by Heide Goody
She looked at him, properly looked at him. Cameron Barnes, the one that got away. He’d left Edinburgh eight months before she did and under far better circumstances. He’d taken up a research position in Micronesia or somewhere. It had been the amicable end of their decidedly casual but undeniably pleasant relationship.
“It’s been too long, hasn’t it?” he said.
“Too long,” she agreed.
“I’m booked into a dei-at rho hotel which I think isn’t far from here. But are you free for drinks or dinner?”
“Or both,” she said.
“Camchai. Oh, and I got you this. Just a small thing.” He pulled from his pocket a small box.
“A present? I really wasn’t expecting…” She opened it. Sat in white tissue paper was an ornate thing of translucent white. It was evidently Venislarn in design for, although it was scored with encircling lines, it was impossible to identify if they were concentric circles or spiralling out. It was like a hurricane filled with snow, squashed flat and yet still, somehow, retaining its depth. “It’s beautiful,” she said.
Cameron lifted it out. It was threaded on a leather string: a pendant.
“It’s a shodu-bon claim marker,” he said.
“What is this? Glass?” she asked as he fixed it round her neck.
“It’s mostly mucopolysaccharides,” said Cameron.
“What?”
“Orally excreted by the yon-bun into these impossible geometries. There.”
He stepped back to admire her.
“It’s dried Venislarn spit?” she said.
“It’s amazing, isn’t it?”
“Oh. Oh, yes. It’s… something.”
Bacchus was a bar built into the basement of the Burlington Hotel on New Street. Rather than attempt to conceal the fact it was in a basement, the Bacchus bar embraced it. Exposed brickwork, dark wood beams and subdued lighting made it look the kind of place where gunpowder plots were hatched or nobles might be bricked up behind the walls.
Rod drank a pint of craft lager. He might have perhaps preferred a pint of the Labrador Stout but, mindful of Morag’s mocking, had chosen something that at least looked like a mainstream beer. It was stealth real ale and had taken the edge right off his nervousness. Around the circular booth from him, Kathy sipped from a bottle of tasteless Generic Beer-Coloured Liquid. Rod congratulated himself on not passing comment.
“So, give us the lowdown on this job I’m applying for,” she said.
“There’s the job they’re going to interview you for and the job you’ll end up doing.”
“And the difference is?”
Rod turned his pint slowly.
“The job they’re interviewing for will be all about cataloguing and categorising the ever-growing quantity of Venislarn materials we discover. Kind of like a scientist who discovers a new element or a new animal species, every single week.”
“Ten new species of beetle are discovered every day,” said Kathy.
“That can’t be true.”
“Prove me wrong.”
Rod sipped. “In the interview, they’ll have you believing that it’s all about contributing to our expanding knowledge of the Venislarn horde and providing expert assistance to those of us who have to deal with it head on.”
“And the reality of the job?”
“You’re like the guys who have to find new ways of storing nuclear waste. New stuff – face-melting glow-in-the-dark stuff – will come in each week and you’ll have to find somewhere to put it without being given any actual additional space to store it in.”
“How did the last person deal with it?”
“Creative bureaucracy. And creative accountancy.”
Kathy drank and gave him a quizzical look.
“As soon as summat turned up at the Dumping Ground or the Vault,” said Rod, “Ingrid would put summat else on the back of a lorry and have it sent somewhere else. And with some subtle alteration to the paperwork, make it look like we hadn’t sent it anywhere, or had kept some and sent some on so that we’d get budget for storage or whatever.”
“I suppose that’s easy with some of the unquantifiable stuff you have in storage.”
“Right. Like those uncountable blue things,” said Rod.
“Tiny Blue Innumerables,” said Kathy.
“Them’s the ones.”
“And the Wittgenstein Volume.”
“The what?”
“The Bloody Big Book,” said Kathy. “If you sent half of that elsewhere, no one would ever know. It would still be infinitely big.”
