The Trouble With Time (19 page)

“Maybe, I don’t know.”

“What about Jace Carnady?”

Saffron shook her head. “Ryker said it wasn’t him, he was poking about because he thought someone in IEMA had gone rogue. Then he disappeared. He was the fall guy, Ryker reckoned. That’s all I know. I’m going to get dressed now.” Floss took the hint and stood up. “If I were you I’d talk to Ryker. If anyone can get his hands on a TiTrav, it’ll be him. You can trust him. And he’s nice, he’ll help if he can. Have you got his address?”

“Yes, that’s where I’m off to next.”

“He’ll be there unless he’s walking Curtis. That’s his dog, a huge German Shepherd.” She picked up a Guinness beer mat and scrawled
Saffy
and a number in silver pen on the black background. “Here. Let me know if you have any luck. Or if you find out anything.”

Floss gave Saffron her own number. “Thanks, Saffron. You won’t tell anyone about me?”

“Saffy. Course not.”

Curtis picked up his latest stick and came and sat beside the milling machine, eyes fixed on his owner. Ryker, totally absorbed in watching his new toy go through the moves he had programmed, didn’t notice. Vadik had returned Quinn’s TiTrav and paid the other half of Ryker’s fee, letting him know in his sombre Russian fashion he was well content with the deal. The minute he’d departed Ryker had ordered the machine. It had arrived the day before and he’d spent all day setting it up.

Curtis made a small polite noise in the back of his throat. The deep buzz of the motor drowned it out, so he put a paw on Ryker’s thigh.

“Hang on a minute, nearly there . . .” The cutter made a couple more precise sweeps, swivelled and put itself away. Ryker pressed the Off button, released the machined piece of steel, wiped it on a rag and admired it. “Oh yes. This is real class. The business.” He showed his test piece to the dog. “Who says crime doesn’t pay?”

Curtis was not to be distracted from matters of greater importance. He gazed at Ryker with trust and anticipation in his topaz eyes.

Ryker put the steel down and stretched. “Okay, I could do with a break. Let’s go.”

Wyck Gardens was nearer, but both Curtis and Ryker favoured Ruskin Park, which was bigger, had more trees, fewer children, and a pond. They emerged into the main road, turned right, and had not gone more than a few yards when a young woman caught up with them.

“Excuse me, are you Ryker?”

Ryker screwed up his eyes against the sun and gave her a once-over. Young, nice-looking, brand new clothes, posh accent. Out of place round here. Seemed to be on her own. He said with automatic caution, “Who wants him?”

“I’m Floss. Saffron – Saffy suggested I talk to you. She said you might be able to help me.”

“I’m going to the park. You can come too if you like and tell me about it.”

On the way, as they walked down the gusty street past massive building sites and run down terraces, Floss told him about herself, and how she had got here. He listened and asked the odd question, but didn’t say anything else until they turned into the park.

“D’you want to sit down?”

“Yes please! I walked here and it took an hour and forty minutes. That’s after I walked to Saffy’s.”

She must be starving, unless she stopped on the way. “Fancy a coffee?”

“And a doughnut. Let me buy you one.”

Nice manners. Ryker was rather taken with Floss. She hadn’t moaned or whined, just told him the facts, and he approved of that. He led her to the booth. Not taking up her offer, he paid for two coffees, plus a Mars bar for her as they didn’t have doughnuts. They sat side by side on a sunny park bench in a sheltered corner, and he threw Curtis’s stick for the dog to retrieve.

Floss watched him bound off into the distance. “Does he take his stick everywhere with him?”

“He does at the moment. He goes through phases. He’s in a stick phase right now, won’t leave home without it.” There was a thoughtful pause, then Ryker said, “Quinn’s been all right with you, then, has he?”

“How d’you mean? I don’t know him very well, obviously, but he’s gone out of his way to be kind to me. He seems really sympathetic and friendly.”

Ryker gave her a sidelong look. “And you want to find someone who’s got a TiTrav and persuade him to take you home?”

“Yes – that seems more possible than stealing one. I was hoping you might know someone . . .”

“Thing is, I only know of one illegal TiTrav knocking about. This is just between me and you, right?” She nodded. He watched her, interested to see how she would react to what he said next. “Quinn’s got it.”

