Another Time, Another Place

by Jodi Taylor

  Winterman was – had been – some kind of gang boss. His image showed a benign-looking silver-haired gentleman with a prominent nose. I thought he looked rather like a 19th-century clergyman. What that said about either him or 19th-century clergymen I don’t know. He’d caused endless trouble and misery for countless numbers of people. He had started small and traditional – selling drugs across county lines.

  Feeney was his enforcer. A younger man with curly hair and a cheeky grin. Not what I’d been expecting at all and certainly not the traditional muscle-bound goon, so his methods of ensuring unquestioning compliance with his boss’s instructions must have been both imaginative and effective.

  From these humble beginnings they’d moved into prostitution and trafficking – so far so yawn-making – but from there they’d somehow acquired a toehold in the construction industry and things really began to look up. For them, that is. The term ‘compulsory purchase’ took on a whole new meaning. People had stood in their way, of course – although only very briefly – because now rumour had it they stood – or more probably lay – in the car park of the award-winning motorway services station just outside Gloucester.

  At this point this precious pair had made the evolutionary leap to respectability. Far from consorting with drug dealers, pimps, arsonists and murderers, they’d graduated downwards towards politics – ‘Makes you wonder if they noticed any difference,’ said Markham – and moved into the promising areas of blackmail, bribery, cronyism and so on. And since they had in no way relinquished their old skills – drugs, women, protection rackets and such – the two businesses merged seamlessly.

  They overreached themselves, of course. They pushed someone too far and a cabinet minister hanged himself, but not before leaving several damning recordings all over the internet. The police closed in on Messrs Winterman and Feeney, who immediately buggered off to live in 1893. We were to fetch them back to face the wrath of the Time Police. I asked why the Time Police didn’t do this sort of thing themselves. There were enough of them and it wasn’t as if they were short a pod or two.

  ‘They do,’ said Pennyroyal. ‘But they’re busy, same as everyone else. Obviously, they don’t want people knowing they’re swamped. Lady Amelia spotted a niche in the market and we made them a gift of one or two people they’d been wanting a word with for quite some time, and now we’re their go-to guys for when things get hectic. Or sometimes for those cases that require a more . . . informal approach.’

  ‘Do they know about me and Markham?’ I asked.

  He shifted in his seat. ‘We tend to keep things on a need-to-know basis. Shouldn’t be a problem.’ He frowned at us. ‘As long as you’re discreet.’

  I beamed at him and Markham assured him discretion was our middle name.

  ‘I’ll leave these two buggers to you, then,’ Pennyroyal said, getting up. He pushed over the files. ‘There’s the London address, together with the best layout of the house I could get.’

  ‘Habits? Routines?’ said Markham, rummaging through the papers.

  Pennyroyal had kept the bad news until last.

  ‘They rarely leave their house,’ he said, kicking into touch my favourite approach, which is always to nobble people in a back alley and drag them into the pod before they know what is going on. ‘I suspect they’re paranoid about being found by the Time Police. You’ll have to get inside somehow, overcome them and then get them both outside. I’ll wait round the corner with a closed carriage. You whistle when you need me. We’ll bundle them inside. Back to my pod. Job done and go.’

  He disappeared to his room. Well, suite of rooms. I’d counted the windows and he had three rooms, including the armoury, at one end of the house – and Lady Amelia had four at the other end. Markham and I had a room each in the middle. No man’s land.

  We laid everything out and read it all. When we’d finished, we read it all again. Interestingly, there was no mention of the mechanism that had removed them from their own time to relocate them in another. I made a mental note to think about this later. Pennyroyal had provided writing pads so I wrote. Peterson and I used to do this all the time. On the occasions where we had to interact directly with contemporaries, we would devise scenarios to account for our presence in an unfamiliar environment. After about half an hour Markham and I exchanged pads.

