Splinters In Time (The Time Bubble Book 4)

by Jason Ayres

  It was a Monday morning, the 10th March, so Peter ought to be at school. He couldn’t just march in, he’d have to try and catch him at the end of the day.

  Unfortunately, that plan went out of the window shortly after getting off the train and walking towards town. He had barely walked a hundred yards along the street when a police car, siren wailing, drew up alongside him. Two police officers, one of whom he knew extremely well, were out of the car and manhandling him before he knew it.

  Held against the side of the car by the man, he was handcuffed by none other than Hannah. This must have been her very early days on the force, as he had never seen her looking so young, but she lacked nothing in confidence and assertiveness.

  “You are under arrest on suspicion of vehicle theft and armed robbery,” she began, going on to recite the rest of the spiel that he had heard so many times on TV.

  “But I haven’t done anything,” he protested.

  “That’s what they all say,” replied Hannah as he was bundled into the car. Speaking to the male officer, she said, “Johnson, radio into the station and let them know we’ve got him.”

  “Kent will be pleased,” replied PC Johnson.

  Josh inwardly groaned – not Kent again. That man kept turning up like a bad penny. Presumably he was now going to have to endure his old school interrogation techniques.

  “What exactly am I supposed to have done, Hannah?” he asked.

  “That’s PC Benson to you,” she replied. “And you’ll be able to see for yourself when we get to the station. We’ve got it all on CCTV.”

  Whatever he was supposed to have done, she seemed pretty sure about it. Was it a case of mistaken identity, or something more? With all these other Joshes running around the universes, anything was possible. Had one of them done something? Was he going to be convicted for the crimes of one of his other selves? Was he to end up living in prison? It would be a pretty dismal end to his adventure. On the plus side, at least he’d get fed.

  Back at the station, Hannah took him into an interrogation room and shortly after, Kent came in, looking as chubby and red-faced as ever. Even though this incarnation hadn’t reached his forties yet, he still had an undeniable look of middle age about him.

  The two of them threw all manner of questions at him, none of which he had answers to, so he simply stuck to some advice his brother had once given him. He had been nicked for allegedly stealing some building supplies off another site and had just denied everything or said ‘No comment’ to any difficult questions.

  This clearly frustrated Kent. While Hannah remained cool and level-headed, her boss quickly became irate.

  “Look, we know you did it,” said Kent. “We’ve got clear CCTV footage from the petrol station of you holding them up.”

  By this stage, Josh had figured out most of what he was supposed to have done. It seemed he had stolen a car, driven to a garage, filled up with petrol, and then held up the cashier at gunpoint, demanding she hand over the contents of the till.

  “How do you know it was me?” said Josh. “It could have been my twin brother.”

  In a way, it was. It was almost certainly one of his alter egos who had done this, but armed robbery? Could he have gone that far? Maybe, if he was desperate enough. Clearly his counterpart was.

  “Oh, and your twin brother just happens to wear exactly the same outfit as you do, does he?”

  “Why not?” said Josh. “Parents often dress their twins identically. It looks cute.”

  “You’re like fifty years old, for fuck’s sake, not five,” exclaimed Kent. “Credit me with some intelligence.”

  Josh thought it best not to respond to that. He estimated Kent’s intellect to be somewhere on the same scale as the Neanderthals.

  “Now look, I’ve plenty of experience of armed robberies,” added Kent. “Busted a whole gang last year when they tried to raid the bookies. Didn’t I, Benson?”

  “Yes, sir,” she replied wearily, giving the impression she had been asked this question many times before.

  “There, see?” said Kent. “I’ve got a nose for this sort of thing and I can sniff out a wrong ’un from a mile off. You’re up to your neck in shit in this one, mate and no amount of denying it is going to get you off. So why don’t you save me a lot of bother, confess, and then I can be down The Red Lion nice and early after work tonight.”

  Before Josh could reply, they were interrupted by PC Johnson who came to the door asking if he could borrow Hannah for five minutes. It seemed he had some problem with the computer that couldn’t wait.

