Lost in a good book (4 page)

“Hullo!” I said to a young man who was taking a cardboard box out of the boot of his car. “New SpecOps?”

“Er, yes,” he replied, putting down his box for a moment to offer me his hand.

“John Smith—Weeds & Seeds.”

“Unusual name,” I said, shaking his hand, “I’m Thursday Next.”

“Oh!” he said, looking at me with interest. Sadly my anonymity had, it seemed, departed for good.

“Yes,” I replied, picking up several large box files for him, “
that
Thursday Next. Weeds & Seeds?”

“Domestic Horticulture Enforcement Agency,” explained John as we walked towards the SpecOps building. “SO-32. I’m starting an office here. There’s been a rise in the number of hackers just recently. The Pampas Grass Vigilante Squad are becoming more brazen in their activities; pampas grass might well be an eyesore, but there’s nothing illegal in it.”

We showed our ID cards to the desk sergeant and walked up the stairs to the second floor.

“I heard something about that,” I murmured. “Any links to the Anti-Leylandii Association?”

“Nothing positive,” replied Smith, “but I’m following all leads.”

“How many in your squad?”

“Including me, one,” grinned Smith. “Thought you were the most underfunded department in SpecOps? Think again. I’ve got six months to sort out the hackers, get the Japanese knotweed under control and find an acceptable plural form of
narcissus.
”

We reached the upstairs corridor and a small office that had once been home to SO-31, the Good Taste Education Authority. The division had been disbanded a month ago when the proposed legislation against stone cladding, pictures of crying clowns, and floral-patterned carpets failed in the upper house. I placed the box files on the table, told him
narcissi
was my favorite, wished him well and left him to unpack.

I was just walking past the office of SO-14 when I heard a shrill voice.

“Thursday! Thursday, yoo-hoo! Over here!”

I sighed. It was Cordelia Flakk. She quickly caught up with me and gave me an affectionate hug.

“The Lush show was a disaster!” I told her. “You said it was no-holds-barred! I ended up talking about dodos, my car and anything but
Jane Eyre
!”

“You were
terrific!
” she enthused. “I’ve got you lined up for another set of interviews the day after tomorrow.”

“No more, Cordelia.”

She looked crestfallen.

“I don’t understand.”

“What part of
no more
don’t you understand?”

“Don’t be like that, Thursday,” she replied, smiling broadly. “You’re good PR, and believe me, in an institution that routinely leaves the public perforated, confused, old before their time or, if they’re lucky, dead, we need every bit of good PR we can muster.”

“Do we do
that
much damage to the public?” I asked.

Flakk smiled modestly.

“Perhaps my PR is not so bad after all,” she conceded, then added quickly: “But every Joe that gets trounced in a crossfire is one too many.”

“That’s as may be,” I retorted, “but the fact remains you told me the Lush show would be the last.”

“Ah! But I
also
told you the Lush show would be no-holds-barred, didn’t I?” observed Cordelia brightly, displaying staggering reverse logic.

“However you want to spin it, Cordelia, the answer is still
no.
”

As I watched with a certain detached amusement, Flakk went through a bizarre routine that included hopping up and down for a bit, pulling pleading expressions, wringing her hands, puffing out her cheeks and staring at the ceiling.

“Okay,” I sighed, “you’ve got my attention. What do you want me to do?”

“Well,” said Cordelia excitedly, “we ran a competition!”

“Oh yes?” I asked suspiciously, wondering whether it could be any more daft than her “win a mammoth” idea the week before. “What sort of competition?”

“Well, we thought it would be a good idea if you met a few members of the public on a one-to-one basis.”

“Did we? Now listen, Cordelia—”

“Dilly, Thursday, since we’re pals.”

She sensed my reticence and added:

“Cords, then. Or Delia. How about Flakky? I used to be called Flik-flak at school. Can I call you Thurs?”

“Cordelia!”
I said in a harsher tone, before she ingratiated herself to death.
“I’m not going to do this!
You said the Lush interview would be the last, and it is.”

