No True Echo (10 page)

Patrick Cornish was the first murderer Liphook had ever interviewed.

‘Mr Cornish,' said Liphook. ‘Do you understand where you are?'

He wore the look of a man who had just woken up from a terrible nightmare. ‘I'm in hospital,' he said at last. ‘What's wrong with me?'

‘I'm not a doctor. I'm a police officer,' she replied.

‘What's happened?'

‘What do you remember about today?'

‘The last thing I remember was tidying up after class and then  …  Eddie was waiting for me outside. I'd offered him a lift. Then, I don't know what.'

‘It's Saturday today. There's no school.'

‘Saturday? No. This is Thursday I'm talking about.'

‘Perhaps it will help if I tell you what I know. This morning, Saturday morning, you drove to the residence of David Maguire.'

‘I don't know who that is.'

‘You parked outside his farmhouse, found his gun and shot him dead.'

Cornish stared at her in utter disbelief. ‘There's been a mistake.'

It was hard to believe she was talking to a murderer. ‘You then shot two children.'

‘I can't have. I've never  …  I wouldn't.'

‘The detectives will take a full statement from you when they arrive,' said Liphook. ‘You can tell me anything. Why did you shoot the kids, Patrick?'

‘I didn't. I wouldn't. Hold on, shouldn't I have a lawyer here?'

‘You most definitely should but it won't do you any harm to tell me what happened.'

The door opened. Liphook turned, expecting to see a doctor or a nurse but two men dressed in smart dark suits entered.

‘Officer Liphook,' said the taller of the two men. ‘Good job. First on the scene of the crime.'

‘You can't start like that,' said the other. ‘You have to say who you are first.'

‘Officer Liphook,' said the first. ‘My colleague and I are from a government agency affiliated to the criminal investigation department.'

‘What agency?'

‘It's called the ETA.'

‘What's that stand for?'

‘We can't say,' said the shorter man. ‘Why were you at David Maguire's today?'

‘I followed a stolen car there, but this is the man you should be talking to,' began Liphook.

‘Yes, we are well aware of Mr Cornish's involvement, thank you,' said the first.

‘My involvement?' said Cornish. ‘What's going on? Who are you?'

‘Please, Mr Cornish, all will be made quite clear to you in due course,' said the first man.

‘Actually  … ' said the other. The two men turned around and whispered quietly to each other, then turned back to face Liphook and Cornish. ‘Sorry. My colleague has pointed out that it will not be made clear to you but that can't be helped, so let's move on, shall we?'

‘What?' exclaimed Cornish.

‘Now, Officer Liphook, tell us about this stolen car.'

‘It belongs to Mrs Spinks. Her cat was in the back. She reported it stolen.'

‘The cat or the car?' asked the shorter.

‘Both. I spotted the car driving erratically along the main valley road so I followed it to a field, where two juveniles abandoned it. I then followed them to the farmhouse.'

The taller of the two men made a note of this in a pad, then flipped over the page and showed it to his colleague. ‘Yes, that seems about right. Did you apprehend the car thieves?'

‘They're in the hospital. Their names are Lauren Bliss and Eddie Dane.'

‘Lauren Bliss?' From their reaction, the two clearly knew the name. ‘Where is she now?'

‘Eddie stole a car?' said Cornish.

‘Lauren is in a hospital bed,' said Liphook. ‘But I think you're missing the point. The gun was fired by Patrick Cornish. He killed a man and shot two kids.'

The two men weren't listening. They turned to leave.

‘What about me?' asked Cornish.

‘Well, you probably want to use loss of memory as your defence,' said the shorter man.

‘Yes. Good luck with that,' said the other.

‘What? This isn't right,' protested Cornish.

‘You've only yourself to blame,' said the taller man.

‘In a sense,' added the shorter.

‘In a sense,' repeated the other.

‘What's going on?' demanded Liphook. ‘I want to see your credentials. Who are you people?'

Neither man answered and she followed them along the corridor to the bed where Lauren Bliss had been, only to find it empty. Lauren was gone. In the bed next to hers lay Eddie, still unconscious. Ruby was sitting next to him, with her head slumped over the side of the bed, fast asleep. But Lauren was gone.

‘None of this makes any sense,' said Liphook.

‘Yes,' said the first. ‘I'm afraid that is correct.'

My second Saturday morning, I sat at the kitchen table, watching the rain trickle down the window, wondering if each droplet would be following the exact zigzagged line as before. I thought about Maguire's diagram explaining what would happen if you went back in time, and how it meant there would be two realities, each a copy of the other. How exact did it have to be? Was every droplet of water acting in the same way as the last time this all happened?

