Barking (11 page)

Duncan frowned. ‘Does someone around here have a dog?' he asked.

‘What? No,' Luke snapped. ‘Why? You're not allergic to dogs, or anything like that?'

‘No, I don't think so. I'm not exactly what you'd call a dog person, but they don't make me come out in spots or anything like that.'

‘Cashier,' Luke said, pushing open a door like the DEA pulling a dawn raid. A little white-haired man with enormous glasses looked up at him from behind a huge desk, then went on with his work. None of those cloying how-utterly-wonderful-to-get-to-know-you introductions in this office. Back out into the corridor again; another swift forced march.

‘This is where we've parked you for the time being,' Luke said, opening another door. ‘If you absolutely hate it, we'll have to sort something out, but I hope it'll do for now.'

Duncan's office at Craven Ettins had, once upon a time, been a boiler room. It was small, windowless, cold in winter and murderously hot in summer; three people turned it into a Bakerloo Line carriage in the rush hour, and the door didn't close properly. This office wasn't like it at all. You could've staged the Olympics in it and still had room for a modest international airport.

‘You don't like it,' Luke said.

‘No, I mean yes.' Duncan scrabbled frantically for words. ‘It's
big
.'

‘What? Oh, I see. Well, it's all right, I suppose. A bit cluttered for my taste, but you can chuck out anything you don't want, obviously.'

Define clutter. There was a desk you could've landed Sea Kings on (but the legs were grooved with scratches) and the sort of chair that emperors used to sit on; a huge leather-covered sofa out in the western prairies; the wall opposite the door was one huge window, with a view of all the kingdoms of the earth; against the north wall, enough raw computing power to send a manned probe to Andromeda. If you lived in a room like this, sooner or later you'd be overwhelmed by the urge to be discovered sitting in your chair stroking a big fluffy Persian cat and drawling, ‘We meet at last, Mr Bond.'

Duncan found he was clinging on to the door frame. ‘It's nice,' he said.

Luke shrugged. ‘It's an office,' he said. ‘And at least you can sneeze without the walls getting wet. Seen enough?'

‘Luke.' Duncan took a deep breath. ‘I think I ought to tell you something.'

‘What?'

‘All this—' He made a vague gesture. ‘Must cost a fortune.'

Luke frowned. ‘Well?'

‘Which means you must be pretty bloody good at the job in order to pay for it.'

‘We manage.'

‘The thing is,' Duncan said, slowly, in a very small voice, ‘I'm not a particularly wonderful lawyer. Like, on a really good day, I'm sort of middling to average. What I mean is, if I had a place like this, I wouldn't hire me to wash down the bogs and frank the letters.'

Luke grinned at him. ‘Oh, come on,' he said. ‘You were always fairly bright at school. Except maths, of course.'

‘Yes, but—' Sort of a surreal feeling about this. ‘School's different, isn't it? Just because you can do French irregular verbs—'

‘You can do French irregular verbs?'

‘Well, yes. At least, I used to be able to. I've probably forgotten, of course.'

‘I'm impressed,' Luke said. ‘I sort of tuned out at
nous sommes, vous êtes
.'

‘But that's not important, is it? What I'm trying to say—'

‘The only maths I can do is adding up and a bit of subtracting,' Luke said. ‘And I learned that from playing darts in pubs. No,' he went on, shaking his head, ‘you don't want to worry about not being bright enough, God knows. Lawyering isn't exactly rocket science, after all. If I can do it, so can any bloody fool. The important thing is getting on well with your mates and having a reasonably good time while you're at it. At least,' he added, ‘that's how we do things, and it seems to work all right for us.'

‘Oh.' Definitely surreal; a job interview conducted by René Magritte and Salvador Dali, wearing silly hats. ‘Well, I suppose that's all right, then.'

‘Excellent.' Luke sounded like he'd just fixed up peace in the Middle East. ‘Well, you've seen pretty much everything. Come and meet the lads. They're dying to see you again.'

