The Better Mousetrap

by Tom Holt

  He stopped. The numbers—

  Frank thought about it for a moment, then went back and did the last three sets of equations again, this time in base eight. It made no difference. He frowned. The numbers—

  Yes, of course it sounded ridiculous, when he tried to put it into words. Nevertheless. The numbers simply weren’t working. It was as though someone had switched off the gravity, and suddenly everything was in free fall, without mass or density; as though all the numbers had suddenly become interchangeable, with six having the same value as nine.

  Frank sighed. Magic, of course. It wasn’t a subject that had ever interested him much, mostly because it refused to obey the laws of mathematics. Dad had told him the stuff came in two basic sorts, Effective and Practical; the difference being that when a Practical magician turned a policeman into a frog, the result was a genuine frog, whereas if an Effective magician did the same trick, what you got was a policeman who believed he was a frog, a belief shared with everybody else in the world. Generally speaking, both types got the job done efficiently enough for the file to be closed and an invoice sent, which was all the bosses cared about. One of the few differences was that maths took no notice of Effective magic, while Practical messed it up good and proper. Faced with an instance of Practical magic, maths was a wheel spinning in mud, unable to grip.

  Which put him in an awkward position. If he couldn’t do the maths, he couldn’t run the simulations; in which case, he couldn’t accept the assignment. That would mean going back to George Sprague and breaking it to him that this time he was going to have to pay out on a claim, something that he had an almost religious objection to doing. And Frank liked George Sprague. He was the closest thing Frank had to-well, a friend. It’d be the first time he’d failed. He really didn’t want to do it.

  But if he couldn’t run the simulation— Deep inside his mind, something small and rather ugly woke up. Thinking about it later, Frank couldn’t help personifying it as the little bit of goblin he’d apparently inherited from his father’s side of the family. Go on, it whispered, and its voice was soft and appealing. What harm could it possibly do?

  Frank shivered. It was a phrase he’d taught himself to react to, the way a woodland animal reacts to the sound of a breaking twig.

  Besides, the voice went on, it’s not as though you’d be doing it for yourself. You know you aren’t in this for the money, not really. Do it for good old George. Your pal.

  Yes, but—

  He tried to get a grip. He tried to concentrate on the fact that he’d beaten George up from ten to fifteen per cent on this job, so it stood to reason that if he took the risk, it’d be because of the money, because of greed. It almost worked.

  And then there’s the girl, hissed the soft voice. Only twenty-eight, poor kid.

  I’m not lis—

  You could save her.

  And that, regrettably, was really all it took. The other reasons, which he quickly gathered round him like a hedgehog rolling in dry leaves, were only there for decoration: you don’t really know what’s going to happen, even if you do run your daft simulations; you think you’re God’s gift to calculus, but really you’re just guessing; history heals its own wounds, it must do or else all the other jobs you’ve done would’ve made a real mess. His inner goblin was chattering away, but it needn’t have bothered. It’d nabbed him with a damsel in distress, easy as twitching a bit of string under a cat’s nose.

  Frank stood up. It was funny about the dog, but he wasn’t going to argue with a stroke of good luck. The thought made him frown. He didn’t like dogs, but he was too soft-hearted to take active steps to get rid of one. He’d even parted with money when ferocious women had shaken collecting tins under his nose in the cause of various homeless-dog shelters. It always came back to his strong sense of duty. If someone or something liked him, he was morally obliged to like them back, even if he didn’t.

  The sun was viciously hot and bleachingly bright: mad-dogsand-Englishmen weather. He stepped out from the shade of the fig tree and hurried back to the Door. As he opened it, something prompted him to look back over his shoulder. He paused. Something was missing. He couldn’t identify it, but he was aware of that moment of deadly vulnerability that a man gets when he doesn’t know for certain where his car keys are. Quick as a snake he patted his pockets, then remembered that he didn’t actually own a car. Couldn’t have been that, then. Nevertheless, the feeling was dangerously strong. He’d lost or forgotten something; but he couldn’t figure out what it was.

  Maybe it was just the dog. In which case—

  Far too hot to linger out in the open without a hat; but he went back into the shade of the tree and carefully searched the place where he’d been sitting. Nothing. He carried out the mild obsessive’s standard kit inspection-the Door’s cardboard tube, wallet, house keys, palmtop, mobile, all present and correct. He tried to remember if he’d been carrying anything else. The file; yes, got that.

  The feeling was very strong.

  This is silly, Frank thought. I’ve made sure I’ve got all the important stuff, so whatever I’m missing, by definition it’s not something I’ll miss. And, of course, the occasional flash of misplaced instinct was perfectly normal for someone who spent his time whizzing backwards and forwards in time via the Door. There were all manner of annoying and bewildering side effects, ranging from mild and vague deja vu to being able to recite huge chunks of dialogue out of movies he’d never seen, often because they hadn’t been made yet. As for detective stories and thrillers: forget it. He always knew who’d done it as soon as he opened the cover or saw the opening credits.

  He caught himself checking his pockets yet again, his fingers groping for a shape and a texture that he was unable to specify. Searching for an absence of something is a really bad way to spend time, a bit like trying to play darts blindfold in zero gravity. He ordered himself to stop doing it. He mutinied.

