The Better Mousetrap

by Tom Holt

‘Besides,’ Frank went on, ‘it’s-well, it’s proper work, isn’t it? It’s getting out of bed at half-past six every morning of your life and going to the office and having to do as you’re told all the time. Office politics. Not my style at all. I mean, I can stay in bed till noon if I want to, and I can still be there bright and early for a six a.m. start.’

  Mr Sprague was looking at him. There was a sort of unspoken agreement between them, so fundamental that it was practically the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Mr Sprague didn’t ever ask about the Door-what it was, exactly, how it worked, how Frank had come by it-and Frank never volunteered enough information to make Mr Sprague’s carefully suppressed curiosity into an unbearable itch. ‘Right,’ Mr Sprague said. ‘Well, mustn’t keep you. I expect you want to be getting on with it. And thanks.’

  Frank dipped his head in graceful acknowledgement. ‘Don’t mention it,’ he said. He stood up.

  ‘Still no dog, then.’

  If Frank winced, it was just the slightest of movements. ‘So far so good,’ he said. ‘Really, in this life that’s the best you can ever say, isn’t it?’

  This time, for some reason, the Door opened in the back wall of the house, right next to the real back door. Frank nipped through, took it down and put it away, and scuttled off behind the cover of a large bush.

  He’d got here earlier this time. If the girl (Emily Spitzer; names weren’t his strongest suit) was going to be killed by a vanishing tree, the sensible thing would be to solve the problem before it happened. He looked up into the branches and located the cat. It was washing its ears with its paw, the way they do. Relaxed, happy cat. Everything’s so much easier if you avoid stress and melodrama.

  Frank took the plate and fork out of the carrier bag and said the magic words. The cat’s head went up, its ears twitched forward. Frank repeated the performance-oh come on, you wretched animal, I haven’t got all day-and the cat did its hopping-from-branch-to-branch routine as before. Then, at the point where it was due to run down the tree trunk, it stopped, looked down and yowled.

  Oh for crying out loud, Frank thought. Bloody creature. I could get down from there, and I’m scared stiff of heights.

  The back door opened. He couldn’t see the two women come out, because of the stupid tree. But he could see the cat. As soon as the door’s hinges creaked, its ears flattened against its skull and it shot back up into the branches, ending up higher and more precariously perched than it had been to start with. It stopped, realised where it was, and let out a faint mewing noise that would have softened the heart of a Chief Constable.

  Frank didn’t swear, not very often. ‘Fuck,’ he said.

  The old lady was standing under the tree, pointing. The girl was looking bored and cross. After a bit, the old lady went indoors. The girl produced a ladder, apparently out of thin air, and started to climb.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Frank called out.

  On reflection, it was perhaps a misguided thing to do, calling out like that when he was quite well hidden behind a bush. The girl started, shaking the ladder. The thin branch it was resting on snapped. There was a thump. One of those thumps.

  Oh, Frank thought. The bushes screened the back fence from the back door. He left, quickly.

  ‘Good morning, sir,’ said the sales assistant in the hardware shop. ‘What can I—?’ The young man looked at him in a way he didn’t like.

  Nevertheless, the customer is always right, even when he might just be completely barking.

  ‘I want a chainsaw,’ the young man said.

  Frank stepped through into Mr Sprague’s office, caught the Door as it rolled off the wall, and flopped into a chair without waiting to be asked. He had sawdust all over his clothes and he was looking unusually frazzled.

  ‘Got there in the end,’ he said, before Mr Sprague had a chance to speak. ‘Nipped in there before the damned cat had a chance to get stuck, said I was from the council and the tree was blocking the neighbours’ satellite reception and it had to come down. I’ve never cut down a tree before - it’s very complicated and rather scary. If your lot does the old biddy’s house insurance, I’m afraid you’re going to have to cough up for a new fence and a couple of windows. But tell you what, you can knock it off my commission.’ He smiled, made himself calm down, and went on: ‘Sorry, George. I know perfectly well that you haven’t got the faintest idea what I’m talking about, but you know what it’s like when you’ve had a stressful time, it helps to talk to someone about it even if they— Anyway. Job done, and here’s the—’

  Mr Sprague was frowning. Frank was holding out a blank sheet of paper.

  ‘Oh,’ Frank said.

  ‘Though I’m glad you’ve dropped by,’ Mr Sprague said, his voice just a little strained. ‘I was just about to call you, in fact.’

