Free The Better Mousetrap by Tom Holt Page B

number twenty-four—’
    ‘Excuse me.’
    ‘Yes, dear?’
    And then she thought: no. I don’t destroy old ladies, even old ladies with cats, because in the final analysis they aren’t the real enemy. I shall be as nice as I possibly can to the old bat, I might even rescue her bloody cat, and every precisely quantified milligram of niceness I expend on her will be another red-hot skewer with barbed wire wrapped round it when I get back to the office and see Colin—
    Emily smiled. ‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘You just leave it to me and everything’ll be just fine.’
    Mrs Thompson pursed her lips. ‘Are you sure? Because—’ You can read eyes after a year or two in the profession.
    Because, after all, you’re only a girl, I’d have thought Mr Gomez would’ve got a man to do it, after all, climbing up ladders-Emily broadened her smile. All the king’s horses, Colin, she thought, and all the king’s men. ‘Why don’t you show me where the tree is and then go and make us both a nice cup of tea?’
    That must’ve been the right thing to say, because Mrs Thompson nodded and led the way through the house and into the back garden. There, sure enough, was an apple tree, with a fat ginger blob sticking like used chewing-gum to one of the spindly upper branches.
    ‘You sure you don’t want to borrow Mr Wilcox’s ladder, dear?’
    ‘No, I’ll be fine. Now, how about that cup of tea? This won’t take a moment.’
    ‘You will be careful, won’t you? Only Barney can be a little bit wary of strangers.’
    Emily waited till the back door was safely shut; then she took the Mordor Army Knife out of her bag, thumbed out the scaling-ladder attachment, dropped it on the ground and jumped back.
    She didn’t know how it worked, and couldn’t have cared less, but she’d learned the hard way to give it plenty of room. The little metal thing like a comb which she’d hooked out of the body of the knife seemed to blur for a moment, as though it had gone out of focus. When it resolved itself again, it was a twenty-foot aluminium ladder. She frowned at it and said, ‘Shorter.’ The adjustment was instantaneous. When she picked the ladder up it was warm, just about bearable to the touch. She leaned it against the nearest substantial branch to where the cat was, wiggled it about a bit to check it was stable, and began to climb.
    ‘Here, kitty,’ she said through gritted teeth. She wasn’t a cat person, in the same way petrol doesn’t have a soft spot for naked flames. The cat, which was licking its paw, lifted its head and looked at her.
    ‘Don’t start,’ she said grimly. The cat’s left ear flickered. She felt her tights catch on a projecting twig. Colin Gomez, she promised herself, was going to spend the rest of his abbreviated life paying for this.
    Three more rungs and Emily reckoned she was in comfortable grabbing range. She put together a plan of action. Left hand off rung, reach out, form grip on cat’s collar, secure cat firmly under left arm, then back the way we came. No bother. The key to success would be smooth, controlled movements.
    The cat hissed at her and stood up, its tail stiff and straight as a pine tree. At this point, it occurred to her that all her training and experience had been directed towards killing animals rather than saving them; which was fine, bearing in mind the sort of animal she tended to deal with, but maybe in this case she was a trifle out of her depth. She glanced over her shoulder to see if Mrs Thompson had emerged from the house; no sign of her, and she wouldn’t be able to see what was going on up the tree from her kitchen window. She grinned.
    ‘Go on,’ she said, ‘make my day.’
    The cat made a growling noise that it had inherited from ancestors who hunted mammoths for a living, and edged a little further along its branch. Emily recognised the tactic: deliberately fall off, get yourself killed, land me in serious trouble with your owner, the feline equivalent