The Trouble With Time (17 page)

“And I can hardly bear the suspense. What have you done?”

“I’ve given in my notice. This job is ridiculous. I’ve decided to go back to university and take another degree so I can work in my own field.”

“But that’s an excellent idea. Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Your advice would be appreciated, of course. But it’s too late now to apply to start this September – assuming the process hasn’t changed?”

“No, you have to apply by mid-January, mid-October for Oxbridge.”

“I went to Cambridge – Corpus Christi – before.”

“It’s just possible I might be able to get your application considered for this year. I have contacts at Cambridge. I’ll see what I can do.”

“That would be awesome!” Floss attempted flattery. “You are so kind, I feel like you’re my only friend here.”

“Just the first of many, I’m sure.”

“There’s one problem – what do I do while I’m waiting? I can’t sit staring out of my virtual window all day. I’d be happy to do a boring job knowing it was a temporary measure . . .”

“Hmm . . . I have an idea.”

It was as easy as that.

The following day, Floss started work at IEMA in the timecrime department as a dogsbody. She cheerfully accepted being the lowliest member of the team, doing nothing for the first few days except make herself useful and friendly, leaping up whenever anyone wanted coffee, running errands, printing things out, updating records. Making it clear to Quinn that his idea had been a brilliant one. Everyone was pleasant; but a few times she looked up and caught Kayla, the head of the department, eyeing her. Maybe she resented Quinn giving Floss the job without consulting her.

Kayla was not happy about having this girl dumped on her. True, Floss was a willing and efficient worker, good at noticing things that needed doing, and doing them before she was asked. She was very little trouble to supervise. But Kayla’s suspicions were aroused. She couldn’t help suspecting that Quinn would not have taken Floss on had she not had those looks. Whenever he dropped into the department and paused by Floss’s desk, Kayla would watch and listen as much as she could without appearing to. They always seemed to be laughing together at some private joke. Kayla resolved to ignore it and say nothing. This resolution lasted a fortnight.

They were in Quinn’s office after working hours to discuss the pay rise Farouk had put in for; after that, Kayla expected they would probably eat out together or go to Quinn’s apartment. His decision made – Farouk got his rise, a little less than he’d wanted – Quinn said in passing how Floss’s presence seemed to have speeded up routine matters in the department. “The weekly digest never arrived on time while it was Farouk’s responsibility. Now it’s in my inbox by nine o’clock every Wednesday morning.”

Kayla tried to sound nonchalant. “How long is she going to be here?”

“Not very long.” Quinn looked up from his screen. “She’ll be going to university in September, most likely. Why?”

“I wondered, that’s all.” Kayla paused, then was unable to resist saying, “I’ve never quite understood what she was doing here in the first place. Why didn’t you leave her in the job that counsellor, what was her name, Jess, found for her?”

He responded to her words, not her underlying emotion. He said calmly, “Floss didn’t like it. She’s too intelligent, she got bored.”

Kayla’s voice sharpened. “If she finds filing and fetching cups of coffee at IEMA rewarding, I can’t imagine what they had her doing. Scrubbing the floor, perhaps?”

Quinn gave her an assessing glance, his eyes cold. “If you’re curious, why not ask her?” he said, getting to his feet and putting on his jacket. He smiled in a perfunctory way and left the building alone. Kayla cursed herself, deeply regretting her failure to play it cool, knowing Quinn disliked any sign of proprietary behaviour on her part.

After a week, discreetly, in the intervals of gofering, Floss started investigating leads. She had already attempted to find Ben Culcavy’s address. But he was clearly a dedicated and successful recluse; there weren’t even many photos of him on the internet, and they were shot from a distance and blurry. Only the student ones looked as if he was aware a photo was being taken and didn’t mind. Out of curiosity, she looked up the Daily Mail article, which made her feel quite sorry for Culcavy. After that her quest had led her into the strange online world of celebrity address websites. She’d typed his name into half a dozen search boxes, and got half a dozen variants on No Results. For the moment, she had given up this line of enquiry.

