The time gene, p.47
The Time Gene, page 47
Thirst burned Gordonstoun’s throat. There was a jug of water inches from him. But he doubted Rauchmann would have tendered it if he were on fire. He fought to maintain his composure. “But why did you say Perun had granted clemency, when he patently had not?”
The governor basked in the silence, and in Skegness’ discomfort. “My friend, lexical terms…alter slightly in wartime. Much as I cannot suffer a coward to live, a bog-standard execution for desertion has not the stigma it once had, simply because it is…ubiquitous. The only alternative would be to execute him for treason…” (and he silenced Skegness with his hand as the latter protested). “But an execution for treason is not quite so…straightforward.” An unctuous smile blossomed on his lips. “Executions for treason are conducted in the Smithy.”
Skegness blanched. “The Smithy?”
The governor muscled in so close that Gordonstoun could see his plentiful gold fillings and the orange gel he slathered on for his receding gums. “Our inmates so christened it, and it sort of stuck. It’s a simple incinerator. I suppose they were thinking of a blacksmith’s forge, or smelting furnace. These days, we cannot afford the labour and messiness of hanging, drawing and quartering, and yet it must be a painful death as a deterrent. All in all, Ironside is lucky.”
Skegness quailed again. “So, Perun asked you to shoot him by firing squad instead of burning him alive?”
An air of puzzlement spread across the governor’s face. “Funnily enough, Perun didn’t want him dead. He wanted to have him confined. But the tribunal (which I chaired) rejected that. With food shortages, sanitation problems and homelessness rife, I just cannot sanction the feeding of unproductive mouths. Perun was outnumbered, and signed the death warrant yesterday.”
Skegness’ eyes wandered from Rauchmann’s mahogany desk to the gold-rimmed picture frames, ermine glasses case, hand unguents and Godiva chocolates, and the exercise bike in the catalogue that cost more than bed and board for ten lunatics for a year. A flash of anger struck him, which he stifled. He didn’t want to waste what might yet be Murdo’s best chance of a reprieve. But, come on, Murdo wasn’t cuckoo. Sure, when he’d first come round he’d garbled nonsensicalities about meeting some weird sort of ghost who could revive the Houdini mission. But that had been trauma. Nothing else.
The tears he’d fought so long began to flow. He’d kept a vigil at Murdo’s bedside that first night, when he was still delirious. It had been touch and go. Before the stretcher reached the ambulance, he’d stopped breathing. And his heartbeat had gone. Another minute in that pit and he wouldn’t have come back. The cruel irony of it! Those paramedics had exhausted themselves blowing air into Murdo’s lungs and massaging his heart only for this cocky arsehole to order his brains blasted out as an act of mercy. And he couldn’t fathom this high treason business.
Yet he urged the governor to spare Murdo on the defence of insanity, assuring him that he and his family would pay for Murdo’s confinement as long as he lived. Rauchmann issued a deep sigh. “See, the trouble with jumped-up boffins such as you is that you understood nothing about national security, official secrets and the dangers of loose tongues. But I, as a veteran of five wars, am all too aware of how easily the house of cards can come down. He leaned forward. “How could I sleep knowing I had kept a madman alive? Level 8 Security...even the King’s only a 9, for Christ’s sake! A madman in wartime is dangerous enough, but a madman who knows half the country’s secrets? A liability…a timebomb…I will not authorise it. Never shall I compromise on my duty to protect the nation state!”
The governor gargled his brandy then resumed, his voice acrid and sulphurous: “So if you use your brain…oh, I beg your pardon,” he snipped. The telephone on Rauchmann’s desk was ringing. He lifted it to his ear. “Yes…”
Rauchmann turned a beetroot colour, and blustered into the receiver: “Elvira, I won’t tell you again…this is the third time today. Completely unacceptable….yes…no…I’m in a meeting. No, give the boy the pumpkin lasagne sprinkled with saffron...he swears it’ll lower his blood pressure…but I want meat. Use the veal mince.” Rauchmann’s irritation was evident. “Now I must go. Yes, yes. Love you too.”
“Sorry,” Rauchmann barked. Gordonstoun doubted he was sorry for anything other than the damage caused to his ego by having his domestic arrangements paraded before an ex-MI8 officer. The head jailor was fidgeting with his brandy glass and ermine glasses case. “Yes…Ironside…diabolical business…but his execution is squarely in the public interest.” The governor rang a brass bell that sat on his desk, a peal that smacked of urgency.
