by Mark Morris
It was the man I had seen at Benny’s, the one in the demob suit. He was walking unhurriedly towards me, a slight pigeon-toed waddle in his step. If the situation hadn’t been so bizarre it might have seemed comical. I watched him approach, until at last he was standing directly in front of me, so close that I could see a tiny shaving cut on his cheek, a rash of soreness where his shirt collar rubbed his neck.
He regarded me a moment, taking a final puff on his roll-up before dropping it and stamping on it.
‘Hello, Alex,’ he said, his voice slightly nasal, his accent pure south London. ‘My name’s Frank Martin. Private Frank Martin.’
He stuck out his hand and instinctively I shook it. His flesh was cold, his grip bony but firm.
‘Right,’ he said, ‘now that’s out the way, we’d better get down to particulars. If you want to stay alive you need to come with me.’
TWENTY-ONE
THE SOLDIER’S STORY
Ten minutes after he had introduced himself, Private Frank Martin and I were strolling side by side through the quiet, ill-lit streets of Walthamstow, heading in the direction of the tube station. As we walked I kept sliding sidelong glances at him, half-expecting him to disappear in a puff of smoke. But he seemed reassuringly solid and, despite his dated appearance, reassuringly normal.
My mind was boiling with questions, and the only reason I wasn’t bombarding him with them was because Frank had assured me he would tell me what I wanted to know as soon as we had put some distance between ourselves and what he referred to as ‘the Surgeon’s mob’. Even so, I had managed to give voice to a few before he’d convinced me of the need for haste – the first of which, after he had instructed me to accompany him, had been, ‘Why should I? How do I know I can trust you?’
Frank had sighed, his almost translucent eyelids drooping in weary exasperation. ‘I was told you might be difficult.’
‘Told by who?’ I countered.
For a moment he looked as if he might be about to answer, and then he released an even longer sigh, perhaps realising what a can of worms he might be opening with his reply. Raising his hands he said, ‘Look, Alex, this really ain’t the time right now. What say we find a boozer and talk about this over a pint?’
Without the clamour of war that had swirled about his slight frame during our previous encounter, his threat seemed minimal, and yet still I was wary. ‘You’ve attacked me once,’ I said, recalling how he had dredged darkness from within himself. ‘How do I know you won’t do it again?’
He shook his head and offered a watery smile, which barely offset the haunted look in his deep-set eyes. ‘That wasn’t an attack, it was a rescue. I needed to get you out of there quickly, which was why I turned on the fireworks – to get you to respond. There were bad things coming.’
‘Worse than you?’ I asked.
He rolled his eyes. ‘A lot worse. Believe me, mate, I’m one of the good guys.’
Suddenly he winced, as if pain had stabbed through his head, and despite myself I asked, ‘Are you all right?’
His face cleared, though he looked more washed-out than ever. ‘That Surgeon’s a strong one. He’ll break out sooner rather than later. We ought to scarper – and pronto.’
As far as I knew, I could have been heading out of the frying pan and into the fire, but deciding that even if I was I could barely make my predicament any worse, I nodded.
‘Okay. But how do we get out?’
‘You just stick close to me. Safest thing would be to hold hands, but I’m not that sort of bloke. So what say I go ahead and you follow with your hand on my shoulder?’
I agreed and he turned his back on me. Reaching out I did as he had suggested, aware of the delicate, almost bird-like jut of his bones beneath the cheap material of his suit jacket. I could smell his hair cream, combined with tobacco smoke and the faint whiff of mothballs.
‘Ready?’
‘Ready.’
‘Right then. Best foot forward.’
I’m not sure what happened then. It was like being in a sensory-deprivation tank, or perhaps a trance, and then of having my senses restored one by one. There was no sensation that I could later recall of ascending the stone steps of the crypt, or of negotiating what I knew to be the uneven terrain of the cemetery. Nor was I aware at first of cold air moving against my skin, or of outdoor sounds like the almost ambient thrum of traffic and the susurration of branches and leaves and long grass, set in motion by the wind.
