The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [706]
“You’re not here for the carpets, are you?”
“I know you have form for cheese smuggling, Next. There was a lump of Rhayder Speckled found beneath a Hispano-Suiza in ’86, and you’ve been busted twice for possession since then. The second time you were caught with six kilos of Streaky Durham. You were lucky to be fined only for possession and not trading without a license.”
“Did you come here to talk about my past misdemeanors?”
“No. I’ve come to you for information. While cheese smuggling is illegal, it’s considered a low priority. The CEA has always been a small department more interested in collecting duty than banging up harmless cheeseheads. That’s all changed.”
“It has?”
“I’m afraid so,” replied Flanker grimly. “There’s a new cheese on the block. Something powerful enough to make a user’s head vanish in a ball of fire.”
“That’s a figure of speech for ‘really powerful,’ right?”
“No,” said Flanker with deadly seriousness. “The victim’s head really does vanish in a ball of fire. It’s a killer, Next—and addictive. It’s apparently the finest and most powerful cheese ever designed.”
This was worrying. I never regarded my cheese smuggling as anything more than harmless fun, cash for Acme and to supply something that should be legal anyway. If a cheese that I’d furnished had killed someone, I would face the music. Mind you, I’d tried most of what I’d flogged, and it was, after all, only cheese. Okay, so the taste of a particularly powerful cheese might render you unconscious or make your tongue numb for a week, but it never killed anyone—until now.
“Does this cheese have a name?” I asked, wondering if there’d been a bad batch of Machynlleth Wedi Marw.
“It only has a code name: X-14. Rumor says it’s so powerful that it has to be kept chained to the floor. We managed to procure a half ounce. A technician dropped it by mistake, and this was the result.”
He showed me a photograph of a smoking ruin.
“The remains of our central cheese-testing facility.”
He put the photograph away and stared at me. Of course, I had seen some X-14. It’d been chained up in the back of Pryce’s truck the night of the cheese buy. Owen had declined to even show it to me. I’d traded with him every month for over eight years, and I never thought he was the sort of person to knowingly peddle anything dangerous. He was like me: someone who just loved cheese. I wouldn’t snitch on him, not yet—not before I had more information.
“I don’t know anything,” I said at length, “but I can make inquiries.”
Flanker seemed to be satisfied with this, handed me his card and said in a stony voice, “I’ll expect your call.”
He turned and walked out of the store to a waiting Range Rover and drove off.
“Trouble for us?” asked Bowden as soon as I returned.
“No,” I replied thoughtfully, “trouble for me.”
He sighed. “That’s a relief.”
I took a deep breath and thought for a moment. Communications into the Socialist Republic of Wales were nonexistent—when I wanted to contact Pryce, I had to use a shortwave wireless transmitter at prearranged times. There was nothing I could do for at least forty-eight hours.
“So,” continued Bowden, handing me the clipboard with the list of people wanting quotes on it, “how about some Acme Carpets stuff?”
“What about SpecOps work?” I asked. “How’s that looking?”
“Stig’s still on the case of the Diatrymas and has at least a half dozen outstanding chimeras to track down. Spike has a few biters on the books, and there’s talk of another SEB over in Reading.”
It was getting desperate. I loved Acme, but only insofar as it was excellent cover and I never actually had to do anything carpet-related.
“And us? The ex–Literary Detectives?”
“Still nothing, Thursday.”
“What about Mrs. Mattock over in