Déjà Vu: A Technothriller by Hocking, Ian (red scrolls of magic .TXT) 📕

essentials from the very beginning. This is for security reasons in the event of my capture.”

“Can’t you give me a clue?”

“You already have one.”

David winced. Of course. The paper he had eaten. How did the clue go? Sounds like a car-parking attendant belongs to the finest. Was that a clue to Jennifer’s location? Had to be. He repeated the clue aloud to Saskia.

“A cross-word clue,” she said. “The difficult type.”

“Ah, clever. That must be why you’re the detective.”

Saskia nodded seriously. “Indeed.”

They found a hotel and slept until 9:00 a.m. David was more tired when he awoke. His back was tight; his muscles ached. If he were a young man, he would have recovered by now. They headed towards the centre of town and soon came to the central artery known as the Strip. The traffic was cattle stampede. David hugged his coat closer – it wasn’t warm – and nodded towards a diner on the corner of their block. Saskia followed him with her arms folded and her head bent against the wind.

The diner smelled of plastic and coffee. A single fan swung in the centre of the ceiling, too slow to stir the air. A large screen showed a baseball game. It was muted. Three or four customers sat silently in booths. An old man sat at the counter. A Latino waitress was wiping the counter around him. The man didn’t move. “Morning, folks,” said the waitress.

“Good morning,” David said. The other customers glanced at them briefly, blankly. He steered Saskia towards a booth near the window. They sat with David looking out and Saskia looking in. That suited him.

The waitress wandered over. She had a pencil behind her ear and another in her hand. She wore horn-rimmed glasses. Her make-up had been applied unevenly. She produced a pad from her apron and stood poised. “What’ll you have?”

“Just a coffee for me, please,” David said.

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you have croissant?” asked Saskia.

“We do, honey,” replied the waitress. She smiled brilliantly. “You bet. You want some jellies with that?”

“That’s jam,” David whispered.

“I know what ‘jelly’ means,” Saskia said. She looked up at the waitress. “You’ll have to forgive my husband. He used to be in the army. He is not the sharpest tool in the shed. All his friends say so. Don’t they, Claedus?”

David held her stare. He tried to think of an awful name for her but the pressure of the moment was too much. “Yes, dear,” he said slowly. “Not the sharpest tool in the box.”

“Shed.”

“Shed.”

Saskia looked at the waitress again, as if to say, See what I mean? Then she said, “Strawberry jelly, please.”

The waitress smiled politely and reversed away. They sat listening to soft rock and the swish-swish of the fan. Outside, a thousand people walked by. David became hypnotized by them. Where did they come from and where did they go? They looked like a forest seen from a train window: each the same, quite untouchable, more interesting because of it.

“I speak English, you know,” Saskia said.

David re-focused his attention. She was staring. He saw then, for the first time, how beautiful she was. Not a classically beautiful face. Not simple and clear-cut. But her emerald-green eyes. “David? Hello?”

“Hello, Saskia. I know you speak English. We’re both tired. Help me with the clue. The sooner we find my daughter…” His words trailed away as he yawned. He heard a bone click in his ear. He waggled his jaw experimentally.

Saskia looked away. She placed her hands on the table with her fingers spread. She stared at the nails. “OK, then. ‘Sounds like a car-parking attendant belongs to the finest.’ Where do you start with a clue like that?”

“Well, it could be phrased like a cryptic crossword clue. They often have part of the answer in the question. One of the words may be an anagram of the answer.”

“Wait,” Saskia said. She took a napkin from the dispenser. She found a pen in her shoulder bag and wrote down the clue. “‘Attend-ent’ or ‘attend-ant’?”

“‘Attend-ant.’ Make two copies, will you?”

A police car flashed by the window. They each took a strip of napkin and stared hard. David found that he couldn’t form a new word from any of the old ones. Not one. “How about you?” he asked.

“Nothing. What about the ‘sounds like’ part?”

“I can’t make any words from that.”

“No, I mean…perhaps that does not refer to the entire answer. Perhaps only part of it.”

David smoothed his strip. He had to blink to wipe the sleep from eyes. “Of course. ‘Sounds like a car-parking attendant’. What’s another word for a car-parking attendant?”

“You’re the English speaker, not me.”

“Ah, but you fake it so well,” David replied. Saskia smiled. “Another word…would be ‘traffic warden’, ‘attendant’…no, we have that. Come on, Saskia.”

“I’m thinking.”

“What’s the name of the bloke who sits in the booth at a carpark?”

“That never happens. There are ticket machines. In former times, maybe.”

David grunted. “Fine. It could be an American word. We’re in America. ‘Valet’.”

“What’s a valet?”

“Somebody who parks your car for you.”

Saskia reclined and tugged at her bottom lip. “It fits better than ‘traffic warden’.”

David re-read the clue. Sounds like a car-parking attendant belongs to the finest. The finest what? “Does it mean the best example of a valet, like a super-valet?”

“What’s a super-valet?”

“Like Superman, only cleaner.”

“What?”

“Never mind. I was thinking aloud.”

The waitress walked over. David laid his arm across the napkin. Saskia noticed and used her own to wipe her mouth. The waitress placed a cup on the table and poured him a coffee. The aroma was beautiful; the finest morning perfume. His eyes began to clear. His headache evaporated. He turned to the waitress. Her expression was neutral, as though she was setting an empty table. David took a chance. Ego, having read all those espionage novels, would have been aghast. He lifted his arm. “Excuse me, miss,” he said. He scratched his ear and feigned touristic helplessness. “We’re tourists.”

The waitress smiled. Some of her warmth returned. She slouched and rested the coffee pot on