by Tom Holt
Right, he said to himself. Here goes.
He pushed the door, and a little bell rang as he walked into what looked like every ma-and-pa dry cleaners he’d ever been in, from Reykjavik to Tierra del Fuego. There was a counter, well used rather than shabby; a rack behind it, half-filled with carefully lynched garments in their blue polythene shrouds; a till. If this was, as he suspected, the fulcrum of multiple intersecting realities, there wasn’t exactly a lot to see. Mr Gogerty, however, knew better than to rely on appearances.
A man, late middle age, short, thinning grey hair, thick-lensed glasses, a beige cardigan with carefully patched elbows, carpet slippers; but Mr Gogerty, who treated chimeras and manticores as though they were badly trained Yorkshire terriers, took a step back as he approached. The man was positively saturated, marinaded in chronomorphic resonances, enough to trigger a Brigadoon syndrome big enough to dislocate San Francisco. He tried to pull himself together, but his voice shook a little as he said, “Mr Williams?”
The man hadn’t been expecting that, almost as if nobody had called him by his name for a very long time. “That’s me,” he said.
“My name’s Gogerty. Is there somewhere we can talk?”
Mr Williams frowned. “How do you mean?”
“Privately. Where we won’t be disturbed.”
Confusion, apprehension. Mr Williams tensed up like a clenched fist. “You from the council?”
“Yes,” Mr Gogerty replied.
“Oh.”
“I need to ask you some questions,” Mr Gogerty said. “About the shop. You understand, I’m sure.”
Mr Williams nodded as though he had lead bricks taped to the back of his head. Something he’d been dreading for a long time was about to happen. “You’d better come through into the back,” he said. “Just a tick.” He edged past Mr Gogerty and turned the sign in the window to CLOSED. “We in trouble, then?”
Deep breath, because he was about to do something rather mean and cruel, though clearly it had to be done. “I’m sure we can sort something out,” he said. “But you’re going to have to be completely honest with me. Do you understand?”
Mr Williams nodded. “I’d better call Eileen,” he said. “I suppose you’ll be wanting to talk to her as well.”
“Not necessarily,” Mr Gogerty said. “It may be possible to keep her out of this, if you really try hard and cooperate.”
A flicker of hope behind those burning-glass lenses, and for the first time Mr Gogerty was grateful for the unique accident he’d suffered a few years back, as a result of which he no longer showed up in mirrors. Looking himself in the face wouldn’t have been a comfortable experience. “You think so?”
“No promises,” Mr Gogerty replied. “But like I just said, it really all depends on you.”
The back room was comfortable, the way a pair of shoes is comfortable a month or so before it’s only fit for the bin. Constant use had bent, strained, creased and warped everything in it into the shape of a routine that hadn’t changed in a very long time. Mr Gogerty lowered himself into a tired-but-faithful-looking chair and took out a notebook and a pen.
“First things first,” he said. “Full name and date of birth.”
George Edward Williams, born in war and brought up in bombed-out streets, spoke slowly, calm as a steer waiting in a stall in a slaughterhouse. He told Mr Gogerty how he’d used his redundancy from the tyre factory to start up the business, how it had been everything he’d ever wanted until the day came when everything changed. He described it all, looking down at his feet or his hands, from the first terrible morning right down to the visions he’d seen in his downstairs toilet earlier that day. When he’d finished, he looked up and said, “That’s all there is to it, really. We didn’t mean anybody any harm,” and Mr Gogerty, who’d seen it all and learned the hard way never, ever to get personally involved, silently vowed to put things right for Mr Williams and his wife, or die trying.
“I see,” he said. “Now, I’d like you to look at this photograph and tell me if you recognise this man.”
Mr Williams peered at the picture of Mr Huos then nodded firmly. “Oh, I know him,” he said. “He was in the paper the other day.”
“But have you ever seen him in the flesh, so to speak?”
“Oh yes. He was in here, not so long back. We were in London. He came in with a coat. Nice quality, decent bit of material. Nice bloke. Polite.”
