Barking (35 page)

He stopped dead. The pavement under his feet was pale, almost milky, and the air felt cold and a bit damp. He sniffed: diesel. Fuck it, he thought, I'm outside. I must've left the station without realising it.

Very reluctantly, he looked down at the backs of his hands. No thick grey fur. Also, he was standing upright, rather than being down on all fours. And he was still wearing his suit, and wiggling his toes told him that his shoes still contained feet, not paws. He looked up and stared straight at the round, bright silver disc in the sky. Full moon. It hadn't happened.

Duncan closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. No change.

For all of two seconds, he couldn't move or breathe. Then, as soon as normal service had been resumed, he threw his head back and howled - not from lycanthropy, but for sheer joy.

N
ot, Duncan realised, the most sensible thing he'd ever done; because if the Ferris Gang were looking for him, anywhere within a five-mile radius, he'd just told them where he was. Couldn't be helped, though, and he'd have to face them sooner or later, unless he was serious about New Mexico; which he wasn't, not any more, not unless Sally fancied going there with him.

Talking of which: coincidence? Unlikely. It had to have been the kiss. How that could have been possible he neither knew nor cared, in the same way that he didn't have the faintest idea how computers work but was only too happy to use them. More important still than the fact that she apparently had the power to save him was that she'd used it. You don't save someone's soul with a kiss unless you quite like them, at the very least. Yippee, he thought.

A sudden noise made him jump; he realised it was a dustbin falling over, half a mile away. He still had the superpowers, then; that was nice, but he wasn't really fussed. He yawned. God, he was tired. A long and weary few days.

Brief pause for thought. If Luke and the gang were after him right now, they'd be here already. Since they weren't, he was prepared to bet they were off persecuting small animals or chasing traffic, in which case he didn't have to worry about them until the morning. A few hours' sleep, therefore; then pack a few things in a bag and find somewhere to doss down for a while until he'd forced some kind of resolution.

The stairs to his flat seemed painfully steep tonight. Duncan hauled himself up to his landing as though he was carrying a hundredweight of coal on his back, and rummaged in his pocket for his keys. No need. Door already open.

Oh come on, he thought, why's it got to be tonight? Whatever it is - unicorns, vampires, beautiful but unmemorable girls, accounts that won't balance - couldn't it wait till the morning and give him a chance to get some sleep, a bath and a bacon sandwich? Apparently not. With a deep sigh, he shoved the door open and walked in.

When he saw the mess he was relieved. Cupboards ripped open, drawers pulled out, stuff scattered all over the floor: just plain, ordinary, comfortingly normal burglars again. He smiled and waded through his jumbled possessions to the kitchen. They wouldn't have nicked his kettle. You couldn't give it away.

The kettle was still there, but they'd scattered the tea bags all over the floor and torn the door off the fridge. Big deal. Chances were, he wouldn't be coming back here again, at least for a while, and a fridge is just a fridge. He found a stray tea bag that hadn't been shredded (strangely meticulous burglars, these. What had they imagined he could have hidden inside his tea-bags?) dropped it into the one unbroken mug and filled the kettle with water.

‘I'm sorry about the mess.'

Duncan froze. The voice (nondescript male) sounded like it had come from right next to him, but he couldn't see anybody. He sniffed: no scent but his own. He held still for two minutes, listening carefully. Nothing but the soft whimpering of the kettle as it slowly persuaded the water to think about boiling. Oh well, he thought.

‘You don't know me, of course.'

He dropped the kettle on his foot. After he'd done a little dance, he burst out of the kitchen into the living room. Nobody there; nobody in the bedroom or the bathroom, either. But definitely not just his imagination. What little self-esteem he had left assured him that if he was going to hallucinate voices, they'd have to be more interesting that that one. He slouched back into the kitchen, and heard a faint muffled cough.

‘Oh, sorry.' A patch of air directly ahead of him seemed to shimmer, as though God was playing with the vertical hold, and out of the blur stepped a man. He was short, bespectacled, podgy, a bit thin on top. ‘Forgot,' he said. ‘It's a nuisance, being invisible. I mean, you don't tend to look at yourself, do you, so it's easy to let it slip your mind.'

Duncan heard a rather terrifying growling noise, and realised he was making it. Bad manners, of course, but never mind. The back of his neck was itching like crazy. ‘Who the hell are you?' he said.

