Marcher: The Author's Preferred Text Part 6

She pushed a large pile of manila folders across the desk.

'These are Tammy's files. Val tells me you may need to see them.'

There were twelve of them at least. Tammy's fifteen years of life must have taken up an entire drawer of a filing cabinet.

'This is the most recent one,' she said. 'There's some photos of Tammy in it, look. A really beautiful girl, don't you think? Filmstar beautiful.'

But right at that moment, Charles was noticing Jazamine. She had a delightful forthrightness about her, and there was none of that cowed, cringing quality that he had so detested in her fellow-deskies up in Janet Richards' office.

'Thanks, I'll have a look at them. I'll probably need to talk to the staff at the residential unit as well. And the therapist too.'

He looked down at the picture. Tammy was beautiful, but he now realised that she was also familiar.

'Oh! I saw her this morning! With an Asian woman, a rather large...'

'Oh yes, that'd be Rita Fernandez from the Unit.'

'I'll need to talk to Rita then.'

Charles remembered the feeling he'd had that morning when he'd seen Tammy with Rita, the sense of an approaching void. And now, quite suddenly, it felt as if the void was all around him: that emptiness, that feeling of vertigo and dread.

Jazamine was watching him with a puzzled frown.

'So is that all you need from me?' she asked.

He told her yes, for the moment, and she stood up.

'Do you really believe in shifters and all that?' she suddenly asked. 'Isn't it just a theory? Isn't it more likely that Tammy is just off her head as usual in some empty garage somewhere and this is all just a great big wind-up?'

'Officially yes, it is just a theory. But... well, I've actually seen people do a shift, right in front of my eyes. It's happened to me a couple of times: people standing or sitting no further away from me than you are and then them just vanishing. You can hear the air rush into the vacuum where they've been, you can even feel it, and there's nothing left of them but a sort of burnt electrical smell, and a... well a feeling, the feeling that shifters call fizz. It's a bit like vertigo, like a weird kind of all-embracing vertigo, and at the same time it's like... It's like a kind of grief. I know I can't prove that those people who disappeared in front of me went to another universe, but they certainly vanished, and no one has come up with an alternative story that's any easier to believe.'

'And people don't come back?'

'It seems not.'

'So it's as if she's died in a way? Died to us in any case.'

'To us, perhaps. But she hasn't really died. Not only is she still alive, but she's alive in this place and this point in time. It's just that we can't reach her.'

Jazamine took hold of the door handle but didn't turn it 'Listen,' she said, 'when I said that thing earlier about you guarding the universe, it probably sounded very sarcastic. I'm sorry about that. I didn't mean it to sound that way. I was just upset for Tammy. I don't like to think of her all alone in some other... in some other place. I mean she's always been alone really and she's probably got far more of the skills to cope in a situation like that than you or me. But I still feel wretched for her... Plus I'm a bit spooked by the whole business if I'm honest. Which I guess you must get a lot of? Probably it even spooks you sometimes doesn't it?'

'Well... I'm used to it in a way. But yes, I'm like most people. I would prefer to think there was just one world.'

'Just one world? I'm not sure I care how many worlds there are. It's the thought of people disappearing from this one that freaks me out. But anyway, I just wanted to tell you that I didn't mean to be rude, specially when I upset you at the party as well. I wouldn't want you to think I had something against you because I really haven't. You seem very nice. I like it that you're pa.s.sionate about what you do.'

Charles smiled.

'Actually I found it very interesting what you asked me at the party. About why I do this job, I mean. Interesting and, well, sort of instructive. I wasn't so much upset as...'

He stopped, shook his head, and laughed.

'Who am I kidding? I was upset, as you could obviously tell. But I found it interesting that I was. You gave me something to think about.'

'Oh, well, good.' Jazamine hesitated. 'You don't... um... fancy meeting up sometime, socially I mean, for a drink or something?'

'Well, I'd like to but I'm not really supposed to... to socialise with...'

'...people who are involved in your investigations? I see. Another boundary, eh? Another transgression to be avoided?'

Her remorse about being sarcastic seemed to be remarkably short-lived.

'Boundaries are important,' Charles insisted, but it sounded lame and pedantic even to him.

'So they are,' she replied, 'but they aren't the only important thing. And some are surely more important than others.'

'Well, yes. That is true.' Charles suddenly smiled, as if just speaking these words had lifted some kind of burden. 'And yes, I'd love to have a drink with you.'

They exchanged phone numbers and arranged to meet the following Friday and then she left, and Charles was on his own in the room, feeling slightly dazed. But he shook himself and turned his attention to the files.

She was a very pretty girl, this Tamsin Pendant, looking out at him from a photo taken on some inst.i.tutional outing to the seaside. She was dazzling in fact. She looked sharp and ruthless too. She looked immensely powerful, even though she was so slight and so very young: powerful and dangerous and terribly vulnerable all at once.

