The Comeback of the King

by Ben Jeapes

  BANG

  –and with an interesting crunching noise the car lurched into a deep pothole that flung Ted hard against his seatbelt.

  “What the-!?” Barry exclaimed. In a flash he was out of the car and running round to the passenger side. He stared down and ran his fingers through his hair. “I don’t believe it! How long has that been there?”

  Ted wound his window down to have a look at the hole in the road. It was right next to his door.

  “Just what the hell are those morons doing with our council tax? Right, I’m writing to them the moment I get back–”

  Um, Ted thought. He peered again at the impression. Unlike Barry, he was looking at it almost directly from above. It was certainly bigger than your average pothole and it was right where he had fallen.

  Exactly where he had fallen.

  And it looked horribly like a human outline. As if he had fallen into plasticine, rather than onto tarmac, and made a full body mould.

  Barry was crouching down and examining the side of the car.

  “I think the shock absorbers took it ... If not then the bloody council are paying for it, I promise you that! Right. Let’s get you to work.”

  Ted closed his window again, and told himself it couldn’t be his outline. He sat back in the seat, tried to ignore his aches and pains, and comforted himself with the silver lining thought that from now on the day could only get less crap.

  *

  The King burst forth from the earth.

  His bare feet, planted on the damp turf, could sense the power in the land. He knew immediately where he was. He had lived here; he was the King of this place and every living thing was subject to him.

  Yet, it had changed. He could never have recognised it just by looking. He stood where his palace had been, at the highest point of his domain. It was the top of a round hill, a massive mound of earth, and it should have had views in every direction down into his kingdom. Now the spot was encircled with the remains of walls and a large earthen rampart so that in fact he stood in the middle of a giant bowl. Inside the rampart were the remains of buildings – buildings of stone, when his palace had been of wood – and even though he could sense they were very old in the terms of man, he knew they were still very young compared to him.

  How long had he been away? And what had happened to make him leave?

  Cold, light rain gusted across the grass of the mound and beads of water clung to his chest hair. He looked down at his stocky body and was intrigued to find himself completely naked. He pursed his lips approvingly as muscles slid beneath taut skin. He hadn’t lost anything in his time away. He didn’t feel uncomfortable, because he was the King, but being naked was inconvenient, so he scratched himself as he looked around and made a mental note to find clothes.

  The King could sense a massive concentration of power to the south. He walked up the slope of the rampart and his eyes widened as he gazed out over the plain below where four valleys met.

  A city had been built there. It covered the plain and crawled up the sides of the valleys, and it thrummed with life and energy. Surely there were more people living down there now than there had been on this entire island in the days of the kingdom.

  What kind of people could build such a place? Whoever they were, they had a high opinion of themselves. The centre of the city was dominated by a giant building with a stone spire that thrust hundreds of feet into the air, challenging the very heavens. People like this, he decided, were worthy of his rule.

  A stone-lined gate was cut into the rampart, and on the other side was a deep ditch. Someone had turned his old home into a fortress. A wooden bridge carried him across the ditch and then there was a locked gate at the far end, but no lock in the kingdom would keep him out and it fell open at his approach. Beyond the bridge was a wide open area of grass, and as he walked the turf gave way to a strangely hard surface, like stone but not. Next to it was a notice, a flat piece of painted wood stuck into the ground. There were also words, which he could understand because the artist had been a royal subject of his kingdom and he could sense the intent behind them.

  Old Sarum. The original Salisbury.

  He kept reading.

  5000 years of history.

  He blinked, his eyebrows rose, and he read it again. The information didn’t change. Five thousand years ... and that was as far back as these people knew. He suspected he might be even older than that.

  His thoughts were interrupted by a bass rumble, a regular sound like a giant animal purring. A brightly painted metal cart was rolling up the hill towards him. Its top half was transparent and a man sat within, staring at him with as much astonishment as the King stared back.

  A side of the cart swung open and the man climbed out.

  “Opening time isn’t until ten, and what the hell are you doing standing there naked?”

  He too was a royal subject, so the King could understand him perfectly and reply without effort.

  “Obviously, waiting for you to give me your clothes.”

  The man’s mouth dropped open as he finally realised who the King was.

  “I am so sorry! I didn’t think. Please, take them–”

  A few minutes later, the King was comfortably clad in the clothes of the present time and the first of his royal subjects to acknowledge him was standing shivering and cold in the rain. The King cast a farewell eye over the desolate mound with its empty ruins. He suspected he would not be returning here.

  This had been the beating heart of the kingdom; the place he held his court, full of life and revelry and sheer joy in being alive. He remembered feasts; his Queen by his side; the companionship of his lords. (Ah, yes, his Queen! Of course, she would not be up here. He would need to seek her out again.)

  Now there was no question that the focus of his reign would be the new city, so thoughtfully prepared in advance as his royal capital.

  “I will need your cart.”

  “Please, sir, yes! It’s all yours.”

  The door was still open. The King sat where the man had been and looked at the wheel and the switches and levers and dials mounted in front of him. Clearly, they did something but he had no idea what.

