by Tom Holt
She sighed. That was another annoying thing – not nearly as bad as the stalker, but over time it was wearing her down. Of course it was part of office life: the constant trivial pilfering of stationery from colleagues’ desks when the store cupboard was bare or one simply couldn’t be bothered to walk up three flights of stairs for a pencil sharpener or a refill of staples. But it was getting so you couldn’t leave anything for five minutes and be sure it’d be there when you got back, and when she thought of all the time she was having to waste, traipsing back and forth to the storeroom because some thoughtless individual had robbed her of basic supplies—
The phone rang. It was only Martin.
“What do you want?” she snapped, rather more harshly than she’d intended.
“Sorry,” her brother replied. “Bad day?”
“What do you want?” she repeated.
“It’s a bit awkward. You see—”
She clicked her tongue. Words weren’t needed when he used that tone of voice. “You’re after money again,” she said.
“You make it sound so—” He stopped, and started again. “It’s only fifty quid,” he said, “to tide me over until—”
“For crying out loud, Martin.”
“I’ll pay you back on Thursday, I promise you. Only I still haven’t got paid for the Hanwell gig, and I’d been sort of counting on that for the rent.”
She sighed. “You know what,” she said. “I’m getting a bit fed up with being a patron of the arts. It was all right for the Medici and the Esterhazys, they had the money. Besides, they got something to show for it. You, on the other hand—”
“Yes, all right. I know. I’m wasting my life and why don’t I get a proper job. Actually, I think I’m on the brink of getting into something really good. I’m meeting this bloke next week, and…”
“Martin.”
“Good,” he said firmly, “as in lots of money. Composing. Well, writing jingles, actually. You know, for commercials and radio stations. It’s crazy what they’ll pay for just seven notes, provided they’re the right ones.”
“Martin,” she said grimly, “if I agree to lend you fifty pounds, will you promise me you’ll spend a fiver of it on a dictionary, so you can look up proper and job, because I don’t think you quite grasp—”
“Forget it, then,” Martin said crisply. “Sorry I bothered you. I quite understand. Have a nice day.”
“Martin—”
Click, buzz. She scowled furiously at the receiver, then slammed it back on its cradle. It was so bitterly unfair, she thought, how Martin had the knack of zooming past her and up into the snowcapped peaks of the moral high ground, when by any relevant criteria he was a sponger, a wastrel and an inefficient use of increasingly scarce resources. It wasn’t as though she begrudged him the money. He’d be welcome to it, if only he had the grace to cringe and grovel for it occasionally.
Her eye fell on the diary, still open in front of her, still broadcasting a big red HELP. The silly thing was, she had a vague memory, a memory of a dream, a dream in which she’d been asleep and dreaming, and in her dream there’d been someone else sitting at her desk, writing in her diary, and maybe the pen she’d used had had a red cap.
Coincidence, or déjà vu. There was a scientific explanation for that; she’d heard something on the radio. There was always a scientific explanation. Unfortunately, she’d given up on science as soon as she’d had the option, a decision she’d regretted ever since. Instead, she’d set her heart on being a lawyer, in a smart suit, sitting at a desk, in control, like the captain of a starship. One of the bitterest things about her life was that she’d always achieved her ambitions to the full.
She’d give it half an hour, she decided, and then she’d call Martin back and tell him he could have his rotten fifty quid. It wouldn’t be enough to regain as much as a moral foothill, but at least they’d be on speaking terms again. Besides, she thought, if he’s really got a chance to go into the jingles business, there was a possibility she might be reunited with her money one of these days, in the coming by-and-by. Like he’d said, it was crazy what some people would pay for a jingle, or so she’d heard.
She opened the next file on her heap and reset her mind to work mode. A lot to do today. A great many important things requiring her undivided concentration. These standard-form requisitions on title, for example.
Like a small boat adrift on a turbulent sea, her mind floated away. A chicken, for crying out loud. As in no spring. Well, she couldn’t deny that, and maybe that was all there was to it. As in Why did the chicken cross the road?
