Jennifer stood on the kerb and looked over the carpet of liquid filth that stretched twenty yards before her. She stepped back just in time to avoid being splashed by a vehicle that came from nowhere and that left in its wake a cloud of inorganic diesel smoke. Out of her coughing fit, she found herself looking again at Radleigh’s men. They stood ankle-deep in the Piccadilly mud. The humpy man was gasping for breath and clutching at his side.
“Jennifer—Jennifer Baldwin!” the other man panted, a look of uncomprehending relief on his face. He took a step forward, but slipped and went face down into the dung. While the humpy man bent to help him up, Jennifer turned and made her best effort to dash along one of the wider streets. But the men were now out of the road, and were trying to catch up with her through the crowd. “For God’s sake, Jennifer!” the humpy man shouted at the top of his voice. “If you ever want to see Richard and Catherine again, you’ve got to come with us.”
Jennifer stopped, though didn’t turn. These men did know her parents. She’d guessed that much the day before, from their Olden Day views and the reference to Madsen Pirie. Before The Break, her father had known many people who worked as lobbyists or hovered on the edge of politics. He’d known many, and there were none he hadn’t despised. But she couldn’t put names to faces. She’d been too young. Too much had happened for her to try imagining how these men may have looked before the collapse of the world that had enabled demand for their skills. But they were working for Radleigh. It might be that he’d found something.
She turned, but found herself looking at a couple of police officers. “You all right?” one of them asked. Jennifer nodded. She looked past the officers. She could see Radleigh’s men trying to squeeze themselves out of sight in a doorway. “You all right?” the officer asked again, now faintly aggressive. She nodded and looked about. If she stayed here, they’d ask for her identity card. She gave them both a sweet smile and hurried off.
Another twenty yards, and she allowed herself to stop and look back again. No sight of Radleigh’s men. She quickened her pace along the wide but crowded pavement. There were limits, though, to her speed in these terrible shoes. She thought of stopping to pull them off, and then taking properly to her heels. But there were more officers just ahead. One of them had his rifle cocked and seemed to be looking for someone to stop and bully. Trying to keep her face steady, she walked slowly past the entrance of what seemed a very fine hotel.
“Hello, love,” a voice called. “Late for a client, are we?” Frank Wapping opened the door of his carrying chair. He showed the carriers one of his cards and sent them on their way unpaid. “It must be your lucky day!” Before she could kick her shoes off and make for a proper escape, he had Jennifer by the arm and was leading her through the door of the hotel. She nodded her thanks to the uniformed doorman who ushered them in, and was pulled briskly across the polished floor to a group of chairs and low tables at the far end of the lobby. Wapping fell into a leather armchair. Straightaway, his telephone began buzzing. He pulled it out to see what text message he’d been sent.
“Can I help you, Miss?” the waiter asked. Jennifer tried to smile, and wondered how she could get away from this latest horror. She should have stayed inside the old Indian’s brothel to think how, if possible, she could get out of London again—and where to. The waiter coughed and repeated his question.
She forced a smile and reached up to see that her hat was still at the proper angle. “I’ll have a gin and tonic, if you please,” she said in what she was sure would sound a grown up voice.
The waiter looked down at her. “How old are you, Miss?”
“Eighteen,” she said firmly.
The waiter stood back to see under the wide brim of her hat. “Can you tell me your date of birth?”
“The 8th January 1998.” The waiter looked silently down at her. She reached into her handbag and took out a £100 note. She put it on the glass table.
The waiter frowned. “I won’t ask to see your ticket. But you can have a Brit Cola—with ice and with a slice of lemon, if we have any. You can leave when those men outside have been sent about their business.”
Jennifer was trying to see past the waiter to the revolving door, when Wapping finished his reply to the text. “The lady said she wanted a G&T,” he said loudly. “You just go and get her one, and stick it on my tab.” Jennifer did now catch sight of the humpy man. He was hopping from one foot to the other and waving his arms. He seemed to be alone, but couldn’t be allowed in wearing such dirty clothes. The doorman was threatening him with a wooden club “Get on with it!” Wapping snarled at the waiter, who hadn’t moved. “I’ll have a glass of red—make it a big one. And get the lady her drink, and don’t skimp on the lemon. If she’s my guest, she’s a guest of the Home Secretary—don’t you forget that!” The waiter allowed himself one disapproving look, before bowing and walking away.
Wapping picked up a laminated menu and fanned himself. “Hot, isn’t it?” he beamed. He leaned far back in his chair, not disguising his interest in looking up Jennifer’s dress, to see if she was wearing any knickers. Giving up on the door—she was safe in here for the moment—she glanced at the big television set. This had been a ghastly day. She’d been mad to go shopping. Wapping took out his mobile telephone again with all the flurry of privilege, and began reading another text message. The television news was being repeated for the second or third time. She listened vaguely to what the Chief Scientific Adviser was saying. She’d been wrong that the man was promising anything. This time, it was a solemn warning about the dangers of contact with the Outsiders. “Any change in the stream of past time,” he intoned, “could change everything about you. It might even cause you to disappear if your intervention led an ancestor not to have children.” This was something Jennifer had discussed at length with her parents on their first trip together across the Channel. “We’re in a new stream of time,” her mother had said, shutting down her father’s own convoluted explanation of the obvious. “Whatever happens now has no effect on what happened in our own past.”
She couldn’t hear the explosion. It came from too far away, and was barely enough to do more than rattle some of the glasses. But it took out the lights and the glow from the television. A few yards away, a woman got up and shouted that she wasn’t paying £10,000 a night for power cuts. Someone else joined in with a complaint about the taste of the coffee. The rising babble of discontent at last brought the manager from his office. All emollience, he jollied the hotel orchestra into striking up. To the strains of All You Need is Love, he hurried the waiters about, each carrying a tray of baked mice in honey.
“You eat them bones and all, dearie,” an aged waitress explained to Jennifer. “They was raised in our own basement—no chance of food poisoning,” she went on soothingly.
Chapter Eighteen
The lights flickered on and off a while before stabilising. The television was in the last few seconds of an interview with Abigail Hooper. Before Jennifer could decide whether it was safe to make her excuses and run for the exit, the waiter was back with the drinks. “Chin chin!” Wapping smirked, raising his glass to the fading image of his boss and then at Jennifer. He drained it in one long gulp, and made a token effort to hold back on his burp. Jennifer sipped at her own glass of industrial spirit, trying not to show how it burned her mouth and throat. Wapping was back to trying to see up her dress. Jennifer smiled and put her glass down. “It must be very interesting to work for the Home Secretary,” she said with a nod at the television. Since she had to sit here, she might as well get him round to the subject of Radleigh.