May Contain Traces of Magic (30 page)

A bit better.

‘SatNav,' he said, ‘what reality am I in?'

‘Your metaphysical coordinates are being calculated, please wait.' Pause, during which Chris looked for, and found, the emergency Mars Bar hidden in the driver's-door pocket. ‘You are currently in reality 001 Alpha.'

‘Oh-oh—?'

‘Normality,' SatNav translated; then added, ‘What an odd question to ask.'

‘Sorry.' Karen, he thought, waiting impatiently for her sun-block while the murderous heat fried her soft flesh like squid rings. Screw her, he thought, this is
important
. ‘Only, the way I remember it, I was on my way to make a call and I got arrested, and they think I murdered Angela, and I was in a cell—'

‘They think you murdered Angela?'

‘Yes, which is bloody ridiculous, because—'

‘Because she isn't dead.'

Silence. Frozen on his lips, like mammoths in the Siberian ice, the words
she's dead all right, Mr Burnoz told me
. In Chris's mind, a light suddenly switched on, the realisation that in this reality - he was beginning to like this reality a
lot
- she might very well be alive, just as he was on holiday rather than in jail.

‘SatNav,' he said cautiously.

‘Yes, Chris?'

‘Just suppose,' he said, his voice soft as prayer, ‘someone was living in one reality and suddenly found himself in another one, just a tad different. Better, say. Could he stay there, do you think? Permanently?'

‘Entirely possible,' SatNav replied. ‘Why, are you planning on—?'

‘Lord. No,' he said quickly. ‘Perish the thought. I like it here.'

‘Of course you do,' SatNav replied. ‘But now I don't understand. Why do the police think you murdered Angela if she's still alive?'

‘Forget I said that,' he mumbled. ‘Touch of the sun, maybe.' Talking of which; he reached into the glove compartment and got Karen's suntan lotion. ‘Oh, one last thing,' he said casually. ‘Do you happen to know anything about the one who is to come?'

‘The one what, Chris?'

‘Forget it,' he said happily. ‘Doesn't matter.'

On the way back to the beach, he bought an ice cream. He hadn't had a proper ice cream, on a little wooden stick, for years.

‘Where did you get to?' Karen demanded. ‘You've been ages.'

‘Phone call,' he said smoothly. ‘Work.'

‘Oh, right.' An acceptable answer, apparently. He handed over the suntan stuff. ‘You ought to turn that bloody phone off while we're on holiday.'

‘Good idea,' he said, and did so. ‘They'll just have to manage without me.'

She had no comment to make on that score. He finished his ice cream and lay down, aware that he was smiling but seeing no reason not to, and closed his eyes. You could get to like beach holidays, he thought.

‘So what was the panic?' Karen said.

‘Oh, just stuff. Customers chasing orders, that kind of thing.'

She clicked her tongue. ‘Can't that half-witted girl of yours handle it? That's the whole point of having an assistant.'

‘That's what I told them,' Chris replied.

Peace, quiet; happiness. The warmth of the sun was making him feel drowsy, but he didn't really want to fall asleep, just in case he woke up and found it had all been a dream. Though, he told himself, the sun isn't warm in dreams, and you can't smell salt and warm sand and suntan lotion.

‘By the way,' Karen said, ‘where is she?'

‘Sorry, what?'

‘I said, where is she?'

‘Where's who?'

‘Doesn't matter.' He heard her yawn, and then say, ‘I'm just going over there for a bit. Be back soon.'

‘That's fine,' Chris answered drowsily. The glare on his closed eyelids dimmed a little as her shadow fell across him. He snuggled his back into the sand. It'd be very easy indeed to fall asleep, and why not? But the thought made him uncomfortable, and he opened his eyes. The sun was annoyingly bright. What I need, he thought, is sunglasses.

Luckily, there was a pair in his jacket pocket. He looked at them, trying to remember where he'd got them from. They looked old-fashioned and rather strange, but they worked perfectly well. He sat up, yawned and stretched.

‘I'm about ready for some lunch,' Karen said behind him. ‘Coming?'

