The Woman Who Died a Lot

“Never mind. Did you hear that the felons up at Wroughton actually agreed to be vaporized in exchange for some cash for their victims and family?”

“That’s a lie,” said Miles. “Goliath doesn’t give money to anyone, especially ax murderers. Besides, such an act of self-sacrifice would show considerable empathy and remorse, and that could engender a limited form of absolution—they would hardly be effective at all in drawing the fire from Swindon.”

Miles’s argument rang true—never believe anything Goliath says.

“What are you here for anyway?” I asked. “I’m in a really boring budget meeting, but it’s kind of important.”

“They nobbled him!”

“Nobbled who? Joffy?”

“No—our righteous man. Goliath managed to infiltrate our defenses, and after forty minutes of careful argument they succeeded in persuading our man to pursue a life of hedonistic self-destruction. He’s currently down at a lap-dancing bar getting plastered and running up gambling debts while eating delicacies made from pandas’ ears.”

“That was quick work.”

“Smite Solutions have a team of dedicated Debasers, specially trained to darken and pervert even the purest mind. If someone has a weakness, they’ll find it. Our man’s weakness was licorice, and once they knew that, it was a short hop to a life of immoral excess.”

“So what do we do now?” I asked.

Miles looked around and lowered his voice. “We thought this might happen, so we kept a righteous man in reserve—just in case. But since we’ve obviously got a mole at the GSD blabbing stuff to Goliath, we need someone we can trust to bring him in. Someone with guile, cunning and resourcefulness.”

“You want me to bring him in?”

“No, we wanted you to ask Phoebe Smalls for us. Just kidding. Yes, of course we want you to do it.”

I tried to tell him I was in no fit state to do anything, and he said that all I would have to do was to drive the righteous man up to Wroughton and get him to within twenty yards of the felons at midday on Friday. It seemed easy enough, so I agreed. He then said he would contact me tomorrow morning with an address and left. I was about to go back in when Duffy stopped me.

“Lucy got this from a guy loitering near the bins.”

It was an adhesive patch about the size of Post-it, upon which was printed a smiley face.

“Nice work,” I said, pulling up my shirt so he could stick it on my lower back. “Not a word to Braxton about this.”

“Sorry about that,” I said as I walked back into the boardroom. “Where have we got to?”

“We were just talking about Special Library Services’ budgetary requirements for next year,” said Colonel Wexler, “and extra staffing levels if we are to implement dawn raids for overdue books.”

“Is there a legal framework for that?”I asked.

“Indeed there is,” said Conrad Spoons. “The Library Act of 1923 specifically states that a library may do everything in its power to retrieve its property.”

“And I’ll need funding for an indoor water cannon,” continued Wexler. “The riot over Mr. Colwyn Baye’s new book nearly got out of hand.”

“The SLS should be under the jurisdiction of SO-27,” said Phoebe Smalls, “so their budget should be transferred across to me. That is, unless you have any objection?”

“Not at all,” said Colonel Wexler. “My duties will remain the same, yes?”

“Pretty much.”

“Will I be able to lead dawn raids for overdue books?”

“Dawn raids certainly. Not sure about overdue books—that will be outside our mandate.”

“Oh,” said Wexler, mildly disappointed.

Braxton confirmed that switching the Special Library Services to SO-27 made a lot of sense, and also that this was a good time to outline just how much of the Wessex Library’s budget should be transferred to SO-27, and he suggested as a starting point fifty million pounds, about a third of our current budget. I looked at Conrad Spoons, and he nodded. Without the policing budget, we could concentrate on core library activities, such as lending, the pursuit of knowledge and Finisterre’s antiquarianbook section.

While this had been going on, I’d been looking occasionally at Jack Schitt. Something about him seemed different, and since I knew that if he were a Synthetic, he’d have lightning reactions, I slipped off my shoe and lobbed it at him.

“Ow!” he said as the boot hit him a glancing blow on the forehead.

“Thursday, what on earth are you doing?” demanded Braxton.

“I thought I saw a mouse,” I said somewhat stupidly, and apologized to Jack, who seemed himself after all. He glared at me, and I shrugged. After my shoe had been returned, the meeting continued.

“Perhaps,” said Conrad Spoons, “we could ask the city council whether any extra cash will be given to the Wessex Library Service in order to fund the additional collections of books made available to us from the closure of the Lobsterhood?”

“Well,” said Bunty, “this is an excellent opportunity for us to go through what we think is correct for the fiscal year 2004–2005 and at the same time peg the funding for the next ten years.”