The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [242]
“A misunderstanding.”
“Hm. Is this also a misunderstanding?”
He laid a police charge sheet on the desk.
“Permissioning a horse and cartecar to be driven by personn of low moral turpithtude. You lent your car to a lunatic driver, then helped her to escape the law. What on earth did you think you were doing?”
“The greater good, sir.”
“No such thing,” he barked back, handing me a SpecOps claim docket. “Officer Tillen at stores gave me this. It’s your claim for a new Browning automatic.”
I stared dumbly at the docket. My original Browning, the one I had looked after from first issue, had been left in a motorway services somewhere in a patch of bad time.
“I take this very seriously, Next. It says here you ‘lost’ SpecOps property in unsanctioned SO-12 work. Flagrant disregard for network property makes me very angry, Next. There is our budget to think of, you know.”
“I thought it would come down to that,” I murmured.
“What did you say?”
“I said: ‘I’ll retrieve it eventually, sir.’ ”
“Maybe so. But lost property has to come under the monthly current expenditure and not the yearly resupply budget. We’ve been a little stretched recently. Your escapade with Jane Eyre was successful but not without cost. All things considered, I am sorry but I will have to mark your performance as ‘F—definite room for improvement.’ ”
“An F? Sir, I must protest!”
“Talk’s over, Next. I’m truly sorry. This is quite outside my hands.”
“Is this an SO-1 way of punishing me?” I asked indignantly. “You know I’ve never had anything lower than an A in all my eight years with the service!”
“Raising your voice does you no good at all, young lady,” replied Hicks in an even tone, wagging his finger as a man might do to his spaniel. “This interview is over. I am sorry, believe me.”
I didn’t believe he was sorry for one moment—and suspected that he had been influenced from higher up. I sighed, got up, saluted and made for the door.
“Wait!” said Braxton. “There’s something else.”
I returned.
“Yes?”
“Keep your temper.”
“Is that all?”
“No.”
He handed over a packet of clothes in a polythene bundle.
“The department is now sponsored by the Toast Marketing Board. You’ll find a hat, T-shirt and jacket in this package. Wear them when you can and be prepared for some corporate entertainment.”
“Sir—!”
“Don’t complain. If you hadn’t eaten that toast on The Adrian Lush Show they never would have contacted us. Over a million quid in funding—not to be sniffed at with people like you soaking up the funds. Shut the door on the way out, will you?”
The morning’s fun wasn’t over. As I stepped out of Braxton’s office I almost bumped into Flanker.
“Ah!” he said. “Next. A word with you, if you don’t mind—?”
It wasn’t a request—it was an order. I followed him into an empty interview room and he closed the door.
“Seems to me you’re in such deep shit your eyes will turn brown, Next.”
“My eyes are already brown, Flanker.”
“Then you’re halfway there already. I’ll come straight to the point. You earned £600 last night.”
“So?”
“The service takes a dim view of moonlighting.”
“It was Stoker at SO-27,” I told him. “I was deputized—all aboveboard.”
Flanker went quiet. His intelligence-gathering had obviously let him down badly.
“Can I go?”
Flanker sighed.
“Listen, here, Thursday,” he began in a more moderate tone of voice, “we need to know what your father is up to.”
“What’s the problem? Industrial action standing in the way of next week’s cataclysmic event?”
“Freelance navigators will sort it out, Next.”
He was bluffing.
“You have no more idea about the nature of the Armageddon than Dad, me, Lavoisier, or anyone else, do you?”
“Perhaps not,” replied Flanker, “but we at SpecOps are far better suited to having no clue at all than you and that chronupt father of yours.”
“Chronupt?” I said angrily, getting to my feet. “My father? That’s a joke! What is your golden boy Lavoisier doing eradicating my husband, then?”
Flanker eyed me silently for a moment.
“That’s a very serious