The Ministry of SUITs (18 page)

“Possibly.”

“Oh, good.”

All three stood looking at one another.

The old woman broke the silence first. “Now that we're alone I don't suppose there's any point in pretending anymore.”

“You were following us.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I work for Chapeau Noir. All I was supposed to do was follow you, keep an eye on you. But you figured out that I was following you. And if you figured that out, my orders are to eliminate you.”

“Oh, good,” said Jack. “So you're going to kill us because I figured out you weren't acting suspiciously. This is exactly what my mother meant when she said that I was too smart for my own good.”

Trudy turned to Jack. “Did your mother really say that to you?”

“No, but it would have been appropriate if she had. Don't you think?”

“Well, not…”

“Shut up!” yelled the old woman, becoming impatient. “Get ready to die.”

“Okay,” said Jack. “If you want me to get ready to die, I'm going to need to make a will. So I'll probably need a lawyer. And obviously an undertaker for the funeral and everything.” Jack found it hard to take threats from a little old lady seriously.

“Is this really the time for jokes, Jack?” asked Trudy.

“Yes!” laughed Jack. “She's an old woman—what's she going to do, throw a Battenberg cake at us?”

The old woman set her tartan shopping bag on the ground and reached into it. Jack felt less confident than he had. Maybe there were more than Battenberg cakes in the bag. Maybe she had a knife, or even worse, a gun. Or maybe Battenberg cakes were heavier and more aerodynamic than he thought. Were Battenburg cakes explosive under the right circumstances?

MINISTRY
OF
S.U.I.T.S
HANDBOOK

BEING FOLLOWED

P
EOPLE
L
OOKING
S
USPICIOUS

People who are up to no good will go out of their way to look innocent.

Often the police investigating a crime will ask, “Have you seen anything suspicious going on?” Which is clearly the wrong question. Thieves, not wanting to get caught, do everything in their power to avoid attention. As a result they act in a very unsuspicious manner.

Detectives in whodunit novels often claim they are suspicious of an individual and therefore they investigate them further. What they should really say is, “That bloke Simon is acting in a very suspicious manner; therefore I know he can't be the murderer.”

If the detectives on television were smart enough to show up on the scene of a crime and arrest the person who seemed to be acting in the most unsuspicious way, there would never be the need for
Midsomer Murders
or
Columbo
to last a full hour.

MINISTRY
OF
S.U.I.T.S
HANDBOOK

BATTENBERG CAKES

P
OTENTIAL
L
ETHALITY

Theoretically it is possible to kill someone by throwing a Battenberg cake at them. But only if they have a nut allergy. Because the yellow slices in the cake have almond in them. But the individual you are trying to kill has to be very, very, very, very allergic to nuts indeed. And you'd have to throw the cake at them, very, very, very hard. I'm not saying that it's impossible to do, just very unlikely. To put this in context, assassins and secret agents often carry guns, knives, blowpipes, throwing stars, and Tasers, but they rarely carry any Mr Kipling products. Not even the Angel Slices. And they are delicious.

 

27

JUST WHISTLE

 

The old woman's wrinkled hand slowly emerged from her tartan shopping bag holding a silver whistle. She put it to her lips and blew as hard as she could.

Nothing happened. The gallery was silent.

Trudy looked around. Jack just laughed. “That's it? That's how you're going to kill us? With a whistle that doesn't even work?”

Jack noticed that Trudy was scanning the room around them. If Trudy was worried, something had to be wrong. “What is it?”

“Jack, some creatures hear at a higher pitch than us. Think about it: It could have been a dog whistle … or worse.”

“Oh.”

At that moment there was a brief scrabbling and the doors to the gallery burst open. Galloping through them were two creatures that looked as if they were half-man, half-dog. They had hairy legs and arms and ran on all fours with their hands touching the ground and propelling them through the air. Their eyes looked human but their noses and mouths were swollen and puggish.

