by Tom Holt
‘Yes. Sally tried to kill him. You were right, by the way. She’s working for the Allshapes consortium.’
Caroline sighed, as if to say how very tiresome. ‘Where is she now?’
‘Front office. Asleep. I, um—’
Caroline did a quick lift of the eyebrows that said how many times have I told you girls not to play rough games? ‘I suppose we’d better put her in disgrace till the morning,’ she said. ‘The key’s in my desk drawer.’
Veronica nodded and went to the desk. With the key she unlocked a big old-fashioned safe. From it she took first a pair of rubber gloves, tongs and a thing like a welding mask, second (using the first) a string of garlic. Holding it at arm’s length, she left the room.
‘Now then,’ Caroline said. ‘To what do we owe the extended pleasure?’
‘What?’ Duncan recalled his attention from the direction of the doorway. ‘Oh yes, right. You know what we were talking about earlier?’
She nodded. ‘You told me you didn’t know.’
‘That’s right, I don’t.’ Deep breath. ‘But I think I may have figured it out.’
He had her attention. ‘This is - well, a guess, right?’
He nodded. ‘But, um, she thought—’
‘Veronica,’ Caroline said promptly. ‘Vee, not Ronnie. Go on.’
His face felt annoyingly warm. Perceptive bloody woman. ‘Veronica thought you might want to hear it anyway. In return for . . .’
Caroline nodded. ‘Asylum,’ she said. ‘Which is a pretty fair description of this place during office hours. It’s a deal. Well?’
It’d have been nice, Duncan thought, if she’d asked him to sit down. The omission, he felt sure, wasn’t accidental. ‘I suddenly remembered,’ he said, ‘about something that happened when Luke Ferris and I were at school together.’
‘I see.’ Very slight frown, signifying that he still had most of her attention, but if the building caught fire or got ripped out of the ground by a freak tornado she’d probably notice. ‘Feel free to reminisce,’ she said. ‘Try not to be too long about it, because Veronica’ll be back in a few minutes, and I’d rather keep this between ourselves for now.’
Duncan nodded, and tried to order his thoughts; a bit like taking someone else’s seventeen greyhounds for a walk through a free-range chicken farm, but he did his best. ‘We had a homework rota,’ he said. ‘It was based on good Marxist principles: from each according to his abilities. Pete did all our French and German, because he was good at languages; Mickey did all the science, Clive did the geography and the—’
‘You, of course,’ Caroline interrupted, ‘know who all these interesting people are.’
‘Sorry, they’re other members of the gang. Luke didn’t actually do anything except organise, which meant looking very fierce if it wasn’t done on time. When I joined the gang, they elected me maths specialist, because all of them hated maths. I told them I was no good at it, but—’ He shrugged. ‘Anyhow, the first time we were set maths homework, I went away and did it all, and brought it in so that everybody could copy it out, and then we handed it in.’
Duncan paused for a moment. ‘Well?’ Caroline said. ‘Straight As, I trust.’
‘Not exactly, no. Actually, it was more like Finland in the Eurovision Song Contest. The thing was, it was equations, and since I was doing them for everybody, I took real care over it. And with equations, as you know, you can check them afterwards to see if they’ve come out right, and I was sure I’d got a hundred per cent. I was really pleased. But when we got our books back, we’d all scored zero. Luke was not pleased—’
‘Is this story going somewhere, or are we still doing background and character development? Because—’
‘Useless,’ Ferris shouted, kicking the nearest chair over. He sounded like a dog barking. ‘Completely fucking useless.’ He slammed his maths book down on the desk as if he was trying to put it out of its misery. ‘And bloody Whitworth’s going to know we cheated. How could you be so stupid—?’
Ferris was scary enough at the best of times. That was the whole point. Nobody was going to give you a hard time if someone as scary as Ferris was your friend. This, though, wasn’t the best of times for a scariness masterclass. For one thing, it was just the two of them. The rest of the gang had been sent away, told to wait by the tennis court while Ferris dealt with the situation. There was, of course, no point trying to argue the toss. You might as well plead with a mudslide or a volcano. But it’s hard to stay still and quiet when the most terrifying boy in the school is coming towards you with that terrible, efficient look on his face.