“Ingrid kept the Vault full,” said Rod, “kept half of everything else on the road to here, there and everywhere and made sure we never had our budgets cut. She was clever, I’ll give her that.”
“She tried to destroy the city.”
“Oh, aye. She was mad too. But clever.” He shrugged. “We all have our off days.”
“Off days? Unleashing city-eating gods counts as an off day?”
“I reckon you’ll have had days when you’ve had enough and decide to cut a few corners.”
“Speaking as doctor, I’d have to say that deciding to cut corners is spectacularly unprofessional.” She gave him a shrewd look. “This is the point where I have to wonder if you’re an undercover tabloid journalist. Or a cop wearing a wire. If you’re a cop, you have to tell me.”
Rod spread his arms as wide as the booth would allow. “Frisk me.”
“Easy, tiger. So, are you a corner-cutter, Campbell?”
“We have to prioritise. Like the tech support job, we can’t actually do the job as it appears on the job description.”
“Triage,” said Kathy.
“Aye. That. I was tempted to cut some corners today.”
“How?”
“You ever met the Mammonites?”
She nodded. “The ones who’d sell their grandmother if it’d make a profit.”
“And some of them probably have. I could have cut some corners today, solved a lot of problems and even saved some lives.”
“How?”
“By shooting one or two of the evil gits.”
“But a sense of duty got the better of you?”
“That and I’ve lost my gun.”
“That just sounds careless.”
“A giant spider ate it.”
“That sounds made up.”
“Totally true,” he said, picking up his pint. “You can ask Morag. She was there.”
“And she’s here,” said Kathy.
“What?”
Kathy inclined her head slightly. Rod looked. Morag was making her way through the press of people near the bar. She hadn’t noticed Rod and Kathy and Rod didn’t want her to. This might not be a date but Rod didn’t want a third wheel at their table. Whatever she was doing here, maybe she’d take her drink to an entirely different corner... No, Morag turned and glanced their way. There was a moment in which their gazes met blankly. Morag and he could have done the quintessentially British thing of pretending not to notice or recognise each other, to avoid social awkwardness. But Morag clearly wasn’t as skilled at it as Rod and her eyes widened in recognition before she could pretend otherwise.
She gave a single wave. That was it. They were committed. She would have to come over.
“Who’s that with her?” said Kathy.
“Who?” said Rod.
Morag cut aside from the bar towards them and there was a man in tow, a dark-haired fellow who looked like Harry Potter’s dad’s stunt double.
“No idea,” said Rod.
He took a deep breath and prepared to have his evening rudely interrupted by the diktats of polite society. That Morag looked equally put out by this turn of events was of no consolation at all.
Morag Senior ran up the stairs to her flat. It was a quarter to seven, the train home had spent twenty minutes idling at Five Ways station for no conceivable reason. She’d already texted Cameron once to let him know she’d be late. She wasn’t going to tell him how
much longer she was going to be late until she had an idea.
She had to get inside, get washed, throw on some clothes and the bare minimum of makeup and then head straight out again. She could do that in ten minutes, fifteen minutes tops.
Keys in the door, twist and in.
“I’m home!” she said.
There was a tinny, muffled reply from the lounge. She went through to the bedroom. There were two neat piles of clothes on the bed. The copy had done at least that. Morag instantly saw that Morag Junior had put the grey cropped trousers and the silk camisole in separate piles which just wouldn’t do. The two of them clearly went together. Morag would sort that out when she picked a pile later.
Nonetheless her clothes for the evening were there, laid out separately. Good stuff.
“How was your day?” she called out.
There was no reply.
Morag went into the lounge. The TV was on but the room was empty, no Morag Junior. In a jar on the coffee table, a squished up pabash kaj doll turned to look at her.
“Put it on channel two!” demanded Steve the Destroyer. “Eggheads is on.”
“Where is she?”
“Did you not hear me, morsel? Do it now or I will rend your flesh from your bones!”
