Doughnut Read online

  Matasuntha cleared her throat loudly; Call-me-Bill looked up and noticed Theo for the first time. He froze for a moment, hedgehog-in-headlights fashion, then smiled and said, “Hi.”

  “Um,” Theo said. “Is there anything—?”

  “No, everything’s under control, thanks.” Call-me-Bill lifted the arm so that Matasuntha could fasten the bandage with a safety pin. “One of our guests has been in the wars a bit. You’ve met Mr Nordstrom, haven’t you?”

  “Um.”

  Mr Nordstrom lifted his head a little, groaned, “Good evening”, and appeared to pass out. Theo tried to reply, but all that came out was a tiny squeak.

  “Poor fellow slipped and cut himself on the bottle he was carrying,” Call-me-Bill said. “Still, no harm done. He’ll be right as rain in no time.”

  The pool of blood on the floor was half a metre square. “Ah,” Theo said. “That’s all right, then. Are you sure there’s nothing I can—?”

  “No, no, we’re fine, you go on back upstairs and have a good rest.” Call-me-Bill lifted his bright red hands and looked round for something to wipe them on. Matasuntha obliged with a towel. “Remember, breakfast’s at seven to ten thirty in the kitchen. You know where that is, don’t you? If not, ask Mattie, she’ll show you the way.” Matasuntha nodded and smiled brightly; she had blood on her cheek, like minimalist war paint.

  “Right,” Theo said. “I’ll, um—”

  “Yes, that’s the ticket.” All three of them were looking at him, not moving, clearly waiting for him to go away. “See you in the morning.”

  “Sweet dreams,” Matasuntha said, and the woman he didn’t know gave him what, if a smile was a sandwich, would have been the filling. He backed away towards the door he’d just come through. Mr Nordstrom came round and groaned, but they didn’t seem to have noticed. It was as though they were trying to push him through the door using only their eyes.

  Theo could take a hint, particularly when bludgeoned round the head with it. He turned, pushed the door open, and walked through it. Then he stopped and held perfectly still.

  “Right,” he heard Call-me-Bill snap, “on three. Mattie, get his feet. Dora, you got his head? Ready? One, two—”

  Another horrible groan, then Call-me-Bill said, “It’s all right, nearly there”, followed by loud shuffling noises and the sound of a chair being knocked over. “Steady,” Call-me-Bill warned someone. “And for crying out loud, somebody clear up that glass.”

  More shuffling; then Theo heard Mr Nordstrom moaning, “It was supposed to be Paris and it was Hanoi, didn’t stand a chance,” before Matasuntha cut him short with, “It’s all right, we’ve got you,” and someone kicked open a door.

  Theo went up to his room, shut the door, looked to see if there was a lock or a bolt (there wasn’t) and dragged the chair across to wedge under the handle. He wasn’t a doctor (well, he was, but not of medicine), but he had an idea that it’s gone straight through and out the other side, and it’s missed the bone wasn’t how you described an injury from a splinter of broken glass. Also, he remembered, now that he came to think of it, there hadn’t been any kind of a stain on the carpet where the fragments of broken bottle lay, which suggested to him that the bottle had been empty. But, then, around here weren’t they all?

  Gunshot wounds, he recalled suddenly, had to be reported to the police, by law; but not nasty nicks you got off smashed bottles. That, he told himself, could well be part of an explanation that might eventually make some sort of sense. Paris and Hanoi, on the other hand, were beyond him entirely.

  Clove of garlic, he thought. Even if Mr Nordstrom had got himself shot up in the course of some illegal activity, and Call-me-Bill, Matasuntha and the unidentified woman were in it up to their necks, it was still nothing at all to do with him. That, evidently, was how they wanted him to see it, he was only too happy to indulge them, and, really, there was nothing else to say on the subject. He glanced at his watch; three minutes past six. A little earlier than his usual bedtime, but it had been a rather wearing day, one way or another. He groped on the floor for the plastic carrier bag that held all his earthly possessions and found his copy of Greenidge and Chen’s Macrodimensional Field Inversion Dynamics; ten times more effective than Nembutal, safe and reusable. He read five pages and fell asleep.