I started to walk away, but when God was handing out insistence, Cordelia Flakk was right at the front of the queue.

“Thursday, this hurts me
really
personally when you’re like this. It attacks me right—right—er—here.”

She made a wild guess at where her heart might be and looked at me with a pained expression that she probably learnt off a springer spaniel.

“I’ve got them waiting right here,
now,
in the canteen. It won’t take a moment, ten minutes
tops.
Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease. I’ve only asked two dozen journalists and news crews—the room will be practically empty.”

I looked at my watch.

“Ten minutes,
¹
whoa!—Who’s that?”

“Who’s what?”

“Someone calling my name. Didn’t you hear it?”

“No,” replied Cordelia, looking at me oddly.

I tapped my ears and looked around to see if there was anyone close by. Apart from Cordelia, we were alone in the corridor. It had sounded so real it was disconcerting.
²

“There it goes again!”

“There goes what again?”

“A man’s voice! Speaking
here
inside my head!”

I pointed to my temple to demonstrate. Cordelia took a step backwards, her look turning to one of consternation.

“Are you okay, Thursday? Can I call someone?”

“Oh. No no, I’m fine. I just realized I—ah—left a receiver in my ear. It must be my partner; there’s a 12-14 or a 10-30 or . . .
something
numerological in progress. Tell your competition winners another time. Goodbye!”

I dashed off down the corridor toward the Literary Detectives offices. There wasn’t a receiver, of course, but I wasn’t having Flakk tell the quacks I was hearing voices.
³
I stopped and looked around. The corridor was empty.

“I can
hear
you,” I said, “but where are you?”
⁴

“Her name’s Flakk. Works over at SpecOps PR.”
⁵

“What is this? SpecOps Blind Date?
What’s going on?
”
⁶

“Case? What case? I haven’t done anything!”
⁷

My indignation was real. For someone who had spent her life enforcing law and order, it seemed a grave injustice that I should be accused of something—especially something I knew nothing about.

“For God’s sake, Snell, what
is
the charge?”

“Are you okay, Next?”

It was Commander Braxton Hicks. He had just turned the corner and was staring at me with curiosity.

“Nothing, sir,” I said, thinking fast. “The SpecOps tensionologist said I should vocalize any stress regarding past experiences. Listen:
‘Get away from me, Hades, go!’
See? I feel better already.”

“Oh!” said Hicks doubtfully. “Well, the quacks know best, I suppose. That Lush fellow’s interview was a cracker, don’t you think?”

Thankfully he didn’t give me time to answer and carried on talking.

“Listen here, Next, did you sign that picture for my godson Max?”

“On your desk, sir.”

“Really? Jolly good. What else? Oh yes. That PR girlie—”

“Miss Flakk?”

“That’s the chap. She ran a competition or something. Would you liaise with her over it?”

“I’ll make it my top priority, sir.”

“Good. Well, carry on vocalizing then.”

“Thank you, sir.”

But he didn’t leave. He just stood there, watching me.

“Sir?”

“Don’t mind me,” replied Hicks, “I just want to see how this stress vocalizing works.
My
tensionologist told me to arrange pebbles as a hobby—or count blue cars.”

So I vocalized my stress there in the corridor for five minutes, reciting every Shakespearean insult I could think of while my boss watched me. I felt a complete twit but rather that than the quacks, I suppose.

“Jolly good,” he said finally and walked off.

After checking I was alone in the corridor I spoke out loud:

“Snell!”

Silence.

“Mr. Snell, can you hear me?”

More silence.

I sat down on a convenient bench and put my head between my knees. I felt sick and hot; both the SpecOps resident tensionologist and stresspert had said I might have some sort of traumatic aftershock from tackling Acheron Hades, but I hadn’t expected anything so vivid as voices in my head. I waited until my head cleared and then made my way not towards Flakk and her competition winners but towards Bowden and the Litera Tec’s office.
⁸

I stopped.

“Prepared for what? I haven’t done anything!”
⁹

“No, no!” I exclaimed. “I
really
don’t know what I’ve done.
Where are you!?!
”
¹⁰

“Wait! Shouldn’t I see you
before
the hearing?”