  And while I’m at it, he thought, I’ll keep my eyes peeled for the invisible man.

  Somehow Frank managed to get a fragile fingernails-only grip, and made long strides back to the Door. Doesn’t matter, he told himself; because if he really had lost something important and found out later what it was, he could always return through the Door to the moment just before he arrived, and leave himself a note to remind him to take care not to lose it. There, you see? Nothing to worry about. Go home.

  He stepped through the Door, closed it behind him and caught it as it rolled down his bedroom wall.

  You could call it home, but only like estate agents call Swindon the Cotswolds. Really, it was just a shed; to be precise, a temporary shelter for shepherds during the summer grazing season in one of the remotest parts of New Zealand’s North Island. Frank had chosen it precisely because it was miles from anywhere, or anyone. The sheep station it had originally belonged to had been derelict since the mid-twentieth century. Nobody came here, not even the movie people; it was practically the only place on the island that hadn’t doubled for Rohan or the Shire. He’d bought it, all legal and above board, just to be on the safe side, but he needn’t have bothered. Nobody else in the world could possibly live there, except the owner of the Portable Door.

  He kicked off his shoes and flopped down on the bed. He had a job to do, but he couldn’t summon up the energy. Not like him at all. His motto had always been there’s no time like the present completely meaningless for him, of course, but nevertheless. Mostly it was just that he hated sitting still. That was why he’d chosen the hut; it was an ideal home for someone who was always out. He yawned.

  This is no good, he told himself. You’ve made the decision, and now there’s a poor dead girl out there for you to bring back to life. Get up. Busy busy.

  Frank closed his eyes. Something was missing and until he’d worked out what it was and got it back, he wasn’t going to feel right. Once again, he toyed with the rather appalling notion that it might just be the dog, but mercifully that didn’t ring true. Not the dog; but possibly someth
ing not totally dissimilar. Something that was always there. Something that followed him about, whether he liked it or not.

  It could well be something like that; except that his life didn’t contain anything that fitted that description. He had no bodyguards, disciples, groupies, cameramen or sound crews. As far as he knew he wasn’t being tailed by the police or the CIA or even the VAT people. His defining characteristic was that he was a table for one. So that couldn’t be right, could it?

  Forget it, he told himself as he opened a cupboard and took out a plate and a spoon and dropped them into a carrier bag. Can’t be important. Let’s get this job of work done and out of the way, and then-well, then there may be another job to do, and George Sprague was very good at keeping him busy. The main thing was not to stop too long in any one place, or any one time. My life, he decided, is the very antithesis of a posh restaurant. Absolutely no ties.

  He picked the Door out of its tube with the nails of his thumb and forefinger, and slapped it onto the wall. The familiar outlines spread and grew a third dimension. He concentrated on the target location and turned the handle.

  One thing Frank found hard to predict, even when entering a place he knew well, was what the Door would choose to open out of. Nine times out of ten it was a wall; other useful surfaces included billboards, hoardings, road signs, cliff faces. Once he’d had to materialise in the middle of the Gobi Desert, no vertical surfaces in ten square miles. On that occasion, the Door had turned into a manhole cover, and he’d had something of a shock when he’d tried to walk through it and tumbled head over heels into the sand. This time it was reasonably straightforward. He stepped out of a doorway in a garden fence onto a flower bed.

  There in front of him was an apple tree, with a ladder leaning against its branches. The object of his mission wasn’t hard to spot. She was halfway up the ladder, stretching out her arm towards a fat, annoyed-looking cat. Frank cleared his throat and said, ‘Excuse me.’

  She didn’t look down. ‘Yes?’ she snapped, in a go-away-I’mbusy voice.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he repeated, ‘but that doesn’t look terribly safe. Would it be all right if—?’

  ‘Who the hell are you?’

  George Sprague’s briefings were always delightfully rich in minor details. ‘Kevin Thompson,’ he said, ‘I’m, um, Mrs Thompson’s nephew. It’s the cat again, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. Look, do you think you could just shut up and let me do this? I don’t mean to be rude, but I do need to concentrate.’

  ‘Actually—’

  ‘Go away.’

  Oh well, Frank thought. And you’ll never know I’m just about to save your life.

  He took the plate and the spoon out of the carrier bag. She’d be furious, of course. She’d assume he’d done it to make her look stupid. It didn’t matter, needless to say. He’d probably never have anything to do with her ever again, so who cared what she thought?

  ‘Here kitty,’ he sang out, tapping the spoon against the edge of the plate. ‘Here kittykittykittykitty.’

  The cat lifted its head and looked at him.

  ‘Kittykittykitty.’ Tap, tap, tap. ‘Din-dins. Here, kittykitty.’

  The cat gave him a look that’d have scarred a more sensitive man for life, but it got to its feet, ran lightly along the branch, hopped down onto a lower one, darted past the girl, brushing her face with its tail as it did so, and ran down the tree trunk to the ground. He put the plate and spoon back in the bag. The cat trotted past the foot of the ladder and vanished through a cat flap in the back door.

