Edie Investigates by Nick Harkaway Page A

information and what on earth to do with it, and then abruptly lost interest. “Sign,” she said, tapping the paper, and Rice, seeing no alternative which did not involve dismissal, signed.
    “I’m Gravesend,” the woman said. “And you’re Lizard.”
    Tom Rice shook her hand and asked her what sort of lizard he might be.
    “It’s a callsign, Tommy. When you get on the phone to report, you ask to speak to Gravesend and you say it’s Lizard. I’ll ask you how your wife is and you’ll say she’s got La Grippe. Not the flu, not the dreaded lurgy. La Grippe. Okay? And then we talk. We’ll supply the phone and it’s the only one you use while you’re down there. If you say she’s got food poisoning I’ll call out the cavalry and I do actually mean the cavalry and these days they have tanks, so don’t unless you mean it. Don’t tell anyone you’re with the Legacy Board, either.”
    “Am I?”
    “Are you what?”
    “Am I with the Legacy Board? Are you?”
    “No. And no. But from time to time that gentleman in there asks for the assistance of Treasury in matters pertaining to the exercise of such business as he is authorised and required to conduct in the name of Her Majesty’s Government, and that assistance is speedily rendered.”
    “Why?”
    She stopped walking and stared at him again. “Because otherwise we’d have to deal with whatever appalling shit it is that he deals with,” she said, “and it must be appalling because of the things he is allowed to do to stop it happening. You have no idea.”
    “Would I know if I’d read that?” He pointed at the paperwork.
    “Yes. So it’s probably a good thing you didn’t. You might have decided not to sign it. And then I’d have had to have you shot.”
    He laughed, and then stopped because she didn’t. After a moment, she nodded.
    “You’re right. I was joking.”
    But he was no longer at all sure, and felt enormously relieved when she deposited him in a car with a uniformed driver and said: “Gravesend.”
    “Oh, yes.” He pantomimed raising a handset to his ear. “Hullo. It’s Lizard here.”
    She rolled her eyes, but nodded. “How’s your wife?”
    “Not so good, actually, I’m afraid she’s coming down with something. La Grippe, you know. Nothing too bad. Certainly not food poisoning, I’m glad to say, we ate all the same things last night. In fact we shared a portion. Scampi,” he added, getting into the swing of it, “with chips. You eat it in your fingers. Anyway, she’s got La Grippe.”
    “Perfect. Except don’t fucking extemporise.” She handed him a modern, ugly phone and walked away without saying goodbye.
    “I’m Lizard,” Tom Rice said to the driver.
    “I know you are, Tommy,” the driver said, “but we’ll just let that be your little secret, all right?”
    And now here he was, and the notion of drawing a chalk outline around anything was laughable, except that actually he wasn’t sure he’d ever laugh again. He sure as hell would not be persuading the local coroner, a retired military doctor with a Liverpool accent, that this was natural causes. Tom Rice had never seen anything so blatantly unnatural in his life.
    Old Man Caspian lay flat on his back. This was clear because he was wearing only a shirt, a pair of cotton boxer shorts in blue-and-white stripes, and socks and shoes. Either he had been in the habit of pulling on his trousers over his shoes or he had thrown them on in response to some external stimulus, such as the broken window at the far end of the room. His knees and hips made obvious the attitude of his body: his head was to some extent missing and for the rest distended and twisted on the neck. However this had been done, it had been done thoroughly.
    Rice was congratulating himself on not throwing up when he realised abruptly that he was going to, and ran.
    One hundred years after a primitive missile composed of wood and goosefeathers and capped with a metallic blade transfixed the brain