There was no answer. I was about to yell again, but several people came out of the elevator, so I kept quiet. I waited for a moment but Mr. Snell didn’t seem to have anything more to add, so I made my way into the Litera Tec office, which closely resembled a large library in a country home somewhere. There weren’t many books we
didn’t
have—the result of bootleg seizures of literary works collected over the years. My partner, Bowden Cable, was already at his desk, which was as fastidiously neat as ever. He was dressed conservatively and was a few years younger than me although he had been in SpecOps a lot longer. Officially he was a higher rank, but we never let it get in the way—we worked as equals but in different ways: Bowden’s quiet and studious approach contrasted strongly with my own directness. It seemed to work well.

“Morning, Bowden.”

“Hello Thursday. Saw you on the telly last night.”

I took off my coat, sat down and started to rummage through telephone messages.

“How did I look?”

“Fine. They didn’t let you talk about
Jane Eyre
much, did they?”

“Press freedom was on holiday that day.”

He understood and smiled softly.

“Never fear—someday the full story will be told. Are you okay? You look a little flushed.”

“I’m okay,” I told him, giving up on the telephone messages. “Actually, I’m not. I’ve been hearing voices.”

“Stress, Thursday. It’s not unusual. Anyone specific?”

I got up to fetch some coffee, and Bowden followed me.

“A lawyer named Akrid Snell. Said he was representing me. Refill?”

“No, thanks. On what charge?”

“He wouldn’t say.”

I poured myself a large coffee as Bowden thought for a moment.

“Sounds like an inner guilt conflict, Thursday. In policing we have to sometimes—”

He stopped as two other LiteraTec agents walked close by, discussing the merits of a recently discovered seventy-eight-word palindrome
that made sense.
We waited until they were out of earshot before continuing:

“—we have to sometimes close off our emotions. Could you have killed Hades if you were thinking clearly?”

“I don’t think I would have been able to kill him if I
wasn’t,
” I replied, sniffing at the milk. “I’ve not lost a single night’s sleep over Hades, but poor Bertha Rochester bothers me a bit.”

We went and sat down at our desks.

“Maybe that’s it,” replied Bowden, idly filling in the
Owl
crossword. “Perhaps you secretly
want
to be held accountable for her death. I heard Crometty talking to me for weeks after his murder—I thought I should have been there to back him up— but I wasn’t.”

“How are you getting along with the crossword?”

He passed it over and I scanned the answers.

“What’s a ‘RILK’?” I asked him.

“It’s a—”

“Ah, there you are!” said a booming voice. We turned to see Victor Analogy striding across from his office. Head of the Swindon Litera Tecs since who knows when, he was a sprightly seventy-something with a receding hairline and a figure that
guaranteed
the part of Santa Claus at the SpecOps Christmas party. Despite his jocular nature he could be as hard as nails on occasion and was a good buffer between SO-27 and Braxton Hicks, who was strictly a company man. Analogy guarded our independence closely and regarded all his staff as family, and we thought the world of him. We all said our good mornings and Victor sat on my desk.

“How’s the PR stuff going, Thursday?”

“More tedious than Spenser, sir.”

“That bad, eh? Saw you on the telly last night. Rigged, was it?”

“Just a little.”

“I hate to be a bore, but it’s all important stuff. Have a look at this fax.”

He handed me a sheet of paper, and Bowden read over my shoulder.

“Ludicrous,” I said, handing the fax back. “What possible benefit could the Toast Marketing Board get from sponsoring us?”

Victor shrugged.

“Not a clue. But if they have cash to give away we could certainly do with some of it.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Braxton’s speaking to them this afternoon. He’s very big on the idea.”

“I bet he is.”

Braxton Hicks’s life revolved around his precious SpecOps budget. If any of us even
thought
of doing any sort of overtime, you could bet that Braxton would have something to say about it—and something in his case meant “no.” Rumor had it that he had spoken to the canteen about giving out smaller helpings for dinner. He had been known as “Small Portions” in the office ever since—but never to his face.