The Better Mousetrap

by Tom Holt

  Technical problems, as they say in the trade.

  So, with Amelia Carrington’s not so oblique encouragements very much on his mind, Honest John decided it was time for a little lateral thinking. It was sheer luck, he couldn’t help thinking, that he had a Plan B.

  He tried again. This time, he raised the lid a full fourteen inches before yelping with pain and letting go.

  It had to be a very heavy lid, of course; half-inch high-tensile steel plate, and that was the lightweight version. The regulations specified a full twenty millimetres for Class 4 species, and you had to have four padlocks to BS 8867 and an alarm system.

  Honest John’s operation couldn’t run to that (the EU will be the death of small business in this country) so he made do with what he’d got. Right now, that included a lid he couldn’t lift and a (no pun intended) deadline.

  Years ago, before he’d been Honest John’s House of Monsters, he’d had a short and colourful career as Honest John’s House of Clones. He’d managed to blot most of the details out of his memory, but he still had a few mementos: stuff the liquidators hadn’t found, or hadn’t considered worth the expense of taking away. One of them was the large, built-in cast-iron vat that took up most of the floor space in Number Six shed. He hadn’t used it since he’d been hounded out of the cloning biz; he wasn’t even sure if the rich green goo that filled it was still functional. Only one way to find out. Unfortunately, that would involve lifting the damn lid.

  The pyramids, he thought. Stonehenge. They’d managed to shift bloody great big heavy things using muscle power alone. Technologically speaking, what did they have that he didn’t? Apart from thousands of conscripted labourers, of course.

  Honest John clambered down and took an armful of bricks from a pile in the corner. With these, he was able to wedge the gap each time he lifted the lid, until at last it was big enough to let him get his arm through. Shivering a little, he groped about until his fingers made contact with the surface of the goo. He fished out a sample and studied it.

  Yuck was, of course, his instinctive first reaction. It was slimy, green and smelly, but that was how it was supposed to be. There were traces of some kind of yellow mould, but presumably it was either inert or non-organic. Just as well. Thinking about it, he cursed himself for his negligence. A mildew spore finding its way into that lot could easily have evolved into sentient life inside a week; a fortnight, and it’d probably have discovered nuclear fission.

  Fool’s luck, he thought. But the stuff felt and smelled right; it even (don’t try this at home, kids) tasted right. He remembered some of the stories he’d heard about Amelia Carrington over the years, hopped down and scuttled over to his bench. Busy, busy.

  On top of the bench was a small fridge, the sort you daren’t open in hotel rooms unless you’re a millionaire on expenses. Inside was a rack of test tubes. He filled a pipette with foul-looking yellow gunge from one of them, and shut the fridge door.

  Halfway to the vat, he paused. Was this a sensible, responsible thing to do? No. On the other hand, living to regret it would nevertheless be living, and by definition preferable to the alternative. He climbed up onto the rim of the vat, stuck his arm out as far as he could get it, and squeezed the little rubber bulb. Then, moving faster than he’d done in years, he dragged the bricks out until the lid slammed shut, and hopped clear like a startled frog.

  He landed awkwardly, hurting his ankle. Silly, really. Even under optimum conditions, it’d take seventy-six hours. In cold, crud-encrusted goo, you could add another six to eight hours, assuming it was going to work at all. The light-blue-touchpaper approach was simple hysterical melodrama. He got up slowly, hobbled over to the bench and switched the kettle on. He hadn’t had a brew for hours, and his throat felt like sandpaper.

  Either the ewe would have to go, Honest John mused, or the drake. No bloody use at all having them if the buggers didn’t get on. He thought it over. Sound business principles dictated that the ewe was the one to get shot of. With her pedigree and stallful of rosettes, she’d be worth a fortune. Tierkraft AG and Cincinnati Lifeforms had both made him tempting offers for her. The drake, on the other hand-well, he was worth money, but not nearly as much. Even so, it’d be a wrench to say goodbye to Daisy, even if she had eaten three DEFRA inspectors and a Ministry vet…

  A sound like the booming of an enormous gong startled him out of his meditations. He looked round, then down at his watch. Twenty minutes. It couldn’t have come from the vat, then. Must’ve been something else. Concorde going over, maybe.