  ‘You were? I mean, oh, that’s good.’

  Mr Sprague nodded. ‘I’ve got the file here all ready. Ought to be quite straightforward. There’s a fair bit of background I won’t go into now, but basically there’s a young woman who got herself killed trying to rescue a cat stuck on a roof.’

  The Door opened. Frank had considered fifteenth-century Tuscany, but it wouldn’t have been quite right. Tuscany was for maths, and this wasn’t really a maths problem, though he felt sure that complex calculations were going to figure in it quite heavily before too long. He’d considered going home and lying on his bed staring up at the rafters for a very long time. He’d even thought about dynamite-sure, if he blew up the old dear’s house so there’d be no roof for the cat to get stuck on, Mr Sprague’s company would have to pay to have it rebuilt, but he’d still be saving them money. But something told him it wouldn’t end there. Except for Emily Spitzer, of course.

  Which was why he was here.

  He climbed the stairs and pressed the buzzer. ‘Frank Carpenter,’ he said, when the door squawked at him. ‘To see Mr Tanner.’

  Long pause, and then the door opened.

  There was a different girl behind the reception desk. If anything, she was even more bewilderingly gorgeous than the one who’d been there last time.

  ‘Mrs Tanner, isn’t it?’ he asked politely.

  The girl gave him a long, hard stare. ‘You’ve got a nerve,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ Frank replied.

  She sighed. ‘So,’ she said, ‘how’s your dad these days?’ The stare became a grin. ‘I always got on very well with your dad, back in the old days.’

  ‘No, you didn’t,’ Frank said. ‘You tried to, but—’

  ‘Told you about me, did he?’

  Frank nodded. ‘Warned rather than told, yes. Oh, while I think of it, how’s your son? Your other son, I mean. Dad’s godson.’

  The grin became a genuine smile. Frank couldn’t help feeling touched. ‘Little Paul Azog,’ she said. ‘Coming along very nicely, thanks for asking. He’ll be three in September. He’s doing very well at play school. Last week he ate a hamster. Caught it himself and everything.’

  ‘Jolly good,’ Frank said. ‘Can I see Mr Tanner now, please?’

  ‘Mphm.’ The beautiful girl picked up the phone and said, ‘He’s back again.’

  Frank could just make out some of the string of curses that made up the reply.

  ‘He says, go right in,’ she said.

  ‘Thanks.’ He hesitated. ‘Urn,’ he said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The, er, appearance thing. Are you really a shape-shifter?’

  She smiled sweetly at him. ‘Your dad said that, did he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There wasn’t anything to see, not even a blur. But five seconds later Frank had seen fifteen different girls sitting in the receptionist’s chair: all different shapes and sizes, all outrageously beautiful, all sharing the same feral grin.

  ‘I suppose I am, yes,’ she said. ‘It’s a goblin thing. Sort of a trick we evolved into, so we could sneak up on our prey.’

  ‘Ah,’ Frank said. ‘Very impressive. So,’ he went on, ‘if I’m part goblin, cou
ld I—?’ She shook her head. ‘Our Dennis can’t, either,’ she said. ‘Only pure-bred goblins, you see.’

  Frank nodded slowly. ‘So,’ he said, ‘presumably that’s a kind of Effective magic’

  Her eyes were suddenly as cold as last night’s chow mein. ‘I’ll pretend you didn’t say that,’ she said. ‘And just so there’s no confusion, no, it bloody well isn’t. Goblins don’t do that stuff. When we change shape, we change shape, every single bloody molecule. The other thing-what you just said-that’d be cheating.’

  ‘I see,’ Frank said mildly. ‘Thanks. And, um, sorry.’

  ‘No problem,’ said the beautiful girl. ‘You weren’t to know, were you?’ She grinned at him. It was getting to the point where, even if he never saw it again, he’d have no trouble picturing that grin with his eyes shut for the rest of his life. ‘And you didn’t answer my question,’ she added. ‘Your dad. Not still hanging round after that frigid little thin—’

  ‘My mother, you mean.’

  She sighed. ‘Oh well,’ she said. ‘But apart from that, he’s happy enough, I take it? Enjoying life, all that?’

  Frank pursed his lips. ‘You could say that,’ he replied. ‘Look, I don’t want to keep Mr Tanner waiting, so—’

  ‘Go on, then.’ Another burst of the grin. ‘We can have a nice chat later, after you’ve finished with our Dennis.’

