‘Barrett-Browning,’ said the receptionist, ‘Liz Barrett-Browning.’
   ‘Well, Liz, keep the flowers. Make your boyfriend jealous. If Mr Parke-Laine calls again, tell him I died of haemorrhagic fever or something.’
   I pushed my way through the throng of Miltons and on to the Cheshire Cat. It was easy to find. Above the door was a large red neon cat on a green neon tree. Every couple of minutes the red neon flickered and went out, leaving the cat’s grin on its own in the tree. The sound of a jazz band reached my ears from the bar as I walked across the lobby, and a smile crossed my lips as I heard the unmistakable piano of Holroyd Wilson. He was a Swindon man, born and bred. He could have played any bar in Europe with one phone call, but he had chosen to remain in Swindon. The bar was busy but not packed, the clientele mostly Miltons, who were sitting around drinking and joking, lamenting the Restoration and referring to each other as John.
   I went up to the bar. It was happy hour in the Cheshire Cat, any drink for 52.5 p.
   ‘Good evening,’ said the barman. ‘Why is a raven like a writing desk?’
   ‘Because Poe wrote on both?’
   ‘Very good.’ He laughed. ‘What’s it to be?’
   ‘A half of Vorpal’s special, please. The name’s Next. Anyone waiting for me?’
   The barman, who was dressed like a hatter, indicated a booth on the other side of the room in which two men were sitting, partially obscured by shadows. I took my drink and walked over. The room was too full for anyone to start any trouble. As I drew closer I could see the two men more clearly.
   The elder of the two was a grey-haired gentleman in his mid-seventies. He had large mutton-chop sideburns and was dressed in a neat tweed suit with a silk bow tie. His hands were holding a pair of brown gloves on top of his walking stick and I could see a deerstalker hat on the seat next to him. His face had a ruddy appearance, and as I approached he threw back his head and laughed like a seal at something the younger man had said.
   The man opposite him was aged about thirty. He sat on the front of his seat in a slightly nervous manner. He sipped at a tonic water and wore a pin-stripe suit that was expensive but had seen better days. I knew I had seen him before somewhere but couldn’t think where.
   ‘You gentlemen looking for me?’
   They both got up together. The elder of the two spoke first.
   ‘Miss Next? Delighted to make your acquaintance. The name’s Analogy. Victor Analogy. Head of Swindon LiteraTecs. We spoke on the phone.’
   He offered his hand and I shook it.
   ‘Pleased to meet you, sir.’
   ‘This is Operative Bowden Cable. You’ll be working together.’
   ‘I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, madam,’ said Bowden quite grandly, slightly awkwardly and very stiffly.
   ‘Have we met before?’ I asked, shaking his outstretched hand.
   ‘No,’ said Bowden firmly. ‘I would have remembered.’
   Victor offered me a seat next to Bowden, who shuffled up making polite noises. I took a sip of my drink. It tasted like old horse blankets soaked in urine. I coughed explosively. Bowden offered me his handkerchief.
   ‘Vorpal’s special?’ said Victor, raising an eyebrow. ‘Brave girl.’
   ‘Th-thank you.’
   ‘Welcome to Swindon,’ continued Victor. ‘First of all I’d like to say how sorry we were to hear about your little incident. By all accounts Hades was a monster. I’m not sorry he died. I hope you are quite recovered?’
   ‘I am, but others were not so fortunate.’
   ‘I’m sorry to hear that, but you are very welcome here. No one of your calibre has ever bothered to join us in this backwater before.’
   I looked at Analogy and was slightly puzzled. ‘I’m not sure I understand what you’re driving at.’
   ‘What I mean—not to put too fine a point on it—is all of us in the office are more academics than typical SpecOp agents. Your post was held by Jim Crometty. He was shot dead in the old town during a book buy that went wrong. He was Bowden’s partner. Jim was a very special friend to us all; he had a wife, three kids. I want… no, I want very badly the person who took Crometty from us.’
   I stared at their earnest faces with some confusion until the penny dropped. They thought I was a full and pukka SO-5 operative on a rest-and-recuperation assignment. It wasn’t unusual. Back at SO-27 we used to get worn-out characters from SO-9 and SO-7 all the time. Without exception they had all been mad as pants.
   ‘You’ve read my file?’ I asked slowly.
   ‘They wouldn’t release it,’ replied Analogy. ‘It’s not often we get an operative moving to our little band from the dizzy heights of SpecOps 5. We needed a replacement with good field experience but also someone who can… well, how shall I put it—?’
   Analogy paused, apparently at a loss for words. Bowden answered for him.
   ‘We need someone who isn’t frightened to use extreme force if deemed necessary.’
   I looked at them both, wondering whether it would be better to come clean; after all, the only thing I had shot recently was my own car and a seemingly bullet-proof master criminal. I was officially SO-27, not SO-5. But with the strong possibility of Acheron still being around, and revenge still high on my agenda, perhaps it would be better to play along.