  He sipped his tea. Stone-cold. He preferred it that way.

  Only, hadn’t they grounded Concorde years ago? He couldn’t remember. Served him right for not reading the papers. To fill in the time, he opened a dog-eared box file and made a start on the monthly accounts. Now, then: feed receipts.

  Boom.

  Not Concorde, even if it was still flying. Not unless it was taking a short cut through the shed. Once his head had stopped spinning, he stood up and took a few steps towards the vat. Then he changed his mind. If it was the vat … He had an idea there’d been an article in the trade mag a while back; something about what happened if the goo was left so long that it began to ferment. Hugely accelerated development, Honest John seemed to recall, but really bad stuff happened to the DNA coding.

  Urn.

  He could go back to the vat and investigate. Or he could nip outside, get in the van, drive very fast to Heathrow and hope like hell that Concorde (a) was still in service and (b) could outfly whatever was beginning to stir under that lid.

  His twisted ankle held him up rather, and he stopped to get his coat. But for that, he might have made it.

  Instead, he’d just laid his hand on the door handle when a third boom knocked him off balance. He staggered and fell, just as the lid flew off the vat like a frisbee and took out the far wall. For a moment, his eyes were filled with brick and plaster dust. When he’d wiped them clean, he looked at the vat and saw a single huge green claw rising up and digging its talons into the rim.

  Cast iron is brittle old stuff. It went ping as it crumbled.

  Oh well, thought Honest John. He searched in his pocket for his mobile phone, and prodded in a number. He gave his name, asked to speak to Amelia Carrington and was put through straight away.

  ‘Your order’s ready,’ he said.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘One thing, though.’

  ‘Well?’

  The claw was snaking upwards, on the end of a massive green-scaled leg. The talons flexed, and something made a deep growling noise that set the building vibrating. Honest John took a deep breath. ‘Do you think you could possibly collect?’ he said.

  CHAPTER TEN

  George?’ said Mr Sprague. ‘Who’s George?’

  ‘You are.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ Mr Sprague looked down, and Frank couldn’t help being reminded of a small boy who’s been caught out in an obvious lie. ‘What a silly question,’ he said. ‘I’m here.’ Then, as if he’d just remembered that he was the injured party: ‘What do you mean by bursting into my office like this? I have no idea who you are. Get out right now, or I’ll call the police.’

  Frank clicked his tongue. ‘You’re not very good at this, are you?’

  Mr Sprague’s face fell, and again, Frank got an impression of extreme youth. Odd, since Mr Sprague had to be at least fifty-five. ‘I don’t have to talk to you,’ Mr Sprague said. ‘Go away. Immediately.’

  ‘Not until you tell me what you’ve done with George.’ Frank took a step forward; Mr Sprague jumped out of his chair and retreated behind his desk. ‘Oh for crying out loud,’ Frank said wearily. ‘It’s bloody obvious you’re not him.’

  ‘Isn’t.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Isn’t.’

  Frank Carpenter wasn’t a violent man. He preferred to resolve conflicts by quiet, rational argument or (better still) by running away. There are times, however, when even the gentlest soul can be goaded into fu
ry. Frank lunged, stretching across the desk, and grabbed the lapels of Mr Sprague’s suit jacket in both hands. ‘Is!’ he roared, and at precisely that moment, Mr Sprague disappeared, leaving Frank baffled and empty-handed.

  Not quite. As he stood and stared at the place where Mr Sprague had been, he noticed something sticking to the palm of his right hand. It was a single long blonde hair.

  ‘We’re here to see Mr Pickersgill,’ Emily said.

  The receptionist looked up at her. ‘Have you got an appointment?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Just a moment, I’ll see if he’s free. Who should I say—?’ No harm in giving her name, or the firm’s. After all, she was here because the board-the rest of the board-were paying for her to do a job. ‘Emily Spitzer,’ she said. ‘Carringtons.’

  ‘I’m afraid he’s on the phone right now,’ the receptionist said. ‘If you’d care to take a seat, I’ll ring through as soon as his call’s finished.’

