The Better Mousetrap

by Tom Holt

  ‘Aren’t you going to check it out first?’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Mr Sprague replied. ‘I trust you.’

  But Frank shook his head. ‘If you wouldn’t mind,’ he said. ‘I just want to make sure everything’s worked out all right. So if you wouldn’t mind—’

  ‘If you like,’ said Mr Sprague, and he prodded at his keyboard with a fingertip. ‘There you go,’ he said. ‘No matches found. No record of any claims involving Emily Spitzer. Who is she, by the way? I mean to say, eleven million pounds. Someone must think pretty highly of her.’

  Frank looked at him, then nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  The first thing Emily did when she reached her office the next morning was grab her diary and write down lunch, twelvish, on tomorrow’s page. When she’d done that, she looked at the words for rather a long time, as if wondering how the hell they’d got there. The opening of the door brought her out of suspended animation. Nobody ever knocked at Carringtons.

  ‘There you are,’ said Colin Gomez, and the white glare of the fluorescent strip lighting flashed off the shiny top of his slightly pointed head. ‘How’d it go? Everything all right?’

  For a split second, Emily couldn’t think of what she should say next. ‘Fine,’ she managed to grunt. ‘No problem.’

  ‘Excellent.’ Colin Gomez loomed in the doorway like a large shapeless bag full of something. ‘Keep the clients happy, that’s the ticket. How about Mrs Thompson? Glad to get the moggy back safe and sound, I expect.’

  Emily looked at him as if he was one of those puzzles where you have to find words hidden in a random jumble of letters. Try as she might, though, she couldn’t make out murderer. Lots of other words, perhaps, nearly all of them offensive to some extent, but not that one. ‘I didn’t get a chance to talk to her before I left,’ she mumbled. ‘Just got the cat and came away.’

  ‘Oh.’ Frown. His forehead made her think of a mop, the sort where you push a handle and it squidges up. ‘You should’ve waited and spoken to her, made sure everything was all right.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  The mop unsquidged. ‘Never mind,’ said Mr Gomez. ‘Can’t be helped. I’ll phone her. Old biddies like the personal touch. Just rang to see if Tiddles is OK after his nasty experience, something like that.’

  ‘Good idea,’ she replied. ‘Actually, I was wondering—’

  ‘Got another job for you,’ Mr Gomez went on, blundering through the last words of her sentence like a stray elephant through a bazaar. ‘Giant spiders. Nest of the buggers, in the main computer room at Zimmerman and Schnell in Lombard Street. Turned up out of the blue early this morning and started spinning webs everywhere. Probably quite well established by now, so you’ll need rubber overalls and some kind of cutting torch.’

  Emily sighed. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘It’d have been nice if they’d called us in a bit earlier, though. Those webs are a pain.’

  Mr Gomez clicked his tongue. ‘They said sorry for that,’ he replied. ‘But it’s taken them this long to unravel the office manager, and apparently he’s the only one who can authorise bringing in outside contractors. They haven’t started laying eggs yet, though, so it’s not so bad. I said you’d pop over there as soon as you got back from your other job. Take a taxi,’ he said, with the air of a prince scattering gold to the urban mob. ‘Save you lugging all the gear about on the Tube.’

  ‘Thanks. That’ll make all the difference in the world.’

  Colin Gomez nodded. Irony had a tendency to bounce off him, like gravel off a battleship. ‘Splendid. Oh, and one other thing.’

  Oh for crying out— ‘Yes?’

  ‘You’d better take the new man with you. Show him the ropes, give him a feel for how we do things here. Nothing like plunging in at the deep end, after all.’

  The final step of the escalator, the one that isn’t there. ‘New man?’

  Mr Gomez frowned again. ‘Didn’t you get the memo? Oh, right. Yes, we’ve taken on a new trainee. Splendid chap, very highly qualified, we were lucky to get him.’

  ‘Oh.’ Emily snatched a fraction of a second to consider that. Nothing wrong with taking on trainees, of course, though the last she’d heard was that the partners reckoned the firm was overstaffed and there’d have to be Rationalisation unless productivity per capita could be jacked up to some impossible level. Still, since when was management consistent? ‘Sure,’ she added. ‘Only-well, giant spiders, it could get a bit awkward. I’m not sure it’s such a terribly good idea, taking along a novice. The client might not like it,’ she added quickly.

