Simon Clark - The Fall

The customer turned to him.

‘Hello there again,’ the man said in a low voice. It was the blond man in the linen suit.

Sam stared at him.

‘Great minds think alike, don’t they?’ The man held out the newspaper. ‘I don’t think there’s any need for us to buy two. Why don’t you have a look at mine instead?’

In the back of the car, Lee Burton still tried (and failed spectacularly) to unfasten the Dracula cape. But his mind wasn’t really on the job.

This is all part of the test , he told himself. God’s testing me. He’s waiting to see if I do the right thing.

He still glanced repeatedly through the window, searching for a sign of the real test to come.

But what was expected of him?

Should he telephone his brother in Canada and admit to stealing cash out of his money jar ten – or was it 12 – years ago? Was that what was expected of him? A confession?

Then there was the girl he’d been engaged to a couple of years earlier. He still blamed himself for the break-up of the relationship. But it was really Anne who’d walked out on him.

Maybe if he’d tried harder? Bought her flowers? Spent more time with her? She’d always wanted to go to the West Indies. Maybe he should have cashed his premium bonds and—

Oh shit, this stupid button . Perhaps he was doomed to wear this ridiculous black cape until the end of time.

In the front of the car the girl in the tiger-skin leggings hit the radio pre-sets, listening to one radio station for a second or two before impatiently switching to the next. If she was looking for something she hadn’t found it yet.

Perhaps everyone was the same, he told himself. Maybe when you die you enter some kind of halfway place between heaven and hell where your past life is assessed. Then maybe you’re given a test. Depending on how well you perform you’re either raised to heaven. Or dumped, screaming, into the pit of hell.

Yes. That’s it , Lee told himself, kneading one hand against the other. This is the test. This is the test.

He scanned the street. Buses, cars, trucks clogged it.

People crowded the pavements. A red-haired tramp picked slices of bread from a litter bin. Meanwhile, the sun flooded the scene with a brilliant light.

His test must come soon. It must…

He froze.

His eyes widened. Here it was.

Here was his test.

He could see it with his own eyes.

In a second he’d shoved open the car door.

‘Hey!’ Zita shouted. ‘Lee! Where are you going? Lee!’

Lee didn’t hear her. This was it. This was his big chance to prove himself. He ran across the road, not hearing the sound of horns sounded by angry drivers, or the screech of tyres.

God Almighty Himself was putting him, Lee Burton, to the test. He’d let nothing get in his way.

Sam Baker stood on the crowded pavement and stared. The blond man held out the paper.

‘Go on, take it,’ the man said calmly. ‘It won’t bite you, will it?’

Sam took the paper. He took it almost reluctantly. This was something he’d wanted to do in private, like opening the envelope that contained the results of an exam or a job application. The idea of someone scrutinising his expression as he looked at the paper made him feel strangely vulnerable.

He opened the newspaper and looked at the day beneath the title.

The drumming of the traffic seemed suddenly distant.

Tuesday .

Air escaped from his lips in a relieved hiss.

Tuesday. It was Tuesday after all. The sun had been too strong in the amphitheatre, that was all. Somehow they’d imagined it. A collective hallucination. There’d been no backwards flip through time.

Then his idea of reality went all pear-shaped again. Damn.

Because now he’d seen the date alongside the word Tuesday.

He stared at it, feeling his hands tighten around the newspaper until the pages began to crackle. His twinjointed thumbs began their outrageous tingling again as if tiny insects burrowed through the skin.

‘You know,’ the man said in a low voice, ‘staring at it like that won’t change the date. So the question is: just what the hell is going on here?’

Sam let his arm drop. The date on the newspaper was 16 thJune. When Sam Baker had climbed out of his hotel bed that morning it had been Tuesday 23 rdJune .

He pushed by the man and scanned the other newspapers on the stall, his eyes darting wildly from one front page to the other.

‘I’ve already done that,’ the man said. ‘They all show the same date. The sixteenth.’ The man’s sharp, glass-bead eyes fixed on Sam. ‘So I repeat my question: what on Earth is going on here?’

Lee Burton ran across the busy road. His eyes had locked onto a man who stood outside the small branch office of a building society.

The building society was the same company he’d once worked for. The coincidence wasn’t lost on him.

In fact, he knew it wasn’t a coincidence at all.

This was preordained. The conviction that this was his God-given test burnt inside of him.

Because, as he’d sat in the back of the car, with Zita browsing through the radio channels, he’d happened to look across the road at the building society.

There he’d seen a man, apparently reading the name plates on the wall next door.

Lee Burton’s eyes had seemed to undergo a marvellous transformation at that moment. It was as if they’d developed the ability to act like a telephoto lens. His attention had zoomed in on the man in the brown leather jacket as the man had lowered his head and slipped on a black balaclava hood. Then the man had drawn another small object from his pocket and had held it in one hand.

Lee’s mind had quickly sifted its vocabulary and pulled out the identifying word: gun .

This is it , he thought with a blaze of excitement and wonder.

His test had come.

In five seconds flat he was dashing across the road.

He wasn’t aware of the traffic or the crowds of shoppers watching this tall, stick-thin man running through the centre of town with a black Dracula cape rippling straight out behind him. Or his white make-up. Or the blood trickles drawn in red lipstick down his chin.

Nothing else mattered.

He was focused on his challenge.

The building society was being robbed.

He had to stop it happening.

It was as simple as that.

The armed man had already entered the building society by the time Lee burst through the door.

Behind the counter the three cashiers were standing back with their hands raised while the gunman shouted instructions. A couple of customers lay on the floor.

‘Get down!’ the man yelled as Lee came through the door. ‘Lie down!’ The man’s eyes widened in surprise behind the balaclava when he saw Lee standing there, panting in the Dracula costume. ‘You! Down on the floor!’

Lee held out his hand, while slowly advancing. ‘Give me the gun… Come on, give me the gun.’

‘Get down, you bloody moron,’ the man bellowed and pointed the revolver at the centre of Lee’s frilled shirt. ‘Down! I won’t tell you again! Do it! ’

The cashiers stared, mouths open in horrified ‘O’s.

Lee ran forward, determined to grab the gun.

The robber grabbed him by the cape and swung him against a wall. Then he immediately stood back, pointing the gun at Lee again. ‘Are you crazy or what? Don’t make me use this on you.’

Lee turned round, held up his hands and walked towards the robber.