Kill The Monster, Chapter 4

II. WARRANTY INVALIDATION

The tea was hideously sweet. Mum never remembered he'd stopped taking sugar in his tea on his first tour of Kosovo, after some idiot had given away the platoon's sugar supply to a Catering Corps chef to make chocolates for a school hall full of refugee children.

The idiot felt underneath the steering column of the Hirondelle, found what felt like the bonnet catch. When he tugged on it, however, there was no satisfying THUNK as the engine bay popped open.

Was there a manual explaining how to do this? Would Hirondelle countenance such a document? Father had had the car for over two years now, and the absence of a manual would have incensed him. He would have seen it as a challenge. There had to be a manual which explained simple things such as how to make the seats go backward and forward and turn the stereo on, didn't there?

Owen Agnello's Hirondelle was a mid-nineties model, worth more than the house Sean lived in. Had it not been for the crippling service bills, Hirondelles would have represented an investment; they accumulated value over the years. Made almost entirely of non-ferrous parts, they neither rusted nor corroded. This Hirondelle had formerly belonged to a Russian 'businessman' who was now conducting his business in prison. Every Hirondelle was different; an individual work of art; this was furnished with surprising restraint, in a soft purple calfskin that would have cost hundreds of pounds to own a pair of gloves in. The whole of the car's interior was an invitation to women in spiked heels, mechanics with oily hands, and small children bearing coca-cola to do their horrid worst.

He popped open the glove compartment - ebony - and a slim leatherbound book, bound in soft purple calfskin, dropped out. The cover had no title. He flipped it open to the first page. It said HIRONDELLE 1993 SUPER PHAETON OWNER'S GUIDE. There was a contents page, which listed such things as DRIVER AND PASSENGER COMFORT and ENTERTAINMENT. The most technical item listed was FUEL, in a short section just before REQUIRED MAINTENANCE, the latter section being ten pages long. After this chapter was another entitled HELP WITH AFFORDING YOUR REQUIRED MAINTENANCE PAYMENTS.

Underneath the book was a pair of soft purple calfskin driving gloves, a pair of sunglasses in a soft purple calfskin case, and a ringbound, hand-scribbled notebook covered in dried oilstains. The notebook bore a heavily and proudly scored biro title: HIRONDELLE 1993 SUPER PHAETON TECHNICAL MANUAL, AUTHOR OWEN K. AGNELLO.

Sean swore in Swahili. He knew how to do little in Swahili except swear.

"You bastards", he said to himself, "missed this."

He flipped the notebook to the first page. The first page said: BONNET CATCH IS DOUBLE ACTION. UNDER STEERING COLUMN & UNDER STEREO. WHY???

He reached beneath the stereo. The catch was there. He pulled it. Nothing happened. He reached under the steering column, pulled both catches together. The bonnet popped up obediently.

"Cheers, dad."

Underneath the line mentioning the bonnet catch, another line read: SPECIAL TOOLS IN STORE SHED IN 3RD DRAWER DOWN, 4TH ALONG.

***

The special tool for opening the air intake was missing. Everything else had been replaced neatly in the toolbox Owen Agnello had been using when he'd died. Sean had no doubt who had done the replacing. Just tidying up after your regrettable tragic accident, sir. And of course you won't be needing this, sir, its only purpose could be to carry out unwarranted maintenance on the engine, after all -

He noticed the broken bonnet seal. The purpose of the Hirondelle mechanics being here had been, no doubt, as much to photograph the seals for legal purposes as to restore the state of the engine.

The old man had had a plan of attack to get in to the engine. He had gone in via the airbox, instructions for removing which were scribbled in the last page of his notes, with question marks suggesting that the operation had not yet been tried. There were thirteen bolts - which did not bode well - and their positions were clearly marked. It took him over ten minutes to realize that the bolt heads were pentagonal, and that only because he realized one of the heads was badly burred, as if someone had previously also had difficulty in removing it. He realized almost immediately that this was the reason for the rubber-nosed grip wrench's presence in the red tool box, where it never usually lived. For Owen Agnello, a size x bolt would have demanded a size x spanner, and anything else would be a bodge job. The grip wrench was there because it had been necessary, which meant none of the spanners in the box would have worked.

