‘Yeah.’
Time was running out for Joshua Jones.
He’d had five days to pay back Lenin, his mum’s dealer, and had wasted four of them cutting back bushes in Churchill Park. There was nothing left to sell other than the TV, which was the only thing that kept his housebound mother from going insane.
Josh tried to free the machete from the trunk of the stupid bush, but it wouldn’t budge. It was like that with his life right now — nothing was going right for him. He just needed a break, for fate or destiny or whatever it was that kept giving him the shitty end of the stick — to just look the other way and deal out some good luck. He’d spent the last few days trying to think of a scheme that would make him a quick £3,000, but his options were limited: cars, bikes, phones — they were all risky, and he couldn’t afford to get caught again. This was his ‘last life’, as his offender manager had pointed out: the next offence would end up with him getting locked up for real — prison time — and he couldn’t bear the thought of leaving his mum on her own, not in her condition.
A month ago he had been caught in someone’s shed. It was supposed to have been a quick job, a couple of mountain bikes worth at least £2,000 each. It had been a stupid, spur-of-the-moment thing, which his mate Billy had said they could split fifty-fifty. But Josh should have known better than to trust Billy; he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box and hadn’t scoped it out properly. There’d been a dog, a big one, and it had taken a chunk of Billy’s backside and trapped Josh inside the shed until the police arrived.
He could tell the owners weren’t that impressed when they discovered he was on first-name terms with the cops who showed up.
At least they knew not to call his mum.
The blade refused to budge.
The morning sun had reached his end of the park, and it was getting warm — sweat had begun to trickle down his back. The kit they issued for community work was too cold in winter and too hot in summer, but he wasn’t about to take his top off like the others — he had his reasons, and the lack of tattoos was only one of them.
Josh gave up and stood back to review his work. The bush was definitely winning. It showed little evidence of his attempts to tame it while he was covered in scratches. Turning round, he saw that the other members of the crew were all sitting on the grass, smoking and playing with their phones. There was a mixture of newbies and old-timers — mostly from Lenin’s gang — all paying for some stupid mistake. Josh had been here many times; he didn’t try to make friends or swap stories any more — he just kept his head down and let his reputation do the work for him.
Their supervisor, Mr Bell, or ‘Bell-end’ as they all liked to call him, was talking to one of the yummy mummies over by the kids’ playground. It was a beautiful autumn morning, and Churchill Park was filling up with young families enjoying the last of the good weather. The Salvation Army was out tidying up the flowerbeds around the war memorial in preparation for VE Day, which seemed a bit pointless. After seventy years he doubted there would be many actual veterans left to turn out for it.
It was an old Victorian square; a park surrounded on three sides by large houses, the kind of homes his mother dreamed of — beautiful old three-storey townhouses with big bay windows, spacious rooms and long gardens. A far cry from the fifth-floor flat the council had given them.
Still, he knew this park well — it had been one of his favourite routes to school. He’d explored every part of it: where the gaps in the railings were for a quick exit, the hidden places where the junkies left their stashes of used needles and the dense shrubberies that made perfect hideouts for when you wanted to bunk off lessons, which was ironically the main reason the council had ordered them to be chopped back.
It also happened to overlook the road where the local crazy man lived.
‘The Colonel’, as the kids had nicknamed him, lived at no. 42. It was an easy house to spot as the unkempt jungle of a front garden stood out like a festering thumb compared to all the other neatly manicured hedges along the rest of the street. The man was something of a hoarder — his house and gardens were packed with all manner of junk. No one really knew if he was ex-military, but the nickname came from the dark green army greatcoats he would wear in all weathers. He was something of a local legend and his house, an eyesore for his long-suffering neighbours, was an inevitable draw for the local kids when it came to dares.
Suddenly, as if he’d summoned the old man, the colonel appeared at his front door, his long coat catching on a stack of metal pots and pans and sending them clattering down the steps. His appearance was as disorganised as his house, his hair its usual matted mess and his beard looked like things were living in it. If you met him on the street, you’d think he was homeless, not the owner of a house on one of the most expensive streets in town.
The colonel muttered to himself as he consulted an old fob watch, shook it and looked up at the sky, like a ship’s navigator checking the position of the sun. He put the watch away, pulled out a tatty old notebook and took a pencil from behind his ear. Licking his finger, he flicked through the book until he found the relevant page and hastily scribbled something onto it. As he closed the book, it seemed to disappear, like a magic trick. Flicking his long scarf over his shoulder, he marched down the steps to the front gate, took a moment to decide which way to go and then marched off down the street with an old lady’s wheeled shopping bag clattering along behind him.
The front door swung back on its hinges unnoticed by the old man as he disappeared round the corner.
Josh knew he’d never get a better opportunity; it was too good a chance to pass up. He whistled to the gang sitting on the grass and one of them, the most junior by the look of his tattoos, eventually got up and sauntered over.
‘Whatsup, Crash?’
Josh put his foot against the tree, yanked the blade out and handed it to the kid.
‘I need to disappear for five minutes. You need to be me.’ He took off his hi-vis jacket and threw it at the younger boy. ‘Put this on and go work in the bush. Bell-end won’t notice you’re missing.’