  But Mr Gomez waved his hand in that vague of-course-Iknow-best-I’m-a-partner way she’d had to get used to over the years. ‘It won’t be a problem,’ he said, in the manner of a bald pop-eyed god saying ‘Let there be light.’ ‘Just keep an eye on him, he’ll be fine. I’ve told him he’ll be working closely with you for the next six weeks. He seemed very pleased.’

  ‘Six weeks?’

  Mr Gomez beamed. ‘I know you’ve had a lot on your plate lately,’ he said, ‘what with the Credit Mayonnaise job and the Dillington Fine Arts business. Having an assistant’ll take some of the load off your shoulders.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  How could someone with such big ears be so deaf? ‘All I ask in return is that you help him get settled in, take a bit of time to show him the routines, a bit of on-the-job training, no big deal. All right? Splendid. I’ll get Julie to send him down and introduce himself.’

  The appalling thing, Emily thought, as Colin Gomez’s elephantine footsteps receded down the corridor, the truly appalling thing is that he honestly thinks he’s helping me. But what’s actually going to happen is, I’m going to have to nursemaid this clown, show him how to blow his nose and tie his shoelaces, keep him from getting eaten or fried, and still find time to get my work done. And to think: when Gomez came in here, the worst I thought him capable of was trying to have me killed. You can be so wrong about people.

  By way of a counter-irritant, she turned her mind back to the Mousetrap and its implications. But her thoughts wouldn’t cut into it; they kept glancing off, like a knife on glass, and sneaking back to her rather bizarre lunch hour. Frank Carpenter: every time she tried to concentrate on motives and opportunities, he kept floating back into her mind’s eye, like the people who stand behind celebrities being interviewed in the street and wave idiotically into the camera. That was disturbing, rather more so than the alleged Mousetrap or even her brush with death. Emotional entanglements-Emily liked the expression, it always made her think of brambles, coils of rusty barbed wire, hopelessly knotted balls of string: dangerous, tiresome things that got in the way, held you up and could cut you to the bone if you weren’t very careful how you handled, them. A sort of World War One scenario; even if you made it over the top and across No Man’s Land, you still had to cut your way through the emotional entanglements before fighting it out hand to hand in the enemy’s trenches. Not fair, she protested to the universe. Bad enough getting saddled with the newbie for six whole bloody weeks. Love as well as nursemaiding was just plain insufferable.

  Her mind froze; then, quite calmly, she played back that last thought. There it was, the L-word, like something nasty showing up on an X-ray. Unwelcome, scary, changing everything if you let it, but if we stay calm and practical, maybe we can figure out what to do about it before the panic sets in—

  I actually agreed to have lunch with him tomorrow. No, excuse me, I damn well suggested it. I must’ve been out of my tiny—

  Spend too long in the magic trade, and you start thinking differently from other people. Her first thought was: J. W. Wells, didn’t they use to market the best love philtre in the business? Bastard! He must’ve laced my salad with it; only, no, both meals came at the same time and anyway, you fall asleep for ten minutes before it takes effect. All right, then, while I was in transit, between Kew and Paris, maybe there was some way he could’ve—

  Or maybe, Emily told herself, you just quite liked the gu
y. It’s possible. Maybe (heresy warning: secure all fragile preconceptions and evacuate sensitive areas) it’d be quite nice to meet someone, have a life outside work, access a few of those human feelings you’ve been carrying around all these years, like the mysterious gadget you find in the car’s tool kit and can never figure out the use of. Maybe. It’s all very well being the job, and her job was one that demanded absolute focus and paid for it in narrow-band self-esteem; in the words of the great Kurt Lundqvist, the man who’s tired of killing is tired of life.

  But.

  She scowled. Something she was scheduled to do in the near future was making her feel apprehensive, and she had a feeling it wasn’t exterminating giant spiders—

  ‘Emily Spitzer?’

  She looked up. Standing in front of her was a tall young man, ginger-haired, with glasses. ‘That’s me,’ she said. ‘Who are you?’

