The Time Bubble Box Set 2

by Jason Ayres

  The entire experience had been one of total humiliation. The final straw had been when Summerfield had made all the delegates carry around some rubber bendy dinosaurs all day, supposedly symbolic of their archaic policing style.

  Kent had dealt with some pretty difficult people in his career, on both sides of the law, but no one had ever pissed him off as much as Gideon bloody Summerfield. He couldn’t decide whom he despised most, Summerfield or his brother-in-law, Ian. It was a close-run thing. Thank goodness the two of them had never met; the idea of them ganging up on him didn’t bear thinking about.

  “Look at it this way,” said Debs. “You’re still a relatively young man. This is an opportunity to start again and do something completely new.”

  He didn’t feel like a young man, especially having just returned from his little sortie back into his past. “Like what?” he asked.

  “Give it time,” she said. “We’ll think of something. I’ll help you. Maybe we could even do something together, like open a restaurant. You know I’ve always wanted to do that.”

  This was quite the nicest Debs had been to him for months, if not years. Perhaps he had done the old girl a disservice, neglecting her like he had in favour of the pub. She wasn’t so bad underneath it all. Then again, she could just be being nice because she wanted to get her hands on his redundancy money.

  He dismissed this unworthy thought. She may have nagged him over the years but she wasn’t a money-grabber. He thought about what she had said and decided she was right, this was an opportunity and it was not the only one that had come his way today. The police had given him a very decent pay-off, so keen were they for him to go quietly. He hadn’t even had to work his notice, so officially he was still employed for another three months. As for the exact amount he was going to get, it would be substantial. A month’s wages for every year of service would amount to something like two years’ salary – tax-free. They weren’t about to go hungry anytime soon.

  And what Debs didn’t know was that he also had his friendly angel along to help out. A nice pay-off from the police was all well and good but a little tinkering about in the past could net him a good deal more than that if he planned it well. He would have to think very carefully about where to go next. But for now, he was going to enjoy his beer and his steak and chips.

  “Thanks, babe,” he said, almost embarrassed at using such a term of endearment.

  “It’s a long time since you called me that,” she said as she stood behind him and gave his shoulders a rub. “You know, these steaks can wait a while if you want to pop upstairs.”

  She gave him a knowing look, one he hadn’t seen for a very long time. It left him in no doubt as to her intentions.

  “The boys are out at five-a-side football,” she added. “I’ve given them some money to get a pizza afterwards with their mates. They won’t be back for a couple of hours at least.”

  He couldn’t believe his luck. He couldn’t remember the last time she’d wanted to touch him. Things were looking up. And barely an hour ago he had been planning to end it all. You really never did know what was just around the corner. Fortune seemed to be favouring him at last, and he was going to make damned sure he made the most of this.

  As she headed for the kitchen door his eyes were drawn to her ample behind, filled out from years of freebies from the bakery. She may have been on the large size but he was turned on by the sight as much as he ever had been. His worries banished temporarily, he followed her up the stairs.

  Cops and Robbers

  April 2013

  It was Tuesday teatime and Kent was back on the car park roof, waiting for the angel. He had spent most of the previous evening lounging contentedly on the sofa, basking in the afterglow of his unexpected early evening delight, with a belly full of steak and chips to boot. It had given him plenty of time to think about where he wanted to go next.

  Two main topics had preoccupied his thoughts. Firstly, he had continued to think about money. What could he do in the past that might make his current life more comfortable? Many people had made their fortunes investing in the stock market or in property, but he decided such schemes were too grandiose for his means.

  For a start, he wouldn’t know where to start. He knew very little about the stock market, other than that there was something called the FTSE that went up and down a lot. Even if he could figure it all out, he would only have one day to set in place some sort of investment plan. That also ruled out investing in the property market. There was no way he was going to be able to become a property magnate in one day.

  Quite apart from all of that, both property and shares would require having a lot of easily accessible capital available. At no time in his past had he ever had anywhere near the sorts of sums at his disposal that he would need to make it worthwhile. The only time a decent windfall had come his way was after his parents had died and he and Annie had sold the house, splitting the proceeds. Most of the money from that had gone towards paying off his own mortgage, unlike Annie’s half which had been spent on a new Jaguar for Ian.

  He certainly wasn’t going to risk that money on the stock market and even if he tried, he knew Debs would put a stop to it. She disapproved of gambling.

  There were quicker and easier ways to lay his hands on a lot of cash quickly and most of these did involve gambling. A lottery win would be the easiest to engineer, but there were other possibilities. Kent mulled them over in his mind.

  In addition to money, the other topic that had been dominating his thoughts was injustice. Kent had suffered a lot of bad luck over the years, and much of this had been at the hands of other people. For a start, there were the countless humiliations by friends, ex-girlfriends and work colleagues. He knew that revenge was not an admirable trait, but he would dearly love to go back and wipe some of the smiles from some of their faces.

