Ripples of the Past

by Damian Knight

  ‘So you do know him!’

  ‘Yeah, but in a different timeline. Fairview had recreated this drug called Tetradyamide which helped control and focus my episodes, allowing me to choose when they happened and where they sent me. But the Tempus Project wasn’t what it seemed, not by a long shot. It was run by someone called Lara McHayden, and what she really wanted was to turn me into a weapon, using my ability to help track down and eliminate government targets. When I tried to leave, she wouldn’t let me. She’d bugged our house and then, when I tried to run, sent someone to bring me in. This all happened on Christmas Eve, and you…you were…’ He glanced away, his voice catching in his throat. ‘Let’s just say things got messy. In the end I had to use my ability to go back to the day of Dad’s funeral and undo my decision to call Hinds, which created a new reality where the Thames House bombing still took place – this reality. In this timeline I’ve got no memory of anything that took place between the funeral and Christmas Day.’

  Chrissie unfolded her arms and rubbed the back of her neck. ‘This takes some getting your head around, but assuming I accept what you’re telling me, none of it explains what you were doing at Malcolm Fairview’s flat on the day he was murdered.’

  ‘Tetradyamide,’ Sam said. ‘After I found out about Imperial Insurance cancelling Dad’s life insurance policy and the potential treatment for Mum’s amnesia, I knew I had to do something. I thought Tetradyamide might be the answer, so I asked Lance to drive Lewis and me to the Tempus Research Facility last week. The place was abandoned, but Malcolm Fairview was there collecting some of his stuff. Once I told him who I was and what I could do, he invited me to his flat the next day. He was already dead when I got there, Chrissie. He had a heart condition, so I thought there was nothing I could do. I called an ambulance, but then I saw a bottle of Tetradyamide and I…I just sort of hung up and took it.’ He paused to steady himself and laid both hands flat on the table. ‘Like I told Levine, the first thing I knew about Fairview being murdered was when the police turned up at our house a few hours ago.’

  Chrissie was watching him with her lips pursed. ‘I don’t honestly know what you expect me to say.’

  ‘That you believe me? That you’ll try and help?’

  ‘I’ll try and help, at least.’

  Sam nodded. It wasn’t exactly the answer he’d wanted, but at least it was something.

  ‘In that case there’s something I need you to do,’ he said.

  4

  Dawn was still several hours away when Chrissie’s taxi pulled up outside her house. If she’d thought the night after the plane crash had been the longest of her life then the one drawing to an end was running it a close second. What her brother had told her was so far-fetched, so totally beyond the scope of anything she’d previously thought possible, that she could now see only two options: either Sam had suffered some sort of massive psychological breakdown and concocted the whole thing while somehow getting involved in the murder of a government scientist or he was telling the truth, and frankly she wasn’t sure which prospect terrified her more.

  She paid the driver and climbed out of the taxi, noting the two white vans parked on the other side of the road. Such had been her haste to follow Sam to the police station yesterday evening that she had forgotten her phone, so had no clue as to developments back at the house, but in spite of the hour all of the downstairs curtains were open and the lights were on, filling her with foreboding as she trudged down the path.

  As she pulled her keys from her handbag, the diamond in her engagement ring sparkled. She paused to gaze at it before letting herself in, wondering how something that only a few hours ago had given her butterflies every time she looked at it could now provoke no emotion whatsoever. Sam had told her that Lance had driven him and Lewis to some sort of research facility the night before the murder, and she recalled swallowing some cockeyed excuse about the three of them going to the cinema together. Was Lance also involved in whatever Sam had managed to get himself caught up in? She’d confront him soon enough, she supposed, but first she had her brother’s strange request to complete.

  On stepping through the door, she found the hallway in utter disarray. A row of black plastic crates had been stacked against the near wall, and unfamiliar voices could be heard in the kitchen and living room. Trying to make as little noise as possible, she crept up the stairs, when all of a sudden the door to her brother’s bedroom swung open and a man in white overalls stepped onto the first-floor landing with Sam’s computer under his arm.

