Barking

by Tom Holt

  ‘Excuse me,’ Duncan interrupted mildly, ‘but presumably you know all about this stuff. If I attack you again and you throw me against this wall really hard, what’s the worst that could happen?’

  Mr Loop furrowed his brow in careful thought. ‘There could easily be significant structural damage to the building,’ he said. ‘Which would inevitably render you liable in damages to the landlord - I’m assuming this property is leasehold?’ Duncan nodded. ‘In fact,’ Mr Loop went on eagerly, as though he’d finally found something in all this dreary unpleasantness that he could bring himself to take an interest in, ‘depending on the nature and degree of the damage, the landlord could be entitled to forfeit the headlease, thereby depriving you of all and any interest you may currently hold in the property, regardless of any premium you may have paid to your predecessor in title. In which case, a court might be inclined—’

  Duncan threw a chair at him. It smashed over his head like a Hollywood prop, but with no sign of having hurt him. ‘Really,’ Mr Loop said. ‘What on earth did you do that for?’

  ‘To shut you up, mostly,’ Duncan replied. ‘Also, I want you to hit me again.’

  ‘Good heavens. Why?’

  ‘To see if it hurts, of course. Because if it doesn’t, I’m going to pull your head off, or at least I’m going to have a bloody good go at it. Presumably I won’t succeed, but what the hell, it’ll be fun trying.’

  ‘Mr Hughes. Duncan,’ Mr Loop added; then, ‘Can I call you Duncan?’

  ‘Sure. If it’s with your dying breath, so much the better.’

  Mr Loop bit his lip. ‘I seem to have annoyed you,’ he said. ‘What did I do?’

  Just when you think you’re way past gobsmacked, somebody says something like that. ‘What, apart from trashing my flat, you mean?’

  ‘I’ve already said I’ll pay for—’

  ‘Why did you do it, incidentally?’

  A guilty look washed over Mr Loop’s face. ‘I was still in my other form at the time,’ he said wretchedly. ‘I’m afraid that when I’m a wolf, I have no respect whatsoever for other people’s property. I was hoping you would understand,’ he added resentfully, ‘since you’re—’

  ‘Oh, forget about it,’ Duncan said, with a rather grand wave. ‘It was all junk anyhow, and I’m leaving here in any case.’

  ‘Ah.’ Mr Loop looked genuinely relieved. ‘That’s a very mature attitude.’

  ‘Whatever. No, the reason why I’m going to smash your face in is because you won’t fucking tell me what’s going on.’

  He launched himself across the room at Mr Loop, who sidestepped and clouted the side of Duncan’s head like a tennis pro returning a volley. Duncan flew a short way through the air and crash-landed against the frame of the kitchen door.

  ‘This is really quite inappropriate,’ Mr Loop said. ‘Listen. If I tell you what you want to know, will you please stop this dreadful behaviour?’

  ‘Sure,’ Duncan replied, and spat out a mouthful of splintered wood. ‘I was starting to get bored with it anyhow.’

  ‘Very well.’ Mr Loop paused and watched him, as though he didn’t trust him not to launch another attack. ‘So, what’s on your mind?’

  ‘Oh, nothing much,’ Duncan replied and, astonishing himself with his own speed and dexterity, lunged at Mr Loop with his arms outstretched. This time, either he was a fraction quicker or Mr Loop was a little slower - the left hook missed the side of Duncan’s head by at least twelve-thousandths of an inch, and Duncan contrived to get hold of the end of Mr Loop’s tie. He jerked hard, and was delighted to watch Mr Loop sailing through the air and landing awkwardly on top of the cooker.

  ‘Ouch,’ said Mr Loop. Then he rolled off and landed on the floor. Duncan charged at him, aiming to drop-kick him into oblivion, but his hurtling shoe met air and then, regrettably, the edge of the cooker. To his surprise, it hardly hurt at all. The pasta jar hurt even less when Mr Loop broke it over his head - an ill-considered move, since it gave Duncan a further and better chance to do his Johnny Wilkinson impression. His toecap caught Mr Loop millimetre-perfect in the groin and the little man lifted off his feet like Peter Pan on wires in a pantomime, shot through the air and disappeared through the kitchen window in a shower of glass and wood splinters.

