The shop owner’s right arm was in a position that struck Will as rather unnatural. It was stretched out to the far side of the counter and his fingertips were sandwiched in the middle of a stack of papers. Will tilted his head to one side and carefully lifted a few sheets of paper from the top of the pile, his hand trembling uncontrollably.
The papers appeared to be sales invoices. Glancing at the dates, it was clear that the shop couldn’t have been doing particularly well; there was as little as one sale being made a month. And this seemed to have been going on for years.
How was this place making any money?
The shop owner’s hand was resting on one invoice in particular. Blood was smeared across the crisp white paper. Will slid the paper out from under the shop owner’s hand, dried blood leaving faint diagonal streaks across it as he pulled it free. He studied it, angling towards the lambent light from the desk. In his shaking hand, he could see that it was the invoice from Will’s visit earlier that day.
Will recoiled.
Why would he have reached out for that specific invoice? Was he trying to implicate me in his murder?
It was an incredible coincidence if not. Whatever the case, it looked as though the old guy had used his last dying breath to bring someone’s attention to it.
Will studied the invoice more closely, relaxing when he saw that it listed none of Will’s personal details. He remembered that, luckily, he hadn’t even given the shop owner his name. ‘Wait a sec. He knew my name,’ Will said out loud, the sound of his own voice alarming him. He reran his conversation with the shop owner in his head. He was certain that the shop owner had called after him and had used his name. Will hadn’t introduced himself, hadn’t shown any ID or used a credit card.
How had he known? What was going on here?
As he held the invoice in his hand, his thumb passed over an embossed shape on the paper. There, under his thumb, was an odd circular symbol that had been stamped on the left edge of the page next to a paragraph of printed text. It appeared to be a clockface but with many hands of differing lengths, fanning out from its centre.
The effect gave it as much the appearance of a flower as a clock. The symbol stirred something in the recesses of Will’s mind, and he reached into his back pocket, retrieved his wallet and pulled out the sales receipt the shop owner had given him for the watch. Right there, along the top edge, was the same odd symbol.
Will shuffled through the other invoices in the stack but couldn’t see the same symbol on any of them. He placed his sales receipt on top of the invoice to better compare the two symbols. As he examined them, he noticed a series of small rectangular holes punched into the receipt. They appeared to be scattered randomly. But perhaps not.
On closer inspection, he could see that the two symbols were not quite the same and he noticed that the symbol on his receipt was rotated ninety degrees clockwise from the one on the invoice. He rotated the receipt until the two matched and lined them up beside each other. As he did so, letters appeared in the rectangular holes, spelling out a garbled message.
Could this be a simple fluke, or could it be something more? Maybe the shop owner’s last moments were not intended to implicate Will but rather to send him a message?
Despite the situation Will currently found himself in, he couldn’t help but feel a sudden surge of adrenaline – as if he’d taken a step closer to finding some answers that would lead him back to Abigayle.
Will composed himself and repositioned the receipt over the page until both clock symbols were lined up exactly. When he did this, a message appeared. In that instant, he understood: the receipt wasn’t a receipt at all, not really; it was a cypher. The message was no longer garbled, but not exactly clear either. He read it out loud: ‘Answers found in rhyme, are safely locked in time.’
No more than a second after speaking the message, Will heard a low, mechanical thud that originated from somewhere inside the counter. A second later the intricately decorated large brass till began to rise away from the countertop. When it eventually came to a stop, some fifty centimetres above the counter, it revealed a hidden safe, embedded in the front of the till’s base. The safe had a number pad and four flip-clock-style digits above it, all set to zero.
CHAPTER FIVE
May 14th, 1984, 20:49
The mechanism that revealed the safe was apparently voice-activated. Will had read an article about IBM’s work on Tangora; a machine, the article said, that could understand human spoken word. Will was fascinated by the idea of science fiction becoming fact, but he didn’t think that this system was even commercially available yet. He crouched down in front of the safe, bringing his head level with the number pad. He waited expectedly for the safe to swing open. When nothing happened, he uttered the words again: ‘Answers found in rhyme, are safely locked in time.’ Hoping that somehow the coded message would also miraculously enter the correct digits for him. Unfortunately, he wasn’t quite that lucky.
By this point, Will was certain that the shop owner knew that the two men in tweed jackets were coming for him – or, more accurately, for the mysterious timepiece now sitting in Will’s jacket pocket. They must have been looking for this safe as well. The thought sent a shiver of dread down his spine. What he was less certain of was why the shop owner had chosen to give him the watch at all or why he’d gone to such convoluted lengths to pass him a hidden message. No matter the importance of the message, Will just hoped it would explain what this watch really was and what it had done to Abigayle.
The safe was mounted in a cast-iron frame, painted in glossy racing-green paint, one of many coats over the years judging by the stepped details to the safe’s many imperfections. The metal was substantial and formed an unsuspecting base for the till when recessed against the countertop. Looking below the counter, Will could see that the whole thing was bolted to the floor and made for an incredibly strong construction. Forcing the safe open was out of the question. Will was no safecracker – he struggled to get into a bag of Opal Fruits – so his only option was to find the four-digit code.