  ‘Hey, that’s private property!’ she said. ‘Where do you think you’re going with that?’

  The man gave a weary sigh that suggested he’d met such a reaction more than once. ‘Young lady,’ he said, even though he wasn’t much older than her, ‘I’m a Scenes of Crime Officer, and this is evidence in an active police investigation. You can’t be here while we work.’

  ‘Where are my family then?’

  ‘Booked in to a hotel for the night. They left the address over there.’ He gestured to the notepad beside the phone on the hall table. When Chrissie made no attempt to retrieve it, he sighed again and shifted the computer to his other arm. ‘Look, I understand this must be upsetting as well as inconvenient for you, but I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’

  ‘Fine, I’ll just grab a few things together and be out of you hair.’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t allow that.’

  Chrissie willed her bottom lip to wobble, which wasn’t too difficult given the circumstances, then burst into tears and sagged theatrically onto the stairs.

  The man laid the computer onto the landing floor and trotted down to her. ‘There there,’ he said, patting her awkwardly on the back with a hand covered by a latex glove. ‘There’s no need to cry. We’re almost done here and then you can have your house back.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ she said, dabbing her eyes and nudging her coat back to display her baby bump. ‘I know you’ve got a job to do, but I’m pregnant and have a vitamin deficiency which could be harmful to the baby. After everything that happened last night, I missed my supplement and…and…’

  ‘A vitamin deficiency?’

  ‘That’s right. I just want to get my supplement from the attic room. I’ll be two minutes.’

  He hesitated and pressed a finger to the spot between his eyebrows. ‘All right, but be quick and don’t touch anything. And don’t tell anyone I said you could, otherwise it’s my neck on the block.’

  ‘You’re a life saver,’ she said and clambered to her feet, flashing him the warmest smile she could muster. ‘Thank you, you won’t even know I was here.’

  ‘Sure, just be quick about it.’

  Chrissie nodded, hurried past him and onto the landing and then up the first few stairs leading to her bedroom. She stopped halfway and turned to peer through a gap in the banisters. The Scenes of Crime Officer had his back to her and was busy packing Sam’s computer into one of the crates in the hall. Holding her breath, she slid her shoes off, scooped them up in one hand and then crept down to the first-floor landing again before slipping into Sam’s room unnoticed.

  The place had been well and truly ransacked, with the mattress lying upturned on the bed, the contents of the shelves stacked on the floor and a pile of clothes heaped next to the wardrobe. She crossed the room and opened the wardrobe doors to find a clothes rail lined with empty hangers. Crouching, she checked the bottom drawer, where her brother had told her she would find a brown pill bottle hidden in a balled pair of socks.

  Whether it had ever been there or not, the drawer was now empty.

  5

  Frances gazed across the table at Rayner. Her suspect was sitting beside his lawyer with his head bowed. His hair had grown back and his face had filled out in the weeks since she’d interviewed him with Agent Steele, but the haunted look in his eyes was as the same as ever, if not worse. So far he’d hardly said a word apart from to protest his innocence, and in a few hours they would be face
d with the choice of either charging him or releasing him.

  Placing her elbows on the table, she tented her fingers and leaned forwards. ‘So, Sam, here’s the situation. An eyewitness has picked you out from an identity parade, placing you at the crime scene around the estimated time of death. We’ve also found your fingerprints in several locations within the flat, and your voice pattern has been matched to the recording of a phone call made from the victim’s landline. You can see how this all looks, can’t you?’

  Rayner stared down at his hands and mumbled something too quietly to make it out.

  ‘We’ve also accessed the victim’s laptop,’ she went on. ‘His browsing history shows that he was researching the crash of Flight 0368 the night before you, one of only two survivors, apparently wander into his house and discover him dead. Talk to me, Sam. The truth, that’s all I want. If you’re covering for someone then you need to tell us. How is Flight 0368 connected to Malcolm Fairview’s death? Is it anything to do with the seven-thousand-five-hundred pounds paid into your bank account last week?’