  He sat up. It was pitch dark. Someone was sitting on the end of the bed.

  “Who’s there?” he said.

  A light flared, and lit up a head. It had bright red skin, pointed Spock ears, a flat stub of a nose, shrunken cheeks, yellow eyes and no hair at all. It grinned, revealing a mouthful of needle-sharp cats’ teeth.

  “Max?”

  He had no idea why he’d said that. The head sighed. “Do I look even remotely like your dear departed brother?” it said wearily.

  “No.”

  “Well, then.” The light grew brighter, and under the head he saw a squat, short body with long arms, sitting cross-legged an inch or so from his feet. It was wearing some kind of body armour made of overlapping steel scales, and its huge feet were bare, revealing claws instead of toenails. “Looks like I’m not him, then.”

  It was also holding a brown manila envelope. Theo felt an urge to grab at it, but the presence of the whatever-it-was appeared to have paralysed him, so he mumbled, “Give me that,” in a high, squeaky voice instead.

  “In a minute,” the goblin replied. It looked at him, as though expecting something of him; then it sighed. “You were reading,” it said. “Yes?”

  Theo could feel the corner of Greenidge and Chen’s Macrodimensional Field Inversion Dynamics digging into his side. “Yes. Yes, I was.”

  “And you fell asleep.”

  “Yes?”

  The goblin clicked its tongue, which was brown and forked at the tip. “You had the bedside light on.”

  “I suppose so.”

  The goblin pulled an oh-for-crying-out-loud face. “The bedside light is off,” he said, with exaggerated patience. “What does this tell you?”

  Theo stared at him. “You turned it off?”

  The goblin held up one hand. Claws, an inch long and twisted into spirals, in place of fingernails. “You seriously think I can manipulate a fiddly little switch with these? Oh come on.”

  A tiny scrap of scientific method, left behind from his previous existence, supplied the answer. “This is a dream. I’m dreaming.”

  The goblin put down the envelope and clapped its hands slowly four times. “Like British Airways,” he said. “It was long and traumatic, but we got there in the end. Yes, this is a dream. I am not real. All right?”

  Theo nodded. He could move again. “Hold on,” he said. “If I’m dreaming, how come I know I’m—?”

  The goblin scowled at him. “You just do, all right?” He picked up the manila envelope and tapped it with a claw. “This is good stuff, you know? Impressive.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Of course, you’ve forgotten to compensate for Heisenberg,” it went on, “and here” – it stabbed at the paper with a claw – “you’ve written a three, but your writing’s so bad you subsequently read it as an eight, so your calculations from that point on are garbage; a careless mistake, and quite typical, I might add, you really must do something about your slapdash attitude to details. Apart from that, though,” it concluded with a nod, “not bad at all.”

  Theo blinked. Heisenberg, of course. And the misread 3 would explain why the last few lines had felt a little strained. “You’re my subconscious,” he said. “Really it’s me figuring out what I did wrong.”

  The goblin shrugged. “If you say so,” it said. “You’re the doctor, as the expression goes.” It put the envelope down on the bed and crossed its arms. “What are we going to do with you, I wonder?”

  “You sound like my mother.”

  For some reason, that made the goblin grin broadly. “A word of warning. From,” it added with a snicker, “your subconscious. Watch yourself.”

  “Excuse me?”

>   The goblin bent forward a little. “These people,” it said, “are not what they seem.”

  Theo laughed. “You don’t say.”

  He’d offended the goblin. It gave him a cold look. “All right, Mister Know-It-All, since you’re so very clever, I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions from your extensive and accurate observations. Just don’t come whinneting to me if it all ends in tears.”

  “Sorry,” Theo said, and then he stopped dead. “Whinneting?”

  “Whining,” the goblin explained. “Complaining in a pitiful manner.”

  “Yes, I know. It was one of Max’s words.”

  “Ah yes, so it was.” The goblin shrugged. “Let’s see. The embodiment of your subconscious mind seeks to give you sage advice, such as a caring elder brother might—”

  “Max never gave a damn about me. Or anyone except himself.”

