The Better Mousetrap

by Tom Holt

  Amelia was just scraping the last smears of chocolate mousse off the sides of the dish when the buzzer went. Dennis Tanner was here to see her. She frowned, vanished the dirty plates, and adjusted the room slightly. Normally, it looked out over the back courtyard, a small, overshadowed concrete square where they put the dustbins out. But it’d be far cooler to have a panoramic view out over the City, so she rotated her floor of the building through ninety degrees and widened the window by six feet. Not bad, but the facade of the Credit Mayonnaise partly obscured the dome of St Paul’s. She toyed with the idea of vanishing the bank, but somebody’d be bound to notice and make a fuss, so she contented herself with raising her own building by forty feet. As a finishing touch, she turned the nice comfy old chair she was sitting in into genuine Louis Quinze, and gave the visitor’s chair an annoying squeak. Then she leaned forward and toggled the intercom.

  ‘Send him up,’ she said.

  ‘Right away. Oh, and he’s got someone with him.’

  Amelia paused, fingertip on toggle. ‘What sort of someone?’

  ‘Assistant, I think. He didn’t say.’

  Amelia frowned, then brushed the consideration aside. For all the difference it made, Tanner could have brought along a regiment of heavy cavalry. He was still small fry. ‘Fine,’ she said, and released the toggle. With a tiny movement of her head she added another chair, very straight-backed and spindly-legged; then, as an afterthought, she lengthened the lift shaft to compensate for the extra height of the building. Detail, detail, detail, as her father used to say. Well, indeed.

  The someone Dennis Tanner had with him proved to be a nineteen-year-old bimbo with legs up to her armpits and an expression so vacant you could’ve dry-docked an oil tanker in it. Which meant precisely nothing, of course. It could be that Tanner was vainly trying to impress Amelia by dragging along his latest trophy PA; but, given his goblin connections, the dolly-bird could just as easily be his uncle. She smiled, acknowledging the small tactical victory. Of course it didn’t matter who he or she was, but the fact that Amelia had had to stop and think for a moment represented a point scored. Clever old Uncle Dennis. Aggravating as usual.

  ‘Dennis.’ Smile. The only proper response to the enigmatic bimbo was to ignore her entirely. ‘Great to see you. It’s been ages. Sit down.’ She twitched her head slightly, and a table with a large rectangular box on top of it appeared next to the squeaky chair. ‘Have a cigar.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Dennis grunted, flopping into the chair, taking a cigar from his top pocket and lighting it. He didn’t seem to have noticed the squeak. ‘Nice place,’ he said, wriggling backwards and forwards in the chair a few times and producing a noise like a cage full of breeding mice. ‘I was just thinking, I haven’t been in here since old Toss— your father passed away. How long’s that been, now?’

  ‘Seven years. And I do believe you’re right. In fact, wasn’t the funeral the last time I saw you?’

  ‘Could be.’ Dennis Tanner sucked in a mouthful of blue fog. She waited for it to come out again, but it didn’t. ‘Anyhow,’ he said, ‘what’s all this about a major bauxite strike?’

  The bimbo, Amelia noticed, was staring right at her. Correction: not at her in general, but a needle-sharp focus on the underside of her chin. Instinctively she lifted her forefinger and prodded furtively, but of course there was nothing there, no unsightly weal of flab she’d inadvertently missed out of her daily reduction. Another point scored, she conceded, though with rather worse grace this time.

  ‘Take a look at these.’ She levitated a buff folder across the room and onto the cigar-box table. ‘Taken by our satellite last week. Have a poke about, tell me what you think.’

  One of the very few advantages of having a face like Dennis Tanner’s was that it was relatively easy to keep-well, not straight, it could never be that; impassive, then. Poker-perfect, not an eyebrow twitched or a lip-corner tweaked. As he ran a fingertip over the glossy surface of the photos, it was only the slightest shiver of his neck that gave him away, and she wouldn’t have noticed that if she hadn’t known him practically since she was born.

  ‘Could be something there,’ Dennis said, putting the pictures back on the table. Amelia cocked her head a little on one side. ‘Only could be, Uncle Dennis?’

  He grunted. ‘Fairly high probability,’ he said, ‘but I’d need seventy-five-by-nineties to be sure.’ He looked up at her. ‘You can arrange that, presumably.’

  She nodded. ‘Assuming it’s what we think it is,’ she said. ‘What do you reckon?’

