‘Tell me about it.’ Lewis flopped onto the settee and changed the channel back. ‘Anyway, why the sudden interest in football? I thought you always said it was boring.’
‘It is,’ Sam said. He sat next to Lewis and pulled the notepad out again. ‘Unless, of course, you happen to know the result already.’
‘Even I can tell you that. Away win.’
‘No.’ Sam squinted down at the page. ‘Arsenal have their goalkeeper sent off and give away a penalty on 43 minutes, which Taylor scores, making it 1-2 at halftime. Taylor scores two more goals in the second half, on 65 and 86 minutes, and West Ham go on to win 3-2.’
Lewis snorted and glanced at the clock in the corner of the screen, which read forty-one minutes and fifty-six seconds. ‘Yeah, right,’ he said. ‘A Taylor hat trick? He hasn’t even scored this season. I’d love to see the odds on that happening!’
‘Why don’t we check then?’ Sam dipped his head towards the family PC in the corner of the room. ‘You know, on your dad’s online betting account.’
‘You’ve got to be joking! He’ll skin me alive if he finds out I’ve been at that again. Remember what I told you about the last time?’
‘It won’t be like the last time, Lewis. This is a sure thing.’
‘Now you’re beginning to sound like my old man. Trust me, Sam, gambling is a mug’s game. There’s only one sure thing, and that’s that there’s no such thing as a “sure thing”.’
They were interrupted by a whistle on the TV, followed by a loud cheer. Lewis turned to the screen to see the referee point to the penalty spot and then, brandishing a red card, march over to the Arsenal keeper. The time on the clock read forty-three minutes and twelve seconds.
‘See, what did I tell you?’ Sam said
Lewis continued to stare, his mouth open as Taylor stepped up, slotted the penalty into the bottom-left corner and then wheeled away, punching the air.
‘That’s impossible,’ he said, and with immense effort closed his mouth.
‘Not impossible,’ Sam said, ‘just highly unlikely.’
‘But how? How could you know that?’
Sam patted the trouser pocket containing the bottle. ‘After I got the pills on Thursday, I travelled forward to this evening, saw Match of the Day – which was like watching paint dry, by the way – and then returned to the present after each match and wrote down the result, times of the goals and names of the scorers. Apparently they give you better odds for stuff like that. It was pretty straightforward, really.’
The referee’s whistle sounded again for halftime. Lewis watched as the West Ham players trotted into the tunnel with newfound energy, whilst most of the Arsenal team stayed on the pitch to berate the referee.
‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘I’ll go switch the computer on.’
* * * * *
An hour later, Lewis and Sam were shoulder-to-shoulder at the computer desk, looking at an overview of his dad’s online betting account. The section that had previously displayed an amount of £238.14 now listed a balance of £7,858.62. Behind them, the muted TV showed the West Ham players celebrating the most improbable of comebacks.
‘So, do you believe me now?’ Sam asked.
Lewis pressed a finger to the monitor, causing the image to ripple. The thing felt too solid to be a figment of his imagination. ‘My eyes say yes, but my brain says no.’
Sam leaned back and grinned. ‘I know the feeling.’
‘But I don’t get it. You say you’ve been able to do all this since waking up from your coma, so why only tell me last week?’
‘Remember, I’m the Sam from a parallel universe, right? What you’re talking about, that was a different me, at least between my dad’s funeral and Christmas Eve. In this timeline all that stuff with the Tempus Project never happened and, technically speaking, Thursday would have been the first time I’d ever taken Tetradyamide. The reason the other Sam didn’t tell you about it was…well, because there wasn’t anything to tell.’
‘I see, I think,’ Lewis said, wondering which version of his friend he preferred. ‘You do seem a bit, um, different.’
‘What I’m trying to say, Lewis, is that in the timeline only I remember – my timeline – you knew pretty much everything all along. And, believe it or not, when things went wrong, you sort of saved the day. If it wasn’t for you, Chrissie would still be dead and I’d be strapped to a trolley in a cell.’
