The Better Mousetrap

by Tom Holt

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘But I told you to use the Better Mousetrap.’

  ‘I did. Apparently the Door beats the Mousetrap.’

  ‘Heavens. Well, that’s that explained, anyhow. And the Door person saved her again, from the spiders.’

  ‘Yes. And the next time, too. I used dragons’ teeth.’ This time, there was no artifice about Amelia’s surprise.

  ‘Dragons’ teeth? Have you any idea what those things cost?’ Colin couldn’t help colouring with shame. ‘You did say get the job done. Any means necessary. So I thought—’

  ‘Yes, well. Never mind about that for now.’ Pause, while the penny dropped. ‘And they didn’t work either.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Extraordinary. So what did you do?’

  Colin ran a finger round inside his shirt collar. ‘I realised that it had to be the Door,’ he said uncomfortably. ‘Nothing else could explain it. Once I’d figured that out, of course, it was easy.’

  ‘Was it?’

  ‘Oh yes. I rang Spitzer and told her I knew about the Door, and I was thoroughly fed up with you because you’d made me try and kill her, and I was plotting to get rid of you.’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘It was the only way to get at her, I thought,’ Colin said. ‘I promised that when you were gone and I was senior partner, I’d give her a partnership too.’

  A moment of extremely eloquent silence. ‘I see. She accepted.’

  ‘Oh yes. Seemed thrilled at the prospect. So I told her that I’d need the use of the Door if I was going to have any chance of killing you. She wasn’t happy about that, but I insisted.’

  ‘Well, of course.’

  Colin nodded. ‘I arranged a meeting: me, her, and the Door person. And when they arrived, I killed them.’ Amelia hadn’t realised she’d been holding her breath. ‘Excellent.’

  ‘And I got rid of the Door, as well.’

  Time stopped. It was a quite unintentional reflex on Amelia’s part, triggered by a combination of shock and fury such as she’d never felt before. Luckily, she realised what she was doing and stopped it before any damage was done, although a lot of scientists subsequently wasted a great deal of time and effort taking their very expensive equipment to bits to see what had gone wrong. ‘You did what?’ she said quietly.

  ‘Got rid of it,’ Colin repeated. ‘Well, naturally, the thing’s an absolute menace. When you think that an untrained amateur managed to get his hands on it and was actually using it, on a daily basis; it’s a miracle we’re all still here. So I burned it.’

  ‘You—’

  Colin nodded briskly. ‘Put a match to it. All gone. Made the world safe for civilisation as we know it, if you care to look at it from that angle.’

  He’s lying, Amelia’s brain shrieked. Even Colin Gomez couldn’t be that colossally stupid. In which case—

  But was he lying? As she looked at him, Amelia couldn’t be sure. The horrible part of it was, he was actually capable of doing something like that. Basically, she knew, deep down, Colin Gomez was-well, not an idealist, he had his faults but nothing quite as bad as that. Deep down, he was a nice man. He was able to function in business because the little seed of niceness had been overlaid with innumerable layers of obedience, ambition and corporate mentality, making it possible for him to doublethink himself into doing practically anything provided his superiors in the chain of command told him to. But in the absence of a relevant direct order-don’t destroy the Portable Door, for instance-there was always the danger that his inner niceness might assert itself and take over. And a nice man would realise how dangerous the Door was; just as a nice man, happening to find a nuclear warhead in the street, wouldn’t immediately start opening negotiations with well-funded terrorist groups, even though he’d be well aware of how much money they’d give for one. A nice man would hand it in at his local police station.

  Which, in this instance, would be me, surely, Amelia thought. ‘You burned it,’ she repeated.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It didn’t occur to you to bring it to me.’

  ‘No. I knew you’d want it disposed of as quickly as possible, in case something happened and it fell into the wrong hands.’

  Silent as a card-house folding, three-quarters of her grand plan evaporated. All that work, effort, time and expense of spirit. But Amelia rose to the occasion very well. A lesser woman would’ve wasted yet more time and emotion cursing herself for not telling Colin from the outset that getting hold of the Door was the main objective of the project-because she hadn’t trusted him not to keep it for himself, which was the bitter irony of the thing; because clearly she could have trusted him. That was obvious, now that it was too late, because if Colin had taken the Door for his own he wouldn’t be there in her office, and quite probably neither would she.

