All was quiet for the next fifteen minutes and Zachary almost nodded off. Suddenly, the lights of a car approaching from the north jerked him back into wakefulness and a short time later he watched as it pulled silently into the motel car park. Immediately it became clear that the driver did not want to attract undue attention because, as the car turned off the road, the driver extinguished the car’s headlights. With scarcely a sound, the car slid to a halt outside the room Nigel had earlier made ready.
He watched as a young woman jumped out of the car and went directly into the open room. It might have been his imagination, but he thought he caught the sound of her giggles as she closed the door. Almost immediately, the light in the office went out, the door opened and Nigel emerged. Zachary smiled as he watched the young man close the door behind him. Nigel was about to indulge in a little extra-curricular activity. With urgency registered in his every movement, Nigel hurried into the next-door cabin.
Zachary waited a further five minutes before he crept out of his room and carefully and quietly closed the door behind him. Not trusting the wooden walkway, he stepped out onto the car park and using the few cars that were parked there as cover, he approached the office. Moments later, he arrived outside cabin No 1 and pressed his ear was to the door. The light was still on inside and from the unmistakeable sounds that came from within, it was apparent that Nigel and his friend were already fully engaged.
Zachary tried the door to the office but, as he guessed might be the case, it was locked. Going around the back and stinging himself badly on some nettles as he did so, he found a window. It, too, was locked but he could see that it was secured with a comparatively cheap catch. Using one of the credit cards he found in his wallet, he managed, not without a struggle, to slide the catch back, doing little to improve his credit card in the process. The window slid up without a sound and fighting his unaccustomed flabby body, he squeezed himself inside, trying hard not to disturb the athletes who were performing so energetically next door.
The Register was not sitting on top of the desk where he hoped it would be but eventually he located it in a locked drawer beneath the desktop, which latter he was obliged to force. The crack as the wood split sounded to him like a pistol shot going off but the activity in the next room continued unabated. Opening the book and using only the starlight that filtered in through the windows, he quickly located the last page; the one containing all his details. Together with the three sheets immediately beneath, in case any tell-tale impressions were left behind, he tore them all out and folding them up carefully placed them in an inside pocket. He replaced everything as he had found it and using his handkerchief to remove his fingerprints from everything he might have touched, he left the room the way he had entered. The entire activity had lasted about ten minutes and he was sweating profusely. Fighting to control his breathing, he crept back to his own room where, after locking himself in and closing the curtains completely, he put on his light, He then had to wait a valuable few minutes more while it gathered strength to give out sufficient light for him to see what he was doing. He removed the torn pages from his pocket and there he was. Mr. Z. Storie, 17 Disraeli Street, Croydon; then followed a telephone number and what looked like the registration number of a car. Going to the window Zachary looked out at the car that was sitting immediately outside. Sure enough, it carried the same number, but what a wreck this one was compared to the brand new, top-of-the-range motors he normally drove. Life was not fair, he decided. He saw from the entry of his registration that he had already paid for his room so, making sure he had the car key handy, he made himself ready. Putting out the light, he picked up his bag and stepped out into the night.
The car started on the first attempt but he knew the racket it made was bound to attract the attention of the receptionist. He could only hope Nigel and his lady friend were at too critical a moment to be bothered by outside influences. In fact, Nigel was more of a sprinter than a marathon runner and was already half-way through his first cigarette when he heard the noise of Zachary’s car starting up. Believing that one of the guests might be stealing the TV or some of the bedding, he jumped to the window and looked out. Quick as he was, he was only in time to see a car without lights disappearing out of his car park.
Zachary had no idea where to go, so he headed home; not to the home of the body he now wore, but rather to the home of his mind and his memories. He was going home to Edinburgh. With his entire world turned upside down, he needed the assurance of his own family, his own house, and his own business to convince him that everything really was exactly as it should be in his carefully ordered world. Regardless of Houndsworth and those futile telephone calls of earlier in the evening, he simply could not bring himself to believe that all the people, places and things he knew so well were no more.
The car was short of petrol so he headed for the M74 where he guessed an all-night service station would still be in operation. By the time he arrived, the excitement and shock of the evening was beginning to take their toll. In fact, he was almost dead with tiredness and after filling up with petrol, and being utterly shocked by the price he had to pay, which was five times more expensive than he was used to paying, he staggered off into the service station’s restaurant to get himself a strong, black coffee. The coffee, too, was exorbitantly expensive, though nowhere in the same league as the petrol. Resignedly, he slumped quietly into a corner seat to drink it and to try, as best he could with his sleep-befuddled brain, to take stock of his situation.
By this time, and partly because he was in the warmth of a restaurant, which gave him a false sense of security, he could hardly keep his eyes open, added to which, his brain refused to cooperate. In his present state of distress, he knew that to continue his journey would be the height of folly. He would certainly fall asleep at the wheel and have an accident. The trouble was, it was now far too late to book into somewhere for what remained of the night. He also guessed that if he fell asleep in the restaurant, he might attract unwanted attention and, of course, the police might already be looking for him. After drinking his coffee, he returned to his car where he spent a restless, cold and uncomfortable night. As the day dawned and the sun came up, the interior of the car warmed up and he finally slept.
