by Brian Hughes
Malcolm glanced at Sergeant Partridge who was obediently waiting close by with the keys. Jack was rubbing his eyes, his usual world-weariness etched across his face. His respect for Reginald Nesbit extended no further than the official hierarchy that the force demanded.
“Right,” added Nesbit determindly. “You be the nasty, foul tempered old sod, Clewes, and I’ll be the genial, handsome ‘harbour-in-the-storm’.”
“Er...” Malcolm raised one questioning finger. Then he thought better of it and lowered it again as the oversized keys clanked noisily around their hoop. “What’s my motivation, Sir?”
“Keepin’ your job, Clewes,” replied Nesbit, stepping inside.
Greyminster Museum was referred to as ‘The Cellar’ by the library staff because...well...that’s basically what it was. The gratings just below the ceiling, far from adding much-needed illumination to this underground attic, created an even more abject misery. Antiquities such as Queen Victoria’s socks and old copies of the Racing Times crumbled to dust in ancient slagheaps across the floor.
Four glass cases blanketed in dust took up their immovable positions, one in each corner of the room. Mostly they contained stuffed seagulls or rusted anchors from long forgotten boats.
Two of the cases had drawers labelled, “Screws” “Thumbtacks” and “Fuse Wire” in what looked, suspiciously, like Albert Doyle’s handwriting.
Mounds of flotsam took up the rest of the room, all fifteen square feet of it. They ranged from Neolithic spearheads to dented cannon balls fired in battles now vanquished to the ginnels of history.
Flinders struggled through the wigwams of rubble. It was difficult going and several times he heard a crunch as some artefact became less ‘fact’ and more ‘arty’ beneath his wheels. Pip hovered close behind.
“Bloody inconsiderate council planners!” There was a crack as a bust of Shakespeare became a novelty marketing ploy for the jigsaw companies. “I’d forgotten how annoying it is to be stuck in this chair!”
“I’ve been meaning to ask...” Pip stuffed an ivory bracelet into her pocket where she’d decided it’d be safer. “You know how blind people develop super-human hearing abilities and stuff? Well...do you have any special...er..?”
She stumbled towards the end of the sentence, now uncertain of the question herself.
“Funny you should mention that!” Flinders furiously battered his way through a narrow pass. “Me todger’s the size of me missing limb. I often use it to scale mountains. It’s got the strength of a double decker bus...and...damn and blast it!”
Several more oaths fluttered up through the ceiling and into the library where, hunched over her copy of People’s Friend, Mrs Wainthrop thought that her tooth was tuning into Classic FM again.
“Sorry,” said Pip, retreating into her clothes. “It was inconsiderate of me to mention it...”
“Actually I ought to apologise for the outburst.” Flinders reined in his temper. “It’s just that the council has this equal opportunities thing...which means that people in wheelchairs have the same opportunities for being confronted by curbs and congested passages as people with both legs.”
There was a moment of silence while he hunted through the never-ending rubbish mounds. “Ah! This is it!” With a rustle, a tug and a shred, he lifted a scroll onto his knees. Then he unrolled it cautiously, an inappropriate consideration as it transpired because it had just gained a seven inch tear. Once unfurled however, it revealed a barely legible map with the words “Ministry of the Grey” scrawled in gothic letters across one corner.
“Fascinating to see how Greyminster’s changed over the centuries. Look...”
He tapped a collection of scribbles forcing Pip to lean over his shoulder for a closer look.
“Here there be sea serpents...don’t see too many of them about these days.”
Mrs Prune would, no doubt, have agreed, had she been close enough to overhear their conversation.
Unfortunately Mrs Prune was unaware of the sinister creature lurking in Spot’s goldfish bowl. She’d noticed recently that Rupert, her ever-faithful tortoise, was giving the aquarium a wider birth than normal. And she’d also noticed that Spot himself seemed to be wearing an expression that was making his eyeballs bulge. But for all that she’d never bothered to check beneath the plastic skull half-buried in the gravel.
