The Better Mousetrap

by Tom Holt

‘Right now.’

  ‘One-oh-five millimetre recoilless rifle and a molybdenum steel projectile,’ Erskine said promptly. ‘Assuming we can establish a danger area not less than eight hundred by six hundred metres—’

  ‘In his office,’ Emily said sweetly. ‘Probably in an interview room, but we may have to do it in reception. Oh, and without making him suspicious.’

  ‘Hm.’ The look on Erskine’s face was thoughtful, but with overtones of suppressed enthusiasm. ‘Presumably a suicide attack isn’t an option.’

  She shrugged. ‘You’ll be doing it.’

  ‘Me?’ He stared at her as if she’d just told him he’d been made king. ‘Really?’

  ‘Mr Gomez thinks the experience will be good for you.’

  ‘Gosh.’ Pause, as self-doubt cut in. ‘You’ll be there, though, won’t you? In case anything goes wrong, I mean. Only—’ Hesitation; then the big confession, all in a rush. ‘Only I’ve never actually done a solo trolloctomy, not in practice. I mean, I’ve done computer simulations, but—’

  ‘Of course you haven’t, you fool.’ Emily sighed. ‘Neither have I, come to that. You don’t get many trolls south of the Malverns these days. And yes, of course I’ll be there - you don’t think our insurance’d stand for letting trainees loose killing things without proper supervision? So,’ she went on, pressing her fingertips to the side of her head, ‘how are you going to go about it? Decided yet?’

  Erskine thought for a moment-not explosives, not poisons, recoilless rifle not available, golly, tricky one-and suddenly the answer was there, staring him in the face. But it was so-well, so amazingly cool that he hardly dared suggest it—

  ‘M-magic sword?’ he said breathlessly.

  Emily nodded sadly. ‘Magic sword,’ she repeated. ‘Worse luck.’

  ‘But—’ This was so exciting; he felt he was about to burst. ‘I mean, I didn’t think people really used them any more.’

  ‘Oh, they do.’ Emily pulled a face. ‘Believe me. It makes you wonder if there’s really such a thing as progress in this business. I mean, we can put a man on the moon and take out fully grown manticores with satellite-mounted high-energy lasers, but there’ll always be some prick who can’t resist the urge to chase after wildlife with a bloody great knife. Distinctly Freudian, if you ask me. Anyway, I told them when I joined, I don’t do swords unless I’ve really got to, and it strikes me you’re just the sort who’d enjoy it, so yes, the gig’s yours. Nip down to the stores and sign one out. See you in reception in ten minutes.’

  As soon as she’d gone, Erskine was on his feet and tearing down the corridor towards the lift. As he ran, he accessed his mental plan of the building. Edged weapons were stored in the stationery cupboard on the third floor, in a locked steel cabinet whose combination was 1415 (easy to remember: battle of Agincourt). When he got there, he burrowed through stacks of green chit pads and timesheet books until he’d cleared a way through to the cabinet door. He picked the tumblers round with his fingernail and opened the door.

  Tsk, he thought. Why do these people have to be so untidy? Spears, axes, cutlasses, crossbow bolts, all jammed in together any old how; he was going to have to take the whole lot out if he wanted to get at the stuff at the back, and all those sharp edges piled up like that was just begging for someone to do himself an injury.

  Right at the back, behind a stack of mildewed whaling pikes, he found it: a simple black scabbard, flecked with white mould. A simple steel cross-hilt, with a brown label dangling off it on the end of a bit of white string. The label read E77931542 Magic Sword Class 2b.

  Erskine finagled it out past the pikestaffs, wiped the mould off with his sleeve, and laid his right hand very gently on the wire-wrapped grip. It felt icy cold, and when he pulled his hand away sharply, small patches of skin stuck to it and ripped off.

  I don’t know you, said a high, shrill voice in his head.

  ‘I’m Erskine Cannis,’ he said aloud.

  Your name is not important. What are you?

  Intuitively, Erskine knew he was going to have to choose his words very carefully. After all, the thing had already tasted his blood; didn’t that give them some sort of power over you? He was beginning to wish he hadn’t accepted the honour of carrying out the mission.

