Timekeepers: Number 2 in Series

by Catherine Webb

  Sam muttered an apology under his breath to the old man lying on the floor in his dressing gown, and scurried through the flat till he found a wardrobe. The clothes inside smelled of mothballs and not enough fresh air, but he took out a long coat nonetheless and pulled it on. Its pockets held a half-eaten packet of peppermints, an ancient bus ticket and a mouldy banana peel, all of which he threw on to the floor. In the kitchen he found a bin bag and slung his satchel and hockey stick bag into it. From a hook he grabbed an ancient hat that looked like something out of a 1930s thriller, rammed it on to his head, and, very carefully, opened the front door.

  The corridor was empty. Sam started walking, taking pains not to move too fast. He reached the stairs. They were empty. He began slowly descending them, half tempted by an idiotic urge to whistle. There were voices above but he didn’t stop. He heard running feet and kept on walking still. A man in black passed him in the opposite direction, glanced at him up and down and went on, taking the stairs two at a time.

  A moment later however, the man stopped abruptly. Sam could feel his eyes on him, looking back. Then he heard someone speaking, as though to a radio. ‘Possible suspect heading down…’

  Sam went on down the stairs, slowly and carefully. He heard footsteps behind him – saw figures ahead – but kept walking. He reached the bottom, put his hand on the door to the street, heard Tinkerbell’s voice.

  ‘Excuse me, sir?’

  Didn’t turn. Opened the door, ran through it, slammed it shut in Tinkerbell’s face and grinned a slow, relaxed grin at the sound of shouting from inside. The door shuddered under the impact of various bodies, but no axe could get through metal this thick. Sam waited, back pressed against the door until he was sure the lock was in place, then smashed a hand burning with fire against the intercom system. There was a loud squeal from the circuit as it exploded, and a decisive thunk from the door itself. He turned and ran for all he was worth through the streets of Southwark, no longer following his mental map of London but reaching out instead for the sensation of a Hell Portal through which he could travel. It was hard, very hard, to follow someone through a Waywalk; you had to start out with a good idea of where they were going.

  Sam turned a corner as a large white van swung the other way. He slowed, suddenly aware of how noticeable he must look on the streets of Southwark, running in old-fashioned clothes, carrying a bin bag. Walk. Deliberate, calm and, above all, innocent.

  He could sense a Hell Portal nearby. Good. It was time to quit this world. He turned on to a road with heavy traffic and huge billboards advertising films that had gone out of circulation months ago. Somewhere on the railway line from Blackfriars, that was where the Portal must be. Portals were often in the most unlikely places, since humans tended to build around them unawares.

  He came to a long parade of shops, ranging from the pretentious French restaurant to the traditional kettles-and-wellington-boots hardware store. Facing it was a long wooden fence, several of the struts displaced. He walked along it until he found a gap big enough and wormed through. Beyond were the many railway tracks that led to Blackfriars Bridge, a few abandoned trains sitting among tall buddleia bushes. He picked his way carefully across to a derelict engine shed.

  Behind him, he heard a yell. Tinkerbell was at the gap in the fence, but could only get halfway through. Whereas Sam was narrower and more dexterous, the giant black man had got stuck. Sam grinned, waved and scampered towards the engine shed.

  At the back of the shed, amid rusted metal debris and thickets of brambles and willow herb, he could sense the Hell Portal. He slowed, mentally calling it to him. The doorway opened, a Portal hanging on nothing, outlined in white fire. White mist poured through it and the temperature around it was distinctly cooler. Sam took a deep breath, then heard another shout.

  ‘Sebastian!’ Tinkerbell was there, slowing as he saw the open Portal. ‘Let’s talk…’

  Sam shook his head. ‘Uh-uh. You’re gonna have to do better than that, Tinkerbell. See you around.’

  ‘Wait!’ Tinkerbell lunged forward. But Sam had already stepped back. Earth, complete with shunting yards, Tinkerbell and Southwark, was no more.

  White mist. Faces in it, voices whispering, calling. Lucifer, Lucifer, come walk with us, Lucifer, come play with us, Lucifer…

  It was cold in the Way of Hell, like it was cold in every Way. It was also hard to breathe – you only ever had as much oxygen in the Ways as you took with you. Only the Children of Time could safely navigate the Ways between the worlds. Everyone else got lost. Which was why the Wayspirits, souls of those who’d tried to breach the gap between worlds and failed, dying in the attempt, haunted the Ways, trying to drag travellers between worlds down with them, calling, beckoning, wheedling. They hated life, particularly the kind of life that could succeed in a Waywalk where they had failed.

  Sam stumbled through the Way, his destination clear in his head. The Way felt it, responded, linking Portal to Portal, guiding his path. The Wayspirits clutched at his ankles, the white mist was almost suffocatingly thick, his lungs burned from lack of air. A light ahead, silver, forming the shape of a doorway. He ran towards it, bursting from the Way in a shower of mist.