‘I did my best, honest,’ Duncan said. ‘I checked them over, three times. They all came out just right. Look, I’ll show you if you—’
Not the right thing to say. ‘I don’t care about the bloody equations. I couldn’t give a stuff about them, otherwise I’d never have let you do them for me. That was coursework, you cretin, it goes towards our exam grades. Thanks to you—’
Duncan retreated behind a desk. All that achieved was to make it possible for Ferris to act very scary indeed. He picked the desk up and threw it an impressive distance across the room. Duncan had never seen him actually hit anybody; nothing had ever been allowed to get that far. Being hit hurts, sometimes quite a lot, but fear controls you.
‘I’m sorry,’ Duncan said. ‘Really, really sorry. But—’
He’d backed up as far as he could go. There was a wall behind him, and it wasn’t going to get out of the way just to let him escape. Ferris took the step that brought him within arm’s reach.
He hesitated.
It was one of those moments . . . Once, when Duncan’s dad had been driving them all home from gran’s house, he’d swung out to overtake a slow lorry, and there’d been a car coming straight at them on the other side of the road. Duncan could remember the moment quite clearly. He’d thought, we’re going to hit the other car, very hard; probably we’ll all be hurt or even killed. Oh well. In that fraction of a second, before dad hauled his wheel one way and the other driver hauled his the other, and the two cars scraped past each other and the swearing started, Duncan had faced death and seen it for what it was: the end of everything, certainly, but so what? Because it had come briskly, efficiently, not dragging out or playing the scene for all it was worth, he’d understood what it actually meant; that tomorrow there’d be a world without the Hughes family in it, or there might not be a world at all. But if that was the worst that could happen - well, not so scary, after all. It was only later, when mum screamed and dad started yelling at her for screaming, and Duncan had burst into tears, and they’d pulled over onto the verge and there’d been several minutes when nobody was under control at all, that he’d been frightened. But then he’d been very frightened indeed, mostly because his parents were acting like lunatics or wild animals, which wasn’t supposed to happen. It was as though they’d changed, from humans into something else. Monsters—
Simple lesson. Fear is worse than death. We have nothing to fear but fear itself. And scary things, of course.
Ferris was looking at him. Then he said, ‘I ought to smash your stupid face in.’
- Which was, by all meaningful criteria, an admission of defeat. It said, I should do this but I’m not going to. Or, but I can’t. Maybe Ferris had seen it in Duncan’s eyes, the Oh-well moment, the great comfort and reassurance that comes from knowing that this is as bad as it gets and things can’t get any worse. In other words, the fast, dribbling puncture of fear.
I’ve won, Duncan thought. I’ve beaten him.
And he was just congratulating himself on standing up to the bully, or at least having the good instinctive judgement to back up against an immovable wall so he’d had no choice but to stand up to him, when Ferris swung back his right arm and punched him extremely hard in the solar plexus.
It had been a bit like being a fish. There was nothing he could breathe. He was drowning in air, and he could feel his eyes trying to push their way out of the
ir sockets. He swayed for a moment, feeling slightly bemused but not particularly panicky or anything, and then dropped to the floor. The opposite wall became the ceiling. His head bashed hard against something solid. A bright light came on at the opposite end of his head from his eyes, which was odd. It was so bright that it flooded everything for a moment. Then it switched off, and he was looking up at Ferris, who was staring down at him with a look of utter, wet-underpants terror.
Strange, Duncan thought, it’s not like he’s got anything to be afraid of. But he really didn’t look good at all. His face was as white as paper, and he was shaking. Like a bad dose of the flu, except it didn’t come on as quickly as that, surely. Duncan decided he didn’t like the look of it. What if Ferris was really ill? Shouldn’t he be doing something?
‘You all right?’ he asked.
For a moment, Ferris opened and shut his mouth like an albino goldfish. Then he said, ‘Am I all right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Fine. What about you?’
‘Me?’ Funny question to ask, when you’ve just thumped someone. Would it be rude to say, Yes, I’m fine? (The implication being that Ferris couldn’t hit for toffee.) ‘Sort of,’ he hedged.
