Ripples of the Past

by Damian Knight

  ‘But…how? The police searched the house, didn’t they? I thought they found the whole lot.’

  ‘Not quite,’ Chrissie told him. ‘Apparently Lance took it from the bottle just before you were arrested. Normally I’d have given him an earful, but on this occasion…’

  With shaking hands Sam folded the paper around the pill again and placed it in his pocket. ‘This changes everything,’ he said, a smile lifting the corners of his mouth.

  ‘Good,’ Chrissie said. ‘That’s what I was hoping you might say.’

  8

  ‘The first visitors’ day usually shakes most boys up,’ Pete said as he unlocked the door to Sam’s cell. ‘I reckon it’s when reality finally kicks in and they realise they ain’t got mummy to tuck ‘em in no more. You look like your bleedin’ lottery numbers just came up.’

  ‘Lottery?’ Sam said, realising that he, Lewis and Lance had probably missed a trick concentrating on football scores. He coughed into his fist and tried to keep from bouncing on his heels. ‘Just pleased to see my family, that’s all.’

  Pete ushered him in and shook his head. ‘Bleedin’ nutter,’ he muttered as he closed the door.

  Once the clanking of footsteps had faded along the metal walkway, Sam performed a couple of victory laps around his cell and then collapsed onto his bed, for once shedding tears of joy. Yet again his friends and family had come through for him, and soon the last, horrible week would be just another memory of something that hadn’t happened.

  Sitting up, he pulled the pill out of his pocket, unwrapped it and raised it between his thumb and finger. It looked real enough, and when he touched it to the tip of his tongue it tasted just as awful as ever. Wonderfully awful. Delicious, even.

  He was about to swallow it down when a worrying thought occurred to him: it was only a few hours since he’d last taken his medication, and he only had the single dose of Tetradyamide, which meant only one chance to get out of the mess he was in. When Sam had used Tetradyamide the week before his arrest, he hadn’t taken his epilepsy medication since Christmas, and back in the December-only-he-could-remember McHayden had supplied him with placebo pills. Thinking about it, there was no way of knowing whether or not his medication might suppress the effects of Tetradyamide as well as his involuntary seizures.

  It was too big a risk, he decided. If things went wrong he would be stuck in this dead-end timeline, possibly for the rest of his life. With a sigh, he folded the sheet of paper around the pill again and returned it to his pocket.

  * * * * *

  Following his evening trip to the medical room, the first thing Sam did on being locked in his cell again was to rush to the lavatory and stick his fingers down his throat, emptying his stomach of the spaghetti Bolognese served in the canteen for dinner and, he hoped, the epilepsy pill he’d swallowed five minutes ago.

  Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he straightened up, then filled his plastic cup at the tap and drained it in a single gulp. It was now almost eight in the evening, and if he stayed up all night drinking water and then took his dose of Tetradyamide just before by lights on the next day, it would give him approximately eleven hours to flush what remained of his medication out of his system, which might just be enough.

  After refilling his cup, he carried it over to his bed and opened his sketchpad. To pass the time Sam had been working on a drawing of Eva’s face, and the prospect of seeing her again suddenly didn’t seem so improbable. If everything went to plan, in a few hours’ time he would finally have a chance to put things right.

  Perhaps the most obvious place to start was the first day of December: the temporal crossroads at which both his father’s funeral and the Thames House bombing had taken place. But he had already decided that returning to that point was too dangerous, because Lara McHadyen and the Tempus Project would still be out there, lurking in the shadows. With only a single chance at fixing things he needed something more certain. A safer bet was, perhaps, to return to the day everything had gone wrong in this timeline: the day of Malcolm Fairview’s murder. If Sam could save Fairview’s life then the bottle of Tetradyamide he had taken from the flat would still be there, and provided he could then persuade Fairview to help him again (which the man had been eager enough to do the first time around), there would potentially be plenty more chances to prevent the Thames House bombing.

