Buying Time

by E. M. Brown

“Use this number to give me a call in two days,” Mackendrick said. “Have a pleasant journey back to Edinburgh.”

  They shook hands, when all Ella wanted to do was hug the businessman.

  Greg led her across to a small electric runabout, and as they rolled down the drive he said, nodding to the card in her hand, “You’re privileged. Mac doesn’t give out many of those.”

  She nodded. “I think we got on very well.”

  “Mac’s astute. He makes snap judgements about people. If he likes you, you’re in.”

  As they turned along the old B-road towards Haddington, Ella stared at the steel card in her hand, then slipped it into the inner pocket of her parka. She was excited, but cautioned herself about getting too carried away; the businessman might tell her something about his research, eventually, but whether that might lead her to discovering what had happened to Ed Richie was another thing entirely.

  “Hello,” Greg said. “Looks as if there’s been an accident.”

  Ella looked up. A car was slewed across the road before them, its driver staggering from the vehicle with a hand pressed to his bloodied head. She had no idea what struck her as odd about the scene – only later did she realise that there was no other vehicle in sight, and that the injured driver was vaguely familiar.

  Greg braked and reached for the door.

  Ella said, “Wait…”

  “What?” He opened the door. “He’s injured –”

  Greg jumped out and ran towards the car.

  Only when he reached the driver, and knelt over him, did Ella recall where she’d seen the middle-aged man before: on the train, and at the airport terminal.

  But by then it was too late. The man lifted a hand and sprayed something into Greg’s face. The young man fell as if pole-axed.

  At the same time, someone hauled open Ella’sdoor. She turned, crying out, and a balaclavaed figure raised a canister and sprayed her in the face with something foul-smelling and acidic. She felt dizzy, then sick. Hands grabbed her, pulled her from the car and carried her along the road: she guessed there was more than one person. She heard a door open, and was lifted into a confined space that stank of oil and petrol. Someone forced a hood over her head and pulled a cord tight around her neck. She heard an engine start up, the floor vibrating under her cheek.

  Someone bound her arms and legs as she lay on her left side. She was in the backof a van of some kind, aware only of the sound of its engine and the strange sensation of passing in and out of consciousness.

  At one point she came to her senses as the vehicle passed over what might have been a speed bump. She had no idea how long she’d been in the van, and no way of telling. She wanted to struggle, but the drug made her sluggish. Even rational thought, as she tried to work out why she was being kidnapped, was too much of an effort.

  Later she heard traffic noises, and the vehicle stopped and started, and she guessed they were driving through a city: Edinburgh. The engine stopped and the van came to a standstill. Ella tensed herself for whatever might happen next.

  The doors opened and she felt hands on her upper arms, hauling her out. She was placed on her feet and someone untied the ropes around her ankles. Then two people gripped her arms and dragged her, staggering, away from the van. The only indication of her environment was the texture of the ground underfoot: from the cold, gritty concrete of what might have been a garage, to the creak and give of old floorboards. She heard a door open and was assisted through it and made to sit on what felt like a dining chair. Someone secured her arms and legs to the chair with parcel tape. Footsteps retreated and a door closed.

  She sensed that there were people still in the room, watching her. She felt terribly vulnerable.

  For the first time since her abduction, she found her voice, “What do you want?”

  She heard whispered voices, away to her right, and then someone was unfastening her wrist-com and going through the pockets of her parka and jeans.

  “What the hell do you want from me!” she cried.

  She heard footsteps, a door open and close, and then silence.

  The only sound, as she sat bound hand and foot to the chair, the hood over her head, was the pounding of her heartbeat. The air was cold; she was aware of the faint scent of machine oil. Was she in a garage?

  She struggled to free her hands and feet from the tape, but they were tied tight and there was no way she might free herself.

  She felt a spasm of panic when she realised she wouldn’t even be missed until she failed to return home that evening.

  She heard the door open.

  Footsteps approached: more than one person. She heard a chair being placed before her, positioned exactly, and then another. Two people, then. This was the interrogation.