The brandy mellowed the governor’s voice to a smoky lilt. Whether or not this lull was a Trojan horse, Skegness could not tell. “As Ironside has no family other than a fairly elderly aunt,” Rauchmann said, “I can ensure the few possessions he brought with him into the prison are conferred to you.” He said this as though conceding some great boon. “There are the clothes he was wearing, of course…boots of very high-quality leather…a photograph of a girl...reminded me of an old pop star crush of mine...” (He licked his lips as though recalling chocolate eclairs or Turkish delight) “…Some miscellaneous mementos…bizarrely, half of a perforated coin…and (oddly enough) a smoker’s pipe. A rather fine one, too. I heard in MI8 they’re notorious for smoking pot…” Rauchmann winked and nudged Gordonstoun’s shoulder with an oily matiness which he abhorred.
The ignominy of the man! Threatening to have Murdo burned alive on undisclosed charges of treason. Besmirching his name to protect the ‘public interest’. Offering up his possessions like spoils from a looted village. Bragging of his black-market luxuries while bleating that Murdo’s life was not worth preserving. Gritting his teeth, Gordonstoun agreed to take his friend’s belongings. Better than letting this ghoul sell them for an emollient skin cream or a pumpkin lasagne.
He made a tentative request to visit Murdo, which he did not expect to be granted. Surprisingly, the governor acquiesced. Footsteps strutted up the stairs, and Skegness heard a clicking sound, regular, like a saw biting into metal. Lovelace stropped in, smirking and munching a chocolate bar. Gordonstoun hadn’t tasted chocolate since the start of the war, and the scent made him heady.
“You rang, Sir?” Gordonstoun sank into his chair. She was almost as tall as he was, and he was six feet two. He felt her hot breath condense on his forehead. He smelt a mixture of chocolate, sweat and disinfectant on her skin and clothes.
Lovelace’s key chain would have crippled a woman of slighter build. A cacophony like shattered glass ricocheted around her. But what made Gordonstoun wince was the clink from that chain in her pocket. Gordonstoun followed jitterily as she unlocked a series of wrought iron doors, rattling her keys as she found the correct one each time. Each new corridor she opened onto was as dank, filthy and squalid as the last, a never-ending corridor of grimy mirrors. Gordonstoun had never seen such a cesspit of filth. Dustbins overflowed with cigarette ends, syringes, syrupy gruel and worse. The heavy bleach odour stung Gordonstoun’s eyes and chafed his nose. His companion’s nose was clearly better accustomed as she did not flinch. Her mouth twisted like a thumbscrew and her catfish lips drooped. “Ironshite, innee, your mate?” she said in a provoking tone. Her speech slurred; her vowels mangled and grated. “You do know old Porphy’s fobbin’ you off? Goin’ in old Smithy, innee?”
Prometheus’ gut tightened. They had arrived at a grimy concrete door. This door did not have a key, but opened by key-pad and a code. “Back in ‘arf an hour,” she barked, before locking him inside with a huge crash. He stared after her open-mouthed.
The cell was tiny. Barely 6 by 6. No toilet; only a cracked basin barely large enough for two hands, and two hissing, foul-smelling taps. One of them dripped. A nuisance if temporary, a torture if prolonged. And a bucket in the corner, which Murdo had covered with a stained and mouldy towel. Everything gave off the same dull, grey monochrome vapidity. The only mote of colour was the red and blue tips of the taps.
Murdo sat on the wafer-thin slab of a bed. Even his skin had greyed and his hair was like cigarette ash. To rub salt in the wound, they’d made him wear military uniform, which must have outraged his every pacifist pore. He looked thin and gaunt; a jaded and pinched resignation had dampened his playful humour and dogmatic optimism. Yet his wistful stare did not channel the haunted despair of condemned men. On the contrary, Murdo looked defiant.
Gordonstoun slapped his friend on the back. His lips twitched nervously. “What ho, my friend,” he said. “How are you?” Realising the ludicrousness of the question, he added: “Bearing up, old chum?”
But Murdo wasn’t rattled. “I’m good, thanks. Yoursel’?”
Gordonstoun felt like a warthog in a lions’ den. He could not deal with the shock of being here, locked in the cell with Murdo. “Splendid, never better,” he stumbled; “but isn’t this jolly rum? I have never heard of a jail where they allowed visiting time in the actual cells…what if I used you as a fence for passwords, or smuggled you crack?”
