The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [262]
“What do you think?” asked Landen. “Twenty-five?”
“Possibly a little older,” I muttered, looking closer at the amalgam of my attacker, trying to fix it in my memory. She had plain features, a small amount of makeup and blond hair cut in an asymmetric bob. She didn’t look like a killer. I ran through all the information I had—which didn’t take long. The failed SpecOps-5 investigations allowed me a few clues: the recurring name of Hades, the initials A.H., the fact that she did resolve on pictures. Clearly it wasn’t Acheron in disguise, but perhaps—
“Oh, shit.”
“What?”
“It’s Hades.”
“It can’t be. You killed him.”
“I killed Acheron. He had a brother named Styx—why couldn’t he have a sister?”
We exchanged nervous looks and stared at the mnemonograph in front of us. Some of her features did seem to resemble Acheron now that I stared at her. Like Hades, she was tall and her lips were thin. That alone would not have been enough; after all, many people are tall with thin lips, and few, if any, are evil geniuses. But her eyes were unmistakable—they had a sort of brooding darkness to them.
“No wonder she’s pissed off with you,” murmured Landen. “You killed her brother.”
“Thanks for that, Landen,” I replied. “Always know how to relax a girl.”
“Sorry. So we know the H in A.H. is Hades—what about the A?”
“The Acheron was a tributary of the river Styx,” I said quietly. “As was the Phlegethon, Cocytus, Lethe—and Aornis.”
I’d never felt so depressed at having identified a suspect before. But something was niggling at me. There was something here that I couldn’t see, like listening to a TV from another room. You hear dramatic music but you have no idea what’s going on.
“Cheer up,” smiled Landen, rubbing my shoulder, “she’s ballsed it up three times already—it might never happen!”
“There’s something else, Landen.”
“What?”
“Something I’ve forgotten. Something I never remembered. Something about—I don’t know.”
“It’s no good asking me,” replied Landen. “I may seem real to you, but I’m not—I’m only here as your memory of me. I can’t know any more than you do.”
Aornis had vanished and Landen was starting to fade.
“You’ve got to go now,” he said in a hollow-sounding voice. “Remember what I said about Jack Schitt.”
“Don’t go!” I yelled. “I want to stay here for a bit. It’s not much fun out here at the moment, I think it’s Miles’s baby, Aornis wants to kill me and Goliath and Flanker—”
But it was too late. I’d woken up. I was still in bed, undressed, bedclothes rumpled. The clock told me it was a few minutes past nine. I stared at the ceiling in a forlorn mood, wondering how I could really have got myself into such a mess, and then wondering if there was anything I could have done to prevent it. I decided, on the face of it, probably not. This, to my fuddled way of thinking, I took to be a positive sign, so I slipped on a T-shirt and shuffled into the kitchen, filled the kettle and put some dried apricots in Pickwick’s bowl after trying and failing once again to get her to stand on one leg.
I shook the entroposcope just in case—was thankful to find everything normal—and was just checking the fridge for some fresh milk when the doorbell rang. I trotted out to the hall, picked up my automatic from the table and asked: “Who is it?”
“Open the door, Doofus.”
I put the gun away and opened the door. Joffy smiled at me as he entered and raised his eyebrows at my disheveled state.
“Half day today?”
“I don’t feel like working now that Landen’s gone.”
“Who?”
“Never mind. Coffee?”
We walked into the kitchen. Joffy patted Pickwick on the head, and I emptied the old grounds out of the coffee jug. He sat down at the table.
“Seen Dad recently?”
“Last week. He was fine. How much did you make on the art sale?”
“Over