by Tom Holt
Self-consciously, the plot thickened.
CHAPTER FOUR
Alistair Barbour, blameless dentist of quiet life and regular habits, sat in his reception room. Outside, Southampton was waking from its night’s sleep like a hung-over giant, and a milk float whined like a resentful bee towards Mafeking Terrace. The distant sound blended with the hum of the steriliser and the ominous grumbling of the coffee-machine to produce background music as reassuring as it was mundane. Mr Barbour
Well no, he admitted to people rude enough to ask, that wasn’t actually his real name; his real name was something Middle Eastern and tiresome to pronounce, and he’d chosen
A. Barbour just so as to be near the front in the Yellow Pages.
Mr Barbour opened the newspaper. He bought it for the waiting room, but if there was time he liked to glance through it himself before the first punters showed up. Not that he ever seemed to take any interest in current events; it was as if he somehow didn’t feel involved in what was going on around him, and people tended to attribute this to his being Foreign. He didn’t vote in elections, either, although he always claimed that this was because voting only encouraged them.
Nothing on the front page - doom, death, dearth and disaster, Labour MPs with their paws in the till, Tories with their trousers down - seemed to engage his interest, and he gave the impression of a man who’s wasted his five bob as he skimmed the foreign and business sections. Stubble-chinned, crumpled-collared hacks, ferreting and scribbling away in the wee small hours, had wasted their labours as far as snaring his attention went; the Earth remained unshattered and the Thames refused to burn. Until, that is, a snippet on Page Five caught his eye, bringing him up as sharply as a whale dropping sideways onto a busy motorway.
MUSEUM BREAKIN
He frowned, and the point of his nose twitched. In the office the phone was ringing, but he ignored it.
Artistic licence and verbal coloratura once pared away, the gist of the story was that in the hours of darkness, some cunning and fearless athlete had managed to break into the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, bypassing the alarms, hoodwinking the electronic eyes, scaling the high walls, squiggling in through a window so tiny that light only managed to squeeze through it one photon at a time, hopscotching a tightrope-thin path through state-of-the-art pressure pads and tripwire beams, all in order to jemmy one dusty cabinet of defunct bird’s eggs and remove one solitary exhibit. True, the scribe admitted, it was a funny old egg, not quite like anything the experts had ever seen before; but somehow nobody had ever got desperately excited about it, and it had sat there gathering dust these twenty years without anyone even bothering to think of a name for it (although the porters used to call it Benedict). And now, it seemed, someone had gone to all this trouble to swipe the wretched thing. Lord, the writer appeared to suggest, what fools these mortals be.
Mr Barbour let the paper slide to the floor, where its delaminating pages lapped round his feet like the sea. He was sitting there, staring at the wall with his mouth open, when his receptionist arrived.
‘What’s the matter?’ she said. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
Mr Barbour pulled himself together; you could virtually hear the click. ‘Oh that’s what it was,’ he replied crisply. ‘Patient with his head under his arm, I was beginning to wonder. All right, Sharon, the lions are ready. Bring on the first Christian.’
But all day he wasn’t, as Sharon observed, quite himself. You had to know him well to realise, of course; but there was something about his manner, as his drill screamed through bone, that hinted that his mind was somewhere far away. Usually, she’d have said if pressed, he’s so full of it, but today he’s only fairly full of it. Sharon, whose husband was an accountant, put it down to a letter from the Inland Revenue and got on with her work. Nobody else seemed to notice.
‘Okay,’ his voice trilled through the intercom at a quarter to six, ‘bring us your huddled masses, your aching molars, your inflamed gums, and we will make them worse. Any more for any more?’
‘Just Miss Partridge,’ Sharon replied. ‘You did her an upper back left filling on Tuesday last and it’s causing some discomfort.’
‘Wheel the poor girl in before I die of shame, then bolt the doors and make a run for it. I’ll lock up.’
‘Thanks, Mr B. Goodnight.’ Sharon lifted her head, flipped the switch and smiled at Miss Partridge. ‘He’s ready for you now if you’d like to go through.’
