Nothing But Blue Skies (17 page)

‘I'm not,' Paul replied, maybe a degree or so too vehemently.

‘My God.' Susan stared at him, then shook her head. ‘Well,' she said, ‘too late now. Should've done something about it while you had the chance, though if I were in your shoes I'd be looking into the possibility of buying my guardian angel a large drink. Takes all sorts, I suppose.'

Paul wasn't inclined to respond to that. In any event, Susan was absolutely right about the one thing that really mattered: too late now. He yawned ostentatiously and went back to the mailing list he'd spent the morning putting together; more junk mail, cascading indiscriminately through letterboxes like flood water. What a way to make a living.

He'd nearly finished when the door opened and two policemen walked in.

Paul shared the instinctive fear of policemen common to all white middle-class Englishmen, who are convinced that the police force is recruited exclusively from naturally gifted telepaths. As soon as they looked at him, he was sure they knew exactly what it was he'd done, even if he didn't; a defective brake light, a packet of crisps unwittingly pocketed in the checkout queue, where were you at 7.38 precisely on the night of 16 April? Other sections of society were more sceptical, less uptight. They could bring themselves to lie convincingly to policemen, stick their tongues out at them, maybe even throw the occasional bottle. Lucky them. Paul and his kind simply didn't have the knack.

He lurched to his feet, stammering something about how could he help them? The talking policeman (there's always one who talks and another who stands perfectly still and stares at the side of your head, watching the lies and hidden guilty secrets squirming behind the bone) said he was looking for a young woman by the name of Karen Orme, who (he had reason to believe) worked here.

‘Karen
Orme
. . .' Paul's mind had gone blank, as if someone had wiped it down with a damp cloth. ‘Oh, you mean
Karen
. . . Yes, she works here. Used to work here, I mean. She's left now.'

The policeman looked at him; Paul could feel his mind being downloaded, formatted, scanned and quite probably spellchecked. Shame washed over him like the spring tides, because he knew what a mess his mind was in, with random notions lying about on the floor, disorderly thoughts slung over the backs of chairs, unwashed fantasies crowding every flat surface. He felt a powerful urge to apologise, but he knew it wouldn't do him any good.

‘I see, sir,' the policeman said; his eyes made it obvious that he knew Paul was lying - which was news to Paul, but if a policeman asserted it, it must be true, surely? ‘Would you happen to know where I could find her?'

‘I—Paul shook his head. ‘Sorry,' he added, with feeling.

‘No forwarding address? Did she mention a new job she was going to, something like that?'

‘Sorry,' Paul repeated. ‘It was all quite sudden, actually. One moment she was here; the next - gone.'

Oh my God
, he realised,
now he thinks I murdered her. I didn't. Did I?

‘That sounds rather odd,' the policeman said.

‘It was,' Paul replied quickly. ‘Very.'

The policeman nodded. ‘Had there been any trouble of any sort?' he asked. ‘Any arguments or bad feeling?'

Paul's eyes opened wide. He knew what that meant: Karen had been caught stealing! That was impossible to believe - but needless to say he believed it, the way human beings always do. Besides, if she hadn't been stealing, why would the police be here looking for her?

‘I hadn't realised,' Paul said. ‘I mean, I hadn't noticed anything like that. I'd always thought she was like, you know, the model employee.'

The policeman nodded, didn't say anything. The conscious part of Paul's mind knew that this was one of the things they were trained to do, create an uncomfortable silence so that the hapless civilian would fill it with unguarded babble. Not that that mattered; there was probably a small part of each fish's brain that tried to point out that fat, juicy maggots didn't just hang there motionless in the water, but of course it was wasting its time. The silence was as unbearable as a full bladder, and he had to do something about it.

‘Mind you,' he said, ‘now I come to think of it, there always was
something
a bit odd about her. The way she did her job, mostly. Sort of - obsessive.'

The policeman raised an eyebrow.

