Markham and I made ourselves some sandwiches and took them to his room to watch TV. We could hear them talking downstairs. About us, I assumed.

  A week later and after a lot of background work . . .

  ‘Right,’ said Lady Amelia, placing a large envelope in front of me. ‘I think it’s all there. References – which will check out. Employment history – ditto. Details of your accommodation. Your wardrobe will be on site when you arrive. A line of credit has been opened for you . . .’

  ‘Don’t go mad,’ interrupted Pennyroyal.

  ‘As if,’ I said.

  ‘Citizen’s ID card. You’re Maxine Forrest. We kept the Max just in case you somehow slip up or – very unlikely, but you never know – someone recognises you. Someone shouting “Max” in the street can easily be explained away if you’re Maxine Forrest.’

  As always, I was gobsmacked by their groundwork. Everything was creased with just the right amount of wear and tear. New docs are always suspect. These genuinely looked as if they’d been in and out of files, folders and bags. There was even a passport full of stamps because Maxine Forrest had obviously knocked around a bit. I sighed. Lots of homework to do there.

  I wondered – not for the first time and certainly not the last – exactly which time these two were from. They seemed at home everywhere they went. I knew if I asked them they’d just fob me off. Smallhope was Lady Amelia Smallhope, so consulting Debrett’s should sort out who and when she was. If that was her real name, of course. But that didn’t solve the riddle of Pennyroyal, who probably hadn’t actually been born of a mortal woman but forged instead. Was he from a different time to Lady Amelia? Had they met on a job? Speculation was tempting but fruitless. I should just happily accept all my first-class forgeries, enjoy my no doubt comfortable accommodation, utilise the credit facilities set up for me, and get on with it.

  ‘You’ll have to get the job yourself,’ Smallhope said, jolting me back. ‘But they publish their vacancies every month and there always seems to be a reasonable selection, even if it’s only in the cleaning and caretaking departments.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Here’s your new address. The accommodation has a garden, I believe. For the pod. Or you might find yourself close to an area of public allotments where no one’s going to notice an extra shed, scruffy though it might be.’

  This was true. Since the greening of London with roof gardens, living walls and a massive plant-a-tree scheme, thousands of small allotments had been made available. We’d find somewhere for the pod. And if things were truly desperate there was always the camouflage device which would render the pod almost invisible. It gobbled up the power though, so we’d have to be careful.

  ‘What are you doing about your hair?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Your hair.’

  And now I need to explain about my hair.

  I think I’ve mentioned breaking Dr Bairstow out of the Red House. Unfortunately, while the operation itself had been successful, things hadn’t gone so well for me. I’d been caught. I came round in some sort of medical ward, handcuffed to a bed. Not the first time but definitely the most unpleasant. And then that bastard Gaunt strode in, hacked off my hair, tossed it into the waste bin and strode back out again. For which he would one day pay.

  Contrary to everything you see in the holos, it’s impossible to just lop off someone’s hair and have it result in a perfect hairstyle afterwards. Or any sort of hairstyle at all. My hair was up around my ear on one side and down to my chin on the other. With a sort of nearly bald spot at the back. Like me, my hair was still in a state of shock and had barely even begun to think about regrowth.

  ‘I could tell people I was growing it.’

  ‘The unkempt look is never fashionable. Get it trimmed.’

  ‘Nearest hairdressers?’

  ‘About seventeen miles away.’

  Shit.

  I looked at Markham, Markham looked at me.

  ‘I’ll give it a go if you like,’ he said. ‘Then we can just bung some product on it. The important thing is to pretend it’s supposed to look like that. That’s what I always do.’

  I looked at his hair. ‘You look like a small coconut.’

  ‘A small but fashionable coconut,’ he corrected. ‘I’ll go and get the kitchen scissors.’

  Oh God . . .

  Afterwards, everyone said how much better it looked. Apparently long bits and short bits and then long bits again were very fashionable this year. I looked like a badly mown hayfield. I don’t really want to talk about it.

  The brief was clear. Get the job. By hook or by crook – get the job. Wander vaguely around seeing what information I could pick up. Don’t get into trouble. Don’t set fire to anything. Return to base with enough useful info to formulate Stage Two. Markham would remain in the background just in case.

  ‘Simple and straightforward,’ I said. ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’

  I won’t bore you with the response. I stopped listening and used the time to grow my hair instead.

  We landed just before dawn. I activated the cameras. As far as I could see we were where we should be – when, however, was wrong. We were a day early.

  ‘This pod is beginning to drift,’ I said, checking over the controls.

  ‘Not a problem at the moment,’ said Markham. ‘We’re not going to be using it very much. If at all. And we can still access the flat. It’s all good. Stop worrying.’

  We left the pod as the sun was struggling over the horizon. Markham had a hand-drawn map and I followed blindly. There were some lovely houses in this area. From different periods, but all making a harmonious whole and sensitively divided into neat little flats. I felt my spirits rise.

