The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [9]
“Not that way. We just made a bit of headway and that’s not always good news. Some people research well in SO-5 but don’t like the fieldwork. They have kids. I don’t. But I understand.”
I nodded. I understood too.
“Why are you talking to me?” I asked almost casually. “I’m SO-27; as the SpecOps transfer board so kindly keeps telling me, my talents lie either in front of a Litera Tec desk or a kitchen stove.”
Tamworth smiled. He patted the file in front of him.
“I know all about that. SpecOps Central Recruiting don’t really have a good word for ‘No,’ they just fob. It’s what they’re best at. On the contrary, they are fully aware of your potential. I spoke to Boswell just now and he thinks he can just about let you go if you want to help us over at SO-5.”
“If you’re SO-5 he doesn’t have much choice, does he?”
Tamworth laughed.
“That’s true. But you do. I’d never recruit anyone who didn’t want to join me.”
I looked at him. He meant it.
“Is this a transfer?”
“No,” replied Tamworth, “it isn’t. I just need you because you have information that is of use to us. You’ll be an observer; nothing more. Once you understand what we’re up against you’ll be very glad to be just that.”
“So when this is over I just get thrown back here?”
He paused and looked at me for a moment, trying to give the best assurance that he could without lying. I liked him for it.
“I make no guarantees, Miss Next, but anyone who has been on an SO-5 assignment can be pretty confident that they won’t be SO-27 forever.”
“What is it you want me to do?”
Tamworth pulled a form from his case and pushed it across the table to me. It was a standard security clearance and, once signed, gave SpecOps the right to almost everything I possessed and a lot more besides if I so much as breathed a word to someone with a lesser clearance. I signed it dutifully and handed it back. In exchange he gave me a shiny SO-5 badge with my name already in place. Tamworth knew me better than I thought. This done, he lowered his voice and began:
“SO-5 is basically a Search & Containment facility. We are posted with a man to track until found and contained, then we get another. SO-4 is pretty much the same; they are just after a different thing. Person. You know. Anyway, I was down at Gad’s Hill this morning, Thursday—can I call you Thursday?—and I had a good look at the crime scene at first hand. Whoever took the manuscript of Chuzzlewit left no fingerprints, no sign of entry and nothing on any of the cameras.”
“Not a lot to go on, was there?”
“On the contrary. It was just the break I’ve been waiting for.”
“Did you share this with Boswell?” I asked.
“Of course not. We’re not interested in the manuscript; we’re interested in the man who stole it.”
“And who’s that?”
“I can’t tell you his name but I can write it.”
He took out a felt tip and wrote “Acheron Hades” on a notepad and held it up for me to read.
“Look familiar?”
“Very familiar. There can’t be many people who haven’t heard about him.”
“I know. But you’ve met him, haven’t you?”
“Certainly,” I replied. “He was one of the lecturers when I studied English at Swindon in ’68. None of us were surprised when he switched to a career of crime. He was something of a lech. He made one of the students pregnant.”
“Braeburn; yes, we know about her. What about you?”
“He never made me pregnant, but he had a good try.”
“Did you sleep with him?”
“No; I didn’t figure sleeping with lecturers was really where I wanted to be. The attention was flattering, I suppose, dinner and stuff. He was brilliant—but a moral vacuum. I remember once he was arrested for armed robbery while giving a spirited lecture on John Webster’s The White Devil. He was released without charge on that occasion, but the Braeburn thing was enough to have him dismissed.”
“He asked you to go with him yet you turned him down.”
“Your information is good, Mr. Tamworth.”
Tamworth scribbled a note on his pad. He looked up at me again.
“But the important thing is: You know what he looks like?”
“Of course,” I replied, “but you’re wasting your time. He died in Venezuela