The Jack Hansard Series: Season Two

Episode 9.2

This was the perfect time to sneak in. The chap in the kiosk was focused on the queue of cars, checking badges and exchanging pleasantries with a few. I waited until he was leaning fully out the window and then I simply crossed through on the other side of the little booth, right behind his back.

The trick is to power-walk, not sneak. I marched through the throng like a Very Important Person who was late for a Very Important Meeting, and for the most part people stepped out of my way or paid me no mind at all.

The majority of these commuters were heading into the large glass-fronted building that was clearly their main office block. A few bodies separated from the pack, heading toward the more featureless buildings that surrounded it. I made a beeline for the first building, which had Baines and Grayle audaciously emblazoned above the doors – and which seemed to require an employee card to open.

Est. 1976, the sign also declared. Was that how long they'd been in business?

I swerved around a group ahead of me to catch the glass door before it closed behind someone. Pretending to just notice the crowd, I held it open graciously for the next knot of people and then slipped inside myself.

The reception area seemed designed especially to intimidate small-timers like me. Every surface was a polished one, from the marbled floor to the shining white walls and the obnoxious mirror sculpture that took up one end of the very empty space. Only a slim desk and two low seats – all matte black and with hard angles in them – made up the rest of the furniture. Employees filed into an array of lifts, and the opening and closing of their shiny doors reflected eerily in the metal sculpture.

I pretended to admire this while the lobby emptied of people. The artwork, if you'd call it that, was made up of separate but interconnecting strips of mirror in a nonsense formation. It was strangely at odds with the precise corners of everything else in the room, that this mess of a shape was allowed to take up so much space. I was about to leave it when, from the corner of my eye, the shape changed, moulded by perspective into an Egyptian wedjat eye.

My head snapped back to stare at it, but the impression was gone. I circled the thing a few times and let myself lose focus on it. More symbols emerged on my periphery. Two crossed spears. A pentacle. A triquetra. The solar cross. All of them resulting in a mishmash of what I knew to be protective symbols – because I had placed all of them, at one time or another, on Cora.

'Can I help you?'

The voice made me jump, despite its polite tone. It belonged to a young lady in a slick trouser suit, who I'd seen behind the reception desk.

'Ah, I was just admiring your . . . art piece.'

'Fascinating, isn't it?' She bade me to step backward, into a specific corner of the room. 'Look now. Do you see it?'

I rocked my head until the twisted mirror ribbons formed into something new. 'It looks like . . . a snake curled around a rod?'

She nodded happily. 'It's called the Rod of Asclepius. He was the Greek god of medicine. Perfectly fitting, don't you think?'

'Ye-es.' Quick, time to take control of the conversation before she asks me what I'm doing here. I stuck out my hand. 'Jack Hansard. I have an appointment. With the–' I bit my tongue before saying boss, '–sales team. I didn't catch a name, though. I'm pitching a presentation today. Can you show me where to set up? I'll need a projector.' I flashed my business card, thumb carefully placed to cover up the 'Occult' in Purveyor of Occult Goods.

She blinked a few times, clearly caught off guard. 'A projector? I don't think we– Hang on, I'll check the diary.'

'I was told I'd be provided with a projector,' I said patiently. The key here is to be insistent, but very polite. Put them on the back foot, and keep them there. 'No trouble if you can't, but I'll need a little extra time to arrange everything. Can you possibly delay everyone by ten minutes? I appreciate you're on a tight schedule.'