  Ours wasn’t any of that. Our destination was a four-storey brick box, designed and built during the architectural desert that was the latter part of the 20th century. Tiny. Dark. Ugly. Flat-roofed and water-stained, it enjoyed a stunning view over its correspondingly depressed-looking sibling on the other side of the street. But it had a garden. Well, it had a small patch of uneven, broken-glass-strewn, thistle-ridden ground at the back, which was where we had landed. There was no direct access from the garden to the block, but if we scrambled over a wall and trotted down a damp, narrow passage and turned right, we would find ourselves only fifty yards or so from the block’s front door. As Markham said, let’s hope we never had to make a quick getaway and, apparently under the impression this would solve the problem, announced his intention of buying a rope ladder.

  As far as I could see, the ground floor was completely unoccupied.

  ‘Probably a crack den,’ he said as we passed the boarded-up doors. Our flat was on the second floor. There were two flats to each floor and we were on the right. Markham unlocked the door and in we went.

  I dropped my bag and looked around. The entire flat was nearly as small as my first room at St Mary’s and had probably cost twenty times as much. Per day. I made a mental note to wrap up this assignment asap – before Pennyroyal began to get shooting pains in his wallet. Not that we’d end up paying for any of this. All our costs would be shunted on in one way or another. I have to admit, I was rather enjoying my time as a recovery agent.

  Markham settled us in while I opened the windows. It smelled as if the previous tenants had kept goats in there.

  The scant furniture was exactly what you’d expect from rented accommodation in the most expensive city in the world. Despite being billed as a two-bedroomed flat, there was one bedroom and what looked like a large cupboard.

  ‘You’re the working girl,’ said Markham. ‘You can have the bedroom and I’ll take this one.’ Which was good of him.

  I activated our private dongle and fired up the ancient data table. Despite my misgivings, it worked. A little bit trembly but so was I.

  I brought up the Insight situations vacant site and read through the list. There were two possibilities. One was in admin proper and one was a filing clerk. I registered an interest in both and went off to explore my wardrobe. Which took approximately seven seconds. The application forms came back by automatic return and I enjoyed a creative hour or so.

  Two days later – much more quickly than I had anticipated – I was invited to interview for the filing clerk’s job. Markham and I celebrated quietly.

  I dressed carefully that morning. An anonymous high street trouser suit with a plain white shirt. All the fabrics were light and comfortable – and self-cleaning. How about that?

  I’d applied just a little make-up. I don’t normally wear it but I wanted to look as if I’d made the effort. My hair looked . . . let’s go with unique. ‘You have your own look,’ said Markham. ‘That’s what you need to tell yourself.’

  He wasn’t coming with me. ‘I don’t want to risk myself,’ he said. ‘I’ll stay safely at home in case you don’t come back.’

  To increase his chances of survival even further, he hadn’t bothered to get out of bed.

  ‘There are cameras everywhere,’ he said, thumping his pillows, ‘so I don’t want to be seen in public with you. Understandable, I think.’

  ‘And I don’t want you queering my pitch with any future employers so don’t go showing your scruffy self anywhere near my – with luck – future place of employment.’

  ‘I meant,’ he said with dignity, ‘that I will be available to get you out in case anything goes horribly wrong.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, pulling up the covers and preparing for another selfless half hour or so in bed. ‘It’s you. Could be anything. Use your imagination.’

  I looked at him in his squalid nest on the floor. ‘I’m trying not to.’

  It was just over a forty-minute walk to the Insight building. I trudged the pavements, following the street map I’d downloaded the night before.

  To begin with, all the streets were residential and reasonably quiet. As I drew closer, small hotels and posh B&Bs began to emerge. Pubs appeared on the corners. I love London – a pub on every corner and all of them festooned with flowers. Perhaps smothering your pub in flowers was a condition of the licence. And I rather liked the way I had to thread my way through all the small tables and chairs strewn across the pavements. Getting home after work without stopping anywhere to avail myself of the facilities was going to be enjoyably challenging.

  As I drew closer to Great Russell Street, the pavements stopped being manual – or footual, I should say. There were automated walkways for those already worn out – for a small fee, of course – and energy-generating walkways for the fitter and poorer. I only had to swipe my ID card and our home address would be credited with the value of the electricity I was out generating while the young master still sprawled in his foetid bed.

  I wasn’t a complete stranger to the future. I’d been here before when I’d had myself seconded to the Time Police as part of a brilliant strategy to take down Clive Ronan. Which had worked – believe it or not – and then the bastard Time Police let him go.

  Before anyone asks – I’m not a fan of the future. Yes, there’s canals crammed with boats, and airships chugging everywhere and everything’s very green, but the weather’s a bit shitty. Overly hot and dry in summer – which is when you need the rain – and cold and wet in winter, when you don’t. That’s the problem with solar power: when you need the hot water – when you fancy a lovely hot bath after a cold walk home – there isn’t any. Because the bloody sun hasn’t been shining. And on the days when you fancy a lovely cool shower after a hot walk home, there isn’t any because it’s so bloody hot even the cold water is warm. Although, to be fair, on four or five days of the year the system works really well.

  And, sadly, still no flying cars. In fact, very few cars at all. Emergency vehicles, official transportation for important people, and that was it. Most people cycled or walked or used the extensive waterways system.

