Checking Out- The Complete Trilogy

by T W M Ashford

  One day, once she’d grown curves and a taste of her own, Mr. Habborlain sent for her, inviting her into his private office. It was not an invitation to refuse. She hadn’t spoken to him properly since the day he’d ‘liberated’ her from the terrible orphanage; now he had a thick moustache and a scar that ran deep down one cheek. He’d started to grey. He smelled as if he was falling apart. He’d gotten old.

  Which made it all the easier to justify to herself when she slit his throat with the switchblade she’d pick-pocketed from a client earlier that day. He was old, he was antique, he was running down to empty. He was past his time.

  When the gang members of Habborlain Cotton & Yarn kicked down the locked and bolted door of his office their grizzled boss had long bled out, his white shirt, once speckled with flakes of tobacco, soaked through to the skin with his deep and sluggish claret. His trousers were pooled around his ankles and his back sank into the recesses of his leather armchair. For a moment the thugs mistook the glassed expression in his eyes for ecstasy - then they realised the grin he sported was not, in fact, a grin, but a cut across his throat, stretching from ear to ear.

  But there was no mistaking the other figure in the room, the one standing beside the late moustachioed Mr. Habborlain. There stood a girl in silent red, a bleeding switchblade hanging loosely from her hand, wielding a creeping smile that promised to be twice as deadly. Her hair slashed lank down her cheeks. The crimson stain fell over her chest like a dripping shawl, coming to a spotted stop beneath her navel. Her clothes were scattered across the splintered, wooden floor but she made no effort to cover herself; most of the men had seen her wear less than their boss’ lifeblood, after all.

  They made no attempt to rush her, to tackle her to the floor and slice her open in return. One or two thought of worse. But that wasn’t the way things worked. Sure, girls were girls and there was no way a Black Dog could be forged from one of those moulds - flimsy little daisies, they all were, even the ones with a temper - but there was no denying the rules. New blood over old. So instead they backed out the door in silence, returning ten minutes later with a cast iron bathtub. While she bathed before them they picked Mr. Habborlain up like a sack of bad potatoes and carried him away to be dumped somewhere unseen.

  Some of the thugs went the same way in the days that followed - those who had gone too far during her time under Madam Jay’s watch, those who had struck with hands and belts. The ones who had torn and ripped. The others she had power over; the others she could shape to be her own. And true enough, none rose up to stop her - not then, and never since. Nobody could forget the story of the girl who’d climbed from orphan to whore to leader of the dreaded Black Dogs.

  Nobody could forget Viola Kadwell, the girl in silent red.

  I guess some people get it worse than having their briefcase stolen, even one as important as mine. But boy, was I glad not to know all that before the door to the vivacious Miss Kadwell’s office swung open.

  A tall figure cut a stark shape in the doorway, leaning slyly against its frame. From beneath a half-shaved head sparkled eyes like an ocean sunset and a mouth that crept into a smile.

  ‘Bourbon or brandy?’ she asked, raising a glass.

  She poured the crystal bottle of bourbon into three identical glasses, each engraved with wintery branches that spread out like snowflakes. The drinks shimmered like gold as she brought them over, pinched together between three fingers. It was strong; I could smell them before she’d crossed even half the room.

  She was beautiful… in an unexpected, almost alien way. And I think she knew that, whether she liked the fact or not. She seemed to have crafted a weapon from her looks, disarming a man first through shock and then, after a time, attraction. Sleek like a viper; she left no sound crossing the carpet. Her smile as I took my glass appeared genuine enough, though my hands still shook once she turned and offered the other to Pierre. He, on the other hand, seemed quite at home, even if his appearance couldn’t have looked less so.

  We were sat in two chairs that felt fantastic, yet somehow didn’t feel right. I was pretty confident that I had one exactly the same back in my hotel room, which may have been the problem. Things in Miss Kadwell’s office just didn’t seem to quite… fit.

  She crossed the room and hopped up onto her desk, a great oak masterpiece with an over-abundance of drawers. Sitting on its edge, she crossed one fishtail-backed leg over the other. She rested one hand beside a quill and ink blotter, in the other she held her drink.