  A smile you could’ve defrosted pizzas with glared in her face. When the dazzle abated and she could see again, she was aware of an outstretched hand pointed straight at her, like a weapon. It took her a moment before she realised that she was supposed to shake it.

  ‘Erskine Cannis,’ the young man said and, since he kept a straight face as he did so, Emily guessed he must be entirely immune to embarrassment. ‘I’m the new trainee, and I’d just like to say how excited I am at the prospect of working with you for the next two months. It’s been—’

  ‘Hold on,’ she interrupted, letting go of the hand and fighting the urge to wipe her palm on something. ‘Six weeks. That’s what Colin Gomez told me.’

  The tiny spasm of Erskine Cannis’s eyebrows translated as does not compute. ‘Two months,’ he corrected her. ‘As part of the firm’s trainee-induction programme. It says all about it in the brochure.’

  Brochure? ‘But that’s not-I mean, I think there’s been some confusion here,’ she mumbled. ‘But that’s OK, I’ll sort it out with Colin, and—’ She listened to herself, and the get-a-grip lights came on inside her head. Sort it out with Colin; sure. ‘So,’ she said, flattening herself against the back of her chair, ‘you’ve joined the firm. Well. Good to have you with us.’

  ‘It’s great to be here.’ It came back at her like a tennis shot. ‘This is a very special moment for me, and I want to thank you for—’

  Emily held up a hand for silence. ‘You’re not American by any chance, are you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ah. My mistake. Listen,’ she said quickly, before he could start again, ‘we’ve got a job to do.’

  He nodded, like someone trying to shake cocktails in his mouth. ‘Mr Gomez told me,’ he said. ‘As you can imagine, I’m pretty damn thrilled about it. Of course, I haven’t absolutely committed to the pest-control track quite yet, naturally I won’t be making a final decision about specialisation-option selection until I’ve completed all the legs of the induction programme, but I think I can say that right now, pest control’s definitely heading up my shortlist, particularly since I got a distinction in both theory and practice in my finals. Talking of which, what are your views on depleted uranium versus traditional mercury as regards exploding projectiles for ogre management?’

  Contrary to what everybody tells you, counting up to three in your head doesn’t really help. ‘You stay here,’ Emily said firmly, ‘while I get the stuff. Sit down, and don’t play with anything. All right?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  Induction programme, she thought, as she fiddled with the sticky lock on the grenade locker in the hardware store. Specialisation-option selection. Depleted uranium versus boring old traditional mercury. The brochure-what brochure, for crying out loud? When I joined up, they stuck me in front of a desk and pointed at the filing cabinet, and it was three days before I found out where the ladies’ toilet was. Where the hell did they get this exhibit from, anyhow?

  Emily stuffed two more grenades into her plastic carrier for luck, then signed for the gas bottles in the weapons register. Two months, she muttered to herself. Two months of dedication, enthusiasm and motivation, unless she broke first and killed him. After killing Colin Gomez, of course. With a Better Mousetrap, just to be sure—

  She paused, her fingers clamped tight on the handle of the poisons drawer. Better Mousetraps.

  She wasn’t paranoid; of course not. But wasn’t it just a teeny-tiny bit odd that the tight-fisted, cost-hyperconscious firm should’ve hired a new trainee, one who by his own admission had pest control right up there on the frozen summit of his shortlist, at a time when they should be facing an unexpected vacancy in the dragon-slaying sector? If the Mousetrap had worked-and it had never been known to fail before; in front of her eyes danced a mental image of Colin Gomez, bleating ‘Of course, we must do everything to minimise workload disruption and inconvenience to established clients, I know, let’s take on a trainee—’

  Bastards, she thought. It really must be them, then.

  Emily drifted across the room and sat down heavily on a crate of 105mm armour-piercing shells. That doesn’t make sense, she thought. If they want to get rid of me, all they’ve got to do is fire me. True, that’d mean paying redundancy, and they wouldn’t want to do that; but they’d find a way round it somehow, something that wouldn’t actually involve homicide. And a Better Mousetrap: complete overkill, dark and slightly hysterical pun intended.

  At least it answered one question. Why had they hired this clown? Because he was all they could get at short notice.