Someone had said that, quite recently, and in context it had seemed important. Supposedly, according to the latest research, that and the door that’s a jar were the two best-known jokes in the English language. Odd that, since neither of them was particularly funny. The door thing was at least a rudimentary pun, but the chicken gag was just silly – meaningless, like a nursery rhyme. The only way she could think of in which it could carry any vestigial charge of humour was if it was shorthand, a prompt, the tip of an iceberg, serving to remind the listener of the rest of the joke (long since lost and forgotten). Otherwise, there was no possible excuse for it. In which case, who’d said it to her just lately, and why had it been so important that she remembered it?
Enough of that. She shooed all the chickens from her mind, and filled in some Land Registry forms, an exercise that left her feeling thirsty and caffeine-deficient, so she went to the kitchen and made herself a nice strong coffee, black, no sugar.
When she got back to her desk, something was different. She scowled, put her mug down on top of the filing cabinet and investigated.
Someone had closed her diary; that was all, nothing more. She opened it, found today’s date and put it down in its usual place. Nothing else appeared to have been touched, which was something. Even so, she was furious. Someone had come in, the moment her back was turned (Did that imply that her movements were being watched?) and had read her diary, presumably to try and get advance notice of any trips out of the office, personal appointments, whatever. That was a new level of creepiness, and she wasn’t prepared to put up with it. Not making a fuss was all very well, but there were limits, which in her view had just been exceeded. She picked up her phone and rang through to Pauline, Mr Huos’ PA.
“Can I see him for a couple of minutes?” she asked. “It’s important.”
Getting past Pauline was usually on a par with sneaking backstage at a Springsteen gig. Today, however, Pauline chirped back, “Will today at eleven be all right?” Mary glanced at the clock on her wall. It was 10:45.
“Um, sure,” she replied, slightly stunned. “If that’s OK with him. I don’t want to—”
“You did say it was important.”
And yes, dammit, it was. “Eleven sharp, then,” she said, and put the phone down. Then the shakes set in. Evidence, for crying out loud. She didn’t have any. Well there was the coffee, but she could hardly go charging into Mr Huos’ actual office with an empty mug in her hand and expect to be taken seriously. The work done for her; thin, perilously thin. The diary, she thought, that at least is a physical object I can put in front of him. There it was; HELP in big red letters.
And big green letters.
She stared at it for a moment. HELP. A fairly useless message because it’s so vague, a bit like Look out suddenly yelled in your ear by your front-seat passenger. Also, the handwriting was different, though, given the degree of cunning displayed so far by her tormentor, there wasn’t anything surprising in that. Well, she thought, that’s evidence. Nobody could look at that and deny that she had a case to put before an industrial tribunal, if she chose to go down that route. Not that she had any reason to believe that Mr Huos wouldn’t be as shocked and appalled as she was.
Another glance at the clock. Might as well make a move; it was a long way to Mr Huos’ office, even when the lifts were running OK. Tucking the diary under her arm, she walked briskly up the corridor, past th
e printer room and the small interview room and the closed file store, left at Denny Brock’s room, along more corridor, then sharp right and directly into the lift, which was waiting for her with its door conveniently open. She pressed the button for the seventh floor, and the door closed with a soft whoosh.
The lift went straight up, from three to seven. The door opened. Mr Huos was in his office, expecting her. He was very kind and sympathetic, and assured her he’d look into it straight away. He went as far as to write something down on the back of a blue folder; even so, Polly got the distinct feeling that his mind was elsewhere.
Polly took the lift back to the third floor. Preoccupied with her recent encounter, she didn’t look down, which was probably just as well. If she had, she couldn’t have helped noticing the stray wisps of straw, the four light-brown feathers and the still-warm egg.
Mr Gogerty stared at the smoking ruins and wept.
