The Fall

23

‘Wait… Nicole, wait! Where are you going?’

Nicole turned to see Lee Burton running across the car park towards her. The big vampire cape flapped out behind him like a black sheet; his face was white with make-up.

‘Nicole. I wondered what had happened to you. I opened my eyes…’ He panted breathlessly while trying to feed the cloak’s big button through the undersized loop around his throat. ‘When I opened my eyes and I saw you weren’t there I thought something had happened to you.’

‘It very nearly did.’

His eyes widened and he stopped struggling with the button.

‘Why? What happened?’

‘Here, Lee, let me,’ she said and unfastened the button. ‘Have you seen anything of Bostock?’

‘Bostock?’

‘He was on our coach. A short, stocky man. He was sitting with his wife towards the back, and—’

‘Oh, yes,’ Lee said remembering. ‘He was always arguing with his wife, wasn’t he?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘Why are you looking for him?’

As they crossed the car park, she told him what had happened, how Bostock had murdered his wife, then Brian Pickering, that he had tried to kill her, and how she intended to track him down.

‘Is that wise?’ Lee said. ‘After all, he sounds insane.’

‘We can’t let him roam around here. Who knows who he’ll attack next? And, remember, he’ll want to shut me up once and for all. I’m the only witness.’

‘Poor Brian Pickering.’ Lee shook his head. ‘He was a bang-up guy. Did you know he used to be a professional footballer until his knees gave out?’

‘Well… Bostock must have smashed his skull to pieces.’

‘The bastard.’

‘I’d appreciate some help finding him.’

‘Sure, but if he’s that dangerous we should be going after him mob-handed. Not just the two of us.’

‘Okay, we’ll try and round up some others. What shape are Ryan and Sue in?’

‘Sue’s fine. But all Ryan’s doing is staring into space and saying “This is another fine mess you’ve gotten me into.’”

‘His one and only line, huh? Sounds as if he’s getting flaky.’

‘Him and a dozen or more others you can mention. Have you seen the state of them? They’re all pretty badly shook up.’

‘Yeah,’ Nicole gave a weak smile. ‘All time travel should come with a government health warning, shouldn’t it?’

‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ He touched her arm lightly.

‘I’m fine. You go back to the amphitheatre and see if you can muster people to look for Bostock. He’s probably in there,’ she said, nodding in the direction of the wood.

‘You could come back with me’ He scanned the trees, then shot her a concerned look. ‘I don’t like to think of you alone here with that maniac on the loose.’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll be fine. Look, I’m still standing in the car park. All those people are just 50 yards away.’ She smiled. ‘What harm can come to me here.’

‘Okay.’ He sounded reluctant. ‘I’ll be five minutes. Now stay there. Okay? Don’t go anywhere.’

Well, she thought, watching Lee’s lanky shape moving back across the car park, I’ve got the makings of my posse; so, Mr Bostock, watch out, watch out, wherever you are…

Before Jud left the boat, he told them he needed something from the cabin.

Carswell sniffed. ‘I wouldn’t bother bringing any money. I haven’t a clue what year this is, but my guess is we’re in the days of pre-decimal currency. Now it’ll be pounds, shillings, pence and all that.’

‘No, not money, something else that’s far more important.’ Jud sounded enigmatic enough to prick Sam’s curiosity, but he didn’t comment.

‘So, what do you make of the United Kingdom, my American friend?’ Carswell asked.

‘I liked it better when it was 1999.’

‘Don’t worry, you’d have to go back another two thousand years before you found the Brits indulging in cannibalism or anything as unsavoury as that.’

‘Everyone ready?’ Jud asked, stepping lightly from the narrow boat. In his hands was a cardboard wallet of the kind in which you’d store documents. ‘Then shall we begin our trip into post-war Casterton?’

Sam Baker drove the Range Rover into town. Carswell sat beside him in the front passenger seat. Jud Campbell was in the back.

And, hell, the world was looking different now. Lots, lots different.

A dirt track now connected the amphitheatre with the main road. As Jud pointed out, the amphitheatre only became a tourist attraction in the late 1960s. With this being sometime in the 1940s, the amphitheatre was, as far as the locals would be concerned, a hole in the ground occasionally visited by a student writing his or her thesis on Roman Britain.

He wished Zita had come with them. He found her presence reassuring. But she’d stayed to help Jud’s wife take care of the tourists who’d been injured by the latest jerk through time. Some were suffering from shock – which was purely a psychological reaction to what was happening to them. Then there were the grotesque injuries. Like the man with the bird fused inside his head, and the man with grass growing through his feet. The latter probably wasn’t seriously hurt, but Jud’s wife had urged them to find antiseptic creams in town.

