Cathy; big eyes, bigger smile, and a pretty face so heavily made-up it was practically a mask, under a heavy bob of expensively styled hair. She was wearing a long white dress of the kind made famous by Marilyn Monroe, and filled it out nicely. She also wore very high stilettos, on the grounds they made for handy weapons in close combat during bar fights. Cathy was bright and crafty and very smart, and ran my office and my business far more efficiently than I ever could. Bangles clattered noisily around her wrists with every movement, and she wore a long set of beads with artless charm. Heavy diamond pendants hung from her ears. She did try to tell me about her other more intimate piercings once, but I declined with all the politeness at my command. Cathy was my secretary, my side-kick, and my good friend; but I have never let it go any further than that. I do have some principles. Cathy’s been my secretary ever since she first came to the Nightside as a teenage runaway, and I rescued her from a house that tried to eat her.
I took a look around my office. It had been a while since I’d seen the place. It boasted all the very latest conveniences and luxuries, including several things I was pretty sure were heavily frowned on even in the Nightside. I carefully averted my eyes from them and studied the brightly coloured walls, the deep plush carpeting of a plum-wine colour, spread across a room big enough to swing an elephant in, provided you had a good wind-up.
Oversized cuddly toys with disturbingly large eyes and unnerving smiles peered at me from every gap in the jumble of odd items and even odder office equipment, like animals watching from a strangely civilised jungle. Polka-dot book-shelves took up all of one wall, packed with reference books. A large poster showed off the generous charms of a Finnish all-girl rock group, INDICA. Various pieces of discarded high tech lay piled up in one corner, presumably replaced by more recent versions. Nothing gets made redundant faster in the Nightside than the Very Latest Thing in high tech.
I did notice a few changes from the last time I’d had reason to visit my office, starting with a tall potted plant that shifted and swayed furtively in one corner, muttering to itself in a breathy voice. A filing cabinet that showed clear signs of the bigger on the inside than the outside spell, without which most buildings in the Nightside couldn’t cope. And the massively overstuffed, leather-bound chair behind the desk, from which Cathy had launched herself; which on closer inspection proved to have its own built-in drinks cabinet, Game Boy, and massage function. I’ve lived in places less comfortable than that chair. Cathy caught my gaze and shrugged charmingly.
“I’m the one who has to work here. You haven’t dropped by in . . . ages! I was beginning to think you’d forgotten where this was, again, and I’d have to send you another map. And a compass. Why are you here, boss?”
I persuaded her to sit back down behind the desk again while I sank into the surprisingly comfortable visitor’s chair. I looked at her thoughtfully.
“Oh bloody hell,” she said immediately. “It always means trouble when you look at me like that. What’s gone wrong now?”
“Now that I’m to be the new Walker for the Nightside,” I said carefully, “I can’t be a private investigator any more.”
“Ah,” said Cathy, nodding wisely. “Conflict of interest.”
“More like I won’t have the time,” I said. “There’s a lot to do when you’re Walker.”
“John Taylor, the last honest man in the Nightside, is now the Man,” said Cathy. “Can’t say I saw that one coming.”
“Same here,” I said. “Or I’d have run extremely fast in the opposite direction. But, better me than someone else who couldn’t be trusted or depended on in a crisis; so I have to do it. If I’d have known my conscience was going to cause me so much trouble, I’d have had it surgically removed long ago. But my time as a PI is definitely over, so I won’t need this office any more. You’re going to have to close it down, Cathy.”
“Oh, is that all? I’ve known that was on the cards ever since I heard you were going to be the next Walker! Don’t worry, boss; I’ve got it all under control.” She stopped and looked at me thoughtfully. “I suppose you’ll have a new office, as Walker?”
“The position does come with a lot of support,” I said carefully. “Most of which I can’t talk about.”
“Not even to me?”
“What you don’t know, someone else can’t make you tell them,” I said. “It’s that sort of job.”
“I suppose it must be a lonely sort of job, being Walker,” said Cathy. “You can’t trust anyone.”
I made myself smile easily. “Situation entirely normal, for the Nightside.”
Cathy fixed me with an almost accusing look. “Is Suzie really pregnant?”
“Yes,” I said.
“How the hell did that happen?”
“Well, if you don’t know by now, Cathy . . .”
“But I thought . . . she couldn’t bear to be touched, by anyone!”
“That used to be true,” I said. “But miracles do happen, sometimes, in the Nightside.”
“Damn, boss,” said Cathy. “You really can do anything.”
“No,” I said. “She did it all herself. She’s always been a lot stronger than most people realise. And I . . . have always been so very proud of her.”
“But . . . do you really feel the need to get married, boss? In this day and age? You don’t have to get married just because she’s up the stick.”
“It seems like the right thing to do,” I said. “And doing the right thing seems more important now than ever. Given who and what I’ve become. But I’m not marrying her just because . . . That gave me the impetus to do what I always wanted to do. I love her. She loves me. Nothing else matters.”
“You soft and soppy sentimental old thing, you,” said Cathy.
“How do you feel about our getting married?” I said.
“Oh, I love weddings!” Cathy said cheerfully. “I cry buckets.”
“Alex usually cries, too,” I said. “In memory of his own.”
Cathy looked at me. “You knew his ex-wife. What was she like?”
“She lacked patience. And a sense of humour. And she slept with everything that breathed and a few that didn’t.”
“Did she every try it on with you?” said Cathy.
“Fortunately, I’d left the Nightside by then,” I said.
“After Suzie shot you in the back.”
“She was only trying to get my attention.”
“I’m going to be doing a lot of baby-sitting, aren’t I?” said Cathy. “Auntie Cathy! I love it! And Uncle Alex! Oh, he’s going to absolutely hate that!”
I looked around the office. “What are you going to do with all this . . . stuff?”
“I’ve already made arrangements, boss. The really good stuff goes with me, and what I can’t sell I’ll chuck in the nearest Timeslip, so it can be someone else’s problem.”
“Okay,” I said. “Down to business. Cathy, I want you to find me one last case, as a private investigator. Nothing too big or too complicated because I want it all over and done with before I get married tomorrow. But something really good, to go out on.”
And then I stopped, as a thought occurred to me. I looked around the office. “How much am I paying for all this?”
“You never wanted to know before,” said Cathy, which I couldn’t help noticing wasn’t really an answer.
“I wasn’t getting married before,” I said. “Everyone’s been telling me that can be very expensive.”
“Relax, boss. Let’s say that thanks to the expert way I have been managing your finances and investments all these years, you can afford it.”
“I’m solvent?” I said. “When did that happen?”
“You never did have a head for figures,” said Cathy, shaking her head sadly.
“Am I rich?”
“Well, by the Nightside’s standards, you are comfortably well off.”
“Damn,” I said. “I really must run out and buy something expensive, on principle. It’s been years since I indulged myself.”