And if I compromised on the truth, was I doing the right thing? Or was it just fear and self-interest that made it so much easier to go along with a deception? It looked as though I was being given a little bit of money to fulfil Gillian’s proposal and persuade the old Polish lady to take a pay-off. I wondered if this was a crucial moment when I should be telling humanity that we’ve outgrown our use. And did Mrs Naumowicz’s loss buy her the right to decide the fate of Limewood with an uncomplicated, vengeful morality?
My mind ached from the effort of thinking it through. I thought food might help. I made a large omelet but could hardly eat any of it.
I went to bed thinking about the evil Miranda had done for the sake of her wider family. Sleeping fitfully, I got up twice during the night, thinking of monsters, assassins and spider-women. I reckoned it would take more than a steel front door to put them off. But no one had come to my apartment to murder me. As the sky grew light, I fell asleep again. Soon I was not alone.
THIRTY-NINE
It must have been very early in the morning because even though it was daylight, there was no one around outside the Natural History Museum. Babyhead and I stood on the wide stone steps, looking up at the fabulous entrance arch of one of London’s greatest buildings. The Victorian masterpiece looks like something from another world, with its intricately detailed carvings, ceramic tiles layered like cliff-face strata, and imposing gothic towers. Stone creatures past and present, writhed and turned on the building, although none of them looked as bizarre as my companion with his enormous vein-throbbing head, four-legs splaying out from the base of his enormous skull and a withered gray-skinned torso hanging behind him.
“Let’s get inside before someone sees you and calls the police, or a hospital. Or the circus.”
Babyhead looked down at me, mouth puckered in accusatory anger, “You’re the one most likely to end up in the hospital. I can take care of myself.”
He scuttled ahead up the steps, looking this way and that, eased himself carefully through the double doors, past the vestibule on the inside and then padded quickly into the cathedral-like central hall. His feet flapped loudly against the quartz-stone mosaic floor. He stopped to peer impudently at the colossal head of the blue whale skeleton, the centerpiece of the hall, its skull lunging downward at us.
“Now that’s what you call an enormous head,” he said.
I wondered if I’d said “enormous” aloud outside. “You know, if anyone sees you in here they’ll never let you out.”
“It’s ok. They don’t open for ages. We’re alone right now.”
“What are we doing here?”
“You know I love whales.”
“I didn’t know that. Dave Slaughter likes whale music.”
“That’s because Dave and I have a psychic connection,” he boomed, vessels pulsating at his temples, “and we’d both like to know why you haven’t found the second person; Sophie Miller’s accomplice.”
“I’m confused. Does Dave know about Sophie Miller?”
“He knows her as ‘blondie’. Remember?”
“Yes, I remember.” I watched the strange creature scuttling back and forth under the whale. “Shouldn’t you be wearing a diaper or something?”
“Look around this place. Do you think there’s a creature in here, past or present, other than Homo sapiens, that would put an excrement bandage around its offspring? I live free and clear, feeding the forest floor and the dung beetles of the plains.” He looked behind for a moment. “Ummm…mind out for that patch under the whale’s tail when you’re wandering around. But getting back to the business at hand, what about the second person?” he said insistently.
“Dave’s wrong about a second person. He thinks Sophie would’ve needed someone to help her carry Aleksy to the bathroom, lift his heavy dead body in and out of the shower, and then heave it to the bedroom. But that’s because he thinks she’s an ordinary girl. He doesn’t know about the exceptional strength the Limewood people have.”
“You’re not bound to the logic of an uninformed detective. That’s fine. But look at the amount of work she had to do,” he pointed a foot at a silver video screen alongside the whale exhibit. Normally the screen showed everything a visitor might want to know about the blue whale’s physiology and history. But now the screen showed a black graph with a jagged, yellow line. The vertical axis was labelled, Activities in Patryk’s apartment. The horizontal one read, Time. “That yellow line represents the workload.”
“I don’t understand how you’ve got this data, but it does seem to make sense.”
“You know I’m good with data analysis. Think about it Zav. The cleaning of the floors, kitchen, woodwork, the vacuuming, cleaning the body, washing the bed-linen, collecting the spider from the café, getting rid of the vacuum cleaner and the mop and bucket. It’s not a question of strength,” he balanced on one leg, waving the other three strangely clean feet at me, “it’s a question of hands.”
“Those are feet.”
“I’m a baby; give me a little latitude.”
“But I still don’t get it. This mystery is virtually solved. There doesn’t need to be anyone else.”
“Is that true? Why was Aleksy killed? Was it an accident, murder or manslaughter? If, by the way, you’ll accept a baby making a distinction between murder and manslaughter. The fact is, even after making all that trouble in Limewood, you still don’t really know why he died, do you?”
“I suppose you’re right. How do you know all of this?”
“I know what you know, which sadly is not very much. Let’s try something simpler. What’s the difference between these questions?” He tapped the side of the screen with a foot.
The chart was gone. In its place were two lines of text which both read, Who is the second person? Every word was the same, in identical type.
“I can’t tell them apart.”
“What about now?”
I looked again. One line had become chestnut brown and the other gold.
