Touchstone Season One- Complete Box Set

by Andy Conway

  It was as fat as a cat, sleek, blackbrown, slimy and it had a finger in its mouth, a human finger.

  Danny stood frozen with horror. The brick missed and it was gone in a flash. He felt his face go all warm and his belly churn and he stumbled away up the street, trying not to vomit.

  AS DANNY WALKED ON and the children followed, he did not see one of the fire wardens glance up from his work and track them with keen eyes.

  Reg hadn’t slept all night but he recognized something about the man; the outline of his face. It had been pitch dark two nights ago but he’d got a good look at him in the graveyard and now recognized him straight away.

  — 23 —

  RACHEL GASPED AND GRABBED the trestle table. Her legs had suddenly buckled under her and she’d thought she was going to faint. A strange feeling, like she was only half there in her own body. The lack of sleep last night, perhaps. But something else too. Her nerves raw and ragged, as if she might fall apart at any moment.

  She and Winnie were filling mugs of tea as fast as Amy Parker could distribute them among the bomb survivors scattered around the church.

  “My mother’s here,” said Winnie. “Now you’ll have to work hard. She won’t tolerate any slacking off.”

  Mary Lewis strode through the church hall and both helpers and victims shifted awkwardly as the big old bossy woman marched through it like St Mary’s was named in her honour.

  Rachel almost said, “I know,” but bit her tongue. She couldn’t tell Winnie she’d already met her mum; couldn’t tell her that she’d sat at a secret invasion committee meeting last night and listened to her rant on about the Russians.

  The battleaxe marched right up to them, looking Rachel up and down through her thick glasses as if it was the first time she’d seen her and disliked what she saw all over again.

  Winnie was vigorously cleaning the inside of a tin cup on her apron, even though it wasn’t dirty. She nudged Rachel and said, “This is my mother, Mary Lewis.”

  “Hello, Mary.”

  “It’s Mrs Lewis to you.”

  “This is Rachel,” stuttered Winnie. “Lieutenant Eckersley’s cousin—”

  “I know who she is,” said Mary Lewis. “There’s a queue at Shufflebotham’s.”

  Mary took her coat off, put an apron on and set off to order people around.

  It was clear from the surprise on Winnie’s face that Mary hadn’t gone home to blab about every detail of the invasion committee last night. Mary had, in fact, acted as if she’d never met Rachel in her life before, apart from the cryptic last remark, and Rachel wondered at how that implied Rachel had a reputation much more than that Mary Lewis had ever met her.

  “The war’s sent my mother a bit short, I’m afraid,” said Winnie, taking off her apron.

  “Is your mother a maid as well?”

  “I’m not a maid,” said Winnie. “I’m a housekeeper.”

  Rachel saw the offence in her pouted lips. “Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t know the correct term.”

  “That’s all right, then.”

  “Only, I thought with you living in such a big house and all that.”

  “You really do know all the local gossip, don’t you?”

  She could tell that Winnie really was affronted now, reaching for her coat. It was so difficult to say the right things to people without causing offence. It reminded her of learning formal and informal address in languages at school and the dire social consequences of addressing elders in the wrong mode, and how she could never quite grasp its meaning, as if there were a whole secret nuance in every interaction and getting it slightly wrong would be an insult to their family.

  “Charlie mentioned it. I just thought with you having such a big house you’d be rich.”

  “Well, we’re not. The house belongs to Mr and Mrs Harper. They’re an old couple. We’ve lived there all my life. Mum used to be their m— housekeeper, before I was born. But now we look after them. They’re like family really.”

  Rachel gazed at Mary in the distance, trying to piece it all together, aware of the stack of old photos in her pocket, some of which hadn’t been taken yet, but at least one that had: Mary the maid with her baby, posing with Mr and Mrs Harper.

  “Seems a bit funny,” she said. “An old couple like that, keeping you on.”

  Winnie was buttoning her coat up. She appeared to be going. “Like I said, they’re like family.”

  “What happened to your father? If you don’t mind me asking.”

  “Oh, I never saw him. He died in the Great War when I was a nipper. Don’t even have a photograph of him. Wish I did, but there you are. Sad, really.” She sighed and brushed her apron, as if brushing the thought away. “I’m off to run an errand. You can hold the fort, here.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Did you not hear? There’s a queue round the corner at Shufflebotham’s.”

  “A queue for what?”

  “I don't know. But it must be good. There's a queue.”

  She threw her a conciliatory smile and marched off.

  Rachel gazed at Mary Lewis ordering people around and felt a desperate desire to take the photos from her pocket and examine each one again to decipher the looks on their faces; the secret that was buried in the past.

  — 24 —

  DANNY CROUCHED BEHIND a privet hedge that bordered a small patch of waste ground, from where he could easily spy on the row of terraced houses nearby.

  Ron and Olive had decided to hide with him, which was cramping his style a little, Ron still asking a barrage of questions and Olive just staring at him like he was her never seen father home from the war, or a movie star or something.

  He shuddered, a violent spasm retching through his body, and coughed bile, blinking away tears and a dead baby’s eyes.

  “Do they have bananas in the future?”

