Existentially Challenged, page 17
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LATER THE SAME DAY
27
After lunch, Alison was at her desk, compiling a more formal report on what she was finding in the Modern Miracle forums. It wasn’t the worst task she’d ever been given. Most of it was fairly mundane online discussion, although she had gotten absorbed by a rather amusing thread in which forum members speculated on what it would be like if Lord of the Rings characters had to fill out a standard DEDA extradimensional services request form.
At around two o’clock, she found herself unable to focus on reading any further, because Adam Hesketh was creeping very slowly into her work area, trying not to be noticed. He was lifting his feet high, clasping his hands behind his back, and looking everywhere except directly at her. He finally came to rest at a potted plant near Alison’s desk and began carefully examining the leaves, feeling each one in turn between thumb and forefinger.
“Alison,” he eventually said as his fingertips traced the veins of a particularly interesting leaf. “Don’t look at me. Keep looking at the screen. Pretend we’re not talking.”
“Okay,” said Alison, confused. “That should be easy. Because. I didn’t think we were.”
“Do you still have Doctor Diablerie’s car keys?”
“Yes.” Doctor Diablerie was still yet to reappear, and Alison hadn’t had a chance to return them. The black key with the skull-shaped silver fob continued to look out of place on her key ring alongside her front door key and a small plastic Japanese cat.
“I’m on kind of a secret mission,” admitted Adam. “I need to get to Modern Miracle’s next service without Mr. Danvers knowing.”
“I thought Mr. Danvers approved you checking on their next service?”
“He did, but I told him I wasn’t going to go after all.” He coughed. “Because now I have to do it secretly. For my secret mission.”
Alison winced. She glanced around, to make sure that the terrible spirit of Elizabeth Lawrence’s disapproval wasn’t manifesting physically behind her shoulder. “And this is all fine, is it?”
“Oh sure, it’s fine,” said Adam. “It’s totally fine. But I can’t take any of the Investigations cars because they have to be checked out and monitored. They don’t do that with Diablerie’s car, right?”
“I don’t think so.” Alison wasn’t sure, but it seemed safe to assume. She’d never had to sign anything when taking Diablerie’s car out, and presumably neither did he; bureaucracy was one of the things that he deliberately kept shut out of his little world, along with most popular trends in culture and fashion. “But I don’t know, Adam, I probably shouldn’t . . .”
“Look, we’ll just head out to Worcester on Friday and be back the same night,” pressed Adam. His voice was casual and downplaying, but his fingers were massaging the leaf in his hand with greater and greater violence. “You don’t even have to get out of the car. Plenty of people drive to Worcester and back for no reason. Worcester’s nice. Very historic cathedral.”
“Actually,” said Alison, suddenly thoughtful. “Beatrice Callum at LAXA has been sending me emails.” She went to the keyboard and clicked over to the relevant browser tab. “She says she’s got new information on Modern Miracle and has been asking to meet up.”
“Well, great! Perfect!” said Adam, looking over her shoulder, before remembering he was supposed to be doing this covertly and returning hastily to the potted plant. “You can go there as part of your official investigation, and you can tell everyone you didn’t notice me in the passenger seat. No risk to you at all.”
Alison eyed Beatrice’s email uncertainly. She had been pretty inconsolable the night of her brother’s death, once the shock had worn off and the matter had properly sunk in. She had been absolutely incoherent with sobs by the time Alison had had to leave and had created quite a large dark patch of dampness on her boyfriend’s shirt. Looking at the text of her emails, Alison doubted she had yet returned to a healthy emotional space. It was something about the way she was ending all her sentences with at least four punctuation marks.
“I still don’t know about this,” admitted Alison.
“Please?” said Adam. “I’d really appreciate it.”
Alison glanced toward Elizabeth’s office door again and bit her lip. “Could you order me to do it?”
Adam blinked several times. “Erm . . .”
“You can do that, right? ’Cos you’re a special agent and I’m a junior agent. I’d just . . . I’d feel a lot better about it if you were ordering me.”
“Okay,” said Adam uncomfortably as Alison reddened with embarrassment. “I, uh. I order you to drive me to Worcester on Friday afternoon. Will that do?”
Alison drummed her fingers on the keyboard, lightly enough not to press any keys, and tossed her head left and right, weighing up whether her feelings about it had changed. “Actually, could you write it down on something?”
Text messages between Victor and Leslie-Ifrig, 6:27 p.m. to 7:09 p.m.:
Your private message history with Leslifrig6969
You replied: You’ve crossed the line this time.
sorry victor i was in the loo
what have i done now?
You replied: That cargo ship that caught fire. The one on the news. That was you, wasn’t it?
uh
you mean the one in cyprus
no that actually wasnt me
You replied: Sure.
You replied: I warned you what would happen if you didn’t behave. I’m putting a stop to you once and for all.
victor
wheres this coming from
You replied: It’s coming from not turning you into vapor when I had the chance.
come on
what are you really angry about?