  This time, Erskine had brought something to read; well, he would have, wouldn’t he? It had been a suggestion rather than a direct order, but obviously he’d taken it to heart, considered it and seen its self-evident merits; probably written it down in a notebook. The book he’d selected was Hasdrubal and Singh on banshee management; Emily’d been told to read it for her final exams, but she’d never managed to stay awake past the introduction. Erskine, she noticed, was two-thirds of the way through, and was using a pink requisition slip as a bookmark.

  Needless to say, she’d forgotten to bring a book of her own. She glanced down at the selection of classic issues of Country Life and The Times colour supplement, all of them so old she was surprised they weren’t bound in vellum and chained to the table. Not for her, she decided. Instead, she half-closed her eyes and tried to run scenarios for the job ahead. It was what you were supposed to do when you were waiting on a mission like this. She’d never managed to get the hang of it.

  Instead, she thought: how the hell can you have a troll on your board of directors and not notice? A goblin, now; that’d be quite understandable. Goblins were natural shape-shifters. Ditto dark elves, gnomes and the Fey. Even giants-there were some very short giants, and some of the full-sized ones had techniques for shrinking down to normal proportions for up to seventy-two hours; a really smart giant with access to the right equipment could probably pass for human indefinitely, or at least until his morphic signature began to break down under the strain. But trolls? No. Sunblock and dark glasses helped them cope with the daylight issue, but there wasn’t really anything they could do about their size, their shape, or the fact that their mouths were full of precious stones instead of teeth. You’d notice something like that, surely.

  (Without taking his eyes off the page, Erskine reached in his top pocket, took out a small notebook, and wrote something down. Emily hated him.)

  Yes, of course you’d notice. In which case it stood to reason that the other directors had noticed, probably long before Mr Pickersgill was promoted to the board, and they were fine about it-no silly prejudice, no bigotry, this is the twenty-first century after all. It therefore followed that if they now wanted their colleague terminated with extreme prejudice, it wasn’t because of his inhumanity. There’d be some other reasona difference of opinion over a takeover offer or a recapitalisation issue, or maybe they had a buy-back option over his shares and wanted to get them cheap from his executors before higher than anticipated mid-term profits sent the share price soaring. All sorts of possible reasons; and it was all quite legal and legitimate, since Mr Pickersgill happened not to be human. You can’t murder a monster, you can only kill it, and provided you abide by the requirements of the Supernatural Vermin (Welfare) Regulations 1977 and the various EU directives, they can’t have you for it. Which, Emily had to concede, was generally fine by her. Ninety-nine per cent of the creatures she dealt with in the course of her professional life were ruthless instinctive killers who had to be disposed of in order to make the planet habitable for small, weak, squishy human beings. The other one per cent-well, omelettes and eggs. No room in this business for sentiment or Disneyeqsue anthropomorphising.

  Even so. She did what she always did when she reached this point, and thought about something else. Frank Carpenter no, we won’t think about him. All right, then, his problem. The disappearance of Mr Sprague.

  That was all right. It was challenging, interesting, and sufficiently remote not to bother her. Emily considered the facts as she knew them.

  The laws of metaphysics categorically state that people don’t just vanish. They can be changed into something else (Practical magic) or made to look like they aren’t there (Effective magic); in the latter case, they can even be made to believe themselves that they aren’t there, a useful trick if you can do it. They can be transported from one place to another (telekinesis). They can be killed and their component molecules instantaneously dispersed (Gardner’s Hammer); they can be banished to the interdimensional void through Probability Snares, Better Mousetraps and Consequence Mines, or retuned to super-low intensity frequencies that mean they can only be detected with a Kawaguchiya RF7000 oscilloscope and three-way litmus paper. Any one of these processes can give you an effect indistinguishable to the layman from vanishing. But people don’t just vanish. Doesn’t happen. Can’t be done.

