You Don't Have To Be Evil To Work Here, But It Helps (18 page)

Staring and prodding at the horrible thing wasn’t going to achieve anything. He passed it by and went to his office. As he pushed open the door, he heard the burbling of the phone.

Her voice; the sound of it made him catch his breath. No doubt about it, then. ‘There’s a Connie Schwartz-Alberich calling for you from J. W. Wells,’ she said.

‘What?’ He’d forgotten all about JWW, and everything they implied. How could you possibly forget about something like that? ‘Sorry, I mean, right, yes, put her through. Thanks.’

Connie Schwartz-whatever-she’d-said. Who? Never mind. ‘Hello?’ said a voice.

‘Hello,’ he said back. ‘Colin Hollingshead,’ he remembered.

‘Connie Schwartz-Alberich. It’s all right, you don’t know me from a hole in the ground. But you have met my colleague, Cassandra Clay.’

‘Yes,’ Colin said, and he meant it.

‘Right.’ Pause. The voice was brisk, normally the sort of tone he’d be intimidated by; and he was, but not nearly as much as he’d usually have been.

‘You got a minute?’

‘Sure,’ Colin replied. ‘Is this about—?’

‘No.’ Another pause, though slightly shorter this time. ‘It’s really more a sort of personal matter. Look, it’s difficult to explain. I don’t suppose there’s any chance you could spare me half an hour? This evening, preferably. Sevenish?’

‘I suppose so,’ Colin said doubtfully. ‘Why?’

‘If I could explain why over the phone, I wouldn’t need to come dragging out all the way to Richmond, or wherever the hell you are. Sorry,’ the voice added, ‘I’m having one of those days. Actually, I’ve been having one of those lives, but it’s only just starting to catch up with me.’

‘I don’t know,’ Colin said. ‘Is it important?’ He caught the sound of breath being intaken at the other end of the line. ‘It’s important,’ he added quickly. ‘Look, excuse me if this sounds really strange, but might it have something to do with why we’ve got a tree growing up through the middle of our lounge?’

He had no idea why he’d said that; but, to his great surprise, the voice replied, ‘Interesting. A tree.’

‘Yes.’

‘Anything’s possible.’ Pause. ‘You’re sure it’s a tree?’

‘Absolutely fucking positive.’

‘Right.’ The voice sounded thoughtful. Not thoughtful as in should-I-tell-someone-where-I’m-going-and-be-sure-to-take-my-personal-security-alarm. Thoughtful as in Oh. ‘Ash?’ What?’

‘Is it an ash tree?’

‘No’

‘Oh. You do know what an ash tree looks like?’

‘Yes, and it isn’t one. It’s not any kind of tree I’ve ever seen anywhere else. Look—’

‘Ah.’ The dictionaries are pretty useless on the subject, but there can be an infinity of difference between an ‘Ah’ and an ‘Oh’ Right, where shall I meet you? I’ll be coming on the train from the City.’

The rest of Colin’s working day was almost mockingly orthodox. He stuffed circulars into envelopes. He went down to Crudgington’s to pick up five boxes of dovetail cutters for the big CNC mills in the tool room. He filed some letters for Uncle Chris. Life was teasing him, pretending to be normal when it patently wasn’t. On the positive side, Fam smiled at him four times, laughed at two jokes, agreed with his views on the latest Trinny and Susannah show and happened to mention in passing that she quite fancied seeing the new Mel Gibson film. All of that was, of course, wonderful. It was only its juxtaposition with all the sub-Koontzian melodrama that made it seem bizarre.

He’d got rid of the ninety minutes between end-of-work and seven o’clock after the fashion of the sea grinding down a cliff. Most of it he spent in a grim little pub just down from the station, where he spun out a glass of Pepsi and failed to read the Evening Standard. At five to seven, he got up and wandered over to the ticket barrier. At ten past seven he’d just resolved to give it ten more minutes and then go home, when a middle-aged woman in a Marks & Spencer coat appeared in front of him like a decloaking Romulan and said, ‘You’re Colin Hollingshead.’

‘Yes.’

‘Fine. I need a drink. Lead the way.’

Which he did, with tolerable efficiency. She bought, which both impressed and relieved Colin, since he suddenly realised, as they walked into the pub, that he only had two pounds and seventy-six pence on him. For some reason, he felt inclined to trust her - probably because she was middle-aged and female, or some daft superficial reason of that kind. In his narrow and slight experience, middle-aged women were calm, efficient voices on the other end of phones sorting out botched deliveries, explaining incomprehensible Department of Trade export licence regulations, or telling him in words of one syllable how to install broadband on the office computer. Leaving aside his mother (easily done), he’d never been let down or dumped on by a middle-aged female, though of course there was a first time for everything.

