Doctor Who_ Cat's Cradle_ Warhead - Andrew Cartmel [14]
The cat was nowhere to be seen. But even if it had been sitting at her feet Maria wouldn’t have noticed it. She was looking at the man.
He was a small man, busy at the computer.
He didn’t seem at all surprised to see her.
‘Excuse me. Do you have clearance for this area?’
The little man looked up. ‘I’ve got clearance,’ he said, ‘but only because I’ve hacked into your security system. I’m an intruder.’ He winked at her and went back to his typing for a moment before stopping again. His head turned suddenly to the left, moving stiffy, like a bird’s. He was staring intently at something on the desk surface. It was as if he’d just spotted it at the edge of his vision. He swung around on his chair to face the desk and picked up something that was lying on it among the pens and papers, a large envelope.
‘What’s this?’
‘Company envelope.’
‘I thought there would be a bee and an eye on it.’
‘You can’t print it on there.’ The envelope was completely black.
‘You can’t address it to anyone, either.’
Maria kept her eyes on the man as she casually moved away from the computer where he was sitting. ‘It’s for keeping documents in. It’s got to be black to stop visual penetration, reading the documents inside.’ She moved a good distance away. She knew most of the people on these three floors by sight. The little man didn’t belong here. ‘You know, satellites, that sort of thing,’ she said, thinking quickly. Could he be some kind of senior executive? Some kind of software genius from the Butler Institutes in Cambridge or Eindhoven? He was weird enough. If the man had tried any kind of a story or snow job on her she would have hit the alarm already. If he made a move towards her she’d hit it. If he tried to run she’d hit it.
The small man looked at the envelope, smiling. ‘I like it, he said. ‘I think I’ll keep it.’ He put the envelope into a pocket of his jacket, then turned back to the computer screen and started working away again. His concentration complete, not pretending that Maria wasn’t there or anything, but just wearing this polite little frown and occasionally glancing up at her. As if to say, Sorry I’m so busy. Just wait a minute and then I’ll be happy to talk to you.
The cat was back now, circling her ankles, sniffing at them. Maria felt obscurely ashamed of those ankles; the old skin and the varicose veins. You should have seen my legs when I was dancing, she thought. ‘I could punch the alarm,’ she said. ‘Any time I want.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ said the man. Now he looked up and smiled. ‘I wonder if you’re going to, though.’ Maria couldn’t stop herself liking that smile. It should have been easy. All she had to do was remember how Jerome used to smile the same way. Full of mischief and hellraising. Smiling just before he did the sort of thing he enjoyed best. The sort of thing that eventually got him killed.
‘Why don’t you sit down?’ said the man.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Sit down. You’re in pain.’
Maria remained standing where she was. ‘What makes you think that?’
‘The way you hold yourself,’ said the man. ‘The way you move. How long has it been bad?’
‘A long time. But it won’t go on too much longer.’
‘No,’ said the man. He knew what he was talking about. He even sounded a little sad, sorry for her.
Maria took a clean tissue from her pocket. It was a soft piece of intricately folded tissue paper with a Japanese watermark. Despite every effort to make the King Building a self‐contained environment, the outside atmosphere got in. Car exhaust, ash and industrial dust leaking in through the window seals and air conditioning. This soft paper was used for wiping city grit off the screens of the computers.
Maria used it now for wiping her eyes. The little man sat, unmoving. It had been a long time since anyone had managed to get in under her radar like that. She blew her nose and wadded the screen wipe, squeezing the wet tissue hard in her fist. The shape of her fingers was moulded into the tight wet paper. She threw it across the