One of Our Thursdays Is Missing (Thursday Next 6)

Pickwick ruffled her feathers indignantly. “She brought a goblin home, and they’re nothing but trouble. What’s more, I think she is entirely unsuitable for carrying on the important job of being Thursday. We all like a hyphen from time to time, but consorting with pointy-eared homunculi is totally out of order!”

She squawked the last bit, and Carmine rolled her eyes.

“I didn’t b-bring a g-goblin home.”

“He followed you home. It amounts to the same thing.”

“You’re j-just sour because you’re not g-g-getting any,” sneered Carmine. “And anyway, Horace is n-n-not like other g-g-goblins.”

“Hang on,” I said. “So you did bring a goblin home?”

“He g-g-got locked out of his b-b-book. What was I supposed to d-d-do?”

I threw up my arms. “Carmine!”

“D-don’t you be so j-judgmental,” she replied indignantly. “Look at yourself. F-f-five books in one s-series, and each by a different g-g-ghostwriter.”

“Your private life is your own,” I replied angrily, “but goblins can’t help themselves—or rather they can help themselves—to anything not nailed down.”

I ran upstairs to find that my bedroom had been ransacked. Anything of even the slightest value had been stolen. Inviting a goblin to cross your threshold was a recipe for disaster, and certainly worse than doing the same with a vampire. With the latter all you got was a nasty bite, but the company, the extraordinarily good sex and the funny stories more than made up for it—apparently.

“That was dumb,” I said when I’d returned. “He’s taken almost everything.”

Carmine looked at me, then at Pickwick, then burst into tears and ran from the room.

“Goblins!” said Pickwick with a snort. “They’re just trouble with a capital G. By the way,” she added, now cheerier since she’d been proved correct, “Sprockett wanted to show you something. He’s in your office.”

I walked through to my study, where Sprockett was indeed waiting for me. He wasn’t alone. He had his foot on top of a struggling goblin, and a burlap sack full of stolen possessions was lying on the carpet.

“Your property, ma’am?” he asked. I nodded, and he took the letter opener from the desk, held the goblin tightly by one ear and placed the opener to its throat. His eyebrow twitched. It was clearly a bluff. I decided to play along.

“No,” I said, “you’ll ruin the carpet. Do it outside.”

The goblin opened his eyes wide and stared at me in shocked amazement, then started to babble on about an “influential uncle” who would “do unpleasant things” if he “went missing.”

“Just kidding,” I added. “Let him go.”

“Are you sure?” asked Sprockett. “I can make it look like a shaving accident.”

“Yes, I’m sure. You,” I said, jabbing a finger at the goblin, “are a disgrace. Place a single toe in my series again and I’ll make you wish you’d never been written.”

Sprockett took his foot off the goblin, and it ran to the window, paused on the sill for a moment, made an obscene gesture and then ran off. That was the trouble with being stuck in Fantasy—too many goblins, spells, ogres, wizards, elves and warlocks. I reckoned it frightened readers off.

“So,” I said, locking the window after the goblin, “what’s the deal?”

“I was reappraising the condition of the wreckage from the debris field.”

He showed me the Triumph Bonneville’s exhaust pipe. It had been folded almost in half by the impact. He pointed to a small patch on the chrome. There was a slight mottling about four inches long and an inch wide.

“A fault in the manufacturing?” I suggested.

“But it wasn’t manufactured,” said Sprockett. “It was written . It should be perfect—better than any real motorcycle.”

“You asked me in here to show me an imperfection on a Bonneville exhaust?”

“There’s more. I found this orange inside the bed-sit. Here.”

He tossed the orange across, and I noticed that this also had a slight mottling on the side. He then showed me similar imperfections on a Polaroid camera, a toaster, a half-eaten sandwich and a plastic bath duck. Then I got it.