by Brian Hughes
Three: it can land on its edge.
Under no circumstances however (and even those subscribing to “Chaos Theory” wouldn’t argue the toss on this point) is it likely to metamorphose into a large garden snail with wings and then flutter off into the sunset.
So, why are there laws to govern such matters? Does this prove the existence of God in as much as an eternal hand was required to create the rules in the first place?
Well, contrary to the theologian’s misconceptions, considering that time is spherical and that all moments are connected to other moments, there can only be a limited number of splotches, or outcomes, from which to choose.
And in a nutshell, this is exactly what the complicated schematics across Flinders’ map amounted to. Diagrams and footnotes, with drawings of time bubbles and stuck-through tortoises. All trying to explain the structure of time.
Not wanting to give the reader the wrong impression I ought to point out that this novel is not about “Time Travel.” (It makes a change I know...but for once we’re dealing with other matters.)
The fact that Felix Wetherby had drawn the sketches back in 1733 does bear relevance.
However, I’m not at liberty to say how just yet, so we’d better leave this discussion alone for the time being.
“Now then, Mrs Duvall.”
The interview room squealed as Nesbit dragged his chair from beneath the table and hung his mackintosh across it. There was something unnerving about the manner in which he did this. It was almost as though he had joined the SS. In fact, he in no way suggested a ‘harbour in the storm’ at all.
“Have you got something in your eye, Inspector?” interrupted Miss Duvall, the barmcake of her chin bobbing up and down as though trying to point at Malcolm’s squint without the use of her finger.
Malcolm’s attempt to look menacing had failed dismally. He let his scowl drop and his eyelid stopped twitching.
“I’ll get straight t’ the point, Madam.” Nesbit shuffled into his seat leaving his colleague to stand threateningly behind him, although, to be honest, Malcolm carried about as much menace as a kitten with a ball of wool.
With one stubby finger Nesbit fumbled for the cassette recorder. It took several attempts before he realised that both the ‘record’ and the ‘play’ buttons had to pressed simultaneously.
“Why did y’ kill Millicent Broadhurst?”
There followed several awkward moments whilst he and Miss Duvall stared at each other reticently. At length Winifred’s jowls began to wobble and she held up one crooked finger.
“Just one moment, Inspector.” And she leaned across the desk, nudging the microphone over deliberately with her elbow. Then she frantically pressed the buttons on the tape deck, shouting loudly as she did so.
Phrases such as, “No Inspector! Not the face!” and, “For the love of God. I’m an old woman!” filled the room with the sudden confusion of a flock of seagulls.
Conscientious of the cost of CID property Nesbit leapt towards her in a series of rabid shouts.
Malcolm had cottoned on to Miss Duvall’s scheme. Unfortunately his senses hadn’t caught up with the rest of his brain. He added to the melee by yelling, “No Sir, don’t interfere with her!” before realising what he’d said.
There was a great deal of banging and crashing, made all the worse by the unstable microphone picking up every last nuance of sound through the tabletop.
Miss Duvall rewound and fast-forwarded the tape several times to make sure that the recording sounded well and truly tampered with. Then she pressed the eject button and caught the cassette in mid flight.
With a lunge she stuffed it between her pendulous bosoms.
Flustered, Nesbit sat back in his chair, an astounded expression across his face. And he fumbled blindly for his oxford.
“Now, Inspector,” Miss Duvall continued, considerably more in control of the situation. “We could keep this up all day, but I think I’ll hold onto this bit of evidence until Mr Bertold turns up.”
“You’ve obviously no idea how serious this is have y’, you daft old walrus?” Unable to locate his pipe in his waistcoat pocket, Nesbit lost his temper. “This is a murder charge and by God I’m goin’ t’ make it stick! Now give me that cassette before I lamp y’ one!”
“Sir...” Malcolm leaned down to Nesbit’s ear and whispered something.
Nesbit bared his teeth ferociously.
