The Better Mousetrap

by Tom Holt

  Frank pursed his lips. ‘He’s a management trainee, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, then.’

  Emily frowned. ‘Good point,’ she said. ‘But no, I don’t think so. It’s like listening to - oh, I don’t know, an insect or something. No,’ she added impatiently, ‘it’s not even that. It’s like he’s not even real.’

  Frank considered that. ‘You think he’s like that whatever-itwas in Mr Sprague’s office,’ he said. ‘The one that turned out to be a hair.’

  ‘Oh God,’ Emily said. ‘No, I wasn’t thinking that, actually. But you could well be right. Something inanimate that she’s brought to life.’

  Frank mumbled, ‘Like I said, management trainee,’ under his breath, but not out loud. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘if that’s true, so what? It’s no skin off our noses, is it?’

  The look Emily gave him started off various trains of thought in his mind. One of them was that if they really had found true love and were going to spend the rest of their lives together, inevitably there were going to be a lot more looks like that and he might as well get used to them.

  ‘He knows I’m alive,’ she said. {Stupid, she didn’t add.) ‘And Colin Gomez has just told the Carrington bitch that he killed me.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ Frank said quickly. ‘You mean, everything’s screwed up.’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Like,’ she went on, ‘bang goes our chance of sneaking up on her quietly. She’ll know that Colin’s lied to her, which means curtains for his palace coup idea. Probably for Colin, too, though I can’t say the thought upsets me terribly much.’

  Frank frowned. ‘You don’t really mean that.’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Oh. Right, fine.’

  Another look. But he wasn’t unduly concerned. Close observation of his parents’ relationship had led him to the conclusion that an unshakeable belief on the female’s part that the male is an idiot is a fundamental ingredient of true love. Odd, he’d always thought, but presumably there was a sound evolutionary reason for it. ‘He tried to kill me, for God’s sake,’ Emily said, maybe a tad defensively. ‘And besides, he’s a jerk.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘Insufferable bloody man. So inconsiderate.’

  ‘Well, there you go.’

  ‘Right.’ She scowled. ‘No, we can’t just let her kill him. Bloody nuisance,’ she snarled. ‘As if we hadn’t got enough to do.’

  The miracle of troll’s blood was something that Frank couldn’t really get his head around, though he believed in it. But maybe it wasn’t such a miracle after all, because as Emily spoke he could hear her thinking, and besides, he’s promised to make me a partner. Perhaps at some deep level he was mildly shocked. If so, he overrode the reaction. She might be the most wonderful person in the world and the meaning of his universe, but she was still Corporate. They think differently from the rest of us. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘we’ll add saving Colin Gomez to the list, then.’

  She shrugged. ‘Well, it’s only fair. You save your Mr Sprague, I’ll save Colin. Assuming,’ she went on, ‘we both live that long. Come on, we’ve got to get out of here, before bloody Erskine tells her I’m alive. Typical Colin Gomez,’ she sighed bitterly. ‘Should’ve known better than to get involved in any scheme he’s responsible for. Get the Door and let’s be on our way.’

  Frank took the cardboard tube from his pocket and teased the Door out with his fingertips. ‘Where to?’ he asked.

  ‘What? Oh, anywhere. No, hang on, let me think.’ Emily turned her back on him for a moment while he plastered the Door onto the nearest wall. She was thinking: I know precisely where we should go; back in time to the day Amelia Carrington was born - no, I couldn’t kill a baby, it’d be impossible, spiders or no spiders. All right, nine months earlier, we could kidnap her dad or something, and then it wouldn’t really be killing. Except, of course, that it would. The sad fact is, she admitted to herself (blaming the excessive honesty on the troll’s blood, but it wasn’t really that), it doesn’t matter whether we do it here and now or thirty years ago or before she was even born, it’s still basically the same thing; and killing dragons is one thing, but people—

  And besides, she added, if there’s no Amelia Carrington there’d be no Carringtons, and I won’t get my partnership—

  Maybe that one was troll’s blood; if so, Emily really wished it hadn’t got into her system. You could mess it up a bit with logic, and say that if you made it so that Carringtons never happened you’d be undoing all the good they’d done in the world, all the bank vaults they’d disinfested, all the spiders they’d squashed; that might be true, but it wasn’t what was motivating her. Simple facts: she wanted her partnership, but she didn’t want to have to kill anybody, even that bitch, in order to get it.

