A Thursday Next Digital Collection: Novels 1-5 (53 page)

Jurisfiction was the fastest learning curve I had ever experienced. I think they were all expecting me to arrive a lot earlier than I did. Miss Havisham tested my bookjumping prowess soon after I arrived and I was marked up a dismal 38 out of a hundred. Mrs. Nakajima was 93 and Havisham a 99. I would always need a book to read from to make a jump, no matter how well I had memorized the text. It had its disadvantages but it wasn't all bad news. At least I could read a book without vanishing off inside it. . . .

THURSDAY NEXT
,
The Jurisfiction Chronicles

O
UTSIDE THE ROOM
, Snell tipped his hat and vanished off to represent a client currently languishing in debtor's prison. The day was overcast yet mild. I leaned on the balcony and looked down into the yard below at the children playing.

“So!” said Havisham. “On with your training now
that
hurdle is over. The Swindon Booktastic closing-down sale begins at midday and I'm in the mood for a bit of bargain-hunting. Take me there.”

“How?”

“Use your head, girl!” replied Havisham sternly as she grabbed her walking stick and thrashed it through the air a few
times. “Come, come! If you can't jump me straight there, then take me to your apartment and we'll drive—but hurry. The Red Queen is ahead of us and there is a boxed set of novels that she is particularly keen to get her hands on—we
must
get there first!”

“I'm sorry—” I stammered. “I can't—”

“No such word as
can't!
” exploded Miss Havisham. “Use the book, girl, use
the book!
”

Suddenly, I understood. I took the leather-bound Jurisfiction book from my pocket and opened it. The first page, the one I had read already, was of the Great Library. On the second page there was a passage from Austen's
Sense and Sensibility
and on the third a detailed description of my apartment back at Swindon—it was good, too, right down to the water stains on the kitchen ceiling and the magazines stuffed under the sofa. The rest of the pages were covered with closely printed rules and regulations, hints and tips, advice and places to avoid. There were illustrations, too, and maps quite unlike any I had seen before. There were, in fact, far
more
pages in the book than could possibly be fitted within the covers.

“Well?” said Havisham impatiently. “Are we going?”

I flicked to the page that held the short description of my apartment in Swindon. I started to read and felt Havisham's bony hand hang on to my elbow as the Prague rooftops and aging tenement buildings faded out and my own apartment hove into view.

“Ah!” said Havisham, looking around at the small kitchen with a contemptuous air. “And this is what you call home?”

“At the moment. My husband—”

“The one who you're not sure is alive or dead or married to you or not?”

“Yes,” I said firmly, “
that
one.”

She smiled at this and added with a baleful stare: “You wouldn't have an ulterior motive for joining me, would you?”

“No,” I lied.

“Didn't come to do something else?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Not some sort of
book privateer
or something, out for riches and adventure?”

I shook my head. Doing what I was doing for Landen might not have sat too well with Havisham, so I decided to keep myself to myself.

“You're lying about something,” she announced slowly, “but about
what
I'm not so sure. Children are such consummate liars. Have your servants recently left you?”

She was staring at the dirty dishes.

“Yes,” I lied again, not so keen on her disparagement anymore. “Domestic service is a tricky issue in 1985.”

“It's no bed of roses in the nineteenth century either,” Miss Havisham replied, leaning on the kitchen table to steady herself. “I find a good servant but they never stay. It's the lure of
them,
you know—the liars, the
evil ones.
”

“Evil ones?”

“
Men!”
hissed Havisham contemptuously. “The lying sex. Mark my words, child, for no good will ever come of you if you succumb to their charms—and they have the charms of a snake, believe me!”

“I'll try to keep on my toes,” I told her.

“And your chastity
firmly
guarded,” she told me sternly.

“Goes without saying.”

“Good. Can I borrow that jacket?”

She was pointing at Miles Hawke's Swindon Mallets jacket. Without waiting for a reply she put it on and replaced her veil with a SpecOps cap. Satisfied, she asked: “Is this the way out?”

“No, that's the broom cupboard. This is the way out over here.”

We opened the door to find my landlord with his fist raised ready to knock.

“Ah!” he said in a low growl. “Next!”

“You said I had until Friday,” I told him.

“I'm turning off the water. The gas, too.”

“You can't do that!”

“If you've got six hundred quid or a V1.2 dodo on you,” he leered, “perhaps I can be convinced not to.”

But his smirk changed to fear as the point of Miss Havisham's stick shot out and caught him in the throat. She pushed him heavily against the wall in the corridor. He choked and made to move the stick, but Miss Havisham knew just how much pressure was needed—she pushed the stick harder and he stayed his hand.

“Listen to me!” she snapped. “Annoy Miss Next once more and you'll have me to answer to. She'll pay you on time, you worthless wretch—you have Miss Havisham's word on
that!
”

He gasped in short breaths, the tip of Miss Havisham's stick stuck fast against his windpipe. His eyes were clouded with the panic of suffocation; all he could do was breathe fitfully and try to nod.

“Good!” replied Miss Havisham, releasing the man, who fell into a heap on the floor.

“The evil ones,” announced Miss Havisham. “You see what men are like?”

“They're not
all
like that,” I tried to explain.

“Nonsense!” replied Miss Havisham as we walked downstairs. “He was one of the better ones. At least he didn't attempt to lie his way into your favors. In fact, I would go as far as to say that this one was barely repulsive at all. Do you have a car?”

Miss Havisham's eyebrows rose slightly as she saw the curious paintwork on my Porsche.

