Sparks (17 page)

“Like a cheap toy?” said Sparks, trying to understand. “One with a sharp edge or a rusty spike in it?”

For the first time, Patricia looked at Sparks the way his mother looked at him.

“Those,” she said, “were his exact words. Like a cheap toy with a rusty spike in it.”

“I had one of those once,” said Sparks. “So what did… your son do next?”

“He said he was going back there,” said Patricia. “He said he thought he’d seen Alison,”

“And he never came back? That’s when he disappeared?”

“No, he came back, but with the dead people,” said Patricia.

“The dead people?” said Sparks.

“They found him near his flat, sitting there, with the dead people. The ones they said he killed,” said Patricia. “There were two of them, which I suppose made him a serial killer.”

“Who were they?” Sparks said, finding that he was taking an almost proprietorial interest in his doppelganger’s apparent victims.

“Nobody could identify them. They had no ID on them and no one claimed the bodies,” said Patricia. “But they were dead. Oh, and very thin.”

“Thin?” said Sparks. “In what way?”

“Thin,” said Patricia, almost as annoyed as Sparks at his call-and-response interview technique. “Just thin. And tall. Like stick insects.” Patricia looked at him. “Did you know them?”

“Not quite. But I know some people who are them,” said Sparks. “In the way that I am your son.”

“I see,” said Patricia, and it looked to Sparks like she did see. “So where’s my son?”

“I don’t know,” said Sparks. “It sounds like he got away, at least. And it definitely sounds like someone was out to get him. And me, too.”

“Well,” said Patricia, looking up at the barred windows. “I’d say they’re doing a good job so far.”

Sparks saw what she meant.

“I’m not coming again,” said Patricia. “You’re not my son, but I feel he would have wanted to help you. So…”

She got up.

“Bye then,” she said. “You do have some of his good points, you know.”

Sparks rose to say goodbye, but once again Patricia was talking to the carer. And staring at Sparks as she did so.

“This library,” she said, “does it have a computer?”

Sparks applied for permission to use the library. This was refused, so instead Sparks applied to become a trusty. He didn’t really know what a trusty was, but it was obviously something to do with libraries, so he thought it was worth a go. After a week or so, he was brought before the chief doctor of the institution, a round-headed man called Dr Allman who wore square spectacles to make himself look more angular, or, if results were the criterion, a melon wearing glasses.

“It says here you want to be a trusty,” said Dr Allman.

Sparks couldn’t help noticing that the doctor was looking at a bare desk. He decided to ignore this detail.

“Yes, I do,” he said.

“Do you know what a trusty does?” said the doctor.

“Not really,” said Sparks.

“Good,” said the doctor. “Because if you did, that would mean you’d been inside this institution before, which would make you a recidivist. And we can’t give positions of trust to recidivists.”

Sparks felt relieved, if not deeply sure he knew what a recidivist was.

“Why do you want to be a trusty?” said Dr Allman, adjusting his glasses to make them look squarer.

“Because I want to look up the Random Life Generator on the computer, if there is one, and see if there’s a portal I can escape to,” said Sparks. He had decided to gamble on telling the truth, thereby making himself look mental.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Dr Allman. “Which only goes to show that you are clearly mental...ly ill. And the fact that you are mentally ill means, again, that you are not a dangerous criminal but rather a sick patient, who can be treated.”

“I would like to be a library trusty,” said Sparks.

“Ah,” said Dr Allman. “I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.”

Sparks’ heart sank.

“Libraries are dangerous places for mad people. By which,” the doctor added, “I mean the unwell. Books full of stories and encyclopedias with unpleasant facts. Even the dictionary is a minefield of inspirations for the crazed killer. No offence.”

“None taken,” said Sparks, from his mental basement of despondency.

“However, I am a lenient, and angular-faced, man,” said the doctor. “I shall give you a trusty’s job elsewhere. You can work here, in my office, doing the filing. Not the dangerous filing, of course, just the dull stuff.”

“How do I do filing?” said Sparks, glumly.

“You’ll need to know the alphabet,” said the doctor. “Oh, and you’ll need this computer.”

He indicated a large, blue and white computer on a desk behind him.

“I’ll do it,” said Sparks, as enthusiastically as he dared.

