by Holt, Tom
Paul frowned. ‘You mean like a belt or a handbag?’
‘All right, accomplice. At the very least, a witness. The Fey are red hot on attention to detail. Have you been doing much for her at the office lately?’
‘As a matter of fact, yes. She had me sorting those Mortensen printouts for the best part of a week.’
‘Mortensen printouts,’ Ricky repeated. ‘That doesn’t make any sense. Why would she bother killing you if all you’ve done is the filing? Oh well, I guess it’s just that she doesn’t like you very much.’ He yawned, like a lion at the dentist’s. ‘You should be all right now,’ he said. ‘Now she’s been rumbled it’s not likely she’ll be back tonight, but a couple of pints of that coffee ought to make double sure. What you really need, of course, is something like a seventh-level shield; I’ve got a spare back home that I could lend you, but I won’t be going that way for a couple of weeks.’
‘Just a moment,’ Paul said. ‘What’s a whatever-it-is-level shield look like?’
‘It can be anything,’ Ricky replied, shrugging. ‘Pencil, watch strap, scruffy old paperback book. The usual thing is a badge of some sort; something inconspicuous you can pin inside your jacket.’
‘Would it scare goblins?’
Ricky laughed. ‘Scare ’em?’ he said. ‘Just being in the same room’d fry their tiny brains. Touching it’d physically burn them, too. Why?’
‘I think I’ve got one already,’ Paul replied thoughtfully. ‘At least, I did have, but I left it on my desk at the office and now I can’t find it.’
Ricky was impressed. ‘Where’d you – no, don’t tell me now, I really do have to get a move on, run errands, see to chores. If we’re both alive and conscious on Monday, you can tell me then.’ He frowned. ‘Far be it from me to dictate how you run your life,’ he said, ‘but in your shoes I’d fix that window before anything else nasty comes through it. It’s a little-known fact that the Fey have real difficulty getting in somewhere if the doors and window are shut. Properly shut, mind. If they’re only open a teeny crack, that’ll do.’
For a moment Paul had no idea what he meant. ‘It’s all very well saying that,’ he said mournfully, ‘but where am I supposed to get a pane of glass at this time of night? Not to mention putty and—’ He stopped. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I see. I’d forgotten I can do that sort of stuff.’
Ricky grinned at him. ‘Give it a try,’ he said.
Of course, Paul didn’t really know how to use magic, just as nobody knows how to fly, but falling from an aeroplane just comes naturally. ‘How do I start?’ he asked nervously. ‘Is there something I should say, or—?’
Whatever else Ricky might have been, he was impressively patient. ‘Just think,’ he said. ‘Think about how the window looked before it got smashed. Then reflect on how a smashed window is inherently wrong, whereas an unsmashed one is how things should be, in an ideal world.’
‘Yes, but,’ Paul started to say; but Ricky shushed him and pointed at the window. Paul saw both their reflections in the unblemished glass.
‘You did that, didn’t you?’ Paul asked.
Ricky shook his head. ‘All you really need is confidence,’ he said. ‘You’ve got the basic skills, you just need to convince yourself that you can use them. Now then, remember: door closed, windows shut, curtains drawn and last but not least, toilet seat down. You can probably chance it and get some sleep tonight, or what’s left of tonight, but if you want to play it absolutely safe, your best bet is a couple of handfuls of stale crumbs in the bed and lots and lots of coffee. And now I really have got to go.’ Sword in hand, Ricky crossed to the door, opened it a crack and peeked out. ‘Good luck,’ he added, and slipped away, closing the door quietly behind him; just as Paul realised what he’d just said and called out, ‘Why have I got the basic skills?’, whereupon the Yale catch clicked firmly home.