Michelle nodded, braced herself and went in. Ever since she’d taken the ring off she’d felt much better, except that her damned tooth had started hurting. That was odd, in itself; she’d been going to Mr Barbour since she was a child, and generally a tooth fixed by him was a tooth fixed in perpetuity. Perhaps she was just falling to bits generally, and would have to be sent back to the manufacturers.
‘Im terribly sorry about this,’ Mr Barbour said, after a minute or so with the mirror and a little toothpick. ‘For some reason best known to itself, the little varmint’s not behaving itself at all. You haven’t been chewing iron bars, gnawing through ropes, anything like that?’
‘Mmmmh,’ Michelle replied. ‘Mmm mm.’
‘Quite so,’ Mr Barbour said. ‘I can see your point. I’m afraid there’s nothing for it but to go back in with the JCB and the blasting powder and see if we can’t make a better fist of it this time. This’ll probably be agonisingly painful, but you won’t mind that.’
The drill shrieked and put on the ring Mr Barbour leaned forward over her, his face set in that deadly serious expression he always wore when setting sharp instruments to human tissue. Not that she could feel a thing, of course, with her face the size and texture of a sofa cushion and put on the ring of all the people she’d ever trusted in her life, the only one who’d never let her down was nice Mr Barbour. Slowly, acting on their own initiative, her fingers groped in her pocket and found the ring.
‘That’s better,’ said the drill, ‘I hate having to shout. You do know who he is, don’t you?’
‘Mmmmh?’
‘Sorry?’ Mr Barbour switched off the drill and looked up. ‘Problems? If I’ve struck oil I insist on forty per cent.’
‘Mmm.’
‘If you say so.’ The drill screamed again, but not for long.
Maybe it was simply clearing its throat.
‘You don’t, do you?’ it said. ‘Know who he is, I mean. Sister, have I got news for you!’
Michelle made a peculiar noise and scrabbled with her left hand at her right. Alarmed, Mr Barbour cut the drill again.
‘I’m making rather a hash of this, aren’t I?’ he said apologetically. ‘Let’s have another look and see what’s going on.’
‘Mmm!’ Michelle said urgently; but he only smiled, gently prised down her lower jaw with the mirror and said, ‘Open sesame.’
Michelle screamed.
She screamed, because the drill let out such a terrifying yell that she couldn’t stand it any more, and just then all the other weird and wonderful machines and devices that surrounded the chair like the instrument panel of the Enterprise joined in and started shrieking and wailing and caterwauling, and it was all too much. Then she managed to yank the ring off and crush it tight in her left palm, and suddenly it was very quiet.
Mr Barbour was staring at her, as if her head had just come away in his hands. She felt awful. ‘Hime ho horry,’ she mumbled, forcing the numb muscles to work. ‘Hawl hy hault. Hot hoo.’
There was a long silence. Suddenly, she wanted to explain, tell Mr Barbour (who she’d known most of her life, God knows) all about it, Aunt Fatty’s ring and the horrible voices, and maybe he’d know what it meant, being a sort of a doctor. And maybe she would have done, if her face wasn’t fifty per cent made of heavy rubber, and as manoeuvrable as a concrete pillar. Using sign language, she did her best to communicate remorse, shame and abject apology.
‘Shall I go on?’ Mr Barbour said. ‘I don’t have to if you don’t want me t
o.’
‘Ho, heeze. Hall hawhight how.’
‘Sure?’
‘Haw.’
Michelle was all alone in the world because - well, she wasn’t actually sure why. She could remember bits and pieces from her childhood; oddly enough, one of the earliest memories was sitting in this very chair, solemnly promising to be good on the understanding that virtue would be remunerated in apples. Other snippets and fragments; bits of school, falling over in the playground, the death of the nature studies rabbit, a firework display. She could remember the headmistress looking down at her as she lay in bed and saying there had been an accident and she must be very brave. She could remember wondering what there was to be brave about, since she hadn’t a clue what was going on or what was happening. She could remember boarding school, staying on in the holidays when the other girls went home, but that was all right because everyone was so nice. She could remember being taken to a stark, clean place and shown a strange old lady they said was her only relative. Most of all she could remember taking the decision not to think about it, because things seemed to work all right as they were. She lay back in the chair and listened for the drill, which screamed properly and didn’t try and talk to her.
