

The Replacement Phenomenon

Will Thurston

Fidus Publishing

Published by Fidus Publishing at Smashwords

Copyright 2010 Will Thurston

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

ISBN: 978-1-908042-04-0

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CHAPTER 1

**Friday 30** th **January**

Despite Jake Hingham hearing the gunshots that had killed his family, and his arriving at the scene within seconds, one scene was missing from his memory. He had not witnessed the demise of his wife and his two sons just a few hours earlier. His mind was working fiercely, attempting to fill in the blanks in his memory. He imagined the killers exiting the car and raising various sizes of guns, saying various things or saying nothing. He didn't know enough to imagine the incident but could not prevent himself from doing so.

He would do anything to numb his mind into letting go of the tragedy he had just faced. He had turned to alcohol to provide a welcome distraction, but had long since proven to himself that half a bottle of wine was affecting nothing but his balance.

Jake used the plain looking black balcony railing to halt his fall as he stumbled towards an aerial view the crime scene that had previously been his front garden. The combination of alcohol running through his veins as well as attire consisting of a dressing gown and old blue slippers, in hindsight did not make for good grip on a stone tiled floor, especially in times of inclement weather. He didn't care that the evening's weather was dreadful and that the rain was throwing down like there would be no tomorrow. The only things in his life that he _did_ care about were now gone, so he had no desire to face tomorrow anyway.

As much as he hated to admit it, within the space of a few seconds his precious family had become as much a part of history as his ancestors. He couldn't handle that. As far as he was concerned there was nothing left. No reason for him to carry on with his day-to-day life without his family beside him.

Perhaps the hardest thing to which Jake needed to come to terms was how close he had been to intervening. Not only had he been seconds away from saving his family from their grim fate earlier that day, but he was the first to witness the awful scene directly below where he now stood.

On previous occasions he'd seen his house as he rounded the last bend in the road, and counted himself as being lucky to be living where he lived. His house was a modern take on an Art Deco style. The white rendered exterior made the detached house look somewhat like a giant, elongated sugar cube with prominent rounded corners and the flat roof. White windows had recently been fitted, replacing poorly constructed dark wooden frames which had been in place previously. The balcony, on which Jake currently stood, protruded from the front of the house overhanging the front door and driveway to the right.

The interior was not so true to a lavish Art Deco style. It clearly showed plenty of signs of a house built in the seventies with brown bricks that were once clean and considered decorative forming a fireplace in the lounge, and an open wooden staircase leading to the first floor. The house looked refreshed and clean, exactly the kind of property estate agents loved to sell. Jake had previously held no desires to sell the property until tonight. Rather than being his family home with fond memories attached, it was now just a building attached to a crime scene.

With an almost empty bottle of cheap white wine gripped firmly in his hand, but swinging loosely as an extension to his arm, he slurred, "If I'm lucky those heartless maniacs will come and finish the family off."

He couldn't see why anyone would kill his wife and two children in such a quick, brutal manner but leave him untouched. What had they done? Why not take him and leave his wife and children alone? They were just a small family from the quiet town of Darlington, County Durham. What could they possibly have done to hurt or offend anyone? They didn't go looking for trouble. They had been a normal, quiet family, doing normal things together. To his knowledge his wife had never been involved in drugs or blackmail or any unscrupulous activity of any kind, and their kids were just kids.

He turned and walked towards the white UPVC bi-folding doors that opened onto the platform on which he now stood. When fully opened the doors created what was essentially a large gaping hole in the front of their house for the length of the balcony. On this occasion, owing to the weather and his current lack of enthusiasm for anything, only the door to the far left was open, leaving the rest of the glass doors in place. As he saw the reflection of his own distraught face stare back at him through the double glazing, he spun around, arms arcing out from his side, and decided he would yell at the grimly dark sky some more.

He didn't know if he was talking to anyone or anything up there. The existence of some kind of God or all-knowing force seemed illogical to him, an opinion being shared by more and more people he knew. He didn't expect an answer to his night time rant, nor did he really want one. He just needed to shout more of what was on his mind into the night sky, even if nothing could answer back or even feign interest.

"Why?" he asked the midnight blackness. "Why _my_ family? Why _now?_ "

The sky managed to grow even darker than it had been seconds earlier; something he hadn't really thought was possible. It was obvious to him that a storm was about to hit. A bright flash was followed almost instantly by a loud rumble of thunder, meaning the lightning struck not too far from where Jake was standing. The storm was beginning and he thought it might be best to continue his protests against such an angry sky from the relative safety of the warm, dry side of his double-glazed doors.

As Jake stumbled across the threshold of the door watching the storm through the glass, he still marvelled at the strange beauty he always found in lightning. Someone had once explained to him the science behind such storms, and how they relieved tension, headaches, and other symptoms of stress. He found that remarkable. Electrical storms neutralized the ions in the air and helped to calm everything through a violent display of light and sound that could not be equalled by any mere mortal.

Whatever the effects of the weather, it would take a lot more than an electrical storm to restore calm to Jake's life.

Whilst only for a brief few moments, Jake was glad to have something else to think about as he stared out at what he could see of the town's basic skyline. His mind had been focused on the events of the past few hours, and no doubt would be for the rest of his life. Any distraction would be most welcome over the coming days, weeks, and months. Any thought to keep his mind from returning to that image that had greeted him as he arrived home, whatever that thought might be, would consciously be given priority on the stage of his mind.

He could hear "Drinking Again", one of the final tracks of a Frank Sinatra album, playing on the mini silver coloured stereo system in his bedroom. The lines "I'm havin' a few and wishin' that you were here" and "Bein' a fool just hopin' that you'll appear" held more meaning to him than they had done previously, and he was sure he did not want to listen to any more.

He walked over to the stereo unit without saying a word, picked it up and yanked it as hard as he could away from its current position with all the fury of a drunk and angry man, pulling it away from the wall and sending its two connected speakers hurtling to the floor. He opened the left hand door leading to the balcony and tossed out the stereo, hearing it smash on the ground beneath. He certainly would not be hearing those depressing lyrics again any time soon. He had probably just contaminated the crime scene below, but he didn't care. According to the police earlier that evening, there was nothing more to be learned from the crime scene anyway.

Despite his efforts to think and do anything else, the events of that day played on his mind over and over again. He was now certain to fruitlessly replay key moments over and over, wishing with all his heart and mind that he could step into his memories and change everything, or even _something_. He looked up at the clock. 23:47. Only thirteen minutes remained of the worst day of his life. He decided he had to have one last good shout at the already violently raging thunderous sky, after which he'd call it a day.

Jake remembered vividly the day that was now ebbing out like old coals on a camp fire. He could see every moment in perfect clarity in his mind as if being displayed in high definition crystal clarity on a giant screen directly in front of him. He did not even have to close his eyes to picture any of it. The first scene was right in front of him as he stood looking through the doorway into his bedroom.

That same large digital clock with its bland LCD display had been his first sight of the day. It was almost always the first thing he would see every day, and the last thing he would see every night. From there, every event of the day rushed to his mind, and he could do nothing to prevent the flood of memories and their accompanying regrets.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The first time he looked at the clock it read 07:30. He dreaded seeing those digits appear. It meant he had another day of work ahead of him. Another day of drudgery and boredom in the name of employment lay before him, but at least it was the end of the working week.

On the weekends, in his mind there was only one 7:30 in a day, and it was much later. That time was usually accompanied by the family gathering around the television set to watch their favourite show of the moment. Most were little more than glorified talent contests, the like of which he had seen countless times. Still, Saturdays were usually a break from the normal way of things in his daily life. He needed the weekends with his family to remind himself of why he put up with the job he had. It was all to provide for his family.

Jake had a routine he had been following every weekday for almost as long as he could remember. Today seemed no different from any other, and there seemed to be no reason for departing from the carefully crafted order of things.

He would wake up with the sound of an alarm clock, look at the big clock on the wall, then his eyes would move to the right where he would see his calendar, set to the new day during the previous evening, and then he would turn over in bed and look at his beautiful wife. They had been married for nine years. It would be ten in just a few weeks.

This day was slightly different from others in the most minor of ways to begin with. There was no reason that this simple change could be considered a warning sign for the day ahead. On this Friday morning as he turned over, his wife was not there. It wasn't long before his wife returned, inexplicably climbed back into bed, and then got up and went about the usual daily routine. As she got back into bed and glanced over at Jake with a brief smile crossing her face, Jake had a good look at her and realised how lucky he was. He had a tendency to forget that from time to time, as he suspected most people did.

Amy was one of the most naturally beautiful women he had ever seen. At five and a half feet tall she was four inches shorter than Jake. She had a naturally pale complexion and dark brown hair the shade of mahogany. She had a snub nose and blue eyes and the cutest smile he'd ever seen on anyone. Even first thing in the morning she was stunning to look at. Make up added something when occasion required, but she rarely wore any. She didn't ever need to in his opinion. Amy of course disagreed, but he wasn't sure if this was out of humility or a reduced sense of self-worth.

In addition to her attractive features, Amy had some less than angelic qualities that surfaced every once in a while. Her temper was short and explosive when pushed to its limit. Luckily, it was extremely rare that anything happened that revealed this temper. Most of the world saw the cute and kind Amy, and to be fair she was that person for ninety nine per cent of the time. He lost his temper far more than she did, and had a list of failings as long as his arm. He was still delighted to be married to her after almost ten years, especially as she'd ignored most of his failings during that time.

The next few actions of the day were as they might be for anyone else. He would shower in the en-suite bathroom and get dressed in his usual workday suit. When dressed for the day he would make his way downstairs to the kitchen to eat breakfast with his family. The content of his breakfast varied from day to day. The same cereal every day would lead to more boredom than Jake could stand. On this particular Friday he enjoyed raspberry jam on toast. Following breakfast he would walk out of the front door to work, climbing into his new car. He would slouch into the comfortable cream leather seats in his silver Mercedes and drive the two miles or so to the office.

It was an almost perfectly straight drive, east on Yarm Road to work. Sadly, traffic meant the journey couldn't be done in four or five minutes. It was just over half an hour to walk the same route, but he didn't earn that money and have a nice car so he could walk into work and leave a fancy car sitting dormant on his driveway. Besides, the modern office block was located just outside of Darlington, in a relatively new development called Morton Park. A lot of the newer business parks didn't seem to have been built for pedestrians. People wishing to travel in or out of the area would need to do so using their own, or local public transport.

There was little that could be considered pleasurable about the job which Jake had endured for the past three years. He was overqualified and underpaid for the tasks he did. Still, he figured that everyone else in almost every other place in the world had the same complaint every day, so switching jobs or careers would not benefit him much, if at all. He was at least glad to be behind a desk and have his own office.

He did not see why people made a fuss about working outdoors. He had undertaken various outdoor tasks including gardening and house painting. Such tasks did nothing to persuade Jake that outdoor work could be enjoyable. The prospect of working in all weathers had never appealed to Jake. A comfortable office was much more to his liking. Besides, he thought, the great British weather should be enough to put any sane person off even entertaining the notion of outdoor employment.

Jake sat at his expensive looking desk and looked around his office, complete with dull pictures on green pastel shade walls. The company for which he worked was large, but small minded. It was nationwide, yet people still viewed it as being a small company that would soon fizzle out as other similar ones had done previously. Whilst they had many competitors, they were the biggest in their line of business in Europe.

The organisation was called Nannotek. Unfortunately, the good spelling of the word had been registered with another company, but they were unwilling to let go of the name. They produced and sold electrical equipment from their own chain of stores up and down the country.

The company employed upwards of three thousand people with their main headquarters in Darlington and other smaller offices at seemingly random locations throughout Europe. Jake figured their policy of avoiding capital cities and ports for the location of their premises was purely a consequence of a company keeping costs as low as possible.

Nannotek had dealt with many obstacles before, but new troubles were arising. Soaring fuel costs meant that transporting their products was becoming prohibitively expensive. They received record numbers of complaints and order cancellations every day. Jake knew that life in his job would not be easy until small problems were dealt with by people who had a lot more influence than he had.

He worked in Customer Services, and was often responsible for dealing with annoyed people wondering where their washing machine, freezer or computer had got to. Many cancelled their orders purely because of the time frame involved in the delivery of their chosen product. Customers often considered the failure of prompt delivery to be the breaking of a promise made to them. Being such a big retailer, deliveries sometimes took days or weeks longer to complete than the time indicated when the order was placed.

This frustrated Jake too, but he didn't ever let the customers know that. He worked in Customer Service, and it was his job to reassure customers that he was doing everything possible to speed up their orders, even though he had no influence whatsoever over such matters. He had complained to his superiors about the company's casual attitude towards their customers, but nothing was ever done to improve the quality of service. Jake felt that no-one in management cared enough about their customers or ever really listened to him, no matter how many times he voiced the same concerns.

When orders were cancelled, as they sometimes were, he felt that the customers were blaming him personally for the company's poor service. None of it was his fault, but it didn't make him feel any better. Some customers were abusive or offensive when they called, and Jake hated having to meekly put up with being cursed at and called various rude names. Nobody should have to be subjected to such abuse on an almost daily basis. Occasionally, when he was feeling particularly vindictive, he would hold off on the withdrawal of the finance agreement and make the customer sweat a little before finally closing accounts and informing their bank not to take money from the accounts of disgruntled former customers. Jake rarely felt in such a harsh mood, but strangely enjoyed exposing the more sinister part of his personality every now and then.

Today was going to be another difficult day for Jake. So far, nothing unusual had happened. January 30th was just like any other day. It was a Friday, which was something he always enjoyed realising. Two full days away from the annoyance of these people would be a blessed relief. He could enjoy two full days of quiet and contentment and solitude with his family.

Several hours passed with the usual string of complaints and problems. There was nothing unusual, but still enough to provide the daily headache that Jake was growing tired of. He started to think about a career change again. Okay, so maybe he wouldn't find a job that he really enjoyed, but he must be able to find one he hated a little bit less.

Now would probably be a good time to start looking for a new position, although he was aware that a lot of other people would also be considering a change of career just a few weeks into a new year.

They were less than a couple of weeks past the most depressing day of the year, which was statistically proven as being the third Monday in January. Apparently, according to some scientific study or other, that was when the euphoria of the Christmas season wore off and people realised they were in huge debt and hated their jobs. Despite the increase in numbers of those searching for work, Jake knew he could find something more suitable.

Just as Jake was starting to drift off into his thoughts again and imagine other job possibilities, the phone rang. He answered with the usual insincere monologue involving his forename, position, and the typical "How can I help you today?"

"I have a complaint to make."

Jake recognised the voice. "I hardly see my husband much these days because he's always dealing with petty problems." His wife, Amy had a habit of calling and making some semi-amusing comment that would make it obvious who she was.

"Well, I'm afraid there's not much I can do about that, Madam. I only deal with the serious problems," he said in return. "Hi gorgeous, what can I do for you?" This time his question was much more sincere.

"Do you realise you spend more hours per week with people that hate your company than you do with me?"

Jake picked up on her point. He spent plenty of time around the family, but not too much time with just her. Someone else always seemed to be there, usually one of their two children. Such was life for a couple with two kids. Time to themselves was pretty much a thing of the past.

"So you think I've worked so hard recently that I deserve some time off?" After almost ten years, Jake was now at the point where he could recognise by the tone of her voice when his wife was smiling on the other end of the line.

"That's exactly what I'm saying," she replied. "We could both do with some time alone."

"We have a big enough house," Jake said innocently. "If we sit at opposite ends it would seem like we're alone."

"You know I mean. Alone time _together_ , not alone time."

He decided he would finish early today and make time for an evening out. Even though they'd been married for a few years, they still wanted to set aside one or two nights a month for dates, like a courting couple. They were about due for another one.

"I'll be home by four. We could get our impromptu free baby-sitter to take the kids for the evening."

"Your sister? Shouldn't be a problem. She always seems to be willing to help out where she can," Amy said.

"Absolutely. It's not like she'll have much else to do."

"That's harsh. You assume she won't have a date on a Friday night?"

"It's a reasonable assumption to make. She hasn't had a proper relationship for a good few months. It's like she lives the life of a parent vicariously. Almost every time we see her in public she's got the child of someone or other nearby or in her arms."

The conversation ended with the usual vocalisation of affection from Amy and an uncomfortable reciprocation by Jake. With that, Jake hung up the phone. He figured it would be better for him to sneak out at ten minutes to four than to try and tell anyone he was going beforehand. He often lived by one phrase in the business world - It's easier to get forgiveness than it is to get permission. He didn't know who had said it, but in his mind they were worthy of some sort of important accolade or title. No truer words had ever been spoken in business, especially when it came to Nannotek.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jake glanced up at the large clock in the main hall. It was rather an old clock. Jake admired antiquated things, yet with the frustration rapidly building inside him, he would happily break anything there, old or new, if it could distract everyone long enough so that he could leave. He watched the hands as they swiftly rushed around the face of the mahogany timepiece, like the blades of a helicopter high on the wall. Through the rest of the day he watched the second hand of the clock in his office as it dragged itself unwillingly from one point of the clock face to another. Time went so slowly during his time working, so why did it suddenly speed up when he was trying in vain to get away from the place?

Jake was mentally kicking himself when he thought of how he'd taken his usual exit route from the building. At this time of day there was always someone in that area, but they were rarely worth the effort to talk to. This time, Frank, the head of the finance department, had collared him, obviously keen to avoid work for the last hour or so of the working week by just wandering the corridors with a couple of pieces of paper in his hand.

Jake was too polite a person to just walk on past a colleague and completely ignore him. Somehow he thought it was less rude to stand there and act interested, when in fact he was ignoring him and watching the seconds tick away behind his overweight friend. Several minutes into the conversation he could honestly not repeat back a word that Frank was saying. All he was doing was smiling and nodding at seemingly appropriate moments.

Over the course of his life, and partly due to the long stories inflicted on him by grandparents, Jake had developed the ability to look completely absorbed and interested in what someone was telling him, whilst at the time completely switching off somewhere inside his mind. He knew this in itself was not too impressive. He saw others do it all the time. What set him apart was the fact that he always managed to say the right thing at the right time, and sincerely enough that the conversation would not result in the other party saying, "Are you listening to me?"

He knew Frank would be saying something about the change in the company pay structure, but he didn't care. Such changes usually meant the people at the bottom of the chain had a minimal increase in salary, while the so-called fat cats at the top would take a large slice of the increase.

Jake started to look for the slightest pause in conversation. Several seconds ticked by as quickly as before but still no pause for breath. It was as if this guy had developed the technique of breathing in through his nose while speaking with his mouth, thus allowing him to carry on talking without the inconvenience of stopping briefly to breathe in.

More seconds passed. The time was a quarter past four. He had been talked to for about twenty minutes. If he'd have known beforehand, he could have brought a chair to sit on, or concealed a pair of minuscule headphones and a portable mp3 player about himself and listened to his favourite songs on the device whilst feigning interest in what his colleague was telling him.

There was a sudden pause as Frank exhausted another subject within the vast encyclopaedic area that was accounting. Jake took his opportunity and butted in.

"Well, it was nice talking to you Frank, but I have somewhere else I need to be." It was probably possible to get out of this situation without lying, but he'd had enough. He was willing to do anything to end this. "My wife needs me home a little earlier today. One of the kids isn't doing so well." He thought he'd better stop talking and walk away before Frank saw through his lies.

They shook hands and Frank wished him a good weekend. Jake was finally able to walk out of the door and taste of the freedom in the air he felt whenever he finished work that little bit earlier.

He hurriedly put his briefcase in the back and climbed into the car. The engine started, and within minutes, he would be home to his darling wife and wonderful children.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Amy looked out of the living room window for probably the hundredth time in the last five minutes. As she looked out at the empty road and driveway, she could see that daylight was fading quickly. She was not concerned as she knew exactly what would have happened to Jake. One of the windbags Jake worked with was talking his ear off again. She told her precious husband that he just needed to be stern with them. When he was leaving, he needed to tell them he was leaving. He needed to walk away and never look back, instead of letting people stop him from doing anything he wanted or needed to do.

If he kept lying down and letting people talk all over him, he would never grow any kind of a backbone. He was too patient for his own good. She tried to tell herself that his patience got to her, but she loved him for it really. He was so sweet and kind that they hadn't ever had a fight in nearly ten years of marriage. That was no small achievement these days.

Some couples seemed to be at each other's throats all the time, but Amy had no idea how those people could stand to be in such a relationship. In her mind, a person's husband or wife should be someone in whom they can confide and feel comfortable with all the time. A spouse needed to be a best friend too. Anything less was not really worth the aggravation if fighting was a part of daily life.

She was beginning to look at only two things around the house as she continued to wait, and each for only a couple of seconds. First, she would look out of the window at the driveway, and then she would look to her left at the clock above the doorway leading to the dining room. As her gaze was shared between these two scenes, her eyes passed straight over the front door in between.

Almost twenty minutes late. It was not normal for Jake to be _that_ polite when collared before leaving work. Surely he would pull into the driveway at any minute. Just as she thought that, she noticed a familiar looking silver coloured car drive around the corner and slow down on its approach to the red brick paved driveway.

She turned around to notify the children.

"Kids, your father's home." Within seconds a rumbling was heard that signalled the two small boys charging down the stairs from their bedrooms to greet their father.

Although it seemed to be the cheesy, typical movie-style greeting for a father returning home from work, Amy enjoyed it. She would open the front door, the kids would bolt out and run to the car to greet Jake as he stepped out and walked towards the house. She always stood just beyond the covered porch area and watched him greet their two sons, before he walked towards the door and gave her a kiss on his way through the doorway. Whatever the weather, the same scene always followed that silver Mercedes pulling into the driveway. The only variable was the closing of the front door behind her during the winter months. Jake was forever pointing out the expense and ineffectiveness of heating the great outdoors.

As she opened the door, the two little boys, aged six and eight, ran past her with enough force to knock over a medium sized animal, should any such collision ever occur. They reached the car and paused. In the dimming light and over the bright car headlights she struggled to see who was in the car. It didn't look like Jake. Her eyes quickly lowered to the number plate. It was different. This wasn't their car. She'd never seen it before.