  She wanted—

  True love should’ve made that an easy sentence to complete, but it didn’t. Yes, all right, she wanted true love, and it was standing by the wall right now looking mildly sheepish, with an I-don’t-want-to-rush-you-but-it’s-time-we-made-a-move expression on its face. Fine. But she wanted the partnership and the clear conscience as well. Picky, but there you go.

  ‘What we need to know,’ Emily said firmly, ‘is what the Carrington woman’s up to. Otherwise we’re just chasing our tails.’

  ‘Agreed.’ Frank nodded. ‘So, how do we find that out?’

  Sigh. ‘I don’t know. I mean, we can be fairly sure that she wanted to get hold of the Door, once she’d figured out it was out there and on the loose, which basically means ever since you saved me from the apple tree. She’d have guessed it had to be the Door, since nothing else could’ve beaten the Better Mousetrap that Colin used to get rid of me. But that still raises the question of why she had Colin set the Mousetrap for me in the first place. I mean, what harm did I ever do her? If she wanted to get rid of me, why not just fire me?’

  Frank frowned. ‘Didn’t want to pay redundancy money?’

  Emily thought about that. ‘Wouldn’t put it past her,’ she replied. ‘But that’s not our way in the magic biz, we’re sort of above all that kind of thing. There’s got to be another reason, something special about me—’ She broke off. ‘And there’s nothing special about me, is there?’

  ‘Well—’

  ‘No,’ she said quickly, ‘there isn’t. I’m just an employee. In fact, I’m amazed that she even knew I existed. But there’s got to be something about me that’d cause her real problems, get in the way of a big deal or whatever.’ She shook her head. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘that’s what we’ve got to find out. And since we can’t puzzle it out for ourselves from first principles, we’re just going to have to ask someone.’

  ‘Great. Who’d know the answer?’

  ‘Well, she would, obviously. But apart from her—’ Emily scowled. ‘Nobody,’ she said. ‘That’s the way she does things.’

  ‘And you don’t feel like asking her.’

  ‘Not really, no.’ Frank waited for Emily to say something. He was hoping for a short but powerful speech, about how none of this stuff really mattered now that they had each other, and the Door, of course. How they could simply turn their backs on this whole mess, go somewhere and somewhen Amelia Carrington couldn’t follow them, and just be happy. Not having the unfair advantage of troll’s blood, he couldn’t be sure that that was what she was thinking, but he was quietly confident nevertheless. After all, it was what he was thinking, and if they saw the world so differently, how come they were in love? So he waited, thinking: no hurry, she’ll say it in a moment or so, she’s probably just trying to think of the right words. He waited.

  ‘But,’ she said, ‘if that’s what it takes, we’ll bloody well have to ask her.’ ‘Oh.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  (Define true love, Frank thought. Specify the levels of love required in order for it to qualify as true. But later; not now.)

  ‘We can use the Door,’ Emily was saying
. ‘If we zoom straight into her office and we’re sharp enough about it, we can hit her over the head or something before she’s got a chance to do anything horrible to us. And then we can ask her, and—’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘What?’

  Frank took two steps away from the Door. ‘You carry on,’ he said. ‘Look, you don’t need me, I’ll probably just be in the way. You hang on to the Door. Let me have it back when you’ve finished with it. I’ll just sort of go away now.’

  He started to move but she grabbed his arm. ‘You’re scared,’ she said.

  He looked at her. ‘You should know,’ he said. ‘You’re the bloody telepath.’

  Emily let go of his sleeve. ‘What’s the matter?’ she said. ‘Don’t you want to help me?’

  ‘Of course. You can have the Door. You don’t need me.’

  ‘Look—’

  ‘No, you look.’ Frank hadn’t intended to sound angry. ‘More to the point, you listen.’ He took another step, then paused. ‘You can hear what I’m really saying, right? Fine. That’s a great gift, always assuming that you’re listening. But I don’t think you are, actually. I think you’ve got more important things on your mind right now. So, fine. You carry on.’