  His thoughts were disturbed by muffled shouts outside his cell. He closed his sketchpad, drained the last of his water and went to the door. Peering through the reinforced glass of the window, he saw Leroy rush past in the direction of the central hub, followed by Pete and the remaining two guards on Unit B, all with their nightsticks drawn.

  Sam frowned and stepped back. Although he’d only been at Knotsbridge a week, this was highly irregular. Obviously there must have been a disturbance of some sort in one of the other units.

  He pulled out his pill again and unwrapped it. All of a sudden there were more shouts from the direction of the central hub, and then, to his shock, two gunshots rang out in quick succession.

  Without hesitating, Sam stuffed the pill in his mouth and swallowed it down. There was a brief pause followed by a third gunshot, and then the cell and the corridor outside were plunged into darkness.

  9

  Sam cowered in the corner of his cell, the blackness around him echoing with the yells of the other inmates in Unit B. There was another distant smatter of gunfire and then the shouting from the central hub fell silent.

  Dropping to his hands and knees, Sam crawled blindly forwards until his shoulder connected with the leg of his bed and then rolled over and dragged himself under. He could only guess at what was going on out there, but it sounded like another prisoner had somehow got hold of a gun and was trying to shoot his way out, and one of the guards had probably cut the power in an attempt to disorientate him. Yesterday, or even a few hours ago, Sam might have considered this an opportunity, but now it only represented a threat to his plans.

  After a few minutes under his bed he became aware of a vague tingling in his limbs. His eyes were now accustomed enough to the dark that he could make out the bottom of the mattress a couple of inches above his nose, but none of the swirling colours that normally tinged his vision as Tetradyamide took hold were present.

  He gave it another minute and then poked his head out. At the same instant a torch beam sliced through the darkness on the other side of the window in his door. There was someone out there, but Sam had no idea whether it was one of the guards or the person responsible for the shooting.

  Unable to wait any longer, he drew his head back and closed his eyes, trying to turn the pages of time. At first nothing happened, and his breath caught in his chest as he realised that his epilepsy medication, no matter how weakened, might be interfering with the Tetradyamide.

  But then the yells from the adjoining cells were suddenly cut off, as was the draught blowing across the floor. Sam briefly saw the underside of the mattress before rolling out and crawling back to the corner of his cell, where he stood and, as the lights flickered on, spat a small yellow pill into the palm of his hand.

  Channelling his concentration, he focused on his destination: a Thursday morning two weeks gone. With an almost resistant lurch, the pages jerked back faster.

  While the Tetradyamide appeared to be working, his control had never felt so tenuous. He saw himself regurgitate a cupful of water and open his sketchbook. As he stepped to the basin, the water in his cup flowed upwards into the tap, and then the turning of the pages grew so fast that all detail was lost. He was vaguely aware of standing next to the windowed counter of the medical room before the backwards-playing images became no more than flashes of light and colour.

  After a while these were spliced with intermittent periods of darkness, each signifying an earlier night at Knotsbridge. He counted them off one by one, reaching the day of his arrest and passing into the week before. It took all of his willpower to maintain his control, but eventually the jarring bu
rsts of light and dark slowed, giving way to the view of a road lined with tall, flat-fronted houses: Malcolm Fairview’s road.

  Judging from the direction he was facing, Sam still hadn’t reached the flat yet, but if he was going to prevent Fairview’s murder he needed more time. He flicked the pages slowly back, seeing himself reverse down the pavement, weaving in between occasional patches of frost.

  Eventually he reached the tube station, where he stopped at the entrance for a silent conversation with a group of nuns before two shiny pound coins leapt from their collection bucket and into his outstretched hand. Then he saw himself back through the barriers and onto a lift, which carried him down to a queue at the bottom.

  Two more lifts arrived as he edged down a short flight of steps and backwards onto the crowded platform. Finally he stepped aboard a waiting train and lowered himself into a seat. It was only as the doors slid closed that he mouthed the word, ‘Play.’