‘Wesley Loop,' the man replied. ‘I was going to clear up a bit before you got back. Is it all right if I sit down?'

‘Wesley—?'

‘Loop.' The intruder looked round, tutted and perched on the edge of the smashed-up worktop. ‘You know - or hasn't Luke told you about me? I used to be his partner. Ferris and—'

‘You're dead.'

Mr Loop frowned. ‘Well, yes,' he said, sounding mildly offended. ‘Look, would you mind not glaring at me like that? I'm really sorry about the furniture and stuff, but you know how it is. Time of the month and all.'

At that moment Duncan happened to catch sight of the bedroom door. It had been ripped off its hinges, and something had taken a bite out of it, just above the handle. It occurred to him that, whatever Mr Loop's reason was for being there, it wasn't to steal his DVD player.

‘I got the curtains drawn as quickly as I could,' Mr Loop went on. ‘But it was awkward without hands, and I suppose I got a bit carried away. I'll write you a cheque in a minute, if you tell me how much for.'

‘But you can't,' Duncan said. ‘You're dead, he repeated.'

Mr Loop sighed, and when he spoke again, it was a bit slower and louder, as if Duncan was a small child, or a foreigner. ‘That's perfectly all right,' he said. ‘It'll be a company cheque. Crosswoods's office account. You won't have any problem with it at the bank.'

‘I don't care about the stupid cheque. What the hell are you doing in my flat?'

He could tell that Mr Loop was a sensitive sort of person, the kind who gets upset when people raise their voices. ‘I came to see you,' Mr Loop explained, martyred-patient. ‘And obviously I couldn't call on you at the office. What are you doing home so early, by the way? I didn't expect you back till the early hours. Shouldn't you be out with the rest of them?'

‘What are you doing in my flat
alive
?'

Puzzled frown, followed by the clunk of the dropped penny. ‘Oh, I see,' said Mr Loop. ‘You don't know about—' He paused. You could almost see the tip of the dilemma horn poking through his shirt. ‘I don't think I'm supposed to tell you, actually. It's a bit of a delicate situation, and—'

Grabbing him by the throat had seemed like a good idea at the time; the only thing to do, in fact. As Duncan flew through the air and splatted against the wall like a fly on a windscreen, he had a fraction of a second in which to reflect on that; and yes, if he had his time all over again, he'd still try and strangle the bastard, because if there was one thing he hated more than anything else, it was
bloody not knowing
—

‘Are you all right?' asked Mr Loop anxiously.

Duncan sat up and felt the back of his head; then he turned half round and looked at the wall. The plaster was all smashed up, but he felt fine. Hooray for superpowers.

‘Please don't try that again,' Mr Loop said. ‘Really, if I'd known there was going to be all this violence, I wouldn't have got involved to start with. Honestly, all I wanted was to acquire new skills that'd help me be the best possible lawyer I could be. Throwing people into walls—' He shuddered. ‘The idea was, eventually, when we'd built up a good, solid practice, that Luke would look after the bread-and-butter work, leaving me to handle the more abstruse and intellectually challenging cases. Copyright,' he added sadly, ‘intellectual property. Internet jurisdictions. Ecclesiastical law, even. As it turned out, though—'

‘Excuse me,' Duncan interrupted mildly, ‘but presumably you know all about this stuff. If I attack you again and you throw me against this wall really hard, what's the worst that could happen?'

Mr Loop furrowed his brow in careful thought. ‘There could easily be significant structural damage to the building,' he said. ‘Which would inevitably render you liable in damages to the landlord - I'm assuming this property is leasehold?' Duncan nodded. ‘In fact,' Mr Loop went on eagerly, as though he'd finally found something in all this dreary unpleasantness that he could bring himself to take an interest in, ‘depending on the nature and degree of the damage, the landlord could be entitled to forfeit the headlease, thereby depriving you of all and any interest you may currently hold in the property, regardless of any premium you may have paid to your predecessor in title. In which case, a court might be inclined—'

Duncan threw a chair at him. It smashed over his head like a Hollywood prop, but with no sign of having hurt him. ‘Really,' Mr Loop said. ‘What on earth did you do that for?'

‘To shut you up, mostly,' Duncan replied. ‘Also, I want you to hit me again.'

‘Good heavens. Why?'

