The Better Mousetrap (7 page)

Eight years of that sort of thinking does things to a person. These days, if she had a feminine side, it was probably the Goddess in her aspect as Kali the Destroyer.

Which reminded her: credit-control meeting with Dave Hook at three-fifteen. Bugger. My cup runneth over, Emily thought, and little dribbles are trickling down inside my sleeve.

Dragons can burn you or flay you alive with their claws. Manticores can shred your face with a flick of their tongues; harpies excel at fly-by scalpings, and their prehensile, six-fingered tails can slice the top of your head off like a boiled egg and dip soldiers in your brain. All Dave Hook could do was look at you and go ‘Tut.’

I’m brave, Emily thought. Really I am. But the little voice in her head said: no, you aren’t, not really. Bravery is defined as facing up to the things that really scare you. Monsters can kill you, but this man can take away your job.

Mr Hook put down the spreadsheet, looked at Emily over the top of his glasses, and frowned. ‘Tut,’ he said. She winced.

‘You’re doing the work,’ he said. ‘No question about that. Everything bang up to date. First-class turnaround time. Outstanding feedback from the clients. But those bills just aren’t getting sent out, are they?’

‘No. Urn.’

‘We’re in this business to make money, after all.’

‘Urn.’

‘There’s no point doing the work if we don’t get paid for it, is there?’

‘Urn.’

Mr Hook sighed, and glanced sideways at the framed photograph on his desk. Mr Hook never ever talked about his family, but the woman in the picture was twenty years younger than him and looked as though she’d just stepped off a catwalk. There was also a small nondescript female child, and a dog. ‘It seems to me,’ he said, ‘that we’ve had this conversation before. Isn’t that right?’

‘Mm.’

‘I have an idea that last time you promised me you’d make a real effort to get the invoices written up and sent out on time.’ Pause. His eyes were eating into Emily’s soul like shipworms gnawing a keel in the middle of the Sargasso Sea. ‘That is what we agreed, isn’t it?’

‘Mm.’

‘Sorry, I didn’t quite catch—’

‘Yes. Only,’ Emily added quickly, in a teeny-tiny voice that made her sound about the same age as the kid in the photograph, ‘there’s been ever such a lot to do this month, and I try and keep on top of the paperwork, but it’s not always easy, and I get confused about what’s zero-rated for VAT and what isn’t, and every time I sit down and try and do the apportionments the phone always rings and it’s someone with a dragon or a chimera or something and you can’t keep the clients waiting, and by the time I get back to the office it’s been driven right out of my head, and …’

Her words tailed off, like the last few drips from a punctured water-bottle in the desert. Mr Hook looked at her. ‘Sorry,’ she said. Those eyes: like those of a crucified spaniel.

‘Sorry really isn’t good enough, though, is it?’

‘No.’

‘We really are going to have to buck our ideas up, aren’t we?’

‘Mm.’

‘This time, when we promise faithfully that we’re going to try and do better, we’re going to have to mean it, aren’t we?’

‘Mwf.’ Pause. Oh God, Emily thought, he’s about to be nice. I can’t stand it when he’s nice. It’s like having your raw soul scoured with a wire brush.

‘I do understand, really,’ said Mr Hook. ‘You’re a hard-working, dedicated young woman who never gives less than a hundred and ten per cent. The profession isn’t just a job of work to you, it’s a passion. I think that’s wonderful, I genuinely do. But.’ He stopped and looked at her; that how-do-you-solve-aproblem-like-Maria look that made her feel - that was the wicked, cruel, unbearable thing about Mr Hook’s eyes. He could make her feel sweet. When his eyes latched on to her like that, suddenly she was a twelve-year-old girl who’d handed in twenty sides of homework that still didn’t manage to answer the question. He made her feel like she was playing at the job, indulging herself, instead of doing what she was paid for. Of course, if they’d hired a man—

‘Now then,’ said Mr Hook. ‘We really have got to sort this out, haven’t we? I’m going to give you one last chance. Bills properly drawn up, sent in on time, credit-control procedures carried out properly. You know you can do it if you try. After all, you’re a highly intelligent girl, and it’s just paperwork. If you’re having trouble with the VAT apportionments, get Clive or Sarah to help you - I’m sure they’ll be only too happy to show you how to do it. Get into the habit of setting aside a little bit of time every day - an hour and a half should be plenty - to really get a grip on those invoices and timesheets and yellow slips. Talking of which, I gather we’ve been a bit careless about filling out stores requisitions, haven’t we?’ Emily nodded. Left undone those things which we ought to have done, and there is no health in us.