  The man was still waiting and shivering, so the King got out again and went over to the passenger side.

  “Take me down to Salisbury,” he commanded. Salisbury. He relished the taste of the name on his tongue.

  “Right away, sir!

  The man climbed into the driver’s seat and pulled the door closed. A gentle warm breeze filled the car as soon as the engine was turned on. As it began to move, it suddenly struck the King that he was possibly leaving his old home for the last time. He must have left it before, but he had no memory of doing so. What had happened to bring about the end of his reign, over five thousand years ago? Had he been – it was a strange thought, but it had to be faced – cast out? Defeated? Overthrown?

  Already he had one – no, two – no, three tasks ahead of him. Find the Queen. Re-establish the kingdom. And make sure that whatever had happened before could never happen again.

  The King sat back, enjoying the comfort of the upholstery, and let himself be transported down to his new home.

  Chapter 2

  “Ah, and here’s Tom. Tom Blake, this is Inspector Amanda Stewart.”

  Amanda stood up to meet the man who ducked into the office of Superintendent Wallace.

  “Pleased to meet you, Tom.”

  “Amanda.” They addressed each other as equals. Tom Blake also wore an inspector’s uniform. He was the man Amanda was replacing.

  Blake was a bulky, grey-haired man who Amanda would have said could have stood to lose a stone or two. He was also considerably older than her. Amanda couldn’t imagine spending twenty-plus years as an inspector: what was the point of a rank structure if you didn’t rise up it? Yet as she understood it, that was what he had done. He was the kind of career cop who knew what he was good at and stuck with it, and now he was retiring on an inspector’s pens
ion. There was certainly integrity to that, she supposed; it just wasn’t a mentality she shared.

  His face was round and friendly, but that wasn’t why she found herself liking him. His eyes were frank and appraising, but they never wandered further down than her own face and he gripped Amanda’s hand for just long enough to deliver a courteous, firm handshake. Even in this day and age, Amanda had seen far too many coppers’ eyes light up when they saw a woman in uniform, for quite the wrong reasons. That was why she had taken extra care on her first day to emphasise the uniform and not the woman inside it. Her shirt was extra crisp and ironed, and her blonde hair was pulled back into a tight bun. With Tom Blake, she already sensed these precautions might have been unnecessary and she was glad.

  “Tom will show you all the ropes …”

  “The Super said you transferred here from Swindon?” Blake commented as they stepped out into a crowded corridor lined with posters and information boards.

  “That’s right. Coming home – technically. I lived here as a little girl.”

  “I don’t know if Salisbury will offer quite the same chances for high flying.”

  He said it so innocently that it might actually have been innocent. She cocked an eyebrow and wondered what else the Super might have said. She knew from experience what it was like to have a boss who was stuck in the good old days when women in the force were only a good idea because all the men doing the real policing needed a little light relief. Sly double entendres were never far from their lips; the chance to stab an officer of the wrong gender in the back with just the tip of a knife was rarely avoided.

  Still, there was nothing so far to suggest that Superintendent Wallace had anything against capable women fast-tracking their careers. She would extend the same benefit of the doubt to his officers.

  “I just felt like a change,” she said. “Ever been to Swindon?”

  It seemed a safe joke to make. From the traces in his accent she was already reasonably certain he was an Essex native. He just grinned.

  “And I.T. are in here–”

  The tour of the station didn’t take long: I.T. to cells to canteen to toilets to locker room to CID to Uniform. The open-plan office was pretty much what she had been expecting – computers at every desk with officers in front of them (PCs with PCs, as her old Super liked to quip, at which everyone was expected to laugh at least once a day), everyone surrounded by large amounts of paper despite the powerful computing facilities that were available. From the door, Blake introduced Amanda generally to the room, then specifically to the three or four officers who were en route to his own desk.

  “… and this was mine but now is yours.”

  He had made a good effort to clear it of paperwork and give her a clean slate, but Amanda noted, ruefully, that it had already started to sprout a few new sheets.

  “Oops, and I should take this.” He reached out to peel away a photo blutacked to the wall next to his monitor. It was a portrait shot of a teenage boy in school uniform, with a floppy fringe and a big half-circle smile.

  “Your young man?” she asked.

  She was only trying to make conversation: she wasn’t expecting the groans and rolled eyes from the officers on either side, and she certainly wasn’t expecting the shutters that came down on Blake’s previously friendly, open face. He scowled down at the complainers before composing his features into polite neutrality to answer her.

  “Long story for a rainy day.” He slid the photo into a pocket. “So, what would you like to do next? I can leave you alone with your computer, I can answer any questions–” He trailed off, eyebrows raised.

  Amanda glanced at the growing pile of paperwork.

  “Well, if you’re not too busy … Show me Salisbury? From a copper’s point of view?”

  The friendly grin was back.

  “I’ll get me coat.”

  *

  She waited until they were safely in the patrol car and Blake was poised to pull out into Wilton Road, away from the austere redbrick fortress that was the nick.

  “So, who’s the lad, Tom?”

  He glanced at her, grunted and looked back at the traffic. A lorry paused to let them slide out onto the A36. They crawled forward in the traffic queue.