‘Me? Save the day? Well now, that I can believe.’ Lewis puffed out his chest. Perhaps new-Sam wasn’t so bad after all, and he certainly knew some useful tricks.
Sam began to laugh, then stopped abruptly. ‘To be honest, it’s a bit of a relief having someone to talk to again. Listen, about Malcolm Fairview, he didn’t exactly give me the Tetradyamide.’
‘What, you nicked it?’
‘No! It’s just, when I got to his flat, he was, well, sort of dead.’
‘Dead?’
Sam nodded. ‘He was lying on the floor, like he’d just collapsed. He suffered from angina, so it was a heart attack, I think. I tried calling an ambulance and then, when I saw the Tetradyamide, I…just sort of took it and left. I know it was wrong, and I was thinking about what I could do to save him, but…’ He trailed off, his gaze flicking back to the monitor.
Lewis glanced across too, blinking as he took in the balance of his dad’s account again. ‘A heart attack, you say?’
‘I think so.’
‘Probably not much you could have done about it then.’
‘That’s what I thought.’
‘But you’ve got the Tetradyamide, at least.’
‘Yeah, there’s that.’
Lewis rubbed his chin. ‘There are six more games kicking off at three o’clock. You have the results, yes?’
‘Right here,’ Sam said, and gave his notebook a little wave.
‘Which means we can place bets on them all, if we’re quick about it,’ Lewis said. ‘That seven thousand is just the beginning. The bigger the bets we place, the bigger the—’
He was interrupted by the sound of someone belching and turned to see his father in the doorway.
‘What’re you two plonkers looking so guilty for?’ his father asked, scratching the hairy underside of his belly beneath his work shirt.
‘Um, nothing,’ Lewis said and hit the standby button on the monitor. ‘Sam was just leaving, weren’t you, Sam?’
Sam made a show of checking his watch. ‘Is that the time? Wow, I really should be—’
‘Oh no you don’t!’ Lewis’s father stepped around them and pressed the button on the monitor again, causing it to flicker back into life. ‘Thought as much, you little so-and-sos. How much of my hard-earned cash have you squandered this time? I can promise you one thing, you’ll be paying back every last…’ He fell silent as he registered the balance of his account. ‘Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle,’ he said, turning back. ‘How the bloody hell did you manage that?’
5
Sam jumped to his feet and stuffed his notepad into his back pocket. ‘Sorry, it was all my idea. Please, Justin, don’t be angry with Lewis, I can explain.’
‘You can?’ Lewis asked, blinking at him.
Justin scratched his beer gut again, lowered his backside onto the armrest of the sofa and folded his arms. ‘Go ahead, sonny Jim. I’d absolutely love to know how there’s nearly eight grand in my account. I’ve been placing bets for nearly twenty-five years, and this is by far my biggest win. And all without me actually doing anything.’
Sam stared back for a few seconds and then shook his head and sighed. ‘The thing is, Justin, we recently found out the insurance company are cancelling my dad’s life insurance policy over a missed payment. The direct debit for the mortgage goes out next week, and unless I find a way to pay, it’s going to bounce. There’s also this new treatment in America which I think might help my mum, but it’s expensive. I got this hot tip about the West Ham match from someone at college, so I asked Lewis to help me place a bet. He o
nly logged into your account because I made him do it. Please, if anyone’s going to get in trouble here, it should be me.’
Lewis’s dad held up a hand to silence him. ‘All right, enough of the sob story,’ he said. ‘I know you’ve been through a lot recently, Sam, but if you needed money, you should’ve just asked. What you’ve done is technically theft—’
‘Hang on,’ Lewis said. ‘How can it be theft if there’s more money in your account than to begin with?’
Justin turned a death-stare on him. ‘All right, smart-arse, not theft exactly, but it’s…it’s not right, is it? For starters neither of you is old enough to gamble. And what if you’d lost, what then? If you’d cleaned me out there’d be plenty of trouble to go round for everyone, believe you me.’
‘But that didn’t happen,’ Sam said.
‘But you didn’t know for sure it wouldn’t, did you?’
