The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [150]
“Jolly good,” he said finally and walked off.
After checking I was alone in the corridor I spoke out loud:
“Snell!”
Silence.
“Mr. Snell, can you hear me?”
More silence.
I sat down on a convenient bench and put my head between my knees. I felt sick and hot; both the SpecOps resident tensionologist and stresspert had said I might have some sort of traumatic aftershock from tackling Acheron Hades, but I hadn’t expected anything so vivid as voices in my head. I waited until my head cleared and then made my way not towards Flakk and her competition winners but towards Bowden and the Litera Tec’s office.8
I stopped.
“Prepared for what? I haven’t done anything!”9
“No, no!” I exclaimed. “I really don’t know what I’ve done. Where are you!?!”10
“Wait! Shouldn’t I see you before the hearing?”
There was no answer. I was about to yell again, but several people came out of the elevator, so I kept quiet. I waited for a moment but Mr. Snell didn’t seem to have anything more to add, so I made my way into the Litera Tec office, which closely resembled a large library in a country home somewhere. There weren’t many books we didn’t have—the result of bootleg seizures of literary works collected over the years. My partner, Bowden Cable, was already at his desk, which was as fastidiously neat as ever. He was dressed conservatively and was a few years younger than me although he had been in SpecOps a lot longer. Officially he was a higher rank, but we never let it get in the way—we worked as equals but in different ways: Bowden’s quiet and studious approach contrasted strongly with my own directness. It seemed to work well.
“Morning, Bowden.”
“Hello Thursday. Saw you on the telly last night.”
I took off my coat, sat down and started to rummage through telephone messages.
“How did I look?”
“Fine. They didn’t let you talk about Jane Eyre much, did they?”
“Press freedom was on holiday that day.”
He understood and smiled softly.
“Never fear—someday the full story will be told. Are you okay? You look a little flushed.”
“I’m okay,” I told him, giving up on the telephone messages. “Actually, I’m not. I’ve been hearing voices.”
“Stress, Thursday. It’s not unusual. Anyone specific?”
I got up to fetch some coffee, and Bowden followed me.
“A lawyer named Akrid Snell. Said he was representing me. Refill?”
“No, thanks. On what charge?”
“He wouldn’t say.”
I poured myself a large coffee as Bowden thought for a moment.
“Sounds like an inner guilt conflict, Thursday. In policing we have to sometimes—”
He stopped as two other LiteraTec agents walked close by, discussing the merits of a recently discovered seventy-eight-word palindrome that made sense. We waited until they were out of earshot before continuing:
“—we have to sometimes close off our emotions. Could you have killed Hades if you were thinking clearly?”
“I don’t think I would have been able to kill him if I wasn’t,” I replied, sniffing at the milk. “I’ve not lost a single night’s sleep over Hades, but poor Bertha Rochester bothers me a bit.”
We went and sat down at our desks.
“Maybe that’s it,” replied Bowden, idly filling in the Owl crossword. “Perhaps you secretly want to be held accountable for her death. I heard Crometty talking to me for weeks after his murder—I thought I should have been there to back him up— but I wasn’t.”
“How are you getting along with the crossword?”
He passed it over and I scanned the answers.
“What’s a ‘RILK’?” I asked him.
“It’s a—”
“Ah, there you are!” said a booming voice. We turned to see Victor Analogy striding across from his office. Head of the Swindon Litera Tecs since who knows when, he was a sprightly seventy-something with a receding hairline and a figure that guaranteed the part of Santa Claus at the SpecOps Christmas party. Despite his jocular nature he could be as hard as nails on occasion and was a good buffer between SO-27 and Braxton Hicks, who was strictly a company man. Analogy guarded our independence closely and regarded all his staff as family, and