Thirty seconds later, Josh was through the nearest gap in the railings and out onto the street.
As a kid, he had sat and watched the colonel’s house for hours. It had always fascinated him — not because of the usual playground nonsense about how the old man kept children in the basement or ate the local cats, but because there was something different about it. He couldn’t put his finger on what it was exactly, a kind of feeling that it was special — like a mystery or a secret. The hairs stood up on the back of his neck whenever he walked past it. Other kids had dared to go into the house (the colonel was notorious for forgetting to lock his doors) and reported that it was full of newspapers and smelt of urine; Josh doubted anyone had ever had the guts to venture further than a few steps into the hall.
Sixty seconds later he was through the front door of No. 42. He closed it gently and let his eyes adjust to the dim light of the hall. The others were wrong about the smell; it was a mixture of mildew, dust and decaying things, like a house that had never been cleaned, or the inside of a tomb.
His body tingled all over with pins and needles, as if the house were electrified.
The pale light of the sun failed against the gloom of the hall, turned away like an unwelcome guest. Josh paused to listen for sounds of anyone else in the house, but there were none.
The hallway was narrower than he expected, stacks of old newspapers were piled up to the ceiling along both sides. As he moved along, he spotted the remnants of old pieces of furniture poking out through the paper. Small manila envelopes with long numbers scrawled on them were tucked in random points along the stacks. There was no doubt that the old man had a problem with throwing stuff away — he was a first-class hoarder. Josh estimated there were literally thousands of editions of The Times crammed along the walls.
The stairs had received a similar treatment; each step had become another shelf brimming with old books,
leaving only the smallest of pathways up through the stacks. He had considered trying upstairs — small valuable stuff tended to be kept in bedrooms — but the cluttered staircase would make it slow going and time wasn’t on his side. So instead he continued down the hall towards the back of the house, scanning the cluttered shelves for anything that would fit in his pocket.
There was something weird about the way old people collected so much stuff. His grandfather used to have a shed at the bottom of his garden packed with jam jars full of various-sized nuts, bolts and bits from old TVs. Josh had never understood what the point of keeping it was — Grandad never used any of them, but he would spend every spare moment in that shed taking something apart and storing the various components in their relevant jars. His nan used to call them his ‘dust collectors’.
A Welsh dresser had been squeezed into the space under the stairs. Its shelves had been reinforced with large metal nails to hold the weight of all the battered old tins that sat precariously on them. There were square metal boxes with faded images of tea plantations or Bisto gravy logos; each was crammed full of random things. His eye caught the unmistakable glint of gold from the top of one marked ‘Valkyrie 44’. Josh tentatively lifted the golden object, careful not to disturb any of the surrounding clutter. It was a medal from World War II; the writing round the edges looked like German, and it was a heavy, the kind of heavy that spoke of quality. It probably wouldn’t pay off the whole debt, but it would be definitely be enough to get Lenin off his back for a few more weeks.
He looked closer at the other tins and realised that each had its own yellowing label with a year scratched on it in pencil. There was no logic to the collection; some were stuffed with an assortment of old pens, others looked like spare parts for watches, one even had what seemed to be human hair.
The chance of finding more treasure was ended by a noise from the front garden — like a bear wrestling with a dustbin, the colonel had come back. As the front door creaked, Josh moved stealthily along the hallway and into the kitchen. The door to the back garden was wide open, and he bolted through it, hardly noticing the spotless, orderly table laid with a china tea service before he was taking the back steps two at a time down towards the garden.
Time seemed to slow as he descended and somewhere off in the distance he could hear music, an old-fashioned tinny gramophone sound. As his foot left the bottom step, the medal began to tingle in his hand. Ribbons of light were beginning to unravel from it, draining the colour from the world around him. The music grew louder, and he felt himself being pulled in many directions at once. He lost his balance and his grip tightened reflexively on the medal.
Closing his eyes, he felt the floor drop away from him and he instinctively put his free hand out to brace for the impact, but there was none. Instead, his fingers found a cold tiled wall.
3
1944
[Wolf’s Lair, Eastern Prussia. Date: 1944-20-07]
There’d been a few times in Josh’s life when he’d blanked out, lost moments or even entire evenings — usually due to alcohol. Worst case would normally involve waking in someone’s front garden or their shed, not in an underground washroom of the Third Reich.
The walls were covered with dark green and white tiles. On one side there was a line of white porcelain washbasins with gold taps and along the other was a series of wooden cubicles. The hand towels were neatly folded to ensure the embossed swastikas were prominently displayed.
The music he had heard was playing through a metal grilled speaker on the wall above his head. It too had the familiar symbol of the Nazi war machine.
Josh’s stomach lurched. He felt disorientated, off balance, the way you got from reading in the car. The overpowering smell of the toilets finally caught up with his other senses and he felt the clammy cold sweat that told him he had seconds to get to the toilet.
He pushed open the nearest stall to find himself staring into the face of a Nazi officer in full dress uniform. The man was staring at him in amazement, which was when Josh realised that he was totally naked.
The officer was every inch a classic German villain, including eye patch and leather-gloved hand. The gun he pulled out of his holster looked every bit the real thing.
