The Woman Who Died a Lot

18. Tuesday: Smalls

Finisterre was unharmed, as was Daisy. The worst off was Sister Henrietta, who had fallen downstairs and was now nursing a burst kneecap and the embarrassment of its being found out that he was a man. Oddly—although given that a low profile would doubtless be beneficial to the gang—no one had been seriously hurt. The pinpoint accuracy the diversionary force had used ensured zero casualties, but they had been live rounds— just intended to miss by a narrow margin. The only hits were the result of ricochets. Few were serious, and none life-threatening. Even Goliath would have realized that killing nuns is bad PR.

I was investigating the plastic bag and what remained of the torn-out pages when Mother Daisy and Finisterre joined me. The vellum had been reduced to a sticky gloop that had eventually dissolved its way through the plastic bag and oozed onto the stone floor. I pushed a pencil into the smoldering muck, and the paint blistered.

“It’s Malevolex,” said Finisterre, sniffing the air, “an organic acid used in the pulping industry to prepare remaindered books for being turned into MDF. When they cracked the phial in the bag, the two parts mixed and the book was history.”

I’d been staring at the plastic bag for a while. It had been a slick operation.

“They came up here knowing they would destroy these pages,” I said, climbing to my feet. “They didn’t copy it or even have enough time to read it all.”

“They’d have been seriously bored if they did,” said Daisy, handing me the rest of the book. It was titled Trawling around Tewkefbury after darke while piffed and the pleafuref to be found therein.

“A thirteenth-century racy novel that early members of the Sisterhood used to entertain themselves,” explained Daisy.

“It’s all a bit more proper these days, I take it?” asked James delicately.

“Goodness gracious no!” replied Daisy. “We’re more into Jilly Cooper and Daphne Farquitt. This particular racy codex is a bit . . . well, unimaginative—unless you like that sort of thing.”

“Who wrote it?” I asked.

“Stephen Shorts of Swine-dome,” said Finisterre. “You’d know him better as St. Zvlkx.”

“Ah!” I said, having come across Swindon’s very own saint before. Aside from his Revealments, which turned out to be a complex sporting fraud, St. Zvlkx wrote only banal books that revolved around drunkenness and womanizing. The purpose and reason for his sainthood are somewhat obscure but, knowing St. Zvlkx, probably had some basis in blackmail.

Daisy was flicking through the book, trying to find which page had gone.

“He pulled only one leaf out,” she said, studying the volume carefully, “which lay across the spine, so from two parts of the book. The first part was a report on which tavern in Tewkesbury offered the best opportunity to get totally plastered for a farthing, and the second section—if memory serves—was a lengthy digression on how best to handle the fallout from getting a town elder’s wife pregnant, an area in which Zvlkx was something of an expert.”

We stood in silence for a moment. Finisterre aired the thoughts we all shared.

“Why would someone attempt to break into a library guarded by dangerously violent nuns—sorry, no offense meant—”

“None taken.”

“—only to read the licentious ramblings of a despicable rogue from the thirteenth century?”

“Goliath is smart,” I said, “so there would have been a good reason. Perhaps that, too, was a diversionary measure—do something utterly random and incomprehensible, knowing full well we’d spend hours trying to figure it out. No, we take this as an attempted theft and vandalism. Was this the most valuable book?”

“It was possibly the least valuable,” said Daisy. “Almost every book in this room is worth more. Have a look at this.”

She drew out a volume almost at random and passed it to Finisterre, who stared at it, lower lip trembling.

“Pliny the Really Very Young’s account of being unable to see the eruption of Vesuvius due to being put to bed early for some bullshit excuse.”

“We have only fragments of this stuff,” I murmured as Finisterre reverentially placed it back on the shelf. “Worth ten million?”

“More. Much more.”

We looked around at the book-lined chamber.

“We’re surrounded by about half a billion pounds’ worth of books,” said Daisy. “Do you think we should consider insurance, and if so, what would be a reasonable excess?”

My ears had stopped ringing by the time Finisterre called in Colonel Wexler, who arrived with ten of her crack Special Library Services troops dressed in their Antiquarian Book camouflage of musty browns and water-stained dark reds. Colonel Wexler nodded respectfully as she passed me, and we were about to leave when Detective Phoebe Smalls turned up.

“Smalls, SpecOps 27,” she said to us when she arrived, presumably for Mother Daisy’s benefit, as we knew who she was. She was in a police tiltrotor along with half a dozen armed cops.

“Hello, Phoebe,” I said brightly. “I knew we’d meet again soon. What are you doing here?”

“I’m taking charge,” she said. “Why didn’t you report this in straightaway? I had to find out about the break-in through the grapevine.”

“Is there a grapevine?” asked Finisterre.

“I’ve heard there’s one,” I returned with a half smile.