“Same question. Different colors. Different hair color? Are you saying that Christmas is involved?”
He leaned toward me his voice growing louder, “I’m saying that you need to look more closely at the evidence and you need to do it soon!”
I tried to back away but my legs were sinking into the floor. “What’s this?”
“Quicksand,” he said matter-of-factly.
“You’d have thought the museum staff would have noticed quicksand in a busy spot like this,” I said, struggling to stay upright and falling onto my back as my knees slipped into the floor. I tried to move but was stuck fast. “I can’t get out. Help me Babyhead.”
“If I help you, will you promise to look for the second person?”
“Yes, alright. But hurry,” I said urgently, sinking up to my waist.
One of his huge feet landed in front of me. I put my arms around his fat ankle and he dragged me out, leaving me prone on the cold, color-flecked stone floor, under the whale’s spine, my nose inches from a thick, coffee-colored pancake.
“This actually smells of coffee. What’ve you been eating?”
“I couldn’t tell you if I wanted to. They say I’m on solids but it’s always some kind of mush.” He scuttled away to the back of the hall shouting, “I’m going to the café now to see if I can find something more substantial.”
“Are you sure that’s wise?”
“Yeah. My stomach’s growling. Don’t forget. Find the second person.”
Suddenly an alarm rang through the hall. My heart sank. Someone must’ve seen Babyhead and now they were going to chase him all around the museum and put him in an immense glass cylinder of formaldehyde so that he could be exhibited and studied for centuries as some grotesque semi-human. His mentoring skills for accidental amateur detectives would be completely lost.
The alarm continued, sounding exactly like my doorbell at home. Usually people just knocked on the door. The ringing came again.
I looked bleari
ly at the clock beside my bed; nine o’clock in the morning. It was my doorbell. It was late.
The dream evaporated instantly along with my promise. I tried to get out of bed, but my feet had become entangled in the duvet cover. For a moment, the quicksand came back to me. The dream swirled in my mind like a landscape emerging from windblown fog. There was something important that I had to do. A promise made. It was lost again.
The bell rang a third time, followed by polite but insistent knocking.
I pulled on a sports shirt, sweatpants and a pair of socks, hurrying to the entrance hall while I dressed. I guessed it must be Christmas. So I opened the reinforced door wide.
FORTY
A man dressed in a white protective overall stood outside my front door. He was tightening the hood around his face and this made it difficult for me to recognize him instantly. But he wore distinctive black-framed glasses and after a moment, I remembered him as the stern HomEvo technician.
“Darren, what are you doing here? Who’s attending to Ariadne?”
“We have to talk,” he said, passing me his rucksack.
I took it obediently and turned sideways to let him in.
“Look, I know I said it before, but let me just say again, I’m sorry about what happened with Ariadne in her apartment. I hadn’t realized she’d be so persuasive.” He didn’t seem to be listening. I asked, “Why are you dressed for a chemical attack?”
He closed the door and seemed to stumble, steadying himself by putting out his right hand and grabbing my side. “Pardon me,” he said and stepped past me.
As he withdrew his hand I felt a stinging sensation. I touched my side unconsciously and turned to follow him. Darren spun around and I saw a tube in his other hand. He quickly and deliberately stuck it into my waist on the other side, through my shirt, and calmly took his rucksack from me.
“What are you doing?” A wave of nausea swept over me. “Have you injected me?” I asked incredulously.
“Come and sit down before you fall down.” Darren’s eyes were anxious.
Even at this point I wasn’t sure that I was being attacked. But then the toxin took hold. My legs stopped working. I’d almost made it to the furniture. I started to kneel, reaching for the coffee table so that I could support myself for the last few steps to the sofa. My legs folded under me and I fell to the floor. Breathing became difficult, as though an iron band had tightened around my chest. I wheezed loudly and my diaphragm spasmed with hiccups. Each breath was short. I lay on my side, ears ringing, skin itching all over. My mouth tasted metallic. The room looked dark. The smooth wood floor was cold against my cheek. I was dying.
I asked hoarsely, “Why?”
He knelt beside me. “You’re ruining everything. Christmas is mine. I do the matchmaking for Limewood. Christmas has always been mine. Together, she and I can still carry Miranda’s plan forward.”
He reached for his rucksack and pulled out a parcel the size of a large shoebox with courier address labels saying, Fragile and This Side Up. He tore the wrapping off and opened the cardboard box. Inside were four transparent plastic boxes, each holding a Sydney funnel-web spider the size of my open palm.
They reared up and jabbed at the walls of their prisons, their fangs clacking against the plastic as Darren hurriedly placed the boxes on the coffee table.
“That didn’t work last time,” I gasped.
“It might’ve done if they hadn’t left the spider in the box.”
Slowly, I moaned, “They’ll trace them to you.”
“On the contrary. They’ll trace them to you Zav. Ordered with your credit card. I intercepted the courier downstairs and signed for them with your name. We’re similar age, height and hair color. The courier will probably say that you collected the package.”