  A man’s voice, with an English accent, “Now, Ms Shaw, in your own words, tell me about your meeting this morning with Duncan Mackendrick.”

  “Take the hood off and I’ll talk.”

  “As if we’d be so foolish. You’ll tell us what we want to know, Ms Shaw, if it takes all day… or all week.”

  “Like hell.”

  “Why did you see Mackendrick?”

  She hesitated. “An interview.”

  “About what?”

  “A short lifestyle piece. A filler for SFM.”

  The man laughed, cynically. “As if the esteemed journalist Ella Shaw would do lifestyle fillers for SFM.”

  “Needs must.”

  “Don’t give me that, Ms Shaw.”

  She heard whispering, as the man consulted with whoever accompanied him.

  He said, “A week ago you interviewed the television writer Digby Lincoln, and then the actress Samantha Charlesworth. The following day you flew to Finland and spoke with the brother of the artist, Emmi Takala. On returning to England, you interviewed Charles Sloane at his college in Oxford.”

  “What about it?” she asked, trying to keep the tremor from her voice.

  “Why, Ms Shaw? Why your interest in these people?”

  Inside the hood, she licked her lips. “I’m writing a book, the biography of the novelist Ed Richie. I’m interviewing the people who knew him: his friends, acquaintances, lovers.”

  “I wasn’t aware,” the man drawled, “that Ed Richie had any connection at all with Duncan Mackendrick.”

  Ella thought fast. “That wasn’t anything to do with the book. As I said, it was a filler for SFM.”

  “You’re a far from convincing liar, Ms Shaw.”

  The man and his accomplice conferred again, and this time Ella heard the second person’s voice. The tone was low, and with a terrible shock of recognition Ella realised that she had heard the voice before: a woman’s voice, American.

  She must not, she knew, give any indication that she was aware of the identity of the woman. If she did, then she might never get away from here.

  The man said, “What do you know about the work conducted by the scientist Ralph Dennison, Ms Shaw?”

  She was about to deny any knowledge of the scientist’s work when she heard a cry from outside the room. The door burst open and someone yelled, “Move it!”

  A window to her right shattered. Something hit the floor and skittered across the bare floorboards.

  The man hissed, “Christ…” and she heard chairs falling as the pair jumped to their feet. “How the – ?”

  The man grabbed her arm and attempted to drag her from the room. He stopped, then cut the tape binding her legs. Ella stood, twisting to free herself from his grip. She felt the woman’s hands clutching her shoulders, grunting viciously as she steered Ella towards the door.

  Crying out, Ella swung her arms, still attached to the chair, and more by good luck than judgement hit the man. She heard his grunt as he staggered across the room. She swung again, freeing herself from the woman’s clutches. She stumbled against the wall and slid to the floor, the chair dragging painfully on her wrist. She managed to pull her hands free from the twisted tape; she was reaching to remove the hood when
she heard a second window smash. Something bounced across the floorboards and came to rest very close to her.

  Then she was deafened by an explosion, the shockwave knocking her sideways. She lay very still, stunned.

  She heard the hissing of something like escaping gas, and above it the sound of the woman, sobbing.

  Then an acrid stench hit her and she passed out.

  SHE WOKE TO find herself in a wonderfully warm bed.

  She felt as if she were floating, and wondered whether this was the effect of the mattress or of the gas still in her system. She struggled upright and looked about her. She was in a Nordic timber-clad room, with a big picture window at the far end overlooking a scene of snow-capped mountains and a lake. She wondered where she might be – Scandinavia, the Scottish Highlands? Next to the bed was a chair with her clothes folded and piled on it; and on top of her parka was Duncan Mackendrick’s silver card.

  She lifted her right hand. Her wrist-com was missing.

  She tried to sit up further, and swing herself out of bed, but was overcome with dizziness and passed out.

  She was not alone in the room when she came to her senses again.

