The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next 1)

He offered his hand and I shook it.

“Pleased to meet you, sir.”

“This is Operative Bowden Cable. You’ll be working together.”

“I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, madam,” said Bowden quite grandly, slightly awkwardly and very stiffly.

“Have we met before?” I asked, shaking his outstretched hand.

“No,” said Bowden firmly. “I would have remembered.”

Victor offered me a seat next to Bowden, who shuffled up making polite noises. I took a sip of my drink. It tasted like old horse blankets soaked in urine. I coughed explosively. Bowden offered me his handkerchief.

“Vorpal’s special?” said Victor, raising an eyebrow. “Brave girl.”

“Th-thank you.”

“Welcome to Swindon,” continued Victor. “First of all I’d like to say how sorry we were to hear about your little incident. By all accounts Hades was a monster. I’m not sorry he died. I hope you are quite recovered?”

“I am, but others were not so fortunate.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, but you are very welcome here. No one of your caliber has ever bothered to join us in this backwater before.”

I looked at Analogy and was slightly puzzled.

“I’m not sure I understand what you’re driving at.”

“What I mean—not to put too fine a point on it—is all of us in the office are more academics than typical SpecOp agents. Your post was held by Jim Crometty. He was shot dead in the old town during a bookbuy that went wrong. He was Bowden’s partner. Jim was a very special friend to us all; he had a wife, three kids. I want . . . no, I want very badly the person who took Crometty from us.”

I stared at their earnest faces with some confusion until the penny dropped. They thought I was a full and pukka SO-5 operative on a rest-and-recuperation assignment. It wasn’t unusual.

Back at SO-27 we used to get worn-out characters from SO-9 and SO-7 all the time. Without exception they had all been mad as pants.

“You’ve read my file?” I asked slowly.

“They wouldn’t release it,” replied Analogy. “It’s not often we get an operative moving to our little band from the dizzy heights of SpecOps-5. We needed a replacement with good field experience but also someone who can . . . well, how shall I put it?—”

Analogy paused, apparently at a loss for words. Bowden answered for him.

“We need someone who isn’t frightened to use extreme force if deemed necessary.”

I looked at them both, wondering whether it would be better to come clean; after all, the only thing I had shot recently was my own car and a seemingly bullet-proof master criminal. I was officially SO-27, not SO-5. But with the strong possibility of Acheron still being around, and revenge still high on my agenda, perhaps it would be better to play along.

Analogy shuffled nervously.

“Crometty’s murder is being looked after by Homicide, of course. Unofficially we can’t do a great deal, but SpecOps has always prided itself on a certain independence. If we uncovered any evidence in the pursuit of other inquiries, it would not be frowned upon. Do you understand?”

“Sure. Do you have any idea who killed Crometty?”

“Someone said that they had something for him to see, to buy. A rare Dickens manuscript. He went to see it and . . . well, he wasn’t armed, you know.”

“Few LiteraTecs in Swindon even know how to use a firearm,” added Bowden, “and training for many of them is out of the question. Literary detection and firearms don’t really go hand in hand; pen mightier than the sword and so forth.”

“Words are all very well,” I replied coolly, suddenly enjoying the SO-5 woman-of-mystery stuff, “but a nine-millimeter really gets to the root of the problem.”

They stared at me in silence for a second or two. Victor drew out a photograph from a buff envelope and placed it on the table in front of me.

“We’d like your opinion on this. It was taken yesterday.”