Doughnut - By Tom Holt Page 0,53

the VVLHC blowing up.

For a surprisingly long time, nothing happened. Then Call-me-Bill came charging down the stairs, wearing a tuxedo and pyjama bottoms, yelling, “Where’s the fire?”

Theo smiled at him. “There isn’t one.”

“What?”

“There is no fire.”

“What?”

Theo pointed at the alarm and tried to mime switch-it-off, which turned out to be harder than he’d anticipated. Eventually, though, Call-me-Bill must have got the general idea, because he opened a panel next to the box and pressed a button, and the horrible noise abruptly stopped.

“Where’s the—?”

“No fire.”

“But you—”

“That,” Theo said pleasantly, “was just to get your attention. Sorry if I startled you.”

“You lunatic,” Call-me-Bill panted, sitting down on the edge of the desk and grabbing at his forehead. “You scared me half to death. I thought the building—”

“Well, it isn’t,” Theo said briskly, “so that’s all right, isn’t it? Now, while you’re here, I’d like to ask you about a few things. Would that be OK?”

“I could’ve had a heart attack,” Call-me-Bill said helplessly. “I could’ve died.”

“Ah well, omelettes and eggs.” He smiled. “If it’s the hoax element that’s bothering you, I could really set fire to the hotel, it’d be no trouble. I’m good at destroying buildings, you see. Especially,” he added cheerfully, “large hadron colliders. Hell, with all the kit you’ve got downstairs, I could fix this place so good, they’d have to cordon it off for ninety years.”

Call-me-Bill tried to back away, but the desk was in the way. “You’re nuts,” he said.

“Nuts,” Theo replied calmly, “not fired. Well? Do I still have a job or don’t I?”

“Um.” Call-me-Bill was breathing hard, and it made his throat wobble, like a bullfrog. “Obviously you’re upset about something. Is it the room? You can move back to your old room if you’d rather, I just thought—”

“Oh come on,” Theo said, and he felt a strange calm sweep over him, like the hole in the middle of a cyclone. “I just threatened to blow up the hotel.”

“I promised Pieter van Goyen—”

“About Pieter.” There had been many questions jostling about in his mind, fighting to jump the queue, but now that the name had been spoken out loud, he knew exactly what he wanted to ask. “How did he die?”

“What?”

“He’s dead, right? So, what happened to him?”

Call-me-Bill wriggled backwards on the desk. “You mustn’t fool around with the fire alarm, you know. It’s a serious breach of health and safety. We could get closed down.”

“This isn’t a hotel,” Theo said firmly. “What happened to Pieter van Goyen?”

Call-me-Bill sagged, like a tyre with a slow puncture. “There was an accident,” he said, “at the lab. It was very quick, he wouldn’t have suffered.”

“That’s nice. What sort of accident?”

“They were testing some new piece of apparatus.” Call-me-Bill was sort of stroking the side of the desk. “I don’t really know what it was, something to do with teleportation, I think, or it might’ve been antimatter. Anyhow, two people saw him go into this acceleration chamber thing, and then there must’ve been a freak electrical surge or something, because the power suddenly came on, and there was this blinding white light, and when we managed to switch it off and get inside, he wasn’t there.”

Theo pursed his lips. One stray pronoun. “And?”

“Well,” Call-me-Bill went on, “it was a sealed chamber, lined with thirty centimetres of lead. They did tests, of course, and there were a few residual traces of DNA. And a sock,” Call-me-Bill added, “with his monogram, PVG. Trouble is, only Pieter really knew exactly how the machine worked, so—”

“The lab,” Theo said. “At the university, presumably.”

“Not as such, no.”

“Here. In the basement.”

Call-me-Bill nodded slowly. “Once the police and the government people had finished investigating, we cleared it all out, naturally, and closed the project down. That’s when we decided to turn the place into a hotel. Well, you know, great big building in its own grounds, handily situated for road and rail links, it seemed like a good idea.”

Theo shook his head. “You didn’t close it down,” he said. “You and her – is she really your niece, by the way? Not that it matters.”

Call-me-Bill nodded. “My sister Morgaine’s daughter,” he said.

“And the police. Are they really looking for me?”

“No,” Call-me-Bill said, looking away. “Sorry, that was Mattie’s idea. She thought you might walk out, you see. She’s got a bit of a ruthless streak, she gets it from her mother.”

Theo took a deep breath. “Pieter’s not dead, is he?”

“Excuse me?”

“He’s gone somewhere, but he’s not dead. You or your weird niece accidentally sent him

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