Murdo gave a sardonic leer. “Couldnae work, mate. Trust me.” His gaze fell, bizarrely, upon the wash-hand basin.
Gordonstoun stared wide-eyed at the recently slammed door. The reverb from the jolt still ricocheted through them in jerky waves. “The…the girl said you’re...you’re...”
“Oh aye. That I was gettin’ the Smithy, instead o’ the squad.” said Murdo sarkily. “Says that to everyone’s nearest and dearest, does our Lotus. Cracker, her.”
Gordonstoun breathing eased. “Look...I could try to sweet-talk Rauchmann. I have a contact – fellow Old Etonian – who could get him 15 bottles of Martin Rémy Louis XIII cognac.”
Murdo gave a hoarse laugh. “Seriously? Dinae waste your breath...or your posh booze. He’ll no’ appreciate you interruptin’ his foot bath. Or his caviar. Or…what’s his latest fad? Exercise bikes…must need a crane to get on one.”
Gordonstoun could not fathom Murdo’s uncanny light-heartedness when facing a firing squad – assuming Lovelace was wrong. Why did Murdo not shout, howl, or scream? Why did he not swear, curse, spit at Gordonstoun? Why did he not rail at him and the other Kaironians for selling him down the river? For allowing a time-traveller, a scientist, possibly the greatest mathematician on the planet, and a cherished friend, to be shot at dawn like any common coward? “I have killed you, Murdo,” Gordonstoun sighed, staring at the filthy floor. Yet Murdo clasped Skegness’ hands and embraced him like a brother. “Oh, please don’t worry about it. It’s just one o’ them things.” One o’ them things, letting the man who had saved over 200,000 New Yorkers die an outcast and a pariah?
He jerked his head away. The conversation turned to practicalities: what he should do with the clothes and personal items that Rauchmann had offered him? Did he want them to take them to his aunt?
Murdo laughed like a fisherman in a country pub. “My clothes willnae fit old Jean. An’ she doesnae smoke a pipe. You keep what you can use, or give it to the homeless…Lord knows, there’s more folks livin’ in the streets these days than in the houses still standin’. He grew drawn and gaunt, and his pupils glazed as though his soul had taken a hike elsewhere. “Mum used tae give everyone what visited her a two-pound coin. She always done that. So I kept the last coin she ever gave. Jean was her sister. Mum would have liked her tae have it.”
He was rambling now. Unable to fathom what even the most sentimental of aunties would want with half a coin, he promised to deliver the bequest.
“I wore it roun’ my neck every day till it got cut in two…will you promise to get the other half back for me?”
Gordonstoun shook his head. It would have been obliterated in the blast. “I’m sorry, old boy.”
Murdo’s face changed. His eyes widened, and the lines on his face deepened. A fiery hunger blazed through him. “No, no. It wasn’t destroyed in the blast. He took it before we fused together. He’s going to bring it back when he’s completed his mission. When he returns, you’ll know it has been done.”
Gordonstoun’s concern turned to panic. “Who?”
“The Tweener, of course.”
Oh, dear God. He was crazy. The blast had indeed addled his mind. Skegness’ panic gave way to despair, to desperation. He began to pace the tiny length of the cell like a bear in captivity. And suddenly his gaze fixated on the sink and that dripping tap. His eyes darkened. Of course. Hadn’t it been driving him cuckoo since he’d arrived in the cell? Hadn’t he wished, many times, that he had a knife, that he could cut off his own ears? Anything...anything...rather than that diabolical din. This must be what was making Murdo gaga. But did it really matter, at the end of the day? He was going to die, no matter what.
“Anyway…I’m no’ gonna be killed.”
A terrible hope sprang up in Gordonstoun’s chest. “You’ve appealed?”
Murdo roared with laughter. “No. But I ken I’ll no’ be killed.”
“Wh…why not?”
“Well – for a start, old Porphy recognised that photograph. An’ then, there’s the SolTach.”
Gordonstoun’s heart exploded in his chest. “Murdo, what is this madness? What photograph? An’ what’s a SolTach?”
But Murdo was cagey.
“Hang on,” Gordonstoun said, racking his brains. “Rauchmann did say something about a photo of a girl. I thought it must’ve been Megan…”
“It wasnae Megs,” Murdo said quietly. “It was the Anchor.”
