Bobby Lucas (The Kidnap of Lilly Beauchamp) - A twenty one chapter novel
He walked into The Ship, a dark gloomy pub with its small windows and dull decoration and dark low ceiling beams and had to stand at the short bar next to a smelly old man in a black grubby jacket to wait to get served. It was so depressingly gloomy in there the curtains might as well have been drawn. The old man looked at him and smiled with brown teeth, then said, “old Sid’s down the hole changing a barrel.” Then he turned back to chew his cheek while studying his empty glass sitting on a brightly coloured beer mat tapping out a rhythm with chewed down fingernails. Robert Lucas thought some old men had a look that kind of made them seem sad and this old man seemed sad. Sad and pale. His hands shook a bit and the greying stubble on his chin was patchy like he only had a blunt blade that skipped a bit here and there. That stubble giving him a kind of whitish mouldy look. His eyes had that sort of watery look some older sad people have, looking as though he might be tired, a worn out