by Barnaby Yard
However, Edie Robertson, who was now seventy four, had successfully won out of court payments from the council for the past six years running, and their patience was running thin. There had been the time she had badly bruised her arm after tripping over a manhole cover that was raised all of half an inch more than it should have been. There was the time she had been the sorry victim when the council’s white lines which designated the edge of a step in town, had worn away so much that she hadn't seen it and fell grazing her knee. The list goes on.
All in all the council were beginning to have doubts about the validity of sweet little Edie’s claims, and although Spencer didn't blame them, he’d still felt bad about sitting outside the old lady’s house waiting to get a snap of her walking normally, gardening or something, so he could claim his pay cheque. Still, you couldn't be picky in his line of work. He sighed deeply and took another gulp of whiskey.
Today he had been sat as normal outside Edie's house, parked just across the street under a roadside tree which seemed to house all the pigeons in London that currently had irritable bowel syndrome. There had been no sign of Edie at all, and as the morning had drifted on to fornicate with lunchtime and give birth to the afternoon, Spencer had become peckish. The small café which sat almost exactly opposite Edie's house was not much to look at from the outside, underwhelming was probably a decent adjective to use. When inside however, it managed to go far below even this level of expectation. It was utterly whelmless. It wouldn't have been able to whelm after five years training at the UK's leading whelm school. The drabness and sterility of it's décor seemed to have been styled on an exciting blend incorporating the fun of a service station on the M5, and the class of a toilet at Gatwick Airport. Sickly yellow was an overriding theme, as was grease. They had managed somehow to cover every single surface in the small room which housed the four cramped tables in a layer of what felt like chip fat. Spencer really hoped it was chip fat. The other options he tried not to think about.
The café was run by a Turkish gentleman whose demeanour suggested he was always deciding whether to treat you in the normal customer/café-worker relationship, or whether he should treat you in a more Hannibal Lecter/kill-you-and-grind-you-into-mince-that-will-go-lovely-in tomorrow's-lasagne kind of way. For some reason, Spencer always felt he was leaning towards the latter with him.
The gentleman's daughter worked in the café, and was almost certainly the reason that despite her father's view that rigorous food hygiene meant shaving the fur off the sausages before cooking them, it was always busy. She had long black hair, large, dark eyes and a body that went in and out to extraordinary degrees and in all the right places. As Spencer entered, she sashayed around the café while certain parts of her white, summer dress strained to keep her decent. The surreptitious gaze of the three men sat at the corner table who would almost certainly be ordering another coffee, had followed her while they talked in low voices. He had taken the seat by the window, allowing an unobstructed view of Edie's house across the road and studied the menu, deciding not to err on the side of caution and go with the sausage sandwich, reasoning that most of the things on the menu were likely to be potentially lethal, so he might as well enjoy what killed him. The waitress arrived in a cloud of exotic scent and crouched before him, placing her pad on the table.
“Hi, what can I get you?” She smiled causing dimples in her olive cheeks which, despite being seated, made Spencer's knees send messages to his brain that suggested if they were stood, buckling would be on the agenda.
“Er... can I just get a sausage sandwich and a tea to take away please?”
“Good choice.” She winked at him and spun upwards and around in one quick movement.
Spencer was still recovering from the wink when he caught the eye of the manager stood behind the counter staring at him murderously. He turned back to the window but could feel the eyes burning into the back of his head. A movement and another cloud of scent made him look back to find the waitress seating herself opposite him.
“So what are you doing sitting out in that car all week?” She cocked her perfectly formed head on one side as he tried to remember what language was and how he could use it to communicate. The only thing guaranteed to slow Spencer's mental capacities, was a pretty face.
“Er...”
“I've seen you out there every morning. Are you a policeman? On a stakeout?” With this last question her eyes grew wider as she leaned across the table conspiratorially.
“Er...”
Spencer's desperate scramble for coherence was thankfully interrupted by a booming shout from behind the counter.
“Afet! Order is ready!” He slapped the counter for added punctuation as Afet rolled her eyes at Spencer and wiggled away from him. Spencer made a very conscious effort to not watch her go under the eyes of her reddening father, and glanced back to the window. The door across the road was opening. Edie's door. Damn. He'd left his camera in the car. He stood and turned to the counter in a rush to pay and get out before he missed his chance and walked straight into the ample chest of Afet who promptly dropped his sandwich and takeaway cup of tea down Spencer's front.
Sausages rolled across the floor as Spencer squealed in pain in a voice far more high pitched than he would have liked. He started brushing the tea off his trousers, when suddenly Afet's hand, complete with towel, joined him in dabbing at the wet patch as she apologised frantically.
“I'm so sorry, are you ok? You're soaked! Can I get you another tea? I'm really sorry!”
“Afet!” the voice boomed around the solid surfaces of the room and Spencer saw him approaching. A vein on the top of his balding head pumped visibly.
“No, no, it's fine, I'll just take the sandwich, how much is that?” said Spencer desperately.
Afet's protestations were cut short as her father stepped in front of her and barked, “Two pounds fifty."
