Oddjobs Page 19

  “Kaxeos is psychic,” said Morag.

  “Practically omniscient,” said Nina and then, “I didn’t know what that word meant until now.”

  “And we’re inside the triangle. We’re directly above him.”

  Nina ate the last of her curry. “Seriously, I can’t feel my face anymore.”

  Morag reached over and took her hand. “I’ve realised something else,” she said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You see that table of four guys by the door?”

  Nina leaned slightly to see behind Morag. “Uh-huh.”

  “One of them was the taxi driver who brought me here.”

  “So?”

  “The man next to him?”

  “Yes?”

  “The taxi driver who brought me to the Library on my first day.”

  “They’re taxi drivers, they know each other.”

  “The guy in the booth over there. Half-moon glasses.”

  “Yes?”

  “That’s the taxi driver who took me to my new flat after we went out for food and drinks on Monday night.”

  “So, taxi drivers come here.”

  “I never told him my address.”

  “You were drunk,” said Nina.

  Morag put her phone on the table. “I’ve got the uCab app on my phone.”

  “I’ve got that,” said Nina. “Really handy.”

  She opened the map page and tapped the icon to find taxis for hire in the local area. Dozens of car icons appeared in overlapping clusters in the area immediately surrounding the Karakoram Balti House.

  “Hundreds of them,” said Morag.

  “Okay, that is weird,” agreed Nina.

  “It’s beyond weird.”

  “Want to hear something weirder?”

  Morag automatically gathered up the last of her curry and ate it. “What?”

  “There are twenty-two diners in this restaurant apart from ourselves.”

  “Yes.”

  “And three staff at the counter.”

  “Yes.”

  Nina fixed her with a serious gaze. “Apart from our waiter, in all the time that we’ve been here, have you heard a single one of them speak?”

  Morag looked round. Men ate slowly or drank coffee. Nina was right; none of them were talking. They didn’t even raise their eyes to look at each other. They just sat and ate and drank. A chill ran through Morag.

  “Rod has been gone for a long time.”

  The orb of shocking pain around Rod’s hand had receded somewhat but the sickening, sticky stump of bog-standard pain it left behind was just as much of a distraction.

  He managed to unravel a length of wire from his survival bracelet and, gathering a bundle of it in his hand, threw it up towards his head with a forceful hand flick. On the second attempt, he got it to fall across his face. Then, suffering only minor nicks to his tongue, he wrapped it around his front teeth and, with a combination of head jiggles and wrist pulls, began sawing at the leather strap over his hands and midriff.

  As he sawed, he tried to get an objective view of the situation: here he was, within the triangle, in a building located over one of the three chambers housing Kaxeos’s confiscated innards. He was prepared to bet that the pit beside him was the entrance to one such chamber.

  He had been to the restaurant before, in the company of Greg, a month or two before his death. They had eaten the special and the pair of them had been rewarded with, if not quite visions, certain insights into local Venislarn activities. It would have been the same special Balti that Sheikh Omar and his little friend, Maurice, sampled recently.

  Rod had not lied to his captors. He had come with openness and honesty to gain wisdom from the hot and spicy oracle of Sparkbrook. The consular mission knew Kaxeos. Kaxeos knew them. There should have been no need for violence or mistrust. Something else was going on. The situation, locally or globally, had changed…

  There was a feeling of give by Rod’s wrist. He flexed his arm and pushed outward, snapping the remains of the leather strap and almost ripping out his two front teeth. The movement brought renewed pain to his left hand.

  Rod reached up with his freed right hand, found the buckle across his chest and undid it. He sat up, dragged the tangle of wire from his mouth, reached down to free his legs and, only then, looked at what had become of his left hand. The napkin the waiter had tied round it was now a sodden red mess. Rod pulled it away and regarded his hand: four and a half fingers (or three and a half fingers plus a thumb). The top joint of his little finger was gone and the wound was bleeding profusely.

  He reached into his jacket for his tobacco tin and simultaneously stuck the ravaged digit in his mouth. While he sucked the wound, he one-handedly took out the superglue and unsealed it.

