The Better Mousetrap (23 page)

‘Hello,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Any chance of a quick word with George?’ She looked at him, whatever her name was. ‘How did you get in here?’ she said.

‘Front door was open,’ he replied, innocent as a lamb, ‘so I came on up. Is he in? I can come back if he’s not.’

Deep frown. ‘He’s not expecting you, then.’

‘No.’

‘And your name?’

‘Frank Carpenter.’

Where he’d got the charm from, he had no idea. Definitely not from his parents, who between them had enough of that precious quality to fill a very small acorn cup. Dad had once told him he guessed it must be from the non-human side of his family tree, a remark that had puzzled him a lot until he’d met Mr Tanner’s mother. One drop of her personality diluted with, say, the Pacific Ocean, and you’d probably get charm. Anyway, regardless of where he’d got it from, he had it, occasionally, mostly when dealing with harassed middle-aged women. Right now, he guessed, it was the only thing stopping him from being slung out into the street.

‘I’ll ask,’ the secretary said. It was clearly a huge concession, but Frank doubted whether it’d be enough. He liked George, but he had an idea that he suffered fools and time-wasters as gladly as fire does water.

‘Thanks,’ he said gloomily. Then, on the off chance, he turned the charm tap till it jammed and added, ‘Sorry, can you spare me a second?’

She hesitated, hand on intercom switch. ‘Well?’

Big frown. ‘Not quite sure how to put this.’ (And that was no lie.) ‘You’ll think this is a very strange question, but—’ Another hesitation. Bank up the suspense, engage her curiosity. Then just blurt it out, as though you’ve tried not to ask the question and failed. ‘Do you think George has been acting a bit oddly today?’

Frown. ‘What makes you say that?’

Interesting reply. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’m imagining it. Only - well, I spoke to him on the phone earlier, and I couldn’t help thinking he wasn’t—’

‘Quite himself?’

(Bingo!)

‘Exactly,’ Frank said gratefully; no need to act there. ‘And I was a bit worried, so I dropped everything and came straight over.’

The secretary considered him as though he was a crossword clue. ‘You’re a friend of his, then?’

‘Oh yes. Friend of the family, really. Uncle George. He’s known me since before I was born.’ Which was true, of course. ‘I don’t know,’ he added quickly, ‘I expect I’m making a great big fuss over nothing. I think I’d better go-I know how busy he is and I don’t want to be a nuisance.’

‘No, don’t do that,’ she said; and Frank thought, if I really did get it from the goblins, then thank you, little scaly people, for sharing your DNA with me. ‘Actually, he’s not that busy right now. I’ll tell him you’re here, and you can go right in.’

‘Actually.’ Don’t screw it up now, Frank ordered himself. ‘I think it’d be better if I just went in unannounced. It’s this game we used to play when I was a kid. Pretty childish, of course, but you know what it’s like in families.’

Pure babbling, of course; but if she hesitated, it was only for a moment, until he’d given her a winning smile. It wasn’t an expression he’d had much experience with, and without a mirror handy he had no idea how it’d come out. But it must’ve been good enough, because she smiled back and said, ‘You go on, then. Shall I get you both some coffee?’

‘That’s very kind, but it gives me the most dreadful indigestion.’

‘You should try decaff.’

Sad smile. ‘Makes no difference, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh dear. Would you prefer tea?’

‘Tea’s worse.’ He reached for the door handle, gave it a twist as though wringing its neck, and dived into the office.

Mr Sprague was sitting behind his desk; well, where else would he be? The odd thing was, he had his feet up on the desktop, and was reading a newspaper. Upside down.

As soon as he saw Frank, the paper collapsed like a tent in a hurricane, and the feet were whisked off the desk. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Mr Sprague barked at him, but his voice sounded scared. ‘I mean, who are you?’

There hadn’t been many sudden flashes of insight in Frank’s life, and he found the sensation bewildering. Nevertheless, when he replied, his voice was surprisingly steady.

‘You know perfectly well who I am,’ he said. ‘Where’s George?’

The owner of Honest John’s House of Monsters wasn’t really called John. That harmless deception aside, however, he generally did his best to earn his self-awarded adjective. When he’d told Amelia Carrington that her order wasn’t ready yet, he’d been telling the truth. His mother had always insisted that the truth, rather like major credit cards, is accepted everywhere.

Fine.

