Something rotten

'No.'

'Charming place. That's where Trafford — my husband — and I met. He was with his gun bearers hacking his way through the undergrowth during the backstory to Bradshaw Hunts Big Game (Collins, 1878, 4/6d, illustrated) and he slipped from the path and fell twenty feet into the ravine below where I was taking a bath.'

She picked Friday up in her massive arms and he chortled with delight.

'Well, I was most dreadfully embarrassed. I mean, I was sitting there in the running water without a stitch on, but — and I'll always remember this — Trafford politely apologised and turned his back so I could nip into the bushes and get dressed. I came out to ask him if he might want directions back to civilisation — Africa was quite unexplored then, you know — and we got to chatting. Well, one thing led to another and before I knew it he had asked me out to dinner. We've been together ever since. Does that sound silly to you?'

Emma thought about how her relationship with Admiral Lord Nelson was lampooned mercilessly in the press.

'No, I think that sounds really quite romantic.'

'Right,' I said, clapping my hands, 'I'll be back at three. Don't go out and if anyone calls, get Hamlet or Emma to answer the door. Okay?'

'Certainly,' replied Melanie, 'don't go out, don't answer the door. Simple.'

'And no swinging on the curtains or lamp fixtures — they won't stand it.'

'Are you saying I'm a bit large?'

'Not at all,' I replied hastily, 'things are just different in the real world. There is lots of fruit in the bowl and fresh bananas in the refrigerator. Okay?'

'No problemo. Have a nice day.'

I drove into town and, avoiding several newspapermen who were still eager to interview me, entered the SpecOps building, which I noted had been freshly repainted since my last visit. It looked a bit more cheery in mauve, but not much.

'Agent Next?' said a young and extremely keen SO-14 agent in a well-starched black outfit, complete with Kevlar vest, combat boots and highly visible weaponry.

'Yes?'

He saluted.

'My name is Major Drabb, SO-14. I understand you have been assigned to us to track down more of this pernicious Danish literature.'

He was so keen to fulfil his duties I felt chilled. To his credit he would be as enthusiastic helping flood victims; he was just following orders unquestioningly. Worse acts than destroying Danish literature had been perpetrated by men like this. Luckily, I was prepared.

'Good to see you, Major. I had a tip-off that this address might hold a few copies of the banned books.'

I passed him a scrap of paper and he read it eagerly.

'The Albert Schweitzer Memorial Library? We'll be on to it right away.'

And he saluted smartly once again, turned on his heel and was gone.

I made my way up to the LiteraTecs' office and found Bowden in the process of packing Karen Blixen's various collections of stories into a cardboard box.

'Hi!' he said, tying up the box with string. 'How are things with you?'

'Pretty good. I'm back at work.'

Bowden smiled, put down the scissors and string and shook my hand.

'That's very good news indeed! Heard the latest? Daphne Farquitt has been added to the list of banned Danish writers.'

'But . . . Farquitt isn't Danish!'

'Her father's name was Farquittsen, so it's Danish enough for Kaine and his idiots.'

It was an interesting development. Farquitt's books were pretty dreadful but burning was still a step too far. Just.

'Have you found a way to get all these banned books out of England?' asked Bowden, running some tape across a box of Out of Africas. 'With Farquitt's books and all the rest of the stuff that's coming in, I think we'll need closer to ten trucks.'

'It's certainly on my mind,' I replied, having not done anything about it at all.

'Excellent! We'd like to take a convoy through as soon as you give the word. Now, what do you want me to brief you on first? The latest Capulet versus Montague drive-by shooting or which authors are next up for a random dope test?'

'Neither,' I replied. 'Tell me everything you know about cloned Shakespeares.'

'We've had to put that on 'low priority'. It's intriguing, to be sure, but ultimately pointless from a law-and- order point of view — anyone involved in their sequencing will be too dead or too old to go for trial.'

'It's more of a BookWorld thing,' I responded, 'but important, I promise.'

'Well, in that case,' began Bowden, who knew me too well to think I'd waste his time or my own, 'we have three Shakespeares on the slab at the moment, all aged between fifty and sixty — put those Hans Christian Andersen books in that box, would you? If they were cloned it was way back in the poorly regulated days of the thirties, when there was all sorts of nonsense going on, when people thought they could engineer Olympic runners with four legs, swimmers with real fins, that sort of thing. I've had a brief trawl through the records. The first confirmed WillClone surfaced in 1952 with the accidental shooting of a Mr Shakstpear in Tenbury Wells. Then there's the unexplained death of a Mr Shaxzpar in 1958, Mr Shagxtspar in 1962 and a Mr Shogtspore in 1969. There are others, too—'

'Any theories as to why?'

'I think,' said Bowden slowly, 'that perhaps someone was trying to synthesise the great man so they could have him write some more great plays. Illegal and morally reprehensible, of course, but potentially of huge benefit to Shakespearean scholars everywhere. The lack of any young Shakespeares turning up makes me think this was an experiment long since abandoned.'

There was a pause as I mulled this over. Genetic cloning of entire humans was strictly forbidden — no commercial bioengineering company would dare try it, and yet no one but a large bioengineering company would have the facilities to undertake it. But if these Shakespeare clones had survived, chances were there were more. And with the real one long dead, his re-engineered other self was the only way we could unravel The Merry Wives of Elsinore.

'Doesn't this come under the jurisdiction of SO-13?' I said at last.

'Officially, yes,' conceded Bowden, 'but SO-13 is as underfunded as we are and Agent Stiggins is far too busy dealing with mammoth migrations and chimeras to have anything to do with cloned Elizabethan playwrights.'

Stiggins was the Neanderthal head of the cloning police. Legally re-engineered by Goliath, he was the ideal person to run SO-13.

'Have you spoken to him?' I asked.

'He's a Neanderthal,' he replied, 'they don't talk at all unless it's absolutely necessary. I've tried a couple of times but he just stares at me in a funny way and eats live beetles from a paper bag — yuk.'

'He'll talk to me,' I said. He would, too. I still owed him a favour for when he got me out of a jam with Flanker. 'Let's see if he's about.'

I picked up the phone, consulted the internal directory and dialled a number.

I watched as Bowden boxed up more banned books. If he was caught he'd be finished. The irony of a LiteraTec being jailed for protecting Farquitt's Canon of Love — I liked him all the more for it. No one in the Literary Detectives would knowingly harm a book. We'd all resign before torching a single copy of anything.