The Blurred Man/I Know What You Did Last Wednesday [antikvár]

TIM DIAMOND INC. 23 THE CUTTING, CAMDEN TOWN, NW1 Dear Reader, It's been a while since I had lunch with the chairman of Walker Books. He's an old man now. Most of his hair's gone white and the rest of it's just gone. He wears bi-focal glasses but he doesn't really need them. He's forgotten how to read. He'd forget his own name if it wasn't written on his Zimmer frame. And yet I still remember the day he took me out - just the two of us, face to face, though with a face like his I wouldn't have bothered. We met at the poshest restaurant in London then crossed the road to the café on the other side. He ordered two bacon sandwiches without the bacon. He was a vegetarian. And that was when he tried to sweet-talk me into writing an introduction for this collection of stories. But it takes more than a bag of sweets to get Tim Diamond on your side, so I told Walker to take a walk. A few days later he came tiptoeing round my flat with a bag of books: a bit like Santa Glaus without the beard, the laughter or (it was the middle of June) Christmas. This was his deal. Three dozen adventures of Maisy mouse and an old Where's Wally? annual in return for a couple of pages by me. But as far as I was concerned, there was still one book missing. The Walker cheque book preferably autographed. Unfortunately, when I pointed this out, the chairman just scowled. That was the sort of man he was: small, hard-edged and leathery. Just like his chair. "I need an introduction!" he cried.