  He shrugged. ‘I’m impressed,’ he said.

  ‘Bigger than Wayatumba?’

  Minimal nod.

  ‘How much bigger?’

  Another shrug. ‘Fifty, maybe sixty per cent.’ He paused to draw on his cigar, and found it had gone out. Amelia lit it for him with a glance. ‘Of course,’ he went on, ‘there’s other things to consider. How far down it is, geological formations, dangerous contaminants. But assuming it’s viable, then yes. Nice strike.’

  ‘Splendid.’ She flashed him a big smile. ‘And just as well, in the circumstances. I bought the land earlier this morning.’

  Dennis grinned. ‘Just like your dad,’ he said. ‘Did he ever tell you about the twenty thousand acres in Zaire he bought, thinking it was diamonds, and it turned out to be a coal seam, too deep to get at?’

  Amelia nodded. ‘How we laughed,’ she said. ‘Though as a matter of fact, we’ve just finished building a safari complex on it. Hotels, pools, a clubhouse. Quite a good investment, seeing as how he got the land so cheap. Coffee?’

  Dennis shook his head. The bimbo was looking out of the window. ‘So,’ Amelia went on, ‘we’ve got the land, and we’re pretty sure—’

  ‘Fairly sure.’

  ‘—Fairly sure there’s bauxite in there. Well, now, you’re the expert. How should we go about this? Last thing we want to do is let everybody know what we’ve got. Once the market gets to hear about it, the price’ll go through the floor.’

  Dennis didn’t reply straight away. He appeared to be thinking about it, though she was sure it was just acting and that he already knew what he was going to say.

  ‘Do we know,’ he asked, ‘who owns Wayatumba these days?’

  She nodded. ‘New Zealand Ethical Minerals Inc,’ she replied. ‘Which is just a corporate front for a trust fund-furry animals and stuff-set up by some people called Carpenter. I wasn’t able to find out anything about them.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’ Dennis’s face stayed as still as Buster Keaton posing for a photo, except that the tip of his nose twitched. Probably he wasn’t aware he did that. She filed it away for future reference. ‘My idea is,’ he went on, ‘we buy out New Zealand Ethical. Then, when the new strike comes on line, initially we pass it off as increased production from Wayatumba. Use the first proceeds to buy out as many of the other consortiums as we can.’

  Amelia raised an eyebrow. ‘A monopoly, you mean?’

  ‘With hotels on Mayfair,’ Dennis answered casually. ‘Corner the market, you can set your own price. Then, when the truth about the big strike comes out, there’s sod-all anybody can do about it.’

  For a moment, a Planck’s Constant fraction of a second, Amelia was tempted. It was, after all, rather a good idea. It’d mean a huge investment, but it’d work, and then there’d be all the money in the world, and nobody would have to die after all. But, on reflection, she resolved to go with her original idea. Not that it was all that much better; but it was hers, so she liked it more. ‘OK,’ she said cautiously. ‘With you so far. What if these Carpenter people won’t sell?’

  ‘Oh, I think they might.’

  Carpenter: the name rang a bell. Wasn’t there a Carpenter mixed up in the spectacular decline and fall of J. W. Wells & Co? That needed checking. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘For argument’s sake, let’s say they sell. It’s still an awful lot of eggs in one basket, and minerals—’ She shrugged. ‘To be honest with you, it’s more of a hobby with u
s. I know it was always your big thing, so naturally you’re inclined to take the broad, ambitious view. But I don’t think my partners’ll be too happy about committing so heavily to what’s basically a fringe thing for us. Sorry,’ she added sweetly. ‘Nice thought, though.’

  Not a trace of a reaction from Dennis, but the bimbo smiled so broadly you’d think she was baring her teeth. ‘No worries,’ Dennis said. ‘So what did you have in mind?’

  Very delicately, Amelia made herself two inches shorter and seven years younger. Time to be daddy’s little girl for a bit. ‘Like I said, Uncle Dennis,’ she said, ‘you’re the expert. Could we pretend the strike’s much smaller than it is? Then it won’t upset the price.’

  Victory; a tiny gleam of a patronising grin. ‘Doesn’t work like that,’ Dennis replied. ‘You can’t keep stuff like this secret very long. Soon as we start digging, you can bet the other companies’ll have Mason and Schmidt or Zauberwerke on the case, and they can scry a photo just as well as I can. They’ll know, trust me.’