Dr Allman’s office was darkened, half-lit by the eerie glow of the computer screen, and also half-lit by the eerie glow of the computer screen bouncing off Sparks’ face. It was late at night, but Sparks was now a trusty, his new status reflected in his trusty pass, which allowed him to go anywhere but the library, and his trusty’s uniform, which was a pair of navy blue dungarees and a nice red T-shirt.

Dressed as a git, every night Sparks would come in, pretend to do some filing for a few minutes, read the doctor’s junk emails (‘Unusually-shaped head? Acquire relief for less than $10000 with Nu-Crania-Shape”) and then type in the address of the Random Life Generator. The first time he did this, he realised how long it had been since he’d last done it, and he almost forgot the details, but the screen filled with the same imagery and Sparks began frantically writing down everything he saw.

At first, most of it was pretty useless to Sparks, unless he’d been able to nip out to the Isle of Man for the afternoon, and of course, if he had been, he wouldn’t be sitting in a doctor’s office in an maximum security happy house writing addresses down. However this evening there were a couple of possibilities which, had he not been crammed to the eyes with tranquillisers, would have excited him, and as it was, still made him quite pleased.

The first pleasing location was about 50 miles away, behind a church in a small historic village. Sparks found the location appealing, not least because he used to go there as a boy and try to remove pennies from a nearby wishing-well, into which he had actually fallen one day, coming out soaking wet but with £3.29 in very small change. Unfortunately, the village was pretty inaccessible for a dangerous mad person, and too far to go before the portal closed.

The second location was less pleasing but much more interesting. Nearby, at least by van, there was a clinic where some of the inmates were taken for the kind of minor medical treatments that the institution could not do itself. This sounded sinister, but probably wasn’t, unless you believed that dental caps and crowns were thought control systems. Several of the people in Sparks’ institution did believe this, and they could usually be spotted by their terrible teeth.

If Sparks could feign an immediate teeth problem and, once there, make a break for it before the portal disappeared, he would be all right.
If
, Sparks though laconically, in the traditional sense of the word by accident.

The van looped bumpily down several country lanes, knocking bits of hedge off and splashing happily into big holes full of old water. Had the van been in a children’s animated TV show, it might have had a cheerful face and honked as it passed old ladies and farmers, it looked so cheerful. But, unfortunately for the van, it wasn’t. It was taking several sociopaths to the dentist, which pretty much disqualified it from any forthcoming kids’ shows. In fact, real children found the van frightening too, as its stern black exterior, grilled-over reflective glass windows and perhaps excessive gun turret jarred with the van’s chirpy country road-hopping.

All these things occurred to Sparks as he sat in the back of the van. Initially he had ruled out the chances of getting an instant dentist’s appointment, or even of rolling around on the floor moaning and clutching his face, as the dentist would soon be shut, and anyway, people were always rolling around on the floor moaning and clutching their faces in this place. However, after a few minutes of sipping cold water and wincing, prodding his cheek, and so on, Sparks found that Dr Allman could easily be annoyed.

“What’s wrong with you?” said the doctor, which was a bit undoctorly.

“Tooth,” said Sparks succinctly.

“Dentist, now,” said the doctor, and Sparks found himself being bundled out of the office into a threatening-looking but potentially cheerful van, which was now burbling its murderous-looking way happily down hill and dale. Sparks, surrounded by men who were mad, bad, dangerous to know and suffering from toothache, worked on his plan. It was a simple one.

1 Ask to use the toilet.

2 Instead, run away and escape via portal.

How could it fail? he thought.

Dr Allman reached for his phone with oddly thin fingers, fat man-wise.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, he is. What? Yes, he is both, I mean. Yes he is exceptionally dim, and yes he is under the impression that he’s going to the dentist. Yes, I know.”

The doctor put the phone down. He hated two things in life. One was working undercover against the very Society he had once believed in so passionately. And the other was wearing a fat-suit.

The van pulled up outside the clinic, eagerly braking as squirrels and rabbits fled its ominous presence. Carers, armed with big industrial syringes, hauled the inmates out into the evening light and into a big door held open by one of those male nurses you only see in films, namely a huge bulk-laden man in a white tunic with no collar whose name ought to be Urgo or Fist but is generally Mike.

