The Portable Door (1987) (36 page)

It vanished in a little shower of blue and green sparks.

After a moment of stunned silence, Paul looked at his watch. “We’d better be going,” he said.

“Why?”

“Well, we’ll miss the train.”

“We aren’t going to catch any train,” Sophie said. Then she jumped in the air, clawing at the back of her head. The goblin was there again, clinging to her hair like a tiny lemur.

“I was hoping you’d say that,” it said.

“Keep still,” Paul shouted, and to his surprise Sophie did as she was told. The goblin scowled. “You’re no fun,” it said, “either of you.” Then it vanished again.

Sophie was shivering. “Has it gone?” she whispered. Paul nodded. “For now,” he said. “But I’ve got a horrible feeling—” He broke off, and stared. Then he knelt down and lifted his head.

“Paul,” Sophie said quietly. “Why are you trying to look up my skirt?”

The goblin, who was hanging upside down from the hem like a little green bat, grinned at Paul and waved

with its free paw. “You don’t want to know,” Paul said. “Just keep looking at me, for God’s sake. Now, we’re going to get the train, right?”

Sophie nodded slowly. “I think so,” she said, her eyes very wide and fixed on his. The goblin pulled a face and disappeared. “Has it gone?” Sophie whispered.

“Yes.” She groaned, and collapsed onto her chair. “I don’t think you ought to have threatened it with that phone book,” he added. “I don’t think it liked it.”

“No,” Sophie said. She was breathing very deeply. “We’re screwed, aren’t we?”

Paul picked himself slowly up off the floor. “Looks like it,” he agreed. “You realise it’s probably listening to everything we say.” He noticed that Sophie was trying very hard not to look at his left shoulder. “Very likely,” she said. He shut his eyes, then gingerly patted at his shoulder with his right hand. Nothing there, apparently. He opened his eyes again. “Was it—?”

“Mphm.”

“Fine. I think we should get out of here. Maybe it won’t keep popping up all over the place where there’s people about.”

Time was getting on, so they took a taxi to Euston. Paul fished about inside the file with his eyes shut until he located the train tickets by feel. First class, Paul noted; presumably the client was footing the bill, but even so. He’d never been first class on a train before.

“It’s nothing special,” whispered a crackly voice in his ear. “The seats are a different colour, and that’s about it.”

Once the train was under way, Paul had an idea. It was a good one, though he said so himself; noble without being stupid. “I think I’ll nip along to the buffet car,” he said. “Anything you want?”

Sophie looked at him, as if to suggest that she had other things on her mind besides thin coffee and stale Danish pastries. “No,” she said. “Why are you waggling your head about like that?”

“I was wondering that, too,” said the little voice in his ear.
Right
, Paul thought,
got you
. He shrugged, and swayed off down the aisle, hoping that Sophie had got the point.

“Smart,” said the little voice, as he joined the buffet queue. “You figured that I can’t be in two places at once, so you’ve diverted me here, giving your bird a chance to be alone with the file, sneak a quick look, maybe even think of a cunning plan. While you’re at it, could you get me a box of matches? The red ones, not the ordinary kind. There’s your actual sulphur in the red ones, and I’m starving.”

“Get your own flicking matches,” Paul muttered. The woman behind him in the queue gave him ever such a funny look.

He bought a cup of tea and a bacon roll—they only had the ordinary brown matches—and staggered back to his seat. Sophie was sitting very still, her eyes screwed up tight shut. Before Paul could say anything, a tiny hand appeared between the top two buttons of her blouse and made a rather vulgar gesture.

“Doesn’t work, of course,” said the little voice in his ear. “Nice try, though.”

Then the hand vanished, shedding three green sparkles, and Sophie sagged forward, jumped up and ran down the aisle towards the toilets. She came back a minute or so later, looking very green.

“It asked me to tell you,” she said in a strained voice, “next time you have a bright idea, warn me first. All right?”

Paul nodded. “Sorry,” he said.

“That’s all right,” Sophie muttered. “It was worth a try. Just—”

“All right, yes.”