When she’d gone, Mr Barbour sat for an hour in the dark, trying to think.
Why should someone want to steal an egg?
Why should Michelle Partridge, of all people, suddenly scream at him?
- And what had possessed him to say that, of all things?
He stood up, went into the office and dug out a black address-book. He tried phoning the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Horniman Museum, Dulwich, the Museum of Mankind, the Science Museum and the Iranian Embassy. He got two answering machines, but didn’t leave a message. He should have known they’d all have gone home by now.
Instinctively he reached for the kettle and switched it on, but the sound of steam whistling in the spout made him wince and he switched it off. Instead, he poured himself a very small brandy and made it last. He wanted to phone Michelle Partridge - her number would be in the file - and ask her some questions, but perhaps that wouldn’t be a very good idea. Maybe it was time to go away again.
Except that that wouldn’t solve anything; probably make things worse. He was as safe here as anywhere, in all likelihood; who would think of looking for Ali Baba, the palm-oil merchant, over a chemist’s shop in Southampton? He could stay here, quiet, head down. No point in counting his eggs before they hatched.
‘My God,’ he said suddenly. Then he turned off the lights, locked up and went home. Nobody followed him, and there wasn’t anybody hanging about in the street or sitting in a parked car. His alarms and security equipment winked friendly red eyes at him as he switched it all on - but they’d had better stuff than this at the Museum. Maybe he should try phoning the police, warning them of further daring raids on museums and art galleries. The futility of the notion made him smile.
From under the floorboards in his bedroom, he retrieved an oily cloth parcel the size of a large shoe, and a long, curved sword in an ornate scabbard. Further futility, he knew; but they were mildly reassuring, like the seatbelts in an airliner. He leaned the sword against the wall and put the gun, loaded and cocked, under his pillow. Knowing his luck, the Pistol Fairy would come in the night and leave him a shilling for it. Which, as a defence against his present dangers, was probably about what it was worth.
‘Right,’ said Akram the Terrible. ‘That’s two doners, chips and curry sauce, two on their own, three teas and a Fanta. Coming right up.’
He drew the knife over the enormous slab of meat - ‘Hey,’ the proprietor had said to him at the job interview, when he was showing what he could do, ‘where’d you learn to handle a knife like that?’ Akram had shuddered internally and replied, Smethwick - slit open the pitta breads with an involuntary flourish and shovelled in salad. The customers were staring at the TV set; probably just as well. There was something about the way Akram cut things up which could easily put a sensitive person off his food.
When they’d gone, he found he was leaning against the back wall, and his knees were unaccountably weak. In a sense, it was just like old times; wield the knife, take the money. The truth of the matter was, it gave him the creeps. God only knew why.
He’d only just managed to straighten himself up and pull himself together when the door opened and a delivery man came in, carrying a wooden crate.
‘The hen,’ he said. ‘Where’d you want it?’
Akram looked round. ‘Keep your voice down,’ he said. ‘Just, um, put it down on the counter or something, will you?’
‘Sign here.’
Akram took the pen, squiggled, and handed the clipboard back. The man gave him a funny look, and left. There was nobody about. Good.
The job in the kebab house was simply to give him a cover and, of course, to help him keep body and soul together until the opportunity arose and he could have his revenge. That was, after all, why he was here. Or at least he presumed it was. As he lifted down the crate and raised the lid, it occurred to him that it would be as well to remember that. It was, he felt, something that might eventually slip his mind, if he wasn’t careful.
‘Cluck,’ said the hen.
‘Wait right there,’ Akram replied, and he darted into the back room to fetch the egg.