  Normally this sort of interruption would have annoyed Kent, but on this occasion he welcomed the opportunity to get Josh on his own. Declaring the interview suspended and pausing the tape, he waited for Hannah to leave the room, before rounding on Josh.

  “Right, now she’s out of the way, let’s get down to serious business. What have you done with my car?”

  “Your car?” asked Josh. He hadn’t mentioned anything about that before.

  “You know damn well it was my car – my Lotus. I can’t believe you had the nerve to steal it from outside this very station.”

  “You’ve got a Lotus?” said Josh, surprised. “And the police always complain that they’re underpaid.”

  “Yes, I have got a Lotus, or did have before you nicked it, and I want it back. And yes, we are underpaid, considering what we have to go through, dealing with the likes of you. I couldn’t afford a car like that on my salary.”

  “How did you get it, then?” asked Josh. “Did you take a backhander from the council or a local businessman for turning a blind eye to something dodgy? That’s not very becoming conduct of an officer of the law, is it?”

  He couldn’t resist trying to wind Kent up. It was so easy.

  “If you must know, I had a big win on the horses,” said Kent.

  “Gambling, eh? And then flashing fancy cars around with your ill-gotten gains? Isn’t that a bit immoral from someone who’s supposed to be setting an example?”

  “Immoral, maybe, but not illegal, and it’s my job to uphold the law,” replied Kent. “I’m good at catching criminals and I’m good at picking horses.”

  Josh didn’t recall Kent being particularly good at either from past experience. He also didn’t recall him being particularly wealthy and had never heard a Lotus mentioned before in his own universe. Perhaps the Kent of this world was a superior, genetically enhanced version.

  If he was, it certainly didn’t show in his appearance. His tie was askew and stained, and his top button wasn’t done up, presumably because Kent’s neck had got too fat for him to do it.

  “Did you know you’ve spilt egg yolk on your tie?” he asked.

  “What?” said Kent, looking down, “Bloody hell, not again.” He tried vainly wiping at the now dried stain. No, this was definitely not a Kent of superior intelligence to the original.

  “Tell me about this win on the horses, then,” said Josh, curious to know how Kent had managed it.

  “Auroras Encore – last year’s Grand National. 66/1 it was – I made a killing.”

  “Oh, Grand National winners, they’re easy pickings. You know I could tell you the winners for the next five years. Let me off and I’ll tell you them. Fair deal, wouldn’t you say?”

  “No, not really,” said Kent. “Who’s to say I don’t already know them?”

  “And how would you know?” asked Josh.

  “You’d be surprised. Go on, then, tell me who’s going to win this year, if you’re the local clairvoyant.”

  “I can’t remember off the top of my head,” said Josh. “But if you look in the backpack you took off me, you’ll find a notebook with all the winners of all the major sporting events from now until 2023 written down in it.”

  “This I have to see,” said Kent. “Wait here,” he said, handcuffing Josh to the chair as a precaution.

  Five minutes later he returned to the room carrying the notebook. Josh had been expecting him to rubbish
the contents and dismiss it as all fantasy, but Kent’s reaction took him by surprise.

  “You really are a time traveller!” exclaimed Kent. “They’re all here: Pineau de Re, Many Clouds, One For Arthur. And that’s not all.”

  He held out a ten-pound note, portraying Jane Austen on the reverse. It was of the polymer design that Josh had brought with him.

  “Johnson’s been going through your wallet and he showed me this. He thought it was Monopoly money, but I know different. In a few years, these notes will be in common use, but right now, I thought I was the only person in the world who would recognise them. And then you turn up, carrying a whole wad of them.”

  “You seem remarkably well informed,” said Josh. How did Kent know all this?

  “How did you get here?” asked Kent. “Are you from the future? Did the angel send you?”

  “What angel?” Josh had encountered a lot of strange things on his travels, but couldn’t count an angel among them.