‘And definitely a loner,' Paul ground on. ‘Never really got on with the rest of us - well, with Susan and me.' He turned his head towards his colleague, imploring her to join in and relieve him, but she wasn't having anything to do with it.

‘Not that she was, like, strange or anything. But definitely odd.'

The policeman moved his head up and down through five degrees. ‘And you're sure you don't know where she's gone? She didn't mention any family or friends who might be able to help us find her?'

‘Sorry,' Paul said. ‘Come to think of it, she never mentioned any family at all. And that's odd, isn't it?' The policeman hadn't blinked for over a minute; quite possibly they removed their eyelids surgically before they graduated from Hendon. ‘I mean, everybody talks about their family sooner or later, don't they?'

The policeman didn't say anything for five, possibly six seconds; then he breathed in through his nose and said ‘Thank you, you've been most helpful. Mr . . .?'

‘Willis. Paul Willis. 78A Philby Court, Casement Road.' He told them his home phone number, too. The policeman wrote it all down in a little book, then turned and looked at Susan. ‘Miss?' he said.

‘Hm?'

‘Could I have your name and address, please?'

Susan frowned. ‘Why?'

‘We need it for our records.'

‘Why?'

Paul couldn't do anything except close his eyes. This was terrible. How could Susan be so
stupid
?

‘In case we need to get in touch with you about anything.'

‘Why would you need to get in touch with me?' Susan said. ‘He's told you everything we know.'

Paul opened his eyes. The policeman was trying to read Susan's mind, but it wasn't working; he was sure he saw a little flicker of surprise on the man's face as his scanning beam was bounced back. But, oh God, why did she have to go and make an
exhibition
of herself like this?

‘All right,' the policeman replied. ‘That'll be all for now. Thank you for your help.'

He put enough spin on that last word to invest it with its own gravitational field, but if Susan noticed, she didn't show any sign of it. ‘That's all right,' Paul burbled quickly. ‘Any time.' But the policeman wasn't recognising his existence any more. He was concentrating exclusively on Susan. And not getting anywhere. After one last high-voltage stare, he turned round and marched out through the door, followed a moment later by his sidekick.

Almost immediately, reaction set in. Paul sat down where he hoped his chair was - luckily he was more or less on target - and tried not to be too obvious about shaking like a leaf. School was out in his mind, and the reactions came spilling noisily out into the playground -
bloody Susan, what the hell did she think she was playing at? My God, Karen's a thief. Or a terrorist, even. Just goes to show, you never can tell. So that's what it's like being grilled by the fuzz. Please, sir, can I be sick now?

‘What on earth,' Susan was saying, ‘do you think all that was about?'

Paul lifted his head and looked at her. ‘Come on,' he said. ‘It's obvious.'

‘Not to me.'

‘What possessed you to answer him back like that?' he demanded. ‘You're just lucky he didn't arrest you right there.'

‘What for?'

Paul opened his mouth to reply, because the answer was obvious. Then he closed it again, thought for a moment and said, ‘Obstructing the police. That's a crime.'

‘Really?' Susan shrugged. ‘Well, nobody could accuse you of that. You were all over him. I was
embarrassed
.'

‘
You
were embarrassed?'

‘Makes me wish I'd had a tape recorder handy,' she said. ‘Sort of obsessive. Definitely a loner. I was waiting for you to say her eyes were too close together.'

Paul scowled. ‘Well, it's true,' he said. ‘Not about the eyes, but the obsessive bit. And the keeping herself to herself—'

‘Dear God,' Susan sighed. ‘And just half an hour ago you were dying of a broken heart. Men,' she added.

‘What's that supposed to mean?'

Susan gave him a contemptuous smile. ‘It's the old power thing,' she said. ‘Men worship authority, it makes you go all weak at the knees. Another five minutes and you'd have been trying to lick his ears.'

Paul could feel pinkness spreading rapidly across his face. ‘Don't be ridiculous,' he said, ridiculously. ‘You're the one who ought to be ashamed of herself, coming over all bolshy like that. I suppose you thought you were being clever.'

