CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The air was foul with the stench of burning bone. It’s a distinctive smell; not perhaps overwhelmingly revolting in itself, but unbearable once you know what it is. You can get used to it, of course; human beings can get used to virtually anything, given plenty of time and no choice in the matter whatsoever. Fortunately, Ali Baba wasn’t naturally squeamish, and he had the advantage of knowing that, although his drill turned so fast that the friction scorched the tooth as he drilled it, the patient never felt a thing because of the anaesthetic.

‘There you are,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Quick rinse and we’re done.’

Last patient of the day; no more drilling into people until eight o’clock tomorrow morning. A propos of nothing much, he wondered whether Akram the Terrible, his former great and worthy opponent, ever felt the same sense of deep, exhausted relief after a hard night’s murdering. Wash off the blood and the bits of bone, change into nice comfy old clothes, make a nice hot cup of something and collapse into a friendly chair by the fire; what, after all, could be better than that? Apart, of course, from not having to get all bloody and covered in bits in the first place.

He had switched off the lights and was just about to lock up when a white delivery van pulled up outside. Mr Barbour? Yes, that’s me. Delivery for you, if you’d just sign here. The driver handed him a crate about eighteen inches square, accepted his tip and drove away.

Ali Baba stood on the pavement for nearly a minute, feeling the weight of the box; then he unlocked the door and went back inside, locking up again afterwards. His heart was beating a little faster now, and he was beginning to sweat ever so slightly.

The museum authorities hadn’t been best pleased when he’d called them up and asked for it back. He’d reminded them that it was only a loan, and pointed out that there had been a recent spate of thefts of similar objects. He mentioned in passing that he had a receipt. When they put the phone down on him, he rang straight back, ignored their claim that he’d got a wrong number and was now talking to NexDay Laundry Services, and demanded to speak to the Director. And so forth. Eventually they agreed to return it by armoured van, with Ali Baba paying the carriage charges. Then, having added (quite unnecessarily, in Ali Baba’s opinion) that at least that meant one less card to send this Christmas, they rang off.

And here it was. He sighed and shook his head. If only the poor fools had realised what they’d actually got there, not all the bailiffs and court orders in the universe could ever have prised it away from them.

Yes. But. Bailiffs and court orders are one thing, but the greatest ever burglar in either of the two dimensions was something else entirely; and if Akram was still out there somewhere, plotting and scheming to find a way of nailing his ancient foe without transgressing the letter of his oath, then leaving this thing in the deepest vault of the most secure museum in the world was pretty much the same as laying it out on the pavement with a big flashing light on top to show him where to find it. It’d be criminal negligence of the most horrible and bloodcurdling variety to let it stay where it was. There could only be one safe place for it from now on, and that was under the loose floorboard in the store cupboard in Ali Baba’s surgery.

‘Blasted thing,’ he muttered under his breath, as he carried it up the stairs. ‘Wish I’d never pinched it in the first place.’

All loose floorboards are not the same. For a start, this one didn’t creak. Nor could it be prised up with a crowbar and the back of a claw hammer. In fact, were a hostile power to drop a nuclear bomb on Southampton, the only thing guaranteed to be completely undamaged would be Ali Baba’s loose floorboard. It’d still be loose, of course; exactly the same degree of looseness, not a thousandth of a millimetre tighter or wobblier.

Carefully - drop it and the consequences didn’t bear thinking about - he lowered it into the hole and then stood back, hands on knees, to catch his breath and say the password. He did so, replaced the board and muttered the self-activating spell. Finally, he locked up and went home.

After he’d gone, the rogue tooth fairy that’d been hanging around the place all day in the hope of picking up sixpenny-worth of second-hand calcium clambered out of a half-empty pot of pink casting medium, looked around to make sure all was clear, and landed heavily on the loose floorboard. It wobbled, but it wouldn’t budge.

‘Bugger,’ muttered Fang.