There was a briefcase at the officer’s feet that Josh had knocked out of his hand with the door, and its contents had spilled onto the floor. It was a mess of wires, waxed paper cylinders and what looked like a timer. Part of Josh thought he should apologise and offer to help collect it up, but he changed his mind when the officer pointed the gun at Josh’s head and proceeded to use his gloved hand to scoop everything back into the case. Josh could see from the way he used it that it was artificial.
His nausea was forgotten in an instant, replaced by a cold knot of fear: the kind you experience when a loaded gun is being pointed at you — especially one that was so close that even a one-eyed man had little chance of missing.
Suddenly there was a loud knocking from the door marked ‘AUSGANG’ at the other end of the room. It was quickly followed by: ‘Herr General? Der Führer erwünscht Ihre sofortige Anwesenheit!’
The officer swore under his breath, holstered the gun and picked up the case with his good hand. He pushed past Josh and walked to the door. Before he opened it, he looked back and shook his head in disbelief.
In his rush to leave, Josh noticed that the officer had left one of the wax cylinders behind.
The lights in the washroom flickered and went out and Josh was standing back on the lawn in the garden of No. 42, naked, his clothes a few feet behind him in a crumpled heap. In his hand he was still holding the medal, which glowed every so faintly.
What the hell just happened?
Adrenalin was coursing through his veins as Josh’s mind started searching for a rational explanation, trying to process what he had just experienced, but the smell of toilets and a final wave of disorientation got the better of him and his stomach heaved; he fell to his knees, relieving himself of what remained of his breakfast.
As the nausea receded, he noticed the grass under his palms had been recently mowed — which he found really odd considering the state of the front garden. His eyes slowly adjusted to the brightness of daylight and he wiped his mouth as he sat back on his haunches. He filled his lungs with a deep breath of cool air and waited for the queasiness to subside. Josh realised then that the back garden was immaculately maintained, like something from the Chelsea Flower Show — another one of his mother’s favourites. He looked back to check that he hadn’t landed in a different garden, but the house behind him was definitely the colonel’s.
A shadow passed across one of the upper windows, as if someone was watching him, and Josh instinctively grabbed his clothes and bolted for the back fence.
4
Returned
Mr Bell was waiting for Josh when he appeared from the bushes. He was holding Josh’s Hi-Vis with an expression that fell somewhere between dismay and disappointment — it was a face Josh had grown accustomed to seeing on every adult he had ever had to deal with.
Josh could see the idiot he’d asked to cover for him, standing behind Mr Bell with a smug grin on his spotty face. Delland had obviously gone to the supervisor the moment Josh had left the park — knowing full well that it would result in him getting extra time. It was a challenge of sorts, a dare to score some respect from the others. Josh had met his type before, the over-ambitious mouthy ones that always got you into trouble.
‘Having a little problem with your bladder, Mr Jones?’ his supervisor asked sarcastically.
‘No, sir,’ Josh replied, squaring up to Mr Bell and staring directly into his eyes. Josh was taller than the man and more than capable of taking him down. ‘Is there a problem? I told twat-face to let you know,’ he added, nodding towards Delland. ‘I wasn’t gone more than five minutes.’
‘Ten actually,’ Bell responded, his eyes looking agitatedly from one side to the other. Josh had learned the staring technique from Lenin years ago
. It intimidated people, and anyone who couldn’t hold it had already lost.
‘Ten!’ Josh could have sworn he had been away for longer. ‘Is there a law against that?’
‘Well, legally you’re under my supervision during the s-s-service,’ Bell started to stutter.
Josh continued to stay in his face. ‘So you’re going to do what exactly?’
‘W-w-well, I should report this.’ Josh shifted his weight as if preparing to fight. ‘B-but as this is o-obviously Delland’s mistake I think we can overlook it this time.’
Josh nodded and walked towards Delland as the others watched carefully, expecting a fight.
‘Crash, I didn’t mean nothing,’ Delland whimpered as Josh approached.
‘No, of course you didn’t,’ Josh said, holding out his hand. ‘No hard feelings?’
Delland took the hand nervously and Josh gripped it tightly as he leaned in to whisper: ‘Next time, I’ll leave the machete in your leg.’
As Josh trudged towards home, he could feel the weight of the medal in his coat pocket — he didn’t dare touch it, but the constant thudding against his leg brought back visions of the officer in the washroom. He was trying to convince himself that it was a flashback — a result of smoking too much dope when he was younger. His friends were always talking about the weird experiences they had months afterwards — but he hadn’t touched anything in over a year and it felt too real to be a hallucination. Even if it was, why would his subconscious conjure up some Nazi officer in a toilet? And what was he doing with a bomb in his suitcase anyway?
There were too many questions flying around in his head, and no way to answer them. He considered going back to the colonel and asking him about where he got the medal, except that would involve admitting that he’d stolen it in the first place.
Josh tried to focus on the more immediate problems, like offloading the medal and settling up with Lenin for good. He would take it to Eddy, the local fence — who would shaft him on the price, but Josh had little choice. Everyone who went to Eddy was desperate.
The Infinity Engines Books 1-3 Page 2