I was so entranced by the rain on the windowpane that I almost jumped out of my skin when the phone rang. I paused before answering. Ruby's friends knew not to call so early, which meant that it was Angus, but I wasn't in the mood to talk to him about trees.

‘Eddie, lad, are you up? That's the phone,' I heard Ruby shout from upstairs.

‘I've got it,' I responded. I picked up the receiver but, before I could say a word, I heard Maguire's voice say, ‘Eddie? Is that you? I understand now. You were right.'

‘What's happened? What do you understand?' I replied.

‘I see now. You were right. It is possible to travel back. Come quickly. We must try to understand what happened to you.'

‘Why?'

‘Because I think it may be extremely important.'

‘You didn't even believe me before,' I said. ‘What's changed?'

‘I've changed, Eddie,' he said. ‘I've been back too.'

‘Where?'

‘It's not important where I went. The question is where have you come from?'

‘I'll come now,' I said.

I grabbed my coat and shouted, ‘I'm going out.' I don't know if Ruby heard and I wasn't going to hang around waiting for her to respond.

This time, instead of trying to cross the muddy field, I continued down the hill until I found a lower path that brought me level with the farmhouse. I leaned my bike against the wall and knocked loudly on the door. The reply came, not in the form of a voice, but as a gunshot. A bullet ripped a hole in the door. I dived to the ground, face down in the mud.

‘That was a warning,' yelled Maguire from the other side.

‘Don't shoot! It's me, Eddie.'

‘Eddie who?'

‘Eddie Dane. I was here yesterday.'

‘If you're from the agency, you have to declare it now. That's the protocol.'

‘I don't know what that means,' I said.

Maguire opened the door. As usual it got stuck halfway. ‘Blasted thing,' he said, yanking it open. He was wearing the same white lab coat as before but his eyes looked wild and frightened, and he had a graze on his head. ‘Why are you here?' he demanded.

‘You called me,' I said, still on the ground in the mud and the rain.

‘When did I call you?'

‘I don't know, fifteen minutes ago?'

‘Why?'

‘Why what?'

‘Why did I call you?' he demanded.

‘You said you knew what was going on and that you believed me about the jumping-back-in-time thing.'

‘Who's gone back in time?'

‘Me.'

‘Ha,' he said, waving the gun in my face. ‘So you are echo jumping. I knew it. What's your originating version and time?'

‘What are you talking about?'

‘How far back have you jumped? What are you doing here?'

‘I  …  Well, I only got as far as today, except it was different,' I said, ‘and I don't know why it happened.'

‘You don't know?' he said. Then, after a moment's reflection, he repeated it. ‘You don't know.' His eyes widened and he looked around, as though checking if anyone was there and said, with certainty this time, ‘You don't know. Yes. Inside now. It's not safe out here.'

‘Not safe? You're pointing a gun at me.'

‘Inside,' snarled Maguire.

I couldn't put my finger on how Maguire was different, but he had definitely changed. It was more than the wild look in his eyes and the way his shaking hands gripped the gun. It was something about the way he moved as he flitted around the room, ensuring the curtains were all drawn.

‘You said I called you. How did I sound?' he asked.

‘Excited, I suppose,' I replied, ‘but why are you asking this like you don't know?'

‘Never mind that. What did I say? What were my exact words?'

‘You said that you had  … ' It was strange. As I tried to recall it, I realised I couldn't remember what he had said to me. A nagging thought occurred to me that it had never happened.

‘It's hazy, isn't it?' said Maguire. ‘They're untethered memories, shifting pasts. Classic early echo-jump side effects before I managed to fine-tune the process.' He placed his hand to my temple. ‘Any hallucinations? Odd associations?'

‘Yes.'

‘Tell me about the repeated days. What differences have there been?'

My first thought was of Scarlett but I remembered her saying she would be in trouble if anyone discovered that I knew anything. I didn't want to mention her, but I did want to understand what all this was about. ‘My English teacher, Mr Cornish, came here to kill you.'

‘Patrick Cornish?' he said.

‘Yes.'

‘Interesting. Did he succeed?'

‘In killing you?'

‘Yes. In killing me.'

‘I think he did, yes. He used that gun. Or at least, I thought he did, only he can't have done, can he?'

Maguire smiled. It was an odd reaction to being told that he had been shot dead. ‘Why were you here?'

‘He was acting weirdly on my way home,' I said, ‘so the next day I followed him and he came here.'

‘On your own?'

‘On my own,' I said.

