out the initials A B, and the last name began with an N. The rest of it looked disturbingly like the last desperate squiggles of a vital-signs monitor in a hospital, just before it flatlines. Ah well.
He hadn’t been knocking for much more than a quarter of an hour when the door opened, and a pretty girl smiled at him through the narrow crack between door and frame. “Hello,” she said.
“Um.”
“Sorry?”
He’d rehearsed a little speech, but for some reason he couldn’t remember it. “I’m here about a job,” he said.
The girl looked desperately sad. She was, he decided, the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen in his life – perfect oval face, shoulder-length wavy chestnut hair, clear blue eyes and all that – but not in the least attractive, as though she’d been assembled by a computer program, with the net result that, when you examined her closely, she wasn’t nearly as pretty as she looked. Nietzsche would’ve christened her the Uberwench. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “But I don’t think they’re looking for anybody right now.”
“I’ve got a letter.”
“And you’re not afraid to use it?”
“Sorry?”
She shrugged. “That was what we call a joke,” she said. “You’ll get used to them in time. What sort of a letter?”
Rather than try and explain, he held the letter out, as if it was a lion tamer’s chair. She looked down at it but didn’t touch it. “A B – sorry, I can’t read that. What does it say?”
“No idea.”
“Ah. Still, it’s a very nice letter. Cute envelope. Very clean.”
He took a deep breath. “It’s from a friend of mine. As a matter of fact, he’s dead.”
“I’m so sorry. What did he die of?”
Actually, Theo realised, I don’t know the answer to that. “It’s a letter to a friend of his.”
“Right. That’d be you, yes?”
“No.”
“Oh. I thought you said this dead person was your friend.”
“No, a different friend. He had two friends. At least two.”
“Ah. Mister Congeniality, in other words.”
Theo forced himself onwards, like a swimmer battling upstream through a custard tsunami. “My friend,” he said, “wrote this letter to his friend.”
“Fine. So why’ve you got it?”
“He gave it to me,” Theo said, “to give to his other friend. That’s A B thing. You know, on the envelope.”
“Ah,” she said sweetly, “I see. You’re a postman.”
Theo sighed. “The letter,” he ground on, like the mills of the gods with a ruptured bearing, “is asking Mr A B to give me a job.”
The girl looked at him and blinked. “Really?”
“Really.”
“Gosh. Well then, you’d better come in.”
“Thank you.”
She pushed the door wide, then stepped aside to let him pass. He found himself in a wide, airy hall, standing on a deep, soft carpet. The walls were panelled in a light, honey-coloured wood and there was a handsome walnut desk with phones and a VDU on it.
“So,” the girl was saying, “this Mr A B’s a guest here, then.”
“Um, no.” Theo noticed the ceiling; moulded plaster, painted white with gilded highlights. “I sort of thought this was his hotel.”
“Oh, you mean Mr Negative.” The girl gave him a smile you could’ve grown aubergines under. “Sorry, I should’ve guessed. Wait there a second, I’ll go and find him.”
“Mr Negative?”
She nodded. “I know,” she said, “it’s an odd kind of name, isn’t it? Won’t be long. Take a seat.”
She walked away through a doorway he hadn’t noticed before, and he looked round for a chair. There weren’t any. A B Negative, he thought, for crying out loud.
Almost at once a hidden door slid sideways in the panelling and a tall, middle-aged man in a smart blue suit stepped forward, smiling and extending his hand. Theo stuck out his own hand to shake, then remembered and lowered it again. With his left hand, he gave the man the letter.
“Ah,” the man said. “Poor, dear Pieter, such a great loss to us all. Now then.” He ripped the letter open like a wolf savaging a rabbit, and glanced at it. “You need a job.”
“Yes.”
“No problem. What can you do?”
“Well.” Here we go. “I used to be physicist, specialising in particle dynamics, but then I—”
“So you’re good with telephones.”
“Excuse me?”
“Telephones.” The man pointed at the desk. “I could use someone to man the front desk. When we’re busy.”
Apart from the two of them (and the girl, presumably, wherever she’d got to) there was no sign of another living creature on the premises. “I could do that.”
The man was peering at the end of his right sleeve. “The arm thing not a