‘You don’t have much fear of Goliath, do you, darling?’ Landen asked.
I shrugged.
‘Goliath is nothing more than a bully, Land. Stand up to them and they’ll soon scurry away. All that large car and henchman stuff—it’s for frighteners. But I’m kind of intrigued as to how they knew we would be here.’
Landen shrugged.
‘Cheese or ham?’ [11]
‘What?’
‘I said: “Cheese or ham?’
‘Not you.’
Landen looked around. We were about the only people within a hundred-yard radius.
‘Who, then?’
‘Snell.’
‘Who?’
‘Snell!’ I yelled out loud. ‘Is that you?’ [12]
‘I didn’t!’ [13]
‘Prosecution? Who?’ [14]
‘Thursday,’ said Landen, now slightly worried, ‘what the hell’s going on?’
‘I’m talking to my lawyer.’
‘What have you done wrong?’
‘I’m not sure.’
Landen threw his hands up in the air and I addressed Snell again.
‘Can you tell me the charge I’m facing at the very least?’ [15]
I sighed.
‘She’s not married, apparently.’ [16]
‘Snell! Wait! Snell? Snell—!’
But he had gone. Landen was staring at me.
‘How long have you been like this, darling?’
‘I’m fine, Land. But something weird is going on. Can we drop it for the moment?’
Landen looked at me, then at the clear blue sky, and then at the cheese he was still holding
‘Cheese or ham?’ he said at last.
‘Both—but go easy on the cheese; this is a very limited supply.’
‘Where did you find it?’ asked Landen, looking at the anonymously wrapped block suspiciously.
‘From Joe Martlet at the Cheese Squad. They intercept about twelve tons a week coming over the Welsh border. It seems a shame to burn it so everyone at SpecOps gets a pound or two. You know what they say: “Cops have the best cheese”.’
‘Goodbye, Thursday,’ muttered Landen, looking at the ham.
‘Are you going somewhere?’ I replied, unsure of what he meant.
‘Me? No. Why?’
‘You just said “goodbye”.’
He laughed. ‘No. I was commenting on the ham. It’s a good buy.’
‘Oh.’
He cut me a slice and put it with the cheese in a sandwich, then made one for himself. In the distance a mammoth trumpeted as it made heavy weather of the escarpment, and I took a bite.
‘It’s farewell and so long, Thursday.’
‘Are you doing this on purpose?’
‘Doing what? Isn’t that Major Tony Fairwelle and your old school chum Sue Long over there?’
I turned to where Landen was pointing. It was Tony and Sue, and they waved cheerily before walking across to say hello.
‘Goodness!’ said Tony when they had seated themselves ‘Looks like the regimental get-together is early this year! Remember Sarah Nara, who lost an ear at Bilohirsk? I just met her in the carpark; quite a coincidence.’
As he said the word my heart missed a beat. I rummaged in my pocket for the entroposcope Mycroft had given me.
‘What’s the matter, Thurs?’ asked Landen. ‘You’re looking kind of… odd.’
‘I’m checking for coincidences,’ I muttered, shaking the jam jar of mixed lentils and rice. ‘It’s not as stupid as it sounds.’
The two pulses had gathered in a sort of swirly pattern. Entropy was decreasing by the second.
‘We’re out of here,’ I said to Landen, who looked at me quizzically. ‘Let’s go. Leave the things.’
‘What’s the problem, Thurs?’
‘I’ve just spotted my old croquet captain, Alf Widdershaine. This is Sue Long and Tony Fairwelle; they just saw Sarah Nara—see a pattern emerging?’
‘Thursday!’ Landen sighed. ‘Aren’t you being a little—’
‘Want me to prove it? Excuse me!’ I said, shouting to a passer-by. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Bonnie,’ she said, ‘Bonnie Voige. Why?’
‘See?’
‘Voige is not a rare name, Thurs. There are probably hundreds of them up here.’
‘All right, smarty-pants, you try.’
‘I will,’ replied Landen indignantly, heaving himself to his feet. ‘Excuse me!’
A young woman stopped and Landen asked her name.
‘Violet,’ she replied.
‘You see?’ said Landen. ‘There’s nothing—’
‘Violet De’ath,’ continued the woman. I shook the entroposcope again—the lentils and rice had separated almost entirely.
I clapped my hands impatiently. Tony and Sue looked perturbed but got to their feet nonetheless.
‘Everybody! Let’s go!’ I shouted.
‘But the cheese—!’
‘Bugger the cheese, Landen. Trust me—please!’
They all grudgingly joined me, confused and annoyed by my strange behaviour. Their minds changed when, following a short whooshing noise, a large and very heavy Hispano-Suiza motor-car landed on the freshly vacated picnic blanket with a teeth jarring thump that shook the ground and knocked us to our knees. We were showered with soil, pebbles and a grassy sod or two as the vast phaeton-bodied automobile sunk itself into the soft earth, the fine bespoke body bursting at the seams as the massive chassis twisted with the impact. One of the spoked wheels broke free and whistled past my head as the heavy engine, torn from its rubber mounting blocks, ripped through the polished bonnet and landed at our feet with a heavy thud. There was silence for a moment as we all stood up, brushed ourselves off and checked for any damage. Landen had cut his hand on a piece of twisted wing mirror but apart from that—miraculously, it seemed—no one had been hurt. The huge motor-car had landed so perfectly on the picnic that the blanket, Thermos, basket, food—everything, in fact—had disappeared from sight. In the deathly hush that followed, everyone in the small group was staring—not at the twisted wreck of the car, but at me, their mouths open. I stared back, then looked slowly upward to where a large airship freighter was still flying, minus a couple of tons of freight, on to the North and—one presumes—a lengthy stop for an accident inquiry. I shook the entroposcope and the random clumping pattern returned.
‘Danger’s passed,’ I announced.
‘You haven’t changed, Thursday Next!’ said Sue angrily. ‘Whenever you’re about something dangerously other walks with you. There’s a reason I didn’t keep in contact after school, you know—Weirdbird! Tony, we’re leaving.’
Landen and I stood and watched them go. He put his arm round me.
‘Weirdbird?’ he asked.
‘They used to call me that at school,’ I told him. ‘It’s the price for being different.’
‘You got a bargain. I would have paid double that to be different. Come on, let’s skedaddle.’
We slipped quietly away as a crowd gathered around the twisted automobile, the incident generating all manner of ‘instant experts’ who all had theories on why an airship should jettison a car. So to a background muttering of ‘Needed more lift’ and ‘Golly, that was close’ we crept away and sat in my car.
‘That’s not something you see very often,’ murmured Landen after a pause. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I don’t know, Land. There are a few too many coincidences around at present—I think someone’s trying to kill me.’
‘I love it when you’re being weird, darling, but don’t you think you are taking this a little too far? Even if you could drop a car from a freighter, no one could hope to hit a picnic blanket from five thousand feet. Think about it, Thurs—it makes no sense at all. Who would do something like this anyway?’
14
‘Why, Hopkins, you idiot! You pretty much confessed there and then on your own doorstep. This is going to really screw things up for us. Don’t speak to
15
‘No time. I’ll speak to you before we go into court. Remember don’t talk to