  “So, you got a little taste, did you?” he said to the hole in the floor as he squirted glue liberally over his tiny stump. The glue stung but began to seal the wound instantly. He blew on it to help it dry. His breath was blades of ice. The glue dried and the bleeding slowed to an oozy trickle.

  “Rod is off the menu,” he told the hole. He felt like using stronger language but this was possibly a god or a part of a god he was addressing and he wasn’t one for offending all-powerful Venislarn.

  “And now for the dramatic escape,” he said.

  His phone had no signal. The door, locked, had no lock on this side. Nor did it have hinges or any accessible screws or other moving parts. There were no air vents, grilles, windows or other openings into the room. Rod looked down the hole. It descended into impenetrable darkness within six feet and Rod had no intention of going for a little explore.

  He inspected and then dismantled the defunct bacon slicer and came away with a heavy square blade. “So, no way out,” he said. “And I can’t get a message out.”

  He looked at the dark slime-edged shaft. “But you could, lord, couldn’t you?”

  Rod regarded the pipes that ran above the door, from one wall to the other. “Gas or water?” he asked philosophically. “What do you reckon, lord?” Rod raised the square piece of blade and brought it over in a double-handed slam which ripped the pipe in two.

  “The curry, then, allows communication with Kaxeos,” said Nina.

  “Communication. Communion,” said Morag.

  “Communion curry.”

  “Kaxeos is a god of fire.”

  “And knowledge.”

  “Fiery knowledge.”

  “The spark of intelligence.”

  “He can reach out to others telepathically.”

  “And control them?”

  “So, he knows our intentions,” said Morag.

  “He knows we mean no harm.”

  Morag nodded. “You know how some of the smartest people you know make the most stupid mistakes?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “I’ve just eaten a whole bowlful of smarts. Watch this for stupid,” she said and stood up, wobbling slightly, drunk with knowledge. “Evening all,” she said to the restaurant at large. “May I assume that I am addressing Kaxeos, most venerable of the Venislarn?”

  Wordlessly and as one, the twenty-odd diners stood and faced her. The synchronicity and silence was eerily unpleasant.

  “Um,” said Morag.

  “Freaky,” said Nina.

  “Yo-Kaxeos,” said Morag, “we have come to seek your wisdom and advice but…” She looked at the implacable and emotionless faces. “Have you done something with our friend?”

  “Yo-Kaxeos skruv’en ist mezzhor,” said two dozen voices as one.

  “Ooh, goose bumps,” said Nina.

  “Ouril skruv’en ist mezzhor,” said the men.

  “Freed?” said Morag. “Why? How?”

  “Ouril skruv’en pes beschro’ne.”

  “Eat,” said Morag. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  Nina was on her feet. “You mindless arseholes had better not have fed our Rod to your god.”

  The nearest men stepped out from their tables and moved toward
s the two of them.

  “I think their god might still be hungry,” said Morag.

  It was a water pipe. Rod had had a half-formulated plan of what to do if natural gas had started jetting out but that plan involved singed eyebrows as a bare minimum. This was better. Water gushed from the ruptured pipe, cascaded over him, pooled on the floor and poured down the tiled shaft. Rod hoped that, whatever aspect of Kaxeos lived at the bottom of that hole, it would object to a spot of god-sized waterboarding and reach out telepathically.

  It did.

  Within a minute, the door was flung open. Ugly ‘tache stared at the water on the floor and then at Rod and then Rod drove his fist into the man’s stomach. As Ugly ‘tache doubled up, Rod brought the same fist up and slammed the man’s bottom jaw shut with a noise like a tree branch snapping. As Ugly ‘tache staggered back, Cleaver ran at Rod, swinging his blade wildly. Rod ducked him easily and brought his whole arm around in a haymaker sweep. The blow knocked Cleaver from his feet. Momentum and wet tiles carried Cleaver onward, slipping and sliding the short distance to the hole, down which he vanished feet first.