Once upon a time, Paul remembered as he waited for the front door of 70 St Mary Axe to open, weekends shot past so fast that bystanders were sent flying by the slipstream. As soon as you stumbled out of bed on Saturday morning, it was time to go to bed on Sunday, so as to be up bright and early for work the next day. He remembered mentioning this effect to Benny Shumway, who confirmed that time got distinctly odd around the sixth and seventh day, and went on to tell him about an early prototype time machine that JWW had built in the late 1890s, based on exactly that principle – by stacking up a series of artificially generated weekends, the designers reckoned, it ought to be possible to accelerate the would-be time traveller several years into the future. The project had foundered only because the return mechanism, which was based on the extreme nostalgia of looking at photographs of old school chums, was too erratic to be relied on, with the result that at some point in 2007, the firm was going to have to pay out a hundred and nine years’ worth of accumulated back pay to the junior associate who had piloted the first manned test launch.
The previous couple of days, by contrast, had crawled by like hourly-paid snails. Between boredom, exhaustion and caffeine poisoning, Paul was practically on his knees. Only the thought of what he was going to say to Countess Judy at around two minutes past nine on Monday morning had sustained him through the ordeal. He’d had plenty of time to choose his words; eventually, he’d pared his speech down to two words (and one of those was a pronoun). He wasn’t looking forward to the interview, but for once he was absolutely determined to follow it through.
The two words were, ‘I quit’; and he got them out without corpsing, stammering or mumbling.
‘Excuse me?’
‘I said, I quit,’ Paul repeated.
‘You quit what? Smoking?’
‘I resign,’ Paul explained. ‘I don’t want this job any more. I’m leaving.’
‘Oh.’ She had the sheer effrontery to look surprised. ‘Really? Why?’
Paul was now seriously over budget on words, but this wasn’t a time for parsimony. ‘You know why,’ he said.
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Yes, you do.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Yes, you bloody well do.’ Paul banged the Countess’s desk with his clenched fist. ‘Ouch,’ he added, as the stapler flew across the room, leaving a staple embedded in the side of his hand. ‘You tried to kill me.’
‘Did I really? When was that?’
‘You know perfectly— Friday night, when I fell asleep at the kitchen table. You got into my dream and you were going to kill me, only Ri— only somebody woke me up,’ he amended sloppily. ‘You had a fucking great knife, and you were going to stab me or slice me open.’
‘Oh,’ Countess Judy said, shrugging. ‘That. There was no harm done, though. And I found someone else, another donor, so you’re no longer at risk. Nothing to worry about, you see.’
It was just as well that there weren’t any itinerant haberdashers in the building at that moment, since for two pins Paul would’ve punched her in the face. ‘No harm done,’ he repeated. ‘You were going to— Hang on,’ he said, ‘you found another donor. You mean, you killed someone else.’
She shrugged again. ‘Hardly killed,’ she said. ‘I managed to locate a donor who was terminally ill; in fact, we arrived when he was on the very point of death. Salvage, you see, not homicide. We do have certain ethical standards.’
The anger was making it hard for Paul to speak. ‘I wasn’t on the point of bloody death,’ he ground out. ‘There wasn’t anything wrong with me.’
Into the Countess’s bright, silvery eyes came a curious glow that Paul couldn’t remember having seen before. It sobered him up from white-hot fury to terror in about a fifteenth of a second. ‘In your case,’ she said, ‘there are special circumstances. Rest assured, I would never ever presume to take a life to which I wasn’t legally entitled.’
Curious, how some people have a certain knack and others don’t. Paul had hoped that his two words would’ve settled the whole business and left him free and clear – free, to be precise, to change his name, grow a beard and
start a new life for himself in Nova Scotia. In the event, they’d proved hopelessly inadequate. Countess Judy’s two words, on the other hand, were the oncoming truck, and he was the hedgehog.
‘Excuse me?’ he said. ‘Legally entitled?’
She nodded curtly. ‘We have to be most particular about the legal side of things,’ she said. ‘In our position, unauthorised harvesting could lead to most undesirable complications. In your case, however, no such problems would arise, as we have clear unencumbered title.’
It was like swimming in shark-infested custard. ‘Just a moment,’ Paul mumbled. ‘Simply because I signed your rotten bloody contract when I joined—’
Now Countess Judy was actually laughing; admittedly, not a laugh that had anything to do with humour. ‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘Your terms of employment are strictly limited to your work obligations. I was referring to our legal claim to your life.’
‘My life.’ Another two words with the stopping power of a ton weight. ‘You own my life?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Really? How come?’