Three quarters of an hour later, she gave up the unequal struggle. During this time she’d snapped or blunted two dozen drill bits, broken a whole box of disposable scalpels and banged her own thumb with a two-pound lump hammer (don’t ask what it was doing in among the tools of Ali Baba’s trade, because unless you’ve got film star’s teeth and will never need to go to a dentist again, you really don’t want to know). There was no way of getting in without the password, and although she knew perfectly well what it was, having overhead Ali Baba setting it, she was just a fairy and couldn’t say it loud enough. A pity; the contents of Ali Baba’s improvised floor safe were worth more to her than all the molars ever pulled. If only she could get her hands on it, then she could name her price; including her old job back and sixpences enough to buy Newfoundland.

Nothing for it; she needed human help. But who? Not a problem. She knew just the man. In fact, he was her landlord.

With a savage buzz she memorised the location of the loose board, checked the office waste-paper basket for teeth one last time, and flew home.

Aren’t human beings wonderful?

Well, actually, no; but they do sometimes manage to achieve wonderful things, albeit for all the wrong reasons. One of their most remarkable abilities, which gained them the coveted Golden Straitjacket award for most gloriously dizzy instinctive behaviour five thousand years running in the prestigious Vicenza Dumb Animals Festival, is their exceptional knack of ignoring the most disturbingly bizarre circumstances simply by pretending they don’t exist. No matter how radical the upheaval, as soon as the dust has settled a little and it’s relatively safe outside the bunker, out they go again to weave their spiders’ webs of apparent normality over whatever it is they don’t want to come to terms with, until the web becomes as rigid and substantial as a coral reef.

Michelle, for example, found that if she went to work as usual, stayed on after hours doing overtime and then went straight on to meet friends for a drink or a movie,, so that she was almost never at home before midnight or after seven-thirty am, she could go hours at a time without thinking strange thoughts or feeling the naggingly persistent lure of the ring. It was like living on the slopes of an active volcano but without the views and the constant free hot water.

And then; well, you can only play chicken on the Great Road of Chaos for so long before you make a slight error of judgement. In Michelle’s case, her mistake lay in stopping off for a bite to eat after an evening’s rather self-conscious cheerleading for the office formation karaoke team. Perhaps it was the strain of having to put a brave face on Mr Pettingell from Claims singing You Ain’t Nothin’ But A Hound Dog in a Birmingham accent so broad you could have used it as a temporary bridge over the Mississippi that sapped her instinctive early warning systems; or perhaps it was just that her number was up.

‘I’ll have the …’ She hesitated, and squinted at the illuminated menu above the counter. She’d originally intended to have the Treble Grand Slam Baconburger, large fries, regular guava shake; but a glance at the ten-times-life-size backlit transparency overhead made her doubt the wisdom of that decision. For one thing, it was too brightly coloured. Mother Nature reserves bright reds and yellows for warning livery for her more indigestible species, such as wasps and poison toadstools. The sight of the ketchup and relish in the illustration must have triggered an ancient survival mechanism. She had another look at the menu, searching for something there wasn’t a picture of.

‘I’ll try the …’ For a fleeting moment she was tempted by the Greenland Shark Nuggets ‘n’ Bar-B-Q Dip, but the moment passed. If God had intended people to eat sharks, as opposed to vice versa, he would have modified the respective blueprints accordingly.

The man behind the counter smiled patiently. ‘Take your time,’ he said. ‘Actually, I’d recommend the Chicken Danish Brunch.’ There was, Heaven help us, a flicker of genuine, unfeigned enthusiasm in the poor man’s eyes as he spoke. ‘My personal favourite,’ he added, ‘for what that’s worth.’

Michelle shrugged. ‘So what’s that got in it?’ she asked.

The man straightened his back with - yes, dammit, with pride as he recited, ‘It’s a scrummy fillet of marinaded prime chicken, served traditional Danish-style in an open sandwich with choice of relish, all on a sesame seed bun.’

The speech went past Michelle like an InterCity train through a Saturdays-only backwoods station. ‘I’m sorry?’ she said. ‘I missed that.’

‘Okay. It’s a scrummy—’

‘Edited highlights, please.’

‘No problem. Chicken, open sandwich, sesame seed bun.’

Michelle shook her head. It was noisy inside, noisy even for a Macfarlane’s on a Friday night, and her ears were still ringing from Mr Sobieski from Accounts informing the world that ever since his baby left him, he’d found a new place to dwell. ‘Say again, please,’ she shouted back. ‘Didn’t quite catch…’

The man nodded and smiled. ‘Sandwich,’ he said. ‘Open. Sesame…’

‘Open sesame?’

(‘Two down. One to go.’)

‘Sesame seed bun.’ Something strange had happened to the man’s face. It was as if he was being used as a guinea pig by a blind acupuncturist. ‘Guaranteed to make your taste-buds … Don’t I know you?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You sound like someone I used to know.’

As he spoke, he saw that her purse was open on the counter, and there was her Visa card. Part of the shared heritage of thieves and lawyers is an ability to read upside down without even having to think about it: MICHELLE PARTRIDGE.

‘Do I?’

‘My imagination,’ Akram replied; while he was saying the words, shutters came down in his eyes, like a snake’s transparent eyelids. ‘Do forgive me. Alternatively, the Saigon Ribs Surprise is very popular. There’s a choice of dips, we’ve got Tangy Orange, Bar-B-Q, Byzantine Lemon …’

Her purse also contained a receipted gas bill, with her address. Akram’s eyes lapped up the information like a cat drinking milk.

‘I’ll have that, please,’ Michelle said quickly. ‘Who did I remind you of?’

‘Forget it, please,’ Akram muttered. ‘That was in another country, and besides, the sonofabitch is dead.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Which dip? We got orange, barbeque, lemon …’

‘Orange.’

‘Coming right up. That’ll be three pounds seventy-five, please.’

Now I know who he is, Michelle realised. He was in the waiting room, the day I—

‘Your change,’ said Akram. ‘Enjoy your meal, have a nice day.’

‘Thank you. I—’

The two girls behind her, who had been very patient so far, eased past and ordered hamburgers. She stood for a moment, at right angles to the queue, clutching her bag and trying to think.

Akram. Akram the Terrible! Here!

‘Excuse me.’ She elbowed one girl out of the way and stood heavily on the other’s toe. ‘Sorry,’ she growled. ‘Look, is your name Akram, by any chance?’

The man looked at her, and pointed at his lapel badge. It read: JOHN, ASST MGR.

‘So sorry,’ she whispered, and fled.

Of all the hamburger joints in all the towns in all the world, Akram reflected, as he locked up that night. Just when I was starting to get somewhere. Just when I was beginning to get some vague idea of what happiness might possibly be like. And now it’s back to the old routine.

Just a minute, he reflected. Just because I’ve found Ali Baba’s daughter (how come he’s got a daughter, and what in buggery is she doing this side of the goddamn Line?) doesn’t necessarily mean I’ve got to do anything about it. I can just ignore it. Forget I ever saw her. Take no notice.

I could indeed. And then, for an encore, I could hitch a ride on a flying pig and save myself the bus fare home. Get real, Akram.

Get real —

If only. Chance, he muttered to himself as he switched on the alarm, would be a bloody fine thing. He’d seen or read somewhere that humans had a proverb: Mankind cannot stand too much reality. As far as he was concerned, Mankind didn’t know it was born.

When he got home, the tooth fairy was waiting for him. That, he reckoned, put the tin lid on it.

‘Not now,’ he said, as she fluttered down from the ceiling like a large moth, the sort that chews holes in chain-mail shirts.

‘Yes, but listen

‘I said not now.’ He flumped into the armchair, kicked his shoes off, and put his hands behind his head. All other considerations beside, he’d had a long day, been on his feet for most of it, and he badly wanted to go to sleep. It occurred to him that on the other side of the Line, he never got as tired as this, even if he’d been in the saddle all day and out burgling and killing all night. In Storybook land, everyone has boundless energy and extraordinary (by Real standards) stamina. In Storybook land, people only keel over from exhaustion when the story demands that they say, ‘I’m done for, you go on without me’; which is the hero’s cue to pick up his worn-out colleague and carry him for two days across the desert.