  Frank smiled. He pictured Mr Tanner’s office. Four perfectly good walls he could spread the Door up against. ‘I’ll look forward to it,’ he said, and went through into the back office.

  ‘That’s it?’ Mr Tanner said.

  Frank nodded. ‘As far as I know,’ he said. ‘I’ve just got what was in the file to go on, of course.’

  Mr Tanner drew heavily on his cigar and blew smoke in Frank’s face. ‘All seems perfectly straightforward to me,’ he said. ‘Someone in the trade wants this Emily Whatsername dead. The mechanics of the thing are no big deal,’ he went on. ‘What we in the biz call a Better Mousetrap.’

  Frank thought about that for a moment. ‘Mousetrap?’

  Mr Tanner nodded. ‘Nothing flash or showy,’ he said. ‘Just thorough, and it works. Invented by a man called Petersen, in Norway, back in the late seventeen-hundreds.’

  ‘Mousetrap?’

  ‘What? Oh, right. The idea is, a really good mousetrap doesn’t just kill the mouse in this variant of the space/time continuum, it kills it in every possible alternative reality in the multiverse. We used to get them mail order from the States. Just over seven thousand dollars each, if you ordered them by the hundred.’

  ‘Ah.’ Frank nodded slowly. ‘So,’ he said, ‘how do you stop it working?’

  ‘You can’t.’ Mr Tanner stubbed out his cigar and lit another one. ‘That’s what’s so good about them - well, I say good, depends which end of them you’re on, I suppose. Efficient, if you prefer. Also easy to use, reliable and at a sensible price.’ He leaned back in his chair and blew a smoke ring. ‘Looks like you’re going to have to tell your insurance bloke he’s going to have to eat it on this deal.’ He frowned. ‘What did you say this female’s name was, again?’

  ‘Emily Spitzer.’

  ‘Spitzer, Spitzer—’ Mr Tanner’s small, smooth face screwed up. ‘I used to know a Clive Spitzer,’ he said. ‘Head of alchemy at Langsam, Chang & O’Brien in Toronto. Come to think of it, I seem to remember he had a daughter or two.’ He scowled for a moment. ‘Pity,’ he said. ‘Old Clive was a bit of an arsehole, but-well. All flesh is grass, as they say. Specially in this business. Practically silage.’

  Frank looked at him. ‘I was wondering about that,’ he said.

  ‘What? Oh yes.’ Mr Tanner nodded. ‘Very competitive, the spell trade. Very much into the cut and thrust of the market place, with the added factor that you don’t get any strife from the authorities, the way you tend to in other lines of work. We keep ourselves to ourselves, see. Wouldn’t occur to any of us to go whining to the cops, and if we did who the hell would believe us? Also, there’s hardly ever a body, or at least, not enough of one to notice. Naturally we have a code of conduct, and we come down like a ton of bricks on anybody who goes too far. In theory,’ he added.

  ‘In—?’

  ‘Well, you know how it is in business,’ Mr Tanner replied with a yawn. ‘At the end of the day we’re all in it for the long haul, and you can’t go starting feuds with people you’ll be working with for the rest of your life. Got to be a bit pragmatic. Besides, the way we see it, looking after your own skin, taking simple precautions, that’s your responsibility. Anybody who gets it was probably too careless or too stupid to be in the trade anyway.’

  Frank considered that. ‘Is that true?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ Mr Tanner replied. ‘But it makes it easier. People get hurt from time to time, that’s how it goes. It’s a bummer if you’ve spent a lot of time and money training someone up to the point where they’re actually more help than hindrance. But looked at from the other point of view, for an ambitious youngster trying to make his way in the world, when it comes to dead men’s shoes, the profession’s a bit like Imelda Marcos’s wardrobe, if you get my meaning.’ He rolled his chair back and put his feet up on the desk. ‘I don’t suppose they’re exactly crying their eyes out over at Carringtons right now.’

  Frank nodded. ‘And Clive Spitzer? Your old friend?’

  ‘Never liked him much anyway.’

  Business, Frank thought. Just business. And the girl had been-well, he’d only spoken to her once, and she’d been rude and unpleasant to him, when all he was doing was trying to save her life. Even so—’

  Fine knight in shining armour you turned out to be.