You replied: Nothing!
You replied: Just the usual stuff.
you mean work
You replied: Mainly Adam acting like a twat.
You replied: Which is the usual stuff, because he is one.
how is he acting like a twat?
You replied: Dunno.
you dont know
You replied: He’s just being whiny because no one in his fancy new office respects him and he’s jealous of me.
thats quite a lot of insight for someone who doesnt know
THE NEXT FRIDAY EVENING
28
After Adam had written down the order and signed it, and Alison had cosigned it and enlisted the fluidic who cleaned the bathrooms to sign it as a witness, and Adam had taken a picture of himself holding the order in one hand and a copy of that day’s newspaper in the other, Alison finally felt comfortable about agreeing to help. It was a comfort that entirely deserted her when the time came to actually do it. The moment she climbed into the driving seat of Diablerie’s car on Friday afternoon, she felt her entire body fold into a guilty cringe. She could only bear to cling to the steering wheel with her fingertips in case the white-hot sting of accusation bled through to her palms.
She didn’t feel any better after she picked up Adam. Everything he nonchalantly did felt like another violation. He wasn’t fumbling with the seat belt—he was fumbling with the seat belt Alison stole from Diablerie. He wasn’t looking out of the window—he was looking out of the window Alison stole from Diablerie. The several rounds of effusive thanks he had made in the first five minutes of the journey had been no comfort, because the sound of his voice had had to drift through several cubic feet of stolen air.
“Look,” said Adam, picking up on the tension in the car from the way Alison kept flinching at the blinking of her own indicators, “if any trouble comes out of this, I will take full responsibility. Just let me do the talking.”
“So you’ll say you ordered me,” said Alison.
“Absolutely.”
“To take you on your secret mission.”
“I—well, obviously I can’t say that. I’ll think of something.” He looked down. “Although the mission was a lot more secret before you made me print out triplicate copies of the order.”
“Sorry,” said Alison, eyeballing the cars in front. “I’ve never taken this car without proper permission before. I’m a little bit on edge.”
“Yeah, I guess we’ve all had to deal with new experiences since the reshuffle,” said Adam, glancing wistfully out of the window again. “I’m still kinda new to going on special investigations by myself.”
“Right, how’s Victor been doing?” said Alison, nervously embracing the change of subject. “Haven’t seen him around lately.”
“Victor? Oh, he’s been getting really weird. I don’t get what’s going on with him.”
“What’s he doing?”
“He’s, you know, feeling shut out by the Department so he’s started hanging out with bad crowds because he thinks it’ll make us jealous.”
Alison nodded uncertainly. “That’s, er, that’s quite a lot of insight for someone who doesn’t get what’s going on with him.”
The conversation proceeded to die the first of the many hideous drawn-out deaths it would suffer throughout the course of the journey, until Alison was finally able to get off the motorway and surround the car with livelier scenery. The discussion could then survive on weak life support as Adam repeatedly commented on how Worcester seemed nice, and Alison agreed that it did, indeed, seem nice.
Alison finally pulled up on the corner of the turn that led to the Modern Miracle house. “Okay,” she said, with forced brightness. “I’ll pick you up from here. Send me a text when you’re ready.”
Adam didn’t get out immediately. He gazed up the sloping road toward the house, already feeling pangs in his legs. “You don’t feel like getting any closer?”
“Erm, no, actually . . .” Alison pointed ahead. “Beatrice wants me to meet a little ways off. Around the corner.”
“O-kay,” said Adam, letting himself out. “Have fun.”
“Have fun?”
“I mean, good luck,” said Adam, now out of the car and talking through the six inches of gap left by the door he was partway through closing.
With him gone, Alison didn’t exactly feel relief, because she was still driving a stolen car that was sprouting hot needles of guilt at every single point where her body touched it, but there was certainly a mental clearing of the air.
She double-checked the address Beatrice had given her on the GPS. It was literally the next street down from Modern Miracle’s street, a cozy suburban cul-de-sac practically identical to the last, stacked with another row of expensive detached houses. The main difference being—as Alison discovered after she had parked under a willow she judged shady enough to conceal her crime—a public footpath running between two of the houses.
Alison checked Beatrice’s message again. There was the address, and then the extra instructions: “Head down path. Stand between first two trees and make cuckoo noise.”
The path was the start of a rough walking trail that ran behind the houses for a few hundred yards before snaking off into the picturesque grassy hills that gave the suburb its backdrop, occasionally touching base with light clumps of trees and foliage to give the dogwalkers something to besmirch. At the first of these, two thin trees stood over a thick bank of bushes as tall as a man, like two skinny Victorian ladies in ridiculously large hoop skirts.
It didn’t escape Alison’s attention, when she reached the spot between the two trees, that she now had a fairly clear view of the back of the Modern Miracle house. Even without her eidetic memory, the faint sound of chatting congregation drifting over from the front garden made it unmistakable.
“Cuckoo,” she said aloud, not being entirely clear on what sound a cuckoo makes. “Cuckoo, cuckoo.”