Twelve fire engines were battling the fire, which was still roaring away in outlying parts of the building. They weren’t having much luck. Water didn’t seem to have much effect, especially on the bright green flames welling up out of what looked like a perfectly ordinary toilet bowl on the second floor. Depending on the water pressure and the angle from which the jets were directed, the flames either rose higher, doubled their heat output or played selections from Phantom of the Opera (the original cast recording). Fire-suppressant foam turned the fire purple, with a faint green pinstripe, and worried-looking men in bulky orange suits were muttering to each other about blowing the remains of the building up with dynamite.
It was just as well Mr Gogerty overheard them. He slid through the crowd, ducked under the incident tape, reassured the policeman with a serious nod and joined the discussion.
“Gogerty,” he said, “head of operations, MP3. Whatever you do, don’t use explosives. Not,” he added with a wild grin, “unless you really want to annoy the Ordnance Survey.”
An orange suit turned to him. “The what?”
“All those maps they’ll have to redraw,” Mr Gogerty explained. “Look, just tell your men to turn off the taps and back off. I’ll deal with it.”
Which he did, by taking a small packet of white powder from his top pocket and tossing it into the heart of the fire, which immediately went out. In fact, the powder was coffee sweetener, but Mr Gogerty reckoned that if he’d just given the fire a stern look and said, “Behave,” to the four overexcited salamanders who’d broken out of the aquarium and were causing all the fuss, he’d have drawn unwelcome attention to himself. Instead, he explained that the powder was the latest oxygen-extraction reagent, a sample he’d liberated on a recent visit to NASA.
“What started it?” he asked.
They had no idea, though they weren’t ruling out arson at this stage. Why not? Because they hadn’t been able to get close enough to rule out anything, from an electrical fault to a fly-past by massed dragons. “Fair enough,” he replied. “Well, I won’t keep you. Make sure there’s a report on my desk by 0900 tomorrow.”
On his way back through the cordon he scooped up the salamanders, who were drooping about on the pavement looking lost and sad, and stowed them safely in his 100-per-cent-fireproof jacket pocket, on the principle that things were bad enough without four emotionally disturbed invisible fire spirits wandering about the capital. Their names, they told him, were Pinky, Perky, Boris and Patch. He promised to find them a new home as soon as he could, and they curled up and went to sleep.
He took a taxi to Blue Remembered Hills and asked to see Mr Huos. He found him sitting at his desk holding a brown chicken feather in one hand and an egg in the other, looking distinctly worried.
“Things are getting bad,” Mr Huos said.
Mr Gogerty registered polite concern. “Business, you mean?” he asked. “Or the other thing?”
Mr Huos put the egg carefully in his empty coffee cup. “Both,” he replied. “I’m having to lay off staff. And that’s not as easy as you might think, either. In fact, I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be able to. Anyway, how about you? Progress?”
Mr Gogerty frowned. “Developments,” he amended. “The thing is about investigations in my field,” he went on, “it’s all a game of snakes and ladders.” With real snakes, he didn’t add, sometimes hundred-headed, and as for the ladders, even he didn’t want to know. “You make what looks like a breakthrough and then suddenly you hit a brick wall. But then, if you can get past that, you’ll probably find there’s been another breakthrough. I won’t bother you with the details.”
“Oh.”
“Suffice to say,” Mr Gogerty went on, “as far as I’m concerned, this case has just got personal. Something very important to me… Well, anyway.” He sat up a little straighter and steepled his fingers in front of him. “I wanted to ask you. Have you told anybody else about what we were talking about yesterday?”
Mr Huos grinned. “Are you serious?”
“That’s a no.”
“Too bloody right. When I was telling you about it, it all sounded so crazy it made me wonder if I was off my head. If some of the people I do business with ever found out—”
“Quite,” Mr Gogerty said. “I just wanted to make sure there hadn’t been a security breach at this end.”
“Rest assured,” Mr Huos said grimly. “So, now what?”
“I still have a very promising lead,” Mr Gogerty replied, “which I’m just about to follow up. I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve got anything.”
Mr Huos nodded. “So, no sneak preview?”