  Then there were the other regrets and missed opportunities, like the girls he let slip through his fingers when he was young because of his crushing shyness. Then there were the many crimes that he had failed to solve because of his own incompetence. Deep down he knew he wasn’t a very good detective, but, like a gambler seeking that one life-changing win, he had lived in the hope that one day he might crack a big case.

  It had never happened. There were hardly any decent cases for a start. Oxfordshire was certainly not the hotbed of crime that a certain long-running ITV series had led him to believe in his youth.

  In the months leading up to his departure, his lack of success had been brought up by his superiors. In his defence, he had protested about the town’s low crime rate but it hadn’t cut any ice with Summerfield. He had pointed out that on the rare occasions anything serious had happened, Kent had invariably failed miserably to catch the villains.

  In one last, desperate roll of the dice, he’d gambled heavily on the outcome of the case of a teenage girl who had gone missing just a few weeks previously. That had ended in complete embarrassment for Kent. She had turned up safe and sound, but only after he’d detained her seventeen-year-old boyfriend and accused him of her rape and murder. The boy’s mother had filed an official complaint against him which was ample ammunition for Summerfield to use against him.

  That was the last in a long and sorry list of failures. A year or two before the missing girl case there had been a spate of burglaries in the area. His next-door neighbours were among the victims, even though he and Debs had promised to keep an eye on the place while they were on holiday. A couple of weeks later, Debs had dragged him off to a car boot sale where he had bought a second-hand strimmer for £20 from a cheerful young man who had even called him by name.

  “You’ve got yourself a bargain there, D.I. Kent,” he had said. “I only wish I could keep it, but my new flat hasn’t got a garden.”

  When he got it back home and started using it, his neighbour saw him over the fence and came over to chat.

  “Oh, I used to have a strimmer just like that,” he had said. “It got stolen in the robbery
.”

  On closer inspection, it transpired it was the same strimmer. Needless to say, the cheeky young man who’d stolen it and then had the audacity to sell it to Kent was never seen again.

  And so the catalogue of embarrassing incidents went on and on. They were all events that Kent saw little point in wasting a day going back and rehashing. He would have got a little satisfaction from nicking the man who’d sold him the strimmer, there was no question of that, but he only had six days to play with. He couldn’t waste one of them on something so trivial.

  And then he remembered the biggest crime that had happened on his watch, the one that would have made all the difference had he been able to solve it.

  He knew enough about what had happened that day to be confident he could catch the criminals red-handed and become a hero as a result. The icing on the cake was that he could make some serious money out of it as well. If he got it all right he could manufacture a true red-letter day for himself.

  It was easy to find out the exact date he needed to go back to. A quick Google search was all that was required. When the angel appeared, right on cue, there was no need for any preamble.

  “Take me back to Saturday 6th April 2013,” he had said.

  “If you’re sure that’s what you want,” replied the angel, with a knowing look in his eye.

  “Oh, I’m sure,” replied Kent.

  He didn’t need to explain his motives. The angel could read his mind anyway so would already know where he was going and why. There was no need for a debate about it and he certainly wasn’t seeking his approval or disapproval. Perhaps what he was planning to do wasn’t a particularly worthy cause. It was all very much in self-interest but what the hell did it matter? He still had four more trips. He could go back and save the planet later.

  Without any further delay, the angel once again clicked his fingers, something that Kent was beginning to find a little irksome. Why did he have to do that? It was such a cliché. Perhaps he did it just for dramatic effect.

  The next thing Kent knew, he was waking up in his bed, five and a half years ago. Unlike his previous trip back through time, waking up this time wasn’t much of a shock to the system. Kent’s body hadn’t changed dramatically between 2013 and 2018, other than getting a stone or so fatter.

  He was alone in the bed but he could hear the sound of Debs using her electric toothbrush in the bathroom. There was no sign of any cup of tea and he felt particularly rough. But it was a Saturday so that was to be expected.

  Kent’s heaviest drinking night of the week was Friday when he would usually manage a good eight pints at The Red Lion, washing it down with a pizza or a kebab on the way home.

  The toothbrush fell silent and Debs came back into the room.

  “It stinks in here!” she exclaimed.

  “Of what?” he croaked, from his familiar, bone dry, morning mouth.

  “Of stale beer and whatever you had to eat on the way home. Not only did I have to put up with your snoring all night, but you were farting for England as well. You’ve been at those dodgy kebabs again, haven’t you?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” offered Kent, genuinely not remembering. That wasn’t down to his hangover but because all of this had happened five years ago. He couldn’t recall the details of any individual Friday night at such a distance. The memories all tended to blend into each other, one long succession of boozy nights, every one different, but ultimately all the same.

  “Don’t bother trying to deny it,” she retorted. “I’ve seen the empty box in the kitchen bin. I’m guessing doner kebab by the smell of it. Still, I suppose it’s an improvement on last week when you left it on the coffee table, stinking out the living room.”

  “Any chance of a cup of tea, love?” asked Kent, pathetically.

  “You must be joking. You can get your own tea. I’ve got enough to do sorting out the kids.”

