The Victim in Victoria Station (10 page)

“Oh, but that's good. Tom, I'm sorry to drag you here in the middle of a day's work, but I couldn't very well impose on Lynn again.”

“Since when is a visit from you an imposition? Are you up to something sneaky you don't want her to know about, by any chance?”

“You know me too well. I don't think she's going to like what I propose to do, if you want the truth.”

Tom groaned. “That means I probably won't either. Well, let's have some lunch before you tell me. I have the feeling I'm going to need sustenance.”

We ordered a ploughman's each; quick and good. I let Tom get some bread and cheese into him before I started in with a few feelers. “Tom, do you know what agency your company uses when you need temporary help?”

He blinked. “Are you looking for some help at home, D.? Because that'd be a different agency, you know.”

“No, I know. But who do you use?”

He looked at me very suspiciously. I smiled and took another swig of beer.

“Oh, all right. We always go to Temp-Assist. We own them, in fact.”

Eureka! That was the name I'd seen on the Multilinks accounts-payable list. Jubilation! I'd better try not to show it, though. I didn't want Tom to know Nigel and I had information we shouldn't have. If you're going to break the law, tell as few people about it as possible, is my motto. “I see. How convenient. It would be too much to hope, I suppose, that you know anybody there?”

He finished his beer in one long swallow and banged down the empty glass. “D. You said when you called that you wanted to talk about Multilinks. I am beginning to get a horrible suspicion, and I will not say one more word until you tell me what you have in mind.”

“Oh, Tom, and I thought I was being so subtle! I should have remembered that chess-playing mind of yours. All right, I suppose you've guessed that I want to get a temporary job with Multilinks. And I know I don't stand a chance without some help. And may I have another beer, please?”

The bar was very busy. I hoped by the time he came back with the beer, he'd have gotten used to the idea.

He had. He was also well prepared with ammunition against it. He set my beer down and became grimly businesslike.

“Now, first things first. Even if I liked the idea of your going in there headfirst—which I don't, not at all—it's impossible. You can't work in this country. Your volunteer job at the Cathedral Bookshop is one thing, but a paid position would be something else again. You need all sorts of permits and papers that you don't have. So it's impossible.”

He seemed very happy about it.

“Oh, but I thought of that. Of course I can't get paid. My idea is this.”

I hunkered over my beer in confidential fashion and lowered my voice. “In America these days, more and more companies use temp agencies as employment agencies for the high-turnover jobs. Instead of going through all the hassle of conducting interviews and all that for their lowliest file clerks and so on, they just tell a temp agency what they need, and they know someone will show up every day, someone reasonably well trained and qualified. The company pays the agency; the agency takes a cut for its trouble and pays the employee. I assume it's much the same here?”

Tom nodded, frowning.

“Very well. Now, many of these jobs pay very badly and are very dull. I imagine that a young woman stuck in one of them wouldn't mind taking a week or two of paid vacation, would she?”

He was beginning to see what I was getting at, and though he still didn't like it, I could see admiration dawning grudgingly.

“You get the idea. You find out who the lowest of the low is at Multilinks and get her home phone number for me, through one of your contacts at Temp-Assist. I call her, tell her I want to take her place for a little while, for a bet. Almost anyone in England will do almost anything for a bet, I've noticed, and they'll believe the silliest things if they're told a wager is involved. We don't tell Temp-Assist a thing, the girl gets her money and her little holiday, and I get to do a little discreet spying. How does that sound?”

He buried his head in his hands. “You have the most ingenious ways for getting yourself into trouble! I can think of a hundred objections!”

He couldn't, of course. In the end he could only come up with one, and that involved a minor detail, not a change in the basic plan.

“Temp-Assist will have to know. They check on the employees from time to time; it's part of their service. And if someone were to call Multilinks, and the girl wasn't there, she'd be in big trouble and you might be, too. If you're absolutely determined to do this—”

“And I am.”

“—then you and the girl make up some story. She has a sick relative she has to go take care of, or whatever, and she wants you to take her place for a little while because she likes the job and doesn't want to lose it. You're probably her aunt.”

“Great-aunt, I suspect. Clerk-typists come younger and younger these days.”

“I leave you to work out the details. I'll still have to pull some strings, because they don't like to place anyone they haven't tested and trained, but I think it can be done. And it'll be safer that way, because Temp-Assist will know you're there and won't blow your cover.”

“I can't use my real name, of course.”

“No, that's right, somebody at Multilinks knows your name. But wait a minute, D.! They know your face, too, or one of them may. You can't possibly—”

“I thought of that, too. I'll wear a wig and leave my hats at home. There isn't a man in a thousand who can recognize a woman he's seen in a hat when she isn't wearing it, or vice versa.”

I passed a satisfied hand over the current hat, and Tom smiled in spite of himself. It's really a very bright red, with a rakish little feather. Frank always loved it.

“All right, all right! I admit I almost didn't recognize you without a hat myself, the other day at our house when you'd just gotten up. I thought a strange woman was sitting across the breakfast table from me.”

“See? Anyway, big important executives don't notice a lowly temp.”

“Aha! And what makes you think your man is a big important executive?”

Oops! “Uh—he acted like one. On the train. When he was pretending to be a doctor.”

“You never were a good liar, D. What are you not telling me?”

“A few unimportant things, Tom Anderson, that I have no intention of telling you. You're better off not knowing. Now, I want to start work as soon as possible.”

He sighed heavily. “Yes, ma'am. I'll do what I can. By the way, do you by any chance actually possess any office skills?”

“Everyone in my generation learned typing in high school, and I've kept up with it a little. And anyone who's run a household for forty-odd years is an expert in organization. I'm polite and reasonably bright and can talk on the telephone. What more do I need?”

“Computer skills.”