The moment, in fact, that Duncan had been dreading. Luke on his own, he mused as he followed his soon-to-be partner down a long corridor, was one thing. Meeting the whole Ferris Gang again, on the other hand, was going to be—

Luke shoved open a door and called out, ‘He's here'. He took a step back. Duncan couldn't see past Luke's substantial bulk, but on the other side of it a chorus of voices was baying his name. Then Luke grabbed his shoulder and bundled him into the room.

They crowded round him, their faces bobbing up and down in front of him, their hands hammering his back and pounding his shoulders, until all he wanted to do was sink to the floor and curl up into a ball. He heard himself mumbling names - hi, Micky; hi, Kevin; hi, Clive; hi, Pete - as though reciting the names of Santa's reindeer or the Seven Dwarves. As for the faces, they were both strange and familiar. They'd aged, all of them. They all seemed to share the same greying hair, worn unflatteringly long. They also looked
battered
, like boxers who'd retired a couple of fights too late. Kevin's nose had been broken at some point, and Pete had a long white scar on his left cheek, only partly overgrown by a bushy white-and-ginger beard. Most surprising of all, however, was the almost inhuman pleasure they seemed to get from seeing him again. He was looking great, really fit, he'd grown, they'd never seen him looking better; and as they laughed and barked and chuckled round him, they kept on pummelling and slapping at him until he felt like a slice of flash-fry steak. But when Luke cleared his throat, they all stopped their onslaught and stood still and quiet.

‘Guys,' Luke said, ‘the man from Del Monte says yes.'

Kevin hugged him. Pete let out a rebel yell. Clive hammered him between the shoulder blades, while Micky punched him savagely in the solar plexus. For a moment, everything went black and wobbly; then he could just about make out Luke saying, ‘I've got the paperwork here on the desk, let's all sign up before he changes his mind. Sod it, witness - Pete, get Bruce in here, he'll do.'

Pete bounded away, as though chasing a rubber ball; the other three frogmarched Duncan over to a desk, on top of which were six shallow stacks of typed-on A4. ‘We're all supposed to be lawyers,' Luke was saying, ‘so I suppose you'd better read the thing first.' Duncan found some papers in his hand, and looked down at them.
This Deed of Partnership made the Day of Between
and then a lot of names; legal mumbo-jumbo, wodges of it.

‘Finished?' Luke said.

Duncan nodded. ‘Seems all right to me,' he said. (But he was thinking: everything ready and waiting for me as soon as I arrive; a bit premature, surely.) ‘Bruce, over here,' Luke was shouting, and the bald, pointy-nosed man from Reception squeezed through the slim gap between Clive's and Kevin's shoulders. Then Duncan felt a pen in his hand, and saw Luke's fence-post-sized finger pointing to a dotted line.

He signed: six copies. The others were signing too, using each others' backs to rest on, while the little bald man from reception sat behind the desk and witnessed each signature. He looked tiny in the shadow of the Ferris Gang - not one of them, Duncan noticed, under six foot - and he seemed to be curled in on himself, a hedgehog without the prickles. He'd barely finished writing when Pete barked, ‘Right, fetch the champagne,' and the little man jumped up and scuttled away, head bowed, legs pumping. He was, Duncan thought, either terrified or very well trained.

‘Everybody signed everything? Hang on, what's today's date?' Luke was sitting on the edge of the desk, riffling stacks of paper like a Vegas blackjack dealer. ‘Pete, you missed one; here, look. Right, that's it, we're legal.'

A cheer that made the floor shake. This is very strange, Duncan thought, as the little bald man scampered back carrying the biggest champagne bottle he'd ever seen in his life.

‘Great stuff,' Luke said; and the others stepped away, like veteran soldiers not volunteering. Duncan realised they were all standing behind him, as Luke slid his leg off the desk and came towards him. ‘Just one last thing,' Luke went on, ‘and then we're done. Duncan Hughes,' he continued, as his hands reached out and pinned Duncan's arms to his sides, ‘welcome to the partnership.'

And everybody cheered again as Luke leaned forward, bared his teeth and bit deep into the side of Duncan's neck.

T
he world had changed.

It was like fiddling with a TV's tracking or vertical hold: one moment everything's blurred and fuzzy, and then quite suddenly the picture's crystal clear, the sound's loud, distinct and in perfect synch, the colour's right and you know that everything's how it should be.