  ‘Frank, she’s been trying to kill me—’

  He closed his eyes. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And that’s really bad. She’s tried to kill you, for all I know she’s killed my friend George, and you reckon she’s up to some evil master plan. Whatever. But we’re lucky. We don’t have to hang around here and be involved. We can piss off through the Door, go anywhere, do anything; we don’t have to stay here and have adventures. Not,’ he added bitterly, ‘unless we want to. And I don’t. All right?’

  ‘No, it’s not all right.’ Emily’s eyes were bright with anger. ‘Oh, I know what you want. You want us to float away into our own little private universe where we can be happy ever after just gazing into each other’s eyes, just like,’ she heard herself add, as the data flowed undigested from his mind into her mouth, ‘just like your rotten mum and dad. You think that’s what being in love means, just the two of us for ever, and a wall of magic to keep the nasty world out.’

  ‘Well, yes, actually.’

  ‘Then you’re wrong. And so were your stupid parents. They didn’t run away because they were in love, they ran away because they couldn’t cope. But I’m not them. I can cope. I don’t want to live in a bubble, thanks all the bloody same. I want—’

  ‘You want to be a partner before you’re thirty.’

  Well, Emily thought. I was the one who raised the subject of bubbles; and now the bubble I’ve been living in has just gone pop. Because he’s right, that’s what I want. And not just a partner, but a partner in Carringtons, even though it’s a nasty, vicious collection of arse-lickers and psychotics who all ought to be put down in the interests of public safety. But that’s what I want.

  Wanted.

  ‘You make it sound silly,’ she said.

  Frank shook his head. ‘Far be it from me to judge,’ he said. ‘I mean, I never wanted anything till a few days ago, so I’m in no position to make fun of anybody. All I’m saying is, if that’s what you really want, you go ahead and get it, and feel free to use the Door if you think it’ll help. And then,’ he added, not looking at her, ‘when you’ve got what you want and that’s out of the way, maybe you’ll decide you want something else as well.’

  ‘In a bubble?’

  He shrugged. ‘Not necessarily. I don’t know much about these things-maybe the bubble isn’t actually mandatory. But to be honest with you, I can’t see how it’d work without one.’

  (And he thought: my God, here we are having a serious talk about our relationship, just like they do on the afternoon soaps. Never thought I’d find myself doing that. Next thing you know, I’ll be getting in touch with my inner feelings. Just fancy.) Emily pulled a face that would’ve curdled milk. ‘I just don’t want her to win, that’s all.’

  Frank had been about to leave, but he stopped. There was, after all, a grain of truth in that. Only a grain, but enough for a hard-working oyster to build a pearl around. He turned back and looked her in the eyes. ‘Are you really dead set on being a partner?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Fine. Why?’

  Excellent question; one she’d never stopped to ask herself. Of course, she knew the answer right away. ‘Because it’s there,’ she said. At which he nodded. ‘Good a reason as any,’ he said. ‘And because they don’t want me to. And so, if I make it, I’ve won.’ Emily frowned, playing back the simultaneous translation in her head. The two voices merged into one. ‘Bloody hell,’ she said. ‘That sounds really silly.’

  Frank shrugged. ‘People who live in bubbles shouldn’t play with needles. Actually,’ he went on, ‘I’m the one who was being silly. I don’t think being in love is a bubble any more. I think it’s more like—’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Like this.’

  Emily thought for a moment. Then she said, ‘You know what? I’m quite glad I met you. Otherwise—’

  ‘You’d be dead.’

  ‘Yes, but apart from that.’

  ‘Oh.’ So much for having a serious talk about our relationship.

  Frank thought about his friend Kevin (friend; he was the counter clerk at the Wayatumba general store. He’d spoken to him, what, two dozen times, over the years) who was always having relationships and, inevitably, the concomitant serious talks. It was OK, Kevin told him, once you’d mastered the knack of half-listening, taking in just enough of the gist of what she was saying to enable you to make the appropriate grunting noises at regular intervals, while allowing the rest of your mind to drift away and graze on more interesting topics, such as the All Blacks’ chances against Oz on Saturday. If you were really organised, you arranged to have the serious talk in the pub, so you could watch the footie on the big TV over her shoulder.