   Analogy shuffled nervously.
   ‘Crometty’s murder is being looked after by Homicide, of course. Unofficially we can’t do a great deal, but SpecOps has always prided itself on a certain independence. If we uncovered any evidence in the pursuit of other enquiries, it would not be frowned upon. Do you understand?’
   ‘Sure. Do you have any idea who killed Crometty?’
   ‘Someone said that they had something for him to see, to buy. A rare Dickens manuscript. He went to see it and… well, he wasn’t armed, you know.’
   ‘Few LiteraTecs in Swindon even know how to use a firearm,’ added Bowden, ‘and training for many of them is out of the question. Literary detection and firearms don’t really go hand in hand; pen mightier than the sword and so forth.’
   ‘Words are all very well,’ I replied coolly, suddenly enjoying the SO-5 women-of-mystery stuff, ‘but a nine-millimetre really gets to the root of the problem.’
   They stared at me in silence for a second or two. Victor drew out a photograph from a buff envelope and placed it on the table in front of me.
   ‘We’d like your opinion on this. It was taken yesterday.’
   I looked at the photo. I knew the face well enough. ‘Jack Schitt.’
   ‘And what do you know about him?’
   ‘Not much. He’s head of Goliath’s Internal Security Service. He wanted to know what Hades had planned to do with the Chuzzlewit manuscript.’
   ‘I’ll let you into a secret. You’re right that Schitt’s Goliath but he’s not Internal Security.’
   ‘What, then?’
   ‘Advanced Weapons Division. Eight billion annual budget and it all goes through him.’
   ‘Eight billion?’
   ‘And loose change. Rumour has it they even went over that budget to develop the plasma rifle. He’s intelligent, ambitious and quite inflexible. He came here two weeks ago. He wouldn’t be in Swindon at all unless there was something here that Goliath found of great interest; we think Crometty went to see the original manuscript of Chuzzlewit and if that is so—‘
   ‘—Schitt is here because I am,’ I announced suddenly. ‘He thought it suspicious that I should want an SO-27 job in Swindon of all places—no offence meant.’
   ‘None taken,’ replied Analogy. ‘But Schitt being here makes me think that Hades is still about—or at the very least Goliath think so.’
   ‘I know,’ I replied. ‘Worrying, isn’t it?’
   Analogy and Cable looked at one another. They had made the points they wanted to make: I was welcome here, they were keen to avenge Crometty’s death, and they didn’t like Jack Schitt. They wished me a pleasant evening, donned their hats and coats and were gone.
   The jazz number came to an end. I joined in the applause as Holroyd got shakily to his feet and waved at the crowd before leaving. The bar thinned out rapidly once the music had finished, leaving me almost alone. I looked to my right, where two Miltons were busy making eyes at one another, and then at the bar, where several suited business reps were drinking as much as they could on their overnight allowance. I walked over to the piano and sat down. I struck a few chords, testing my arm at first, then becoming more adventurous as I played the lower half of a duet I remembered. I looked at the barman to order another drink but he was busy drying a glass. As the intro for the top part of the duet came round for the third time, a man’s hand reached in and played the first note of the upper part exactly on time. I closed my eyes; I knew who it was instantly, but I wasn’t going to look up. I could smell his aftershave and noticed the scar on his left hand. The hair on the back of my neck bristled slightly and I felt a flush rise within me. I instinctively moved to the left and let him sit down. His fingers drifted across the keys with mine, the two of us playing together almost flawlessly. The barman looked on approvingly, and even the suited salesmen stopped talking and looked around to see who was playing. Still I did not look up. As my hands grew more accustomed to that long-unplayed tune I grew confident and played faster. My unwatched partner kept up the tempo to match me.
   We played like this for perhaps ten minutes, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at him. I knew that if I did I would smile and I didn’t want to do that. I wanted him to know I was still pissed off. Then he could charm me. When the piece finally came to an end I continued to stare ahead. The man next to me didn’t move.
   ‘Hello, Landen,’ I said finally.
   ‘Hello, Thursday.’
   I played a couple of notes absently but still didn’t look up.
   ‘It’s been a long time,’ I said.
   ‘A lot of water under the bridge,’ he replied. ‘Ten years’ worth.’
   His voice sounded the same. The warmth and sensitivity I had once known so well were still there. I looked up at him, caught his gaze and looked away quickly. I had felt my eyes moisten. I was embarrassed by my feelings and scratched my nose nervously. He had gone slightly grey but he wore his hair in much the same manner. There were slight wrinkles around his eyes, but they might just as easily have been from laughing as from age. He was thirty when I walked out; I had been twenty-six. I wondered whether I had aged as well as he had. Was I too old to still hold a grudge? After all, getting into a strop with Landen wasn’t going to bring Anton back. I felt an urge to ask him if it was too late to try again, but as I opened my mouth the world juddered to a halt. The D sharp I had just pressed kept on sounding and Landen stared at me, his eyes frozen in mid-blink. Dad’s timing could not have been worse.
   ‘Hello, Sweetpea!’ he said, walking up to me out of the shadows. ‘Am I disturbing anything?’
   ‘Most definitely—yes.’

