Buying Time

by E. M. Brown

Richie thought back; it was like being asked to do an almost impossible physical exercise. He came upon a memory, and mentally winced… No, he didn’t want to concentrate on that, still less talk about it.

  “Memories of uni, with Digby, the pubs we went to…” He shook his head. “The odd thing is that ever since waking, I’ve had… I don’t know what to call them. Visions. Almost like… images from a dream. Only…”

  He looked from Canning to Digby.

  “Go on,” Canning said.

  The more he thought about the visions, the clearer they became. “It’s as if I have memories of being older… in my fifties. I’m… I’m living in Yorkshire, on the moors, and Digby’s not far away… and we’re both writing for TV. And then…” He shook his head. “And then it’s as if I’ve flipped back in time, to my forties, on holiday on a Greek Island, and I met someone, a woman…” He gasped at how real the images became as he concentrated, and how they came with attendant emotions, a melancholy at the TV hack he would become, the love he felt for the blonde woman…

  Canning heard him out, nodding. “The brain is a very strange organ, Ed. It’s the part of the body we know the least about. You’ve had a hell of a blow on the head, and quite naturally it’s affected you. You’re suffering hypnagogic hallucinations – seeing images, feelings things, that haven’t happened even though they seem real to you. I wouldn’t worry about it; the mind does odd things to you when you’re asleep, after all. Think of all the surreal dreams you have. This is something along those lines, though brought about by trauma.” He replaced the ophthalmoscope in his bag and snapped it shut. “Right, what you need to do is rest. No alcohol. If you vomit or feel like vomiting, call 999. Have a restful night and – this is an order – first thing in the morning get yourself along to CC and explain the situation to someone there. There’ll be formalities to go through, they might even prescribe medication, and they’ll certainly make a follow-up appointment.”

  “I’ll drive you there myself,” Digby said.

  “I’ve no doubt that, given time, your memories will return, Ed. Just take it easy.” Canning rose and shook Richie’s hand. “And do get yourself back to the hospital, okay?”

  “I’ll do that.”

  Digby saw his friend from the room.

  “It’s strange…” Richie said when Digby returned.

  “What is?”

  Richie shook his head, as if marvelling. “My ‘memories’ of the future, of my older self… they seem more real than my actual memories of university. I was there, living as an older person, and I have real nostalgia, real regret…”

  “You heard what Mick said, the brain is a strange organ. What you mentioned reminds me, in a different way, of those people who claim to have regressed to previous lives and retain crystal-clear memories, recalling sights and sounds and smells… And yet it’s all a product of the imagination.” He tapped his head. “All happening up here.”

  “It’s reassuring,” Richie said, “but disconcerting at the same time.”

  “As Mick said, the ‘memories’ will fade and your short-term ones will return. It’s all a question of time.”

  “I have one particular ‘memory,’ Digby. But it’s of a past that never happened.” He concentrated, and little by little it came back to him. “You showed me a draft of A Trove, and when I criticised it…” He shook his head. “You couldn’t take it, Digby. You told me to get out, that you never wanted to see me again.”

  “I did? What a shallow, egotistical fool that Digby Lincoln must have been!”

  “And yet…”

  Digby smiled. “Ed, the fact is that, without your comments – which I admit were hard to take at the time – without your comments, A Trove of Stars might never have been published. It’s an indication of a writer’s maturity, Ed, when he can take criticism and use it.” He smiled. “Now, I could murder a beer, and normally I’d feel guilty about drinking when you can’t. Another coffee?”

  A little later Pam arrived with the take-away, and Richie had the odd experience of spending the next couple of hours – over food and then coffee – in the company of someone who, he’d been told, he’d met many times before, but of whom he had not the faintest recollection. It must have been odd for Pam, too, being treated as a stranger by someone she knew well, but she put on a good show of accepting his reserve.

