The Better Mousetrap (43 page)

‘Are you Gomez?’ said the inexplicable female.

‘Yes. Who are—?’

Behind her, someone else. At least he recognised this one: Dennis Tanner, of all people. He’d known Dennis on and off for years, as a fellow professional, and of course he was the principal fall guy in the bauxite scheme. That didn’t give him any right to come walking through Doors—

‘Where’s Emily Spitzer?’

A third voice. Behind Dennis Tanner (how many more of them were there going to be, for pity’s sake?) the Carpenter boy. Colin opened and closed his mouth, but no words came out. This was all too much—

‘He asked you a question,’ said the inappropriate young woman. Colin ignored her. With all this going on, he couldn’t be bothered to notice impertinent questions from the secretarial grade. But then she sank her unexpectedly strong fingers into three of his four chins, and he revised his priorities accordingly.

‘Don’t know,’ he gurgled. ‘Let go.’

‘You’re in trouble,’ the annoying secretary said, with a disturbing grin. ‘First, Carrington knows you gave the spare Door to Frank and Emily. Second, I’m going to throttle you unless you do as you’re told. Third, Frank’s going to smash your face in for trying to murder his girlfriend. Fourth, our Dennis doesn’t like anybody in this firm very much. There’s probably a fifth, but I don’t think there’s enough of you to go round.’

Then she let go, and Colin fell backwards, banging the base of his spine painfully on the edge of the desk. He tried to summon up enough magic for a fireball, but there was something about this terrifying, steel-fingered secretary that drained all the power out of him. He opened his mouth to whimper, but his throat was too badly mauled.

‘On the other hand,’ the secretary said, ‘we could make you senior partner. Would you like that?’

The phone purred. Amelia picked it up.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said, with a frown.

She wasn’t ready to talk to Colin yet. Not because the actual words she’d be saying were in any way complicated; she was undecided between ‘So long, then,’ and ‘Die, traitor’, but it really didn’t matter. It was just that she had other, more important things to do first: bauxite things, involving large sums of money.

‘Sorry to bother you,’ burbled the voice in her ear, ‘but I was just wondering. How did you get rid of the Spitzer girl, in the end?’

She frowned. Colin shouldn’t want to know that. ‘Why?’

‘Just interested.’

‘Need to know,’ Amelia replied shortly. ‘Just take it from me, she’s gone and she’s never coming back. After all,’ she added venomously, ‘it’d take a Portable Door to save her now, and we’ve got both of them. Haven’t we?’

‘Yes, absolutely’

‘Excellent. What did you do with the spare, by the way?’

Click. Colin had hung up on her. Both of Amelia’s precision-engineered eyebrows shot up in blank surprise. Then she quietly rearranged her Things To Do list, with Colin’s name a bit nearer the top.

She looked back at her screen. Bauxite prices. If they went much lower, they’d come out in Australia. She extended a finger to press a key that would set in motion the necessary sales and purchases, and then she could—

Some invisible vandal was drawing thin black lines on her wall. Amelia lifted her hand away from the keyboard, scooping the elements of fire out of the air like a child clawing snow into a snowball, but before she could let fly, the Door opened.

‘Hello,’ said Emily Spitzer.

They found him in a poky little office in the annexe. He was stapling together bundles of computer printout, and sorting the bundles into neat piles. He seemed genuinely pleased to see them.

‘I’m glad you’re all right,’ Frank said, surprised to hear himself say it. ‘Only, I thought that when Amelia Carrington found out that you’d given me and Emily the other Door, she might have done something nasty to you.’

Erskine frowned. ‘Well, I’ve been sentenced to death,’ he said, ‘but she was quite nice about it. She said I’d been incredibly stupid rather than actively treacherous, and of course I can see her point. It looks like we both misunderstood what she wanted me to do.’

‘But you’re still alive,’ Frank pointed out.

‘For now, yes. She explained about that. She said she’s pretty busy right now, but she’ll try and fit me in before half past five. So in the meantime I’m making myself useful, filing the Mortensen printouts. I felt it was the least I could do, since she’d been so reasonable about everything. Oh, hello, Mr Tanner, I didn’t see you there. I don’t suppose you remember me, I’m Ms Carrington’s junior assistant. Was,’ he added, with a flush of shame. ‘I failed her, you see.’

Dennis said something under his breath, but Frank nudged him in the ribs. ‘Erskine used to be Amelia’s pet dog,’ he explained. ‘Man’s best friend, and all that.’