‘I really don’t want to make a big issue out of this,’ said Mr Hook, concentrating a billion megawatts of disapproval into the pinpoint lasers of his eyes, ‘but we really can’t go on just taking stuff out of the stores without signing for it. Let’s see, now: twelve kilos of SlayMore, seven packets of detonators, nine boxes of rubber bands, three blocks of Semtex … It’s not just the materials themselves, it’s the time and effort it takes to get the books straight at the end of the month, and then of course we’ve got the licensing and the HSE inspections, and it’s getting really rather awkward trying to account for the discrepancies. It may seem like a lot of fuss to you, but it’s costing us a lot of money and causing some serious difficulties for us with the authorities, just because you can’t be bothered to fill in a few forms and write things down in the book. You do see that, don’t you?’

That was, of course, the worst part of it. Emily could see. When she thought about it calmly, once the red mist had lifted and the urge to kill and kill and keep on killing had dissipated enough to let her brain start working again, she understood perfectly. Nobody in their right mind would slay monsters for fun; we do it for the money, and we don’t get paid unless we send out a bill. And yes, of course we have to keep the stock books and the registers straight, if we don’t want the health and safety people and the DEFRA bogies coming down on us like a ton of bricks. Hardly rocket science. It was just—

She slammed into her office, threw her bag at the wall, crashed into her chair and did the long, silent scream. Once upon a time, she could clear her mind just by imagining Mr Hook being torn apart by goblins, but that didn’t work any more. No matter how vividly she pictured the scene, these days she tended to see the severed head’s lips move and hear the calm, sad voice saying, ‘But you know I’m right, don’t you?” And yes, he was. Right, right, right. And yes, you can’t eat unless you do the washing-up first, and her room would be so much more comfortable if she tidied it occasionally and yes, she’d be able to find things if they weren’t all piled up on the floor in a heap; and yes, they’d have been much better off if they’d hired a man to do her job, even if he’d been useless and she was the best damn dragon-slayer in London and quite possibly the whole of Europe; and yes, of course she’d do it all, every invoice and yellow slip and stationery requisition voucher, if only he’d bloody well stop telling her to—

It’s me, isn’t it? Emily thought. I just don’t like doing as I’m told. How silly is that? And I get really angry when people don’t do what I tell them, because it’s stupid. If I say, don’t go in there, it’s dangerous, and they don’t listen and they come out covered in boils or a different species, of course I’m bloody furious, because how could anybody be so dumb? But for some reason, when it’s me—

Deep breathing. Calm. Inner peace. And when I’ve done that, I’ll go out and kill something big and scary with enormous teeth, and that’ll make me feel better. It always does. Query: would I be able to motivate myself to do this job if I didn’t have Dave Hook? Good question. Don’t go there.

Emily took a deep breath. It didn’t work. She took another, and six more, and one more for luck. Then she got up, dragged an armful of files out of the cabinet, dumped them on the desk and reached for her calculator.

Sodding apportionments. Slaying monsters was zero rated, but you had to charge VAT on materials used (apart from safety equipment and books); and anything that habitually stood upright on two legs - vampires, zombies; ores, goblins and balrogs were a bit of a grey area - was classed as humanoid and didn’t count as a monster for VAT purposes, which meant it had to be charged for. Werewolves were a complete pain: generally speaking they were quadrupeds when you killed them, but they reverted to human shape in the split second before they died, which meant you had to add VAT at 8.75% unless you killed them with a slow-acting poison such as silver nitrate, in which case the rate decreased from 17.5% by one percentage point per day for the period between the first administration of the poison and the actual date of death. And as for shape-shifters— The phone rang. Emily whimpered and picked it up. ‘Mr Gomez for you.’

‘What? Oh, right. Put him on.’

Click, pause; then: ‘Emily?’

‘Yes.’

‘Job for you.’

Naturally. Like bloody magic. The moment she picked up a calculator, someone had a job for her. ‘Can it wait? Only I’ve got mounds and mounds of paperwork, and—’

‘Emergency,’ Colin said. ‘I’m at the client’s place now, as a matter of fact. Actually,’ he added, lowering his voice a little, ‘it’s the client’s mother-in-law. You know Stan Lazek, don’t you?’

‘No. Who the hell is—?’

‘CEO of Dragoman Software Solutions.’

‘Oh.’ Yes, definitely an emergency, in that case. ‘What seems to be the—?’