  What the hell was Kent talking about? Josh couldn’t believe he was sitting here having this bizarre conversation with the last person he could imagine would know anything about time travel. He wouldn’t have credited the witless fool in front of him with being able to wire a plug, let alone build any sort of time-travelling device.

  “The angel who sent me here,” insisted Kent. “Did he send you, too?”

  Josh was stumped for an answer, not even having the remotest idea who this mysterious angel could be. He was spared having to muster a response by Hannah as she came back into the room.

  “Sorry about that boss,” she said. “Johnson thought Russian hackers had got into the police database again because he couldn’t access it. Turns out he was putting the wrong password in.”

  Impatient to get rid of her, Kent quickly changed the subject.

  “All this questioning’s making me hungry,” he declared. “I expect you’re hungry, too, aren’t you?” he added, looking at Josh.

  Turning to Hannah, he continued. “Tell you what, Benson, why don’t you pop out to McVie’s and get us fish and chips all round? My treat – here you go.”

  He reached into his jacket pocket, took out his wallet and handed over a couple of his old-fashioned twenty-pound notes.

  Hannah took the money with a perplexed look on her face. She wasn’t used to her boss being pally towards prisoners like this.

  “Come on, chop chop,” added Kent, patronisingly. “I’m starving. Get some cans, too, and make sure they’re out of the fridge and not off the shelf. There’s nothing worse than warm fizzy drinks. And get a couple of battered sausages as well. And make sure they put plenty of salt and vinegar on mine, they always skimp on it in there. That bloody McVie’s a right tight arse.”

  “Is there anything else I can get you, sir?” replied Hannah. “Perhaps you’d like to show our guest here the wine list as well?”

  “No need to be sarcastic, Benson,” said Kent. “There’s no reason we can’t be civil to our guests.”

  “It’ll be the first time you have,” said Hannah.

  “Look, just go and get the chips and I’ll explain more when you get back,” said Kent, annoyed at his junior’s insolence.

  “Right you are, sir,” replied Hannah, looking distinctly unimpressed. “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll skip the chips and get a salad from Marks & Spencer. I’ve got my figure to think about.”

  “Whatever,” replied Kent. “Just don’t try and force any of your rabbit food on us.” Kent wasn’t a salad fan and it showed in his waistline.

  With Hannah gone, the conversation returned to time travel.

  “How do I know you really are a time traveller?” asked Josh. “This could all be some clever routine you’re using to get me to confess. Tell me something from the future that’s not in that notebook.”

  “Alright, I will,” replied Kent. “Theresa May is going to become Prime Minister, Donald Trump will become President, and Prince George is going to have a sister next year and they are going to call her Charlotte. How am I doing so far?”

  “Impressive,” said Josh, who had to concede that Kent knew his stuff. “OK, I accept you have time-travelled. What I’d like to know is how and from when?”

  “I came here from November 2018,” began Kent.

  Just after we discovered the time bubble, thought Josh, as Kent continued.

  “I was going through a bit of a mid-life crisis at the time – not getting on with the wife, made redundant from the job after a few investigations went a bit pear-shaped, the usual sort of thing. So there I was, up on the roof of Sainsbury’s car park, thinking about ending it all. Then, just as I was contemplating jumping, a younger version of me appeared. At least he looked like me, though he claimed he wasn’t, he was just taking my image.”

  “Go on,” said Josh.

  “He offered to let me live any six days of my life over again. So I asked him to send me back to when I was seven years old. Lo and behold I find myself in 1984 in my body as it was at the time. After a day, I found myself back in 2018. Next, I asked him to send me back to Grand National Day last year so I could foil a robbery and win a tidy sum on the race.”

  “Which explains how you got the Lotus,” said Josh. “But you didn’t go back to 2018 afterwards?”

  “No,” replied Kent. “That’s the strange thing. This time nothing happened. I’ve been living here for nearly a year since. I don’t mind, though. I’ve been given an extra five or six years to live over again, and you’d be amazed how much more enjoyable they are with the benefit of hindsight.”

  Josh weighed up everything Kent had said.