“Don’t be bloody stupid, Clewes! I think we’re beyond the ‘good cop, bad cop’ routine now!” A flummoxed expression tugged down on his eyebrows. “Parkins...take this woman back to the bloody cells!”
Parkins marched towards Miss Duvall and grabbed her dutifully by the elbow.
“You’ve gone a bit purple, Inspector,” commented Winifred, standing up. “Too much sun I expect. You should see a doctor about that.”
As was its intention the remark stung. Nesbit had an inbuilt hatred of medical establishments. In his world doctors ranked alongside lawyers and vets. They were the sort of people who made huge wads of money out of everybody else’s misery. Besides which, he subscribed to the Schrodinger theory: “All states of illness exist, whether heart failure or flu, until a doctor fixes them in the space-time continuum.”
Miss Duvall hobbled towards the door under Parkins’ escort as Nesbit threw back his chair with a crash.
“And Parkins...mek sure you throw away the key!”
The drizzle had grown heavier by the time Jack Partridge reached Applegate. Great pears of rainwater burst on the flagstones as he tried to shelter beneath his trench coat. Intermittantly he blew into his leather gloves and rubbed the carbuncle of his nose.
Bloody awful weather! He’d much rather have been at home in front of the fire, watching the smoke saunter up his chimney. Amanda Duck would be questioning him about the sort of day he’d had. Of course, it’d be difficult trying to explain that he’d been out chasing dragons.
That sort of thing was right up his housekeeper’s street though. She wouldn’t put it down to senile imaginations. She’d blame the government, then concoct several conspiracy theories loosely connected with ancient rituals.
Jack watched the reflections of his life in the forming puddle. Then he looked up. Just in time to witness what appeared to be an enormous green tail disappearing through the wall of Mrs Prune’s boarding house.
Upstairs, in what used to be Mrs Prune’s lounge -- a room that now resembled Greyminster tip after an invasion of tinkers -- things had taken on new proportions.
Smaller proportions to be exact.
The rainwater from the gutter had fallen on the serpent’s tail. As a consequence the tail had shrunk. Exactly why this was the case was anybody’s guess. However, the serpent itself was now hanging upside down from the ceiling, its claws embedded in the plaster and its fangs sunk into the lamp. Every so often a spark would explode from the wires and Mrs Prune would recoil into the armchair still clutching her broom at arm’s length.
“Don’t squirt the exposed bits!” Benjamin Hobson balanced on the coffee table, clasping a bucket of water to his chest.
On hearing the commotion Jess had thundered up the stairs with his pump-action water cannon. Now he was dowsing various scaly limbs with water sucked from Mrs Prune’s toilet.
He watched them shrink humorously, dry off in the heat from the bulb, and then expand again as though they were passing through a fairground Hall of Mirrors.
“Mrs Prune...” continued Ben, trying his best to keep his footing on the unstable bookcase. “Try and dislodge it into the bucket! Jess’ approach has about as much chance of success as Osama bin Laden winning the Nobel Peace Prize.”
“Don’t mince words with me, Sunshine!” Jess raised the water cannon to one eye and battened down the lid of the other. “It’s bad enough you mincin’ your walk. Watch and learn!”
An arc of yellow liquid curved up towards the roof. It spattered gently against the serpent’s elbow, which promptly creaked and started to shrivel.
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br /> The talons tightened. A tiny split appeared in the ceiling. Like a trend-setting streaker the fracture was suddenly surrounded by hundreds of other cracks.
There followed a shredding sound and a large chunk of plaster gave way. It swung momentarily from a root-ball of wiring.
Then the serpent plunged headfirst, the crumpled shade still in its jaws.
Moments later it reached Benjamin’s bucket.
There was a slosh!
With the sort of sound that a Warner Brothers cartoon about a mouse swallowing an innertube might have made, it puckered and wheezed, until there was nothing left except for a small newt swimming monotonously round the bucket’s rim.
With the serendipitous timing commonly displayed by Scully in early episodes of the X-Files, Sergeant Partridge took that moment to walk through the door. All eyes turned towards him as he studied the devastation.
