by S. B. Hayes
‘No beer cans or wine bottles around,’ Harry interrupted. ‘Now that’s really weird.’
The police officer pulled a resigned heard-it-all-before face. I gave Harry a furious sideways glance. From when Patrick had first began to go off the rails I’d been schooled in covering up his drinking, and this was so ingrained that I grew hot at the nakedness of Harry’s words. In an instant he had stripped away all the years of pretending and keeping up appearances. I coughed affectedly, but now it was in the open I felt I should elaborate.
‘You don’t understand. My brother has an … um … addiction problem and is quite … vulnerable.’
‘Does he have a social worker?’
‘No … he has a therapist … a private therapist.’
That didn’t go down well. It smacked of elitism and snobbery. The police officer didn’t reply but a deep V-shape appeared between his eyebrows. Something told me I was losing his interest.
‘I really think you need to investigate,’ I persisted. ‘The entire flat isn’t right. Someone’s gone to a lot of trouble to erase … something.’
‘Are his possessions still there?’ the bored voice continued.
‘Yes, his clothes are still in the wardrobe, but I couldn’t find his wallet.’
‘Are you eighteen?’ the policeman demanded.
I shook my head.
‘Your parents should have come themselves.’
I winced. ‘They would, but my mother is really … distressed and my father is abroad, working for an overseas aid organization … he’s a doctor.’
The police officer held one hand against the screen as a colleague appeared and they put their heads together, deep in conversation. This was obviously his you’ll-have-to-wait-don’t-bother-me-any-more gesture. Someone sighed very close behind me and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up in anger. I hated anyone invading my personal space, and this person was doing just that. Their arrogance made me instinctively assume that whoever it was was male, and I slowly turned my head, pleased to be right.
He was a few inches taller than me. His hair was sun-bleached and his skin tanned. The colour told me it wasn’t from a couple of weeks frying on a package holiday. The white vest, denim cut-offs and sandals made him look like he’d just come from the beach. I could almost smell salt and sun cream. He was muscular, although not in a pumped-up way, and he flashed me a cocky smile. I disliked him intensely at first sight.
Unconsciously I threw back my shoulders and raised my head to look him in the eye. My stance was confrontational – arms folded, face set hard.
‘Sorry? Can I help you?’
He took a step back. ‘My phone’s been stolen. I’m waiting to report it.’
He had an accent that sounded Australian. ‘Your phone’s been stolen,’ I repeated with as much contempt as if he’d said that someone had pinched his lollipop. ‘My brother is missing, and all you can do is breathe on me.’
‘Sinead!’ Harry said warningly.
I thrust out my chin but tried to simmer down. ‘Anyway … a little space would be nice.’
The beach boy weighed up Harry, which took me by surprise. Harry used to be so geeky, but he’d undergone a transformation these past few months, shot up in height and got broader shoulders. Even his face had lost its roundness. It was my turn next. I could feel a pair of hazel eyes moving from the top of my black spiky hair, down to my nose stud and long legs. I was skinny and sometimes I’d been mistaken for a boy from behind. Harry’s nickname for me was Big Bird. Only he could get away with that.
‘You must be the rudest girl I’ve ever met.’
Despite Harry’s disapproval I was glad to have needled the stranger. ‘You obviously don’t get out much,’ I said, and indicated the benches running either side of the room. ‘That’s the waiting area.’
Something about this tickled him because he gave a cynical smirk. ‘Life’s just one big waiting room,’ he drawled, and lazily flopped on to a bench, arms clasped behind his head and legs outstretched.
I was strangely incensed at his words. ‘Thanks for the philosophy lesson,’ I shouted across. ‘But my time’s precious.’
He leaned forward, his face serious, and ran one hand through his tousled hair. ‘So is mine … it’s always later than you think.’
Three
‘Uppity, arrogant, opinionated, macho …’ My tirade ended only when I ran out of insults.
Harry shook his head at me in amazement. ‘He’s in a strange country, Sinead, he doesn’t know the system and you bawl him out just for standing behind you.’
