Earth, Air, Fire and Custard

by Tom Holt

  Paul looked at him. ‘No.’

  ‘Yes, we fucking are.’ Ricky’s knuckles were white around the sword’s hilt. ‘Look what I’ve done for you. Your first day with the firm, I bought you lunch. Looked after you, took you under my wing, taught you the pest-control biz—’

  ‘No, you didn’t, that was Benny Shumway. You weren’t there.You’d been captured by Countess Judy, remember. And if it wasn’t for me—’

  ‘Yes, but I saved your life.’

  ‘You shot me with a crossbow,’ Paul reminded him. ‘It hurt.’

  ‘Balls. Death was instantaneous. You never felt a thing.’

  ‘It felt like feeling something.’ Paul shrugged. The conversation was getting tedious, as far as he was concerned. ‘Truth is,’ he said, ‘I don’t like you either.’

  ‘Big deal.’ Ricky breathed out through his nose. ‘So we’ve had our ups and downs,’ he said. ‘So what? It’s been more ups than downs, that’s got to count for something. Didn’t I give you a magic sword?’

  ‘What, the one you’ve got there in your hand? Besides,’ Paul pointed out, ‘I didn’t want it. I stuck it under the sofa where I didn’t have to look at it. I tried chucking it out once, but the nasty thing’s so sharp it went through the bottom of the bin liner so fast that it nearly pinned my toes to the floor.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s the thought that—’

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ Paul snapped, unexpectedly loud. ‘The thought doesn’t matter a toss. What matters is the terrifyingly dangerous mess you get people into. Now, will you please shut up? I’m trying to figure out an escape plan, and you whingeing away in the background isn’t making it any easier.’

  When Ricky Wurmtoter shrugged his mighty shoulders, it was like watching two herds of bison walking towards each other. ‘Suit yourself,’ he said. ‘For the record, I don’t like you much, either. I’ve never liked you, not from day one.’ He edged round on his shelf until he was facing away from Paul and toward Sophie. ‘Ungrateful bastard,’ he said. ‘I really went out of my way for him, you know - well, of course you do, you were there. And anyway,’ he added, chivvying a smile onto his face, ‘he’s just a bit upset right now, it’s making him want to lash out, say stuff he doesn’t mean.’

  ‘Really?’ Sophie said sweetly. ‘Such as?’

  Ricky sighed. ‘Right, fine,’ he said, holding up his left hand. ‘Look, I think we’re all getting a bit over-tired and overwrought here. Best thing, if you ask me, would be a nice, sociable, relaxing drink, followed by a good rest, maybe a couple of hours’ sleep. Just so happens,’ he added, reaching inside his jacket, ‘I’ve got a bottle of premium Estonian vodka here in my inside pocket. The good stuff, two hundred and eighty-seven proof. Any takers?’

  Instinctively, Paul and Sophie looked at each other. ‘Two hundred and what?’ Sophie asked, in an awestruck voice.

  ‘Eighty-seven. Distilled and bottled in Kohtla-jarve, Dragon Snot brand. One sip of that, you’ll be amazed how much cheerier things’ll look.’ Ricky pulled out a fat square bottle, and shook three shot glasses out of his sleeve. Remembering the night the fridge first spoke to him, Paul shuddered and looked away. Sophie, on the other hand, was plainly interested in spite of herself.

  ‘Funny name,’ she said.

  Ricky grinned, filled a glass and handed it to her. ‘Traditional,’ he said. ‘Like, you know the Polish stuff, it’s called “buffalo-grass” because they put a blade of special grass in it to give it that special flavour? Well, same principle.’

  Sophie, who’d just swallowed her dose of the stuff, immediately turned green. Then she burped. ‘Actually, she said, ‘izzen bad. Gimme nother.’

  ‘Pleasure.’ Ricky refilled her glass. ‘Sure I can’t tempt you?’ he asked Paul, who shook his head and swallowed hard. ‘Here’s health, then,’ he said, picking up his own glass and holding it a few inches from his nose, as though savouring the bouquet. ‘I always carry a bottle with me, for just this sort of situation. Butterfingers,’ he added, as Sophie’s glass, now empty, slipped through her fingers and rolled across the floor. ‘Well, you’re a convert, obviously,’ he said to her.