   ‘I won’t be long, then. What do you make of this?’
   He handed me a yellow curved thing about the size of a large carrot.
   ‘What is it?’ I asked, smelling it cautiously.
   ‘It’s the fruit of a new plant designed completely from scratch seventy years from now. Look—‘
   He peeled the skin off and let me taste it.
   ‘Good, eh? You can pick it well before ripe, transport it thousands of miles if necessary and it will keep fresh in its own hermetically sealed biodegradable packaging. Nutritious and tasty, too. It was sequenced by a brilliant engineer named Anna Bannon. We’re a bit lost as to what to call it. Any ideas?’
   ‘I’m sure you’ll think of something. What are you going to do with it?’
   ‘I thought I’d introduce it somewhere in the tenth millennium before the present one and see how it goes—food for mankind, that sort of thing. Well, time waits for no man, as we say. I’ll let you get back to Landen.’
   The world flickered and started up again. Landen opened his eyes and stared at me.
   ‘Banana,’ I said, suddenly realising what it was that my father had shown me.
   ‘Pardon?’
   ‘Banana. They named it after the designer.’
   ‘Thursday, you’re making no sense at all,’ said Landen with a bemused grin.
   ‘My dad was just here.’
   ‘Ah. Is he still of all time?’
   ‘Still the same. Listen, I’m sorry about what happened.’
   ‘Me too,’ replied Landen, then lapsed into silence. I wanted to touch his face but I said instead:
   ‘I missed you.’
   It was the wrong thing to say and I cursed myself; too much, too soon. Landen shuffled uneasily.
   ‘You should take aim more carefully. I missed you a lot, too. The first year was the worst.’
   Landen paused for a moment. He played a few notes on the piano and then said: ‘I have a life and I like it here. Sometimes I think that Thursday Next was just a character from one of my novels, someone I made up in the image of the woman I wanted to love. Now… well, I’m over it.’
   It wasn’t really what I was hoping to hear, but after all that had happened I couldn’t blame him.
   ‘But you came to find me.’
   Landen smiled at me. ‘You’re in my town, Thurs. When a friend comes in from out of town, you look them up. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work?’
   ‘And you buy them flowers? Does Colonel Phelps get roses too?’
   ‘No, he gets lilies. Old habits die hard.’
   ‘I see. You’ve been doing well for yourself
   ‘Thanks,’ he replied. ‘You never answered my letters.’
   ‘I never read your letters.’
   ‘Are you married?’
   ‘I can’t see that’s any of your business.’
   ‘I’ll take that as a no.’
   The conversation had taken a turn for the worse. It was time to bale out. ‘Listen, I’m bushed, Landen. I have a very big day ahead of me.’
   I got up. Landen limped after me. He had lost a leg in the Crimea but he was well used to it by now. He caught up with me at the bar.
   ‘Dinner one night?’
   I turned to face him. ‘Sure.’
   ‘Tuesday?’
   ‘Why not?’
   ‘Good,’ said Landen, rubbing his hands. ‘We could get the old unit back together—‘
   This wasn’t what I had in mind. ‘Hang on. Tuesday’s not very good after all.’
   ‘Why not? It was fine three seconds ago. Has your dad been round again?’
   ‘No, I just have a lot of things that I have to do and Pickwick needs kennelling and I have to pick him up at the station as airships make him nervous. You remember the time we took him up to Mull and he vomited all over the steward?’
   I checked myself. I was starting to blabber like an idiot.
   ‘And don’t tell me,’ added Landen, ‘you have to wash your hair?’
   ‘Very funny.’
   ‘What work are you doing in Swindon anyway?’ asked Landen.
   ‘I wash up at SmileyBurger.’
   ‘Sure you do. SpecOps?’
   I nodded my head. ‘I joined Swindon’s LiteraTec unit.’
   ‘Permanently?’ he asked. ‘I mean, you’ve come back to Swindon for good?’
   ‘I don’t know.’

   I placed my hand on his. I wanted to hug him and burst into tears and tell him I loved him and would always love him like some huge emotional dumb girlie, but time wasn’t quite right, as my father would say. I decided to get on the question offensive instead so I asked:
   ‘Are you married?’
   ‘No.’
   ‘Never thought about it?’
   ‘I thought about it a lot.’
   We both lapsed into silence. There was so much to say that neither of us could think of any way to start. Landen opened a second front: ‘Want to see Richard III?
   ‘Is it still running?’
   ‘Of course.’
   ‘I’m tempted but the fact remains I don’t know when I will be free. Things are… volatile at present.’
   I could see he didn’t believe me. I couldn’t really tell him I was on the trail of a master criminal who could steal thoughts and project images at will; who was invisible on film and could murder and laugh as he did so. Landen sighed, dug out a calling card and placed it on the counter.
   ‘Call me. Whenever you’re free. Promise?’
   ‘Promise.’
   He kissed me on the cheek, finished his drink, looked at me again and limped out of the bar. I was left looking at his calling card. I didn’t pick it up. I didn’t need to. The number was the one I remembered.
   My room was exactly like all the other rooms in the hotel. The pictures were screwed to the walls and the drinks in the mini-bar had been opened, drunk, then resealed with water or cold tea by travelling reps too mean to pay for them. The room faced north; I could just see the airship field. A large forty-seater was moored on the mast, its silver flanks floodlit in the dark night. The small dirigible that had brought me in had continued on to Salisbury; I briefly thought about catching it again when it called on its return the day after tomorrow. I turned on the television just in time to catch Today in Parliament. The Crimean debate had been raging all day and wasn’t over yet. I emptied my pockets of loose change, took my automatic out of its shoulder holster and opened the bedside drawer. It was full. Apart from the Gideon’s Bible there were the teachings of Buddha and an English copy of the Koran. There was also a GSD volume of prayer and a Wesleyian pamphlet, two amulets from the Society for Christian Awareness, the thoughts of St Zylkx and the now mandatory Complete Works of William Shakespeare. I removed all the books, stuffed them in the cupboard and placed my automatic in the drawer instead. I unzipped my case and started to organise my room. I hadn’t rented out my apartment in London; I didn’t know if I was staying here or not. Oddly, the town had started to feel very comfortable and I wasn’t sure whether I liked that or not. I laid everything on my bed and then put it carefully away. I placed a few books on the desk and the life-saving copy of Jane Eyre on to the bedside table. I picked up Landen’s photo and walked over to the bureau, thought for a moment and then placed it upside down in my knicker drawer. With the real thing around I had no need for an image. The TV droned on:
   ‘… despite intervention by the French and a Russian guarantee of safe habitation for English settlers, it looks as though the English government will not be resuming its place around the table at Budapest. With England still adamant about an offensive using the new so-called Stonk plasma rifle, peace will not be descending on the Black Sea peninsula…’
   The anchorman shuffled some papers.
   ‘Home news now, and violence flared again in Chichester as a group of neo-surrealists gathered to celebrate the fourth anniversary of the legalisation of surrealism. On the spot for Toad News Network is Henry Grubb. Henry, how are things down there?’
   A shaky live picture came on to the screen, and I stopped for a moment to watch. Behind Grubb was a car that had been overturned and set on fire, and several officers were in riot gear. Henry Grubb, who was in training for the job of Crimean correspondent and secretly hoped that the war wouldn’t end until he had had a chance to get out there, wore a navy blue flak jacket and spoke with the urgent, halting speech of a correspondent in a war zone.
   ‘Things are a bit hot down here, Brian. I’m a hundred yards from the riot zone and I can see several cars overturned and on fire. The police have been trying to keep the factions apart all day, but the sheer weight of numbers has been against them. This evening several hundred Raphaelites surrounded the N’est pas une pipe public house where a hundred neo-surrealists have barricaded themselves in. The demonstrators outside chanted Italian Renaissance slogans and then stones and missiles were thrown. The neo-surrealists responded by charging the lines protected by large soft watches and seemed to be winning until the police moved in. Wait, I can just see a man arrested by the police. I’ll try and get an interview.’
   I shook my head sadly and put some shoes in the bottom of the wardrobe. There was violence when surrealism was banned and there was violence as the same ban was lifted. Grubb continued his broadcast as he intercepted a policeman marching away a youth dressed in sixteenth-century garb with a faithful reproduction of the Hand of God from the Sistine chapel tattooed on his face.
   ‘Excuse me, sir, how would you counter the criticism that you are an intolerant bunch with little respect for the value of change and experimentation in all aspects of art?’
   The Renaissancite glanced at the camera with an angry scowl.
   ‘People say we’re just Renaissancites causing trouble, but I’ve seen Baroque kids, Raphaelites, Romantics and Mannerists here tonight. It’s a massive show of classical artistic unity against these frivolous bastards who cower beneath the safety of the word progress. It’s not just—‘
   The police officer intervened and dragged him away. Grubb ducked a flying brick and then wound up his report.
   ‘This is Henry Grubb, reporting for Toad News Network, live from Chichester.’
   I turned off the television with a remote that was chained to the bedside table. I sat on the bed and pulled out my hair tie, let my hair down and rubbed my scalp. I sniffed dubiously at my hair and decided against a shower. I had been harder than I intended with Landen. Even with our differences we still had more than enough in common to be good friends.

