The Timepiece and the Girl Who Went Astray: A thrilling new time travel adventure

by O. R. Simmonds

  Will didn’t want to press his luck any further and crawled towards the hallway where Frenz and Madame Izri were waiting. As he crawled, he heard a voice call out, ‘Won’t the lady of the house greet her guests? And why not send the dear Ms. Brockett down as well. Your man here has made an awful mess of the marble.’ His voice, while not loud, seemed to carry through the whole house.

  Will moved down a long, narrow hallway and rejoined the others as they descended a set of stairs in the west wing. The stairwell was dark, with only fine pockets of light breaking through the vine-covered windows that spanned the full height of the building. When they reached the bottom, Madame Izri pulled a key from her pocket and used it to open a concealed door that had been built into the wood panelling at the base of the staircase. Behind this secret doorway was a bare brick stairwell, with steep stone steps. Will entered the doorway and began navigating the treacherous incline as Frenz offered a hand to Madame Izri. She held her ground; instead of taking Frenz’s hand, she bowed her head and lifted the thin gold chain over it. The bulky odd-shaped vault key swung back and forth. She placed it in Frenz’s outstretched hand and said, ‘Here. I am a woman of my word.’

  ‘What are you doing?’ Frenz pleaded.

  ‘Frenz, I’m too old to run from this. Besides, it’s been a while since I gave that retched Cillian Gander a piece of my mind,’ Madame Izri said, grinning defiantly.

  Will reappeared at the doorway and from behind Frenz said, ‘What’s going on? Are we going or what?’

  ‘Madame Izri isn’t coming with us.’

  ‘What?! We’re not leaving her behind with those guys!’

  ‘It’s my choice to make,’ Madame Izri said, ‘and somebody needs to lock this door behind you.’

  ‘We can’t just leave you here!’ Will said.

  ‘You can, and you must. Now go.’

  Frenz moved towards the doorway, but before more objections could be made, Madame Izri pushed the door closed. From inside the now dark stairwell, Will and Frenz could hear the key turn in the lock and the bolt slide home.

  Grudgingly, they both stumbled down the staircase, finding that the bottom opened out into a long, tunnel-like room with a low arched ceiling. At first, the room appeared to be part of some kind of sewer system, with damp red-brick walls coated in moss and algae. The ceiling was dark green and slick, saturated with water dripping from multiple orifices. A harsh vinegary smell hung in the air. The far end of the room was open, with daylight streaming in.

  They walked several paces towards the end of the tunnel where the floor dropped and a set of steps descended into a dock large enough only for a single boat. At the base of the steps was a small concrete platform. Beyond that was a shallow stream of water that led out towards the end of the tunnel some twenty-five metres away and into the Thames, which was flowing powerfully past the tunnel opening. A small boat with an outboard motor mounted to its transom rocked gently in the dock.

  Will untied the mooring lines while Frenz climbed aboard and got to work on the engine. He set the shift lever to neutral, pulled out the choke, set the throttle arm to the ‘start’ position and gave the starter rope a firm pull. His first attempt was unsuccessful. Will climbed aboard towards the stern, reached over the side of the boat and began to walk the boat out towards the end of the tunnel with his arms. Meanwhile, Frenz unscrewed the fuel cap and inspected the levels. As he did so, more muffled gunshots rang out from above.

  Will and Frenz looked at each other, pain and sorrow etched into their features, their thoughts left unspoken.

  Will continued to push the boat silently along the underground canal, now passing the halfway point. He whispered, ‘Come on, Frenz, we really don’t want to float out of this tunnel without the motor working. We’ll be sitting ducks.’

  ‘I know, I know.’

  Satisfied that they had sufficient fuel, Frenz replaced the cap. Will continued to push the boat and they were now only metres from emerging from the tunnel and into the open air of the Thames. Frenz made another choke adjustment, then pulled the cable once more. The motor turned over briefly, spluttered some dark smoke from its exhaust, then died. As the boat passed the threshold of the tunnel, emerging from under the house, they both squinted in the sunlight. Will scanned the rear of the Izri home, hoping not to see one of their pursuers overlooking the river. It appeared that luck was with them, for now. Frenz pulled the starter cable once more and the motor spluttered into life. Frenz immediately opened the throttle and the boat pitched upwards. He then turned eastwards towards Westminster and the now unoccupied home of Cillian Gander. As they moved farther and farther downriver, Will kept his eyes fixed on the windows and balconies until the house drifted completely out of sight.

  The small boat seemed to hit its top speed at around twelve knots; as such, Will and Frenz were thankful that they’d appeared to have escaped the Izri estate unseen. Leaving Madame Izri behind was playing on the minds of both men for the entirety of the forty-minute journey upriver.

  They disembarked just south of Lambeth Bridge, not wanting to get too close to Westminster while so exposed on the river. Fortunately, the tide was out so they allowed the boat to run aground on the western riverbank before climbing a nearby ladder to street level. They walked north along Millbank with their heads lowered to avoid being spotted, but the streets were busy once more, the masses of people comfortably camouflaging them. Once close to the house, they decided to take a slightly different route, overshooting Great Peter Street and turning west so that they entered Barton Street from the north.

