“Yes,” Joe says. “I began to get it when I was in there. I don’t know when. Maybe after the first month.”
Mercer hesitates. “Joe, you weren’t in there a month. It wasn’t even a full week. I know it must have seemed like longer, but you escaped after five days.”
Joe Spork shakes his head, and his smile is very fey indeed.
“No, Mercer,” he says gently. “It just felt like that to you, because you were on the outside.”
There is a ghastly silence. Mercer starts to object, to correct him, and then the upside-down truth of this sinks into him and he crumples.
“I’m so sorry, Joe,” he murmurs. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help. I’m sorry. I did my best, and it wasn’t… it wasn’t anything like enough.”
“You were superb,” Joe Spork tells him gently. “They tried to tell me you’d given up. Both of you.”
They bristle, and he smiles. “Look: this is just how it is now. My whole life I’ve been telling myself to be calm, to be reasonable, to be respectable. To toe the line. But here I am, all the same, because they cheated. They changed the game so that I couldn’t win by being an honest man. But the thing is, I wasn’t very good at being an honest man. I had to put so much of me away to do it. But being a crook, now… I’ve got the skills for that. I can be an amazing crook. I can be the greatest crook who ever lived. I can do that, and still do the right thing. I’m not bonkers, at all. I’m free.”
Polly Cradle cocks her head, and considers.
“What right thing?” she asks.
Bastion growls softly.
Joe gestures at the newspaper.
“They’re coming after me. They’re killing people and it’s only a matter of time before they get”—he looks around, and finds himself gazing at Polly, looks away—“one of you. I’m not running any more. It’s time to give them something to think about.”
He folds his arms.
Mercer opens his mouth to argue, and Bastion Banister chooses this moment to open his mouth and snap at the circling bee. To his own evident surprise, he captures it, and there’s a curious little glonking noise as he swallows it whole. Mercer cringes slightly, as if expecting the dog to explode.
Nothing happens.
“All right,” Polly Cradle says, and then, pro forma, “Bastion, you’re a very naughty boy.”
“Yes,” Mercer says acidly. “The dog has consumed a possibly lethal technological device of immense sophistication, deprived us of our only piece of tangible evidence and possibly doomed us all to some sort of arcane scientific retaliative strike. By all means, chide him severely with your voice. That will solve everyone’s problems.”
There is silence, and then Joe Spork starts to sputter, and Polly Cradle snorts, and then Joe actually laughs: a small snigger which grows into a loud, open laugh, and finally a great shout of mirth, and Polly is laughing right alongside him, with relief and delight and in honour of the expression of profound affront on her brother’s face. Finally, even Mercer joins in.
When the fit is over, they regard one another with glad eyes.
“Mercer,” Polly says, “we are now going to hug. As a group. The experience will be very un-English. It will be good for you. Do not speak, at all, especially not in an attempt to diffuse the emotional intensity of the situation.”
They hug, somewhat awkwardly, but with great feeling.
“Well,” Mercer says, after a moment, “that was certainly—”
“I will hit you with a shovel,” Polly Cradle murmurs.
The clasp goes on a second longer, and then they step back.
“All right, then,” Joe Spork says. “Let’s get started.”
“This is actually not something I’ve done before,” Joe says a few moments later to the man in the pink shirt, “but I felt almost sure I would have natural talent.”
The man nods hurriedly, but very gently, because he’s worried about the Sabatier cleaver resting just under his chin. Joe liberated this gruesome item from the kitchen in the giant mint, and his face brightened significantly as he appreciated its weight and general nastiness. The owner of the house is apparently some sort of closet gourmet, because Polly was able to arm herself with a brace of short, fat-bladed items used for shucking oysters which, while small, possess a similar measure of menace and utility.
Joe smiles benignly, which in the circumstances makes him appear completely deranged. “Do you read the newspapers? No, don’t nod again, that’s not a good idea. Make a sort of squeak if you can… yes, there we are. One for yes, two for no… Good. So you are aware that I am an escaped mental patient, a sociopath, and an accused terrorist?”
The man squeaks.
“Great. So we’re clear on the absolute and incontrovertible awfulness of your situation and how very dangerous I am? Oh, by the way, this is Polly. Polly, say hello to Mr… well, perhaps we won’t ask his name, in case it makes him nervous. Say hello, anyway.” Polly Cradle smoulders.
“Now, where was I? Oh, yes. This car. It is absolutely lovely. I can almost promise you it will not be damaged. I say ‘almost’ because there’s a slight possibility that any car in which I travel will be shot at and blown up. It’s a negligible risk from my point of view in that I would be past caring, but I can see that you might take exception. Anyway, it’s a lovely car and I’ll do my best. You don’t mind, do you?”
An emphatic double-squeak: mi casa, su casa.
“Thank you. Now, can you tell me, will it get us to Portsmouth on that much petrol, do you think? No? Well, I suppose I can rob a garage. Now, can we be reasonably sure that you’ll wait an hour or so before calling the police? Because otherwise I’ll have to ask you to accompany us. How is the boot, by the way? Comfy? Oh, you’re leaving? Yes, I think that might be best…”
Joe Spork opens the door. The man departs. Joe turns to Polly to say something about how they’re obviously not going to Portsmouth, and finds an oyster knife balanced on his cheek, just under his eye.
“Can we be very clear,” Polly Cradle murmurs, “that I am not your booby sidekick or your Bond girl? That I am an independent supervillain in my own right?”
Joe swallows. “Yes, we can,” he says carefully.
“There will therefore be no more ‘Say hello, Polly’?”
“There will not.”
The knife disappears immediately, and she slides over to him, plants her lips on his. He feels her tongue, wide and muscular, in his mouth. Her hand puts his firmly on her arse.
“Start the engine,” she says. “I find car-theft sexy.”
“This was technically a car-jacking,” Joe says.
“Do you want extra points for that?”
“Yes, please.”
“Then don’t say ‘please.’”
From St. Albans they head north.
A brief conversation with Cecily Foalbury via public phone at a petrol station yielded the information that the “Station Y” of Ted Sholt’s final, desperate confidence was better known as Bletchley Park. Cecily was somewhat scathing about this. “For God’s sake, it’s common knowledge, Joe. I took you there myself. They broke the Enigma code, won the war. Invented the digital computer. No?”
And yes, of course, Joe remembers Bletchley, with its mysterious Nissen huts in various stages of decay, surrounded by suspect little hills which were clearly anything but, and the sprawling red-brick house which had been home to the greatest mathematicians an embattled Britain could lay hands on. He’d been almost equally impressed by the model-train club which occupied part of the house and helped to pay the rent, and by the mothballed Harrier jump jet on the lawn. A decayed British institution, abandoned by its secrets and left to run to seed. You could hide almost anything at Bletchley. Who would ever ask?