  ‘No,’ I said. His idea was that I’d infiltrate the house as a maid of some kind – according to the notes they found it difficult to keep staff and I could guess why – and, once in, I was to drug them. Or something. He was a bit hazy on the detail.

  My much better idea was that I gain access to the house somehow – charity donation, new neighbour, twisted ankle, whatever – and having lulled them, then incapacitate them – drug them, stun them, liaise with Markham, who would be effecting a more informal approach at the rear – i.e. breaking and entering – call up Pennyroyal, and then bundle them into the carriage, etc., etc.

  ‘I’m female,’ I said. ‘There aren’t many women in the Time Police. I’m obviously not young and fit – in fact, I’m so outside the accepted parameters of Time Police personnel that they won’t suspect anything at all.’

  Markham pulled a face but agreed. We made a colossal plate of sandwiches and a giant pot of tea, and got stuck in.

  I have to say, it’s brilliant being on the wrong-ish side of the law. Comfortable accommodation, good food – I should have done this years ago. Lady Amelia and her thug were professional to their fingertips. The facilities here were magnificent. There was everything we could possibly need. A whole room was set aside for costumes and equipment. Lady Amelia was a little taller than me but our colouring was similar and I had no hesitation picking out a rather smart outfit in a kind of teal blue. Striking and unusual and definitely not the sort of thing a discreet undercover agent would wear, as I informed Markham, who had selected a quiet cut-away coat with matching black trousers and a conservative bowler.

  I scoffed and held up my costume. ‘Are you sure you don’t want this one? It’s ages since you’ve worn a skirt. I don’t mind if you want to be the girl this time.’

  He informed me I was the noisy distraction and he was the dark and deadly professional and could I stop calling him Oddjob.

  I had to shorten the skirt – which caused me some problems until Markham threaded the needle for me. It took me the best part of an evening to tack it up. And I reinforced it with sticky tape at strategic points. As I said to Markham, it was only for a couple of hours.

  I also acquired a small, old-fashioned clothbound notebook, and with a copy of Debrett’s propped up in front of me, I spent a fun morning making imaginative entries. One or two in ink, the rest in pencil. In beautifully flowing copperplate, obviously, because as a child I’d had a girls’ school inflicted on me and had therefore received an education based on social conditions in the 1850s.

  Lady Hounslow£0 10s 0d

  Mrs Heppleby-White £0 12s 6d

  That would be Mrs Heppleby-White not wanting to be seen as less generous than her ladyship.

  The Hon Mr M.A. Phrynne£1 1s 0d

  A whole guinea! I decided the Honourable Mr Phrynne must have won at his club last night and be in a good mood this morning.

  Mr Wm. Allison£0 5s 0d

  William had lost his shirt to Phrynne and couldn’t afford a larger sum.

  Lady Ryde£0 10s 0d

  The Misses Cowley£1 1s 0d

  Only a guinea between the three Misses Cowley, I decided, because their father’s recent death had revealed he’d gambled away half the family fortune and they were now living in newly straightened circumstances.

  And so on and so on. About six pages of entries altogether. Then I tossed the little book about a bit, cracked the spine and dog-eared a couple of pages. I have to say, I did rather a good job there. It really looked as if it had been dragged in and out of someone’s muff ten times a day.


  On the morning in question I dressed carefully in my rather attractive outfit. White blouse, high at the neck, tight-fitting jacket, practical, ankle-length skirt and a jaunty little hat with a feather that curved over my right eye and which, I was pretty sure, would drive me insane before the day was out. If I lived that long.

  I spent some time loading my muff. Notebook. Pencil. Two pencils, in fact, in case something happened to Pencil One. Pepper spray. Stun gun. Handkerchief. Spectacles in case there was an emergency and I had to read something. Unfortunately, they were too modern to be worn normally as part of my outfit. If I was going to do this full-time, I would have to acquire something less contemporary. Perhaps I could peer haughtily at the world through a lorgnette. I made a note to mention it to Markham on our return.

