Angelmaker (36 page)

Hah
.

A moment later, the patrol has gone and Edie continues her climb. One foot up, and here’s a convenient ledge … she reels in the rope.
Off to meet a fair lady, tra la la
. Yes, indeed: Dotty Catty, not dotty at all but sharp as a tack. In Edie’s pocket, the note telling her where to go and how to get there, and when. Other foot, up. She stops, listening for the sound of a karabiner tinkling against a stone wall, giving her away. No. It’s fine. Someone moving glassware on the second floor. Up, up.

Sweat rolls down her back, between her shoulder blades, and her legs tremble. It’s a long way down. She grins to herself, and starts the traverse. Girls wishing to serve their country, indeed.

Ten minutes later, she hauls herself up through a narrow window, and finds herself looking into the saddest, most beautiful, most aged face she has ever seen.

Dotty Catty is waiting for her.

M
ercer puts down the phone and glances at Polly, the Bold Receptionist, who shrugs. Mercer frowns.

“No arrest warrants,” he says moodily.

Joe Spork contemplates the changes in his life over the last twenty-four hours which make not being under warrant of arrest a piece of active good news, and tries to imagine a further twist in the world where it is for some reason worse rather than better.

“Does that mean I can go home?”

“It does not. Bees have been seen in the sky over Paris. And Berlin. An unseasonal swarm which baffles apiarists. There’s a quirky story about a mechanical hive in Florence, too. ‘An ornamental sculpture at Palazzo Lucrezia near Fiesole, believed to be a timepiece, has resumed its function after nearly thirty years …’ And a rumour from Mumbai. Apparently there’s been a distressing lapse in normal diplomatic practice. A deniable operation through Jammu into Gilgit-Baltistan to stir up trouble—which is normal, only this time everyone seems to know about it. Karachi isn’t taking it well at all. And remember, Joe, please, these are nuclear states. All right?

“This is still going on. In fact, it’s getting bigger.” Mercer shakes his head plaintively. “Who makes mechanical bees, for God’s sake? Who creates a superweapon or a superwhatever-it-is and makes it so bloody whimsical?”

When Joe makes no answer, Mercer picks up his cup and starts to wander. It is his habit, when he is thinking very hard, to pace and talk and sip at something which ought to be hot and is now cold. Occasionally he complains about it, as if someone should have done something. Then he fights off any attempt to remove it, and carries on. At least two of his assistants have quit after being growled at for cup theft when they were under orders to bring fresh beverages.

Joe waits for Mercer to explain. He doesn’t. He just wanders jaggedly, eyes fixed now on the middle distance, now on the surface of his gelid coffee.

“I need to go and see Joyce,” Joe says finally. “She needs to hear it from someone she knows. They won’t call her because she’s not officially family.”

Mercer sighs. “I will talk to Joyce.”

“She doesn’t know you.”

“Even so. No, Joe,” Mercer adds sharply. “I said there were no arrest warrants. That does not mean that there is nothing fishy going on. It means only that the fishiness is fishier than that.”

“What fishiness?”

Mercer sighs. “I can’t find Tess.”

Joe stares at him. “What?”

“It’s perfectly simple. The barmaid who by your own admission had the hots for you is not available for comment. I cannot find her.”

“I don’t see—”

“I sent a man down to Wistithiel to retrace your steps. It seemed like a good idea. No one can find her, Joe. She’s missing.”

“What do you mean, ‘missing’?” Joe demands, but Mercer considers this question too ridiculous to deserve an answer. Joe shakes his head. “She’s probably gone off on a trip or something. Visiting an old boyfriend.”

“Almost certainly. Her credit card was used at the railway station. All perfectly normal. But then, as well, there has apparently been a fire at Hinde’s Reach House. An old wartime agricultural facility, you’ll be pleased to know, and presently mothballed. The place seems to have been completely immolated. Brother Theodore Sholt, a hermetic monk, was rescued by firemen and taken to a medical facility for the treatment of mild smoke-inhalation. Which medical installation is a matter of some confusion. The paperwork has been misfiled. Do you not smell the fish, Joe? Honestly? Because they seem pretty ripe to me.”