Amy called out to the boys, trying her best to not sound concerned. "Kids, get back in the house. That's not your father."

They didn't move. "Jason, James, get back in the house this very minute." She always called them by name, starting with the oldest, when she wanted to get through to them. The next stage was embarrassing them by calling out their full names, followed by an order. They didn't need the final stage this time. They turned around and started walking slowly back to the house.

"Who is it, Mum?" asked Jason.

"What do they want?" added James.

She didn't know. It wasn't anyone they had ever seen before. Perhaps it was a new work colleague or a friend to whom she had never been introduced.

A tall, well-built man in a dark grey suit and light blue tie opened the driver side door and stepped out of the car. Another man, dressed the same but with a red tie, stepped out of the passenger side. "Amy?" the first man said, posing it as a question. Before any response could be given, he added to the question and asked again. "Mrs Amy Hingham?"

She took an instinctive step forward. "Yes... and who are you?" she replied, with a question of her own.

The two men were dressed smartly and had a certain presence of authority about them. She thought they might be official authorities of some kind. They made no attempt to show any kind of credentials or identification.

What seemed like a huge amount of time was just an uncomfortable several seconds. The two men looked at each other, nodded slightly, and without warning pulled guns from their jackets and opened fire on Amy and her sons. The first man struck Amy with the first shot, and the second.

The noise of gunfire was far louder than she had ever thought it would be. Her ears were ringing and sharp pains were spreading from her torso around her whole body. The other man picked off the two children with ease as they were running back to the house, a deafening bang accompanying each shot.

Amy saw her sons fall to the ground like the stuffed toys they had played with throughout their short lives. They didn't move, and she knew they wouldn't be getting up. She tried to scream, but she was unable to. She looked down to her midriff to discover two large red patches growing by the second on the front of her floral dress. Looking back at the men in horror, she wanted to know why they had just done this. The two strangers climbed back into the car with slight smiles on their faces and were gone as quickly as they had arrived.

Amy's strength was failing. She was in horrendous pain, and worst of all, she knew her children were dead. She was sure she was about to join them wherever they had departed to. She leaned against a post supporting the porch and started to slowly slide to the ground. As she felt her strength sap away, she noticed another silver Mercedes drive around the corner. Then everything went black.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jake was almost home, seemingly seconds after leaving work. He flicked the indicator on to signal he was turning right at the next junction. He slowed down and found a gap in the traffic moving the opposite direction, allowing him to turn onto Wymundham Way.

After turning into the street on which he and his family lived, he still had a couple of corners to drive around before he arrived at his house. His wife could usually spot him from a distance, and by the time he pulled up, his two sons would be bounding out of the front door towards him just as they always did.

When he was just seconds away he heard a loud bang, followed closely by three more. The first one sounded rather like a tyre blow out from a neighbour's car, but on hearing the next three, he wondered if a firework had been lit somewhere. Knowing a little from crime television shows, he feared for what sounded suspiciously like a gun being fired.

Drug problems and gang warfare could often have resulted in shootings in the area surrounding a city. Everything was bigger in cities, including criminal activity. Shootings might happen in bigger places but not in their small town, and not in this neighbourhood.

Jake drove around the last bend to see an almost identical silver Mercedes heading towards him. He panicked, but steered wide enough to avoid the oncoming car as it sped past him. There was no sign of an apology, and no reaction at all from the two dark figures in the other vehicle. They were obviously not concerned with manners.

Jake was focussed on the car in his rear view mirror so intently that he failed to notice he was heading towards his own gatepost. His attention was refocused in front of him just in time to see the front of his car whack the edge of his own property with great force. The iron gatepost collapsed to the side with the weight of the now unsupported gate attached to it, and several airbags in the car flew up in his face and sides.

For a few seconds everything was a bright white and all he could see was airbag. The first few thoughts that came to mind when he realised what had happened all involved the word, "expensive." He fought until he was free of the two large white airbags on his side of the car, and clambered out of the door, covered in a white powder and ready to make a grovelling apology to his wife.

Jake stepped out of the car and couldn't believe what was in front of his eyes. This wasn't real. It couldn't be. The usual scene of happy children and a beautiful wife were replaced with a frame from a horror movie. His wife was slumped in front of the porch with two huge scarlet stains around her stomach, obviously from the bullets he heard being fired. Were the children in the house? Did they hear? He needed to find them.

He hurried anxiously past the edge of his car, numb from head to foot and completely unable to feel anything but a kind of light-headed panic. As he walked around the car his two sons came into view, lying face down on the grass next to the driveway, about ten feet from the door. It took all of his effort to stay on his feet.

He could not believe what had happened. He began to see what had unfolded just seconds before he had arrived home. Whoever had been in the other silver car had driven up to the house. Amy and the kids had thought it was him, and so were ready to greet him as he arrived. Those two men must have reacted in seconds, and the four shots were the sound of his wife and children leaving him alone in this world.

He now wished he'd at least hit the other car. Within moments, he wished he'd hit it, hurt the two strangers, locked them in the car and burned it. The excessive patience which Jake held was, in an instant, as much of a part of history as his family had just become.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

No more Mr Nice Guy. It sounded so clichéd, but it could not have been any more fitting when it was first expressed, or in any of its many uses since then. Jake was ready to go out and destroy every silver Mercedes he ever laid eyes upon from now until the end of his life. Someone had destroyed his life, and he needed to even up the score somehow.

The worst part of it all was the mystery surrounding it. The police had come and gone but they could not shed much light on the situation.

Initially, the police had questioned Jake. Apparently this was standard procedure for such an incident. He needed to be eliminated from suspicion. He had agreed to go with the officers to the police station, and to provide his fingerprints and a DNA sample, and to give his own statement of events.

The neighbours had only looked out of their windows when they heard gun shots, and then all any of them had seen in the January twilight amounted to two figures, probably men, getting into a silver car and driving off, seconds before seeing Jake drive home.

The accounts of various neighbours helped to clear Jake of any involvement in the shootings. Sadly, all of the neighbours had been too far away to be of any use in identifying these men. The only useful information they could provide was to confirm that the car had looked exactly like Jake's. No one could even give the police a registration number.

The police, of course, had checked Jake's whereabouts and his movements for the day, and had admitted that he was no longer considered a suspect in his family's murders. He barely registered what they had told him. His life was all but over and no one seemed able to find out who was responsible.

The last thing the police had done, before leaving Jake alone, was to section off the front of his house as a crime scene. The accounts of witnesses suggested the shooters did not enter the house. Initial forensic examination confirmed that to be the case. He was informed that he could stay at the house overnight if he kept clear of the front of the property and did not open the front door. Initially he had no desire of staying in that house. It was only pure exhaustion and lack of transport that led him to conclude that he could handle one last night in that house.

Nobody could offer any credible explanation as to why this had happened. Was it some revenge-seeking gang who had simply targeted the wrong house? Was it some crazed customer of his company who had managed to find him? Was it just a couple of lunatics, driving around shooting people for the fun of it? Could it have been a drug fuelled robbery gone wrong? He would never know the truth of it all now.

He wasn't ready to let his family go without a reason. He needed to know why this happened. There was no way that Jake was going to believe that his family died as a result of some random act of madness. He could not even begin to come to terms with his loss without finding a reason or purpose behind this outrage.

As Jake looked through the large doors opening onto the balcony, he could see that rain was still hammering on every surface outside. The lightning was still around.

He wanted to have one last good go at something out there. He decided that he didn't care if he got soaked. He wouldn't care much if he caught pneumonia and died. In fact, that seemed like a suitable way out of this nightmare of a life he now faced. He didn't care whether any of the neighbours heard him and complained. Shouting would make him feel better, and if someone wasn't happy with that, then they'd just have to face his wrath. The clichéd phrase "No more Mr Nice Guy" sounded in his head again.

Jake opened the left hand door again and walked outside. The rain was certainly heavy. After drying off inside he was soaked to the skin again in about twenty seconds. He looked up at the sky and saw the occasional fork of lightning strike at some distant point on the horizon.

"I need a reason for all of this! My family did not die for nothing! WHY?" With every word, every thought, tears started streaming down his face.

"I could've stopped all of this. If I'd got home on time instead of talking to that fool in accounting, my wife and kids would still be alive. If only I could go back."

Jake didn't see a shooting star, he had no access to a wishing well, and he didn't have a magic lamp, but he wanted to make a wish anyway. For all he knew there just might be a shooting star behind a cloud somewhere up there. Not that he believed in any of that anyway.

"I wish I could go back and stop it. I wish I could turn back time!" Just as he spoke the last word, a horrendous crash seemed to surround him. A mighty clap of thunder echoed around him for most of a second and he wondered if perhaps he or his house had been struck by lightning.

Seconds later he saw another fork of lightning in the distance. There were several quick flashes. For a brief moment he wondered if he was starting to get delusional. Had he really seen what he thought he had just seen? Was he drunk, or was he losing his mind? He could have sworn there had been four almost simultaneous flashes of forked lightning in the distance. They looked to him like letters of the alphabet.

The word WISH was spelled out on the horizon in the most spectacular display of forked lightning he'd ever seen. Perhaps he was even more drunk than he'd thought.

Coincidence, he told himself. Lightning could form any one of an infinite number of shapes. No one heard his feeble cry into the night. On the grand scale of things, his cry was nothing. No one had the power to put things right now. Jake would do what he could to avenge his young family's death, but it could never be put right.

Jake eventually decided that he'd had enough of venting for one evening. Tomorrow he was going to figure out what he was going to do from here. He had a lot to organise. He now had family to contact and a funeral to arrange. After that he'd have to consider what he was going to do with his life.

He changed, ready for bed, and went robotically through his usual evening routine of washing his face and brushing his teeth. It seemed like so long ago since he had gone through his standard morning tasks.

He set the calendar for the next day. He always set it the night before. He didn't bother setting the alarm before he glanced up at the digital clock whilst retiring to his bed. It read 23:56.

He didn't suppose he would get much sleep, but he would try. There was no sense yelling at the sky all night. The end of a long day had finally arrived. Hopefully he could stop thinking about death and revenge for a few hours. He closed his eyes and in no time was out like a light.
CHAPTER 2

**Friday 30** th **January, 7:30am**

A familiar beep sounded and Jake opened his eyes. He flicked the switch on the top of his alarm clock and lay there in his bed quite contentedly for a few seconds, drifting into the day, remembering the final moments of the last of his dreams. Then he remembered yesterday.

The scene that had greeted his arrival home flashed before his eyes again. He recalled finding his wife lying just beyond the front door after having been shot twice, and then finding his two sons lying face down on the lawn having met the same end. It was like watching a horror movie.

Everything that made life worth living for Jake was now gone. His blood ran chill as he thought of how he had lost his family forever. What made it so much worse was his knowing that whoever had done this was getting away with murder. No one knew who was responsible, and no one had any idea why it had happened.

He looked up at the familiar clock. It was 7:30 in the morning. On any normal weekday morning it would have been time to get up and go to work. He had his usual routine that he knew needed to be adhered to. But today was no ordinary weekday. Nothing in his life would be ordinary ever again. In the next moment he remembered it was Saturday. He worked a typical working week from nine until five, Monday to Friday, and so he should not have been due in work today. And yet, he had the strangest feeling that all was not what it seemed.

Jake looked across at his daily flip calendar. It was still set to yesterday. It was very rare that he forgot to change the day on the calendar. Setting it ahead the night before was automatic to Jake. It was so much a part of his routine that it would take great effort for him to not set the calendar. He also found it strange that he would have set his alarm when he knew perfectly well that the next day was Saturday.

Maybe amongst the drama, confusion and heartache of yesterday he'd set it without thinking, but he did not remember setting his alarm, and he was sure he'd changed his calendar. With every waking second of the day so far, he was feeling more and more confused.

His confused state was greatly multiplied when he heard a noise in the en-suite bathroom, which was to the left of the bed by about six feet. He heard someone moving around, and clearly not making much of an effort to keep quiet. The toilet flushed and he heard the sound of water hitting the sink as if someone was washing their hands. There was someone else in the house and they were within a few feet of Jake. He had been alone last night, with only the night sky and the rain for company. Who else could be in the house? Had someone else arrived in the midst of his grief that he'd forgotten about? A friend, perhaps, or a relative? The last thing he remembered was his lonely shouting at the night sky. No one was there at the time.

He hoped for a second that it would be the two mysterious killers from yesterday. He briefly hoped the two men had climbed back into their silver Mercedes and had decided to complete the set by removing him from the life he no longer cared about. That was a bit of a crazy idea. Surely, if someone was going to murder him in his own house, wouldn't they do it discreetly?

He couldn't imagine they would make their presence so obvious as to use the bathroom, but he was familiar with the phrase, "When you gotta go, you gotta go." Still, there were other bathrooms in the house. There was one on the ground floor and a family bathroom across the hall. He wouldn't have heard anything from them.

Maybe it was a policeman coming back to check on him. Even so, they wouldn't be so impolite as to use his en-suite bathroom.

Jake decided that he had either a very unintelligent, dragged-off-the-street type of killer to deal with, or some adventurous, homicidal thrill-seeker who enjoyed building the tension with their victims before putting them out of their misery. In either case, he didn't like any thoughts that were arising concerning his demise and departure from this life. It was true that he wanted to be with his family again, but he'd prefer to decide how he went, where and why. At the very least he wanted to take some action that would have the whole ordeal over with very quickly. He was not about to be dictated to by a serial killer.

He decided to lie still under the duvet and spring on this person as soon as they lifted the sheet. He could catch them unaware if they expected him to still be asleep. That was, of course, unless they opened fire on him as he lay on the bed, which would scupper his seconds-old plan.

He spread out a little bit under the cover. He still only occupied the right hand side of the bed, even though the other side would lie empty. He stretched out his arms. His left arm drew his attention. The other side of the bed was warm, and the mattress had a slight dip in it. Someone had slept there last night.

It could have been that he moved around a lot in his sleep, but he didn't think he had. His side of the bed was just as warm, so he hadn't just moved over before waking up.

He heard quiet humming. He recognised the voice, but it didn't make sense. It was clearly the voice of his now deceased wife, Amy. Jake started to doubt his sanity. Here he was, thinking his wife was either back from the grave, that she was haunting him, or that he had somehow transported back to yesterday.

He didn't change his calendar last night, he set his alarm, and he kept both sides of the bed warm. There was probably no one in his bathroom. His imagination was, without equivocation, running wild. He was going insane, but that seemed like it could be the only logical conclusion for someone who had just lost everything.

The en-suite bathroom door opened and closed again. There was definitely someone else there, and they weren't being very discreet. There were footsteps approaching the bed. Okay, here we go, he thought.

The duvet lifted at the same time as he heard Amy's voice say, "You can't hide under that duvet, Jake. Friday morning. You need to be getting up." She climbed back into bed and lay down, pulling the duvet over herself. "But maybe we can get away with another five minutes."

Jake couldn't believe what was happening. Yesterday did happen, didn't it? Everything seemed to point to today being the very same day as yesterday, but how could that be possible? He had experienced vivid dreams in the past, but his entire yesterday surely could not have been one. He remembered every exact thing that happened. He knew what had been said and by whom, and he remembered every little thing and every little detail of Friday 30th January. This was a surreal situation. As much as he wished yesterday hadn't happened, he knew that it had happened. He would prove it.

He clambered out of bed and threw on his dressing gown as he noticed the silver coloured stereo still in one piece. It was placed as usual on top of their tall set of drawers. He walked to the door of the bedroom and swung it open. He looked around. Everything was in its proper place. He hadn't removed the empty wine bottle from beside the doors leading to the balcony, yet it was not there. There was no wet clothing strewn over the floor where Jake had left such items the previous night when he had been alone.

Still utterly unconvinced, he looked out of the window at his car below. He hadn't moved it since the rather incidental collision with the gatepost. He had remained in the house from then until now, with the exception of asking the neighbours what they had seen with one of the police officers who arrived shortly after the incident. He hadn't moved the car, but it was not where he left it. The silver Mercedes was in its usual position, minus the huge dent slightly to the driver side of the middle of the bonnet, which he inadvertently caused just seconds after the new central point of his life. The stereo, previously seen in the bedroom, was of course not lying in several pieces on the ground next to his car. The police were no longer outside his house, and the yellow incident tape which had cordoned off the crime scene last night was nowhere to be seen now. Everything had somehow undone itself.

He heard his two children talking along the landing as they played happily. Everything in his life was back to the way it should have been, and he had no idea how that was possible.

Something beyond strange was going on here. He remembered his yell into the dark abyss of a ferocious thunder storm several hours ago. Although his memory of the yesterday's events during daylight were clear, the evening with its drunken mourning was far less clear. Through his clouded memory of the last events of the evening, he remembered one specific wish. Could it be that the seemingly coincidental and unreal reply to his lament into the night was actually a real response to his wish?

Wish. The word had been spelled out across the distant stormy horizon for perhaps a fraction of a second during one freaky moment. And, of course, he had made that wish, although with not the remotest expectation or belief that it could possibly come true. How, then, could he even begin to explain what was so clearly real and yet so clearly impossible at the same time?

There he stood, in yesterday. A day which had ended in catastrophe and disaster was once again in its infancy. He did not know how it happened, nor did he know why such a wish had been granted. Somehow the events of yesterday had been reversed, ready to be repeated. It was as if his life was recorded on video tape and someone had hit the rewind button.

There was nothing special about him and his family. He wasn't the only one to have suffered loss from a tragedy. What made his grief so different that it would qualify him for a second chance?

He decided he was going crazy. This couldn't happen. How could it happen? Was he losing his mind? It must have been a very, very real dream. He must be transforming into some kind of clairvoyant or prophet. Nobody had such clear visions of the future, especially not normal people in normal situations.

It was time for Jake to see if the day was going to be exactly the same as his yesterday. His worst fear had been realised, then reversed. He would experience it all for a second time unless he did something about it. He could not bear the thought. Once had been bad enough. He could not allow himself to contemplate the possibility that he would have to experience it all over again, like a horror version of Groundhog Day.

He showered quickly and got dressed. He wore the same suit that he often put on for work. It was charcoal grey and made of new wool. He didn't much like the pale blue pinstripe running through the suit jacket and trousers. At first glance it looked white, but on closer inspection it was obvious that it was not. His wife had picked out the suit for him. She was beautiful, and perfect in many ways, but her choice in clothing for others left something to be desired.

Jake wore the suit to work for two main reasons. The first was that he didn't care much about the opinions of his associates in the professional world, especially when it came to fashion sense. The second reason was so he could wear it out as quickly as possible and pick out a suit that he liked.

On first seeing the suit he was currently wearing, he stopped using the phrase, "Anything you pick out for me would be as perfect as you are." He would pick out his own clothes in future, but he would do so in as polite a way as possible.

He let his mind drift away for a minute. Again, he was surprised that he was able to do so on such an important day. It wasn't important for most people on the planet, but right now this was the turning point in Jake's life. The worst thing that could happen today was a repeat of yesterday because he had some sort of lapse in concentration.

Jake started to make his way down the stairs for breakfast. He figured that a discussion over plans for the day may be drastically different from the previous version as a result of his own input. Whatever he said at breakfast could potentially put in motion the saving of the lives of his family.

He made his way down the open staircase and turned to his left at the base of the stairs, through the open doorway into the dining room. He made his way through the dining room towards the kitchen. The house had doorways linking the rooms on the ground floor of the house. He could also have turned right at the base of the stairwell and still made his way there, but the distance was marginally shorter through the dining room due to the location of doorways and walls.

As he walked through the archway into the kitchen he approached the small round beech wood table where they usually had breakfast. The usual noisy breakfast was underway.

It was quite rare that the family sat around the large solid wooden table in the dining room for a meal. The furniture was expensive and the children were still too young to appreciate it. That was his wife's decision, but one that he agreed with.

He walked in through the arch into their recently fitted kitchen. The white high gloss units were organised along walls decorated in a deep toffee apple red. A dark grey granite work surface and black bevelled tiles offered a good contrast to the bright white units and stainless steel appliances. It was an expensive looking kitchen but he was comforted by the fact that it cost substantially less than its appearance suggested.

Jake sat down in his seat, facing the entrance through which he had just walked, with his wife on his right. His oldest son, Jason, sat at his left. James was facing him. All three of them were debating the cereal available for breakfast, and the benefits and drawbacks of the usual packed lunch versus the possible school dinner. The conversation would end, as usual, with both sons relenting and taking another packed lunch to school.

His heart sank as he realised that this point yesterday would have been the last chance he had to look upon the faces of his family. He was grateful for a second chance to commit every detail of each of their features to memory. Realising that he had the chance to change the events of the day, he still thought that he would make the most of this opportunity to forge a lasting memory of his twenty nine year old wife, and six and eight year old sons.

Amidst the usual breakfast chaos, Jake considered how he could change the course of the day's events. Things would have to start to change from breakfast. After a few seconds of careful thought he asked Amy, "Honey, how is your day looking?"

"Well, let me check my schedule." She raised her right hand to the right side of her forehead and acted as if she was deep in thought. "I have an exciting day of housework ahead of me, with washing clothes and cleaning the kitchen being highest priority."

She made no attempt to hide the sarcasm in her voice. They all knew that she preferred the role of stay-at-home mother to that of a full-time worker. She had admitted to Jake previously that she did in fact find housework therapeutic. The two boys hadn't heard that and Amy was glad of that fact as she didn't want them deliberately adding to her 'therapy'. She enjoyed, to some extent, causing the restoration of cleanliness and order to their home. He found that a bit strange because he hated housework. He would of course help when necessary, but the idea of gaining any satisfaction from cleaning was certainly foreign to Jake. Amy, on the other hand, had always hoped to be a mother and home maker. This, of course, drove feminists nuts. Friends of Amy often said she was a backwards step for female equality. She didn't take any such comments to heart and considered her feminist friends to be missing out on the family life they'd want when it was too late to choose it.