Sam joined the main road to town. It looked pretty much the same as it had in 1978, or in 1999 for that matter. Of course, the road signs were different. It seemed narrower. And there were great clumps of horse droppings scattered here and there.

Jud noticed, too. ‘Horses were still commonly used for transport right up into the 1950s. So watch out, you’ll probably find a few horse-drawn delivery vehicles on this road.’

Sam eased the Range Rover down to 40. He didn’t want to compound their problems by running the car into the ass of some carthorse ambling along the road.

The fields at either side of the road, Sam noticed, were smaller; there were far more hedges, too. On the road itself there were few cars. And what vehicles there were looked pretty much like museum pieces: boxy cars that seemed peculiarly high, with running boards and spoked wheels, and painted in colours that were predominantly black or grey. The sole exception was a cream-coloured sports car driven by a jaunty-looking man with a handlebar moustache and a leather flying helmet.

Carswell said, ‘I think our own vehicle is going to turn heads. An electric-blue Range Rover in 1940s Britain is going to stick out like the proverbial sore thumb.’

Sam nodded. ‘I think we’ll just have to live with that interest. If anyone asks, just say it’s an experimental car from the States. I think they’ll buy that, don’t you?’

‘Wait – wait! Stop the car,’ Jud shouted suddenly from the back.

Sam braked hard and the car skidded slightly on the carpet of horse crap that covered most parts of the road. ‘What’s wrong? Jud? Where are you going?’

‘Back in a minute.’

Carswell said coolly, ‘If he’s going to be jumping in and out of the car every five minutes then perhaps we should drive on without him.’

Sam frowned. ‘He knows what he’s doing.’

‘Does he? Maybe he’s losing his marbles, too. You know, time travel doesn’t appear to be agreeing with most people.’

Jud came running back to the car, his gold waistcoat flapping open as he ran. ‘See this? Yuk, bit of a mess I’m afraid.’

‘Hell, Jud, what’s that smell?’

‘What’s left of someone’s fish-and-chip supper, it looks and smells like to me,’ Carswell said dryly. ‘That’s one souvenir we could safely leave behind, don’t you think?’

‘No,’ Jud said. ‘Look, in days gone by, fish and chips were wrapped in old newspapers. This should give us a pretty accurate date. Uh, I think vinegar was even more pungent in… let’s see.’ Jud peeled back a corner of the newspaper from a clot of cold chips and scraps of batter-covered fish-skin. The paper was nearly transparent with grease. ‘Good heavens, it’s wet through with fat.’

‘And just think, no-one had heard the word “cholesterol” in those days,’ Carswell observed in that dry voice of his.

‘Let’s try farther down where… Ah, got it.’

‘You can see a date?’

‘Yep. 14^th May 19…’ Jud screwed up his eyes to read the blurred print. ‘1946. That’s it: 14^th May 1946 – a Wednesday.’

‘The paper might be old if it was used to wrap fish and chips.’

‘But not that old – no more than a month at the most,’ Jud said, dropping the greasy newspaper back onto the road then wiping his hands on his handkerchief. ‘So,’ he said, thoughtfully. ‘The summer of 1946. That means the war’s been over for a year. There’s still rationing. And most of the world is undergoing some pretty miserable austerity measures to pay for the war effort.’ He shut the car door and Sam accelerated away.

‘If Britain in 1946 was hardly a land of milk and honey,’ Carswell said, ‘do you think we’ll just be able to walk into a pharmacy and demand antiseptic cream? We’ve no cash, remember.’

‘That should he our first priority.’ Jud still rubbed at his fingers with the handkerchief. ‘Perhaps we can find a local doctor who’ll—’

‘I don’t agree.’ Carswell’s voice sounded crisp, as if addressing a business meeting. ‘Our first priority should be to find this Rolle gentleman. From what you say, he should be able to tell us what’s happening: why we’ve come adrift in time, and how we can return to 1999.’

‘Assuming he can tell us that,’ Sam said. ‘All he was trying to do was warn me to keep away from the amphitheatre during the time-slip.’

Jud nodded. ‘And how do we know he’ll be here in the Casterton of 1946? For all we know Rolle, or Dirty Harry, whatever his name really is, might be stuck in 1978.’

Sam cocked his head to one side, thinking. ‘But didn’t you say that when you saw him in 1978 he looked exactly as he did in 1999?’

‘True.’

‘Then he might be here in 1946?’

‘I really don’t know,’ Jud said. ‘I really don’t know.’

‘There’s only one way to find out,’ Carswell said. ‘Step on the gasoline pedal, Sam, old boy, and we’ll see if we can track down this mysterious fellow.’