  Simple, then. She had to get into Sprague’s office with an RF7000 and take readings. That’d tell her what had happened to him, and thereafter the mystery should solve itself. It wouldn’t be difficult, not for Frank and his Portable Door; when everyone had gone home, and there was nobody to worry about apart from cleaners and night security. And then they could have dinner, to celebrate—

  Emily’s train of thought skidded on the wet leaves of shock and ploughed into the embankment of shame. She wasn’t quite sure why. She’d do him a favour, naturally he’d want to thank her, they could discuss her findings over Thai chicken with lemon grass, and what was so very wrong about that? She couldn’t put the reason into words, but then, she didn’t have to. It’d be-what? Betrayal? Surrender? Prostituting her craft in order to worm her way into the affections of her mark?

  Oh, come off it.

  But. She scowled, and Erskine, happening to look up from his book, intercepted her ferocious glare and shrivelled like a salted slug. Good, she thought; serve him right for-well, for whatever it was he deserved to be punished for. Existing, for example.

  ‘Mr Pickersgill’s free now, if you’d like to go through.’

  Who the hell was Mr Pickersgill? Oh yes, the troll they were here to kill. Emily stood up abruptly and marched towards the open door, Erskine trailing behind her like the tin cans behind a newly-weds’ car.

  As soon as the door closed behind them, her mind reverted to tactical mode. They were in a small, bare room-interview room-with a plain table and three chairs; one door, but there was a nice old-fashioned sash window (sealed shut with nine or so coats of paint) and they were on the ground floor. She glanced through it and saw a grubby, overshadowed courtyard, empty apart from a colony of wheelie bins. Escape route, in case things went wrong. She ticked Priority One off her mental list, and relaxed very slightly.

  ‘Where should I sit?’ Erskine hissed at her.

  Stupid question, she thought; no, scrub that, it’s a very good question, since he’ll be doing the sword work. She stared at the backs of the two visitors’ chairs, her mind a sudden blank. For sure, one of the chairs was better, strategically speaking, than the other, but just then she didn’t even know how to set about deciding which. ‘That one,’ she snapped, pointing at the space directly between the two.

  ‘Right,’ Erskine said, in a clipped, efficient voice, and took the chair furthest from the window. Well, of course. It placed him on the victim’s left, so he’d have space to use his right arm.

  Assuming he was right-handed. Emily realised she hadn’t bothered to notice.

  The door opened, and a troll walked in.

  Other than his size-eight foot two, at a gues
s-there was nothing remotely intimidating about Mr Pickersgill. He was broad in proportion to his height, but cheeks like slices of grey spam and a veritable harem of extra chins dissipated the effect of his bulk. He was bald, with a shiny, pointy head that rose through a chaplet of fuzzy white hair like a mountain through clouds. He wore thick-lensed, gold-rimmed spectacles and a plain dark blue suit with the sort of tie that only gets bought by children for Daddy’s birthday.

  I can’t kill that, Emily thought.

  Mr Pickersgill smiled. It was a pleasant smile, faintly apprehensive. ‘Ms Spitzer?’ He held out a big, soft hand. She shook it. ‘Sorry to keep you hanging about, call from one of our suppliers. Now then.’ He waited for them both to sit down, then lowered himself carefully into his chair. ‘What can I do for you?’

  Erskine was looking at her. He was practically quivering, like a dog watching a rabbit. She gave him a tiny frown. Oh God, she thought.

  It was, she realised, all about spiders. As a little girl, she’d squashed spiders because she was terrified of them. Really, there wasn’t anything else she could do. She couldn’t leave them be, in case they ran up her leg-unthinkable, yuck. She couldn’t catch them alive and put them out the window, because that’d mean touching them. She didn’t have the dexterity or the quick reactions to trap them in matchboxes. But a swift, decisive blow with a long-handled hairbrush turned them into a smear on the wall, and that was the problem solved. The killing aspect-an inoffensive living thing brutally and arbitrarily crushed to death never crossed her mind. Then, later, she killed spiders because they scared other people, and by then she was hardened to it. After that-spiders, dragons, vampires, manticores, harpies, the world was a better place without them. An article of faith, and no grey areas. A few brown, sticky ones, maybe, but no grey.

  Mr Pickersgill, on the other hand, wasn’t a spider, not even by Emily’s extended definition. He was just a rather large man whose skin happened to be the colour and texture of pumice. He didn’t invalidate the spider principle; it just didn’t apply to him, that was all.