by Mark Morris
The building where I’d been recuperating was beautiful. A big old town house in an exclusive little enclave overlooking Kensington Gardens. Clover had told me our neighbours were mostly A-list movie stars, politicians and industry tycoons. When I asked her who owned the house she simply said, ‘You do, for now. The real owner wants to remain anonymous.’ When I said that secrets made me uncomfortable, she just shrugged. ‘Sorry, Alex, but there’s nothing sinister about this. Believe me, if I could tell you everything, I would, but I’m under strict instructions. The owner doesn’t want to get involved. If that changes, I’ll let you know. But in the meantime, just enjoy this place while you can. Why look a gift horse in the mouth?’
Once the nausea after waking up had passed, I ate ravenously, despite the apprehension gnawing away in my stomach. The fridge and cupboards in the kitchen were full of food and drink. The kitchen itself was modern, tasteful, expensive-looking and full of top-of-the-range gadgets and equipment. The rest of the house, I discovered, was an impeccably blended mix of the old and the new. Original fireplaces and priceless antiques rubbed shoulders with up-to-the-minute entertainment systems and computer technology. There was a vast library of books, a spotless home office that looked like something out of a science-fiction film, even a long attic room that had been converted into a home cinema. Yet although the place was beautiful, it was oddly anonymous – the show home to end all show homes. I was not restricted in my movements – I could go wherever I wished, delve into whatever nooks and crannies I could find – and none of the rooms I came across were locked. Even so, I found no indication, nor even the slightest clue, as to who owned the place, or (if the two things were not mutually exclusive) who might live here. There were no photos, no documents, no personal knick-knacks, nothing. The place wasn’t bland – it was too luxurious and well-appointed for that – but, all the same, the personality of the owner or owners was peculiarly absent.
Although I had taken a long bath, changed into fresh clothes, and fed myself not only with food and drink but plenty of painkillers, I hardly felt fighting fit. I was grateful in a way that McCallum’s house was not much more than a stone’s throw from where I was staying, though at the same time I felt uncomfortable being so close to the scene of my terrible crime. It was like tempting fate. Or, in spite of the fact that the choice had not been mine, it felt arrogant, even disrespectful, to set up camp virtually on my victim’s doorstep. Was it coincidence that the kidnapper had contacted me now and suggested McCallum’s house as the venue for our meeting, or was it his way of indicating that he knew where I was staying and that there was nowhere I could hide that he wouldn’t find me? I knew that over-analysing the question would only make me more paranoid, but I couldn’t help it. As I limped slowly up Bellwater Drive, I was unable to shake off the notion that everything about this situation smelled bad – and yet at the same time there was no way I was going to turn down the possibility of meeting and speaking with my daughter’s abductor.
Although it was daylight, the neighbourhood was no busier than it had been the last time I’d been here. It was a cold day, but the autumn sun in the bleached-bone sky was as harsh as light reflected off tin and gave everything a crisp, sharp brightness that hurt my eyes.
I was dressed in jeans and boots, a dark grey sweater and my black zip-up jacket. The jeans and boots were mine, but the sweater was from a chest of drawers in the house. I’d been loath to wear someone else’s clothes at first, but Clover had told me she’d been unable to get the bloodstains out of my grey hoodie and so had burned it. The fact that the stains had come from the shape-shifter had also given her and Frank cause for concern. I saw her point: what if Hulse, Jackery and the shape-shifter had been working together and the death of the false Clover had been part of the plan? The false Clover might have been discovered after a short time in my company, but we’d be more likely to overlook the stains, to forget that they were part of the same living organism. Clover’s argument was that at some point – while we were asleep, for example – they might have oozed from the fabric, formed into an entirely new entity and murdered us in our beds before making off with the heart.
Far-fetched? Paranoid? Maybe, but it was an example of the way we were thinking. Impossible as it seemed, we were trying to cover every angle, consider every eventuality. We knew that to find some kind of resolution to this matter we had to take risks, but at the same time we were trying to eliminate unnecessary ones.