Sam open and closed his mouth, realising there was nothing he could say without giving the game away. After a while he shook his head. ‘No, I suppose not.’
‘Anyway, be that as it may, none of it answers the question of what I should do with the seven-and-a-half grand’s worth of winnings sitting in my account that aren’t mine. How much did you say Rebecca’s treatment cost?’
‘Fifty thousand,’ Sam said. ‘That’s dollars, not pounds.’
Justin baulked. ‘Well, I’ll transfer it into your bank account this afternoon, but I think you’re going to need a few more of them “hot tips”.’
‘You’ll let me keep it?’
‘I can’t very well go lecturing the two of you on doing the right thing and then keep it myself, now can I?’ Justin stood and tucked his shirt into his belt. ‘It might not be fifty thousand, Sam, but it’s a start, and it should at least cover your mortgage for a few months. Lewis, go and get a pen and paper from the kitchen and I’ll take his bank details.’
‘Okay,’ Lewis said, and disappeared into the hall.
‘Thanks, Justin, I appreciate it,’ Sam said. ‘If there’s anything I can do, just say.’
Lewis’s dad raised one corner of his mouth in a lopsided smile. ‘Now that you mention it, there might be something. This hot tip of yours, I’d like to know a bit more about it.’
Sam hooked his finger and tugged at the collar of his jumper. ‘I…er…there’s not much to tell, really. He’s just this kid at college. Josh…or Jake, I think. I hardly know him, really. The other day I overheard him talking with someone else, saying that his uncle had this tip about the West Ham game, that it would finish 3-2, so I thought I’d give it a shot. Like I said, I was desperate.’
‘The thing about betting on football, Sam, is that you can have a good idea about who’s going to win based on form, or even hazard a guess that there might be a lot of goals, but unless a game’s rigged, I can’t for the life of me think of a way of knowing for sure what the final score will be.’ The smile on Justin’s face had grown into something closer to a smirk. ‘Is that what happened?’ he asked. ‘You somehow found out a Premier League game was rigged and decided to cash in? It would take some pretty powerful people to pull off something like that.’
‘I…I wouldn’t know anything about that,’ Sam said, suddenly desperate to get out of there. ‘Like I said, I just overheard some kid at college. It was probably dumb luck that I didn’t lose your money. I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.’
‘If you say so,’ Justin said, although his tone made Sam suspect the matter was far from over.
At that moment Lewis returned, clutching a pen and paper. Justin blinked for the first time in what felt like ages, the smirk vanishing from his face.
Sam scribbled his account number and sort code, then passed the sheet over. ‘Thanks again,’ he said. ‘I should probably get going now.’
‘No problem.’ Justin folded the piece of paper, slid it into his shirt pocket and winked. ‘Remember to let me know if you get any other hot tips, okay?’
‘Er, yeah, sure thing,’ Sam said and followed his friend into the hall.
‘What was all that about?’ Lewis asked as he opened the front door onto a day that hadn’t improved a bit since Sam had arrived.
‘I think he suspects something,’ Sam said, and slid his arms into the damp sleeves of his coat. ‘He wanted to know where I got the tip.’
‘Yeah, good thinking back there, by the way. I was wondering how you were going to explain that.’
‘I’m getting pretty good at improvising,’ Sam said. And lying.
‘Doesn’t look like we’ll be able to use his account again, though.’
‘He already thinks I’m involved in rigging Premier League matches. I don’t think I’ll be able to improvise my way out of that one.’
‘What about the three o’clock games? They’ll be starting any minute.’
Sam shrugged. At least he now knew his plan worked, and his family were in no immediate danger of losing their house. There might even be enough money left over for a ticket to Montclair, assuming he’d ever have the nerve to set foot on a plane again.
‘There’ll be other games,’ he said. ‘I counted the pills yesterday and there are ninety-seven in the bottle, not including the one I took on Thursday. From what I understand, there are fixtures pretty much every weekend.’
‘And weekdays too, sometimes,’ Lewis said. ‘It doesn’t just have to be football either, there are loads of sports we could bet on.’