  The rewinding images ground to a halt and Sam was suddenly aware of tinny, too-loud music seeping from the headphones of the girl in the next seat. Someone nearby was wearing too much cologne. And then, with a beeping noise, the doors slid open.

  He flew out of his seat, elbowing his way past the other passengers waiting to get off.

  ‘Oi, learn some manners!’ someone shouted as he dived past.

  Sam didn’t look back but raced up the stairs two at a time. Sucking in a breath, he squeezed his way around the patiently waiting crowd at the bottom of the lifts and managed to wedge his foot between the closing doors of a departing one before forcing his way on. To an array of muttered complaints and insults, he pushed to the front and was first out when the doors opened at ground level. Barely slowing, he raced through the barriers and, after dodging a collection-bucket-wielding nun, hit the pavement at full sprint.

  It didn’t take long before a stitch began to throb in his side, but he put his head down and powered through it, at one point skidding on a patch of icy ground but somehow regaining his footing.

  By the time Sam turned onto Beaumont Crescent his heart was hammering and the pain in his side had become almost unbearable, however he kept going until he reached the tree by the cracked wall outside number 47.

  Hands on knees, he stopped to catch his breath. Then, crouching, he eased the gate open and crept down the steps to the basement flat. Everything was exactly as he remembered, right down to the muffled classical music coming from somewhere inside. He was about to press the doorbell when it dawned on him that the killer might already be there. Up until then Sam had been so preoccupied with the question of whether or not he could get back to this point that he hadn’t given any thought to how he’d prevent Fairview’s murder if he actually managed it. Not knowing what else to do, he followed the gravel path around the side of the building again. As he sneaked down the steps to the patio, he glanced up and through the living room window just as Malcolm Fairview walked into sight.

  Sam felt his legs go weak, and ducked behind a potted bush for cover. Fairview was still alive, and now all Sam had to do was to warn him and together get the hell out of there, thereby altering the timelines and creating a new present in which Fairview had never been killed and Sam was never arrested.

  Craning his neck, Sam peered out to see the scientist enter the kitchen, fill his kettle at the sink and then place it on its stand. He took a deep breath and drew himself up. Just as he was about to step out, Fairview suddenly turned around and strode through the living room door and into the hall.

  Sam ducked behind the bush again and unzipped his coat. In spite of the chill to the air, his hands felt clammy. Less than a minute had passed before Fairview returned, glancing over his shoulder as if talking to someone out of sight. He went back into the kitchen, took two mugs from the cupboard above the sink and dropped a teabag into each. After topping them up with boiling water, he stepped into the living room again.

  Sam realised Fairview must have just let his killer into the flat, and scanned the patio for something to use as a weapon. Sticking from the soil in the raised flowerbed behind him was a three-pronged gardening fork. He snatched it up and turned back to the living room window just as a man with a shaved head and a beard stepped through the door from the hall.

  Although his appearance was drastically different, there could be no mistaking those bulging eyes and the smile that looked like a wolf bearing its teeth: it was Esteban Haufner, the man who had killed Sam’s dad.

  10

  From his position behind a potted bush, Sam gaped through the rear window of Fairview’s flat. In sabotaging Flight 0368 and planting the bomb at Thames House, Esteban Haufner had ruined Sam’s life across multiple timelines. And now he was about to do it all over again by killing Malcolm Fairview.

  Deep tremors shook Sam’s body, rocking him back and forth. The question as to why Haufner had done (or would do) these things barely registered; all that mattered was stopping him. But what was a skinny, brain-damaged kid with a blunt gardening fork going to do against a trained killer who’d evaded capture for almost two months? If he went in there alone, he'd probably get himself killed too.

  Realising what a laughable weapon it was, Sam went to drop the gardening fork, only to discover that he couldn’t move. The world around fell oddly silent, the background rustle of the wind through the trees snapped out. Less than twenty feet away, Haufner and Fairview stood as still as mannequins.