She flinched as the bank of hedges to her left burst open, revealing that it was, in fact, the LAXA van, covered in a thick camouflaging layer of branches and weeds that must have been gathered with the single-mindedness that only a disturbed brain can possess. Beatrice stood in the open side door, staring madly and pallidly like some kind of harassed creature of the forest guarding its cave, and Alison immediately noticed that she was wearing the exact same outfit she had had on at their last meeting.
“Alison!” she said, grinning widely. “Get in here!”
Alison thought it best to obey, only having second thoughts when the wave of stench hit her: a combination of unwashed laundry, bad breath, and dog fur, all percolating nicely in an atmosphere kept warm by several running electronic devices. Three laptops were scattered around the unmade sleeping bags in the back, one of which was connected to a whirring camera in the passenger seat with a very long lens pointing forward through the disguised windscreen.
“You’re staking out Modern Miracle,” said Alison, half asking, half realizing.
“Yeah, but it’s okay,” said Beatrice, squatting before one of the laptops. “I told Mum I was getting to the bottom of David’s murder, and she didn’t, like, directly tell me not to. Take a look at this.”
Alison was moving to join her behind the laptop when the thing she had taken for a pile of unwashed laundry at the back of the van shifted slightly and revealed itself to be Roger, Beatrice’s dreadlocked cameraman-boyfriend. And on closer inspection, the crumpled furry sleeping bag at his feet was Arby the dog, dozing.
“Oh, hello,” said Alison on instinct as she made eye contact. “Have you . . . have you all been here this whole time?”
“Yeah,” said Roger. He seemed quite placid and unconcerned in comparison to Beatrice, but he was still unshaven and wearing clothes that had become a few shades darker since Alison had seen them last. “It’s cool, I had nothing on.”
“Look!” insisted Beatrice, pointing at her screen. Alison obediently leaned in.
She was being shown a recorded video that must have been taken from the camera in the front passenger seat, as it was prominently focused on the back of the Modern Miracle house and the tall wooden fence that enclosed its rear garden. The footage had been taken at night and was bathed in night vision green.
“Where’d you get all this equipment?” asked Alison as nothing happened onscreen for several seconds.
“Oh, I had some savings,” said Beatrice dismissively. “And Mum didn’t directly tell me not to spend it. Ah! Look!”
On the screen, a gate in the middle of Modern Miracle’s rear fence opened a few inches and a figure emerged. It took a few moments for Alison to identify it as Miracle Dad; he was barely recognizable with a bathrobe on over his Modern Miracle T-shirt, and with all the flamboyance and energy he reserved for the camera subtracted from his posture.
“So, this happened last night, and the night before as well,” said Beatrice as the image of Miracle Dad furtively crept along the walking trail until he was out of shot. “The first time it was Miracle Dad, and yesterday it was Miracle Mum. Only ever one of them.”
“Where do they go?” asked Alison.
“We don’t know,” said Beatrice, in a mysterious voice.
“Have you followed them?”
“Yeah, we tried, obviously.” Beatrice pointed to the camera. “But that thing doesn’t pan very far. And then they just go out of shot again.”
“I mean, physically follow them,” said Alison. “Like. Move.”
“Oh.” Beatrice scratched under her beret, which was now more brown than red. “No, I’m pretty sure they’d notice a van this size.”
“I mean, leave the van and follow them on foot,” said Alison, exasperated.
Beatrice stared at her, bleary eyed and confused. Then she looked to the others. Arby perked up, peeling his jowls off the floor of the van and letting his tail thump left and right, as if he didn’t understand what was going on but was getting the vibe that it might be time for walkies.
“See, this is why I said we should bring the professionals in,” said Roger.
29
In the time it took to walk all the way up the road to Modern Miracle, Adam concocted a cover story. He was Achilles Vanderberg, recently returned from studying overseas. His younger sister, who, to his slight embarrassment, practically worshiped him as a god, had been diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. With her medical expenses having used up the last of the inheritance they had earned from their Swiss uncle, an eccentric inventor with a mysterious past, he had come to the Modern Miracle service to see if magical healing might provide the solution to their problems.
As he sauntered up to the front gate, he was mentally filling in the last few details. He could picture their uncle’s mansion outside Zurich and the extensive grounds in which they had spent so many magical summers. He was prepared for any amount of questioning. So he was rather annoyed when absolutely nobody noticed or tried to stop him.
After Modern Miracle’s televised PR boost, the congregation had expanded to the point of overflowing the front garden. As Alison had noticed, the people present were from all walks of life, naturally separating into conversational cliques. Adam’s additional senses informed him that each clique had at least one magically infused person. The crowd was a fireworks display of multicolored traces. He even noticed a few dual consciousnesses, not that he needed enhanced senses to notice those; the nearest one had a face like a plate of day-old salad with eyeballs. For a brief moment he wondered if any of them would make for a good archnemesis, but he quashed the thought.