“Very funny,” said Smalls. “I want you to turn over the command of your SLS troops to me and have a full report on my desk by tomorrow morning—after you’ve given me a debrief on what you know right now.”

“Where are your own people?” I asked, since she had arrived without any SO-27 operatives.

She glared at me. “We’re having recruitment . . . issues,” she said quietly. “I went through the list of reassignment requests. The formation of SO-27 has been on the cards for weeks. Lots of time for officers to ask to join me.”

“There weren’t any, were there?”

“Not one,” said Phoebe, “but we’ll resolve that soon enough. Now, this is SO-27 jurisdiction. The debrief, Next.”

“It’s our jurisdiction,” I said simply.

“How do you figure that?” she demanded, her mood angrier by the second. “Scriptorium, theft,thirteenth-century codices— what could be more Literary Detective about it?”

“We’ve given the Lobsterhood book collection Wessex Library status,” I said. “This library and all within comes under our control. The Special Library Services troops are legally empowered to shoot to kill. I can ask SO-27 for assistance, but that’s as far as it goes.”

Phoebe Smalls looked at me, then at Mother Daisy, who nodded agreement. Smalls could have carried on in a dopey rant, but she was smart enough to know that yelling would be pointless and degrading, plus there was a better-than-good chance I knew what I was doing.

“Very well,” she said at last. “SO-27 offers every assistance to the library in this matter. But I’d like to be kept in the loop,” she added in a softer tone, “simply as a professional courtesy.”

“Okay,” I replied, “here it is: Thieves of unknown origin with an unknown motive destroyed a single leaf from a book with marginal value, literary merits or rarity.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. But,” I added, “there might be a Goliath angle to this, and if someone is monkeying around with thirteenth-century codices for no reason, all antiquarian suppliers, dealers and collectors need to be informed so they can increase security. You can do that better than I.”

“It might not be the first time this has happened,” said Phoebe thoughtfully. “I’ll run through reports of any unexplained vandalism in the lucrative and highly buoyant seriously-ancientcodex market.”

It wasn’t a good idea—it was a great idea. So great that I should have been the one making it.

“Goes without saying,” I said, and she flashed me a quizzical look.

“I’m glad to see we can work together,” she said. “I’ll have my staff make it happen. When I get staff. Shit. I’ll be doing it.” She paused. “What sort of Goliath angle?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “They have lots of angles. It shouldn’t be too hard to find two dozen. We can narrow it down from there.”

“Right. May I ask a favor in return?”

“Sure.”

“Would you have a word with Bowden Cable? I need a good deputy, and he’d be pretty much perfect.”

“He’s very happy working at Acme Carpets,” I said, “but I’ll ask him.”

She nodded, placed her armed police under the command of Colonel Wexler, then departed. If she couldn’t get any staff to work for her—SpecOps was always voluntary—then the department could be closed as quickly as it had been reopened. It wouldn’t affect Braxton’s wasteful-budget policy, as there were plenty other SpecOps departments in which to squander money.

Finisterre vented some steam from the condensers before winding the craft up to liftoff power.

“All right back there?” he asked.

Sister Megan was with Sister Henrietta, whose kneecap had been placed back in position and then covered with bandages. The blood was already seeping through. We asked for an expedited transit of the Salisbury range and were at the Lola Vavoom Discount Sofa Warehouse See Press for Details Memorial Hospital less than twenty minutes later.

“Are you sure you don’t want to be checked over?” asked Finisterre after we had offloaded the recently renamed Brother Henry. “Bruised and sore, but I’ll be fine,” I told him. “Despite being pretty much useless, I actually enjoyed myself.”

“Don’t get too used to it. You’re chief librarian now: less running around waving a pistol and more in charge of policy and procurement, appointments and budget responsibility.”

“I am, aren’t I?”

If I had clout, it was time to use it. I called the office to tell Duffy that I needed to see Swindon’s Goliath representative in my office first thing in the morning “as a matter of the utmost urgency.”

Duffy said he would take care of it, then asked me what time I wanted to be picked up in my car in the morning and whether I had any “dietary considerations” as regarding lunch. I was going to tell him I didn’t need a car, but since I couldn’t drive myself and it wasn’t fair to use Landen as a taxi service, I told him 9:00 A.M. and that I ate most things except okra and marzipan.

“James?” I said as soon as I had rung off.

“Yes?” he replied, scooting low across Liddington Castle as he made the short hop to Aldbourne.

“Why did we only find Crabbe’s descender?”

We had been to look at Jack and Crabbe’s escape route before Smalls had arrived. The rope was still there, and the descender used by Crabbe—but no sign of Jack’s.

“Logic would dictate that he escaped using another method. Not sure how, though—a BASE jump would be the only other way out, but there was no evidence of a parachute either. Unless you have any bright ideas?”

I didn’t, which raised the question: If Jack didn’t parachute out and didn’t go down the rope, how did he escape?