Mr Gogerty’s throat was the Nullarbor in high summer. “Can you remember,” he said, “if there was anything in the pockets?”
Blank look, then suspicion began to seep in. Mr Williams might be placid by nature – had to be, to have stayed sane all those years – but he clearly wasn’t stupid. “Don’t think so,” he said. “Why? What’s that got to do with anything?”
“It’s very important,” Mr Gogerty said, and managed to stop himself adding, “trust me,” because anyone as smart as Mr Williams would instinctively know that anybody who says ‘trust me’ is likely to be about as trustworthy as a petrol station watch. “Are you sure you can’t remember? You seem to have a remarkably good memory.”
Mr Williams frowned. “Yes,” he said. “Matter of fact, I do. Which is a bit funny,” he went on, “because before, well, It –” he paused and a very slight shudder passed through him “– I had a very bad memory. Eileen used to make jokes about it. Memory like a tea bag, she used to say. But not nowadays,” he said. “I can remember stuff now like it was yesterday.”
Of course he could, Mr Gogerty didn’t explain, because to all intents and purposes every day since the initial temporal excursion was yesterday. “So,” he pressed on, “if there had been something in this man’s coat pockets, you’d remember.”
“Might do.” Very suspicious. Any moment now, he’ll ask for ID. Which wouldn’t be a problem, of course. Mr Gogerty carried identity cards for all major intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and 90 percent of them were quite genuine. “But anyhow,” he went on, “if there had been, we’d have given it back to him. We’re very particular about that.”
Mr Gogerty nodded. “Of course,” he said. “I expect you’ve got a system for when that happens.”
“Oh yes.” Mr Williams leaned back a little in his chair, knowing he was on safe ground. “Anything that’s left in a pocket, we put it in a plastic bag with the job number on it, in a box under the counter next to the ticket tray. Then, when a customer comes in to collect, we always check the box before we hand the garment back, just to see if there’s a bag with that number on it.”
“That’s a good system,” Mr Gogerty said.
“Never had any complaints,” Mr Williams replied. “Well,” he added sadly, “we never get any complaints about anything, cos we’re always gone the next day. But we’re very careful about customers’ things. Got to be. Position of trust, you see.”
“Quite,” Mr Gogerty said. “But just supposing – and I’m not implying anything, this is just for argument’s sake – just supposing there had been something in that coat pocket and for some reason you didn’t give it back, then there’s a good chance it’d still be in your box, right?”
Mr Williams didn’t like that question at all. “Well, I suppose it might be, yes. But like I just told you, we’re extra-specially careful about stuff like that. And ninety-nine times out of a hundred, we’d remember anyway, without needing to look.”
Suddenly Mr Gogerty’s throat was very tight. Forming the next words he spoke made the tendons in his neck rub against each other, like cables. “Maybe we should just go through your box to make sure,” he said.
He’d blown it. Mr Williams’ forehead crinkled up, like paper in a fire. “You did say you’re from the council,” he said.
“That’s right. Trading standards. And planning.” Mr Gogerty pulled out his card wallet (Zauberwerke AG of Hallstadt; only four made, and then they had to blow up the whole valley, just to seal the rift), flicked through and found what he was looking for. East Devon District Council and
a photograph of him looking as though he’d just been taken down off the gallows. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist, Mr Williams,” he said. “This is a very serious business. Naturally, I don’t want to have to involve the police, but…”
The P-word. Does it every time. Here was a man who’d just watched two knights beating each other up with swords over and over again in his toilet and could still function normally, but threaten him with the police and he fell apart. The British, Mr Gogerty thought, God bless them.
“Maybe you could ask your wife if she can spare me a moment,” he said.
“No, that’s all right.” Mr Williams’ eyes closed, just for a moment. “Come on through.”
It was just a box. Once it had held two dozen packets of Walkers crisps. Mr Williams put it down on the counter, then started looking in the book for the ticket number. Someone was banging on the shop door, some poor fool whose laundry was hanging on the rail, presumably. Mr Williams looked up, but Mr Gogerty shook his head.
