Bob Shaw - The Two Timers

“I see.” John’s eyes were watchful. “What are you doing with my cases?”

Jack’s fingers closed around the butt of the pistol. He shook his head, unable to speak.

“You don’t look well,” John said. “Are you all right?”

“I’m leaving,” Jack lied, struggling with the newly-made discovery that he would be unable to pull the trigger. “I’ll return your cases later. I took some clothes as well. Do you mind?”

“No, I don’t mind.” Relief showed in John’s eyes. But do you mean you’re staying in this… time-stream?”

“Yes — as long as I know Kate’s still alive somewhere, not too far away, that’ll do me.”

“Oh!” There was a baffled expression on John Breton’s square face, as though he had expected to hear something entirely different. “Are you leaving right now? Do you want me to call you a taxi?”

Jack nodded. John shrugged and turned towards the telephone. The icy paralysis was dragging at Jack’s muscles as he pulled the pistol out of his pocket. He stepped up close behind his other self and smashed the heavy butt into John’s skull, just behind the ear. As John’s knees buckled he hit him again and, in his uncoordinated numbness, stumbled and went down with him. He found himself sprawled on top of the other man, faces almost touching, watching in horror as John’s eyes flickered open in pain-dulled consciousness.

“So it’s like that,” John whispered in a semblance of drowsy satisfaction, like a child on the verge of sleep. His eyes closed but Jack Breton hit him again and again, using his fist, sobbing as he tried to destroy the image of his own guilt.

When sanity returned he rolled away from John and crouched beside the inert body, breathing heavily. He got to his feet, went up the shallow staircase to the bathroom and hunched over the washbasin. The metal of the taps was ice cold against his forehead, just as it had been when, as a young man making his first disastrous experiments with liquor, he had sprawled in the same attitude waiting for his system to cleanse itself. But this time relief was not to be purchased so easily.

Breton splashed his face with cold water and dried himself, taking special care over his knuckles, which were skinned and already beginning to exude clear fluid. He opened the bathroom cabinet in search of medical dressings and his attention was caught by a bottle of pale green triangles. They had the unmistakable generic look of sleeping tablets. Breton examined the label and confirmed his guess.

In the kitchen he filled a glass with water and carried it to the hall where John Breton was still sprawled on the mustard carpet. He raised John’s head and began feeding him tablets. The task was more difficult than he had expected. The unconscious man’s throat and mouth would fill up with water and an explosive cough would spew it and the tablets down onto his chest. Breton was sweating, and an unguessable amount of valuable time had gone by, before he had managed to get eight tablets down John’s throat.

He threw the bottle aside, picked up the pistol, put it in his pocket and dragged the body into the kitchen. A quick search of John’s pockets provided Breton with a wallet full of the identification he was going to need later in his dealings with the outside world, and a bunch of keys including those of the big Lincoln.

He went out to the car and drove it around to the back of the house then reversed so that the rear bumper was nuzzling the ivy-covered trellis of the patio. The air was warm from the afternoon sunshine and the distant lawn mower was still going its unconcerned way beyond the screens of trees and shrubbery. Breton opened the trunk of the car and went back into the kitchen. John was very still, as though already dead, and his face had a luminescent pallor. A single delta of blood extended from his nose across one cheek.

Breton dragged the body out of the house and manhandled it into the open trunk. While tucking the legs in he noticed that one of John’s slip-on shoes was missing. He pulled down the lid of the trunk without locking it and went into the house. The shoe was lying just inside the doorway.

Breton picked it up and was hurrying back to the Lincoln when he walked straight into Lieutenant Convery.

“Sorry to disturb you again, John.” Convery’s wide-set blue eyes were alert, dancing with a kind of malicious energy. “I think I might’ve left something here.”

“I… I didn’t notice anything sitting around.”

Breton heard the words issuing from his own mouth, and marveled at his body’s ability to continue with the intricacies of communication while the mind nominally in control was reeling with shock. What was Convery doing here? This was the second time in one day that he had materialized on the patio at the worst possible moment.

“It’s the fossil. My boy’s fossil — I didn’t have it when I got home.” Convery’s smile was almost derisive, as if he was challenging Breton to exercise his prerogative and throw an interfering cop off his property. “You’ve no idea of the trouble I got into at home.”

“Well, I don’t think it’s here. I’m sure I would have noticed — it isn’t the sort of thing you would overlook.”

“That’s right,” Convery said carelessly. “I guess I left it somewhere else.”

All this was no coincidence, Breton realized sadly. Convery was dangerous — a clever, dedicated cop of the worst type. A man who had instincts and believed in them, who clung to his own ideas tenaciously in spite of logic, or evidence. This then was the real reason Convery had been visiting John Breton at intervals over the past nine years — he was suspicious. What vindictive twist of fate, Breton wondered, had brought this ambling super-cop onto the stage he had so carefully set on that October night?

“Lost a shoe?”

“A shoe?” Breton followed Convery’s gaze and saw the black slip-on gripped in his own hand. “Oh yes. I’m getting absentminded.”

“We all do when we have something on our minds — look at that fossil.”

“I don’t have anything on my mind,” Breton said immediately. “What’s troubling you?”

Convery walked to the Lincoln and leaned against it, his right hand resting on the lid of the trunk. “Nothing much — I keep trying to talk with my hand.”

“I don’t get it.”

“It’s nothing. By the way — speaking of hands — those knuckles of yours are looking a bit raw. Have you been in a fight or something?”

“Who with?” Breton laughed. “I can’t fight myself.”

“Well, I thought maybe the guy who delivered your car.” Convery slapped the metal and the unsecured lid of the trunk vibrated noisily. “The way those grease-monkeys speak to customers I often feel like belting them myself — that’s one of the reasons I do all my own maintenance.”

Breton felt his mouth go dry. So Convery had noticed the car had not been around on his earlier visit. “No,” he said. “I’m on the best of terms with my service station.”

“What were you getting done to her?” Convery eyed the Lincoln with a practical man’s disdain.

“Brakes needed adjusting.”

“Is that so? I thought the brakes on these things were self-adjusting.”

“Perhaps they are — I never looked to see.” Breton began to wonder how long this could go on. “All I know is she wasn’t stopping too well.”

“Do you want some advice? Make sure the wheels are bolted on properly before you take her out on the road. I’ve seen cars come back from a brake job with the wheels’ nuts hanging on by a single thread.”

“I’m sure it’ll be all right.”

“Don’t trust ‘em, John — if there’s anything they can leave loose without it actually falling off, they’ll do it.”