  ‘Sgreat,’ Sophie muttered. ‘Funny taste, mind. Reminds me of something.’ She pulled a deep, thoughtful face, eyebrows scrunched up, lips pouting. ‘Ackshly, reminds me of—’ Then, with a long, sweet sigh, she flopped onto her back like a carpet unrolling, and went to sleep.

  ‘Is she all right?’ Paul asked sharply.

  Ricky turned to him and grinned. There was a look in his eyes that wasn’t reassuring. ‘Oh, she’s fine,’ he said. ‘Absolutely fine. In about twenty minutes or so, she’ll wake up, and about five seconds after that, she’ll be happier than she’s ever been before. Life for her will be one sweet song, for ever and ever.’

  A forty-watt bulb lit up in the back of Paul’s mind. ‘Oh yes?’ he asked mildly. ‘Why?’

  Ricky laughed. Not quite a full-blown villain’s laugh, but it had nothing to do with seeing the funny side. ‘Because what could be better than being young and in love?’ he said. ‘Well, different in your case, obviously, because you’ll never get the girl, even if they start hiding them in the bottoms of cereal packets. But in twenty minutes’ time, dear sweet little Sophie’s going to open her puffy little eyes and gaze at the face of the man she’s going to love for the rest of her life. Now,’ he went on, standing up and flipping the sword nonchalantly round in his hand, ‘that face belongs to one of the two men in this room. Another hint. It’s not you.’

  The click of bits of information falling into place in Paul’s mind was as deafening as a tap-dancing contest on a galvanised-iron bridge; all too late, unfortunately. ‘The drink,’ Paul mumbled, ‘the whatsitsname vodka. It’s not that at all. It’s that bloody love-philtre stuff.’

  ‘Got there in the end,’ Rick sighed. ‘Took you long enough. That’s right; mainstay of JWW for over two centuries, never fails, satisfaction guaranteed or your life back. You may have noticed,’ he added, edging forward a step or two, ‘that I didn’t drink mine. No offence, because I know you’re soft on the stupid bitch, but really, she’s not my type. Doesn’t matter, so long as she loves me. That’s all that’s required for the job in hand, and there’s no point over-egging the pudding, as my old granny used to say.’

  Paul backed away. Pointless, because he knew he was no match for Ricky Wurmtoter in reach, speed, skill or agility. ‘Bastard,’ he said. ‘You vicious bastard, why—?’

  Ricky sighed melodramatically. ‘I wish people’d stop calling me that,’ he said. ‘For someone in my line of work, I’m pathetically sentimental. For starters, I ought to kill you right now, it’d solve a lot of problems. It’d solve everything.’ He breathed out impatiently, as though chiding himself for his weakness. ‘But I can’t,’ he said, ‘not unless I have to, self-defence or whatever. Partly it’s the old code of chivalry stuff, partly because—’ He shrugged. ‘Anyhow,’ he said, ‘that’s not relevant. You’ll be relieved to hear, I’m not proposing to kill you, or even hurt you. Except,’ he added, ‘I need to give you a tiny little tap on the head, just enough to put you to sleep until after Sophie wakes up. Attention to detail is ninety-nine per cent of the heroism business, and I don’t want any possibility of you being around when she wakes up, so you’re going to have a pleasant nap in the stationery cupboard. I may even come and let you out again, if I remember.’ He stepped forward again, and somehow he seemed to have covered far more than a single stride of carpet; he was looming over Paul like an unfriendly Alp. ‘I’ll ask you to keep still, if you don’t mind,’ he said. ‘I’m pretty good at precision knocking-out, but there’s always a very slight element of risk, and we don’t want you ending up with a smashed skull and permanent brain damage.’

  Ricky’s left hand closed into a big fist. ‘Look,’ Paul said, ‘you can bash me up all you like. You can kill me, if you feel you really must. But can’t you let her alone, for crying out loud? It’s not fair, and she’s never done you any harm.’


  ‘That’s all you know,’ Ricky snapped. ‘For your information, that bloody woman—’ He pulled a stern face. ‘Tell you later,’ he said, ‘maybe, if you’re good and hold still. But just in case I never get another opportunity, I’ll tell you this. There’s a whole lot more to Sophie Pettingell than meets the eye, and if you think what I’m doing to her is a bit nasty and mean, you don’t know the half of it.’ He paused, then laughed harshly, like a dog barking. ‘No pun intended. Okay, hold still. There may be some slight discomfort.’

