You Don't Have To Be Evil To Work Here, But It Helps (33 page)

‘All right,’ Fam said, in a tiny voice. ‘I’ll buzz her and ask if she can see you.’

Colin shook his head. ‘Tell her I’m on my way up. Where’s her office, by the way?’

‘Um, I’m not actually sure,’ she replied. ‘It’s a rather odd building, you can get lost in it. I’d better ring through to her - don’t want to lose this job as well.’

Colin sighed. ‘Yes, all right. But don’t ask if she can spare me five minutes. Tell her I’ve got to see her right now. Matter of life and death. Matter of life after death, actually, but that’s part of the long, complicated explanation, so we’ll save it for later, all right?’

Fam rang through. ‘She’ll be straight down,’ she said. ‘Sounded almost like she was expecting you.’

Colin shrugged. ‘She’s strange. In fact, I think they all are. Fam, have they told you what it is they actually do here? Because—’

‘Of course they have,’ she replied. ‘They’re tea and coffee importers, it says so on the brass plate outside.’ She frowned. ‘What’s so desperately important and involves tea?’ she added.

Colin felt the grin take control of his face before he could stop it. ‘I need to dump about a hundred tons of it in a harbour,’ he said. He almost added ‘Humour’ out of sheer force of habit. ‘Look, forget I said that. I really will explain, I promise.’ The fire door was opening; that’d be Cassie. ‘And think about what I said, right?’ he hissed, as Cassie walked into reception. ‘Promise?’

Fam mouthed yes at him, and he looked away.

‘In here,’ Cassie said. ‘My office. We won’t be disturbed in here. I’ve got all the documents and stuff.’

Colin looked round, and took an instant dislike to the place.

For one thing, there was something very odd about it. No matter how hard they try not to, people can’t help leaving an impression on rooms they spend time in. Sometimes it’s obvious - fluffy cushions, bead curtains, framed photographs of fat children cuddling dogs, cured and stuffed squirrels in a glass case, the smell of forgotten salad rotting in obscurity. Sometimes it’s more subliminal: the perfectly tidy desk and immaculately placed furniture of the neurotic, for example. Cassie Clay’s office, by contrast, told him nothing at all. It was as though nobody had been in the room for months.

But he wasn’t interested in rooms, no matter how weird and physically impossible they might be. All he wanted to do was get the information he needed and leave, pausing only to sweep Fam off her feet and into his arms on the way out, so, if they’d laid on all this ambience for his benefit, they’d been wasting their time.

‘In here,’ Cassie went on, ‘I’ve got a photocopy of the contract your father signed, along with the correspondence between us and them, notes of my phone conversations, all that kind of thing. Do you want to work through it together, or what?’

Colin shrugged. ‘Do what you like,’ he said. ‘What I want to know is, how does it affect me personally? Because that bloody horrible thing that calls itself Oscar told me I couldn’t quit or run away, or they’d foreclose at once and my Dad’d go straight to— Well, you know. So, can you look at the paperwork and tell me if that’s really true, or whether they’re lying about it.’

Cassie nodded. ‘Bear with me,’ she said, ‘I’ll have a—’ She broke off. First she stared at the contract - she was only on the first page - and then at Colin.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘Sorry if this sounds like a dumb question,’ she said, ‘but what’s your father’s first name?’

‘Colin,’ Colin replied. ‘Same as me. What about it?’

Cassie breathed a massive sigh of relief. ‘That’s all right, then,’ she said. ‘Only, when I drew up the contract, his name wasn’t in the file anywhere, or in the letter of instruction, so I left a blank for him to fill in. So when I looked at it just now and saw what’s been written in there, Colin Derek Hollingshead, I thought for u moment there’d been some sort of terrible—’

‘Did you say Derek?’

Cassie looked up. ‘That’s right. Here, see for yourself.’

‘My father’s middle name is Henry.’

‘What?’

‘And I was called Colin Derek after my Mum’s cousin in — Give me that,’ Colin snapped, grabbing the contract from her. ‘You must’ve …’

Dad’s handwriting had always been something of a mystery to him. He’d always wondered how come a forceful, dynamic man like his father could have such childish, girly handwriting.

‘Oh shit,’ he said.

Childish and girly, but crystal clear. And unmistakable.

‘I don’t understand,’ Cassie was bleating. Colin laughed.

‘Don’t you?’ he said. ‘I do. I fucking well understand, all right.’ He could feel the anger welling up inside him like a balloon. ‘You know what he’s done? It wasn’t his soul he sold to the Devil - it was mine.’