  Ugly ‘tache stumbled into an upright position against the corridor wall. There was blood on his split lip. He pulled Rod’s pistol from his waistband. Rod moved forward, slapped the gun hand aside and, taking the man’s face in hand like a basketball, bounced his head off the wall. Rod caught the pistol as Ugly ‘tache dropped it and put a bullet in the man’s foot for good measure.

  He flipped the pistol up to point at the waiter along the corridor. The sad-faced little man put up his hands. “No violence, please,” he said.

  “You’re saying that now, hmmm?” said Rod, holding up his mutilated hand as a counterpoint.

  From the pit in the waterlogged room, Cleaver began to scream. It wasn’t a nice scream and it didn’t sound like it was going to end anytime soon.

  “I think it’s time we settled the bill,” said Rod and, with a waggle of the pistol, shepherded him back to the dining area.

  The entire restaurant was on its feet. Morag and Nina were backed up against the counter, facing a small crowd of blank-faced men.

  “Nobody is to do anything reckless,” said Rod, advancing with pistol aimed, “or I’m literally going to take off and nuke the entire site from orbit.”

  “Figuratively,” said Nina and then looked at Rod, in his sodden suit. “Muda, did you actually fall in?”

  “I’m not right happy at this very moment,” he replied.

  “These taxi drivers are all under Kaxeos’s control,” said Morag. “What happened to your hand?”

  Rod ignored her and wheeled on the waiter. “Explanations. Quickly. I’ve had some deeply unsanitary surgery and want answers before A and E.”

  The waiter wrung his hands pitifully. “Kaxeos must be freed. Before…”

  “Before what?” demanded Rod.

  “Before the city is destroyed.”

  “Destroyed,” said Morag. “The incursion Professor Omar mentioned?”

  The waiter nodded. “Tomorrow,” he said.

  A trickle of water ran down from Rod’s wet hair. He wiped it away with the back of his injured hand. Suddenly, he was very tired. It was one a.m. and he’d lost the tip of his finger and probably a bit too much blood and he’d had enough.

  “Right,” he said. He waved the gun at the taxi drivers. “You lot sit down and shut up.”

  “They’re shut up,” said Nina.

  “Good. Stay that way.” He looked at his colleagues. “Think one of you two will need to drive me to the hospital. And you” – he turned to the waiter and waved the gun at his uneaten Balti – “box this up for me. I’ve still not had my flaming dinner.”

  Shortly after nine o’clock that morning, Vivian found Nina in Room Two with a sad and sorry looking man.

  “Miss Seth,” said Vivian.

  “Mrs Grey,” said Nina, unscrewing the cap on a Boost energy drink. From the mess on the table Vivian could see it wasn’t her first of the day.

  “I went into Room Eight and found it to be full of taxi drivers,” said Vivian.

  “Yes.”

  “And Room Seven.”

  “Yes.”

  “And Room Six.”

  “Guess what’s in Room Five?”

  Vivian really didn’t enjoy the young woman’s impertinence. “I assume there’s a reason why you’ve rounded up and detained half the city’s private hire drivers.”

  “Certainly is.”

  Vivian waited. Nina smiled at her inanely.

  “It’s too early in the day to play silly games, Miss Seth,” said Vivian.

  Indeed, in the morning it was too early for silly games, in the later portions of the day she was too busy for silly games and, at all other times, she was simply not in the mood for silly games. The correct time for silly games, she had decided, was any time before seven years of age.

  “This is Mr Arif,” said Nina. “Until this morning, he was proprietor of the Karakoram Balti House.”

  “The House of Kaxeos.”

  “Bang on. And Mr Arif has been a very busy man. In a beautiful combination of modern tech and Venislarn powers, he’s been calling uCab drivers to his master’s home whereupon Kaxeos has seized control of their minds and bodies.”

  “Building an army.”

  “An army of spies throughout the city. But not only that. Mr Arif has been defiling the chambers that outline Kaxeos’s prison and weakening their power.”