  ‘Oh look,’ Frank said. ‘He’s come down all by himself.’

  The girl still had her back to him, which was probably just as well. He had an idea that she wouldn’t be happy when she came down off the ladder. He turned to go, and took a long stride onto the flower bed, trying hard not to tread on any intentional vegetation.

  He heard a thump.

  There are some noises that aren’t good, ever. The thump was one of them.

  He looked back. The girl was lying on the ground. The angle of her head to her spine was definitely wrong, as though she’d been drawn by a clumsy amateur. She was lying on top of the ladder, which was flat on the ground. There was no sign of the tree.

  Oh, Frank thought.

  He tried to remember the original storyline, as set out in George Sprague’s briefing. The old lady was due to come out of the house at any moment; probably not a good thing if she saw him there.

  He glanced quickly at the back door, but couldn’t see it. The reason being, there was a tree in the way.

  It was back.

  Oh, he thought.

  Part of his brain said: got to be Practical, then, rather than Effective. Effective magic could make her think that the tree had suddenly vanished, causing her to topple off the ladder and fall to her death, but it wouldn’t be able to persuade the ladder. But the ladder’s lying on the ground with her on top of it. Therefore, someone must have physically removed the tree and then put it back a split second later. Furthermore, put it back about ten inches off to the side, so it wouldn’t zap back into existence on top of her dead body. Definitely Practical, then, rather than Effective. Also, according to what Dad used to say about the two different types of magic, extremely difficult to do and a lot of effort to go to when a perfectly simple bit of Effective would’ve achieved the same result.

  The rest of his brain said: Oh Jesus, she’s dead. And the tree just sort of vanished—

  Frank heard a door open, and crockery smash. Time - he felt really guilty about running away like this, but you had to be sensible - he wasn’t there.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘Murdered’, Mr Sprague said slowly. And then: ‘So what?

  Frank frowned. ‘I thought it might be - well, you know. Relevant.’

  ‘She’s still dead, even if it wasn’t an accident. We’ve still got to pay out. Or have we?’ A flicker of hope lit up Mr Sprague’s face, and he scrabbled through the pages of the policy document. ‘Bloody small print,’ he added, reaching for his glasses. ‘Ah, here we are. Sod it, no, it says here they’re covered against homicide. Makes you wonder what sort of business they’re in, really. Still, pest control and all that. I guess some of the, um, things they have to deal with are technically human-vampires, I suppose, werewolves.’ He sighed. ‘Oh well,’ he said. ‘You’ll just have to try again.’

  Awkward silence. Money was about to sour their otherwise pleasant relationship. ‘Of course,’ Frank said, ‘I won’t be expecting any additional payment.’

  Mr Sprague looked at him like a prisoner on Death Row who sees the state governor coming through the door when he’d been expecting to see two guards. ‘You won’t?’

  ‘I get paid by results,’ Frank said calmly. ‘A percentage of money saved. I haven’t saved you any money yet.’

  ‘Ah.’ Mr Sprague sighed rather beautifully. ‘Well, yes—’

  ‘And,’ Frank went on, ‘I think it’d be only fair if I waived the extra five per cent. After all, there’s the delay and so forth. Time is money.’

  He waited for the joke, but it didn’t come. That told him he’d got Mr Sprague genuinely off balance. But in a good way, he hoped.

  ‘Glad you see it like that,’ Mr Sprague said, rather breathlessly. ‘Though of course—’ He paused. He’d been about to point out the logical flaw in Frank’s argument. ‘Glad you see it like that,’ he repeated. ‘Always a pleasure doing business with you.’

  ‘Likewise,’ Frank said happily. He yawned. ‘Better go back and have another stab at it, I suppose,’ he said. ‘But I think perhaps you should just mention it to her employers,’ he added. ‘If someone’s murdering their staff, it’s possible that they might be interested.’

  Mr Sprague thought about that. ‘Yes, but once you’ve fixed it up, none of this’ll ever have happened, so—’

  Frank shook his head. ‘I don’t think it works quite like that with, um, people in their line of work,’ he said. ‘Dad used to say, it’s a
bit like companies that keep two sets of books.’

  ‘You mean they—’

  Frank nodded. ‘I believe it gets very complicated,’ he said. ‘Keeping track, and everything. Some of the bigger firms have specialist bookkeepers. Time and Motion, they call them.’

  Mr Sprague nodded. It was a gesture designed to show that he didn’t understand and didn’t want to. ‘You never thought of going into the family business, then?’

  ‘Me? Heavens, no. Dad said it was utterly miserable. Boring.’

  ‘Boring?’

  ‘Oh yes. Apart from short intervals of being horribly frightened. He got killed, too.’

  ‘Ah. I hadn’t realised. I’m sorry—’

  ‘Three times,’ Frank went on. ‘Or was it four? Can’t remember. Anyhow, he got quite friendly with the man in charge at, you know, the other end. But even that got to be a bit of a drag after a bit, he said. Going where no man has gone before is all right the first time, he used to say, but when you’re practically commuting—’

  Mr Sprague did the nod again. He was getting quite fluent at it.