Barking (54 page)

Veronica was looking at him: uncertain, worried, afraid she'd said or done something wrong or that something was hurting or bothering him. Extraordinary. Judging by what she'd said, she'd
seen
him while he was completely out of control; in which case, how could she possibly bear to be in the same hemisphere as him, let alone the same room? Who could possibly tolerate a monster? Who could
love
a monster?

Well. She could, for one.

And me.

‘Is that the time?' she said suddenly. ‘I'd better get moving, I've got clients coming in at ten-fifteen and I haven't even read the file yet. It's a dreadful bad habit of mine.'

‘Doing things on the fly, you mean?'

A clock would have ticked once; then she smiled. ‘If you're up to making vampire jokes, you're obviously on the mend. Will you be all right like that? I'd bring you something to read, only there's nothing in the building except law books and chick lit . . .'

‘Megarry and Wade,' Duncan said. ‘Or Kemp and Kemp, doesn't matter which. Or Whitehouse and Stuart-Buttle on revenue law, at a pinch. Something meaty, with a bit of weight to it.'

Veronica frowned. ‘You actually read that stuff?'

Duncan flexed his left arm. ‘No,' he said.

‘Oh.'

He smiled. ‘I promise I'll be good,' he said. ‘It's just that if
he
starts anything, I'd prefer to have the law on my side.'

She nodded. ‘Dispute resolution,' she said. ‘It's what we're all about, really, isn't it?'

She went away, and for a while Duncan stared at the ceiling. He was just thinking it was a nice ceiling, white artex, restful, ordinary, when he caught sight of a heavy-duty steel ring hanging from it in the corner of the room. Funny, he thought, what's that for? A winch? But that's the traditional argument in favour of a career in the law: no heavy lifting. It was a big ring, made from chunky metal: five-eighths of an inch thick at the very least. What would you want to hang from the ceiling in a solicitors' office?

And then he thought,
upside down, as a change from the box; a bit like sleeping in a hammock in the garden in summer. Or not
.

Monsters.

‘I take it you're awake now.'

Duncan didn't turn his head. ‘Maybe,' he said.

‘Just one thing I'd ask of you,' Luke went on. ‘Next time you two are planning on a cosy tête-à-tête, would it be too much trouble to ask you to give me a massive dose of anaesthetic? Only, throwing up when you're completely immobilised is probably a bad move. At the very least, a pair of industrial-grade earmuffs'd be nice. There are times when having supernaturally enhanced hearing isn't the blessing you'd take it for.'

‘Piss off, Ferris.'

Mistake; the bully looks for a reaction. ‘Thank you for saving my life, you wonderful big, strong man,' Luke falsettoed. ‘For crying out loud,' he added. ‘If I could've reached I'd have chewed my leg off just so as to escape. You may have noticed I'm still strapped down, incidentally. Strikes me this bird - no, sorry, this
bat
of yours has got a bit of thing about—'

‘She's not my bat. Bird. Girlfriend.' Stop it, Duncan ordered himself; but it wasn't any good. Luke had figured out long ago that the needle is mightier than the sword. ‘Just shut your face and leave me alone, will you?'

‘Wish I could. Unfortunately—' He didn't need to look; he could picture the smug expression on Luke's face even with his eyes shut. ‘Bondage girl's seen to it that I'm stuck here, with you. What shall we talk about? Oh yes. See that ring over there in the ceiling?'

‘No.'

‘Well, I was thinking. If that's how vampires sleep . . . Actually, I'd rather not turn my imagination loose on that one, not stuck here like this, I might find myself plagued with mental images I could well do without. I mean, rope burns, sprained ankles, dizziness—'

‘Shut
up
, Luke.' Megarry and Wade and a clear field of fire . . . ‘Considering you nearly murdered her, I'd keep a low profile if I were you.'

‘You think that'd do any good? Use your brains, Duncan, they're
vampires
. Our natural enemies.
She
might be all over you like a pair of pyjamas. I'm prepared to bet the rest of them have something entirely different in mind.'

‘Really.'