  ‘I’m a junior trainee,’ he said.

  Very good. What are you, junior trainee?

  He thought hard and quickly. People who lied to these things tended to have short, unhappy lives. On the other hand, he didn’t think he’d be much better off telling it the whole truth.

  ‘Scared,’ he said. Silence; then the voice in his head laughed softly. Nice answer, it said. Bear in mind that I am permitted three questions. ‘Are you?’

  You didn’t know that?

  Erskine tried a little smile. It came out droopy and sad. ‘Like I said, I’m a junior trainee. We were going to do magic swords in my second year at college, but we ran out of time.’

  Unfortunate. What are you, scared junior trainee?

  He managed to drag his stare off the sword and onto his watch face. ‘Late,’ he said. ‘My boss is waiting for me upstairs, so if it’s no trouble—’

  Very well. The risk is yours to take, if you insist on it. Please note that Weyland Metal Industries and its successors in title accept no liability in respect of death or injury incurred as a result of false or misleading answers, for further details see handbook. Pause. Your last chance. Is there anything you’d like to say at this point?

  Erskine swallowed hard and licked his lips. ‘Urn,’ he said.

  Um?

  ‘Can we go now? Only, Miss Spitzer did say ten minutes, and I’ve still got to put all this junk back in the locker.’

  He listened for a moment, but the voice had gone, and all he could hear was his own heart pounding. Well, he said to himself, got away with that, then.

  So far.

  Erskine shuddered and started stuffing weapons back inside the cabinet. His hands were bleeding where he’d lost the patches of skin, but they were still so cold and numb he couldn’t feel any pain. It took him a long time to reset the combination, with fingers that felt like huge overripe bananas.

  ‘There you are,’ Emily said as he scuttled through the fire door into reception. Of course, she couldn’t quite give it Colin Gomez’s unforgivably patronising tone. Presumably that only came when you were real management. ‘You found one, then.’

  Erskine nodded. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘In the golf bag.’

  ‘Fine. Really inconspicuous, he won’t suspect a thing.’ She sighed. ‘I was going to take the Tube, but if you insist on lugging that thing around with you, the firm can bloody well pay for a taxi. We’ll be about an hour and a half,’ she called out to reception, who made a note in the going-out-and-coming-in book. ‘Come on, you,’ she said to Erskine. ‘And if you can make it look like you’re not with me, that’d be something.’

  Like the Delphic oracle or a crystal ball, Frank’s ham sandwich with Emily had answered some questions and raised an uncomfortable quantity of others. As he peeled the Door off the cabin wall and lay down on the bed, he made an effort at correlating the results.

  Questions definitely answered. Yes, she was now an unmistakable and unavoidable issue, something he was going to have to deal with, one way or the other. It wasn’t an issue he particularly wanted to face, because love is like consumer credit: a refusal often offends. He’d always had a tendency to believe what people told him, and ever since he could remember, his parents had given him the impression-in the nicest, most loving way imaginable-that he was neither use nor ornament, and nothing he’d done or experienced since leaving home had given him cause to question their assessment. It was logical, therefore, to assume that any girl he offered his heart to would find it about as desirable as junk mail; and then there’d be all that tiresome lovelorn mooning-about to get through before he could draw a line under the whole business and move on to something else. Certainly, if God had come to Frank in a dream and asked him what he wante
d for Christmas, he wouldn’t have put true love at the top of the list. Come to think of it, he’d probably have ended up asking for socks and soap on a rope, because as far as he knew he’d never really wanted anything-which explained why at one stage he’d had ten million pounds in his bank account, and never spent it on anything except underwear and convenience foods.

  Yes, but doesn’t everybody want true love? Everybody else. He had the advantage over them of having seen it in action, close up. His parents had been utterly devoted to each other, he knew that for stone-cold fact; for one thing, his mother was under the influence of J. W. Wells & Co’s universally acclaimed love philtre, guaranteed to ensure true love for ever, and Dad well, dosing him with the stuff would’ve been like pouring bottled water into the Great Lakes. A fat lot of good true love had done them, though; true love and unlimited wealth and even the Portable Door, but if you had to sum them up in one word, it’d have to be miserable. Why else, after all, would they have built their own pocket universe and retired into it? That, Frank recognised, had left him with a rather jaundiced view of love, not to mention money and magic. As far as he could tell, all three were in the same category as satellite TV and broadband: everybody says you’ve got to get it, so you do, and then it either doesn’t work or turns out not to be worth having. In which case, why bother?