He reached down and grabbed hold of the lid. Properly speaking, it was too heavy for one man to lift on his own, but Neville the trainee had already gone home and the winch was bust. He leaned back against the weight and heaved, ignoring the strongly worded communique from the muscles of his back.

The problem as he saw it was that, by all accounts, Amelia Carrington shared his single-minded sincerity. If she said he’d be killed if he didn’t deliver on time, she meant it, and there was precious little he could do about it.

The lid lifted eight inches. Then the strain on his fingers and elbow tendons got too much for him, and he let go.

Needless to say, the problem lay with the livestock. He had a very good breeding ewe-possibly the finest in the country: Best of Show at Smithfield last year, and Best In Class at the Bath & West three years running-and a thoroughbred drake with a better pedigree than the Duke of Kent. The problem was, they didn’t like each other. Nor was it one of those quirky, Bogardand-Hepburn love/hate relationships, which only takes a gentle pressure on the right levers to convert it into a fiery romance. The ugly fact was, the last time he’d managed to coax the drake into the ewe’s pen, she’d tried to eat him.

Technical problems, as they say in the trade.

So, with Amelia Carrington’s not so oblique encouragements very much on his mind, Honest John decided it was time for a little lateral thinking. It was sheer luck, he couldn’t help thinking, that he had a Plan B.

He tried again. This time, he raised the lid a full fourteen inches before yelping with pain and letting go.

It had to be a very heavy lid, of course; half-inch high-tensile steel plate, and that was the lightweight version. The regulations specified a full twenty millimetres for Class 4 species, and you had to have four padlocks to BS 8867 and an alarm system.

Honest John’s operation couldn’t run to that (the EU will be the death of small business in this country) so he made do with what he’d got. Right now, that included a lid he couldn’t lift and a (no pun intended) deadline.

Years ago, before he’d been Honest John’s House of Monsters, he’d had a short and colourful career as Honest John’s House of Clones. He’d managed to blot most of the details out of his memory, but he still had a few mementos: stuff the liquidators hadn’t found, or hadn’t considered worth the expense of taking away. One of them was the large, built-in cast-iron vat that took up most of the floor space in Number Six shed. He hadn’t used it since he’d been hounded out of the cloning biz; he wasn’t even sure if the rich green goo that filled it was still functional. Only one way to find out. Unfortunately, that would involve lifting the damn lid.

The pyramids, he thought. Stonehenge. They’d managed to shift bloody great big heavy things using muscle power alone. Technologically speaking, what did they have that he didn’t? Apart from thousands of conscripted labourers, of course.

Honest John clambered down and took an armful of bricks from a pile in the corner. With these, he was able to wedge the gap each time he lifted the lid, until at last it was big enough to let him get his arm through. Shivering a little, he groped about until his fingers made contact with the surface of the goo. He fished out a sample and studied it.

Yuck was, of course, his instinctive first reaction. It was slimy, green and smelly, but that was how it was supposed to be. There were traces of some kind of yellow mould, but presumably it was either inert or non-organic. Just as well. Thinking about it, he cursed himself for his negligence. A mildew spore finding its way into that lot could easily have evolved into sentient life inside a week; a fortnight, and it’d probably have discovered nuclear fission.

Fool’s luck, he thought. But the stuff felt and smelled right; it even (don’t try this at home, kids) tasted right. He remembered some of the stories he’d heard about Amelia Carrington over the years, hopped down and scuttled over to his bench. Busy, busy.

On top of the bench was a small fridge, the sort you daren’t open in hotel rooms unless you’re a millionaire on expenses. Inside was a rack of test tubes. He filled a pipette with foul-looking yellow gunge from one of them, and shut the fridge door.

Halfway to the vat, he paused. Was this a sensible, responsible thing to do? No. On the other hand, living to regret it would nevertheless be living, and by definition preferable to the alternative. He climbed up onto the rim of the vat, stuck his arm out as far as he could get it, and squeezed the little rubber bulb. Then, moving faster than he’d done in years, he dragged the bricks out until the lid slammed shut, and hopped clear like a startled frog.

He landed awkwardly, hurting his ankle. Silly, really. Even under optimum conditions, it’d take seventy-six hours. In cold, crud-encrusted goo, you could add another six to eight hours, assuming it was going to work at all. The light-blue-touchpaper approach was simple hysterical melodrama. He got up slowly, hobbled over to the bench and switched the kettle on. He hadn’t had a brew for hours, and his throat felt like sandpaper.

