by Tom Holt
He got up and examined the tray: two paper plates, a pile of egg-and-watercress sandwiches and a jug of freshly squeezed iced lemonade. He scowled at it.
‘What’s the matter?’ Neville asked.
‘I don’t like being made fun of,’ Gordon replied.
Neville gave him a quizzical look. ‘You’re making even less sense now than you were a few hours ago. How does feeding us sandwiches constitute a piss-take?’
‘Look around,’ Gordon replied. ‘Go on, look. Tell me what you see.’
‘No, thanks. I think I’ll just—’
Gordon reached out and grabbed Neville around his chicken neck. ‘Tell me,’ he repeated, ‘what you see.’
‘All right, all right - it’s a room. A cell. It’s not very nice. But at least there’s food. Okay?’
‘You’re missing the point.’ Gordon sat down on the bunk and rested his chin on his hands. ‘They’re mocking us. Everything in here is deliberate. Don’t you see? It’s a cloudless sky—’ He pointed at the ceiling. ‘Over a sky-blue sea.’ He pointed to the walls. ‘And we’re lounging at our ease on golden sands, under a dazzlingly bright sun in glorious heat, about to eat our sandwiches and drink our lemonade. Couldn’t ask for a better way to spend a lazy summer afternoon, could you?’
Neville’s scowl melted into a wry grin. ‘Not my cup of tea, beach holidays,’ he replied. ‘But I see what you’re getting at. If you’re right and it’s more than just a coincidence, I’d say we’re in the presence of a truly sick mind.’
Gordon grunted. ‘Makes two of you.’
‘Three of us. Hey,’ he added, as Gordon glared at him, ‘be fair. I’m not the one with the serious drink problem, remember. I don’t know. Maybe we died and this is weather-forecasters’ Hell.’
‘I think,’ Gordon said, getting slowly to his feet and craning his neck to study the ceiling, ‘that it’s about time we did something about this.’ A smile was crawling spiderlike over his face. ‘After all,’ he went on, ‘it’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘Don’t you? How odd. The weather is all our fault, remember. We’re the guys who make it rain on Bank Holiday Monday. Well,’ he went on, ‘how about it?’
‘Definitely three sick minds. Which,’ Neville said, with a shrug, ‘are proverbially better than one. What’s the deal?’
‘I don’t like it in here. I think it’d be nice to get out. What do you think?’
‘You’ll get no arguments from me on that score. I take it you’ve got an idea.’
‘I’m a weatherman,’ Gordon replied simply. ‘Shame there’s no bedclothes on the bunks. We’ll have to improvise. Give me your socks.’
‘Get stuffed.’
‘Do you want to get out of here or don’t you? Give me the goddamn socks.’
Neville backed away nervously. ‘What’s wrong with your socks?’ he said.
‘They’ve got my feet in them. Besides,’ Gordon added, ‘they’re nylon. Unless I’m very much mistaken, yours are cotton.’
‘Cotton-rich,’ Neville said. ‘Which could mean virtually anything. Look, what are you up to?’
The smile on Gordon’s face was reaching epidemic proportions. ‘I’m going to make it rain,’ he said.
‘With my socks?’
‘With your socks. And my handkerchief. For starters. Anyway, they’ll do to get it going.’
Neville’s eyes opened wide. ‘You’re going to start a fire,’ he said.
‘Precisely.’ Gordon took a step closer, backing Neville into the corner of the room. ‘And you know what happens when you start a fire in a government building? It rains. Or, to put it more prosaically, the sprinklers come on. And the fire alarm goes off—’
‘—And they evacuate the building.’ Neville relaxed, and grinned. ‘Good idea. How were you proposing to light the fire? Matches? They didn’t search you, then?’
Gordon shook his head. ‘Lighter. Present from my secretary the Christmas before last.’ He pulled off his belt and freed the buckle. ‘She probably saw it in an Innovations catalogue and thought it was the most incredibly cool thing she’d ever come across in her life. I wear it so as not to hurt her feelings, and because it’s the only belt I’ve got. Anyway,’ he continued, ‘the guys who searched me obviously couldn’t conceive of anything as unutterably naff as a belt-buckle cigarette lighter, and here we are.’ He pressed a knob on the front of the buckle, and a thin blue bud of fire duly appeared. ‘Socks,’ he commanded.
