The small timber dispatch office of Bell Commercial Pest Services on Foundry Lane was warm with the dry, pine-scented heat of an electric bar fire. He smelled of cedar shavings, neat pyrethrum powder, and clean black rubber. Outside, the rain ran in dark rivulets down the corrugated iron fence of the adjoining scrap yard, washing the coal soot into the street gutters. On the plywood desk sat Sal Bell’s open route ledger. She was flanked by two brass paperweights, a mug of cold boiled tea, and a small stack of blue telephone message slips.
Sal sat behind the desk, her reading glasses pushed down her nose, holding a clockwork brass touchstone needle in one hand and a foreign silver coin in the other. She rubbed the edge of the coin against a slab of black Arkansas novaculite, then touched the silver streak with a drop of strong etching acid from a glass dropper. The metal line remained bright, creamy white, with zero green discoloration.
“Ninety-four percent fine silver, Imran,” Sal announced. She set the acid bottle back into its wooden block. “Tamsin Drew gave us eighty-four pounds sterling for the five coins you brought back on Tuesday. That covers the quarterly petrol account for the Cortina, two new tires for the winter route, and forty pounds toward little Tommy’s dental work in Leeds. The money is honest. But the schedule is a shambles.”