  I knew there was a considerable armoury locked away in Pennyroyal’s quarters. I, alas, was not allowed access. Not that I wanted to go in there – for all I knew he lived in some sort of cave littered with the bones of his victims . . . but I couldn’t help feeling that a nice little lady’s pistol . . . but sadly, no. Apparently, the Time Police deduct for damage to the merchandise. Given they’re famous for shooting anyone who looks at them wrong – what a bunch of bloody hypocrites. However – no guns.

  We took all the info with us although we’d have to leave it in the pod. Pennyroyal had the coordinates ready – I laid them in – and away we went. Markham and Maxwell – bounty hunters.

  Sorry – recovery agents.

  London 1893. Victoria was still on the throne and with a few years left to go yet. Industry and commerce reigned supreme. Black chimneys reared skywards belching their smoke into the already dirty air. A glittering aristocracy at one end of society – extreme poverty at the other. The British Empire spread across the globe. Hunger at home. Exactly the sort of place where our two fugitives could exercise their natural talents. God knows the sort of damage they could do here. There was very little legislation to protect women, children and the poor. I remembered the state of Matthew when Leon eventually rescued him from being a climbing boy. I couldn’t remember anything from school about the Factory Acts. In fact, I was pretty sure I’d been asleep. Typically, my school had veered away from interesting History – pharaohs, curses, murders, regicide, bloodshed, violence and plague – and dragged me, fighting and kicking every inch of the way, into 18th- and 19th-century social History. I left them to get on with it and immersed myself in the probably less worthy but far more interesting Ancient History. It seemed a safe bet, that our two targets not only knew less than me but cared less than me as well. If such a thing were possible. However, from their point of view, the nineteenth century was a wonderful place to bring several dozen big bags of gold and make a fresh start. Within a very short space of time they’d have even more bags of gold, courtesy of their own particular brand of bribery, corruption and terror. And no real police force to worry about. I wouldn’t be surprised if half the industrialists of this age were from the future.

  Anyway, we were only interested in two of them. Josiah Winterman, who’d made his fortune in various unspeakable ways, and Jack Feeney, Winterman’s enforcer who was probably even more unpleasant than his boss. Two evil men who’d made their own time too hot to hold them and thought they’d nip back to the 19th century to avail themselves of the many opportunities to do it all over again but better this time.

  Or so they thought. Because now they had Markham and Maxwell on the job. It should have been Maxwell and Markham but we’d been unable to agree and apparently, rock beats scissors. I’d gone along with it because Markham’s other big idea had been that I go as a prostitute – for no better reason, as far as I could see, than we could then call ourselves Pros and Cons. He’d been very keen on the idea. I wondered why I’d ever missed him.

  We’d both rather liked the idea of Slippery When Wet as a team name but Pennyroyal put his foot down over that one. There’d also been a bit of a confrontation over Markham’s call sign. Combat Wombat had been his preferred designation. Pennyroyal’s silence was eloquent.

  ‘Could be worse,’ I said. ‘It used to be Horse’s Arse.’

  His look gave us to understand that fifty per cent of that call sign had been correct.

  We landed in a kind of ill-defined no man’s land between two rows of modest dwellings. They weren’t quite back-to-back hovels but they weren’t much further up the social scale. And the site was a little more public than I was happy with.

  Peering at the screen I could see the ground was rough and muddy with deep ruts where laden wagons had passed, presumably on their way to the smoke-belching edifice I could see in the distance. It had been raining so these ruts were now filled with oily water. A few wooden shacks crouched nearby but there were no fires – no signs of life. No dogs barked. No men shouted. We waited a few moments, just in case, but no one appeared. Not even a small crowd of curious boys and their dogs. Everyone was obviously out earning a dishonest crust.

  Cautiously, we opened the door and got our bearings.