Benjamin handed him the slops bucket.
“’Ard t’ believe I know, Sergeant,” said Mrs Prune, tucking the stray hairs from her bun back into some semblance of order. “But that thing in there was thirty-odd foot long a few minutes ago.”
Jack watched the sad little animal parading the extent of its prison. He was reminded of the Sea Monkeys advertised in the comic books of his youth.
“’Ard to believe perhaps, Madam,” he muttered. “But these days I’m prepared to go along with anythin’.”
That might not strictly have been accurate.
Even Jack Partridge, who over his many years in the Greyminster police had seen enough Fortean happenings to convince Reverend Fanthorpe to bin his dog-collar, would have been hard pushed to accept what was happening down Garrison Street.
In the little-girl’s room at number nineteen Mrs Wainthrop was having her few remaining marbles removed.
A collection of jackdaws, stuffed weasles and anthropomorphic vegetables were binding the old woman to the cistern with a length of rope.
Ethyl had managed to stop her from screaming by stuffing a large pair of spotted knickers into her mouth. Then she had stuck her lips together with masking tape.
Strapped to Mrs Wainthrop’s shoulders was the atom bomb. It was purring quietly to itself.
The Martian was resting on one elbow on the floor. Every so often it would scratch its head with an elegant quill and then return to its crudely written letter.
Although it hadn’t made much headway, this is what was written so far:
Councillor Ordenshaw. Here are our demands, to be met implicitly and in full otherwise we shall set off Mrs Wainthrop and take the whole of Greyminster with us:
The alien scratched its head again, leaving a scribble of blue ink across the crown. Then it started to think about exactly what those demands should be.
Chapter Eleven: Of Homecomings and Hodges
There was the rattle of a key inside a lock. Actually, it was more like the rattle of several keys inside a lock, each one that didn’t fit being pushed around the ring so that another could be tried in its place. At length a crack of moonlight spilled across the overloaded hat-stand in Nesbit’s porch. A Macintosh-shaped silhouette squeezed through the opening.
A crash of shoes, coats and luggage! The screech of a cat taking flight from beneath Nesbit’s boots! Grumbling, he disentangled himself from the jumble and hunted for the light switch. Eventually the room was lit. With scarves and body-warmers dowsed liberally about his person, he continued through the living room door.
It had been a long day. The increasingly ridiculous case was no closer to being solved. And Nesbit was tired.
Moments later, unwinding in his customary manner, Nesbit found himself perched on the toilet, trousers round his ankles and his copy of ‘True Detective Stories’ on his knees. It was opened at the cartoon supplement.
“Had a difficult day, Reg?” The voice was delivered with such disarming familiarity that Nesbit dropped his pipe. It vanished into the bowl with a rattle.
The curtain surrounding the old fashioned bathtub inched backwards. Chief Inspector Edith Nesbit’s shower-cap peered out of the gap. She was buried beneath a mountain of bubbles the likes of which her husband could only have dreamed of generating. Even after a second helping of Homicide Division sprouts.
“Evenin’ Ma’am.” Reginald recollected himself and tried again. “I mean Edee...you’re home early.”
“The conference disintegrated into shambles.” Edith gathered a shrub of froth and blew it lethargically towards her toes performing a Mexican wave at the far end of the tub. “Only to be expected really. You can’t have a debate about racism in the police force without inviting any coloured bobbies to take part.”
She pursed one eyebrow at her husband who was trying to avoid a noisy splash.
“I believe you’ve got a bit of a situation happening yourself?”
“You could say that!” Nesbit sucked in his cheeks as though somehow that would help his discomfort.
“Of course you’re headed in entirely the wrong direction,” Edith continued, unaware that Nesbit was trying to stop anything heading in any direction whatsoever. “That Miss Duvall woman is just a victim of unfortunate circumstances.”
She noticed the pained expression across his face and misread the signals.
“I took the liberty of checking the case notes earlier. There are a few more points to be taken into consideration. For example...”
Nesbit was turning the colour of beetroot now.