  It occurred to Duncan that he might have gone a bit far this time, bearing in mind that his flat was on the fifth floor. Not that it mattered, of course. Wesley Loop was dead, Duncan had Luke’s word on that, and they couldn’t have you for killing a dead man, not even if David Blunkett was still Home Secretary. Nevertheless—

  He picked the kettle up off the floor, refilled it and plugged it back in. He really was going to have to leave soon. Even if Luke and the gang didn’t show up, sooner or later someone was going to notice Mr Loop’s spreadeagled corpse and the curtains blowing through the smashed window five storeys above it. Never mind. There was too much rushing about in modern life, leading to all manner of stress-related disorders. A nice cup of tea, therefore, and then he’d go on the run.

  He’d fished out the tea-bag and was stirring in the milk when he noticed something on the back of his hand. A pale silver stain. Moonlight.

  He frowned. He was looking at a hand, not a paw. So: if his earlier theory was right, how long would it be before the effects of the kiss wore off, or was he cured for good? He wished, not for the first time, that lycanthropy had come with a handbook or manual, something you could look stuff up in, rather than having to rediscover the wheel every five minutes. Of course, he thought with a mild pang of guilt, Mr Loop could probably have told me the answer if I hadn’t kicked him out of the window. Why did I do that, he asked himself, and why aren’t I curled up in a ball on the floor whimpering with terror and guilt? Fuck’s sake, I just killed someone. That’s got to matter, surely?

  The doorbell rang.

  Oh, Duncan thought. Didn’t take them long, did it? Well: he could resist arrest, probably successfully, if he didn’t mind damaging a copper or two. Or he could go quietly, cooperate, explain. He was a lawyer, after all, and although he’d managed to skive off doing any criminal work while he was training, he reckoned he could still remember the basics of what they’d told him at law school about standard when-someone-gets-busted protocols. Thanks to his ace in the hole, he was confident that it’d only be a temporary annoyance at worst. They’d go away, check the records, find out that the ironed-looking corpse was Wesley Loop, who’d died years ago in a park in Surrey and therefore couldn’t have been murdered that night in north London, and let him go. Simple as that. The worst thing he could do was complicate matters by mangling law enforcement officers. He nodded to himself, went into the hall and opened the door.

  ‘You’ll notice I rang the bell this time,’ said Mr Loop.

  Not a mark on him, by the looks of it. ‘You’re alive,’ Duncan said.

  ‘No,’ Mr Loop replied. ‘Can I come in, please? I’ll wipe my feet and everything.’

  ‘Of course,’ Duncan said. The anger had evaporated, he noticed. Probably just as well. ‘The kettle’s just boiled, if you—’

  ‘Not for me, thanks.’ Mr Loop passed him and walked into the kitchen. ‘I don’t eat or drink nowadays.’ He paused, looking round for something to sit on. ‘Can we agree a truce, please?’ he said. ‘Believe me, I do understand your urge to sublimate your bewilderment and anxiety into acts of reckless violence, but really, it’s completely pointless.’ He picked a shard of broken glass out of his ear. ‘I hope we’ve established that beyond reasonable doubt.’

  Duncan nodded. ‘No more playing ping-pong with each other, promise,’ he said. ‘And I don’t usually lose my temper like that. It’s just been a rough old couple of days, that’s all.’

  ‘Quite.’ Mr Loop hitched up his trouser knees and sat down on the broken remains of Duncan’s telly. ‘I think we can make allowances for each other at this time. It must be particularly trying for you, since I gather it’s your first—’ He caught sight of the smashed-out window frame, an
d the silvery-grey shimmer. ‘Would you mind,’ he added nervously, ‘if we went into another room? Somewhere darker.’

  ‘What? Oh, I see.’ Duncan got up and led the way into the bedroom, having first checked that the curtains were drawn. ‘So, you’re still—’

  ‘Yes, essentially.’ Mr Loop sat down on the bed, while Duncan perched on the edge of the overturned wardrobe. ‘Like yourself, I do well to stay indoors and in the shade until this current phase of the moon is over. Luckily under the circumstances, I have the knack of - becoming invisible would be an overstatement, but let’s say I can discourage people from noticing me. Accordingly, when I fell out of your window and became a wolf in mid-air—’

  ‘Is that because you’re dead?’ Duncan asked. Then, without waiting for an answer, he added, ‘You are, aren’t you? Dead.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh.’ At least he managed to keep himself from saying I never met a dead person before. For one thing, he had an uneasy feeling that it wasn’t actually true.

