The Trouble With Time Page 5

Without warning, he left the sofa and smashed his fist into the side of Jace’s head, knocking him face down on to the floor. Jace’s desperate bucking and kicking made it take a little longer, but within a few minutes Quinn had used a third restraint to fasten the plastic cuffs binding Jace’s hands and feet together behind his back.

  A moment later Jace felt his wrist being grasped. He twisted to look over his shoulder, blinking blood out of his eyes. Quinn had hold of him with his left hand, and was pressing the two buttons on the TiTrav.

  CHAPTER 10

  A dark night in future London

  Monday, 4th September 2180

  The world went black and spun. When Jace had imagined taking his first time trip, it had not been like this; in his daydreams he hadn’t been hogtied, powerless, with death on the agenda. An unquantifiable amount of time passed, then his body smashed to the ground as Quinn let go of him. He smelled wet earth. Autumn leaves and ragged grass pressed damply against his face. A cool breeze blew. Lifting his head as much as he was able, he saw a tangled mass of saplings and creepers smothering mossy gravestones, gilded by the amber light of a setting sun. He guessed where he was. Quinn had brought him to the future, after the end of mankind.

  Jace waited to find out his fate, heart thumping. Quinn either intended to put a bullet in his brain, or to abandon him in the future as he had planned to abandon Scott. If the latter then maybe, if he was fast, he could hit out the moment his hands were free and overpower him.

  Quinn walked into Jace’s view, and stood quietly looking down at him. His face was cold; bereft of its normal humour, it looked like a stranger’s. He didn’t reach for his gun. Instead he pushed up his left sleeve, and tapped at the TiTrav’s screen.

  Jace’s heart sank. He said urgently, “You can’t leave me like this! Cut me free before you go.”

  Quinn paused. “I’m surprised you ask me that,” he said. “As you pointed out, I don’t give a shit for anyone except myself. You are here by your own choice. You’ve got a week to ten days to think about that, while you die of dehydration.”

  He pressed the buttons and disappeared. Primeval dismay and terror gripped Jace, one human alone on the planet, a tiny speck of life soon to be snuffed out. The air seemed to grow darker and heavier, pressing in on him. The sigh of the wind in the trees emphasized the silence of a dead city. He made a monumental effort to pull himself together, summoning anger and pride to help him.

  I am not going to panic. That bastard is not going to get the better of me. First, I have to work out how to get free. Think.

  Quinn had secured him with three of the zip-tie flexicuffs they used in the department. Jace was very familiar with their construction; they were made from two tough plastic strips that passed through a single roller-lock retention block. They could be cut easily enough with wire cutters, or released by slipping a pin between the block and the serrated side of the strap, or melted with a flame. That was why the time police always cuffed people’s hands behind their backs, with the lock the other side from the captive’s thumbs.

  Jace did not carry a lighter or pins, and his penknife was out of reach in his pocket. The position he was tied in restricted most movement, and was acutely uncomfortable. He tried twisting his wrists in opposite directions to put tension on the plastic, then wrenching his hands away from each other in the hope of bursting the catch. This achieved nothing except painful wrists.

  He needed something solid and rough he could rub the plastic against until it wore away, and he needed to do it now before darkness fell and while he was still relatively fresh, before he got too weak from thirst, hunger, and cold. The nearest headstone was ten or twelve feet away. Right. Jace transferred his weight from knees to hips, then moved his shoulders and repeated the action, jack-knifing his body towards the stone. It was slow going, and painful in a multitude of different ways. The thin plastic cut into his wrists and ankles, and he ached all over. He had to steamroller over small branches in his path, his jacket buttons catching and dragging, impeding his progress.

  Halfway to the stone he stopped for a rest. His back was killing him. Perhaps Quinn would feel remorse when his anger had died and return, if only to put him out of his misery with a bullet. On reflection, insulting him had been stupid and self-indulgent. He should have stuck to his original plan to play along, hoping for an opportunity to turn the tables before it got to the point where he was supposed to kill Scott. He and Scott together just might, with a lot of luck, have overpowered an armed Quinn, and he’d thrown away that chance. Almost any scenario he could think of would be better than this.