It was odd. He'd never met her, he was twice her age, and she came from a completely different background to him, yet he felt a connection of some kind with her, an affinity. Once again he saw in his mind the empty field and the darkening sky, and he realised that this was what shifters called a switch: he was seeing it through her eyes, hearing the cold wind through her ears. And off in the distance he could just make out...

But there was another knock on the door.

It was Janet Richards.

'Charles, I need to tell you that I've been in touch with your line manager, Roger Young,' said the Executive Director. 'It's about this offer by Ha.s.san to talk if we hand back the... um... slip. I do appreciate your reasons for not wanting to accede to this and Roger told me that the line you took was entirely consistent with your agency's policy, so please don't take this as criticism in any way, but I just felt we needed to do everything possible to find out about this "mischief" that Furnish and Ha.s.san talked to you about. And if that means handing over some of this slip stuff, well I know it's not ideal, but the upshot of my phone conversation with your Roger was that he agreed to authorise you to do so. In fact it's his decision that you should do so. He said to ask you to give him a quick call to confirm this.'

'I see.'

'Um, I don't want to rush you, but these two men have been in custody for several hours and Roger was telling me that they could well disappear at any moment if they swallowed seeds themselves when they were arrested. I think you told us that yourself, in fact. So perhaps you could make that call and then go straight down to the custody suite? I believe you took possession of the slip yourself, isn't that right?'

'Yes, it's here in my bag.'

'd.i.c.k Thomas has lined up a very experienced detective who will join you in interviewing Ha.s.san. Could you just make that call please Mr Bowen?'

'Okay,' Charles said, very reluctantly. But just as he was picking up his phone, her phone rang.

'h.e.l.lo. Janet Richards... Oh. I see...'

She turned back to him.

'It seems we're too late,' she said curtly. 'The custody sergeant reports that both Ha.s.san and Furnish have disappeared. What a pity. I know you were following your own rules, but I do wish that...'

She broke off.

'The sergeant particularly asked if you could go down there to speak to him and the officers on duty there,' she said. 'I gather this has rather shaken them up.'

The sergeant and two PCs were waiting for Charles with almost childlike eagerness. They showed him the empty cells and watched while he went into each of them and stood there, sniffing the air.

The smell in them was unmistakable: that same burnt, electrical, ozone tang that he'd just been describing to Jazamine.

'Yes, they've done a shift all right,' Charles told them. 'Don't worry. There was absolutely nothing you or anyone could have done.'

He looked round at the stunned faces of the sergeant and the two young officers, but found it hard to feel sorry for them. Information about shifters was readily available after all, in the papers, on TV, on the internet. Why didn't people prepare themselves? Why did they persist in imagining they'd never encounter the phenomenon themselves?

'A bit disturbing for you, yes?' he grudgingly managed.

'Nothing like this has ever happened to any of us,' said the sergeant. 'We're rather freaked out by it, to be honest with you. I mean the doors were definitely locked. There's no way they could have got out.'

Charles turned back into the room and sniffed the hot, burnt smell. It wasn't really the smell, though, that he was noticing. It was the feeling he'd talked about to Jazamine, the fizz, the unbearable longing, the sense of loss, the vertigo. It was as if a chasm had opened up in the floor and was pulling him towards it. As if some loved one had been s.n.a.t.c.hed from him, s.n.a.t.c.hed away so completely that he couldn't even remember who it had been.

'The doors were locked,' he said. 'I know it's hard to get your head round this but, take it from me, the doors have got nothing to do with it.'

The sergeant gaped at him.

'I know, I know,' Charles said. 'It just doesn't fit in with how we think the world works, does it?'

'But there's no way they could have got out,' the sergeant repeated. 'We left the doors locked until you arrived and the windows haven't been touched.'

'Listen to me, okay? Just listen to me. They didn't get out. They didn't move from this point in s.p.a.ce. They just dropped into another timeline. Who knows? They may even have ended up in an identical police cell in exactly the same spot.'

'So... Where are they then?' one of the PCs asked.

'Parallel universe.'

The three policemen stared at him, as if they'd never heard of such a thing.

'Jesus,' the sergeant breathed, horrified.

'There's one thing I should warn you about. We don't have any idea how slip works, but it's more like a force field than a drug. You don't have to take it to be affected by it and you can get weird side effects just from having been near a shifter, specially if you've been near him when he crosses over, or if you've had some sort of dealings with him. You can even get them just from having been near another person with some sort of connection to a shifter. We don't know how, but I've seen it happen many times.'

'Side effects? What like?'

'Strange dreams, unfamiliar impulses, vivid images.'

The three policemen stood there waiting for Charles to tell them that the antidote to these side effects was X, the helpline number was Y, the website that told you everything you needed to know was Z and could be found at www dot whatever. Whether fairly or not, this made him angry, but he was a conscientious professional and he managed to summon up a reasonably kind and rea.s.suring tone.

