way around our town yet?" Dr Stoddart said.
    "I don't mean to be rude, but why should I need to do that?"
    "Because now you'll want to see Don Rothermere."
    Fairman waited until the doctor turned to face him, having opened the door. "To what end?"
    "For the same reason you've seen me."
    "Another volume of the book?" Less enthusiastically and with some unease Fairman said "Just one?"
    "That's how it's going to be, Leonard."
    "But why has it to be? Why do I need to go through all this?"
    His outburst was unprofessional, and he regretted it as Dr Stoddart and the receptionist gazed distantly at him. "It isn't for you, Leonard," the receptionist said.
    Fairman might have expected her to be rebuked for being too familiar. He supposed she must think she was defending her employer. "So who's this Mr Rothermere?" he said. "Where shall I find him?"
    "It's Suit Your Book on Station Road," the doctor said. "If you ask anyone—"
    "I've got a map. I assume he's a bookseller."
    "Our only one," Dr Stoddart said, and the receptionist added "Your kind of person, Leonard."
    Fairman hoped so. Most booksellers would surely have completed the set of books by now and sold it for a considerable profit. Once the first volume was safely boxed in the car boot he consulted the map and drove uphill. Below the menagerie he turned right along Tree View, a name that made him feel as if he were following some kind of diagram. Beyond a sloping junction the twin terraces of small houses, which looked as if they'd been squeezed fat and grey, met Station Road. Cast-iron awnings set with coloured glass overhung the shops, and halfway along the road a railway station was composed of the omnipresent stone. Families were dragging luggage across the forecourt with a ponderous thunder of wheels while they did their best to hasten for a train. Suit Your Book was almost opposite the station, next to a doorway bristling with nets on canes and hung with plastic buckets. Fairman parked in a side street, where Vacancy signs dwindled downhill to the hazy promenade, and tramped up to the bookshop.
    The window display wasn't encouraging. All the books— hardcovers of various sizes and a scattering of paperbacks—had plainly spent years in the sun, leaving them almost as pale as the haze above the sea. As Fairman stepped into the shop a bell sprang its clapper above his head, and a man hastened over to him. "Leonard Fairman?" he said, if it was even a question. "Don Rothermere. Kindred spirits, eh?"
    Presumably the doctor had phoned ahead. The bookseller was a lanky man who moved as loosely as his grey suit hung on him. His face looked as if the dewlaps at his throat had drawn it narrower, and it was topped by an outburst of hair that might almost have leached colour from his skin so as to stay reddish. Prodigious glasses magnified his blinking eyes, and his pale lips kept twitching at a smile. "I'd hope we are," Fairman said.
    Rothermere thrust out a long hand to hold Fairman's in a clammy grasp while he jerked his head to indicate the contents of the shelves—new or at least unread volumes along the side walls and in the middle of the floor, secondhand books at the back. "We don't read many books in Gulshaw," he said.
    "Not the best place for you, then."
    "I've got all I want to read." Apparently grasping that Fairman hadn't meant this, the bookseller said "And it isn't much of a trot to the post office."
    Fairman wondered how much postal business Rothermere could do, given the state of his stock. "Have you been reading much here?" the bookseller said.
    "Just the new acquisition."
    "Of course." Rothermere's eyes widened, filling the lenses. "How's it affecting you?" he said.
    "I wouldn't say it