  Not the most constructive world-view, he was perfectly ready to admit, but it was the one he was stuck with, and there didn’t seem to be a lot he could do about it. Take away love and money, though, and what were you left with? All he could think of was Doing Good; and somehow he’d never been able to get himself particularly worked up about that. He had no quarrel with other people; most of the other people he’d met had turned out to be quite nice, on balance. But the thought of spending his life doing nice things for them had never really grabbed his enthusiasm. The insurance thing, with Mr Sprague, had been the closest he’d been able to get. It was Doing Good, because people who would’ve died or been horribly mutilated didn’t and weren’t. Also, he got paid money for it, and (most important of all) it hadn’t called for any real effort on his part. Nip through the Door, hold up a bit of cardboard with some writing on it, nip back, the rest of the day’s your own. True, there was also the heavy maths, figuring out precisely when and where he had to intervene, but he’d never really minded that. He hadn’t enjoyed it, but it had been a not-too-irksome chore; somewhere between a little light dusting and ironing while watching something good on TV.

  Fine; not much of a life, all told, but a hell of a lot better than working for local government. Now, though, it looked like all that was about to go up in smoke, thanks to the question answered and the question posed; yes, I’m in love, and what the hell happened to Mr Sprague?

  Well. There wasn’t a lot Frank could do about the question answered. Like a man trapped in a subterranean cavern rapidly filling with water, he was just going to have to wait and see what happened on that score. Mr Sprague, though: different kettle of fish. He didn’t know much about these things-and Emily, for all that she was now officially the most wonderful person on earth, hadn’t been much use at all-but it did seem quite likely that the George Sprague thing was because of him, and quite possibly his fault. In which case, it was up to him to do something about it. The problems of others which weren’t his responsibility might not have interested him much, but he was red-hot on clearing up his own messes. It was, he recognised, about all the character he had. When he was fourteen, his bedroom had been tidy. It was that bad.

  Frank rolled off the bed and stood up. He hadn’t a clue where to start, so the only option open to him was to go and ask someone. And, since he couldn’t think of anybody else to ask

  He spread out the Door and walked through it into Mr Sprague’s office. This time, to be on the safe side, he didn’t go straight into Mr Sprague’s actual inner lair. Instead, he chose a patch of wall in a corridor halfway between the secretary’s office and the toilet. Luckily there was nobody about, and he rolled up the Door and put it away. Then he presented himself before what was her name? He’d heard George say it many times, but he hadn’t taken it in. Luckily, he’d never actually met her; the most she’d been was a squeaky voice at the other end of a phone line.

  ‘Hello,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Any chance of a quick word with George?’ She looked at him, whatever her name was. ‘How did you get in here?’ she said.

  ‘Front door was open,’ he replied, innocent as a lamb, ‘so I came on up. Is he in? I can come back if he’s not.’

  Deep frown. ‘He’s not expecting you, then.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And your name?’

  ‘Frank Carpenter.’

  Where he’d got the charm from, he had no idea. Definitely not from his parents, who between them had enough of that precious quality to fill a very small acorn cup. Dad had once told him he guessed it must be from the non-human side of his family tree, a remark that had puzzled him a lot until he’d met Mr Tanner’s mother. One drop of her personality diluted with, say, the Pacific Ocean, and you’d probably get charm. Anyway, regardless of where he’d got it from, he had it, occasionally, mostly when dealing with harassed middle-aged women. Right now, he guessed, it was the only thing stopping him from being slung out into the street.

  ‘I’ll ask,’ the secretary said. It was clearly a huge concession, but Frank doubted whether it’d be enough. He liked George, but he had an idea that he suffered fools and time-wasters as gladly as fire does water.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said gloomily. Then, on the off chance, he turned the charm tap till it jammed and added, ‘Sorry, can you spare me a second?’

  She hesitated, hand on intercom switch. ‘Well?’