  Sam was frozen, trapped in a single moment, just like his first few seizures in hospital last year. But before he could make sense of what was happening, time seemed to skip forwards as though he were missing a page in the book. As if from nowhere a robin redbreast materialised on the patio before him, its head cocked to one side. Haufner and Fairview vanished, teleporting halfway across the room and reappearing by the door to the hall.

  Stutteringly, the pages began to turn again and the scene sprang into life. As Fairview stepped into the hall, Haufner paused to pull on a pair of leather gloves, reached into his pocket and then followed him out. Finally able to move, Sam clambered to his feet, startling the robin into flight. He dropped the gardening fork and raced around the side of the house and up the front steps.

  Scanning the road, he found it deserted. There was no way of knowing how much time he’d bought in which to prevent the murder, but it could only have been a few minutes at most. With no other option, he pulled out his phone and dialled 999.

  ‘Emergency services,’ a woman’s voice said. ‘Which service do you require?’

  ‘I need a police car. Now!’

  ‘What’s your location?’

  ‘47C Beaumont Crescent, Notting Hill,’ Sam said, and took a breath. ‘Please hurry, there’s going to be a murder.’

  There was a pause followed by a click. ‘Okay, a unit has been dispatched. Just stay calm and tell me what’s happened. Let’s start with your name.’

  Sam looked up to see the curtains in the neighbouring house twitch and caught a glimpse of an elderly lady at the window, probably the same person who would pick him out from an identity parade on the night of his arrest.

  ‘Are you still there?’ the operator asked. ‘I need a name.’

  Feeling a horrible sense of déjà vu, Sam hung up. Short of letting himself into the flat, he had just re-established the conditions by which he’d originally implicated himself in Fairview’s murder.

  Time was running out…

  …or was it?

  With Tetradyamide in his blood, Sam could still correct his mistake. Come to think of it, all he really needed to do was travel back a few more hours and make sure he left home early, giving himself plenty of time to warn Fairview before Haufner arrived.

  He threw his hands in the air at not thinking of it sooner, closed his eyes and formed the word ‘Back’ in his head.

  The scene before him ground to a halt, but instead of rewinding, Sam was left standing in a frozen snapshot of the moment once again. He tried to sweep the pages back, putting every last ounce of hi
s mental strength into the task, but nothing happened and he was left staring at the still image of an unruly, bare-branched tree that was beginning to crack the bricks of the wall in the front garden.

  ‘Back!’ he repeated, now screaming the word in his head. ‘Back, damn you!’

  So slowly that it was almost imperceptible at first, the scene began to lighten like a gap in the clouds had appeared overhead. As he watched, the colour washed from the image of the tree until, like a pencil sketch, only the dark outlines of the trunk and branches remained. After a while these vanished too, leaving Sam floating in a sea of white light.

  Chapter VI

  A Wanted Man

  1

  June 1954

  It was the twins’ thirteenth birthday, a day of monumental importance in the Rutherford household. Once the cake had been cut and the presents opened, Nell made herself scarce while Stephen sat with the children at the table he had built from mountain ash the summer before.

  ‘Me first,’ Nora said, and presented her bandaged right hand.

  ‘No, me!’ Marcus objected, elbowing his sister in the ribs and laying his hand next to hers.

  Stephen gave an exasperated sigh. Perhaps it was the isolation of their upbringing and the consequent lack of playmates, but it seemed as though the twins had been at each other’s throats from the moment they were old enough to walk and talk. When Marcus had shown an interest in shooting, Nora had insisted that she wanted to too, practising day in and day out until she was twice the marksman of her brother. And when Nora had taken up the piano, Marcus had soon after spotted a fiddle for sale at the market in Ilulissat and begged Stephen to buy it for him. Both children had become skilled musicians in the years since, but instead of playing together practised at opposite ends of the farmhouse, creating a cacophony of competing sounds that left Stephen and Nell wincing.

  ‘Does it really matter who goes first?’ he asked.