  Rayner jerked his head up, his posture stiffening. ‘No, that’s got nothing to do with it! The money was a payment from my friend’s dad, you can check.’

  Levine raised a hand, stopping Rayner before he could go on. ‘That’s conjecture, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘It proves nothing, as well you know.’

  Frances nodded to concede the point, but Campbell, in the chair beside her, banged both fists on the table.

  ‘You think this is all a game, do you?’ he yelled, wagging a finger at Rayner. ‘There’s a man lying dead in the morgue, and you won’t even tell us why!’

  ‘Detective Campbell,’ Levine said, ‘might I remind you that my client has stated his innocence of the alleged offence on several occasions.’

  Campbell’s face was a deepening shade of red. ‘He’s up to his neck in it. C’mon, you little bastard, admit it! Where’d you get the cyanide?’

  ‘No!’ Rayner pleaded. ‘Please, you’ve got it all wrong!’

  Campbell growled, looking like he might burst a blood vessel, but Frances placed a hand on his arm to still him.

  ‘Sam,’ she said, her voice level and calm, ‘no one wants this to go any further than it has to, but at the moment everything points to you. You need to give us something to work with here. If you didn’t kill Malcolm Fairview then what were you doing at his flat that day?’

  ‘It’s hard to explain,’ Rayner said and gave a slight shake of his head. ‘I was walking down the road and must have heard a noise or something. I followed it around the back of the house and—’

  ‘What sort of noise?’ Campbell demanded.

  ‘I don’t know. A bang or a crash, I think. It sounded like someone was hurt.’

  ‘So,’ Frances said, ‘you followed this noise around the back and…’

  Rayner glanced to Levine, who spread his hands for his client to continue.

  ‘I looked through the window,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t see anyone, but when I tried the back door it was unlocked. I let myself in and had a look around, and that’s when I saw him – Mr Fairview, I mean – lying on his back. When I realised he was dead I thought it must be a heart attack, not that he’d been murdered or anything, so I called an ambulance on his house phone and then, I don’t know, sort of freaked out and ran.’

  ‘Are you in the habit of letting yourself into other people’s property?’ Campbell asked.

  ‘Like I said, I heard a noise.’

  ‘So you’d never met Malcolm Fairview before finding him dead?’

  Rayner paused for a moment and blinked. ‘No.’

  Frances pulled out an evidence bag containing a note written on the back of a leaflet about a proposed animal hospice in Notting Hill and slid it across the table:

  Malcolm,

  I came over on Thursday morning like we arranged but there was no one home.

  Please call me - 07263 212 851

  Sam

  ‘Your house was searched immediately after you were brought in,’ she told him. ‘This was in the wastepaper basket in your bedroom. A handwriting analyst has already matched it to samples from your schoolwork. So, I’ll ask you again, Sam, do you still maintain that you’d never met Malcolm Fairview?’

  Rayner’s face sagged. He linked his hands around the back of his neck and stared silently at the table.

  Levine raised the note and, jiggling his leg, read it.

  ‘That wasn’t the only thing we found,’ Frances said, and placed a second evidence bag on the table. ‘This was in a pair of socks in your wardrobe. They’re not cocaine or ecstasy, as far as I can tell. We’re having a sample analysed as we speak, so we’ll know what they are soon enough. Care to shed any light on the matter?’

  Rayner gaped at the pill bottle and raised a hand to his mouth. What little colour was left in his face slowly drained away.

  ‘Okay,’ he said after a moment. ‘The truth.’

  ‘That might be a good place to start.’

