The Better Mousetrap

by Tom Holt

  ‘Give it here. Now.’ Very slowly and reluctantly, Frank knelt down, rolled up his trouser leg and removed a cardboard tube from inside his left sock. He parted with it so reluctantly that Emily reckoned it must have taken the skin off his fingertips. ‘There,’ he said. ‘That’s the lot. Promise.’

  The girl nodded grimly; the boy gave Frank a faint, weak smile, as if to say I’m proud of you, son, but we both know what my opinion’s worth. The girl turned her head away and said, ‘Come on, Paul, we’ve got a lot to do. Goodbye, Frank, look after yourself.’ Then she gave Emily a long stare, took three paces forward and vanished. A moment later, her voice called out, ‘Here, boy’; and Erskine, who’d been curled up fast asleep beside the egg-and-bacon-roll-man’s shack, jumped up, sniffed the air, trotted after her with his tail wagging and disappeared too.

  ‘Bye, Mum,’ Frank said.

  The boy looked as though he was about to follow; then he stopped and turned back. ‘You could always come with us, you know. I mean, yes, we’ve had our differences, and—’

  ‘Thanks, Dad. But no.’

  ‘Oh.’ A tiny pinpoint of despair, small and bright as a distant star, glowed briefly in the boy’s eyes. Then he shrugged. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘if ever you change your mind, you know where we are.’ Frank nodded, said nothing; the boy forced his mouth into a two-dimensional smile, then turned and looked at Emily. ‘Look after him for me, will you? It’s his mother, you see, they never really—’ He shrugged, turned away, turned back again. ‘Nearly forgot,’ he said. ‘There’s forty million US dollars in your name in the First State Bank of Wisconsin. Just a little something left over from the old days, no use to me any more, but for God’s sake don’t tell your mum, all right?’

  Frank nodded. ‘Thanks, Dad.’

  ‘That’s all right. Sorry about the Doors.’

  ‘Forget it. Bye, Dad.’

  ‘Bye, Frank,’ the boy said; then he too walked three paces forward and disappeared. Behind her, Emily heard the sizzle of an egg landing in hot oil. She looked at Frank, who shook his head slowly.

  ‘My parents,’ he said. ‘Sorry about that.’

  ‘It’s all right, I understand, I know you must be feeling really upset right now but later we’ll talk about it and maybe it won’t seem so bad,’ was what Emily fully intended to say. But there was some sort of glitch in the translation, and what actually came out of her mouth was, ‘Forty million doll—’

  ‘Yup,’ Frank said, then added, ‘Better than a kick in the head, I guess.’ Then, quite suddenly, he smiled broadly. ‘Considerably better than a kick in the head, actually.’

  ‘No Door, though,’ Emily pointed out.

  ‘True.’ Frank was grinning so broadly, it was a wonder that his head didn’t fall off. ‘But what the hell. Emily.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What would you do if you suddenly came into forty million dollars?’

  Emily thought for a moment. ‘I think I’d find a dragon who had eighty million dollars and challenge it to a game of gin rummy,’ she said. ‘And then I’d find another dragon with two hundred and forty million and see if it fancied playing whist. And then I’d find two more dragons worth a total of four hundred and eighty million and-you do know how to play bridge, don’t you?’

  Frank smiled at her. With or without a Door he had only one life, and without a purpose, existence is meaningless. But with a purpose—

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘But I’m sure you can teach me.’

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN