“Well,” said Lisa, “to judge by what we just heard, it’s working.”

“Far too well,” Leland agreed, cracking open the second can of pollen beer. Lisa felt a momentary pang of regret as she swallowed and found her mouth still dry, but she told herself that she needed to keep a clear head if she were to stay abreast of the game.

“Personally,” Leland continued, “I prefer the lunatics who just sit on mountaintops waiting for the flying saucers to come and carry them away to the new world. The ones who want to plant their own New Order in my backyard are a royal pain in the arse. Utopian socialists, Gaean freaks, pretend radfems … they’re all the bloody same.”

” ‘Pretend’ radfems?” Lisa queried. “Are you assuming that the radfem thing is just a cover—an overlay to conceal their real political interests?”

“You heard the woman,” Leland reminded her. “How did it sound to you?”

“Not quite as crazy as it sounded to you, obviously,” Lisa admitted. “But then, I had heard most of it before, from other Real Women. To me, she sounds like a classic case of the Cassandra Complex—someone who believes she’s seen the future and can’t stand the frustration of knowing she can’t do a damn thing about it. Someone who’d jump at the chance to make a difference, however slight. Maybe the person she’s taking orders from has filled her with a certain charismatic fervor, but it’s nowhere near as crazy as waiting for Jesus to arrive in a flying saucer. She’s not looking backward to ancient prophecies and obsolete commandments. She’s looking forward. I ought to call in the troops, by the way—I’ve already delayed too long.”

“That’s okay,” Leland said. “Jeff should have everything packed by now and the engine running. Do you have any suggestions as to where I might start looking for Chan?”

“He’s back from Birmingham,” Lisa said guardedly as she took her phone from its holster. “It shouldn’t be too difficult to track him down.”

“No, it shouldn’t,” he said contemplatively—and then his expression changed. Lisa’s fingers froze before touching the buttons that would summon the cityplex police. Leland looked at her, reproachfully as well as quizzically.

“He was there, wasn’t he?” he said softly. “They were after him, not you.”

Lisa hesitated for a moment, then shrugged. “He was there,” she admitted. “Chasing after me. I don’t know what happened to him—he probably skipped out through the hole your battle wagon made as soon you started lobbing gas grenades around. By now, with luck, he’ll have given over whatever he’s got to Smith.”

“I really would have appreciated it if you’d seen fit to mention this before,” Leland complained, although his tone had as much admiration in it as resentment. “But I can understand why you kept it up your sleeve. You will remember, I hope, that I played fair with you—and if you ever need a job, get in touch. I can fix it.”

Lisa couldn’t help feeling flattered. But Leland stillhad a hold of the wrong end of the stick. Did she really want to work with someone like that? Her fingers relaxed again, and she picked out the number of Mike Grundy’s mobile.

“Help yourself to the stuff in the fridge,” Leland said as he moved to the door. “Once they turn up, you’ll be as busy as I will—no time to snack. Wish me luck.”

“You don’t need it,” Lisa assured him, not really caring whether he did or not.

FOURTEEN

Leland had left Lisa’s outer clothes behind, draped over the banister on he upper floor. They’d been washed, but not pressed. The black smartsuits the women had worn were there too, and their guns and helmets were in the kitchen cupboard. Lisa didn’t see any point in changing out of Jeff’s slightly ill-fitting shirt and trousers, even though she figured there had to be a clever bug lurking in one of the buttons. They’d almost certainly sneaked one into her own outfit too.

As soon the van had driven away, she went back to the downstairs room where Stella Filisetti was secured.

“A police vehicle is on the way,” she told her prisoner. “It’ll be about twenty minutes. We’re in the Mendips somewhere east of Winscombe. Sorry I can’t let you take a longer look at the view—it’s the last you’ll see till you’re my age, so you’d better make the most of it while they’re loading you up. Morgan might visit you if the prison’s not too far away, but I wouldn’t bank on it. Your friend reckons that it’ll be as good a place as any to sit out the end of civilization as we know it, but I’m not so sure. If you really did spot something in one of the library models that nobody else had noticed in forty years, you must be pretty good. It’s a pity to let ability like that go to waste, but it can’t be helped now. Who do you think will get the big prize—Leland or Peter Grimmett Smith? Either way, I suppose it’ll end up with the Secret Masters. If you’d only let Morgan alone, he’d probably have given it to Ahasuerus. Your intervention will almost certainly have the effect of bringing in a worse result than the one you’d have had if you’d let well enough alone.”

“You can drop the act now,” the younger woman told her, although she surely wasn’t naive enough to think they were safe from electronic eavesdroppers. “I know you know, because I know Morgan. He wouldn’t have kept it from you. From everyone else maybe, but not from you. He trusted you to see it his way. And you did, didn’t you? You even consented to grow old—but I know how you kept your options open. You can fool that idiot cowboy, and your second-string boyfriend, and the secondhand spook from the MOD, but you can’t fool me. I know you know, so I know exactly how desperate you are to get Morgan back—but you can’t have him. There’s too much at stake.”

“Maybe I don’t need him,” Lisa suggested blandly. “Maybe I already have everything I need. Maybe the only thing your friends will accomplish by killing Morgan is to make me the sole custodian of the big secret. It’s not on any of the wafers or sequins you took from my desk, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I don’t have it hidden.”

“Maybe you do,” Stella agreed. “Maybe the time will come when you’llhave to make up your mind what to do with it, without Morgan to seduce and tyrannize you. Maybe then you’ll realize that we’re in the right. You had radfem sympathies yourself once, I understand. If it hadn’t been for joining the police force, you might have been one of us.”

Lisa continued staring out the window for half a minute longer, but then she turned to look down sternly at the woman on the bed. Instead of responding to Stella Filisetti’s provocations, she said, “You tried to shoot me. The original plan was not to let anyone get hurt, but you were shooting to kill.”

“Was I?” was Stella’s only riposte.

Lisa watched the half smile that spread across the younger woman’s lips. It looked like a smile of satisfaction. Even though Stella’s shot had missed, she was pleased that she had tried. She wasn’t going to admit it while eavesdroppers were hanging on her every word, but she didn’t care whether Lisa knew. Lisa felt compelled to retaliate. “What do you mean, ‘second-string boyfriend’?” she asked abruptly.

As she’d intended, the question took Stella entirely by surprise. For a moment, the younger woman hesitated in confusion, obviously unsure as to whether or not she’d made a mistake, and whether or not it was recoverable. “The detective inspector,” she said, smoothly enough but rather belatedly. “You’re screwing him, aren’t you?”

“Who told you?”

The hesitation was minute, but perceptible. “Nobody,” she said. “We’ve been keeping a close eye on you. We know far more about you than you might think.”

“The keys to all my locks, for instance,” Lisa retorted. “Were you the one who sprayed Traitor’ on my door? I know you weren’t the one who shot the phone out of my hand, because you couldn’t shoot that straight, but you could have been the furtive one who went through my desk so ineptly. Or were you at the university, making sure that the mice were all burned up? That was pointless, by the way—a stupid, meaningless gesture. You should have been content with the ones you’d already sneaked out, the ones whose absence you were trying to cover up. Torching the room was sheer mindless vandalism. Surely you could have covered your tracks without burning the cities and nearly killing poor Ed Burdillon.”