Every so often the sea serpent’s whiskers would twitch in some feverish dream. Then the skull would rattle against the ornamental castle, forcing Spot to take refuge behind his treasure chest.
With a plop, Ginger dipped his paw in the water. He sloshed it around, presumably trying to prove the old adage that ‘curiosity does indeed kill the cat.’ Cats are not renowned for their intelligence at the best of times. Subtle inflections of ‘Meow’ ranging from ‘I’m so hungry...please feed me’ to ‘I’m full up now...open the door you old bag’ feature heavilly in the feline psyche. But intelligence, per se, doesn’t.
Mrs Prune entered the kitchen with her tray of pots just as the snap of razor sharp teeth rattled up from the bowl.
Ginger reeled backwards. Or, to be more accurate, Ginger bristled outwards in the fashion of some grotesque hot-water bottle that had been attached for too long to a tap.
The sea serpent was dragged from the bowl.
Once introduced to the air its growth far exceeded anything that Ginger could mustre.
Accompanied by creaks and cracks it expanded, its tiny limbs taking longer to grow than the rest of its body. Moments later one huge talon knocked the cupboard off the wall above the sink onto Mrs Prune.
The serpent’s head continued to stretch, smashing through the window and snapping the ferns from the outside wall. Finally its struggling tail upended the armchair, scattering anti-macassers across the room. Then it slammed through the wall, bringing down one of the chimney pots.
The foyer at York Street station was crammed this afternoon. A large number of people had gathered around the enquiry desk, all wet and steaming and accompanied by a thoroughly unpleasant stench.
“One at a time, please.” Sergeant Partridge turned his overcoat collar up. Not so much as protection against the draught but to muffle the voices assaulting his ears.
“The damned thing farted, I tell y’!” Gordon Thompson slammed his sodden fist down, raising the corners of the sergeant’s ledger.
Jack jotted the details down as best he could.
“Actually, it was more of a belch!” Councillor Ordenshaw’s deadpan voice slammed through the melee, refusing to be upstaged by the squabbling rabble. A gloop of slurry parted company with her shoulder and shattered on the floor.
“Whatever it was,” Mrs Cravat, Head of the Women’s Institute, interjected with one crooked finger. “That plumbing’s dangerous. The ’ole lot needs cordoning off! I’ll be seeing my lawyer about this, so help me I will!”
“I’d ’ave a bath first, if I was you.”
Mrs Cravat shrank from the sergeant’s suggestion, not altogether sure if it had been intended as an insult or not. Whatever the case it shut her up for the moment, giving Jack the opportunity to continue with more composure.
“Let me get this straight...the public bogs...” He coughed as he realised the officious company he was keeping, despite their appearance. “The public lavatories down ’Igh Street,” he corrected himself. “’Ave been subjected to terrorist attack. An’ there’s someone at the ’arbour throwin’ hubcaps?”
“Hubcaps?” Grimeswald Haddock pushed his way to the front of the crowd. His sweater was stretched down to his knees, a startled octopus attached to his scalp. “Bloody landmines more like! Me boat’s down at the bottom of the Grey with everythin’ still onboard.”
He thought about that for a moment, Ralph Sedgwick, his insurance broker, springing to his mind.
“Me fifty-six inch Nicam Stereo went down with it.”
He prodded the ledger as an indication that Jack was to write every down.
Very clearly.
“A
n’ me Mitsubishi CD player, me brand new mountain bike...Raleigh or something it was...me ‘F’ registered Porsche...”
“Cuddly Teddy bear...” Fortunately the telephone rang before Jack reached the end of the first item. He laid down his pen and picked up the receiver. An animated voice twittered out of the earpiece.
Jack shook his large fingers towards the gathering in the hopes of silence.
“Right...I’ll be over shortly.” He hung up again, an expression of resignation rearranging his leathery features. “Constable Jaye?”
“Yes Sarge?”
