The Better Mousetrap by Tom Holt

from ten to fifteen per cent on this job, so it stood to reason that if he took the risk, it’d be because of the money, because of greed. It almost worked.
    And then there’s the girl, hissed the soft voice. Only twenty-eight, poor kid.
    I’m not lis—
    You could save her.
    And that, regrettably, was really all it took. The other reasons, which he quickly gathered round him like a hedgehog rolling in dry leaves, were only there for decoration: you don’t really know what’s going to happen, even if you do run your daft simulations; you think you’re God’s gift to calculus, but really you’re just guessing; history heals its own wounds, it must do or else all the other jobs you’ve done would’ve made a real mess. His inner goblin was chattering away, but it needn’t have bothered. It’d nabbed him with a damsel in distress, easy as twitching a bit of string under a cat’s nose.
    Frank stood up. It was funny about the dog, but he wasn’t going to argue with a stroke of good luck. The thought made him frown. He didn’t like dogs, but he was too soft-hearted to take active steps to get rid of one. He’d even parted with money when ferocious women had shaken collecting tins under his nose in the cause of various homeless-dog shelters. It always came back to his strong sense of duty. If someone or something liked him, he was morally obliged to like them back, even if he didn’t.
    The sun was viciously hot and bleachingly bright: mad-dogsand-Englishmen weather. He stepped out from the shade of the fig tree and hurried back to the Door. As he opened it, something prompted him to look back over his shoulder. He paused. Something was missing. He couldn’t identify it, but he was aware of that moment of deadly vulnerability that a man gets when he doesn’t know for certain where his car keys are. Quick as a snake he patted his pockets, then remembered that he didn’t actually own a car. Couldn’t have been that, then. Nevertheless, the feeling was dangerously strong. He’d lost or forgotten something; but he couldn’t figure out what it was.
    Maybe it was just the dog. In which case—
    Far too hot to linger out in the open without a hat; but he went back into the shade of the tree and carefully searched the place where he’d been sitting. Nothing. He carried out the mild obsessive’s standard kit inspection-the Door’s cardboard tube, wallet, house keys, palmtop, mobile, all present and correct. He tried to remember if he’d been carrying anything else. The file; yes, got that.
    The feeling was very strong.
    This is silly, Frank thought. I’ve made sure I’ve got all the important stuff, so whatever I’m missing, by definition it’s not something I’ll miss. And, of course, the occasional flash of misplaced instinct was perfectly normal for someone who spent his time whizzing backwards and forwards in time via the Door. There were all manner of annoying and bewildering side effects, ranging from mild and vague deja vu to being able to recite huge chunks of dialogue out of movies he’d never seen, often because they hadn’t been made yet. As for detective stories and thrillers: forget it. He always knew who’d done it as soon as he opened the cover or saw the opening credits.
    He caught himself checking his pockets yet again, his fingers groping for a shape and a texture that he was unable to specify. Searching for an absence of something is a really bad way to spend time, a bit like trying to play darts blindfold in zero gravity. He ordered himself to stop doing it. He mutinied.
    And while I’m at it, he thought, I’ll keep my eyes peeled for the invisible man.
    Somehow Frank managed to get a fragile fingernails-only grip, and made long strides back to the Door. Doesn’t matter, he told himself; because if he really had lost something important and found out later what it was, he could always return through the Door to the moment just before he arrived, and leave himself a note to remind him to