‘Yes, Duncan, really. Get a fucking grip, for God's sake. Yes, I know we've had our differences lately—'

‘
Differences
—'

‘But,' Luke said firmly, ‘the fact remains, they're them and we're us. In the end, it's always about sides: whose side you're on, whose gang you belong to. You may be lying there dreaming of hanging cheek to cheek from the rafters with the bat of your dreams, but I know about these things. Them and Us. Sides. That's all there is.'

‘Shut up, Luke.'

‘All you've got to do—' It was the other Luke Ferris voice: the calm, authoritative, Luke-knows-best voice, rather than the loud, overbearing one; he'd never been able to withstand it. ‘All you've got to do is get up, come over here, undo these straps and leave the rest to me. I'll get us out of here, we'll go back to the office and we'll be
safe
. The others are there. We can just carry on as normal, and everything'll be fine. Look,' he went on, modulating the voice like a precision instrument, ‘I know I was out of order last night, it was wrong of me and I feel pretty bad about it. I expect you do, too; neither of us was exactly at our best, really. But there's no point either of us bearing a grudge. Never solved anything. The truth is, deep down where it matters we're on the same side. Always have been. You and me, and the others. Occasionally we make mistakes, it happens. But we're big enough to put all that stuff behind us—'

Well, he had to ask, and now seemed as good a time as any. ‘Why did you do it, Luke?'

‘Do what? Oh, that.' Pause. ‘Simple, really. Fear.'

‘Oh.' Actually, it was a good answer.

‘I was scared shitless, if you must know,' Luke went on; and it wasn't either of the voices this time, it was just
a voice
, the sound Luke made when he talked. ‘She said she'd run me to death if I didn't cooperate. Well, not straight away. First she'd pick the others off one by one - Pete, Micky, Kevin, Clive, and finally me - and by then she'd have figured out another way of getting to you, so it wouldn't actually matter: all of us dying wouldn't actually have achieved anything, it'd all have been a stupid waste.' He hesitated, as though dwelling for a moment on something he'd rather not put into words. ‘And she gave me her word that nothing really bad would happen to you. Like, she wouldn't kill you, it's in her interests to keep you alive as long as possible—'

Dead or alive, Duncan thought. But possibly Luke hadn't thought that one through.

‘Well, anyhow,' he added lamely. ‘Like I said, I was scared. That's it, basically.'

‘I see,' Duncan replied.

‘That and the money.'

For a moment, Duncan struggled to remember what the M word meant. ‘
Money?
'

‘That's right, yes. Well, not cash in hand, thirty pieces of silver, that'd have been in dubious taste, obviously. But she said she'd give us all her commercial leasehold work . . . you know, I never realised, their investment property portfolio alone is bloody
awesome
, and then there's the development side—'

For a whole second, Duncan searched his vocabulary for an expletive: the nastiest, filthiest, most appalling word he could possibly think of. He found it.

‘Luke,' he said.

‘Well, it wasn't the deciding factor, obviously,' Luke said quickly. ‘I mean, it was the threats that did it, no question about that. But after all, if you've got to betray your friend and pickle your immortal soul in shit for the rest of eternity, you might as well have something to show for it as not, it's only common sense. Apparently, she's got two hundred acres slap bang in the middle of Leeds, vacant possession, planning consent, venture capital all lined up—'

‘You bastard, Luke,' Duncan said. (And he thought, two hundred acres.
With
planning. Actually, that's a lot of leases, we could really—)

‘Look, it was you or the rest of us,' Luke said. ‘Basically, your bog standard
Star Trek
ethical dilemma: the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. It's the sort of decision a leader's got to make, and I made it. If you want to hate me about it, go ahead. You have my permission. And I can hate you back for making exactly the same decision - except you were prepared to let me die just so that you wouldn't have to do a boring, rotten job; it wasn't like you were thinking about Pete and Clive and all the others, the way I was. Bloody hell, Duncan,' Luke went on, his voice rising, ‘how the hell could you do something like that? It's not as though it's even the shittiest job in the universe: you sit in an office all day adding up meaningless numbers - so fucking what? Millions of people do that every day of their lives, all over the world. You'd have been no worse off than if you'd stayed at Craven Ettins. Oh, you were happy enough to sacrifice yourself for the bat girl, who you'd only known five minutes; but not for me, your oldest friend, who took you in hand when you were just a sad, pathetic kid whose mummy sent him to school with a
vegetarian packed lunch
. You still owe me for that, Duncan. Whatever else may have happened since, you still owe me for that, and you always will.'