The quiet, almost deserted car park of the small hours of the morning was a different place when he awoke. The sound of a car door closing with a bang immediately next to him, accompanied by the sound of voices raised in laughter, dragged him from a deep slumber. The situation he found himself in confused his brain and only gradually did he return to the land of the living. Initially, his bleary eyes could see nothing because of a heavy condensation on the inside of the car’s windows that obscured his view to the outside. He ached all over and while, by no stretch of the imagination could he say he felt refreshed, he felt a damn sight better than earlier that same morning.
Groaning with self-pity he almost fell out of his car, much to the amusement of a group of weirdly dressed young people who were just getting out of a multicoloured van nearby. As he locked his car, from beneath lowered eyelashes he surreptitiously examined those oddities. There were four of them, two young men and two girls and all appeared to be in their late teens. The young men were dressed in what looked like torn and battered leather bits and pieces, and each carried an assortment of metal in his ears, nose and lips. Their hair, which, like their van, was multicoloured, stuck up in long spikes. The girls were similarly dressed except that they both exhibited bare midriffs that showed off yet more metalwork, this time in their navels. They also wore low cut blouses, which revealed tattoos all over the tops of their breasts. Zachary imagined they probably belonged to a circus.
While the youngsters made for the restaurant, Zachary made straight for the wash room. After relieving himself, he walked across to the hand-wash basins and looked in the mirror at the dreadful apparition peering back at him. To add to the general air of neglect he remembered from the previous evening when, presumably, the man he now
was, was at his best, after a night in his car his cheap clothes were now badly crumpled and he had a day’s growth of beard on his face. His eyes were bloodshot and, overall, he looked disgusting. By comparison, the four youngsters he had noticed on his way in now seemed positively wholesome.
Going back to his car, he rummaged about in his holdall until he found the electric razor he remembered throwing in the previous evening. Personally, he always used a wet shave because he felt it gave better results, but that morning, the electric razor was just what he needed. Even the condensation on the car’s windows was helpful, providing him with a measure of privacy while he shaved. Returning to the wash room he washed as best he could before finally entering the bustling restaurant to buy his breakfast. It was just as well he had earlier resigned himself to the extortionate price he would have to pay.
When he eventually returned to his car, the cold light of day not only revealed how rusty and clapped out it was on the outside, it also revealed how filthy it was inside. The car was smelly and ill-used but, much to his surprise, it did not let him down. He lost his way just once on the way to Edinburgh but that was because he was looking for the M75, which usually took him directly to Edinburgh’s Ring Road. He was unsure how he could have missed it and, instead, he travelled by way of the old country route to Edinburgh through Biggar. It was strange how familiar everything was but, at the same time, how utterly different it also appeared. It was only when he eventually arrived at the ring road, though semi-ring road might be a better description since it only runs around the southern half of the city of Edinburgh, that significant differences began to reveal themselves. Since he used it most days, he reckoned he knew the Ring Road like the back of his hand but the road he knew was very different from the road on which he now travelled. Cars, the makes of which he mostly failed to recognise, surrounded him; the road signs were different and everyone seemed to be in a tearing hurry. With a beating heart, he made for Barnton and home.
It would be wrong to suggest he was shocked when he discovered that his house and the road in which it used to be no longer existed. He had been forced to make major adjustments to who and what he was during the last twelve or so hours and by the time he arrived in Edinburgh he was fully resigned to his changed circumstances. In any case, his abortive attempts to telephone home the previous evening had prepared him for precisely such a situation. Nevertheless, reluctant to leave what he considered was his own stamping ground, for a while he wandered aimlessly around the familiar yet strange neighbourhood that, only yesterday, he had known so well and only decided to move on when he noticed someone watching him from behind a semi-closed curtain. He realized he must look extremely disreputable by this time and the good people of Barnton probably saw him as someone up to no good. Anxious not to attract the attention of the local police, he climbed back into his car and left what once had been the very centre of his life.
His family, his home and his business in Edinburgh were so intrinsic to who he was, he now felt utterly lost. Without them life would be meaningless. In any case, he reckoned he was far too old to start over again and nor did he want to. It was all so bloody unfair. By this time, he felt nothing but loathing for the other Zak Storie who, quite clearly, had been an utterly useless slob. What had he done that such a thing should happen to him? The only reason he decided not to end it all there and then was the thought, or hope, that, just as quickly, he might revert to what he'd been before.