  But there were lovely roof gardens, and living walls bloomed everywhere. There were trees at street level for shade and to soak up the CO2. Markham would be delighted by the number of plane trees lining the streets. And there were smaller trees above street level as well. To see a small wood of silver birches fifty feet in the air is quite a sight.

  Arriving at my destination, I stood on the other side of the road – it was the only way I could get a proper impression of the building as a whole.

  Wow. Impressive. Seriously impressive. It made St Mary’s look like a lean-to.

  In front of me reared a massive building some six storeys high, and that wasn’t counting the labyrinth of cellars and basements that almost certainly existed below street level. Five very impressive steps, flanked by stone lions, led up to wooden double doors. The brass plaque beside them gleamed like a second sun.

  The edifice was built of red brick – real red brick – not the cheap cladding used in the only designed to last as long as the life of the mortgage buildings you get these days.

  A wrought-iron balcony ran around the first-floor windows. I don’t know why – in the days when the house was built, no one would ever have gone out there. Too noisy and smelly by day, and the night air would’ve been considered most injurious to the health. Especially if you were female and barely surviving the rigours of life anyway.

  The architect – whoever he was – must have been smoking some seriously good stuff. The complicated frontage was festooned with turrets, arched windows supported by mini pillars, crests, gables, barley-sugar chimneys, stained glass and parapets. A second balcony ran around the fourth floor and was no doubt as unused as the first.

  The ornate roofline rose up to a kind of dome with a clock face embedded. Five to ten. Time for my second job interview with an historical research organisation. Because the first one had turned out so well, hadn’t it?

  With luck, this would turn out to be a nice indoor desk job offering no opportunities to be eaten by dinosaurs or trampled at the Battle of Bosworth Field, or drowned in the tsunami that brought down Bronze-Age Crete.

  Being a recovery agent wasn’t any less hazardous, but probable causes of death were disappointingly dull. Shot dead seemed most likely. And the shooter would probably be Penny­royal when I pushed him too far – as I was bound to do one day. Although if it was Pennyroyal, they’d certainly never find my body.

  For God’s sake, Maxwell – focus.

  Dodging e-bikes and pedestrians alike, I crossed the road to peer through the glossy black-painted railings. There was at least one floor below street level, possibly two. That would be where one’s servants had led their subterranean existence.

  Sighing, I smoothed the sad results of Markham’s first attempt at free-form haircutting, climbed the steps and went inside. Two terrifyingly chirpy receptionists regarded me with delight. My appearance had obviously made their day.

  ‘Good morning. I have an interview with Bridget Lafferty at ten. My name is Forrest.’

  ‘You do,’ said the one on the right, consulting her screen. They issued me with a visitor’s badge and asked me to wait. The badge had one of those clip things that I can never work out how to operate. They watched me struggle for a while and then, in pitying silence, popped it on a lanyard for me. Not the best start.

  ‘This way,’ said the other one and led me to the lift.

  She pressed the basement button. I sighed. People always keep their filing in the basement. It’s a conspiracy by the entire world to deprive filing clerks of fresh air and sunshine. I could feel early-onset rickets kicking in already.

  The lift pinged and the doors opened. Not entirely sure what to expect, I stepped out cautiously. The smell hit me immediately. Old paper, must and chemicals. Much stronger here than it had been in the loading bay. I took a deep breath.

  ‘Good luck,’ she said, and left me standing there. I heard the doors close behind me. I took a quick look around. I was in a large office area. There was a notice board with everything pinned in neat rows, two enormous photocopiers, a stationery cupboard with a skull and crossbones and the words Keep out – yes, this does mean you stencilled across the front, three metal filing cabinets against one wall and two desks. The one on the right was empty. A man was seated at the other, peering at his screen with such intense concentration that I would have put good money on him playing a game of some kind. Behind the desks a big metal grille stretched from floor to ceiling behind which was a massive – and I do mean massive – filing system. The only access was through a key-padded door. It was hard to tell whether the door was keeping people out or the files in because, trust me, if this lot ever became sentient and escaped then they could take over the world. The cavernous space just went on and on, row upon row of metal shelves stretching off into the distance. The Cheddar Gorge of filing. And it wasn’t all enclosed in those nice modern rolling stacks, either. The shelves were all open. There would be dust. And miles and miles of walking.

  I stared. I don’t know if it’s just me, but does anyone else have difficulty equating filing with sinister organisations doing sinister things?

  ‘Excuse me, Ms Lafferty? Does World Domination go under W or D?’

  I was still staring in disbelief when a cheerful voice said, ‘Hello there.’

  I turned and got the shock of my life.

  Smiling warmly at me, her arm extended all ready to shake hands, was the woman who’d attacked us at Home Farm a couple of weeks ago.

  And died in the attempt.

  I could only hope she put it down to interview terror.

  For long moments I was paralysed. Was I in the right time? Had she recognised me? Was this a trap of some kind? The last time I’d seen her she’d been dead. What the hell was going on here?

  And then I pulled myself together – mostly – smiled, and shook her hand. ‘How do you do?’

 

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