He also noticed that each bolt bore a soft metal seal, as if the chassis had been welded to the bolt. The seals bore no inscription like the warranty tape on the bonnet, but would be disturbed just as surely by unfastening the nuts. What could be the reasoning behind such a thing?

He returned to the notes, and discovered as he did so that there was a kettle, mug, tap and jar of teabags in the same area of the garage wall shelving as the toolbox. He was no longer dependent on Mum for tea. There also appeared to be what looked like sugar and proved, on dabbing and licking a finger, to be that hideous thing, Coffee Mate.

Coffee Mate and tea. He had drunk worse and liked it. As he was unscrewing the teabag jar, however, he noticed a small, bright thing lyin discarded on the shelf where it had been put down by the last person to make tea here.

The bright thing was a bolt, pentagonal in cross section at the head, with a small soft metal seal attached to it. The seal had been broken. He could read the words:

WARNING! REMOVAL OF THIS
WILL INVALIDATE WARRANTY AND
MANY THANKS, THE MANAGEMENT, H

This made more sense. The original seals had borne written warnings. People were supposed to see the warnings and leave them undisturbed to maintain their car's warranty. But the warranty on this car was already invalidated. What purpose would replacing the seals have served?

Unless the seals were not just seals...

He returned to the car and re-examined one of the engine mounts. His suspicions were confirmed. Owen Agnello had never heeded warnings not to tinker with complex hardware, always assuming that he would end up knowing more about it in five minutes' exploration than its designers did. Usually, infuriatingly, he had been right. His mechanical engineering firm had sold consultancy expertise across five continents. But he had also had too much respect for the fine tolerances to which intricate machines were put together to fail to mark his place as he took an engine apart. The point at which he'd started unscrewing the bolt was still clearly marked on on the side of the air intake mount in indelible ink. So the bolt had been removed, but the Hirondelle engineers had replaced the seal on it afterwards. Why?

He examined the broken face of the seal on the old bolt, pulling out a magnifying glass from a Victorinox knife in his pocket. Most metals would conduct electricity, or at the very least would act as insulators, so there would have to be -

There. Right in the centre of the face. A hole only the size of a pinprick. Not electricity, then. Optical? An optical circuit which would be broken if the seal were removed. It would have to somehow travel out of the bolt, into the chassis, and back into the bolt again. Maybe another special tool would be needed to install it.

So what would happen when the seal was broken? Where did that optical fibre go to? He remembered suddenly the position his father had been found in, lying full length on the garage floor, one hand stretched out towards his mobile 'phone. Trying to call for help.

But what if he hadn't been calling for help? What if he'd been answering?

The mobile had been turned off. Owen Agnello famously never turned his mobile off. It had been a constant source of friction between himself and Lilianne One. So why had he turned it off on this occasion? Unless leaving it on had made the work impossible -

He put down the bolt, wiped his hands in Swarfega out of absent-minded habit despite the fact that he hadn't got them dirty, and moved off in the direction of the house.

***

"How's Sam?"

Mum had assumed that his presence in the house meant that he needed tea. The tea was good, but the accompanying conversation was holding up his investigation. Mr. Darcy and Mr. Knightley prowled below table height like lurking furry sharks, watching for unguarded sandwiches. They still refused to come near Sean, although in this house they had long been accustomed to the smell of motor oil.

"She's fine. She's fine. And, um, Mickey's fine too." Best forestall that question before it hit. He searched round the Nokia for the ON switch. It was usually difficult to operate on Nokias.

"How does she feel about you going back to Africa?" This was an attempt to gang up on him, prevent him spending any further time tinkering with unexploded munitions.

"Uh, she's not one hundred per cent happy with it, but you know, it pays the bills."

"You don't do it because it pays the bills, Sean."