  Well; too late to do anything about it now. One had to be businesslike, and cutting losses was one of the pillars of commercial wisdom. She wouldn’t even have Colin killed, because what good would that do? She’d only have to find someone else to do his job, and he was quite good at it. She made an effort, like a snake shedding its skin, and shrugged off the fury and the despair.

  ‘Quite right,’ Amelia said. ‘Well done. Get on to the agency and find someone to replace Spitzer. In the meantime, get Atkinson down from Manchester office to cover her workload.’ She gave Colin a bright, brittle smile. ‘I think that’s all for now,’ she said. ‘See you at the partners’ meeting on Friday.’

  Colin stirred but didn’t get up. ‘Just one thing,’ he said.

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘The Spitzer girl. Just out of interest. Why did we kill her?’

  We, Amelia noted. There you had it, the perfect synthesis of corporate and nice. ‘Oh, it’s complicated. All to do with a little deal I’m putting together. Nothing in your line.’

  ‘Ah.’ He stood up. ‘Well, I hope it works out, whatever it is. I’d better be getting on, I’ve got clients coming in.’

  When he’d gone, Amelia counted up to twenty and screamed. It wasn’t like her, but then again, neither was failure. And it was her own silly fault, of course, keeping Colin in the dark.

  Assuming he’d been telling the truth. She pursed her lips. Since he hadn’t already assassinated her, what would he have to gain by pretending to have burned the Door? Nothing sprang to mind. Even so. She picked up the phone.

  ‘Erskine.’

  ‘Gosh.’ Silence; then, ‘Is that really you?’

  ‘Stop babbling and get in here now.’

  He must’ve run all the way. Amelia hardly had time to fill in four across before he was there, shiny-eyed and trembling slightly. ‘Erskine,’ she said, carelessly forgetting to tell him to sit down, ‘a little job for you. Several, actually.’

  ‘Golly. Thanks.’

  ‘First,’ she went on, ‘I want you to search Colin Gomez’s office from top to bottom. He’ll be seeing clients, so he’ll be out of the way.’

  ‘Right, yes, certainly, of course. Um, what am I looking for?’

  Amelia described the Door. No point telling him what it was. ‘And when you’ve done that,’ she said, ‘I want you to clear Emily Spitzer’s stuff out of her office and put it in store. She’s dead.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘And then,’ she went on-it was slightly wearing to be gazed at with such devoted intensity- ‘you might as well move your stuff in there.’

  ‘Thanks. Thanks ever so much.’

  Sigh. ‘You’ll be looking after her work until John Atkinson gets here from Manchester. Do you know John? No, I don’t suppose you do. Anyhow, just hold the fort till he gets here. Can you manage that?’

  ‘I’ll do my very best.’

  ‘Yes, of course you will. Now, was there anything else? Oh yes. The cardboard tube thing might just be in with Emily Spitzer’s stuff. Keep an eye open for it, and if you find it, bring it here immediately. Don’t stop to ring first, just get yourself in here. Understood?’

  ‘Perfectly.’<
br />
  ‘That’s all, then.’ Amelia looked at him. He’d have to do. ‘For now,’ she added. ‘Right, on your way.’

  Busy, busy. No sooner was Erskine out of the door than Sarah called in to say that she’d arranged the sale of the bauxite stake. She’d done well, too. A small enough consolation, now that the Portable Door had apparently slipped through her fingers, but every little bit helped. Look after the billions, and the trillions will look after themselves.

  More to the point, though; Amelia dialled a number, tapping her fingers impatiently on the desk until she got an answer.

  ‘It’s me,’ she said. ‘You can let it go now.’

  The dragon woke up.

  It had no idea where it was, or how it had got there. Since it was awake, however, its new surroundings hardly registered. It moved its head painfully on a cricked neck, following the scent of roast pork until it located a heap of freshly cooked pig carcasses. It ate five and felt better.

  Not hungry, it noted with satisfaction. Go to sleep now.

  It wriggled, but the surface under its belly felt strange. It wasn’t the cold, smooth feel of its usual bedding. Not good. It was lying on stones—

  It shifted, preparing to move, then intuited better of it. Stones, yes, but nice stones. Being a dragon, it could carry out with a brush of its belly scales a valuation more accurate and detailed than anything a trained mineralogist could do with a fully equipped lab and a staff of twenty. Nice stones, worth lots.