Sparks shuffled down the white-lit corridor, pretending his jaw hurt. He was shoved down onto a bench and a magazine pressed into his hand. It was a 30-year-old copy of
Punch
.

“Stay here,” said their carer, and walked a few feet away to talk to a notionally attractive receptionist. The inmates, dulled by pain and some very strong pills, tried to study their magazines. Sparks opened his
Punch
and immediately became engrossed in a series of cartoons about the generation gap.

“Sparks,” a carer said, so neutrally that he almost didn’t hear it. “Sparks, the dentist will see you now.”

Sparks got up.

“I have to go to the toilet first,” he said.

The carer smiled.

“Of course. Here, I want to talk to this receptionist. Off you go on your own, now.”

Sparks was not a suspicious man. He was a gullible man. Only his own personal poverty prevented him from regularly investing in pyramid sales schemes, internet start-up schemes and company pensions. However there was something in the carer’s almost lewd grin and unpleasant, leering face that suggested he was being made a fool of. So he decided to be cautious.

Walking determinedly down the corridor, Sparks kept an eye out for anyone with a club or syringe. He rounded a corner and, safe from the carer’s insolent gaze, began looking for a fire exit or a window. There weren’t any. For a dental clinic, the place was amazingly secure. Sparks walked on some more and then found he actually did want to use the toilet.
The perfect alibi,
he thought as he opened the door of the gents. Then he saw Jeff and Duncan behind the door, and closed it again.

Jeff and Duncan had in fact been in the gents for some time, and, forming the conclusion that Sparks wasn’t as predictable as they had believed, had decided that they too actually did want to use the toilet. Turning to the urinals for a long thin slash, they were therefore facing the wrong way when Sparks came in, giving him valuable seconds to run off into the nearest hiding place, which was the ladies.

“You can’t hide in there for ever!” Jeff shouted, banging on a cubicle door.

“No,” said Duncan. “This room is for women!”

Jeff turned to Duncan.

“Fool,” he said, and returned to banging the door.

“You’ll have to come out sometime!” shouted Jeff.

“We can wait all day!” said Duncan. “Unless,” he added, thoughtfully, “some women come in.”

Jeff turned round and looked at Duncan.

“I don’t think you entirely get this threatening people thing,” he said.

Inside the cubicle, Sparks was only vaguely aware of Jeff and Duncan’s presence.

“I expect you’re wondering how we found you,” said Jeff.

“You can’t say that,” said Duncan, sulkily.

“Why not?” said Jeff.

“Because it’s a cliché. Villains say it in films.”

“No they don’t,” said Jeff. “Unless it’s the gay porn films you watch.”

“I resent that,” said Duncan.

Sparks found he wasn’t too concerned how or why they had decided to trick him into coming here so something nefarious and dental could be done to him; he didn’t even care how they knew he was looking for a portal. In the corner of the cubicle, incongruously near the loo brush for a miracle of trans-dimensional strangeness, was a patch of shimmering air. Sparks had found the portal.

There was a light thudding outside, like a very thin man throwing himself at a door, followed by a thin curse. Jeff (or Duncan) began hammering at the door instead. Sparks leapt at the portal, just as Jeff’s hammering reached a crescendo. Then the hammering vanished, like a clumsy edit.

OW!

This takes me back!

OW!

OWOWOWOW!

Sparks woke up, as ever, in some pain. Worse, he realised as he cleared what felt like but weren't tiny red hot pikes from his eyes, he was back in the toilet. Admittedly, he was now in the next cubicle, but this was hardly a great escape. He turned to see the portal vanish with an audible pop (as opposed, he thought vaguely, to those inaudible pops which are so much part of modern life, or at least modern popping).

Sparks waited for the cubicle door to be kicked in by Jeff, or possibly Duncan. He crouched down to cushion the blow, if a door falling on someone can properly be called a blow, but no blow came. The place was quiet, even for a lavatory. Sparks opened the cubicle door and peered out. The room was empty. A dripping tap and a bin full of crumpled-up green paper towels indicated either recent human occupancy or a race of bears that used lavatories. Sparks suppressed his fear of the latter possibility, and sneaked out into the corridor.