The Better Mousetrap (13 page)

CHAPTER SIX

Emily Spitzer thought of something else she could say to Colin Gomez, and the thought gave her the strength to proceed. Equalising her weight on both feet, she reached out towards the cat’s neck. It was only a few inches from her hand. She reached a little further and felt her elbow brush against a branch. There was a click, like a door opening. The tree disappeared. Thirty feet up in the air, with nothing to hold on to except an absence of tree. Don’t try this at home. You could do yourself a mischief. Emily fell. As she did so, her entire life flashed before her eyes, just the way it was supposed to. Having been trained in all aspects of her trade, including death management, she realised what the slide-show meant, and thought, Nuts. After all, it was such a silly way to go; and the thing about the life flashing in front of her eyes wasn’t just that it had been unfulfilled, pointless and so very short. Mostly it was that she hadn’t finished with it yet. It was as though the waiter had brought pudding and then snatched it away from under her nose before her fingers had closed round the handle of the spoon. Not bloody well fair. Thirty-two feet per second per second; good old Isaac Newton, or was it Galileo? Like it mattered a damn.

Falling out of a tree is a bit like life itself. It all goes swimmingly until the end, and then bad stuff happens. Since she knew she wasn’t going to survive this one, there was no point bracing for impact. An awfully big adventure, wasn’t it supposed to be? But she’d spent her working life battling dragons and staking vampires. Adventures? Yawn.

All in all, she just wanted to land, die and get it over with.

Emily landed; and the first observation she made was that death didn’t hurt. Since a large slice of humanity spends a lot of time worrying about that, it’d have been nice if she could have passed on the good news-sent them a postcard, maybe, or an e-mail- but presumably that wasn’t possible or someone would’ve done it already. Death, in fact, didn’t seem to be bad at all. It was dark-no, that was because she had her eyes closed.

Pause. If she still had eyes to close, how could she be dead?

She opened them, and a waiter handed her a menu.

Saving others is its own reward, which is just as well. You can’t expect gratitude. Even so, Frank had secretly been hoping for something along the lines of ‘My hero’ or ‘ You saved my life, how can I ever thank you?’ Instead, when Emily Spitzer opened her eyes, what she said was, ‘This isn’t death, it’s Paris.’

Factually accurate, but there are times when you want to hear a little bit more than just the truth. ‘Yes,’ he said, very slightly nettled. ‘I can recommend the lobster.’

‘It’s bloody Paris,’ Emily said, sitting bolt upright in her white plastic chair and staring past him. (As though he wasn’t there; great.) ‘Look, that’s the Eiffel Tower, for God’s sake.’ Then, apparently, she noticed him; she swivelled round in her seat like a tank turret and gave him a scowl that would’ve scorched asbestos. ‘What the hell is going on here?’ she snapped. ‘And who are you?’

‘Frank Carpenter,’ Frank said. ‘Or if you don’t fancy lobster, there’s the crepes Suzettes. My treat,’ he added. ‘I can get it back off expenses, so we might as well—’

‘But I died:

‘No,’ Frank pointed out emphatically, ‘you didn’t. Not this time. All the other times, oh yes. Whee, thud, splat, call a doctor, no, don’t bother, over and over again. This time, though,’ he added, with a certain fierce pride, ‘you made it. So we’re having lunch. To celebrate.’ He nodded at her defiantly, then raised the menu and made a show of studying it. ‘Oeufs en bricotte avecfleurs du matin. What on earth is that supposed to be when it’s at home?’

For about a second, Emily sat perfectly still, tense as a guitar string. Then she slumped back into her chair and began to sob. Oh God, Frank thought. He glanced furtively round. People were staring.

‘Look,’ he hissed, ‘if it’s something I said then I’m very sorry, and I understand that this must be rather disconcerting for you and you’ve got every right to be upset. But do you think you could possibly not make that fucking awful noise?’

She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry,’ she snuffled. ‘It’s just, for a moment there I thought I’d died, and I must’ve been really, really bad and wicked in my life, or why would God have sent me to France …’ She stopped, and sat up. You could almost hear the click, as all the pulled-together parts of herself locked back into place. ‘Who are you?’ she said.

‘I just told you, Frank Carpenter.’ He hesitated. ‘That’s my name,’ he added, then heard what he’d just said, and went on, ‘I, um, save people.’

Emily frowned. ‘What, you mean, like Superman?’

A stray tendril of the concept tickled the edge of his mind, but he ignored it. ‘Not really, no,’ he said. ‘I do it for money, actually. I work for an insurance company.’