‘Mphm.' He stood up, turned to face her—

Chris didn't scream. He didn't make a sound of any kind, because his throat, mouth and lungs had got stuck, and the full-blooded yell he wanted to let fly with couldn't get out. Later, he realised that what had really freaked him out was the fact that the three-eyed, grey-skinned, four-tusked, pointedeared, noseless, drooling monster facing him was wearing Karen's light blue bikini, a garment of which he had very fond memories, and for a split second he was afraid that the demon had eaten her and stolen her clothes.

‘I'm starving,' the demon said, in Karen's exact voice. ‘Let's go.'

But that wasn't what had happened; because if the demon had just eaten—

‘You go ahead,' Chris said. ‘I think I'll just stay here a bit longer.'

Given the demon's facial layout, you couldn't really tell if it was scowling or not. But the voice told him everything he wanted to know. ‘You don't want to have lunch with me?'

‘Not terribly hungry.'

‘Fine.' The enduring-with-bad-grace voice. ‘I'll have to wait, then. Will you be ready in half an hour?'

He wanted to look away, but he didn't dare break eye contact; so he took the sunglasses off. It helped; he couldn't see the demon any more, just Karen in the blue bikini, glowering at him. ‘On second thoughts,' he said, ‘let's go now. I could really fancy fish and—'

‘We'll go back to the hotel and change,' she said firmly. ‘Then I thought we could try that Mexican place we saw last night.'

Chris tried to think of a strategy, but all that came to mind was getting to the car, locking the doors and driving away very fast. He could see all sorts of objections, but it was the best he could do at short notice, with his synapses fused with revulsion and fear. The only other course of action he could think of was getting out the pantacopt and trying to kill the demon, and he knew he wouldn't be able to do that, for all sorts of reasons.

They reached the sea wall. He turned left.

‘Where do you think you're going? It's this way.'

She was pointing right; they wouldn't be going anywhere near the car park after all. He choked back a whimper. Make a run for it? He knew that his legs wouldn't hold out; they were only just keeping him upright as it was. Going back to the hotel room definitely not an option. Stand and fight, then.

Chris shuddered. So much he didn't know, for one thing. If you cut a shape-shifted demon in half with a pantacopt, did it revert to its real form, or vanish into thin air, or would he be left standing on Weymouth beach with two bisected halves of a dead woman to account for to the authorities? Not that it'd come to that, he knew; he'd cock it up somehow, either let her get the weapon away from him or cut off his own legs. Nothing for it, then, but to go quietly—

Out of the corner of his eye, a glimpsed impression: stormtrooper black, body armour, a fetishist's dream of an equipment belt. The police. He turned his head and spotted them: two coppers, a big tall man and a short woman, doing that slow walk perfectly described as proceeeding. Well, he thought sadly, anything's better than death.

Slowly and reluctantly, he began taking off his shorts.

‘Chris, what the
hell
are you doing?' Her voice: shrill, furious - nothing unusual there. He closed his eyes; everybody in Weymouth must be staring. Any moment now the police would arrest him and take him away. Not an experience he was looking forward to very much, but at least it wouldn't be the last thing he did—

‘Excuse me, sir, but what—?'

He opened his eyes and tried to smile. He didn't get very far. Before he'd done more than just hitch up the corners of his mouth, a hummingbird zoomed out of absolutely nowhere and hit him right between the eyes, like a bullet.

 

 

‘
E
xcuse me, sir,' said the big male policeman, ‘but are you feeling all right?'

Chris opened his eyes. He was sitting in the driver's seat of his car, and the policeman's head was poking through the open window. He was in a lay-by, beside a dual carriageway—

‘What? Sorry, yes. Fine.'

‘Only you appeared to have fallen asleep,' the policeman went on, looking at him carefully. ‘You do realise it's an offence to sleep in a lay-by, don't you?'

‘Is it?' Like he cared. He wasn't in Weymouth any more. ‘Sorry, I didn't know that,' he gabbled. ‘I was feeling a bit drowsy, and they say, don't they, if you start to feel drowsy, pull over and rest, otherwise you could cause an accident. So—'

The policeman nodded slowly. ‘I shall have to ask you to take a breathalyser test. If you'd just step out of the vehicle.'