There were an incredible sixteen voice messages and seventeen texts in the phone, all from only two numbers. He didn't recognize the area code. "Mum, you know very well that ninety-nine per cent of what I do involves heavy armoured vehicles specially designed for mine clearance. The armour is heavier underneath our BTR than it is on the turret. We've added extra plating. I'm safer driving it up and down a minefield all day than I would be riding a bicycle around Westminster." He neglected to mention that he considered the latter to be suicide.

"You know very well you shouldn't be doing either of those things. You have a son now. There are responsibilities."

He thumbed himself into the RECEIVED CALLS list. There were two from the same number. The old man had received two calls, and hung up.

"Do you have a list of the incoming calls you've had over the last month, mum?"

"Don't try to change the subject, Sean?"

"Mum, I do what I do in Africa for two reasons. One, because there's only one other career for an ex-soldier that pays as well, and it really is suicide. Two, because it helps people who really haven't got anyone else to help them. Have you ever seen an African kid whose legs end at the knee? No? Well, that's why I do it."

This point hit home so satisfactorily that it took her another two whole seconds to reply.

"Well, that's all very well, but I can't see why someone else can't do it."

He explored the answering machine in the wall in the same way as bomb technicians investigated all unfamiliar devices with wires. "How do I find out whether we have any messages on the answerphone?"

"There aren't any. There were a whole load of messages from the car people, but I wiped them off. They were taking up space."

He pulled out the manufacturer's instructions - which of course had been carefully sellotaped to the device in a clear plastic wallet - and started fiddling with the answerphone to find the call log. "What did they say?"

"I only listened to the first two or three, then I deleted the rest. They were all the same message. Taped, I imagine. They were all the same mesage. Telling your father he was about to do something that would invalidate the warranty on Lilianne Four. I couldn't help thinking that if your father had been able to get to his phone, and if I had been in the house able to take a call, he still wouldn't be alive today because of those cretins phoning the line constantly. I'd probably have left the phone off the hook. You're trying to change the subject again."

He stared at the numbers on the display. "No, I'm trying to avoid what Dad would have called 'a damn fool woman-manufactured convesation'. I'm going down the garden now. In ten minutes' time, that mobile phone is going to ring, and it's going to be a Hirondelle engineer about the warranty."

She sipped a mug of tea. "How do you know?"

"I've acquired a sudden uncanny ability to tell the future. Synchronise watches?"

From long experience with Owen Agnello, Lilianne Agnello raised her wrist. "Ten past twelve?"

"Ten past twelve, synchronising now. You will be phoned up at half past twelve exactly. Hang up on that call and give me a call back on my mobile when you get it."

She frowned. "You sound awfully sure about this."

He drained his mug and walked out intot he garden.

***

At one thirty-one exactly, his phone rang to the tune of We're Only Making Plans For Nigel.

"Yes?"

"That was weird. How did you do that?"

"I am the Hirondelle engineers' puppet master. They dance at my every whim." He could still hear his father's mobile going off in the house. "Switch that call off too, it's the same number."

"I don't know. It sounds awfully rude."

"I wouldn't be surprised if the bastards could hear me talking right now. They can certainly tell when I remove parts from the engine, and it's only one step from a radio pager to a microphone."

There was a brief silence. Then she said: "What exactly do you think is going on?"

"I don't know. But I think I'm going to need better tools. Do you know who Dad was using to make those special cast tools he needed to get into the engine?"

Another pause. "Sean, is there any possibility that this might be dangerous?"

He paused in his turn. "You know, I really have no idea. Can I go through Dad's address book? I think there might be some stuff in Garage Four that might be useful, too."

"Sean, I am not stupid. I know what's in Garage Four."

"Yes. Things that protect you if you're in danger. Now, do you want to get me the key to it or not? I can go into danger unprotected if you like."

I always wanted to be like my Dad. Now I finally get the chance.