‘Now then,’ she said, as they sat across a table in the quiet corner, next to the broken fruit machine. ‘I’ve got a theory, and I need you to help me prove it. All right?’

Colin nodded. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Is it to do with—’

‘I’m coming to that.’

‘Are you? I mean, fine, sorry.’

‘All right.’ She seemed to brace herself, as though she was nervous. The thought of someone being nervous talking to him struck Colin as faintly absurd. ‘You’ve met my colleague, Ms Clay.’

‘Yes.’

The woman thought for a moment. ‘All the time you were with her, you had this unaccountable feeling that something extremely weird was going on, but you couldn’t quite figure out what it was.’

Colin nodded.

‘You know what it is we do at JWW.’

‘Sort of.’ He took a deep breath. ‘You’re wizards. Sorry, witches, I suppose, in your—’

Connie gave him a weary look. ‘Hint,’ she said. ‘Not the W word. It’s got the wrong connotations; you know, old men in long white beards, crones with cats, teenagers larking about in the sky on broomsticks. We prefer the word “magical practitioners”, though old-timers like me still say sorcerers. Amounts to the same thing, but it doesn’t make me cringe when I hear it.’

‘All right,’ Colin said. ‘Sorcerers. You do magic’ He hesitated for a moment, then added: ‘You’re arranging for my Dad to sell his soul to the Devil.’

‘Hmm?’ The relative positions of the woman’s nose, mouth and eyebrows gave Colin the impression that she didn’t hold with that sort of thing, but wasn’t quite prepared to admit as much to someone outside the trade. ‘I imagine you’re not thrilled by that.’

‘Not really.’

‘Don’t blame you. If I were you, I’d talk him out of it.’

‘You don’t know my Dad.’

‘True. But that’s beside the point. Listen.’ She then told him about temporal displacement theory. She was better at explaining than Messrs Levinson and De Pienaar which was just as well.

‘Ring any bells?’ she concluded.

It was Colin’s turn to think. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I mean, yes, that could be me. But hang on. You’re saying that I’m being - well, like possessed, or something.’ He heard himself say that, almost as though he was eavesdropping on someone else, and his hand shook, spilling beer on his knees. ‘Someone else has taken me over, and they’re making me feel like I’m in love with her.’

Connie pursed her lips. ‘Nearly,’ she said, ‘but not quite. It’s not a case of malicious little gremlins squatting inside your head and ordering you about. It’s more - I don’t know; more impersonal than that. It’s got more in common with catching a cold than invasion-of-the-body-snatchers. The thing is,’ she went on, ‘it’s a really huge coincidence that both of you seem to have gone down with the same thing. Trust me, that’s really unusual. In fact, I can’t think of a single case study where it’s happened before.’ She drank some of her gin and tonic, then said, ‘Why don’t you tell me about it in your own words?’

That sounded a bit too much like English homework for Colin’s taste, but he did his best. ‘And the crazy part of it is,’ he concluded, with a rush, ‘since all this stuff started I’ve met someone else who I think’ I really do like, a lot. And some of the things I’m feeling now are pretty much the same, but a lot of them are different. Like, with this - this other girl I mentioned, it’s—’ He made an effort and found some words that more or less got the job done. ‘It feels much more like me, if you see what I mean. The stuff with Cassie doesn’t feel like me at all. It’s like I suddenly stopped talking normally and started saying everything in blank verse. It feels all wrong, but at the same time it’s really, definitely there, if you get me. Almost,’ he added with a frown, ‘it’s like it’s all happened before, and I’m remembering it. Which can’t make any sense, surely.’

Connie looked at him oddly and said, ‘I’ll be the judge of that. Now then, what’s all this about a tree?’

‘Two trees, actually.’ Colin studied her for a moment, and realised that she was actually taking him seriously. So he told her about it, the whole shebang, starting with his early childhood and putting in all the details he could call to mind. When he’d finished, all she said was, ‘And you’re sure it’s not an ash?’

‘Yes.’

‘OK. Not an apple, either?’

‘I’ve got books out of the library,’ he said. ‘Alan Titchmarsh and everything. It’s not anything in any of them.’

‘That’s very strange,’ Connie said. ‘That’s the bummer with mysteries, of course. One particular detail catches your attention and reminds you of something, and so you don’t pay proper attention to the rest of it, and you wind up completely screwed. I mean, here’s me banging on about species … But this tree definitely goes up through your roof and then disappears?’