“All right, I smell them.”

Mercer hesitates. “In your own right, Joe, there are people you could call on regarding the extra-legal aspects of all this. People with their ears to the ground who have connections in shady places.”

“No.”

“I realise you’re not fond of being Mathew’s son, and that you might incur liabilities as a result, but at the same time—”

“No. I’m not going down that road. I’m me, not him. Not his shadow or his remnant. Not their bloody crown prince, to bring back the glory days. Me.”

Mercer raises his hands, palms up. “Well. If you will not exert yourself to your own advantage, can I at least take it that you will not work to your detriment?”

Joe shrugs. Mercer apparently takes this as a yes. “So as I say, if you will forgive the repetition, I will talk to Joyce.”

“I can do it.”

“Of course you can. But no one is looking for me with a view to arrest and interrogation.”

“Well, no one’s looking for me, either.”

“Yes, they are.”

“But—”

“It is a ruse.”

“But—”

“Joe, listen. Please. The fact that there is no paperwork means one of two things. It could theoretically mean that you are home free. It could mean that Rodney Titwhistle has looked more closely into the matter and realised that you are a cog in someone else’s machine, and not a very interesting one. Or it could mean that he has ascertained that you are absolutely dead centre of his bullseye, and he has vanished you from the official files so as to facilitate his next officially unofficial but unofficially official move.”

“And you think it’s the latter.”

“Did he give you any reason to think he was likely to go away? Do you honestly, cross your heart, look back on last night and think it could possibly all be okay this morning?”

“… No,” Joe Spork mutters at last.

“Then I will call Joyce.” Mercer pauses, as if reviewing the conversation. “When did you get so gung-ho?”

“I’m not. I don’t want this. I want to be left alone.”

“Then keep your head down.”

Joe scowls mulishly. “What about my VAT?”

Mercer stares at him. “What?”

“My VAT. I’ve got to get my papers in order for the shop. Otherwise it all comes down. I could lose the warehouse.”

“Joe, please—”

Joe Spork hunkers down upon himself. For all the world, he looks like a human tortoise, and might remain in his shell for another fifty years, until Mercer’s arguments have dried up and blown away. “It’s my home, Mercer.”

“I will send someone for your papers. We’ll get them done and delivered through the firm. But this is not the time to worry about VAT. All right?”

“I have obligations, Mercer.”

Mercer contemplates him for a moment with an odd expression.

“Obligations.”

“Yes.”

“To yourself? To Joyce? I need to know about these obligations.”

“Why?”

“Because your obligations are germane. I need to take them into account. I thought I was only protecting you. If there’s more to it than that, I need to know.”

“He was my friend!” Joe yells abruptly. “That’s all I mean. I suppose that doesn’t really matter very much now, does it? He was annoying and loud and he got me into trouble. But I never had to be alone if I didn’t want to. There was always Billy and he’s dead. All right?” He has risen to his feet, fingers curled and palms up, legs about a shoulder width apart. A pugilist, rooting himself for a fight. He stops, glances down, sees his hands and puts them away. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I liked him, too. Infuriating little berk.” Mercer blows air through his teeth. “But that is all, isn’t it? You haven’t got some other stake in all this?”

“That’s all.”

The Bold Receptionist shifts in her chair. Something hosiery-related makes a shuddering sound which draws the eye. “What would you do if you were free to act, Mr. Spork?”

“I am free.”

“Well. Assume there is no threat. What would you do?”

“I’d get some sleep. And a shower. Go to Harticle’s and find out about my grandfather. Get his jazz recordings from the lock-up, and the bloody golden bee! I want to know what’s going on!”

Oh
.

“All right,” Mercer says. “Thank you, Polly. Joe … There are rules to your situation. All right? And these are they: do not look for new faces in your life. Be paranoid. You have been shown the stick. At some point they will show you the carrot. It is a lie. There is no carrot. Polly and I are your only friends. We are all the carrot you have. Is that understood?”

