The Jon Lymonday Teaser: Free sample of Seller V.

A free sample of the Jon Lymon novel Seller V this close to Christmas? Does that still count as Christmas coming early?

I’m shocked when I return from a prolonged visit to the bathroom to find a different guy standing beside the filing cabinet with the middle drawer open. He’s smoking a pipe which is daring as smoking is banned in the apartment block.

“Put that out!” I demand at high volume, but the guy’s unflustered.

“Get in,” he says, pointing a long forefinger at the filing cabinet, his voice well spoken and as stern as the expression on his brow.

I take a deep breath. All my instincts say no, don’t get in there again.

“Where’s Ducannon?”

“Whom?”

There’s tobacco on this guy’s breath. I know who this is.

I’m reminded of the big set piece scene toward the end of the book in which Stetson and Qualms agree to play poker with a couple of cowboys to secure the release of a sick child and her mother whom they are holding hostage upstairs in one of the bedrooms that’s accessed from the landing balcony that runs around the length of the square house.

“This mother and child are innocent,” Qualm insists.

“Guilty by association,” one of the cowboys, Bucky West declares. “A horse is a horse and you can’t steal a man’s horse without punishment.”

“How much is a horse worth around these parts?” Qualms asks.

“More money than you got,” says West’s accomplice, Hank Duvall.

And the scene develops until the men finally decide to resolve their differences at a round table covered by green baize.

“If I raise the funds to pay you back the value of the horses this woman’s husband stole, will you let her and her daughter free?” Qualms asks.

West looks at Duvall and they nod to each other before turning to Qualms and Stetson and doing likewise.

“Deal them out,” says Qualms.

Stetson shapes to leave the table as he’s no gambler, but Qualms grabs him by the arm, and using only his eyes directs Stetson to join the game.

According to one reviewer, the plot of the novel was contrived beyond belief, and the characters caricatures (what’s the difference?). She obviously didn’t ‘get’ me, more proof as if it were needed that I just hadn’t found my audience and my audience hadn’t found me yet.

As they prepare to deal the first hand there’s a crash at the far end of the bar. West and Duvall draw their weapons and as I slide along the bar I’m genuinely concerned they’re going to fire something up my arse.

“No,” I yell, and someone reaches out to me trying to calm me.

I turn to see it’s the barman with a huge moustache skilfully pulling a bottle of his expensive stuff out of my path as I slide along his wooden bar top, arriving from the filing cabinet at speed. My momentum extinguished, I style it out and swing my legs off the bar and stand next to the card table in between Stetson and Duvall the cowboy.

The four players at the table are almost hidden from view by the swirling smoke as Qualms, Stetson and the two cowboys all suck on tobacco-based products, with Duvall jettisoning wads of the stuff into a spittoon with loud metallic clangs.

“Can we knock the smoking on the head,” I ask, really quite anti the idea of smoking indoors, it having been banned in the UK for a good many years.

All four of them look at me like I have asked them to remove all their clothing and dance on the table to the tune of Greensleeves.

“What did you say?” Duvall asks with aggression clear in his voice.

“I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind stopping smoking. It’s not good for you and others around you.”

“Sure feels good, buddy.”

West laughs and even Qualms and Stetson have no idea the habit is killing them, silly fuckers.

Qualms leans into the table for the deck and starts shuffling, still puffing at his pipe.

Stetson shrugs at me and takes a last drag of his cigarette before dropping the stub onto the floor by his boots and crushing it underfoot.

“What we playing?” I ask, seeing my stop smoking campaign falling on deaf ears.

“Five Card Stud,” Duvall states, deliberately blowing smoke in my direction.

“I only know Texas Hold ‘Em,” I tell them.

“Texas what?” West asks. I scan the faces around the table and all four of them are looking at me blankly and Qualms just goes ahead and deals five cards to each player, not the two I’m used to receiving, and there are no chips in the middle, each man boasting a wad of dollars in front of him on the baize, except for me. I reach into my pocket and realise I’m in my dressing gown again and those pockets aren’t strong enough to hold anything weighty.

I feel a tap on my right knee. Stetson is staring across the table at the cowboys but he’s offering me some notes under it. I bend down to scratch my leg and quickly take the money from him, my actions disguised from the cowboys by the fog of the smoke they’re emitting.

I check the five cards in front of me and see three aces, two kings. The kind of hand that gets people killed. My heart rate shoots though the roof. I hear an alarm sound to my right and the barman asks if I’m OK, he can obviously see I’m not as calm as I need to be.

I take a deep breath, worried that I’m giving away tells to my opponents around the table.

Stetson is the first to play and throws in a few notes, valued at 300. I have 500 in total and slide it all in.

“Are you ready?” the barman asks off to my left, his voice closer to my ear than his body.

I nod at him and he trudges a few paces to the shelves where he keeps bottles of his less expensive stuff, whiskey he doesn’t mind getting launched across the room and smashed into heads in saloon brawls.

On my nod he flicks a switch. The air fills with a hum and heaviness. The players at the table don’t notice at first. Then I see Stetson’s glasses dislodge on his nose. Qualms feels something strange pulling at the inside pocket of his jacket.

West to my left checks the pistol in his holster while Duvall puts his index finger in his mouth.

The whirring gets louder and Stetson’s glasses rip from his nose and fly across the room, sticking to a metallic Southern Cross flag that adorns the bar wall near where the barman is standing.

Qualms pulls his gold alloy cigarette case from his inside pocket and it’s snatched from his hand by an invisible force and flies in the same direction as Stetson’s glasses.

West’s pistol follows, and Duvall yells as something metallic flies out of his mouth, drawn to the flag on the wall behind the bar.

I stay where I am, watching my four fellow players react with shock at what’s happening. They stand almost as one and battle to keep items about their person from being snatched by the greed of the wall – a set of keys rip from West’s belt, and I see him gripping the star-shaped sheriff’s badge he must have pulled off his lapel, everything metallic getting suckered against the wall behind the bar. Pens, bullets, guns, they all fly across the room at speed, the barman ducking as each subsequent missile crashes into his wall and sticks there.

“What in blue blazes is going on?” West asks.