11. Polly flashes upon the inward eye

   ‘I think Wordsworth was as surprised to see me as I was him. It can’t be usual to go to your favourite memory only to find someone already there, admiring the view ahead of you.’

Polly Next interviewed exclusively for The Owl on Sunday


   As I was dealing with Landen in my own clumsy way, my uncle and aunt were hard at work in Mycroft’s workshop. As I was to learn later, things seemed to be going quite well. To begin with, at any rate.
   Mycroft was feeding his bookworms in the workshop when Polly entered; she had just completed some mathematical calculations of almost incomprehensible complexity for him.
   ‘I have the answer you wanted, Crofty, my love,’ she said, sucking the end of a well-worn pencil.
   ‘And that is?’ asked Mycroft, busily pouring prepositions on to the bookworms, who devoured the abstract food greedily.
   ‘Nine.’
   Mycroft mumbled something and jotted the figure down on a pad. He opened the large brass-reinforced book that I had not quite been introduced to the night before to reveal a cavity into which he placed a large-print copy of Wordsworth’s poem ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’. To this he added the bookworms, who busily got to work. They slithered over the text, their small bodies and unfathomable collective id unconsciously examining every sentence, word, vowel sound and syllable. They probed deeply into the historical, biographical and geographical allusions, then they explored the inner meanings hidden within the metre and rhythm and juggled ingeniously with subtext, content and inflection. After that they made up a few verses of their own and converted the result into binary.
   Lakes! Daffodils! Solitude! Memory! whispered the worms excitedly as Mycroft carefully closed the book and locked it. He connected up the heavy mains feed to the back of the book and switched the power switch to ‘on’; he then started work on the myriad of knobs and dials that covered the front of the heavy volume. Despite the Prose Portal being essentially a biomechanism, there were still many delicate procedures that had to be set before the device would work; and since the portal was of an absurd complexity, Mycroft was forced to write up the precise sequence of start-up events and combinations in a small child’s exercise book of which—ever wary of foreign spies—he held the only copy. He studied the small book for several moments before twisting dials, setting switches and gently increasing the power, all the while muttering to himself and Polly:
   ‘Binametrics, spherics, numerics. I’m—‘
   ‘On?’
   ‘Off!’ replied Mycroft sadly. ‘No, wait… There!’
   He smiled happily as the last of the warning lights extinguished. He took his wife’s hand and squeezed it affectionately.
   ‘Would you care to have the honour?’ he asked. ‘The first human being to step inside a Wordsworth poem?’
   Polly looked at him uneasily.
   ‘Are you sure it’s safe?’
   ‘As safe as houses,’ he assured her. ‘I went into “The Wreck of the Hesperus” an hour ago.’
   ‘Really? What was it like?’
   ‘Wet—and I think I left my jacket behind.’
   ‘The one I gave you for Christmas?’
   ‘No; the other one. The blue one with large checks.’
   ‘That’s the one I did give you for Christmas,’ she scolded. ‘I wish you would be more careful. What was it you wanted me to do?’
   ‘Just stand here. If all goes well, as soon as I press this large green button the worms will open a door to the daffodils that William Wordsworth knew and loved.’
   ‘And if all doesn’t go well?’ asked Polly slightly nervously. Owens’ demise inside a giant meringue never failed to impinge on her thoughts whenever she guinea-pigged one of her husband’s machines, but apart from some slight singeing while testing a one-man butane-powered pantomime horse, none of Mycroft’s devices had ever harmed her at all.
   ‘Hmm,’ said Mycroft thoughtfully, ‘it is possible although highly unlikely that I could start a chain reaction that will fuse matter and annihilate the known universe.’
   ‘Really?’
   ‘No, not really at all. My little joke. Are you ready?’
   Polly smiled. ‘Ready.’
   Mycroft pressed the large green button and there was a low hum from the book. The streetlights flickered and dimmed outside as the machine drew a huge quantity of power to convert the bookworm’s binametric information. As they both watched, a thin shaft of light appeared in the workshop, as though a door had been opened from a winter’s day into summer. Dust glistened in the beam of light, which gradually grew broader until it was large enough to enter.
   ‘All you have to do is step through!’ yelled Mycroft above the noise of the machine. ‘To open the door requires a lot of power; you have to hurry!’
   The high voltage was making the air heavy; metallic objects close by were starting to dance and crackle with static.
   Polly stepped closer to the door and smiled nervously at her husband. The shimmering expanse of white light rippled as she put her hand up to touch it. She took a deep breath and stepped through the portal. There was a bright flash and a burst of heavy electrical discharge; two small balls of highly charged gas plasma formed spontaneously near the machine and barrelled out in two directions; Mycroft had to duck as one sailed past him and burst harmlessly on the Rolls-Royce; the other exploded on the Olfactograph and started a small fire. Just as quickly the light and sound died away, the doorway closed and the streetlights outside flickered up to full brightness again.
   Clouds! Jocund company! Sprightly dance! chattered the worms contentedly as the needles flicked and rocked on the cover of the book, the two-minute countdown to the reopening of the portal already in progress. Mycroft smiled happily and patted his pockets for his pipe until he realised with dismay that it too was inside Hesperus, so instead he sat down on the prototype of a sarcasm early-warning device and waited. Everything, so far, was working extremely well.
   On the other side of the Prose Portal, Polly stood on the grassy bank of a large lake where the water gently lapped against the shore. The sun was shining brightly and small puffy clouds floated lazily across the azure sky. Along the edges of the bay she could see thousands upon thousands of vibrant yellow daffodils, all growing in the dappled shade of a birch grove. A breeze, carrying with it the sweet scent of summer, caused the flowers to flutter and dance. All about her a feeling of peace and tranquillity ruled. The world she stood in now was unsullied by man’s evil or malice. Here, indeed, was paradise.
   ‘It’s beautiful!’ she said at last, her thoughts finally giving birth to her words. ‘The flowers, the colours, the scent—it’s like breathing champagne!’
   ‘You like it, madam?’

