49
NOVEMBER 2017
Ruby
Though she spent two months trying, once Ruby knew how Bee died she couldn’t get it out of her mind. Margaret’s actions were a final insult to Bee after many years of contempt. Since Bee’s death, nothing had changed for Margaret, she was still at the Conclave, treating people as cruelly as she’d treated Bee. The Toy Museum was where it happened and Ruby believed if she saw the scene she might understand how to make Margaret pay.
Ruby was relieved, when she visited, to be the only patron. It was better to be there in silence. Vacationers with cameras, or busloads of schoolchildren, might have overwhelmed her. She stared at the Roman dolls and wheeled horses without really seeing them. There was only one museum assistant in the hall. The minute he strayed from his post, Ruby would make for the basement stairs. Until then she pretended to browse. Just when she was beginning to worry no opportunity would arise, a phone rang in the distance. The assistant smiled apologetically and rose from his seat, leaving the way clear.
Quickly Ruby made for the door. She took the little dark flight of stairs, glancing over her shoulder as she went, and the boiler room door was ajar when she arrived.
She flicked the light switch. The boiler room must contain some clue of how Margaret’s mind worked. Grace had told Ruby that Margaret would die of bullets from the Candybox game. That must be significant. With every player that Margaret invited here, was she rehearsing the scene of her eventual death? Did coercing other people into violent acts lessen her sense of impotence?
I should pretend I’m Margaret, Ruby thought. I can get into her head.
She stood with her feet apart, and pretended to raise a gun. She shut one eye. The shelf of stock was in front of her. There, in the middle, was a Candybox. The Candybox.
At closer range Ruby could see the Candybox had aged badly. She lifted it off the shelf. The plastic had bubbled and cracked, and was rough to the touch. Tears dropped onto the toy and Ruby swiped the back of her hand across her eyes. This was the instrument of Bee’s death.
Her own invention.
Ruby put the Candybox back on the shelf. An idea was beginning to form.
*
‘This is going to be such a wonderful Christmas,’ Grace said.
They were in Liberty’s, looking at brown diamonds in the jewellery section. Most years Ruby was not an early Christmas shopper – they were barely into November – but Grace’s enthusiasm was infectious. She would be the only Grace to spend Christmas with Ruby. The other Graces could spend Christmases with other Rubys, and this Grace was glad none of her silver selves would be around.
‘I’ve made a decision,’ Ruby said.
‘Ooooh! And I don’t have the first idea what it is. I love it when that happens!’
‘I’m going to apply for a job at the Conclave. I’d be a good candidate for their Psychological Services department.’
Grace gaped.
‘Honey, no,’ she said.
‘Won’t my application be successful?’ Ruby asked.
‘I haven’t the first idea. I don’t understand why you’d want to work for the Conclave. After everything you know about them!’
Ruby didn’t want to work for the Conclave; she wanted to retrace Bee’s steps. She would ask Margaret for a job and, presumably, be put through the same ordeal as Bee. Except this time, Margaret would get her comeuppance. Ruby resisted telling Grace this. Grace’s reaction suggested she would dissuade Ruby, or try to.
‘You know how bad the Conclave is, and you still work there,’ Ruby pointed out.
‘That’s different. I was embroiled before I knew how bad it was going to get, and then it was too late to extricate myself.’
‘Wouldn’t life be easier if we could both move through time?’
‘Oh, sweetheart. I understand why you’d think so but I don’t want that for you. Being at Margaret’s beck and call, my God. Spare yourself. Now, look at that beauty of a necklace – it would look perfect on you.’
‘How could you not know this conversation was coming?’ Ruby asked.
‘Maybe none of the silver Graces thought it was very significant.’
‘Or you’re lying.’
‘That’s quite an accusation.’
‘You might want me to think there’s no point applying.’
‘This is ridiculous. First I’m the villain for giving you information from the future. Then I’m the villain for lying about it. I can’t win. You’re impossible.’
