Doughnut - By Tom Holt Page 0,35
fireplace. “I remember Con saying, you could chuck knives at that Max all day long and never hit him, cos he’s so thin. No, I think he just stopped coming by after a while, for some reason.” She looked at him. “You know him, then.”
“What? I mean, I don’t know. He could be someone I used to know, but then again, it could be someone else. Did he, um, come in here with anyone in particular?”
She smiled. “Oh yes,” she said. “He was great pals with that wizard bloke.”
“Wizard.” He had to ask, but he already knew, with the resigned foreboding of an infant at the font who knows that his three elder brothers are called John, Paul and George, what the answer would be. “He wouldn’t be a short, fat guy. Bald head.”
“That’s him,” the woman said cheerfully. “Talks funny.” She paused. “Like you do.”
“He used to come in here with this Max.”
“Oh yes. From time to time, you know. On and off.”
“When was the last time you saw the wizard?”
“Not quite sure,” she replied. “I think maybe he was in here last—” She stopped. She was looking over his shoulder. When she spoke again, she lowered her voice. “Don’t want to seem unfriendly, but you might think about getting along. That’s Mad Frad waking up over there, look. I don’t think he likes you.”
“What makes you say—”
“Well, he did throw an axe at you. Mind, you can’t always tell with Frad. Sometimes when he wakes up, all he does is sit in a corner and sob for a day or so. Other times—”
“I’ll be going, then,” Theo said. “Thanks for the chat.”
“Don’t you want your doughnut?”
He’d forgotten all about it. His hand lashed out and connected, and the last thing he saw in that reality was the woman’s face through the hole in the doughnut. And then –
“Sorry I was so long,” he panted, slamming the bottle of Veuve Clicquot down on the reception desk. “I, um…”
“You’ve been seven minutes,” Mrs Duchene-Wilamowicz replied, with a smile. “Not bad, considering.”
“What? Oh, I see what you—” Memo from his brain; stop talking, before you embarrass yourself. “One bottle of champagne,” he said. “Will there be anything else?”
She stood up. “No, that’s fine. Thank you very much. I expect it’ll be lovely and fizzy, after all that being shaken about.” Looking past her, he saw that a couple of the desk drawers, the ones that stuck a bit, weren’t properly closed, as they’d been when he left them. “Well,” she said, “I’ll leave you to it.”
“Thanks for looking after the desk,” he remembered to say. “Were there any messages?”
“Two,” she replied. “I’ve left notes,” she added, nodding towards two yellow stickies on the desktop. “Enjoy the rest of your shift. Doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun?”
He gave her back a thoughtful scowl as she walked away. Time flies, yes. Fun, no. That and the rummaged-in desk drawers, and the fact that she’d been Pieter’s wife – obviously she knew something; equally obviously, it wasn’t something to be admitted to or talked about openly, or else why all the sneaking about and room searching?
He sat back in the chair and thought about it all. Clearly she knew about YouSpace; so, in all probability, did Call-me-Bill and Matasuntha. It wasn’t an unreasonable exercise in conclusion gymnastics to assume that they wanted the bottle. Fine, Theo thought. It’s terrifying and potentially lethal, so why not let them have it?
If he’d been having this conversation with himself eight minutes ago, there’d have been no argument. Give them the stupid bottle. But things had changed since then. Sudden, unexpected and potentially troublesome as a Klingon battle cruiser at a garden party, echoes of Max were back in his life. Yippee.
Because of which, he really couldn’t let go of the bottle just yet, not if there was any possibility, however remote, of finding out what had become of Max, not to mention what connection, if any, he’d had with Pieter van Goyen. Of course, the likeliest explanation was that it was all a con; a captivating little Easter egg snuggled into the program by Pieter to snag his attention and nestle there, the sweet-corn husk of doubt wedged between the teeth of curiosity. Ninety-nine per cent sure that that must be the true explanation; because he had no reason whatsoever to believe that Pieter and Max had known each other, or that Max could do any form of mathematics not immediately relevant to losing money in