It was the morning following Evade the Question Time and I had slept badly, waking up before Friday, which was unusual. I stared at the ceiling and thought about Kaine. I'd have to follow him to his next public engagement before he discovered that I had returned. I was just thinking about why Joffy and I had nearly been sucked into the whole Yorrick circus when Friday awoke and blinked at me in a breakfast sort of way. I dressed quickly and took him downstairs.
'Welcome to Swindon Breakfast with Toad' announced the TV presenter as we walked in, 'with myself, Warwick Fridge, and the lovely Leigh Onzolent—'
'Hello—'
'—bringing you two hours of news and views, fun and competitions to see you into the day. Breakfast with Toad is sponsored by Arkwright's Doorknobs, the finest door furniture in Wessex.'
Warwick turned to Leigh, who was looking way too glamorous for eight in the morning. She smiled and continued:
'This morning we'll be speaking to croquet captain Roger Kapok about Swindon's chances in Superhoop '88, and also to a man who claims to have seen unicorns in a near death experience. Network Toad's resident dodo whisperer will be on hand for your pet's psychiatric problems and our Othello backwards-reading competition reaches the quarter-finals. Later on we talk to Mr Joffy Next about tomorrow's potential resurrection with St Zvlkx, but first, the news. The CEO of Goliath has announced contrition targets to be attainable within—'
'Morning, daughter,' said my mother, who had just walked into the kitchen, 'I never thought of you as an early riser.'
'I wasn't until Junior turned up,' I replied, pointing at Friday, who was eyeing the porridge pot expectantly, 'but if there's one thing he knows how to do, it's eat.'
'It's what you did best when you were his age. Oh,' added my mother absently, 'I have to give you something, by the way.'
She hurried from the room and returned with a sheath of official-looking papers.
'Mr Hicks left them for you.'
Braxton Hicks was my old boss back at Swindon SpecOps. I had left abruptly, and from the look of his opening letter it didn't look as if he was very happy about it. I had been demoted to 'Literary Detective Researcher', and the letter demanded my gun and badge back. The second letter was an outstanding warrant of arrest relating to a trumped-up charge of possession of a small amount of illegally owned bootleg cheese.
'Is cheese still overpriced?' I asked my mother.
'Criminal!' she muttered. 'Over five hundred per cent duty. And it's not just cheese, either. They've extended the duty to cover all dairy products — even yogurt.'
I sighed. I would probably have to go into SpecOps and explain myself. I could beg forgiveness, go to the stressperts and plead post-traumatic stress disorder or Xplkqulkiccasia or something and ask for my old job back. Perhaps if I were to get handy with a nine iron it might swing things with my golf-mad boss. Outside SpecOps was not a good place to be if I wanted to hunt Yorrick Kaine or lobby the ChronoGuard for my husband back; it would help to have access to all the SpecOps and police databases.
I looked through the papers. I had apparently been found guilty of the cheese transgression and fined ?5,000 plus costs.
'Did you pay this?' I asked my mother, showing her the court demand.
'Yes.'
'Then I should pay you back.'
'No need,' she replied, adding before I could thank her: 'I paid it out of your overdraft — which is quite big, now.'
'How . . . thoughtful of you.'
'Don't mention it. Bacon and eggs?'
'Please.'
'Coming up. Would you get the milk?'
I went to the front door to fetch the milk and as I bent down to pick it up there was a whang-thop noise as a bullet zipped past my ear and thudded into the door frame next to me. I was about to slam the door and grab my automatic when an unaccountable stillness took hold, like a sudden becalming. Above me a pigeon hung frozen in the air, its wingtip feathers splayed as it reached the bottom of a downstroke. A motorcyclist on the road was balancing, impossibly still, and passers-by were now as stiff and unmoving as statues — even Pickwick had stopped in mid-waddle. Time, for the moment at least, had frozen. I knew only one person who had a face that could stop the clock like this — my father. The question was — where was he?
I looked up and down the road. Nothing. Since I was about to be assassinated I thought it might help to know who was doing the assassinating, so I walked down the garden path and across the road to the alley where de Floss had hidden himself so badly the previous day. It was here that I found my father looking at a small and very pretty blonde woman no more than five foot high who was time-frozen halfway through the process of disassembling a sniper's rifle. She was probably in her late twenties and her hair was pulled back into a ponytail held tight with a flower hair tie. I noted with a certain detached amusement that there was a lucky gonk attached to the trigger guard and that the stock was covered with pink fur. Dad looked younger than me but he was instantly recognisable. The odd nature of the time business tended to make operatives live nonlinear lives — every time I met him he was a different age.
'Hello, Dad.'
'You were correct,' he said, comparing the woman's frozen features with those on a series of photographs, 'it's an assassin all right.'
'Never mind that for the moment!' I cried happily. 'How are you? I haven't seen you for years!'
He turned and stared at me.
'My dear girl, we spoke only a few hours ago!'
'No we didn't.'
'We did, actually.'
'We did not.'
He stared at me for a moment and looked at his watch, shook it and listened to it, then shook it again.
'Here,' I said, handing him the chronograph I was wearing, 'take mine.'
'Very nice — thank you. Ah! I stand corrected. Three hours from now. It's an easy mistake to make. Did you have any thoughts about that matter we discussed?'
'No, Dad,' I said in an exasperated tone, 'it hasn't happened yet, remember?'
'You're always so linear,' he muttered, returning to comparing the pictures with the assassin. 'I think you ought to try and expand your horizons a bit — bingo!'
He had found a picture that matched my assassin and read the label on the back.
'Expensive hit-woman working in the Wiltshire—Oxford area. Looks petite and bijou but is as deadly as the best of them. She trades under the name the Windowmaker.' He paused. 'Should be Widowmaker, shouldn't it?'
'But I heard the Windowmaker was lethal,' I pointed out. 'A contract with her and you're deader than corduroy.'
'I heard that too,' replied my father thoughtfully. 'Sixty-seven victims; sixty-eight if she was the one that did Samuel Pring. She must have meant to miss. It's the only explanation. In any event, her real name is Cindy Stoker.'
This was unexpected. Cindy was married to Spike Stoker, an operative over at SO-17 whom I had worked with a couple of times. I had even given him advice on how best to tell Cindy that he hunted down werewolves for a living — not the choicest profession for a potential husband.