The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [7]
“What are you hoping to find?” asked Paige.
“Anything.”
I didn’t find it.
3.
Back at My Desk
Funding for the Special Operations Network comes directly from the government. Most work is centralized, but all of the SpecOps divisions have local representatives to keep a watchful eye on any provincial problems. They are administered by local commanders, who liaise with the national offices for information exchange, guidance and policy decisions. Like any other big government department, it looks good on paper but is an utter shambles. Petty infighting and political agendas, arrogance and sheer bloody-mindedness almost guarantees that the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing.
MILLON DE FLOSS
—A Short History of the Special Operations Network
TWO DAYS of fruitless hunting for Chuzzlewit had passed without even the slightest clue as to where it might be. There had been whispers of reprimands, but only if we could figure out how the manuscript was taken. It would seem a bit ludicrous to be chastised for leaving a loophole in the security arrangements but not know what it was. Now slightly despondent, I was sitting at my desk back at the station. Recalling my conversation with Dad, I phoned my mother to ask her not to paint the bedroom mauve. The call backfired slightly as she thought this a grand idea and hung up before I could argue. I sighed and flipped through the telephone messages that had accumulated over the past two days. They were mostly from informers and concerned citizens who had been robbed or cheated and wanted to know if we had made any headway. It was all small beer compared to Chuzzlewit—there were a lot of gullible people out there buying first editions of Byronic verse at knockdown prices, then complaining bitterly when they found out they were fakes. Like most of the other operatives, I had a pretty good idea who was behind all of this, but we never caught the big fish—just the “utterers,” the dealers who sold it all on. It smacked of corruption in high places but we never had any proof. Usually I read my messages with interest, but today none of it seemed terribly important. After all, the verses of Byron, Keats or Poe are real whether they are in bootleg form or not. You can still read them for the same effect.
I opened the drawer of my desk and pulled out a small mirror. A woman with somewhat ordinary features stared back at me. Her hair was a plain mousy color and of medium length, tied up rather hastily in a ponytail at the back. She had no cheekbones to speak of and her face, I noticed, had just started to show some rather obvious lines. I thought of my mother, who had looked as wrinkled as a walnut by the time she was forty-five. I shuddered, placed the mirror back in the drawer and took out a faded and slightly dog-eared photograph. It was a photo of myself with a group of friends taken in the Crimea when I had been simply Corporal T. E. Next, 33550336, Driver: APC, Light Armored Brigade. I had served my country diligently, been involved in a military disaster and then honorably discharged with a gong to prove it. They had expected me to give talks about recruitment and valor but I had disappointed them. I attended one regimental reunion but that was it; I had found myself looking for the faces that I knew weren’t there.
In the photo Landen was standing on my left, his arm around me and another soldier, my brother, his best mate. Landen lost a leg, but he came home. My brother was still out there.
“Who’s that?” asked Paige, who had been looking over my shoulder.
“Whoa!” I yelped. “You just scared the crap out of me!”
“Sorry! Crimea?”
I handed her the photo and she looked at it intently.
“That must be your brother—you have the same nose.”
“I know, we used to share it on a rota. I had it Mondays, Wednesd—”
“—then the other man must be Landen.”
I frowned and turned to face her. I never mentioned Landen to anyone. It was personal. I felt kind of betrayed that she might have been prying behind my back.
“How do you know about Landen?”