Uncomfortable silence; because it was true, even though Luke had said it. Even a lawyer can tell the truth sometimes; and the fact that it's a lawyer saying it doesn't change anything. ‘I always wondered why you did that,' Duncan said quietly. ‘I mean, like you just said, I was the freaky little loser and you were - well, the Ferris Gang. What did you want me for?'

‘I don't know, really,' Luke replied. ‘Maybe I felt sorry for you, maybe I had a sort of instinct. It's so long ago I can't remember now. It doesn't matter, anyway. You're not the freaky kid any more, because of us. You're what we made you. We're all what we made each other. That's the point.'

And Duncan shook his head (ouch) and said, ‘No, it's not. The thing is, Luke, you may still be the Ferris Gang, but - well, I didn't stop growing when I turned seventeen.'

‘Yes, you did. You were six foot two then, and you're still six foot two. You can see it on the school photos, where you're standing next to Clive—'

‘Let's call it quits, shall we?' Duncan said, and if it wasn't the Ferris voice, it owed a lot to it. But there's a difference between what we learn and what we are. ‘For years I tried blaming everything that's wrong with me on you, but that doesn't add up. No pun intended. I used to think, it's not that I'm some kind of bizarre freak of nature or anything. I just got this way because of hanging around with those meat-heads for so long. But now it turns out I really
am
a bizarre freak of nature: point one of a decimal place out of synch, whatever the hell that means. And I got this way because Bowden Allshapes has been frigging around with my destiny, and I've been programmed as a sort of human computer, or a secret weapon, or something. Well, screw that, I've had enough. This worm's going to turn so fast you could use me to drill holes. As soon as I'm fit enough to get out of here—'

‘You and the bat girl?'

Like a trail of tin-tacks strewn in the path of a speeding car. ‘Well, possibly. I hope. If she'll have me.'

Luke made an exasperated noise. ‘Same old story, nothing special at all. He meets some girl, and straight away all his old friends go out the window. Well, in this case it's the other way around, she's the one who can bloody
fly
, but that's beside the point. Don't try and dress it up in melodrama, Duncan. It didn't work the last time, did it? With that miserable cow, that Sally. Stitched you up like a hemline, didn't she?'

‘Yes, but—'

‘They're all the same,' Luke said wearily. ‘Vampires. Women. You make the mistake of confusing Them with Us, and next thing you know you're back living in a bedsit paying school fees for a bunch of brats you never even wanted. Bowden Allshapes really hasn't got anything to do with it. She may have set you up for the last time, but this one's all you. Your own free, unfettered, bloody stupid choice. Oh, the hell with it. I wash my claws of you.'

Duncan thought about that for a moment. ‘Promise?' he said.

‘You know what, Duncan Hughes? You're a disgrace to the legal profession.'

As Jenny Sidmouth used to say. It's awkward, lying perfectly still in the same room with someone you know really well, for hours on end, not talking. To fill up the time and keep his mind from straying where he didn't want it to go, Duncan tried to figure out a solution: a Clever Plan that'd solve everything and leave him free to go away and have a life. But he couldn't. This was sad but hardly surprising. Duncan knew perfectly well that finding solutions just by thinking about problems is like trying to catch your own shadow. He tried to be logical about it. (What would Mr Spock do?) He tried to be creative, lateral, outside the box. He tried creeping up on the problem, outflanking it, wandering off in the opposite direction and suddenly turning round and pouncing . . . It reminded him a bit of chasing the unicorn, which killed you by letting you chase it. The more he chased, the more he had a problem.

Disgrace to the legal profession indeed. Look who's—

He tried breaking the problem down into its component parts. He tried nibbling little chunks off the edges, to make the problem smaller. He tried thinking of a number and doubling it. What would Napoleon have done? Gandhi? Philip Marlowe? Indiana Jones?