“Shut it, Steve. Where is she?”
“She went out, to cover for you.”
“She…” Fury rose in Morag, nought to a hundred in under a second. “She went to meet Cameron?”
“She went to meet some man,” said Steve.
“Gallus bitch!”
“Now put on Eggheads before I destroy you,” said the doll.
“Screw Eggheads. You’re coming with me.”
Rod couldn’t fault the new guy, Cameron. He’d got the next round of drinks in. Bottles of Beer-Flavoured Liquid for Morag and Kathy, a craft lager for Rod and a pint of something dark, cloudy and mysterious for himself.
“What’s that?” said Kathy.
“Labrador Stout,” said Cameron. “Produced by a local microbrewery. I love microbrewery stuff and homebrew. It’s more authentic, you know?”
“I don’t know enough about beers and brewing and stuff to know what I’m buying.”
“Try it,” said Cameron and slid the pint towards her.
“Morag, you told me that real ale is boring,” said Rod, “and that, I seem to remember, no woman in the history of the world ever liked it.”
“Interesting stuff,” said Kathy, licking a foamy moustache from her top lip.
“And I never said that,” said Morag.
“Oh, it must be some other Morag who said it to me,” said Rod.
“Must be. So, is it permissible for candidates to meet the night before the interview?”
“You’re thinking of weddings, aren’t you?” said Cameron. “Well, say-up havvan isch.”
“Huh?” said Rod.
“May the best candidate win,” Cameron translated and offered a hand to Kathy.
She gave it a firm shake. “Bring it on.”
“There’s the third candidate of course,” said Rod.
“Professor Sheikh Omar,” said Morag.
“A professor?” said Cameron. “Professor of what?”
“Black magic muda.”
“And is he any good?” said Cameron.
“Good at what he does,” Rod conceded. “But good? Hell, no. Whoever gets this job, we’d rather it was one of you two.”
“I’ll drink to that,” said Kathy.
Cameron raised his glass to her and she clinked her bottle against it.
Rod wasn’t a man governed by his emotions. He was a man for one thing. And a northerner too and emotions hadn’t been introduced to the north until 1996. He regarded himself as thoroughly sensible and logical and yet… this Cameron fellow, with his well-spoken Scottish accent, random outbursts of Venislarn and his amiable little face and his… his hair, was getting too pally with Kathy for Rod’s liking.
“You guys got dinner plans?” he asked as casually as he could.
“You said you’d booked some place,” Cameron said. “Bogota or something.”
“Did I?” said Morag. “Or we can go somewhere else. Pizza?”
“He’s come all this way to Birmingham and you’re not taking your guest out for a curry?” said Kathy.
“Cameron eat curry?” smiled Morag. “This is a man who used to think that spaghetti Bolognese was unnecessarily exotic.”
“Hey, I’m a changed man,” he said. “Travel broadens the mind. And the palate. I’ve eaten curry. I think I have. It was certainly spicy.”
“You think it was curry?” said Kathy.
“It was in Indonesia. I can’t say I was fluent in the local language. The menu was mostly pictures.”
“You were in Indonesia?”
“Only en route to Pohnpei,” said Cameron.
“What were you doing in Pohnpei?” asked Kathy. “You weren’t part of the bloop research team?”
“For six months, earlier this year.”
“Bloop?” said Rod.
Kathy put a hand on Rod’s knee and for an instant he felt a teenage thrill at her touch. “Campbell, we have to take this wonderful man out for the finest curry Birmingham can offer and he can tell us all about it.” And with that, the touch of her hand was transformed and Rod knew that he had been friend-zoned like never before.
“But these two have a booking,” said Rod.
“But you don’t seem fussed about the place,” Cameron said to Morag.
“Yeah, but you don’t like curry,” said Morag.
“I know this great place behind the Old Rep Theatre,” said Kathy.
“The Taj?” said Rod.
“They’ll have space for four people.”