Her eyes widened. “
Quinn
has got a TiTrav? The same Quinn, Ansel Quinn?”

“Yup.”

“But . . .” She stared at him, then her brows drew together, and he could tell she didn’t believe him. “He works for IEMA. His job is to
stop
time travel.”

“Yup.”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry to . . . the thing is . . . I’ve only just met you, and for all I know you could be saying this to make trouble for him. I know you don’t like Quinn, he searched your workshop that time . . . he seems okay to me.” She hesitated and said, “What makes you think he’s got one?”

Ryker finished his coffee and dropped the carton in the bin. “Because he brings it to me when he wants it fixed. I had it in the workshop last month.”

He watched Floss frown as she assimilated this information and put it together with what she knew already, as if doing a jigsaw puzzle. She was no fool. He could see the exact moment when doubts began to infiltrate her mind.

“Did he steal it from Saffy’s father?”

“Yup.”

“And shot him? So it wasn’t Scott Winchester doing it by accident at all, though he got the blame, but Quinn?”

He nodded. “Saffy doesn’t know that. I haven’t told her. She might do something stupid if she knew.”

“Bloody hell. Why do you fix it for him?”

“Because I don’t have much choice. He’d fit me up if I didn’t.”

“So what happened to Jace Carnady, if he was innocent?”

“I don’t know. But he was on to Quinn. He came to see me.” Curtis brought his stick back and Ryker threw it again. “I reckon Quinn offed him, then maybe dumped his body in the past.”

Floss summed up what she had learned. “You’re saying
Quinn
killed Saffy’s father and maybe Jace Carnady and has an illegal time travelling device which he blackmails you to fix. So he’s a total double-dealing psychopath. And when he was all sympathetic about me being stuck here, when he said if there was anything he could do he’d do it, it was complete bollocks, because he could take me back any time he chose to.”

“Yup. And he could do it without anyone knowing, too, so that means either he doesn’t give a toss, or he wants you here for some reason. Whatever the reason is, it’ll be all about him.”

Floss’s lips tightened. She said, “How often do TiTravs need mending?”

Ryker laughed. “Hardly ever.” He looked sideways at her. “Unless they’ve been got at. This particular one will be showing an error message Thursday April 14th, because I programmed it to do that. There won’t be anything wrong with it, but it’ll bring Quinn round to my place for sure. I’m going to tell him it’ll take a day or two to fix.”

Floss’s face lit up and her voice trembled as she said, “While it’s here, could you use it to take me home?”

“No.” Ryker felt bad saying this, seeing the hope fade in her eyes. He should have thought before he boasted about putting one over on Quinn. “He’s not an idiot. If you vanish while I’ve got his TiTrav, he’s going to guess what happened. He’d take me to pieces.”

She said tentatively, “You could go somewhere else out of his reach. Then you could keep the TiTrav.”

“Yes, but this is my home. I like what I’ve got. I don’t want to relocate any more than you did. Sorry.”

She swallowed and nodded. “I can see that.” Ryker’s respect for her increased. A lot of women would have burst into tears when he said that, accusing, entreating; embarrassing him. After a moment she said, “How about . . . I realize it’s a big favour . . . would you just take me back to see my mother? Then I could tell her I was okay, and if she never saw me again at least she would know I was still alive, just living in the future.”

Ryker thought about this. “On the level? You’re not planning to run off the minute we got there?”

“I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t want to get you into trouble with Quinn, especially not after you’d helped me.”

“Okay then.” He grinned at her. “Come to the workshop on the 14th, in the evening, and we’ll time travel.”

On the walk back, Floss brooded over the revelation that Quinn was not at all what he seemed. She had always believed herself a good judge of character, and yet Quinn had taken her in completely. She had thought him, not just able and intelligent, but good natured and kind; yet according to Ryker he was totally self-centred, a liar, a hypocrite and a murderer. Oddly, it was his sense of humour that made his villainy so unlikely and hard to believe. Humour is a sign both of humanity and a sense of proportion. One expects a baddie to be humourless.