“Not good,” said Jack. And although Jack's analysis of the situation was reasonable, it was not entirely accurate, as not only was it not good … it was about to get worse.

The man-dogs were the first creatures to enter the building, but they were followed by others. Another three creatures entered that were a hideous mishmash of human and bluebottle flies. They walked in a crouched fashion and had two pairs of buzzing, silvery wings affixed to their backs. It didn't seem as if they could fly, but as they walked they occasionally took a gigantic hop powered by two or three buzzing flaps from their wings. Instead of hands their arms finished in two long, black, serrated pincers. Their eyes were a honeycomb pattern of silver mirrors and below that there was a small black tube, which must have served them for both a mouth and a nose.

The last creature into the gallery was possibly the most disturbing of all. Although it looked the most humanoid, it had been crossed with a lizard or a snake. Walking upright with two arms and two legs, its body was covered in dark green scales that seemed to ooze some kind of oily black fluid, but that wasn't what made it look so disturbing. It was the eyes, the human eyes in the flat, featureless face. Its head was smooth with no ears or nose. Instead of a nose it had two small black nostrils and its mouth was a horizontal, lipless slash.

Jack gulped. He literally gulped. He'd read about people gulping when afraid but it had never actually happened to him.
So that gulping-when-terrified thing does actually happen
,
then
, he thought. That's an interesting fact to find out. Although its level of interestingness
51
didn't really outweigh the fact that in order to learn this he had to be put in a horrific and life-threatening situation.

The six man-beasts lined up beside the old woman. “You see, I really am nothing more than an old woman. But I am an old woman who works for Chapeau Noir Enterprises. And Mr. Teach has a lot of people and … creatures who work for him. You'd be surprised how many strange creatures you can get an evil scientist
52
to make for you when you have a few chests full of gold to throw at him.”

Jack turned to Trudy. “Have you ever come across this situation before?”

“Jack, I've only been a Ministry agent for a few months longer than you have.”

“Right, so you haven't come up against weird man-creatures that want to kill you. Nice to know that this is a first for both of us. So what do we do?”

“Fight.”

Secretly Jack had been hoping that Trudy would say “run away.” But if she was ready to fight, he wasn't going to leave her by herself. “Succinct and to the point, Trudy. I like it. I suppose now is the time to use The Speed.”

Trudy nodded. “Yeah, if you don't use it now, you'll probably never get the opportunity to use it again.”

“Thanks for the inspiration.”

Trudy bunched her fists and moved toward the man-beasts. The two man-dogs leapt toward her. Trudy blurred into action, skidding feet-first under the man-dogs. She lashed out a hand, grabbed one by the tail, and swung it into the other. They smashed together and fell crumpled to the ground. Trudy jumped up and ran toward the snake creature.

The bluebottles started moving toward Trudy. Jack had to stop them. He felt a brief flash of guilt for not having gotten involved more quickly. What would have happened if Trudy had gotten hurt or even killed? The thought made him feel like a concrete block had been dropped through the bottom of his stomach. It was exactly the kind of negative emotion he needed for The Speed to kick in.

Jack ran over and stood between Trudy and the bluebottles. He felt as though he should say something clever and intimidating like an action hero in the movies.

“I am going to give you such a slap.”

It wasn't a great line. Jack thought that action heroes probably prepared lines beforehand for this kind of situation. He decided to work on some later, assuming he wasn't dead, of course.

A bluebottle whipped out a black pincer at him, and he dodged, bending backward. The second bluebottle dived at his legs. Using The Speed, Jack jumped and put a foot square on the bluebottle's back. He launched himself into the air and kicked the third bluebottle in the face. The third bluebottle went tumbling to the ground as Jack landed awkwardly beside it. The Speed made him faster, but not any more agile.

The second bluebottle tried to grab Jack with its pincers. Jack dodged under the pincer, grabbed the creature's wrist, and spun it in a circle. He put a foot against the wall and kicked himself into an attempted backward somersault. He had planned to land elegantly on his feet, but underestimated the distance and instead smashed awkwardly down on top of a bluebottle, causing it to stumble sideways.

