The Swap - By Antony Moore Page 0,17

with tassles? Was this some sort of recognised fetish? It might be worth checking on the internet. And when finally he stood in front of the last box in the sitting room, surrounded by damp-smelling bed linen, Harvey realised that he was done. Somewhere he could sense his future self throwing up his hands and smiling: 'Fair do's, you've tried, I'll give you that.' And he would continue to run a perfectly pleasant little comic shop on Old Street rather than a superhero-themed coffee house in Gramercy Park, and that was OK. Maybe it was actually for the best. With a last, almost affectionate glance round the old place (as he now thought of it), Harvey strolled out into the hallway and made for the kitchen. As he did so he was struck by a thought. He hadn't been down to the front door itself. Maybe there was a cupboard there, something like that. So he turned and walked back down the hall, with a sense almost of wanting to prolong what had really been a rather pleasing exercise: a completely new experience and those were rare in his life these days, perhaps too rare, perhaps he should do things like this more often.

Turning over the idea of robbing people's houses now and again just to keep his adrenalin levels up, Harvey approached the front door in a mood of benign affection for crime and for criminals as a group. And it was then that he noticed the wooden door on his left and realised with complete suddenness that the house had a cellar. Frozen for a moment, he stood caught between impulses. He had been ready to leave, to turn and stroll nonchalantly out into the garden and fight his way back through the jungle. His first instinct now was to continue with that plan. Who would keep a comic in a cellar? It was probably just a damp hole full of old tools or bits of coal. And he didn't, he really didn't want to go in a cellar right now. All his insouciance left him in a rush. What if someone came in while he was down there? What if he got locked in for ever? What if Bleeder Odd was the psychopath that any comic-strip writer would make him and came back and found Harvey in his basement? The basement where he kept his victims locked in metal cages, hanging upside down. What if Bleeder Odd had never left St Ives and had been living in the basement all this time just waiting for this moment . . . ? Harvey took several deep breaths. 'I know, I know,' he muttered to his future self, and, opening the door, he stepped inside.

Chapter Seven

Well, this was more like it. The darkness was all-embracing and all-disorientating. Even with the tenuous light from the hallway, Harvey's senses were befuddled by the absolute blackness. This surely was what a burglar was meant to feel like. Again it was his parents' faces that swam into Harvey's mind. When he was small his father had liked to tell him tales of how pirates would hide in the local caves and some would get lost in the darkness and never be found. The child Harvey had been frightened by these stories and had questioned their validity. 'Oh yes, it's quite true, dear,' his mother had told him when he asked. 'Only wicked pirates go in dark caves, wicked pirates and naughty boys, of course.' It had been a source of resentment over many years that he had been frightened in this way. And even now he was able to feel a certain annoyance that his first thought on being in this dark place was that pirates might come and get him. He fumbled along the wall for a light switch, trying to keep his mounting terror within rational boundaries. Surely there had to be a light switch? If there wasn't then his future self would have to just accept that he'd done his best. Or to put it another way, his future self could go fuck himself.

Still clutching the kitchen knife in one hand, Harvey patted the other along the wall, aware of soft things brushing his fingers that he hoped were spiders' webs (rather than pirates' beards, for instance). After a few edgy moments his fingers discovered an old-fashioned switch and pushed it down. This drowned him in light and switched his fears of the dark to panic as to what this