The reputation I was building really helped when it came to selling the items I found, but it came with something I hadn't expected: eyes on me. At first, I thought it was coincidence — familiar faces turning up at the same sales. But after a while, I started to notice a pattern.
And patterns were my thing. That was the skill everything rested on — recognising anomalies, spotting the one detail that didn't belong. It was why I could pull a Victorian vinaigrette out of a tray of junk or find a brewer's log in a box of mouldy ledgers.
That same instinct is what made me pick up on him so quickly. He wasn't like the regulars — the dealers who nodded over tea urns or the hobbyists who rummaged for curios. He moved differently, like someone rehearsing casual. He'd arrive just after me, every time, as if my shadow set his clock. Sit in his Audi until I was inside, then drift in and hover — not browsing, not buying, just orbiting. If he'd spent half as much effort pretending to care about the stock, he might have pulled it off. But he didn't. And once I'd seen the pattern, I couldn't unsee it.
So I began to test the theory. First, I left early one morning and drove a different route, doubling back twice before heading to the sale. He still turned up — same car, same casual drift through the door. Next time, I parked in a multi-storey two towns over and walked the last half-mile. He was there before me, leaning on the bonnet like he'd been waiting all morning. The third time, I tried a decoy. Left my car outside a café and sat inside with a coffee, watching the street. Sure enough, the Audi cruised past twice before I even moved. When I finally drove off, he fell in behind me like it was nothing.
Sussex was different. I took the train this time, two stops past the obvious station, then doubled back on a rural bus. No car, no predictable route. For the first time in weeks, I walked into a sale without feeling eyes on my back.
That's how I found myself holding a cobbler's box in Sussex, thumbing through a journal that would change everything I thought I knew about the past.