You Don't Have To Be Evil To Work Here, But It Helps (14 page)

Talk of the Devil (must stop using that expression now They’re clients of ours); here was Ms Clay in person. Rosie jerked her head toward the waiting room, and went back to her crossword.

‘You can’t let him do it,’ Colin said.

Cassie closed the door and sat down. ‘Oh,’ she said.

He was standing by the window (extensive views of the back alley and the dustbins; because of the rather unconventional geography of 70 St Mary Axe, the back alley was only there on Tuesdays when there was an R in the month, which made emptying the bins even more hit-and-miss than is usual in Central London)

‘You can’t,’ he repeated. ‘It’s so stupid. It’s only a poxy little company. We’d all be better off stacking shelves in Tesco’s anyway.’

Cassie opened her mouth to say something, but hesitated. There were lots of things she could say at this point; client confidentiality, only obeying orders, was he sure he hadn’t got entirely the wrong end of the stick. She’d said all those, and several other variants on these themes, to other clients’ families on other occasions. It was part of getting the job done. Long ago she’d come to terms with the fact that magic isn’t all flower remedies and the ends of rainbows.

Instead, she said, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘You’re sorry}’ He spun round and looked at her. ‘My Dad is going to go to Hell, and you’re bloody sorry.’

She shrugged. ‘It’s not up to me. I’m just the—’

‘Look.’ Cassie noticed how awkward Colin was in the fairly straightforward business of displaying anger; a greenhorn, a newbie. Probably this was the first time in his life he’d allowed himself to lose his temper with a virtual stranger. ‘I don’t want to her about it. It’s not going to happen, all right?’

‘Sit down,’ she said. He sat down.

‘Sorry.’ He didn’t mean that. What he meant was, I can’t risk pissing you off by shouting at you. ‘Listen, can’t you see what this means? He’s my Dad.’

She looked at him. ‘So talk to him,’ she said. ‘Persuade him.’

‘He won’t listen to me.’

Cassie thought about that. No, quite probably he wouldn’t. She imagined herself having a conversation along those lines with her own father. ‘Don’t fuss, kitten,’ he’d say; his mind made up, her objections dismissed unheard, because of course she was still a little girl who wouldn’t eat up her nice casserole. And she’d never had any trouble talking to her parents. It helped that they’d been in the trade, of course, but that only covered superficialities. No, she could see his point.

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘So, what do you want me to do about it?’

‘Easy. Tell him the deal’s off.’

She sighed. ‘I could do that,’ she agreed. ‘And then your father would ring up my boss and say, what the hell - what on earth’s going on? And my boss would apologise and make up some excuse, he’d pass the file on to one of my colleagues, the deal would go through just the same and I’d get the sack. Do you think that’d help?’

‘All right.’ Colin scowled in thought. ‘How about this: you get in touch with—’ He hesitated. ‘Whatever you call them,’ he said. ‘You get on to Them and say, my Dad’s changed his mind, terribly sorry. They go away. Then you tell Dad that They’ve cried off. He accepts it, so there’s no call for him to go to your boss. Would that be all right?’

Cassie shook her head. ‘It doesn’t work like that. Technical reasons which I can’t go into. I’m very sorry,’ she said. ‘You could burn down this office, or blow it up with dynamite, and it’d still go through. They’re pretty persistent, I’m afraid, once they’ve got their hooks into someone. Imagine a combination of AOL and the National Trust - it might give you some idea.’

‘So there’s nothing you can do,’ he said.

It was his tone of voice. She’d heard it before, but when? It was the voice in which he’d once said, I’m asking you to do this one thing for me, to show that you really— Almost she could hear him saying it, if she closed her eyes and ignored his face.

‘I don’t—’ she said, and stopped. Maybe there was something she could do after all, but it was still tentative and vague in her mind: an approach, not a strategy. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Has he actually signed anything yet?’

Colin thought, visualised the last page of the contract in his mind. Dotted lines, pencil crosses to show where the signature had to go, but nothing in actual ink. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Actually, that’s odd. I guess there’s still some details he wants to iron out. He’s like that, picky.’

Cassie smiled. She knew that already. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Look, I can’t promise anything—’

(And by saying that, of course, she’d just given him a solemn undertaking.)

