Gareth Nunne grunted.
‘Ostensibly. In the shop you’d have books on Churchill and the Battle of Britain and piles of war comics. But upstairs, up past the sign that said “Staff Only”… was the other stuff.’
‘We used to think it was just pornography,’ Connie Wilby said. ‘Sort of stuff you’d sell on the Internet these days. You knew people were going to that shop who never went anywhere else. Men usually, sometimes in pairs, in those short denim jackets. It was only when he died that we found out that it was wall-to-wall heavy-duty Hitler and the SS and satanism.’
‘Some of those books,’ Gareth Nunne said, ‘were actually plain-cover stuff. Interminable tracts full of hatred. Privately published by the neo-Nazi fraternity in the UK. He also – this was the early days of video – would put together old films of the rise of Hitler and those Berlin Olympics, the Aryan fitness dream. And footage from Himmler’s magic castle at Wewelsburg. He had a video copier, churning out all this stuff.’
‘You’d hear him talking about Hitler when he was pissed,’ Connie said, ‘like the Fuhrer was some bloody dark angel, and he—’
‘Was that his phrase?’ Betty’s head had snapped up. ‘Or yours?’
‘Oh, his, I ’spect. He was a bit of a… they’d say he was a Goth now.’
‘There was a stage,’ Gareth Nunne said, ‘where we’d have all these bloody skinheads in town, all filing into his shop. I hadn’t got a shop then, see, I was working for the King, and I don’t reckon he was too happy, but it wasn’t like he owned the place.’
Gareth Nunne scowled, remembering, his facial skin flaw shining like beetroot. Gareth Nunne and Connie Wilby… Merrily had been in both their shops once or twice, over the years. She remembered Connie specializing in local history and old maps.
‘With hindsight,’ Connie said, ‘I think Jerry only opened that shop to feed his obsession. His opening hours were ludicrously irregular. Sometimes he’d close for a week and bugger orf somewhere – back to his parents’ house – or with some woman, we thought. He was very fond of women. But, as I say, he was terribly handsome. Blond hair.’ She looked up at the bar, wistfully. ‘Terribly handsome. Which rather blinded you to the rest.’
Merrily saw Gwenda raising an eyebrow.
‘And so fit,’ Connie said. ‘As if he worked out at the gym, which was hardly fashionably in those days. I don’t think there were any gyms in this part of the world. Not outside schools anyway.’
‘You’re playing this for all it’s worth, aren’t you, darling?’ Gwenda said. ‘And you do keep dwelling on his physical attributes. That mean you… knew him well?’
‘Not well,’ Connie said gruffly. ‘But – yes – I knew him. Once. Couldn’t take my drink in those days, that was the trouble.’
‘Bugger me.’ Gareth turned his chair round to peer at her. ‘I didn’t know about that, Connie.’
‘Thought I was going to be his older woman at first, but he never even looked at me again. Or he looked at me properly and thought, “Oh Christ, what have I done?”’
‘You were still in your thirties,’ Gareth said. ‘Just about. If I’d known you was up for—’
‘Oh please! They were heady days, even the King bringing girls back to his castle. Nearest Hay ever came to a summer of love. And I didn’t know he was a bloody Nazi, did I? It was just war books, then, far as we knew.’
Gwenda said. ‘Was this… you and the Aryan beauty… in the shop in Back Fold?’
‘Was, yes. I think Jerry was the last person to actually live there. He’d had the walls painted black, and there were posters and things. Joss sticks. Not bad for a man-pad. I remember he just had a bloody big mattress on the floor in the living area. And he’d light a fire in the small grate upstairs. Small burn marks all over the floorboards.’
Connie burst into throaty laughter.
Robin said, ‘What happened to all the books and tapes and stuff?’
‘Don’t know, dear. Somebody must’ve come to clean the place out, get rid of the stock. I doubt any of us would’ve wanted to take it on, even as a free gift. We didn’t know about his heroin habit. Wasn’t so ubiquitous, then, not like now, all those needle bins in the public lavs.’
‘A superfit heroin addict?’ Gwenda said.
‘Perhaps he was just wasted. I wouldn’t know, would I? I was a convent girl. Perhaps when he shut the shop and went away he was in some sort of rehab – they have rehab in those days? Can’t recall. Anyway, that’s why nobody noticed. When he… went.’