  It was odd to watch Digby and Pam together, effectively, from Richie’s point of view, for the first time: he was surprised at the pair, at how Pam’sextrovert character contrasted with his friend’s introversion; she was bubbly and loquacious, while Digby was much quieter, more self-contained. Opposites attract, he thought.

  Pam took herself off the bed at eleven, and Digby fetched more beer from the kitchen.

  “Now, Ed, I’m going to ask you what you thought of Pam, and see if it’s the same as what you told me originally, when you met her back in spring.”

  Richie winced. “Was I uncomplimentary?”

  “Not exactly,” Digby temporised. “Go on, then.”

  “Well, she’s nice. Obviously very bright, and talented.”

  “I sense a but coming.”

  “Not a but at all. That said… she’s not the type of woman you usually go for. You usually like less… demonstrative types. And tall women.”

  “You see… your memory is coming back.”

  Richie frowned. “The odd thing is… I have nothing at all to back this up with. I can’t recall a single one of these tall, quiet women. Except…”

  “Yes?”

  “No, it’s nothing.”

  “You mentioned someone called Caroline.”

  Richie sat in silence and stared across the room to the painting above the hearth. He said, “The odd thing is that this Caroline seems more real to me than any of the others. And she’s no more than a product of my imagination.”

  They talked of other things for a time, and on Richie’s prompting Digby outlined the plot of his next novel; usually he was loathto discuss his work… another detail that Richie remembered.

  Towards midnight, when Richie thought that his friend was about to suggest they turn in, he said, “There’s a cut-off, Digby. I’ve just realised it. Earlier, when Mick asked about the long-term memories… The last thing I recall wasn’t university.”

  Digby looked at him. “What was it?”

  Richie slipped a hand into his back pocket and pulled out the plastic bus-pass holder containing the photograph.

  He stared at it until he felt tears stinging his eyes, then passed the photo to Digby.

  His friend took it in his thick, clumsy fingers and stared down at her smiling face in silence.

  “Annabelle…” Digby said.

  Richie said, “I recall everything about that last day, Digby. Everything. Every last detail. What I said to her, and how she responded. It’s as if it happened yesterday. And I can feel the guilt.”

  “Ed… Ed, for chrissake. We’ve been over this time and time again.”

  “Have we?”

  “Believe me, we have. And it wasn’t your fault.”

  “But it was my fault, and I know it. And nothing I can do can make up for it.” He took the picture from Digby and slipped it back into his pocket. He wished he could return the memories just as easily to wherever they came from.

  “Strange, isn’t it, Digby, that I recall nothing else from around that time, but that very last day is branded on my memory.”

  “Perhaps it’s not so very strange at all, Ed…” Digby said.

  They talked late into the night, discussing Annabelle’s death, and Digby resorted to the platitudes he must have used again and again in the past, no doubt to little effect; and they made not the slightest difference this time, either.

  Richie went to bed at one and slept well, waking only once at dawn to use the toilet, then sleeping again until bright winter sunlight woke him at nine o’clock. He rolled out of bed and dressed, and a phrase came suddenly into his head. The first day of the rest of your life…<
br />
  He was looking forward to going back to the hospital, perhaps receiving medication. He wanted his memories back, which in turn would return his life to him.

  He smelled coffee and bacon, and realised he was very hungry. He made his way to the bathroom, then halted… He felt suddenly unwell, and it came to him that he had to alert Digby: he had to get to hospital, and immediately.

  He felt a strange pain in his head, then staggered as a white light hit him full in the face.

  From the Daily Mirror, 22nd July, 2030

  Whatever Happened to Ed Richie?

  IN JULY 2025, best-selling novelist Ed Richie vanished without a trace from his luxury Yorkshire barn conversion in the village of Harrowby Bridge. Police were mystified at the time, and are no closer to solving his disappearance five years later. Detective Inspector Ralph Graham, from Leeds CID, who led the investigation at the time, said recently, “Sadly, we’ve had no further leads on the whereabouts of Mr Richie.”