  “Yeah, the shops are full of them.”

  “Do they have sweets in the future?”

  “Tons of them.”

  He didn’t care about pretending for them anymore. He fished the chocolate from his pocket, sliced through the silver paper with his thumbnail, snapped it and handed the two halves to their eager little hands. They ate it greedily, dreamily and when he saw them smile, especially the girl, something cracked inside him.

  “Don’t eat it all now, save it for later,” he said. Then he heard himself and wondered why the hell he’d said that. Let them eat it all. Let them gorge on it and be sick if they wanted to. In the morning they could be lying dead in a pile of smoking bricks.

  “You!”

  The voice belonged to a man and it came from behind Danny. He turned to see a fire warden and a policeman advancing on him, both with pistols drawn.

  “Stay there,” the policeman barked.

  Sergeant stripes on his arm. Old, uncertain. Danny raised his hands. The children edged out of the way.

  “This is him,” said the air warden. “Saw him loitering round the churchyard the other night during the raid. Never seen him before.”

  “What’s your name?” said the sergeant.

  He could have them in a fight with a couple of swift kicks, but for the two guns pointed at him.

  “Danny Pearce, officer. I’m sure there’s been some mistake.”

  A woman came walking down the street, saw them too late, halted, frozen in fear. The sergeant’s eyes flitting to her, his hands shaking. Danny wondered if he could grab the woman and use her as a shield. Or one of the kids.

  “Madam,” said the sergeant.

  The woman came out of a trance.

  “Move along, please. As quick as you can. And take these kids with you.”

  She nodded, pulled the children away, rushing them down the street. They squirmed and craned their necks to see.

  “Check his papers, Reg. Keep your hands in the air!”

  “Okay, don’t shoot,” said Danny. “Please.”

  Reg, the warden, edged towards him, making sure not to block Sergeant Webster’s shot
and reached inside Danny’s jacket pocket. He pulled out a folded slip of paper, backed away and opened it.

  “What is it?”

  Reg’s eyes scanned the list, confused, not sure what he was reading. Then its importance stuck out at him suddenly, like a hand from under rubble.

  “It’s a... it’s a list of Jerry air raids.”

  The sergeant reached with one hand for his handcuffs and held them out. “Handcuff him, Reg. Behind his back.”

  Danny slumped and groaned. “Oh, not again!”

  Reg cuffed him quickly and pushed him towards the police sergeant.

  “Come on then, you Jerry bastard. Let’s be having you.”

  — 25 —

  RACHEL’S BELLY GROANED. It was an hour after they’d had lunch yesterday and there was no sign of it arriving. No one mentioned it. It seemed they just didn’t need much food.

  Winnie returned empty handed. The queue had been for pork belly, but it had quickly run out.

  Amy Parker was walking among the wounded with a tray of tea, stepping around the volunteer nurses who were offering little but sympathy. The survivors had a few scratches but they’d all been patched up last night. They were homeless. The wounds were all inside.

  Rachel watched dreamily as Amy approached a couple settled on a camp bed. A husband and wife in their thirties, dishevelled and dirty. Amy stood over them with a tray full of steaming mugs, Maddy at her side, hanging on to her skirt shyly, clutching her doll.

  “You two look like you need a cuppa,” she said.

  The woman looked up from her bomb-dazed trance and went to reach out. The man snatched his wife’s arm back.

  Amy froze in the man’s hostile glare.

  Maddy looked at the man, then up at her mother, then at the woman, who avoided her gaze, embarrassed.

  Amy’s eyes fell to the floor and she moved on.

  Rachel jerked awake. “Did you see that?”

  “What’s that?” said Winnie.

  “That man. He just...”

  Winnie glanced over. “Oh her. There’s not many people like her.”

  “What? Just because she’s a single parent?”

  “You really do know all the gossip, don’t you? I don’t know what it’s like in London but round here that kind of thing’s still frowned upon.”

  “It’s not right.”

  Winnie smiled to herself. “You’re like your cousin. He’s a soft one and all.”

  The man left his wife and walked over to their station and Rachel felt anger boiling in her throat.

  “Can I take two teas, please?” he croaked.

  For a second she felt pity. He’d lost his house; maybe he’d even lost some other member of his family. But she found herself snapping.

  “No, you can’t.”

  “Pardon?”

  “You take them from her. We give them to her, she gives them to you. If you don’t like it, you go without.”

  The man’s mouth fell open.

  “And try to remember you’re in a church too and who does the judging in here.”

  The man’s eyes fell to the floor and he clenched his fists. Rachel wondered if he would hit her. But he turned away and walked to where Amy was handing out mugs to another family. He said a few words, still looking at the floor and took two tin mugs from her tray as she nodded and blushed.

  Rachel felt triumph and pride surging through her veins. She’d stood up to someone, righted a wrong, held her nerve in the face of a bully.

  Then she remembered she’d done all this for the woman who was supposed to be her enemy.

  This was what had happened to Charlie. Perhaps he’d tried to keep Amy Parker away from Rachel’s family, but in the end, you had to accept that she was a human being. Rachel had lasted little more than a day before she’d given in. She couldn’t blame Charlie. It was all so impossible.

