Jasper Fforde - The Eyre Affair

“Fate.”

There was a pause. Acheron smiled. “I always liked you, Thursday. You turned me down and, as we all know, there is nothing more seductive than resistance. I often wondered what I’d do if we met again. My star pupil, my protegee. We were nearly lovers.”

“I was never your protegee, Hades.”

He smiled again. “Have you ever wanted a new car?” he asked me quite suddenly.

I did, of course, and said so.

“How about a large house? How about two large houses? In the country. With grounds. And a Rembrandt.”

I saw what he was up to. “If you want to buy my compliance, Acheron, you have to choose the right currency.”

Acheron’s face fell. “You are strong, Thursday. Avarice works on most people.”

I was angry now. “What do you want with the Chuzzlewit manuscript, Acheron? To sell it?”

“Stealing and selling? How common,” he sneered. “I’m sorry about your two friends. Hollow-points make quite a mess, don’t they?”

We stood there facing one another. It wouldn’t be long before SO-14 were on the scene.

“On the ground,” I ordered him, “or I swear I’ll fire.”

‘Hades was suddenly a blur of movement. There was a sharp crack and I felt something pluck at my upper arm. There was a sensation of warmth and I realised with a certain detached interest that I had been shot.

“Good try, Thursday. How about with the other arm?”

Without knowing it, I had loosed off a shot in his direction. It was this that he was congratulating me on. I knew that I had thirty seconds at best before the loss of blood started to make me woozy. I transferred the automatic to my left hand and started to raise it again.

Acheron smiled admiringly. He would have continued his brutal game for as long as he could but the distant wail of police sirens hastened him into action. He shot me once in the chest and left me for dead.’

The SO-1 officials shuffled slightly as I concluded my story. They swapped looks, but I had no interest in whether they believed me or not. Hades had left me for dead but my time wasn’t yet up. The copy of Jane Eyre that Tamworth had given me had saved my life. I had placed it in my breast pocket; Hades’ slug had penetrated to the back cover but had not gone through. Broken ribs, a collapsed lung and a bruise to die for—but I had survived. It was luck, or fate, or whatever the hell you want to make of it.

‘That’s it?’ asked Flanker.

I nodded.

‘That’s it.’

It wasn’t it, of course, there was a lot more, but none of it was relevant to them. I hadn’t told them how Hades had used Filbert Snood’s death to grind me down emotionally; that was how he managed to get the first shot in.

‘That’s about all we need to know, Miss Next. You can return to SO-27 as soon as you are able. I would remind you that you are bound by the confidentiality clause you signed. A misplaced word could have very poor consequences. Is there anything you would like to add yourself?’

I took a deep breath.

‘I know a lot of this sounds far-fetched, but it is the truth. I am the first witness who has seen what Hades will do to survive. Whoever pursues him in the future must be fully aware of what he is capable of.’

Flanker leaned back in his chair. He looked at the man with the twitch, who nodded in return.

‘Academic, Miss Next.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Hades is dead. SO-14 are not complete losers despite a certain trigger-happiness. They pursued him up the M4 that night until he crashed his car by Junction twelve. It rolled down an embankment and burst into flames. We didn’t want to tell you until we’d heard your evidence.’

The news hit me squarely and hard. Revenge had been a prime emotion keeping me together over the past two weeks. Without a burning desire to see Hades punished, I might not even have made it at all. Without Acheron all my testimony would be left unproven. I hadn’t expected it all to be believed, but at least I could look forward to being vindicated when others came across him.

‘Sorry?’ I asked suddenly.

‘I said that Hades was dead.’

‘No he isn’t,’ I said without thinking.

Flanker supposed that my reaction was the effect of traumatic shock.

‘It might be difficult to come to terms with, but he is. Burned almost beyond recognition. We had to identify him by dental records. He still had Snood’s pistol with him.’

‘The Chuzzlewit manuscript?’

‘No sign—we think destroyed as well.’

I looked down. The whole operation had been a fiasco.

‘Miss Next,’ said Flanker, standing up and laying a hand on my shoulder, ‘you will be pleased to hear that none of this will be published below SO-8. You can return to your unit without a blemish on your record. There were errors, but none of us have any idea how anything might have turned out given a different set of circumstances. As for us, you won’t be seeing us again.’

He turned off the cassette recorder, wished me good health and walked out of the room. The other officers joined him, except for the man with the twitch. He waited until his colleagues were out of earshot then whispered to me:

‘I think your testimony is bullshit, Miss Next. The service can ill afford to lose the likes of Fillip Tamworth.’

‘Thank you.’

‘What for?’

‘For telling me his first name.’

The man moved to say something, thought the better of it and then left.

I got up from the table in the impromptu interview room and stared out of the window. It was warm and sunny outside and the trees swayed gently in the breeze; the world looked as though it had little room for people like Hades. I allowed the thoughts of the night to come back again. The part I hadn’t told them was about Snood.

Acheron had talked some more that night. He had indicated the tired and worn body of Snood and said:

‘Filbert asked me to say he was sorry.’

‘That’s Filbert’s father—!’ I corrected him.

‘No,’ he chuckled. ‘That was Filbert.”

I looked at Snood again. He was lying on his back with his eyes open and the likeness was unmistakable, despite the sixty-year age gap.

‘Oh my God, no! Filbert? Was that him?’

Acheron seemed to be enjoying himself.

‘“Unavoidably detained” is a ChronoGuard euphemism for a time aggregation, Thursday. I’m surprised you didn’t know that. Caught outside the here-now. Sixty years piled on to him in less than a minute. It’s little surprise he didn’t want you to see him.’

There hadn’t been any girl in Tewkesbury after all. I had heard about time dilations and temporal instabilities from my father. In the world of the Event, the Cone and the Horizon, Filbert Snood had been unavoidably detained. The tragedy of it was, he never felt he could tell me. It was then, as I hit my lowest, that Acheron had turned and fired. It was as he had planned it.

I walked slowly back to my room and sat on the bed feeling utterly dejected. Tears come easily to me when no one is about. I wept copiously for about five minutes and felt a great deal better, blew my nose noisily then switched on the television as a distraction. I rattled through the channels until I chanced across the Toad News Network. It was more about the Crimea, of course.

‘Still on the subject of the Crimea,’ announced the anchor-woman, ‘the Goliath Corporation Special Weapons Division has unveiled the latest weapon in the struggle against the Russian aggressors. It is hoped that the new Ballistic Plasma Energy Rifle—code-named ‘Stonk’—will be the decisive weapon to change the tide of the war. Our defence correspondent James Backbiter takes us through it.’