The Fall

26

‘Where is St Jude’s?’ Sam asked as they walked back to where they’d parked the car in the field near the circus.

‘It’s the little church near the amphitheatre,’ Jud replied.

‘Well,’ Carswell said sharply. ‘If you take any notice of the madman you’re probably bigger fools than he is.’

‘Get in the car, Carswell,’ Sam said, irritated by the man’s mood.

Jud climbed into the back seat. ‘So far, Carswell, Rolle is our only hope.’

Sam started the car. ‘And he appears to know how to travel in time – as distinct from us who are just being carried along by the flow.’

Carswell nodded and, staring out of the window, echoed Sam. ‘He knows about time travel. Well, we’ll have to wait until we can speak with him further at eight.’

Sam scanned the channels of the radio until he hit a station playing big-band swing music.

‘Glenn Miller,’ Jud said. ‘It used to be my father’s favourite.’

‘Sweet,’ Carswell said in a voice sticky with sarcasm.

Sam shook his head. For two pins he’d leave Carswell there to walk back.

‘Back to the amphitheatre, then?’

‘Fine,’ Jud said. ‘We’ll have a wait of just under a couple of hours until we meet Rolle at the church.’

Then Carswell said something surprising.

‘Well, if the evening’s still young, why don’t we stop off at that old inn at the end of the track to the amphitheatre?’ Carswell smiled across at Sam. ‘I’ll treat us to a beer apiece. I think we’ve all earned it, don’t you?’

Lee Burton had thought he would throw up, but oddly the job he had to do wasn’t as repellent as he’d anticipated. He’d talked it through with Nicole and Sue. (Ryan was still out of it and had taken himself off to sit on the coach, where he muttered to himself, his frightened eyes rolling.) They’d decided that as tour reps they still had a duty to their clients, whatever the circumstances, no matter how bizarre the situation.

After the last time-slip, Sue had noticed an elderly woman apparently asleep on one of the benches. She’d soon discovered the woman was dead. Perhaps the shock had killed her; perhaps she’d materialised with a rat inside her, a rat that had been occupying the same space as her when she’d suddenly popped through into 1946. Who knew?

Not that Lee was going to investigate any further. In any event, she looked as if she’d died peacefully enough, perhaps of natural causes after all.

Nevertheless, she was dead. And the three of them had decided to move the body. They’d quickly agreed on using the visitors’ centre as a mortuary.

According to the coach radio, the time was six o’clock. The early-evening news was just starting on the BBC’s Home Service; the opening news report concerned the repatriation of Italian prisoners of war and reminded listeners that it was now 12 months since the war had ended in Europe. The defeated soldiers were going home.

With the help of Dot Campbell and Zita they had carried the body up to the visitors’ centre on a door taken from one of the toilet cubicles.

It was probably then that Lee found he was distancing himself from the fact he was carrying one end of a door on which a dead human being lay. Instead, he concentrated on the practical problems of carrying the body, manoeuvring it through the doors into the visitors’ centre, then over the counter and into the museum area at the back. By then the body might have been no more than an awkward piece of furniture that had to be moved from A to B.

Not an elderly woman with slightly parted lips that were turning a bloodless blue and one eye that remained fixed wide open while the other’s lid lay shut.

The little museum area housed a few artefacts that had been excavated from the site over the years – mainly Roman coins, bits of pot and a sword-blade that was remarkable only because it had been $found lodged in the ribs of a skeleton.

Lee remained quite dispassionate about the business as he eased the body between two glass cabinets, with Zita issuing breathless instructions: ‘Your end down a bit… Watch your back, Lee. Sue, can you push the waste bin aside with your foot?’

He even found himself reading the label on the skeleton exhibit:

Nicole, with both hands gripping the end of the toilet door that was serving as a stretcher, flicked back her long blonde hair with a toss of her head, then tried to blow away the loose strands that clung to her face.

‘There’s not much room,’ she panted. ‘But we could put her behind the display at the end.’

Lee nodded. ‘Go back straight. There’s a space where we can slot her at the side of the monk.’