Three seconds passed, during which there was no sound at nil.

‘Oh,’ Cassie said.

Which only went to show: she might’ve known a very great deal about magical law and spiritual conveyancing, but absolutely nothing about tact. Colin, on the other hand, seemed lo have stopped entirely, as though God had hit the pause button. It wasn’t that the anger had gone away; far from it. Rather, it was now so huge, filling him so completely, that at first he could neither move nor speak; and when the pressure dropped just a little, all he could come out with was a small, flat voice, like the snotty cow in a Japanese car who reminds you that you haven’t put you*r seat belt on.

‘He can’t do that, can he?’ Colin said.

‘Well, no,’ Cassie replied quickly. ‘I mean, if you’re not a party to the contract it’s not binding on you, obviously. It’d only affect you if you actually signed—’ She tailed off, then added, ‘You did sign, didn’t you?’

‘Yes. You witnessed my signature.’

‘So I did,’ Cassie replied. ‘Actually, I remember thinking at the time, why’s he got to sign, it’s nothing to do with him; but I assumed it was just an indemnity or something, just so they could cover themselves—’

‘You thought that,’ Colin said, very quietly indeed.

‘Yes, but I didn’t actually read—’

‘You didn’t actually read what it said. I see.’

At least Cassie didn’t say sorry at that point; not because she wasn’t about to, her common sense having evaporated like whisky on a hot stove, but because at that moment the door opened and Fam came in, holding a tray. On it were two cups and saucers, a sugar bowl, a milk jug and a small plate of digestive biscuits.

‘Thought you might like some tea,’ she said, putting the tray down on the table, and left.

It was only after she’d gone that Colin realised it had been her; and the irony of it burst through his stunned numbness like an armour-piercing shell. Just when he’d got somewhere; just when there was a chance she’d say yes and come with him to Vanuatu or the Andaman Islands and help him with the beachcombing and the splitting open of coconuts or whatever the future held for them both, just at that moment, this had to happen. It was just so bloody unkind—

‘Milk and sugar?’ Cassie whispered.

‘Yes, please,’ Colin replied automatically. ‘No sugar.’

‘Biscuit?’

‘Thanks.’ A plate appeared on the periphery of his vision; he reached out and took a biscuit, then stared at it blankly for a second or two, trying to remember what the hell he was supposed to do with it. ‘So what you’re saying is,’ he said, ‘I signed the contract, so Dad gets his demon workforce and I’m the one who goes to Hell for ever and ever.’

‘Basically, yes,’ Cassie replied.

‘And the moment I try and quit or escape, I drop dead on the spot and—’

‘Yes.’

Without really knowing what he was doing or why, Colin stirred his tea a few times and drank a mouthful. The milk must’ve been off, because it tasted funny - wasn’t there an old superstition that the presence of the Evil One curdled milk? It’s started already, he thought wildly. How absolutely bloody wonderful.

‘And all this could’ve been avoided,’ he went on - Cassie was trying to hide behind her teacup, but he wasn’t having that’- if you could’ve been arsed to do your job and read the sodding small print.’

‘Mphm.’

‘Great.’ Colin put down his cup, realised he was still holding a digestive biscuit, and closed his hand on it, crushing it into dust. ‘Well, since I’m going to go to Hell anyhow, I might as well do something evil and bad while I’m at it. Such as strangling you.’

Something in his tone of voice, perhaps; because Cassie reacted as though she thought he meant it. She choked on the biscuit that she’d been eating, jumped up out of her chair, sending the cup and tray flying, and backed towards the door. Colin, now he came to think of it, actually had meant it. ‘There’s a saying,’ he said, as he stood up and took a step forward. ‘Something about sheep and lambs,’ he muttered. ‘And hanging.’

‘Now look,’ Cassie gabbled quickly. ‘I’m not promising anything, but maybe if we talked to them really, really nicely—’

Colin lunged at her. He wasn’t blessed with particularly good reflexes or anything like that, but the adrenalin was flowing and he had all the motivation that anybody could possibly need. Cassie dodged, of course, but her chair was in the way and she stumbled against it, which slowed her up a bit. In fact, it’d have been a close-run thing if she and Colin hadn’t both suddenly stopped dead in their tracks, dropped to the floor like sacks of potatoes, and immediately fallen asleep.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Connie Schwartz-Alberich had many virtues, but patience wasn’t one of them. Not that the deficiency bothered her in the least. Trees, she reckoned, were designed to be patient; likewise buildings, stalactites and tectonic plates. Human beings, on the other hand, were better suited to bustling about and getting things done, and she was a great believer in playing to one’s strengths.