  ‘So,’ she asked in a gruffer voice than I would have expected, ‘what brings you back to my humble timeline, Pierre?’

  I zoned out as Pierre explained our story, about how we were chasing down the briefcase thief across a series of similar yet unfamiliar worlds. I didn’t grow so distant from the conversation that I failed to notice Viola casting curious glances towards me every few seconds, however.

  One time she winked, which didn’t make me feel any more comfortable.

  Beautiful, like a carabela portuguesa. Or perhaps a boa constrictor, descending unsuspected from a branch like a drooping vine.

  The bronze glow of her skin was underset with warm orange-red tones that glowed gold under the hanging lanterns, her eyes blackened with heavy shadow and eyeliner. She’d shaved one side of her head - or perhaps had a complete undercut, it was difficult to tell - whilst letting the other side grow out and down in a sheer, violent and purple streak. She wore the jacket of a pinstripe suit over a plain white vest that opened in a low V. Her nails were kept short and unpainted. She chewed her bottom lip as Pierre talked and I glanced around the office.

  Anachronistic. That’s what it was. Some aspects were how I expected - the cabinets, the gas lanterns, the woodlouse making its daring trek across the threadbare carpet - but others, like, for example, the vinyl player playing a scratched out rendition of The Beatles’ Hey Jude, stood out like a clown at a wake. A wine rack scaled the wall to my left, and I swear there were bottles of vintages yet to even come around - 1910s, 20s, 40s. Did they still keep their fermentation, brought back into the past? I guessed they did, and looking down at my glass I wondered if the grain for my bourbon would even be harvested that century. It tasted good. Sharp and warm. And why the hell was there a framed Gone With The Wind poster hanging on the wall behind her? Why did she even need that?

  ‘And what does any of that have to do with me?’ she asked, shattering my distraction. She’d addressed the question to Pierre but was casting a curious eye my way instead, turning her head this way and that, as if trying to figure out the answer to a question she couldn’t quite see. ‘Would you like me to get you a briefcase? I can promise you it’ll be an antique by the time you get it home.’

  ‘No, it has to be his own,’ Pierre said. ‘And I know you have it, so it would mean the world to dear Mr. Webber here if you could just hand it over and let us call it a day.’

  Viola looked at me and smiled. She reached over her desk and plucked a cocktail stick from out of a tin can, proceeding to clasp it between her teeth.

  ‘Let’s say I have it,’ she said, leaning forward towards us. ‘Or rather, that I’m in possession of the man who has it. Why should I ever give anything away for free? Besides, how am I to tell who it truly belongs to?’

  ‘Wait, can we go back a minute?’ I asked, confused. ‘Why did the thief come here? Does he work for you or something?’

  Viola giggled and clapped her hands together. ‘I like this one!’ she exclaimed. She gestured towards Pierre. ‘May I?’

  ‘Go ahead,’ Pierre replied.

  ‘No, George,’ she said, switching her toothpick from one side of her mouth to the other, ‘he doesn’t work for me. I haven’t a clue who he works for. But yesterday, at about a half past eight in the evening I reckon, one of my men came across this strange bloke trying to unlock the front door to our mill with this big set of keys. He figured he’d caught a spy from The Diamond Rats, or something. So he clubbed him one and tied him up for a spot of
interrogation.’

  ‘This mill is like the St Louis Cathedral - an easy spot to hop off from,’ added Pierre. ‘When I saw which world he’d headed to I knew he’d try to come through here. He obviously didn’t do his homework, otherwise he’d have steered well clear.’

  ‘Goddamn right he would,’ continued Viola, tapping her desk with her heel. ‘We roughed him up a bit, hoping for some secrets to come spilling out. When he started talking about magic doors and all that crap, I guessed what was going on. Not the first time we’ve caught somebody trying to use our factory as a shortcut, is it?’

  Pierre smiled politely.

  ‘I’ve been expecting you to turn up since,’ she went on. ‘Besides, you mentioned you’d be stopping by again last week, when you dropped off the bourbon.’