  ‘Sorry,’ Frank said, ‘I seem to have lost track. Where did we just get to?’

  Emily clicked her tongue at him. ‘I think we’d just decided that we’re each of us as bad as the other,’ she said. ‘You’ve got hopelessly woolly-minded romantic ideas about being in love, and I’ve spent my whole adult life chasing after a partnership for absolutely the wrong reasons. Something like that, anyhow.’

  ‘Ah, I see. So it’s basically a draw.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Fine. Now, can we go, please? Before this mad senior partner of yours comes along and turns us into frogs?’

  ‘Of course. Where do we go?’ Not again. ‘Anywhere. Vienna. Dar-es-bloody-Salaam. Let’s just go.’

  Frank reached for the handle of the Door, but before his fingers connected it started to turn. Hang on, he thought, it shouldn’t do that. It’s never done that before. What’s happening?

  And then the Door opened.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ‘Hello, you two,’ said Amelia Carrington.

  Immaculate in a simple grey business suit and almost austerely formal black court shoes, she stepped through the Door, followed by Colin Gomez, with a black eye and his arm in a sling. The Door closed behind them, fell off the wall and rolled itself up. Colin Gomez pounced on it, snatched it up with his good hand and stuffed it in his inside pocket.

  Surprisingly, Frank was the first to recover from the shock. He tried to grab Colin, but Emily stopped him by stamping on his foot. ‘Don’t,’ she said urgently. ‘They’re dangerous.’

  Amelia beamed at her. ‘She’s right, of course,’ she said. ‘Oh, I know you but you don’t know me. Amelia Carrington. And you’re Frank Carpenter,’ she added, with a subtle blend of curiosity and distaste. ‘I know ever such a lot about you.’

  ‘Dangerous in what way?’ Frank asked. Then he stopped abruptly, as a pain in his head made everything impossible. It only lasted two seconds, but that was long enough.

  ‘Colin,’ Amelia said, and without any apparent hesitation Colin Gomez handed her the Door. She produced its cardboard t
ube out of thin air, tucked it away and handed it back.

  ‘Now then,’ Amelia said. ‘Let’s get this over with as quickly as possible.’

  Emily backed away, dragging Frank with her; not that there was anywhere to go. There was a sort of irony in that; your deadly enemy’s got the Portable Door, and you honestly believe that running away might help?

  ‘The story so far,’ Amelia said, in the manner of someone making a private joke for her own amusement. ‘In about ten minutes’ time, you two misfits will walk through my office wall. She’ll be waving around a magic sword, in the naive belief that I’ll be scared of it. You’ll try and force me to tell you my evil cunning plan for world domination, and after that you’re going to stop me doing it by taking me back through time and marooning me in-‘ her upper lip curled in involuntary disgust ‘- 1963. That’s because neither of you have got the guts to kill me, but you really think I ought to be got out of the way, for the sake of the planet.’

  Emily looked at her. ‘That’s what we’re going to do?’

  Amelia nodded. ‘It was his idea.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Quite. Of course, it won’t work. While you’re dithering about being humane, I flatten you both against the wall with Schrodinger’s Ferret, and Colin-I’ve forgiven him, by the way, he’s too pathetic to squash, and he does earn the firm a great deal of money-Colin’s been hiding behind the filing cabinet all this time, just in case I can’t handle you myself, and Erskine comes rushing in from the interview room, and they jump on you.’ Amelia frowned. ‘At this point, things go slightly wrong. Well, Colin messes them up, actually. Don’t you, Colin?’

  Gomez nodded sadly. Not that his feelings mattered a damn, but he did seem very unhappy about the whole business.

  ‘Colin,’ Amelia went on briskly, ‘sees you-‘ stern glance at Frank, who winced ‘- picking up a hole-punch, presumably to throw at me. He overreacts-well, you did, you stupid man-and throws a thunderbolt. Only he misses,’ Amelia added, frowning. ‘And hits Erskine. Nothing left but a smell of burned hair and a brown patch on the wall. Which is why,’ she went on, with a faint sigh, ‘we’re all here. You see, I’m rather fond of Erskine.’