Three days after his escape from the palm-oil jar, he’d heard a rumour that Ali Baba had vanished. This information had left him very much in two minds. On the one hand he could forget all about it, make a fresh start and try and build a new life for himself somewhere far away. That was, he knew, the sensible thing to do - and completely impossible. Just because he’d escaped from his own particular story didn’t change the fact that he was a storybook character, and a villain into the bargain. You can get the character out of the story, but not the story out of the character; all his instincts and reflexes were conditioned - more than that; blow-dried, permed and set - in accordance with his Character. Even if he’d really wanted to run away and set up a little bicycle repair shop somewhere - was that what he really wanted? He really had no idea - he was no more capable of doing it than a lawyer of twenty years’ standing could say ‘That’s all right, mate, it’s on the house’ after a half-hour interview. The fact had to be faced; he had about as much free will as a trolley-bus, and that was how it would always be. Unless …
On the other hand - on the third finger of the other hand, to be exact - there was the matter of King Solomon’s ring. He’d seen for himself that it was tricksy, in a way that he couldn’t quite understand. It had changed the rules. It had broken the story. He wanted it.
When, on further investigation, he found that Ali Baba had taken the ring with him, along with a connoisseur’s collection of other magical hardware from the Thieves’ hoard, he realised that, as far as alternatives were concerned, he was driving a tram down a one-way street. He’d have to go after Ali Baba, kill him and take the ring. The ring was his only chance - no assurances, but he had to try, just in case the ring might be able to change stories and break patterns. And Ali Baba; he had no choice in that respect, either. As long as Baba was alive, the story wasn’t over. And it had to be murder, because that was the only sure way to deny him the happiness ever after that sealed the story and made it immutable. No earthly use to him Baba dying if it was in bed, fifty years later, in the bosom of his loving family and surrounded on all sides by wealth and good fortune. No; he had to get to Baba before he died in the course of Nature, and cut his throat. Neglect that, and he might as well find himself a large earthenware jar and wait for the hot water.
So here he was.
‘There you go,’ he said to the hen, and pointed. ‘Sit.’
The hen looked at him.
As well it might. The egg was, if anything, slightly bigger than the hen; it would have to sit astride the blasted thing, like a very small child on a very round pony. Well; if that was what it took…
He concentrated. He fix
ed the hen with his eye. Blood-crazed dervishes in old Baghdad had seen that look in Akram’s eye and immediately fled, packed in dervishing and become chartered surveyors. The hen blinked, swallowed twice and scrambled up onto the egg.
Here he was; and until he could find the bastard (which would take some doing; Reality, he’d discovered to his dismay, is big) there was nothing for it but to tuck in, keep his head down and earn a living. His old trade was out; this side of the border was far more complex and difficult to cope with than the simple world he’d come from, and under these circumstances a career as risky as thieving would be asking for trouble. But kebab houses are more or less the same on either side of the line; he’d seen the notice in Mr Faisal’s window, applied and got the job. For some reason, he felt prouder of that than, say, robbing the caravan of the Prince of Trebizond or stealing the Great Pearl from the palace of the Wazir of Cairo. The concept All my own work came into it somewhere; he was able to thieve because the story said he was a great thief, but when it came to slicing up reconstituted lamb, he was on his own.
‘Cluck,’ said the hen, clinging grimly to the shell with its claws. Akram listened, and heard a tiny tapping noise.
His game plan was simple. According to the fairy godfather, Ali Baba had gone into deep cover somewhere in the twentieth century. Because magic is rather conspicuous in modern Reality, he’d taken the sensible precaution of getting rid of most of his supernatural kit as soon as he’d used it for the purpose he’d originally brought it for. To be doubly sure that it wouldn’t turn up again later to plague him, he’d cunningly lodged each item where it would be guaranteed to be safe and out of anybody’s reach for ever and ever. He’d given the stuff - well, permanently loaned - to museums. The bottomless purse, the magic carpet, the plain, battered brass lamp, were trapped forever behind unbreakable glass, constantly guarded by bits of technology that made silly old magic look sick in comparison; one unauthorised finger coming within a metre would set off enough alarms to gouge great holes in the ionosphere. You had to admit, the man had class. Compared to the security he’d arranged for his souvenirs, the traditional secret cave guarded by hundred-headed dragons was tantamount to leaving the stuff out in the street under a notice saying PLEASE STEAL.