In Your Dreams (35 page)

‘All right,' Ricky said, wincing. ‘Spare me the full narrative. Just as well I forgot this and had to come back for it,' he added, showing Paul the sword. ‘Oh, and I got you this on the way, from the all-night shop up the road. Doewe Egberts,' he explained, carefully placing a huge jar of coffee granules on the table top. ‘Since you'll be pretty much living on the stuff for a while, I thought you might as well have a brand that doesn't taste of bitumen dissolved in piss. In fact, if I were you I'd get a proper cafetière and some Whittards Mocha. False economy is not your friend.'

Paul nodded. ‘Thanks,' he said. ‘I – I believe you now,' he added. ‘But why would she want to kill me? I never did her any harm.'

Ricky was looking at him oddly. ‘Are you sure about that?' he said. ‘Or maybe it's the other way around entirely. Maybe you did her a really good turn, something very useful indeed. In which case,' he explained, ‘that makes you an accessory.'

Paul frowned. ‘You mean like a belt or a handbag?'

‘All right, accomplice. At the very least, a witness. The Fey are red hot on attention to detail. Have you been doing much for her at the office lately?'

‘As a matter of fact, yes. She had me sorting those Mortensen printouts for the best part of a week.'

‘Mortensen printouts,' Ricky repeated. ‘That doesn't make any sense. Why would she bother killing you if all you've done is the filing? Oh well, I guess it's just that she doesn't like you very much.' He yawned, like a lion at the dentist's. ‘You should be all right now,' he said. ‘Now she's been rumbled it's not likely she'll be back tonight, but a couple of pints of that coffee ought to make double sure. What you really need, of course, is something like a seventh-level shield; I've got a spare back home that I could lend you, but I won't be going that way for a couple of weeks.'

‘Just a moment,' Paul said. ‘What's a whatever-it-is-level shield look like?'

‘It can be anything,' Ricky replied, shrugging. ‘Pencil, watch strap, scruffy old paperback book. The usual thing is a badge of some sort; something inconspicuous you can pin inside your jacket.'

‘Would it scare goblins?'

Ricky laughed. ‘Scare 'em?' he said. ‘Just being in the same room'd fry their tiny brains. Touching it'd physically burn them, too. Why?'

‘I think I've got one already,' Paul replied thoughtfully. ‘At least, I did have, but I left it on my desk at the office and now I can't find it.'

Ricky was impressed. ‘Where'd you – no, don't tell me now, I really do have to get a move on, run errands, see to chores. If we're both alive and conscious on Monday, you can tell me then.' He frowned. ‘Far be it from me to dictate how you run your life,' he said, ‘but in your shoes I'd fix that window before anything else nasty comes through it. It's a little-known fact that the Fey have real difficulty getting in somewhere if the doors and window are shut. Properly shut, mind. If they're only open a teeny crack, that'll do.'

For a moment Paul had no idea what he meant. ‘It's all very well saying that,' he said mournfully, ‘but where am I supposed to get a pane of glass at this time of night? Not to mention putty and—' He stopped. ‘Oh,' he said, ‘I see. I'd forgotten I can do that sort of stuff.'

Ricky grinned at him. ‘Give it a try,' he said.

Of course, Paul didn't really know how to use magic, just as nobody knows how to fly, but falling from an aeroplane just comes naturally. ‘How do I start?' he asked nervously. ‘Is there something I should say, or—?'

Whatever else Ricky might have been, he was impressively patient. ‘Just think,' he said. ‘Think about how the window looked before it got smashed. Then reflect on how a smashed window is inherently wrong, whereas an unsmashed one is how things should be, in an ideal world.'

‘Yes, but,' Paul started to say; but Ricky shushed him and pointed at the window. Paul saw both their reflections in the unblemished glass.

‘You did that, didn't you?' Paul asked.