‘Jesus fucking Christ!’ Several heads turned. Ruby lowered her voice. ‘I’m not impossible. We are. Us. You have all the power. I can’t check you’re telling the truth, I don’t get to pick which parts you tell me, and I’m never going to be the one telling you about your future. We can’t be on a level footing. I’m fucking done.’
‘No such luck,’ Grace scoffed. ‘I’m stuck with you.’
Ruby wailed. Grace had proved Ruby’s point, using foreknowledge as the opportunity for a barb.
‘I can’t see you right now,’ Ruby said. ‘I just – need to be by myself.’
*
But she didn’t want to be by herself. She wanted to be with someone who knew nothing about her future; who knew hardly anything about her at all. So she went to the brain injury unit, for the first time since the summer, and sat on the front wall for an hour, and caught Ginger on her way out. Ginger’s mac was uncharacteristically shapeless. The folds of her dress hung oddly. She placed a self-conscious hand on her middle.
‘I can see why you’ve not been in touch,’ Ruby said, taking stock of the bump.
‘Weren’t you busy too?’ Ginger’s tone was sardonic, which surprised Ruby. They didn’t normally criticise each other for unexplained absences.
‘It’s all been happening with me.’ Ruby slid her hands into her pockets. ‘Love, death. Not birth, though.’
‘Love? So what was the attraction of this person you’re in love with? Fewer vices than me? Prettier?’
Of all the ways Ruby thought Ginger would react to her arrival, she hadn’t anticipated jealousy.
‘She’s not prettier than you,’ Ruby said. ‘And she probably drinks as much – though she’s more interested in mother’s ruin than the grape.’
‘So that’s your type. Decorative alcoholics.’
‘Don’t forget intelligent. I outdid myself this time. She’s a genius.’
‘It was brains you were interested in? I really played things the wrong way.’
Ruby hesitated. She thought of the barman, in Birmingham, that she’d seen Grace flirting with, and said: ‘You’re both bi.’
‘I’m not bi.’ Ginger’s tone wasn’t defensive; it was resigned.
‘OK. Whatever.’
Ginger waited for some colleagues to walk past, then said, ‘How can it be love with her, if you’re here with me now? I missed you. I kept thinking of contacting you but… things seem a lot more complicated than they did.’
‘Only as complicated as we make them. Come home with me.’
‘Ruby… I don’t know…’
‘I’m not asking more than an hour or two. You can say a client overran.’
‘You know how to make a girl feel special,’ Ginger said in that sardonic tone again.
‘Since when do you want romance?’
‘Yes, you’re right. That’s not what this is.’ Ginger sighed. ‘Let’s go.’
They weren’t even halfway there before Ruby started having doubts. The train took her further and further from Grace, who might still be standing at the counter in Liberty’s for all Ruby knew, and as her anger at Grace dissipated, she realised she had said, out loud, that she thought she was in love with Grace for the first time, and it was to the wrong person. She pushed the doubts aside and slept with Ginger anyway. That path, Ruby told herself, had already been set. There wasn’t any turning back now.
50
OCTOBER 2018
Odette
In the Environmental Health de
partment, Odette had access to a variety of public and ordinarily private records. The ones that were of most interest to her were inquest reports, and medical records, for the years 2017 to 2018. For that period she was able to identify several cases of macromonas. Several residents had died at an old people’s home in Nottingham. A nurse had died at a hospital in Oldham. Barbara Hereford, the mad time traveller, had died of a deep infected scratch – which seemed likely evidence of a hygiene breach, as she might plausibly have had contact with a Conclave employee carrying the germ. But for now there was only one report among the documentation that Odette wished to follow up: the unnamed woman at the museum, with macromonas in her blood. The pretext of investigating hygiene breaches meant Odette could justifiably contact the police, and request the museum case evidence. It arrived on a wooden palette, in stacks of inauspicious boxes. She spent several days unpacking and examining their contents.