  “Defiling how?” said Vivian.

  “The usual. Human sacrifice.”

  Vivian gave the horrible little man a hard stare. He shrivelled under her gaze. “That is not acceptable, Mr Arif,” she told him firmly.

  The man whimpered something.

  “What was that?” snapped Vivian.

  “But we must flee. The end is coming.”

  “Yadda yadda yadda,” said Nina. “Apparently, Kaxeos is convinced that the city will be destroyed by some cataclysmic incursion event tomorrow.”

  Vivian sighed irritably. “I’ve got to do this ridiculous community outreach workshop this morning with Silas Adjei and the Waters Crew. I had a chance to put it off until next Tuesday but I thought I’d better get it over and done with. If I had known that we’d all be dust and rubble by tomorrow…” She looked at Nina. “I was going to use Room Seven, as it’s the largest. Any chance you could have these mindless cabbies processed by ten?”

  “Doubtful,” said Nina. “I’ve got to ID them all and work out where to send them. Morag’s taken Rod to the hospital and I’m operating on caffeine and sugar.”

  “Hospital?”

  “Lost his little finger.”

  “Careless,” said Vivian.

  Morag left Rod in the restricted ward of the QE hospital – on an IV drip of Venislarn antibiotics and antiparasitics while he waited for some consultant or other to take a look at his beshortened pinky. He had insisted he''d be able to drive himself back to the office once the ‘fusspot doctors’ let him leave, so Morag left his car keys with him and called for a uCab.

  Outside hospital reception, she bent to peer in the driver’s window.

  “Morning.”

  The taxi driver looked at her and said nothing.

  “Jeez, how many of you are there?” she said and got in the back seat. “Take me home.”

  The Kaxeos-possessed taxi driver waited.

  “Home,” she said. “Don’t pretend you don’t know where that is.”

  The taxi driver silently put the car in gear and drove off.

  “And don’t think I’m paying either,” she said. “Ever. From now, I get in one of your taxis, it’s a free ride.”

  The taxi driver said nothing. She didn’t expect him to.

  It was a mere ten-minute drive across a dual carriageway and down alongside the chocolate factory to 27 Franklin Road.

  “Stay here,” she told the cabbie. “I’m going to need a ride back to the Library in half an hour.”

  Out since midn
ight and having got smeared with more than a drop of Rod’s blood, Morag needed to change. She went upstairs, threw her clothes into the washing machine (on top of the other, still unwashed clothes she had dumped there on Tuesday) and showered. As she dried her hair in the bedroom, she heard the faint and weird music from the flat upstairs once more. What had sounded like ukulele or guitar in the wee hours now sounded more like a harpsichord or a harp, something static, plucked and resonating. It had a peculiar quality to it, as though it was being played backwards or at the wrong speed. And, accompanying it, an out-of-time thumping, like stamping feet.

  “I’m surprised your cats put up with it,” Morag said to the ceiling.

  As she gathered her things and headed back downstairs, she thought about Drew. She’d had one night stands before but not one where there had been no pretence of staying in touch afterwards. No exchanged phone numbers (real or fake). No promises to friend each other on Facebook or Snapchat. Nothing. Admittedly, spending most of his days naked, Drew possibly didn’t have anywhere to keep a phone anyway.

  Extenuating circumstances of the I’m-going-to-die-tonight variety aside, Morag wondered if she’d reached a new low in personal sluttiness.

  “Not that sluttiness is bad,” she said to herself.

  “Well, no,” said Richard.

  Morag gave a start.

  “I’m certainly not going to judge,” he said, standing in his doorway.

  “Jesus,” she said. “I did not see you there. You’re like some kind of ninja.”

  “Yes, I am,” said her neighbour.

  “Um. Listen,” she said. “About last night…”

  “We were going to have pizza at ten,” said Richard.

  “Right, because we agreed that, didn’t we?”

  “The whole new-neighbours thing. I did knock.”

  “I realise. I went to bed early.”

  “I heard noises.”

  “I did have a bit of a cough.”