Yet gradually these things were returned to me, like small, unexpected gifts. I was walking with my hand on Frank’s shoulder when suddenly I realised that I could feel grass brushing against my shins, or a breeze stirring in my hair. Or I could see the glow of a distant street lamp flickering through a jagged silhouette of leaf-stripped branches.
By the time we reached the entrance to the cemetery I had no further need of Frank’s guidance. Letting go of his shoulder I cupped my hands to help boost his scrawny frame over the gate, and then I clambered after him.
We barely spoke again until we were sitting on a tube heading back into central London. The rush hour was well over by now and apart from us there were only four or five people in the carriage. I had deliberately led Frank to the seats at the far end, out of earshot of the other passengers, who had given him a few curious glances before turning their attention back to their iPhones and BlackBerries. London was full of weirdos, after all, and Frank in his retro gear was not all that strange compared to some.
As soon as the train began to clank its way out of the station, I leaned forward.
‘Time for some answers,’ I said.
Frank looked tired. From what he had said earlier, I guessed that manipulating the darkness was an energy-sapping experience. Sure enough he said, ‘Have a heart, Alex. I’m all done in. Could do with a nice pint of stout to see me right.’
‘I haven’t got time for the pub,’ I snapped. ‘I need to get back to Clover.’ Realising I was being a little harsh I raised my hand. ‘Look, I’m grateful for what you did, Frank, but my daughter’s missing, I have no idea what’s going on, and I don’t want to leave Clover alone for any longer than I have to. There’s a bar at the hotel. I’ll buy you a pint of stout there – I’ll buy you ten pints – if you’ll give me some answers.’
He slumped back in his seat and expelled a long breath.
‘Right then,’ he said. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Well… for a start, who are “the Surgeon’s mob”? And who are you? Where do you all come from?’
He smiled faintly. ‘The Surgeon’s mob I can’t help you with – for the simple fact that I don’t know all that much about ’em, except that they’re a bad lot. As for me, I’m guessing you want a bit more than my name and place of birth?’
I raised my eyebrows and he nodded resignedly.
‘Fair enough. Well, my name’s Frank Martin, like I said. I was born in Lewisham in 1897 and died at Ypres in August 1917 during the battle of Passchendaele. I was twenty.’
My heart lurched. I raised a hand. ‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘No. What did you say? You died? In the First World War? Are you… are you shitting me? Are you telling me you’re a… what? Zombie? Ghost?’
Frank scratched his nose. ‘Not entirely sure what I am, to be honest with you. All I know is that I’m here. I copped it from a bullet – then you brought me back.’
It wasn’t just my heart that lurched this time. The whole world seemed to tilt. I felt dizzy, sick. I felt something akin to panic. As if I was clinging to a ledge above an abyss, and my fingers were slipping, and there wasn’t a single damn thing I could do about it.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Wait. Whoa a minute. What are you talking about? I brought you back?’
Frank nodded matter-of-factly. ‘Well, you and that box of tricks of yours.’ He leaned forward, winked, his voice dropping to a whisper. ‘The heart.’
Perhaps it would be best just to let go, I thought, to drop into the abyss. At that moment oblivion see
med like a desirable option.
Frank looked at me, not unkindly. ‘Knocked you for six, that one, didn’t it? Thought it might,’ he said.
Even so, I made an attempt to drag my reeling thoughts together. ‘But… how?’ I stammered. ‘I mean… what…’
Frank’s bony shoulders lifted in a shrug. ‘I’ve no idea how your oojamaflip works, Alex. All I can tell you is what I know. We were both called up on the same day, learned the ropes together, got shipped out to the trenches. I wasn’t long out of school, was training to be a draughtsman. I was shit-scared and as green as they come. You looked after me, took me under your wing. Like a regular big brother to me you was. We were sent to Ypres in Belgium – all the lads called it Wipers. It was like Hell – literally like Hell. Barbed wire, mud, rats, everything dead, the town bombed to shit, the stink of smoke and rotten flesh, slop to eat and not enough of it. We were too cold and wet and scared to sleep…’ His voice faltered, and for a moment his eyes looked black, his face like a skull. ‘But you got me through it. In my darkest moments you were there. And then I got shot. Stray bullet, ricochet, I don’t know. Bull’s-eye, right in the heart, snuffed out without so much as a by-your-leave. Then next thing I know I’m opening my eyes to find your ugly mug looming over me. And that thing of yours, that heart, is glowing or burning or some such. I can feel it inside my chest, fixing me up, working its magic. I am the resurrection and the life, all that palaver.’ He grinned cadaverously. ‘Only I came back changed, didn’t I? I came back with something else inside me.’