***

"Excellent". The suit was heavy, but more seriously, very poorly balanced. The heavy leather-and-steel plates were designed to protect the front of the body, not the rear. Dad had, he knew, been told to back away slowly from a device if he thought the situation was irretrievable, not turn and run. There was a bulletproof glass visor that slid over the eyes - very heavy, evidently pre-Lexan. There were even chainmail extensions for the hands.

"The gloves were a thing your father had seen used by fishmongers", said Lilianne One. "To help them cut fish rather than fingers. They're also used by skin divers, so I'm told. To play with sharks."

Why on earth would anyone want to play with a shark? He slid his fingers into the mail. "I feel like the Michelin Man playing tiddlywinks. Did dad really use these?"

"When he was in 579 Bomb Disposal. You know he was never a regular soldier? He was a Territorial. He volunteered for it, after National Service."

Lilianne One had brought Mr. Darcy from her. He could be distinguished from Mr. Knightley by a nick in his ear. His tail was wagging, and he was staring moronically at Sean. Hello! I am your friend. However, he kept his distance from his friend, sitting in the short grass, his nostrils working overtime as if Sean smelt of something Mr. Darcy couldn't quite fathom.

"Well, uncle Thomas died in a bomb explosion."

She nodded. "One of the German butterfly bombs, up north. He was only a little boy, poor thing. They came out of the shelter after the All Clear sounded, and he picked the thing up, thought it was a piece of debris, and BOOM....Sean, you didn't hero-worship your father because he dug in other people's back gardens, did you?"

You've only just realized? "There was an element of that. Though I used to be terrified when I was a kid that he'd die and not come home. I used to lie awake nights thinking about it."

She grinned. She still had perfect teeth, the cow. "You and me both. I made him choose between a life of constant risk of death and me. You'd be surprised how many men have difficulty with such decisions."

He grinned back. "Actually I wouldn't." He struggled out of the suit. "You do know that I never, ever do any of this sort of thing at work, don't you?"

"So you keep saying. That'll be why Sam doesn't sleep either, I imagine." She put a hand on his shoulder. "What I mean to say is, you do know that your Dad was my hero after he stopped playing with bombs as well as before, don't you? I mean, your man can be your hero in the back garden and the supermarket and on long boring walks in the countryside. He doesn't have to swing across pits of crocodiles with a knife in his teeth."

"Bugger. My Boys' Own periodicals lied to me."

"Anyway, what do you want all this stuff for?"

"Erm, it's not so much this stuff as some of the other stuff", he lied. "For example, did Dad ever show you this?" He picked up a device like a wizard's wand made by a caddis fly, covered in electronic devices attached with sticky tape.

The wrinkles on her face multiplied severalfold. "What is it? A light sabre?"

"It's a Howl Round detector. An elegant weapon from a more civilized age. It gives out a signal that steadily increases in frequency, and when it finds something operating on the same frequency, you get feedback -" He turned the device on and waved it around; absolutely nothing happened.

"Gosh. That was impressive."

"It is. It means this room isn't bugged at all."

"Though to tell the truth, I hadn't imagined anyone would bug the shed."

Sean shrugged. He checked the idiot light on the base of the device - only Owen Agnello would have installed an idiot light on a piece of jury-rigged hardware - and, taking hold of her shoulder, steered her out of Garage Number Four and into Number Three. He waved his wand in the direction of the car. The device screamed.

"Oh, my. It certainly lives up to its name."

"It does. Dad said he designed it to look for acoustic radio detonators in the Sixties after he talked to some guy from MI5."

"Does that mean the car's bugged?"

"It means there's a radio transmitter in the car. Probably sending out a signal more or less constantly saying HELP! SOME BAD MAN IS TRYING TO REMOVE MY NUTS. The car doesn't need to be bugged, it's probably just using the car radio as a transceiver. But all that simply begs the question of course, why, Mr. Hirondelle? Why?"

She considered this. "Are you suggesting your father was a spy?"