Sam glanced in the rear-view mirror and caught Jud’s eye. Jud shot the back of Carswell’s head a look as if to say, ‘You’ll be lucky.’ Then, shaking his head, he flipped open the cardboard wallet.

Sam, glancing back in the rear-view mirror, saw Jud pull out a sheaf of old photographs. He began to study them each in turn, taking particular notice of what was written on their backs. Sam couldn’t see what the photographs were of, but he did see that Jud examined them carefully, very carefully; they were clearly of tremendous importance to him.

‘Watch out for the poor gee-gees,’ Carswell said with more than a hint of sarcasm.

Sam grunted and turned his attention to the road in front of him. It was busier now as they headed into town. Carefully, he eased the car round a horse-drawn van on which were written the words Ferringer & Son, Greengrocer.

The town itself was noticeably smaller than it had been in 1978. There were no high-rise buildings. The only man-made structures of any height were the town hall clock tower and factory chimneys, standing like long fingers of brick. From them black smoke rose. In fact, Sam saw that a haze of smoke hung over the whole town; every household, it seemed, must have had a fire blazing in the hearth grate, despite the fact it was a fine summer day.

Jud noticed, too. ‘Looks pretty filthy, doesn’t it? I’d forgotten how smoky towns were before smokeless fuel and gas central heating.’

‘You must be a cold-blooded race,’ Sam said. ‘Fires on a warm day?’

‘You have to remember that most of these people wouldn’t have electric or gas water heaters. The only way they’d have hot water would be to light a fire. Also, I’d bet good money that a lot of these people are cooking meals on coal-fired ranges.’

‘Roll on 1999,’ Carswell grunted, his voice thickened with distaste.

Suddenly there seemed to be men on bikes everywhere.

They wore blue military uniforms.

‘Ah, the boys of the RAF,’ Carswell said lightly. ‘I take it there must be an RAF station hereabouts, Jud?’

‘RAF Casterton. Home of 717 Squadron. They flew Wellington bombers out of here until 1950. Then the aerodrome was closed down and ploughed out. The last I saw of it, it was under several acres of wheat.’

‘My dear old Dad was in the RAF,’ Carswell said distantly, his elbow resting on the door frame, fingers toying with the rubber seal around the window. ‘Although I don’t think he made it so far north.’

‘Where was he stationed?’

‘Christ knows. Whenever he started talking about it, people left the room. The old boy bored us silly. All I know was he was a grease monkey on Spitfires. Probably Kent or some such place. Just think…’ He shot Sam a smile. On Carswell’s face it wasn’t a pleasant expression; the man’s eyes were as nastily beady as ever. ‘Just think, if I knew his base’s telephone number, I could phone the silly old bugger up and say, “Guess who?’” Carswell laughed.

And as far as laughs went, Sam thought, it wasn’t a particularly pleasant one either. Carswell was soon lost again in his own thoughts as he absently fiddled with the rubber seal of the window.

Sam turned his attention back to the road, which was becoming clogged with slow-moving traffic. There were a fair number of horse-drawn carts and even a horse-drawn postal van. Horse crap littered the streets, lying here, there and everywhere in piles of greeny-brown balls. He could even smell it through the air vents of the car.

The town hall clock showed the time to be just a little after four.

On the High Street there were far more shops than he’d remembered before, each specialising in a specific kind of merchandise – an ironmonger’s, a hardware store, a greengrocer’s, a butcher’s, a fishmonger’s, a bookshop, a baker’s, a confectioner’s, a men’s clothes shop (specialising in made-to-measure military uniforms, said a sign), then a women’s hat shop, a laundry, a bank, a post office. They all looked pokily small, with drab wooden signs and even more drably-painted woodwork in dull greens and chocolate browns. Most had their windows covered in whitewash writing that announced ‘Coupons welcome here’ or ‘Nylons on sale – first come, first served’ or ‘Boys in Blue? Front of the queue!’

‘Looks poxy, doesn’t it?’ Carswell murmured. ‘So bloody poxy.’

Jud leaned forward to say in a low voice, ‘They’ve noticed the car.’

Sam glanced to his left, then right. Shoppers were stopping to stare at the car, some open-mouthed. To his right, a pair of boys in short trousers (although not so short: they reached their knees) ran after the car, waving and shouting.

Sam heard a thumping sound. When he looked in the door mirror, he saw that a man in a blue uniform riding a bike had grabbed hold of the back window frame and was hitching a lift. He had a cigarette gripped between his teeth and grinned hugely as he coasted along.

