May Contain Traces of Magic (13 page)

Chris neglected to point out the basic flaw in her assumptions. Angela always muttered, so with any luck Karen wouldn't hear her and realise she was a she. He wasn't quite sure why it mattered, but his instincts, finely honed as those of a small vulnerable forest creature, told him it probably did. ‘Right,' he said. ‘I'll—'

‘And if he wants coffee it'll have to be that crappy instant muck you bought, because there isn't anything else.'

‘OK. That's fine.'

Not a chance in hell that Angela would accept a coffee from him, in any case. She'd regard it as fraternising with the enemy, the sort of thing women had their hair cut off for after the liberation of Paris. For the record, he was desperate for a coffee, but he'd just have to wait.

Chris nipped back into the hall and opened the door. Angela was still there, looking awkward and unwanted at him. ‘Sorry about that,' he said with a slightly crazed smile. ‘Come on through.'

‘You're still in your pyjamas,' she said.

‘Yes,' he replied. ‘Can I get you anything? Coffee?'

She gave him a look, as though he'd just demanded her first-born child. ‘No, thanks,' she said. ‘Look, I know I'm messing up your weekend, but Mr Burnoz said I had to come over. I'd have rung first, but I didn't want to disturb you.'

The logic of the young. Quite possibly his mind had worked that way once, though he couldn't remember any specific instances. ‘It's no bother,' he said. ‘So, what's—?'

She was huddled in the armchair, looking down at her hands. ‘Mr Burnoz said he's being hassled by the demon-control authorities,' she said. ‘Apparently they rang him at home - they need us both for questioning, about that poor man at the shop. He told them he'd had a call from them earlier saying you were a nervous wreck and suffering from post-traumatic stress, and they said they didn't know anything about that; so he called my mother and said he wanted me to go round to your place first thing in the morning, and then we could both go to their office and answer their questions; only if you were really at death's door, I was to call him back and he'd explain to them.' She looked up and frowned at him. ‘He said something about “the second incident”, whatever that means. Do you know what he meant?'

Chris nodded. ‘One of them got into my car yesterday,' he said.

Her eyes became very large and round. ‘What, a—?'

‘Yes.'

‘That's awful. What did it do?'

He shrugged, the self-effacing hero. ‘I looked in my mirror and there it was, on the back seat. Then it grinned at me, kicked the door open and jumped out. And that was all, basically. '

‘But that's—' She'd been about to say
that's really unusual
or something of the sort. ‘Bad enough,' she said. ‘Did they catch it?'

‘Not yet,' Chris replied. ‘They asked me loads of questions and took my car for forensic tests. They think it might have been hiding in something I was carrying; a sanctuary,' he added, remembering the technical term Jill had used. ‘Something like a BB—'

‘You know a lot about it,' Angela said.

It was practically an accusation. ‘Picked up quite a bit from them while they were interviewing me,' he said. ‘Listen, give me ten minutes to get dressed, and then I suppose we'd better be getting along, if it's so urgent.'

When he got back, he found Karen in the living room with her. Angela was looking at something terribly interesting on the carpet, while Karen was mauling a cushion with her fingers. She looked up as he came into the room and said, ‘How long are you going to be? Only we're supposed to be at Molly and Clive's by one, and you were going to make a start on the bathroom. '

On the other hand, Chris thought, getting dragged out by the government on a Saturday morning had its bright side. And it was his civic duty, of course. ‘I don't know,' he said. ‘Could just be a couple of hours, could be all day. I'll phone when—'

‘Doesn't matter,' Karen snapped. ‘I'll just have to tell Molly you're ill. Again,' she added. ‘But you've got to get that bathroom started - I've got the carpet on order.'

(And he couldn't help thinking: when did it all change? Because at school, and just afterwards, it was Karen who chased after me; she laughed at my jokes and smiled a lot, and once she came to a football match with me. I still love her, of course, but something changed. At which point, in some remote siding on a rural branch-line of his mind, a train of thought gradually shuffled into movement.)