  The smell hit them well before they saw it with their own eyes. As they rounded the corner, both Will and Frenz were stopped in their tracks. The street was lined with police, firefighters and ambulances. The house of Cillian Gander was nowhere to be seen.

  It had been burned to the ground and all that remained was a black, smoking shell where the house once stood.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  May 19th, 1984, 8:29

  DI Moss sat behind his desk, slouching lazily in his chair. He was enduring a frustrating week. Not only had he had to contend with a murder on his patch and the resulting manhunt, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was all part of some bigger, far-reaching plot.

  He’d returned from his unsuccessful visit to Ireland early that morning convinced that William Wells had somehow managed to evade capture once again and had come back to England. He had no solid proof that Wells had even left Ireland, but his experience and instinct for the truth told him that was the case. Everyone he’d spoken to in the port town of Ballycotton had no love for the English and they were hiding something, he was sure of it.

  Part of the reason Wells was proving so hard to catch, Moss had told his unsatisfied superiors, was that he was behaving so unpredictably. Wanted men usually do one of two things: they either lay low and hide or they try to leave the country. In this case, Wells had been remarkably successful in doing the latter; however, for reasons Moss couldn’t fathom, the fugitive had then decided to return to England.

  There were other characteristics to the movements of William Wells that Moss was so far unable to offer a rational explanation for. Namely his ability to vanish into thin air and to be in two places at once. He looked on his desk at the two CCTV images of Wells at Holyhead and he had to admit that Mrs. Gesler had made an astute observation: the timestamps on each image were within seconds of each other. He’d called the security team at Holyhead personally and they’d assured him that the time codes on their cameras were accurate. He’d had them double- and triple-check them, much to their annoyance, but the same answer had come back.

  As punishment for allowing Wells to escape in the first place, Moss had ordered Mapson to personally trawl through the footage of every camera in the station, combing through each frame from the hour before Wells was brought in, to the hour after he was reported missing. While he had serious doubts about Mapson’s ability to lead an investigation without his oversight, he was a solid p
olice officer, hardworking and hungry for approval. When he’d reported to Moss the following morning that he’d found no trace of Wells on any of the camera footage, beyond that which showed him entering the station, he took him for his word, confusing as the news was.

  To make this case even more complicated, the coroner had still been unable to make a formal identification of the thrift-shop shooting victim. His name wasn’t coming up in any database the police had and there appeared to be no family or friends willing to come forward. They couldn’t even say for sure that the shop had had any customers to speak of. Other than William Wells, that is.

  More troubling was the news Moss had just received concerning the shell casing and bullets recovered from the scene and from the body of the victim. It had been confirmed that they’d all been fired from the same unusual calibre of pistol. What he’d neglected to inform the ballistics lab was that one of the bullets he’d submitted for inspection hadn’t been retrieved from the thrift-shop shooting at all. He had substituted one of them for a bullet he’d pried out of the southern wall of the police yard.

  That last revelation had Moss more worried than anything else. Whatever had taken place during Wells’s escape, it certainly wasn’t a car backfiring that had caused the commotion in the station yard. Someone had fired a weapon during the escape. That same someone had fired a weapon that used identical unusual-calibre bullets as the murder weapon in the thrift-shop shooting. For reasons unknown, that fact appeared to have been covered up. Someone in the police department was lying to him about the whole thing.

  While DI Moss sat contemplating all of this, Mapson appeared at his door. ‘Ah, sir, you’re back.’

  ‘Incredible. We’ll make a detective out of you yet. What is it?’ Moss said sarcastically.

  ‘Thank you, sir. We’ve just had a call. Possible shooting in progress at the Izri residence.’

  ‘Give it to Brooks. I’m too busy with the Wells case.’

  ‘That’s just it, sir. We have a witness who claims to have seen Wells at the scene.’

  Without responding, Moss grabbed his coat and hurried out of his office.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  May 19th, 1984, 08:49

  Will and Frenz stood for a moment, mesmerised by the swirling dance of the rising smoke and the trickle of water that was running from the base of the house and pooling onto the street. Frenz shook his head in disbelief, a chortle escaping his lips at the absurdity of it all.

  ‘I don’t know the guy,’ Will said, ‘but in some ways you’ve got to admire his commitment.’

  ‘Cillian Gander isn’t just committed, he’s obsessed to the point of madness.’

  ‘You sure this isn’t an accident?’

  ‘No, this was very deliberate. He will have known that we’d try to access the Central Station building and he knows that the only way in is through here.’

  ‘Well, we can’t stay here,’ Will said. ‘This place is crawling with cops and in case it had escaped your attention, I’m currently a fugitive from the law.’

  ‘Agreed, let’s move.’

  Frenz began to walk away from the scene when Will reached out and grabbed his arm, stopping him in his tracks. Frenz turned back, surprised. Will said, ‘Frenz, where are you going?’

  ‘Doing as you suggested and getting out of here. This is no time to fool around.’