  The day was cold and windy. Very windy. I had to hang on to my hat and the wind whipped up my skirts in a way I was pretty sure would get me arrested for reckless ankle-revealing if I wasn’t careful. At least it wasn’t raining, which was a good thing because even the most dedicated fundraiser wouldn’t be out in that sort of weather. I skewered my hat more firmly to my head and hoped for the best.

  Markham had put himself firmly in charge of navigation. His map, as far as I could see, consisted of a sheet of paper with a few streets and squares drawn on it in pencil. He was certainly embracing low tech.

  ‘This way,’ he said confidently. ‘We pick up this street here, turn left at the end into Stratford Street there, and Swan Court should be on our left. About a mile.’

  London was filthy. There was very little difference between the rough ground where we’d landed and the streets leading off it. The mud and shit were so deep in places that if you wanted to cross the road and couldn’t find a small boy with a broom to sweep you a path then you stood very little chance of reaching the other side unburdened by waste product. Both animal and human.

  I’d been to Victorian London before when Kal and I had set off to find Jack the Ripper and he’d found us instead. Something about which I still have the occasional nightmare. And I’d come back again to sort out old Ma Scrope. I had forgotten the dirt, the grime, the way you could actually taste the soot at the back of your throat; the way everything felt gritty to the touch; the rich, ripe smell of horse dung – nearly knee-height in some places; the noise of metal-rimmed wheels clattering over cobbled streets and the incessant clip-clop of hooves over the same cobbled streets.

  There were chimneys everywhere – on houses and factories – all of them belching out dirty yellow smoke that seemed to climb about twenty feet into the air and then just hang like a sinister cloud over the city.

  Looking in through the windows as we went, many houses had already lit their gas lamps. In one house, a middle-aged man and woman sat either side of a cheerful fire, each holding a glass of something. Sherry, probably. They were talking together and just for a moment I felt a slight pang for the sort of domestic peace I probably wouldn’t enjoy very much. Or so I told myself.

  A young paperboy, muffler under his chin and his hands black with newsprint, stood on the corner, piles of newspapers around his ankles, shouting something incomprehensible. Occasionally, a man would toss him a coin and take a paper. It’s funny how some old customs linger. Leon always prefers to get his news from a newspaper. I, on the other hand, always feel that nothing interesting has happened since 1485.

  The streets were a living tangle of horses, carriages, carts, dogs and pedestrians. Driving on the left had been mandatory since 1835, although actually, in this country we’d driven and walked on the left since the Romans had decided on our behalf. Apparently, it was to keep your sword arm free. Incidentally, it’s not true that Napol
eon forced Europeans to drive on the right. They were all on the wrong side of the road long before he turned up. Anyway, looking at the street in front of me, I don’t think anyone had any idea of the correct side. Coachmen yelled at draymen who shouted at wagoners, and jarveys roared at everyone.

  Pedestrians were moderately better behaved. Most women were accompanied, their male escorts walking on the outside – theoretically to protect them from oncoming traffic. All the men tipped their hats when stopping to speak to someone. Their formal manners shone like jewels among these dark satanic mills, although given the moral standards of the day, they then probably went home, knocked their wife senseless and rogered the parlour maid over her unconscious body.

  I mentioned this to Markham who rolled his eyes.

  ‘It’s only just around the corner,’ he said, attempting to distract me, I suspected. He consulted his map. ‘On the left. Swan Court.’

  ‘Nice name.’

  A nice name for a nice court. A small open square was set back from the busy road, with three large terraced houses down each side and two detached houses facing us. Eight altogether. In place of the garden normally found in the centre of a square, railings enclosed the biggest London plane tree I’d ever seen and very little else.

  ‘Fun Fact,’ said Markham and I groaned because I thought I’d got away with it this time but there’s never any escape. Not unlike Leon’s approach to sex, all you can do is close your eyes and pray for it to be over with as soon as possible.

  ‘The oldest London plane was planted on land belonging to the then Archbishop of Canterbury – although he probably didn’t do the actual digging himself – back in 1685 and is still living today. The tree – not the archbishop.’