“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Lunch, then a lead in the Chuzzlewit theft. I’ll explain on the way. Do you have a car?”
Bowden wasn’t too impressed when he saw the multicolored Porsche.
“This is hardly what one might refer to as low profile.”
“On the contrary,” I replied, “who would have thought a Litera Tec would drive a car like this? Besides, I have to drive it.”
He got in the passenger seat and looked around slightly disdainfully at the spartan interior.
“Is there a problem, Miss Next? You’re staring.”
Now that Bowden was in the passenger seat I had suddenly realized where I had seen him before. He had been the passenger when the car had appeared in front of me at the hospital. Events had indeed started to fall into place.
14.
Lunch with Bowden
Bowden Cable is the sort of honest and dependable operative that is the backbone of SpecOps. They never win commendations or medals and the public has no knowledge of them at all. They are all worth ten of people like me.
THURSDAY NEXT
—A Life in SpecOps
BOWDEN GUIDED me to a transport café on the old Oxford road. I thought it was an odd choice for lunch; the seats were hard orange plastic and the yellowing Formica-covered tabletops had started to lift at the edges. The windows were almost opaque with dirt and the nylon net curtains hung heavily with deposits of grease. Several flypapers dangled from the ceiling, their potency long worn off, the flies stuck to them long since desiccated to dust. Somebody had made an effort to make the interior slightly more cheery by sticking up a few pictures hastily cut from old calendars; a signed photo of the 1978 England soccer team was hung above a fireplace that had been filled in and then decorated with a vase full of plastic flowers.
“Are you sure?” I asked, sitting gingerly at a table near the window.
“The food’s good,” responded Bowden, as though that was all that mattered.
A gum-chewing waitress came up to the table and put some bent cutlery in front of us. She was about fifty and was wearing a uniform that might have been her mother’s.
“Hello, Mr. Cable,” she said in a flat tone with only a sliver of interest in her voice, “all well?”
“Very well, thank you. Lottie, I’d like you to meet my new partner, Thursday Next.”
Lottie looked at me oddly.
“Any relation to Captain Next?”
“He was my brother,” I said loudly, as if wanting Lottie to know that I wasn’t ashamed of the connection, “and he didn’t do what they said he did.”
The waitress stared at me for a moment, as if wanting to say something but not daring.
“What will you lot have, then?” she asked instead with forced cheerfulness. She had lost someone in the charge; I could sense it.
“What’s the special?” asked Bowden.
“Soupe d’Auvergne au fromage,” replied Lottie, “followed by rojoes cominho.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“It’s braised pork with cumin, coriander and lemon,” replied Bowden.
“Sounds great.”
“Two specials please and a carafe of mineral water.”