I didn’t stop to question how he could know such a thing. I was prepared to seize any straw. He’d been right. Leon wasn’t with the others. I didn’t know or care how Matthew could possibly know or that he hadn’t also told me where Leon actually was. I had come to find Leon and that’s what I was going to do. To find Leon and bring him home.
I turned and stared in the direction diametrically opposed to where we’d found the others. The remains of a high wall – none too safe by the looks of it – would be a good starting point. From there I could work my way back towards the med teams, still frantically working.
I scrambled over rubble, feeling it shift under my feet, burning my hands a couple of times and wishing I’d thought to wear gloves. Close up, the wall looked even more precarious than it had from fifty feet away. If Leon was anywhere near it then we would both be in trouble.
Several black figures were making their way towards me.
‘What are you doing over here?’ asked Ellis.
I took a deep breath and told the truth. ‘Matthew said he wouldn’t be with the others.’
He looked at me for very long moment and then said, ‘Did he indeed? Well, I think that’s worth investigating, don’t you? See what you can find, guys.’ They consulted their tag readers, muttered to each other, and moved away.
We stood in silence and then he looked at his watch and said, ‘Max…’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘You must do what you need to do,’ and tried not to think about how I would feel as their pod blinked away and I was alone in all this destruction.
And then a voice spoke very quietly.
‘We’ve found him.’
I peered through the drifting smoke. About twenty yards away, an officer had raised his arm. Another crouched over something. The remaining medical team was scrambling towards them, but carefully. The remains of the high wall hung over them. Given the amount of stonework and timber, I wondered if this had been a church. It was certainly substantial enough to have brought a runaway pod to a halt, but whatever it was, having performed this useful function, had then collapsed, leaving just this one precarious-looking section still standing.
Ellis took my hand. ‘Come on, Max. Let’s go and see.’
And – now that the moment had come – I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. If I remained here then there was a chance Leon could still be alive, but if I went and looked then I would know for certain. I remembered Leon’s voice from long ago, telling me about Schr?dinger’s Cat. Two possibilities. The cat is alive. The cat is dead. And only when you open the box to look do the realities collide and you know, one way or the other, whether the cat is alive or the cat is dead. But so long as I stood over here, there would always be the hope that Leon could be alive.
‘Max?’
‘I’m sorry. I was thinking about Schr?dinger’s Cat.’
Staggeringly, he understood. ‘Well, let’s go and see, shall we?’
The only thing that stopped me falling apart completely was that Leon’s visor was down and I couldn’t see his face. I told myself it was some other man who lay at my feet.
We couldn’t get to him. He was buried under a criss-cross of burning timbers. I remember thinking it looked like that child’s game where you have to pick up a coloured stick without disturbing any of the others – I couldn’t remember what it was called.
We heaved and strained at the beams but it wasn’t easy. Every time we pulled at one, something moved somewhere else. It was a giant cat’s cradle of heavy wood.
In the end, Ellis stood back, directing operations, instructing us to lift this end, pull that bit free, hold that one up, slide this one out. It all took time. Too much time. Every now and then he tilted his head and I knew he was listening on his private link. I could guess what they were telling him.
I left them to get on with it, because I was less worried about the timbers under which Leon was pinned and more about the very, very unstable wall towering above us all. Captain Ellis followed my gaze. ‘Keep an eye on that for me, will you, Max. I’m concentrating on getting Chief Farrell free.’
I nodded gratefully, not for one moment taking my gaze from the wall, which gave me an excellent excuse for not seeing what they were doing to Leon. Because I couldn’t even think about it. That he would come so far, survive so much, only to die now, within sight of rescue. And there was nothing I could do. I stared at the wall as if, by sheer strength of will, I could stop it toppling on us all.
Their talk was all of the job in hand. Quiet instructions were issued and carried out without fuss. The medical team had set up drips and were still monitoring his readings – so he was still alive. I stared at the crumbling brickwork. Somewhere out there, a city was dying, but I have no memory of the shouts, the screams, the flames. I watched the wall. There’s an old smuggling saying:
Watch the wall my darling, as the gentlemen go by.
And I did. I watched that wall to within an inch of its life.
And then, suddenly, everything happened at once. The last few timbers were lifted and tossed aside. Whether, in some way, the timbers had been supporting the wall, or whether it was just its time to fall, I don’t know. The wall moved. It leaned. A stream of dust fell down upon us. Small stones rattled down; the precursors of the bigger stuff to come.
I opened my mouth to shout a warning but it was too late.
I had the briefest glimpse of Leon, visor up, white faced, among a throng of Time Police, and then the wall sagged.
Two men seized Leon by the straps on his armour and dragged him out of the way, bumping him over the rough ground. The medical team threw themselves sideways. Captain Ellis lost his balance and fell. Without even thinking – I have to stop doing that – I threw myself over his upper body.
I don’t know what hit me. I only know that it was heavy. Wood or stone – something struck me a massive blow between my shoulder blades, driving all the breath from my body.
I lay, face down over Matthew Ellis, completely unable to move. Frightened thoughts scampered through my brain. Was I paralysed? Had I sustained some dreadful injury to my spine?
A muffled voice said, ‘You just can’t stop saving my life, can you?
Someone shouted. The weight was lifted. Someone gently rolled me over. I remember I cried out in pain.
There was a babble of voices.
‘We need to get out of here now. The whole lot could come down at any moment.’
‘Stretcher. Bring up another stretcher.’
‘We only have four, sir.’
‘Well, we can’t leave her here and she can’t walk so think of something.’
At that moment, I couldn’t have cared less if they’d gone off and left me. I was in so much pain I could hardly think straight. I tried to tell myself this was a good thing. The pain showed that things were still working. Just a little less pain would have been good though. Everything hurt. My ribs, my back, my front, my inside, my outside. Everything. A thick, hot, never-ending pain radiated outwards, sitting heavily over my heart like a lump of red-hot lead. I had no idea about broken bones but I certainly had extensive soft-tissue trauma. My back felt as if it was on fire and I had pins and needles in my hands and feet. I wondered whether, if I hadn’t been wearing armour, I would be dead.
Someone said, ‘Can she stand?’
‘Not a chance.’
They were fitting me with a neck brace and, from what I could see at ground level, they were improvising a stretcher from a broken door. Everyone worked quickly and efficiently. I felt comforted.
We set off for the pod. I assumed the others had gone on ahead with Leon and I still didn’t know if he was alive or dead. Then there was Guthrie, with his terrible wounds, and Markham, covered in blood. And I hadn’t even seen Van Owen.
I lay on my side and tried to grip the edge of the door, feeling it tip and tilt as they scrambled over the uneven surfaces, up and down steps, around corners. I lay still, lost in my own little pile of pain