‘Since when do you want romance?’
‘Yes, you’re right. That’s not what this is.’ Ginger sighed. ‘Let’s go.’
They weren’t even halfway there before Ruby started having doubts. The train took her further and further from Grace, who might still be standing at the counter in Liberty’s for all Ruby knew, and as her anger at Grace dissipated, she realised she had said, out loud, that she thought she was in love with Grace for the first time, and it was to the wrong person. She pushed the doubts aside and slept with Ginger anyway. That path, Ruby told herself, had already been set. There wasn’t any turning back now.
50
OCTOBER 2018
Odette
In the Environmental Health department, Odette had access to a variety of public and ordinarily private records. The ones that were of most interest to her were inquest reports, and medical records, for the years 2017 to 2018. For that period she was able to identify several cases of macromonas. Several residents had died at an old people’s home in Nottingham. A nurse had died at a hospital in Oldham. Barbara Hereford, the mad time traveller, had died of a deep infected scratch – which seemed likely evidence of a hygiene breach, as she might plausibly have had contact with a Conclave employee carrying the germ. But for now there was only one report among the documentation that Odette wished to follow up: the unnamed woman at the museum, with macromonas in her blood. The pretext of investigating hygiene breaches meant Odette could justifiably contact the police, and request the museum case evidence. It arrived on a wooden palette, in stacks of inauspicious boxes. She spent several days unpacking and examining their contents.
When she thought back, Odette could vividly recall hard, white fragments that had crunched under her feet on the day she found the body. She’d assumed they were shattered pieces of bone. In fact they were plastic, and had been bagged as evidence. The police had concluded they were probably ricochet debris, formed from the museum’s toy stock – some of which was stored on the cellar shelves.
She took the pieces to the Conclave’s digital archaeologist, Teddy Avedon, because he had software to reconstruct broken objects. Teddy was in his late twenties, and Odette quickly learned they had studied the same degree at Cambridge; for a few minutes they exchanged news of mutual acquaintances, before moving on to the matter of plastic ricochet debris.
‘Reassembling the parts should be straightforward,’ Teddy told her. ‘For an object of this weight… with this many pieces… we can get a good reconstruction.’
The broken parts were placed on a concrete plate in the centre of an empty room. A thin line of green light moved back and forth over the pieces, as Teddy’s equipment collected data about the shape of each section. Odette watched the pieces jostle round each other, as they were moved, remotely, by signals from the computer. Even the tiniest shards slotted into place, creating a three-dimensional jigsaw from the bottom up. When the reassembly was complete a cuboid, made from yellowing, cracked plastic, with a hole in the top, sat on the concrete plate.
‘What do you know,’ Teddy said. ‘A Conjuror’s Candybox. Did you have one when you were a kid?’
‘We didn’t play with those where I grew up. They’re for party tricks, yes?’
‘Yes. You pretend you’re a wizard, you can make objects disappear and reappear. But really the object’s travelling through time.’
‘Send it to ballistics,’ Odette said. ‘I want to document what happens if you fire a bullet into a time machine.’
Teddy laughed. ‘Are you talking about Candybox roulette?’
‘What’s that?’
Teddy grinned ingratiatingly. ‘Let me explain.’
*
The ballistics specialist scheduled the tests for the following morning. In the meantime, Odette convinced Elspeth they could travel back to January 2018 and set up surveillance cameras at the museum, to check if the dead woman was a known time traveller. They took a small Technical Operations team, who parked a battered van opposite the museum, where they could capture images of anyone who came in or out the main gate or fire doors. This felt very low tech, compared to Teddy’s wizardry, but it would satisfy Odette’s requirements without drawing attention from the public.
Everyone got out in silence. Approaching the building again perturbed Odette, taking her back to the day she found the body.
Then is not now, she thought. Ruby had taught her anchoring techniques when she felt the first signs of panic. She looked for differences from the last time she had walked here, on that January morning. It is now night, not morning. I am with colleagues. I am here to solve a mystery. I am here to solve a mystery. I am here to rebuild a world, not watch one crack open.
Odette soothed herself with these refrains while they walked through the lobby and the exhibition hall and down the stairs. Did the others notice her disquiet? Maybe not the Tech Ops team, who went ahead into the boiler room, but Elspeth was watching Odette closely. Odette raised her chin, feigning composure.
The room was lit by a fluorescent light. That helped; the illumination showed her a plain room, just a room, not the dark cavern of blood and decay she’d dreamed of. Only the sound of the boiler threatened to drag her back in time. The rumble and click of its innards was the same.
She walked round the room while the team set up their cameras. What details would be important to the case? The shelves were lined with boxes of games and playthings – she couldn’t have seen that before, in the dark, when the room was dim and her lungs were full of foul air.
Mid shelf, at eye level, one particular toy arrested her. It was made from yellowing plastic, and was cracked with age, though it didn’t have the deep fractures Odette saw after its reconstruction.
As soon as the surveillance equipment was installed everyone returned to the van to await the victim’s arrival. On a small monitor images of the empty basement strobed in the blacks and neon greens of night vision footage. They’d had to turn the lights back off.
The waiting was dull. They played word games, and because Odette was still a wench, the others teased her. They relayed future celebrity scandals, interspersed with lies, and invited her to guess which were true.
‘I don’t read celebrity scandals in my own time,’ Odette complained, but the others enjoyed themselves, and they were laughing at her when the Surveillance Officer interrupted:
‘Look! Look over there! For fuck’s sake!’
The leader of the Conclave was walking down the street.
‘It’s Margaret Norton,’ the Surveillance Officer said.
They all watched Margaret under the moonlight. Shining court shoes, a wide-lapelled coat and smoothly set hair. A sensible yet expensive-looking handbag.
Shouldn’t we try to stop her? Odette thought. She’s walking to her death. We should intervene.
When Margaret reached the door, she turned around on the step, and took a last look at the winter night. Her final night. Cold, bright, with the heavens curved over them like a glass bowl.
Odette reached for the handle of the door, but the Tech Ops manager gripped her coat.
‘Remember your training. You can’t stop Margaret dying,’ he said.
‘I have to try.’ Odette couldn’t stand by and watch someone die. She opened the door, just as Margaret disappeared into the museum. Odette broke into a run.
‘Margaret!’ she called. ‘Stop! Margaret!’
A hand clamped Odette’s mouth from behind and an arm encircled her waist.
‘You could get us all executed,’ the Tech Ops Manager whispered in her ear. ‘If anyone saw you it would be an embargo breach.’
He carried her back to the van. After he released her she lay back, breathless, on the floor.
‘You need to keep your fucking trap shut,’ he said.