What Time Devours

by A. J. Hartley

  But as a kid Thomas had dreamed up all kinds of absurd superstitions: that it would be a good day if he did not look back until he reached the bus stop, that three cardinals in the tree outside his house meant that his parents would get home early, that avoiding cracks in the sidewalk really kept his mother’s back from breaking . . . or something. It was usually vague, privately gleeful, something he never discussed because he knew that to put it into words would make it stupid. Now a small, unreasoning part of him clung to the childish certainty that if he could get these wholly unconnected things right, then other things would follow suit. Unravel one set of knots—Escolme, Shakespeare, champagne—and the one he couldn’t untie—Kumi—would somehow resolve itself. Stupid, he knew, but still . . .

  So he rang Elsbeth Church’s front door hoping that she would not be in.

  She wasn’t, which was a relief of several kinds, and he was able to move quickly around the back, looking for an open window, or a flimsy door. A coal hatch was too much to hope for, but there was no sign of an alarm system. The house across the street looked quiet and the curtains didn’t twitch when he looked at it.

  Now or never.

  Thomas checked his wallet and fished out an expired MasterCard. He worked the corner of the plastic into the crack between the jamb and the back door. He had never tried this before, and wasn’t sure what he was doing, but he pressed the card hard against the latch and was amazed at how easily it snapped free. He opened the door, heard no beeping or barking, and stepped inside.

  He smelled it instantly, that aroma of damp earth and leaves, and something muskier underneath it, something animal. It made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle.

  He was in a stone-flagged kitchen that looked like it hadn’t been upgraded since the turn of the last century. It was clean but spartan, boasting no implement that postdated the Second World War. Ancient iron cookware and heavy knives were laid out on a scrubbed stone counter. Thomas turned and flinched as he brushed up against something that shifted, something that seemed to generate that outdoors scent, but underwritten with a darker note: blood.

  He flinched away before realizing what it was.

  From a ceiling rack hung two gutted rabbits, head, eyes, and fur intact.

  Thomas backed away from them, steadying his nerves with an effort.

  He moved quickly from room to room, and the smell followed him. Every room was the same, swept and dustless spaces without character. They were like those rooms in castles, uneven plaster walls and open wood or stone floors with a few hulking pieces of rough-hewn furniture. There were no pictures on the walls, no drapes, no paint other than the default whitewash, no TV, no couch, no shades on the light-bulbs, no carpet, no sound system of any kind. It could have been a house from four hundred years ago, except that Thomas would have expected the period to somehow stamp itself on the place: a piece of tapestry, an obsolete tool, an inkwell . . . Something. This place had no period, no context. It was a space in time.

  All but two rooms.

  One was where Elsbeth wrote. It was still spare but there was an absolutely modern computer sitting silently on the desk, and there was a Concise English Dictionary beside it. On a pine shelf was a complete Shakespeare and a set of her own books. Nothing by anyone else.

  The other fully furnished room was upstairs. It was unlocked. As soon as he stepped inside, Thomas was sure that this was Pippa Church’s—or rather Pippa Adams’s—room, but it couldn’t have been further from Alice Blackstone’s. The shock of it rooted Thomas to the spot. For a long moment, all he could do was stare, gazing around the walls in horror.

  The room was papered with details of the school fire. There were newspaper cuttings circled and underlined in red. There were grainy, faded pictures of the funeral, stoic mourners in black and stunned locals with out-of-fashion raincoats and umbrellas. There was a photocopied blueprint of the school hall, with red felt-pen arrows indicating, Thomas assumed, the path of the flames. There were evidence memos tacked up, crime scene pictures, even a pathology report that talked in terrible, clinical terms about “smoke inhalation” and “extensive postmortem burns.” Only one thing tied the room to Alice’s. Over the coverless bed was the same XTC album cover, the white horse outlined against green.

  Thomas left.

  In thirty seconds, he was down the stairs, through the rancid kitchen, and out, sucking in the cool, misty air and fighting the impulse to throw up.

  But standing out there beneath a vast horse chestnut, Thomas knew he had seen something, that the visit hadn’t merely been a violation of Church’s terrible monument to her daughter’s death. The pictures of the funeral had shown the childless parents as a confused huddle, as if segregated from the others by grief. At the edge of that group, not quite of it, but somehow in it, was a quarter-century-younger Randall Dagenhart.

  He felt a rush of exultation. His hunch had been right, and he had managed to prove it without climbing out windows and over rooftops like some overgrown chimp . . .

  Thomas started to turn exactly as the hand clapped his shoulder. He flinched, but the hand was heavy and its grip was firm. He heard the voice before he saw the man:

  “All right there, son?”

  He was a large man—his shoulders looked a yard apart—and he had short red hair and pale eyes. He was wearing a black jersey and a peaked cap with a black-and-white diced band around the headband.

  A policeman. There was another behind him.

  “What?” said Thomas, half feigned innocence, half genuine surprise.

  “Neighbor reported a strange car,” said the policeman. “Is that your house, sir?”

