He hadn’t realised you could write about fucking like that. There was cheap filth, and there was stuff like Women in Love, which had been accused of obscenity as if anyone could find the good bits in all that waffle. Will had given up on page seventeen. The point was, he’d always thought you could have Pornography or you could have Literature. He hadn’t believed you could do both at once.

Things I might say myself if I could write love poems, Kim had said. It felt like he had written these, for Will.

He still couldn’t believe anyone had published this, especially twenty years ago or however long it was. The blighters had nerve. He leafed idly to the front of the book to check the imprint page, and stopped dead.

There was writing on the title page. He hadn’t seen that before. It wouldn’t have occurred to him anyone would be fool enough to write their own sodding name in a book like this.

Will—

I hope you find some of these as snugly up your alley as I find you up mine.

‘I will neither delay nor dissemble’

—Kim

Will clapped the book shut, as though the mere existence of the words might make them visible to his customers. Jesus. What had Kim been thinking, writing that down? He must be off his rocker.

He reopened it cautiously to check. Yes: it was that bad. And what was the message supposed to mean? The second part, that was. He got the first half well enough, just like anyone else who read it would. Bloody idiot.

‘I will neither delay nor dissemble’. Dissemble meant lie, and Kim had promised not to lie to him any more after the Etchil business. He’d said it seriously, and Will had chosen to trust him, and that had mattered a lot to them both. He didn’t need it repeating, and he wasn’t sure why Kim would.

It was a quotation, so context would probably help. He flicked through White Stains, trying not to remember the many other books he’d searched because of bloody Kim, and found the line half way through.

I will neither delay nor dissemble

But utter my love in thine ear

Though my voice and my countenance tremble

With a passion past pity and fear...

Will was still looking at that when the phone rang.

He put the book back in its drawer alongside the Messer before answering. “Darling’s Used and—”

“We’ve got him.”

“Kim?”

“We—have—got—him,” Kim enunciated. “Fairfax. We have the bastard. Get over here. Come in round the back. The vultures seem to have gone, and to hell with them if they haven’t.”

***

HE ARRIVED AT KIM’S place at a flat run, to find the rest of them gathered with cocktails. “What’s going on?” he demanded. “What have you done? How?”