‘Funny old world, isn’t it?’ Carswell murmured. ‘I can’t wait to find out what we shall see next. Can you?’

Sam gave a low groan. ‘Damn. I think we might just be about to run into our first problem.’ Standing in the middle of the road was a policeman. He held up his hand and fixed Sam with an authoritarian stare.

‘Well, old boy,’ Carswell said. ‘You’ve got a choice of running the constable down or stopping.’

Sam stopped the car.

‘You might have made the wrong choice,’ Carswell said. ‘I hope you’re silver-tongued enough to explain why three strangely dressed people, especially Jud in his gold waistcoat, are driving a peculiar-looking car that isn’t taxed for this year and bears an incomprehensible registration plate. Good luck, old boy.’

Sam wound the window down as the policeman walked slowly up, poked his head into the car and gave the three of them a look that was both long and searching.

Nicole Wagner stood in the hot sun. She found she couldn’t take her eyes off the deep shadows of the woods. She was convinced Bostock was in there.

Probably watching me standing here, she thought uneasily. She shot a look back at the amphitheatre. Where was Lee? He was supposed to be drumming up some kind of posse to go out and look for Bostock. She couldn’t bear the idea of Bostock escaping. The little bastard should be brought to justice.

Wait…

She tilted her head to one side and shielded her eyes with her hand against the sun.

She saw something move in the wood. It moved quickly. Fleetingly, she glimpsed a figure.

Now, now, she told herself. Is that Bostock running from tree trunk to tree trunk to hide himself?

She shot a glance back at the amphitheatre. There were half a dozen people or so in the car park. Most had gone to the toilet block or begged cold drinks from the coach driver. The coach’s galley boasted a well-stocked refrigerator. (Good grief, he probably even sold them the drinks; she hadn’t met a tour coach driver yet who hadn’t some wrinkle for earning extra cash on the side. Usually it was spurious detours to destinations not in the regular itinerary: passengers would be invited to make a ‘contribution’ to the driver for the additional fuel used. Naturally, the money, equalling at least a week’s wage, went directly to the driver’s pocket. It did not pass Go, nor did it attract the tax man’s beady eye.)

There he goes again! she thought, looking back to the wood. A figure, nothing more than a dark shape, flitted amongst the trees.

Was that Bostock playing peek-a-boo with her?

Or maybe he would rush out of the wood with the intention of strangling her there and then at the edge of the car park.

Let the sod try, she thought, angrily. Just let the sod try.

He was 50, fat and short-legged. She could easily outrun him. She’d run, yelling blue bloody murder all the way back to the others.

She caught a glimpse of a pale face peeping from behind a tree trunk.

Perhaps if she took a step or two towards him that might tempt him out from the wood. Then she’d let him chase her back to the amphitheatre, where Lee and the rest would overpower him. Just what would happen then she wasn’t so sure. She had vague ideas of turning him in to the police. Well, never mind, she told herself, I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

The face still peered out at her. It was too far away for her to be sure if it was Bostock. Nevertheless, whoever it was seemed peculiarly interested in her.

She took another couple of paces. Now she was on the turf.

The wood lay about 50 yards away from her. The face ducked back as if shy.

She took another pace forward.

No more peek-a-boo. The owner of the face was staying hidden.

Damn, she thought. I’ve scared Bostock away. More angry than afraid now, she strode towards the wood.

It was far bigger than in 1978, she realised. The whole countryside seemed far more lush, greener. Everywhere there were hedgerows. Birdsong was more noticeable, too.

She slowed as she neared the edge of the wood.

‘Come out, come out, wherever you are,’ she sang under her breath. Then louder, ‘Come on, Mr Bostock, you’re not shy, are you now?’

With the faintest of rustlings a figure moved lightly away from the trunk of a huge oak in front of her.

At that moment she was ready to turn and run like hell. But the figure was moving away from her into the shadows of the wood where they hung as thickly impenetrable as a fog.

‘Damn you,’ she hissed. It was a good 30 or so seconds later that she realised she was following the man. She’d acted on impulse. Only she just didn’t want to see the wretch get away scot-free.

Now she found herself under the canopy of branches. She glanced back. The car park seemed a long, long way away. And here in the wood it was like a different world. Very still. Very quiet. Very gloomy. All that came to her ears was a distant whispering sound from the leaves being stirred in the treetops. A bird called.

Startled, she took a step back.

She bumped back against a tree trunk.

At least, that was the first thought that entered her head. Only now she realised the tree trunk was soft. And then it breathed into the back of her neck before grunting, ‘You’ve done it now, haven’t you, you bitch?’

Her insides turned cold.

There was no mistaking Bostock’s voice.