“Here you go,” Mr Williams said. “Ticket number 776598. It’ll be on the plastic bag, if it’s there.”
The search didn’t take long. There were only five bags in the box, and none of them had that number on it. Not that Mr Gogerty needed to look. If it had been there, he’d have felt it through his fingertips like gripping a wet electric fence.
“That’s fine,” he said wearily. “Sorry to have bothered you.”
Not there, he thought (and took a small black disc, a little smaller than a pound coin, out of his shirt pocket, slipped it into the palm of his hand and clenched his fingers round it). Which meant that either his entire hypothesis was wrong or else it had left Mr Huos’ coat pocket and somehow found its way—
“Can you tell me,” he said, looking away, “anything about the other customers who left stuff to be cleaned, the day that Mr… that the man whose picture I showed you came in? Just basic information,” he added, throwaway voice, no big deal. “Just names and addresses, that sort of thing.”
Mr Williams looked shocked and scared. “I don’t know,” he muttered. “I mean, it was a long time ago.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Mr Gogerty said pleasantly. “Also, I’m sure you make a note of that sort of thing. It seems to me you’ve got a really impressive routine going here, very orderly and methodical. I imagine you write down all the names and addresses so you can be sure people get their things back – if they don’t come in to collect, for example, before you move on. A conscientious man like you, I’m sure you take a lot of trouble over just that kind of detail.” He smiled, all teeth and predator DNA. “You don’t strike me as the computerised type, so it’d either be a book or index cards. Well?”
Like watching a very small giant trying to carry the weight of a very large planet on his shoulders, you could see him gradually buckle and give way. “Book,” Mr Williams said. “There, on the counter, the blue one. You’ll have to excuse my handwriting.”
“No problem,” Mr Gogerty said. He was already standing over the book, reaching for it. “Let’s see,” he said. “Date order. Well, we know the date. Here we are.” He ran his finger down the list. Ten customers, not a particularly busy day. Mr Huos had been the fifth. While he was at it, he pressed the locator device he’d palmed earlier on to the underside of the counter. “I’ll just take a picture of this page,” he said, slipping his phone out of his inside pocket. “There, all done. Thank you very much; you’ve been extremely helpful.”
Mr Williams frowned at him. “That’s it?”
“For now,” Mr Gogerty said. “I may need to talk to you again.”
“How’ll you find me? I haven’t got a clue where we’ll fetch up next.”
Another of those smiles. “Oh, that won’t be a problem.” Nor would it be, with the handy 5D transponder unit clinging to the underside of the counter like a Borg limpet.
“Is there…” Mr Williams tried to look him in the eye but couldn’t quite manage it. “Is there anything anybody can do? To stop it, I mean?”
Mr Gogerty shivered, but not so anybody’d notice. “No promises,” he said, “but there may be. If I can, I will. I give you my word.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Mr Gogerty said. “We’re not out of the woods, not by a long chalk. Still, there are various approaches we can try.”
Mr Williams swallowed hard, almost like someone choking back tears. “I feel better just for knowing someone else knows about it,” he said. “It’s been difficult, keeping it to ourselves all this time.”
Difficult. What a word to choose. The kind of pressure required to crush everything he must have been through into ‘difficult’ would be enough to turn a red giant into a black hole.
Mr Williams went with him to the door, unlocked it, even opened it for him. “I’ll be in touch,” Mr Gogerty said, as he stood with one foot on carpet, the other on pavement.
“Will you?”
“Oh yes.”
“You couldn’t…” Big spaniel eyes. “You know, give us a clue where we’re going next.”
“Sorry,” Mr Gogerty replied. “Rules, you know.”
“Ah, right. Hope you don’t mind me asking.”