Of course the necessary risks were often the biggest of all. We might try to keep our heads down, to cover our tracks, but if an open invitation came to meet with our enemies there was no way we could ignore it.
No way I could ignore it, anyway. I had too much to lose. After the text had come through yesterday, Frank and Clover had spelled out the dangers, had felt compelled to point out (as if I didn’t know) that this was almost certainly another trap. And yet they hadn’t tried all that hard to dissuade me from accepting the summons. They knew as well as I did that if there was even the remotest chance of seeing Kate again, of getting her back, then I had to take it.
‘I’ll be fine,’ I reassured them. ‘The heart will keep me safe. And they must know that by now, whoever they are.’
Clover nodded, but she didn’t look convinced. We both knew that all manner of things could go wrong. What if Kate’s kidnappers threatened her life in front of me and the heart did nothing? Or what if the heart did react and my weakened body couldn’t cope with another symbiotic link so soon after the last one?
‘I’ll be close by,’ Frank said, ‘in case you need me.’
‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘I won’t have Kate’s safety jeopardised. The text said I should come alone. If something goes wrong and they find out you’re with me, hiding in the shadows… Sorry, Frank, but I just can’t risk it.’
Alone aside from the heart, which as always was tucked into the inside pocket of the leather jacket, I came to a halt outside 56 Bellwater Drive. In the daylight the house, which I could see through the iron gate, looked shabbier than it had in the darkness – the stonework in need of re-pointing, the wooden window frames rotting at the edges – but it was still an impressive and imposing structure. A strip of yellow and black police tape hung limply from the gate itself, another from the frame beside the catch. Clearly it had once been a single piece, tied across the gate as a flimsy barrier, presumably after McCallum’s body had been removed and the police had concluded their forensic examination. Now the barrier had been breached – pulled apart or simply snapped. Not that this was a sign that Kate’s kidnappers were already waiting for me up at the house, of course. The tape might have been broken by a member of McCallum’s household staff, or even by the police themselves returning to the house for a follow-up examination.
I stood for maybe ten seconds, staring up at the windows, trying to detect signs of life. Eventually, when it occurred to me that if I stood there any longer I might draw attention to myself, I reached through to undo the latch, pushed the gate open and went in. It was a still day and there was hardly any movement, only the very tops of the trees lining the high wooden fence that bordered the sides and back of the property nodding sagely as I passed. Unlike the last time I had been here I walked up the gravel path that encircled the house. My footsteps crunched slightly, but the sound seemed less pervasive in the daytime – besides which, I had no particular reason to conceal my presence this time.
I still had the key for the French windows that Clover had given me a week ago. As I was reaching into my pocket for it, I saw that I wouldn’t need it. The French windows were ajar, an obvious invitation. I thought briefly of a spring-loaded mousetrap ready to snap shut when the bait was taken. And then I stepped inside.
My heart started drumming the instant I crossed the threshold. I knew it was crazy, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that the house recognised me and was raising its hackles in memory of what I had done. I looked down at the now-faded pink bloodstain on the carpet and wondered who had clean
ed it up. McCallum’s housekeeper? Or did the police have a special team that dealt with such things?
The familiar smell, of old carpets and furniture polish, made me gag, not because it was unpleasant but because of its associations. Although the police must have swarmed all over this room since the murder, it looked no different to the last time I had been here. The body was gone, of course, and the broken glass from the smashed dome had been removed. But the rest of the room was just as it had been on the night the old man had died. There wasn’t even evidence of fingerprint dust on the surfaces or the muddy boot prints of all the coppers who must have come traipsing through here.