  ‘Awkward.’ Amelia synthesised a baffled look. ‘I suppose we could just sort of sit tight and wait to see what happens.’

  Dennis shook his head. ‘Bad idea,’ he said. ‘If word does get out, the others’ll know we’re sitting on a major find, which means we could flood the market at any time. The bauxite price’d crash, and we’d be no better off. That’s why a monopoly’s the only safe way to go. But if that’s not practicable— ‘ He shrugged. ‘Maybe you should consider selling to one of the big companies,’ he said. ‘A nice little Dutch auction, maybe. All the main players’d have to join in, just to stop their rivals getting it. Nice return, no outlay, get shot of it and move on. If you’re not really into minerals, it’d be the sensible thing to do.’

  He was calling her bluff. Loathsome little man. No wonder Dad had liked him. He always hero-worshipped people who were smarter than himself-his own offspring excepted, of course. ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ Amelia said, making herself sound just a bit disappointed. ‘It’d be a pity, though, wouldn’t it? I’m sure we’d make ever so much more if we mined it ourselves, just so long as we could control the silly old price.’

  Dennis stifled a yawn; a genuine one, damn him. ‘I think you may be worrying too much about that,’ he said. ‘Even if the price goes splat, there’s still money to be made out of it. I’ve been in this business over a century, and if there’s a way of outsmarting the market I haven’t found it yet. Try being too clever and you’ll end up with footprints all down your back. Anyway,’ he added, stubbing out his cigar, ‘we don’t yet know for sure that there’s anything worth having down there. Get me those seventy-five-by-nineties and then we’ll have a better idea of what we’re dealing with.’ He stood up. So did the bimbo, simultaneously. ‘Great to see you again,’ he said. ‘Give me a shout when you’ve got the pics, and then we’ll talk.’

  After he’d gone, and she’d conjured up demons to empty the ashtray and spray the room with air freshener, Amelia sat for a while and thought about her plan - no, her grand design. Clever Uncle Dennis, she thought; he’d come within a long gobshot of stumbling on the truth, and she wouldn’t put it past him to figure out what she really had in mind, given time. She’d known he was smart-he had to be, to have survived the savage office politics of JWW for nearly a century - but maybe she’d underestimated him; it made her wonder what sort of diabolical genius the Carpenter man must’ve been, to have outsmarted him and the rest of the JWW brains trust. It’d be annoying, to say the least, if he did manage to work it all out for himself. Maybe-she frowned as she contemplated it-there would have to be a tragic accident in Uncle Dennis’ near future. A probability mine, perhaps, or even (hang the expense) a Better Mousetrap. It’d be a pity, of course, because he reminded her of her childhood, and there was a sentimental streak buried deep inside her, like a small, uneconomic-to-exploit bauxite deposit. But there. Cruel world, and all that.

  She’d have to think about it. If Dennis Tanner could be allowed to survive without jeopardising the project, nobody would be happier than her; if not, well. Meanwhile— Amelia snapped her fingers, and a cloud of small, burning flies appeared in mid-air. They swarmed for a moment, then split up, swirled around for a couple of passes and formed themselves into a flow chart of the project so far. A third of them turned green-things already done-while the rest stayed blue: things still to do. She studied them for a while, then disappeared them, picked up the phone and thought of a number.

  ‘Honest John’s House of Monsters, this is John, how can I—?’

  ‘Amelia Carrington,’ she snapped. ‘Is it ready yet?’

  The sound of air being sucked in through teeth. ‘Ah yes,’ said the voice at the other end of the line. ‘That one. Been meaning to give you a call.’

  ‘Is it ready yet?’

  Pause. ‘Remind me,’ said Honest John, ‘how long did we quote you?’

  ‘Six weeks, and that was five weeks ago.’

  ‘Mmm.’ A tongue, unseen and distant, clicked. ‘Could’ve been a shade on the optimistic side there. It’s the hot weather, basically. Throws out their whatchercallits, biological clocks. Hold on a tick, I’ll go and have a look in the tank.’

  ‘Now just a—’ Too late. Click, and the phone started warbling Aretha Franklin in her ear, apparently through a megaphone stuffed with socks. She scowled. It was well known in the trade that anybody who put Amelia Carrington on hold and made her listen to music was unlikely to live long and prosper, but clearly Honest John hadn’t been on the Cc list when that memo did the rounds. She clenched her fingers into claws, and told herself to be calm.