  Beyond, it was even colder than it had been in the Way. Hell was divided into two uneven parts. The larger continent was in sunlight for ninety per cent of the year, while for the same period of time the smaller was in darkness. Between them was the huge expanse of the Whirlpool Ocean, the two continents being linked only at a few points by land bridges that, though small, had been the paths of many an invading army.

  Sam’s area of Hell, the part that he’d founded, shaped, guided, ruled and eventually been betrayed by, was the colder one where darkness reigned, bringing with it eternal cold. The principality that made up the other, hotter part had often sworn his destruction, and numerous times completely failed to bring it about.

  He was standing on a snow-covered ridge in the middle of nowhere, which was the kind of place he liked Portals to be. Here there was no one to remark, ‘Hey, a guy’s just appeared out of nowhere, how unusual.’

  Sam stood there only long enough to get his breath back, however, before turning and facing the Portal again. It was an unfortunate part of Waywalking that you could never go from a Portal on Earth direct to a Portal on Earth. You always had to go from Earth to Hell or Earth to Heaven and then back the other way. The only good thing about this was that, from Hell or Heaven, you could go to whatever part of Earth you liked.

  Sam threw off his hat and the old man’s coat, fumbled in his bag with increasingly cold hands and drew out the envelope he’d found in Tinkerbell’s flat.

  It read, ‘The Manager, Der Engelpalast, Berlin’.

  Well, Berlin was easy enough to find, even if the Angel Palace was a slightly worrying name for someone who’d encountered angels at first hand. And he knew someone in Berlin who might just be able to help.

  He turned back the way he’d come, slipping through the Portal, a darker figure in the darkness. It was a strange feeling, but now that he had a plan he was almost happy.

  FOUR

  Franz the Forger

  I

  n a small, dark street in a small, dark suburb of Berlin, in a small, dark house with a small, dark basement, sat a man called Franz. He was, in contrast to everything else around him, a surprisingly handsome man, except his face had long ago been distorted by anger and resentment against the world. His front door was little more than a sheet of corrugated iron, like the windows of his house, and when Sam knocked it made a dull ‘clunk, clunk’.

  Franz put one suspicious blue eye against the door, and saw Sam. ‘Crap,’ he muttered in German. ‘Not you.’

  ‘I’m pleased to see you too, Franz,’ said Sam, breezing his way into the gloom of the house. Most of the furniture was overturned boxes, padded out with ravaged cushions that looked as though they’d been misused at some time by every creature from aardvark to zebra. The chair Sam sat down on was missing a leg,
but a pile of trashy airport novels had been substituted to support it.

  ‘Franz, I need your magic touch,’ said Sam, tossing the letter and envelope at him. Franz read it, eyebrows raised. ‘What do you want me to do with this?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘I want you to write me a new letter, in that hand.’

  ‘What do you want me to say?’

  ‘Something along the lines of “The Manager, Der Engelpalast etc., etc., the man delivering this letter is trustworthy. He has been employed to help track down Sebastian Teufel, tell him everything.”’

  ‘To help track down you?’ asked Franz with a frown. ‘Dare I ask?’

  ‘Let’s just say I’m going to bluff.’

  Franz shrugged. ‘I’ll need paying.’

  ‘I’ve no euros on me – I’ve just come straight through the Way of Hell.’

  ‘You’re a good customer. I’ll take an IOU.’

  ‘I’m not giving you a sample of my handwriting, Franz. I know you far too well.’

  Franz grinned. ‘Sebastian, how can you not trust me?’

  ‘You’d be amazed. Shall we say two hundred euros to be paid in the near future?’

  ‘Three hundred, Sebastian, three! You know you can afford it.’

  ‘My account is being watched.’

  ‘A pathetic excuse,’ said Franz, waving a hand as though he could banish Sam’s problems with a gesture. ‘You can steal something.’

  ‘Franz, not everyone is an anarchist. Just do it, okay? I’ll pay soon.’

  ‘All right, but only because you’re a good customer.’ Franz sat down at a desk and switched on a very bright, steady light. He peered over the letter. ‘Does paper matter?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Just try and get it as close as you can.’

  ‘It’ll take time.’

  ‘Do you have a street map?’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘I’ll be back in half an hour,’ said Sam with a sigh.

  He took the U-Bahn into the centre of town, where new shining buildings were being thrown up as fast as could be amid concrete apartment blocks, on which the tracery of huge murals could still be seen, and oddments of grand nineteenth-century architecture, much of it in disarray. He walked down a broad avenue lined with half-grown lime trees, past cafés and huge, ugly international hotels that were the same in any country, past the battered police station, past a chemist so new and bright and clean it might have served as an even more hygienic extension of the local hospital, and on to a small, anonymous building on the street corner. He pushed open the door, which beeped with electronic boredom at the dullness of its life.

  Street maps covered the walls; so too maps of the surrounding countryside and posters showing nearby places of interest. Castles competed with new glass government buildings in the heart of town, and pictures of carnivals and traditional festivals. For some reason there was even a picture of a white bunny with a bell around its neck.

