The Better Mousetrap (17 page)

‘Big bastards,’ he said, in the voice of someone who’s seen rather more than he wanted to. ‘Big hairy bastards with ten legs—’

‘Ah,’ said Erskine, smirking, ‘arachnis grandiforma Atkinsonii pachythorax. In which case, schedule four applies.’ Mr Ahriman shot him a terrified glance. ‘What’s he talking about?’

‘No, it doesn’t,’ Emily said firmly. ‘And even if it did, we aren’t going to start letting off nukes in the middle of the City of London, so you can forget about that for a start. Technical stuff,’ she told Mr Ahriman blandly - he’d gone ever such a funny colour - ‘nothing for you to worry about. You just leave everything to us and we’ll have them out of there in a brace of shakes. Oh, while I think of it,’ she added, ‘we’ll need some dust sheets and a couple of big rolls of sticky tape. Could you possibly organise that for us? Thanks.’

Mr Ahriman left them outside a door on the third floor marked No Unauthorised Entry and scuttled back into the lift. When the doors had closed behind him, Erskine said, ‘What are the dust sheets for?’

‘Nothing,’ Emily replied. ‘It’s just to give him something to do, let him feel he’s contributing. And another thing,’ she said. ‘When we’re on a job, don’t you ever talk about trade stuff in front of the punter again. Got that?’

‘Of course.’

She sighed. Rebukes, even when pitched at bollocking level, just seemed to soak away into Erskine, like water into sand. Instead of cringing or taking offence like a normal human being, he was grateful. That was too much. It wasn’t natural. It was inhuman. ‘Good,’ she said weakly. ‘Glad we’ve got that sorted out. Now, then.’

Her mind had gone blank. She couldn’t think what she was supposed to do next.

Of course, Emily said to herself, I’m used to working solo. Having someone else along flusters me. Even so; it wasn’t good. On the other side of the door was an unspecified number of giant spiders (the ten-leg variety; oh, joy): lightning-fast, bodies as big as cows, legs like scaffolding, stings that went through five-mil Kevlar like it wasn’t there, venom sacks holding more poison that a party conference-dammit, she needed to be focused, tuned, in touch with the grimly single-minded little girl with the torch in one hand and the slipper in the other who feared nothing (except fear itself) and who got the job done. And instead, here she was, mind like a teenager’s bedroom, dithering.

‘Right,’ she snapped, her voice a trifle shrill, ‘prime the stun grenades, and-no, scratch that, set up up the Everleigh scanners and then prime the grenades. Or is it the other way round?’

Panic.

Emily had heard the stories, of course. Everyone in the trade had heard them. Hugo van Leipzig, winner of five consecutive Siegfrieds, suddenly freezing in the middle of a routine manticore clearance. Gordon Shirasaya, five hundred and seven authenticated vampire stakings, taken down by a poxy little Class Seven because he lost the plot at the critical moment and dropped his tent peg. It was the thing you dreaded and never ever talked about in the bar at seminars, the sudden, unexplained onset of crippling fear in the course of a piece-of-shit milk run. It happened, everybody knew that. Basically, if you’d already lasted more than eighteen months in the trade, you knew for stone-cold certain that, sooner or later, that was how you were going to die. But this isn’t that, screamed a voice inside Emily’s head; she thought about it, as dispassionately as she could, and had to agree. It wasn’t fear, she’d know it if it was. She’d feel the twisting in her stomach, the vicious twinge in the bladder, the loosening of the bowels. Not fear, then: something worse. It was-it was just woolly-mindedness, plain and simple. Somewhere in her head a door or a window had been left open, and she couldn’t concentrate.

‘Grenades first, isn’t it?’ The voice just behind her had lost that insufferable cockiness. Erskine was worried. Not good. ‘Then the scanner, and then—’

‘Then the thunderflashes, masks on, and then the gas bottles.’ Emily was almost sobbing with relief as she said it. Her mind was clear again, and of course she knew what to do. ‘Sorry about that,’ she heard herself say. ‘Just had a funny five seconds. Got those primers in, have you?’

‘Nearly. Look, are you feeling all right? Only—’

‘Of course I am, I’m fine. And get a move on with those primers. If we stand out here chatting all day they’ll register our body heat and then we’ll be really screwed. Or didn’t they tell you that at college?’