"I thought we could disappear for a weekend break somewhere. Nothing fancy, but just somewhere more interesting than this town," he said, noticing the inquisitive looks in the faces of their children. "My parents aren't too far away. What do you think of us stopping by? I'm sure they'd welcome the chance to catch up."

Jason and James lifted their heads quickly and their eyes lit up. They approved of the idea of being spoiled by grandparents. His wife still looked like she needed convincing. The look in her eyes suggested that she wondered what he was trying to do.

"What brought this idea on? It's only been a few weeks since we last visited them. Remember New Year?"

"Of course I remember New Year." Jake answered. Well, he remembered most of it. One or two memories were a little fuzzy around the edges, thanks to a generous helping of champagne from his mother and father. He remembered that there had been a party, and he remembered warmly greeting other family members, but he didn't remember much more than that.

"I just thought it would be better to set off this evening and stagger the journey to avoid traffic. There's a good but low cost hotel on the way where we could stay overnight, then we can visit them early on Saturday."

Jake knew he had the children on his side already. The prospect of generous, spoiling grandparents and a night in a hotel had the makings of a fantastic weekend as far as they were concerned.

He continued, "But I think I'll just call them and make them aware that you would prefer to stay home and do the housework than-"

"Don't you dare!" Amy butted in. "You know that's not true." As she spoke, she knew that her defensive nature had made the possibility of a weekend trip a virtual certainty.

"Well, that settles it then. Amy, if you pack the essentials during the day, we can load up the car and set off when I get back from work." She nodded in agreement, and they all quickly finished off their breakfast of cereal and toast.

Jake stood up and moved towards the door. It was also time for the children to start the short walk to school. It took them fifteen minutes to walk there, but only ten minutes to walk home at the end of the day. As with other weekdays, the family went in their separate ways, and within the space of two minutes, Amy would be left on her own.

Jake kissed his wife, much to the disgust of his two sons, as he walked out of the door and headed for the car. Jason and James always tried their luck with a ride to school, but the response was always the same. "By the time you get ready and get in the car and I take you, you could easily have walked." It probably wasn't entirely true, but the traffic was heavy enough to make it difficult to get to their school and to his place of work in time.

And so another day had begun for his family, but he was determined to do better at the second attempt. He was going to make sure his family saw the end of Friday 30th January this time.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It was approaching lunchtime for Amy. She had been on her own in their house now for just over three hours. She rarely let half a day go by without talking to her husband. With this in mind she picked up the phone.

She stood there for a couple of seconds with the phone in her hand. Suddenly a smile crossed her face. She'd thought of something that would possibly bring a smile to Jake's face. Whenever she called him at work, she always liked to relieve any tension from stress that may be building up inside of him, with the aid of a smart remark as he picked up the phone. She was well aware of how stressed he became sometimes, and was always willing to try and lift his spirits.

Amy dialled the direct number for Jake's office, which she knew well. It rang once, twice, three times. She thought he must have had a hard day if he was ignoring his phone already. Just as she thought that, she heard his voice.

"Good morning. This is Jake, the Customer Services Manager for Nannotek. How can I help you today?"

"I have a complaint to make," she said with a grin on her face. "I hardly see my husband much these days because he's always dealing with petty problems." The line went quiet for a few seconds. She thought he might not have realised who it was.

"Hi gorgeous. How are you?" Jake's reply came eventually.

"In better health than you I think. I thought your idea this morning was a little out of the blue. What made you think of going away for the weekend? Why this weekend?"

"I really don't know how to explain why I made that decision. I..." Jake paused again. "I just have a bad feeling about today. You know sometimes you feel like something is coming and the feeling just sits in the pit of your stomach?" It was a rhetorical question. She didn't respond and he continued. "I think we need to get away from this area for a couple of days. I guess you could say I had a premonition."

"A premonition?" Amy's response was riddled with cynicism. "You mean like a dream or something?"

"Yeah. Something like that. Maybe I'm losing my mind or something, but I had a terrible dream last night that was so real. I lived everything from today already. The thing is, I don't think it was a dream. It was real to me. Some of the things that have happened so far today are the same as they were in this dream."

"Okay, you're freaking me out a little bit here. Jake, I love you, but you can worry me sometimes."

He didn't know what to make of that comment. Usually when people said, "I love you but..." they would follow it up with some kind of insult, or put-down, like, "but you're a complete moron." Maybe that was Amy's really polite way of saying it.

Most times she didn't disguise her words behind flattery or flowery language. When she had something to say, she said it. However, when it came to people she really cared about, she tried her hardest not to hurt their feelings.

"Amy, I'm thinking of leaving work earlier than discussed. Could you have the overnight bags ready for the car by about three? I'll aim to be home by then. We can pick up the boys from school and set off. My sister will be home this evening, so would you give her a quick call and see if it's okay to drop by there on the way?"

"Okay. I'll leave some clothes for them handy so they can change out of their school stuff when we stop by there. I'll see you at three. I love you."

"I love you too." Jake replied.

She hung up the phone and gazed at the wall behind, thinking about the strange conversation she'd just had. A dream was causing him such distress?

He'd never reacted like this before. In fact, she couldn't recall a single point previously when he'd mentioned anything about a dream he'd had. But whatever she thought might be strange, she'd be grateful for a weekend away from home. She set about preparing clothes and a small amount of food for the journey.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jake leaned back in his chair, placed his hands behind his head and relaxed his entire upper body, allowing his head to fall back until it hit the top of his comfortable leather swivel chair. The furniture within his office was one of the few things he still liked about his job. That in itself was a reflection on how little he cared about his job. He'd never say, "I hate this job. I'm only still here for the furniture." Such a comment would bring with it countless strange looks and a large amount of derision from other employees.

His office was mostly occupied by a large solid wood desk. He had insisted on solid furniture, rather than the poor quality covered chipboard items that spread through most modern offices like a plague. Good furniture was more expensive, but it was surely built to last much longer. Two matching wooden chairs were positioned on the opposite side of the desk to Jake's usual position. The walls were decorated with random modern artwork that he was certain he could recreate if he ever had a few spare minutes and a paintbrush. Some of the artwork could probably be replicated by his youngest son too. Regardless of his opinion on the paintings, his office was a place where he could occasionally relax, out of the sight of other employees. At least, that was the case until another customer called him with another complaint.

What an unusual day this was turning out to be. Even down to the smallest detail it was thus far exactly the same as his yesterday. Small things happened, that he didn't even really think about before. All of it brought the reality of the previous day's events to his mind. Events such as a secretary rounding a corner with a cup of coffee in hand, only to collide with Dave, a fellow employee, and to find herself no longer carrying that coffee. Dave didn't seem too impressed that she'd passed that particular burden onto his favourite shirt and tie.

The phone rang at the same times as yesterday. Everyone had the same complaints. He remembered how he dealt with them. At one point he even "guessed" at the customer's complaint before they divulged it to him. If he didn't have such a terrible end to the day staring him in the face, he would have had a lot of fun with today.

The little things happened in just the same way. His wife even said the same thing when she called. A typically long day was made longer by the fact that he knew what was going to happen. He was forever looking anxiously at every clock and watch that came into his view, wondering how long he had until the killers would be showing up at home.

He looked up at the clock again after looking away for a few seconds. In two minutes, Dave, wearing a jacket to cover his once white shirt, would walk into his office and ask him about his plans for lunch. Yesterday, Jake responded by saying, "Surely you don't want to go anywhere dressed like _that,_ do you?" Maybe he could do better with longer to think about it.

Not long after he looked up at the clock, Dave walked through the door. "Hey Jake, what are you doing for lunch today?" he asked.

"I thought we could find a nice trendy upbeat restaurant so people can see the fashion statement you're making. Just say that the shirt and tie are from a famous designer. You can wear anything outside these days if you can bluff your way through it." Dave didn't look impressed. "Alternatively we could stop by a clothing shop."

He didn't know if his comments were any better than those of the previous day, but at least it was different. Just because everyone else did and said the same things didn't mean that he had to act the same way too.

He picked up his suit jacket and, putting in on, said, "So will you be requiring a takeaway container for your lunch or will you just wear it back to the office?" Once again, Dave didn't seem amused.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"I'm leaving early today," Jake said as he walked towards the door. People were generally quite relaxed about staff going home early, because they almost always made it up somewhere along the line. They used a system referred to by the rather unprofessional-sounding name of "flexitime", which sounded to Jake like a TV show about Yoga. Utilising flexitime didn't stop Jake feeling uncomfortable for leaving over two hours earlier than usual, however.

He had a quick look around as he walked. No sign of Frank. He wasn't going to be there for over an hour, but he wanted to make sure. He thought someone would have a way of watching him and would send Frank to him whenever he tried to leave the office. He may have upset their plans by using a different exit.

He stepped out of the side door and quickly made his way to the car. He hadn't decided what he was going to do with those killers who would visit his house, or if he would even do anything. If they got the wrong house, they may realise their mistake by the time his family returned. On the other hand, what would be the point of going to such trouble if his family were likely to end up the same way on Monday? He couldn't finish work early every day of his life to protect his family. He had to see this through to figure out what he could do to protect his family in the future.

Jake's journey took him from the relatively new business and retail area named Morton Park, on a journey that seemed to show the history of Darlington. He would initially drive past a number of new office blocks, some of which had only recently been let to new businesses. Past those he would glance to his right where he would find a head office for a major mobile phone network provider. On the opposite side of the road was a glass-walled factory that had been left empty then reused as office space.

Further from the road on which he travelled was the site of the former cigarette factory that had brought a boost to employment in the seventies. Several years had now passed since its closure, and the effect on other industries in the town was still evident. Abandoned factories were dotted along the roads in this industrial part of the town.

Jake then passed a modern retail park before driving down a mostly residential area. The housing had been built between the two world wars when there was an urgent need for housing throughout the UK. The houses were typically semi-detached and had ample front and rear gardens.

Half way along Yarm Road he passed a road on the right that led to the training ground of Darlington Football Club, who had gone from riches to rags in a few years, thanks to a millionaire investor who eventually left the club in the lurch.

Jake turned right at the end of Yarm Road, and continued on his way home along Neasham Road. The houses suddenly became much smaller, newer and were set in a long terrace. On his right, behind shops and apartments, was a set of train tracks leading into and out of the Darlington train station. Darlington was of course one of the first towns to ever see a train. The first passenger train journey in the world used the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1825. The town continued to play a large part in the manufacturing of trains until the sixties.

A couple of corners later Jake finished his drive down Darlington's memory lane and turned left onto his home street, named Wymundham Way. He pulled into his driveway – this time without hitting his own gatepost. His wife greeted him at the door. She quickly brought out two small shopping bags and a medium sized suitcase.

Amy always liked to pack for every eventuality. When they went away for a week, she would often take enough for almost a month. It highlighted the difference between the two. Whenever Jake went away for a couple of days, he took only a small overnight bag. He was very much a believer in travelling light. He was happy for his wife to be comfortable when they went away, so he allowed a reasonable amount of excess luggage.

Everything necessary (and some things that weren't necessary) had been loaded into their silver car. Jake looked at his watch. His children would be finishing school within seconds. It was time to leave to pick them up. They set the house alarm, locked the white front door, and drove the short distance to school.

James was the louder of their two sons, and always seemed to be out of the classroom and out of the school building within seconds of the final bell ringing. Jason, the quiet one, always seemed to take substantially longer to leave. He often took so long that his mother wondered if he'd actually been locked inside. Sometimes what seemed like every pupil had left for home by the time he walked out of the doors. Occasionally she even observed teachers leaving the school before her son left the building.

Today Jason was surprisingly quick to leave school. Maybe he'd seen his parents' car and wanted his friends to see him getting into their shiny new silver vehicle. Whatever the reason, everyone was quite pleased that he didn't take his usual amount of minutes to greet his mother.

In less than five minutes since the car parked, the family were inside it, buckled up and ready to go. Jake started the engine and they set off to his sister's house, a five minute drive away.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Lynn had only known about the visit of her brother and his family for a couple of hours but she was well prepared. Her small house was always neat. She couldn't bear to have it any other way. She had lived in the house by herself for the past three years. Initially the rent was reasonable, and in the longer term she realised the area was quiet and the neighbours were friendly. She had neither desire to move nor any requirement to do so, so she kept renting the house month after month.

The semi-detached house built in the fifties was ageing, but the need for repairs and maintenance was the landlord's concern, not hers. She was happy with the house as long as her own life stayed as it currently was. At home alone with a weekend looming, she was always happy to have a brief visit from family.

Lynn considered herself to be relatively attractive. She wasn't in the category of models and celebrities famous for their beauty first and their talent second, but she had the occasional admirer. Unfortunately these admirers turned out to be anything other than ideal. She had natural blond hair and a button nose, and she had a full figure with a face to match. Family would often exclaim that it is amazing that Lynn was still single. She hated such conversations and was quite content to still be single, especially when she was spending time with family and their loud and seemingly uncontrollable children.

Lynn saw light dancing across the wall opposite her living room window and knew a car was approaching the house. She noticed the time on the novelty blue cat-shaped clock on the wall. They must have left school in some kind of a hurry to arrive there so soon.

The visits of her nephews were frequent, but usually short-lived. She knew that as long as her house was in the same town, therefore in close proximity to where they lived, this would remain the case. When anyone else in their family visited, they'd usually travelled for some distance and would make a week or a weekend of the trip. In some ways Lynn was grateful that the visits of at least these relatives were short, but in other ways she would have liked to spend a little bit more time with her nieces and nephews while they were still young.

The doorbell rang and she swung the door open. The usual sight of two excitable young boys charging towards the door lay before her eyes. She could always gauge how much the children had grown by how difficult it was to stay on her feet when the two of them whacked into her and forcefully hugged her as a means of stopping their run.

"Hello boys. It's only been a few days, but you're growing bigger and stronger every day." Both boys shyly grinned in Lynn's direction.

"Jake, Amy, how are you?" she asked in a raised voice as they stepped out of the car.

"Just fine, sis. How are things?" It was typical of Jake to answer a question and fire one straight back.

"Oh, you know how things are. They're the same as they always are with me."

"Have you found any company other than that hideous clock on your wall yet?"

Whatever the tone of mockery she detected in her brother's voice, she knew that there was genuine concern there also. A number of people seemed to think there was something wrong with you if you reached thirty and were still single.

"Not yet," she responded with a smile. "Still, I at least get some time to myself. Eventually that'll disappear and I'll have a life as tiring and hectic as yours."

Lynn always had in the back of her mind the words of their father from many years ago. They were not spoken with gravity or sincerity, but one sentence stayed with her nonetheless. "People are always trying to force marriage onto people as an ideal, but secretly they just want everyone else to be as miserable as them!" She still smiled to herself when she thought about it. She didn't really believe it, but repeated it to others when they asked her why she was still single.

She explained to her visiting relatives that she'd prepared some food for them to eat while they were there. The food consisted of nothing more than sandwiches and snack food, but she could tell the thought was appreciated. At least that was what she had thought until her brother looked uncomfortable. His attention was clearly focussed elsewhere and he couldn't walk past a clock without looking intently at it. Her cat-shaped clock drew attention, but not usually that much, and not from him. Jake clearly wanted to be somewhere else.

"Damn. I forgot my wallet." Jake had found his excuse to leave them for a little while. "I'll have to go back to the house and get it. Before I do, are we sure we have everything else we need?"

"No, I think we're fine, dear. Just make sure you pick up your brain when you go back." Amy smiled as she spoke. "You may not need it, but just to make sure, best bring it along anyway."

A light laugh followed between Lynn and Amy. Jake didn't find it as amusing. They occasionally shared jokes that seemed to poke fun at him. He picked up his jacket from the clothes rack near the door, checked his pocket for keys, and was gone. The sound of the engine was heard from the house, slowly becoming quieter as he reached the end of the street and turned left on his short journey home.
CHAPTER 3

**Friday 30** th **January, 4:15pm**

Jake looked at the orange glow of the time displayed on the instrument panel of the car. According to the clock he was running just about on time, but he had a habit of setting clocks and watches just a few minutes fast. His wife always said he was strange for doing so, but he had a reason. He figured that if he ever left something slightly too late and was in a rush to get to his destination, he would actually arrive just in time.

Whilst that idea would work in theory, he knew that it did not often work in practice. He always knew in the back of his mind that he had another few minutes. As a result, the idea was totally wasted and would not profit him at all. In some instances it was likely to make him later than he would have been in the first place, due to the belief he still had a few minutes to spare.

He quickly set the unusual timepiece setting debate to rest that was raging inside his head. He suddenly realised just how much he needed to concentrate on what was about to happen. His actions this evening would save the lives of his family, or they would cost him his own life. He did not see any middle ground.

He weighed up what he knew about the situation from yesterday. None of his neighbours had witnessed what had happened. It took several loud gunshots to alert them to the fact that something was wrong. If he could exact his revenge without making much noise, there would be no witnesses. He wondered if it was possible to exact revenge if the original act had not actually taken place. He wasn't about to concern himself with that at the moment.

If he was indeed going to avenge an incident that hadn't happened yet, the next question was how he would do it.

He had seen actors in the movies kill someone and make it look like an accident. He doubted he had the skill or imagination to be able to pull that one off. As easy as some gangsters and con men made it look in their high-budget glamorous movies, he knew the task for him was not easy. The fact remained that these people were attacking him in his own home. Much of what he could do would be deemed self-defence.

He steered to his left and realised he was almost home. He didn't have a plan. He had no idea what these people even looked like. The time for thinking and planning had passed. It was time for action. The killers would be hunting for their victims within five minutes. It was now down to his instinct, impulse, and a large slice of luck.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jake slowed down outside his house, wondering if they knew he was not home. He considered that someone had probably been watching his house. He did not know where they were watching from, but he could almost feel the cold stare of another person. He couldn't explain how. A spy of some sort would explain how a hit-man would know exactly when to show up and which car to drive. He felt another chill run down from the back of his neck as he suspected that this wasn't an accident or a mistake. Someone must have been watching for some time to draw up a plan for a hit on his family, maybe even for days. Whoever they were and wherever they were hiding, they would be keeping a lookout for his car.

The intruders could have been watching from a distance first. If they were to see his car they would abandon their plans and return to carry out their dastardly deed at some other time.

He made sure he didn't slow down to the point of stopping, but made it look as if he was lost or admiring the neighbourhood, then carried on. It wouldn't be uncommon to see several silver Mercedes cars drive along a street like this.

The street they lived on was long and winding. There were many nice houses, and potentially many nice cars, and hopefully, another car that looked like his. That way, anyone keeping a lookout would mistake his car for theirs. It was now his hope that whoever was watching would think this car was heading for another house. Hopefully they hadn't watched to the point of recognising his car number plate.

If they knew the details of his car, then his plan for revenge could have already been thwarted. In fact, if they'd been watching the house for a few hours, they would already know his family would not be there. He decided to carry on and hope for the best. He hoped that if there was someone watching their house that he was a part-time spy, or that they were taking a break when he picked up his wife earlier. Maybe luck would be on his side on this occasion. It certainly had not been yesterday.

He knew that if he followed the road around to the right that he could stop outside the house which faced the opposite direction from his house, with a rear garden that backed onto his own. This could be used to his advantage.

He stopped by the side of the road. There were no cars outside. That usually meant no one was inside the Robinson home. He scrambled out of the car, swinging his arm around behind him to close the door. He didn't have the time to make sure he pressed the correct button to remotely lock his car, or to turn and see the usual flash of lights indicating a successful button push.

The house looked very different from his own, which he could see in the background from where he stood. Each building on his street was individual. The area wasn't very old, but every house had been built by different people with different plans. This helped maintain the uniqueness of everyone's house on the street. The theory was that value for individual houses would remain high when each house wasn't identical. He was glad of the attempt, even if he didn't agree with all of the logic. He didn't like looking out of his window and seeing nothing but identical houses. It seemed to make him feel less original somehow.

The Robinsons' red brick house looked like every simple house he'd ever seen a child draw when they were at school. The front door was in the middle of the front of the house with a window on each side. On the first floor there were three more windows directly above the door and windows below them, with each window representing an upstairs room. The roof sloped down from the apex in the middle. It even had a white front door and square window frames. The architect had used little imagination in coming up with this design. Maybe the inside was vastly experimental and unique. The architect must have earned his money somehow.

All of the house lights were off. The sun was setting, leaving shades of red and orange in the sky before blackness would shroud the sky in just a few minutes. Anyone at home would have their lights on by now, especially with cloud cover blocking out what was left of the sun.

Jake ran over the gravel driveway and stepped through the unlocked gate attached to the right hand side of the house. There he would find a flagstone path leading towards the back of the garden. He'd seen the garden from the upper floor of his own house and remembered how it was meticulously laid out by the Robinson family. He would have to be careful not to damage anything if he was to leave no obvious signs of this event.

Jake was soon met by the large wooden slat fence he had helped to erect several months earlier. It would not prove much of an obstacle. He put his foot between two wooden slats onto the beam half way up the height of the fence and threw himself over it. His landing was soft, but uncomfortable. He failed to think about how he'd come down on the other side. The ground on his side of the fence was slightly higher, and he hadn't taken that into account. He jumped to his feet, knowing he'd just hurt something around his right knee. He didn't have time to console himself or nurse his injuries. He needed to get into position.

Jake scrambled across his back garden and through the back door of his house, disabled the alarm, and rushed to look out the front window to find that no car was approaching.

He was out of breath. It was no doubt more exercise than he'd had in a while. "Go... to the gym!" he whispered to himself in a broken sentence. "You pay... an extortionate... monthly fee for membership.... Just go once in a while!"

After a brief moment he regained his composure and his regular breathing pattern. He knew someone must be watching. It was almost the time that Jake arrived at his house yesterday, and still there was no silver Mercedes approaching the house.

He wondered what might have changed to stop them from being there now, and then the thought came to him. These people obviously saw no lights, and they waited. Maybe they'd been there a while and had seen him and Amy drive away before. Thought after thought about the failure of his plan came to mind. Now was not a time for negative thinking. He flicked on some lights within the house, drew some curtains, and turned on the television. He tried his best to fool anyone watching into believing that his family was at home.