Now, it seemed, she had a choice. She could wait patiently for her notice to expire, and then she could wait patiently at home for the phone to ring with an enticing new job offer, and then she could resolutely, stoically wither away and die. Or she could get up off her bum and do something.

Define ‘something’. There were all sorts of things Connie could do, such as burst her way into the new boss’s office and restructure his nasal architecture - fun for about five seconds, but not offering any long-term solution. Or she could get on the phone to every contact she had in the trade and plead for an interview, which would help pass the time but was unlikely to do any good. Or—

Instead, she’d got on with her work. She went at it like a combine harvester in a cornfield, mowing it down in swathes until there simply wasn’t any more. That was a pity, because it had helped take her mind off the unpleasant choice that was still unresolved. So she decided to go and see Cas Suslowicz. He might have some work she could be getting on with; alternatively, she could torture him with guilt over the fact that she’d been sacked and there was nothing he could do about it. Yes, that’d be fun.

Connie found him, as usual, slumped in his chair, elbows on the desk, surrounded by a mountain range of files, folders, reports, surveys, architects’ drawings and other accumulations of information. Cas loathed paperwork; he was a giant (the shortest giant in the world, but still a giant) and what he liked doing was building things - castles in the air, rainbow bridges, palaces on top of beanstalks, highways to Heaven, anything with a bit of n challenge to it. Trotting up gangplanks with a twenty-ton slab of marble on each shoulder was no bother as far as he was concerned. Filling in a planning application, however, gave him a headache. Pencils broke as soon as he picked them up, and building regulations had been known to make him burst into tears.

‘Connie,’ he said, looking up. ‘I haven’t seen you in ages.’

Of course he hadn’t. Guilt. That was something else he was good at. Maybe it was a giant thing. If your race memory is all about bearing the weight of the world on your shoulders while someone else is bedding in the acroprop, sooner or later you’re going to get into the habit of accepting responsibility for anything that isn’t nailed down.

‘Oh well,’ she said. ‘You look busy.’

Cas groaned and nodded his huge, shaggy head. ‘It’s this rotten job,’ he sighed. ‘Oh, it’s no big deal in itself: Union Bank of Sacramento wants a city in the clouds so they can transfer their registered office there and save a bundle in corporation tax, but the red tape’s appalling. There’s the Federal Aviation Authority, the California state legislature, the Yosemite National Park people, NASA—’ He lifted a vast, sausage-fingered hand, and let it fall on his massive knee. ‘I’m telling you,’ he went on, ‘if we’d had all this kind of crap to contend with when we were building Valhalla, Odin and the boys’d still be beating each other up in a Portakabin on the Oslo fjord.’

Connie pursed her lips. ‘You know what, Cas,’ she said. ‘What you need is someone to look after the bullshit for you and let you get on with building things.’

Cas Suslowicz cupped his chin in his palms and roared softly, like a very sad lion. ‘Don’t torture me, please, Connie, it’s not fair. I know perfectly well, you can do all this stuff standing on your head - didn’t I always say you could’ve been really great in civil engineering?’

‘Yes,’ Connie said, with a mild smirk. ‘And you were right, of course.’

‘And now,’ Cas went on wretchedly, ‘those snot-nosed bastards have given you the sack, and you know as well as I do that it’s out of my hands and there’s bugger-all I can do about it. Really, Connie, if it was up to me—’

‘But it isn’t,’ she said crisply, ‘so there we are. Cas, why the hell did you and Dennis and Jack have to go and sell the bloody firm to those people? And while we’re on the subject, who exactly are they? Come on,’ she added soothingly, as his brow puckered into a ferocious scowl, ‘I know you’re sworn to secrecy and if you break your oath you’ll get staked out on top of the Caucasus and gnawed at by giant vultures, but you can tell me.’ She paused, then added: ‘I’m your friend.’

Cas grunted like a bull elephant. ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘Don’t start, please. If you could only see the penalty clause they made us sign, you wouldn’t joke about it. I promise you, vultures’d be a picnic in comparison.’ He sighed, and the window-panes rattled. ‘The stupid thing is, they aren’t even interested in the business. They aren’t in it for the goodwill or the client list or anything like that.’