  Can sleep now.

  Its nose touched its curled-up tail, and it slid into the intersecting matrices of its dreams. Bauxite, it told itself, currently quoted in New York at sixteen, seventeen-point-two in Lisbon, seventeen-point-six in Sydney and London. Meanwhile, the innate sensors in its hindbrain performed their usual miracle of quantity surveying, and reported back a figure which, multiplied by the closing price in Singapore, made it whistle the melting point of iron.

  Blessed are the pure in heart, apparently, for they shall see God. Nobody had ever seen fit to tell Erskine this, since it wasn’t immediately relevant to his duties, but he’d sort of figured it out for himself, from first principles. Because he’d been good, he’d been chosen by Her for a special mission of great importance. The glow of pride charged him up like an electric current.

  Mr Gomez’s room. Normally, he wouldn’t have dared trespass on a partner’s carpet, but a mandate from the highest possible authority made all the difference.

  First, the desk. Erskine had been designed to be methodical. First, he took a mental photograph, noting the exact position of everything. It took some doing, because Mr Gomez’s desk was a perfect example of dynamic chaos, but Erskine had been specially fitted with an enhanced memory. With the picture saved on his internal screen, he took everything off the desk, stacked it neatly on the floor and put it back again, in the process frisking everything for small cardboard tubes.

  No result; so he started on the piles of blue, orange, green and buff folders that covered two-thirds of the floor, the way the oceans cover the planet. Any one of the piles could have been artfully arranged to hide a small cardboard tube. As it turned out, they hadn’t, and Erskine moved on to the filing cabinet.

  Nothing in the filing cabinet but files; nothing in the files but paper. Next, he examined the pockets of the two coats that hung behind the door. Mostly, they were full of discarded wrappings from extra-strong mint rolls. No cardboard tubes.

  He glanced at his watch. Because the firm charged for its services on a time basis, Mr Gomez considered it a point of honour to make any interview with clients last at least an hour. That meant Erskine had a minimum of twenty minutes in hand. Enough time to lift the carpet and prise up the floorboards? Possibly, but he’d be pushing it. Well; he’d just have to work faster.

  First, though, there was the walk-in cupboard. He’d left that till last, because it was such an obvious place for hiding stuff. He opened the door, then took a step back.

  ‘Oh,’ said Emily Spitzer. ‘It’s you.’

  ‘Hello,’ Erskine replied. ‘And it’s Mr Arkenstone from the Salt Lake City office, isn’t it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Shhh. Yes, Mr Arkenstone.’ Emily looked disconcerted, and also unusually scruffy. Her clothes were a bit rumpled, and her lipstick was smudged. ‘From Salt Lake City. I expect you’re wondering what we’re doing in Mr Gomez’s cupboard.’

  ‘Looking for files, presumably,’ Erskine replied.

  ‘That’s right, yes. Mr Arkenstone needed a file, and I said I’d help him find it.’

  ‘I thought so,’ Erskine said. ‘Sorry to have disturbed you, only I didn’t know you were in there. I’d have knocked if I’d known.’

  ‘Yes, of course you would.’

  ‘Can I help you look?’

  ‘What? No, thanks, it’s fine, we can manage.’

  ‘Right you are.’ Erskine hesitated. ‘Only, I’m supposed to search the cupboard for a small cardboard tube. You haven’t seen one in there, have you?’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Small cardboard tube,’ Erskine repeated. ‘About so long, with a bit of old plastic sheet inside, though I’m not to touch that. It won’t take me two minutes, and I can be looking for your file while I’m at it.’

  ‘Who told you to look for a cardboard tube?’ asked Mr Arkenstone. He didn’t have an American accent, which was odd if he was from Salt Lake City. Maybe he’d been posted there as part of a management restructuring initiative.

  ‘Ms Carrington,’ Erskine replied, trying not to sound too smug about it, but he couldn’t resist adding, ‘Personally.’ The name had the effect he’d expected. Mr Arkenstone looked properly impressed, and even Ms Spitzer raised an eyebrow. ‘And I don’t want to have to hurry you or anything, but Mr Gomez will be back quite soon, and he’s not supposed to know I’m here.’