He crouched by the window, looking out on the street in twilight. He realised that he still had no plan. He had no weapons at his disposal other than makeshift ones. He could get a kitchen knife, a cricket bat, a golf club or just anything heavy.

He wondered about calling someone for help. What would he say if he did? No one would believe his story if he tried to tell them. Hit-men, shootings and reliving days? He could barely believe it himself. Most of his friends would think he'd become more paranoid than usual, or he'd had one drink too many.

He picked up the house phone, moved his hand towards the number pad, but then replaced the handset without dialling anything.

Maybe the hit-men weren't going to show up. Maybe they had just made a mistake the first time, and had somehow managed to correct it tonight. As he thought this, the room began to get lighter from oncoming car headlights. Someone was driving towards the house.

Jake unconsciously picked up the phone again. Before he realised what he was doing, he heard a voice on the other end of the phone.

"Emergency Services. How can I help you?" He'd dialled without even knowing he'd done it.

"Hi. This is Jake Hingham, and I live at 17 Wymundham Way, off Neasham Road, Darlington. Two dangerous men with guns are approaching my house. I believe they're here to kill my family. Please send the police immediately!"

The realisation of what he had just done dawned on him and wondered if this was the right course of action. Having the police arrive in a few minutes would severely limit his options for exacting revenge. Perhaps he could claim self-defence, but no one would believe that if he hurt these men as much as he wanted to hurt them. Serious injury would be considered more than reasonable force, which was the term he'd heard used in self-defence cases that made the news.

He heard the car pull into his driveway. This must be them. He glanced out of the corner of the window. A silver Mercedes, looking exactly like the one he drove to and from work every day, was now outside his house. Two mysterious looking men sat in the car. They weren't moving. They seemed content to sit and watch the house. Jake figured that they would be waiting there until the family converged on the car, expecting to see their father.

He knew he had to open the door to get them to leave the car, but how was he going to do it without the risk of being shot?

He ran to the cupboard under the stairs. Leaning against the wall by the door was a cricket bat. "This will prove to be useful," he muttered to himself as he closed the door again. Jake would have to think on his feet. He wondered how well he would do thinking on his feet when he could barely do it sitting down. The next few moments would give him an idea.

He flicked on the light in the hallway, and stood a couple of feet back from the front door. He reached out and turned the handle on the door, but realised that it was still locked. He reached into his pocket for the keys and fumbled around until the door could be opened. He tried again. The handle turned and the door opened slightly.

There was very little breeze outside, just enough to stir fallen leaves and to nudge open a front door already ajar. He could remain fairly close to the door without being seen as it slowly blew open. He tugged on the door slightly, stepping further back, into the doorway leading to the dining room.

"Amy Hingham?" A loud, authoritative voice spoke from the driveway. Jake then heard two car doors close. They were out of the car, and possibly walking towards the house. "Mrs Hingham, we need to speak with you." The voice was louder this time. He could now hear the footsteps of the hard soles of dress shoes on his brick paved driveway. They were definitely getting closer.

Jake held the cricket bat firmly in both hands, with the top of the bat angling down to the floor. He looked almost ready for someone in his living room to throw a leather covered cricket ball in his direction, except that he lacked the padding and the skill of the average batsman. He heard steps just outside, then a gentle tap on the door. Jake moved closer to the front door, still hiding behind it, using the angle to his advantage to see through the narrow opening between the door and its frame. He knew exactly where they were, but they had no idea that he was even there.

Jake could make out a shadow in or near the doorway. The top of a head started to move past the door. Without any thought, Jake swung the bat upwards from the floor, until it crashed into the jaw of the man walking over the threshold. He followed that by lifting the bat high on the air before bringing it crashing down with all of his might on top of the same person's head. The man fell to the floor clear of the doorway as the sound of cracking wood echoed on the porch. Jake's hands felt the brunt of the vibrations of a solid willow wood cricket bat meeting the hard object of an intruder's head.

The other man was probably just behind the first. Jake kicked the door hard, noticing that it hit something which stopped it from closing, most likely the second intruder. He kicked it again with all of his weight behind it, and heard a thud just before it stubbornly reached the door frame and fully closed. The key was still in the door, so Jake turned it, locking the person out.

He suddenly remembered something from yesterday. They had guns. He dived to his right from behind the door just as he heard the sound of a bullet being fired. A second later Jake felt a searing pain in the calf muscle of his left leg. He looked down to see a tear in his trousers, and blood coming from the back of his leg. As he lifted his trouser leg up, he saw that the bullet which was fired had barely grazed the back of his calf muscle. He looked at the front door, which now had a perfectly round hole in it. Looking backwards towards the stairs, he saw a bullet lodged in the second step from the bottom

What were the chances? One bullet fired, and one injury. The movies were littered with people who could take on tens and hundreds of bad guys, all armed with machine guns, whilst they themselves only had a pistol. Odds stacked against such people, but they managed to escape with little more than scruffy hair and possibly a small cut on their cheek. He always wondered why the bad guys were always such a terrible shot. Surely an evil boss would spare the time or the expense to get his henchmen shooting lessons.

Anyway, he was side-tracked again. How could his mind wander now? What was wrong with him? He couldn't even concentrate on the events of the moment when he was being shot at!

Jake searched the pockets of the unconscious man until he found his gun in the inside jacket pocket. He felt tempted to take the suit. The man was almost his height, and it was much better than his one. He grinned at that, and then set about getting rid of the other guy. He'd never fired a gun before in his life, so he didn't much like his odds in a shoot-out. He went back to the unconscious man and searched the rest of the pockets to see what else he could find. Two spare clips for the gun, a small flick knife, and a wallet. Here was a man who was well armed, and not too concerned about giving away his identity if captured.

Jake grabbed one of the fold-out metal chairs they had stored in a cupboard under the stairs, along with a large amount of string, duct tape, and whatever else he could find that he could use to tie this man up. He lifted the man onto the chair with great difficulty. He was heavier than he looked.

The man outside the house started shouting. He sounded muffled through the thick walls but Jake could just about make out what he was saying. "Mr Hingham! Well done for springing our trap and catching my colleague." Jake taped the other man's legs together, and then he taped them to the metal chair.

"We have an interesting situation now. I have a quota to meet, either with or without my friend."

Jake continued to tape the man to the chair, using almost an entire roll of tape.

"The neighbours can hear this now, Jake. They're involved. But guess what? One of them was already! You see that empty house over the road from you?" The house in question had been up for sale for the past three months. The previous owners had to move quickly, but didn't have time to sell before they did. That's how they had been watching him and his family. Someone had been watching them from the house exactly opposite theirs.

Jake pulled up another metal chair and sat opposite the man he had tied up in his home. Blood was dripping from his mouth. Hopefully Amy would understand when it came time to clean the carpet. He'd knocked out or loosened probably half of the guy's teeth. He may have even broken his jaw.

He looked through the guy's wallet. He wanted to know who he was about to talk to when he woke up. He found a driving license. The picture matched that of the man sitting opposite Jake, a younger looking Boris Stedgaard. The name was probably of German origin. Not a name one would usually associate with a contract killer. He started to wonder what kind of name he might associate with a serial killer. That was something he could think about at a later time.

Jake moved through the house quickly, turning off all of the lights. He didn't want the man outside to know where in the house he was. He went upstairs and had a look outside the bay doors. He could see the back half of the car in his driveway. He edged towards the balcony until he could see the whole car. Boris's colleague was not by the car. He was probably still by the front door. The shouting had stopped for the moment. Jake needed to find out where he was hiding, and why he'd gone so quiet all of a sudden.

He moved quietly back down the stairs. "Boris wants me to say hi!" he shouted. "If he could talk he would say not to get too lonely without him."

"Oh, come on Jake. Don't let your last words be sarcasm!" came the reply. He was still by the front door. Jake hurried upstairs with a new idea. The balcony was directly above the front door. If he could find something heavy, and if he was lucky enough, he could drop it over the edge onto the man below.

As Jake searched the rooms for something heavy that he could still lift over the balcony, he decided that he was sick of thinking of the man outside as "the man." He thought he would give him a name. "How about the name Bill?" he whispered to himself, smirking. "Boris and Bill, the contract killers." How cute, he thought.

He looked across his bedroom and noticed the solid wood bedside cabinet. He could lift that. He took out the three drawers and dragged it along the floor towards the balcony in the hallway. He quietly opened the doors, and lifted the drawers, ready to plunge it down on top of 'Bill' below.

Just as Jake lifted the heavy object above his head, he heard something. The phone was ringing. He peered over the edge of the balcony to see the man move to the window as he tried to look through the glass to see what was going on. He lowered the drawers a little. "Why does that always happen when you're in the middle of something!" he whispered in frustration. Eventually the ringing stopped and Bill moved to his former position just in front of the door, inspecting it as if he was considering trying to kick the door in. Jake gave one last heave and sent the unit flying over the edge. A worried cry came from below, just before he heard the sound of wood breaking into hundreds of pieces on a concrete step. Jake dared to look over the edge to satisfy his curiosity. A perfect hit.

Whoever had hired these men did not go searching for the brightest or sharpest tools in the box. One peered around a vacant doorway, and the other stood underneath the obvious danger of a balcony, expecting Jake to give up and throw the door open. Maybe he just didn't want to upset the neighbours with more shouting and gunfire than was absolutely necessary.

It was obvious that the man now underneath the bedside cabinet pieces was no longer moving. Jake had another man to tie up.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Amy hung up the phone. Jake had been gone for ten minutes and was not answering the phone at home. It was only a two or three minute drive to their house from Lynn's home. She was growing more and more concerned as she imagined what Jake might be up to.

She started to suspect there was something more to what he said earlier than he revealed to her. It was more than a bad feeling or a bad dream. What had he gotten involved in? She shook her head in response to her own thoughts. Maybe she was just paranoid. Knowing what Jake was like, someone from work probably called with some dilemma. He wasn't any less polite with phone conversations than he was with face-to-face discussions. She needed to have a serious conversation with her husband about his tolerance of others. At some point he would need to stand up for himself.

"We'll have to eat without him. You know what he's like. The food will be stale by the time he gets back," Lynn said, bringing Amy out of her apparent daze.

"I understand. Who knows what he's up to?" she replied. "Maybe he forgot something else on his way back?" She smiled. That was probably more like it. Her husband was many things. He could be charming, funny, caring, and more often than not, intelligent. But considering all of that, he could be completely absent minded sometimes.

The four of them sat at the table, with one seat still empty, and ate the prepared sandwiches, leaving a selected few for Jake on his return. Lynn talked about her adventures over the past two weeks or so since they'd dropped by, but Amy was not really listening. Her attention was mostly fixed on the unusual cat-shaped clock on the wall, and its swaying tail moving back and forth as a pendulum. Where was Jake, and what was he doing?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The other hired goon didn't have a wallet in any of his pockets. He seemed like the slightly more sensible of the two, and clearly didn't want to be identified if he was caught. Jake thought he'd still refer to him as Bill, regardless of what his real name might be. Whatever his name was, he was tied up even better than Boris had been. If either of those two got out of their seats, they were better escape artists than they were hit-men.

Jake was searching through their silver Mercedes. The front seats and the glove compartment held nothing unusual. The back of the car was empty. Maybe the boot held the answers he was looking for. There wasn't much there either. No insurance documents, no drivers licence, not even a shred of paper explaining their assignment or giving directions.

Jake could not prove that they were supposed to be there. Then he remembered the brief conversation with Bill when he was outside the house and still awake. He knew the family names. In fact, on their first approach Boris called out his wife's name. This was no mistake. He needed to find out why they were hunting his family.

After searching the car he found only what could be seen from anywhere around it - the license plate number. He could get something from this. He'd need the help of one of the policemen when they eventually arrived. What was taking them so long? It had been half an hour since he had made the call. Maybe they'd thought it was a hoax. Maybe they were all currently on call elsewhere and didn't see a potential shooting as being that big a deal. He didn't know why they weren't there, he just knew they should be.

He smirked as he thought of a bunch of overweight guys in police uniforms that used to fit them, drinking coffee and eating doughnuts. Years of TV shows set a stereotype that police forces around the world must now find hard to shift.

Jake walked slowly back to the house, closed the door, and turned to face the hired goons in the lounge. They were still tied down as they were when he left them, but Boris was moving slightly, and groaning. Jake noticed more blood on Boris than there was before. His mouth was still bleeding. That shouldn't have surprised him. Being hit on the underside of his jaw probably did more than just hurt him. It was more than likely that Boris had a jaw broken in at least one place as well as a gummed mouth. Jake imagined Boris awake and spitting teeth at him.

The carpet was no longer the light blue it had been an hour ago. It was mostly covered with dark red patches, with the occasional piece of broken glass or wood. Jake's left calf muscle felt sore with every step he took. He'd washed the graze and treated it with antiseptic cream and had bandaged that portion of his leg. It would take a few days for the pain to go away, but he preferred the pain to the alternative. He could have been caught by the bullet full on, possibly ruining his leg. If the goon had shot further up the door then Jake might even have been killed in the attack. He couldn't bear to think about that.

He stood by the door to the kitchen, looking for things that might help his guests to talk. He needed information. Who were they? Who were they working for? What would happen if they didn't return? He turned around to see Boris staring at him with a look which combined hate and fear on his face.

"Sleep well?" Jake couldn't help but be sarcastic.

"When I get out of this chair you'll be lucky to get off with just broken teeth." The reply was slurred.

"So Boris, I can see you don't like me much. I completely understand why. If you can tell me who you work for I'll leave you alone until the police arrive." He said nothing. He knew extracting information from them would be difficult, and he was not exactly trained in torture techniques. He failed dismally in attempts to get the truth out of his two sons, let alone two strangers involved in criminal activity.

Jake stood up from the seat stationed opposite Boris and Bill and headed for the kitchen. He opened the first cupboards he came to. Inside he found ketchup, vinegar, salt, pepper, chocolate sauce, and lemon juice. He knew it was mean, but he could help himself. He picked up the small plastic lemon shaped container and walked triumphantly back to Boris.

Jake opened the container and held it by Boris's mouth. "I don't really know how painful this will be, but I'm hoping it won't be soothing." He still looked defiant. "Who are you working for?" No answer. "Why did you come for my family?" There was still no answers forthcoming.

Jake squeezed the container, throwing lemon juice into the cut and bleeding mouth of the hostage. Boris's yell proved to Jake that this might just work. He knew he couldn't injure them any more now without the police assuming he'd used unreasonable force, but he could make their existing injuries hurt more. "I don't even know who we're working for." came the slurred shout from Boris. "We only got a place to pick up the money when it was done." He didn't speak with a German accent. He sounded more like he had grown up in Birmingham.

"Good enough. Where was that?"

"It doesn't matter. He'll know we've failed. He won't be there now."

"Is that all you have? No more information than that?" Jake asked.

"What do you expect - a name, address and telephone number? I'm not Directory Enquiries. They only tell us what we need to know to get the job done."

Jake saw flashes of red and blue and heard a siren. They'd arrived. "You weren't even supposed to be here." Boris spat at Jake, with what seemed a lot like a tooth hitting his jacket.

It was time to see what the police could figure out.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The two police officers weren't the stereotypical policemen that Jake had imagined earlier in the evening. One was old, tall, black, and heavily built, and the other was a fairly plain looking but thin woman in her mid-thirties. Neither of them looked as if they'd been eating doughnuts all day. In fact, neither of them looked like they'd ever eaten a doughnut. The police here in the Durham Constabulary obviously kept in good shape as far as he could tell. Of course, that opinion was now based on only four police officers. He hadn't associated with any others in this town before this night, other than another two young slim police officers he'd encountered on his yesterday. He had no reason to speak to them previously.

They could give him some insight into what was going on, but not much more than he had already figured out. Several murders had happened in the local community over the past week. They knew someone was orchestrating the attacks, but they did not know who (or at least they weren't telling Jake). They kept telling him that they had several leads, but needed time to investigate them before they could comment.

Whilst the woman was explaining the situation to Jake, someone called for her on her walkie-talkie. They knew who the vehicle belonged to. Jake didn't hear everything the guy on the other end said, but he did hear the words "stolen yesterday" in there somewhere. The policewoman, patting her pockets with the palms of her hands, discovered she'd left her notebook behind. "Do you have a notepad and a pen, sir?" She asked. Jake obliged and she wrote on the top of his telephone message pad, tore off the top sheet, and handed it back with the pen with a thank you.

Within minutes of the message coming through the police were leaving with the men Jake had apprehended, minus the chairs they had been taped to. They'd told Jake that they would return to sort out the crime scene in the morning, and that in the meantime he shouldn't stay at the house. That was different to the previous day where the crime had happened in front of the house, and forensic scientists were there and gone in a matter of minutes. This time the crime scene was spread throughout the property and a forensic team didn't class apprehension of two criminals in the same category as a triple homicide.

He responded the officers by telling them it was not his intention to stay in the house tonight anyway, then before he knew it they were gone. He apologised to the Robinsons for abandoning his car in front of their house and was soon on his way back to his sister's house.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jake sat in his sister's house with his family. He held a piece of paper from his phone notepad in his hand and was staring at it whilst talking to them. It was the sheet underneath the one the police wrote on. He'd shaded over it with a pencil and could make out most of what was written on it. The writing looked like "178 Avenham Square". Maybe he'd figure out what happened by visiting the house next week. For now, he wouldn't let two hurt legs get in the way of a weekend away with his family. He was relieved the day was finally over, at the second time of asking. With the scars, bruises, injuries and flesh wounds he had suffered, he clearly was not built for an ordeal such as this. The day was over and life could return to normal.
CHAPTER 4

**Thursday 29** th **January, 7:30am**

Jake awoke very confused, as he had done yesterday. He opened his eyes to see the ceiling of his bedroom once again. For the second day in a row his world had changed substantially overnight and he had not woken up in the same circumstances in which he'd gone to bed. He went to bed in a hotel, but he woke up in his own bed to the sound of his alarm.

He looked at the glowing digits of his alarm clock. Not only did he definitely not set his alarm clock last night, but he definitely did not go to bed in the same building, or even the same town or county as the alarm clock. He went to bed in a hotel in Teesside. He woke up in Darlington again.

He looked around the room after flicking the light on. He glanced at his daily flip calendar. It read 29th January. That wasn't even yesterday, it was the day before. Maybe some unusual twist in time had somehow resulted in him not setting his calendar to the right date on retiring to bed. What day was it? Was it really the day before yesterday? If so, then why had he gone back another day?

He thought about his bizarre circumstance as he readied himself for a day at work, although he really wasn't sure which workday he was getting ready for. Showering and dressing didn't give his perplexed mind time to draw a definite conclusion. He didn't have enough information to make sense of this yet.

He went downstairs and sat down in the kitchen for breakfast. The usual malted wheat cereal and orange juice couldn't help him determine the day. He had the same cereal almost every weekday. He decided to risk foolishness and take the opportunity to ask a question which would prompt more in return.

"Hey, what's the date today?" He asked.

Amy responded with surprise, and with some sarcasm, "You mean you didn't change your little calendar last night? Are you all confused now honey?" The last question was spoken in the same condescending tone one might use when speaking to a pet or a baby. He didn't take offence, but scowled for effect.

He responded. "You're mocking me, aren't you?"

Again he got a sarcastic response, "Duh! How'd you guess?"

"Look woman, can you give me a straight answer?" Jake asked with some frustration, but kept a grin on his face so Amy didn't think he was being harsh.

"It's the day after yesterday." Amy's less than helpful answer provoked another scowl from Jake. "It's 29th January... And it's a Thursday. Are you okay?" This time she spoke with genuine concern.

Jake had to think quickly to avoid giving a very ridiculous sounding answer that would cause his wife of nearly ten years to once again doubt his sanity. "I'm okay. I just had a really weird dream last night." He even believed that last comment as he said it.

Maybe it was all a strange dream. Could dreams cover a period of several days but actually last several seconds or minutes? Could they be that real? He felt pain in his yesterday when a bullet struck him. He recalled people asking someone to pinch them to make sure they weren't dreaming. Pain was generally considered a mark of reality.

What a ridiculous conclusion he'd come to. Of course it happened! Nothing like that could be considered a dream. It was far too real. He remembered every detail. He didn't ever remember dreams with such clarity. Smells, tastes, aches, pains, names, and details were not things he'd recalled vividly about any previous somnambulistic experience. He could not think of any other sensible conclusion.

Thoughts of science fiction stories involving time travel came to mind, but his version was a lot less glamorous. Whatever his idea of normal time travel was, this was not it. He chuckled to himself slightly when he realised he had considered there was such a thing as 'normal time travel'.

Repeating one day was weird enough. Going backwards one day at a time was stranger than any movie or book on time travel that he'd ever heard about. The Hollywood version usually allowed its eccentric characters to pick their time or destination, or at least use some kind of snazzy time machine. He had no such machine, or desire to travel through time, and if this whole thing was under his control it would have already stopped.

He couldn't figure out what was going on. He'd asked for a chance to save his family - not for an eternally unwinding life. He'd asked for a second chance, but the powers-that-be seemed to have given him more than that. Why was this happening? He only wanted to relive one day - not his entire life backwards.

As useless as Jake was at coming to the right conclusion, he kept fathoming unusual theories throughout the morning while he was preparing for work. What if the events which led to his family's trauma started today? Maybe his task was to prevent the whole course of events. That must be it. He needed to stop the event that would spark a chain reaction culminating in an attack on his family.

Jake's thoughts had lasted right through breakfast. He said goodbye to his family and started driving to work.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jake's recollection of the day before his family died was considerably hazy, but he could guarantee that it would be different now. He had been driving for several minutes, and he was still driving, but he was no longer on his way to work. Something had already caught his eye as he drove out of the town. He'd seen the very silver Mercedes that was used by the thugs who tried to dismantle Jake's normal family life. He was now discreetly following it.

