Lost in a Good Book

home minus a leg but alive—my brother was still out there, making his way through eternity from the comfort of a military cemetery near Sevastopol.

As Landen amused himself by trying to teach Pickwick to stand on one leg, I opened another letter and read aloud:

Dear Miss Next, I am one of your biggest fans I thought you should know that David Copperfield, far from being the doe-eyed innocent he is usually portrayed as, actually murdered his first wife Dora Spenlow in order to marry Agnes Wickfield. I suggest an exhumation of Miss Spenlow’s remains and a test for botulism and/or arsenic While we are on the subject, have you ever stopped to wonder why Homer changed his mind about dogs somewhere between The Iliad and The Odyssey? Was he, perhaps, given a puppy between the two?’ Another thing do you find Joyce’s Ulysses as boring and as unintelligible as I do? And why don’t Hemingway’s works have any smells in them?

‘Seems everyone wants you to investigate their favourite book,’ observed Landen. ‘While you’re about it, can you try and get Tess acquitted and Max DeWinter convicted?’

‘Not you as well!’

‘Up, Pickwick, come on, up, up, one leg!’

Pickwick stared at Landen blankly, eyes fixed on the marshmallow he was holding and not at all interested in learning tricks.

‘You’ll need a truck-load of them, Land.’

I got up, finished my coffee and put on my jacket.

‘Have a good day,’ said Landen, seeing me to the door. ‘Be nice to the other children. No scratching or biting.’

‘I’ll behave myself. I promise.’

I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him.

‘Oh, and Landen?’

‘Yuh?’

‘Don’t forget it’s Mycroft’s retirement party this evening.’

‘I won’t.’

It was late autumn or early winter—I wasn’t sure which. It had been mild and windless; the leaves were still brown on the trees and on some days it was hardly cold at all. It had to get really chilly for me to put the hood up on my Speedster, so I drove to the SpecOps divisional HQ with the wind in my hair and WESSEX-FM blaring on the wireless. The upcoming election was the talk of the airwaves; the controversial cheese duty had suddenly become an issue in the way things do just before an election. There was a snippet about Goliath declaring itself to be ‘the world’s favourite conglomerate’ for the tenth year running, whilst in the Crimean peace talks Russia had demanded Kent as war reparations. In sport, Aubrey Jambe had led the Swindon Mallets croquet team into SuperHoop ‘85 by thrashing the Reading Whackers.

I drove through the morning traffic in Swindon and parked the Speedster at the rear of the SpecOps HQ. The building was of a brusque no-nonsense Germanic design, hastily erected during the occupation; the facade still bore battle scars from Swindon’s liberation in 1949. It housed most of the SpecOps divisions, but not all. Our Vampire Disposal Operation also encompassed Reading and Salisbury and in return Salisbury’s Art Theft division looked after our area as well. It all seemed to work quite well.

‘Hello!’ I said to a young man who was taking a cardboard box out of the boot of his car. ‘New assignment?’

‘Er, yes,’ replied the young man, putting down his box for a moment to offer me his hand.

‘John Smith—Weeds & Seeds.’

‘Unusual name,’ I said, shaking his hand. ‘I’m Thursday Next.’

‘Oh!’ he said, looking at me with interest.

‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘that Thursday Next. Weeds & Seeds?’

‘Domestic Horticulture Enforcement Agency,’ explained John. ‘SO-32. I’m starting an office here. There’s been a rise in the number of hackers just recently. The Pampas Grass Vigilante Squad are becoming more brazen in their activities; pampas grass might well be an eyesore, but there’s nothing illegal in it.’

We showed our ID cards to the desk sergeant and walked up the stairs to the second floor.

‘I heard something about that,’ I murmured. ‘Any links to the Anti-Leylandii Association?’

‘Nothing positive,’ replied Smith, ‘but I’m following all leads.’

‘How many in your squad?’

‘Including me—one.’ Smith grinned. ‘Thought you were the most underfunded department in SpecOps? Think again. I’ve got six months to sort out the hackers, get the Japanese knotweed under control and find an acceptable plural form of narcissus.’

We reached the upstairs corridor.

‘I wish you luck.’

He thanked me and I left him to unpack in his small office, which had once been home to the SO-31 Good Taste Education Authority. The division had been disbanded a month earlier when the proposed legislation against stone cladding, pictures of crying clowns and floral-patterned carpets failed in the Upper House.

I was just walking past the office of SO-14 when I heard a shrill voice.

‘Thursday! Thursday, yoo-hoo! Over here!’

I sighed. It was Cordelia Flakk. She quickly caught up with me and gave me an affectionate hug.

‘The Lush show was a disaster!’ I told her ‘You said it was no holds barred! I ended up talking about dodos, my car and anything but Jane Eyre!’

‘You were terrific!’ she enthused. ‘I’ve got you lined up for another set of interviews the day after tomorrow.’

‘No more, Cordelia.’

She looked at me in a crestfallen manner.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘What part of no more don’t you understand?’

‘Don’t be like that, Thursday,’ she replied, beaming in an attempt to bring me round. ‘You’re good PR and, believe me, in an institution that routinely leaves the public perforated, confused, old before their time or, if they’re lucky, dead, we need every bit of good PR we can muster.’

‘Do we do that much damage to the public?’ I asked.

Flakk smiled modestly.

‘Perhaps my PR is not so bad after all,’ she conceded, then added quickly: ‘But every Joe that gets trounced in a crossfire is one too many.’

‘That’s as may be,’ I retorted, ‘but the fact remains that I’m done with SpecOps PR.’

Flakk seemed flustered, hopped up and down for a bit, pulled pleading expressions, wrung her hands, puffed out her cheeks and stared at the ceiling.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘Well, we ran a competition.’

‘What sort of competition?’ I asked suspiciously.

‘We thought it would be a good idea if you met a few members of the public on a one-to-one basis.’

‘Did we. Now listen, Cordelia—’

‘Dilly, Thursday, since we’re pals.’

She sensed my reticence and added:

‘Cords, then. Or Delia. How about Flakky? I used to be called Flik-Flak at school. Can I call you Thurs?’

‘Cordelia!’ I said in a harsher tone, before she ingratiated herself to death. ‘I’m not going to do this! You said the Lush interview would be the last and it is.’

I started to walk away, but when God was handing out insistence Cordelia Flakk was at the head of the queue.

‘Thursday, this hurts me really personally when you’re like this. It attacks me right… right, er, here.’

She made a wild guess at where she thought her heart might be and looked at me with a pained expression