There at the end of the room was a scene depicting, so a notice said, The Devotion of Richard Rolle, Hermit, Writer and Mystic (b. 1300, d. Michaelmas Day 1349). There, kneeling before a fake stone altar of fibreglass, was the mannequin of a small, pious-looking man, his limpid brown eyes turned up towards heaven in prayer. The figure was dressed in a monk’s habit, and the silver nylon hair was shaven into a monk’s tonsure.

(A solar panel for a sex machine was Lee’s sudden inappropriate thought as he manoeuvred the lavatory door on which the dead woman wobbled plumply at every movement.)

‘There, got it,’ Nicole said as she dropped the door the last inch (so as not to trap her fingers) onto the raised stage area that carried the tableau of the hermit. ‘Just shove it from your end, Lee.’

With a last heave he slid the door onto the stage, knocking the fibreglass altar back against the wall.

Oddly, the tableau of the kneeling monk didn’t look at all out of place. If anything, he now looked to be praying over the dead body of the woman. A moment later, Jud’s wife covered the body with a dust sheet she’d found at the back of the museum area.

‘You say there’s another body still out in the woods?’ Sue asked Nicole.

Still breathless, Nicole nodded. ‘Bostock. But he deserves to lie out there and rot.’

‘It’s a shame we can’t just phone for an ambulance and let them take care of it.’

‘And then start having to answer some awkward police questions?’ Nicole shook her head. ‘We’ve got to manage this ourselves.’

When Lee spoke, he was surprised at how businesslike he sounded. ‘Did anyone see what happened to the man with the bird in his face?’

‘As far as I know he’s still alive,’ Dot Campbell said. ‘But how long he can survive like that, I don’t know. Certainly the blood groups will be incompatible. I imagine the bird will die first and decompose. Then septicaemia will set in, which would kill the man in a few hours.’

‘Dear God, what a way to go,’ Sue said, and swallowed as if a filthy taste had leeched across her tongue. ‘Imagine. A bird growing out of your face; its flesh and bones fused with your flesh and bones.’

At that moment Nicole thought about the man in the wood with the pair of eyes peering from his stomach. And as she walked away from the visitors’ centre she began to wonder about that.

‘What do you think?’ Jud asked.

They sat in the tap room of the inn that stood at the junction of the dirt track leading to the amphitheatre.

Sam sipped the beer. It was flat, warm and tasted particularly bitter. In fact, it was very much like every other British beer he’d tried before. He was getting a taste for it now, but he didn’t feel competent enough to say whether it was great beer or if it tasted like something a tom-cat had passed.

‘Not too unpleasant,’ Carswell said. Which, coming from him, Sam realised, was probably high praise indeed.

Jud licked his lips before taking another swallow. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘I imagined something full-bodied, richer, stronger.’

‘Remember,’ Carswell said, sipping the beer, ‘this is the austere post-war period, with rationing and belt-tightening still much in evidence. Now, would anyone like anything to eat?’

Sam glanced at Jud as Carswell studied a chalked menu that offered pork pie, sandwiches and something called Rabbit Bake. Why was Carswell suddenly on a charm offensive? He seemed to have completely changed, mood-wise, on the 15-minute run back from town. Why was he buying them drinks, inviting them to eat? For heaven’s sake, he’d even concealed that sour expression and was actually being charming.

Sam realised from the expression on his face that the same questions were going through Jud’s mind.

Needless to say, he knew the maxim, ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch.’ And he was positive that Carswell would do nothing for anybody unless he’d identified a profitable return for himself. So what was Carswell’s game? What did he want from them?

‘I think I’ll take the pork pie,’ Carswell said. ‘Anyone like to join me?’

Sam and Jud shook their heads and thanked him.

‘No? All right,’ he said mildly. ‘Anyone for another beer? No? Just say when you’re ready for more. I still have a fair amount of 1940s currency left. There’s no point in allowing it go to waste, is there? Now, you know, this beer is starting to grow on me. More hoppy than the ones I’m familiar with. What do you think?’