  ‘I’m sorry if that makes you feel uncomfortable,’ Mr Loop went on. ‘Quite understandable if it does. We go to great lengths to conceal our true nature, but in your case, of course—’

  ‘Was he one of yours?’ Duncan broke in. ‘The man who brought the note from Sally. The dentist.’

  Mr Loop looked at him for three seconds, then nodded. ‘Norman Standwell,’ he said. ‘1946 to 2002, dental surgeon. Cardiac arrest. Though I wasn’t aware that you’d met him. You say he brought you a note.’

  ‘He’s a—’ Duncan hesitated. He couldn’t help thinking the word sounded silly. ‘He’s a zombie, then.’

  Sharp intake of breath. ‘I’m sorry,’ Mr Loop added, ‘you weren’t to know. But we don’t use the Z-word. We find it pejorative and insulting. Instead we say “revenant”, or “after-walker”. “Undead” is an acceptable colloquialism, but properly speaking it refers to our colleagues in the vampire community, so it can be confusing.’

  Duncan nodded slowly. ‘Anyhow,’ he said. ‘That’s what you are. You and that dentist bloke.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And Bowden Allshapes.’

  Mr Loop smiled. ‘Oh, assuredly Bowden Allshapes. Though again,’ he added, ‘that might be construed as misleading.’

  ‘Misleading?’

  ‘Like referring to God as a vicar.’

  That one went over Duncan’s head like a cruise missile. He waited for a moment, to make sure it had gone away, then said, ‘What happened?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘To you. And the dentist bloke. And you make it sound like there’s more of you.’

  Mr Loop smiled. Not quite like a shark; not exactly like the jaw of a skull lolling open. But not cuddly, either. ‘Oh yes, there are more of us. Quite a few, in fact.’

  ‘How many?’

  This time a laugh, somewhere between a cough and a snigger. ‘I can’t give you an exact figure,’ Mr Loop said. ‘But a substantial number. Not as many as the Liberal Democrats, but loads more than UKIP, if you follow me.’

  ‘Oh. More than werewolves?’

  ‘Heavens, yes. More than werewolves and vampires put together. Using the same frame of reference, compared to us you and your sister community are the Lord’s Day Observance Society. You’re fringe,’ he added, just a little smugly. ‘We’re starting to matter.’

  Something about the way he said that. ‘That sounds like you’re - well, for something.’

  Mr Loop nodded. ‘Oh, quite definitely. Actually, that’s a good way of putting it. We’re for something, in the sense that we serve a purpose. Also, we’re for something as in having an agenda. I suppose that would make us the National Trust, though in time we hope to become the RSPCA, or something like that. But yes; most certainly we’re for something. All thanks,’ he added, ‘to our mutual friend Bowden Allshapes.’ A sort of fond smirk showed on his face. ‘I little thought when she killed me that I’d be saying this one day, but Bowden Allshapes is all right. And I believe you’ll come to think so too, in time. Actually, that’s why I’m here.’

  Duncan stood, and Mr Loop tensed up, watching him closely. No trust there, then. ‘You didn’t answer my question,’ Duncan said. ‘What happened? I mean, I was always told that when you die, that’s it. But you’re saying you can sort of - well, opt out, like a pension scheme or something. Are you saying that you’ve found a way of—?’

  ‘We didn’t find a way. The way found us. A bit like a fox finding a rabbit.’

  That sank in, and Duncan thought for a moment about the dentist. ‘Now you’re making it sound like it’s - like it’s not a nice thing,’ he said awkwardly. ‘But a moment ago you were saying, go out and prepare for government. Which is it?’