She was excited to learn that the department had its own TiTravs used for collecting data from the future, plus a small black museum of illegal devices confiscated from time criminals. Farouk told her these used to be on display behind half-inch thick glass, until a couple of attempts to break in and steal them. They now resided in the vaults, locked behind foot-thick steel walls, and she could see that realistically there was no way of getting her hands on one. Tantalizing. Nor was anyone likely to leave a TiTrav on her desk while stopping for a chat. But you never knew . . .

And there were other possibilities. Just occasionally, an illicit TiTrav surfaced. There were, in IEMA’s estimation, between six and twelve of them on the loose. The last one to show up had been five years before. Floss raised her eyes from studying the department’s records on her computer. Everyone was out of the office except for Farouk, who occupied the desk next to hers. He was scrolling through a property website in his coffee break, hoping to find a bigger flat before his first child was born; a hopeless enterprise that always left him glum and uncommunicative. She’d be doing him a favour distracting him.

“Hey, Farouk, the illegal TiTrav that was found five years ago – were you here then?”

Farouk raised sober brown eyes. “Yes indeed.” He shook his head. “It was a very big scandal. And we never actually found it, either.”

“Tell me about it.”

Farouk told her, in detail. Floss listened carefully, memorizing names and places. He finished by saying, “I liked Jace. He was the last person you’d expect to go off the rails like that. It goes to show you never really know someone. Even Kayla had no idea.”

“Why, was Kayla . . . ?”

“His girlfriend, yes. She and Quinn only got together much later.”

Quinn and Kayla an item . . . This was news to Floss. Though the possibility had crossed her mind once or twice, there was little in their behaviour in the office to give them away. It explained why she noticed Kayla looking at her from time to time. “What happened to Scott?”

“He left soon after. I think he felt bad about killing Peter McGuire, his heart went out of the job after that. He never got the chance to settle in here.”

“And did you ever pin anything on Ryker?”

“No. As far as I know, he’s still in his workshop under the arches. We haven’t had reason to investigate him since.”

Farouk smiled politely and returned to Yourplace.com, his brow furrowing over videos of apartments in undesirable parts of London, all of them undersized and expensive, and most requiring considerable work.

Floss went back to the records of the raid that Farouk had told her about. If anyone asked what she was doing, she could tell them Farouk’s story had made her curious. The people involved, apart from those she saw every day in the office, were Scott Winchester, Jace Carnady, Saffron McGuire, and Ryker, who didn’t seem to have another name. Helpfully, their 2045 contact details were there.

Floss wondered if there was more to Scott’s leaving IEMA than Farouk supposed. She looked him up in the department’s records and found his date of birth, his photograph, and his employment dates. He was young, clean shaven with an open face and dark crinkly hair. He had worked at IEMA for only three months. Aha – here was the copy of a request for a reference for Scott from the Metropolitan Police. All at once Floss saw the flaw in her plan. If she looked up Scott and tried to pump him for details of the raid five years ago, he’d naturally want to know why. And she could hardly explain to a policeman that she was hoping to get her hands on an illegal TiTrav in order to get back to her own time.

Okay. So she needed to find someone involved on the other side of the law. Ideally, she wanted to find Jace Carnady, the likeable (according to Farouk) guy who had stolen the TiTrav and presumably still had it, and ask him to take her back to 2015. She Googled his name. To the right of the page were half a dozen photos of him. She moved closer, then clicked on Images. Carnady had dark eyes, a straight nose and a firm mouth in the few photos where he wasn’t smiling and showing good teeth; his hair had a Byronic curl, his jaw varied between stubbled and lightly bearded, his shoulders were broad in the high collared jackets of the time. Farouk hadn’t mentioned that Jace Carnady was hot.

Below the photos it said:

JASON CARNADY is a British man alleged to have stolen a TiTrav May 2045. He has never been found, and nor has the TiTrav. His last known address was London.

Born 15 October 2016 ~

He hadn’t been born yet, in Floss’s own time. Staring at his photos, she told herself this was probably not a useful lead. If the authorities had failed to locate him at the time, and were still looking, how much chance did she have now?

What about Saffron, McGuire’s daughter? If her father had been a criminal, she might know some of his contacts. She hadn’t talked to Kayla, but she might talk to Floss.

