Jasper Fforde - Early Riser

‘Anyway,’ he said, clapping his hands together, ‘ready to go?’

‘No,’ I replied, making a mental note to report all this to Logan, ‘I have to repo a nightwalker and I need you to hold this train for me.’

Moody stared at me with a half-smile. Punctuality was the guiding principle to which RailTecs pledged their lives. Often, quite literally.

‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘and how would I do that?’

He knew how to delay the train; he didn’t need to ask. All we were really talking about was the price.

‘How about a Favour?’

When you urgently needed something from somebody in the Winter, the only true currency was influence. A Favour was simply general assistance – a no-quibble cash advance, parking ticket quashed, hundredweight of pasta when you were skint and a few pounds too light, that kind of thing. But even so, Moody wasn’t impressed.

‘With all due respect, Deputy Consul,’ he said, ‘a Favour from you wouldn’t buy me a pork scratching in Sector Twelve.’

I thought about being punched in the head five times.

‘A… Debt , then.’

The freightmaster raised his eyebrows. A Debt was bigger than a Favour by a factor of fifty. For a day or two you could have a Consul pretty much in your pocket.

‘You must want that Vacant pretty badly,’ he said.

‘A lot depends upon it.’

‘Okay, then,’ he said with a short snorty giggle, his demeanour changed, ‘you’ve got yourself a deal. I’ll recheck the loading; probably take me an hour.’

I thanked him, ran off to the station exit and found the taxi driver waiting for me. Comically, he had vapour rising from his bald head. Mrs Tiffen had been taken to the John Edward Jones Dormitorium, about ten minutes’ drive away.

‘That’ll be fifty euros,’ said the taxi driver when I asked him to take me there.

‘I’ll pay when we get back.’

He turned around to look at me.

‘You’re a Novice, trying to repo a Tricksy walker from a Footman in a Dormitorium out in the Scorch?’

‘Yes?’

‘You’ll pay in advance.’

I sighed, handed him a fifty, and we set off.

The smell of smoke grew stronger as we drove north out of town, and we soon entered a landscape of fire-consumed desolation. We passed carcasses of terraced houses and pit workings blackened by decades of fire, then a burned-out bandstand and abandoned cars, their bodywork rusted to a wafer. I noticed that the snow, which had blown into drifts eight foot deep in town, had gradually thinned out as we drove until there was no snow or ice at all, and the trees seemed not devoid of leaves by virtue of the Winter, but by incineration .

‘We’re in the fire valleys, aren’t we?’ I asked, a mild tremor in my voice.

‘We call it the Scorch up here.’

After five minutes of the charcoal-toned landscape, we stopped outside a Dormitorium, the only one still occupied in a clutch of seven, the rest burned out and abandoned. The John Edward Jones was higher than the others – at least forty storeys – and looked to be typically K-14: a mixed-sleep-ability Flopshop, a place where one could hibernate or nap on a budget, with staff on hand to rouse any Winterer who had slipped unthinkingly too deep into the abyss. It would have been cheap, too, out of town, and in the Scorch. I picked up the bouzouki, climbed out of the cab and was immediately struck by the warmth in the air. In Cardiff and Merthyr it had been about ten below, but here the temperature was somewhere around Low Ideal. The smoke was heavier than in Merthyr, and drifted across the road, the fumes occasionally punctuated by acrid whiffs of sulphur. As I looked around, a dead tree on the ridge-line suddenly burst into flames.

Muted chatter greeted me from the Winterlounge as I walked in. Although I couldn’t see the sleepers, I knew they were close. There is something about a Dormitorium that gives them away. The faintest smell of rotten eggs, a taste, a sound – a presence .

The lobby was lit sparingly with low-wattage bulbs, but made warm and welcoming by the orange glow from the fireplace. The portress was behind the reception desk and looked up at me with a quizzical expression as I approached. She had luxurious auburn hair, a nose with an interesting kink and was wearing spectacles.

‘Food, flop, laundry, booze, drowsy, blackjack, cage-fighting or poker?’ [30] The fire valleys, owing to a legal quirk, were not subject to gambling laws twenty days either side of the Winter. she asked, reeling off my options.

‘None,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for a Footman. Fiftyish, medium height, shabby combats. Came in here with a dead woman.’

‘What, like in a body bag or something?’

‘A nightwalker.’

‘That would make more sense,’ she said, ‘not a lot, but some. Let me guess: you want her back?’

I sighed. No one in the Winter seemed the least intimidated by a Winter Consul, nor rated my chances. Perhaps it wasn’t the uniform, but the resolve of the character inside it.

‘Yes, I want her back. Which room did you say?’

‘I didn’t. Want some advice?’

‘Does it involve leaving right now?’

‘It does.’

‘Then no thanks.’

As I pondered my next move, a man moved from the Winterlounge to the elevators, and within the soft caress of fresh-moved air I detected a faint whiff of carbolic soap. The smell of cleanliness stuck to medical professionals as yeast to a baker. If Foulnap wanted to farm Mrs Tiffen it would require extensive funding and logistical support – so he’d need a medic at the outset to confirm viability. All I had to do was to follow the medic all the way to Foulnap.

‘Listen,’ I said to the portress, ‘if I’m not down in thirty minutes, call Logan at the Mrs Nesbit’s station branch and tell him he needs a new Novice.’

‘Shall I just call him now?’

I gave her a glare that was totally wasted. She said ‘Okey-dokey’, then returned to her magazine.

I picked up the bouzouki and followed the medic into the elevator, smiled, apologised and double-clicked the button I’d seen he’d already pressed – the twenty-first floor. The doors closed and I felt my heart start to thump. I could see the man was wearing scrubs underneath his suit and he looked at me suspiciously, then at the bouzouki, which was probably the best disguise one could have. Winter Consuls don’t carry musical instruments. And even if they did, it would never be a bouzouki. A viola, maybe. Or a tuba.

‘I had an aunt who played the guitar,’ said the medic.

‘It’s not a guitar,’ I said in a calm voice, surprising myself.

He sighed deeply.

‘She wasn’t my aunt. Winterplayer?’

I thought quickly.

‘I’m accompanying a… pantomime horse act.’

‘Which end do you play?’

‘I’m the arse. Our equestrian gavotte is to die for.’

‘I’ll keep an eye out for it.’

The lift doors opened on the twenty-first floor. I trod the worn carpet behind the man in the scrubs until he stopped at a bedroom where I wished him sound napping, then continued to where the circular corridor would place me out of sight. I waited until I heard the latch click shut, then doubled back to the door to listen. There seemed to be a discussion going on inside, and to a mixture of relief and dismay, I heard Foulnap’s voice clearly.