‘Oh yes.’

Connie shook her head. ‘I’ll have to think about that one,’ she said. ‘There’s something lurking at the back of my mind, but I must’ve ticked it off somehow, because it’s sulking and won’t come out to play. Meanwhile, we’ve got to assume that it’s nothing to do with the other stuff. Which is hard to take,’ she added irritably, ‘because two separate lots of weirdness happening to one civilian - no offence - is pretty bloody unlikely if you ask me. Tell me, do you do the Lottery?’

‘Sometimes,’ Colin admitted.

‘No luck so far, obviously.’

‘No.’

‘Maybe you should stick with it,’ Connie said. ‘I mean, it’d solve a lot of problems if you won. Well, of course it would, ignore me. Only, you remind me a bit of the old joke about Cyprus being a place that produces more history than can be consumed locally. You do seem to have an awful lot of luck, far more than your fair share. Pity it’s all bad luck, really.’ She shook herself like a wet dog and went on, ‘The tree thing probably isn’t anything to worry about, but the other business is turning my colleague into a nervous wreck, and I don’t suppose it’s much fun for you, either. And the larks your father’s getting to up to-‘ She pulled a face. ‘I’ll be straight with you, if you promise not to breathe a word of it to anybody at JWW. In our profession, ethics is generally just someone talking with a lisp about southern East Anglia, but most of us do draw a line somewhere, eventually. Trouble is, the firm’s just been taken over, and the new management isn’t too picky about who it does business with. Seems to me,’ she added with a slight edge in her voice, ‘that if you help young Cassie to sort out her bit of bother - and that’ll be doing you some good too, don’t let’s forget - then she might be inclined to be grateful, which might lead her to make a complete balls-up of this routine sale-and-purchase. Completely out of character, that’d be, because she’s pretty good at her work most of the time, but everybody makes mistakes occasionally.’

Colin nodded. ‘I think she’d be happy to do that,’ he said, only she doesn’t know how. I mean, how to make a mess of it so the - the other lot pull out.’

Connie smiled beautifully. ‘That’s just youthful inexperience,’ she said. ‘When you’ve been in this trade as long as I have, you learn a thing or two about how perfectly simple, straightforward, do-it-standing-on-your-head-whistling-“Chatanooga-Choo-Choo” jobs can go horribly wrong in the twinkling of an eye. So; have we got a deal?’

‘I guess so,’ Colin said, feeling vaguely stunned. ‘Sorry if I sound a bit out of it, but I’m new to all this. A few days ago, I thought magic was sawing girls in half and Paul Daniels.’

‘Did you really?’ Connie shook her head. ‘Well, don’t beat yourself up too much about that. Let me tell you a secret about our profession. Basically, it’s all about giving a tiny minority of the population a hugely unfair advantage over everybody else. If everybody could get at it, there’d be no point, because it’d be the proverbial level playing field; and then you’d get cowboy sorcery outfits in every high street, you’d have watchdogs and ombudsmen and EU directives and disgruntled customers ringing up You & Yours, and everything’d grind to a halt. So instead, we confine ourselves to the very, very few people who can afford to pay our extortionate bills. We help them to get even richer still and the rest of the world gets screwed rotten without even knowing it; everything’s normal, everybody’s happy. It’s a noble calling, but it’s all I’ve got. Or it was,’ she added, frowning. ‘But that’s none of your concern. Leave it with me,’ she said, finishing her drink, ‘and I’ll see what I can do.’ She grinned. ‘Think of me as your fairy godmother,’ she said. ‘I’ll wave my magic wand—’

‘Have you got one?’ Colin said. ‘A real one?’

She looked at him. ‘I’ll pretend you didn’t say that. Anyway, I’ll be in touch. Now we’ve got some idea of what the problem actually is, solving it ought to be relatively simple. Probably a great big anticlimax; it usually is. We just like to dress it up in funky long words so we can pad the bill out a bit. Still, I don’t suppose you’re the first person in galactic history that this has happened to.’

Colin looked at her. ‘A moment ago you said I was. You said—*

Connie made a dismissive gesture. ‘I say all sorts of things,’ she replied, ‘it’s a side effect of charging by the hour. The more I think about it, the more I’m inclined to the view that it’s probably just a little bit of fluff on the points of the space-time continuum. Really screws things up for you, but a wipe with an oily rag and a squirt of WD-40 and you’ll be back on the rails in no time.’

‘You think so?’

‘In the trade before you were born,’ she said, getting up. ‘I’ll call you as soon as I’ve got anything concrete, as the developer said to the mafioso. Nice to have met you.’