‘He was too close for comfort and I didn’t like his attitude.’ Reluctantly I grinned, noticing Harry’s stunned expression. I had a terrible attitude problem and I knew it. I swiped his arm with the tips of my fingers. ‘He mentioned time. You know how much that gets to me.’
‘I know,’ Harry soothed. ‘Your obsession it’s a bit … unusual.’
‘I almost died when I was little, remember? Maybe I’m still running from the grim reaper.’
‘You’re so completely weird,’ Harry said. ‘That’s what I love about you.’
I looked away, uncomfortable. ‘It’s always later than you think,’ I mocked, still livid at the stranger. ‘As if I needed reminding. That guy was like a weird messenger of doom.’
Harry’s eyebrows peaked. ‘Most people don’t constantly measure time as if it’s their last day on earth.’
‘Well, they should. We spent thirty-three minutes in that police station, in a pointless exercise in going nowhere.’
‘You need a shrink, Sinead.’
I pulled a face. ‘Patrick has the shrink … my mother didn’t think I was important enough to get one.’
We reached Patrick’s flat and I impatiently keyed in the entry code and ran up the stairs three at a time. I flung open the door and absorbed the whiteness of the walls and the pristine space, not a thing out of place.
‘Look, Harry, I wasn’t exaggerating. This could be a monk’s cell, and the bed is made like in a hospital, so tightly tucked it’s impossible to get into.’
‘It is pretty dazzling,’ he agreed.
‘Isn’t it?’
Harry twisted his curly hair absent-mindedly. ‘I don’t know what to suggest.’
‘Something weird’s happened here,’ I insisted.
‘What about Patrick’s friends? We should ask them before we do anything else.’
I rolled my eyes. ‘He doesn’t really have any. He’s so unpredictable … one minute the life and soul, the next aggressive and then morose and depressed. Not many people will put up with that.’
Harry reached to brush my fringe from my eyes and I instinctively drew away. ‘If the police aren’t going to do anything, then … we should search the place and look for evidence.’
‘They said we could file a missing persons report.’
‘Yeah, yeah … I’ll put it to Mum, but she won’t be impressed. She’ll expect the entire country to be on high alert and a giant manhunt underway … at the very least. Now come on and help.’
Harry set to work with all the enthusiasm of a deranged detective, opening drawers and cupboards and closing them again, his forehead creased with concentration. I decided he was just acting out what he thought he should do without really having a clue. There were a few letters on the mat and a bank statement that I tore open. Patrick got through roughly the same amount of cash each day, most of which he spent in the pub or off-licence, but the last transaction had been fifteen days ago. I knew before I opened the fridge that it would be empty. On the bedside table I recognized a children’s Bible, bound in red leather. I used to have a matching one, but I didn’t have a clue where mine had gone.
‘Sinead!’
Harry’s urgent tone made me look up quickly, banging my head on an overhanging cabinet. He was holding some sort of notebook in one hand. I went over and took it from him. There was a heavy iron key resting between the blank pages; it had a distinctive fleur-de-lis d
esign. I weighed it with one hand, trying to imagine the sort of door that would need something so heavy and ornate. A quick glance around told me that none of the doors in the flat had a keyhole.
I scratched my head, a suspicion beginning to slowly filter through. All those years that Patrick had left me a trail to follow. Was he still playing our game? But surely we were too old now. Even so, the blank notebook was classic Patrick and I had an idea what to do. I picked it up, making sure to keep it open at the same page, and took it to the quatrefoil leaded window in full glare of the late afternoon sun. The pages began to scorch, revealing two words of spidery writing: Tempus Fugit.
‘What the … ?’ Harry looked at the sky in awe as if a thunderbolt had struck him.
I gave him a playful shove. ‘You’re a scientist, Harry! Lemon juice turns brown when heated.’
He cleared his throat. ‘Sorry … I just wasn’t expecting it. It’s the building – all old and strangely … hallowed. It gives me the creeps.’
‘It’s just a building.’
‘When we came in you lowered your voice,’ Harry said. ‘Didn’t you notice?’
‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘It does have an atmosphere. Maybe … chapels have memories and all those years of praying and singing hymns have kind of seeped into the walls.’