Now she opened her eyes wide, a show of surprise. ‘By purchase, of course. We bought you.’
Three words this time. Paul took a step back, but that wasn’t sensible. His legs didn’t seem to be functioning terribly well. ‘Bought,’ he said. ‘Who the hell from?’
‘Your parents, naturally. Come now, Mr Carpenter, please don’t ask me to believe you weren’t aware of the fact. You have a certain degree of basic intelligence, even though you often seem to be at pains to conceal it. Do you really believe your parents could have afforded to move to Florida on the strength of your father’s savings?’
Chapter Eleven
At some point, some time later, Paul must’ve been in his office, because Melze came in. She asked about where some forms or other were kept, though what had given her the impression that Paul knew where they might be he had no idea. He didn’t answer. He was all out of words.
She repeated the question a couple of times, then said, ‘Paul, are you all right?’
‘What?’
‘I said, are you all right?’
Honesty, the best policy; wasn’t that what his mum had always told him? Good joke. ‘No,’ he replied.
Melze looked concerned, bless her compassionate heart. ‘You look awful,’ she said. ‘What on earth’s the matter?’
Cue enormous grin. ‘Oh, I just found something out. About me, my life, the world in general. No big deal.’
That didn’t seem to satisfy her; in fact, she sat down with a let’s-talk-about-this look on her face and said, ‘You’re acting very strangely, Paul. What’s all this about?’
Extend grin. ‘You really want to know?’
‘I wouldn’t be asking if I didn’t.’
‘Fine.’ Paul folded his hands on the desk and sat up straight. ‘You met my mum and dad a few times, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, of course.’ A look of alarm occupied her face. ‘Nothing’s happened to them, has it? They’re all right, I mean.’
Funny. ‘Oh, they’re all right. They’re as right as bloody rain. I got told something about them, that’s all.’
Just a tiny flicker of impatience in among all that warmhearted concern. ‘What?’
Paul pursed his lips for a moment. Not the sort of announcement you want to rush. ‘You know they retired to Florida?’
Melze nodded.
‘Well,’ Paul went on, ‘I just found out where they got the money from.’
‘Oh.’ She waited, then prompted him: ‘Was it something bad?’
‘You could say that. They sold something.’
‘Sold something? What?’
‘Me.’
Melze looked at him as though he’d cracked a tasteless joke at a moment of great solemnity, like a christening or a funeral. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said.
‘Don’t you? It’s very simple. They took money in exchange for me. For my life.’
‘But they couldn’t have. There’s no such thing any more – well, they say it still goes on in India and places, but not here. It’s illegal.’
‘So are lots of things,’ Paul said placidly. ‘Murder and stuff. Still happen every day.’
‘But—’ She scowled at him. ‘Don’t be so bloody aggravating, Paul. Lose the melodrama. Tell me exactly what happened.’
‘I just did.’ He sighed, and leaned back in his chair. ‘They sold me to the firm. This firm, J.W. Wells and Co. For four hundred and twenty-five thousand US dollars.’ He frowned. ‘Excluding VAT, presumably, I didn’t ask about that. I don’t know if people are zero rated.’
‘But.’ Melze seemed fond of that word suddenly. ‘But why, for crying out loud?’
‘Why did they sell me, or why did JWW buy me?’
‘Both.’
Paul shrugged. ‘The first one, because they’re utter bastards and they wanted the money. The second bit’s rather more complicated, and I don’t want to bore you.’
‘Paul.’
‘Oh, please don’t say “Paul“ in that tone of voice, you remind me of my mum and that’s not tactful. All right, here goes. My uncle Ernie, right?’
‘The one who died.’
