The Swap - By Antony Moore Page 0,12

The road was busy as people drove out of town from shopping and there was a traffic jam up the hill towards the lights. Bleeder brought the car to a halt. 'I wanted your comic and you let me have it. It was a swap.' His voice was far away from the car and the traffic, even from the rain and the wind.

'It's just . . . It's funny, I was just then wondering what happened to it. The comic, I mean. 'Cause I run a comic shop as I told you and I was just thinking: I wonder what happened to that old comic. I don't even remember what it was, what kind. But I do remember swapping. I wonder if it might be with your stuff, the stuff you're going to go through on Monday.'

'Yes, a comic. I do remember but it was so long ago. We did a swap, you swapped a comic. What did I swap?'

'If you are going through your old things, I just wondered, if you found it you might let me have it back. 'Cause comics are kind of my thing. You never know, it might be worth a few quid now. I might buy it from you for a couple of pounds, just for nostalgic reasons, yeah?' Harvey laughed a weird and, to his ear, raspingly unattractive laugh, a skull's laugh. He was gazing out of the windscreen now, staring forwards, watching the raindrops splash and splinter the red lights and then be swept aside over and over again.

'I'll, I'll think. I'll have a think.' The lights changed and Bleeder engaged the engine. 'I'll have a think, but it may be gone. It's probably gone.' He pulled forward as the queue began to move. 'Where am I dropping you, by the way? I can't remember where you—'

'Oh, actually, anywhere's fine. I need to go to the shops and so on. Thanks.' The car came to an immediate halt, bringing a horn's cry of outrage from behind.

'So, there you are,' Bleeder said.

'Oh right, yeah, cheers.' Harvey, surprised by the suddenness of his arrival, fumbled with his seatbelt and tried to open the door. The horn sounded again and Bleeder reached across him to grab the handle. 'You have to push it like this'. His voice was as clear and precise as when they first met but when Harvey looked for a moment into his eyes they were wild and staring, as if Bleeder had seen something terrible, something unthinkable. And the hand that opened the door for him, Harvey couldn't help noticing, was trembling.

Chapter Five

The road was eerily familiar. Tired bare trees led the eye from the end of a row of cheap prefabs directly past the house, as though the planners had intentionally wanted it not to be noticed. Harvey could see their point. The estate had encroached a little more perhaps. A few extra buildings, but indistinguishable from those that had marked the end of the estate in his day. There were even some boys riding their bikes up and down the road, using the kerb as a mini-jump to perform wheel spins. The boys gave Harvey a look-over and passed some inaudible but apparently hilarious remark, and then carried on. None of them was singing. Harvey was glad of that.

The house itself sat with its same grim disinterest back from the road behind a garden that had the look of somewhere that had been beaten up. It was as though someone had stepped into the matted nature and slashed about them with a scythe until there was a semblance of desolate order. Harvey stood uncertain outside the peeling white gate in the peeling white fence and looked at the windows. There were net curtains at all four of them, grey net curtains. Then he walked, whistling casually – until he realised he was whistling 'Jesus Christ Superstar', at which he stopped abruptly – along the road past the house. He assumed Bleeder must be out, for no handsome silver car adorned the road in front. 'If I had a car like that I wouldn't leave it here,' Harvey muttered to himself and then realised the implications of that. 'Shit, what if he's parked down on the main road and is even now watching me through the netties.' Harvey himself had parked his father's car ('Now don't go scratching me paintwork, I know you'; 'Piss off, Dad') about half a mile down the main road from the town. Now he stomped