‘It would be in your best interests to tell me the truth. Remember, I do have a gun.' He held it up both as a reminder and a threat.

‘It was just me,' I said. ‘Now will you tell me what's going on?'

‘I very much doubt you could understand it.'

‘Try me.'

‘You are mid-echo jump. Since your originating point was here and you jumped back two days, I think we can safely assume that this, the first time-particle accelerator, was used and that it was used in a hurry, meaning that whoever sent you back didn't have time to adjust the settings. Which leads us to the question of who sent you back. Who was here with you?'

‘What's an echo jump?' I asked. ‘And how come you know all this when yesterday you didn't know anything? And how come you don't remember calling me? And why are you still pointing a gun at me?'

Maguire lowered the gun and placed it on the armchair.

‘Maybe I should show you the recording.'

‘What recording?'

‘People love the recording.'

Maguire walked into the back room, where he picked up a camera and found a lead to connect it to one of the computers. After a little jiggling of wires and pressing buttons, an image came onscreen of Maguire sitting on the stool in front of the blank wall.

‘Watch this now,' said Maguire. ‘This is a real piece of history. Or at least, it will be.'

‘My name is David Maguire and this is a scientific demonstration.'

The on-screen Maguire reached forward and clumsily swivelled the camera around to show the equipment that was pointing directly at him.

‘I have, for some years now, believed that there exists a particle that governs our relationship with time. Those of my peers who doubted this belief should understand that I feel no ill will towards them. In fact, without their firm hands pushing me away from the established scientific community, I would never have been able to fully dedicate my time to this pursuit.

‘Soon I will publish a paper detailing the specifics of my findings, but for the sake of this demonstration, try imagining that just as a strand of DNA holds the blueprint of life, the time particle contains all information pertaining to that which has already occurred: the past. Whether it also contains that which is yet to occur, I do not know. But let's not try to run before we can walk. What I am sure of is that this particle governs our forward movement through time. Let us take this book as an example.'

Maguire held up the hardback copy of
Frankenstein
.

‘A book contains many traces of history. This is a story written by Mary Shelley in 1816, published in 1818, then again with changes by the author in 1831. This edition was published in  … ' Maguire opened it up and checked the date inside. ‘1937. I can't tell you how many owners it has had, how many hands have held it, or whose eyes have perused the words. What I can say is that each molecule that makes up each page is governed by time particles that ensure that this book travels forwards through time. It began life in pristine condition but now its pages have smudges from dirty fingers, folds from those who wanted to keep their place and other marks, common in old books. Time, as we have always understood it, allows for things to become worn and we would all be very surprised if the book's condition improved over the years.

‘I will now use this book to demonstrate how time is not what we thought it was. For some reason, best known to the publishers, there are two completely blank pages at the back.' He held the book open to its back pages, at first putting it too close to the camera, causing it to lose focus, then moving it further away before lowering it. ‘I have never read this book and only selected it because I was reminded of it recently. Now, watch carefully as I turn to a page, completely at random.'

He flicked through the pages and chose one.

‘I will now read the first sentence my eyes have fallen upon.
The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature
.'

He paused to reflect on this before continuing.

‘That is the first time I have read that line. It's rather good and oddly appropriate. Watch now, as I turn on the time particle accelerator, which will send me on a short jump back along my own timeline. You will not be able to join me on this journey, but will instead witness me falling into a short temporal coma. Please do not be alarmed by this.'

He leaned forward and flicked a switch, then sat back in the chair.

‘My time perception is now being  … '

His voice drifted away and he fell forward, crashing straight into the camera and, for a few seconds, the screen showed nothing but the ceiling until Maguire picked it up. This time he had a graze on his temple.

‘Now look,' he said.

He pointed the camera at the book, opened it and revealed on the blank pages, written in messy handwriting, the sentence:
The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature.

He swung the camera back to his face. ‘Obviously, you're thinking this is a trick. I could have written this while the camera was not pointing at me but I assure you it is not. The acceleration of my governing time particles sent me back into my own past. Physically I remained here but my conscious self returned to an earlier point in my life. It entered this very body two days ago. Thursday morning. I was not there long, just long enough to find a pen and write the sentence that I had just read. To avoid confusion, rather than labelling this time travel, which has too many connotations and inherent inaccuracies, I am calling this echo jumping because I returned to an earlier point of my existence, just as a sound wave can bounce back in the form of an echo. I am yet to fully establish the consequences of causality involved in this temporal shift but, as you've seen from my demonstration, it is possible to alter events. Whatever the truth, this is a significant leap forward, both in the history of science and in the science of history.'