The shop was dimly lit, save for the flickering light on the countertop, which made searching the place a challenge. On tiptoes, with his back arched upwards, he leaned across the shop owner’s body, taking care to avoid touching him, and turned on a floor standing lamp situated behind the counter. He let out a muted scream of fright when the shop owner’s face was suddenly illuminated only centimetres away from his own as he pulled the lamp cord. It cast a warm glow across the area around the counter and threw dim green hues on the ceiling through its dark green glass shade. He had wanted to avoid using it for fear it would draw too much attention should someone look into the shop from the street, but he had no choice. In any case, two men had murdered a man and ransacked the whole shop without anyone noticing, so he was fairly sure no one would pay much attention to a dim light.
He began by examining the counter, checking every scrap of paper that might have numbers scrawled on them. Thankfully, the countertop was clear aside from the stack of invoices, so Will was spared the task of looking through sheets of blood-soaked paper. The underside of the counter had numerous drawers, nooks and crannies, most of which were stuffed with books, notepads, ledgers and various loose scraps of paper. Just as much paper covered the floor, thrown there when the attackers had carried out their search.
Will was extremely thorough, searching through anything of interest, and took almost an hour doing so. He was becoming concerned about how long he was spending at the scene and had only found a few scraps that had some potential, but he couldn’t help but think he was clutching at straws. It had always been a long shot.
Why would the old guy go to such effort to keep the safe hidden, only to keep the combination written down nearby?
But Will was determined and he pressed on with his search: looking under the counter for numbers carved into the wood and taking out every drawer to check that there was nothing taped to the bottoms of them. The one place h
e’d been hoping to avoid completely was the only place he had yet to check: the shop owner’s pockets. Searching a corpse was an experience he hoped he would never have to repeat, and he had to stop several times to compose himself. The whole encounter gave him chills and was ultimately pointless.
With the combination nowhere in sight, he started to pace back and forth, deep in thought. Abigayle had teased him about his pacing, saying it made him look like a third-rate Columbo. Will conceded to himself that she might have had a point, but he was a big fan of the Columbo TV show so didn’t find the comparison particularly offensive. Moreover, Will thought that it really did help him think. It got the blood flowing.
After a few minutes, he stopped and pulled the watch out from his pocket, looking for an engraving of some kind. No such luck.
He returned to pacing, holding the watch tightly as its many hands ticked away. The watch had a strong movement, and he could feel the gentle vibration of every second against his palm. At that moment, something clicked in his mind.
The room with all the clocks.
On reflection, it was rather odd that all the clocks had stopped the way they had. The ticking had been almost maddening earlier that day, but every single one was now silent. There must have been two hundred clocks in a room no larger than a pool table.
How had they all stopped? Would the attackers have taken the time to silence every single one during their search?
Will doubted it.
He stepped into the room. The glass display case containing the watches had been smashed open and turned on its side. Splintered wood and shards of glass had scattered across the floor. Some of the clocks had been ripped from the wall and strewn around the room, but the majority seemed to be intact.
The past few hours had passed in a blur and Will had no idea what time it was. Since the clocks had all stopped and reading the time on the watch in his hand proved far too complex a task in the low light, he turned instead to some of the watches that had fallen out of the display case. He picked up a silver rectangular watch with a metal bangle bracelet strap. He read the time, which, according to the watch, was 7:40. That couldn’t be right, Abigayle hadn’t returned home from work until just after 7:30 and he had been searching the shop for at least an hour already.
He picked up another from the floor, this time a vintage diver’s watch with an orange nylon strap. He checked the time and it too read 7:40. He checked another and another. He checked every watch that he could find and all of them had stopped working. All showing the exact same time.
From his crouched position he scanned the clocks that still clung to the walls around him, and like every other timepiece in the room, they had stopped at precisely 7:40.
An idea struck him just then and he felt a ripple of optimism surge through his body.
Safely locked in time. This was the code for the safe, it must be.
Will returned to the counter and approached the safe. He composed himself and carefully entered zero, seven, four, zero into the number pad. The final digit he entered was followed by a metal thud and a sharp buzzing sound. It was the universal sound of failure.
The code was wrong.
The optimism drained out of him as quickly as it had built up. He’d felt so sure that he’d figured out this part of the puzzle, but now he was overwhelmed by the feeling of hopelessness and despair. Stepping back from the safe, he suddenly felt lightheaded and weak at the knees. He steadied himself on the frame of the safe; it was all he could do to stop himself from fainting. He’d been on the go all day and couldn’t recall the last time he’d eaten anything.
Maybe he should just hand himself over to the police. Maybe his story wouldn’t seem so crazy once they saw the watch and the cyphers and the coded messages. Maybe he should have done that immediately after his encounter with Kevin. He was in no doubt that Kevin would have called the police as soon as he got back to his flat. That would have been about 8 p.m., but Will had no clue how much time had passed since then.