It was a very long train journey. Sitting perfectly still for hours on end made Paul itch in several places, but nothing on earth was going to induce him to scratch. Neither of them said a word, for fear of inviting a contribution from the goblin. A half-hour hold-up in a tunnel just outside Rugby didn’t help matters, either. At one point, Paul managed to slide into a light doze, but that was even worse, because he dreamed he was sitting there with no clothes on, and a diminutive Mr Tanner’s mum was sitting on his shoulder, blowing in his ear. He started awake—(“Actually,” said the crackly voice, “she’s my niece. God knows what she sees in
you
.”)

Paul whimpered, and opened his eyes. Sophie turned her head slightly and nodded, as if to say
Yes, me too
. Under other circumstances, he might have reflected on that, and the expression in her eyes, but as things stood he didn’t dare.

Because of the hold-up at Rugby, they had to sprint for their connection at Manchester, and caught it with fifteen seconds to spare. It was only when they’d flopped into their seats and caught their breath that Paul realised something was missing. Sophie must’ve shared the thought. They stared at each other.

“The file,” she said. “Have you got it?”

“I thought you—”

“We’ve left it,” Sophie whispered. “On the other train.”

There was a brief moment of unspeakable joy; then something landed with a soft thump on Sophie’s lap. No need to look down and see what it was.

“Oh,” she said, and Paul could see her brace herself for something extremely unpleasant. A second or so later she relaxed.

“It’s its lunch break,” she explained. “But it’s still listening.”

Paul nodded. “What about the bottle?” he said. “Have you got that?”

“In my bag. Which,” she added, “appears to have turned into a suitcase. Probably a change of clothes for the morning, or costumes if we’ve got to be in disguise or whatever. They think of every bloody thing,” she added bitterly.

Lunch break
, Paul thought; and then, tiptoeing across the back of his mind so as to avoid attention, came the thought of the portable door. He spat the image out of his mind, then waited; but there came no little crackly voice in his ear, and he was pretty sure the goblin wouldn’t have been able to resist making some remark or other, if it’d noticed.

So; the goblin didn’t know about the door. So—It was very hard indeed to think in whispers. He managed it by thinking about other things, gingerly tacking on snippets of thought at the end. If the goblin didn’t know about the door, maybe they could use it to escape (assuming he could get the wretched thing set up before the goblin could stop him). Fine; but where or when could they go, and how could they stop the little bastard coming with them? That could be disastrous—if, for example, he tried to escape into the pre-J.W. Wells past, but managed to take the goblin back there too; would it be able to force them to go to the job interview? He couldn’t see any reason why not; and then they’d never be free, not even in the past. He flicked the very concept of the door out of his mind as quickly as he could, and concentrated on the colour and texture of elephants’ ears for the next two minutes, just in case.

In due course, the train dragged itself into Ventcaster, and they found a taxi to take them on the last stage of their journey. Cudsey turned out to be a rather pleasant grey stone village, genuinely picturesque in the soft haze of almost-rain. Sophie insisted on carrying the suitcase, which by now was extremely large and heavy. The pub was just the sort of place Paul would have enjoyed staying at, under other circumstances.

After they’d dumped the case in Sophie’s room, they took the file into the deserted games room behind the public bar and dumped it on the pool table. The goblin duly popped up out of the flap, yawning and stretching.

“We’re here,” Paul said. “Now, what have we got to do?”

The goblin scuttled across the green baize and nibbled a chunk out of the cue chalk before answering. “Nice easy job,” it told them. “Even you ought to be able to manage it without screwing up. Now, pay attention.”

It sounded simple enough. At a quarter to six that evening, according to the goblin, the pub landlord and his wife were going to fall fast asleep, at which point Sophie, wearing the outfit provided (Sophie’s expression suggested she didn’t like the sound of that) would take her place behind the bar and try to look like a barmaid. At five to six, a man would walk into the bar and ask for a pint of beer. This Sophie would provide, having first added the required dose of JWW Valentine Express; she would then clear out at once, for obvious reasons, and Paul would take her place. The customer would immediately fall asleep for twenty minutes, that being a side effect of the philtre. At a quarter past six, the client would turn up and be there when the customer woke up, and that would be that, as far as their involvement was concerned. The only other point to bear in mind was that while the victim was asleep, it’d be up to Paul to make sure that no female other than the client got into the bar, again for obvious reasons. And that, the goblin added, was all there was to it.