  Mr Arkenstone stood back out of Erskine’s way. ‘You go ahead,’ he said. ‘We’ll, um, carry on looking for our file when you’ve finished.’

  ‘Are you sure? I mean, I can easily keep an eye out for it while I’m looking for the tube.’

  Ms Spitzer gave Erskine a conspiratorial glance. He was thrilled. He’d never had one before. ‘Need to know,’ she said, in a loud whisper. ‘You understand.’

  ‘Oh, of course.’ Erskine nodded seven times. ‘Quite. What file, eh?’

  ‘Absolutely. You crack on,’ Mr Arkenstone added kindly. ‘Don’t mind us. We’ve got all the time in the world.’

  There was something in what he’d said that made Ms Spitzer giggle, though she managed to do it with a straight face. ‘Thanks,’ Erskine said. ‘After all, we’re all on the same side, aren’t we?’

  Mr Arkenstone nodded gravely. Ms Spitzer must’ve got a frog in her throat or something, because she made a little gurgling noise. But not unkindly. In fact, Erskine reflected as he rummaged carefully through the cupboard (no tube; oh well), she was being a good deal nicer to him now than she had been before. It could only be because he’d been blessed with Her special favour. Would it go on like this from now on, he wondered. He hoped so.

  And then he froze.

  Erskine’s first instinct was to hate himself for being so careless. The excitement of it all had got the better of him, and he’d forgotten something that She’d said to him.

  I want you to clear Emily Spitzer’s stuff out of her office and put it in store. She’s dead.

  Erskine thought about that. True, the Emily Spitzer with whom he’d just had that extremely pleasant conversation hadn’t seemed all that dead to him, but then, who was he to judge? If She said Ms Spitzer had passed away, which of them was more likely to be right, the Creator or the unworthy result of Her labours? But, replied his inner common sense, Ms Spitzer really didn’t look terribly dead at all. In which case, maybe it was possible that whoever had told Her about Ms Spitzer’s demise had been lying. In which case, She really ought to be told, right away.

  Twin forces of incalculable ferocity were tearing Erskine apart: the
imperative of letting Her know, just in case someone was trying to deceive Her, and horrified fear of wasting Her time and getting into trouble. For a full ten seconds, he stood quite still, not even breathing, as his wretched mind was bounced backwards and forwards like a tennis ball. His first solo mission, and here he was, messing it up; because whichever course of action he took, it’d be bound to be the wrong one.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it, even. She’d also told him to search Ms Spitzer’s things for the tube, if it wasn’t in Mr Gomez’s room. And he’d just gone and mentioned to her that he was looking for it. What if she wasn’t supposed to have it? In which case, he’d just tipped her off that it had been missed and was being searched for. What a terrible, terrible mess.

  Nothing for it; he was going to have to tell Her at once.

  Very carefully, Erskine opened the cupboard door and looked out. What he saw made him whimper. The room was empty. Ms Spitzer (and that nice Mr Arkenstone from Salt Lake City office) weren’t there any more.

  ‘Who the hell,’ Frank asked as they slammed through a fire door, ‘was that?’

  ‘Erskine,’ Emily told him. ‘Long story. In here.’

  In Here proved to be a small, dusty room crammed with angle-iron racks filled with dusty files. She closed the door and listened, presumably for sounds of pursuit. There couldn’t have been any, because she came away and sat down on the floor, looking exhausted.

  ‘The new kid,’ she went on. ‘Trainee. Supposed to be going round with me, learning pest control. Coals to Newcastle,’ she added bitterly. ‘Though there’s something a bit bloody odd about him. I’ve only just figured it out, but it’s pretty strange.’

  Frank looked at her. ‘Well?’

  ‘I can’t hear him.’ Emily frowned, then shook her head. ‘No, that’s putting it badly. Look, I told you about the troll’s blood, right? Well, when Erskine says something, that’s all I hear. Just the words he says out loud. No little voice in my head telling me what he’s really thinking. And before you ask,’ she added, ‘that’s downright weird.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Believe me, yes.’ She pulled a bewildered face. ‘You, Colin Gomez, Emma on reception, everyone I’ve talked to since it happened. But now I come to think of it, not Erskine. Which,’ she added quietly, ‘can mean only one thing. He’s not human.’