  The goblin nodded. “True. Anyway, we’re drifting off topic. You want to be on your guard around these people. They’re up to something.”

  “All due respect,” Theo said carefully, “but I’d sort of gathered. What are they up to, do you know?”

  “Me? I’m just your—”

  “Pretend you aren’t,” Theo said firmly.

  “Ah, well, in that case,” the goblin said, “I’d draw your attention to the bottles, in particular the one left to you by Pieter van Goyen. Once you’ve got inside—”

  There was a loud crash, and the goblin vanished. Theo sat bolt upright, and saw Call-me-Bill standing in the doorway, framed by the splintered wreckage of the door.

  “Sorry if I startled you,” Call-me-Bill said, with a pleasant smile. “Door must’ve been a bit sticky.” He stepped over the shattered remains of the chair Theo had jammed the door closed with, looked down at it and shrugged. “Just thought I’d remind you, it’s ten fifteen and breakfast finishes at ten thirty. Of course, I’m sure we could rustle you up an omelette or something if you want a lie in, but—”

  “No,” Theo said. “No, that’s fine. I—”

  “And when you’ve had breakfast,” Call-me Bill went on, “if you could see your way to doing an hour on the desk, that’d be grand. Cheers, then.”

  He smiled again and withdrew, and Theo vaulted off the bed, noticing in passing that the bedside light was on. He scrabbled in his carrier bag for his comb and dragged it through his hair, then shook the bag out on the floor searching for his razor. He shaved quickly and brutally, and was heading for the door when he saw the brown manila envelope lying on the bed, where he hadn’t left it the night before.

  He spent his hour on the desk in perfect isolation, which suited him just fine, since it gave him exactly the time he needed to fix the mistakes in his calculations that the dream-goblin had so thoughtfully pointed out. When he reached the last line, he paused. Leaving an armed bomb lying around isn’t the smartest thing a person can do, even if it’s lying around in a pocket, or hidden under a pillow, or sealed in a concrete silo at the bottom of the sea. At least two of the people in this hotel had taken a lively interest in his brown manila envelope, and he wasn’t sure their motives were unimpeachably good. However, unless they were top-flight mathematicians, the incomplete formula would be useless to them. He, on the other hand, could solve the last line in a minute or so. He put the pencil and the envelope in his pocket.

  No sooner had he done so than Matasuntha came in through the front door, holding a pair of secateurs. “Morning,” she said. “Sleep OK?”

  “How is he?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Mr Nordstrom.”

  “Oh, he’s fine, I expect. I haven’t seen him since last evening. Had breakfast?”

  “Yes. Look, what exactly—?”

  “What did you have?”

  “Slice of toast and a coffee. What exactly happened last night? It looked like he’d been—”

  “Just a slice of toast? That’s not enough. You should try the scrambled eggs with smoked salmon and oregano.”

  Fine. “Tomorrow,” he said. “I overslept this morning. Mr, um, Negative had to come and wake me up.”

  She nodded. “He’s very good about that,” she said.

  “He didn’t seem to mind, but I don’t know if he was being sarcastic.”

  “Oh, Bill’s not like that. Quite easy-going. Really, this isn’t a bad place to work, you know.”

  He smiled at her. “You must’ve been up bright and early.”

  “No, I—What makes you say that?”

  “Well.” He looked at her. “Last night this carpet was absolutely soaked in blood, there was a great pool of it right here, where I’m sitting. And now there’s not a trace of it. I assumed you’d been up at dawn with the carpet shampoo.”

  Just for a moment, a look of furious hatred shot across her face, like share prices on a ticker-tape machine. Then it was gone, leaving behind the unruffled surface of her smile. “We have cleaners for that sort of thing,” she said. “And there wasn’t very much blood. Mr Nordstrom slipped and cut himself when the bottle he was holding broke. Just a little nick, that was all. No big drama.”

  “Ah.” Theo nodded. “That’s all right, then. Presumably I imagined all the blood.”

  “Presumably.” She put the secateurs down on the desk. “Well,” she said, “I expect you need a break. I’ll cover for you for a bit.”