  “You don’t have to tell me anything, of course, but I like to have a handle on the running jokes around the office. Is he someone I’m likely to meet in the course of my duties?”

  “Very likely,” he muttered, before saying more loudly, as if the car might be bugged: “I have no reason to suspect the young man of any illicit activity.”

  “I didn’t say you did.”

  His grin was half-hearted. “How well do you trust an officer’s instincts when there’s not a shred of evidence?”

  “Implicitly,” she said without hesitation. “Keep it legal, don’t harass anyone, but otherwise you go for it.”

  He shot her a sideways glance as if to check her out, and seemed to like what he saw. He half nodded; a corner of his mouth curled in a grim smile.

  “I have met the young man once and once only. It was unusual circumstances but I thought no more of it … Just that, after that, he started being peripheral to … well–”

  Amanda waited. He was obviously trying to marshal it all together into a form that made sense to someone else.

  “Everything I have was either gathered in the course of an unrelated enquiry, or picked up, here and there. I wasn’t actively looking him up. That’s what made it so weird – he kept cropping up anyway, by association. It just bugged me. You know?” He tugged at his ear as the car began to pick up speed. “Like something was trying to get my attention but I couldn’t quite put a finger on it–”

  Now Amanda wanted to hear about this boy more than anything else.

  “Start at the beginning?” she suggested.

  “Right.” Blake settled down a little more comfortably into his seat. “The young gentleman is one Edward Jonathan Gorse, known to family and friends as Ted, lives at 34 Henderson Close, East Harnham. Sixteen years old; currently in his first year of sixth form at the college. Works part time in an antique bookseller’s in New Canal. No previous convictions by the skin of his teeth.”

  “Oh?”

  “About a year, eighteen months ago, Ted picked up a nasty habit of walking out of shops with other people’s property without paying. It got as far as a final warning and that seemed to help him get a grip. Looks like it’s genuinely cleared up. His employer at the shop is a retired barrister, very high-powered in his day, nice habit of prosecuting thieving corporate banker scum.”

  Amanda sensed Blake’s approval.

  “So far, so good,” she commented. He grunted and carried on.

  “We step back in time by a few years. Four years ago Ted’s younger brother Robert went suddenly catatonic. The doctors couldn’t work out why – no sign of drugs or trauma – and once they’d run out of things to try they put him in St Osmund’s Hospice for kids. It burned down last summer. Arson. Three kids killed but the huge majority got out safely – thanks to young Ted who was staying the night to keep his brother company at the request of the doctor in charge.”

  “Doesn’t he have parents who could do that?”

  “They were abroad, ma’am. The doctor verified all this on the night and further enquiries confirmed it – all completely above board. I was one of the officers responding. I spoke to her, I spoke to Ted – that was the one time I’ve actually met him. And I remember Ted demanding to speak to a policeman because, get this! Somehow, during the night, before the fire, Ted’s brother – who hadn’t been able to speak or walk or feed himself or pick his nose or wipe his bum for four years – vanished. Ted swore he had no idea where he had gone. Said he went to sleep, woke up, brother gone, fire alarm goes off. Well, that was his story.”

  “You don’t believe it?”

  “Oh, I believe him about the disappearing brother, for reasons I’ll come to. But Ted’s girlfriend was there too – older than him, hint
of child-snatching but he’s still legal – and it was pretty clear – she said as much – they’d found a room and were too busy making whoopee to notice what might be happening elsewhere. So, whoever took Robert Gorse – maybe premeditated, maybe not – had a window of opportunity. But, credit where credit’s due, when the alarm went off those two arranged the evacuation and they got the kids out before the fire brigade arrived.”

  He seemed to sense her next question before she said it.

  “All the adult staff in the building – none of them heard the alarm. The firemen had to drag them out. If I hadn’t seen it I wouldn’t have believed it myself.”

  Amanda filed that information away for further analysis.

  “Do you think Ted actually had something to do with the fire?”

  “Playing with matches, you mean? It did cross my mind but the arson report’s against it. The lobby was doused with petrol and so was the body of the night porter, which was burned to a crisp.”

  “So the porter started it?”

  Blake grinned but without any humour.

  “That’s what the coroner concluded, after praising Ted for his actions. But, after speaking to me and being checked out by the medics, Ted and his girlfriend vanish. They reappear a couple of hours later in the Cathedral Close, where they’ve found Robert, fast asleep in a car belonging to … the night porter who started the fire! Who by this time has been dead for a couple of hours, so someone took his car and quite possibly started the fire and killed the porter too. The file’s still open. Anyway – Ted’s account of how he came to be there … just say it never entirely made sense. Oh, and from that night onwards, Robert Gorse makes a miraculous recovery. He now lives back at home and to all intents and purposes is a normal thirteen year old, with a special needs statement to make up for the missing years.”

  “A happy ending, then?”

  “Oh, it gets better–”

  Chapter 3

  Malcolm Jackson was tall and thin with grey-white hair. He leaned against the wall with his arms folded and fixed Ted with piercing, sceptical eyes. That was when Ted suspected he was going to lose.