Spencer scooped the sandwich off the floor and fished the coins out of his pocket, shoving them into the man's open hand and already turning for the door.
“Thanks."
He had to get that picture.
He charged into the steamy café door, pushing it open sharply with his free hand. It swung open halfway when it suddenly thunked to a stop. There was a small whimper on the other side of the door as Spencer's stomach flipped in gloomy premonition. He peered round the edge of the door to see Edie Robertson lying spread-eagled on the pavement.
The rest of the afternoon had been a blur. The police had turned up at the emergency room at the same time as the lawyer. You could say this for little Edie. She didn't let the pain of a genuine broken arm get in the way of business. The police had taken a statement from him in a way that suggested they were seriously considering charging him with assault before Edie even got to them. After that, they were mostly fuming with him for bringing the woman in to their lives at all. He had overheard Edie explaining that she might sue the police force for not arriving quickly enough.
Spencer had made the only sensible decision he could think of and gone to the pub in order to drink until he couldn't remember who Edie bloody Robertson was. The late night chase and resulting bop on the head on the way home had definitely not improved matters. It was the confusion of arriving back to find a tortoise with the word 'Prat' written on it in white paint, sat calmly on his doorstep in a box, that had really topped things off to the point where whiskey was required though.
And so he sat in his small kitchen, staring at his newly acquired and accusatory pet. Contemplating through an alcoholic haze what to do with it. Kitchen is probably stretching the definition somewhat, even for the most exuberant of estate agents. It was a counter which ran around a corner of his one room flat. Flat is probably stretching the definition too if the truth be told. He was currently renting what was in reality Mr Reginald Singh's garage. Ok, Mr Singh had put down carpet and installed a tiny closet toilet, but it was still a garage.
Spencer thought that it might well be time to take stock
of his life. He'd never really felt he belonged anywhere, or to anything in particular. He always felt like he was just biding time. To what end? He didn't know. Things interested him of course, he was fascinated by things on a daily basis. He'd once had a huge, fat Maybug fly into his face and after once again emitting a far higher pitch scream than he would have liked (it seemed to be a common theme in the face of terror), became fascinated. He studied them, discovered other names they were known by such as Cockchafer (it hardly needs to be said that this was a particular highlight of the research). Then, as things tended to from his mind, it vanished. The only information he could remember now about the Cockchafer was its amusing name and the fact that in the Middle Ages they were put on trial for not withdrawing into a designated area, found guilty and executed.
Spencer Blake had a certain kind of kind of mind. Once something had interested him, he had an almost unquenchable thirst for more information. On the face of it, this would seem like a tremendous trait. Unfortunately it was coupled with an extraordinarily selective memory. It seemed he was only able to retain the esoteric and frankly useless facts. This was why the changes he’d noticed in the world had bothered him so much, why he’d had to document each one, why he’d become obsessed with them.
It was the moon landing change that had really annoyed him. One day he’d woken up to find that Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon, and not Buzz Aldrin as he had been previously. Although this was how it always went with the changes, him noticing and the rest of the world being ignorant, this one annoyed him for another reason. His favourite chocolate bar, Buzz bars, had simply vanished from the shelves. It had been named after Aldrin originally, but apparently a chocolate bar named ‘Neil’ didn’t really have the same appeal to the marketing people as Buzz had had.
He swilled the whiskey in his glass and wondered If the council would ever hire him again. Or if anyone would once word got out that he had broken the arm of the very old lady he was supposed to be invisibly watching.
He was stirred from his thoughts by a knock on the door. He carefully placed the tortoise on the floor in case he crawled off the counter, and made his way to the hall.
The silhouette outlined against the stained glass of the front door appeared to be wearing a top hat. It had to be said, this was not a common occurrence in Ealing, and Spencer visibly checked as he noticed, slowing for a second before continuing to the door and opening it.
The man was indeed wearing a top hat, though oddly this wasn't the most striking aspect of him. Even in Ealing. A shock of white, straggly hair stuck out around the brim of the hat, coupled with a large, bristling, white moustache. White mind you, not grey. The most brilliant of whites. This facial hair extravaganza lived below a thunderous nose, bulbous and red in equal measure. His eyes sparkled blue with an electric mischievousness as he leant on the long dark wood cane he had in his right hand.
His blue three piece suit had a military air, with brass buttons and gold thread dashed around. Though it was more Sergeant Pepper than Sergeant major. He looked like Dick Van Dyke trying to play Willy Wonka, in a costume borrowed from Adam Ant.
“Spencer!” he boomed, beaming a set of perfect teeth at the rather puzzled figure in front of him.
“Yes?”
“We need to talk young man about what you intend to do in life and how you think you're getting on with the aforementioned life, I would suggest it is not going well at all now that you have lost your job, your rent is due soon and you have no... romantic engagements...” at this last point he waggled his eyebrows. Quite an exhibition on someone with what looked like two white, hairy sausages above his eyes.
This had all been rattled off so quickly that Spencer felt a little off balance, particularly as he was still looking at those eyebrows.
“Well...”