‘To see if it hurts, of course. Because if it doesn't, I'm going to pull your head off, or at least I'm going to have a bloody good go at it. Presumably I won't succeed, but what the hell, it'll be fun trying.'

‘Mr Hughes. Duncan,' Mr Loop added; then, ‘Can I call you Duncan?'

‘Sure. If it's with your dying breath, so much the better.'

Mr Loop bit his lip. ‘I seem to have annoyed you,' he said. ‘What did I do?'

Just when you think you're way past gobsmacked, somebody says something like that. ‘What, apart from trashing my flat, you mean?'

‘I've already said I'll pay for—'

‘Why did you do it, incidentally?'

A guilty look washed over Mr Loop's face. ‘I was still in my other form at the time,' he said wretchedly. ‘I'm afraid that when I'm a wolf, I have no respect whatsoever for other people's property. I was hoping you would understand,' he added resentfully, ‘since you're—'

‘Oh, forget about it,' Duncan said, with a rather grand wave. ‘It was all junk anyhow, and I'm leaving here in any case.'

‘Ah.' Mr Loop looked genuinely relieved. ‘That's a very mature attitude.'

‘Whatever. No, the reason why I'm going to smash your face in is because you won't fucking tell me what's going on.'

He launched himself across the room at Mr Loop, who sidestepped and clouted the side of Duncan's head like a tennis pro returning a volley. Duncan flew a short way through the air and crash-landed against the frame of the kitchen door.

‘This is really quite inappropriate,' Mr Loop said. ‘Listen. If I tell you what you want to know, will you please stop this dreadful behaviour?'

‘Sure,' Duncan replied, and spat out a mouthful of splintered wood. ‘I was starting to get bored with it anyhow.'

‘Very well.' Mr Loop paused and watched him, as though he didn't trust him not to launch another attack. ‘So, what's on your mind?'

‘Oh, nothing much,' Duncan replied and, astonishing himself with his own speed and dexterity, lunged at Mr Loop with his arms outstretched. This time, either he was a fraction quicker or Mr Loop was a little slower - the left hook missed the side of Duncan's head by at least twelve-thousandths of an inch, and Duncan contrived to get hold of the end of Mr Loop's tie. He jerked hard, and was delighted to watch Mr Loop sailing through the air and landing awkwardly on top of the cooker.

‘Ouch,' said Mr Loop. Then he rolled off and landed on the floor. Duncan charged at him, aiming to drop-kick him into oblivion, but his hurtling shoe met air and then, regrettably, the edge of the cooker. To his surprise, it hardly hurt at all. The pasta jar hurt even less when Mr Loop broke it over his head - an ill-considered move, since it gave Duncan a further and better chance to do his Johnny Wilkinson impression. His toecap caught Mr Loop millimetre-perfect in the groin and the little man lifted off his feet like Peter Pan on wires in a pantomime, shot through the air and disappeared through the kitchen window in a shower of glass and wood splinters.

It occurred to Duncan that he might have gone a bit far this time, bearing in mind that his flat was on the fifth floor. Not that it mattered, of course. Wesley Loop was dead, Duncan had Luke's word on that, and they couldn't have you for killing a dead man, not even if David Blunkett was still Home Secretary. Nevertheless—

He picked the kettle up off the floor, refilled it and plugged it back in. He really was going to have to leave soon. Even if Luke and the gang didn't show up, sooner or later someone was going to notice Mr Loop's spreadeagled corpse and the curtains blowing through the smashed window five storeys above it. Never mind. There was too much rushing about in modern life, leading to all manner of stress-related disorders. A nice cup of tea, therefore, and then he'd go on the run.

He'd fished out the tea-bag and was stirring in the milk when he noticed something on the back of his hand. A pale silver stain. Moonlight.

He frowned. He was looking at a hand, not a paw. So: if his earlier theory was right, how long would it be before the effects of the kiss wore off, or was he cured for good? He wished, not for the first time, that lycanthropy had come with a handbook or manual, something you could look stuff up in, rather than having to rediscover the wheel every five minutes. Of course, he thought with a mild pang of guilt, Mr Loop could probably have told me the answer if I hadn't kicked him out of the window. Why did I do that, he asked himself, and why aren't I curled up in a ball on the floor whimpering with terror and guilt? Fuck's sake, I just
killed
someone. That's got to matter, surely?