Darren took a pair of large tongs from the rucksack, opened one of the plastic boxes and used the tongs to hold the spider against my thigh, prodding it until it sank its fangs into my leg. It was more painful than a wasp sting. Then he picked up my world atlas from the coffee table and used it to crush the animal’s head against my knee. “Final score is three, one. The spiders win. The delivery note shows four, so with luck, they’ll find the others and conclude that you died from multiple bites.”
He opened the other boxes and let the spiders run across the floor. “I’m going to stay with you until you’re unconscious. You’ve had enough venom to kill you within thirty minutes. One more bite will add some certainty.” He rolled up a leg of my sweatpants to check on the bite at my knee. “Where would you like the next one?”
With shallow breaths I said weakly, “I’ve found Ariadne’s children.”
“That won’t buy you any time. She’s known where they are for years, you idiot. She’s just not very maternal.”
“Why did she…” I took a breath, “ask me to find them?”
“We just wanted to know what you’d found out. I’m putting the next bite in your face,” he said spitefully, taking the twin-needle injector that he’d used to hit me in the side and pushing the metal needle fangs into my cheek.
I raised my arm weakly but he brushed it aside easily. I wanted to tell him that he’d get caught, but I could only manage a grunt. I was almost completely paralyzed by the venom. I had only minutes to live.
There was a knock at the front door.
Darren froze, kneeling beside me.
The knock came again. Then the doorbell. And then my phone rang. Finally, I heard a key in the lock. The door swung open. Through the small entrance hallway I saw Christmas.
She could see me, lying on my back by the coffee table, Darren hunched at my side.
She rushed in. “What’s happened?”
“Zav’s been bitten. I’ve called an ambulance,” Darren stood up.
Christmas knelt at my side, supporting my head with her hand. “Who did this?”
I looked at Darren and grunted his name indistinctly.
“Darren,” she said, “how did this happen? Did he speak to you?”
“No, he was like this when I arrived. The door was open. He bought funnel-webs. Look.” He pointed at the spiders against the baseboard on the other side of the room and put the parcel’s wrapper with the address label in front of Christmas, on the coffee table.
“I’ve got anti-venom,” Christmas said breathlessly and started rummaging through her bag. “Are you sure it’s a spider bite?”
“I think so. There’s a dead one here,” he pointed at the smashed carcass next to my leg. “I’m sure he’ll be fine with a shot of anti-venom. Let’s hope he makes it,” he said with barely perceptible insincerity.
Christmas glanced at him before turning back to her bag saying, “I’d like to think you mean that…” She found the auto-injectors and held them in front of her face to make sure she had the right one for spider venom, “But let’s be honest Darren. We both know the answer to the question that you asked during dinner the other day—”
“About whether we have a future?”
“Yes. You know I don’t see us being anything other than friends.” Without turning to him directly she continued, “And besides, even without my affection for Zav, I could never marry a man who wears protective overalls when he goes visiting.” As she said the words, she unbuttoned her jacket, her mild tone disguising the grim realization that I saw on her face.
I knew Christmas was about to reach for her pistol.
So did Darren. He’d seen the movement. And he was used to dealing with a super-strong woman who was quicker than a cat. He stepped back and as she turned, pistol in hand, I heard the zip and crackle of Darren’s taser.
Christmas convulsed, falling to the floor, her back against the sofa.
Darren stepped forward, hurriedly taking the gun from Christmas’s shaking hands. He dropped it into the pocket of his overalls. “Since that’s your choice, I’m really sorry Christmas. I’m committed to Miranda’s plan, with or without you. You and Zav can be united in oblivion. Limewood will put the Pend
le inheritance to better use.”
He injected her with a shot of venom in the thigh. Working quickly, he raised her shirt and injected her again above the waist. A third bite in the neck had Christmas gasping for breath.
Darren picked up his tongs and strode to the other side of the room, carrying one of the empty spider boxes. He collected one of the funnel-webs from the skirting board, brought it back in the box and then clasping it with the tongs, positioned the creature on Christmas’s thigh. Darren prodded the spider with the corner of the box until it bit her. Putting the box down, he pulled out the pistol. Lining up the butt of the weapon over the spider, he aimed to smash its head against Christmas’s knee.
The electric shock had only momentarily stunned her, but the three venom injections were taking effect.
Christmas grabbed at the pistol, but only managed to knock the weapon from Darren’s hand. It clattered heavily across the floor. He backed away.
The spider scuttled under the sofa.
“Looks like I’m going to have to wait for the venom to thoroughly take hold.” He stooped to pick up the gun.
Christmas groaned, drawing her leg up as though convulsing. Her hand reached inside her boot. A moment later, she levelled her compact pistol at Darren. In the confined space of the living room, the shot exploded like a cannon, sparks blasting from the muzzle.
Darren dropped the gun, shouting in pain as the bullet struck him just below the collarbone. Blood burst onto the inside of his white overalls. He staggered several steps backward, hitting the wall, knees bent but still standing.
Christmas’s second shot struck the wall level with his ear, her hand shaking hard now. He cowered for a moment, one hand at his face which was peppered with plaster, the other, against his chest to staunch the blood. He watched Christmas’s hands fall to her lap.
Grimacing with pain, Darren slowly stood upright. He stepped forward, picked up his rucksack, backed away, headed for the front door and was gone.