  As if on cue he heard one of the boys call rather rudely from downstairs. “Mum! I want a drink.”

  She turned and headed back out of the room and down the stairs.

  “You won’t be getting anything if you talk to me like that,” she yelled as she went. “What’s the magic word?”

  “Pleeeee-eeaaase,” replied Luke, his younger son, completely insincerely.

  He could hear both the kids making a lot of noise downstairs and again vowed that he must spend some time with them. Kent may not have changed much in five years but they certainly had. He did a quick mental calculation and worked out that they would be ten and eight in April 2013. It was before adolescence had arrived, when their dad was still their hero and they thought everything he did was cool.

  He mustn’t miss the chance to spend some time with them this day, but it would have to wait until the evening. He had come back to this particular date for two very good reasons. He was a man on a mission, or two missions, to be precise.

  Or rather he would be, once he had got over the after-effects of the previous evening’s gallon of beer and the kebab. Doubtless he had gone to the shop next to the bus station where he had been quite partial to the “House Special”. It had been his favourite late-night eatery at the time, but by 2018 it no longer existed.

  There had been all sorts of rumours circulating about the cleanliness of the place. Even Kent had begun to have his doubts when he suggested to his junior, P.C. Adrian Johnson, that they stop off to get lunch there one day. The young officer had pointed out that it was the only fast-food outlet in the town that didn’t display its hygiene certificate on the door, and went on to inform Kent of a number of unsavoury stories he had heard about the place. In his sober state Kent had vowed to stop using it. Unfortunately those intentions soon went out of the window once he’d had a skinful.

  Eventually the rumours were proved to be true after a health inspection discovered out-of-date meat, a plague of maggots in the bins, and rats freely running around in the kitchens. The business was closed down for several weeks. After reopening it quickly went bust when even the drunkest weekend boozers still retained enough sense not to go in there. By 2018 it had been bought out and reopened as yet another coffee shop.

  When Kent came back into the bedroom, Debs had clearly relented as there was a cup of tea sitting on the bedside table along with the daily newspaper. “Free 8-Page Grand National Guide Inside” was emblazoned across the top of the front page, above a ridiculous headline about some popstar’s false tits exploding.

  He sat back down on the bed, picked up the paper and thought about his plans for the day ahead.

  It was Grand National Day, 2013. The day that the town had seen its biggest crime in over a decade take place, one that Kent had miserably failed to solve.

  An hour or so before the start of the race, armed robbers had burst into a busy bookmaker’s shop in the town centre and demanded that the staff hand over all of the cash. Not content with taking what was in the tills, they then held a gun to a terrified cashier’s head, ordering the manager to open the safe.

  He had told them that it was on a time lock and he couldn’t open it, but one of the robbers clearly had knowledge of how the system worked. He knew that it was set to open at 3.00pm, just a few seconds away, and started a countdown.

  The gang had planned everything in great detail. With the gun held to the terrified girl’s head, the manager had no choice but to comply. Everyone else had been ordered to lie on the floor, and with another gunman at the front door no one was able to come in and out.

  This had attracted attention from outside but the gang were not bothered. They hadn’t had any intention of hanging about. The whole thing was over and done with in less than five minutes. By the time people in the street outside were calling the police on their mobiles, the gang were already out of the back door with over £30,000 in cash. They hadn’t picked Grand National Day at random. They knew it was the busiest day of the year for the bookies and that the shop would be stashed with more cash than at any other time.

  By the time the alarm was
raised the robbers were well and truly gone. The first Kent knew about it was when he heard the police sirens wailing as they raced past The Red Lion, where he’d stopped off for a couple of lunchtime pints with the regulars. Checking his mobile, which he’d left on silent to avoid being bothered, he discovered several missed calls and texts from Adrian who was on duty at the station.

  By the time he got to the betting shop it was far too late for him to do anything about it. The place was already swarming with officers. They had been called in from other local stations to supplement his meagre two PCSOs who were on duty in the town centre that day.

  Kent had taken charge of the situation. Despite all his bravado, vowing to the local news crews that the perpetrators would be caught, his investigation went nowhere. Local enquiries revealed nothing and his attempt at interrogating the shop manager in the hope of getting him to confess to being an inside man had been a disastrous waste of time. The man had been distressed enough by the incident as it was and Kent’s actions also led to an official complaint being filed. It was just one more blot on his increasingly tarnished copybook.

  A couple of days later, a stolen BMW from the local area was found abandoned on the South Coast, not far from Portsmouth. The car had been reported missing on the same day as the robbery but Kent hadn’t made the connection. In the boot of the car the Hampshire police had found the three guns that had been used by the gang. All were subsequently revealed to have been fake replicas.

  To say he hadn’t exactly covered himself in glory that day would have been an understatement. To compound his misery, he had spent the whole morning studying the form for the big race and had picked out Auroras Encore, one of the rank outsiders. He had been on his way to the betting shop to put the bet on when he had got sidetracked in The Red Lion. In the aftermath of the robbery he had completely forgotten to put the bet on.