‘That’s right, the one who died. Turns out that he was one of them. One of us. Good at magic, strong in the Force, whatever. He was really good at it, apparently, and according to Countess Judy, the sort of magic stuff he was best at almost always runs in families. She explained it to me, but I wasn’t really listening; seems there’s charts and tables and whatnot, you can work it out really precisely, who in the family’s likely to have inherited the gift, if that’s the word I want. Seems that Countess Judy and the other partners did the maths and decided that I’d be a good investment. So they looked up my mum and dad and made them an offer they couldn’t refuse.’ Paul grinned disturbingly. ‘Not that they tried all that hard, it seems. Countess Judy said she and the rest of the gang got the impression that mum and dad would’ve settled for a hell of a lot less, like a fiver cash and a bag of dog biscuits, but according to her there’s rules of professional ethics that mean they had to make a fair offer to start with. She did tell me how they arrived at the figure, something about thirty per cent of the income they’d reasonably expect me to produce for them, multiplied by two-thirds of the number of years till I retire. I’m sure she was telling the truth. She’s got an honest face, among others.’
Melze didn’t say anything for a very long time. ‘Paul,’ she said, ‘you’re not making this up, are you?’
‘Nope. Come on, be reasonable. You’ve known me for years. When did I ever have that sort of imagination?’
Melze looked like someone had just slapped her round the face with a large sea bass. ‘But they can’t hold you to it,’ she said. ‘They can’t.’
Paul shook his head. ‘Don’t you believe it,’ he said. ‘Look, I told you about how Dennis Tanner made puppets out of Sophie and me when we tried to resign, and that was just on the strength of a contract. Where they’ve bought you outright, it’s far, far worse than that. Among other things, they can kill me, just like that.’
‘But the police—’
‘Can’t arrest them for killing someone who drops dead of perfectly natural causes, like a heart attack or a blood clot in the brain. It’s not my body any more, you see; it’ll do precisely what they tell it to do. Not that they’re likely to kill me just for wanting to quit – I cost them too much money. Besides, all they need to do is tell my body to show up for work every morning and that’s exactly what it’ll do, whether I like it or not. Pretty cool, huh? Anyway, that’s my bit of news. How’s things with you?’
‘But—’
‘Please,’ Paul interrupted. ‘I know you’re trying to be nice, but I’d rather you didn’t. I think I’ve stopped believing in nice for the moment, and if you stay here I’m going to say something really horrible. I know I won’t really mean it, but you’d have to take that on trust. Besides, you’ve got that s
tupid form to find.’
Melze stayed right where she was. ‘Are you sure it’s not just Countess Judy winding you up?’ she said. ‘I mean, she doesn’t seem the type, but you never know. Did she – well, give you any proof, or anything?’
Paul stifled a yawn. ‘Well, she showed me the bill of sale, all properly signed and witnessed. Do you know, they got old Mrs Bath-Patterson from next door to witness their signatures. I hope they didn’t tell her what the document was all about – it’d have fried her brain.’
‘But—’ Melze was struggling, he could see; trying to find a loophole for him, something to give him a tiny crumb of hope. He should have found it touching and sweet, but all he felt was irritation. ‘You told me you saw the job advertised in the paper and went for an interview.’
‘True; but the questions they asked me were gibberish. According to Countess Judy, that was to see if I freaked out easily. But no, I just thought I was too stupid to understand what they were getting at. They’d got it all carefully arranged. I only saw that advert because mum and dad told me the best place to look for jobs was that particular newspaper. The whole interview thing was a set-up.’
‘But it couldn’t have been. They hired that other clerk at the same time. The girl. Chloe.’
‘Sophie. I guess they must’ve set her up too,’ Paul added; that hadn’t occurred to him before. She’d told him her mum had highlighted the ad in the paper with yellow marker pen so she couldn’t miss it. ‘Look, I really don’t want to talk about this stuff any more. Last night—’ He frowned. ‘Last night, Countess Judy tried to kill me. She’d have done it, probably, if Ricky Wurmtoter hadn’t stopped her.’
‘Kill you? But why?’ Paul shrugged. ‘And is she going to try again? Paul, for crying out loud . . .’
‘The answer is,’ he said, ‘I don’t know. Don’t bother asking me the question, whatever it is. I really do think you should go away now.’
‘But—’
‘Go away.’
Melze left. For a long time, Paul just sat, his mind in neutral. He was trying to remember something that had occurred to him – yes, right; Ricky Wurmtoter had saved his life, apparently; but Ricky was a partner in the firm, he’d been at the interview, so he must’ve known the whole deal, right from the beginning. Another cheerful thought.