Susan shook her head, indicating that the subject was closed. ‘I should have made him tell me why they were looking for her, though,' she said.

‘He wouldn't have told you. It's probably classified.'

Susan giggled. ‘Classified?'

‘Or
sub judice
, or whatever the word is. They aren't allowed to go telling people things. Stands to reason.'

‘Does it really? I'll have to take your word for that.' She perched on the edge of her desk. ‘So what do you think they're after her for?' she said.

Paul shrugged. ‘How should I know?'

‘You think she's in trouble, don't you? The Brinks Mat job. The Littlehampton pillar box bombings.'

‘What? I haven't heard about any—'

‘I just made them up,' Susan explained. ‘God, you're so suggestible. My guess is,' she went on, ‘something's happened to a close relative - father or mother or something - and they're looking for her to tell her. But she'd already heard, which is why she went off so suddenly. Doesn't that make rather more sense than Karen being the Barrow-in-Furness Ripper?'

Paul wilted a little, because of course it did. ‘You could be right,' he said, ‘how the hell would I know? None of our business, anyway.'

Susan took a deep breath, got up and returned to her chair. Paul didn't notice the slight frown on her face as she turned her computer monitor back on.

‘Exactly,' she said.

 

‘This is going to hurt,' the scientist said. ‘A lot.'

She wasn't gloating, exactly; there was no fiendish laughter or twirling of moustaches. On the other hand, she didn't seem particularly bothered about it, either. Rule 6(b) in the heroes' basic training manual puts it very succinctly. Mad scientists aren't usually any bother; it's the sane ones you want to look out for.

‘You may be thinking,' she went on, drawing back the plunger and filling the chamber of the syringe with whatever was in that small, unlabelled bottle, ‘that I'm going to have real problems getting you to hold still long enough to stick this in you. But that's OK. You see this?' In her left hand she held up another small bottle. This one was blue. ‘Two drops of this shit in there with you and you won't be able to wiggle so much as a fin. I guess,' she went on, smiling a little, ‘this is what's known as the hard way. But as far as I'm concerned it's going to be very, very easy.' The dragon backed away until his fin hit the wall of the tank, recognising for the first time in his long, adventurous life that there was absolutely nothing he could do about the wholly superior forces ranged against him. He watched as the first blue drop hit the water, followed by the second, and the third . . .

‘Hello again,' said a voice beside him. He opened his eyes—

—
His
eyes, for the first time in ages. All three of them.

‘Don't try to move,' the voice advised him. ‘I had these clamps specially made. Chrome molybdenum steel for toughness, case-hardened to eighty points Rockwell in case you were thinking of trying to chew through them. I had your teeth tested while you were under and they're only sixty-five which isn't bad, harder than a file-blade, but not good enough in this instance. If you try gnawing on these babies, you'll regret it.'

Clamps?
the dragon wondered, craning his neck.
Oh
, those
clamps
; the ones that were pinning him to the hydraulic ramp he was lying on. ‘Thanks for the tip,' he growled.

‘You're welcome. I really don't want you hurting yourself, you know. I mean, if you get damaged, where am I going to get another specimen from?'

The dragon didn't reply; he was preoccupied with the feel of his own shape, the glorious relief of being his own size again, of having legs and wings and a proper tail instead of the drowned-moth-wing arrangement he'd been starting to get used to. ‘How did you manage it?' he asked.

‘Getting you back, you mean?' The scientist smiled. ‘It was pretty straightforward. Not easy, but straightforward. Really, it was just a matter of pumping you full of muscle relaxant and letting your physical memory do the rest. Like letting the air out of a balloon, only the other way round. There was a twenty-three per cent chance the dosage I had to use would kill you, but since you were being so damned uncooperative I didn't really have a choice. Headache?'

The dragon shook his head. ‘Dragons don't feel pain,' he said. ‘Completely impervious to it, in fact.'

‘Really?'

‘Oh yes,' the dragon replied with more than a hint of pride. ‘We deliberately bred it out of our species twelve thousand years ago as a response to -
yow
!'