  ‘Frenz, come now, you of all people must know that our perception of here is all relative,’ Will said, grinning in a way that Frenz found a little unsettling.

  ‘I don’t like the way you’re looking at me. What is it?’

  ‘The thing that was going to be difficult about this whole plan was getting into Cillian’s house unobserved, right?’

  ‘Yes, and?’

  ‘Well, what don’t you see anymore when you look at his house?’

  ‘Nothing, it’s all gone. Will, can you please get to the point before somebody spots you?’

  ‘No walls, no windows, no front door. We can walk right into the place.’

  ‘What good will that do? The entrance tunnels would likely have been in the basement and that will be under a tonne of rubble by now.’

  Will’s expression seemed to grow even more manic. ‘Precisely, now it’s under rubble.’

  When realisation struck Frenz, he immediately began to shake his index finger in Will’s direction in objection and said, ‘Oh no. Absolutely not!’

  ‘Why the hell not?’ Will asked, throwing his hands wide, exasperated.

  ‘Why? Because the Timekeepers will find us, and they’ll kill us, of course! On top of that, even if we go into the past and get into the house, we won’t know what we’re going to be faced with when we get there.’

  ‘What if we did know what we would face? What if I knew an exact date and time when this house would be empty?’

  ‘How could you possibly know that?’

  ‘The day I met Abigayle for the first time. She’d called at the house before me and there was no one there. All we have to do is travel back, I don’t know, ten minutes before Abigayle knocked on the door. That should do it, right?’

  ‘It’s still too risky. What if Cillian was home and just refused to answer the door? Or worse, that Abigayle had lied to you about him not being home?’

  ‘I don’t know a man alive that would refuse to open a door when Abigayle is on the other side of it. And I know Abigayle, and I know she wasn’t lying to me. Look, it’s as certain as we’re ever going to be. Besides, what other option do we have? If we run now, what’s next?’

  Frenz began to offer further objection, but before any words were uttered, he realised that Will was right: they were all out of options. His shoulders slumped slightly, he nodded glumly and said, ‘Okay, fine, we’ll do it your way. But how do we get in there? This whole street is still crawling with police and firefighters.’

  Will said, ‘Exactly, it’s chaos. The fire might be out, but there are people all over the place. We’ll follow your advice and use the crowds as cover. It’s worked for us so far.’

  Behind them, a number of firefighters were pulling back from the scene and attending to their equipment. Hoses and tools were being gathered and stowed in fire engines. Soot-covered helmets, jackets, trousers and gas masks were being removed and piled against the wall of a house opposite. Police were attending to their paperwork and talking on their radios.

  ‘Quick, follow me,’ Will said. Before Frenz could respond, Will had turned and headed confidently towards the scene once more. He approached the front door of the house opposite, with the firefighters’ uniforms and equipment piled along one wall. A firefighter moved to block Will’s passage, but Will cut him off, claiming to live in the house. Will walked assertively to the front door and began fumbling around in his pocket as if he was trying to find his front door key. Satisfied that Will was just a local resident innocently returning home, and clearly fatigued from a long shift, the firefighter walked away and continued with his duties. As soon as he was out of sight, Will grabbed a helmet, trousers and jacket and thrust them into Frenz’s arms in a crumpled ball. Frenz looked around anxiously, more certain than ever that they would be spotted. As fast as Frenz had ever seen him move, Will had turned and picked up another full uniform for himself and ushered Frenz into the narrow passageway between two houses. Once safely out of sight, the two of them began wriggling into the sweaty gear.

  Will stepped into the inflexible, tough but baggy trousers, pulled them up around his waist and slid his arms through the elastic braces one by one. They hung heavily on his shoulders as he proceeded to put on the jacket, which was equally rigid and heavy. After securing all the zips, buttons and buckles, he placed the yellow helmet on his head and tucked the strap under his chin. When he was done, he looked at Frenz, who was still working on his jacket. Will picked up Frenz’s helmet, dropped it onto his head and then wiped his hand across a thick patch of soot on his own jacket before smearing it across Frenz’s face. Frenz flinched at first before acknowled
ging Will’s intentions. He was quick to return the favour, appearing to quite enjoy covering Will’s face with the black powder.

  Now suitably disguised, Will approached the neck of the alleyway and checked that the coast was clear before emerging and striding assuredly forwards once more. Frenz followed Will, doing his best to look as if the two of them belonged. They rounded the side of a parked fire engine and carefully navigated the tangled, snaking hoses weaving across the road. The two of them crossed the street, stepped up onto the footpath and up the steps to where the front door of Cillian’s house used to be. Will took a breath and stepped unmolested through what was left of the front door, with crumbling black bricks stacked precariously on either side of it.

  Once inside the house, things got a little trickier. Piles of rubble covered most of the ground floor and large wooden beams lay at crooked angles, propping up the few internal walls that remained.

  Will turned to Frenz. ‘Okay, Frenz, you’re the expert, where’s the safest place to do this?’

  Frenz glanced around, then pointed to a room to the right. ‘Through there, into the study. We’ll be out of sight from the street and I can see a patch of floor that looks to be intact, but for the record, I don’t like this one bit.’