When she thought back, Odette could vividly recall hard, white fragments that had crunched under her feet on the day she found the body. She’d assumed they were shattered pieces of bone. In fact they were plastic, and had been bagged as evidence. The police had concluded they were probably ricochet debris, formed from the museum’s toy stock – some of which was stored on the cellar shelves.
She took the pieces to the Conclave’s digital archaeologist, Teddy Avedon, because he had software to reconstruct broken objects. Teddy was in his late twenties, and Odette quickly learned they had studied the same degree at Cambridge; for a few minutes they exchanged news of mutual acquaintances, before moving on to the matter of plastic ricochet debris.
‘Reassembling the parts should be straightforward,’ Teddy told her. ‘For an object of this weight… with this many pieces… we can get a good reconstruction.’
The broken parts were placed on a concrete plate in the centre of an empty room. A thin line of green light moved back and forth over the pieces, as Teddy’s equipment collected data about the shape of each section. Odette watched the pieces jostle round each other, as they were moved, remotely, by signals from the computer. Even the tiniest shards slotted into place, creating a three-dimensional jigsaw from the bottom up. When the reassembly was complete a cuboid, made from yellowing, cracked plastic, with a hole in the top, sat on the concrete plate.
‘What do you know,’ Teddy said. ‘A Conjuror’s Candybox. Did you have one when you were a kid?’
‘We didn’t play with those where I grew up. They’re for party tricks, yes?’
‘Yes. You pretend you’re a wizard, you can make objects disappear and reappear. But really the object’s travelling through time.’
‘Send it to ballistics,’ Odette said. ‘I want to document what happens if you fire a bullet into a time machine.’
Teddy laughed. ‘Are you talking about Candybox roulette?’
‘What’s that?’
Teddy grinned ingratiatingly. ‘Let me explain.’
*
The ballistics specialist scheduled the tests for the following morning. In the meantime, Odette convinced Elspeth they could travel back to January 2018 and set up surveillance cameras at the museum, to check if the dead woman was a known time traveller. They took a small Technical Operations team, who parked a battered van opposite the museum, where they could capture images of anyone who came in or out the main gate or fire doors. This felt very low tech, compared to Teddy’s wizardry, but it would satisfy Odette’s requirements without drawing attention from the public.
Everyone got out in silence. Approaching the building again perturbed Odette, taking her back to the day she found the body.
Then is not now, she thought. Ruby had taught her anchoring techniques when she felt the first signs of panic. She looked for differences from the last time she had walked here, on that January morning. It is now night, not morning. I am with colleagues. I am here to solve a mystery. I am here to solve a mystery. I am here to rebuild a world, not watch one crack open.
Odette soothed herself with these refrains while they walked through the lobby and the exhibition hall and down the stairs. Did the others notice her disquiet? Maybe not the Tech Ops team, who went ahead into the boiler room, but Elspeth was watching Odette closely. Odette raised her chin, feigning composure.
The room was lit by a fluorescent light. That helped; the illumination showed her a plain room, just a room, not the dark cavern of blood and decay she’d dreamed of. Only the sound of the boiler threatened to drag her back in time. The rumble and click of its innards was the same.
She walked round the room while the team set up their cameras. What details would be important to the case? The shelves were lined with boxes of games and playthings – she couldn’t have seen that before, in the dark, when the room was dim and her lungs were full of foul air.
Mid shelf, at eye level, one particular toy arrested her. It was made from yellowing plastic, and was cracked with age, though it didn’t have the deep fractures Odette saw after its reconstruction.
As soon as the surveillance equipment was installed everyone returned to the van to await the victim’s arrival. On a small monitor images of the empty basement strobed in the blacks and neon greens of night vision footage. They’d had to turn the lights back off.
The waiting was dull. They played word games, and because Odette was still a wench, the others teased her. They relayed future celebrity scandals, interspersed with lies, and invited her to guess which were true.