Ricky shook his head. ‘All you really need is confidence,' he said. ‘You've got the basic skills, you just need to convince yourself that you can use them. Now then, remember: door closed, windows shut, curtains drawn and last but not least, toilet seat
down
. You can probably chance it and get some sleep tonight, or what's left of tonight, but if you want to play it absolutely safe, your best bet is a couple of handfuls of stale crumbs in the bed and lots and lots of coffee. And now I really have got to go.' Sword in hand, Ricky crossed to the door, opened it a crack and peeked out. ‘Good luck,' he added, and slipped away, closing the door quietly behind him; just as Paul realised what he'd just said and called out, ‘
Why
have I got the basic skills?', whereupon the Yale catch clicked firmly home.

Once upon a time, Paul remembered as he waited for the front door of 70 St Mary Axe to open, weekends shot past so fast that bystanders were sent flying by the slipstream. As soon as you stumbled out of bed on Saturday morning, it was time to go to bed on Sunday, so as to be up bright and early for work the next day. He remembered mentioning this effect to Benny Shumway, who confirmed that time got distinctly odd around the sixth and seventh day, and went on to tell him about an early prototype time machine that JWW had built in the late 1890s, based on exactly that principle – by stacking up a series of artificially generated weekends, the designers reckoned, it ought to be possible to accelerate the would-be time traveller several years into the future. The project had foundered only because the return mechanism, which was based on the extreme nostalgia of looking at photographs of old school chums, was too erratic to be relied on, with the result that at some point in 2007, the firm was going to have to pay out a hundred and nine years' worth of accumulated back pay to the junior associate who had piloted the first manned test launch.

The previous couple of days, by contrast, had crawled by like hourly-paid snails. Between boredom, exhaustion and caffeine poisoning, Paul was practically on his knees. Only the thought of what he was going to say to Countess Judy at around two minutes past nine on Monday morning had sustained him through the ordeal. He'd had plenty of time to choose his words; eventually, he'd pared his speech down to two words (and one of those was a pronoun). He wasn't looking forward to the interview, but for once he was absolutely determined to follow it through.

The two words were, ‘I quit'; and he got them out without corpsing, stammering or mumbling.

‘Excuse me?'

‘I said, I quit,' Paul repeated.

‘You quit what? Smoking?'

‘I resign,' Paul explained. ‘I don't want this job any more. I'm leaving.'

‘Oh.' She had the sheer effrontery to look surprised. ‘Really? Why?'

Paul was now seriously over budget on words, but this wasn't a time for parsimony. ‘You know why,' he said.

‘No, I don't.'

‘Yes, you do.'

‘No, I don't.'

‘Yes, you bloody well
do
.' Paul banged the Countess's desk with his clenched fist. ‘Ouch,' he added, as the stapler flew across the room, leaving a staple embedded in the side of his hand. ‘You tried to kill me.'

‘Did I really? When was that?'

‘You know perfectly— Friday night, when I fell asleep at the kitchen table. You got into my dream and you were going to kill me, only Ri— only somebody woke me up,' he amended sloppily. ‘You had a fucking great knife, and you were going to stab me or slice me open.'

‘Oh,' Countess Judy said, shrugging. ‘That. There was no harm done, though. And I found someone else, another donor, so you're no longer at risk. Nothing to worry about, you see.'

It was just as well that there weren't any itinerant haberdashers in the building at that moment, since for two pins Paul would've punched her in the face. ‘No harm done,' he repeated. ‘You were going to— Hang on,' he said, ‘you found another donor. You mean, you killed someone else.'

She shrugged again. ‘Hardly killed,' she said. ‘I managed to locate a donor who was terminally ill; in fact, we arrived when he was on the very point of death. Salvage, you see, not homicide. We do have certain ethical standards.'

The anger was making it hard for Paul to speak. ‘I wasn't on the point of bloody death,' he ground out. ‘There wasn't anything wrong with me.'

Into the Countess's bright, silvery eyes came a curious glow that Paul couldn't remember having seen before. It sobered him up from white-hot fury to terror in about a fifteenth of a second. ‘In your case,' she said, ‘there are special circumstances. Rest assured, I would never ever presume to take a life to which I wasn't legally entitled.'

Curious, how some people have a certain knack and others don't. Paul had hoped that his two words would've settled the whole business and left him free and clear – free, to be precise, to change his name, grow a beard and start a new life for himself in Nova Scotia. In the event, they'd proved hopelessly inadequate. Countess Judy's two words, on the other hand, were the oncoming truck, and he was the hedgehog.