“Were you aware that Superintendent Hodges’ wife has been unable to locate him for the past four nights?”
“Nnnngh...” grunted Nesbit.
Edith took his response as a ‘no’ and plunged on, scrubbing her toenails with the loofah.
“If I were you I’d concentrate my efforts on finding out exactly what the Super’s up to...are you alright there, Reg?”
“I’d be eternally grateful, Ma’am...” Nesbit forced the words out through gritted teeth. “If y’ could just let me finish off me business f’r a moment.”
Edith coughed and tugged the curtains closed discreetly. “Sorry Reginald...wasn’t thinking.”
A wall of splashing emerged from the tub in an attempt to curtail Nesbit’s further embarrassment.
“Perhaps when you’ve completed the paperwork we could give Piglet some exercise?”
As some of the more observant readers are no doubt aware our tangled tale has moved forwards since the previous chapter. Night had fallen over Greyminster, tucking itself into the corners of the mill town.
It was a crisp night. The air crackled and everywhere was as brittle as icing sugar.
Along Greyminster High Street the shops had pulled down their shutters. Now the grouping of trees beside the recently refurbished lavatories stood black and forlorn against the pinpricked heavens.
Pip lifted the police tape surrounding the building. Then she struggled to untangle her hair from it whilst, simultaneously, holding it above her head so that Flinders could get underneath.
“So how exactly did you lose your leg?” the genial Goth asked in what was supposed to be a whisper. The question was designed partially to break the tension, but also because she felt it was a good way of showing concern.
“I told you already! A rabbit in a waistcoat stole it.”
Despite Flinders being seated Pip had to stretch to her full height to keep the ribbon above him.
“I meant originally,” Pip went on, regretting having brought the subject up. “Mrs Dunwoody, ’oo lives next door to me mum, she reckons you lost it in an accident with a motorbike.”
“Been a lot of speculation about it, has there?” Flinders snapped, not exactly predisposed to talk about the subject. “If you really must know I was born this way. Something genetic! Doctor Driscal explained it to me once but it was all goobledy gook. I just put it down to another of life’s great balls ups and left it at that!”
“I was only asking...” muttered Pip, her hair moving gently in and out to the rhythm of her lips.
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��People are always asking!” Flinders brushed her hands aside roughly as she tried to take hold of his wheelchair. “Bloody nosy buggers! Have you any idea what it’s like having to grow up with everyone staring at you?”
Ironically Pip had.
Even before she’d started her campaign to reintroduce the nineteenth century gypsy look to the unfashionable streets of Greyminster, people had patted her on the head and said things to her mother such as, “Fifteen? Never? I’d have said she was eight at the very most.”
“Condescending!”
Thump went the wheels against the uni-sex-but-anti-handicapped doorstep.
“Pitying!”
Thud went the back tyres as Flinders swung himself through the doorway.
“Bastards!” he concluded, all four wheels now squeaking across the floor.
If Pip had fancied Flinders before, she now had a new admiration for him. Following his chair inside, she parted her hair and discovered the room was much too dark to see anything.
“I didn’t have the greatest of childhoods either,” she muttered softly, fumbling for the wall. “My father used to call me his pepperpot. You can’t understand how much that hurt.”
Despite her insistence to the contrary she was hoping that Flinders would.
Unfortunately the only retort was a belch from the darkness.
“There’s no need for that!”
“It wasn’t me...” replied Flinders, affronted. “There’s something wrong with the plumbing in here. Let’s just check out the pipes, find what we’re looking for, and then get out.”
The room began to vibrate. The haunting strains of ‘Rule Britannia’ filled their ears as the toilet bowls extemporised. After a deal of shuffling and clanking, Pip’s voice rang out.
“I think I’ve got it.”
In her podgy hand, although it was too dark to decipher, she clutched a note. The sort of note that wouldn’t have been out of place in Miss Duvall’s collection.
This is what it read:
“Eight: Fish Supper. Travel East along Grimsby Road for twenty yards. Turn North and follow Albion Close for ten yards.”