‘I might be able to think of something, but—’

Again she hesitated, and thought about what she was getting herself into. She was, after all, a professional. Her work wasn’t her entire life or anything like that, but it was what she’d chosen to do (Have you thought about what you’re going to do when you leave school, kitten? You’re going to go into the trade, aren’t you? Yes, Daddy, of course) and it mattered to her to do it reasonably well, because she wanted to get on. The fact that doing her job occasionally involved arranging for strangers to go to Hell was one of those things. Of course, she could pack it all in and do something else - computers, aromatherapy, a job in a call centre somewhere - but there’d have to be a damn good reason. True love, for instance; assuming that such a thing existed. She’d never had any trouble believing in magic, because she’d grown up with it, but true love was, well, a bit far-fetched. She looked at Colin again, and took a deep breath.

‘Do I know you from somewhere?’ she said.

He was leaning forward, massaging his leg below the knee, the way you do when you’ve got pins and needles. ‘I don’t - I’m not sure,’ he said quietly.

‘Oh,’ she said.

Colin looked up at her. ‘I’ve been assuming it’s that thing,’ he said in a rush. ‘Deja vu. You know, where you’re convinced something’s terribly familiar, but it can’t possibly be. I heard something about it on the radio. Apparently it’s all just brain chemistry or something.’

Cassie held her breath for a moment, then let it out slowly. ‘That’s what I’ve been telling myself, too,’ she said. ‘But we can’t both—’

The light bulb blew. It didn’t matter terribly much, since there was plenty of daylight to see by, but the soft plinking noise made them both jump. ‘That’s beside the point,’ he said firmly. ‘Do you really think you can stop this stupid deal happening? You’ve got to. You must see that.’

‘I don’t know.’ She was only playing for time, though, keeping him talking. ‘It’s like -I don’t know. It’s like I’m a fox and you’re a chicken, and you’re trying to talk me into turning vegetarian.’ She scowled. That hadn’t come out right. It wasn’t even anything like what she’d actually wanted to say.

‘Is that how you see yourself?’ Colin asked her.

‘No, of course not. Look, all I do is draw up paperwork. If my boss knew I was even having this conversation—’

‘I’m sorry.’ She wished he wouldn’t say that. ‘But I’ve got to try.’

‘Yes.’ Cassie looked away. This - she really wished she knew how she knew it - this wasn’t the conversation they were supposed to be having. It was as though they’d both drifted so far away from the script that they were hopelessly lost, and hadn’t got a clue how to wind up the scene or escape off the stage. ‘Leave it with me, all right?’ she said. ‘After all, we get paid whatever happens, so I don’t suppose it’ll be the end of the world.’

Colin looked at her one more time, then nodded and got to his feet. He staggered and grabbed hold of the desk to steady himself. ‘Thanks,’ he said.

‘That’s all right. I’ll show you out.’

Mr Tanner’s mum gave Cassie an extra-special glower as she passed through reception, but it hardly registered with her. Part of her was protesting I’m going to get into so much trouble for this, but most of her didn’t care about that; it was desperately trying to figure out what it should be caring about.

She sat at her desk the rest of the morning, going through the motions of drafting a building contract for Mr Suslowicz. It was by no means straightforward, and should have engaged her full attention. A major international leisure consortium had engaged JWW to design a castle in the air (Cas Suslowicz was widely recognised as the best flying-freehold architect in the business); it was going to be their flagship shopping-mall-cum-casino, floating serenely above all terrestrial jurisdictions, tantalisingly out of reach of mortal laws and taxes, hanging in the sky like a free-enterprise heaven. Cas was pulling out all the stops, because the client was on a strict schedule, and it was vital that the paperwork should be sorted out as soon as possible. Normally, Cassie would be chuffed to nuts to be involved in such a high-profile job, so much more prestigious and exciting than a routine little sale-and-purchase for the clients we prefer not to think too much about. Instead, she turned the pages of the precedents book, trying to find a form of words that she could adapt for the snagging clause, and her mind was jumping and snapping like a performing seal trying to get at the just-out-of-reach gobbet of fish.

Colin had a thoroughly rotten afternoon. Dad wasn’t talking to him; there was no work for him to do but he didn’t dare skive off, so he sat in the post room stuffing more of the stupid brochures into their stupid envelopes. At five-thirty he went home. Mum was out at her yoga class. She’d left a meat pie in the oven, but he wasn’t hungry. He went up to his room and shut the door.