She considered – assuming Ryker was telling the truth, and she had to assume he was, else he wouldn’t have agreed to take her to see her mother – why Quinn might want to keep her around. It wasn’t for her outdated scientific credentials. He was attracted to her, she knew, and before Ryker’s assertions she’d found him quite attractive, too. Not knowing exactly how his relationship with Kayla stood, she had suspected he might ask her out; had given him brownie points for being too considerate to do so until she was more settled in her new life. Now she viewed him with acute mistrust, and any increase of intimacy was out of the question.

Floss turned to happier thoughts. She was hugely comforted by the thought of Ryker taking her to see her mother, so Floss would not have to worry about her if she never managed to return. She decided to take some photos of 2050 to show her, and began by snapping the quiet streets with no parked cars, the futuristic pods, and the tall buildings glittering in the background against the sky.

She was nearly home when an idea came to her so brilliant that her feet stopped moving of their own accord and she stood transfixed in the middle of the pavement. Ryker was an engineer, and was going to have access to Quinn’s TiTrav on the 14th April. What was to stop him putting some kind of receiver inside it, the sort of thing you get in a key finder? Then all she would have to do was find a way to be on her own in Quinn’s apartment – she assumed that’s where he kept it – and use the transmitter to locate and steal the TiTrav. Ryker would be in the clear, especially if she left a note where she found it letting Quinn know she was the thief. Something along the lines of “So long, and thanks for all the fish, Floss”. There’d be bugger all Quinn could do about it, either, in his private capacity.

Of course, it was possible IEMA might come looking for her in 2015. She wasn’t sure what the rules were. But surely, if she lay low for a few weeks, and there were no undesirable repercussions in their time, it would become clear to them that a second abduction was unnecessary? And it would be in Quinn’s interests to do what he could to stop them; he wouldn’t want her telling them about how she’d escaped using his illegal TiTrav.

Also, she’d have the TiTrav all to herself for a bit, though obviously she’d have to let Ryker keep it for his help. She wasn’t particularly interested in time travel, but the thought of one thing she could use it for made her heart flutter with longing in a way that was almost unbearable.

Back in her tiny flat, her mind buzzing, she ordered a late lunch. Sitting on the sofa with her feet up, a cup of tea, a sandwich and an apple on the coffee table, she considered her plan. Its only downside was that she would need to get closer to Quinn and gain his confidence. Going to bed with him would be the obvious way to get time on her own in his apartment, but the thought revolted her; she had no intention of sleeping with a devious murderer. Even the light flirtation that was the most she could see herself managing would strain her thespian abilities to the max. Perhaps she could break in to his apartment . . . if she got herself invited there, she could check out the door lock, and see if he had an alarm.

After finishing her meal she took some photos for her mother of the flat, then looked up Jace Carnady on the internet, staring at one image after another, and finding new ones she hadn’t seen before. Now Ryker had told her what he thought had happened to him, looking at his handsome smiling face pained her, gave her an almost personal sense of loss. Her feeling of outrage towards Quinn increased. To take her mind off him she read for a while, then began to find the flat oppressive, and looked up the cost of apartments with windows. Their prices gave her a new sympathy for Farouk. Unable to go out in case Quinn rang to see how she was, she drifted off to sleep on the sofa.

The room was dark when the doorbell woke her, city lights gleaming in her virtual view. She walked to the entry phone, and got a nasty jolt when she saw Quinn’s face on the screen. Fighting her feeling of revulsion, striving to sound natural, she said, “Hi . . .” and yawned, half-deliberately.

Quinn’s mellow voice said, “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“It doesn’t matter. Lucky you did wake me or I wouldn’t sleep tonight.” After a moment, Floss realized it would look odd if she didn’t ask him in. Reluctantly, she pressed the door release. “Come up.”

She turned on all the lights and ran her fingers through her hair, apprehensive about seeing him now she suspected what he was like, not feeling ready for this. She worried that he might read her knowledge in her eyes. The door buzzer sounded, and she went to let him in.

“How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine now. Just a bit tired.”

“I won’t keep you long. I wanted to make sure you were okay, and I practically pass your building on my way home.” He smiled.

It was all right. He hadn’t read her mind, though she was finding it difficult to look him in the eyes. She felt obliged to ask him to sit down, and offer him coffee.