  All right, fine. They really are out to get you; in which case, vitally important to decide what I’m going to do about it, and quickly, before they try again. Resign; they want rid of me, indulge them. But that wouldn’t do; see above, under firing, ease of. Run away? Leave the country, one-way ticket to Nova Scotia, change name, retrain as an aromatherapist. Emily shook her head; so naive. In her office on the eighth floor, she knew for a fact, Amelia Carrington had a mirror that could show you anything you wanted to see, anywhere. True, she’d buggered up the central processor unit by asking it ‘Who’s the fairest of them all?’ and kicking it round the room when it flashed up Kate Moss instead of her, but even so, it wasn’t a viable business risk to assume that it couldn’t still do simple things like finding runaway employees. And there were other ways they could track her down, if they wanted to. Running and hiding were strictly no dice.

  Unless—

  The thought made her wince, but she forced her eyes open. Hiring the trainee was so typically them; it made it believable, real, serious. In which case, she was going to die. Again. And again and again, if needs be, until the job was done and signed off. Unless the one man in the universe who could save her was prepared to help.

  Emily sighed, and pulled a face. My hero, she thought.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Dennis Tanner was reading his obituary when the call came through.

  He’d found it eighteen months ago, in the back of one of the trade journals, while looking for a piece on applied demonology in the petrochemicals industry. Dennis Norman Azog Tanner, 18801997, and a list of his various discoveries, publications and achievements. At the time he’d been bewildered, terrified and extremely annoyed that they’d left out his 1989 Gandalf award (the bauxite find at Wayatumba; still the biggest on record). Now it was just a useful reference for dates and names.

  ‘Call for you from Carringtons,’ his mother said. ‘That pushy tart.’

  Coming from her, that was praise indeed, and it could only refer to Amelia Carrington - his god-daughter, for what little it was worth. She’d been a revolting child, he remembered; top of the class in everything, played six musical instruments and kept winning rosettes at gymkhanas. Of course, the winged horse was an advantage.

  ‘Fine,’ Dennis Tanner said, closing the journal and putting it away in his desk drawer. ‘Put her through.’

  Click, pause; then, ‘Uncle Dennis.’

  He frowned. He was only Uncle Dennis when she wanted something, and anything the managing partner of Carringtons wanted from a sole practi
tioner with an office over a chemist’s shop couldn’t be good. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘How’s tricks?’

  ‘Pretty good.’ That low, husky voice, Marlene Dietrich with her mouth full of chocolate. Pure effective magic, of course. Unadjusted, she sounded like a mouse on helium. ‘Reason I’m calling, I’ve got something that’s rather in your line, and I thought it might be fun if we looked at it together.’

  Being mostly humanoid, Dennis Tanner didn’t have the wonderfully expressive ears of his goblin ancestors. If he had, they’d have been right back, like a worried cat’s. ‘Something in my line,’ he repeated. ‘You mean minerals.’

  ‘Bauxite, yes. Jerome Hernandez in our Christchurch office thinks he’s on to something, but apparently there’s high levels of ambient thaumaton radiation, which means he can’t get a clear reading. I seem to remember something in that April ‘76 article of yours in the Gazette about cutting through thaumaton interference, so I thought I’d give you a shout.’

  Dennis leaned back in his chair and groped for a cigar. Very flattering, of course, that she’d read his article, even though it was groundbreaking stuff and still the last word on the subject. But if she remembered it, including the date and everything, why didn’t she just look it up, instead of ringing him? Letting a trade rival know that there was a whiff of a big bauxite find in-Christchurch office, did she say? Presumably not Hampshire, so New Zealand somewhere. Not the sort of thing a sensible person would do. And for all her many faults, Amelia was sensible. Smart as a smart bomb, in fact.

  ‘Thaumaton radiation,’ he said slowly, playing for time. ‘Well, basically, it’s caused by the decay of compromised magic particles in a powerful Effective field. Eberhard and Chang—’

  ‘I know all that, Uncle Dennis,’ Amelia interrupted, and her voice changed slightly: a shark’s fin breaking the surface of an ocean of dark brown honey. ‘What I need to know is, what can we do about it? I mean, Jerome’s a nice enough boy and very sound on basic scrying, but if what he’s saying about the scale of the thing’s anything to go by, we need to cut to the chase on this one, start out the way we mean to end up, you know? So, naturally, I thought of you.’