My attention was snagged by something which I had been too preoccupied to notice the last time I’d been here. It was a large framed poster above the fireplace advertising a performance by ‘The Great Barnaby’ at the London Hippodrome on Friday, 10 December 1948. I remembered Clover telling me about the poster the first time we’d met. The main painting depicted a moustached and bearded man in a red eye mask, a top hat perched at a jaunty angle on his head. His hands, in white kid gloves, were upraised, fingers widely spread. An array of objects – playing cards, candles, pocket watches, juggling balls – arced in a glittering rainbow above him. Dressed in a black jacket, a red cravat and a cream-coloured waistcoat emblazoned with stars and ringed planets, the magician was grinning widely, almost crazily. I stared at the poster – and my heart gave a jolt. One of the objects he was ‘juggling’ was the obsidian heart.
Suddenly I tensed. As before, from elsewhere in the house, I could hear the slow, sonorous ticking of a clock. But now that sound was accompanied by another – a faint, rhythmic squeak-squeak… squeak-squeak… As this new sound grew louder, approaching the room, I took an instinctive step back towards the French windows. Though my body was stiff and aching I felt my muscles bunching, readying themselves to flee.
The squeaking sound halted right outside the room and then the door in the far corner started to open. Next moment a wheelchair entered, pushed by a burly man with a square jaw and dark, close-cropped hair, his pumped body straining to burst from a sombre pin-striped suit and tie. However I barely gave him a second glance. My attention was focused on the frail old man in the wheelchair.
It was Barnaby McCallum.
I stared at him, thinking of the warehouse in the Isle of Dogs. As his minder or carer pushed him further into the room I raised a hand and took another step back towards the French windows.
‘Don’t come any closer,’ I said. ‘I know you’re not him.’
The old man in the wheelchair peered at me with an expression of… interest? Perhaps even sympathy? As if mirroring me, he raised one of the gnarled hands that were resting on a thick blanket across his knees, his face crinkling like a walnut as he spoke.
‘I am, you know,’ he said, ‘though, of course, you’re right to be suspicious.’
I licked my lips, aware that I was up on the balls of my feet, prepared to run. ‘How can you be? You’re dead. He’s dead.’
The old man tutted. ‘How long have you had the heart in your possession, Mr Locke? A week? Have you learned nothing of its properties in that time?’
Despite myself I felt offended by the question. ‘I’ve learned plenty.’
‘Ah. Then you’re no doubt aware that it displays a certain… ah, temporal flexibility?’
I looked at him warily. ‘Go on.’
His face crinkled even more alarmingly, as if it was folding in on itself, and I realised that he was smiling. ‘Haven’t you guessed? I’ve used the heart to travel forward in time. Today is… what? Monday the eighth of October?’
I nodded.
Tapping the arm of the chair, he half-twisted towards the burly man behind him. ‘What day was it when we left, Hartson? The last Friday in September, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Which means that in… three days – or is it four? – you’re going to kill me, Alex.’
My heart gave a jolt, causing me to gasp as my various bruises throbbed with pain. I opened my mouth to speak, but no sound came out.
‘It’s quite all right,’ the old man said in his rasping voice, ‘I know what you’re thinking. You’re wondering why, if I know this, I don’t take precautions to prevent it?’
Dumbly I nodded.
McCallum sighed. ‘You may not understand this, Mr Locke, young and fit as you are, but the truth is… it’s simply time. I’m old and so very, very tired. It’s time to pass on my legacy, to deliver it into your hands.’
I cleared my throat, forced myself to speak. ‘But you tried to stop me stealing the heart.’ Then I realised that the past for me was the future for him, albeit a future he was aware of. ‘What I mean is, you will try to stop me.’
The suggestion of a twinkle appeared in McCallum’s rheumy eyes. ‘Well, I had to make it look good, didn’t I? Would you have bashed me on the head if I hadn’t attacked you?’
‘No,’ I admitted.
‘No. Of course you wouldn’t. You’re not a violent man.’
This encounter wasn’t going the way I had envisaged it at all. Despite the fact that I couldn’t decide whether I ought to feel relieved to know that McCallum had wanted me to kill him, thus lifting my burden of guilt, or angry that he had chosen me to be his murderer, thus dropping me in the shit, I decided it was time to get back on track. ‘Where’s Kate?’ I demanded.