  ‘Did I?’ asked Pierre, genuinely confused. ‘I don’t remember that.’

  ‘Huh. Must not have happened to you yet. Makes sense. Otherwise you wouldn’t have known you’d be coming, I guess.’

  I wasn’t sure how much of anything made sense, but I was starting to figure out why Viola’s office was so out of sync. Pierre sure seemed to need a lot of favours.

  Viola hopped up off the desk and walked over to a cabinet behind. She unlatched the twin doors and pulled them open to reveal an old 1950s television set, complete with bug antenna. I shot a look over towards Pierre, who shrugged.

  ‘Isn’t there some rule about messing with other people’s timelines?’ I hissed.

  ‘What’s the point?’ he said. ‘If I decide not to, then another version of me will do it anyway. So why not be the one to do it?’

  Viola twisted a knob and the television crackled into life, its picture scrolling in black and white waves before coming to a temperamental stop. There was no sound except for its popping electrics and subliminal whine.

  The screen showed a man tied to a chair, sitting in a room not all that unlike the one in which Pierre and I had waited. I recognised him as the man who had stolen my briefcase not by his face, which had been bludgeoned from the nose down, but by the torn and bloodied scarf that fell around his shoulders. His head hung low on his chest, and my jaw hurt just looking at him.

  ‘That’s him,’ Pierre said, and I nodded. ‘But how do we know you have the briefcase? How do we know he didn’t fob it off to someone else first?’

  Viola smiled and rang a bell via a rope pulley, though not before first turning the television off and hiding it from view. A few seconds later one of the thugs who had escorted us to the office appeared in her doorway.

  ‘Would you fetch our guest’s belongings from our hospitality room, please?’

  The thug nodded and disappeared again.

  ‘We haven’t met before, have we?’ Viola asked me, leaning against her desk again. ‘Not come along on any of Pierre’s other trips, have you?’

  ‘Not that I’m aware of,’ I replied, ‘but perhaps they just haven’t happened yet.’

  ‘Ha! I like you George, I really do. You’re an odd one, but aren’t we all. Perhaps I know your great-great-grandfather. Perhaps,’ and then she gave me another one of her chilling winks, ‘I know him particularly well.’

  As I tried to rinse from my mind the idea of Viola as my great-great-grandmother, the thug returned with a briefcase in hand. My briefcase. He passed it to Viola, who held it across her lap.

  ‘Now, I don’t know what’s in this here case,’ she said, drumming her fingers against its leather. ‘But I’m guessing it must be valuable for you to be chasing after it so… vigilantly.’

  ‘Valuable to me, but not to you,’ I said, holding myself back from jumping forward to snatch it from her. ‘It’s just personal to me, that’s all.’

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that, I think.’

  ‘What do you want, Viola?’ asked Pierre. ‘Next week’s race results again? Or perhaps a GameBoy? Everybody wants a GameBoy, right?’

  ‘What on earth is a game boy? Sounds perverted. I love it. But no, times are getting harder. The Diamond Rats are getting stronger, their mill spinning cotton all the faster. We’re falling behind in the markets, and on the streets. I want the next stage in cotton mill technology.’

  ‘Spoiler alert,’ said Pierre. ‘This is kind of as good as it gets.’

  ‘Goddamn it. I don’t suppose you could get me some slaves?’

  ‘Woah! No, that’s not going to happen.’

  ‘Fine then. No technology and no workers. Fat lot of use you are. Well, I’m going to need something to show the Rats that the Black Dogs can still cut it. We need to hit them before they hit us. Get me some weapons.’

  ‘What kind of weapons?’ asked Pierre. I went to protest and he raised his finger, motioning for me to keep quiet.

  ‘Big ones. Explosive ones. The biggest explosives your world can give me.’

  Pierre and I looked at each other.

  ‘Ah, you mean grenades,’ Pierre answered, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Then I realised that, although considerably smaller than a nuke, grenades don’t offer much less in the way of death for anyone in their immediate vicinity, and are often found in environments considerably more hazardous for one’s health.

