The Woman Who Died a Lot (Thursday Next 7)

My ears had stopped ringing by the time Finisterre called in Colonel Wexler, who arrived with ten of her crack Special Library Services troops dressed in their Antiquarian Book camouflage of musty browns and water-stained dark reds. Colonel Wexler nodded respectfully as she passed me, and we were about to leave when Detective Phoebe Smalls turned up.

“Smalls, SpecOps 27,” she said to us when she arrived, presumably for Mother Daisy’s benefit, as we knew who she was. She was in a police tiltrotor along with half a dozen armed cops.

“Hello, Phoebe,” I said brightly. “I knew we’d meet again soon. What are you doing here?”

“I’m taking charge,” she said. “Why didn’t you report this in straightaway? I had to find out about the break-in through the grapevine.”

“Is there a grapevine?” asked Finisterre.

“I’ve heard there’s one,” I returned with a half smile.

“Very funny,” said Smalls. “I want you to turn over the command of your SLS troops to me and have a full report on my desk by tomorrow morning—after you’ve given me a debrief on what you know right now.”

“Where are your own people?” I asked, since she had arrived without any SO-27 operatives.

She glared at me. “We’re having recruitment . . . issues,” she said quietly. “I went through the list of reassignment requests. The formation of SO-27 has been on the cards for weeks. Lots of time for officers to ask to join me.”

“There weren’t any, were there?”

“Not one,” said Phoebe, “but we’ll resolve that soon enough. Now, this is SO-27 jurisdiction. The debrief, Next.”

“It’s our jurisdiction,” I said simply.

“How do you figure that?” she demanded, her mood angrier by the second. “Scriptorium, theft,thirteenth-century codices— what could be more Literary Detective about it?”

“We’ve given the Lobsterhood book collection Wessex Library status,” I said. “This library and all within comes under our control. The Special Library Services troops are legally empowered to shoot to kill. I can ask SO-27 for assistance, but that’s as far as it goes.”

Phoebe Smalls looked at me, then at Mother Daisy, who nodded agreement. Smalls could have carried on in a dopey rant, but she was smart enough to know that yelling would be pointless and degrading, plus there was a better-than-good chance I knew what I was doing.

“Very well,” she said at last. “SO-27 offers every assistance to the library in this matter. But I’d like to be kept in the loop,” she added in a softer tone, “simply as a professional courtesy.”

“Okay,” I replied, “here it is: Thieves of unknown origin with an unknown motive destroyed a single leaf from a book with marginal value, literary merits or rarity.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. But,” I added, “there might be a Goliath angle to this, and if someone is monkeying around with thirteenth-century codices for no reason, all antiquarian suppliers, dealers and collectors need to be informed so they can increase security. You can do that better than I.”

“It might not be the first time this has happened,” said Phoebe thoughtfully. “I’ll run through reports of any unexplained vandalism in the lucrative and highly buoyant seriously-ancientcodex market.”

It wasn’t a good idea—it was a great idea. So great that I should have been the one making it.

“Goes without saying,” I said, and she flashed me a quizzical look.

“I’m glad to see we can work together,” she said. “I’ll have my staff make it happen. When I get staff. Shit. I’ll be doing it.” She paused. “What sort of Goliath angle?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “They have lots of angles. It shouldn’t be too hard to find two dozen. We can narrow it down from there.”

“Right. May I ask a favor in return?”

“Sure.”

“Would you have a word with Bowden Cable? I need a good deputy, and he’d be pretty much perfect.”

“He’s very happy working at Acme Carpets,” I said, “but I’ll ask him.”

She nodded, placed her armed police under the command of Colonel Wexler, then departed. If she couldn’t get any staff to work for her—SpecOps was always voluntary—then the department could be closed as quickly as it had been reopened. It wouldn’t affect Braxton’s wasteful-budget policy, as there were plenty other SpecOps departments in which to squander money.

Finisterre vented some steam from the condensers before winding the craft up to liftoff power.