‘I don’t read celebrity scandals in my own time,’ Odette complained, but the others enjoyed themselves, and they were laughing at her when the Surveillance Officer interrupted:
‘Look! Look over there! For fuck’s sake!’
The leader of the Conclave was walking down the street.
‘It’s Margaret Norton,’ the Surveillance Officer said.
They all watched Margaret under the moonlight. Shining court shoes, a wide-lapelled coat and smoothly set hair. A sensible yet expensive-looking handbag.
Shouldn’t we try to stop her? Odette thought. She’s walking to her death. We should intervene.
When Margaret reached the door, she turned around on the step, and took a last look at the winter night. Her final night. Cold, bright, with the heavens curved over them like a glass bowl.
Odette reached for the handle of the door, but the Tech Ops manager gripped her coat.
‘Remember your training. You can’t stop Margaret dying,’ he said.
‘I have to try.’ Odette couldn’t stand by and watch someone die. She opened the door, just as Margaret disappeared into the museum. Odette broke into a run.
‘Margaret!’ she called. ‘Stop! Margaret!’
A hand clamped Odette’s mouth from behind and an arm encircled her waist.
‘You could get us all executed,’ the Tech Ops Manager whispered in her ear. ‘If anyone saw you it would be an embargo breach.’
He carried her back to the van. After he released her she lay back, breathless, on the floor.
‘You need to keep your fucking trap shut,’ he said.
‘Enough,’ Elspeth told him. She looked at Odette then – not with disapproval, Odette noticed, but with interest – and said, ‘We need to watch what happens next.’
The surveillance team watched their small monitor as Margaret entered the basement. Their night vision cameras captured four alternating views of the room. They would observe her death from every angle.
Margaret had slid the bolt across the basement door, and taken her gun from her bag. She stood motionless, with one side of her body pressed against the door.
‘What’s she doing?’ Odette asked.
‘Listening for anyone following her,’ the Techs Op manager said. ‘I wonder why, Odette.’
‘Hush,’ Elspeth said.
Suddenly, Margaret rattled at the bolt. The Candybox spat out half a dozen bullets. Her body jerked and crumpled with the impact. The Candybox smoked for a few seconds, then a final bullet flew from its mouth. The bullet caught the rim of t
he hole, shattering the box.
‘That’s weird. Why did she go there? Who turned the Candybox on?’ Odette asked.
‘Dunno,’ the Tech Ops manager said. ‘But we know one thing. She didn’t switch on the machine, or fire her gun into it.’
‘The bullets must have come from a previous player,’ Odette surmised.
The team watched the body onscreen, in silence. They’d identified the victim. Now they had to find the murderer.
51
NOVEMBER 2017
Grace
Grace was in her forties – she wasn’t quite sure where in her forties – when she sent Barbara the origami rabbit. She was prompted by a visit to one of the oldest Lucilles, who in late 2017 was dying of a brain tumour in a palliative unit.
Lucille had lost the use of her legs but her cognition was unimpaired by the tumour. She and Grace played gin rummy while they talked.
‘Not one of my greens has visited,’ Lucille commented.
Grace slid a five of hearts into the discard pile. She sympathised with Lucille’s younger selves. Time travellers could avoid grief with ease – it’s why they were so blasé with uncarved mourners – but they tended to be abnormally anxious about their own deaths. Every other dead person was reachable by time machine, which made one’s own death uniquely final and lonely.
But to say this seemed less than tactful. Instead, Grace said:
‘The other Lucilles probably think they’re being kind.’
‘Kind how?’
‘You might get upset, if you saw yourself how you were. In good health, everything ahead of you.’
‘Poppycock.’ Lucille picked up a card. ‘They’re terrified. I know from the inside – I remember well enough. I’m sure they tell you it’s kinder to leave me alone.’
‘Hm. Maybe.’
‘Do you know what that excuse reminds me of?’
‘No.’ Grace discarded again, and laid out her melds.
‘Barbara. D’you remember how we said it was kinder to leave her alone?’
The Psychology of Time Travel Page 21