   A man aged about eighty was facing her. He was dressed in a black cloak and wore a half-smile upon his weathered features. He gazed across at the flowers.
   ‘I often come here,’ he said. ‘Whenever the doldrums of depression fall heavy on my countenance.’
   ‘You’re very lucky,’ said Polly. ‘We have to rely on Name That Fruit!’
   ‘Name That Fruit?’
   ‘It’s a quiz show. You know. On the telly.’
   ‘Telly?’
   ‘Yes, it’s like the movies but with commercials.’
   He frowned at her without comprehension and looked at the lake again.
   ‘I often come here,’ he said again. ‘Whenever the doldrums of depression fall heavy on my countenance.’
   ‘You said that already.’
   The old man looked as though he were awakening from a deep sleep.
   ‘What are you doing here?’
   ‘My husband sent me. My name is Polly Next.’
   ‘I come here when in vacant or pensive mood, you know.’
   He waved a hand in the direction of the flowers.
   ‘The daffodils, you understand.’
   Polly looked across at the bright yellow flowers, which rustled back at her in the warm breeze.
   ‘I wish my memory was this good,’ she murmured.
   The figure in black smiled at her.
   ‘The inward eye is all I have left,’ he said wistfully, the smile leaving his stern features. ‘Everything that I once was is now here; my life is contained in my works. A life in volumes of words; it is poetic.’
   He sighed deeply and added: ‘But solitude isn’t always blissful, you know.’
   He stared into the middle distance, the sun sparkling on the waters of the lake.
   ‘How long since I died?’ he asked abruptly.
   ‘Over a hundred and fifty years.’
   ‘Really? Tell me, how did the revolution in France turn out?’
   ‘It’s a little early to tell.’
   Wordsworth frowned as the sun went in.
   ‘Hello,’ he muttered, ‘I don’t remember writing that—‘
   Polly looked. A large and very dark rain-cloud had blotted out the sun.
   ‘What do you—?’ she began, but when she looked around Wordsworth had gone. The sky grew darker and thunder rumbled ominously in the distance. A strong wind sprang up and the lake seemed to freeze over and lose all depth as the daffodils stopped moving and became a solid mass of yellow and green. She cried out in fear as the sky and the lake met; the daffodils, trees and clouds returning to their place in the poem, individual words, sounds, squiggles on paper with no meanings other than those with which our own imagination can clothe them. She let out one last terrified scream as the darkness swept on and the poem closed on top of her.

12. SpecOps 27: The Literary Detectives

   ‘… This morning Thursday Next joined the LiteraTec office in place of Crometty. I cannot help thinking that she is particularly unsuited to this area of work and I have my doubts as to whether she is as sane as she thinks she is. She has many demons, old and new, and I wonder whether Swindon is quite the right place to try and exorcise them…’

