Alex Scarrow - City of Shadows

‘Eventually, huh?’ He laughed at that. ‘Least of me worries, wouldn’t you say?’

‘We’ll be heading in now,’ said Maddy, tugging Liam’s sleeve.

‘Hammer-an’-spades! You got a funny accent there!’ The man looked at her. ‘Where are you from?’

‘Boston. United States.’

‘ America? ’ He was taken aback.

Maddy sensed that might not have been a prudent thing to say. ‘Well… my folks were. You know, originally.’

‘Well.’ His eyes were wide. ‘And they gave you a job in the Ministry of Information? I’d keep all that family ancestry to yourself, young lady. Quite seriously.’

They stepped past him. ‘I… I will,’ she said quickly. ‘Thanks.’

‘Hang on! Did you lie about that?’ He looked up at them. ‘To get the job? You must have had to lie to the Job Commissariat?’

‘I, uh… I may have bent the truth a little,’ she said with a shrug. ‘I guess.’

Liam grabbed her hand. ‘Enjoy your smoke, sir.’ He pushed the door and they stepped into a dark hallway. It reeked of floor polish and disinfectant. At the end of the hallway the faint pearly glow of a pair of frosted-glass doors leading outside.

‘I guess it’s not good to be an American,’ whispered Maddy.

‘Aye, it seems it.’

They made their way towards the double doors, passing an opening on the right that led on to a large office: two long rows of dark wooden desks, with men and women typing away on machines that looked like a cross between typewriters and logic engines, all brass levers and glowing vacuum fuses. The room echoed with the clatter of keystrokes, and the long ring of a telephone.

‘It’s like one of them old black-and-white flicks,’ said Liam.

Maddy nodded. Yes, it was: those old films where every scene was veiled behind a pall of cigarette smoke and every desk lamp seemed to cast its own beam of light through it. Men with trilby hats and trench coats, and every street glistening from a torrential downpour. Noir

… she remembered. That’s what they called those old films.

They reached the double doors and pushed them open. At least it wasn’t raining. There was that.

The roar of traffic, the buzz of activity in Piccadilly Circus, took them by surprise. They were three wide steps up and back from a pavement thick with pedestrians. Maddy quickly located and identified the things she expected to see: the statue of Eros, the circular fountain and plinth on which it stood and the steps surrounding it. She noticed the signs pointing out the ‘Underground Tramlines’. The tall stone buildings with classic grand entrances and granite pillars. Signs for Shaftesbury Avenue, Coventry Street, Regent Street. And as she’d expected, yes… it was busy. Hectic-busy.

But none of the garish colour she had in the images on her phone. No billboards, no electronic displays with SANYO or TDK or COCA-COLA dancing across them. No street vendors selling plastic double-decker buses, or Beefeater soft toys.

And no tourists.

Maddy had expected Piccadilly Circus to look a bit like Times Square: clusters of faces of all colours, people taking pictures of each other posing in front of Eros. But this was very different. It was certainly busy, though — busy with cars, bicycles and electric trams. A network of wires spun like a spider’s web above the hectic thoroughfare. The trams, running along rails in the roads, all had connector arms that reached up to wires, and here and there sparks flickered and fizzed.

The cars all appeared to be the same, albeit in a variety of unexciting colours: maroons, browns and greys. Small bubble-like cars with oval windscreens that puffed thick dark clouds of exhaust fumes. And as many people on bicycles as there were clogging the pavements on foot; they wove round the trams like a school of pilot fish around a whale.

On the side of one towering building overlooking Piccadilly Circus was a giant television screen. Huge. Bigger even than the one in Times Square. But the image was blocky and primitive. Two-tone ‘pixels’ of just black and white. Looking more closely, Maddy saw it wasn’t even a light-based display, but each ‘pixel’ was a disc about the size of a dinner plate, that flipped on a spindle. One side black, one side white.

‘Now this is different to how it’s meant to be.’ Liam looked at her. ‘Isn’t it?’

‘Very.’

It felt like a London that belonged to a Britain stuck in 1945. Perhaps the early fifties. She wasn’t sure.

‘Well now,’ said Liam, ‘we know for sure the Jack-the-Ripper thing has caused a change.’

Maddy looked at her watch. ‘We’ve got fifty-six minutes left. Let’s split up. Get what you can, any newspapers, magazines, books you can lay your hands on. Back here in fifty minutes, OK?’

2001, Piccadilly Circus, London

Liam decided the plaque above the grand building in front of him looked promising enough: INFORMATION RESOURCES CENTRE (DEPT OF INFORMATION DISSEMINATION).

He took the dozen steps up and pushed his way through a heavy wooden revolving door and stepped into a cavernous foyer beyond. He saw several concentric circles of benches round a cluster of newspaper stands in the middle. Most of the seats were already occupied with men and women, even some children, flipping through rustling broadsheet newspapers.

He spotted long tables beyond, glowing reading lamps evenly spaced along them; they were mostly occupied by people reading newspapers or books. To his left was a counter and a young woman busily filing index cards in an organizer.

He wandered over and stood in front of the counter for a moment, before finally coughing into his balled fist for her attention.

She looked up. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry!’

Liam offered her his best lopsided smile. ‘Ah, that’s all right.’

‘How can I help you?’

‘Well now, I’d like to have some information.’

‘Information?’

‘Aye.’

‘Well…’ Bemused exasperation on her face, she laced her fingers and leaned forward. ‘How about we try and narrow that down just a little bit?’

Liam laughed softly. ‘Aye, might help. I’m after history books, recent history, that is.’

‘All right…’ She nodded. ‘Wonderful start! How recent?’

‘Hmmm… last century or so.’

‘Or so?’

‘Last century, then. Nothing too specific, you know… general history, world history.’

She looked at him through a drooping tress of mouse-brown hair. ‘Just arrived from another planet in another galaxy, have you, sir?’

‘Aye. Who knows… I might even choose to stay.’

Her turn to laugh. ‘Well, I have academic reference texts or general information texts.’ She glanced at his puzzled face and decided to clarify that. ‘With nice pretty pictures or without?’

‘Oh, pictures! Please.’

‘Pictures you can colour in?’

‘Uh?’

She chuckled, raised a hand to cover her mouth. He noticed she had braces on her teeth. ‘Just teasing you, sorry. Let me quickly check my info-veedee for some suitable lend-outs.’

He noticed a pale blue glow lighting her face from below and her fingers began to tap at a typewriter keyboard. He leaned forward over the counter and noted a small cabinet the size of a cigar box; one glass side glowed blue, like a small television set. Two metal brackets held a large oblong magnifying glass screen between the young woman and the mini ‘television’. She adjusted its hinges slightly; the tiny screen loomed large in the lens, glowing blue with white text.

‘That’s a veedee, is it?’

She looked at him. ‘Veedee? You know, visual display?’

‘Ahh, that’s a computer down there, I suppose?’

She looked at him quizzically. ‘ Compute-er? What an odd word.’ She cocked her head. ‘You really are from another planet, aren’t you?’