Despite Zach Callaghan’s curt email, Odette didn’t seriously consider giving up. There was no point going to the newspaper’s offices if he was a freelancer, but with some further internet stalking she learnt that Zach taught on the journalism degree offered by a college in central London. Twice Odette went there in person, pretending to be a prospective student, only to be told Zach wasn’t there that day. She was luckier on the third visit. The receptionist made her sign in, gave her a pass, and looked up the theatre where he was lecturing on high-risk reportage.
The lecture hadn’t finished when Odette found the right room. She looked through the oblong of glass in the door and could see Zach speaking at the front. She remembered him now. He had sat in her row at the hearing – the man with the dark curls. When he’d finished his lecture, students swarmed past Odette into the corridor, and she slipped inside to join the few people with questions for Zach. Several times his eyes flickered in Odette’s direction. He recognises me too, she thought.
Soon they were the only two people left in the room.
‘Yes?’ Zach prompted.
‘My name’s Odette Sophola. I want to talk to you about the inquest we both attended in the spring.’
‘Don’t you think it’s presumptuous, tracking me down without an invitation?’
‘Very. Have you never doorstepped anyone, in your line of work?’
‘Are you saying you’re a journalist too?’ Zach unzipped his bag and placed his lecture notes inside.
‘No,’ Odette said. ‘I’m just someone who knows that woman’s death was suspicious. Like you do. Wouldn’t you like to speak to me? I was there.’
Zach ran a hand through his hair. He wouldn’t meet her eye. He was worried, scared, even, Odette realised – that was why he hadn’t written anything in months. Something had happened to shut his mouth.
‘Why did you stop calling the coroner, Mr Callaghan? Did someone threaten you?’
‘No.’ Zach slung his rucksack onto his shoulder and made for the door.
‘Your family then?’
‘I don’t want to talk about my family.’
‘Please – Mr Callaghan. I can help.’
‘Oh? How?’
She thought rapidly. ‘I can draw the attention away from you. Let me follow the story. Please. Just give me the information you have.’
He stared at her for a long moment, then shook his head.
‘I must be out of my mind,’ he said.
*
Zach insisted they walk to the nearest park; he could be sure they wouldn’t be bugged there. They found an empty bench by the duck pond.
‘I was looking into the Conclave’s finances,’ Zach began. ‘The Conclave is subsidised by tax payers, but it isn’t really held accountable to them – it’s an arm’s length organisation. The money’s spent on military action, commercial development, a bit of academic research – all the kinds of things you’d expect. They also have labour costs. Do you know how time travellers get paid?’
Odette shook her head.
‘They act as contractors. You can’t really give them an annual salary because they might work much less, or much more, than twelve months in any given calendar year. It’s more practical for them to negotiate their payment per mission, and self-assess their tax contributions. Which is all well and good, I’ve no objections there – I self-assess my own taxes – but it’s very easy for a time traveller to exploit the tax system.’
‘In what way?’
‘Time travellers need money across multiple time periods, but the cost of goods inflates and the currency changes. To work round this the Conclave has its own currency, called the achronic pound, or achron for short. Workers are paid with achrons. Whatever the time period, workers can sell their achrons back to the Conclave, for pounds sterling or any of the British currencies that succeed it. The rate’s set by the Conclave. Time travellers don’t hold their funds in a central bank tied to a specific time and place. Rather, they carry their money with them. Whether they go back or forward in time, their personal ledger’s stored in their wristwatches.
‘So, in practice, a time traveller receives a lump sum as soon as they get a wristwatch, and this lasts them till they die. Grace Taylor, say, gets her first wristwatch in 1969, and it already contains a billion achrons. But for tax purposes, the Conclave may not have paid her those achrons in 1969. For the paperwork, she can ask to be paid in any year that she likes, on a mission-by-mission basis. A hundred thousand achrons in 1991, another five hundred thousand in 2137 – the date is completely immaterial to when she has access to the money.’
‘How convenient.’
‘Isn’t it? Time travellers must declare their earnings to the tax man at least once in a twelve month period, but they can load their payments into the years where tax conditions are most favourable. They get paid with government money but can avoid paying their own share into the country’s upkeep.’
‘How’s this connected to the body in the museum?’
‘Hang on, I’m coming to that.’ Zach waited until two runners had passed out of earshot. ‘Someone sent me a database of time travellers’ finances.’
‘Who?’
‘An anonymous source. Clearly someone with access to confidential data at the Conclave, but so far I haven’t been able to identify them.’
‘A source within the Conclave?’ An employee on their side could be very useful. ‘So what did their database tell you?’
‘It contained banking transactions from all the time travellers’ wristwatches. Ninety per cent of Conclave payments were officially made in 2097 to 2113. This makes sense if you know that no tax on earnings is collected in those years. I was most interested in the senior time travellers, because they were making the biggest money. There was something strange in Margaret Norton’s transactions. Between 1969 and 2017 her investment habits were remarkably consistent. She had the kind of varied portfolio you’d expect for a woman of her background and income. But at the start of 2018, she sold multiple assets to the Conclave – including all her residential properties. And then she never withdrew another achron. Not a single penny. The database covers three centuries and she never made another transaction. What does that tell you?’
‘She was expecting to need a lot of ready cash, but something happened to stop her spending it,’ Odette said.
‘Yep. It’s the behaviour of someone in trouble. I wasn’t sure what kind, although Norton does have some shady political associates. So all of last year I kept tabs on her whereabouts, in case there were any clues in the company she was keeping or any sign she wanted to relocate in a hurry. And I kept a close eye on the different coroners’ courts. By the time you found the corpse in the museum, I was pretty primed to write about the violent death of a woman in her eighties. And then the coroner said he couldn’t identify her!’
‘You thought it was a cover-up?’
‘I thought it might be. In February, a month after you found the body, the Conclave announced that Norton had retired, and a woman named Angharad Mills became interim director. Fair enough, perhaps, no one could begrudge someone in their eighties retiring. But there was no word of farewell from Norton herself, and it’s not like her to miss a PR opportunity. So I put pressure on the coroner. Questioned him about whether he was in cahoots with the Conclave.’
Odette remembered how Yelland had spoken of journalists. ‘He thought you were a pest.’
‘I was. Somebody had to be. Then, one sunny morning, some disgusting pictures landed on my doormat. Pictures of my relatives, dead, lying in mortuaries. They could only have come from someone at the Conclave because all the people in the photos are alive and well now.’
‘Photoshop?’