“Sort this lot out f’r us, will y’?”
Jaye unenthusiastically took over his position as Jack pulled on his gloves.
“Seems those psychic investigators down Applegate ’ave gone an’...” He paused, mulling over how ridiculous the statement sounded. “Well, it seems that, not content with discovering Queen Vic ’eadfirst in the dunny, they’ve now ’ad a dragon crash through their ’ouse.”
“That’s not what I wanted to show you though.” Flinders struggled to turn the map over above his head.
In her attempts to help him a tussle broke out. It concluded a few moments later with Pip’s cheeks so flushed from embarassment that her hair was almost smoking. With a stiffled cough she shuffled backwards whilst Flinders, unconcerned by this invasion of his personal airspace, flattened the map back down on his knee reverse side up.
“Now then...” Across the back of the map was an old, slightly smudged, diagram. It was covered in excited scrawls and calculations. The drawing itself resembled the type of construction usually found on physics lecturers’ desks. The sort of thing that consists of wooden balls and dowelling rods and worrying spin factors.
“I’m not sure what it is...” said Flinders, anticipating Pip’s next question. “But it’s signed by someone called Wetherby.”
He looked back across his shoulder expecting to see Pip’s gaze following his finger. Instead she was blowing cold air up the side of her nose as though the heating had been suddenly turned up.
“You did say that label we found was once owned by somebody called Wetherby, didn’t you?” Flinders continued, returning to stare at the schematics before him.
“Er...yes...I did.” Pip recomposed herself. “It might be a good idea to visit...er...”
She dug into her waistcoat pocket and pulled out the notepad.
“Forty-one Caldwell Crescent...” The pad was flipped shut again. “Don’t you reckon?”
Inky clouds flowed across the heavens as though they’d been dropped into a tumbler and then stirred by the spoon of the wind. Here and there shafts of sunlight probed Greyminster’s rooftops through wounds in the sky. They highlighted the bank on Drummond Street, the war memorial at West Wattling Lane, and, more importantly as far as this book’s concerned, the small grey wart of a building growing out of the town hall.
This was the mortuary, its dark interior oblivious to the growing storm.
There were no windows here, just rows of cabinets in a morbid lattice. Some were empty, others occupied; all banking the east wall like a ghastly self-serve buffet.
Don Shaftsbury’s desk was spotlit by a spindthrift of light woven from a countersunk bulb overhead. He thumbed his way through the reams of beuarocracy that the position of morgue attendant required him to read.
Don was a hefty man. Some would say grotesequely disproportioned. In silhouette he resembled the Frankenstein version of Winnie the Pooh. Not that it mattered. Don’s was a quiet life, devoid of critical company. The antiseptic mantle of death was his personal refuge from the hustle of Greyminster’s streets. He’d just finished reading Dr Driscal’s synopsis of the ‘Queen Victoria Cadavar’, an unusual case and one that lead him to believe the good doctor had been hitting the insulin. A thumping noise, accompanied by a disturbed sounding moan, broke through the silence. Due to the metalic structure of the morgue the sounds echoed briefly in the corners before fading away.
Don was used to perculiar noises. Dead people had little social decorum as a rule. The odd fart, groan or belch as the last flatulant residues escaped their systems wasn’t uncommon.
But there was something altogether unearthly about this particular rumble. Dragging his enormous palm across his forehead, Don carefully rose, cocking one ear towards the renewed thudding. It seemed to be coming from casket thirteen. Picking up his torch, more for use as a truncheon than to light his way, he stealthily crossed to the drawer. Pressing his ear against it, he listened intently.
A grunt shuddered unpleasantly from deep within the casket’s bowels. Don grabbed the handle and with a squeal he dragged the container open.
Crunch! Millicent Broadhurst sat up straight and dug her false teeth into his head.
Don reeled backwards, an arc of blood spattering out behind him. Millicent’s dentures, still embedded in his skull, left the old woman’s gums accompanied by a sloppy squelch. As Don hit the floor with a tremendous thump, Millicent looked from side to side, moving her whole head as though her eyes were fixed in their sockets.