‘Can’t talk now,’ Colin interrupted. ‘Just get over here quick as you can. It’s at—’ He gave her an address in one of the more opulent west London suburbs. Emily jotted it down on the nearest file cover.

‘Look,’ she said, ‘you need to tell me what it is so I’ll know what stuff to bring. Like, if it’s harpies I’ll just want SlayMore, but if it’s a thirty-foot-high one-eyed giant I’ll need the 105mm recoilless rifle—’

‘Don’t worry about that. They’ve got everything you’ll need right here.’

‘Yes, but—’ Click. Buzz. Bastard. Colin Gomez was intellectual property, entertainment and media, so it was only to be expected that his grip on reality was one fingertip hooked over the edge of a very tall cliff. Even so. If there was one thing that really annoyed Emily, it was a complete lack of consideration for other people.

Everything you’ll need right here. Yeah, sure. But just in case—

She slid open the top drawer of her desk and took out a little canvas pouch. She held it for a moment before dropping it in her bag, as if drawing strength from it. Then she scribbled a note to say where she was going, and left the room.

At least, with Dragoman footing the bill, she could take a taxi rather than battling over there on the Tube. As the Embankment shuffled smoothly by outside the taxi window, Emily closed her eyes and tried to figure out what she’d be most likely to find when she got there. Of course, if it was an entertainment-and-media job, there was absolutely no way of knowing. E&M magic was typically flamboyant, wide-dispersal and highly temperamental. If a reality-fiction interface had blown, for example, you could be up against any bloody thing: dinosaurs, skyscraper-climbing gorillas, space aliens, you name it, those cowboys in E&M could contrive a way of getting it over the line and letting it get away from them. A faulty glamour was just as bad. A year or so back, some pinhead in media R&D had developed a sort of cap thing that turned the wearer into whatever he truly wanted to be. Marvellous idea in theory, but if you’re going to make stuff like that you really can’t go cutting costs at the production stage. If you do, sooner or later something’s going to jam, some poor bugger’s going to stick like it, and suddenly you’ve got a junior Home Office minister swooping low over Whitehall on a thirty-foot wingspan shooting out jets of green fire from both nostrils. And Colin reckoned they’d got everything she’d need right there. Absolutely.

Which was why she’d brought the Lifesaver, otherwise known as the Mordor Army Knife. Strictly speaking, she wasn’t really supposed to have one, since it had been made in the forges of the Dark Lord and counted as an instrument of darkness. But it had everything. As well as the usual penknife, screwdriver, bottle-opener and combination wire-stripper and fingernail-breaker, there was a siege tower, a battering ram, a folding heliograph, a scaling ladder, a high-velocity ballista capable of knocking holes through ten feet of solid rock, a caltrop dispenser, a six-dragonpower welding torch and a pair of scissors that you could actually cut things with. Furthermore, it didn’t belong to the firm. It was her very own, which meant she didn’t have to write out three pink chits and a yellow requisition every time she wanted to use it.

‘Pull up at the top of the road,’ Emily told the driver. ‘I’ll walk the rest of the way.’

An important lesson, one she’d learned the hard way. Unless you know exactly what’s waiting for you at the other end, don’t jump straight out of a cab and onto ground zero. There’re all sorts of things you notice from a hundred yards away that might escape your attention if you’re too close, wrecked cars, burning trees, a six-ton adult gryphon perched on a neighbouring rooftop. As she walked slowly and quietly down Chesterton Drive, however, there didn’t appear to be anything to see, and her feather-edged professional intuition wasn’t picking up anything in the way of bad vibes. She could always tell when something was wrong; but here, everything seemed to be exactly as it should have been. In which case—

You know you’re a professional when the hairs on the back of your neck start to crawl precisely because everything feels right.

She rang the doorbell: Big Ben chimes, which set her teeth on edge. An elderly woman in an Edinburgh Woollen Mills cardigan opened the door and smiled at her.

‘Yes, dear?’

Emily frowned. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I think I’ve come to the wrong house. Only—’

Behind the woman, Colin suddenly materialised. He was one of those men who manage to be very tall without achieving anything in the way of stature. ‘There you are,’ he said, in a voice that suggested that he’d had a long and uncalled-for day. ‘I was wondering where you could’ve got to. This is Mrs Thompson. This is Emily Spitzer, who works with me at the office. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d better be making tracks. Clients coming in at four-thirty, mustn’t keep them waiting.’