  He raised his fist, and Paul looked away. Accordingly, he saw the door start to open a split second before Ricky did, and a tiny little scrap of self-preservation instinct that had been hibernating in with all the cowardice and freezing-with-terror stuff at the back of his mind ever since he’d been born suddenly blossomed into action. He jumped sideways; Ricky’s fist crashed into the angle-iron shelves behind him. Ricky yelled with pain and started to make predictions about Paul’s immediate future, which wasn’t, apparently, terribly promising. He didn’t get very far, however, because the door was open now and someone was charging into the room.

  Ricky saw him, yelped with terror and sprang back. He landed in a perfect high forehand guard, sword held out, knees slightly bent, and his face was as white as soap-powder-commercial laundry. That would’ve been remarkable enough, in any other context, but Paul noticed it in passing and immediately dismissed it from his mind as trivial when compared with the other remarkable thing on display at that precise moment—

  Namely, a tall, slim young man in chain-mail armour, holding a round shield in his left hand and a long, dark blue sword in his right. His whole body radiated purpose and quivered with pure aggression, and you could’ve barbecued shish kebabs over the fire burning in his eyes. He was terrifying, clearly extremely competent in the use of edged weapons, palpably afraid of nothing in this world or the next, and his face was exactly what Paul would expect to see when he looked in a mirror.

  CHAPTER TEN

  It’s probably the same for the policemen who stand duty at football matches. On the pitch in front of them, twenty-two highly paid experts are putting on an exhibition of the very greatest science and skill that the game affords, pulling off shots that extremely boring people will discuss in pubs for the next twenty years. But the policemen aren’t interested; they probably don’t like football, hate standing around in the open air for hours on end, and wish they were back home with a nice cup of tea watching the ballet on Channel Four. Completely wasted on them, the whole show.

  So with Paul. Even he sensed that the display of swordfighting of which he was a very unwilling spectator was something quite out of the ordinary: the jumping, ducking, prancing, swishing about, blade-clashing, flying sparks and bad language were all evidently Olympic standard and then some. Paul, on the other hand, just wished they’d go away and do it somewhere else, where there’d be less risk of a careless backhand slash slicing him in two. He’d have followed his instincts, shut his eyes and curled up into a little hedgehog-style ball on the floor if it hadn’t been for the extreme surrealism of the thing, which gripped his attention in spite of everything. No doubt about it: utterly improbable as it might seem, the tall skinny bloke giving Ricky Wurmtoter such a very hard time out there was unquestionably Paul Carpenter.

  It was a curious feeling, watching himself fight. It wasn’t an activity he’d ever had the slightest desire to indulge in, and his knowledge of it matched his enthusiasm. But there he was, plain as the nose on their mutual face, hacking and hewing and slashing, to the point where Ricky Wurmtoter (who was presumably pretty good at that sort of thing) was starting to look decidedly harassed. That’s me, Paul thought, as another shower of sparks blossomed out of the collision of the two blades. I’m doing that. It surely added a new penumbra of terror to the proposition that he’d always been his own worst enemy.

  Ricky was getting tired. He was sweating, his movements were growing jerkier and more desperate, he was puffing like a fat man on an exercise bicycle, and he was trying all those stunts that Kirk and Errol and Burt pull off in the movies but which don’t actually work - jumping up on the furniture, weaving in and out of shelf units, ducking behind free-standing lampstands. Any minute now, Paul thought; and sure enough, Ricky ducked out of the way of a lunge with micromillimetres to spare, sprang up in the air and grabbed for the light fitting, presumably with a view to swinging across the room over his enemy’s head towards the door and safety. But of course there are things that Errol and Sean and even Mel and Pierce can get away with on the silver screen, but which you should not try at home. For a split second Ricky hung in mid-air, an electric flex stripped of its insulation in one hand, a steel sword in the other. Then he dropped like a dead spider and thudded heavily on the floor.

  Immediately, Swordfighter Paul was standing over him, sword raised for the kill. Real Paul couldn’t bear to look. He turned his head to the wall, waiting for that tearing, slicing sound he’d only heard in butchers’ shops, and instead heard a piercing female yell. He looked up, and saw that his other self had inadvertently trodden on Sophie’s outstretched ankle.

  Shit, he thought. Even she couldn’t sleep through that.