  A young lady sat behind a desk, wearing the huge, patronising smile reserved for tourists. Sam matched her grin tooth for tooth. ‘Er, hi,’ he said in German, ‘I need to find the Engelpalast, please.’

  The girl’s face fell at losing the chance to display her fluency in various languages. Sam was almost tempted to start stuttering in English.

  ‘What is the Angel Palace, please?’ she asked in German. ‘A museum, a concert hall, a theatre…?’

  ‘I was hoping you could help me find out. It has a manager, if that’s any help.’

  ‘Please wait.’ Her smile was almost gone as the triviality of the task beckoned. She turned her attention to a computer screen, angled to be invisible to Sam’s eyes. Probably she was playing solitaire on it. Sam waited while she tapped in her request.

  ‘Der Engelpalast,’ she said finally. ‘It’s a nightclub. Sixty-seven Engel Strasse.’

  Beaming all over, he left the shop almost, but not quite, whistling.

  ‘It’s not exciting,’ said Franz, handing over the newly forged letter. Indeed, he’d found it so uninteresting that he’d added an envelope, inscribed with the words ‘by hand’, just for something to do.

  As Sam scanned the letter he said, ‘Do you know where Engel Strasse is?’

  ‘It’s not far from here.’

  Sam glanced up with doubt in his black eyes. ‘This is the point where you acquire a sinister accent and go, “Ooooh, you don’t want to go there, young sir, it isn’t safe up in Engel Strasse.”’

  ‘Engel Strasse,’ said Franz primly, ‘is the new centre of the inner-city fashionable-yet-gritty business.’

  ‘You mean where the rich and privileged go to convince themselves that they’re down-to-earth and practical?’

  ‘Essentially.’

  ‘Anything else you might want to tell me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Will it make me happy?’

  ‘No.’

  Sam made an expansive gesture. ‘Fire away.’

  ‘Two days ago a man with red hair, a glare and a very large axe knocked on my door and asked if I’d seen you recently. I told him no. He said that if you did turn up I should phone him and he’d make it worth my while.’

  ‘And what was your reaction to this?’ Sam was suddenly tense, and conscious of his sword.

  ‘I told him I’d consider what he said. But then he isn’t established clientele, is he? Unlike you.’

  ‘Did this mysterious stranger give a name?’

  Franz watched Sam squirm, relishing the moment for all it was worth. ‘Well,’ he said coyly, ‘if I didn’t know better I’d say it was brother Thor.’

  ‘But you know better?’ said Sam hopefully.

  ‘A figure of speech. It was Thor. He’s looking for you.’ Franz was really enjoying himself, and Sam couldn’t resist saying as much.

  Franz was unrepentant. ‘I just get such a kick, watching the Children of Time go pale.’

  ‘Only because you envy us,’ declared Sam. ‘Why did you wait before telling me about this?’

  ‘I wasn’t sure whether or not I wanted to sell you out.’

  Sam sighed, and held out his hand. ‘Franz, it’s been a pleasure doing business with you, as always.’

  ‘You still owe me three hundred.’

  ‘I know, I know.’ They shook hands. ‘I’ll deliver it as soon as things settle down.’

  Departing, Sam grinned, waved, and felt slightly queasy. Of course, Franz might have thrown Thor’s name into the conversation to try and scare him. But Sam was a good enough customer to merit Franz looking out for his survival. Therefore…

  Is Thor trying to get his loutish hands on my hide? I really, really do hope not.

  Engel Strasse was a long, wide road full of contradictions. What few houses survived had long ago been boarded up and sprayed with graffiti imploring the return of either fascists or communists. Grungy greengrocers competed for space with dark doors that led into who knew what basement, while cafés with pinball machines and snooker tables competed against newer, mass-market bars complete with dance floors and a stylised decor that was supposed to remind the drinker of summer and flowers. Between these were the dimly lit doorways of the night clubs. A bus stopped a few metres off and deposited an old lady, but other than that, the street was almost dead.

  Der Engelpalast was just another entrance, if anything even darker than the rest, at the quieter end of the street. The door was open; from beyond it a purplish-blue light shone out. No one was about, so Sam went in.

  There was a short corridor, barely illuminated, with pictures of famous people who’d never been to der Engelpalast but had still felt the overwhelming urge to sign a picture to ‘my good friends at the Angel Palace’. There was a small reception area, with no one manning it. Sam pushed open a double glass door and stepped into a large, square room whose low ceiling was strung with lights of every colour, most of them off. A long bar displayed more drinks, of more variety and maybe more toxicity, than Sam had ever seen. Behind it was a rather dumpy woman, wearing an ap
ron and cleaning glasses.

  There was a small bandstand, tucked away in the corner, and an empty stage. The floor was strewn with bits of paper – discarded telephone numbers, torn up beer mats, empty packets that could have contained anything from peanuts to ecstasy pills.

  ‘We’re shut.’ A young man moved towards Sam with the determination of an avalanche. He wore a T-shirt and shorts and looked completely out of place.