“It was painted this way when I bought it,” I explained.

“I see,” replied Miss Havisham in a disapproving tone. “Keys?”

“I don't think—”

“The
keys,
girl! What was Rule One again?”

“Do exactly as you say.”

“Disobedient perhaps,” she replied with a thin smile, “but not forgetful!”

I reluctantly handed over the keys. Havisham grasped them with a gleam in her eye and jumped in the driver's seat.

“Is it the four-cam engine?” she asked excitedly.

“No,” I replied, “standard 1.6 unit.”

“Oh well!” snorted Havisham, pumping the accelerator twice before turning the key. “It'll have to do, I suppose.”

The engine burst into life. Havisham gave me a smile and a wink as she revved the engine up to the redline before briskly snapping the gearshift into first gear and dropping the clutch. There was a screech of rubber as we careered off up the road, the rear of the car swinging from side to side as the spinning wheels sought to find traction on the asphalt.

I have not been frightened many times in my life. Charging into the massed artillery of the Imperial Russian Army had a surreal detachment that I had found eerie rather than fearsome. Tackling Hades first in London and then on the roof of Thornfield Hall had been quite unpleasant. So had leading an armed police raid, and the two occasions I had stared at close quarters down the barrel of a gun hadn't been a bundle of joy either.

None of those, however,
even came close
to the feeling of almost certain death that I experienced during Miss Havisham's driving. We must have violated every road traffic regulation
that had ever been written. We narrowly missed pedestrians, other cars and traffic bollards and ran three traffic lights at red before Miss Havisham had to stop at a junction to let a juggernaut go past. She was smiling to herself, and although erratic and bordering on homicidal, her driving had a sort of
idiot savant
skill about it. Just when I thought it was impossible to avoid a postbox she tweaked the brakes, flicked down a gear— and missed the unyielding iron lump by the width of a hair.

“The carburetors seem slightly unbalanced!” she bellowed above the terrified screams of pedestrians. “Let's have a look, shall we?” She hauled on the handbrake and we slid sideways up a dropped curbstone and stopped next to an open-air café, causing a group of nuns to run for cover. Havisham climbed out of the car and opened the engine cover.

“Rev the car for me, girl!” she shouted. I did as I was told. I offered a weak smile to one of the customers at the café, who eyed me malevolently.

“She doesn't get out often,” I explained as Havisham returned to the driver's seat, revved the engine loudly and left the customers at the café in a cloud of foul-smelling rubber smoke.

“That's better!” yelled Miss Havisham. “Can't you hear it?
Much
better!”

All I could hear was the wail of a police siren that had started up.

“Oh, Christ!” I muttered; Miss Havisham punched me painfully on the arm.

“What was that for?”

“Blaspheming! If there is one thing I hate more than men, it's blaspheming—Get out of my way, you godless heathens!”

A group of people at a pedestrian crossing scattered in confused panic as Havisham shot past, angrily waving her fist. I looked behind us as a police car came into view, blue lights flashing, sirens blaring. I could see the occupants bracing themselves
as they took the corner; Miss Havisham dropped a gear and we took a tight left bend, ran the wheels on the curb, swerved to avoid a mother with a pram and found ourselves in a car park. We accelerated between the rows of parked cars, but the only way out was blocked by a delivery van. Miss Havisham stamped on the brakes, flicked the car into reverse and negotiated a neat reverse slide that took us off in the opposite direction.

“Don't you think we'd better stop?” I asked.

“Nonsense, girl!” snapped Havisham, looking for a way out while the police car nosed up to our rear bumper. “Not with the sales about to open. Here we go! Hold on!”

There was only one way out of the car park that didn't involve capture: a path between two concrete bollards that looked
way
too narrow for my car. But Miss Havisham's eyes were sharper than mine and we shot through the gap, bounced across a grass bank, skidded past the statue of Brunel, drove the wrong way down a one-way street, through a back alley, past the Carer's Monument and across the pedestrianized precinct to screech to a halt in front of a large queue that had gathered for the Swindon Booktastic closing-down sale—just as the town clock struck twelve.

“You nearly killed eight people!” I managed to gasp out loud.

“My count was closer to twelve,” returned Havisham as she opened the door. “And anyhow, you can't
nearly
kill someone. Either they are dead or they are not; and not one of them was so much as scratched!”

The police car slid to a halt behind us; both sides of the car had deep gouges down the side—the bollards, I presumed.

“I'm more used to my Bugatti than this,” said Miss Havisham as she handed me the keys, got out and slammed the
door, “but it's not so very bad, now is it? I like the gearbox especially.”

I knew both of the officers and they didn't look very amused. The local PD didn't much care for SpecOps and we didn't much care for them. They would be overjoyed to pin something on any of us. They peered at Miss Havisham closely, unsure of how to put their outrage at her flagrant disregard for the Road Traffic Act into words.

“You,” said one of the officers in a barely controlled voice, “you, madam, are in a lot of trouble.”

She looked at the young officer with an imperious glare.

“Young man, you have no idea of the word!”

“Listen, Rawlings,” I interrupted, “can we—”

“Miss Next,” replied the officer firmly but positively, “your turn will come, okay?”

I got out of the car.

“Name?”

“Miss
Dame-rouge,
” announced Havisham, lying spectacularly, “and don't bother asking me for my license or insurance— I haven't either!”

The officer pondered this for a moment.

“I'd like you to get in my car, madam. I'm going to have to take you in for questioning.”