‘The darkness,’ I murmured.
‘That’s right. It was like that bullet was an infection, like it was part of the war itself. Either that or it created a hole, and when I died everything that the war was – all the blood and pain and death and fear – came rushing into that hole and filled me up. Maybe it wanted to claim me, eat me, like a big fucking monster. But when you brought me back it… trapped it, tamed it somehow. And now it does what I tell it, it dances to my tune.’
This time his grin was savage enough to make me shudder. I reached out and touched his hand in an attempt to calm him, or bring him back, and was shocked by how icy his flesh was.
‘But I don’t understand,’ I said, almost pleading with him. ‘How can I have saved you? I’ve never met you before. I wasn’t around in—’
And then realisation hit me and the shock of it stopped the words in my throat.
Frank nodded slowly, a look of grim satisfaction on his face. ‘Penny dropped, has it?’
My mind began to spin all over again. What I was thinking couldn’t be true. And yet in the past few days I had been confronted by the impossible on too many occasions to entirely dismiss it. I goggled at him.
‘You’re talking about my future, aren’t you? You’re saying that somehow… I’m going to travel back in time?’
‘Already have, as far as I’m concerned.’ Frank jerked a glance at my pocket. ‘All down to that box of tricks of yours, ain’t it? The things it can do…’
I cupped my hand over the bulge of the heart. Could I feel it thrumming with energy or was that merely my own hot blood racing through my veins?
‘Is this actually happening?’ I said. ‘Or am I hallucinating? Maybe I’m away with the fairies. Maybe I’m strapped to a bed in a looney bin somewhere, dreaming all this.’
‘You’re saying I might be a figment of your imagination?’ said Frank.
‘It’s possible.’
‘How do you know that you’re not a figment of mine?’
‘Oh fuck,’ I said. ‘Oh fuck.’ My head was throbbing, like a boiler under too much pressure. I wondered how much strain a human mind could take before it snapped or shattered.
‘How can I believe this?’ I said. ‘I need proof. What else can the heart do? How does it work?’
Frank laughed. ‘He asks me! That’s rich, that is.’ Stemming his mirth, he jabbed a finger at me. ‘You’re the organ-grinder, mate. I’m just the bloody monkey.’
I sat back, breathless, my head thumping, my heart racing. Could it really be true? Was I really going to travel back in time? To Ypres, to the trenches, to the First World War? The fact that I was even contemplating it as a possibility seemed ridiculous. And yet, and yet… How far into my future would it happen, I wondered. And was it predetermined, unalterable? If Frank had already experienced it, and if he was here now, then surely it had to happen?
‘What do I look like in the past, Frank?’ I asked, amazed that I was even entertaining the notion. ‘When you knew me, I mean. Did I look any different to how I do now?’
Frank shook his head without even scrutinising my face. ‘Not that you’d notice. Different haircut, of course. Army short back and sides. But apart from that…’ He shrugged.
‘So you’re saying this happens soon?’ I said. The magnitude of it swept over me again, leaving me dizzy and breathless. ‘Shit.’
Frank grinned, seemingly amused by my predicament. ‘Least you’ve got an idea what to expect – from history books and that, I mean. How do you think I felt being sent in the opposite direction? Talk about a fish out of water.’
I stared at him, still trying to put together all that he was telling me. ‘Are you saying it was me who sent you here?’
‘To help you out. Gave me a right mission briefing, you did. Dates, times, all that.’
‘So… you know what’s going to happen to me?’