Floss poured Quinn’s mint tea from his special teapot into a glass, put it on a tray with a small bowl of mixed nuts and raisins, and carried it down the corridor. Quinn’s office occupied the corner of the building, and was the largest and best on that level with windows on both sides. The door was open, and as she got nearer, Floss could see Kayla’s back view. She was standing in the doorway facing into the room, hand on the door knob. Instinctively, Floss froze. Kayla spoke, sounding exasperated, as if she had been trying to convince him of something for some time, and had got nowhere.

“You’re being naïve.”

“
Naïve?
” Quinn’s voice, calm and amused. “That doesn’t sound like me.”

“You can’t see she’s got her own agenda! D’you think she
likes
fetching you cups of coffee? She’s just hoping for an opportunity to get back to her own time.”

“I don’t see how fetching me cups of coffee would further that aim.”

“I’m not saying it would, just that’s what she thinks! You’re Chief of Intelligence, she knows you get to time travel. She’s trying to manipulate you.”

“It’s thoughtful of you to warn me. I shall take care not to be manipulated.” Pause. “By anyone.”

Quinn’s tone was a dismissal in itself. Hearing this, Floss turned and practically ran back the way she had come, careless of slopping the tea, until she reached the far end of the corridor. She swivelled, and when Kayla emerged, expression stormy, Floss was walking slowly towards her from twenty feet away. Floss gave her a sunny smile, and received a curt nod in return. Kayla was clearly too cross to keep up appearances.

Floss knocked on the door and went in.

Quinn looked up and smiled. “Ah, a cup of your mint tea, just what I need. No one else makes it quite as well.”

“I’m afraid I’ve spilled it a bit.” Floss put the tray on his desk and made to leave.

“Sit down a minute, Floss.”

She sat opposite him.

“Do you have any plans for your birthday?”

Floss was going to be twenty-six on the following Saturday, 9
^th
April. Or of course sixty-one, if you counted the years from 1989 to 2050. “No . . .”

“In that case you must let me take you out to celebrate. We’ll have dinner and go to the opera. You can wear that long dress you look so ravishing in.”

Floss was not particularly musical, and didn’t like opera. She hoped it wasn’t a long one. Wagner, she knew, could go on for four hours, not counting intermissions. But she did like eating out, and it was nice of him to remember her birthday from the details he must have studied about her. This was a kind offer, and much better than staying in on her own in her flat on her birthday.

“Thank you, that’s very kind of you, I’d love to.”

“Splendid. I’ll pick you up on Saturday at five thirty.”

Saturday morning Floss’s doorbell woke her up. Clambering out of bed to answer it, she remembered that today was her birthday. She opened the door and took delivery of a large bouquet of white flowers; roses, lilies and gypsophila. Rather bridal, she thought. The note read:

Happy birthday.

Looking forward to tonight,

Q

Floss found a vase, put the flowers in water and arranged them on her desk. They took up most of the space, but there wasn’t anywhere else to put them. Their heady scent filled the apartment, a constant reminder of her birthday outing that evening.

Quinn collected her at exactly five thirty. Floss opened the door to him having made a special effort with her appearance; she wore the cobwebby dress, and her hair up. He was looking his smoothest in a waisted black tailcoat and britches, with a white cravat and a red carnation in his buttonhole.

“Hi,” she said.

Quinn ran his eyes over her appreciatively. “You look . . . delightful.”

“Thank you for the flowers, they’re lovely.”

“My pleasure.”

Floss had never been to The Royal Opera House, though she had often passed it. Their pod dropped them in Bow Street, immediately outside the huge pillared façade. The building had hardly changed at all. Quinn escorted her to a table in the Amphitheatre Restaurant and sat opposite her.

“We can take our time. The table is ours for the evening.”

Floss sat up schoolroom straight amid the lavish surroundings, a little uneasy at being out with a man who had a girlfriend; she was not entirely sure of his motives. She hoped he was just being friendly . . . but maybe he was not. A waiter handed her the menu, and Quinn ordered champagne. The food was delicious, and the attentive waiters and civilized bustle of the restaurant around them made their tête-à-tête seem less like a date. Quinn’s manner was companionable rather than flirtatious, and Floss began to relax and enjoy herself.