Gordonstoun wrung his hands in despair. When would Murdo accept that that era was over? That the tachyophones had been destroyed? That, however much they might wish it, there was no way to retrieve Roxanne?
Murdo seized both Gordonstoun’s arms. His eyes bored into him. “Did Porphy say the girl reminded him of a pop star he once liked?”
Gordonstoun wracked his brains. He fidgeted and flapped about. Had he said that? His memory wasn’t what it had been. The old brain cells had been overloaded recently. “Yes, now I come to it, he did say something about a pop star. I’ve no idea whether it was ‘looked like’ or ‘reminded him of’. But, old friend, I really don’t see...”
Murdo gripped him by the shoulders, till it almost hurt. “Don’t you see that this means a change is in motion?” Skegness looked baffled. “What if it means we won? What if the Tweener did save Roxy? What if she became a star in her own time? What if, in Canute’s time, she is not only alive, but has mastered her powers and is ready to be beamed to us?”
Despair flooded through Gordonstoun. Such a great mind – such a waste! He buried his face in his hands. Of course, he would pursue the only path left to him. He would go cap in hand to Rauchmann. Hell, he’d buy him 200 bottles of Martin Rémy Louis XIII cognac from his black market contacts. And he and the ex-Kaironians would crowdfund a comfortable confinement for this tragic genius’ decline, where he would be in the company only of approved nurses and could not divulge dangerous secrets.
Murdo seemed to read his thoughts. “He won’t spare me for bein’ crazy, Gordy. Not for a diamond mine, he willnae.”
Gordonstoun forced an ebullient smile. “Nonsense, old chum. Porphy would sell his own daughter into slavery for that cognac...”
“Hasnae got a daughter,” Murdo muttered. “Maybe his wife…but I’m no’ sure she’d cut it as a slave, seein’ she’s thirty-two stone. There was a son, though. Moriarty. Used tae be a screw here. He dated Lotus Lovelace. Talkin’ about their reign o’ terror still puts the fear o’ God in the lags. He died o’ prostate cancer just after the war started. An’ no. Porphs won’t spare me. But he won’t need to.”
Gordonstoun buried his face in his hands. How could he bare to see this prodigious intellect so unhinged? The Smokehouse was a fortress. He recalled the series of gates and doors he’d had to plough through to get to Murdo’s cell. One could not imagine a more impregnable building.
A cacophony of loud bangs at the other side of the door presaged Lovelace’s return. No time for goodbyes. The sullen screw hauled Skegness out like a suitcase, and although he was taller than the buxom guard, he felt as vulnerable as a paper doll in her vyse-like grip. The wardress was chewing gum. Her braces clicked as her teeth bit together. He could still hear that grinding sound from the left pocket of her thigh. The click that turned his blood cold. But he could not be cowed. He had to give his all for Murdo. And maybe ask...well, maybe not. He felt such a fool just considering it.
He cleared his throat. “Er...Miss. Ma’am. There was just one final matter that I wanted to clear up with the governor.”
Lovelace smirked. “ ‘E’s busy, innee.”
“I’ll wait.”
She shrugged. “’Ope you’ve got all night, love. Say, did you know we ‘eat the Smithy up quite slowly? Ever wondered ‘ow skin blisters before it burns?”
Gordonstoun covered his mouth with his hand. Lotus stood smiling, as though waiting patiently for him to vomit all over reception.
The hours crawled. Six hours. Seven, and then eight. Darkness fell. When the office staff left, they turned out the lights, leaving Gordonstoun slumped in the near-total blackness in one of those awful metal chairs. But at 7pm a door creaked open two floors up – a languorous sound, like chains clanking. An oily light pooled down, and a strong paraffiny smell wafted down the stairs. “’Guv’nor’ll see you now. You’ve got two minutes.”
Rauchmann lay slouched in a quilted chaise longue, his bandaged feet resting on a plush pouffe. Gordonstoun then saw what he had not noticed on his previous visit to the head jailor’s lair, because he had been facing the other wall. Opposite Rauchmann’s desk hung a 100-inch UHDTV. The governor was engrossed in an ancient American sitcom and gorging on an enormous bowl of ice cream and jelly. Strewn all the floor were five large plates, a salad bowl, two casserole dishes, and a gravy boat, all spattered with leftovers. The barbecue sauce-soaked remains of a rack of ribs had spilt onto the carpet. Amongst the detritus sat a mouldering black bin bag, perforated by three holes.