  ‘Thought so,’ Honest John said, after what seemed like a very long time. ‘Probably we’re looking at another three, maybe four weeks, call it five and you won’t be disappointed. Sorry,’ he added-very much an afterthought - ‘but there you go. Can’t rush Mother Supernature, after all.’

  Amelia took a deep breath. ‘Now listen to me,’ she said (Penelope Keith and Margaret Thatcher and just a hint of the Goddess in her aspect as the Destroyer). ‘We have a contract, and if you care to look at clause 7(c), you will see that time is of the essence. Do you know what that means?’

  ‘Yes, of course I do.’ He sounded just a little bit rattled. Brave man. ‘But like I said, you can’t rush things in this business. I mean, you’re dealing with livestock here, not machines, and if the ewe’s not in the mood, there’s really not a lot I can—’

  ‘Seven days,’ Amelia said. ‘At the end of which, I expect a delivery. Failing which, I shall have you killed, eventually. Do we understand each other? Splendid. So nice talking to you - goodbye.’

  It is, after all, just another kind of magic. Tell someone to do something impossible and back it up with a credible threat, and somehow it always seems to get done. It did occur to Amelia that maybe she’d been a little bit hard on the poor man, given the nature of his business. She resolved to make it up to him by sending him a card at Christmas, assuming he was still alive.

  Eventually Frank decided to go with plain white with a button-down collar. It was, he felt, what George would have wanted him to choose.

  He felt awful about it, of course, but what could he do? As far as being resourceful went, he was the proverbial one-trick pony.

  If time travel could put it right, he knew how to cope. Other stuff-flat tyres, chip-pan fires, basic first aid-was beyond him, and he knew it. And in the matter of the disappearance of George Sprague en route from Cheapside to Marks & Spencers, Marble Arch, he couldn’t see how the Portable Door would be of any use. If he went back in time to try and prevent it, he’d have to confront himself in George’s office and somehow convince himself that he ought to choose his own rotten shirts without outside help, without actually mentioning what would happen to George otherwise. The hell with that. Even thinking about it made him feel timesick.

  Feeling guilty, miserable and frustrated, he nipped back home to New Zealand, had a quick shower and changed into his new shirt. It didn’
t suit him at all, and the thought that his good friend George Sprague was now missing presumed lost in time just so that Frank Carpenter could look like a waiter made him even more depressed. No, he couldn’t just leave it and hope it’d fix itself. He had to do something about it. What, though? That was the question. Pound to a penny magic was involved in it somewhere. He cursed his own ignorance, not to mention the arrogant stupidity of using magic without having the first idea how it worked. Nothing for it, he decided, he’d have to ask someone. Someone in the trade. Such as—

  Well, Emily, of course.

  Frank sagged with relief. Emily would know what to do. You could tell just by looking at her that she was good at her job. Besides (he felt slightly ashamed of the thought, but not enough to be put off it) it’d be a splendid opportunity to get to know her better. She’d come across as the kind of person who’d quite like showing off her professional expertise to a prospective boyfriend, a touch of the knight in shining armour embarking on a quest for his lady’s sake. Silver linings, he thought.

  And then he thought, Shit, the time—

  The panic didn’t last long. He took out the Door, spread it on his cabin wall, thought in the arrival coordinates and stepped out into Cheapside precisely on time, to find she wasn’t there.

  No big deal. She was a busy professional, he reminded himself, she could easily have been held up by a last-minute phone call or an emergency call-out to an infestation of basilisks or something. Not everybody, he reminded himself primly, has a Portable Door. Most people have to go the long way round, via linear time. He leaned against the builders’ hoarding he’d just walked through and tried to relax.

  One drawback to having a Door is that you quickly get out of practice when it comes to being bored. No more arriving half an hour early and having to kill time wandering up and down looking in shop windows; just fast-forward through the tedious, unproductive bits and cut to the chase. But he couldn’t do that on this occasion, and as three minutes became five and then ten, he started to feel distinctly uncomfortable. His feet were hurting, for one thing, from the unaccustomed labour of standing still. Also, he was sure that people were looking at him; and nobody likes the thought that maybe they’ve been stood up. Fifteen minutes: it was sheer torture, especially with the George business still painfully unresolved at the back of his mind. Even if Emily’d changed her mind and didn’t want to spend the rest of her life with him after all, he still needed the wretched girl to help him find George. Bloody woman, he thought. Talk about inconsiderate—