Erskine nodded eagerly. ‘She let me do all sorts of stuff for her,’ he said. ‘I fetched sticks and made the little rubber ball go squeak, and I always came back when she called, and lately I’ve been spying,’ (he counted the activities off on his fingers as he named them) ‘guarding, fetching and carrying, providing back-up, and we did some spider-killing and troll slaying too. It was all very exciting, but then I did the bad thing, so—’ He shrugged. ‘Anyway, I’m glad you managed to get back from the past all right. Are you going straight back to Salt Lake City?’

‘Not quite yet,’ Frank said evenly. ‘Before I go, I wanted to ask you something.’

‘Me? Gosh. Yes, go ahead, fire away.’

Frank drew in a deep breath. On the one hand, he’d never really liked dogs. But— ‘I was wondering,’ he said, ‘which you preferred. Being a dog, I mean, or being a junior management trainee. Just curious, you know.’

Erskine’s brows huddled tightly together. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I think I preferred being a dog. I mean, all the stuff you humans do is tremendously interesting and exciting. But it’s also very confusing, and I don’t like that. It means I make mistakes and do bad things, which upsets me.’ He simpered a little. ‘Actually, I haven’t been a very good human, and I reckon I was always a fairly good dog. It’s best to stick to what you’re good at, I think. So yes, a dog, definitely. Not,’ he added with a shy smile, ‘that it matters a lot now. I had my chance and—’

‘The thing is,’ Frank interrupted, ‘fairly soon, Amelia Carrington isn’t going to be the senior partner here any more. In fact, she may be, um, going away on a long journey, so I was thinking: instead of, well, dying, would you like it if Mr Tanner here turned you back into a dog? He says he knows how to do it, and it won’t take a second.’

Erskine’s nose twitched. ‘Whose dog?’

‘What?’

‘Whose dog would I be?’

One of those questions that jumps out at you when you aren’t expecting it. ‘I don’t know,’ Frank answered. ‘Your own dog, I guess.’

But Erskine shook his head. ‘You can’t be your own dog, it doesn’t work like that. I’d have to be somebody’s, or— No, I think I’d rather be dead than a stray, thanks all the same. But it was very kind of you, and Mr Tanner, too.’ And, although he had no tail to wag, he sort of vibrated on the spot while smiling warmly.

Oh for pity’s sake, Frank thought. ‘You could be my dog,’ he made himself say. ‘If you wanted, I mean. Rather than being dead.’

‘Your—?’

‘After all,’ Frank ground on, ‘you were sort of my dog for a while, when you were trailing round after me, and you weren’t that much of a nuisance, I suppose.’

‘That’s right. You called me Bobby.’

‘Quite. And you did rescue Emily and me from the Sixties, so I guess I owe you one.’

‘Yes, please.’ A huge beam lit up Erskine’s face; you could have read small print by it in the dark. ‘At least, until Ms Carrington gets back from her long journey. I’d have to go back to being her dog then, of course, it’d only be right. But until then, that’d be super.’

‘Fine,’ Frank said, muffling a heavy-duty sigh. ‘Right then. Dennis, if you wouldn’t mind.’ Mr Tanner cleared his throat and lifted his left hand, but before he could go any further, Frank suddenly stopped him.

‘Just one other point,’ he said, trying to sound casual. ‘When you were, urn, spying on me.’

‘Yes?’

‘You’re good at that sort of thing, are you? Finding people, sniffing things out. Good nose, I mean. A knack for following a trail.’

‘Oh yes,’ Erskine said, not without pride. ‘I can find most things. I did lots of finding for Ms Carrington, even tricky finding, like across interdimensional barriers and stuff. So long as it’s alive, I’m fairly sure I can track it down.’

‘I see,’ Frank said slowly. ‘So if I asked you to find my friend George—’

‘I’m sure I could. What does he smell like?’

‘Only,’ Frank said, ‘Ms Carrington sent him somewhere, and I really ought to bring him back again. I don’t think he’s dead or anything like that, just-well, put somewhere. Is that the sort of thing—?’

‘Piece of cake,’ Erskine said cheerfully. ‘Just give me a sock to sniff, or a shoe, or his favourite chair, and I’ll have him for you in no time.’

‘Excellent,’ Frank said, with a certain degree of genuine authentic sincerity. ‘In that case, Dennis, if you wouldn’t mind.’

Dennis nodded. A moment later, there was a flash and a sort of sizzling noise— ‘It’s the same dog,’ Dennis observed. ‘The one that was following you about, the first time you came round my place.’

‘That’s him, yes.’

‘And he’s—’ Dennis frowned. ‘He’s yours now, then.’

‘Apparently.’

Dennis clicked his tongue. ‘In that case,’ he said, ‘you should make him get off that chair. Once you start letting them sit on the furniture, they think they own the place.’

‘Hello,’ Emily said.