  If Quinn came back, he wanted to be untied, waiting for him, ready. He imagined punching him in the face, beating him up. The savage satisfaction of this thought made him set off with renewed zeal towards the stone slab in the deepening twilight. The white scuts of rabbits gleamed in the light of a full moon as they moved about close by; they seemed to know he was not in a position to pose a threat. The grass was alive with small black slugs inches from his nose, and it was getting difficult to see them. However, slugs were the least of his worries. He tried to ignore the pain: he could do this. He remembered his Krav Maga instructor tapping the side of his skull and saying, “It’s all in here. Believe you can do it, and you can.”

  Time was hard to judge, but Jace reckoned it took him about twenty minutes to reach the gravestone. Brambles lapping its base scratched his face and caught at his clothes. He had to rock himself over on to his other side and shuffle backwards, feeling with his fingers to line up the plastic holding his wrists and ankles together with the edge of the slab. He pulled off strands of ivy and bramble, then got hold of the spare wrist band to keep it out of the way as much as possible. At least Quinn hadn’t threaded both of them through, which would have given him twice the work. He paused for a breather, gathering his strength, then moved his hands up and down the few inches they would go, fretting the taut strap against the corner of the stone. He had hoped to do it fast enough for friction to melt the plastic, which would have been quick, but he couldn’t. He’d just have to wear it away.

  His arms were quickly screaming at him to rest, and every now and then the stone caught his knuckles and scraped skin off. It was difficult to exert much pressure, but the worst thing was that he couldn’t judge his progress – could neither see nor feel if the stone was having any effect at all on the plastic. His mouth was dry, his stomach empty, he hurt all over. He told himself it could have been worse; Quinn could have used metal handcuffs, and he’d have had zero hope of getting them off.

  Doggedly, Jace counted out loud; twenty rubs, pause, relax, three breaths and start again. He tried moving his feet for a bit to give his arms a rest, but this was more difficult to control and he went back to lifting his arms sideways, up and down, up and down. The air was cold and the sky had grown so dark Jace could see very little. The rabbits had gone. Some creature moved in the undergrowth, a cat, a rat or a fox. Then unmistakably, he heard the howl of a wolf not far off, and redoubled his efforts, now counting under his breath. Lying trussed on the ground while a pack of wolves ripped him to pieces was not something he wished to experience.

  The hours passed. Once or twice he nodded off, until the pain in his limbs woke him. When the night was darkest and the agony seemed too much to bear, tears ran down his face and death seemed inviting. Death not being an immediate option, he summoned the dregs of his resolution and carried on with the repetitive movement, trying to visualize the plastic as practically worn through, about to give way . . . he’d be a fool to give up when he was so nearly there.

  It was almost an anticlimax when it finally happened. Jace’s legs began to straighten behind him on their own, became painful in a new and different and very welcome way. Gradually he extended his body, flexing his spine, letting his sore muscles relax.

  He rolled on to his back and sat up against the gravestone, knees bent, so he could work on the band on his right wrist. This position was immeasurably more comfortable, a
nd he could move his arms a greater distance and apply more force. As the cuff gave way and his hands separated, he noticed the darkness was less absolute, and shapes were becoming distinct once more. Birds tweeted in a desultory autumnal way. It was dawn. It had taken him all night to get this far.

  His wrists were sore and bloody where the bands had cut into them, his knuckles raw. He wiped his face on his sleeve to try to remove the slugs’ slime. He felt in his pockets for his penknife to release his feet, but the moment he found his phone had gone, he realized Quinn must have searched him while he was unconscious. In the corner of an inner pocket his fingers closed on something Quinn had missed; hard and triangular like a plectrum, it was a locator he’d borrowed from Kayla weeks ago and forgotten about. Jace smiled a grim smile to himself. If a time traveller approached within a mile radius, the locator would give him a minute’s notice, beeping louder the nearer it got to the location where the traveller would time in. He put it carefully away again, and used a slim metal tag on a zip to slide into the roller-lock and remove the cuffs from his feet and the remaining wrist band.