Jack scrambled to his feet and glanced over to see how Trudy was doing. The man-dogs and snake-creature kept trying to grab her, but every time they looked as though they would get ahold of her she cracked two or three punches into their bodies before dodging out of the way.

“Everything going well?” he called over to her.

“Brilliant! How about you?”

“Better than average, I'd say.”

Two of the bluebottles were moving toward Jack. He held up his fists and pretended to be brave. In reality he was savoring the momentary respite. Unfortunately, the two bluebottles weren't really trying to attack Jack. They were just distracting him from what the third bluebottle was doing. Jack felt a slamming impact in the center of his back. The bluebottle had run at him at full speed and then leapt, using its wings for momentum. The impact carried Jack into the air for ten feet, and the bluebottle who had hit him was along for the ride, clinging and scratching his body.

For a few seconds Jack felt as if he would be flying through the air forever. Feeling like flying wasn't entirely unpleasant and was certainly a lot better than the feeling that replaced it—the feeling of crashing into the double doors.

Jack felt like he had broken a few bones and the door was partly off its hinges. The bluebottle leapt up, grabbed a vase from a nearby plinth, and threw it at Jack's head. It exploded on the wall, showering Jack with pottery fragments.

Jack scrambled to his feet and ran out the doorway. He was now standing on a balcony overlooking the entrance hall. There was a sheer drop of thirty feet to the ground.

The bluebottle dived at Jack, trying to knock him over the balcony. Just as the bluebottle was about to hit him, Jack used The Speed and grabbed both of the bluebottle's wrists. Jack rolled onto his back, pulling the bluebottle's hands with him. A final kick propelled the creature over the balcony.

The museum had been hosting a dinosaur exhibition recently, and the bluebottle crashed into a large fiberglass model pterodactyl hanging from the ceiling. The bluebottle got caught in the metal wires that attached the model to the ceiling. The more the bluebottle struggled, the more it became entangled. Suddenly its thrashing caused the wires to snap. The ruined model, the bluebottle, and some plaster from the ceiling dropped to the floor and smashed to smithereens. Jack looked over the balcony. The bluebottle twitched a few times and then lay still. “That's one down.”

Jack ran back through the doorway back into the gallery. Trudy was lying on the floor unconscious and the old lady was fastening her wrists with plastic ties. One of the man-dogs was slumped against the wall and the other lay spread-eagled and motionless in the middle of the floor. Trudy must have knocked them out before she was captured.

Whatever confidence Jack had felt after beating the bluebottle left his body. If Trudy hadn't been able to handle the remaining creatures, how would he? She was ten times more skilled and experienced than he was.

“Come back for more?” the old lady sneered at him.

Jack couldn't leave Trudy, but at the same time it wouldn't do her any good if he got himself caught.

Then he had an idea. The museum had lots of old stuff in it, including medieval weaponry. Maybe he couldn't defeat these creatures with his bare hands. But if he could find a sword or an ax … With that kind of weapon and The Speed he would be unstoppable.

“Back in a minute,” said Jack as he ran back out the double doors.

MINISTRY
OF
S.U.I.T.S
HANDBOOK

SNAKES

H
EARING
D
IFFICULTIES

Snakes don't have ears and therefore can't hear. They can sense vibrations, but that isn't really the same thing. Some scientists claim that it is, but it's about as similar as sitting on a washing machine during the spin cycle would be to listening to a world-class philharmonic orchestra.

People often claim that rattlesnakes use their rattle to scare people off. However, the fact that snakes can't hear clearly means that they have no idea that they're even doing it.

This was proven by a Ministry scientist years ago, who managed to use a thought-transference device to speak to a rattlesnake. Although the snake could not actually use words, computer software interpreted its thoughts so that they could be relayed through a computer screen: