The tureen was almost empty. Owain drew his Walther and shouted that there was no more food, that they should disperse. But while nervous faces turned towards the sound of his anger, still no one was prepared to withdraw.
I was trying to stop him firing over their heads when I heard a deep-throated barking. The restaurant proprietor came down the steps, followed by two younger men. One was carrying a rifle, the other restraining a black Labrador on a chain leash that was already barking fiercely.
The noise and sight of the dog finally galvanised the crowd. As swiftly as they had come, they began to melt away, leaving only a few die-hards at the very front of the queue.
One of them was a slender young man with an avid face who pushed an upturned helmet at Marisa over the heads of others. It was a GRP Alliance army helmet, stripped of its internal webbing.
Fury welled up in Owain. Before Marisa could ladle the last of the stew into it, he stepped forward and knocked the helmet out of the man’s hands. He pushed him back so hard he went sprawling.
The man lay still for a moment before heaving himself up and attempting to recover the helmet. Owain kicked his hand away. He brandished his pistol and the man scrambled away. I had to focus so intensely on keeping his rage in check that I was quite unable to discern what had actually provoked it.
Owain retrieved the helmet. The restaurant owner approached Marisa and began gesticulating wildly and jabbering in broken French. Owain couldn’t understand most of it. He heard Marisa reply that since she had paid a good price for the stew it was hers to dispose of as she pleased.
Owain stepped between them
“This is an unfortunate misunderstanding of no great importance,” he said in French. “Let’s content ourselves with the fact that there has been no injury or damage, and therefore no need for continued unpleasantness. We are finished here. I suggest we all get back to our business without further fuss.”
Still holding the helmet, Owain walked Marisa across the ice towards the snow mobile. She kept glancing at him curiously.
“I’ll drive us back,” he said.
“Why did you hit him?”
His behaviour had clearly disturbed her as much as me. Still Owain gave nothing away. He climbed into the driver’s seat.
“Why, Owain?”
“Because he’d jumped the queue.”
She didn’t move. “No. That wasn’t it.”
He hadn’t wanted to explain. But he owed it her. Turning the helmet in his hands he pointed to two small holes at the front.
“See these? Rivet holes. For a badge, the circlet of stars. Probably levered off and sold.”
Marisa looked blank.
“They don’t make them like this any more. To reduce production costs, they starting leaving the badges off. This has to be at least twenty years old.” He showed her the dark interior, criss-crossed with paler strips where the padding had been. “Glass reinforced plastic with a carbon fibre lining. An officer’s helmet, rank of colonel at least.”
It was obvious the significance of this still eluded her.
“Don’t you see?” Owain said vehemently. “It couldn’t have been his. He had no business having it.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Tanya. A black-and-white photograph on the inside flap of the dust jacket. It was a side-lit shot of her sitting at a desk, staring off-picture at something, looking both glamorous and intellectual, the epitome of the seriously sexy science writer.
The cover of the book carried her name, Tanya Z Peters, and the title, The Paradox Realm, in bilious green and tangerine lettering. It was a popularisation of quantum physics, its cover a lurid swirl of electric pastels.
Tanya hated the cover because it suggested a sherbety confection of easily digestible facts aimed at the casual reader. In fact it was a book about a difficult and non-intuitive subject, aimed at a scientifically literate audience. I’d read it soon after it appeared and still found much of it bewildering.
Her other titles were on display in a glass-fronted bookcase of her study. The first was Elemental Fired, a book on stellar nucleosynthesis that had been published when she was still in her twenties. Others had followed on subjects as diverse as genetic engineering and the greenhouse effect. She was a regular contributor to Radio 4 and the Discovery Channel, and she also taught a course on the social impact of scientific developments for the Open University.
Her study was quite unlike my father’s: a light, airy place, its window overlooking the garden. There were modern prints on the wall, a bronze samovar, a set of Russian dolls arranged along the mantelpiece. Trophies of her travels.
I put the book back on the shelf, saw a copy of Battlegrounds. The book had been ghosted by a freelancer but was based on e wres transcripts that I had written. It seemed a fake in comparison to Tanya’s, not truly a product of my own efforts.
I felt a powerful urge to bolt from the house, go running and never come back until I’d found out where I was supposed to be.
A toilet flushed and a door opened. Geoff came in.
He wore a navy suit and his only concession to informality was that the top button on his shirt was undone and his striped tie loosened. I wondered if he had just popped home for a couple of hours, was taking time out to give me a bit of psychological counselling.
As though rehearsed, we resumed our seats in armchairs opposite one another. “So,” he said, smiling. “Where were we?”
“You were asking me if I was still having problems with my concentration,” I said, surprised that I had remembered it.
He nodded earnestly. “And?”
“And what?”
This threw him.
I grinned and said, “Joke.”
Geoff mustered a smile of his own, though it wasn’t particularly convincing.
“I’m finding it hard to retain anything,” I said, giving him what he wanted. “Though I know you’ve just been for a pee.”
He looked at me carefully, trying to figure out whether I was still joking or not. Very straightforward, Geoff: no side to the man whatsoever. I’d always imagined it would be a disadvantage in his profession, but evidently not. Unless he was a Supreme Master of subterfuge.
“Believe me,” I insisted, “it’s a major achievement.”
Slow, repeated nods, his gaze on me all the while, inviting some further comment. I started thinking about Owain and the sudden rage that had enveloped him over the helmet. He’d seen it as a form of sacrilege, a filthy grasping civilian in unlawful possession of precious military equipment. But there was even more to it than this.
“Any difficulties sleeping?” Geoff prompted.
I made a noise like a laugh. “Staying awake’s the big problem.”
“But no headaches?”
“Not as such.”
He waited. I felt obliged to give him more.
“Just a vague buzzing sometimes. Especially when people are talking to me. It gs into a kind of auditory blur. I lose track.”
He didn’t pick up on this. “Any giddiness or nausea?”
“No. Nothing like that.” Which wasn’t totally true. “I just don’t feel with it.”
This was putting it mildly, but I certainly had no intention of telling him about where I really went when I wasn’t “with it”. He’d have me pegged as psychotic or brain-damaged in no time at all. Which I supposed was a distinct possibility. Except that it didn’t feel like that. It didn’t feel like that at all. It felt real.