  Mr Loop shrugged. ‘Like everything in this life - no wordplay intended - a bit of both. Like getting a job and working for someone, I suppose. You go along to the interview all nervous and trying your best to impress. You get the job - and six months later you’re longing for the parole board to come along and get you out of there. Let me ask you the question: who’s the predator? You think you are - warily stalking the job through the long grass, careful not to make a loud noise and startle it away. But it’s the job that catches you, and next thing you know, you’re a prisoner in a chain gang. I suppose the moral is, be careful what you hunt.’ Mr Loop sighed. ‘People throughout history have yearned for eternal life. Those of us who’ve achieved it find out it’s not quite what we imagined it’d be. No, it’s not a nice thing, as you put it. There’s an entity,’ he went on, his voice hardening. ‘I’m not quite sure how you’d define it; somewhere between a god and an insurance company, maybe. When I encountered it, the form it took was a white unicorn with silver hooves and a golden horn in its forehead. It killed me. Like you, I assumed that I’d reached the end of the road. I was wrong. What I mistakenly thought was death turned out to be a form of recruitment. At the time, after I’d got over the blind relief of still existing, I was bitter, resentful. The entity doesn’t bring people back from the dead and then set them loose. It harvests them. Sustainably, of course,’ Mr Loop added. ‘Fortunately, the living aren’t yet an endangered species, although we shall have to be careful as time goes on. In my case, I was unhappy about it. You see, I believed that by becoming a werewolf, I’d got as close as I could reasonably expect to perfection, given my aims and aspirations. I wanted to be rich, powerful and respected; that was why I became a lawyer, and a werewolf. Having achieved my aim, I resented being killed and having everything I’d won for myself taken away. As a revenant, I had to start at the bottom again, work my way up, prove myself all over again—’ Mr Loop stopped for a moment. He looked as though he was thinking back over what he’d said, in case he’d been indiscreet. ‘We all have to start at the bottom, you see,’ he went on. ‘Your Mr Standwell, for example. In life, he was a well-respected dentist with a flourishing practice in Worthing. Now he runs errands. I was a solicitor, founder and senior partner of my own firm, leader of my own pack of werewolves. I, by contrast, am still a lawyer. What’s more, I’m doing far better as I am now than I could ever have done if I’d stayed running Ferris and Loop. Excuse me if this sounds like boasting - well, it is boasting. These days I head up the legal department of Allshapes International - whereas my former partner Luke Ferris is still battling along in private practice and chasing lorries on the Kingston bypass on his day off. Oh, Luke and I are still in the same profession, but that’s like saying a whale and a clownfish are both in the same ocean. To die is an awfully big opportunity, you see. I’m one of the few people it brings out the best in.’

  This lecture sponsored by the Death Marketing Board. Duncan gave himself a mental shake, like a wet dog. ‘Allshapes International,’ he said.

  ‘That’s right.’ A faint, Gollum-like glow lit up Mr Loop’s eyes. ‘Essentially we’re an employment agency. We supply staff. When our clients approach us, they know we’ll be sending them a cheap, docile workforce; men and women who’ll get the j
ob done quietly and efficiently. No unions, no health and safety, no National Insurance, no statutory coffee breaks, no employers’ liability insurance. No wages. We charge twelve pence an hour a head for our people. As far as labour costs are concerned, that’s it.’ Mr Loop smiled. ‘At the moment, of course,’ he went on, ‘we’re limited to sectors where they want workers with no skills and no motivation. But there’s plenty of work like that about. Call centres, cleaners, agricultural, that sort of thing. We make all the difference to employers struggling to compete against China and Eastern Europe.’

  ‘You’re a public service,’ Duncan said quietly

  ‘As a matter of fact, we are. Really, it’s just a logical extension of current practice. Outsourcing your customer service department to Calcutta or Bangalore is all very well, but even Indians have got to be paid something. You need to look at it from the employer’s point of view,’ Mr Loop went on, and the passion began to build in his voice. ‘When an employer takes on staff, all he wants is a certain amount of work done adequately and on time, as cheaply as possible. If he hires a traditional worker he may get that, but a whole lot of other stuff comes with the package. You hire a living, breathing human being - it’s such an intimate relationship that you might as well marry him and have done with it. You’ve got to consider his health and welfare, take account of his feelings, coax him along with little incentives. There he is, a fellow creature, your equal in the eyes of the law; making demands on your time and energy, needing to feel he’s loved and wanted. It’s just like a marriage - and all you wanted was the floors swept and the empty pallets stacked. We give you what you want: no less and definitely no more. And at sensible prices, too. You can see why we’ve got to be responsible with our expansion programme. If we aren’t careful, we’ll put the living out of a job.’