From Bowden Cable’s diary


   The Swindon SpecOps headquarters were shared with the local police; the typically brusque and no-nonsense Germanic design had been built during the Occupation as a law court. It was big, too, which was just as well. The way into the building was protected by metal detectors, and once I had shown my ID I walked into the large entrance hall. Officers and civilians with identity tags walked briskly amid the loud hubbub of the station. I was jostled once or twice in the throng and made a few greetings to old faces before fighting my way to the front desk. When I got there, I found a man in a white baggy shirt and breeches remonstrating with the sergeant. The officer just stared at him. He’d heard it all before.
   ‘Name?’ asked the desk sergeant wearily.
   ‘John Milton.’
   ‘Which John Milton?’
   John Milton sighed. ‘Four hundred and ninety-six.’
   The sergeant made a note in his book.
   ‘How much did they take?’
   ‘Two hundred in cash and all my credit cards.’
   ‘Have you notified your bank?’
   ‘Of course.’
   ‘And you think your assailant was a Percy Shelley?’
   ‘Yes,’ replied the Milton. ‘He handed me this pamphlet on rejecting current religious dogma before he ran off.’
   ‘Hello, Ross,’ I said.
   The sergeant looked at me, paused for a moment and then broke into a huge grin.
   ‘Thursday! They told me you’d be coming back! Told me you made it all the way to SO-5, too.’
   I returned his smile. Ross had been the desk sergeant when I had first joined the Swindon police.
   ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked. ‘Starting up a regional office? SO-9 or something? Add a touch of spice to tired old Swindon?’
   ‘Not exactly. I’ve transferred into the LiteraTec office.’
   A look of doubt crossed Ross’s face but he quickly hid it. ‘Great!’ he enthused, slightly uneasily. ‘Drink later?’
   I agreed happily, and after getting directions to the LiteraTec office, left Ross arguing with Milton 496.
   I took the winding stair to the upper floor and then followed directions to the far end of the building. The entire west wing was filled with SpecOps or their regional departments. The Environmental SpecOps had an office here, as did Art Theft and the ChronoGuard. Even Spike had an office up here, although he was rarely seen in it; he preferred a dark and rather fetid lock-up in the basement carpark. The corridor was packed with bookcases and filing cabinets; the old carpet had almost worn through in the centre. It was a far cry from the LiteraTec office in London, where we had enjoyed the most up-to-date information retrieval systems. At length I reached the correct door and knocked. I didn’t receive an answer so I walked straight in.
   The room was like a library from a country home somewhere. It was two storeys high, with shelves crammed full of books covering every square inch of wall space. A spiral staircase led to a catwalk which ran around the wall, enabling access to the upper shelves. The middle of the room was open plan with desks laid out much like a library’s reading room. Every possible surface and all the floor space were piled high with more books and papers, and I wondered how they managed to get anything done at all. About five officers were at work, but they didn’t seem to notice me come in. A phone rang and a young man picked it up.
   ‘LiteraTec office,’ he said in a polite voice. He winced as a tirade came down the phone line to him.
   ‘I’m very sorry if you didn’t like Titus Andronicus, madam,’ he said at last, ‘but I’m afraid it’s got nothing to do with us—perhaps you should stick to the comedies in future.’
   I could see Victor Analogy looking through a file with another officer. I walked to where he could see me and waited for him to finish.
   ‘Ah, Next! Welcome to the office. Give me a moment, will you?’
   I nodded and Victor carried on.
   ‘… I think Keats would have used less flowery prose than this and the third stanza is slightly clumsy in its construction. My feeling is that it’s a clever fake, but check it against the Verse Metre Analyser.’
   The officer nodded and walked off. Victor smiled at me and shook my hand.
   ‘That was Finisterre. He looks after poetry forgery of the nineteenth century. Let me show you around.’
   He waved a hand in the direction of the bookshelves.
   ‘Words are like leaves, Thursday. Like people really, fond of their own society.’
   He smiled.
   ‘We have over a billion words here. Reference mainly. A good collection of major works and some minor ones that you won’t even find in the Bodleian. We’ve got a storage facility in the basement. That’s full as well. We need new premises but the LiteraTecs are a bit underfunded, to say the least.’
   He led me round one of the desks to where Bowden was sitting bolt upright, his jacket carefully folded across the back of his chair and his desk so neat as to be positively obscene.
   ‘Bowden you’ve met. Fine fellow. He’s been with us for twelve years and concentrates on nineteenth-century prose. He’ll be showing you the ropes. That’s your desk over there.’
   He paused for a moment, staring at the cleared desk. I was not supernumerary. One of their number had died recently and I was replacing him. Filling a dead man’s shoes, sitting in a dead man’s chair. Beyond the desk sat another officer, who was looking at me curiously.
   ‘That’s Fisher. He’ll help you out with anything you want to know about legal copyright and contemporary fiction.’
   Fisher was a stocky man with an odd squint who appeared to be wider than he was tall. He looked up at me and grinned, revealing something left over from breakfast stuck between his teeth.
   Victor carried on walking to the next desk.