“Oh, we’re all going,” said Rod, turning a dismayed question into a statement of pleasant surprise halfway through.
“Sounds pad camchai,” said Cameron.
“Oh, so it’s settled then,” said Morag in a tone of pleasant surprise that could perhaps have started out as a dismayed question.
They left Bacchus and walked through the back of the Burlington Arcade and round the side of the train station towards John Bright Street and the curry house. The sun had set. The red exterior lights of the Mailbox were visible beyond the A38 flyover, adding a pleasant demonic glow to the light of evening.
Dr Kathy Kaur led the way. Morag Junior looked at the woman’s shoes. How could someone walk so briskly in heels that high? Cameron strolled alongside Kathy, and Junior found herself following a short distance behind with Rod. This was not how she had expected the evening to go. A night of wild passion with a former lover had been, perhaps, an unlikely prospect. Morag Senior turning up and dragging Junior into the street to the astonishment of all would have been more probable. But her base bid, her most reasonable expectation, had been of a gently intimate if non-sexual evening with an old friend, chewing the fat and getting all nostalgic about pointless shite. And now even that had been taken from her. She walked close to Rod.
“Sort this out,” she hissed.
“Sort it out?” he hissed back.
“You’ve turned this into a double date!”
“It’s not a date!”
“Oh, I’m glad yours isn’t a date.”
“And yours is?” said Rod. He nodded viciously ahead at Cameron. “Does he know?”
Junior huffed. “Okay. It’s meeting up with an old friend, an ex.”
“And we’re just going out for drinks,” said Rod.
“And a curry now, apparently. And no woman goes out for an innocent drink wearing heels like that.”
“You mean…?”
“Oh, yeah. She’s into you, Rod. Either that or she’s meeting someone she fancies later.”
Kathy and Cameron were at the corner now, turning left along the back of the train station. Rod and Junior increased their pace to catch up.
“I wasn’t the one who changed their plans to make it a double date,” said Rod.
; “You were the one who suggested food!” snapped Junior.
“To get rid of you two! So we could have a bit of, you know, privacy.”
Morag Junior’s laugh was hollow and knowing. “So, it’s not just drinks then, is it?”
They turned the corner. Their dates (or not-dates) were getting away.
“The night is young,” said Rod. “We were going to see where things led.”
“They’re leading to the Taj bloody Mahal.”
“Are you drunk?”
“Wish I was,” she said.
He shook his head bitterly and looked down.
“What happened to your hands?”
“Huh?” She looked at the scratches and the few remaining plasters. “I was attacked while helping Mrs Atraxas trim her cat.”
“You were down at the canal only a bit ago, confiscating flying horrors from Wizard Tim –”
“Mystic Trevor.”
“Whatever – and you were able to nip home, give a cat a haircut and be back in time to meet sexy boy there.”
“I’m a woman. I can multitask.”
Much of the Library of Birmingham was in darkness. The office staff had gone for the day. The armed security teams patrolled only the lower floors and the bits of the Vault they were permitted access to. Up on the seventh floor, Nina Seth and Chief Inspector Ricky Lee sat on swivel chairs, face to face, knees to knees. Five minutes earlier, Ricky had phoned his wife and told her that he was working late on a case. This was technically true, although he hadn’t mentioned he was currently sitting with his occasional fuck-buddy, planning to take alien recreational drugs.
“You are aware that drugs detectives don’t spend their time sampling the gear,” he said.
“We need to understand the effects,” said Nina. “When we get the call, we need to know what we’re dealing with.”
“No good if we turn up to the scene smashed out of our skulls.”
“Sven assures me that the effects only last as long as the rune is in contact with the body.”
Ricky turned over the square of paper.
“Drugs that you can switch off whenever you like. Hardly sounds like a worry for us guys.”
“Yeah, but some people swallow when they mean to spit,” said Nina. “Come on.”
She held up her square. Ricky did likewise.