It only took Amelia a third of a second to recover. She closed her right hand hard on a fistful of air, squeezing out all the trace elements that wouldn’t burn until she was left with a sort of fiery snowball. With a fast, easy movement she hurled it at Emily’s face. For a split second, the girl’s head was shrouded in roaring flames. But then they went out, leaving no mark or trace of any kind.

‘That’s not very friendly,’ Emily said, taking a step forward. ‘Anybody’d think you weren’t pleased to see me.’

Amelia threw another fireball. Might as well not have bothered.

‘For crying out loud,’ Amelia screeched. ‘Can’t you stay dead for five minutes?’ Emily smiled. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Bet you can, though. Like to find out?’

Amelia was groping under her desk for the panic button. ‘Don’t you dare threaten me,’ she shouted. ‘You’re just an assistant, you ought to be terrif—’ She stopped and froze, as a sensation she hadn’t felt for years soaked into her. Fear, she remembered. She’d never liked it much. ‘Why aren’t you scared of me? Everybody’s scared of me.’

‘With good reason,’ Emily replied placidly. ‘Which is why you need to be put down, like a biting dog.’ She came a step closer, and Amelia (much to her own surprise) retreated.

‘You can’t have come back,’ Amelia said. ‘I’ve got both Doors.’

‘Indeed. Two out of three. Nearly the complete set, but not quite.’

‘There’s a third—’

‘Yes.’ Emily smiled. ‘Thanks to the intelligence and foresight of Dennis Tanner’s mother, a splendidly resourceful woman who you completely underestimated. Most people do,’ she added. ‘Anyway, that was your big mistake. Oh, and I wouldn’t rely too much on anybody coming to rescue you. The alarm doesn’t work. Well, it does, but Colin Gomez rerouted it to his office. So it’s just you and me. Well, go on, then. Fireballs don’t seem to do any good, but I’m sure you’ve got lots of other weapons up your sleeve. Let’s see, how about Litvinov’s Polecat? Or a nice consequence mine? Or dragons’ teeth, even.’

Amelia stared at her warily. ‘They won’t work, will they? You wouldn’t be suggesting them otherwise.’

‘No.’

‘You’re bluffing.’

‘Perhaps.’

Rather clumsily, Amelia tugged a few hairs from the top of her head, blew on them and threw them in the air. They changed into giant bats, which flew at Emily’s face. She swatted them easily with the back of her hand. They hit the walls and folded up.

‘You can’t possibly do that,’ Amelia protested.

‘Can’t I?’ Emily smiled. ‘I kill monsters for a living, remember. And I’m good at it. Maybe you should consider paying me more.’

The next twist of hair turned into three adult male lions. They took one look at Emily and scampered behind the desk, making whimpering noises.

‘Try spiders,’ Emily suggested. ‘I never did like spiders.’

Amelia did just that. The spiders, Atkinsonii, each as big as a Great Dane, joined the lions behind the desk. There wasn’t really enough room for all of them, but they managed to squeeze in together somehow.

‘You can keep that up till you’re as bald as a cue ball and it won’t do you any good,’ Emily said smugly. ‘Look, why don’t you give Litvinov’s Polecat a try? It won’t work, of course, but I do so enjoy all the pretty coloured lights. Or, tell you what, how about an inversion grenade? The worst that could happen is that it’d get you too, and you’d hardly feel a thing.’

Amelia had retreated so far that her back was to the wall. The feel of it seemed to calm her down, somehow. ‘No, thanks,’ she said. ‘Your turn. If you’re going to attack me, go ahead.’

‘Splendid,’ Emily said, and clapped her hands together. ‘A little bit of backbone, that’s what I like to see. Preferably sticking out through the side of your neck.’ Faster than Amelia’s eye could follow, Emily lunged forward, raised her right hand and slapped her across the face. Amelia howled, tried to retreat, tripped up over her own feet and fell on her bum. ‘That hurt,’ she squealed furiously.

‘Yes. Serves you right. Come on, get up. We’ve got a lot to get through, and I haven’t got all day.’

Amelia didn’t move. ‘There’s something wrong about this,’ she said quietly. ‘This can’t be happening. It’s all an illusion, it must be.’

‘Maybe,’ Emily replied, and kicked Amelia hard on the shin. ‘Real enough for you?’

Amelia replied with yet another fireball. It missed, bounced off a wall and hit one of the spiders. There was, interestingly, a distinct smell of burning hair.

‘The joke is,’ Emily said, ‘you did it yourself.’

‘What?’

‘The way you killed me, the last time.’ Emily clicked her tongue. ‘It was a really neat idea, but it backfired, and now-well, I’m not afraid of you any more. And that’s all it takes, you see.’