“Oh. Oh, dear, I suppose you're right. Especially in a computer company. Well, I'll see what Nigel can teach me in a hurry. It can't be all that hard.”

It took another twenty minutes, and I had to switch to plain tonic or lose my reasoning edge, but Tom eventually came up with a plan. He had, as luck would have it, played golf with the CEO of Temp-Assist. He, Tom, would explain to his friend that his elderly aunt—I made him change that to middle-aged aunt—had made a bet she could make good in an office job, and he, Tom, needed some information and influence in order to help me out. When he got the information—the name of the employee and her phone number—he'd get in touch with me.

“How soon?” I said finally.

“
If
I can hook up with this guy, and
if
he can see me right away, and
if
we can get the information quickly—”

“A CEO can get anything done quickly.”

“In theory.”

“This is important, Tom. A matter, as they say, of life and death.”

He sighed histrionically. “Yeah. Yours, maybe.”

“How soon?”

“Couple of days, maybe.”

“Tomorrow. And make sure it's a job that doesn't really need good computer skills, because I won't have the time to learn. File clerk or something like that.”

“You know, the world lost a damn good executive when you took up schoolteaching! I'll do what I can.”

“I'm sure you will, Tom. I don't know what I'd do without you.” I smiled as winningly as I could, but Tom just laughed.

“Come off it, D. You've gotten your way. You don't have to turn on the megawatt charm. Will you beat me up if I tell you to be careful tomorrow, or whenever?”

“Why, suh, how you do go on! Fiddle-dee-dee!” I slid off the stool, batting my eyelashes for all I was worth as I headed for the door. When I looked back, Tom was shaking his head and looking imploringly heavenward.

Maybe southern belle wasn't my best role.

I
spent Wednesday buying a wig and a pair of glasses with gaudy rhinestone frames, and (sans disguise) talking Nigel into teaching me the rudiments of word processing.

“Why do you want to know?” he had demanded when I walked into the Computer Centre and made my request. “What are you going to do?”

“Ni-gel!” I split the word into two protracted syllables on a rising note loaded with vague but dire threat. Years of dealing with schoolchildren and cats had perfected the technique. I had actually intended to tell him what I was planning, but if he was going to launch into his protective mode, he could remain in ignorance. He started muttering to himself (it was becoming his standard response to my suggestions, I realized), but he sat me down at a desk and launched me into the secrets of typing at a television set.

At the end of three concentrated hours I knew how to create and save a document, how to find it again after I'd filed it, and how to edit it and print it out. And I'd fallen in love.

“But this is wonderful! So much easier than typing! Think of it, no more erasing or whiting over mistakes! I just overtype it, and it's corrected—amazing! And look at this—I can move a whole sentence around, or put in a word I forgot. It'll even show me my typos and look up synonyms for me! Why did no one ever tell me computers could do this sort of thing?”

“Wait till the hard drive crashes,” said Nigel darkly. “Or you forget to save a file and it's gone forever. Or the computer won't boot, or any of the thousand things that can go wrong.” He was still annoyed with me.

“You can't fool me. You love these machines, or why would you be working with them?”

“I love them when they work properly. Half the time they don't.”

I gave him a very skeptical look.

“Okay. A quarter of the time. Some of the time. But what you must never forget is that a computer will not do what you want it to do. It will do only what you
tell
it to do.
Exactly
what you tell it to do, and only if it understands the command.
You
have to do the thinking. Never click a mouse button until you're quite sure you know what you're doing. Always—”

“Nigel.” This time I was gentle, but firm. “I think I've absorbed as much as my brain will stand for today. Thank you
very
much. One of these days I may actually consider buying one of these gadgets.”

I drove home absently, my mind full of strange new terms and my hands a little cramped from hours on a keyboard and mouse. Since Alan made me take driving lessons, I've been quite a bit more at ease on English roads, but this afternoon I was so distracted I very nearly turned down the wrong side of my street.

There were two messages on my answering machine. The blinking light drove every other thought out of my head.

“You are to report to Temp-Assist at nine tomorrow morning.” Tom gave the address in an extremely dry voice. “I had my secretary set the thing up with Alice Scott, whom you'll be replacing. I didn't trust you not to get carried away with the details. She was delighted, incidentally, Alice, I mean. At Temp-Assist they'll give you some instructions and send you on to Multilinks. Everybody and his Aunt Sally has protested about this, D. You're supposed to go through all kinds of testing and training and God knows what. The big boss had to talk, in person, to a lot of flunkies to get you out of all that, and he's taking a big chunk out of my hide for it. You'd better be good at your job, or I'll never hear the end of it. And D.—be careful.”

My heart thumped uncomfortably in my chest. This was what I'd thought I wanted, but now I had it, that old adage about being careful what you pray for hit home with force. It had been many, many years since I'd had a new job. I had completely forgotten what it felt like. Anticipation vied with stage fright, anxiety and fear with hope, all doing a jig somewhere in the region of my stomach.

I wasn't young anymore. There was no denying it. I was about to go into a strange office in a country that, no matter how much I loved it, was not my own. And to make matters much worse, I was going in there under completely false pretenses. I'd never worked in an office in my life; my career had been in the classroom. I'd have to pretend to know routine I'd seen only on TV shows and in the movies. I'd have to be professional and competent—not only, I reminded myself, to preserve Tom's reputation, but to save my own skin. There was a murderer in that office. I swallowed hard.

A cup of tea and several cookies later, I remembered to listen to the second message. It was Tom again.

“Almost forgot. Your name is Louise Wren. And you had your purse stolen two days ago and don't have new identification yet, just in case anyone asks you for some. They probably won't, but it's best to be on the safe side. Don't forget your name, and you'd better take a new purse to preserve the fiction.”