'Don't worry. These things do pa.s.s. Just don't expect to get much sleep tonight.'

Chapter 5.

Then there were witnesses to the disappearance of Tammy Pendant to talk to, and Rita Fernandez from the a.s.sessment Unit, and her boss Mr Johnson, and Tammy's screechy friend Jolene. After he'd done with Jolene, Sarah Ripping the therapist was on the phone pressing him to hear her views, for she was a person who saw herself as having unique and important insights which everyone should hear. ('I know Tammy, you see, Mr Bowen. The social workers are wonderful of course, but they are so busy. I think perhaps more than anyone else I've got a real sense of who she actually is...') And then he had to go back to Janet Richards and her cabinet (minus Burkitt who'd returned to look after his grandson) who needed a precis of everything he'd found out so far. He was only a junior bureaucrat in a suit, but right now he was the only person who could give these people the slightest sense that these events were part of the normal world: knowable, understandable, controllable.

It was nearly 11 o'clock at night when Charles finally got back to his flat but even then it was still far from being the end of his day. There were reams of information to collate and a long string of interviews to prepare for tomorrow: Mrs Ripping, the rest of the staff and residents at the a.s.sessment unit, the three witnesses to Tammy's disappearance...

Before he settled down in front of his computer Charles phoned Roger to give him another report on the day and brief him about the apparent extent of the problem on the Meadows Zone. Roger sounded as if he'd already gone to bed, but he managed to summon up a concerned and interested voice, and promised to try and get some additional help over in the morning.

'I've pushed it right up to the Director, Charles, I really have. Trouble is, it's been a crazy time on the conventional immigration side too: people coming in from Central Asia and Africa in droves right now, and plane loads of asylum seekers from America. We sometimes forget that are plenty of troubles just in this world, never mind all the others.'

'Yeah, I guess. Anyway, listen, Roger, I do have a bone to pick with you. It would have been quite wrong to hand seeds over to that man Furnish and you shouldn't have authorised it over my head. As it happens, he'd shifted before I could do the deal anyway, so I've still got the slip in my briefcase. But I want you to know that I felt very undermined.'

Roger always tried to agree with everyone.

'Don't get me wrong, Charles, I didn't want to do it, but the Richards woman had already got the backing of her senior people and I didn't see the point in having a wrangle that we couldn't ultimately win.'

His tone brightened.

'And if you've got a whole bag of seeds, that's great. How many were in it?'

'Two bags actually. I haven't had time to count the seeds. Thirty? Forty?'

'That's brilliant. A good haul. A good day's work. Now forget all about it and get some sleep!'

It was a stupid thing to say. For one thing, Charles had a good hour and half's work still ahead of him. For another, no one got a good night's sleep after contact with shifters. Having only recently transferred from Heathrow, Roger couldn't be blamed for having no personal experience of the collateral effects of slip. But he could read, d.a.m.n it, he could listen, he could ask questions! It was his b.l.o.o.d.y job to know!

'Oh yeah,' Charles said, 'I'm sure I'll sleep like a baby.'

He put down the phone.

All around him, in his many mirrors, images of himself stretched back and back through reflected and re-reflected worlds.

When, just after one o'clock in the morning, Charles finally finished work, the sudden absence of a task exposed an alarming emptiness inside of him, as if his busyness up to that point had been a kind of screen. Not knowing where to put himself or what to do, he walked through to the bathroom and had a shower, then into the bedroom, then back into the living room, then into the kitchen. He ate some cold meat from the fridge. He put the kettle on to boil. He took the seeds out of his briefcase and sat down at the table to count them, then changed his mind and stuffed them away again.

As he stood up he caught his own eye in a mirror. He looked hastily away again but not hastily enough, because a voice spoke in his head, as clearly as if Ha.s.san the shifter was standing there in front of him.

'You should try them. They'll give you all the benefits of suicide and none of the drawbacks.'

He tried to feel indignant. What made that time-tramp think that Charles needed the 'benefits of suicide'? What made him think he knew who Charles was? But the indignation was synthetic and the answer was so straightforward that it could be given in a single word: slip. Slip let you see inside other people. Slip let you experience their feelings and their thoughts, breaking down the barriers between minds as well as the barriers between worlds. And Charles' unease at Ha.s.san's suggestion, the fact that it still haunted him, only served to confirm that the shifter had indeed seen something that was really there.

Actually 'unease' was putting it very mildly. His heart was pounding. His hands were clammy with sweat. He could have chosen to call this fear, he could have chosen to call it excitement, but there was no doubt that he was very agitated indeed. All around him copies of himself stood waiting in the unreachable worlds of his mirrors, and in the reflections of his mirrors, and in the reflections of the reflections, waiting to see what he'd do next.

'Well why not?' he suddenly heard himself mutter, as if there was no more consequence in swallowing slip than there was in tasting a different flavour of crisp. 'Why not just try one?'

He answered himself through gritted teeth.