‘Oh.’ For some reason, the words insurance company made Emily feel a whole lot better. There’s something so wonderfully mundane about insurance. It’s so solid you could build skyscrapers on it. ‘But how—? You were standing under the tree and you caught me?’

Frank twitched. ‘Sort of.’

‘Ah. But in that case, what’re we doing in France?’

Shrug. ‘Like I said, I thought it called for a celebration. You know, you not being dead and everything.’ Silence. A long interval, during which Frank buttered a piece of bread and ate it.

‘But I fell out of the tree like, two minutes ago. How did we get here?’ A look of panic spread across Emily’s face. ‘I’ve been in a coma, haven’t I? Or did I get amnesia from the bash on the head, and—?’

‘Nope,’ Frank interrupted. ‘Look, if you can’t make up your mind I’ll order for both of us, all right? Only I’m hungry. Missed breakfast.’ He waved at a waiter, who immediately homed in like a Scud missile and took down an order for two lobster salads. That alone made Emily realise that supernatural forces were at work.

‘This is magic, isn’t it?’ she said quietly.

‘Of course,’ Frank said. ‘You’re in the trade, I’d have thought you’d be used to— All right,’ he said, holding his hands up by way of supplication, ‘I can see I’m possibly not handling this as well as I might have done. Begin at the beginning?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘You died.’

‘Oh.’

Frank smiled. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but luckily your employers had the good sense to insure your life with Beneficent Mutual for eleven million quid. My boss-George Sprague, nice bloke when you get to know him-he could no more pay out eleven million quid on a claim without a fight than walk to Mars without a spacesuit. So he hired me to save you. And I did.’

‘Ah.’ Emily looked at him as though she was wearing fogged-up glasses. ‘So I didn’t die after all?’

‘Oh yes, you died all right.’ Frank paused to crunch some more bread, and wipe crumbs off his shirt. ‘Broken neck, punctured lung, massive brain trauma. I read the autopsy report, it was practically instantaneous, so you didn’t suffer, but it was a genuine all-the-king’s-horses job all the same.’ He grinned. ‘George Sprague suffered, though. I imagine they could hear him groaning on Alpha Centauri. So he sent for me. It’s what I do. When there’s a particularly expensive accident giving rise to a claim, I go back in time and make it not have happened.’

Long silence. Then she said, ‘That’s impossible.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think it’s worth mentioning that you gave me more hassle than any other case I’ve handled. I had three goes at it, no, scratch that, four, and on each occasion you snuffed it. A lesser man would’ve given up,’ he added with a gentle smile that he later realised must’ve been quite insufferable, ‘but not me. I was baffled. Until, of course, I figured out what was going on. Well, actually,’ he conceded, ‘I went and asked someone, and he explained it to me. You see, you were the victim of a Better Mousetrap.’

The look on Emily’s face told him that he wasn’t going to have to explain what that meant. It also had the useful effect of sobering Frank up. He’d been showing off, he realised. Not good.

‘Sorry,’ he said.

‘That’s all right,’ Emily replied quietly. ‘But-look, you’re sure about that, are you? The Mousetrap, I mean. Only—’

‘Someone was trying to kill you, yes. I’m—’

‘Sorry, I know, you said.’

She was angry; he could understand that. Actually, the way she snapped herself out of it was quite impressive. ‘But if it was a Mousetrap-I mean, they’re infallible. They always work, and there’s nothing anybody can …’ She stopped dead, like someone who’s just realised they’ve missed their turning. ‘You can go backwards and forwards in time?’

‘Yes. Also impossible,’ Frank said. ‘Unless you’re lucky enough to have a Portable Door.’ The look on Emily’s face was worth paying money to see.

Eventually, she whispered, ‘You’re kidding.’

‘Straight up.’ For some reason, Frank felt absurdly pleased that she was so impressed. ‘The only one in existence, as far as I know. Belonged to my dad.’

‘You’ve got a Portable Door. That’s amazing.’ She made it sound ever so much cooler and more impressive than, say, boring old saving someone from certain death. ‘So that’s how you brought me here, then. The Door.’

‘Yes,’ Frank said smugly. ‘Like I said, I asked someone how to beat a Mousetrap. He said, the only thing stronger than a Mousetrap is the Door; because it can take you anywhere, you see, anywhere in time and space. And then I remembered, Dad used it to get out of death once-long story, and I’m not sure I ever really understood it-so, well, why not give it a go? And it worked.’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘So how did you—?’