“No.”
“Tiny little hint? Cryptic clue?”
“No.”
“Oh.” Mr Huos pulled a face, then shrugged. “For fear of compromising security, I suppose.”
“Partly,” Mr Gogerty said, rising to leave. “Also, you’d probably think I’m crazy.”
The Carpenter library wasn’t the only place that had the definitive edition of the Yellow Pages. There was one other copy. Sort of. Mr Gogerty took a taxi to Marylebone station, a train to High Wycombe and a minicab to a small private airfield about six miles out of the town, where he was well enough known to be able to hire a helicopter at ten minutes’ notice.
The pilot assigned to him was a short square man with bright blue eyes and no neck. “Where to?” he asked.
Mr Gogerty handed him a piece of paper with a map reference.
The pilot nodded. “You want to land, or…”
“No.”
“Just buzz round a couple of times, that sort of thing.”
“I’ll tell you what to do when we get there.”
It was a fast, modern helicopter (bless Mr Huos and his unlimited unqueried expenses) and the flight only took an hour, during which time Mr Gogerty sat quietly in the passenger seat doing sums on a calculator with three side-by-side screens. When the pilot said, “We’re here; now what?” he looked across at the instrument panel.
“Which of these is the altitude?” he said.
“That one.”
Mr Gogerty looked at the readout, then down at his calculator. “Up another seventy-six metres,” he said.
“Seventy-six.” The pilot grinned. “You’re sure you don’t mean seventy-six point three nine five?”
“That’s all right,” Mr Gogerty said. “I’ve got long legs.”
When the altitude readout was as close as he felt he was going to get, Mr Gogerty checked his calculator again. “Hold this altitude,” he said, “and move three metres starboard.”
The pilot shrugged. “Tricky,” he said.
Mr Gogerty gave him a look he remembered for many years to come. “Give it your best shot,” he said.
The pilot swung round in a shallow loop and tried again. “There,” he said. “Close enough for you?”
“I hope so,” Mr Gogerty said. “Right, just wait here. I won’t be very long.”
Before the pilot could stop him, Mr Gogerty had unbuckled his safety harness, opened his door and stepped out of the helicopter.
For a split second his left foot groped cloud, then it came to rest on something invisible but solid, and Mr Gogerty shifted his weight onto it, as with his right hand he appeared to knock three times on a faint wisp of water vapour.
A door opened. The pilot tried to peer past him to see what was beyond it, but couldn’t. Then the door closed. A moment later the pilot, who hadn’t been paying proper attention to the controls, flew straight through the exact spot where it had been. Just as well, really, that there was nothing there.
“Stan.” The old man who’d opened the door grinned broadly and clapped Mr Gogerty on the shoulder. “Wonderful to see you. It’s been such a long time.”
Mr Gogerty looked down at the mangy carpet under his feet, then across at the dingy nicotine-streaked woodchip on the walls. “Everything here seems pretty much the same,” he said. “I thought you were going to redecorate.”
“I did.” The old man sounded hurt. “Don’t you like it?”
On the mantelpiece at the far end of the room Mr Gogerty noticed a faded chrysanthemum in a jam jar. Last time, as he recalled, it had been a faded rose. “Love what you’ve done with the place,” he said.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” the old man said. “Come in, sit down, let me get you something. Coffee, tea.” Two grubby-looking cups materialised on a dusty table. A plate of digestive biscuits landed on the edge of the table, wobbled and fell on the floor. “You’re looking really well, Stan, really well. And doing all right for yourself, so everybody’s saying.”
Mr Gogerty perched on a rickety chair, which swayed under him. “Not so bad,” he replied. “Ever since—”
“And your mother,” the old man went on. “How’s she doing?”
“Oh, fine.”
“And your aunt Priscilla?”
“Fine, fine.”
“And your cousin Mary?”
“Fine.”
“And your second cousin Darryl? He’s at medical school, isn’t he?”
“That’s right,” Mr Gogerty said grimly. “And he’s fine.”