  A small blonde nurse stood at the foot of her bed, reading from a softscreen. She smiled when she saw that her patient was awake.

  Ella struggled into a sitting position, and the nurse hurried to bank her pillows.

  “Where am I?”

  “You’re fine,” the woman said. “You’re safe now.”

  “But where…?” she began. “Who…?”

  She felt drowsy, closed her eyes and slept.

  When she next came awake, a familiar figure in Harris tweeds was seated beside the bed.

  Mackendrick took her hand briefly, squeezing her fingers. “Good to have you back in the land of the living, Ms Shaw.”

  “Where am I?”

  “I am afraid your whereabouts, for reasons of security, must remain a secret.”

  “My wrist-com…?”

  “Again, for security, Ms Shaw, it must remain in our safe-keeping.”

  She closed her eyes, framing her next question. She still felt drugged, drowsy. “Who…?”

  “Who snatched you? The Americans, of course. With the help of the English.”

  The Americans… She recalled the voice she’d heard while being held captive, and felt sick.

  “Aimee Carter,” she said.

  Mackendrick looked surprised.

  Ella explained. “While I was being held, I heard them talk. I recognised her voice.”

  Mackendrick said, “The woman using the name Aimee Carter was an employee of the US government, initially tasked with keeping tabs on your friend, Kit Marquez. When you told Kit Marquez about Ed Richie and Ralph Dennison, quite naturally Marquez had no reason to suspect Carter. She must have mentioned your enquiries to Carter, who relayed them to her handlers. The Americans are very interested in Dennison’s whereabouts.”

  She thought of Kit, and Aimee’s betrayal. “Have you informed Kit about – ?”

  “Carter was arrested yesterday,” Mackendrick said.

  “But how long have I – ?”

  “You’ve been unconscious for almost twenty-four hours.” He pointed across to his card on top of her piled clothes. “And it was only thanks to the card that we wereable to trace you.”

  “The card?”

  “A surveillance device. When the police informed us that Greg had been found unconscious by the side of the road and that you had been abducted, we instituted a search for you. We were able to track the card, and I had a team effect your release.”

  She tried to sit up. “Greg…? How is he?”

  Mackendrick nodded. “He’s fine, Ella.”

  She collapsed back against the pillows. “The card…” She smiled. “That was devious of you.”

  “We needed to listen in on what you might have said to Douglas, and anyone else, when you returned to Edinburgh. While you’ve been unconscious, we’ve been able to delve pretty comprehensively into your past.”

  “And?”

  Mackendrick smiled. “And I’m pleased to say that my initial judgement has been proven correct. So…”

  “Yes?” she said, her voice catching.

  “So I can tell you what happened to Edward Richie,” he said. “I’ll leave you to get dressed now, Ella, and then I’ll take you down to the lab.”

  He moved from the room.

  I can tell you what happened to Edward Richie…

  Ella climbed from the bed and dressed quickly.

  From the Breitbart News online, 17th October, 2028

  Gone and Forgotten…

  REMEMBER FAT-CAT HACK Ed Richie, caviar-commie beloved of the liberal chattering classes for his overblown, overlong novels satirising all things good and patriotic? No, you probably don’t. He might have been a best-seller back in the day, but few read his tub-thumping agit-prop in these enlightened times.

  Well, Richie did a bunk in summer 2025, vanishing from his North Yorkshire pad, never to be seen again. Some say he saw the writing on the wall, the fall of his beloved Labour party and the rise of the Right – so he did a runner with all his ill-gotten gains.

  And get this. Our Asian reporter has credible info that Richie, 70, has been seen living it up in Phuket, Thailand, indulging his passion for prostitutes and… wait for it… lady-boys.

  In fact, check out the photos, right, of handsome fat-cat Richie as he was in 2005, and what he looks like now, bloated on the good life and weighing in at three hundred pounds…

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  June, 1983

  WHEN RICHIE CAME to his senses he was lying in a comfortable bed. He knew from the position of the pale grey rectangle of the window to his right that he was no longer in Digby’s Islington house.