‘Hold on.’ Neville was hopping on one foot. ‘You sure this is going to work?’ he added. ‘I mean, how do you know they’ve got sprinklers and alarms and all that stuff? This isn’t your run-of-the-mill government office.’
‘Trust me,’ Gordon replied. ‘They’re all the same. Regulations. I remember some really boring bloke at the Met Office telling me all about it at a drinks do once. It’ll be fine, you see.’
‘You reckon?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re sure about this?’
‘Of course I’m sure. What could possibly go wrong?’
‘You’re confidently predicting that it’s going to rain in this room, and you’re a weather forecaster.’ Neville grinned disturbingly. ‘That’s all right, then,’ he said. ‘I was worried there, for a minute.’
CHAPTER SIX
Absence, according to the old saying, makes the heart grow fonder.
Just because an idea is old doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true. Other selections from the golden treasury of ancestral wisdom include the flat-earth theory and the leech as a sovereign cure for all known ailments. As far as the proximity/affection inverse ratio is concerned, however, our forefathers were definitely on to something, as Paul Willis would have confirmed as he sat behind Karen’s desk, looking up an address in her immaculately ordered card index.
Odd, that a filing system should bring a lump to his throat. A flower pressed between the pages of a book, maybe; a dog-eared photograph discovered among the Visa receipts at the back of his wallet, perhaps; but a black plastic box full of neatly-inscribed cards wasn’t typically one of Those Foolish Things. Then again, Karen wasn’t like most people. To put it mildly.
For one thing, he reflected, as he pulled out the card he’d been looking for, she terrified the life out of him. He wasn’t at all sure why. Compared with, say, Sharon Goodlet or Terriwith-an-I Ciszek or Leeona-from-Arizona or Bridget the Poison Waif - he shuddered as the memories trooped through his mind, each one leering mockingly at him as she passed. God preserve us from the memory of our lost loves, the ones who continue to haunt our dreams, especially after a late-night Indian meal. They’d all been scary, each in her own distinctive and unforgettable way, and in each instance he’d managed to jump clear at the last minute, hit the ground rolling and make good his escape with only superficial cuts and bruises. He was, in fact, something of an expert at miraculous escapes: Indiana Willis, the man who always walks away.
That was only to be expected. A man who looked like a third-generation photocopy of Hugh Grant and whose father owned twelve newspapers, sundry TV stations and a railway went through life with at least one set of cross-hairs centred on his heart at all times, and the more he tried to run away from his assigned place in the food chain, the harder his destiny pursued him. But a whole lifetime of evicting simpering blondes from his immediate environment hadn’t prepared him for Karen, who didn’t frighten him by her determination or rapacity. She just frightened him.
And Paul didn’t know why. Most of the time, she ignored him. She avoided him as if he were a tactless topic of conversation; and yet he was certain that if someone were to ask her at any given moment where he was in relation to her, she’d have been able to reply with the exact distance in centimetres, bearings relative to magnetic north and precisely calculated grid references. It was the feel of the eyes in the back of her head boring into him that bothered him most. Maybe.
He closed the box and put it back in the drawer. Rationalised, hi
s observations could be taken to show that she was attracted to him but didn’t want to be; which was fair enough and perfectly understandable. After all, he knew better than anybody else that he was as commonplace and unexceptional an individual as it’s possible to find outside of a cloning vat; so colourless as to be practically invisible when submerged in water, deep as an oil slick, complex as a hammer . . . Presumably, the reason why Karen scared him was that she actually seemed to like him (not his face or his potential value net of inheritance and capital gains tax, but him) and he couldn’t understand why anybody would want to do that. Bizarre, almost to the point of perversity.