There are times when you can’t stop a grin. You’ve just got to step back and let it rip. ‘Quite simple, actually. I snuck up quietly while you were playing about up the tree with that cat, and spread the Door out on the ground exactly where you were going to land. Then, when you fell, I quickly opened it. You fell through the Door; I jumped through after you and told the Door to bring us here. Piece of cake, really. Ah, here’s lunch.’

The lobster was a bit rubbery and the tomatoes didn’t actually taste of anything much, which was a bit of a disappointment. The restaurant guide Frank had found this place in had particularly recommended the lobster salad. Still, not all magic works. And Emily didn’t seem to mind, or to have noticed. She ate quickly and efficiently, like a jet liner refuelling in mid-air.

‘So you’re in the trade?’ she said.

‘Me?’ Frank swallowed a chunk of fennel. ‘No, not really. My parents were.’

‘Oh.’

Complete lack of interest. It could be that she was thinking about something else: not being dead, maybe, or who it was that had tried to kill her. Frank decided that it probably wouldn’t have made much difference if the lobster had been all the guidebook cracked it up to be. It was awkward. It’d have been nice to talk to her (that was something Frank found he had strong views on: when had that happened?) but finding a subject wasn’t going to be easy. Probably best if he left that to her. But she just went on eating, as though it was a chore she had to get through; and when she’d run out of things to eat, she looked at him and said, ‘Now can you take me back, please?’

Oh, he thought. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Where do you want to go?’

‘Home,’ she replied. ‘I mean, the office.’ Interesting slip there. ‘I’ve got to get back and find out who tried to kill me.’ Well, there’s that.

‘Have you got any idea?’ Frank asked.

Emily shook her head. ‘Not a clue,’ she replied. ‘I mean, it’s not exactly unheard of in the profession. We’re pretty much a law unto ourselves, if you see what I mean. Partners-well, the office politics can get a bit intense sometimes.’ She frowned. ‘But I can’t see why anybody’d want to get rid of me. I mean, I’m not anybody. I’m right down at the bottom of the ladder, not even on the letterhead, so it can’t be someone who wants my job; and outside of the firm, I can’t think of anybody I could be a nuisance to. It doesn’t make sense, really.’

Frank rubbed his chin rather self-consciously. ‘Revenge?’ he said. ‘I don’t know, the family of a vampire you slew, something like that?’

‘Unlikely. The things I get rid of, everybody’s only too glad to see the back of them. Besides, nobody outside the profession would’ve known about Mousetraps, or how to get hold of one, or how to make it work. And vampires and werewolves and ogres and trolls and suchlike aren’t really in the profession. I mean, they don’t do magic themselves, usually they aren’t bright enough, for a start. Goblins, maybe; but I’ve never had a job with goblins involved. But if it’s not office politics—’ Emily paused. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘that’s my problem.’ Hesitation. Embarrassment, even? No, not really. Just another chore she was about to get out of the way. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, rather primly, ‘I haven’t thanked you yet for—’

‘Forget it,’ Frank said, rather too quickly. ‘Like I said, I get paid. And now I’ve got this job out of the way at last, I can get on with something a bit less complicated. Usually it’s just road traffic stuff, the occasional industrial accident. Most of it you could do in your sleep.’ He waved his hand again, and a waiter materialised with a bill like a Klingon battlecruiser de-cloaking. He plonked a card on the tray without looking.

‘That’s amazing,’ she said. ‘How do you do that?’

He frowned. ‘What?’

‘Attract waiters like that. Is it some kind of psycho-telekinesis, or are you using a modified form of Lexington’s Hook?’

It took Frank a moment to figure out what she was talking about. ‘Oh, I see. No, it’s not magic or anything like that. I just sort of look hopefully at them and they come.’

‘Really.’

‘It’s just a knack, I suppose,’ he said. ‘I’ve never thought about it.’

‘That’s—’ Emily was looking at him; for the first time since they’d met, looking at him as though he was actually visible. ‘I just sit there hoping they’ll notice me. And they never do. And I hate sitting around after the meal’s finished, waiting for the bill.’

Frank was disconcerted, he found, by how disconcerting he found her sudden interest. A great deal was happening all of a sudden, and he wasn’t sure he was keeping track of it. ‘Never been a problem with me,’ he mumbled, thinking: a moment ago, she was in a hurry to get back to the office. ‘Not that I’m a great one for eating out anyway. I generally just have a—’