‘Was that your wife?' Angela asked when they were outside, walking to where he'd left the car.

‘Yes,' Chris answered, because he couldn't face explaining. ‘You mustn't mind her, she's been under a lot of pressure at work lately, makes her a bit—'

‘Is she in the business too?'

He nodded. ‘She's in the mineral rights department at Donder and Busch. Scrying for natural gas deposits under the North Sea, mostly. Of course, they do it all from aerial photographs. '

‘It's a big firm, isn't it?'

‘Quite big, yes. She's assistant head of section,' he added, trying to make it sound like he was boasting. She didn't seem interested.

‘We did scrying at uni,' Angela said. ‘I was rubbish at it. It must be boring, doing that all day.'

‘I don't think she does much actual scrying these days. More sort of managerial.' Shouts at people, in other words. ‘Hence the pressure.'

‘Ah.'

There was the black BMW, property of Her Majesty's government. It'd have been so nice if he could've hung on to it just a little bit longer, but Jill's people would be coming to collect it that evening. Or, come to think of it, they'd probably take it off him when he got to their offices, and give him the bus fare home. Life can be so—

‘What's DS stand for?'

Chris's mind went blank; then he realised he must have put yesterday's shirt on, the polo shirt he'd got from Jill's bloke. ‘I don't know,' he said. ‘Designer Shirt, probably. Or somebody's name.' He was about to say it wasn't his shirt, but he didn't. Maybe he thought it wasn't worth mentioning.

‘And that's not your car, is it?'

‘No. It's one they lent me while—'

He stopped. There was something wrong with the car. He lunged closer, and saw that the window had been forced open and the interior was a mess. The seats (the beautiful plush German luxury seats, a tantalising hint of a world of opulence and ease that he knew he could never attain) had been ripped up, the plastic dashboard panels were cracked and distorted where somebody had tried to prise them off, and the glove compartment door was hanging loose by one mangled hinge.

‘Fuck,' Chris said.

She frowned. ‘It's a bit scruffy,' she said. ‘Was it like that when you got it?'

He stuck his head through the open window and looked more closely. Further desecrations: the footwell mats had been ripped out and shredded, the padded headrests had been slit open, the ashtrays had been torn out, and the attackers had put a lot of effort and ingenuity into trying to get the radio, though somehow or other it had held out and beaten the siege, like Malta, though paying a dreadful price for its resistance. It was enough to break your heart.

‘Oh,' Angela was saying. ‘Someone's tried to break into it.'

Chris wasn't interested in anything she might have to say. The ghastly thought had just struck him that, since it had been in his possession at the time, he might be liable for the repairs.

‘Bastards,' he mumbled. ‘Bastard bloody kids, just look at what they've—'

‘I don't think it was kids,' Angela said quietly. ‘Look.'

She was pointing at the murdered seats, and she had a point. It wasn't just random slashes; there were five long, straight, parallel lacerations in the shape of a capital I. Someone with an excessively vivid imagination might well attribute them to a powerful long-fingered hand, tipped with very sharp claws.

‘I think they were looking for something,' she said.

Oh, Chris thought. ‘You reckon?' he said, and noted that his voice was higher and squeakier than usual. ‘I suppose so, yes. Wasting their time, of course, that's the stupid thing. Apart from the radio, there wasn't anything in there worth nicking.'

‘How do you know?' Angela said thoughtfully. ‘You said it's not your car. For all you know, there might've been something hidden in it.'

Suddenly, having to pay for the damage no longer seemed the worst thing Chris could imagine. The claw marks; and the strength it must've taken to crack the dash like that, even if they'd been using a jemmy, and he had an idea they hadn't.

‘I suppose I'd better call the demon-control people,' he said wearily. ‘If it was a - well, one of
them
that did this, they'll want to do all their forensic stuff on it. We'd better not touch anything. Last thing I need is another bollocking.'

‘But we're supposed to go straight to their office,' Angela objected. ‘Mr Burnoz said it's really urgent.'