“Just to make sure there’s no fuck-ups,” the goblin went on, “you’d better know what these people look like.” It took a deep breath and vanished in the usual shower of sparks; a moment later, a woman materialised where the goblin had been—a thirty-something bottle redhead, attractive in a chrome-molybdenum-hard sort of way, wearing a short skirt and an obvious blouse. “The client,” she said, and vanished. Then a man appeared—Paul stared. “Bloody hell,” he said.

Sophie looked at him, and then at the man on the table. “You know him?” she asked.

“What? Oh, sorry,” Paul said, “I forgot, you don’t go to the pictures much. That’s Ashford Clent.”

“Who’s Ashford Clent?”

“The mark,” said the man on the table; then he vanished too, and was replaced by the goblin. “Your friend doesn’t get out much, does she?” it went on. “Mind you, hardly surprising. Award-winning Ashford Clent,” it continued, “is the third most highly paid movie star in the world. Thirty million bucks a picture, and if your girlfriend had just one hormone in her bony little body, she wouldn’t need to ask why. Anyhow, Mister Multiple-Oscars has just bought Cudsey Castle, which is very handy, saves you having to go to California.” Was it Paul’s imagination, or did the goblin wink at him as it said that? He could have sworn the little horror didn’t know about the door, but now he wasn’t quite so certain.

“Who’s the woman?” Sophie asked. “The client, I mean.”

The goblin pulled a face. “None of your business,” it said, “but I’ll tell you anyway, since you won’t like it. You don’t need to know her name, but she’s a very clever little lady, worked it all out by herself, bless her. Quite simple, as all the best scams are. She marries Clent; then, after a decent interval, she divorces him. JWW gets two million dollars off the top, she keeps the rest of the divorce settlement for herself, everyone’s a winner.”

Sophie’s expression would have blunted carbon steel. “Apart from what’s-his-name, the actor,” she said. “Or does the potion thing wear off after a bit?”

The goblin laughed. “No way,” it said. “Guaranteed for life, one hundred per cent. The poor fool’ll love her till the day he dies. No big deal,” it added, “when you think about it. After all, there’s five million women in fifty countries worldwide who’d gut their own mothers just for a chance to fondle Mr Clent’s discarded socks, so you don’t want to go feeling sorry for him. Poetic justice, if you ask me.”

Sophie shuddered. “Fine,” she said. “I like happy endings, anyway.”

“Oh, absolutely,” agreed the goblin. “Boy meets girl, girl poisons boy, they get married. Hardly original, but all true romance is just clichés anyhow.”

§

To Paul’s surprise and lasting regret, it all went as smoothly as clockwork. At the appointed time, award-winning Ashford Clent strolled into the bar and asked for a beer. Sophie—actually, Paul thought she looked nice in her barmaid’s costume, but he’d no more have dared tell her so than he’d have confronted God on the eighth day of Creation and demanded to see the manager—Sophie managed to introduce two tablespoonfuls of the golden stuff into Clent’s glass without being noticed, and since the beer was traditional Yorkshire real ale, its inherent foul taste masked the presence of the philtre, at least until it was too late. Mr Clent fell asleep before Paul had a chance to ask him for his autograph, which was probably just as well.

The client was precisely on time, and Paul left her sitting opposite the sleeping screen god, smoking a cigarette and reading
The Daily Telegraph Guide to Investment Management
. The rest of the evening, according to the goblin, was his own.

Talking of which; the nasty little critter hadn’t bothered either of them, as far as he was aware, for some time, not since the briefing. Was it too much to hope that it had finally—?

“Yes,” said the scratchy voice in his ear.

“Oh,” Paul said. “Look, we’ve done our job, so why don’t you just push off and leave us alone?”

The goblin’s laugh sounded like someone chewing tinfoil. “Because I like you,” it said. “Both of you, the same way you like roast chicken. See, I don’t get out of the office as much as I’d like to, so I’ve got to make the most of it when I get the chance.”

Paul sighed, and climbed the stairs to the guest bedrooms. At the top of the staircase he went to turn right, but small, sharp nails tightened in his earlobe, and he stopped.

“Not that way,” he said. “Left.”

“But my room’s this way.”

“Yes. But you aren’t going there.”

“Aren’t I?”

“No. You’re going to see your girlfriend.”

In spite of the pain in his ear, Paul wrenched his head to the right. “She’s not my girlfriend,” he said.