Erskine handed her the first grenade in dead silence. Oops, Emily thought. Not making the most brilliant first impression here. Not, she added quickly, that it matters a flying fuck what that young stick of celery thinks. Even so.

‘Right,’ she said; and, with the fluency of long practice, she breathed in deep and out again, and kicked open the door.

After that, it was all a bit of an anti-climax. The stun grenades made the whole building shake, and in the complete dead silence that followed she fitted together the three parts of the Everleigh scanner as coolly as if she was putting the little brush thing on her vacuum cleaner at home. Thunderflashes - ho hum, yawn; slip the mask on, turn calmly round to make sure that Erskine’s mask was clipped down properly, then out come the cyanide-gas bottles, twiddle the valve screws, close the door, sit down on the floor, set the timer, get out the latest Robert Harris and chill for ten minutes while the gas does its work—

‘Excuse me,’ Erskine said. ‘What are you doing?’

Emily looked up from her book. ‘Reading,’ she said.

‘But—’ Shocked expression, as if she was doing something disgusting. ‘Shouldn’t you be monitoring life signs on the Everleigh scanner?’

‘Nah.’ She yawned. ‘You can, if you like. Personally, I find watching a digital readout counting down from three thousand doesn’t really light my fuse. Tell you what,’ she said pleasantly. ‘Why don’t you go and find someone to make us a nice cup of tea? Milk and no sugar.’

‘I-Certainly, right away.’ For a split second, she honestly believed he was going to click his heels.

When Erskine had gone she tried to read, but her eyes just seemed to skid off the page. She shut the book, leaned her back against the wall and closed her eyes. Whatever had happened to her back then - not fear; not fear of death, anyhow, but there are other scary things in the world - it hadn’t been any fun at all, and she needed to figure out what it was before she went any further. Was it, Emily asked herself, just that she’d been working alone for so long that any disruption to her customary procedures was enough to thrown her off balance? Or was it Erskine’s unique ability to create irritation and self-doubt? She considered the evidence-no problem at all concentrating now-and reluctantly decided that it was none of the above.

True, it was the first time she’d had a trainee tied to her tail, but there’d been plenty of times when the client, or the office manager or the head of security or some other pest had tagged along and got under her feet, and on those occasions she hadn’t gone all soft in the head. Quite the reverse: the annoyance had only made her more focused, as she’d sublimated the irritation into cold, grim determination to do the job and get out of there before she murdered a customer. No, it was something else, something she couldn’t isolate and label. She hadn’t frozen, or let annoyance distract her. Instead, there’d been a moment when she hadn’t been herself, almost as if—

The monitor beeped, and Emily glanced down. All the indicators were flatlined, and the infra-red showed nine large stationary biomasses, cooling steadily at the appropriate rate. She checked the toxicity level and used her E-Z-Teek telekinesis remote to tap into the building’s environmental controls and set the extractor fans running. Simple, routine magic. Another day at the office.

Three minutes later, Erskine came back carrying two mugs. One had The World’s Greatest Boss written on the side, and the other one was decorated with dancing cartoon pigs.

‘Just waiting for the gas to clear,’ she said brightly. ‘You’d better ring Ibbotsons and tell them we’re ready for clean-up. There were nine of them, so they’ll probably need two skips.’

‘Oh.’ Erskine’s face fell. ‘I missed it.’

‘What?’

He shrugged, rather ostentatiously. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘I’ll ring Ibbotsons. Straight away.’

Emily felt an urge to jab the air with her finger and bark out ‘Make it so,’ but she fought it down. ‘No rush,’ she said. ‘Ten minutes before we can go in there. Loads of waiting about in this game,’ she added. ‘You really should bring something to read.’

This time when Erskine went away she had no trouble getting into her book; in fact, it was rather nice to have an obedient gofer to do the phoning and fetch the tea, and she found herself wondering what on earth all the fuss had been about. So yes, she’d had a funny turn; but it had happened before the serious business started, it had only lasted a second or two, and once she’d got back into the swing of things it had faded away completely. Lot of fuss about nothing, she reassured herself; you’re just a bit wound up because of having the idiot along.

‘I called Ibbotsons,’ Erskine reported, sounding as though he’d just come back from being the first man to reach the South Pole. ‘They’re sending two skips and a crane, just in case.’