‘Except we can’t use your dad’s account anymore.’
‘No.’
‘And neither of us is old enough to gamble.’
‘No.’
Sam sighed. ‘What we need is someone who’s older than eighteen. Someone we can trust.’
They stood in silence for a few seconds until Lewis clicked his fingers. ‘I think I know just the person!’
6
One week later
It was Friday evening, over a week since Malcolm Fairview’s death, and Frances was sat hunched over her desk at New Scotland Yard. So far little about the case made any sense. They had called in Cynthia Fairview, the victim’s ex-wife, for questioning on the day of the murder, but the woman had appeared convincingly distraught and, in any case, had a watertight alibi. The second set of fingerprints found at the crime scene had drawn a blank when put through the database, however an elderly neighbour reported seeing a young man loitering at the scene close to the time of death. And then, a few days ago, the toxicology reports from the autopsy had come back, indicating a level of potassium cyanide in the victim’s blood consistent with the cardiac arrest that had killed him.
In Frances’s view it had all the hallmarks of a professional hit, adding further weight to her theory that the murder was in some way connected to Fairview’s past employment, but when she’d contacted the Security Service for further information her requests were flatly rebuffed with the words ‘classified’ and ‘top secret’.
Most perplexing of all was the call to emergency services. She had listened to the recording so many times she could recite it from memory, and on each occasion had been unable to shake the feeling that she recognised the caller’s voice from somewhere. Unfortunately, no matter how hard she wracked her brain, Frances could neither work out where from, nor construct a plausible explanation as to why the killer would call for an ambulance before fleeing the scene.
Leaning back in her chair, she linked her hands behind her head. It was getting late and she was due at her brother’s house for a dinner party in less than an hour. She strongly suspected it was another of her sister-in-law’s attempts to fix her up, the latest being the time Debbie had introduced her to Colin, a History professor at the university where she worked. On top of his rampant halitosis, Colin was well into his fifties and had spent most of the evening talking about his research into British warships of the colonial era. Needless to say, they hadn’t hit it off and, bored out of her mind, Frances had drunk too much white wine and done little to hide her displeasure at the potential match.
‘Hinds?’ the voice on the other end of the line asked. ‘It’s Kaur. I have some news.’
‘You do?’
‘Cybercrimes have unlocked Fairview’s laptop. There were several dozen encrypted files, mostly chemical formulas that go way over my head, if I’m honest. I’ve just emailed copies over, and I’ll have the laptop couriered to your office this evening.’
‘I’ll be here,’ Frances said, and booted up her computer before returning to her chair.
‘There was one more thing.’ He made a slurping noise that sounded a lot like he was sucking on a mint. ‘Not sure how relevant it is, but seeing as how you used to work at CT Command, I thought you might be interested. According to his browsing history, Fairview accessed several websites the evening before he was killed, all relating to the sabotage of British Airways Flight 0368 last year. You were involved in the investigation, weren’t you?’
‘I was,’ she said, a sudden chill sweeping through her. ‘And I think you might be on to something, Bikram. Can you send me a list of the sites?’
‘Will do,’ he said and hung up.
As Frances lowered the phone, Campbell strode past, an oversized teddy bear under his arm. ‘You still here?’ he asked. ‘It’s Georgia’s fifth birthday, so we’re taking the kids out for pizza and ice-cream.’
‘Ring and tell them you’re going be late,’ she said. ‘I know who made the call to emergency services.’
7
The three partners and co-conspirators sat facing one another in a triangle; Sam on the corner of his bed, Lewis on a stool at the computer desk and Lance cross-legged on the carpet. Last weekend Lance had agreed to join their scheme and set up an online betting account, after which Sam had travelled forward to Wednesday night and found out the result of the midweek match between Liverpool and West Bromwich Albion (a 1-0 home win). With that bet they had more than trebled the £7,600 that Justin had transferred into Sam’s bank account, which, mortgage payments aside, left him almost halfway to paying for his mum’s treatment.
Ripples of the Past Page 12