He looked at the clock on the instrument panel of his car. 8:50 was a good time to call in sick for work. No one would be there to argue with him about his sickness. No one would be able to persuade him to come in, despite his illness, and to "see how it goes". He could simply leave a message explaining why he would not be in the office until the following day.

He left a message indicating he had a family emergency that required his immediate attention and hung up the phone. It wasn't a lie as such. These events all related to his family, or at least he thought they did.

He was now free to try and stop this car from being stolen from Avenham Square. The Mercedes seemed like it belonged to any normal businessman. Jake could see only one person sitting in the car, so the goons had not commandeered the vehicle yet.

Jake had gleaned a great deal of information regarding spying techniques from movies and TV shows. He knew he needed to stay some distance behind the car he was following. Subtlety was the key when pursuing a vehicle. People had told him that he'd waste years of his life watching spy shows on TV, but today he would find a use for them and would show those people how wrong they were.

The car pulled into a car park to the right hand side of the road. There was a guard's station and a barrier blocking entry for those who did not belong to the company. Jake drove past the entrance and stopped in a parking space further down the road on the left. From there he could see the entrance and exit to the car park. No one was getting in or out without him noticing. Now it was time for the dull part of his operation - Surveillance.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Constant monitoring of an uneventful car park entrance left Jake feeling more than a bit weary. The gradually revolving silver cube displaying the company logo between the entrance and exit had a hypnotising effect when watched for an extended period of time. The sign had a similar look to the one he'd seen on the News previously for "New Scotland Yard", the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police in London. He pondered the name and wanted to know what happened to the old Scotland Yard. He didn't care enough to remember the question and Google it when he returned home.

He looked at the clock inside the car, then at the large digital clock and temperature display located under the slowly spinning logo. One minute and thirty seven seconds slower than his own. He knew he was getting bored when he realised he'd actually figured that out. The time was 9:16 according to his car's clock. Just over half an hour had passed and there was still no activity involving the car park. It was likely there would be no activity for most of the day. The attendant still sat in his cubicle, the barrier had remained down and nothing but a gentle breeze had passed it for some time.

Just as Jake was settling down for an incredibly dull day, he noticed another car approach the barrier. This one was an old beaten up small blue hatchback. He could see two people in the front of the car. This could be them. He perked up in his seat, tearing his attention away from the two clocks in his view, and focussed on the two people in the car.

The security guard hunched next to the driver door to talk to the driver. A five second conversation and the handover of something resulted in the guard returning to his booth and lifting the barrier. If these were the men, they had to have contacts to be to get inside so easily. Either that or they were very persuasive.

The blue car drove into the car park and Jake lost sight of it. His attention was to be shifted back to the silver car he'd followed earlier. Within two minutes the Mercedes was driving out of the exit, most likely with the very same driver and passenger that had just entered the car park in the small blue hatchback.

It was time for following again. He pulled out of the space, making sure that he kept several vehicles between him and them.

He couldn't say for sure, but from the distance he was maintaining from the car three cars ahead, it seemed there was a great deal of urgency about the way they were driving.

Heads inside the car were moving from side to side when they slowed down or stopped. They seemed very anxious to get to their destination. It seemed like there were more than two heads moving inside the car. Maybe it was just the way they were moving around.

Since the hired goons had yesterday been so overzealous in trying to enter his house, Jake was of the opinion that they would be blissfully unaware of the presence of a pursuing car. Even with that in mind, he knew he needed to be careful. If they turned down a small side street he would no longer be able to hide the fact that he was following them. Luckily for him, so far they'd stayed on major roads. This particular road headed straight out of the town to an industrial estate located not too far from the local motorway. They were running out of streets to turn down.

Over the years, as Darlington's main industry changed from railway carriage manufacturing to cigarette making, more and more industrial businesses were drawn to the town. When these businesses went, most recently British American Tobacco, these industrial areas became empty and desolate. Eventually these areas seemed to be bought up and turned into new housing developments. They were now in one of the industrial areas requiring attention and renovation, or simply a wrecking ball and a few sticks of dynamite. Only one car was now sandwiched between the two silver Mercedes. Jake was desperately hoping he could discover their destination before the traffic thinned further.

Only another minute or two went by before Jake had his answer. The silver car turned off the road to the left hand side. They even used the indicator in case anyone in the area had no idea where they were going. There was no doubt in his mind that these men were not the smartest of criminals. Surely it didn't cost much to hire decent help these days. Still he decided, as with everything in life, you get what you pay for. He had no idea that such a statement would also be true in the world of crime.

The concrete road the car was driving down went to only one building - an empty and dilapidated looking single storey factory with weathered red brick walls and a corrugated roof that looked like a concrete and asbestos mix. A square-based red brick chimney reaching a height of roughly fifty feet was attached to the short end facing the road. It had once been painted with the white letters of a company name but it was no longer possible to discern what this name had been.

This appeared to be their hideout.

Jake carried on driving past the side road and followed the curve of the road to the left, then to the right in a large S bend. From his new vantage point he could see in his rear-view mirror the side road leading to a larger concrete area that served as a car park. There were two cars and a dark red van parked in the centre of it. The Mercedes was joining them.

He kept on driving. Jake knew his only chance to find out what was going on was to get inside that building. The building contained a few cracked and broken windows and absolutely nothing of architectural value. Even in a new condition this would not have been an attractive place to work. This would be even truer now as it seemed that this place had been left vacant for some time. The conditions would sustain short meetings, but they would surely not stay there for long. Anything longer than that would no doubt require heating of some sort, and he couldn't imagine they'd have bothered connecting services such as electricity and a gas supply. It was the end of a cold January, and not a good time to be in a draughty building.

He looked at his silver wristwatch. The time was now 10:05. Depending on their tolerance for cold places, they could potentially be in there scheming and planning tomorrow's attack for several hours.

There was nothing he could do for the moment. He noticed a lay-by where he pulled up and switched off the engine.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

His wait this time was considerable. No one had left the old factory in over two hours, but a black car had arrived. The dark red van that was in the centre was now almost completely blocked in by the other cars. It seemed unlikely that it would need to go anywhere for the next few minutes.

Maybe Jake should have picked up a book, or brought some of his favourite music CDs for entertainment. He knew he needed to be here to see what was happening, but he wished he didn't. There were a lot of things he would rather be doing, but none of these would help to save his family.

There were few things in life more boring than sitting waiting for something to happen. He knew from his own experience. Last time was less than an hour. This time he'd been waiting for over two, and it looked like there was no sign of a reprieve soon.

He was sick of waiting around to see if anything was going to happen. At the very least he needed to be able to recognise those vehicles if he saw them again. He certainly couldn't do that from nearly half a mile away. He looked out over the surrounding area and made a mental note of things that could hide his approach from whoever might be watching by the building.

There was an overgrown field between the run-down factory and the segment of road where he was positioned. The grass was nearly waist high and various weeds scattered throughout the field were nearly twice that. To the right of the field was a small wooded area separated by a wiry metal fence. That would work very well to provide adequate cover and hide his approach.

Jake stepped out of the car and was over the fence and in amongst the trees within a minute, this time without hurting himself. What he hadn't thought about though, was the over-grown weeds and thorns in the woods. Hundreds of prickling plants stood in the gaps between trees, growing wildly and completely out of control, just waiting for their chance to ensnare a passer-by. He just happened to be their next victim.

Trying to take the path of least resistance, Jake made it most of the way without getting snagged on weeds, and more importantly, without being seen by anyone standing guard by the factory. He was keeping a close eye on it as he approached. He could see the entrance from the angle he was now at. It was a standard sized door, and it seemed complete overkill to have one person standing guard on either side, but that's what was there. Whoever was in charge of this whole operation was very secretive and protective of his vicious plans.

Getting into the building did not seem to be an option with two armed guards next to the only apparent entrance. All he could see from his angle was the four vehicles parked outside. There was the silver Mercedes, a dark blue estate car, the dark red van, and the black car he'd just seen arrive.

He could make out a logo on the side of the van. "B. BRADY & SONS BUTCHERS AND BAKERY" The lettering was circled around a picture of a smiling cartoon pig. It was a very clichéd and cutesy logo. Most people might find it cute and funny until they imagine what the company actually does to those cute little pigs.

All of a sudden there was movement by the building. He heard steps. He heard voices and turned his head to see what was going on. He could see the two goons, the original Mercedes driver, two people who were smartly dressed and one more person.

He couldn't believe who it was. What was he doing here? How deeply was he involved in the whole incident? Whatever the reasons for it, all of a sudden it made one more thing on that fateful day clear.

From that moment, he decided there was no one he could trust. Anyone could be working against him. He watched them all get into three of the four cars and drive away. Just a few seconds later there was no one left. Most of the cars, all of the people and the guards were gone, and the place appeared to have been left unsecured and open to anyone. Now it was time for Jake to figure out what was going on.
CHAPTER 5

**Thursday 29** th **January, 1:00pm**

Jake could not believe that these schemers had managed to get to Frank. He had seemed so innocent and helpful that no one would ever suspect him of working with murderers. He had worked with him for as long as he had worked in Customer Services. He was a slightly plump, quiet accountant. He heard someone once say that it was the quiet people you needed to be suspicious of. He was starting to understand why.

In fact, if someone had asked him more than two days ago whom he considered to be a likely terrorist, Frank would probably be the last name from his lips. He was just an accountant at Nannotek. He was now convinced that his conversation with Frank after work, delaying his return home, was no coincidence. It had been planned.

The more he thought it through, the more absurd it was. Frank was not good enough at lying or pretending to do anything, so how could he fool Jake? Someone had engineered the whole of that conversation purely to delay him. Frank had been told to keep an eye on him and prevent him leaving at the time he said he would. At some point he would need to speak to Frank and see if he knew anything more about the perpetrators of his family's attack than he did.

Bringing his mind back to the present, Jake realised that it had been a few seconds since the small group of people had left the factory, and with no guards and no lock on the door, it would not be hard to get inside. Whatever their reason for protecting the building with guards, it was not because of anything inside it, but probably due to the information passing between those in attendance.

As Jake entered the building through the weathered wooden door, he wondered whether this crumbling old factory was only their meeting place, or a makeshift one used for just one or two meetings. The answer to that question seemed obvious by the contents of the building. Seven rusting light brown fold-away metal chairs were set out in a semi-circle to face two large, heavily scratched blackboards leaning against a wall. The board on the left had various numbers, dates, times and other symbols arranged in some kind of a list. The board on the right seemed to have been used for the planning of specifics.

He recognised the layout on the board to the right. The lines formed a crude diagram of the street where he lived. There was a dot over where his house would be. They had planned the murder of his wife and children to the finest detail. Times had been scribbled at the bottom of the board with brief notes next to them. These included the time he usually left home and the time he returned home.

He found it hard to comprehend how anyone could intricately plan the murder of a mother and two young children. Such a person had to be brought crashing down to earth, possibly before being sent to Hell. This was not to be tolerated and Jake was perhaps one of a select few who could bring the person behind this act to justice.

The more Jake learned about the whole situation, the more determined he was to become this group's arch nemesis. This was war.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Further investigation and scouring of the inside of the factory revealed little. That was, until he reached the only solid door on the site. It was a solid oak door with a dark colour and a highly polished surface. The door was the only wooden surface that looked even remotely new, and that was free from woodworm and rot. Like the doors previously encountered, this one wasn't locked.

As he opened it, he was utterly surprised. He expected the same grotty furnishings as existed in the rest of the large run down building, but that was not what he found.

Immediately in front of him was a large, highly polished oak desk, with a comfortable looking brown leather swivel chair behind it. The walls were lined with fancy looking watercolour pictures in rimless glass frames over the top of subtle, but expensive looking light green and textured wallpaper. Horizontal wooden blinds covered the window behind the chair, and there was even a thick piled deep red carpet on the floor. This furniture was shipped to this factory especially for the boss, whoever that was.

Whoever this guy was, he was too extravagant for his own good. Who would bother with using this dump to run an operation? More to the point, who would not only use this building for their evil designs, but deck it out partly with the finest furnishings one could buy in the area? The whole abandoned warehouse idea was clichéd anyway. Maybe this guy was just trying to add a bit of sophistication to an otherwise horrible establishment.

Still, why did this larger-than-life character go to such incredible expense to get his office looking like this? This wasn't a rush-job, furnishing this room from a local Swedish furniture store. This was high quality furniture and décor. What had he done in his life to be able to afford such things for a temporary office? Was there more money than sense furnishing this guy's life? He wondered whether his quest would ever lead him to find answers to these questions.

He snapped out of his wondering state to search the drawers for clues. He moved further from the door, around the desk and sat down in the chair. There were three drawers to the left of equal size, one the same size on the right, and a larger one beneath that for suspension files. Each drawer had an indented plastic handle, making the desk appear slightly cheaper than he suspected it actually was.

He started his search in the top left drawer. He found nothing there. It was the same for the next one. The bottom drawer held only a free red and white Cancer Research pen and a scrap of paper, which he removed and placed on the clear, clean desk top.

He moved to the top right draw. He found a stapler, a hole punch, and some paper glue. Not much so far. He'd found nothing helpful to his investigation.

Only one drawer remained. He quickly calculated the possibilities of finding anything useful in that final drawer, given the meagre findings in the previous four. He was hoping for a miraculous find. He knew the details of his family's planned demise, but this went much deeper than this. He needed clues that would allow him to find out who was responsible. He slid the bottom drawer open to the accompaniment of a deeper sound than that of the other desk drawers, and then peered inside. It was filled with dark green suspension files with plastic tabs on the top of each. The tabs were long enough for names, but each held only a sliver of paper with printed numbers ranging from one to twenty one.

He looked through the front three suspension files and found nothing. He skipped several and looked at number six. He pulled out three sheets of A4 paper stapled together and froze.

The top sheet was glossy photo paper and had photographs of him, his wife, and their two children, as well as their house and car. They all seemed to have been taken from the vacant house over the road, confirming the words of one of the hit-men from his yesterday.

The second sheet was a timetable, laid out like any bus or train timetable he'd ever seen, except this one was more personal, with a much more sinister purpose. It was a week long, day-by-day event log. The sheet had every major event of his family's week, accurate and true for pretty much every week. Their life didn't change much from week to week. He found the timetable incredible. The document also outlined that Jake was not a target, but the remaining family members were.

Someone had been watching his family for days, and probably weeks to be able to document all of this. The third sheet was nothing but blank lines. It was attached so whoever received this could add their own notes. This was not just a single publication. This was one of several copies of a hand-out.

Everyone involved would have received their own copy of this information, and would have probably made notes as they sat in front of those two blackboards. He could not believe murder might be discussed as if it was a proposal at some kind of business strategy meeting.

Jake placed the papers back in file number six and looked at file seven. There was another family, another house, and the same layout of information. He put it back and flicked quickly through the others.

Who were all of these people? What did they have in common? They all worked at different places in different careers. Occupations ranged from teachers to plumbers to accountants. They all lived in different places, in Darlington and surrounding towns and villages. All of these people seemed to have led very different lives. There seemed to be no correlation between them at all. He realised he'd missed numbers four and five. Four was empty. Now for number five. He opened it up and found the same style of hand-out.

There was a thick red line from a permanent marker through each sheet going from the top right corner to the bottom left. He flicked to the notes sheet. In the same red marker pen, the words "TAKEN CARE OF!" were written in the middle of the page. Smaller writing underneath, written with a red ball-point pen said that the second half of the payment was due to the staff assigned to the task.

Jake closed the drawer and stepped out of the office into the conference area and looked over the blackboard again. The right hand board had the number six in the upper right hand corner. The left hand board had the numbers one to twenty one starting each line of the list of dates and times. Number six was definitely his family. The dates and times matched up.

A realisation dawned on him that this was his mission. He needed to stop these thugs from killing these innocent people. The previous five had been "taken care of," but all within the past week. If Jake was to continue going backwards through time, in just a few days he could stop all of this. He didn't know what exactly he was supposed to stop, or how to do it, but this was surely why he was here now.

Yesterday...... or tomorrow...... would bring his next task and the next victim for him to save. The more he thought about it, the more he realised that there were several flaws in his heroic idea. He didn't know who these people were or where they lived, nor did he know how they were to be killed. He returned to the desk for clues, but found very little.

There were just two pictures on the glossy page of number four. Each colour photograph had a name underneath. The man on the left was in his fifties, with thinning grey hair. The right hand picture could quite easily have been the same man twenty five years earlier, but was obviously his son. He saw a picture of the red cartoon pig clad van parked outside. The older guy was Brian Brady. He must've been the owner of the butchers and bakers. His son, Joseph, was the only of Brian's sons left to run the business when his father retired.

It seemed the last words in the business name should have read "and son" rather than "and sons" if the research into this family was to be believed.

He looked at their typical week. The date on the blackboard had these people's demise planned for yesterday (by a normal person's reckoning of time). With that in mind he looked at Wednesday. It was their earliest start of the week. They were awake by 5:30 and they'd travel to a nearby meat market at 6:30. They worked from then until the late afternoon when they closed the shop for the day.

As Jake read on, he realised that the document in his hand contained no details on how these criminals were going to target the Brady family. As a result he could not see how he could succeed in defending the Brady family from these people.

He would have to follow their actions for the whole day. That would mean getting up when they got up. It would also mean more following and more surveillance. He grimaced as he thought about it. Another potentially dull day was ahead of him. Maybe he would remember to take something with him that could pass the time.

Whatever he had to do, there was some connection with this place and the van outside. Did they steal it after their actions yesterday? Why steal an old, obviously traceable van? Very little of it made sense.

His day would have to start with him arriving at this old factory earlier than anyone else. This van had some definite link with the killings, but he didn't know what it was. Tomorrow, he'd have to be here by shortly after five o'clock in the morning to follow the people who would eventually steal it. Only then could he be sure of what was happening. The pieces of this puzzle needed to be put together, and he seemed to be the only one capable of doing it.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Amy was concerned. This was highly unusual for Jake. To her recollection he hadn't ever called in sick to work. She hadn't thought this day was any different to any other until she tried to call him just before lunch. She called the direct line to his office, and got an answering machine. That had happened in the past. The cause was usually Jake having stepped out of the office for one of several reasons. Typically he would always return the call within five or ten minutes.

After waiting more than an hour for Jake to call, she called one of his colleagues. To her surprise, after introducing herself, before she could ask where Jake was, his colleague asked Amy how the family emergency was going. She bluffed her way through the phone call and hung up as quickly as possible.

She had questions she needed answering. What was he doing? Why hadn't he called her? Was he okay? Why the secrecy and the lies? She hoped there would be a reasonable explanation to this, and that there would be no trust issues as a result.

Hundreds of questions floated around in her mind. She didn't know the answer to any of them. She couldn't bear that her husband was lying to her, or that he was keeping something from her. Never in ten years had they ever had an argument, let alone having a reason to lie to each other. They had a policy of never keeping secrets from each other. He had some explaining to do.

Amy was torn between anger and fear. Usually such unexplained events might lead to confusion or a sadness for a lack of trust shown in her. It was unusual for her to skip this stage and jump straight to anger.

She looked out of the window, knowing that he wasn't likely to come charging around the corner in his car. That didn't stop her hoping that he would. She'd tried calling his mobile phone, but got no further than his voice mail, requesting the caller leave a message after the beep. She hung up before the beep, not wanting to leave another message. She had already left a message previously in what was no doubt a frustrated tone. She would keep trying to contact Jake until she got to the bottom of this, and when she did, there would have to be one hell of an explanation waiting there.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jake walked outside and kept one eye on the car park entrance while he checked out the red van. The lettering was old and wearing. It seemed the pig in the logo would once have been even brighter and more eye-catching. The driver and passenger doors were unlocked, and so was the back door. He looked through the driver side door and could see several different coloured wires hanging from below the steering column. It looked like this van had been hot-wired. Why did they take this van? police would surely be looking for it. It wasn't exactly inconspicuous.

Inside the back of the van he found the items one might expect to find in the back of such a van. There were some empty boxes and crates on the floor. There was thick clear plastic packaging scattered around. There was nothing of value in the contents of the van, making the whole thing more difficult to figure out. If there had been some expensive cargo then that might explain the theft.

Nothing made sense, but he was sure it would by the end of tomorrow. For now, it was time to explain the situation to Amy. She wouldn't believe it, but he had to try. He turned his phone on to discover a voice mail message from Amy. She knew he wasn't at work. She sounded upset, angry, and a little bit scared.

Jake needed an excuse. However far-fetched his excuse may be, it would be more believable than the truth. He couldn't think of much to say to Amy, but he kept thinking hard. Before he knew it, he was back at his car.

Before returning home to explain things to his wife, Jake had one more stop to make. A certain colleague of his was about to have a visitor who would be keen to find out what the man knew about the upcoming attack on Jake's family.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jake sat in his car outside the large supermarket a short distance from Nannotek. He looked ahead of him at the large retail outlet of fairly recent construction adorned yellow symbols. This supermarket was still the largest building on the site known as Morton Park. Initially it seemed only to have a petrol station and a McDonals restaurant for company.

The site was built in the late Nineties, at about the time the Brick Train was commissioned. During a lunch hour on a previous sunny day, Jake had wandered from his place of work to the piece of artwork, about a five minute walk away. Signs provided details of the unusual architectural sculpture. The train, made from almost two hundred thousand bricks, was sixty metres in length and stood six metres above the ground.

Artist David Mach wanted to capture some of the heritage of the town in the item, which Jake had some respect for when he had taken the time to examine it closely. It was a brick-built replica of a 1938 "Mallard" locomotive with a plume of smoke coming billowing from the top and floating backwards over the top of the train.

Many people thought the cost of over seven hundred thousand pounds, paid for by the National Lottery, was excessive. Jake was now accustomed to seeing this tribute to Darlington's history, and viewing the brick train regularly reminded him that Darlington had once done something remarkable. The "Mallard" was a world record setting train. That was something the town could be proud of. Very little of the town's heritage was obvious these days, so he was pleased that the train existed. In addition, he was pleased to see that it was situated alongside the busy A66, a road providing routes to Teesside and beyond. A percentage of the thousands of drivers that passed the train everyday would consider the rich history of the town they were driving past.

