She said it disdainfully; I took an instant dislike to her.
“Who is this?”
“This is Daisy Mutlar, darling, Landy’s fiancée.”
I leaned back in my chair slowly and closed my eyes. This couldn’t be happening. No wonder Landen asked me as a matter of some urgency if I was going to forgive him.
“Changed your mind, have you, sweetheart?” asked Daisy in a mocking tone. “Landen’s a good man. He waited nearly ten years for you but I’m afraid now he’s in love with me. Perhaps if you’re lucky we’ll send you some cake, and if you want to send a present, the wedding list is down at Camp Hopson.”
I forced down a lump in my throat.
“When’s the happy day?”
“For you or for me?” Daisy laughed. “For you, who knows? As for me, darling Landy and I are going to be Mr. and Mrs. Parke-Laine two weeks on Saturday.”
“Let me speak to him,” I demanded, my voice rising.
“I might tell him you called when he wakes up.”
“Do you want me to come around and bang on the door?” I asked, my voice rising further. Bowden looked at me from the other side of the desk with an arched eyebrow.
“Listen here, you stupid bitch,” said Daisy in a hushed tone in case Landen heard, “you could have married Landen and you blew it. It’s all over. Go and find some geeky Litera Tec or something—from what I’ve seen all you SpecOps clowns are a bunch of weirdos.”
“Now just you listen to—”
“No,” snapped Daisy. “You listen. If you try anything at all to interfere with my happiness I’ll wring your stupid little neck!”
The phone went dead. I quietly returned the receiver to its cradle and took my coat from the back of the chair.
“Where are you going?” asked Bowden.
“The shooting range,” I replied, “and I may be some time.”
22.
The Waiting Game
To Hades, the loss of every Felix brought back the sadness of the first Felix’s death. On that occasion it had been a terrible blow; not only the loss of a trusted friend and colleague in crime, but also the terrible realization that the alien emotions of loss he had felt betrayed his half-human ancestry, something he abhorred. It was little wonder that he and the first Felix had got on so well. Like Hades, Felix was truly debased and amoral. Sadly for Felix, he did not share any of Hades’ more demonic attributes and had stopped a bullet in the stomach the day that he and Hades attempted to rob the Goliath Bank at Hartlepool in 1975. Felix accepted his death stoically, urging his friend to “carry on the good work” before Hades quietly put him out of his pain. Out of respect for his fr
iend’s memory he removed Felix’s face and carried it with him away from the crime scene. Every servant expropriated from the public since then had been given the dubious honor not only of being named after Acheron’s one true friend, but also of wearing his features.
MILLON DE FLOSS
—Life after Death for Felix Tabularasa
BOWDEN PLACED the ad in the Swindon Globe. It was two days before we all sat down in Victor’s office to compare notes.
“We’ve had seventy-two calls,” announced Victor. “Sadly, all inquiries about rabbits.”
“You did price them kind of low, Bowden,” I put in playfully.
“I am not very conversant in matters concerning rabbits,” asserted Bowden loftily. “It seemed a fair price to me.”
Victor placed a file on the table. “The police finally got an ID on that guy you shot over at Sturmey Archer’s. He had no fingerprints and you were right about his face, Thursday—it wasn’t his own.”
“So who was he?”
Victor opened the file.