The Wraiths of War (42 page)

‘So how much did he leave you?’

‘Enough to afford this place, pay off your boyfriend’s debt and buy myself a new house.’

‘A new house! Where?’

‘Kensington. Near the park.’

‘Wow! You
have
gone up in the world. Oh, and by the way, he’s not my boyfriend any more.’

‘What?’

‘Dean. I’ve dumped him. Which
doesn’t
mean it’ll get him out of paying you back that money.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Well, I’m glad to hear it. I’m sure you can do a lot better.’

‘I think so too. I’m like you, Dad.’

‘Like me?’

‘Yeah. I’m going places.’

Seeing Candice – who
was
probably more like me than anyone else in the world – cheered me up no end, but it still didn’t rid me of the nagging desire to speak to Clover. I wish I knew where I stood with her, what was going on. Maybe I was wrong, but I couldn’t help thinking that if only I could solve the riddle of why her teenage self was acting as McCallum’s assistant in the 1940s, so much of what I still didn’t understand would suddenly fall into place.

I still felt manipulated, but the more I looked back on our time together, the harder I found it to believe that Clover and I hadn’t been genuine friends. Could it be that McCallum had initially
employed
her to manipulate me, but that during our time together she’d come to like me, and as time had gone on had therefore been struggling with a conflict of interests? Could that be why she’d now made herself scarce? Because she could no longer bear to pull the wool over my eyes?
Some
of that seemed feasible, but there was a lot that still didn’t make sense. As I drifted off to sleep that night, I thought,
Maybe she’ll call me tomorrow. Maybe she’ll even visit me.
I couldn’t believe that it was over between us, that I might never see her again.

Clover didn’t call or visit the next day, or the one after, or even the one after that. I did get another visit from Kate, though, who this time was accompanied by all three Sherwoods. The following day Hope came to see me with her new ‘mum’ Jackie, and her new ‘brother’ Ed, and it was a real tonic to see her looking so well and happy. The most remarkable visitors I received, though, turned up the following day, by which time I’d been in the hospital for a month and the nurses were starting to put up Christmas decorations. I was dozing when my visitors arrived, and so didn’t see them come in. Not that they used the door.

I was roused from sleep, as I’d been several times before, by the sound of someone speaking my name. I opened my eyes to see a long, grizzled face peering down at me. Then two hands rose into the gap between our faces, one holding the heart, the other my black notebook.

‘Ta da!’ said my older self. ‘You can stop worrying. I’ve brought them back, as promised.’

I eased myself into a sitting position, grunting and wincing. My older self winced along with me.

‘Take it easy,’ he said. ‘I remember how much that hurt. Still get a bit of an ache in my ribs when it’s cold. Bloody nanites can’t solve everything.’

I sensed movement behind him, the presence of others in the room, but I was too stiff and sore to peer around his body. ‘Who’ve you brought with you?’

‘Not even a thank you?’ He pursed his lips in disapproval. ‘I’d forgotten what a rude bugger I used to be.’

No matter how many times I’d seen my older self, it was eerie to see wrinkles I didn’t yet have framing his mouth and grooving his cheeks.

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’m grateful – and relieved. You know I am.’

He half-turned to whoever was standing behind him, and took possession of a bright orange Sainsbury’s bag, which appeared to be full to bursting.

‘You’ll be even more relieved to know I popped back to get these for you.’

He upended the bag on to the bed beside my left hip. Out tumbled the clothes I’d left in 1948, including my jeans, whose pockets contained my mobile and wallet.

‘Thanks again.’ I leaned back tentatively into my pillows, trying to get comfortable. I was improving day by day, but I still felt like I’d gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson every time I woke up.

‘My pleasure. I’m doing it for my benefit as much as ours. Now, as you’ve already gathered, I’ve brought a couple of people to see you. You ready for this?’

‘Just get on with it,’ I said.

He tutted. ‘You really need to develop a sense of occasion, son – and you will.’ Then he stepped aside and raised his left hand in a gesture of introduction. ‘Gentlemen.’

A couple of men stepped forward into the space that my older self had vacated, one grinning from ear to ear, the other peering at me shyly, almost sheepishly, from under a long fringe of hair. I looked at them, baffled. I had no idea who they were.