Will usually wasn’t a watch-wearing kind of guy, something Abigayle never understood. She couldn’t leave the house without a watch wrapped around her wrist. On a couple of occasions, she had come rushing back through the front door early in the morning to collect her watch on the rare occasion that she’d forgotten to wear one, something that, ironically, would often make her late for whatever appointment she had been heading to.
Will looked at the watch in his hand. He was unsure if this thing even had the correct time. It took him a moment to decipher the complex arrangement of hands so that he could read it. Thankfully, it did appear to be working and it reported the time to be 21:55. It was unusual to read an analogue watch with twenty-four-hour segments to it.
Will looked up from the watch, eyes wide with the sudden realisation. ‘It’s a twenty-four-hour clock!’ he said out loud to no one in particular. ‘Will, you idiot!’
He turned back towards the safe and entered the four digits: one, nine, four, zero. This time there was a series of metallic thuds and scrapes as metal moved against metal. This was followed by a satisfying, high-pitched bell chime: the universal sound for success.
The safe door swung open, smooth and slow.
CHAPTER SIX
May 14th, 1984, 21:58
The solid metal lining of the safe was far thicker than Will had expected. Despite its relatively large exterior, the internal cavity was no bigger than a shoebox. It was lined with black felt, and the surface seemed to absorb what little light shone into it. It gave it the appearance of a bottomless void, like looking out into space. For a ludicrous moment, Will thought he may have opened a doorway to a parallel dimension. Given the events so far that day, this didn’t seem such a farfetched concept.
The safe looked empty and Will felt his heart rate increase and his stomach turn. His eyes soon adjusted, and he could make out the flat rectangular shape of a folder, angled on its end, leaning against the inside of the safe. The dark brown manila folder looked disappointingly insubstantial.
Before removing it, Will stood upright and glanced around the room, momentarily unsure if he was still alone in the shop. There was no one there, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched.
He pushed the anxiousness from his mind and reached towards the safe, his outstretched hand trembling. He clenched his hand into a fist, then shook the tension from his fingers. He made another attempt, and when he was within a few centimetres of the folder the silence was broken by the shrill ring of the phone, which hung on the wall behind him. The sudden and deafening sound jolted Will’s whole body, causing him to rasp his knuckles on the top of the safe’s interior. He groaned in pain and pressed his damaged hand between his thighs.
He let the phone ring out, allowing a little chuckle at himself for being wound so tight. Once more he reached towards the safe, and with his thumb and forefinger he slid the folder out. He took a breath and opened the cardboard cover.
Inside was a laminated ID card and a tissue-thin sheet of paper with a crude pencil-drawn sketch on it. He upturned the folder, hoping something more significant might fall out. This, he knew, wasn’t a lot to go on. He had hoped for something concrete after stumbling his way through all the puzzles and coded messages. He took another optimistic look in the safe, but it was definitely empty.
The more interesting of the two items, the ID card, looked to be quite old. The once transparent plastic was scuffed and had yellowed over time, but the beige card inside was still legible. The left side listed a number of the man’s personal details, printed in dark red ink. He was 5’10“, 135 pounds, right-handed, suffered from severe hay fever, partially deaf in his left ear, wore reading glasses, had hazel-brown eyes, dark brown hair and was born on Pigeon Island in the Caribbean on 4th May 1927.
The right side had a black-and-white photograph of a young Afro-Caribbean man wearing dark-rimmed glasses and a geometrically patterned knit tank top over a white shirt and a neat tie. Even though he was far younger, it wa
s clear that the man in the picture was the shop owner.
He looked to be thirty or forty years younger than the dead man next to him. Happier too, and not just because death didn’t agree with him. The old shop owner whom he’d met earlier that day cut a disillusioned figure, tired with life. The man in the photograph looked positive, content and confident.
According to the ID, the man’s name was Frenz Belingi.
The ID also revealed that Frenz Belingi wasn’t always a shop owner; his job title was listed as Extra-dimensional Geohistorian.
What the hell is that?
The back of the ID card bore the same strange symbol he had seen on the invoice and receipt: a clockface with numerous hands of varying lengths fanning out from it. This time, however, it wasn’t stamped but printed, revealing the finer details of the symbol. Below it, printed in large, bold font, were the words:
THE OFFICE OF TIME DISSEMINATION
Will had never heard of this agency, but it was apparently part of the intergovernmental organisation known as The International Bureau of Weights and Measures, whose crest and title were printed along the base of the card.
If nothing else, he now had a name. Perhaps he could track down this organisation and get some answers there.
Will turned his attention to the drawing. The thin paper had a slight blue tint. The pencil markings were faded but still clear enough to make out. At first glance it looked as if someone had hand-drawn gridlines for a graph, but now that he was looking more closely, it was clear that it was actually a crude drawing of a brick wall. At the top of the wall was a small, barred window.
The Timepiece and the Girl Who Went Astray: A thrilling new time travel adventure Page 5