   ‘Seventeenth—and eighteenth-century prose and poetry are looked after by Helmut Bight, kindly lent to us by our opposite number across the water. He came here to sort out a problem with some poorly translated Goethe and became embroiled with a neo-Nazi movement attempting to set Friedrich Nietzsche up as a fascist saint.’
   Herr Bight was about fifty and looked at me suspiciously. He wore a suit but had removed his tie in the heat.
   ‘SO-5, eh?’ asked Herr Bight, as though it were a form of venereal disease.
   ‘I’m SO-27 just like you,’ I replied quite truthfully. ‘Eight years in the London office under Boswell.’
   Bight picked up an ancient-looking volume in a faded pigskin binding and passed it across to me.
   ‘What do you make of this?’
   I took the dusty tome in my hand and looked at the spine.
   ‘The Vanity of Human Wishes,’ I read. ‘Written by Samuel Johnson and published in 1749, the first work to appear in his own name.’
   I opened the book and flicked through the yellowed pages. ‘First edition. It would be very valuable, if—‘
   ‘If—?’ repeated Bight.
   I sniffed the paper and ran a finger across the page and then tasted it. I looked along the spine and tapped the cover, finally dropping the heavy volume on the desk with a thump.
   ‘—if it were real.’
   ‘I’m impressed, Miss Next,’ admitted Herr Bight. ‘You and I must discuss Johnson some time.’
   ‘It wasn’t as difficult as it looked,’ I had to admit. ‘Back in London we’ve got two pallet-loads of forged Johnsonia like this with a street value of over three hundred thousand pounds.’
   ‘London too?’ exclaimed Bight in surprise. ‘We’ve been after this gang for six months; we thought they were local.’
   ‘Call Boswell at the London office; he’ll help in any way he can. Just mention my name.’
   Herr Bight picked up the phone and asked the operator for a number. Victor guided me over to one of the many frosted-glass doors leading off the main chamber into side offices. He opened the door a crack to reveal two officers in shirtsleeves who were interviewing a man dressed in tights and an embroidered jacket.
   ‘Malin and Sole look after all crimes regarding Shakespeare.’
   He shut the door.
   ‘They keep an eye on forgery, illegal dealing and overtly free thespian interpretations. The actor in with them was Graham Huxtable. He was putting on a felonious one-man performance of Twelfth Night. Persistent offender. He’ll be fined and bound over. His Malvolio is truly frightful.’
   He opened the door to another side office. A pair of identical twins were operating a large computing engine. The room was uncomfortably hot from the thousands of valves, and the clicking of relays was almost deafening. This was the only piece of modern technology that I had seen so far in the office.
   ‘These are the Forty brothers, Jeff and Geoff. The Forties operate the Verse Metre Analyser. It breaks down any prose or poem into its components—words, punctuation, grammar and so forth—then compares that literary signature with a specimen of the target writer in its own memory. Eighty-nine per cent accuracy. Very useful for spotting forgeries. We had what purported to be a page of an early draft of Antony and Cleopatra. It was rejected on the grounds that it had too many verbs per unit paragraph.’
   He closed the door.
   ‘That’s all of us. The man in overall charge of Swindon SpecOps is Commander Braxton Hicks. He’s answerable to the Regional Commander based in Salisbury. He leaves us alone most of the time, which is the way we like it. He also likes to see any new operatives the morning they arrive, so I suggest you go and have a word. He’s in Room twenty-eight down the corridor.’
   We retraced our steps back to my desk. Victor wished me well again and then disappeared to consult with Helmut about some pirate copies of Doctor Faustus that had appeared on the market with the endings rewritten to be happy.
   I sat down in my chair and opened the desk drawer. There was nothing in it; not so much as a pencil shaving. Bowden was watching me.
   ‘Victor emptied it the morning after Crometty’s murder.’
   ‘James Crometty,’ I murmured. ‘Suppose you tell me about him?’
   Bowden picked up a pencil and tried to balance it on its sharp end.
   ‘Crometty worked mainly in nineteenth-century prose and poetry. He was an excellent officer but excitable. He had little time for procedure. He vanished one evening when he said he had a tip-off about a rare manuscript. We found him a week later in the abandoned Raven public house on Morgue Road. They had shot him six times in the face.’
   ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
   ‘I’ve lost friends before,’ said Bowden, his voice never wavering from the measured pace of speech he used, ‘but he was a close friend and colleague and I would gladly have taken his place.’
   He rubbed his nose slightly; it was the only sign of outward emotion that he had shown.
   ‘I consider myself a spiritual man, Miss Next, although I am not religious. By spiritual I merely mean that I feel I have good in my soul and am inclined to follow the correct course of action given a prescribed set of circumstances. Do you understand?’
   I nodded.
   ‘Having said that, I would still be very keen to end the life of the person who did this foul deed. I have been practising on the range and now carry a pistol full time; look—‘

   ‘Show me later, Mr Cable. Do you have any leads?’
   ‘None. Nothing at all. We don’t know who he was seeing or why. I have contacts over at Homicide; they have nothing either.’
   ‘Being shot six times in the face is the mark of a person with a gleeful passion for the undertaking of their duties,’ I told him. ‘Even if Crometty had been carrying a gun I don’t think it would have made much difference.’
   ‘You could be right,’ sighed Bowden. ‘I can’t think of a single time that a pistol has been drawn on a LiteraTec investigation.’
   I agreed. Ten years ago in London it had been the same. But big business and the huge amounts of cash in the sale and distribution of literary works had attracted a bigger criminal element. I knew of at least four London LiteraTecs who had died in the line of duty.
   ‘It’s becoming more violent out there. It’s not like it is in the movies. Did you hear about the surrealist riot in Chichester last night?’
   ‘I certainly did,’ he replied. ‘I can see Swindon involved in similar disturbances before too long. The art college nearly had a riot on its hands last year when the governors dismissed a lecturer who had been secretly encouraging students to embrace abstract expressionism. They wanted him charged under the Interpretation of the Visual Medium Act. He fled to Russia, I think.’
   I looked at my watch.
   ‘I have to go and see the SpecOps Commander.’
   Bowden allowed a rare smile to creep upon his serious features.
   ‘I bid you good luck. If you would permit me to offer you some advice, keep your automatic out of sight. Despite James’s untimely death, Commander Hicks doesn’t want to see the LiteraTecs permanently armed. He believes that our place is firmly at a desk.’
   I thanked him, left my automatic in the desk drawer and walked down the corridor. I knocked twice and was invited into the outer office by a young clerk. I told him my name and he asked me to wait.
   ‘The Commander won’t be long. Fancy a cup of coffee?’
   ‘No thanks.’
   The clerk looked at me curiously.
   ‘They say you’ve come from London to avenge Jim Crometty’s death. They say you killed two men. They say your father’s face can stop a clock. Is this true?’
   ‘It depends on how you look at it. Office rumours are pretty quick to get started, aren’t they?’
   Braxton Hicks opened the door to his office and beckoned me in. He was a tall, thin man with a large moustache and a grey complexion. He had bags under his eyes; it didn’t look as though he slept much. The room was far more austere than any commander’s office I had ever seen. Several golf bags were leaning against the wall, and I could see that a carpet putter had been hastily pushed to one side.
   He smiled genially and offered me a seat before sitting himself.
   ‘Cigarette?’
   ‘I don’t, thank you.’
   ‘Neither do I.’
   He stared at me for a moment and drummed his long fingers on the immaculately clear desk. He opened a folder in front of him and read in silence for a moment. He was reading my SO-5 file; obviously he and Analogy didn’t get on well enough to swap information between clearances.
   ‘Operative Thursday Next, eh?’ His eyes flicked across the pertinent points of my career. ‘Quite a record. Police, Crimea, rejoined the police, then moved to London in ‘75. Why was that?’
   ‘Advancement, sir.’
   Braxton Hicks grunted and continued reading.
   ‘SpecOps for eight years, twice commended. Recently loaned to SO-5. Your stay with the latter has been heavily censored, yet it says here you were wounded in action.’
   He looked over his spectacles at me.
   ‘Did you return fire?’
   ‘No.’
   ‘Good.’
   ‘I fired first.’
   ‘Not so good.’
   Braxton stroked his moustache thoughtfully.
   ‘You were Operative Grade I in the London office working on Shakespeare, no less. Very prestigious. Yet you swap that for a Grade III Operative assignment in a backwater like this. Why?’
   ‘Times change and we change with them, sir.’
   Braxton grunted and closed the file.
   ‘Here at SpecOps my responsibility is not only with the LiteraTecs, but also Art Theft, Vampirism & Lycanthropy, the ChronoGuard, Antiterrorism, Civil Order and the dog pound. Do you play golf?’
   ‘No, sir.’
   ‘Shame, shame. Where was I? Oh yes. Out of all those departments, do you know which I fear most?’
   ‘I’ve no idea, sir.’
   ‘I’ll tell you. None of them. The thing I fear most is SpecOps regional budget meetings. Do you realise what that means, Next?’
   ‘No, sir.’
   ‘It means that every time one of you puts in for extra overtime or a special request, I go over budget and it makes my head hurt right here.’
   He pointed to his left temple.
   ‘And I don’t like that. Do you understand?’
   ‘Yes, sir.’
   He picked up my file again and waved it at me.
   ‘I heard you had a spot of bother in the big city. Other operatives getting killed. It’s a whole new different alternative kettle of fish here, y’know. We crunch data for a living. If you want to arrest someone then have uniform do it. No running about shooting up bad guys, no overtime and definitely no twenty-four-hour surveillance operations. Understand?’
   ‘Yes, sir.’
   ‘Now, about Hades.’
   My heart leaped; I had thought that would have been censored, if anything.
   ‘I understand you think he is still alive?’
   I thought for a moment. My eyes flicked to the file Hicks was holding. He divined my thoughts.
   ‘Oh, that’s not in here, my dear girl. I may be a hick commander in the boonies, but I do have my sources. You think he is still alive?’
   I knew I could trust Victor and Bowden, but about Hicks I was not so sure. I didn’t think I would risk it.
   ‘A symptom of stress, sir. Hades is dead.’
   He plonked my file in the out-tray, leaned back in his chair and stroked his moustache, something he obviously enjoyed.
   ‘So you’re not here to try and find him?’