Ferris was looking past him, at the wall, with a gormless-stunned expression on his face as though he’d seen a ghost. Duncan sat up (no aches and pains, so nothing broken) and looked over his shoulder to see what was so fascinating. First, he noted that the solid thing he’d hit his head on was an iron water pipe that supplied the radiatior. Second, there was blood.
He reached up and felt the back of his head. Wet and sticky, like the glue they used in the art room. He looked at his hand, which was red.
‘Cut myself,’ he said. Then his brain clicked in, and he realised why Ferris was so upset. If someone came in, a teacher, and saw all that mess everywhere, they’d be in dead trouble. Detention, probably. ‘We’d better get it cleared up,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘The blood,’ Duncan said. ‘We’d better clean up the blood before anybody sees.’
For a moment or so Ferris had stared at him, as though he was having trouble understanding what he was saying. Then he nodded sharply, the decisive leader. ‘Get the board-rubber thing,’ he said, quickly kneeling and pulling out his handkerchief. Duncan hurried to obey. This was better: Ferris giving orders, him carrying them out. The thing about Ferris was that he always knew what to do. They’d managed to wipe off all the blood, and nobody ever said anything . . .
‘That’s it, isn’t it?’ Duncan said. ‘Luke killed me. By accident, of course. I bashed my head on that pipe and it killed me. Only I didn’t die.’
Caroline nodded slowly. ‘That would make sense,’ she said, and he could tell she hated herself for having to say it. ‘You died for a fraction of a second - when the bright light came on in your head - and then you shook it off somehow and came back to life.’ She frowned. ‘The tape-measure,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘The tape-measure. The one that stopped the silver bullet. Can I see it, please?’
Obviously someone else who knew how to give orders. He felt in his pocket, found it and handed it over. Caroline looked at it briefly, then gave it back. ‘Would you mind,’ she said, rather quietly, ‘taking off your jacket and unbuttoning your shirt? Pretend I’m a doctor, if it’ll help.’
Orders are orders. Wishing (not for the first time) that he wasn’t quite so habitually scruffy, Duncan did as he was told. She looked at his chest, then nodded.
‘There,’ she said, pointing.
Duncan looked down. There indeed: on the skin of his chest, on the left-hand side, about where his inside jacket pocket would be, a small round red scab, about the same diameter as the bullet hole in the tape-measure.
‘She fired two shots,’ Caroline said.
‘Oh.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought she’d have missed. She’s very good at anything involving aiming, things like that. Did she tell you she’s on the darts team?’
Duncan looked down at the scab, then back at her. ‘She shot me and I didn’t—?’
‘Apparently not.’
‘Oh.’
It was maybe a full half-second before the dam broke inside his head. When the roaring and the turbulence had died down a little, he said, ‘Did I tell you about the unicorn?’
Caroline shook her head. ‘But I assume you’re talking about Bowden Allshapes,’ she said. ‘It’s the body she uses when she wants to kill werewolves. It’s a hobby of hers, I don’t know why she does it. Probably she just doesn’t like your lot very much. We all have a good laugh about it—’ She stopped. ‘You’ve met her,’ she said flatly.
‘Yes.’
Suddenly, it was hard to imagine her ever laughing again. ‘You met her and chased her,’ she said. ‘But she didn’t kill you. Or at least, you didn’t die. Do your shirt up, by the way, you’ll catch your death.’
‘Well, I was pretty well out of breath—’ No wordplay intended, he thought. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Actually, I kept chasing her till I hit a tree.’
Caroline nodded. ‘And I suppose everything went white for a moment, and then you had a nice little chat. In other words, you did it again. Like with the water pipe. Bashed your head in, but no lasting harm done.’ She shook her head, as if it was a watch that had stopped. ‘You know what this means. You’re—’
The door opened, and in came nice-looking Veronica. Vee, not Ronnie. She was still wearing the rubber gloves, and the welding mask hung from her wrist. ‘She was just waking up when I got there,’ she said. ‘She wasn’t happy.’ She looked at Duncan, then at Caroline (note the order). ‘Have I missed something?’ she said.