Then with a jolt she slid one leg over the edge of the drawer and slapped her naked instep against the tiles. And with her arms stretched out before her, she headed off towards the door.
Chapter Ten: Of Temporal Mechanics and Tape Recordings
One of the questions that preoccupy quantum physicists (generally when they’re in the bath, which goes some distance towards explaining why their more elaborate theories involve rubber ducks) is: “Exactly what shape is the universe, then?”
One theory claims that it’s egg-shaped, raising the further question: “If that’s the case then what lies outside?”
Another theory, slightly more advanced but still incorrect, claims that the universe is an inverse sphere. If a traveller started from any given point and headed outwards, they’d eventually find themselves back where they started. Interesting idea but one that begs the question: “What’s become of all the outside stuff then? Surely it can’t all be kept in Mrs McFife’s potting shed, can it?” A remark from which we can also deduce that quantum physicists are not very good at sarcasm.
If the truth be known, the universe doesn’t have a shape.
It has no edge.
So it naturally follows that it also has no centre.
But it is limited in size, due to the nature of “Time”.
Let me try to illustrate.
Imagine a beachball.
A very large beachball.
Everything in the universe tries to make itself spherical if it can, and “Time” is no exception.
Now imagine millions of spots all dabbed onto this huge bloated sack with a bingo marker. Each one of these dots is connected to the other dots around it by thin pencil lines.
Got that? Good...because you’re now looking at the “Shape of Time.”
Choose one of the red spots at random. From this distance they all look the same anyhow.
This splodge represents one moment of “Time”.
An instant.
A perception.
An idea.
The moment just before you stub your toe on the bedstead for example.
Examine the adjoining pencil lines, those slithers of graphite connecting all of the moments together. Those are the pathways that determine what’s going to happen next.
One line heads to the splotch on the left: “Toe connects with bedstead painfully.”
Another heads to the right: “Toe narrowly misses bedstead thus preventing its owner from having to hop around the bedroom screaming frantically.”
In other words, you have a choice of which direction to take.
Let’s pan back and study the whole picture.
Following the splodges and pencil lines, choose a route for yourself through the countless billions of connections. This is a Utopian cartographer’s daydream, consisting of seemingly infinite crossroads, taking the observer through the rat’s maze of the millennia.
All the way round we
make our journey, past the huge stopper covered in spittle where the beachball was originally inflated, across the arcing circumference around the other side and, eventually, back to the position from where we started.
That’s the whole of “Time” covered.
More or less.
And not once did you leave the universe.
Some ancient Greek philosopher (he might have been French, but it’s not important) put forward the conundrum: “How is it possible to shoot a moving tortoise with an arrow? Every time the arrow reaches the spot where the tortoise has been, the tortoise would have moved forwards by a fraction of an inch. Seeing as tortoises are pretty bloody easy things to shoot on the whole, there’s obviously something amiss here!” (Actually, perhaps the biggest conundrum is why anybody would want to shoot tortoises anyhow.)
The answer is ridiculously obvious. So much so in fact that scientific research has failed to spot it.
Each moment is independent. (We’re back to the bingo splotches again.)
The pathways between them don’t really exist except in our imaginations. It’s a bit like the different frames on a film, really. Put them all together and we don’t notice the gaps between. And everything moves smoothly forwards.
As we stand on one of the splotches the projectile is still approaching the tortoise.
By the next, it’s stuck in the poor bastard’s head and the philosophers are standing around looking puzzled.
The specific moment of impact doesn’t actually exist, the event having happened between observation points.
Which might explain why it takes certain people several seconds to realise they’ve just smacked their heads on the cupboard door.
This model of time explains something else that the scientists have overlooked. That being: “Why do we have laws that govern the universe at all?”
Toss a penny in the air and it has three choices.
One: it can land heads up.
Two: it can land tails up.