‘Some of it,’ Frank said, and tapped his nose. ‘But that’s classified information. No foreknowledge, you said. Too dangerous. Even I only know the bits I need to know.’
I rubbed my forehead. My hand was trembling and my heart was still beating hard. ‘This is so fucked up.’
‘You’d better get used to it,’ said Frank. ‘I’ve a feeling this is going to be your life from now on.’
I rubbed my hands briskly over my face, as if my confusion was a grey fug, a caul, I could shred and discard.
‘What about Kate?’ I asked, almost afraid of what his answer might be. ‘What do you know about her?’
‘I know she’s your daughter and that you’re looking for her.’
‘But you don’t know where she is?’
He shook his head and I felt something slump inside me. ‘Sorry, guv’nor.’
When we reached Paddington, Frank got off the tube with me, telling me he would be sticking with me for a while. Walking back to the hotel I felt as if I were floating or dreaming, as if not only my surroundings, but my entire life was no longer real. It was hard to believe that only a few days ago everything had seemed set and immovable – time, the universe, life and death, whereas now it all seemed unstable, temporary, ephemeral.
Reaching the hotel, I drifted across the reception area, Frank at my side. It was only when we were ascending in the lift that I remembered the circumstances in which I had left Clover, and began to wonder what sort of mood she might be in and how she might react to my account of what had happened tonight, what I had discovered.
‘Did I tell you about Clover?’ I asked Frank, who was staring at the digital floor indicator on the panel beside the door as if suspicious of what it might do. ‘Did the future me tell you, I mean?’
Still with his eyes on the panel, Frank said, ‘Girlfriend of yours, ain’t she?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘At least…’ I had been about to say ‘not yet’, wondering whether in my future – when Frank met me – my relationship with Clover might have changed. But I balked at even suggesting that it might become a possibility, for the simple reason that it seemed too weird and inappropriate to contemplate. ‘No,’ I said again. And then, after a pause, ‘We’re just friends.’
‘Whatever you say,’ Frank said, after which the lift reached the fifth floor and there was no time left for discussion. As soon as the doors opened, Frank stepped smartly out as if he didn’t trust them not to slam shut on him. I exited behind him and looked across the landing at the door to our room. It was ajar.
Dread seized me.
>
There was no way, given the current situation, that Clover would have been so lax as to leave the door open. Which meant that something must have happened, almost certainly something bad. I shot across the landing, overtaking Frank, and leaped into the room, barging the door open with my shoulder and reaching for the heart in the same way that Benny might reach for his gun.
It needed no more than a cursory glance to see that the room was empty.
Not that the sight of it, nor even the fact that there was no evidence of a struggle, was any kind of relief. Remembering what had happened the last time I had found a hotel room unexpectedly empty, I crossed to the en-suite bathroom and (muttering a quick and silent prayer) pushed the door open.
The light was on, the harshness of the high-wattage bulb seeming to pulse at the backs of my eyes in time with my queasily pumping heart. Seeing that this room too was empty I allowed myself a small sigh of relief. There was still plenty of cause for concern, though; I couldn’t believe Clover would simply pop out for a change of scene, or to do a bit of shopping, or even that she would have tried to follow me (I had given her no indication in my note of where I might be going). The alternatives, therefore, were that she had either been abducted or, like me, had been lured into a trap.
I scanned the bathroom again – toiletries around the sink, a damp towel on the heated rail, the plastic shower curtain still beaded with moisture – and then I went back into the main room. Frank was standing in the gap between the twin beds, hands in pockets, rocking gently back and forth on his heels.
‘She’s been taken,’ I said.
He gave a brief nod. ‘So it would seem.’
I narrowed my eyes suspiciously. ‘Do you know something I don’t?’
‘I’ve seen something you haven’t.’ He looked pointedly across the room. ‘There. Propped against that white jug.’
He meant the kettle. I followed his gaze and saw what appeared to be a business card. I crossed to it, snatched it up. The card was pristine, ivory-coloured, expensive-looking. Across the top, in gold, embossed script, was the heading: Commer House, followed by an address in the Isle of Dogs.