  Speculation is rife as to the writer’s fate. A doyen of the Left, he was reviled by the Right for his outspoken criticism of the Tory party and the rise of the UK Front, and some have speculated that Mr Richie might have been the victim of far-right thugs…

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  January 2030

  ELLA WOKE EARLY the following morning and left the house before Kit or Aimee were up and about. She breakfasted on coffee and a granola bar at a café in Waverley station, and took the ten o’clock train out to Haddington on the new line. Last night she’d spent an hour Googling the man she was about to meet.

  Duncan Mackendrick had made his millions in the information technology boom of the late ’nineties, selling a controlling share in his cyberware company to the Chinese in 2008. He was accused of selling out at the time, and pilloried as a traitor by the British press. Since then, however, he’d used his millions to start a dozen new companies and fund as many lines of scientific research, all the while pouring funds into the Scottish National Party. Now, with the SNP governing the country, he acted as their official scientific advisor and kept his fingers in a dozen high-tech pies. In his mid-sixties, online photographs showed him to be a stout, grey-haired man with the weather-beaten face of a Highland farmer – an image he was fond of playing up to, as his ancestors had been crofters on the Isle of Lewis.

  The train drew into Haddington station, just to the south of the county town, and Ella took a taxi out to Hailes Castle. She wondered what her imminent interview might yield. The businessman would deny all involvement with the disappearance of RalphDennison and the whereabouts of Ed Richie, of course; but Ella liked to think she could tell when someone was lying or concealing the truth.

  The taxi passed through a security check at the gate, rolled up the long gravelled driveway, and deposited her before the great oak door of the refurbished fourteenth-century castle. Through small windows in the rebuilt east and west wings, she could see open-plan offices and people working at softscreens or standing in consultation before wallscreens. As well as being Mackendrick’s country residence, the castle was the hub of his business empire.

  The thick timber door swung open before she was halfway up the steps and a bearded young man in a T-shirt bearing a mathematical equation waved her in. “Ella Shaw? You’re a bit early, but Mac’ll see you. I’ll show you up.”

  That was something else she’d read in his online profile: Mackendrick didn’t stand on ceremony. He ran his business on democratic lines, liked to be known as ‘Mac,’ and had a healthy disregard for punctuality.

  He led her up a timber staircase, and at the top hammered on a door, opened it without awaiting a reply, and ushered her inside. He closed the door behind Ella without announcing her arrival. She found herself in a large room with windows on three sides, giving magnificent views of the surrounding snow-covered countryside.

  She didn’t see Duncan Mackendrick until he extricated himself from the depths of an ancient settee, dabbing his mouth with a napkin.

  “Caught me indulging in my daily ritual – tea and tattie scones at ten-thirty.” He spoke in a soft Highland burr, as welcoming as his smile. He shook her hand. “Now, we could stay in here and chew the fat over tea, or how about a turn about the garden? It’s such a lovely morning with the sun shining and frost on the ground, why not take advantage of it, hey?”

  When she smiled her assent, he led her not to the door but to a lift in the corner of the room. He grabbed a threadbare overcoat from the back of a chair, along with a stout walking stick, and limped into the lift. They descended, and the lift door opened onto a gravelled path at the rear of the tower. Mackendrick pointed his stick at a flight of steps that led down into a vast sunken garden.

  They walked across the lawn, leaving dark footprints in the frosted grass.

  “Douglas said you wanted a lifestyle piece,” the businessman said. “Five hundred words of cliché on how the reclusive, self-made billionaire bachelor spends his days in the lap of luxury, hey?”

  “Well…”

  “It’s been done before a hundred times, with varying levels of vitriol depending on the political bias of whichever paper or newsfeed the reporter is employed by. What I don’t understand is why ScotFreeMedia sends Ella Shaw to dothe dirty work. Come to that, I don’t understand why Duncan wants a lifestyle piece on me. He knows me personally and could write the rubbish himself. Down here.”