  “Er, no,” said Thomas, looking past them to the house over the road where the net curtains were now being held open.

  “Can you tell me what you’re doing here?”

  “I was just . . .”

  Thomas’s mind went blank.

  “I was passing,” he said.

  “Were you passing through the house?” said the policeman. “Only I just saw you come out.”

  “Sorry,” said Thomas, “I was hoping Miss Church would be in, but . . .”

  “I’m afraid you’re nicked, mate,” he said, smiling as if at a private joke.

  “I’m sorry,” Thomas began. “Nicked . . . ?”

  But the policeman cut him off in measured, no-nonsense terms, and he wasn’t smiling anymore.

  “I’m arresting you for suspected burglary. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defense if you do not mention, when questioned, something that you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Please step this way.”

  PART IV

  When I consider every thing that grows

  Holds in perfection but a little moment,

  That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows

  Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;

  When I perceive that men as plants increase,

  Cheered and checked even by the self-same sky,

  Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,

  And wear their brave state out of memory;

  Then the conceit of this inconstant stay

  Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,

  Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay,

  To change your day of youth to sullied night;

  And all in war with Time for love of you,

  As he takes from you, I engraft you new.

  —Shakespeare, “Sonnet 15”

  CHAPTER 80

  Thomas was walked to an inappropriately cheery “panda” car—white with borders of blue and white checks but slashed with luminous yellow and red—handcuffed to the second officer, and given a seat in the back. It was a small car, a toy by American standards, but the situation more than made up for that. Thomas was in trouble.

  As they drove the rural roads to the Newbury police station, Thomas tried to figure out just how much trouble. In any circumstances, an arrest was bad news, but i
n a foreign country, he thought, it could be devastating. He knew he wouldn’t be tortured or beaten in an English cell, or thrown into prison indefinitely, but he suspected he had just walked into difficulties of another kind, difficulties that were likely to cost him money and dignity at the very least.

  And time. How long would it take to straighten this all out? Days? Weeks?

  God, he thought, what a screwup.

  “Listen,” he said, “I really didn’t do anything. I know Miss Church. I talked to her just the other day. This is crazy . . .”

  But the two policemen said nothing, and though a part of him wanted to laugh off the absurdity of the thing, the surreal feel of it all was starting to settle like lead in his gut. As they approached the station—a nondescript brick building as unassuming as the car—and the road swelled with houses, shops, and traffic, Thomas found himself huddling lower in the seat, staring ahead to avoid the eyes of the people they passed. A woman with a blue plastic stroller gave them a long look as they stopped at a traffic light, and Thomas looked down, feeling stupid and humiliated.

  Inside, the custody sergeant listened to the account of the arrest, then asked for his name.

  “What was that, sir?”

  “Knight,” said Thomas, conscious that he was muttering. “Thomas Knight.”

  “And I’ll need some form of identification.”

  Thomas fished in his pockets and drew out wallet and passport.

  “A visitor from overseas?” said the sergeant, pleasantly, as if Thomas were clearing customs at Gatwick. The redhaired officer who had arrested him gave him a long look.

  “If you will just empty your pockets,” said the custody sergeant, “remove all jewelry, your belt, and your shoelaces, then you can step through there.”

  Thomas stared at him.

  “I really didn’t do anything,” he said. “I just wanted to see if . . .”

  “Your belt, please, sir.”

  Thomas was in a daze. His fingers didn’t work properly. He had to focus on them as they unfastened the belt buckle, watching them as if they belonged to someone else.

  “And your shoelaces, please, sir.”

  “That really isn’t necessary,” Thomas began.

  “I’m afraid it is, sir.”

  Thomas’s gaze faltered and shifted.

  This can’t be happening.

  “I’m going to check your pockets now, sir.”

  He did so.

  “You are entitled to call your consulate prior to your interview if you wish.”

  Thomas shook his head quickly. He wasn’t sure why, but he didn’t want to talk to anyone about what had happened, and he certainly didn’t want to draw attention from home to his idiocy. If nothing else, it could cost him his job, though in truth he wasn’t being that practical right now. He just couldn’t stand the idea of admitting what he’d done to some official to whom it would be a stupid inconvenience.

  “And you understand why you have been detained?”

  He nodded.

  “Burglary,” he said. “I didn’t take anything, but, yes.”

  “Burglary doesn’t necessarily involve theft,” said the custody sergeant. “But it is a Crown court indictment punishable with up to fourteen years’ jail time.”

  Thomas, who had lowered his eyes, looked up again.

  “Sure you don’t want to talk to your consulate?” said the sergeant.

  Thomas thought, then shook his head again, slower this time.

  Fourteen years . . . ?

  His eyes closed.

  He was photographed and fingerprinted, each finger individually rolled, then the palms of both hands. He washed his hands but couldn’t rinse off the ink. The sergeant gave him a cloth impregnated with methylated spirit, which got the ink out from everywhere but under his nails but left a sharp, alcoholic stench that he couldn’t get rid of, even with more washing. He was searched. He was shown to what the duty sergeant called—sarcastically or not, he couldn’t tell—the “custodial suite.” It was a small room, perhaps ten feet by twelve with a single narrow window—barred and with unusually heavy glass—above head height: a cell.

