Read Written in Dead Wax for Free Online Page A

barrister I’m sleeping with.” I felt like I’d been stabbed in the heart. I turned away from her and locked the door. The cats came out through the cat flap to watch us leave. She waved goodbye to them.
    “We shall catch a taxi now, though,” she said. We walked to the main road and flagged one down. There was always a black London cab cruising in the area thanks to the proximity of the Abbey. This one was driven by a striking young mixed-race woman with a shaved head. I gave directions.
    “So, where are we going?” said N. Warren.
    “Every charity shop between here and Chelsea,” I said.
    “God, I don’t think I’ve ever been to a charity shop. I’m not sure I want to. Do they smell funny?”
    * * *
    She followed me into the first charity shop contentedly enough and waited patiently while I looked through about half the records in the first crate. But then she said, “Are you going to look at every single one?”
    I was crouching over the box of records, squatting comfortably on my heels in my crate-digging shoes. I smiled up at her. “I don’t know any other way of doing it.”
    She tapped her foot. “Can’t we go to another shop?”
    “Not until we finish in this one.”
    “You really are going to scrutinise every record?”
    I looked up at her. “I could stop right now and we could leave the shop. And the very next record I was about to look at might be it, the one we’re looking for. And we’d have missed it.”
    That shut her up. She turned away and began taking a pointed interest in the rest of the shop’s wares. She started going through a railing of women’s clothes. I could still feel her impatience weighing on me, though, as I looked through the records. I’d found a nice old Philips pressing of
Anatomy of a Murder
by Duke Ellington, but that was about it. Behind me I heard the impatient squeaking of coat hangers on a rail as she went through the clothes.
    The squeaking gradually slowed down and then stopped. After a pause she came over to me and whispered excitedly, “There’s a Nicole Farhi linen biker jacket there and it’s exactly my size and it’s only twelve quid!”
    “So, why are you telling me?” I said. “Do you want me to lend you the money?”
    “Very funny. But it is exactly my size.” She gazed wistfully at the clothes rail. “And my colour.”
    “So, go and buy it.”
    She hesitated. “Do you think there will be a problem with insects?”
    “Insects?”
    “You know, vermin.”
    I felt like informing her that the underclasses had got a lot cleaner since indoor plumbing had become the norm, but instead I just said, “I think they steam clean the clothes.”
    She turned back to the clothes rack with a glint of determination in her eye. “Do you suppose they take credit cards?”
    “I’m sure they do. You really haven’t ever been in a charity shop before, have you?”
    “Why would I have wanted to?”
    Now things were reversed. I would finish searching through the crates of vinyl in a shop and have to wait impatiently around while she combed through the clothes. She rapidly acquired a cluster of bags of purchases and soon had me carrying them. By the time we’d exhausted the charity shops, working our way back from the King’s Road, the light was fading.
    “I suppose we should call it a day,” she said. She took out her phone and a business card.
    “What’s that?” I said.
    “It’s from our driver this morning. Was she or was she not the coolest taxi driver in London? I got her business card.” The woman was obsessed with business cards. “She can be our official driver.”
    “I’m sure the two of you will be very happy together.”
    “Ha ha, very funny.” She called the number and we waited in a coffee shop until the taxi came and picked us up. We sat in the back, headed home, tired after a long day of failing to find the Easy Geary album. We were surrounded by the bags containing our purchases—well,
her
purchases. We had just turned off