Lost in a good book by Jasper Fforde Read Free Book Online Page B

and we followed Volescamper out through the shabby building to the entrance, just as a pair of large Bentley limousines rolled up. Volescamper bade us a hasty goodbye before striding forward to greet the passenger in the first car.
    “Well well,” said Bowden. “Look who it is.”
    A young man flanked by two large bodyguards got out and shook hands with the enthusiastic Volescamper. I recognized him from his numerous TV appearances. It was Yorrick Kaine, the charismatic young leader of the marginal Whig party. He and Volescamper walked up the steps talking animatedly and then vanished inside Vole Towers.

    We drove away from the moldering house with mixed feelings about the treasure we had been studying.
    “What do you think?”
    “Fishy,” said Bowden. “Very fishy. How could something like Cardenio turn up out of the blue?”
    “How fishy on the fishiness scale?” I asked him. “Ten is a stickleback and one is a whale shark.”
    “A whale isn’t a fish, Thursday.”
    “A whale shark is—sort of.”
    “All right, it’s as fishy as a crayfish.”
    “A crayfish isn’t a fish,” I told him.
    “A starfish, then.”
    “ Still not a fish.”
    “A silverfish?”
    “Try again.”
    “This is a very odd conversation, Thursday.”
    “I’m pulling your leg, Bowden.”
    “Oh I see,” he replied as the penny dropped. “Tomfoolery.”
    Bowden’s lack of humor wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. After all, none of us really had much of a sense of humor in SpecOps. But he thought it socially desirable to have one, so I did what I could to help. The trouble was, he could read Three Men in a Boat without a single smirk and viewed P. G. Wodehouse as “ infantile,” so I had a suspicion the affliction was long-lasting and permanent.
    “My tensionologist suggested I should try stand-up comedy,” said Bowden, watching me closely for my reaction.
    “Well, ‘How do you find the Sportina? / Where I left it’ was a good start,” I told him.
    He stared at me blankly. It hadn’t been a joke.
    “I’ve booked myself in at the Happy Squid talent night on Monday. Do you want to hear my routine?”
    “I’m all ears.”
    He cleared his throat.
    “There are these three anteaters, see, and they go into a—”
    There was a sharp crack, the car swerved, and we heard a fast flapping noise. I tensed as we fishtailed for a moment before Bowden brought the car under control.
    “Damn!” he muttered. “Blowout.”
    There was another concussion like the first, but we weren’t going so fast by now and Bowden eased the car in towards the car park at the South Cerney stop of the Skyrail.
    “ Two blowouts?” muttered Bowden as we got out. We looked at the remnants of the car tire still on the rim, then at each other—and then at the busy road to see if anyone else was having problems. They weren’t. The traffic zoomed up and down the road quite happily.
    “How is it possible for both tires to go within ten seconds of each other?”
    I shrugged. I didn’t have an answer for this. It was a new car, after all, and I’d been driving all my life and never had a single blowout, much less two. With only one spare wheel we were stuck here for a while. I suggested he call SpecOps and get them to send a tow truck.
    “Wireless seems to be dead,” he announced, keying the mike and turning the knob. “That’s odd.”
    Something, I felt, wasn’t quite right.
    “No more odd than a double blowout,” I told him, walking a few paces to a handy phone booth. I lifted the receiver and said: “Do you have any change—”
    I stopped because I’d just noticed a ticket on top of the phone. As I picked it up a Skyrail shuttle approached high up on the steel tracks, as if on cue.
    “What have you found?” asked Bowden.
    “A Skyrail day pass,” I replied slowly, replacing the receiver. Broken images of something half forgotten or not yet remembered started to form in my head. It was confusing, but I knew what I had to do. “I’m