The older man, who must have been in his fifties, was mostly bald with a lumpy face partly hidden behind a thick, grey handlebar moustache, and a black eyepatch over his right eye. He was wearing a hairy brown suit over a checked waistcoat that stretched over his paunch, and he was holding a brown hat in his meaty hands.

The younger man, perhaps eighteen or nineteen, was slim, good-looking, and dressed in a black suit with waistcoat, white shirt and black tie.

The older man chuckled throatily. ‘Has I really changed as much as all that, sir? I suppose I has. Though largely for the better, I ’ope you’ll agree.’

I gawped in amazement as recognition set in. ‘Mr Hulse?’ I said.

‘The one and only, sir, at your service.’ He gestured with his hat towards his companion. ‘And who might this young whippersnapper be, would you say?’

‘It’s not… surely it’s not Tom?’

The young man blushed. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, his voice soft and low.

Hulse chuckled delightedly. ‘I can see you is mightily surprised, sir. ’Tis quite a transformation, is it not?’

‘It’s incredible,’ I said. ‘You both look… incredible!’

‘All thanks to your generosity, sir. Your… er… generosity to come.’

I couldn’t get over how much the two of them had changed. Despite being chubbier and balder and a good ten or fifteen years older than the last time I’d seen him, Hulse looked a damn sight cleaner, smarter,
healthier
.

But whereas Hulse’s transformation was remarkable, Tom’s was…
miraculous
. When I’d last set eyes on him he’d been a scrawny mute, almost feral, with a hideous metal lower jaw that had been created for him by Tallarian. Now his face was complete, flawless. There was not even the slightest evidence of scarring.

My older self said, ‘Isn’t it fantastic? Reconstructive facial surgery.
Future
reconstructive facial surgery. The details are all in the notebook.’

Despite myself, I laughed – and immediately set off a pinballing ricochet of pains in my bruised and battered body. Last time I’d seen Tom I’d been certain his life would be short, and that he would die an ugly and painful death.

‘Fantastic’s the word,’ I said as the pain ebbed. ‘So how are you doing, Tom?’

‘I am doing very well, sir,’ Tom said.

‘And what are you up to these days? Both of you. Whatever it is you seem to have done well on it.’

Puffing his chest out proudly, Hulse said, ‘Tom and I is respectable businessmen, Mr Locke. Partners we are. Ain’t that right, my boy?’

Tom nodded.

‘And what business are you in, if you don’t mind me asking?’

Hulse closed his good eye in what it took me a moment to realise was a wink. ‘We is in the business of death, sir.’ Then, seeing my face, he guffawed. ‘No, Mr Locke. Not in the way you is thinking. That was just my little joke. Tom and me run an undertaking business, sir. We ensure the final journey for them what has passed over is a satisfactory one.
More
than satisfactory! I would even go so far as to say: dignified, sir. Dignified and delicate. Tom and I is decorum personified. Ain’t that right, Tom?’

‘We do our best, sir,’ Tom said to me, his face earnest.

‘Our
very
best,’ Hulse declared. ‘Our utmost, you might say. And we are respected for it. Hulse and Son is renowned throughout London.’

‘Hulse and
Son
?’ I repeated.

Hulse nodded. ‘I think of Tom as my son, Mr Locke – so that is what he is.’

I thought back to the first time I’d encountered Hulse, to how he and his cronies had chased me through the streets of the East End and given me a beating. They’d most likely have killed me if I hadn’t used the heart to escape. And yet here my attacker was now, beaming, amiable and respectable.

And Tom! Tom who surely would have died if it hadn’t been for the heart. So whatever trouble it had caused, here was proof – if any were needed – that it could be a force for good.

I held out my hand – my left one, as my right was mostly encased in plaster – and said, ‘It’s a genuine pleasure to see you both. It really is. I couldn’t be happier to see you doing so well.’

Hulse stepped forward and enclosed my hand in his huge, scarred paw. ‘The pleasure is ours, sir. I hope that we shall see you again very soon. Though as friends, o’ course, and not in a professional capacity.’ He guffawed.

Lying in my hospital bed that night, I had the feeling that things were coming full circle. If it doesn’t sound too morbid, I felt not unlike a dying man who was slowly but surely being reacquainted with all the significant elements of his past, so that he might… well, if not make peace with them, then at least familiarise himself with them one last time.