Either the ewe would have to go, Honest John mused, or the drake. No bloody use at all having them if the buggers didn’t get on. He thought it over. Sound business principles dictated that the ewe was the one to get shot of. With her pedigree and stallful of rosettes, she’d be worth a fortune. Tierkraft AG and Cincinnati Lifeforms had both made him tempting offers for her. The drake, on the other hand-well, he was worth money, but not nearly as much. Even so, it’d be a wrench to say goodbye to Daisy, even if she had eaten three DEFRA inspectors and a Ministry vet…

A sound like the booming of an enormous gong startled him out of his meditations. He looked round, then down at his watch. Twenty minutes. It couldn’t have come from the vat, then. Must’ve been something else. Concorde going over, maybe.

He sipped his tea. Stone-cold. He preferred it that way.

Only, hadn’t they grounded Concorde years ago? He couldn’t remember. Served him right for not reading the papers. To fill in the time, he opened a dog-eared box file and made a start on the monthly accounts. Now, then: feed receipts.

Boom.

Not Concorde, even if it was still flying. Not unless it was taking a short cut through the shed. Once his head had stopped spinning, he stood up and took a few steps towards the vat. Then he changed his mind. If it was the vat … He had an idea there’d been an article in the trade mag a while back; something about what happened if the goo was left so long that it began to ferment. Hugely accelerated development, Honest John seemed to recall, but really bad stuff happened to the DNA coding.

Urn.

He could go back to the vat and investigate. Or he could nip outside, get in the van, drive very fast to Heathrow and hope like hell that Concorde (a) was still in service and (b) could outfly whatever was beginning to stir under that lid.

His twisted ankle held him up rather, and he stopped to get his coat. But for that, he might have made it.

Instead, he’d just laid his hand on the door handle when a third boom knocked him off balance. He staggered and fell, just as the lid flew off the vat like a frisbee and took out the far wall. For a moment, his eyes were filled with brick and plaster dust. When he’d wiped them clean, he looked at the vat and saw a single huge green claw rising up and digging its talons into the rim.

Cast iron is brittle old stuff. It went ping as it crumbled.

Oh well, thought Honest John. He searched in his pocket for his mobile phone, and prodded in a number. He gave his name, asked to speak to Amelia Carrington and was put through straight away.

‘Your order’s ready,’ he said.

‘Good.’

‘One thing, though.’

‘Well?’

The claw was snaking upwards, on the end of a massive green-scaled leg. The talons flexed, and something made a deep growling noise that set the building vibrating. Honest John took a deep breath. ‘Do you think you could possibly collect?’ he said.

CHAPTER TEN

George?’ said Mr Sprague. ‘Who’s George?’

‘You are.’

‘Oh, I see.’ Mr Sprague looked down, and Frank couldn’t help being reminded of a small boy who’s been caught out in an obvious lie. ‘What a silly question,’ he said. ‘I’m here.’ Then, as if he’d just remembered that he was the injured party: ‘What do you mean by bursting into my office like this? I have no idea who you are. Get out right now, or I’ll call the police.’

Frank clicked his tongue. ‘You’re not very good at this, are you?’

Mr Sprague’s face fell, and again, Frank got an impression of extreme youth. Odd, since Mr Sprague had to be at least fifty-five. ‘I don’t have to talk to you,’ Mr Sprague said. ‘Go away. Immediately.’

‘Not until you tell me what you’ve done with George.’ Frank took a step forward; Mr Sprague jumped out of his chair and retreated behind his desk. ‘Oh for crying out loud,’ Frank said wearily. ‘It’s bloody obvious you’re not him.’

‘Isn’t.’

‘It is.’

‘Isn’t.’

Frank Carpenter wasn’t a violent man. He preferred to resolve conflicts by quiet, rational argument or (better still) by running away. There are times, however, when even the gentlest soul can be goaded into fury. Frank lunged, stretching across the desk, and grabbed the lapels of Mr Sprague’s suit jacket in both hands. ‘Is!’ he roared, and at precisely that moment, Mr Sprague disappeared, leaving Frank baffled and empty-handed.

Not quite. As he stood and stared at the place where Mr Sprague had been, he noticed something sticking to the palm of his right hand. It was a single long blonde hair.