“Not what I heard . . .”
“What?”
“Nothing, boss!”
Cathy fired up the various computers and monitor screens built into the surface of her desk and made a point of studying them carefully. She gestured meaningfully at the piled-up paper in the trays, marked In, Out, Urgent, and Pay Now. I grabbed a few handfuls and sorted through them while Cathy called up all the most recent e-mails. People still write a lot of letters in the Nightside, sent by personal messenger, because paper can’t be hacked. My office has also been known to receive communications from any number of alternate futures. Usually marked Not To Be Opened Till . . . I sorted those out and placed them carefully to one side. Never trust messages from the Future; they always have their own agenda.
“That’s nothing,” said Cathy, noting my interest. “Sometimes things appear here in the office, arriving out of nowhere by supernatural methods. I only ever open those wearing my special protective mittens. And there’s always the ravens, of course.”
I looked at the handful of ravens, gathered together on a wooden perch at the far end of the office, patiently waiting their turn to deliver their magically imposed messages.
“I don’t know how they get in, boss,” said Cathy. “Especially considering this office doesn’t have a window. I never ask them what their messages are because then they’d disappear back to whoever sent them. And I’m not doing anything for anyone who’d treat living creatures that cruelly. So I let them hang around here until their messages are safely out-of-date, then I find them good homes.”
“You soft and soppy sentimental thing, you,” I said.
“And the ones I can’t find homes for I make into pies.”
I said nothing. Often, I find that’s the safest course. I concentrated on sorting through my papers while Cathy worked her way through the e-mails.
“I have programs in the computer to weed out the time-wasters along with the spam,” Cathy said finally. “But sometimes messages by-pass the system completely and drop onto my desk out of nowhere, punching their way right through the office’s protections and defences. I always treat those messages very respectfully because anyone with that kind of power wouldn’t be bothering us unless it was something really urgent.”
“Hold everything,” I said. “I just noticed that you’re using a whole new computer system. Whatever happened to that silver sphere thing, holding rogue AIs from the Future?”
“Oh them . . . They went home again, a few months back,” said Cathy. “They were basically data junkies. At first they were as happy as pigs in shit because they thought they’d never run out of fresh new data to investigate and correlate, but eventually even they had enough. They announced one day that the Nightside was too weird, even for them, and it made their heads hurt. And since they didn’t have heads, they were going home. And off they went. To wherever or whenever they came from. The computers built into my desk now are state-of-the-art thinking things that fell off the back of a Timeslip. And no, you really don’t want to know how much I paid for them. Before they were fitted into my desk, they looked like Robby the Robot’s head, if its designer had been having a very bad day while out of his head on really dodgy blotter acid. Sometimes it thinks so fast it gives me the answer before I’ve even worked out the question. It’s called Oliver. Don’t upset it.”
I decided I needed a break. I got up out of my chair and marched over to the futuristic coffee-pot standing on its special stand. A gleaming metal Moebius monstrosity that somehow never needed refilling and produced steaming-hot black coffee on demand. As long as you were very polite while demanding it. Far too many things in the Nightside have minds of their own. They’ll be forming unions next . . . As I waited for my mug to fill, I couldn’t help noticing a line of empty champagne bottles stacked up on the floor behind Cathy’s chair. Good vintages, too. I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to know. The mug finally filled, steaming thickly. I took a good sip, and then spat it half-way across the office. I swear the coffee machine sniggered. I glared at Cathy.
“What the hell has happened to the coffee? It tastes like battery acid that someone’s pissed in!”
“I wouldn’t know,” said Cathy innocently. “I haven’t touched that stuff since the machine had its nervous breakdown. Personally, I think it’s a cry for help. It’s only for clients and visitors, these days. I drink vintage bubbly, and the occasional bottle of Stoli. Here . . .”
She fumbled beneath her desk as I put the coffee mug carefully to one side and settled myself in the visitor’s chair again. Cathy emerged again, offering a pale blue bottle.
“If you want, you can clear your mouth out with this. Viennese Creme Violette. A desperate and downright threatening thick liquor whose taste could punch through steel plate. This is industrial-strength palate cleanser. An old client of yours sends us a new case every Easter, to say thank you.”
“What for?” I said, looking closely at the bottle, then shaking my head firmly.
Cathy grinned as she made the bottle disappear again. “There’s never any name. But . . . free booze is free booze! If there’s any left over at the end of each year, I go out and hand it over to the homeless. They’re always very grateful. I think they use it to thin out paint-stripper before they drink it. Or to start a fire when it’s cold.”
“I have also just noticed,” I said, “that your state-of-the-art sound system has been replaced by what appears to be an old-fashioned wind-up gramophone, complete with metal horn.”
“Oh that!” said Cathy, wriggling excitedly in her chair. “It’s the latest thing! You can put on any record you like, adjust the dimensional tracking system, and it will play any variation of the record from any number of alternate timetracks! It’s super cool!”
“Sometimes you make me feel very old,” I said. “What’s wrong with CDs?”
“Vinyl rocks!” said Cathy.
I returned determinedly to my stack of papers, trying to find something that appealed to me . . . and then looked up again, to consider Cathy thoughtfully.
“It’s that look again,” she said resignedly. “What is it this time, boss?”
“I did wonder,” I said carefully, “whether you might want to take on the office, and the business, after I’m gone. Be a private investigator in your own right.”
“Oh hell no,” Cathy said immediately. “Not my thing. I only stayed on here because it seemed to me you needed a secretary and a helper.”
I had to smile. “And I let you stay on here because I thought you needed something to do, and keep you occupied, while you found your feet in the Nightside.”
We both laughed quietly together.
“I have enjoyed being your secretary,” said Cathy. “Going out drinking and dancing in all the best clubs and bars, to keep up with the latest gossip and useful information. And getting paid for it. Best job ever! I might keep that part going . . .”
“Are you still in contact with your mother?” I asked.
“We have regular little chats, on the phone,” said Cathy. “We get on much better, now there’s a distance between us.”
“Any chance of your going back, to visit her?”
“Best not,” said Cathy, very firmly. She flashed me a bright smile. “So it’s definite, then. No more John Taylor, PI. No more faithful girl secretary. The end of an era.”
“What are you going to do once this place is shut down?” I said.
“Oh, that’s already been decided, boss. I’m going to help Alex run Strangefellows. I love organising things. And people.”
“Will you be sad, to see the back of this place, after so long?”
“Nostalgia is for old folks, boss. I always look forward, never back.”
I sat up a little straighter in my chair, so I wouldn’t look like old folks, and concentrated on the papers before me while she ran through the e-mails. And soon enough, we both started coming up with interesting cases. Luckily, none that involved looking for that notorious black bird, the Maltese Falcon. Which is a very real object, in case you were wondering. Not that I’d touch it with an enchanted barge-pole.