While Jud and Carswell chatted about the beer, Sam allowed his gaze to run round the pub. It didn’t look much different from other English pubs he’d visited. There was no jukebox, of course, nor any gambling machines. The chairs weren’t cushioned and the whole place looked in need of a lick or two of paint. There were half a dozen or so other people in the bar. A couple were in RAF uniform. Across the room a middle-aged couple sat at a table. They were drinking half-pints of beer while shooting glances in Sam’s direction. The woman was clearly talking about him, even holding her hand against her mouth in such a secretive way it was nothing less than theatrical. The man wore a thick moustache and black-framed glasses.

Sam looked down at his own light-coloured chinos, loafers and open-necked cotton shirt that was the colour of a well-ripened lemon. Well, the clothes stood out as much as the Range Rover, which they’d taken the precaution of parking down the track behind a clump of bushes.

After a few moments the secretive couple drank up and left, the woman still looking him up and down as if she couldn’t quite take in the clothes he was wearing.

In the meantime Carswell had been to the bar again, his own white linen suit attracting curious glances from the RAF men.

When Carswell had returned with the drinks he said, for no real reason, ‘I hated my father, you know. The man was either drunk or chasing women. I don’t know why my mother put up with him, but whatever he did, she had an excuse. At weekends he’d stagger in at breakfast time covered with cuts and bruises, his clothes torn…’ He wiped foam from the rim of his glass, then licked his finger. ‘That wasn’t just an occasional event. It happened nearly every week. He used to get into fights, I suppose. I suspect he was actually allergic in some way to alcohol and it made him act like a madman. Anyway, this went on year after year. But one day, when I was eight years old, I asked my mother why he came home in such a state.’ Carswell leaned forward with his elbows on the table. ‘And do you know what she said?’

Sam shook his head, puzzled why Carswell was baring his soul like this.

‘She said my father was employed by the Lord Mayor of London, and that he had a very important job.’ He looked from Sam to Jud. ‘She said he was employed to fight the Devil’s serpent.’ He gave a colourless smile. ‘Can you believe that? To protect us kids from the truth – that dear old Dad was a drunk, a brawler and an adulterer – she invented that outlandish story. She told us all that this monstrous serpent of the Devil was as long as six London double-decker buses; that it would come slithering out of the Thames every weekend intent on tearing Westminster Abbey down stone by stone. But every week my father would be standing on the Abbey steps, waiting for it. The monster serpent would attack, and dear old Dad would fight it all night until dawn; that’s when, she said, the serpent’s power would fade as the sun rose. Then it would go slithering back to the river, where it would lurk until next time.’ Carswell chuckled, but his eyes were glazed and fixed as he remembered. ‘And, of course, my father would always be there the next weekend: waiting to do battle with Old Nick’s serpent. Some part-time job, eh?’

‘Your mother wanted to protect you.’ Jud took a sip of beer. ‘It’s important for young children to respect their parents. Even to see them as superhuman or heroes.’

‘Well, I can appreciate that. But do you know what my mother did to drive the story home – perhaps to give it that little extra veneer of truth? She told me that one day I’d work for the Lord Mayor, too. That when my father retired, it would be my turn to stand guard on the Abbey steps, and to fight that big old serpent with all my might.’ His voice rose louder. ‘So that was to be my destiny. To stagger home every weekend – dishevelled, dirty, my eyes blackened, blood dripping from my nose onto the kitchen lino, because, God, I remember that as clear as day. Seeing those drips of blood leading through the kitchen, through into the hall, up the stairs to where the old bastard would collapse into bed. You know, my mother would wash him and tuck him up in bed knowing full well he’d got himself into a fight over some tart he’d picked up. He even came home with love-bites on his neck – you’d call them hickeys, Sam – he’d come home with those, and she’d call us in when he was asleep.’ His voice dropped to a rasp. ‘“Do you see those,” she’d whisper to us, “those bruises on his throat? That’s where the serpent coiled round his neck and tried to strangle him.’”