“Well I think it's best if I just come in and have a little chat over a nice cup of tea," the man said, pushing past Spencer into the kitchen/living room/bedroom.
Spencer spun round to see him bend to look at the tortoise on the floor.
“Ah! A tortoise! Quite wonderful creatures!”
He wagged a long finger at Spencer who stood slack jawed and silent.
“Though I think you could have taken more care with the choice of name.”
~~~~
Despite now being sat in his own flat with a strange man in a ludicrous suit, Spencer was feeling relatively serene. This was of course partly because he was clouded in the warm fuzzy embrace of copious amounts of ale and several large whiskeys, but also because he was now nursing a cup of hot tea that wasn't spread across his trousers as the previous one of the day had been. The strange man had prattled on that tea leaves being the best reason he could see for trees, and how he was determined to one day grow his own, all the while breezily going about the actual making of said brew, with remarkable efficiency bearing in mind this was to him, a strange kitchen. To be honest, it was quite a strange kitchen to Spencer, who preferred to sample the delights of Ealing's finest takeaways. Ok not finest as such, but he had, he told himself, been discerning enough to have cut down the number of curries he had gotten from 'The Spice of Life' since he had found a piece of what had looked suspiciously like a collar in his lamb bhuna.
It suddenly occurred to him that up until now he hadn't really been much of a host, he was pretty sure he should have made the tea for starters. Then again, he didn't have a bloody clue who this guy was and he had already had a very rough day and a great deal of alcohol. He asked a question he thought he was jolly well entitled to ask.
“Who the bloody hell are you?!”
“Spangler my boy, Arthur Chesterton Spangler.”
He sat opposite Spencer beaming a grin as he wiggled his eyebrows.
“Oh. OK.” Spencer realised this actually didn't help him that much. This clearly required some deeper investigative questioning. He thought hard.
“What do you want?” Brilliant, thought Spencer. Brilliant.
“Well you of course my boy!” This was an unexpected and slightly troubling answer, thankfully he carried on.
“I want you to come and work for me. Join my little team. Ah yes, we have a fantastic team, all eager, all keen, and all of them... enjoy the work.”
He waggled his eyebrows to such an extent that Spencer was pretty sure they were going to jump from his face and crawl off to join the wildlife under the fridge.
Spencer was acutely aware of how suddenly and desperately bleak his employment opportunities were at the moment. He turned and looked into the bright blue eyes.
“You’re offering me a job?”
“Of course my boy! The pay is double what you were earning for the council snooping you did, but you will have to work hard!” At these last words he waggled his finger and rose, picking up his tea and downing it in one.
“I must dash I have many things to do today! Oh yes indeed!” The man seemed to almost verbalise the exclamation marks.
“Look, how did you know where to find me? How did you know I'd lost my job?” He was already heading for the front door with Spencer in pursuit.
The old man looked around the tiny bedsit, his eyes scanning the walls. Spencer could feel a prickle of heat run down the back of his neck. The walls were covered with newspaper articles, handwritten notes and lengths of string which joined various parts between the drawing pins which held them there.
Spangler took a slow breath. “I see you’ve been noticing things for quite a while.”
Spencer could feel panic rising now. He’d never spoken to anyone about the things he’d noticed. He’d only laid it out across his walls since Lisa had stopped coming around, previously having it hidden in drawers. He said nothing, not wanting to sound crazy.
“I can answer all of your questions Spencer. If you do not believe me, I suggest you have a look at the moon tonight.” He’d answered in the same faraway tone as when he’d scanned the walls, but the moment he stopped talking he snapped out of it and leapt to his feet
.
“I shall see you tomorrow at 8am my boy, until then!”
“Wait!” Spencer leapt up from the table and instantly realised that although from the waist up the tea had sobered him considerably, his legs remained at least 48% whisky. His foot hit the corner of the table and he fell, sprawling on the floor. He opened one eye slowly and saw golden handwriting on a thin card of white paper lying next to him. 8pm, Ingress, Bushy Park, London. Bring the tortoise.
3
Ingress
Spencer woke up to the sound of his phone alarm. It played an annoying melody that every morning he swore he'd change, but promptly forgot. He sat up and looked towards the end of the bed. There was the tortoise. Staring at him. It was exactly where he’d left it last night, sat in an old cardboard box he’d found at the end of Mr Singh's garden, with only a limp piece of lettuce for company.
The light seeping through his fading curtains was dulled, suggesting it was another grey day in London. Either that or a lorry had parked outside again blocking the light. He yawned, making his way to the tiny bathroom, aware of the tortoise's eyes burning a hole in the back of his head.
He blearily splashed his face with water and brushed his teeth. His hand reached down to his stomach which was starting to form a very small paunch.
I really need to start looking after myself, he thought. He had noticed that his face had become more puffy recently. He was fully aware that his face was fairly normal. No dashing good looks here, but nothing too unfortunate in the appearance stakes either. This waxy look his skin seemed to be developing would not do at all though. Recently he had been eating badly and drinking too well. Or eating well and drinking badly depending on your particular view of these things.
