'Yes,' said the one on the left. 'Which one of us is obb, did you say?'
I unpacked my few things in the small room behind the flight deck. I had sketched a picture of Landen from memory and I placed it on the bedside table, staring at it for a moment. I missed him dreadfully and wondered, for the umpteenth time, whether perhaps I shouldn't be here hiding, but out there, in my own world, trying to get him back. Trouble was, I'd tried that and made a complete pig's ear of it — if it hadn't have been for Miss Havisham's timely rescue I would still be locked up in a Goliath vault somewhere. With our child growing within me I had decided that flight was not a coward's option but a sensible one — I would stay here until the baby was born. I could then plan my return, and following that, Landen's.
I went downstairs and explained to obb the rudiments of cooking, which were as alien to it as having a name. Fortunately I found an old copy of Mrs Beeton's Complete Housekeeper, which I told obb to study, half jokingly, as research. Three hours later it had roasted a perfect leg of lamb with all the trimmings. I had discovered one thing about Generics already: dull and uninteresting they may be — but they learn fast.
2
Inside Caversham Heights
'Book/YGIO/1204961/: Title:Caversham Heights. UK, 1976, 90,000 words. Genre: Detective Fiction. Book Operating System: BOOK V7.2. Grammasite infestation: 1 (one) nesting pair of Parenthiums (protected). Plot: Routine detective thriller with stereotypical detective Jack Spratt. Set in Reading (England), the plot (such as it is) revolves around a drugs czar hoping to muscle in on Reading's seedy underworld. Routine and unremarkable, Caversham Heights represents all the worst aspects of amateur writing. Flat characters, unconvincing police work and a pace so slow that snails pass it in the night. Recommendation: Unpublishable. Suggest book be broken up for salvage at soonest available opportunity. Current status: Awaiting Council of Genre's Book Inspectorate's report before ordering demolition.'
I explained the rudiments of breakfast to ibb and obb the following morning. I told them that cereal traditionally came before the bacon and eggs but that toast and coffee had no fixed place within the meal; they had problems with the fact that marmalade was almost exclusively the preserve of breakfast and I was just trying to explain the technical possibilities of dippy egg fingers when a copy of The Toad dropped on the mat. The only news story was about some sort of drug-related gang warfare in Reading. It was part of the plot in Caversham Heights and reminded me that sooner or later — and quite possibly sooner — I would be expected to take on the mantle of Mary as part of the Character Exchange Programme. I had another careful read of the précis, which gave me a good idea of the plot chapter by chapter, but no precise dialogue or indication as to what I should be doing, or when. I didn't have to wonder very long as a knock at the door revealed a very agitated man holding a clipboard.
'Miss Next?'
'Yes?'
'The name's Wyatt.'
'What?'
'No, not Watt, Wyatt — W-Y-A-T-T.'
'What can I do for you?'
'You can get your arse into Reading, that's what you can do.'
'Steady on—'
'I don't know why people in the Character Exchange Programme think they can treat it like a holiday,' he added, clearly annoyed. 'Just because we've had a demolition order hanging over us for the past ten years, you think you can all muck about.'
'I assure you I thought no such thing,' I replied, attempting to pacify the minor character who had taken it upon himself to keep me in check. From my reading of the book I knew that he featured as nothing more than a voice on the end of a telephone.
'I'll be on to it straight away,' I told him, fetching my coat and heading for Mary's car. 'Do you have an address for me?'
He handed over a scrap of paper and reminded me I was late.
'And no ad-libbing,' he added as an afterthought. I promised I wouldn't and trotted up the lane towards Mary's car.
I drove off slowly into Reading, across the M4, which seemed as busy as it was back home; I used the same road myself when travelling between Swindon and London. It was only when I was approaching the junction at the top of Burghfield Road that I realised there were, at most, only a half-dozen or so different vehicles on the roads. The vehicle that first drew my attention to this strange phenomenon was a large white truck with Dr Spongg's Footcare Products painted on the side. I saw three in under a minute, all with an identical driver dressed in a blue boiler suit and flat cap. The next most obvious vehicle was a red VW Beetle driven by a young lady, then a battered blue Morris Marina with an elderly man at the wheel. By the time I had drawn up outside the scene of Caversham Heights' first murder, I had counted forty-three white trucks, twenty-two red Beetles and sixteen identically battered Morris Marinas, not to mention several green Ford Escorts and a brace of white Chevrolets. It was obviously a limitation within the text and nothing more, so I hurriedly parked, read Mary's notes again to make sure I knew what I had to do, took a deep breath and walked across to the area that had been taped off. A few uniformed police officers were milling around. I showed my warrant card and ducked under the 'Police: do not cross' tape.
The yard was oblong shaped, fifteen foot wide and about twenty foot long, surrounded by a high red brick wall with crumbling mortar. There was a large white SOCO tent over the scene and a forensic pathologist was kneeling next to a well-described corpse dictating notes into a tape recorder.
'Hello!' said a jovial voice close by. I turned to see a large man in a macintosh grinning at me.
'Detective Sergeant Mary,' I told him obediently. 'Transferred here from Basingstoke.'
'You don't have to worry about all that yet.' He smiled. 'The story is with Jack at the moment — he's meeting Officer Tibbit on the street outside. My name's DCI Briggs and I'm your friendly yet long-suffering boss in this little caper. Crusty and prone to outbursts of temper yet secretly supportive, I will have to suspend Jack at least once before the story is over.'
'How do you do?' I spluttered.
'Excellent!' cried Briggs, shaking my hand gratefully. 'Mary told me you're with Jurisfiction. Is that true?'
'Yes.'
'Any news about when the Council of Genres Book Inspectorate will be in?' he asked. 'It would be a help to know.'
'Council of Genres?' I echoed, trying not to let my ignorance show. 'I'm sorry, I've not spent that much time in the BookWorld.'
'An Outlander?' replied Briggs, eyes wide in wonderment. 'Here, in Caversham Heights'?'
'Yes,' I admitted, 'I'm—'
'Tell me,' interrupted Briggs, 'what do waves look like when they crash on the shore?'
'Who's an Outlander?' echoed the pathologist, a middle-aged Indian woman who suddenly leaped to her feet and stared at me intently. 'You?'
'Y-es,' I admitted.
'I'm Dr Singh,' explained the pathologist, shaking my hand vigorously. 'I'm matter-of-fact, apparently without humour, like cats and people who like cats, don't suffer fools, yet on occasion I do exhibit a certain warmth. Tell me, do you think I'm anything like a real pathologist?'