The old man shrugged, resembling a bat drawing up its wings. ‘How should I know?’
I felt the hope I had been offered slipping away from me. ‘But that’s why I came here! You did send me the text?’
McCallum gestured at the man behind him. ‘Hartson here did it. My fingers aren’t as dextrous as they used to be.’
‘But you said you were the man who had Kate!’
‘I lied,’ said McCallum casually. ‘I had to say something to get you to come.’
Despair and anger washed through me, as I realised I was as far away from finding Kate as ever. ‘You bastard.’ I glared at him. ‘So why did you bring me here?’
‘To talk,’ said McCallum reasonably. ‘I thought it was time you were given a few answers, time you stopped floundering in the dark.’
I half-raised a hand, then slapped it dismissively on my thigh. ‘So tell me,’ I said, as if it was an inconvenience. ‘Tell me everything.’
McCallum looked at me shrewdly. ‘Oh, I can’t tell you everything.’
‘Why not?’
‘Too dangerous, Mr Locke. That wouldn’t do anyone any good.’
Exasperated I said, ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake. This is a waste of time.’
McCallum simply smiled. ‘I understand your frustration. But please allow me to tell you this. You’re about to embark on a long and difficult journey, one on which you must, at all costs, protect the heart.’
‘Why?’
‘Because if you don’t, terrible things will happen. Not only to your daughter, not only to you and your friends, but to everyone.’ He paused, and suddenly his eyes seemed to glitter as he fixed them on me. ‘If the heart falls into the wrong hands, if the balance of power tilts, things will unravel at an alarming rate.’
Despite myself I felt chilled by his words. ‘But why me? Why was I chosen for this?’
‘You killed me. Therefore it’s your responsibility.’
I shook my head. ‘No, it’s more complicated than that. I was dragged into this against my will. I was manipulated. But this isn’t me. I don’t want any of this. So tell me again – why me?’
McCallum spread his hands. He looked genuinely sympathetic. ‘There’s only so much I can tell.’
‘Bollocks!’ I shouted and took a step forward. I saw the man-mountain standing behind McCallum’s wheelchair tense, and I halted.
For a moment there was an impasse. I stared at McCallum, breathing hard. On the way here I had toyed with the idea of stopping to buy cigarettes. But I had kept walking, too hyped up, too anxious to break my stride. Now I wished I
had bought some. I could have murdered one at that moment.
I grimaced at the unfortunate choice of phrase, a memory flashing into my head of McCallum lying on the carpet, a hole in his skull, blood pooling beneath him. I unzipped my jacket, slipped my hand inside.
‘What if I were to give you the heart back right now?’ I said. ‘What if I were to return it and never kill you?’
‘But you have killed me, Mr Locke,’ McCallum said. ‘The dirty deed has already been done and now it can’t be un-done. Don’t you see?’
‘But if I were to give you the heart,’ I said, drawing it from my pocket and holding it out to him, ‘wouldn’t that undo everything? Set everything back to normal?’
McCallum sighed. ‘Time is a complicated thing, Mr Locke. But you’ll get to grips with its quirks and contradictions soon enough.’ He slipped his hand under the blanket spread across his knees, then slowly drew it out and held it up, showing me the object he was holding.
An obsidian heart, identical to my own.
‘There are two of them?’ I said, confused.
He smiled indulgently. ‘Of course not. I’ve come forward in time. As far as I’m concerned you haven’t stolen the heart from me yet. This is the one you’ll flee with after killing me. The one you’re holding right now.’
I looked from the heart in my hand to the one in his. ‘How can the same object be in two places at once?’
He giggled, a cracked, rather awful sound. ‘I know. It’s mind-boggling, isn’t it?’
Before I could reply I heard the faint wail of police sirens. I tensed, hoping they would fade, but alarmingly they seemed to be coming closer.
‘Ah,’ said McCallum sadly, ‘my cue to leave.’
I could barely contain my own urge to flee, but I said, ‘But you’ve hardly told me anything.’