  Jace stretched and looked about him; exhausted, chilled to the bone, and feeling as if he’d been on the rack. What would be happening back in his own time? Nothing yet; it would be around six in the morning there as well as here. But later . . . he imagined life going on without him, his colleagues discussing his unexplained absence, ringing his dataphone. As the hours passed, Quinn’s initial pretended concern would turn to reluctant drawing of conclusions: the obvious, neat solution to the mystery of the vanishing TiTrav and the missing operative.

  Would Kayla accept this story, or not believe it of him and do some investigating on her own? That would be dangerous for her. He desperately longed to be back in his own time, sorting things out, exposing Quinn. Frustration and misery gripped him. This would not do; if he was going to survive, and he was, he had work to do – he needed to get his stiff limbs moving, explore, discover where he was, look for shelter, tools and food.

  The tops of tall buildings were visible above the trees. He headed towards them, to look for a knife.

  CHAPTER 11

  The wrong question

  Thursday, 23rd July 2015

  “Florence?”

  Floss swivelled, house keys poised by the lock, her other hand holding her bike steady. Nobody had called her Florence since her school days. Screwing up her eyes against the sun, she saw a tall solidly built man with stubble-short hair standing on the pavement. She could have sworn the street was empty a moment before. Though it was a warm evening, he wore a padded jacket and heavy boots.

  He came up the steps towards her. “Florence Dryden?”

  “Yes, what is it?”

  His hand reached out and grabbed her arm, jerking her away from the bicycle. For an astonished second she looked into cold blue eyes, then the world went dark, inky black, and her stomach felt as if she was simultaneously plummeting in a lift and spinning on a fairground ride. Time passed, long enough for her to wonder if he had hit her over the head – was this what being knocked out felt like? Or maybe this was what death felt like. Terror assailed her while she battled with acute nausea, then she felt solid ground beneath her feet and could see again. Someone barrelled past her, knocking her out of the stranger’s grasp and on to all fours. Floss vomited convulsively on rough wet grass, eyes watering, damp soaking through the knees of her jeans while a steady rain fell on her back and seeped through her tee shirt. Behind her she heard thuds and grunts. As soon as she could, her stomach emptier than it had ever been before, weak as a kitten, she struggled upright and turned.

  She wasn’t in Islington any more. Ancient gravestones covered in moss and ivy leaned drunkenly towards each other, and tree saplings sprouted through ragged grass. Where was she? And how had she got here, and why was the light all wrong; grey when it should be amber? Perhaps she had been unconscious for hours. She shivered, her clothes offering no protection against the cold rain, and that was wrong too in July.

  Nearby two men were fighting savagely, the man who’d brought her here and another who looked like a tramp. The man slammed the tramp into a headstone and reached under his jacket. The tramp punched him, kneed him in the stomach and knocked his arm away fast and hard, and whatever the man had hold of spun out of his hand. They crashed to the ground grappling, the man’s hand groping about for what he had dropped. It had to be a weapon. Floss leaped forward, saw something black nestling in the wet grass and grabbed just as his fingers touched it.

  Though different from those she had seen in films and on television, this was unmistakably a gun, small and made to fit the contours of a hand, with silver knobs and sliders on one side. Floss had never held a gun before. It felt heavy for its size, and warm. She didn’t know what to do – should she call out, try to stop them fighting? Who were they, anyway?

  The tramp seemed to be winning. His arm went round the other man’s neck, straining, and they both became still for several seconds. Then the tramp got to his feet and walked towards Floss, limping a little.

  He was broad-shouldered and lean, and his clothes – vaguely piratical with fraying braid and a few surviving gold buttons – were worn and discoloured with grease and grime. Lank dark hair curled below his shoulders, and his beard came to his chest. His eyes were bright and impossible to read in a face dark with dirt. He looked her over, breathing hard.

