The Fall

27

Sam Baker sat looking down at the heavy steel cuffs clamped around his wrists. They were tight, cruelly tight, and already the fifth fingers that served as his thumbs were starting to tingle. The oval scars where the thumbs had been removed soon after his birth, normally a pink colour, had turned a bloodless white.

The detective said, ‘Sergeant, we’ll take his two companions in for questioning, too. Birds of a feather and all that.’

It had to happen. Looking back, Sam saw that it had, after all, been only a matter of time.

Carswell pulled the gun.

‘Carswell, no!’ Jud shouted.

Carswell stood up, pushing the table to one side; glasses crashed to the floor, splashing beer against the policemen’s legs. ‘Lie down on the floor,’ Carswell ordered, holding the muzzle of the gun so it was pointed at the centre of the detective’s face. ‘Lie down on the floor!’

The detective shook his head. ‘No, I won’t do that, sir. Give me the gun.’

‘Lie down!’

‘No, sir.’ The detective’s voice was very low, soothing almost; he looked Carswell calmly in the eye. ‘I think it best if you give me the gun.’

‘Damn it!’

‘You know you’ll hang if you shoot a policeman. Now, give me the gun.’

Sam saw the muscle tension begin in Carswell’s shoulder. It was as if he was watching it all in extreme slow motion and extreme detail. The muscles coiled, bunched and tensed beneath the white sleeve of the suit. Carswell was squeezing the trigger.

Sam watched as the tensing muscles actually created a ripple in the fabric of the sleeve, running from shoulder to wrist to trigger finger.

The dark blue metal muzzle of the automatic shook slightly.

‘Sir, hand me the—’

Sam swung his manacled hands upward, hitting Carswell’s arm just below the elbow.

The gun jerked up at the same instant as it boomed. Sparks seemed to fill the bar; acrid smoke flooded Sam’s nostrils.

Above the detective’s head the bullet hacked a chunk of timber from the ceiling beam.

‘Bloody idiot,’ Carswell screamed. For an instant Sam thought he’d turn the gun on him; instead, Carswell tugged his shoulder. ‘Run!’

As Sam blundered through the fog of gunsmoke, he glanced back to see Carswell and Jud following.

Carswell paused again to fire the gun.

But this time he fired into the wall of the bar, adding to the confusion of the customers, who shouted as they scrambled under tables for cover, knocking over glasses and chairs.

Suddenly, Sam found himself outside. A policeman had left the patrol car and was running towards him.

Sam froze, expecting the cop to pull a gun.

But British cops are unarmed, he reminded himself. They don’t carry firearms.

Even so, the constable was drawing his truncheon.

Sam turned and ran past the side of the building into the back garden.

A family was there, the father pushing a girl on a swing that hung from a tree branch. ‘Get down on the floor!’ he yelled as Carswell came running across the grass, firing the gun in the air.

Sam heard Jud shout, ‘Carswell, throw that damn thing away. Someone’s going to get hurt!’

Carswell didn’t listen. He vaulted over the fence and ran. Jud climbed over the fence and followed.

Sam saw policemen pouring through the back door of the pub. The photographer was there, too. Straightening the glasses on his face, he was hollering, ‘Don’t let them get away!’

Sam ran at the fence, ready to vault over it. It was only as he put out his hands to grasp the top rail that he remembered his hands were manacled together.

The chain links of the cuffs caught on a protruding nail, but already the momentum of his body was carrying him forward.

He made it over the fence, but the chain snagged against the nail, throwing him of balance.

He fell face forward.

The turf came up at him in a green blur.

It looked soft, but the blow it struck was hard.

As he groaned and rolled over, the chain on the cuffs clinking, he looked up at the sky. Coloured lights streamed from it as static electricity crackled across his arms and through his hair.

That was when he realised he’d not been knocked senseless by the blow.

But whatever mechanism had hauled that little group of people back through time was starting all over again.

Just moments before Nicole Wagner was flung into temporal backflow for the slide down through the months and years to who knew when, she had walked into the wood.

She had no intention of finding the body of Bostock. Let him rot!

No. Instead, she and the others were looking for the man Lee’d dubbed ‘the birdman.’ On the face of it, it was distasteful to give the poor devil such a nickname. But already they’d begun dealing with the horrors of the day by developing a dark sense of gallows humour. If they didn’t make a joke of some of the things they’d seen – the old man with the bee squirming in his eye-ball, for instance – they would go mad.

Dot Campbell was certain that the birdman would soon die. That the blood of the bird and the blood of the man would intermingle and poison both of them, either through septicaemia or gangrene.

Nicole stepped slowly across the dappling shadows cast by the sunlight filtering through the leaves.

There, deep in the wood, she found the birdman.

As she looked down at him, she felt the first crackle of static in her hair. If it wasn’t for the fact that her attention was held by the poor man’s face, she probably would have realised what was happening.

The man lay on his back. His breathing was shallow and rapid.

She found her gaze held by his face.

The bird’s black wing twitched feebly from the side of the man’s head. His eyes were glazed, unseeing; his hair was ruffled and sweaty.

From his cheek, just below the eye, the blackbird’s head and neck hung limply, the yellow beak resting against his nose.

The bird, in panic, must have pecked the man’s face. Worse were the cuts around his top lip: they still glistened a shiny red.

For a moment she thought the bird was dead. But then she saw the eyelid slip down over the eyes, turning them a milky white as it blinked slowly.

‘Can you hear me?’ she asked the man gently. He didn’t stir; if it wasn’t for the little tugs of air as he inhaled, she would have thought him dead.

He was dying.

So was the bird; the yellow beak parted slightly and she could see the tiny tongue trembling.

A black feather protruded from between the man’s lips.

‘Are you in pain?’ asked Nicole.

‘He doesn’t feel pain anymore.’

She turned sharply at the sound of the voice.

The tall man with the blond hair stood there with his cloak gathered around him. He gazed down at the dying man on the ground with the bird crudely, repulsively fused to the face, like some sculptor’s sick joke. ‘He looks at peace now, doesn’t he?’

Nicole stared for a moment at the blond man’s beautiful face, then she nodded.

The man came to stand alongside her. For a moment they both gazed down at the dying man.

Nicole said at last, ‘I need someone to help me carry him back to the amphitheatre.’

The blond man shook his head.

‘But we can help him.’

‘No, you can’t.’ The man spoke gently.

‘Why don’t you tell her?’ It was the sharp Cockney voice she’d heard before. The voice that belonged to the eyes in the man’s stomach, she guessed.

‘I’ll stand over him,’ the blond-haired man told her.

‘Why?’

He looked at her with those gentle blue eyes. ‘Because he’s one of us now.’

The words had barely left his lips when Nicole felt static crackle through her T-shirt up into her hair.

Lights exploded in her eyes.

And there was the dizzying sensation that she’d suddenly been turned head over heels.