Ian Hocking - Déjà Vu

‘I’m singing like a bird.’

She nodded. ‘That’s good. Don’t worry about me. I have a new life.’

‘So what do I call you?’

‘I’m afraid you don’t.’ She linked her arm in his. ‘I suspect that we are under surveillance. Now, what would be the best outcome?’

David sucked air through his teeth. ‘They’d advise the state prosecutors not to proceed with a criminal trial. Unofficially, that is. Even better, they might clear my name. Then I could get my job back at the university. I’ve got another ten years before I retire. Or I could retire now. Why not?’

They walked in silence for a while.

‘Tell me about Jennifer.’

‘She’s back in America. I’ll see her again at Christmas—and her new boyfriend, worst luck. Do you have any plans for Christmas?’

‘Some. I’ll be visiting a friend in Berlin. Then another in Moscow.’

They continued towards parliament. The Westminster Bridge was quiet. Cold air had come down from the North Sea. They turned against it. After ten minutes, they came to an elderly building near the Ministry of Defence. ‘I’ll see you very soon, David.’

‘Where?’

In reply, she placed a finger to her lips. Then she touched his with the gloved tip.

‘You know,’ David said, ‘I could do with some help in there. Another witness.’

‘I’m sorry, David. Take care.’

He waved. ‘I understand. You take care too. And thanks.’

He showed his ID to the duty officer and passed through into the main courtyard. He found the committee chamber. It was a small room with an oval table. Conversation ceased as he entered.

‘Ah,’ said Lord Gilbert. He looked at David over the top of his glasses in the way that David would look at a late student. ‘The star of the show.’ Gilbert chuckled. The men on the panel chuckled back. The two women pursed their lips.

Tony Barclay, the MSP for West Lothian, took a nod from Gilbert. ‘Perhaps we could go back to the man who you met on the Internet, Professor Proctor. The man who supplied the explosives.’

The stenographer watched his computer screen.

David sighed, and began again.

David’s hosts were confident that he would not try to leave the country, so he was not held in custody. His hotel was a small one north of the river. It was dingy but, he guessed, not cheap. He entered his room and locked the door. He decided to cheer up. He was making progress with the committee, after all. He threw off his coat and walked into the bathroom. ‘Lights,’ he said.

He took the measure of himself. He was a rumpled, tired version of the man who had arrived at the West Lothian Centre two months before. But he felt no different. He washed up and returned to the main room.

There was an envelope on the floor near the jacket. He remembered Saskia linking her arm in his. The envelope was addressed to ‘You’. He opened it and withdrew a single sheet of paper.

Down in Marseilles there’s a nice bar run by a man called Dupont. It is famous for its cat, which turned up one day and never left. The cat thinks she’s a loner but, really, she likes company. Now can you remember all that?

David smiled and watched the text fade until the paper was blank.

In 1947 a Santiago-bound plane crashes into the Andes minutes after confirming its landing time.

In 2003 a passenger plane nosedives into the Bavarian National Forest during a routine flight.

Although separated by more than 50 years, these tragedies are linked by seven letters:

S, T, E, N, D, E, C.

It is the night of September 5th, 1907, and the Moscow train is approaching St Petersburg. Traveling first class appears to be a young Russian princess and her fiancé. They are impostors. In the luggage carriage are the spoils of the Yerevan Square Expropriation, the greatest bank heist in history. The money is intended for Finland, and the hands of a man known to the Tsarist authorities as The Mountain Eagle—Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

Dear reader,

Thanks for finishing my book. I really appreciate it. Honestly, I lose count of the books I’ve given up on halfway through. I’ve tried to make Déjà Vu the kind of book that you can’t put down. To do this, I’ve taken Elmore Leonard’s advice and carefully removed all the rubbish bits, printed them out, and sent them to Dan Brown as suggestions.

IF ‘fan of Dan Brown’ = TRUE then

Awkward pause.

ELSE

Suck air through teeth and looked pained. The Da Vinci Code, eh? Blimey.

END IF

So, back to this important Author’s Note. You know when a street juggler performs the last, amazing trick, and then whips out a moth-eaten beret and invites the audience to help him eat?

That.

By all means, close this book, think no more about it, and good luck to you.

But cast your mind back to my amazing trick with the chicken, unicycle, and the unctuous child from the front row! If you’d like to help me out, and you liked Déjà Vu, please let people know about it. If you thought the book was total flapdoodle, please tell no-one, and it will remain our dirty secret. You see, I’m an independent writer and I pay for my own editing, proof-reading, and marketing. And the coffee! You wouldn’t believe how much the cost of coffee mounts up over the course of a book. Even the cheap stuff I get from Lidl. Seriously. It’s criminal. And I usually let it go cold before I drink it. So, feel free to tweet about Déjà Vu, write me a review on the Kindle store (these are particularly helpful), or otherwise spread the word.

If you look at my Amazon page (US or UK), you’ll see that there is another Saskia Brandt book called Flashback . (The stonkingly huge advert just before this Author’s Note would be another clue.) Furthermore, I’m nose-to-the-grindstone on the third book: The Amber Rooms . Should be out by early 2013. It’s taken me four years and God alone knows how much coffee. I can let you know when that one comes out if you sign up for my mailing list. (I don’t write fiction as part of an elaborate scam to collect email addresses, or I’d write like Dan Brown. Your email address is safe with me.)

You can contact me via my blog, This Writing Life, drop me an email, or tweet me @ian_hocking. I’d love to hear what you think of my work (typos/formatting screws-up also appreciated). I’m particularly keen to hear more from the lady who gave me a one-star review and suggested that I have the reading age of a ten-year-old. Because. Of. My. Short. Sentences. Oh, and to save you some effort: yes, of course I have a real time machine; no, you can’t use it, because that would create entertaining paradoxes, as anyone who’s watched Back to the Future will know.

Once more, thanks for reading.

The original manuscript was read by my intrepid friends Daniel Graaskov, Karen Jensen, Alex Mears, and Arie van der Lugt. Their comments vastly improved the final book. Further constructive feedback came via the Psychology Department Book Club at the University of Exeter (Rachael Carrick and Kate Fenwick were particularly helpful). Thanks also to Rachel Day for permission to use her copyrighted word ‘tit-full’. And not forgetting my editor at the UKA Press, the redoubtable Aliya Whiteley, who helped transform the manuscript from the bloated pug of yesterday to the svelte whippet of today (any errors of breeding, such as an extra ear or a penchant for chair legs, must be left at my door).