  Floss held out the gun in both hands like she’d seen in the movies, finger on the trigger, pointing at him. “Don’t come any closer!”

  He took a step towards her.

  “I’ll fire!”

  “No, you won’t.” His voice was low, with a rough, husky edge to it, as if he hadn’t used it for a while.

  “I will! Stop there!”

  He took another pace forward. Floss aimed the gun at the sky and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. The man stepped up to her and took the gun out of her hands and put it in his pocket.

  “You didn’t take the safety off. You’d better come back to the house.”

  He turned to the other man, grabbed the back of his collar and began to drag him along the ground. Something about the way his head lolled seemed wrong.

  “Is he . . . all right?”

  He gave a curt laugh. “No. He stopped being all right when I broke his neck.”

  Appalled, Floss watched him walk away, the body trailing after him, then got out her mobile, feeling sick again, shaking with shock and cold. No signal. She hastened off in the opposite direction from the one the man was taking, stumbling over the rough ground. Above the trees, their leaves just beginning to change colour, she could make out the tops of tall buildings. People there would help, take her in and let her use their phone.

  Footsteps made her turn. He’d dropped the body to come after her. “Don’t wander off, you’ll get lost. There’s wolves out there. And the odd lion.”

  Floss stared at him in disbelief. “Wolves and lions? Where is this?”

  “London. Bunhill Fields. Near Silicon Roundabout.”

  Relief flooded Floss. That was practically home ground. She recognized the old graveyard now, though the last time she’d been there two or three years ago it had been better maintained. They’d really let it go since then. All she had to do was escape from this homicidal maniac. Who now had a gun. Edging away, she attempted a polite smile. “Thank you. Now I know where I am I’ll be off.”

  He shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He pointed to a small square brick building overgrown with ivy. “That’s where I live, over there, if you need me.”

  He started to move away. Relieved but cautious, Floss managed another insincere smile and turned decisively to go.

  “But you asked the wrong question,” the man said over his shoulder.

  Pretending not to hear, Floss picked her way towards the safety of City Road. At the gates she paused. They were solid rust, with barely perceptible scraps of black and gold paint clinging here and there. And beyond the gates . . .


  The surface of the road was broken up into great zigzag cracks, with grass and small trees growing through the tarmac, and in places an invading carpet of ivy. The only noise was the wind in the trees and the patter of rain. Buildings across the street looked normal at first glance. Look again, and you could see the broken window panes, the encroaching creepers, the damp spreading down the walls from sagging gutters full of weeds. Floss climbed up the gate, hanging on to the stone pilaster, and craned in both directions. The front wall of one house had collapsed into a heap of bricks, exposing the rooms like an opened dolls’ house. A lamppost lay at an angle across the road. Further away was a pile of fallen scaffolding, next to an area of water like a small lake. Everywhere was going back to nature; no lights, no traffic, no humans. The place smelled like the countryside, not like a city. In the distance skyscrapers appeared intact, until you noticed black specks spattered over their smooth façades, indicating missing panes of glass. A movement caught her eye – at the other side of the pond a wild boar trotted towards the water, surrounded by a troop of striped piglets.

  Perhaps this was all just a very, very vivid dream, and she was actually lying in a hospital bed, badly injured and unconscious with morphine dripping into her veins. This struck her as a more inviting prospect than the alternative, that this was real. She shut her eyes tight for a few seconds, and opened them again fast when something ran over her hand.

  Floss shook off the spider and started to climb the gate. She got to the top and stopped, remembering what the man had said about wolves and lions. It no longer seemed quite so improbable. Perhaps he had simply been telling the truth. His eyes had looked sane. Maybe she should go back and ask him what was going on. On the other hand, she’d just watched him kill a man. An idea came to her, an irrational idea she was unable to resist. Floss clambered down the far side of the gate and warily headed towards Old Street Roundabout.