   ‘Why would Hades be in Swindon if he were alive, sir?’
   Braxton looked uneasy for a moment.
   ‘Quite, quite.’
   He smiled and stood up, indicating that the interview was at an end.
   ‘Good, well, run along. One piece of advice. Learn to play golf; you’ll find it a very rewarding and relaxing game. This is a copy of the department’s budget account and this is a list of all the local golf courses. Study them well. Good luck.’
   I went out and closed the door after me.
   The clerk looked up.
   ‘Did he mention the budget?’
   ‘I don’t think he mentioned anything else. Do you have a waste bin?’
   The clerk smiled and pushed it out with his foot. I dumped the heavy document in it unceremoniously.
   ‘Bravo,’ he said.
   As I was about to open the door to leave a short man in a blue suit came powering through without looking. He was reading a fax and knocked against me as he went straight through to Braxton’s office without a word. The clerk was watching me for my reaction.
   ‘Well, well,’ I murmured, ‘Jack Schitt.’
   ‘You know him?’
   ‘Not socially.’
   ‘As much charm as an open grave,’ said the clerk, who had obviously warmed to me since I binned the budget. ‘Steer clear of him. Goliath, you know.’
   I looked at the closed door to Braxton’s office.
   ‘What’s he here for?’
   The secretary shrugged, gave me a conspiratorial wink and said very pointedly and slowly:
   ‘I’ll get that coffee you wanted and it was two sugars, wasn’t it?’
   ‘No thanks, not for me.’
   ‘No, no,’ he replied. ‘Two sugars, TWO sugars.’
   He was pointing at the intercom on his desk.
   ‘Heavens above!’ he exploded. ‘Do I have to spell it out?’
   The penny dropped. The clerk gave a wan smile and scurried out of the door. I quickly sat down, flipped up the lever marked Two on the intercom and leaned closer to listen.
   ‘I don’t like it when you don’t knock, Mr Schitt.’
   ‘I’m devastated, Braxton. Does she know anything about Hades?’ ‘She says not.’
   ‘She’s lying. She’s here for a purpose. If I find Hades first we can get rid of her.’
   ‘Less of the we, Jack,’ said Braxton testily. ‘Please remember that I have given Goliath my full co-operation, but you are working under my jurisdiction and have only the powers that I bestow upon you. Powers that I can revoke at any time. We do this my way or not at all. Do you understand?’
   Schitt was unperturbed. He replied in a condescending manner: ‘Of course, Braxton, as long as you understand that if this thing blows up in your face the Goliath Corporation will hold you personally responsible.’
   I sat down at my empty desk again. There seemed to be a lot going on in the office that I wasn’t a part of. Bowden laid his hand on my shoulder and made me jump.
   ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t wish to startle you. Did you get the commander’s budget speech?’
   ‘And more. Jack Schitt went into his office as though he owned the place.’
   Bowden shrugged.
   ‘Since he’s Goliath, then the chances are he does.’
   Bowden picked his jacket up from the back of his chair and folded it neatly across his arm.
   ‘Where are we going?’ I asked.
   ‘Lunch, then a lead in the Chuzzlewit theft. I’ll explain on the way. Do you have a car?’
   Bowden wasn’t too impressed when he saw the multicoloured Porsche.
   ‘This is hardly what one might refer to as low profile.’
   ‘On the contrary,’ I replied, ‘who would have thought a LiteraTec would drive a car like this? Besides, I have to drive it.’
   He got in the passenger seat and looked around slightly disdainfully at the spartan interior.
   ‘Is there a problem, Miss Next? You’re staring.’
   Now that Bowden was in the passenger seat I had suddenly realised where I had seen him before. He had been the passenger when the car had appeared in front of me at the hospital. Events had indeed started to fall into place.