Now that she wasn’t here any more, of course, it was much easier to like her, since she was, above all things, the sort of person who’s far more attractive in theory than in practice. One of the things that intrigued him the most was that qualities he’d have found distinctly offputting in someone else (someone normal . . .) suited her like designer clothes. She was serious: serious about everything, as if everything she did or was involved in mattered somehow. He couldn’t help finding that fascinating. Sure enough, there are a million people who keep their desks scrupulously organised and tidy, who make a note of the date and time of each phone call, who keep lists of Things To Be Done and work methodically through them till they reach the end; and 999,999 of those million people are the ones you’d gladly feed to the sharks, because you know perfectly well that they do it out of spite, to show the rest of humanity what it could have been like if only it hadn’t gone so badly wrong back in the Late Bronze Age. But there’s one person in that million who does it out of faith, believing that if a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing properly. That’s the one person who should have been Florence Nightingale or Thomas Jefferson or Gandhi, but who ended up behind a desk in an office somewhere and still managed to keep the faith. Utterly fascinating, in a terrifying sort of a way; because you couldn’t help thinking, if she cares so much about garbage like this, how much would she care about something that really mattered? Such as me . . .?
Anyway, Paul told himself, she’s gone now; filed her last photocopy, sharpened her last pencil, backed up her last file, and left behind her a tiny, fragile model of her own perfection for him to bugger up. He frowned; he couldn’t believe that anybody, even he, could be attracted to someone for her tidiness . . . Not that it mattered now. Gone, and just as well. Mentally he transferred Karen to the folder marked Perils Escaped From, and got on with some work instead.
‘Bloody woman,’ muttered Susan, at the other end of the room.
Paul looked up. ‘Sorry?’ he said.
‘I said, bloody woman,’ Susan replied. ‘You don’t need me to be more specific, I’m sure.’
Paul’s eyebrows pulled together. ‘What’s the problem?’ he asked.
‘No problem,’ Susan said. ‘I wanted the OS map sheet for this site plan, and I couldn’t remember what I’d done with it; and then I remembered that before she left, she sorted all the maps out, filed them in order and put them all neatly in folders where they’d be nice and handy for when we needed them. So I said “bloody woman”. Naturally.’
‘Oh. Why?’
‘Because she’s only been gone five minutes and I know for a fact that I’ll forget to put this sheet away, so when I want it next time I won’t be able to find it. Bitch,’ she added. ‘Some people have no consideration.’
Paul frowned. He knew that Karen hadn’t liked Susan much - he had no idea why - and that Susan had always seemed to resent Karen, as if she blamed her for getting her into something she didn’t want to be involved in. He hadn’t a clue what that was all about, either. There were times when he wondered if he wouldn’t have been better off getting a job as a lighthouse keeper, with no colleagues of any description to perplex him.
‘You could always try putting the map back when you’re done with it,’ he suggested.
‘Certainly not. That’d mean she’d have won, and I’m not having that.’ Susan got up, dragged open a filing-cabinet drawer and pulled out a folder. ‘Other people who leave on the spur of the moment leave chaos and disorder behind them,’ she went on, ‘which is how it should be. I feel like I’m living in a bloody museum.’
I know what you mean, Paul deliberately didn’t say. ‘I don’t know what you’re making such a fuss about,’ he replied. ‘There’s nothing wrong with being conscientious.’
Susan pulled a face. ‘There’s a special place in Hell reserved for people who quit unexpectedly, leaving an immaculate system behind them,’ she said. ‘Probably in the Ninth Circle, along with the party leaders and the TV producers, and the people who sell lists of names to the junk-mail outfits.’
Paul was silent for a moment. ‘Don’t suppose you’ve heard anything from her, have you?’ he asked.
She turned her head and looked at him. ‘Certainly not,’ she said. ‘And I don’t think she left a forwarding address, either. Why the hell would you be interested?’
‘I’m not,’ Paul replied, maybe a degree or so too vehemently.
‘My God.’ Susan stared at him, then shook her head. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘too late now. Should’ve done something about it while you had the chance, though if I were in your shoes I’d be looking into the possibility of buying my guardian angel a large drink. Takes all sorts, I suppose.’
Paul wasn’t inclined to respond to that. In any event, Susan was absolutely right about the one thing that really mattered: too late now. He yawned ostentatiously and went back to the mailing list he’d spent the morning putting together; more junk mail, cascading indiscriminately through letterboxes like flood water. What a way to make a living.