Realising he was lost in his thoughts, Jake turned off the engine, got out of the car and looked in the boot. Underneath a bit of thin carpet was the car's spare tyre with the jack and a small but heavy wheel brace. He removed the wheel brace and replaced the carpet. He needed something to make him look violent and vengeful if he was to get information from Frank. He doubted he would need it, but it was always better to be prepared.

He pulled his mobile phone from his pocket and dialled a familiar number with a less familiar extension.

The extension only rang once before it was picked up.

"Good afternoon, Nannotek, Frank Fellows speaking."

"Frank, I need to speak with you immediately," Jake said, trying his best to make his voice sound deeper than usual. He hoped his feeble attempts to disguise his voice would work over the phone.

A nervous few words were spoken in response. "Is this Jake?" Clearly his attempt didn't work. He had to think quickly.

"Meet me at the entrance to the company car park in five minutes or I'll come in looking for you." Jake ended the call without hearing another word and walked to the entrance to the car park with the tyre changing tool in hand.

It wasn't long before a nervous looking Frank appeared at the entrance and walked towards him. Neither of them greeted the other with the usual hollow words or the customary handshake. It seemed pointless at this moment to follow such customs. Pleasantries were over and done with when Jake had discovered that Frank assisted in the killing of his family. Frank clearly knew he'd been found out the day before the event.

"So," Jake said, "Is this the guy who's been paid off to assist in the killing of my family?"

Frank stood there in silence, looking ashamed and astonished at the same time. It lasted for about fifteen seconds. Finally there was a response. "I had no idea that I was agreeing to that."

"What's going on Frank? How are you involved?"

"I honestly know nothing, Jake." He sounded very nervous, but he still managed to look far more nervous than he sounded. He was sweating more by the second. Jake wasn't sure if it was due to lies or just because he was scared out of his mind at being found out. "A new guy who works as a cleaner in the building spoke to me and said he had a quick way of me making some money. Everyone could do with more money coming in, especially just after Christmas"

"Did they say how?"

"No, they just gave me the address of some old abandoned place and a time to meet some people there."

"I saw you there, Frank. What did these people tell you?"

"They just said they needed you to get home from work late on Friday, so I had to keep an eye on you and stop you from leaving early."

"Is that it? They didn't tell you anything else?"

"Not a thing. I wish I hadn't gone. These people scare me and they'll probably come after me now." Jake was starting to think that Frank was gullible enough to walk straight into this situation without knowing what was going on. Frank was not a good liar, but now he would know faces, probably names, and as of this moment he knew why they wanted to delay Jake's trip home from work. They would undoubtedly track down Frank, possibly adding his profile to the end of their lists. It may well have been in their plan anyway. They wouldn't want to leave any loose ends. Despite the possibility that these people would come after Frank, he could still have some information that could help him.

"Did you catch anyone's name?"

"They wouldn't tell me. They just said this was part of something big and important and the less I knew the better."

"Are you reporting back to them after Friday?"

"They said I'd get my money on Saturday morning at the same old building."

"Thank you Frank. I believe you."

Frank's shoulders slumped and he seemed like a massive weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

"I'm so sorry you've become involved in this. I think these people will be keeping an eye on you, and I think they might come after you now. I think you should get out of here." Jake turned to walk away before Frank had time to formulate a response.

"Go? Where should I go?" Frank asked loudly, obviously hoping from some advice from Jake.

"Somewhere they're not likely to look for you," Jake responded, loud enough for Frank to hear.

His thoughts about Frank had changed over the last few minutes. He was unfortunate to be caught up in this. He wasn't an evil man. He was now a victim, a pawn in their murderous game.

A short walk soon returned Jake to his car. He replaced the wheel brace in the back, got into the driver seat and started the engine. Soon he was heading back to Wymundham Way with some explaining to do.

Jake's mind turned to the events of the future and the impact his actions would have. If Frank wasn't to be involved, would he be late home? Would they add Frank to their hit list? He would have to see what happened as soon as time returned to normal. A short drive later Jake was pulling into his home driveway. All he had swirling around in his head was the truth. Whether his wife liked it or not, that was what she was going to get from Jake in a matter of seconds.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"Do you honestly expect me to believe any of that?" Amy said, clearly upset at what seemed to be an attempt to mislead her. It seemed he'd stirred in her the temper that so often laid dormant an unnoticed. "Do I really seem that stupid to you?"

Jake didn't have the opportunity to answer any of the questions being fired at him. He'd tried to explain all of this over the last half an hour. He was not surprised she didn't believe him. The story sounded ridiculous, and his experience of it was all that prevented him from not believing it too.

"Who were you with? What were you doing?" she demanded, obviously accusing him of something but she didn't quite know what. Jake didn't like where this was going. She'd never shown an angry or a jealous streak before. She was upset about being lied to by the person she most trusted. She just wanted a straight answer. Unfortunately she wasn't going to get a different answer. It was the truth or nothing.

"This is absurd!" Jake said in response.

"Is it absurd that I wouldn't believe you? Is it more absurd than time travel and random killings of complete strangers, and your mighty calling from some mystical power to stop it all? Do you think I was born yesterday?"

Jake thought that if he kept going back in time, eventually he'd reach the day when she was born yesterday. He kept that comment to himself. It wasn't going to help anything.

This conversation wasn't going anywhere. She'd determined that either he was lying or he was completely mad. Either way, he wasn't likely to change her mind any time soon.

He would have to leave her to cool off. Maybe he'd have to sleep elsewhere tonight. She had been wonderfully calm throughout their married life but he'd heard from her family that when she got angry she got _very_ angry. He had once thought such stories to be based on an exaggerated reality. Now he knew they were speaking the truth. Amy was clearly of the belief that every word he had spoken was a fabrication, and he understood her annoyance. He didn't know what he'd think if their roles had been reversed.

The day was getting old quickly, and their argument still seemed to be quite young by comparison. He needed to go somewhere to let Amy cool off, maybe for the rest of the day. A relatively cheap Victorian era hotel was just around the corner, so Jake left and checked in there for the night, after agreeing to disagree (strongly) with Amy.

The daylight was fading as Jake approached the Greyhound Hotel. It was an ageing Victorian building, but provided good value for money. Overlooking the grand Darlington Civic Theatre immediately across the road, the place was old inside and out, and was in need of modernisation. Both buildings looked to have been built at the same time, probably by the same architect. Both were ornate red brick and light stone buildings with large, arched windows on the ground floor and pitched grey slate roofs. Once upon a time, he imagined people would have stayed in this hotel after a night at the rather impressive looking little theatre.

Despite the lack of modernisation, the place was comfortable and friendly. He had no need for satellite or cable television channels. The theatre over the road was showing Roald Dahl's "George's Marvellous Medicine" but he had no plan to spend the rest of the day entertaining himself anyway. He had to concentrate on the future, or the past.

It was going to be a frustrating night, but at least he had time to think through tomorrow's plans. The difficulty would be in waking up on time. He couldn't set an alarm to aid his waking up if he was going backwards. He'd relied on his own body clock to wake himself occasionally in the past, but this time two lives depended on it.

He wasn't sure how he'd sleep until yesterday, given all that he'd been though today, but he laid on the modest but comfortable bed, and his eyelids felt like lead weights. All of a sudden he didn't doubt how he was going to get to sleep. Hopefully tomorrow would be a better day than today had been. Only time would tell if that was to be the case.

CHAPTER 6

**Wednesday 28** th **January, 5:07am**

Jake's eyes opened as his heart started to pound in his chest. He glanced at the clock on the wall to discover that he'd managed to wake up early, but not as early as he would have liked. Seven minutes past five in the morning. His head was spinning, his eyelids were heavy. At that moment he wanted to close his eyes again more than anything else in the world. He knew, however, that the decision to get out of bed now could possibly be the most important decision of his life so far.

Jake wasn't an early morning person. He had always chosen late nights over early mornings when he had the choice. He had long since known that he did his best thinking after ten o'clock at night. How did anyone function getting up so early? He knew people who would practically wake up with a smile on their face, whistling and humming their favourite tunes. No amount of early mornings could encourage Jake to start the day in such a way.

Looking at the clock again he suspected he now had just a couple of minutes to get to the old factory. He hoped that the factory was the starting point for their journey to target Mr Brady and his son. He crept around the bedroom as quietly and quickly as possible.

It seemed as he finished getting dressed that he had managed to get ready without disturbing Amy. She stirred a little as he sneaked out the bedroom door, but she wasn't awake. She certainly wouldn't have been awake enough to have any clue what was going on around her.

Jake was out of the house and in the car within a minute of leaving the bedroom. He looked at the instrument panel of the car and figured it was actually 5:10am. He was probably cutting this a bit too close.

He drove quickly and slightly recklessly to the same spot where he had parked on his last visit.

He trampled his way through the wooded area to the car park. It was still dark, but dawn was breaking. He could see a faint silhouette of the van, with no cars surrounding it. He walked up to it and looked through the window. It looked a lot newer than it had yesterday and the steering column seemed intact. This van hadn't been hot-wired yet. The doors were locked. He still couldn't fathom what was really going on here. Why was the van here the morning before it was stolen, and why would they hot-wire a van they already had possession of the day before? This van had to be the key to finding and helping the Brady family.

Having tried the back doors, and finding them to be unlocked, Jake had found his way to help the Brady family. On climbing in and closing the door behind him, he discovered there were several bags piled up in the middle of the back of the van. Scattered on top of and around the bags were several pieces of paper. He picked one of them up, but didn't yet have enough light to see what was printed on it.

All of a sudden, headlights flashed across the inside of the back of the van and the sound of a car engine grew louder and louder. The hired goons for this task were here. If they opened the back of this van they'd see him, and his plan would have backfired considerably. He heard car doors open and close, and some weary sounding voices getting ever closer.

He needed to think quickly again. Now he could hear footsteps. They were very close, and one seemed to be heading for the back doors. He dove across the van and hid as well as he could underneath the bags, hoping the darkness would hide any parts of him that he couldn't obscure beneath the contents of the van.

The left hand back door swung open, and a second later Jake felt the thud of a fairly heavy bag landing on his stomach. It took all of his energy to not yelp in pain as it hit him. "What the hell are you doing?" he could hear one of them say as the door slammed shut again. The words were now muffled but he could still hear what they were saying. "We don't know how sensitive this stuff is. One wrong move and we won't even make it as far as the Brady house."

The voices were becoming increasingly muffled. They were going into the factory before setting off on their murderous journey.

On the very top of the bag that had collided with Jake, he found another information sheet about the Brady family. He was trying to make out the writing underneath the pictures of the two men whose lives he'd try to save in a few minutes. He could just about make out the pictures, and some of the printed text, but there was additional writing on it. The other pages surrounding him had several unusual symbols and large print messages to someone.

He still couldn't see enough to decipher it all. A thought hit him as he lay there in the dark. This van didn't show any signs inside that it had been used by a butcher or a baker. There were bags in the middle and papers strewn everywhere. Somehow it didn't seem like the same van he had peered in to yesterday. Once again something didn't add up.

He'd thought at great length on his yesterday evening about the whole plan for B. Brady& Son, but had come up with nothing. How were they going to attempt to bump off these people? With that thought, he heard footsteps again. This was it.

The men were sitting in the front, the engine started without any fuss, and the van was being driven quickly and erratically, cornering sharply to the left, then to the right. He could tell how aggressively they were driving by how hard his head was hitting the side of the van when they turned right. They were apparently trying to make up for lost time.

A band of orange light illuminated half of the rear of the van, moved gradually forward and then vanished, then another band of light appeared. It was from overhanging street lights. Jake was able to see what was on the paper in front of him every few seconds. He picked up a piece of paper and read what he could.

ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALIST JIHAD MOVEMENT was printed in the middle of the piece of paper. That was crazy. The program of hits put out on people's lives wasn't run by people who were Muslims as far as he could figure out.

These people were putting a religious front on their actions. They weren't doing this for religion. He didn't know what their motivation was, but it seemed as far away from religious or philosophical reasons as one could get. He knew a little bit about all the major religions, and everyone was against killing and bloodshed, with the occasional allowance of such actions if it was in defence of family, rights, and liberty. This was clearly not religiously motivated, but religion was being used as a scapegoat.

He heard excited talking between the two in the front of the van, and then he could feel the van stopping. The passenger door opened and one of the men stepped out.

Five minutes later another vehicle that sounded like a beaten up van approached and stopped behind the one in which Jake and the mystery driver were seated. The passenger door opened and someone shuffled into the seat, then the door was slammed closed again. That seemed to be the cue for Jake's driver to move. He drove for thirty seconds around a couple of corners and then they stopped again. The engine turned off and everything was quiet for a few seconds.

The driver door opened and he heard more panicked, but hushed voices this time. He heard something about a vantage point and a mobile phone, then the door closed and he was in the van alone.

Jake decided to take the opportunity to examine the contents of the van. All of the paper had some reference to the Islamic Fundamentalist Jihad Movement, which he was sure wouldn't actually exist, and if it did, it was pure coincidence. It was a terrorist façade to redirect the possible ramifications of their actions.

The paper gave no other clues. He rummaged through the several canvas hold-all bags on the floor of the van and found what looked like an old radio, a mobile phone, and several random electronic components.

This was hopeless. He was never going to get any closer to knowing what was about to happen. He heard two distant male voices, getting louder. They were different from the others. These could be the voices of Brian Brady and his son.

Their conversation about work was drowned out by a random beep inside one of the bags. In a few seconds there was another one. After several beeps they sped up. At first there was five seconds between beeps. Then there were two... Then one.

It all clicked in his head. This was a dummy van that was going to be detonated by those thugs who put it here. They'd hot-wired the original and driven this one into its place. The voices grew louder. They hadn't noticed the switch of vans. Why would they? Who would go to the hassle of rigging up another van to look like theirs, complete with cartoon pig logo? The driver door opened, and the father asked his son to get something from the back.

Their faint conversation could just be heard over the incessant beeping. It sped up. The van was going up in smoke in a few seconds and he needed to get out of there.

"No!" he shouted. "Don't get in! Move away!" He jumped up and ran to the back door of the van. "Don't come any closer! It's going to blow!"
CHAPTER 7

**Wednesday 28** th **January, 6:31am**

At the moment Jake flung the back door of the van open, he saw Joseph Brady for the first time in real life, but he wasn't stopping to chat or to offer a hand and introduce himself. He grabbed the guy by his t-shirt and was running as fast as he could away from the soon-to-be exploding red butcher's van.

Only a few steps after spinning Joseph around, a thunderous sound erupted behind them, then instantly a fiercely hot gust of air hit the back of his neck before engulfing him and throwing him forward off his fast-moving feet. It was as if an unseen force had literally picked them both off the floor and had thrown them onto their chests and faces. As Jake picked his face up from the tarmac he was certain that he would not look pretty when the action died down. He was now certain to have sustained several cuts and bruises.

After a few long seconds pain flooded his face and hands. He turned his hands over, revealing the palms. He hoped his face was in better shape than his hands. Even in the dim street light he could see that they were scraped and already covered in blood. The guy to his right had somehow fallen with less force on his front, and had only one or two small scratches.

Behind him lay smouldering pieces of what had been a replica van just seconds before. These large pieces had been thrown some distance from the van by the explosion. The Bradys hadn't noticed the switch or any difference in the vehicles in the dim light. They surely had no reason to suspect anything was different. Whatever the motivation behind this attack, it seemed to Jake to be equally as cold-hearted as the attack on his own family. They were wrecking a family and possibly their business for some reason that he was yet to determine.

Flames still rose high from what was left of the van, now a short distance away from Jake and Joseph. The van's remnants would probably be burning and smouldering for some time yet. The bags in the van must have been packed with large amounts of explosive, probably home-made. He'd heard about people smuggling fertiliser, sugar and coal dust onto an aeroplane with the intention of combining ingredients when on board. These people had probably concocted something similar.

Jake looked around at the street that had started the day with a bang. The street appeared to be part of a housing estate built and once owned by the local Council. The houses were in blocks of four terraced houses, were bland in appearance and had a grey-looking render applied to the outside. They had gently sloping tiled roofs and window styles that varied from house to house. Some windows were single paned with cheap metal frames. He suspected these to be original windows. The majority of houses had cheap white UPVC framed windows of all shapes and sizes. Front gardens had an overgrown look, separated by waist high chain link fencing and old metal gates. The houses looked like they were built by the lowest bidder some time ago, but they were showing their age and in need of an overhaul.

In recent years these houses would have been bought by tenants for less than the market price and would now be privately owned. A reputation surrounded streets like these that Jake had never believed to be accurate. This reputation suggested streets filled with broken families, where loud children walk the rubbish lined pavements into the early hours of the morning. Places where one would be crazy to walk around after nightfall and expect to return home with their wallet. Jake knew good people living in such areas, and was not aware of such anti-social problems. This street wasn't very attractive to look at, but looked quiet and seemed to be the kind of place where families could live quietly, excluding the events of this morning.

Lights were on, and people were watching from the doorways and windows of neighbouring houses, silhouetted by their own lights as they looked out on the smouldering darkness. This would have been a shock in a quiet street at any time, let alone at this unearthly hour. Most of these people probably hadn't yet seen this part of the morning so far this year. Whenever he had to get out of bed before 7am he'd joke that he didn't know there were two sixes in a day. Everyone around here was in no doubt that six thirty in the morning existed. What a wakeup call!

Amongst the several small fires still burning, Jake could see a cartoon pig's face lying on the ground being slowly consumed by fire, and thought of the disastrous effect this would have on their business. Assuming both father and son escaped with their lives, a part of their business was gone. A business such as theirs would not have the cash to easily buy a new work vehicle. A financial strain would now be placed on the company, from which it would be difficult to recover in difficult economic times. There was a possibility that their business would disappear as quickly as the logo in front of him.

He then thought of how different it would have been if he wasn't there to try to save them. As far as he knew he'd managed to save Joseph, but what about his father? He hadn't seen him since the blast. There was no other figure standing near the van. He needed to see if the other guy had avoided the blast. He clambered to his feet, finding the task to be more difficult than he had expected. He staggered towards the twisted wreckage looking for the man who was about to sit in the driver seat of an exploding van. He looked to the ground that he had hit forcefully after the blast. He imagined in his mind a dent the exact shape of his body in the tarmac of the road in a cartoon style, but refocused on the task of finding Brian Brady.

The area immediately surrounding the van was well illuminated, thanks to the flames rising from the vehicle combined with nearby street lights, some of which had shattered as a result of the explosion. He could see pieces of paper sporting logos and letterheads with Islamic phrases on them. This was where their cover-up came into effect. The police would grab the paper and seek a fake Muslim organisation for answers, while the actual perpetrators were getting away with attempted murder.

After staggering in the road for a second, Jake was approaching the driver door. Well, he was approaching the place where the door used to be. He looked to the ground a short distance to the right and saw a motionless body lying there on the road. He'd found Mr Brady.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Joseph raised himself from the tarmac until he was on his hands and knees. He looked up, and turned his head back to the van. "Dad?" He hadn't seen him since he walked to the driver side of the van, moments before the explosion. He had no idea who this stranger was, but he knew he was grateful to him for probably saving his life.

The stranger was now next to the spot where Joseph expected his father to be lying. He was hunched over something. Through the ringing in his ears he heard the raised voice of the stranger. "Hey, you. Your father's alive, but he's hurt."

He tried to stand up, but felt himself sink to the ground again. He'd taken a knock on the back of his head and felt very dizzy. Things around him started spinning and he slumped to his hands and knees again. He thought he could hear distant sirens and knew police and firemen would soon be on their way if they weren't already. It was likely that at least one neighbour had already reported hearing the explosion.

After a few seconds he tried standing again, but had little success. He thought he'd try an alternative method of movement instead. He crawled on his hands and knees to the stranger who was still hunched over his father. It took Joseph as long as a minute to reach him, but he completed the short crawl and slumped again, lying on the ground. That was as much energy as he had left. He was surprised at just how much energy had been drained from his system by the last few explosive minutes.

This stranger was talking to Joseph, he could hear him but he wasn't really listening. He was trying to help, trying to figure out why this happened, and trying desperately not to panic by forcing himself to breathe slowly, despite the toxic smoke-filled air surrounding him. As a result of his conscious effort to stay calm, anything else didn't really sink in.

"Your dad's hurt, but he'll live. His face and arms look badly burned. We're going to need someone to call an ambulance." That was all well and good, but he couldn't move. He could try shouting to one of the neighbourly observers. The stranger looked at him again. "I'm Jake, by the way. So you know something about what's going on at least."

"I'm Joseph. Thanks" He offered a general thanks rather than several specific ones, but this guy would have known what he meant by those simple three words. Turning his head away from Jake, he shouted to the onlookers. "Can someone call an ambulance? My father's hurt pretty bad!" He was answered with a confirming shout from a nearby neighbour.

He looked at his watch. It showed the time as 6:31. Several minutes must have passed, but it still showed the same time. It had obviously stopped with the force of the explosion earlier. He had no idea what the actual time was now, but it felt to him like the time was closer to seven. In fact it was probably less than five minutes since the incident, and only shortly after 6:30.

Whatever the time was, he thought it was worth trying to stand up again. He lifted his head, then rose up onto his hands and knees. It seemed the worst of the dizziness had subsided and he was able to stand again. He rose to his feet and staggered towards the burning van. There were pieces of van strewn all over the road, but not within a metre or so of the vehicle's initial parking spot.

He circled the van and surveyed the debris. He found pieces of half charred paper, millions of fragments of glass, and the rear number plate. He stopped as he looked at the yellow plastic plate. It was a different number plate.

He looked at the paper surrounding the van. That was clearly not what was left in their van. He didn't know what to make of this. He was confused, but maybe this mysterious stowaway could shed some light on all of this.