Little short of miraculous; because, a second or so ago, Duncan would have sworn blind that the fuzzy, blurry, foggy, mumbling reality he'd lived in for the last thirty-three years was about as good as it was likely to get, in terms of clarity and definition. All completely wrong, of course. For the first time in his life he could actually see, and hear. And smell. God almighty, he could smell. He had no idea how he'd contrived not to notice them before, but the world was crammed with an unbelievable wealth of scents, smells, odours and stenches; seven different flavours of incredibly rich and complex sweat, for one thing, not to mention the almost stifling perfume of the furniture wax, the dry, mellow background of dust, the bewildering medley of shoe polish and toothpaste and peppermints and stale beer and blood and bath salts; far more vividly perceptible than mere sight could ever be, and phase-shifted backwards through time, so that he felt he was taking in a whole week's worth of perceptions simultaneously in a fraction of a second.

‘Fuck it, Luke,' he heard himself squealing, ‘you
bit
me.'

Laughter all around him; loud enough to float the top off his head, but not loud enough to drown out a million other distinct and fascinating sounds - a phone ringing on the floor below, the beating of six hearts, someone talking out in the street.

(In the street; and I'm on the twenty-first floor, and all the windows are sealed and double-glazed.)

‘That's right,' Luke said. ‘How do you feel?'

Three days ago, Luke had eaten curry; to be precise, roghan ghosh with tarka dal, pilau rice and sag aloo. Since then—

‘Weird,' Duncan said, clapping his hand to the side of his neck. Cocaine? LSD? Could Luke's teeth have been carrying enough drug residue to get him instantaneously stoned out of his brain? Instinctively, however, he knew it wasn't anything like that. It was more like coming down out of a really bad trip back into blissful reality. Even the air was as delicious as chocolate. It smelled completely new and different. It smelled of
air
.

Then Pete said, ‘You did tell him, didn't you?'

Pause. Then Luke growled.

What Luke growled was,
No. Want to make something of it?
There were no words, just as you don't get English subtitles on English-language films. Pete lowered his head and his shoulders slumped.

‘Tell me what?' Duncan said.

Another pause. Then Luke said, ‘You might want to sit down for a minute.'

Duncan's legs were wobbly as he walked over to the chair behind the desk. He pulled it out, turned round three times and sat down. Then he raised his head and said, ‘Why did I just do that?'

‘Ah.' Luke grinned. ‘Let's say it's something you're going to have to get used to.' Apparently absent-mindedly, he'd snatched a biro out of Micky's top pocket, and was chewing it. ‘Pete, you tell him.'

The world might have changed, but not the hierarchy of the Ferris Gang. Pete Thomas had always been Luke's duly accredited herald. ‘It's quite simple,' Pete said. ‘Smart bloke like you, I'd have thought you'd have figured it out for yourself. We're werewolves.'

At some point over the last ten days, someone had eaten peppermints in this room. Duncan sniffed again to make sure; then he realised what Pete had just said.

‘Bollocks,' he protested. ‘There's no such thing as—'

Something whizzed through his field of vision; something small. Without thinking, he sprang out of his chair and caught it. A small rubber ball; and, to his deep embarrassment, he appeared to have caught it in his mouth.

‘Actually, there is,' Luke said, retrieving the ball from between Duncan's teeth (Duncan felt a strange but strong urge not to let go) and dropping it back in his pocket. ‘Are. Whatever. The lightning reflexes are a definite plus; the short attention span's a bummer, but you learn to work round it, if you see what I mean. The biggest problem, of course,' he went on, ‘is lamp-posts.'

The others were nodding sagely, as if to say that they too had been sorely tried in the furnace of temptation.

‘The heightened sense of smell and hearing should already have kicked in by now, so you don't need me to brief you on them,' Pete said, scratching behind his ear. ‘You're going to love the extra strength and stamina; also, you can eat and drink anything you like, as much as you like, and no worries about putting on weight or anything like that. You may find it a bit awkward keeping your temper around humans for a day or so, because patience isn't really one of our top virtues, but it's like everything else, you find your own ways of adapting. Really, it's just the little things, like not jumping up at people when they come into the room, or begging at tables in restaurants.'