  She followed him down another shallow flight of steps to a flag-stoned area surrounding a circular pond, its surface sealed with a sheet of fractured ice. They walked around the pond, Ella matching her pace to Mackendrick’s limp.

  He glanced at her, sideways. “So, Ms Shaw, what kind of piece do you intend to write?”

  “You’re notoriously reticent when it comes to speaking publicly about the various scientific projects you fund.”

  “And rightly so. These things are often top secret. Don’t want our rivals to get their dirty mitts on our hard-won knowledge, do we?” He stopped and stared at her. “So that’s why you’re here? You really want to know about the research?”

  “Not all of it. Just certain aspects.”

  Mackendrick led her away from the pond and down a long, paved walkway between frosted lawns.

  “‘Certain aspects,’” he said, almost to himself. “Now, I wonder what you mean by that?”

  She took a breath, aware that she was taking a risk. “Okay… I’d like to know a little about the research done by the scientist Ralph Dennison, and what bearing it has on the disappearance of the novelist Ed Richie.”

  She watched him closely as she spoke, but his expression didn’t flicker in the slightest.

  “And what makes you think I have anything to do with these people, Ms Shaw?”

  “I have it from a reliable source that you hired the services of Dennison way back in 2000. He has links with Ed Richie, and met the novelist a number of times just prior to Richie’s disappearance five years ago.”

  “Who told you this?”

  “I can’t reveal my sources,” she said.

  Mackendrick seemed unperturbed. He pursed his lips, staring across at the distant hills. “What do you know of Dennison’s work?”

  She blinked, surprised. She had expected a blanket denial from the businessman, followed by a swift dismissal.

  “I understand that his work for Omega-Tec, back in the ’nineties, involved the theory behind faster than light travel.”

  He smiled at her. “That’s highly classified information, Ms Shaw. I think that perhaps only twenty people in England and Scotland, and the rest of the world, know that.”

  “So…” she ventured, “you’re funding work in this area?”

  He refrained from replying as they walked on. At last he said, surprising her, “You’re a Scottish national, aren’t you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Came up here in 2020, naturalised a couple of years later. I like what I’ve read of yours.”

  Ella wondered where this might be leading.r />
  He turned to her. “Who do you think our enemies are, Ms Shaw?”

  The question wrong-footed her. “Why… principally the US and Russia.”

  He nodded. “And when you say the US, you also mean their lapdogs, the UK Front. The difficulty of having the enemy on your doorstep,so to speak, is that infiltration is very difficult to prevent, or detect. We’ve shared such a common culture for so long that chameleons find it easy to adapt.” He smiled at her, then laughed. “Forgive the metaphors, Ms Shaw. What I mean to say is that I have to be very, very careful.”

  He swivelled and gestured back at the castle with his stick. “The chill’s getting to my bones. Time I was getting back inside. It’s been pleasant chatting with you, Ms Shaw.”

  And that’s it, she thought; a polite brush off, rendering her trip out here futile. Mackendrick certainly had something to do with the disappearances of Dennison and Richie, but why admit as much to her?

  Instead of returning to the tower, Mackendrick walked her around the castle to the gravelled drive.

  He turned the lapel of his tweed coat and spoke into a tiny microphone, “Greg, would you be so good as to drive Ms Shaw back to the station? Oh, and if you could give her one of my cards.”

  They waitedbefore the steps, Ella wondering where she might go next in her investigation. Back to tracking down and questioning Richie’s lovers?

  Mackendrick said, “Give me two days, Ms Shaw, so that my people can do the requisite background checks.”

  She peered at him. “And then?”

  “And then I might be willing, once I am assured that I can trust you, to tell you a little more about certain aspects of the research I fund.”

  “And about the disappearances of Richie and Dennison?”

  He ignored her. “Ah, here he is…”

  The bearded young man emerged from the castle and hurried down the steps. He passed Ella a silver metal rectangle, embossed with Duncan Mackendrick’s name and contact details.