Carswell took a large swallow of beer. ‘And she drummed it into us how Dad was a hero. That we’d follow in his footsteps. That we’d fight the monster too, and, oh, how proud she would be of us all.’ He put the glass down and fixed Sam and Jud with his piercing eyes. ‘I had nightmares for years… bloody years. As soon as we could, my brother and I escaped, not just from home but from the East End altogether. My brother found his slice of paradise at the sharp end of a syringe in a hippy squat in Cornwall. I chose a different path. While my friends – well, peer group, I should say – were out on the piss in the local pubs, I educated myself by reading every book I could lay my hands on. I could read two a night. And I’d been into the City enough to realise that people with top jobs spoke with upper-crust accents, not a Cockney cor-blimey-where’s-me-trousers patois. So I taught myself to speak like an English lord, enunciating “How now, brown cow” and “The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain” until the early hours. Consequently I ended up with an apartment in Belgravia. My brother is dead from being unlucky enough to have bought extremely pure heroin. While my father—’ He gazed at the beer glass as if it was a TV screen in which he saw his life being replayed. ‘While my father is still working for the bloody Lord Mayor of London. Still coming home with his shirt buttons torn off; still with a bloody nose. In his seventy-fifth year, too, miserable bastard.’

Sam looked at Carswell. The man’s face was expressionless. It was hard to find a response to such a story. He found himself hoping that Jud would speak first. As it was, the voice came from another part of the room.

‘Excuse me, sir.’ A man had come to stand by the table. Despite the heat of the evening, he wore a brown woollen suit that looked a size or two too small for him. Even his chin rolled over his shirt collar to hide the knot of his tie as he looked down at Sam. ‘Sorry to trouble you. But could I have your name, please?’

Sam looked up, surprised. Two thoughts vied for prominence. One, that he’d been mistaken for someone else. Two, that the man thought he was from the circus in town and was trying to poach a couple of free tickets.

Sam nodded. ‘Sam Baker. And you are?’

‘Oh, my name isn’t important, Mr Baker.’ Abruptly he stood back. In the doorway were two uniformed policemen; their high helmets made them look huge in the low-ceilinged bar.

Then the man in the brown suit turned to the man in glasses who’d been sitting in the bar earlier and had returned unobtrusively.

‘Mr Blakemore. Is this him?’ the man in the brown suit asked sharply.

‘Yes.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure. I took the photograph myself two years ago. It was the night of the big Whit Sunday raid.’ The man in the glasses fixed Sam with a direct stare. ‘Well, you’re a cheeky bastard, aren’t you? I never thought you’d be brass-faced enough to come back here after what you did. They were my neighbours.’ With that the man lunged forward. At first Sam thought the man would attack him. Instead he threw a folded newspaper onto the table.

Sam stared at it, stunned. He heard the brown-suited man say, ‘Read the charge, Sergeant.’

‘Yes, sir. Samuel Baker, I am arresting you on suspicion of…’

Now Sam hardly heard a word of it. Because he was staring at a photograph of himself – an impossible photograph – plastered there halfway across the front page of the newspaper. It showed him looking back over one shoulder as if caught by surprise.

WANTED FOR MURDER ran the headline in monstrously dark print. DO YOU RECOGNISE THIS MAN?

In sheer astonishment he found himself reading the story as the policeman recited the charge in a monotonous voice: ‘That on the night of May 26^th 1944 you did, with malice aforethought, unlawfully kill…’

Gazette photographer Sandy Blakemore discovered the bodies of the Marshall family in their home in the Rookery, a quiet suburb of Casterton, Sam read on, stunned. Even hardened police officers were appalled by the brutality of the crime…

Then the newspaper was yanked away from him by the man he now took to be Blakemore. ‘You bastard… They’d done nothing to you…’

The detective held out an arm to gently push the man back.

At that moment another policeman stepped forward.

Dumbfounded, Sam watched the cop snap handcuffs onto his wrists. The only rational thought going through his head was how heavy they were. And how cold.

Blakemore shouted, ‘They’ll hang you, do you realise that? You’ll hang… and I hope you feel it – I hope you feel the agony when that rope breaks your neck!’