  “It’s quite an incredible tale,” he replied. “I, too, can travel in time, but not in the same way you did. The whole concept of transferring minds back into people’s bodies at an earlier time isn’t possible – or at least not yet in the time I come from, which is 2055.”

  “So it could have been an angel, then?” asked Kent.

  “I wouldn’t have thought so,” replied Josh. “Mind transfer has been talked about as a concept and it’s bound to come. In 2055, we’re already working on uploading brains into new bodies. I guess combining the time travel technology with that could be theoretically possible. It’s something I’ll have to think about working on if I ever get home.”

  “If you’re from 2055, how did you end up here?” asked Kent.

  Mindful that Hannah would be back soon with the chips, Josh gave him the edited highlights of a story he had told several times now to several different people in several different universes. It also enabled him to explain about the other Joshes running around the multiverse and how it was almost certainly one of them that had stolen Kent’s Lotus.

  “Fascinating, the idea of multiple universes,” said Kent. “Perhaps that’s why I’m still here. When I came back in time I created a new universe and perhaps the old me has gone back to my old body in the original.”

  “That’s very possible,” said Josh, impressed by Kent’s grasp of the concept. “Each trip does create both possibilities.”

  “This all still leaves us with a bit of a problem, doesn’t it?” said Kent. “You’re still sitting here facing these charges. Now you claim you didn’t do it – that it was another you from another universe, but that’s not going to stand up in a court of law, is it? Not when it’s all been captured on CCTV.”

  “Maybe if you could track down the other me…?” suggested Josh.

  There was a knock on the door and PC Johnson came in.

  “Sorry to disturb you again, boss, but there’s something important you need to know.”

  “Can’t it wait, Johnson? You’re always interrupting my meetings. First you drag Hannah out on some trivial matter and now you’re bothering me.”

  “Sorry, boss, but it can’t wait. It’s about your car.”

  “What about my car? Have they found it? Is it OK?”

  “Well, there’s good news and bad news, but I think you should come outside. We shouldn’t
really be discussing such matters in front of a suspect.”

  “Don’t mind me,” replied Josh, hopeful that the car turning up could lead to his exoneration.

  “Don’t go all protocol on me, Johnson, just spit it out,” replied Kent, irritated as ever by his insistence on doing everything by the book.

  “Fine. Well, it seems your car has turned up. A random patrol spotted it being driven down the A34 and pursued it. That’s the good news.”

  “And the bad news?” asked Kent fearfully. “They had better not have damaged it.”

  “Well, not exactly damaged it, sir. ‘Totalled it’ would be a more accurate description. They chased it down the Didcot slip road and unfortunately the driver lost control, turned it over and hit the barrier.”

  “Bloody idiot, I’m going to throw the book at him for that,” exclaimed Kent. “Even if he is your twin brother,” he added, turning to Josh.

  “Your brother?” said Johnson, worriedly looking at Josh.

  “In a manner of speaking,” said Josh.

  “I think you’d better sit down, sir,” said Johnson.

  “He already is bloody sitting down, you imbecile,” barked Kent. “Anyway, there’s no need to say any more, I can tell what you’re going to say. He died in the crash, didn’t he?”

  “I’m afraid so,” said Johnson. “You have my deepest sympathy, Mr Gardner.”

  “Never mind him!” exclaimed Kent. “What about me? I’m going to have a bloody nightmare with that insurance company now, I can tell you. If they try and wriggle out of it, there’ll be hell to pay. And that’s the no-claims bonus shot to buggery.”

  “Sorry sir,” said Johnson.

  “Alright, lad, it’s not your fault,” said Kent, relenting. “You can go. And get Hannah on the blower and find out where those fish and chips are, I’m bloody famished.”

  With Johnson out of the way, Kent turned back to Josh.

  “Looks like you’re off the hook, then. So what’s the plan now?”

  “Well, what I really need is some money,” said Josh. “It looks like I may be stuck here for a while and my Monopoly money’s no good to me. How about we strike a deal?”