  Two children came running in, a boy and a girl.

  “Olive, where the bloody hell have you been?” Winnie snapped. “What on earth have you got all over your face?”

  Something smeared all over their mouths.

  “Chocolate,” said the boy.

  Winnie wiped a finger over her daughter’s lips, licked it. “Where did you get chocolate?”

  “From the man,” said Olive.

  “What man?”

  “We saw a man arrested,” said the boy, proudly. “With guns!”

  “What are you talking about? Which man?”

  “The man from the future.”

  — 26 —

  CHARLIE MARCHED UP Woodbridge Road and strode into the police station, barely registering the Victorian facade of the building, now covered with sandbags, and the list of casualties on the notice board outside.

  Inside, Reg was sat slumped on a bench. He jumped to his feet.

  “At ease, Reg. Have you slept at all?”

  “Just grabbed forty winks, sir.”

  “Go home and grab some more. You’ll be no use to anyone tonight.”

  Reg nodded and wiped his eyes. “If you’re sure, sir.”

  “It’s an order. Sleep.”

  He marched to the desk sergeant, intending to announce his arrival and demand access to the prisoner, but Sergeant Webster came out from the corridor to his right.

  “Webster. Where’s this prisoner?”

  “In the cells, sir. Chief Inspector Lees has arrived to carry out an interrogation.”

  Charlie nodded, ignoring the subtle pulling of rank. He was a soldier in a police station, poking his nose into things that didn’t concern him.

  “I hear he has a list on him?”

  Sergeant Webster shifted uncomfortably and glanced around the crowded reception, unsure of how much he could say. “List of Jerry air raids,” he murmured. “Plain as day.”

  Charlie nodded. “Show me to Chief Inspector Lees, now.”

  Webster nodded. There was little he could do. Charlie was a senior officer, they were fighting a war, the police were there to serve. A lieutenant outranked a sergeant.

  They walked through the pool of desks behind the reception counter and Webster knocked an office door, waiting for the voice that rapped, “Come in.”

  Chief Inspector Clifford Lees sat at a desk, reading a sheet of paper, smoke curling from a cigarette.

  “Lieutenant Eckersley. Thank you, Webster.”

  They were alone together. Clifford indicated the seat he should take but Charlie ignored it, standing over him to the side of the desk.

  “They say he has a list of planned German air raids?”

  Clifford handed it over. Charlie read it, feigning a knot of puzzlement. It was the detail that was so extraordinary. Bombs that would fall in the future, their exact location and how many people would die. No one should know exactly how this could be, unless you knew the suspect had come from the future, where this list was history.

  A thought lit inside him. A list like this could change the war. A list like this could change history.

  “He also had these about his person.”

  Clifford waved at the piled of objects on his desk. Three silver wrapped bars of chocolate and four packs of nylons. But it was the other object that was curious.

  A small, black slab of what looked like shiny metal. It was smooth and curved, like a pebble made of black glass and it instantly reminded Charlie of an anthracite rock he’d bought at the Blue John mine in Derbyshire, which now sat on his bookshelf. There were holes, indentations and silver buttons of varying shapes along its edges and on the front and back, but they didn’t intrude too much on the overall impression it gave of being a smooth pebble. On the back were some symbols and hieroglyphs, the curious word iPhone, and in tiny print, Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China.

  Charlie looked up and tried to read Clifford’s face. Smooth and calculated, but he couldn’t hide his excitement. They had stumbled upon something major.

  “I thought it might be something to do with that war between China and Japan,” said Clifford.
“The Americans are helping the Chinese, aren’t they?”

  “Perhaps they are,” said Charlie. “Perhaps this is the start of that.”

  He knew it wasn’t true, but anything that connected the boy in the cell with neutral countries that might end up as allies was better than the slightest association with the country that were currently bombing the city every night. The Sino-Japanese war had been raging for a couple of years following Japan’s invasion of China, and the British government had been providing loan assistance to the Chinese for a couple of years, as had the USA.

  “Might this be an attempt to get the Americans on our side?” Clifford asked.

  Charlie looked up with surprise. There was something in Clifford’s expression; searching for what Charlie knew, knowing that he knew more than was letting on.

  “I can’t say,” said Charlie.

  “Because you don’t know or because it’s restricted?”

  “I can’t say.”

  It wasn’t restricted. Charlie knew nothing, but it was important to make Clifford feel that he knew something.

  “If your ARP man, Reg, is right that he was signalling in St Mary’s churchyard, it wouldn’t make sense if he was with the Chinese and the Americans. All very strange.”

  “Any papers on him?”

  “The only other thing on him was this.”

  Another slip of paper. It contained Amy Parker’s name and address.

  “He was there on Newport Road when they apprehended him. Perhaps he was spying on her, or meeting an accomplice. I’ve sent a constable to bring her in.”

  “Good work,” said Charlie.

  Clifford brushed away the congratulation and the implication that it came from a superior. “So is he a German spy, or one of ours, in your professional opinion?”

  Charlie shook his head. He wanted to avoid all talk of spies. “Have you contacted any of the mental asylums? See if they have anyone missing?”

  “I hardly think—’