‘Sure. Yes. No problem.' It was all he could do not to grin like an idiot. Fortunately, the policeman didn't seem to have noticed, and by the time he'd passed the test and been given his lecture and promised faithfully not to let it happen ever again, he'd managed to get himself under control.

And I woke up
, Chris said to himself as he watched the police car drive away,
and it had all been a dream
. But it hadn't, he was sure of that. He had evidence; a trivial thing, the sort of thing only Poirot or Colombo would recognise for what it was. He'd only noticed it himself when he'd taken out his wallet to show the bogies his driving licence, but it was substantial enough to build an entire reality on.

He sat for ten minutes or so, watching the cars zoom past. Ten minutes of the hardest work he'd ever done.

‘Fine,' he said aloud. Then he got out his phone and made a call.

He didn't ring Jill. Instead, he called the number on the card the Day-Glo bloke had given him.

‘Hi,' he said. ‘I've got your shirt.'

‘What?' Pause. ‘Oh, it's you.'

‘Yes, it's me. I expect you want it back.'

‘Wouldn't mind,' the Day-Glo bloke said. ‘No desperate hurry, though. Or you could stick it in the post, save you a—'

‘It's no trouble.' Chris reached out and touched the place on the windscreen where SatNav's rubber plunger had left a mark. ‘Besides, you're coming to see me. Bring your electronic stuff,' he added. ‘Might as well do a thorough job.'

A moment while that sank in. ‘They've been back.'

‘Yes.'

‘Where are you?'

Chris laughed. ‘Private joke,' he explained. ‘I'm about three miles past Junction 6 on the A980 northbound - there's a lay-by. '

The Day-Glo bloke's name turned out to be Derek Bloom. He listened without interrupting while Chris explained. Then he said, ‘You're sure?'

Chris held out his hand. Lying on his palm was a little wooden stick.

‘Ah,' Derek said. ‘It couldn't be - well, you know, one you'd had earlier. Like, there's all sorts of junk in my coat pockets, some of it's been there years.'

Chris shook his head. ‘I hadn't had an ice cream for ages,' he replied. ‘I remember thinking that, while I was in there. I don't actually like the stuff, like I can't stand beach holidays.' He paused, then said, ‘That's very important.'

‘Is it?'

‘I think so. Feel free to disagree - after all, you're the professional. '

Derek shrugged. ‘Take your word for it,' he said. ‘All right, so it wasn't a dream. And while you were there, you definitely saw a demon.'

‘Yes.'

‘No offence, but how can you be—?'

By way of reply, Chris handed him the sunglasses. Derek looked at them and whistled. ‘Feinwerkhaus of Vienna, about 1935,' he said, in a pleasingly awed voice. ‘Where did you get . . . ?'

‘A kind friend lent them to me,' Chris replied.

Derek handed them back. ‘All right,' he said. ‘You saw a demon. So what you're saying is, your wife's a—'

‘She's not my wife,' Chris snapped. ‘And no, I don't think she's a demon, either. And it wasn't a dream. It was real.'

‘OK,' Derek said, in a where-exactly-is-this-leading sort of voice. ‘And she asked you the question.
Where is she?
'

‘Yes.' Chris sighed, and put the sunglasses away. ‘The whole beach location must've been a PK86V - JWW Retail TimeOut Instant Bank Holiday,' he explained. ‘It's just your basic metadimensional vortex stabilised in a temporal disruption field, loaded onto a CD. It's not one of our best-selling lines, in fact I think it's been discontinued; but I demonstrated one to a customer only a day or so ago, and when I went through my samples before I came out this morning, it'd gone. I'm guessing that was the one they used, but it could be one they bought somewhere over the counter. They must've hacked into it and reconfigured it to do all that stuff with the policemen and me being arrested and carted off to the nick. In fact, I know they did, because when I woke up in this lay-by forty minutes ago I checked my watch and it said 8.45. Just before the being-pulled-over-by-the-cops business started, I'd heard the 8.30 news summary on the radio.'

Derek nodded slowly. ‘All right,' he said. ‘With you so far. You're saying they tried to pull basically the same stunt as the last time, at the Ettingate Retail Park.'