  ‘Wait just a second,’ I shouted. Viola looked up from her discussion with Pierre and for just a moment looked sharp enough to cut through air. Her expression relaxed as I continued. ‘Are we seriously considering this? My briefcase is right there. Is it really worth becoming, what, arms dealers over? I mean, this is lunacy!’

  ‘Ah, you worry too much,’ said Pierre, dismissing my concern with another wave of his hand. ‘You forget: I’m a concierge. It’s my job to satisfy people’s ridiculous requests.’

  ‘I’m in a universe of idiots and maniacs,’ I muttered to myself. ‘It doesn’t matter how far you go through space and time, there’s always a moron beside you.’

  ‘So we have a deal, yes?’ asked Viola, standing up and slamming my briefcase down on her desk. I winced. ‘Your briefcase for your gunpowder.’

  ‘Agreed,’ replied Pierre, shaking her hand. I just shook my head, and that was enough for me.

  ‘What do you want me to do with our mutual friend downstairs?’

  Pierre looked towards me with a question mark for an expression. I made a sort of sighing noise and buried my head in my hands.

  ‘Whatever you feel like,’ replied Pierre. ‘Right, we’d best be off.’

  ‘What, already?’ I asked. I still had half my bourbon left. I expected I’d need whatever courage sloshed in the glass so I necked the rest in one gulp. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Somewhere we can help Miss Kadwell with her problem, of course,’ he said, fishing his keyring out from the depths of his pocket. ‘Or would you prefer to stay here and wait?’

  Viola blew me a kiss and smiled like a great white.

  ‘I’ll take my chances with the grenades,’ I decided.

  Chapter Nine

  Preston Jones had seen quite a lot of weird things in his brief stint as a soldier in the Great War. He’d seen men stroll towards monsoons of bullets wearing smiles you’d expect to see on a man walking home for Christmas. He’d seen just as many men blow their own brains out rather than climb over the top. There was a madness buried in those trenches. Hell, his friend, Arthur Bainbridge, had had his arm blown off at the elbow and still he’d gone on running towards the Germans, trying to pull a trigger with a finger that just simply wasn’t there anymore.

  But two odd gentlemen spilling out from the passenger door of his supply truck - a supply truck that he’d just inspected and found to be completely empty of people, no less - that probably came top of the weird list.

  At least it was a weirdness that didn’t involve having to find somebody’s body part, he supposed.

  He’d spent the last of his free time that day picking lice out of his clothing, having spent a few hours of the morning on watch at the lookout post. There had been no sign of those Fritz, thank God, but he could feel them out there, looking out for him as he
did them. After being relieved (and relieved he always was, for he woke each night from dreams of being shot through the eye, his brains showering his friends and brothers, having peered over the top one time too many) he’d traipsed back through the squelching and muddy duckboards to his hole in the trench wall, where he’d picked at his food with all the appetite and enthusiasm as he would the lice. Stale bread and watery pea soup. His favourite. How lucky he was to have it every damn day.

  His mum would send him a care package soon enough though, he was sure of it. A fortnight ago he’d received a letter from her, complaining about how she couldn’t get good butter anymore and had been stuck using the same butcher she’d had a row with only the week before. She had it real rough, the silly mare. But with it she’d sent a bar of chocolate and some sardines, so as far as he was concerned she could complain about all the shit she wanted.

  Just as he was settling down for a not-so-quiet nap in his not-so-comfortable hole, his commanding officer, Brendan Bamford, had asked him to run back to the camp (about a hundred or so metres behind the trenches, hidden amongst the forest to their rear) and bring back some supplies - namely .303 rounds, and .45s for their American friends. If there was any food spare then he was to grab himself some of that too. That all sounded just peachy to Preston; any excuse to get away from the front line, even if only a fraction of a mile.

  And so he’d followed the snaking trenches back, squat-running back and forth, back and forth, further and further away from the sounds of silent boredom and peppering yaps of Mauser rifles. Yet still that creeping sensation would persevere, like hands grabbing your ankle when you head upstairs with the lights out, that a sniper’s bullet would come screaming through the mist, to split his skull and send his brains scattering across the sodden floor.