‘Listen!’

Akram turned, his hand partly raised as if to swat. ‘Well?’ he snapped. ‘This had better be important. Anything less than world-shattering, and the only loose teeth around here are going to be your own.’

Tooth fairies are, of course, first-class narrators, and it took Fang less than thirty seconds to explain about her discovery. When she’d finished, Akram nodded slowly.

‘Okay,’ he said, ‘so that is pretty world-shattering.’

‘And?’

‘And what?’

‘And,’ said Fang impatiently, ‘as in, what are we waiting for? Come on, it’s after midnight already.’

Akram held up his hand, as if he was God directing traffic. ‘Not so fast,’ he said. ‘Admittedly, the obvious course of action would be to go immediately and steal this thing.’

‘Right.’

‘Ninety-nine out of a hundred villains would already be out of the door and halfway down the street by now. The hundredth would be hobbling along behind the other ninety-nine, cursing the day he got lumbered with a wooden leg.’

‘Right. So why are we …?’

‘But,’ said Akram, ‘you overlook one minor detail. I’m not a villain any more. I’m through with all that, remember? I’m a good guy now.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said the tooth fairy. ‘What’s got into you, anyway? If you’ve got some sort of hyper-subtle master plan…’

Akram shook his head. ‘Nope,’ he replied. ‘Look, my fluttering friend, watch my lips. I am not interested. I don’t do that stuff any more. I mean it,’ he added, as Fang made a vulgar noise implying disbelief. ‘If I still wanted to nail Ali Baba, I’ve got an even better trick up my sleeve. I’ve found his daughter. I could put the snatch on her, demand that he release me from my promise, and then go scrag the fucker.’ He paused for a moment. Without realising he was doing it, he’d taken such a tight grip on the arm of his chair that the wood was creaking. With an effort he let go. ‘But I’m not going to,’ he went on, putting his fingertips together and crossing his legs, as smoothly as a chat-show host. ‘So, it was terribly sweet of you to think of me and if there’s anything I can do that doesn’t involve nutting people in the mouth so you can swipe their teeth, you just name it. But I’m not interested. You got that, or would you like me to tap it out on your head in Morse code with this teaspoon?’

At first, all Fang could do was stare at him, as if waiting for the practical joker to pull off the rubber Akram mask and say, ‘Fooled you!’ When it finally sank in that he was serious, the fairy couldn’t trust herself to speak. She buzzed furiously to her shoebox, dived in and dragged the lid shut after her. Shortly afterwards, the flat was filled with the sound of a tiny person crying.

‘Cut that out, will you?’

‘Snf.’

‘Look,’ said Akram, raising the lid a few millimetres. ‘I’ve brought you something, see? It’s a left front incisor, I found it at work, a customer left it in a Triple Swiss Fondueburger. Don’t you want it?’

The lid slammed.

‘I’ll leave it here for you,’ said Akram, slightly shaken. ‘For when you’re a bit less overwrought. Look, it’s still got most of its original plaque.’

From inside the box came a tiny voice telling him where he could put his lousy rotten tooth. The recommendation was biologically feasible, but not something you’d suggest to someone whose shoebox you were living in. Akram shrugged.

‘If you don’t want it,’ he said, ‘there’s plenty that will. I’ll put it under my pillow, and we’ll see if it’s still there in the morning.’

Nothing from the shoebox except bitter snuffling. Akram shrugged. Maybe she had a point, at that; but if she thought he was going to chuck away what might be his one and only chance to break out of the Story just to please a tiny gossamer-winged garbage collectress, she was deluding herself and that was all there was to it. It’d be like giving all your property to the poor, dressing up in sackcloth and wandering forth to preach to the birds just in order to get your picture on page seven of the Assisi Evening Examiner.

And anyway, he reassured himself, as he rolled into bed and switched off the light, virtue’s its own reward, or so it says in the rule book. The better I am, the better I get. Turning down two opportunities for revenge in one day must mean I’m getting positively beatific. I bet that if I keep this up, I’ll be so good I can sell my second-hand bathwater as beaujolais nouveau.