  And when she woke up—

  Swordfighter Paul hesitated, the sword still hanging in the air above his head, and that was all the reprieve that Ricky needed. In the time it would take a camera to snap a picture at noon on a hot summer day, he’d scuttled between Sword-boy’s legs and shot away behind a bank of file stacks. Sword-boy lunged after him like a pouncing cat, with the result that, at the precise moment when Sophie’s eyes opened, the first person she saw wasn’t Ricky, or even the ninja doppelganger. Before Paul could look away or do anything, their eyes met, and you could practically see the pink filter come down behind them, like the safety curtain in a theatre.

  Though they were too far away to hear it, a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square; and Paul gazed deep into the eyes of the only girl he’d ever really loved, saw in them the deep glow of the same fire that burned so fiercely in his soul, and thought: Balls, shit, fuck, bugger. Because only a few minutes ago, Sophie had told him that she loved him; and now she still loved him, almost certainly a whole lot more, but entirely because she’d just drunk a tumblerful of J. W. Wells’s world-famous, infallible, all-conquering love philtre. Which meant, of course, that he was now ineffably screwed.

  Sophie didn’t seem aware of the ear-splitting bangs, crashes, thumps, clangs and scrunching noises issuing from behind the file shelves. She only had eyes, and ears, for him. She gazed at him, her lips trembling. ‘Paul,’ she said huskily.

  ‘Shh,’ Paul hissed back.

  ‘Sorry, darling.’

  Shit, Paul thought. Créme de merde in diarrhoea sauce with a tossed salad. ‘Look,’ he said desperately, as a wild thought crossed his mind, ‘we’ve got to get out of here. Right?’

  ‘Anything you say, darling.’

  That was when the file stack collapsed. It had every right, given that Ricky (wouldn’t you just know he was a B-movie buff?) had just kicked it over under the misguided impression that it would help matters. It didn’t, of course. All it achieved was an avalanche of alphabetically ordered buff folders, which engulfed Sophie like the lava stream from a volcano. A moment later, Ricky and Psychotic Paul fell on top of the pile. Both of them had lost their swords. Ricky had hold of his opponent’s wrist, while Psycho Paul was trying to skewer him with a long knife, with every prospect of success. Not that the real Paul really gave a damn, one way or the other. But if they weren’t careful where they rolled and thrashed about, Sophie was going to get squashed like a fly on a windscreen, and he wasn’t having that.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said.

  Predictably, they took no notice: all wrapped up in each other, like a pair of amorous teenagers. Paul tried clearing his throat loudly, but that had no effect. So he got up, strolled round the back of the trashed file stack, looked around till he found the two discarded swords and picked the
m up.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he repeated; then he slammed the flat of the sword in his right hand across the shoulder blades of his mirror self. That was a rather weird feeling, too, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to hit Ricky - partly because he was so obviously losing, partly from some lingering vestige of respect or fear - whereas beating up on himself was, after all, something he’d been doing for years, in one way or another.

  That got through in a way that mere words couldn’t. Sword-boy clearly had all the right instincts for someone in his line of business. As soon as he became aware of the potential danger he didn’t muck about yelling or turning round. Instead he shot forward, using Ricky’s face in roughly the same way that a sprinter uses the starting blocks, landed on his feet, and threw the big knife in his right hand as he turned.

  Paul watched it coming straight at him for a very, very long fraction of a second. He had time to think about the nasty mess he was in and even analyse the various wrong turnings and mistakes he’d made that had fetched him up here. If only, he concluded, I’d paid more attention in school; I could’ve got better exam results, decent qualifications, right now I’d be sitting behind a desk doing grossing-up calculations for advance corporation tax, not watching a dirty great knife spinning through the air right at me. Miss Hook told me I’d regret it. Wonder how she knew—

  The knife missed.

  Odd, that. Alternative Paul didn’t look like the sort of man who was capable of missing a fairly straightforward shot like that, even if he’d wanted to. Maybe he was having a bad day (Makes two of me, Paul thought sourly), or maybe deep down he still had a shred of the Carpenter decency and reluctance to shed blood. Or not; a moment later, Alt. Paul had jumped over Ricky like the cow in the nursery rhyme, grabbed the sword out of Paul’s left hand, and driven it hard into the floorboards, in the spot that Ricky’s head had just vacated. Ricky, meanwhile, was on his feet and hurtling towards the door. Alt. Paul howled something in a language Paul didn’t recognise, and went after him, close on his heels as a very angry shadow. He didn’t bother closing the door after him; clearly, good manners, as well as regard for the value of human life, was something he didn’t share with his identical twin.