Whatever was going on, and whoever was behind it, he was going to find out. This guy wasn't leaving his sight until he had some answers.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

More sirens and flashing lights approached. Jake was getting used to their sound and the appearance of red and blue light bouncing off nearby buildings. He couldn't be bothered with dealing with them today, but he had little option. He was part of this now, whether he wanted to be or not.

Everyone in the street had seen him, and could likely identify him, despite the darkness that still enshrouded the smouldering van and the victims of this attack. He was afraid of the accusations they would throw at him. He had run out of the van just before it exploded. His explanation was ridiculous and clearly unbelievable, even to his loving wife. What would law enforcement officials make of it? They would undoubtedly think he was somehow responsible for triggering this bomb or that he knew who was responsible. The truth was he knew nothing of value, and was likely to simply implicate himself in the attack if he stayed to answer questions. He would certainly be treated more like a villain than a hero.

The sirens were getting louder. They were just a street or so away. He had to get out of there now if he wanted to avoid facing awkward questions and a hard time. He quietly and quickly moved away from the man lying on the ground. The man was hurt, but Jake could not do much for him anyway. He was no paramedic. He hadn't even had proper First Aid training. Regardless of what would happen with this man in his few seconds alone, he was fairly sure he'd survive. He looked like he had been burned significantly so it was difficult for Jake to really know what would happen to him.

Most of the people had returned to their houses, realising that the drama was mostly over and that they could do nothing to help. One or two were approaching Brian and Joseph Brady to offer their help. Maybe one of them knew something of First Aid, making them infinitely more helpful than himself.

The son had turned away from his father for a second to get a look at the aftermath of this attempt on their lives. This was a good time for Jake to run. He heard the sirens approaching to his right at one end of the street, so he ran to his left. He was a hundred yards away by the time he heard someone shout at him. No one was trying to catch him. They were just shouting at him to come back.

These bystanders were bound to alert the police to the fact that the man who ran out of the van moments before it blew up was now running away.

The more Jake thought about what he was doing, the more stupid it seemed. He had nothing to hide. He'd not done anything but save two lives. If people thought he was a fugitive then they were sadly mistaken. He was, however, guilty of fleeing the scene of a crime. He thought that would be better than having to try and answer questions about why he was in that van. He couldn't provide a sensible answer to that question.

He recalled the moments after he tried to help Mr Brady, and he remembered the brief conversation with this guy's son. He'd actually told him his first name. Joseph could give a description of him. The police would eventually track him down. Someone might even come after him in the next few minutes. He had done his good deed for the day. All he had to do was remain hidden for the rest of the day and things would sort themselves out.

However crazy running away seemed, he figured it was too late to stop running and turn back. There were no other options available to him. Hiding from the police for a while would probably prove to be much easier than explaining what he was actually doing there.

As his thoughts died down, he realised he had been running for a few minutes, and was well and truly shattered. He wasn't used to light exercise any more. It had been many years since he had done anything like the kind of running he had been doing. He'd spent the past few years driving most of the places he ever went. He was regretting all of the times he'd taken the car when he could have walked. He regretted them more with every step. "Go to the gym" he thought to himself again. "You pay for it. Just go!"

He looked around as he paused to take a breath and realised he was nowhere near the Council estate he had previously been in. He could see dilapidated housing, industrial units of varying description, and the silhouette of a new housing estate in the distance. It was only at that point that Jake realised that he had no idea where he had stopped.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jake eventually slumped against a lamp post to catch his breath. He had been looking around the maze of streets around him for a few minutes, but was no closer to figuring out where he was.

He tried to remember how long the ride in the van had been. With the time taken to get into the van and hot-wire the original, the time spent actually driving could have been no more than seven or eight minutes. He couldn't have been too far away from the factory where he had started the day.

The town he lived in was not the biggest, and there were not many places within a ten minute drive. County Durham was not the most densely populated part of the country by any means. He was amazed at how disoriented he was by somewhere that could have been no more than three miles from his house. He really didn't know the town as well as he thought he did.

Figuring he was only a short walk from the factory by now, he could easily walk from here back to his car. It would look suspicious if he continued to run through quiet residential and industrial areas before seven in the morning. The more he walked, the more he wished he'd eaten something before leaving the house. His stomach was making all kinds of noises as it often did when he'd gone without breakfast. He felt a bit weak, a feeling which was compounded by the events so far that morning.

Most of the time Amy wouldn't allow him to skip a meal, and would insist that he eat something, but she'd obviously had no say in Jake's actions so far today.

There was a good chance that she'd be awake by now. Once again she'd be wondering where he was. He needed an excuse, unless he planned on staying away from home all day as well today. She hadn't believe him yesterday, so was unlikely to believe him today.

He fumbled through his pockets and found his keys and mobile phone. He could leave her some kind of message, saying he was alright, and that he'd gone into work to solve a problem because he couldn't sleep. He turned his phone on and watched the small screen as three different logos flashed up showing the make of phone, the model, and his network. The screen went blank and the device turned itself off again. The battery must have been empty.

So far, this was not one of his better days. He suspected he would not have a good day until time moved in a forward direction again.

Jake turned around another corner and heard the dull drone of traffic along a busy road. He knew most of the main roads in the area, and thought that if he could get to this one he would recognise where he was. The street he was currently walking down was oddly laid out. Houses were different shades of assorted colours and were covered in small stones in a rendering style referred to as pebble dashing, with each house dotted with small, narrow windows. Each roof was angled differently to the last, pointing in all sorts of directions. The place looked strange, probably more so in the dim light of an early morning. Pathways went in every direction, starting and ending suddenly. The whole place seemed like a giant maze. It seemed to be typical of some housing estates built in the sixties and seventies. The whole of the nearby town Newton Aycliffe was built in a similar fashion, with strange angles and stranger street layouts. Such designs were supposed to be a sign of future developments. Instead of embracing such design methods, people eventually resorted to much simpler layouts and more traditional house styles. Jake was glad of that fact as he still had no idea how to find his way around the pebble-dashed maze that surrounded him.

He could hear the traffic, and could occasionally see it through some trees, but he couldn't get to it. Via the walkways he had found. He finally located a small alley way that led to a pathway by the side of the main road. Seconds later he knew exactly where he was. As luck would have it, the road next to him ran almost parallel with the road where the factory was situated. He was at the top of North Road, about a mile away from where he'd spent a large chunk of the previous day, and where he could now pick up his car.

If he was lucky, Amy and the kids would still be in bed and he could just walk upstairs with a drink and he would get away with his sudden departure. Then he remembered the cuts to his face and hands. What was he going to say? "I fell over" sounded stupid, especially in such circumstances. Maybe he could clean himself up anyway. Maybe the cuts weren't deep enough to arouse suspicion. He'd cut himself shaving on a number of occasions and hoped the new cuts were of a similar size to those suffered on most mornings. Somehow he doubted it and wondered what kind of excuse could explain away a badly cut face this early in the day.

It had been more than fifteen minutes since the bomb had gone off, and Jake was sure the police would have a description of him by now. Someone would be on the lookout very soon. He needed to remain unseen and get home as quickly as possible. He crossed the road and turned down the next street on the right, which would take him to within a hundred yards of where his car was parked.

Jake was now in the middle of one of the main industrial parts of town and expected to see very little of anyone or anything until he reached his car. Most such industrial areas were not occupied at this hour of the day, and did not employ any kind of twenty four hour security. The businesses were so small they could not afford such security. At most there would be one man keeping an eye on an entire site, looking after the property of up to twenty small businesses. The absence of many people in the area would permit Jake to casually make his way back to his car.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Joseph Brady was still in shock. This explosion had changed everything about his life, and had done it all in just a few short seconds. His father had spent his entire life building their business and a safe life for his family. It took someone an instant to potentially take all of that away.

Paramedics had arrived and treated his father, but things didn't look to be going well. Before he knew it, they'd whisked Brian Brady off to the Accident and Emergency department of the Darlington Memorial Hospital.

Joseph was assured by the police that his father would be fine, and that he could join him in a couple of minutes after making a brief statement. He had expected to deal with the formalities of providing a statement at a later point, possibly while sitting at hospital, but had been told that the police needed something they could act on immediately because someone with information had fled the crime scene.

He told the officers what he could remember: the man jumping from the van to save his life, helping his father, and then running away. The man had told him his first name - Jake. Not an uncommon name, but it would help them narrow their field of search. He couldn't understand why he would start helping, then would run off when his father's life was hanging in the balance.

Joseph also managed to give some kind of a description to the officer. He was six feet tall, medium build, black jacket, and tan trousers. That's all he could remember, but he was told all that information could help to identify and to find the man who they now considered to be their prime suspect.

One of the policemen offered him a ride to the hospital and Joseph accepted. He was still being asked questions, but not as formally as when he was providing a statement to them. After he made the statement, it was read back to him and he signed it when asked to do so. It was not surprising that the questions being asked were the same as the ones circulating within his head.

Who would have reason to attack his family? What were the links with this Muslim movement? Had this stranger ever crossed paths with him before? Why did he stop to help before he ran away?

He struggled to answer anything else, and pleaded for a minute or two of silence during the car journey so that he could just stare out of the window and collect his thoughts. They would likely want to question him further later on in the day when things had calmed down. Maybe then he could remember more details of the morning's events and could be of greater help.

He looked out of the windows surrounding him as the car made its way onto the main road. It was probably more than a ten minute drive to the hospital from their current location. It was at the other end of town, and there was no direct route to get there.

He looked out of the window on his right. Something caught his attention and his eyes widened. A man was casually walking by the side of the road that he recognised. "Hey, there's the guy!" he exclaimed, pointing energetically out of the car window. "He's walking down that street on the right."

The policeman turned his head and responded with a nod. The officer responded, "Shall I go for him, or would you prefer I send someone else after him?"

"He's the guy. Just go get him!" Joseph responded. With that, the officer flicked on the sirens and turned the car with a sharp U-turn. He turned left down the street after it was clear that he'd seen and heard them. The fugitive started to run, but the car was catching him quickly. Joseph was determined to find answers to his questions, and this guy was the only one who could answer any of them. As far as he was concerned, this man had nowhere to run.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jake didn't want to have to run again. His heart was still pounding from his earlier exertions and he felt weak from the lack of food so far today. However, he had no choice in the matter when he heard the sirens and saw the red and blue lights of a police car approach him. He knew he had to get away from the road to stand any chance of avoiding police custody.

There was a high chain-link fence to his right, but it seemed to be his only option with a police car rapidly approaching to his left. He jumped and grabbed onto the top of the flimsy fence to his right and pulled himself up with great difficulty. He heard the tyres screech and knew the policeman was about to chase him on foot. He had to get over this fence and find a way out of this mess.

He threw himself awkwardly over the fence and landed on his feet facing the officer that was chasing him, but was currently on the other side of the tall fence. He turned and started running anywhere away from where the officer was standing.

Immediately in front of him were three large round metal sheds, looking like giant cylinders buried so only the top third was visible. They were a dark shade of green and looked like Second World War bunkers laid out in a grid three wide and five deep, with space in between each unit to allow for vehicle access and parking. The units each displayed a sign above the door. Each would be owned or rented by a variety of people running their own small businesses such as carpenters or metal workshops. He could get limited cover from these buildings, but soon this policeman would be over the fence and right on his tail again.

He ran and hid behind the building furthest to his left and stayed up against the farthest wall of the shed. The policeman would undoubtedly find him there, or anywhere on that site, so he needed a plan.

There were fifteen of these buildings. If Jake could keep moving it would buy him some time to figure out what to do. He ran for the one straight ahead of him, down the left hand side of it, and stopped behind that one.

The sign above the door suggested that this building was used by a carpenter. Several large off-cuts of wood were leaning up against the side of the large metal shed. He thought about using one as a weapon, but he dreaded getting deeper into this problem. He had nothing to hide, but he was now a suspect and a fugitive. He didn't really want to add the assault of a police officer to the charges, especially as he'd now been face-to-face with the man with only a fence in between and could easily be identified.

He heard the heavy steps of an out of breath man as he approached from a distance, and using his radio as he ran. There were policemen not too far from here, so he couldn't wait around for them all to arrive and help their out-of-breath colleague.

He noticed a hole in the chain-link fence to his left. What a stroke of luck, just when he needed it. This was his escape route. If he could quietly and quickly sneak out of that hole, it might be a while before the policeman realised it was there. He took several large pieces of wood as he quickly moved closer to the fence, squeezed through the small gap, snagging his jacket slightly on one of the many protruding strands of metal, and propped as much of the wood up against the fence as he could from the other side in order to cover up his escape route. He hoped his cover-up looked as convincing from the other side of the fence as it did from where Jake was now standing. As the wood was scattered around next to a carpenter's workshop, it was possible the man would not think anything suspicious of it until he'd checked the rest of the site. He wondered how badly he had snagged his jacket, and then he remembered he'd just been thrown from an exploding van, so his jacket would most likely be ruined already anyway.

He found himself on a small road belonging to the next industrial site along the main road. He ran in the direction of the road he'd just come from. At the entrance to the industrial plot was a single bar barrier aimed at preventing access to vehicles when the site was empty. Jake ducked underneath the horizontal red and white pole and was back to the spot where he had been walking before the interruption of the police car.

He heard a voice behind him, but didn't look back to see who it was. He just kept running until he reached the end of the road and turned left. Ahead of him in the distance was the factory where the plans for these attacks had been dreamed up. Closer to him on the left hand side of the road was his car. He reached for his keys as he approached and pressed a button to unlock it using the remote central locking. The usual beep and accompanying flash of lights ensued and he was able to then get into his car and rest his feet.

With the keys in his hand he opened the door and scrambled into the driver seat, pulling the door shut with the small amount of energy he had remaining. He leaned over the steering column to put the key in the ignition, and heard a noise behind him. He froze. He heard another noise. It sounded like someone was shuffling around on the back seat.

He looked in his rear view mirror and saw it was entirely taken up by a face just before he felt something suddenly being held tightly around his neck. The cord around his neck felt tighter with every passing second. This man was trying to strangle Jake because of what he knew or because of what he had done. It took no time at all for the cord around his neck to press like a razor against his skin. He fully expected to see cuts along his neck if he was lucky enough to get free from this.

"Hi Jake. What are you doing here? You're not supposed to be involved for another few days yet." said the mysterious man in a low, vicious sounding voice.

"I don't know." Jake tried to say in response, but couldn't vocalise the words, meaning his words came out in a whimper of a whisper.

"You're getting in to this thing too deep, Jake. You will either walk away now, or you'll not live to see the end of the week," the man said next.

Jake reached up and pulled at the cord around his neck, but couldn't loosen it. "Get off me!" he said with no more success than the last time he'd tried to speak. He could feel his face turning red and his heart pounding in his chest as if it was about to burst through and escape. He knew he was on the verge of blacking out and needed to get free of this strangle-hold.

He let go of the cord with his left hand and swung his elbow backwards as hard as possible, catching this thug on the chin or the nose. Jake wasn't really sure what he hit but he knew he'd hit something. The intruder let out a groan and fell back, letting go of the cord. He heard the sound of metal clicking against metal. Action movies he had seen in the past told him that such a sound was not good. He turned his head to see the barrel of a handgun staring back at him. The only thought in his head was, "Get out of the way!"

Jake ducked and clambered out of the car as quickly as he thought possible to the sound of glass shattering. He kept his head down and ran for the woods with thousands of tiny fragments of shattered glass falling around him, flying from the windows of the silver Mercedes as the man continued to shoot from the back seat. As he entered the shelter of trees and foliage he heard a car door open and close, then another gunshot, then another. This man was now shooting wildly into the woods with the hope of hitting Jake, who was obviously hoping he wasn't going to get a lucky shot.

He fought through the woods up an embankment and down the other side. He was clear of the woods but he knew he needed to keep running to get away. As exhausted as he was, he found the strength to keep moving because his life now depended on it, as did the lives of his family. Once again he had no idea where he was going. He just kept on running as fast and as far as his energy-lacking body would take him.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Lynn flicked on the light with the switch to the left her bed, bathing the room in a bright light instantly. With the sudden change from darkness she rubbed her eyes, as if somehow hoping that would help them to instantly adjust to the change in light. She looked at the clock by her bed. It was nearly seven in the morning. She rarely received phone calls so early, but she was not overly bothered by an early phone call. She would have to get up soon anyway. The phone was still ringing after waking her up with a start. She reached over and picked it up. "Hello. Who is this?" she said with the croaky voice of someone speaking as they were waking.

"Lynn, it's me. I know it's early but I need your help."

She immediately thought something terrible must have happened. She fired questions at him as if from an automatic weapon. "Jake? What's going on? Why aren't you in bed? Do I hear traffic? You're not at home, are you?" She didn't wait for a response between questions as was often the case when she panicked. She paused for breath to give him time to respond.

"No, I'm in a phone box on Skinnergate in the town centre. I took a bus here from the outskirts of town. I'm in trouble and I need your help. I'll explain when you get here," Jake replied. "Meet me by the indoor market and you can help me figure out what I'm going to do next."

"Wait, Jake. Why would I drop everything and go running after you? What have you done?" She needed to find out something before following his command. It was possible Jake was exaggerating, although he wasn't prone to doing that very often.

"Lynn, I'm being accused of trying to blow someone up, the police are after me, and the people who really tried blowing them up are now trying to kill me."

There was silence for a couple of seconds. She took a couple of deep breaths to try and take things in. "Well, you have had a busy day so far. What are you planning for the rest of it? Shoot someone? Rob a bank?" she said with more than a hint of sarcasm. She had instantly recognised the seriousness of this situation as Jake outlined his morning, but thought she'd try to ease the tension somewhat with a light-hearted response.

"I'm planning to survive, for one thing. I can't call Amy. These people are after her too. I need to keep her safe."

"Okay. I'll throw something on and I'll be there in a couple of minutes." She hung up the phone and hurriedly got dressed. What a crazy day this was already turning out to be.

As she finished getting dressed she heard the sound of her usual morning alarm, which she had not disabled in all the excitement. It was the time she'd usually be rolling out of bed, but she was already heading out of the door to help a brother who seemed to be running for his life.

She grabbed the keys to her dark red Nissan Micra and drove towards the high street. She couldn't get her head around what was going on. How does a day start off like any other and become so messed up so quickly? There was something else going on with Jake. He had become involved with the wrong people, or he'd started doing something illegal. People didn't start a day like this when the previous few days had been normal. Maybe Jake would have calmed down sufficiently to allow him to explain things to her.

High Row was the name of the main high street in Darlington. It was unusual because it was on a definite slope, causing both sides of the street to he completely different levels. It hadn't been long since building work had finished on High Row again, this time converting the majority of it from roads to walkways. Pedestrianising the very centre of town caused more problems than simply putting down brick paving. A lot of delivery vans, cars and buses used the bottom half of High Row frequently.

The bottom half of the street was rarely seen without seven or eight buses along its length before the changes had been made. Previously buses would have to drive past the ornate Victorian Era indoor market, possibly stopping next to one of the bus stops dotted alongside it. From there they would have either continued straight on towards the main entrance of the new-looking indoor shopping complex known as the Cornmill Shopping Centre, or they would turn right immediately past the indoor market on their way down to the main roads and bus routes.

The recent work meant the route towards High Row had changed significantly. Blackwellgate, full of its Sixties and Seventies brown brick buildings, was once a thoroughfare for buses, but had now been section off and paved for the use of pedestrians only. This sent buses along a seemingly crazy one way system around the surrounding streets, bringing them out on a street named Horse Market, turning right along the bottom part of High Row. The modifications cleared the area in front of the famous indoor market, allowing shoppers to walk freely around it.

Lynn navigated her way through the maze of one way streets, past the old "Our Lady of the North" church, built in 1183, and was soon driving uphill along Horse Market with the new-looking Cornhill Centre to her right and the indoor market ahead of her on the left.

The indoor market was considered a historical gem, having been built in 1863 in a time when Darlington was known throughout the North as a market town. It was built of a light brown brick with a grey slate roof. The market building itself was typical of large Victorian buildings, but it was complimented by a clock tower built the following year in 1864. The tower had a steep pointed slate roof with an additional point on each of the four corners at the base of the roof. Between the church and the clock tower, she had seen two of the most iconic buildings in the town within a few seconds of each other. You could in fact see one from the other, looking across the outdoor market area, which doubled as a car park for every day but Monday and Saturday.

She drove slowly up the street, keeping the indoor market to her left. She passed a cluster of phone boxes and saw a very scruffy looking Jake next to one of them. She pulled over to the side of the road, where Jake saw her and walked quickly towards the car. "Thank you, sis. I owe you one," he said as he climbed into the passenger seat.

"A very big one. Okay, Jake. How have you got into a lifetime of trouble before most people have even got out of bed?" she asked.

"It's a long story and you won't believe it, but here goes," he replied. She suspected as much. Jake began to explain as she turned the car around and drove for home.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jake sat staring at the weird cat clock on the wall in a living room. It was the only thing he had for company after Lynn walked out of the room and upstairs to think, as well as to shower and dress for the day properly.

He didn't know which part of the story was the hardest to swallow. Maybe it was the fact that he was reliving days. Maybe it was the mystical calling he'd received to save these people. Perhaps it was the fact that he'd been nearly blown up, arrested, strangled and shot before anyone else had even heard the sound of their morning alarm clock.

Whatever she thought about the whole ordeal, it was true. He had tiny cuts all over his face and hands from the road, from glass in his car windscreen and from various thorns he'd run into whilst escaping a mad man with a gun. He also had several larger cuts from being thrown to the floor by an exploding van. These things were proof of the reality of his unusual situation. He looked down at his hands. Someone had once told him that the glass from car windows is not sharp enough to cut when it shatters. Maybe he was just unlucky.

He needed to know what he was going to do next. He needed one hell of a plan. He felt like he needed to return to the factory and see if any clues remained. Maybe something there would help him to understand why all of this was happening. The factory would also show Lynn what was really going on.

He needed someone on his side, even if he woke up tomorrow and she had no idea what was going on again. His thought was interrupted by the living room door opening.