  Big frown. ‘Not quite sure how to put this.’ (And that was no lie.) ‘You’ll think this is a very strange question, but—’ Another hesitation. Bank up the suspense, engage her curiosity. Then just blurt it out, as though you’ve tried not to ask the question and failed. ‘Do you think George has been acting a bit oddly today?’

  Frown. ‘What makes you say that?’

  Interesting reply. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’m imagining it. Only - well, I spoke to him on the phone earlier, and I couldn’t help thinking he wasn’t—’

  ‘Quite himself?’

  (Bingo!)

  ‘Exactly,’ Frank said gratefully; no need to act there. ‘And I was a bit worried, so I dropped everything and came straight over.’

  The secretary considered him as though he was a crossword clue. ‘You’re a friend of his, then?’

  ‘Oh yes. Friend of the family, really. Uncle George. He’s known me since before I was born.’ Which was true, of course. ‘I don’t know,’ he added quickly, ‘I expect I’m making a great big fuss over nothing. I think I’d better go-I know how busy he is and I don’t want to be a nuisance.’

  ‘No, don’t do that,’ she said; and Frank thought, if I really did get it from the goblins, then thank you, little scaly people, for sharing your DNA with me. ‘Actually, he’s not that busy right now. I’ll tell him you’re here, and you can go right in.’

  ‘Actually.’ Don’t screw it up now, Frank ordered himself. ‘I think it’d be better if I just went in unannounced. It’s this game we used to play when I was a kid. Pretty childish, of course, but you know what it’s like in families.’

  Pure babbling, of course; but if she hesitated, it was only for a moment, until he’d given her a winning smile. It wasn’t an expression he’d had much experience with, and without a mirror handy he had no idea how it’d come out. But it must’ve been good enough, because she smiled back and said, ‘You go on, then. Shall I get you both some coffee?’

  ‘That’s very kind, but it gives me the most dreadful indigestion.’

  ‘You should try decaff.’

  Sad smile. ‘Makes no difference, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Oh dear. Would you prefer tea?’

  ‘Tea’s worse.’ He reached for the door handle, gave it a twist as though wri
nging its neck, and dived into the office.

  Mr Sprague was sitting behind his desk; well, where else would he be? The odd thing was, he had his feet up on the desktop, and was reading a newspaper. Upside down.

  As soon as he saw Frank, the paper collapsed like a tent in a hurricane, and the feet were whisked off the desk. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Mr Sprague barked at him, but his voice sounded scared. ‘I mean, who are you?’

  There hadn’t been many sudden flashes of insight in Frank’s life, and he found the sensation bewildering. Nevertheless, when he replied, his voice was surprisingly steady.

  ‘You know perfectly well who I am,’ he said. ‘Where’s George?’

  The owner of Honest John’s House of Monsters wasn’t really called John. That harmless deception aside, however, he generally did his best to earn his self-awarded adjective. When he’d told Amelia Carrington that her order wasn’t ready yet, he’d been telling the truth. His mother had always insisted that the truth, rather like major credit cards, is accepted everywhere.

  Fine.

  He reached down and grabbed hold of the lid. Properly speaking, it was too heavy for one man to lift on his own, but Neville the trainee had already gone home and the winch was bust. He leaned back against the weight and heaved, ignoring the strongly worded communique from the muscles of his back.

  The problem as he saw it was that, by all accounts, Amelia Carrington shared his single-minded sincerity. If she said he’d be killed if he didn’t deliver on time, she meant it, and there was precious little he could do about it.

  The lid lifted eight inches. Then the strain on his fingers and elbow tendons got too much for him, and he let go.

  Needless to say, the problem lay with the livestock. He had a very good breeding ewe-possibly the finest in the country: Best of Show at Smithfield last year, and Best In Class at the Bath & West three years running-and a thoroughbred drake with a better pedigree than the Duke of Kent. The problem was, they didn’t like each other. Nor was it one of those quirky, Bogardand-Hepburn love/hate relationships, which only takes a gentle pressure on the right levers to convert it into a fiery romance. The ugly fact was, the last time he’d managed to coax the drake into the ewe’s pen, she’d tried to eat him.