“Yes.”

“For twelve hours or so, we are quite possibly in hiatus. Something big is going on and you are touched by it, but unless you are actively deceiving me, which would be very bad …”—Joe shakes his head vigorously—“then you have a chance of dealing yourself out. If you can be demonstrably dense and unexciting—if after your recent brush with the very wide and alarming world of power, you dive like a mole into your hill and do not emerge—then there is a vanishingly small but pleasing possibility that you may be bothered no further. I suspect that is greatly to be desired … But for it to happen … you need to be a small person.”

Joe ponders. Then, with a reluctance he himself finds very curious, he nods. He understands the argument, understands it in fact far better than meteoric Mercer, whose own life is strewn with moments of significance, public showmanship, and occasional catastrophe. It is the chosen path of Mathew’s son: be quiet, be compliant, let the world slip over you and around you unnoticed. Bend with the wind. Because the tall tree gets hit by lightning and the high corn breaks in a gale. A child’s promise: I will have a life, not a legend.

And yet here, today, it feels like cowardice instead of prudence. Billy is dead and Joe has been assailed by myrmidons from a sort of shadow Britain where the rules do not apply. Some unacknowledged part of him is angry and combative, wants answers and confrontations, wants to be judged and found rightful, and doesn’t want to look like a small person in front of the Bold Receptionist.

“You need a shower,” Polly says. “Mercer, he’s just lost a friend and he wants to do something about it. He needs to wash and have a cup of tea and he needs to sit there and let it settle a bit.”

“That’s right,” Joe says, because Polly says it, and then realises that it may also be true. His skin is twinging at the thought of hot water.

“Actually,” Polly puts in, “a bath would be better. With a duck. And possibly toast.”

“There’s a bathroom here,” Mercer says a bit doubtfully.

“What’s it like?”

“Eerie, to be honest.”

“Then I’d prefer a hotel,” Joe says firmly. Eerie, on top of everything else, he can do without.

Polly tuts. “He can stay with me.” She glances at Joe politely. “If you’d like. You shouldn’t have to be by yourself in some hotel. I’ve got plenty of space and Mercer will know where to get me if anything happens. It’s discreet and it has Cradle’s panic buttons for emergencies. There’s a nice bed in the spare room and lots of hot water. And a rubber duck you can borrow.”

Rubber duck
has somehow become the most erotic expression in the English language. Joe Spork stares at her. He looks at her mouth and wonders whether she will say it again. She doesn’t.

“You really have a rubber duck?” he says hopefully.

“Actually I have two rubber ducks,” she confirms, “but one of them is no longer seaworthy and is, as you might say, retired. I like ducks.” He sees a flash of her tongue on the D.

I like ducks
. She cannot possibly have meant that to sound the way it did. Did it sound that way? Or was that only him? Mercer looks quite unaffected. Fevered imaginings. Restraint. Joe finds himself wishing he could be a duck, see the things that duck has seen, though of course he would then be unable to do anything about them. Polly smiles at him encouragingly.

“See?” she says to Mercer. “He looks less like a dead mouse just thinking about it.”

This ought to dampen Joe’s sense of acceptance, but somehow it doesn’t. Being called a dead mouse by Polly is better than being called handsome by anyone else—or so it seems to him at the moment. A shower or—amazing idea—a bubble bath might just be the beginning of life. He still has his arms crossed, but he loosens them a little to say thank you. He wonders whether he really does want to have sex with this woman as much as he thinks he does, or whether it’s just deprival and crisis. And then he wonders what it means to wonder whether you want to have sex with someone. Surely it’s a thing where you want or you don’t want. He concludes that he thinks too much. He wonders how many times in a day he thinks that, and then stops himself, because the Bold Receptionist is looking at him as if she can hear every word.

“My car’s parked at the back,” she says.

“Good, then.” Mercer puts down the cup. “We’ll all be in touch.”