Barking (19 page)

Sod it, he thought, this is silly. Outside, it was a bright, crisp day, and the streets were humming with remarkable sounds and smells. He got up and headed for the front office.

In the corridor he bumped into Clive.

‘Going somewhere?' Clive said.

Duncan nodded cheerfully. ‘It's a nice day and I've got nothing much on. Thought I'd go for a walk.'

‘Oh.' Clive looked at him. ‘I see.'

‘I might stroll down to the river, maybe.'

‘Fine.' Clive frowned. ‘Well, why not? Yes, I'm sure that'll be all right. Excuse me, I've got to get this lot copied before the punters arrive.'

Something about Clive's manner suggested that he didn't want to be caught associating with dissidents. Duncan hesitated, but for the life of him he couldn't see that he was doing anything wrong. He carried on, and met Micky coming out of the lavatory.

‘Where are you off to?' Micky said.

‘Just going for a walk,' Duncan replied. ‘It's a nice day, and—'

‘Outside?'

‘Yes.'

‘On your own?'

Something prickled against Duncan's collar. ‘Well, yes,' he said. ‘I'll be careful crossing the road, if that's what you mean.'

‘Why?'

‘Well, I don't want to get run over.'

‘Why are you going outside on your own?'

Suddenly, Duncan understood something that had been puzzling him on and off for eighteen years. The reason, he discovered, why he'd always felt uncomfortable around Micky Halloran was that they didn't like each other very much. One of his oldest and closest friends, yes, but not a friend he
liked
.

‘Because it's a nice day and I'm bored stuck in here with bugger-all to do,' he said pleasantly. ‘That's all right, isn't it?'

Micky gave him a look. ‘We usually do things together,' he said. ‘Or hadn't you noticed?'

Duncan shrugged. The truth had set him free, just like it's supposed to do, and he didn't feel uncomfortable any more. ‘Sure,' he said. ‘But the rest of you are busy, so I thought—'

‘I'm not busy.'

‘Clive is,' Duncan replied, quick on the draw, like a gun-slinger. ‘He's got a client coming in, he just told me.'

Micky nodded. ‘Well, then,' he said, ‘you can wait till he's free, and then we can all go out. Go and ask Luke, I expect he'll be up for it.'

‘I don't want to bother anybody,' Duncan said sweetly. ‘Luke's probably having a nap, if he hasn't got a meeting or anything. Why go disturbing him, just because I fancy a breath of air?'

Duncan could have sworn that Micky's ears twitched, as if they wanted to go back but were restrained by the stupid inflexibility of human anatomy. ‘You don't want to go wandering about outside on your own,' Micky said. ‘Where's the point? You go out, you walk around for a bit, you come back in. What exactly does that achieve?'

The difference was, Duncan realised, that eighteen years ago he'd never have dared to stand up to Micky Halloran like this. It was an issue they'd never resolved by combat or any other formal means, but Micky had always been above him in the hierarchy, for some reason never explained or analysed. Perhaps it was just because he was slightly taller, or had a deeper growl; maybe subconsciously, Duncan had always known that Micky could beat him in a fight. Unimpeachable logic for fourteen-year-olds in a playground gang; didn't cut it as between two adult officers of the supreme court of judicature.

‘Oh well,' Duncan said. ‘I just feel like it, that's all. If anybody needs me for anything, I've got my mobile with me. See you later for the run.'

For a moment, Duncan was sure that Micky was going to stand in his way to stop him going, and he felt his muscles tense, ready for fighting. But Micky was looking past him, over his shoulder.

‘Duncan.' Luke's voice. ‘You going somewhere?'

Just the trace of a smile on Micky's face. ‘I was just nipping out for a breath of air,' Duncan said, but he couldn't get any real conviction behind it. Not when it was Luke he was talking to.

‘Oh.' Luke passed Micky and stood between Duncan and the lift door. ‘Well,' he said, ‘Clive's got clients coming in at three-fifteen, and then Pete's got that call from Canada at four. I think we're all free after that. Say twenty past four, here. Any idea where you want to go?'