He’d nearly finished when the door opened and two policemen walked in.
Paul shared the instinctive fear of policemen common to all white middle-class Englishmen, who are convinced that the police force is recruited exclusively from naturally gifted telepaths. As soon as they looked at him, he was sure they knew exactly what it was he’d done, even if he didn’t; a defective brake light, a packet of crisps unwittingly pocketed in the checkout queue, where were you at 7.38 precisely on the night of 16 April? Other sections of society were more sceptical, less uptight. They could bring themselves to lie convincingly to policemen, stick their tongues out at them, maybe even throw the occasional bottle. Lucky them. Paul and his kind simply didn’t have the knack.
He lurched to his feet, stammering something about how could he help them? The talking policeman (there’s always one who talks and another who stands perfectly still and stares at the side of your head, watching the lies and hidden guilty secrets squirming behind the bone) said he was looking for a young woman by the name of Karen Orme, who (he had reason to believe) worked here.
‘Karen Orme . . .’ Paul’s mind had gone blank, as if someone had wiped it down with a damp cloth. ‘Oh, you mean Karen . . . Yes, she works here. Used to work here, I mean. She’s left now.’
The policeman looked at him; Paul could feel his mind being downloaded, formatted, scanned and quite probably spellchecked. Shame washed over him like the spring tides, because he knew what a mess his mind was in, with random notions lying about on the floor, disorderly thoughts slung over the backs of chairs, unwashed fantasies crowding every flat surface. He felt a powerful urge to apologise, but he knew it wouldn’t do him any good.
‘I see, sir,’ the policeman said; his eyes made it obvious that he knew Paul was lying - which was news to Paul, but if a policeman asserted it, it must be true, surely? ‘Would you happen to know where I could find her?’
‘I—Paul shook his head. ‘Sorry,’ he added, with feeling.
‘No forwarding address? Did she mention a new job she was going to, something like that?’
‘Sorry,’ Paul repeated. ‘It was all quite sudden, actually. One moment she was here; the next - gone.’
Oh my God, he realised, now he thinks I murdered her. I didn’t. Did I?
‘That sounds rather odd,’ the policeman said.
/> ‘It was,’ Paul replied quickly. ‘Very.’
The policeman nodded. ‘Had there been any trouble of any sort?’ he asked. ‘Any arguments or bad feeling?’
Paul’s eyes opened wide. He knew what that meant: Karen had been caught stealing! That was impossible to believe - but needless to say he believed it, the way human beings always do. Besides, if she hadn’t been stealing, why would the police be here looking for her?
‘I hadn’t realised,’ Paul said. ‘I mean, I hadn’t noticed anything like that. I’d always thought she was like, you know, the model employee.’
The policeman nodded, didn’t say anything. The conscious part of Paul’s mind knew that this was one of the things they were trained to do, create an uncomfortable silence so that the hapless civilian would fill it with unguarded babble. Not that that mattered; there was probably a small part of each fish’s brain that tried to point out that fat, juicy maggots didn’t just hang there motionless in the water, but of course it was wasting its time. The silence was as unbearable as a full bladder, and he had to do something about it.
‘Mind you,’ he said, ‘now I come to think of it, there always was something a bit odd about her. The way she did her job, mostly. Sort of - obsessive.’
The policeman raised an eyebrow.
‘And definitely a loner,’ Paul ground on. ‘Never really got on with the rest of us - well, with Susan and me.’ He turned his head towards his colleague, imploring her to join in and relieve him, but she wasn’t having anything to do with it.
‘Not that she was, like, strange or anything. But definitely odd.’
The policeman moved his head up and down through five degrees. ‘And you’re sure you don’t know where she’s gone? She didn’t mention any family or friends who might be able to help us find her?’
‘Sorry,’ Paul said. ‘Come to think of it, she never mentioned any family at all. And that’s odd, isn’t it?’ The policeman hadn’t blinked for over a minute; quite possibly they removed their eyelids surgically before they graduated from Hendon. ‘I mean, everybody talks about their family sooner or later, don’t they?’