"No, no, nothing so exciting. I'm just suggesting he had a very weird car. Hirondelles are weird whichever way you look at them. Dad was fascinated by them. He used to show me statistics out of car magazines." He walked back to Garage Four and loaded the toolkit up with the talcum powder, the dentist's mirror, and the vial of acid, then closed it and heaved it round to Three at ground level. "You know, a Hirondelle is not the fastest car in the world, but it is a far faster car than it should be, given its kerb weight. It isn't the most fuel-efficient car, but it's more fuel-efficient than it should be, given its size and speed. And it never, ever breaks down."

She snorted. "I should think not, given the size of the warranty payments."

"Yes. Well, we don't have to worry about those, do we?" He lowered the visor. "Luke: I am your father. You are a member of the Rebel Alliance and a traitor. Any chance of a cup of tea?"

***

The car was transmitting fit to burst, constantly and on several frequencies. Whatever it was transmitting was either readable only by machine or scrambled. As he'd suspected, every time he broke a fresh seal on the air intake, another voice was added to the chorus of signals.

It would be safe to remove all thirteen bolts, or at the very least to undo twelve of them. Jesus God, listen to yourself. How can unscrewing bits off a car engine not be safe? The tiny voices of the engine's various alarms were trilling in his ears, making it difficult to work. Warning! You appear to be attempting to disconnect a part that should only be touched by trained Baronia Hirondelle personnel -

He pushed the anti-blast plugs from the UXB suit into his ears, and the world became comfortingly soundless. He realized that this would also make him uncomfortably oblivious to anyone sneaking up on him from behind. Was there a more prosaic answer to the problem than the one he was imagining? Had anyone looked for hypodermic needle marks on Owen Agnello's body?

Lord God, listen to yourself. He grinned as he looped the pulley straps underneath the air intake, ready to take up the slack as the last bolt was removed. It would, he was convinced, be easy to remove it; he was convinced that the old man had removed it before him. Lilianne One had said that 'the long silver widget' had been hanging loose above the engine when she'd found the body. The three-toothed tool had been easy to re-source. The shop had kept the blanks; it had been only a hundred mile round trip and a generous tip, half an afternoon's work.

He had an unaccountable feeling of light-headedness, as if he'd run up one too many flights of stairs. Maybe he was coming down with something. He surely couldn't be this out of condition. He'd run a mile this morning -

He sprang back from the machine, hitting his head on the garage door and not caring. He took three more quick stumbling skips backward till he was out of the garage. Once out, he thought a little longer, then turned and physically ran to the corner of the next prefab. Once there, he turned and watched the garage entrance, breathing hard.

Was his left arm tingling, or was that just imagination?

He stared at the inert entrance. His heart was beating fit for orgasm.

Okay. Assuming it's not just your imagination. How could it have been done? Gas?

"Gas." He nodded to himself and took off across the darkening lawn for the house. The house contained the extra components he would need.

***

The fan was powerful enough to motor across the floor under its own power. His father had had to remove its wheels to stop it doing so. He'd used it to cool the patio in the sumer. Its motor was ageing, making a far from discreet whirring sound, and the inside of the garage was now freezing cold with no small or paper objects staying in place unless weighted, but he now felt safer by a considerable margin. The fan was facing down into the engine, fastened in place with duct tape.

He loosened the last fastening on the air intake, being careful to keep his hands inside the chainmail mittens on the suit, and stood back to hoist the unit out of the engine. It began to rise, then snagged on a pipe - one of several, probably a fuel line - still attached to the intake. No matter, it would only take another second or so to undo -

He stared at the fastening on the pipe and did a double take. It needed another special tool to undo it. A different special tool. How could a minor thing like this need special tools? He'd need a solid steel lever attached to a pentagonal prism a centimetre or so deep, almost exactly like that one down there -

He stared down into the engine. The exact tool he needed was lying there, wedged between engine and shock absorber. The old man had had one made, and dropped it.

He started to reach for it automatically, then thought again. But why had he dropped it? Had he dropped it because he was feeling sudden, chest-compressing pain? Had that been the moment when he had begun to die? He turned round nervously to check, but nobody was behind him.