When this is over, he thought; when all this is over, I’m definitely leaving. I’ll move out, get a flat or a bedsit, find a job, don’t care what. Once I’ve cleared out, Dad can do what he bloody well likes. This is the last and only time.

He lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Years ago there had been plastic Spitfires and Messerschmitts up there on bits of fishing line, wheeling endlessly above his slumbers like guardian angels, ready to shoot down the bad dreams, the disturbing thoughts. It was well over ten years since they’d gone: outgrown, discarded, squashed in the jaws of the council dustcart. Now, when he needed them most, he missed them. Bad thoughts were zooming down in squadrons. (In his mind he pictured the Ops room, where WAAF’s in neat uniforms pushed little wooden blocks with flags sticking in them around on a tabletop map of his life, as the radio burbled about more bandits crossing the channel). It occurred to Colin that he was only able to keep going because he had so many different bad thoughts circling over him that he couldn’t choose between them. As soon as he made that choice, it’d get very bad for him. Implications would start raining down on him like enemy paratroops - the implications of magic being real, of there being a Hell where you went if you sold your soul, of that crazy deja-vu thing, of the realisation that he’d probably already screwed his life up beyond any possibility of repair or redemption. Compared with all of that, the prospect of living in a fleapit and spending his days flipping burgers was as enticing as the New World to the crew of the Mayflower.

So: I’ll do this one thing, and then I’m out of here.

He wriggled round to face the wall, and tried to think of something else. Counting sheep. His all-time greats fantasy World Cup final teams. Rivers in South America beginning with various letters of the alphabet. No joy; and then he found himself suddenly and unexpectedly engrossed by a thought that had never occurred to him before.

So there’s this tree, Colin thought, growing up through the middle of our house. It starts off in the lounge, right, and then it goes up through the ceiling into the first-floor landing and up the stairwell to the second floor— He struggled to figure out the layout of the rooms. For one thing, how could the first-floor stairs be directly above the middle of the lounge? And the place where the tree vanished into the loft; surely that was well over to one side, facing the back-garden fence. He reached for a bit of paper and a pencil and tried to draw it out, side views and seen-from-above, like an architect’s drawings he’d looked at once. The more he thought about it, the less sense it made (unless he’d got the whole topography skew-whiff, which wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility). In the end, he managed to wrestle the problem down to two possible alternatives. Either the tree didn’t fit the house, or the house didn’t fit the tree. Neither of them was satisfactory, and neither of them addressed the question that was bugging him; namely, what in God’s name was it doing there in the first place?

Foolish, foolish; because the tree had always been there, as long as he could remember. Therefore it followed that it wasn’t an emergency, which meant he shouldn’t be wasting his time and his exceedingly small reserve of mental energy worrying about it right now. Instead, he should be tearing himself to bits over the reality of Hell, the existence of witches and the fact that his Dad was trying to sell his soul to the Devil in return for a cunning way round the statutory minimum wage regulations.

This is no good, Colin decided. I can’t just lie here, I’ve got to do something.

Like what? Get up a petition? Write to my MP?

He sagged, like a becalmed sail. All his hopes rested on the girl; the strange young woman, the witch, who gave him pins and needles in his feet and ferocious mental flashbacks to non-existent memories. Only she could stop Dad doing this dreadful thing; and if anybody could cast some light on the whole deja-vu nightmare, it had to be her. Right; talk to her. But he’d tried that. She was going to see what she could do; fine. But—

His door opened.

‘Dad?’ Colin sat up. A thin taper of light gleamed through from the landing.

‘Oh,’ said a voice. ‘Sorry, wrong door.’

Colin froze. It was one of those moments when time slows down; more than that, it crumples, the way the front end of a Volvo’s supposed to if you drive it into a tree. It wasn’t just that he didn’t recognise the voice. It was the pitch, the timbre, the piercing tone. Hardly more than a whisper, but so clear as to be practically deafening.

The door closed. For seven seconds - he could hear the ticking (of his alarm clock, as loud as panel beating in the silence that followed that voice - he remained paralysed. Then his bones seemed to melt, and he flopped like a discarded shirt back down onto the bed. How long he lay there, he had no idea. He lost count of the ticks. He couldn’t think; it was as though someone had scooped out his brains to fill an ice-cream cone.