She was starting to get on Chris's nerves. ‘Fine,' he said. ‘And exactly how do you suggest we get there? We can't drive this wreck. Even if it's still running after what's been done to it, we'll smudge all the pawprints and stuff.'

‘That's all right,' she said. ‘We'll go in my car. It's parked just round the corner.'

It hadn't occurred to him to wonder how she'd got there; as far as he was concerned, she was just a pest who sprouted up out of the ground to torment him. ‘Your car,' he repeated.

‘Yes. Look, why don't you phone the demon people to come and see to this car, and then we'll drive over to their place in mine.'

There was a flaw in her reasoning, but Chris was too shocked and preoccupied to bother isolating it. ‘Yes, all right,' he said distractedly. ‘We'll do that, then. Where did you say your—?'

He'd been expecting something ancient and beat-up and studenty; but her car turned out to be an almost new shiny red Suzuki jeep, the interior clean, tidy and smelling discreetly of air freshener. Her mother's, he rationalised, borrowed for the morning.

‘Do you know how to get there?' Chris asked as he put on his seat belt. ‘I don't.'

Angela flipped open the glove compartment and pulled out a map, printed off a computer. ‘I got it off Google,' she said. ‘I've marked the route in yellow felt tip.'

Well, he thought. Clearly they do teach them something at university, besides how to carry their liquor and stuff newspaper into the pockets of pool tables so as to play for free. ‘I'll map-read,' he offered.

She started the engine. ‘All right.'

‘Right.' He studied the map, turned it the right way up, and found where they were. ‘OK, carry on to the end of this road and turn right.'

Naturally that made him think about SatNav, which in turn reminded him of what Jill had told him. Hang on, he thought; what if it wasn't a demon that trashed the Beemer? After all, demons don't have a monopoly on claws and sharp pointed teeth. The SatNav entity had broken out of the government labs, and Jill had as good as told him it might come looking for him. So, what if it had been SatNav - disturbed, psychotic and lovesick - who'd junked the car, searching for clues that'd lead her to him? Chris thought about that. It was a motive; maybe not a very good one, but surely rather more plausible than a mystery demon he'd never met getting fixated on him.

‘Well?'

‘Well what?'

‘Which way now?'

‘Sorry,' he mumbled, and checked. ‘Yes, fine, got it. At the roundabout, take the third - no, forget that - take the fourth exit.'

‘There isn't any roundabout,' Angela pointed out. ‘Just a junction. Do I go left here or right?'

‘Course there's a—No, sorry, hang on,' Chris added, peering at the map. ‘That's the flyover, not the railway bridge. OK, turn left here, then carry straight on till you get to the—' Truth was, he'd never been much good at maps. In fact, if map-reading was an event at the 2012 Olympics, the only way he'd make the national team would be if there was a mass outbreak of the Black Death around Christmas 2011. It was a skill he hadn't needed lately, of course, because he'd had his own personal navigator, perched on the dashboard, always ready with the answers. He was going to miss her, he realised. Then he pictured the BMW's shredded seats, and those long, steady sweeping cuts.

‘I don't think this is the right way,' Angela said.

‘No, we're bang on course, there's the railway line, look, so—'

‘That's the canal, not the railway line.'

So it was. ‘All right,' Chris said, trying to make it seem like he was indulging her in some trivial whim. ‘Take the next right, then immediately left—'

‘I'd rather not,' she said. ‘This is a car, not a narrow boat.' She had a point there. ‘Sorry, make that left, then immediately right, which ought to bring us out onto the B6603—'

Ten minutes later, Chris gave up. ‘Just pull over as soon as you can,' he said wearily, ‘and you have a look at the stupid thing. I can't make any sense of it. I mean, it just doesn't seem to bear any relation to what's actually there on the ground, if you follow me.'

She looked at him. ‘Don't be silly,' she said. ‘It's a map.'

Which was entirely true. But, according to the map, the canal was over
there
, not right in front of them, because there were the gasworks, there was the railway, you didn't have to be bloody Lewis and Clark to figure it out; in which case, the map was
deliberately lying to him—