  He knew the little voice was just trying to wind him up; he knew it, and he knew perfectly well that if that really was why he was letting himself get involved, then it was a bloody stupid reason and he ought to be ashamed of himself. It was a great big fiery Thou Shalt Not: you don’t go helping people just because it makes you feel good - or, in his case, makes you feel slightly less of an insignificant little tit. That kind of motivation was the very worst kind of eight-lane blacktop, last-petrol-beforeEternal-Damnation good intention.

  Analyse, he ordered himself.

  Why?

  Well—

  -

  Because otherwise George Sprague is going to have to fork out money, and he hates that. And George is my friend.

  -

  Because I accepted the contract, and I like to see these things through.

  -

  Because an accident is one thing, but this is murder, and that’s nasty and shouldn’t be allowed.

  -

  Because of a million US dollars. (Good one. We approve of that one.)

  - Because— Well. Because it’s there. Because.

  He ran the checklist, and found it wanting. Those aren’t the reasons, he made himself confess. You know what the real reason is, and it’s very bad. We don’t do damsels in distress. Why don’t we? Because only heroes do that stuff, and we’re not a hero. We’re not a swinging-in-through-windows, Milk-Tray hero, nor are we the meek, quiet hero with hidden depths who comes through when the chips are down. We aren’t any kind of hero. We’re just us. Me.

  Got that?

  ‘Fair enough,’ Frank said mildly. ‘It’s just a pity, that’s all.’

  Mr Tanner shrugged. ‘Yeah, well—’

  ‘Because I was going to use the fee from this job to pay off a bit more of what I owe you, but since you say there’s absolutely nothing anybody can do—’

  (Got that? Apparently not.)

  Mr Tanner stayed perfectly still, apart from his eyes. They flicked round in their deep-set sockets and focused on him like an advanced targeting system. ‘Is that right?’ he said.

  ‘Never mind,’ Frank replied. ‘I expect there’ll be another job along in a bit, and I can pay you then. Assuming Mr Sprague still wants me to do stuff for him. I had a hundred per cent success rate, you see, up till now.’

  Mr Tanner wasn’t
fooled, he could tell. He could see the silly little bit of string being dangled in front of his nose. His problem was, he really, really liked string.

  ‘Hundred per cent, eh?’

  ‘Satisfaction guaranteed,’ Frank said. ‘Someone you can rely on. But it doesn’t matter. Mr Sprague’s a reasonable man. And surely everybody’s allowed to screw up once.’

  The flash of a paw, as the string moves. ‘You think so?’

  ‘Well—’

  ‘It’s pretty obvious you’ve never been in business, then,’ Mr Tanner said. ‘It doesn’t work like that. Oh well, you did your best is one of those phrases you just don’t hear in the challenging environment of the modern market place.’

  Keep the string moving. For both of us. ‘Oh, I don’t think Mr Sprague’s like that. He’s more of a friend than a boss, really. He’ll understand, I’m sure.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ Mr Tanner was grinning at him. ‘Until the day comes when some other kid comes into his office with a Portable Door, or something else that does the same thing; and then he’ll have to ask himself, who can I really trust to get the job done and the shareholders off my back? Fat lot of good personal rapport and cards at Christmas are going to do you when that happens.’

  ‘All right,’ Frank said slowly. ‘But it’s all academic, isn’t it? Because you said yourself, there’s nothing at all anybody can do about it.’

  Mr Tanner looked up at him. String, set and match. ‘Well,’ he said.

  In the very heart of the City of London, wedged in between two dizzyingly tall glass and steel towers, snuggles the Cheapside branch of the Credit Mayonnaise. The building is extremely old, one of the very few survivors of the Great Fire of 1666; which means, among other things, that it’s so heavily listed, you’d need a dozen licences just to open a window. Most of its business is something abstruse to do with turning one sort of money into another, but it also has a modest cellar, which houses a number of safe-deposit boxes.

  Cellar, please note; not vault. There are no time-locked steel doors, because the Environment wouldn’t stand for it; likewise, no pressure pads, infra-red beams or cunning sensors capable of registering the slight change in temperature caused by the heat of an unauthorised body. A moderately enterprising burglar could probably break into it armed with nothing more than a tyre lever and a garden trowel, although he’d have to be careful not to scratch the paint if he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life hiding from the enforcers from English Heritage. Besides, no burglar would bother. There’s nothing valuable down there; just a load of old papers and some empty boxes.