  He had all his memories intact. He recalled himself at fifty-six, a journeyman TV writer with a house on the Yorkshire moors; he recalled sessions with Digby at the Black Bull, and his last row with Anna Greaves, where all this had started…

  He recalled finding himself shunted back in time a year, and his fear that he was going mad; and then the second time-jump back to 2013. He remembered the holiday in Crete, and how he had manipulated events so that he’d met Emmi Takala earlier than he had on the first occasion; he recalled their love-making in the lagoon, and later in bed at her farmhouse… She had stunned him by saying that he was part of some experiment, as she was herself. But had that been his own imagination, playing tricks?

  He recalled 2002, and Laura and the party at Diggers’ Islington pad. He remembered awaking in 1995, attempting to save the life of Helen Atkins, and failing… and then waking from concussion in a Chelsea mews, in an altered time-line where Digby Lincoln had taken his criticism of A Trove of Stars on board and become a successful science fiction writer.

  But the question he asked himself, again and again, was: was any of this real? Was he actually being shunted back in time to inhabit his own body at various ages, or was it all the delusion of a comatose mind?

  He lay very still and tried to discern exactly where he might be; the room was indistinct in the pre-dawn darkness. He made out the window, and the table before it. Next to the bed was a small cabinet, with a thick book beside a digital clock. The clock read 6:20, and gave the date: 20/06/83.

  He lay paralysed, sweating, grappling with his thoughts.

  He was in the tiny three-room apartment in Hackney he’d shared with Annabelle from July 1981, after they’d graduated from university, until June 1983.

  The happiest time of his life, until the morning of the 20th of June.

  This morning…

  He felt sick at the realisation of where he was, when he was… He could not bring himself to turn his head and stare at the young woman sleeping beside him in the darkness.

  Annabelle? Could it be? Was she really there, beside him, alive again?

  Was it truly the 20th of June, or was his mind playing one last, sadistic trick on him, as punishment?
>
  Very carefully he sat up, found his clothes on a chair beside the bed and dressed, still unable to turn and look at the sleeping woman… But he could hear her shallow breathing on this miraculous summer’s morning.

  Still not turning to look at the bed, he moved to the door, hesitated, then looked back.

  The sight of her slim form, naked in the pale dawn light, with the sheets twisted around her lower legs, made him gasp. A part of him wanted to rush forward, take her in his arms, and verify what his eyes were telling him. Another part of him, stupefied by the consequences of finding himself here, could not bring himself to shatter what might be no more than a cruel illusion.

  For more than thirty years he had lived with the knowledge that Annabelle Shaw was dead; he had relived this morning, and his part in it, countless times; he had lived for years with the knowledge that the woman he had loved no longer existed, was no longer part of a reality that for him had become a punishment.

  As the light strengthened, he saw her sleeping face on the pillow, her lips slightly parted; her small breasts rising and falling as she breathed.

  He moved into the small living room, closing the door quietly behind him and drawing the curtains to admit the early sunlight. The sight of the room brought memories flooding back: there was the ancient sofa where they’d made love a hundred times; there the rickety table where he’d pounded out his early, immature plays, believing they were excellent. There, in the opposite corner, stood Annabelle’s desk, where she worked sometimes in the evening, writing reports and exhibition notes for the Kensington gallery where she worked.

  He collapsed on to the sofa and raised his right hand; it was shaking uncontrollably.

  He had met Annabelle Shaw during his final year at Cambridge – and wondered why he’d not noticed her sooner. She was tiny, bird-boned, quiet and terribly shy, and she glowed with a singular, radiant beauty. His first sight of her had stunned him, brought him to a halt in the café across from King’s College. She’d been bending over her book, a coffee at her elbow, and Richie had stared at her until someone tapped him on the shoulder and told him to get a move on. Too shy to speak to her, he’d bought a sandwich and hurried back to his room, but had been unable to concentrate on his essay.