Deep in thought, he drove out to Seafield to play out the final act in his personal tragedy. That it was a tragedy he had no doubt. He’d had it all, a lovely wife and family, wealth and success and all that, in an instant, had been exchanged for god only knew what. All he knew was, it was much less than he’d had twenty-four hours earlier. As he made his way through a now strange city, he wondered what had happened in this dimension to make him whatever he now was. He was also intrigued to know why the police and that fellow Sinclair were looking for him. The car smelled strongly of cigarette smoke and, absent mindedly, he once more lit up. This time, and despite all his better instincts, he relented and allowed his body to enjoy the nicotine it was craving. He needed all the help he could get.
On his way out to Seafield, and even though he had travelled the route for many years, he still managed to get lost twice. This was partly because the road system was subtly different and because the route he remembered from the day before was now so run-down by comparison, the many new sights that greeted him, repeatedly shocked him. Even the smell of the place seemed different.
When he reached it, he was not surprised to see that Seafield Road was also very different from his recent memory of the place. Interestingly, it was still full of car showrooms but there the similarity ended. In his dimension, Seafield Road was a prestigious site attracting high property prices. In this dimension, it seemed to be a reclaimed, brown site on the edge of the Forth estuary. Even the showrooms were different, being far less substantial and low-tech in design than they were in his old dimension. There was no sign of Galveston Ford and where his substantial business had once stood there was now a large used car agency chock full of all sorts of different makes of cars. Further along the road, he spotted a name he recognised from his own dimension. The name Freddy Cromarty was one he knew well. But even here there was a difference. In his dimension, the Cromarty family ran a Rootes Group agency. In his current dimension Freddy Cromarty headed a Vauxhall agency. Zachary wondered if the owner was still the same. Anxious to make contact with anyone he had previously known, he drove into the car park and was scarcely out of his car before a cruising salesman homed in on him.
‘Good afternoon sir. Looking for a new motor, are we?’ he said casting a critical eye over the old Vauxhall Zachary was driving. Zachary’s somewhat dishevelled appearance was no disincentive to the man, who was smartly dressed. Zachary guessed he was in his early twenties
‘Good afternoon,’ Zachary replied. Then, before committing himself, he looked around at the cars on display. They were all unfamiliar models as far as he was concerned and the ones sitting out in the open were mostly second-hand vehicles. They all had price tags in their front windscreens that made him gasp. They seemed unbelievably expensive when compared with similar cars in his old dimension. Clearly, he needed to make substantial adjustments.
‘I’ve been out of the country for a few years so I’m completely out of touch with British cars as well as with British prices. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind giving me a quick run through that one over there.’ He pointed to a year-old Vauxhall Frontera.
‘You may have been out of the country but you’ve obviously got a good eye for a bargain, sir.’ The salesman was all smiles and smarm. ‘That’s the Frontera, that is, sir; generally regarded as being one of the finest off-road vehicles built today. But that’s not all; in addition to its fine, distinctive looks, if you bought this car, you’d also have an extremely capable motorway cruiser.’ Opening the car's door, he invited Zachary to sit inside.
‘And where, may I ask, were you when you were out of the country, sir?’
‘I’ve spent quite a few years in the other hemisphere.’ Zachary tried to be as non-specific as possible.
‘I’ve never been there,’ the young man said a touch wistfully. ‘What was it like?’
‘All I can say is, I wish I were back there now,’ Zachary replied with feeling. Then, while he fiddled around with the driving position he said,’ Is Mr Cromarty in today?’
‘Yes he is. Do you know him?’
‘I used to, but that was a long time ago. Perhaps I should say hello. He might still remember me.’
‘Come on in. You never know, he might even be prepared to give you a special deal on the Frontera.’
Zachary followed the salesman into the showroom and as he stepped inside he immediately recognised Freddy at the far end. Unlike himself, Freddy appeared unchanged. Other than being dressed differently, he seemed just like the man Zachary knew so well. He watched as the young salesman w
ent up to his boss and began talking, gesticulating back to where Zachary stood as he did so. Freddy excused himself from the young lady he was talking to and came across. Zachary’s heart momentarily lifted when he saw the smile of recognition on the face of his long time associate.
‘How good to see you,’ Freddy said. ‘It’s been years since I last saw you but I recognised you straight away. How have you been?’
Freddy had always been the consummate salesman. Zachary said Freddy could sell refrigerators to Eskimos and he instinctively realized the man was lying through his teeth for no better reason than he hoped to make yet another sale.
Zachary smiled back. ‘I've changed a lot since you last saw me, Freddie, so I don’t think you do recognise me really, do you? But I recognise you. Tell me, didn’t your father have a Rootes Group agency here in Edinburgh? He used to sell Hillmans and Sunbeams, didn’t he? You probably took over from him.’
Freddy had a stunned look on his face. ‘You’re right. My old dad did run a Rootes Garage but I never took it over from him. Rootes had folded long before I joined him in the firm. By that time he’d already changed to Vauxhall. I took over the Vauxhall agency when he retired. What did you say your name was?’
SWITCHED: The man who lost his body but kept his mind. Page 4