Emily frowned. ‘You weren’t to know,’ she said, ‘but the crane’s a scam. Means they can charge an extra ten per cent, and they know perfectly well they won’t need it. You’ve got to watch them like a hawk or they’ll fatten the bill like a Christmas turkey.’

‘Oh.’ He looked so very guilty and sad that she cheered up considerably. ‘Shall I call them back and—?’

She shook her head. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said. ‘Client pays out-of-pocket expenses, so it’s no skin off our nose. I just don’t like to let them get out of hand. Word gets around if you’re not careful.’ Her monitor bleeped again; she closed her book and stood up. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘That’s the all-clear. We can go in now and check that everything’s OK, and then we can sign off and go back to the office.’ She grinned. ‘Welcome to the pest-control business. What do you think of it so far?’

‘Well—’ Erskine said, and she opened the door.

He was bleating something about objective verification procedures as she peered into the darkened computer room. For a moment, the darkness puzzled Emily, until she glanced up and saw the swathes of dense black cobweb hanging like curtains from the ceiling. Even if the lights were still working, there was no way that stuff would admit the passage of a single photon. She sighed and pulled out her pocket torch.

The first spider she saw was about five yards from the door, curled up in the classic folded-legs configuration that meant it was no longer a problem. Just to be on the safe side, however, she monitored it for life signs with her Kawaguchiya XZ7700 SpydaSkan. Dead as the proverbial hammer. Next.

Emily edged forward, prodding her way with a telescopic probe. Even if the spiders were all dead, getting caught up in a patch of web was still something to be avoided. The revolting stuff ruined any article of clothing it came into contact with, and as for hair … She shuddered. Scary she’d learned to cope with, but there was no real, permanent defence against yucky. As a stray wisp snagged the back of her hand and welded itself to her skin, making her whimper as she pulled it away, it occurred to her that a routine check like this should really be left to junior staff-a trainee, say. Valuable hands-on experience, and cheaper for the client, too. The only factor that put her off the idea was the likelihood that Erskine would jump at the chance and quite possibly thank her afterwards, and she wasn’t sure she could stand that.

Seven more dead spiders. They’d made a thorough mess of the computers. Atkinsonii are classed as sentient-intelligent, and some veterans of the trade reckoned they were considerably brighter than most non-humanoid monsters once you got to know them, though their world-view was crude and violent and their love of country-and-western music was predictable but sad. One thing on which all the authorities agreed, however, was that they were extremely literal-minded, which meant that once they started hearing rumours about humans building a worldwide web, they abandoned their usual habitat in dark, remote forests and started making a serious nuisance of themselves. Monitors and CPU’s cracked open and with their wiring wrenched out littered the floor, and there was even a small, rather droopy proto-cobweb made out of modem cables slung between two desks in the far corner of the room.

Seven plus one makes eight; Emily stopped, and flicked the beam of her torch through the shadows. Another feature of Atkinsonii behaviour was their urge to crawl under something to die, so she knelt down and looked under the desks and tables. Nothing. She killed the torch beam and stood up, instinct ordering her to keep perfectly still. There had been nine quite distinct blips on the Everleigh, but so far she’d only found eight folded-up corpses. Of course, there was no way anything could have survived in there while it was pumped full of cyanide gas, and the Everleigh had also shown her nine perfect flatlines. At the back of her mind, a memory flickered: something about Atkinsonii acrodontis being able to slow down its bodily functions to simulate death and fool a scanner. These weren’t acrodontes, they were pachythoraces, but maybe the research was incomplete … Emily’s intestines prickled, and she called up the floor plan of the room in her mind’s eye, with special reference to the distance and vector of the doorway. If her theory was correct, it’d be nice to live long enough to write a short piece for the Gazette about it.

‘Hello.’ Bloody Erskine’s voice. ‘Are you all right in there?’ One of the few really useful things she’d learned in second year at college was that, ninety-five times out of a hundred, you make more noise going Sssh! than the person you’re trying to silence. Something about sibilants carrying further than dentals, labials and all the other types of articulated sound. She tried to remember if the article she’d read had mentioned whether pachythoraces understood English. Atkinsonii acrodontes were only fluent in Spanish, she recalled, while leptopodes were bilingual in Gujarati and (by some extraordinary quirk of evolution) Esperanto. But if the article had mentioned pachythoraces, she couldn’t remember what it’d said—