But Owen Agnello would also not have left a valuable custom-made tool lodged in an engine. Was the point at which he had begun to die the point when he'd reached deep into the mechanism to retrieve it? This engine could tell when it was being tampered with. Could it also defend itself?

He needed the part. Rather than reaching for it, he pushed down on the shock absorber mount, bouncing on it with all his body weight. The special tool tinkled to the concrete below. Quickly, he scooped it up and began to uncouple the fuel line.

***

He'd now detached all the various cables and connectors leaving the intake unit. Despite this, it was still broadcasting radio waves. He'd taken it outside on a trolley and laid it on the grass, and it had still set off the Howl Round detector. Maybe it was battery operated, he decided. The experience was unsettling, like that of cutting off a man's hand and watching it scuttle off across the carpet like a pink five-legged spider, still alive...

He realized that, across the garage, his mobile phone was lit up and attempting to escape to a new life on the floor by vibrating itself across the bench. He unbent from under the bonnet, switched off the fan for a moment, walked over to the worktop and pulled the plugs from out of his ears, then picked up the call.

"Sean Agnello."

"Sean, where are you?"

"Mum's house. Those bastards from Hirondelle were bothering her with phone calls."

"Your mum says you're at the bottom of the garden with your head under a car bonnet."

"Well, that's true up to a point -"

"What happened to 'I'll come back and have a holiday and we'll do family things together'?"

"We will still do family things together." Good god, woman, if Dad's will reads the way Mum says it does, I am about to inherit two million pounds' worth of shares and we can spend our entire fucking lives doing family things together. "I won't be long here." He knew, as he said it, that it was a lie.

"I want you back at home by tomorrow lunchtime."

"Or what?"

"Or your bloody lunch will go cold." The phone went dead.

He laid the phone back on the bench. He turned his attention back to the car, just as the spider flung itself at him.

It was rather larger than the average house spider, with the leg spread of a golfing umbrella, its fangs like fur-sheathed daggers. He grabbed hold of one of its legs, trying to deflect the bite sideways, but it pushed back with more spare limbs than he had. Venom dribbled down two huge teeth like the first wasted spurt from a hypodermic needle, centimetres from his face. Finally, he kicked its beachball-sized body clean up into the roof, breaking its grip; he heard it the garage door clang on its runners as it collided with it. He staggered backwards out of the garage, to find the long grass outside seething like the fur of a dead animal filled with maggots. Grass was surely a thing that shouldn't be alive, at least not in the sense of being alive and moving. Green mouths were opening in it, traps into which an incautious foot might fall, each an emerald-lined wet red cavity filled with sharp white teeth -

He leapt for the roof and pulled himself up onto the asbestos, rolling over on corrugated moss and rivets. He heard his own voice echo through the trees. His voice was screaming. The trees, meanwhile, were flailing and whipping in the wind like motile sea creatures in a current. At the top of the garden, the house's every window was an eye of flame. Lightning flickered overhead like celestial neuralgia.

He slammed his hands over his eyes, crammed his thumbs into his ears, curled up into a ball, rolled over on the roof, trying to cut off all access to his mind through all his senses.

And then, all of a sudden, he was sitting on a moss-covered roof with blood under his fingernails, coughing with the pain of breathing rapidly enough to satisfy the insistent beating of his heart. The trees were static and silent. Only a few windows in the house at the top of the garden glowed, and those with child-safe electric light, not fire. He moved cautiously to the edge of the roof, and looked down. The grass lay flat and uncarnivorous.

"Jesus", he said. "I only switched it off for thirty seconds."

Gingerly, he descended from the roof, feeling his fingernails protest, ripped to the quicks. He walked gingerly across the grass, exhaling all the way, switched on the fan again, and stepped back out, picking up his mobile phone.

It took a long time for the number to dial, and even longer for it to be picked up.

"Hello, Pete? I'm going to be here another two weeks. Yes, something's come up. Can you put one of the manual UXB kits on a plane to Heathrow?"