‘Excuse me?' he said. ‘Legally entitled?'

She nodded curtly. ‘We have to be most particular about the legal side of things,' she said. ‘In our position, unauthorised harvesting could lead to most undesirable complications. In your case, however, no such problems would arise, as we have clear unencumbered title.'

It was like swimming in shark-infested custard. ‘Just a moment,' Paul mumbled. ‘Simply because I signed your rotten bloody contract when I joined—'

Now Countess Judy was actually laughing; admittedly, not a laugh that had anything to do with humour. ‘Of course not,' she said. ‘Your terms of employment are strictly limited to your work obligations. I was referring to our legal claim to your life.'

‘My life.' Another two words with the stopping power of a ton weight. ‘You
own
my life?'

‘That's right.'

‘Really? How come?'

Now she opened her eyes wide, a show of surprise. ‘By purchase, of course. We bought you.'

Three words this time. Paul took a step back, but that wasn't sensible. His legs didn't seem to be functioning terribly well. ‘Bought,' he said. ‘Who the hell from?'

‘Your parents, naturally. Come now, Mr Carpenter, please don't ask me to believe you weren't aware of the fact. You have a certain degree of basic intelligence, even though you often seem to be at pains to conceal it. Do you really believe your parents could have afforded to move to Florida on the strength of your father's savings?'

Chapter Eleven

A
t some point, some time later, Paul must've been in his office, because Melze came in. She asked about where some forms or other were kept, though what had given her the impression that Paul knew where they might be he had no idea. He didn't answer. He was all out of words.

She repeated the question a couple of times, then said, ‘Paul, are you all right?'

‘What?'

‘I said, are you all right?'

Honesty, the best policy; wasn't that what his mum had always told him? Good joke. ‘No,' he replied.

Melze looked concerned, bless her compassionate heart. ‘You look awful,' she said. ‘What on earth's the matter?'

Cue enormous grin. ‘Oh, I just found something out. About me, my life, the world in general. No big deal.'

That didn't seem to satisfy her; in fact, she sat down with a let's-talk-about-this look on her face and said, ‘You're acting very strangely, Paul. What's all this about?'

Extend grin. ‘You really want to know?'

‘I wouldn't be asking if I didn't.'

‘Fine.' Paul folded his hands on the desk and sat up straight. ‘You met my mum and dad a few times, didn't you?'

‘Yes, of course.' A look of alarm occupied her face. ‘Nothing's happened to them, has it? They're all right, I mean.'

Funny.
‘Oh, they're all right. They're as right as bloody rain. I got told something about them, that's all.'

Just a tiny flicker of impatience in among all that warmhearted concern. ‘What?'

Paul pursed his lips for a moment. Not the sort of announcement you want to rush. ‘You know they retired to Florida?'

Melze nodded.

‘Well,' Paul went on, ‘I just found out where they got the money from.'

‘Oh.' She waited, then prompted him: ‘Was it something bad?'

‘You could say that. They sold something.'

‘Sold something? What?'

‘Me.'

Melze looked at him as though he'd cracked a tasteless joke at a moment of great solemnity, like a christening or a funeral. ‘I don't understand,' she said.

‘Don't you? It's very simple. They took money in exchange for me. For my life.'

‘But they couldn't have. There's no such thing any more – well, they say it still goes on in India and places, but not here. It's illegal.'

‘So are lots of things,' Paul said placidly. ‘Murder and stuff. Still happen every day.'

‘But—' She scowled at him. ‘Don't be so bloody aggravating, Paul. Lose the melodrama. Tell me exactly what happened.'

‘I just did.' He sighed, and leaned back in his chair. ‘They sold me to the firm. This firm, J.W. Wells and Co. For four hundred and twenty-five thousand US dollars.' He frowned. ‘Excluding VAT, presumably, I didn't ask about that. I don't know if people are zero rated.'

‘But.' Melze seemed fond of that word suddenly. ‘But why, for crying out loud?'

‘Why did they sell me, or why did JWW buy me?'

‘Both.'

Paul shrugged. ‘The first one, because they're utter bastards and they wanted the money. The second bit's rather more complicated, and I don't want to bore you.'