  It wasn’t a suggestion, more like an order. “Thanks, but I’m fine.”

  “Really, it’s no trouble. Why not drop by the kitchen and have a coffee and a doughnut? They’re very good.”

  He looked at her. A firing squad would’ve been friendlier. “That’s extremely kind of you,” he said, “but honestly, I’m fine. I don’t want to give a bad impression if Mr Negative comes by.”

  “He won’t mind. Trust me.”

  The last thing in the world he was prepared to do. On the other hand, he didn’t really want to force the issue any further, and she had a grimly determined look in her eye that suggested physical force was definitely an option. “Thanks,” he said, and stood up. “I’ll do the same for you some time.”

  She smiled, surged past him and sat in the chair. “Or if you don’t like doughnuts,” she said, “there’s always the apple turnovers.”

  He nodded. “I’ll bear that in mind,” he said, and withdrew.

  The hell with it, he thought, as he finished his coffee in the deserted kitchen. Pieter’s bottle.

  He’d found a cup laid out for him on the kitchen table, along with a plate of doughnuts and another of apple turnovers. The coffee was freshly made, with milk, sugar and cream all within arm’s reach. Who the hell had put them there he had no idea.

  Pieter sent me here, he told himself; and Pieter was my old tutor and my friend. He fixed me up with this – he paused to clarify his thoughts – this extremely strange but basically not-too-bad job, and he left me the bottle. Oh yes, and it was supposed to be fun. Dangerous (Mr Nordstrom weltering in blood on the lobby floor) but a good laugh nevertheless. All right. Enough of the fooling around. Let’s do it.

  Down the long staircase, therefore, to the wine cellar. He turned on the light, and saw that the entire floor had been carefully swept, so that not a speck of dust remained anywhere. He thought about that for a while, then shrugged and put it out of his mind. His bottle was exactly where he’d left it, label uppermost, as far as he could tell untouched. He lifted it out, pocketed it and swiftly withdrew, taking care to turn out the light.

  He went back to his room, to find the door had been replaced (not repaired; the paint was dry) and he had a new chair, of the same pattern but a slightly lighter colour wood. Wedging it under the handle didn’t inspire quite the same level of confidence as it had done previously, but it was the best he could do. He sat down on the bed, put the bottle on the pillow and took out the manila envelope. Zero hour.

  Presumably his subconscious mind had been chewing over the last line of the calculation while his conscious mind had been occupied with fending off Matasuntha and fretting
itself stupid with vanishing bloodstains and similar trivia; he sailed through it with contemptuous ease, and there it suddenly was, on the paper in front of him, in his own abysmal handwriting. The formula; the key; the bomb. He stared at it, the way you sometimes stare at a familiar word that’s suddenly stopped making sense. Then, with a sort of well-here-goes-nothing shrug, he picked up the bottle and carefully measured its length and width with his trusty Vernier caliper.

  Well now, he said to himself, as he wrote the numbers and symbols out again; if H = 30.17 and D = 8.72, then according to the formula –

  PART TWO

  Message In A Bottle

  He was standing under the broad canopy of a beech tree. It was a sensible place to be, because it offered the only shade for miles around, the sky was blue and the sun was very hot. He was surrounded on all sides by an ocean of ripe grain – wheat or barley, he couldn’t be sure and he didn’t really give a damn. He was holding the bottle in his right hand, which was visible. The clothes he was wearing were quite definitely not the ones he’d had on a moment or so before; in fact, he couldn’t remember ever having seen them, or anything like them, except on the covers of the sort of books he didn’t read; books with dragons and elves and heroes with swords and people whose names were split up with unexplained apostrophes. Not in Kansas any more. Um. So far, the only sound had been the jabbering of song thrushes and the distant cawing of rooks. Now he heard, far away and intermittent, the vaguely comforting drone of an aircraft. He looked up, and saw a white vapour trail, marking the passage of an airliner. He found it reassuring, because they don’t have scheduled passenger services in those books he didn’t read; therefore, normality still prevailed somewhere, even if it was only at twenty thousand feet above sea level. Then the airliner changed course.