Duncan wanted to run away and hide, for some reason. ‘We were just chatting,’ Caroline said. ‘Guess what. Mr Hughes here is going to join us.’
‘Really?’ Genuinely pleased; then - ‘But what about Sally? Won’t that be a bit awkward?’
Caroline’s face had that Mount Rushmore look. ‘I don’t think so. Sally may well be leaving us soon. A better offer, as I understand it.’
No, something yelled inside Duncan’s head. But when it looked round for support, it realised it was in a very small minority and resolved to keep its mouth shut in future. ‘Oh,’ Veronica said. ‘You mean, the dead people—’
Caroline nodded firmly. ‘I think Sally believes she has a future with them. Well,’ she added briskly, ‘we’ve all got a future with them sooner or later, if you see what I mean, but—’ Pause, slight frown. ‘Nearly all of us, anyhow. But yes, I don’t think Sally will be a problem. Now, since Mr Hughes’s speciality is probate, tax and trusts, we’ll have to do a bit of reshuffling. I suggest you take over matrimonial finance from Sally; Rose can do your commercial litigation and personal insolvency, I’ll do Rose’s commercial landlord and tenant; that leaves a bit of a gap in product liability, but we’ll all have to huddle together like willows aslant a brook and cover it as best we can. Does that seem all right? Vee?’
‘Fine,’ Veronica said brightly. ‘Well, this is a—’
‘Hold on,’ Duncan said.
Really, he didn’t want to cause difficulties. It would have been so nice, so neat. After all, he couldn’t go back to the Ferris Gang, not now that he’d actually committed the crime they suspected him of, and he needed somebody to protect him against Bowden Allshapes, he was pretty well convinced of that. Apparently, these people were prepared to do that. Which was odd: hadn’t Wesley Loop offered to pay for his damaged furniture with a Crosswoods office account cheque? Didn’t that mean—?
But instead, he said, ‘I don’t want to seem ungrateful, but what about the - well, let’s call them cultural differences. No offence, but I sort of got the impression that my lot and your lot don’t get on terribly well.’
‘Fight like bats and dogs, you mean?’ Caroline shrugged. ‘You know what the watchword of the twenty-first century is, Mr Hughes? Diversity. The melting pot.’ She looked at Veroni
ca, then back at Duncan. ‘Cross-pollination,’ she said, with a face so straight it was practically obscene. ‘I think it’s high time we challenged these outmoded species stereotypes and embraced an environment where skin, fur and feather can coexist in mutually beneficial harmony.’ She frowned. ‘Strictly speaking it should be membrane rather than feather,’ she added, ‘but it hasn’t got that ring. Look,’ she went on, ‘the bottom line is this. What choice have you got?’
New Mexico, protested the little voice that had made itself so unpopular a short while ago. It didn’t get a noticeably better reception this time. ‘Fine by me, then,’ Duncan heard himself say. ‘So long as your people—’
‘You can leave them to me,’ Caroline said firmly. ‘Though to be honest I don’t think they’ll have any objections. You might find things a bit strained for a while,’ she added, and Duncan noticed a curiously resolute expression on Veronica’s face, ‘but I’m sure it’ll all shake down soon enough. The important thing,’ she added, ‘is getting the work done. Looking after our clients, especially the old and valued ones.’
Oh, Duncan thought. Like that, then. And for a moment there, he’d imagined they wanted him for his legal acumen. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Though I should point out,’ he added hopefully, ‘I think there may be a bit of aggravation about my existing clients following me here. I’m thinking of, you know, the big, long-drawn-out probate jobs.’
Caroline nodded. ‘Me too,’ she said. ‘Just the sort of work we need to attract here.’
‘Ah. You think they’ll want to come?’
‘I don’t think they have any choice.’ The smile Caroline gave him was all eyes and teeth, proving beyond question that there are worse things that kindly old grandmothers can turn out to be than disguised wolves. ‘The work’s got to be done. You’re - well, the only man for the job. You know that, don’t you?’
Eek, he thought. ‘Yes, but I really don’t think it’d be—’
‘Just a second,’ Veronica broke in. ‘Are we talking about Bowden Allshapes?’