  He stepped inside, and was about to say something—what, he didn’t know, just something—when the heavy metal door swung clanging shut behind him.

  A spy hole in the door slid open and the sergeant said,

  “I’ll be by to check on you.”

  Then he was gone.

  The room was brick, but painted with a thick gloss paint the color of mantling cream. The floor was concrete. There was a long solid structure against one wall that was obviously supposed to be a bed, though it was really a brick platform—part of the structure of the room—on which lay a stained mattress covered with rubberized plastic. There was a toilet in an alcove, which was flushed remotely from outside. Suddenly Thomas found he wanted to use it, but couldn’t bring himself to do so. He considered calling for assistance, but couldn’t bear the idea of speaking to anyone.

  CHAPTER 81

  They came for him about a half hour later.

  “This way, please, sir,” said the sergeant.

  Thomas smiled weakly at their politeness, then looked down as he followed them. He still felt stunned, drained of energy, of fight, by a sense of guilt and stupidity. He thought of Kumi and shrugged the image away, barely holding in a groan of horror and shame.

  They took him to another room, this one with a large silver tape recorder labeled Neal Interview Recorder 7000 Series. It contained two sets of spools. There was a mirror on one wall and a camera in the corner on a ceiling bracket. There was a table with four chairs of thin tubular steel with wooden seats and backs, almost exactly the kind of chairs he had in his Evanston classroom.

  A young man in shirtsleeves was already inside. Thomas was motioned into the chair next to him. He shot Thomas a quick look and then returned his gaze to a sheet of paper. The sergeant didn’t sit, but stood by the door like a guard.

  The officer who had arrested him produced two reels of tape.

  “Please confirm that these are sealed,” he said, looking at Thomas.

  “What?”

  “The tape reels. Can you confirm that they are sealed?”

  Thomas looked at them and then at the officer, as if he had been asked to perform some complex conjuring trick.

  “I guess so,” he said.

  The policeman turned on the recorder.

  “This interview is being recorded and is taking place in an interview room at Newbury Police Station,” he said, in the flat monotone of someone who has said the same thing a thousand times before. “If your case is brought to trial, this recording may be given in evidence. At the end of the interview I shall give you a notice explaining what will happen to the tapes and how you can obtain a copy. The time by my watch is five thirty-five P.M. and the date is the twenty-first of June, 2008. I am Sergeant Jeff Hodges, the arresting officer. I am accompanied by the Custody Sergeant Harry Philips. Since the suspect is not a British citizen, a solicitor—Mr. Devan Cummings—has been provided for him. If this is not acceptable, the suspect can request other counsel.”

  He gave Thomas an expectant look. Thomas, belatedly, shook his head.

  “The suspect has signified in the negative by shaking his head.”

  Thomas just looked at him. The whole thing was surreal, like he was in a TV show.

  “For the benefit of the tape,” Hodges went on, “could you please state your name, age, and address.”

  “Thomas Knight, age thirty-eight, 1247 Sycamore Street, Evanston, Illinois.”

  “That’s in the United States of America, is it, sir?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Could you please speak up a little, sir. For the tape.”

  “Right. Sorry.”

  “Do you agree that the people whose names I just gave are the only people in the room?”

  “Yes.”

  “A little louder, please, sir.”

  “Yes. They are the
only people in the room.”

  “The sheet of paper I am giving you now is the notice to persons being interviewed. Please review that now. If you have questions, the interview will be delayed until we have answered them to your satisfaction.”

  Thomas stared at the form but his mind could not take it in. He looked at Hodges.

  “May I proceed?” said the policeman.

  “Yes.”

  “Mr. Knight, you were arrested because you were seen coming out of a house that you do not own. Would you mind telling us what you were doing there?”

  Thomas had known since he had been picked up that this is where they would start, but he could still think of nothing to say. How was he supposed to explain that he was looking into the death of a child twenty-six years ago as a way of tracking two more recent killings and a lost Shakespeare play. It would seem absurd. No, worse than that. It would be absurd.

  I know not seems, he thought.

  For the first time since Escolme had called him, it all seemed completely preposterous, and the prospect of telling the story made him feel even more humbled.

  But tell it he did, slowly, haltingly, doubling back to clarify points, speaking in a hushed monotone, while the others sat in silence, listening. He gave them the names of Polinski in Evanston and Robson in Kenilworth, as if merely knowing officers of the law would help somehow, and he insisted that he had not taken anything from Elsbeth Church’s house, that he had merely looked and left.

  “Was the back door open?” said Hodges.

  Thomas hesitated, knowing that he had dodged this point before, that it was a fork in the road that would determine a great deal. If he admitted forcing the door, he would surely be charged. If he lied and said the door was open, he might walk, but he also might find himself in considerably deeper waters when Church swore she’d locked it behind her.

  “I tried it, and it opened,” he said.