Very pleasant and reasonable. Duncan felt his strength draining away, as though there was a hole in his foot. ‘That's all right,' he said quietly. ‘I've just remembered, I've got those stupid Allshapes accounts to sort out. I really ought to get them out of the way, while I've got a bit of spare time.'

‘As you like.' Luke shrugged. ‘We're all meeting up here at six for the run anyhow. See you then, all right?'

As he pushed through the fire door on his way back to his office, Duncan looked quickly round. Luke was still in position, guarding the exit. So what? The essence of leadership is attention to detail.

I shall have to get myself one of those dear little doggy-beds, like the others have got, Duncan said to himself as he sat down in his chair. Much more comfortable than sprawling over the desk. I'd have no trouble getting to sleep in one of them. He looked round the room and thought, fire escapes. There had to be fire escapes, because of health and safety, but nobody had thought to tell him where they were. It'd be a sensible idea to find out about them, just in case there ever was a fire, or some similar emergency.

He swivelled his chair to face the computer screen. There was a file he'd come across a while back but had never bothered to look at, labelled ‘FloorPlan'. Sure enough, it showed him a map of the office. There wasn't any writing on it, but a little experimenting revealed that if you hovered the cursor over the place you were interested in, you got a close-up with neat little words:
closed file store
or
cashier's office
or
Luke Ferris
. He set the cursor dancing like a crane-fly, and before long he found what he was looking for. There was a door next to the library which led to the fire stairs, which came out round the back, in the alley where the dustbins were. He smiled. Somehow, he felt a whole lot better for knowing that - though it did occur to him to wonder why, when he'd asked a few days ago what that door was for, Pete had told him it was where the electricity meter lived.

Flicking the cursor round was fun. Duncan found that he could spin the mouse on its pad with just the very tip of his little finger, and the little spidery letters were pretty as they flashed by . . . Pete's room, Clive's room, Kevin, Luke, Micky; a big room just off the main corridor (not the big or small conference rooms, he'd already found them) which had no label at all. He flicked again, like a kitten batting a ball of wool. Wesley Loop's room.

He paused and frowned. If he'd got the geography of the place straight in his mind, the cursor was hovering over his own office. But it didn't say
Duncan Hughes
. Well, fair enough. Nobody had got around to updating the floor plan yet, megadeal. Wesley Loop; as in Ferris and Loop, presumably. So: he'd inherited the domain of one of the founding partners; pretty cool, right? You don't just stick a man like Duncan Hughes in a broom cupboard, you give him the second-best room in the building. Hah! When he thought of the dreary little coop he'd been banged up in back at Craven Ettins—

Wesley Loop. He hadn't heard the name spoken since his first day. Well, fine. They weren't the chattiest of people, his partners, so it wasn't particularly remarkable that he hadn't heard a load of remember-when-old-Wes-got-his-tie-caught-in-the-shredder type stories. Nothing sinister or first-Mrs-Rochester about that. Presumably, the doggy-bed he'd found in the corner had belonged to him, and maybe he'd chosen the colour scheme and the furniture, although Duncan was inclined to doubt that. There was a general consistency about the decor that suggested it had come as a job lot, chosen by someone who'd looked at the price tags rather than the stuff itself and ordered the most expensive things he could find. After all, money couldn't really mean anything to the Ferris Gang any more.

Four o'clock. He killed the computer screen and leaned back in his chair. He wanted to go and check out the fire escape, but he didn't relish the prospect of explaining his sudden interest in alternative exits to Luke, if he happened to run into him while he was doing it. He could just about understand why they didn't like the thought of him wandering off on his own. After all, the defining characteristic of a pack is that it sticks together. That was how it had been at school. Inseparable, the teachers used to say, usually with grim smiles, as they made a point of making sure the members of the Ferris Gang didn't sit together in lessons. Even so; they split up every evening, didn't they, when the run was over and it was time to go home. Luke didn't seem to have a problem with that. Maybe it was just perfectly ordinary, normal corporate bloody-mindedness. He'd drafted enough partnership agreements to know that the one clause that always gets shoved in is the body-and-soul clause, whereby the new junior partner undertakes to work himself to death so that the seniors can have Mondays off to play golf. Presumably there was something of the kind in the huge great thing he'd signed, just before Luke bit him. What with all the excitement and brave-new-world stuff that had followed, he hadn't given the agreement much thought. It might be an idea to read it, at some point, when he was really bored.