‘Suppose.’
A shaft of light burst through one of the panes and illuminated a circle on the floor. I stared at the pattern of swirling dust motes. ‘Mum thought it would protect Patrick. We looked at loads of places but she insisted on this one even though it was more expensive. She thought he might be saved – probably expected him to have an epiphany at the very least.’
Harry looked vacant. ‘Epiphany is like a … revelation,’ I said, ‘a blinding flash of self-awareness.’
‘Oh,’ he said vaguely.
I sat down heavily on the smooth white bed sheet, studying the letters on the page, deep in thought. ‘I think this is part of Patrick’s game, leaving me clues to decipher to make me follow his trail. It’s definitely his handwriting.’
Harry peered over my shoulder. ‘Latin?’
‘Yeah,’ I muttered. ‘Patrick went to a posh school where they studied dead languages.’
Harry looked at me questioningly. ‘Do you know what it means?’
‘Time flies,’ I answered, ‘or time flees. It comes from a poem by Virgil.’ I decided to enlighten him further whether he wanted me to or not. ‘The saying is sometimes used on clocks and sundials. It was very popular with the Victorians because they liked to remind people how short life is and how you can never get back the time you’ve lost.’
‘You didn’t study Latin, Sinead.’
‘No, but it’s about time, Harry,’ I said pointedly. ‘I know the full quotation by heart.’
‘What’s the point of putting it there, except to wind you up?’
My stomach lurched and my hands flew to my face. I should have seen it immediately. The clue was so obvious; Patrick had to be directing me towards the clock tower. My frightened eyes were drawn to a tiny door tucked away in one corner of the flat. A bookcase had been butted against the jamb and almost concealed it. I stood up slowly, my heart thudding, and silently pointed to the door. Harry caught my drift and immediately jumped in front of me, offering to go first. I shook my head. Patrick was my brother and I couldn’t run away from this.
The door was tight-fitting or had swelled with the heat and I had to yank it open with both hands. I could immediately smell fresh air and feel a slight breeze. There was a scratching noise that made me freeze, but a reassuring coo let me know it was only pigeons. Patrick had mentioned that they’d taken to nesting on the ledge outside the clock face. Anyone else would have complained, but he said he liked to listen to them because they sounded so content and free.
Harry was right behind me, his palm in the small of my back. I felt as if I was being taken to the gallows. I noticed that there were footprints in the dust on each stair tread: someone had been up here recently. The feeling of dread coiled deep inside me. At the top we found ourselves in a small round space, empty except for general dust and grit, a few feathers and bits of chipped wood from a broken stool. I was so relieved that my legs momentarily turned to jelly and I clutched the wall for support. There were openings in the bricks, little more than slits completely exposed to the elements, and some of the wooden floorboards looked blackened with age. Harry pointed upward to the set of even narrower steps leading to the belfry, but there was nowhere for anyone to hide; only the bells were up there, screened from view by a fretwork panel.
‘Thank goodness the tower is empty,’ I said, the gnawing pain in my stomach subsiding slightly.
Harry nodded in agreement.
‘Why doesn’t anyone try to fix the clock?’ I said. ‘The movement doesn’t look very complicated. I don’t know anything about clock workings, but it’s not exactly Big Ben.’
Harry gazed out over the town with one hand above his eyes as if he was a tourist. ‘It’s a great view. Patrick’s so lucky. But you said he didn’t really want to leave home?’
‘It was one of Dad’s conditions. If he was going to continue to support Patrick financially then he had to stand on his own two feet in other ways.’ Distractedly I wrote my name in the dust. ‘Dad wanted to get him away from Mum. She loves him too much.’
Harry turned baleful eyes on me. ‘I didn’t think it was possible to love someone too much.’
I was annoyed with myself because I’d meant to say, ‘She dotes on him too much,’ but the truth had slipped out. ‘Sometimes love isn’t that healthy,’ was the only explanation I could offer.
I felt an incredible wave of sadness remembering something Patrick had once told me: that he’d found a place to make the buzzing inside his head go away. I was certain he’d meant up here. It was easy to imagine him at night, watching the stars and pondering on all the things that got him down, which was just about everything. He must have felt like the loneliest person on earth.
