The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [51]
He rubbed his nose slightly; it was the only sign of outward emotion that he had shown.
“I consider myself a spiritual man, Miss Next, although I am not religious. By spiritual I merely mean that I feel I have good in my soul and am inclined to follow the correct course of action given a prescribed set of circumstances. Do you understand?”
I nodded.
“Having said that, I would still be very keen to end the life of the person who did this foul deed. I have been practicing on the range and now carry a pistol full time; look—”
“Show me later, Mr. Cable. Do you have any leads?”
“None. Nothing at all. We don’t know who he was seeing or why. I have contacts over at Homicide; they have nothing either.”
“Being shot six times in the face is the mark of a person with a gleeful passion for the undertaking of their duties,” I told him. “Even if Crometty had been carrying a gun I don’t think it would have made much difference.”
“You could be right,” sighed Bowden. “I can’t think of a single time that a pistol has been drawn on a Litera Tec investigation.”
I agreed. Ten years ago in London it had been the same. But big business and the huge amounts of cash in the sale and distribution of literary works had attracted a bigger criminal element. I knew of at least four London Litera Tecs who had died in the line of duty.
“It’s becoming more violent out there. It’s not like it is in the movies. Did you hear about the surrealist riot in Chichester last night?”
“I certainly did,” he replied. “I can see Swindon involved in similar disturbances before too long. The art college nearly had a riot on its hands last year when the governors dismissed a lecturer who had been secretly encouraging students to embrace abstract expressionism. They wanted him charged under the Interpretation of the Visual Medium Act. He fled to Russia, I think.”
I looked at my watch.
“I have to go and see the SpecOps commander.”
Bowden allowed a rare smile to creep upon his serious features.
“I bid you good luck. If you would permit me to offer you some advice, keep your automatic out of sight. Despite James’s untimely death, Commander Hicks doesn’t want to see the Litera Tecs permanently armed. He believes that our place is firmly at a desk.”
I thanked him, left my automatic in the desk drawer and walked down the corridor. I knocked twice and was invited into the outer office by a young clerk. I told him my name and he asked me to wait.
“The Commander won’t be long. Fancy a cup of coffee?”
“No thanks.”
The clerk looked at me curiously.
“They say you’ve come from London to avenge Jim Crometty’s death. They say you killed two men. They say your father’s face can stop a clock. Is this true?”
“It depends on how you look at it. Office rumors are pretty quick to get started, aren’t they?”
Braxton Hicks opened the door to his office and beckoned me in. He was a tall, thin man with a large mustache and a gray complexion. He had bags under his eyes; it didn’t look as though he slept much. The room was far more austere than any commander’s office I had ever seen. Several golf bags were leaning against the wall, and I could see that a carpet putter had been hastily pushed to one side.
He smiled genially and offered me a seat before sitting himself.
“Cigarette?”
“I don’t, thank you.”
“Neither do I.”
He stared at me for a moment and drummed his long fingers on the immaculately clear desk. He opened a folder in front of him and read in silence for a moment. He was reading my SO-5 file; obviously he and Analogy didn’t get on well enough to swap information between clearances.
“Operative Thursday Next, eh?” His eyes flicked across the pertinent points of my career. “Quite a record. Police, Crimea, rejoined the police, then moved to London in ’75. Why was that?”
“Advancement, sir.”
Braxton Hicks grunted and continued reading.
“SpecOps for eight years, twice commended. Recently loaned to SO-5. Your stay with the