What an appalling existence, Mr Gogerty thought, as he walked away. Like what would happen if the Tardis’ navigation system got replaced by the computer that runs baggage handling at Heathrow. The theory that was gradually building in his mind would explain most of it, fitted 90 percent of the established facts. If it proved to be correct, it was all Mr Huos’ fault. Maybe he could nudge Mr Huos into a nice, neighbourly ex gratia compensation payment, when it was all over. When. If.
Before anything fuzzy and heart-warming could happen, however, he had to do the job he was being paid for, and his best and only lead was the wodge of digital information stored in his phone: the customers who’d brought clothes in to be cleaned on the same day Mr Huos took in his coat. Plain, ordinary investigation, simple legwork, Rockford Files stuff.
He found a low wall to sit on, took out his phone and called up the picture he’d taken of the page in Mr Williams’ book. He concentrated on the first name on the list.
The first name was Kevin Briggs.
She understood protocol the way a fish understands water. All good lawyers do; it’s the element that gave them birth and nourishes them, from which they came and to which they will ultimately return. This morning, however, she was hopping mad. So, instead of knocking and waiting for Alan’s reedy “Come” to filter through the woodwork, she clubbed the door with the heel of her hand, twisted the handle as if killing poultry and burst in.
Alan was on the phone. She scowled at him. He flinched as though she’d just hit him but carried on with his call. Angrily she dropped into a chair and started picking at the frayed upholstery.
He wasn’t the most sensitive man on the planet, but he had the good sense to wind his call up quickly and put the phone down. “Rachel,” he said.
She raked him with a glare. “Where were you last night?” she said.
The sort of question no fiancé likes to have staring him in the face first thing in the morning. Luckily his conscience was clear. “I had a late meeting at Burridge’s,” he replied. “Why?”
“I rang you at eleven.”
“I didn’t get home till gone midnight.”
“Your mobile was off.”
“Like I said, I was in a meeting.”
She took a deep breath and let it go, and with it went a certain proportion of her rage. “The most extraordinary thing happened last evening,” she said. “That’s why I was trying to get hold of you.”
“You should’ve left—” He didn’t bother to complete the recommendation. Rachel didn’t leave messages. He had an idea she saw it as a sign of weakness. “What happened?”
Her frown deepened. “I met this madwoman,” she said. “Total nutter. And Kevin’s disappeared.”
Item, one silver lining, Alan didn’t say. If his future brother-in-law real
ly had vanished off the face of the earth, it’d be a sweet, beautiful thing and a cause for lasting joy. Highly unlikely of course. “Oh?” he said.
“I found the madwoman in Kevin’s flat.”
Figures, Alan thought. Any woman would have to be mad to go there, or at least utterly desperate. “New girlfriend?”
She shook her head so fiercely it was a miracle she didn’t centrifuge her brain. “She claimed she works here,” she said.
You don’t have to be mad to work here, Alan was tempted to argue. Wisely he didn’t. “She doesn’t, I take it.”
“Of course she doesn’t. Listen,” she added, and told the story. Being a lawyer, she knew how to pick out the salient facts and arrange them in due order. When she’d finished, she had his undivided attention.
“That’s mad,” he said.
“The disturbing thing is,” Rachel went on, “how much she knew about me. Obviously she’s been in my office – more than once, quite likely.”
“One of the cleaners?”
“Doubt it. I know all the cleaners by sight. I’m usually here when they come round, after all.”
Rachel was a great one for working late. Until she’d joined the company, Alan had held the coveted Last Man Sitting award for voluntary unpaid overtime. These days, he wasn’t in the running. “You’re sure you didn’t recognise her?”
“Of course I didn’t. Don’t be ridiculous.” She picked a pencil off his desk, broke it in two and dropped it in the bin provided. “You haven’t seen anybody hanging round the place lately, have you?”
He shook his head. “She could’ve been here for a meeting,” he suggested. “There’s people in here all the time.”
“Not roaming around the place sneaking into people’s rooms,” she snapped. “And anyway, why would anybody want to do something like that? It’s not like I’m a movie star or a TV presenter or anything. It’s weird.”