He fell asleep; his sleep lapsed into dreaming, and in his dream he was back across the Line and standing in front of the Fairy Godfather’s desk with a terrified grin on his face and (since this was a dream) a schoolboy’s cap on his head and an exercise book down the back of his trousers.

‘So,’ said the Godfather, ‘you wanna be good?’

‘Yes, padrone.’

‘So you wanna be a hero?’

‘Yes, padrone.’

‘And you wanna nail that sonofabitch Ali Baba so good he’ll wish he’ll never be born again?’ And then Akram wanted terribly, terribly much to say No, padrone and he could feel himself straining the muscles of his brain as he tried to stop the other word, the one beginning with Y, squirming out through the gate of his teeth; but, since it was one of that sort of dream - I knew I shouldn’t have finished off the two leftover Cheese Double Whammyburgers before we closed up, but isn’t it a sin to let good food go to waste? - all he could do was stand back from himself and look the other way, and try not to listen —

‘Yes, padrone.’

And now the Godfather is laughing; big man, big laugh. ‘Your wish is my command,’ he says. ‘To hear is to obey. Rocco, you heard?’

‘Yeah, boss.’

‘So obey.’

‘Yeah, boss.’

‘But that’s impossible,’ Akram could hear himself protesting. ‘If I’m the good guy and the hero, how come I can nail the creep Baba? I thought nailing people, I was through with all that.’

And a close-up of the Godfather’s face; cigar clamped in corner of masonry jaw, black eyes burning. ‘Hey,’ he says softly, ‘show some godamn respect. I mean, who’s telling this story, you or me?’

Because it’s a dream, one of that sort of dreams (all our cheeseburgers are made with a hundred per cent pure natural milk cheese; okay, it’s industrial grade cheese, it’s rolled out in huge fifty-metre sheets in a processing plant that’s a dairy the way Greenwich Village is a village, but eat it late at night and you’ll find out if it’s real cheese or not) Akram finds he’s no longer in the Godfather’s study; he’s standing behind a huge boulder in a cleft in a cliff-face, and it’s dark, and there’s a troop of horsemen riding in, he can hear their horses breathing and the soft tinkle of their mailshirts, the clink of their swords in their scabbards. He wants to run but he can’t, and the leader of the troop rides up to the rock face, only a yard or so from where he’s cowering and he says -

I know that voice!

— ‘Open sesame!’ whereupon a door opens out of what looked for all the world like solid rock, and as it swings open on its hinges it creaks ever so slightly, and the leader of the troop rides past; and over his coat of mail he’s wearing a white coat, and there’s a scalpel, not a sword, by his side, which is why they call him Ali Baba the Terrible, leader of the Forty Dentists. And he looks up from writing Open Sesame on his shirt-sleeve and through the space between door and doorframe, Akram can just see inside the cave, and it’s stuffed full of gold - gold teeth, gold bridgework, gold dental plates, gold fillings prised out of the heads of screaming, dying men …

And of course, it makes sense, in a way; because surely stealing makes you a thief, even if it’s thieves you steal from. On the other hand (but, since this is a dream, there’s no actual contradiction; dream-logic is as flexible as a lawyer’s promise) thieves are outlaws, and anything you do to a thief is perfectly fair; hell, you can kill thieves if you want to and still be as good as, well, gold (unfortunate simile, in the circumstances; all those teeth - ) and so what, you don’t get all hung up and conscience-stricken when you pour boiling water on an ants’ nest, do you? And most of all, if you will go eating cheese last thing at night, what possible right have you got to complain if you have bad dreams?

Akram woke up.

‘Fuck,’ he said.

Stories grow, stories spread; and if you smuggle a story across the Line, don’t go whining to the doctor when it starts frothing at the mouth and bites you.

‘Fang.’

‘ Snfnottalkingtoyousnf.’

‘Fang,’ Akram repeated, ‘get your coat. We’re going out.’