  ‘The truth is I first met Malcolm Fairview over a month ago. He was a scientist at the Tempus Project, a secret government organisation researching time-travel abilities in people with traumatic brain injuries,’ he turned his head and tapped his now-covered scar, ‘people like me. Mr Fairview taught me how to control my ability using a drug called Tetradyamide. That’s what the pills are. Things with the Tempus Project got…complicated, let’s say. My family were in danger, so I altered the timelines and created a new reality in which the Tempus Project was shut down after the Thames House bombing. Even though we’d technically never met before, I tracked down Mr Fairview at the Tempus Research Facility, the place where he trained me, and he invited me to his flat the next day, the day he was killed.’ He took a deep breath, held it for a couple of seconds and then released it. ‘That’s what I was doing there, Sergeant Hinds. Everything else I told you about finding Fairview dead and thinking it was a heart attack is the truth. Apart from calling an ambulance, I didn’t think there was anything I could do for him, and when I saw the bottle of Tetradyamide on his chest of drawers I just took it and ran. I know it was the wrong thing to do, but I wasn’t thinking straight at the time.’

  ‘Enough!’ Levine slapped the note down on the table. ‘I need to speak with my client. Alone.’

  ‘Of course,’ Frances said. She gathered up the evidence bags and stood. ‘You have one hour, Mr Levine.’

  6

  Things were far worse than Sam had allowed himself to believe. In addition to the other evidence stacked up against him, the police had found the note and bottle of Tetradyamide in his bedroom, and while the former proved Sam had lied about not knowing Fairview, the latter meant he had sent Chrissie on a wild goose chase.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ Levine asked. ‘You don’t actually believe a word of what you just said there, do you?’

  ‘It’s the truth,’ Sam said.

  ‘I see.’ The lawyer pinched the loose flap of skin beneath his chin, his lips pressed together. ‘In that case my honest advice is that you consider changing your plea.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I have to be blunt with you, Sam, but it’s my honest opinion that you’re suffering from some form of delusional schizophrenia, no doubt a result of your brain injury last autumn. If you admit to killing Malcolm Fairview, I may be able to get you a reduced sentence of the grounds of diminished responsibility. A thorough psychological assessment would be necessary, of course.’

  Sam stared back, wondering whether he’d misheard. ‘You expect me to admit to something I didn’t do?’

  ‘But did you, though?’ Levine asked, meeting his gaze.

  ‘No!’

  ‘Very well then.’ The lawyer switched his Dictaphone off, rose from his seat and flattened his ketchup-stained tie. ‘I’m sorry, Sam, but under the circumstances I really don’t see how I can defend you.’

  7

  After dropping the pill bottle and note off at the evidence room, Fra
nces returned to the Homicide and Serious Crimes office and made her way directly to the kitchen for a much-needed caffeine fix. Her ploy with the note had worked a treat, proving that Rayner had been lying to their faces, and they now had more than enough evidence to charge him. What he had told them about time travel and secret government organisations was deeply concerning, however, and did little to ease Frances’s fears that the murder was in some way connected to the sabotage of Flight 0368, an event to which she herself was inextricably linked.

  As she stirred milk and sugar into her coffee, Campbell strode in with a wide grin on his face. ‘Nice work back there, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘Looks like we’ve got him.’

  ‘Yes,’ Frances said. ‘I suppose it does.’

  He stopped smiling. ‘What’s got your goat? Not my bad-cop routine, I hope. It worked, didn’t it?’

  ‘No, it’s not that, just…’ She shook her head.

  ‘That nonsense he was spouting about time travel?’ Campbell shrugged and poured himself a mug of coffee from the pot. ‘The kid’s obviously got a few screws loose. Sad, really. It sounds like he doesn’t even remember doing it and invented this fantasy as a coping mechanism. That or he knows exactly what he’s doing and made the whole thing up in the hope of getting off the hook.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Frances said. ‘But I can’t help thinking there’s more to this than meets the eye. Like where a sixteen-year-old boy gets his hands on cyanide, for starters.’

  ‘You can get almost anything on the dark net these days if you know what you’re doing. The main thing is we’ve got our killer, Frances. The rest is just details.’