In the previous week or so I’d been visited by Lyn and Dr Bruce, by Kate and the Sherwoods, by Candice, by Hope and Jackie, and by Hulse and Tom – not to mention my older self. The obvious omissions from that list were Clover and Benny. But I’d now come to a decision. I’d decided that if the mountain wouldn’t come to Mohammed, then Mohammed would go to the mountain.

I’d pondered on various ways of seeing Clover again. I’d wondered about using the heart to jump back to the day she’d left, the day I’d driven to Wales to pick up Kate. But I’d already lived through that day. I’d come back to find her note on the kitchen table. So to go back and either prevent her from leaving, or find out her reasons for cutting herself off from me, would be to change a history I’d already experienced – and could I afford to do that? Or perhaps, more to the point, would the heart
allow
me to do that?

I also considered going back to 1948 and finding another opportunity to speak to teenage Clover. But what would that really achieve, besides perhaps giving me an insight into how she and McCallum had met, how they had started their association?

No, to find out the full truth without endangering the timeline I needed to speak to Clover as she was
now
, and the only person I could think of who might know where I could find her was Benny. Perhaps she was even staying with him? After all, with Incognito having been destroyed by fire, she had no home of her own to go to.

Ideally I could have done with another few days, if not another week or so, to recover and recuperate, but once the idea was in my head I knew I wouldn’t be able to rest until I’d acted upon it. So at around 3 a.m. that night, with the hospital as quiet as it ever got, I pushed back my bedclothes and eased myself out of bed, wincing at the pain in my pelvis and ribs and neck, but relying on the fact that if I got into any sort of trouble, I could always use the heart to transport myself straight back to hospital again.

The clothes that my older self had brought for me had been folded up and placed on the shelves in the bottom of the bedside cabinet. I eased off the hospital gown I was wearing (I was issued with a fresh one every day) and got dressed slowly and painstakingly. It was an effort getting my T-shirt and hoodie over my neck brace and the pot on my arm, but luckily both items were pretty stretchy and I managed it eventually. By the time I’d tied my boots I was panting with exertion, and decided I needed a minute or two to recover. Impatience was gnawing at me, though, so only thirty seconds later I was sliding open the top drawer of the bedside cabinet and taking out the heart. Still sitting on the bed, I held it in my hand and closed my eyes.

When I opened them again, I was standing outside Benny’s house. I leaned against the wall of the porch beside his front door for a moment, catching my breath and waiting for the nanites to dampen down the familiar waves of nausea that were sweeping through me.

By the time I knocked on his door I no longer felt sick, but I did feel sweaty and enervated, simply from being on my feet. I’d timed it so that I’d jump back in time a few hours and arrive not at 3 a.m. but at around 10 p.m. the previous evening. I took several deep breaths and closed my eyes as I waited for the door to be answered – which it was surprisingly quickly.

‘Bloody hell, son,’ Benny said, ‘you look a fucking wreck. You’d better come in.’

I followed him into the house and down the corridor to the meringue-white sitting room that overlooked the front drive. Last time I’d been in here, I’d collapsed on top of the glass coffee table that had sat in the midst of a trio of white leather sofas and smashed it to bits. Its replacement was a highly polished wooden table (teak, possibly), on which sat two tumblers of whisky on metal coasters.

I pursed my lips. ‘I’m guessing you’re not surprised to see me. Who told you I was coming?’

‘You did,’ Benny said. He sighed.

‘“Me” me?’ I asked. ‘Or…’

‘You were older,’ Benny said bluntly. ‘I don’t mind admitting, it gave me the fucking willies.’ He looked suddenly weary. ‘Look, I don’t like any of this shit, Alex. People and business I can understand. Violence, and even death, I can accept as a consequence of what I do. But this… this fucks with my head. It unsettles me.’

‘I know, Benny,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Fuck your sorry. Just drink your drink, because you look as though you bloody well need one, and then we’ll get going.’

‘Going?’ I said. ‘Where?’

‘Where do you think?’ he said. ‘To see Monroe. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? I’m going to take you to her.’

It was too uncomfortable to sit up straight in the passenger seat of Benny’s Jag, so I stretched out in the back.