Harry squeezed my shoulder. ‘Come on, let’s go. You can make me a coffee.’
I took one last lingering look at the inside of the redundant clock, wishing I could stop time as easily, when a flash of white caught my eye. I could already hear Harry’s feet on the stairs and resisted the urge to call him back. The clock face was transparent and I was staring at a mirror image of the numbers, but there was a piece of paper attached to the axis between the hands. I had spotted it only because we’d startled the group of pigeons and the movement of their wings had caused the paper to flutter. But now that I’d seen it, it was impossible to ignore.
There was a gap of at least a metre between the wooden balustrade and the clock face. A platform must once have existed to allow access, but now there was a sheer drop. Peering down gave me instant vertigo. The paper wasn’t faded and so had to have been put there recently – could it have been left by Patrick? I leaned across the gap, holding on to a hook in the wall for extra support. The wooden rail dug into my hip as I tested its strength. There was a slight creak, but I was strong and had finally found an advantage to having long arms. I was tantalizingly close; another couple of millimetres would do it. The wood creaked again, slightly more ominously, but it held under my weight and I grew more confident and made a lunge for the paper.
The floor dropped away beneath my feet as I overbalanced, my hands flailing in the air as I desperately sought to grip something solid. I dangled, clutching the lowest rung of the rail, my fingers numb and my arms torn from their sockets. Time slowed down. My mind detached itself and all kinds of unconnected things invaded my consciousness, circling in my head like planets in the solar system. Someone small and supple might have been able to swing their legs back up to the walkway, but I was too gangly to be good at gym. I couldn’t scream because a strange paralysis had set in, and I knew the effort would sap what little strength I had left.
Who would miss me? I mean really miss me? Now that school had finished for the sum
mer even my friend Sara had cooled off. I wasn’t even sure why; after years of being close tension had recently grown between us that I didn’t understand. It was such a shame that I didn’t have any romantic feelings for Harry; I knew he should be with someone who liked him in the same way. My mother might finally realize that she had a daughter who needed her, but it would be too late. I’d never find out my exam results, fall in love, get a tattoo, climb to the top of the Empire State Building, see the Great Wall of China. The beach boy from the police station flashed through my mind. Perhaps he had been a messenger warning me that this was the day, the day I’d been running from. I shouldn’t have been so hard on him. A boy with sun-kissed hair and a handsome face had tried to warn me that I was about to die in a few hours’ time, and I’d chewed him out. It’s always later than you think.
There was a moment of intense clarity as I anticipated the drop and was able to predict my injuries – broken legs, shattered pelvis, internal injuries, skull fracture – my chances were negligible. My ears were suddenly ringing with the music of a thousand bells. I didn’t even hear Harry until he was standing above me, his face weirdly contorted and his mouth opening and closing. It was like watching TV with the sound turned down and I almost laughed, but it was too painful.
Harry tried to clasp my wrists. For a moment his eyes locked with mine and I saw despair reflected in them. There was no way he could support my weight, and time was running out; my arms were so dead they had ceased to feel connected to the rest of me. He disappeared from my vision and my eyes closed as I floated out of my body. It would be over in seconds. Harry must have returned because there was a voice close by, but a strange feeling of inner calm washed over me. My fingers, blistered and split as the wood gnawed into them, loosened their hold and I slipped further.
Finally, with one last breath, I fell backwards into the vacuum, waiting for the falling sensation. But it never came. Instead I found myself moving upward, a pair of strong arms supporting my torso, almost crushing me, and there was a heartbeat as loud as my own pressed against my chest. It didn’t seem possible, but I was dragged on to solid ground, a dead weight, incapable of doing anything to help. My body eventually lay curled in the foetal position, unable to move, my bloodied hands cupped to my face. Harry’s laboured breathing was somewhere close by but I couldn’t orientate myself and the world was still spinning. A haunting echo of the past resounded in my head: I won’t go back on my promise, Patrick. Cross my heart and hope to die.