Like now, for instance. He vaguely remembered seeing his copy of the wretched thing in the bottom right drawer of his desk. Sure enough, there it was. It was bigger than he'd remembered; they'd probably had to deforest half of Norway to make enough paper to print the bugger out. It was just as well he could speed-read so well these days.

The usual stuff; in fact, it read like it'd been copied out unchanged from the big grey book of forms and precedents - the lazy man's way, and also, of course, the best. Confidentiality, pre-emption, valuation of assets on dissolution, nothing here he couldn't have recited by heart without needing to look at the page. If anything, an anticlimax; he'd have expected something a bit more flamboyant from Luke Ferris—

Fifteen seconds later, he barged through the door of Luke's office, brandishing the document like a tomahawk.

‘Oh, that.' Luke shrugged. ‘Standard clause, it's in all our contracts. Show you mine if you like.'

‘Big deal, since you're the senior partner.'

‘There's that, of course.' Luke smiled. ‘But I wasn't when I signed it.'

Oh, Duncan thought. ‘That's beside the point,' he said. ‘And the point is, I'm not having it.'

Luke nodded. ‘In that case, the clause doesn't really affect you, does it?'

‘Let me rephrase that. I won't put up with it. How dare you interfere with my private life?'

Frown. ‘But you haven't got one, you just said. All right,' Luke added quickly, as Duncan opened his mouth to say something uncouth, ‘let's be serious. You told me yourself, your wife dumped you. Yes?'

‘Yes.'

‘And you're not seeing anybody else right now. Yes?'

‘Yes, but—'

‘Well, there you go. Naturally, soon as you think you're going to get lucky, just drop me a memo, I'll initial it and send it right back, and off you go. Simple as buying a tube of toothpaste.'

Put like that, it did seem fairly reasonable—No, it bloody well didn't, Duncan reminded himself. ‘Bugger that for a game of soldiers,' he snapped. ‘Look, I don't care if you've all agreed to it. I don't care if it's just a formality. What business is it of yours anyway? What the hell's it got to do with—?'

Luke's frown deepened; not anger, but surprise, as though Duncan had just let slip the fact that he couldn't tell the time. ‘I'd have thought that was obvious,' he said. ‘After all, you're not a human being any more, you're one of us.
Everything
you do is our business. Particularly if it involves bringing someone else into the pack.'

‘Yes, but—' Duncan hesitated. Not something that had occurred to him before. Bearing in mind how lycanthropy was transmitted, you didn't need a particularly lurid imagination—Besides, as and when he met a nice girl, would he
want
to make her a part of all this? Would she have to join the Ferris Gang, and/or Ferris & Loop? He couldn't imagine a stranger being part of the unit; not someone who hadn't been there right from the start, in the playground at Lycus Grove. ‘I wouldn't be bringing anybody in,' he said, and if he said it loudly and assertively - maybe it was because he was trying to bustle himself into believing it. ‘And anyhow, it's the principle of the thing.'

He knew as soon as he said it that he'd given in; when a lawyer talks about principles and there's nobody else footing the bill . . . ‘Fine,' Luke said. ‘If that's really the way you feel, then I guess we'll have to call it a day. Pity; I'd sort of got the impression you liked it here.'

Bluff; surely he was bluffing. But Luke didn't bluff, in the same way that cannon balls dropped off church towers don't generally float in mid-air. Panic flooded Duncan's brain. The force of it was far more intense than he'd have imagined possible. Losing the gang, just when he'd found them again after all those years of being apart, would be more than he could bear.
So that's that, then
, he told himself.
That's the price I've got to pay for being able to smell pot noodles three quarters of a mile away
.