Lynn stood in front of him with a stern look on her face. "Okay Jake. As crazy as your story seems, I can just about believe it, but only because you're a terrible liar and you couldn't possibly make this stuff up. You don't have the imagination for it" It was kind of a compliment veiled in an insult. He wondered whether Lynn was ever going to take anything seriously and leave out the witty remarks, but he recognised the need for comments such as hers in a tense situation.

"Thanks," Jake responded, with a hint of sarcasm.

"We need to sort this out. How do we get to these people without involving the police?" she queried.

"We'll go back to the factory where they planned this lot. You'll see what's going on, and maybe there'll be other clues that weren't there yesterday - or tomorrow."

He always managed to confuse himself when referring to yesterday or tomorrow. His yesterday and tomorrow was different from everyone else's on the planet. "All right then, let's go," she said. "That is, if you don't mind going back to the place where you were nearly killed this morning."

"If I avoided every place I'd nearly been killed, I wouldn't have many places left to go by now!" Jake responded. Lynn nodded in agreement and they set off for the abandoned factory on the edge of town.

In less than five minutes they'd arrived. They had both expected the traffic to be heavier at that time of day, but this route was still quiet. Against the wishes of Jake, and against her own better judgement, Lynn drove the car straight up to the car park of the factory. It was empty. The red van wasn't there, and Jake wondered why. In any case, they were safe enough for the moment.

As they stepped out of the car they both looked across the overgrown field to where Jake had parked his car a few hours earlier. It was a black, deformed mess of a car. When the other guy had lost track of Jake he had evidently returned to destroy his car.

"Well, there's not much point in having a closer look at your car now. Looks like they got their hands on it first," Lynn said.

"Forget the car for a minute," Jake responded. "There are bigger things going on here, and we've arrived when there's no one around. We'll need to look around quickly and get out of here in case someone comes back."

Lynn nodded. They walked to the factory and Jake tried the main door. It was locked. Lynn could tell by his puzzled look that he had been expecting easy entry. It hadn't been locked for any of Jake's recent visits. They looked for another way in but found nothing. There was only one way that they were getting into this building, and that was with force. Jake knew he could do nothing further if he simply walked away from this now.

He took a few steps back and ran at the door. As his right shoulder hit the door he felt himself falling with it inside the building. It seemed the door frame was much weaker than the door or the heavy padlock used to secure it. After crashing to the hard ground he got to his feet, feeling a little dizzy, and rubbed his painful right shoulder. That hurt more than he'd expected it would. Not surprisingly when he considered he had collided with a concrete floor with only a solid wooden door for protection against the hard surface.

"That worked a treat," Lynn commented, stepping past him, gazing aimlessly around the factory. "Now, what are we looking for?"

"Anything. Whatever might help us," he replied. He circled around in disbelief. There was nothing there. There was nothing at all. The building was empty, with the floor covered in a thick layer of dust and debris, looking as if no one had been there for several years.

"No. This can't be right," he said with a hint of panic in his voice, which echoed back off the dusty walls. "It was all here. Everything. A blackboard, chairs, and..." The office must still have something in it. He ran across the empty floor, leaving footprints in a thick layer of dust. He found the door to the office and tried the handle. This one opened with little effort. His shoulder couldn't take another hit like the one gained from their entry to the factory. As he stared into the room his shoulders slumped.

Empty. Not only was this building empty, but it looked very much as if no one had been there for at least five or six years. Dust covered everything. Anything metal was badly corroded. Rotten pieces of wood covered the floor. This didn't make sense. People had brought things out of this building this very morning. How could it be so empty now?

"I guess they knew you were coming," Lynn surmised as she walked up behind him.

"I guess they did. I've got to hand it to them. They can cover their tracks well," he stated.

"So Jake, what do we do now?" Lynn asked.

He shrugged. "I have absolutely no idea."
CHAPTER 8

**Wednesday 28** th **January, 7:46am**

Jake couldn't believe what was happening. Nothing about the old factory made sense any more. This building was definitely being used, but it looked as if it had been lying desolate for many months, and probably for several years.

Jake was left speechless by the change in the building from when he'd last seen it. The guy who had attacked him in his car must have had something to do with it. He must have seen his car near the factory and put two and two together.

Returning this building to its former desolate condition would have taken several people the entire morning so far. In just an hour and a half this building had gained month's worth of dust, dirt, and corrosion. They had even damaged a number of the bricks inside and out to give a greater impression of the building falling into disrepair.

These people were not stupid, nor did they take anything for granted when planning and carrying out their attacks. Covering tracks was very hard to do but these people did it very well.

He was reviewing the day's events, trying to decide what he should do next. He knew little about these people or their scheduled attacks. He needed to find some link between his family and the Brady family. They didn't live in the same part of town. They didn't have any professional connections. He listed possible connections in his head and systematically eliminated them, one by one. There was no link, as far as he could see, that could possibly connect the two families, other than the fact that they lived in the same town, but the same could be said for thousands of people.

He and Lynn were now driving back to her house. There was nothing at the dilapidated building he'd frequented over the past few days. He needed another source of information regarding these people. He knew nothing about them, except for the fact that they employed poor quality hit-men, and that they had the money and resources to over-decorate an abandoned factory and restore it to its crummy state at almost a moment's notice.

They had something against the Bradys and his family, and he wasn't going to rest until he found out what it was.

Jake rubbed his tired eyes with his fingers and sighed. "I just don't know where to go from here. These people cover their tracks really well, and I'm no private investigator," he said, not expecting to get a response. "I'm running from the police, and trying to track down a gang of serial killers." He threw his arms up in despair, as far as the ceiling of the small car would allow. "I have no leads, no information, and I'm going backwards in time. Does any part of this not sound crazy to you?"

"I think you need to rest for a couple of hours, then you'll be able to think more clearly. It's been an exhausting day for you so far." Lynn's comment seemed very sensible, and arguing took too much effort.

"Exhausting is not the word. I've seen entire TV series with less going on. When we get back to your place I'll get a little sleep if that's okay with you. First I'll have to call work, and figure out what I'm going to tell Amy... if I tell Amy anything." Jake was confused and very tired. They arrived at Lynn's home and Jake was in the spare room sleeping within minutes.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The corridor in which Joseph was sitting was clean and not particularly well decorated. He'd been sat staring at these two-coloured walls for what seemed like an eternity. People came and went; doctors and nurses entered and exited rooms at seemingly random intervals.

He was running out of things to read on the walls surrounding him. He'd already read public notices about homophobia, basic first aid, and the dangers of super-bugs with emphasis on cleanliness. There were occasional magazines dotted around, but they all seemed to be older than he was, or of a subject matter such as fashion, fame and home-making, so he wasn't remotely interested in trying to read any of them.

Two-tone cream and pastel green walls weren't enough to keep the mind active for four seconds, let alone four hours.

The view in front of him was one that he associated with previous pain. He was reminded of the last time he'd sat staring at these walls inside the Darlington Memorial Hospital, and he hoped the news would be better this time. He was sitting in the same chair as he had done just over a year ago. The last time his father had been beside him, comforting him and reassuring him.

His mother and both of his brothers had been returning home from a New Year's Eve party when a truck, travelling too fast for the conditions, skidded across a snowy road outside of town and hit them. A car would always come off second best in such a collision. He'd seen the police photographs of the accident. The car was a squashed and mangled wreck. They were all killed of course, but the truck driver didn't even get a scratch. He'd been troubled for this past year over the injustice of such a thing, but he knew he couldn't change anything. He did, however, want revenge on that driver. He thought that man deserved to be deprived of something, but his father had told him that revenge led down a dark path from which there was little chance of return. He said that a person loses part of his soul when he seeks out revenge and that a universal justice fixes things eventually. He wasn't sure if he agreed with that any more. Justice would mean his father would now live to take care of him. Reality suggested something different.

He brought himself back to the present and wished he could wake up to discover today was one long nightmare, but he knew that would not happen. As much as it pained him to admit it, this was as real as any previous moment of his life.

His father had arrived at the hospital at about seven. There had been no word on his condition since about fifteen minutes after his arrival. There was internal bleeding and severe trauma to the head, as well as some bad burns.

They'd told him other things about his father's condition, but he was so overawed by the whole series of events that he'd failed to really hear the rest of the details.

A door swung open and a man in a light blue surgeon outfit stood before him, fidgeting with a small blue cloth cap that matched the rest of his uniform. He looked very uncomfortable and upset. Joseph was pretty sure he knew what was coming. His mother and both of his brothers had been taken away from him, and now his father was on the brink of joining them in the afterlife, if he hadn't done so already.

He didn't know if he was prepared to hear what this surgeon was about to say, but he didn't have much choice in the matter.

Before Joseph could say anything the man started to speak. "Mr Brady, I'm sorry but we did everything we could. There were more complications than we had initially thought. Your father didn't make it. I'm so sorry." The surgeon finished what he was saying with a mention of a counselling service and the question of whether any other family members could be informed. It all seemed like a recitation of something from medical school, then the man disappeared back into the room he had exited as quickly as possible.

He was alone, and feeling more alone than anyone else. He had no one left. It felt to Joseph as though his world had collapsed around him. He was on his own with a house and a butcher's shop, and was barely old enough to have finished school. He felt resentment for the stranger who charged out of their van to stop him joining the rest of his family and dying with them. If the man had been involved in the murderous act then Joseph would of course hate the man. If he was trying to help, and thus saved Joseph's life, he would possibly hate him more for causing him to survive and to be left alone in this world.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jake heard the bottom of the thin wooden door scrape against the carpet slightly as it always did when it was opened. The noise was enough to wake him from his sleep. He didn't think any dreams had been interrupted. He was probably sleeping too deeply to dream.

"Re-joining the world of the living I see," Lynn said. "You must have been tired to sleep this long." Lynn's voice helped Jake readjust to reality. He looked at the basic quartz clock on the wall that Lynn had pointed to as she spoke. It was nearly 2 o'clock in the afternoon. His head felt slightly numb, making it difficult to think. His mouth felt as dry as parched earth in the middle of summer. He sat up and was greeted by a brief spell of dizziness before he regained his balance and stood up gingerly.

Jake and Lynn were deep in thought as they had lunch, but neither of them spoke. Jake knew he needed to figure out what his next move would be, and could concentrate better when things were quiet. Every lead he had was gone and he still had no idea what he should do next. Things would reset tomorrow, but that would not help him if he didn't know where he needed to be.

There was only one thought that seemed to lead anywhere: He needed to find out more about the Brady family. Maybe they had more in common with his family than he had previously thought, although he couldn't fathom what that might be. There were two problems with this idea: First of all, he knew that the Brady house would surely be watched by policemen after this morning, and secondly, he wasn't exactly sure where they lived. When he had been outside their house that very same morning he'd arrived there in the back of a dark van before sunrise. When he left the area, he left so quickly that he did not take in any details that would help him to return.

He sat thinking about ways to talk to the Bradys without handing himself over to the police. He also needed to do it without putting himself or them in danger of being hurt by the thugs who orchestrated the attack in the first place. They would still be looking for them, and would be unlikely to give up after one failed attempt.

Jake's eyes were staring into nothingness as he pondered his next move, then he noticed the phone book on the coffee table in Lynn's lounge. He immediately went to it and opened it in the residential listings under the letter B. There were about twenty families with the surname Brady, but he could eliminate quite a few.

He knew the first initial of the man of the house and could cut the list down to five people named "B. Brady".

He asked Lynn for a street map and looked up the street where each Brady family lived. Two of them lived on streets in the area he'd been in that morning. He could handle cold-calling two phone numbers, and so he did.

The first number belonged to a Bill Brady who worked as an estate agent. Clearly not the man Jake wanted to speak to. He pretended to be calling for marketing purposes, offering the man a good deal on double glazing windows, then the man hung up.

Assuming that the Brady's number was listed in the phone book, he had it in front of him. He dialled the number. The phone rang three times, then four. Jake was wondering if anyone would pick up the phone when he suddenly heard a voice on the other end.

"Joey Brady speaking. How may I help you?"

"Hello Joey. This is Jake \- the guy who saved your life this morning." There was silence on the other end, so Jake continued, "I want you to know I had nothing to do with the bomb. I was just trying to save you two when I found out you were being targeted."

"Why should I believe you? You're the closest thing the police have to a suspect. If you didn't do it, then why did you run away like a criminal?" Joseph asked.

"I guess I thought I'd be treated like one for saving someone's life. Listen, if I was behind it, why would I have been in the van? Why would I have stopped you getting in and getting blown up?" Jake answered the question with two of his own.

"Okay, say I believe you. Did you just call to apologise for running off, or to offer your condolences?" Joseph said harshly.

"Condolences? Why would I-"

"My father died in hospital after you deserted us!" Joseph interrupted.

"Hey Joseph, I'm really sorry. I didn't think that would happen. He didn't look too badly hurt, but I'm no first aid expert. I don't think I was being much use anyway." Once again there was no response, just silence. "Listen, I think we could trade information that might help us find out who did this, and why. They tried to kill my family yesterday and there may be more targets, more victims." There was no response again.

Jake decided to carry on with what he was saying. "We can save lives, Joseph. We can bring the real murderers to justice. I will be waiting by the north entrance to South Park, at the end of Victoria Embankment, in half an hour. If you want to know something about these people or how I'm involved you'll meet me there alone. No police, no one but you and me." Jake waited for a response.

"The officer here will want to know where I'm going. I can't just wander off for no reason," Joseph said thoughtfully.

"Just make up some excuse. Say you need to walk around the park alone to clear your head. Whatever you want, just get out there if you want to help either of us to understand any of this." With his last comment Jake hung up the phone. He'd managed to withhold the number but still expected Joseph to find a way to call him back. He fully expected others to be briefed of the contents of the call, but hoped Joseph would go alone.

He wondered whether police had traced the number and whether anyone would try returning the call, but the phone sat idle and there was no sign of anyone calling. He had to clean himself up and get to the park. Between the two of them they might be able to come up with answers to their questions and find the killers they were looking for.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"Did you get his location?" Joseph asked.

"No sir, but we know he was calling from the northernmost part of town. We can't say whether he was at a phone box or at home, but he probably won't stay there long," the officer answered.

"Of course he won't if he's going to be in the town centre in half an hour. Did you hear the conversation, though?" There was a nod in response. Joseph asked, by way of confirming what the police were certain to do, "Is there any way of checking out if his family was targeted yesterday?" he asked.

"I'll call the station and ask for crimes reported yesterday and if anyone with the name of Jake was involved, then we'll know whether or not he was lying to you." The policeman then left the room to make the call.

A couple of minutes later he returned shaking his head. "No sign of any attempt on anyone's life yesterday in Darlington. There was an accident or two but no attack on a family. It looks like this guy was just trying to find some common ground between the two of you so you would trust him."

"So I don't suppose I'm really meeting this guy in the park, am I?" Joseph asked.

"I think you should," the officer responded.

"Are you crazy? If this guy's who you think he is he'll-"

"We will have officers hidden nearby to make sure nothing happens to you." Joseph didn't seem any more assured by that last comment that came by way of interruption. "We may even be able to plant a remote microphone on you so we can hear exactly what's going on."

With the officer's comments, Joseph grew more and more confident that the meeting could go ahead in complete safety, so he agreed to it. What did he really have to lose now anyway?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

South Park was the largest open space in Darlington, and Jake believed it was the safest place for a meeting between him and Joseph Brady. The park entrance was a typical Victorian entrance with decorative iron gates attached to ornate stone pillars. To the left of the large gate from Jake's view was a small river that ran past Victoria Embankment and right through the park. Through the branches of wintry and leafless trees he could see the Feethams football and cricket grounds. The land was donated to Darlington Council by the Quaker community around 1860 with specific conditions of the land only being used for recreational purposes. The football ground was home to Darlington FC between 1883 and 2003 when Darlington moved to a new all-seated stadium on the edge of the town. The football pitch was overgrown and apparently not in use by anyone anymore. This saddened Jake who had experienced many highs and lows watching the local team. Drama and heartache accompanied so many visits, with the occasional glimpse of happiness. The ratio of sadness to happiness was indicative of Darlington FC's current league position. The stadium, left to rack and ruin, was symbolic of the club, also in poor health financially.

Returning his attention back to the park, he spun on his heels and looked around. He was now facing the majority of the park, mostly comprising large grass areas, frequently used for football and other games. Jake would frequently stand not far from his current location early in November of each year for the annual firework display. This was typically impressive and was often advertised as one of the biggest in the country. Today things were quiet and Jake could wander around casually and relax by leaning against a tree, with no one within at least a hundred yards of him.

Jake had surveyed the area surrounding the entrance to the park. There were only a few people around in the middle of a cold January day. Outside the entrance, a homeless man was begging for change to be thrown into a bag on the ground and one or two people were walking their dogs. Nothing out of the ordinary seemed to be happening as far as he could tell.

He looked at his wristwatch. Joseph was nearly ten minutes late. He would allow only five more minutes before assuming that he wasn't coming to see him. He leant up against the large tree again, this time able to see the entire iron gate and stone entrance to the park. One man walking a dog left through the side pedestrian gate, another one entered the park almost immediately. The usual mix of the retired and the unemployed kept themselves busy with their pets during the hours they had to themselves.

Jake noticed a tall, thin man approach the entrance and wait by the large iron gates that marked it. He walked closer and Jake discovered that it was indeed Joseph Brady. "I'm glad you came," Jake said when he was almost next to him. "I was wondering if you'd show up."

"Yeah, sorry I'm late. I couldn't get away any sooner without it looking like I was up to something. The police officer wanted to come with me," he responded.

"Are you sure you weren't followed?" Jake asked. Joseph nodded in response.

They talked for several minutes without making any progress. Jake forced himself to relax, but Joseph was tense. Jake could understand why, given the day he'd had.

Jake had shared his entire story of how he arrived at their house that morning, skipping the time travel to make it more believable. Joseph had shared any information that might relate to Jake's family, and he had mentioned that he vaguely recognised his wife from the pictures he'd been shown in Jake's wallet. Since that point they'd made no more headway in finding out what was really going on.

Just at the point where Jake was growing weary of a conversation that seemed to be leading them around in circles, he was puzzled by a shift in conversation by Joseph. He said that Jake's family had not been attacked yesterday because there was no police record of it. He then said that it was hard to believe that he ran away that morning just because he got spooked.

At that point Jake saw one of the dog-walkers out of the corner of his eye. He was getting closer. He then noticed another man approaching. Joseph started to back away. They were undoubtedly undercover police officers. How could he have been so foolish as to think Joseph would have come alone?

Joseph was probably wired up. He wanted to see if Jake would admit to anything and then hand him over to the police. "No big deal." Jake thought to himself. "If I've outrun the police once, I'm sure I can do it again."

A moment later he felt a thud in his right hand side and was falling to the ground. The next thing he heard was, "I'm arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Brian Brady and for the attempted murder of the Joseph Brady. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something that you later rely on in Court. Anything you say may be given in evidence."

"This is a mistake!" Jake shouted. "I haven't done anything wrong and the real criminal is still out there!" All of a sudden Jake hated himself for getting into this situation. He should have known that this would happen.

He felt the cold hard metal of handcuffs clasp much too tightly around his wrists and he was dragged to his feet. They walked him to a police car and pushed him into the back seat, closing the door that could not possibly be opened from the inside.

Now he was in an awkward situation. He couldn't see any way out of this, but at least he was safe from those thugs who threatened his life today. Maybe being in police custody for the rest of the day wasn't an entirely bad thing. At least he would be protected by the very bars intended to keep him in.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jake sat in the bare concrete walled room awaiting the arrival of a senior officer to question him for the second time. A constable had already asked him for his statement, but there was a general belief that he was holding something back. He'd told them about the threat to his family and how he'd learned about the Brady bomb, but that didn't seem to be enough. They told him there was no record of an attack on his family. He didn't have an answer for that. What could he say? That he was a vigilante who didn't report it and sought revenge himself? That would not make him look much better.

He was deeply concerned that there seemed to be enough evidence to link him to the attack. Of course there was. He had been in the back of the van which had blown up shortly afterwards. There was no conceivable way to do this without leaving some mark proving that you were there. That seemed to be all that they needed. Questioning was just a formality, which they hoped would add something when building a case against him. He fully expected, if time were to move forwards, that he would be charged with this murder in a day or so, and would have to face Court as the accused. They seemed to no longer be looking for suspects. Jake was seated in front of them with some evidence to link him to the attack. They had not considered his reasons for exiting the van and saving Joseph Brady. Maybe they considered that to be a by-product of exiting the van at the wrong moment.

In any case, they believed him to be guilty, but were trying to persuade him to give up the names of the others involved. Jake of course had no idea who else was involved, and he was definitely not working with them. Quite the opposite was in fact true. He was trying to thwart their efforts, but he was now stuck in a police station as their prime suspect, providing them with a perfect scapegoat for their malicious activities.

He heard the creak of the hinges on the old wood and glass door he'd been brought through about an hour before. "Hello Jake Hingham." Jake looked up from the table in front of him, recognising the voice of the officer who'd spoken.

For the second time in as many days he could not believe what he was seeing. His mind flashed back to the incident in his car which led to him being nearly strangled and then being shot at several times. He'd only seen part of the man's face in his rear view mirror, but he'd seen his face when he turned to face a gun barrel.

The very man who'd threatened him and then tried to kill him in two different ways was now sitting on the police side of the desk in Interview Room 2.

Jake wouldn't have been surprised if he heard a large clunk from his own jaw dropping hard enough to hit the table. Even in the most outlandish scenario that Jake could have imagined, he had certainly not expected to see this man in a police uniform.

"My name is Detective Inspector Arnold. I need to ask you some questions," he said with a smirk crossing his face. Jake shook his head in disbelief, hoping others would not treat his reaction as an indication that he wouldn't co-operate.

He knew others would be listening, but if they didn't believe what he had said so far, stating that the DI assigned to the case was guilty of the crime would seem preposterous.

Ten or fifteen minutes of further questioning got the police nowhere. DI Arnold stood up, excused himself, and left the room with the other officer. He returned a minute later on his own. Jake somehow knew that the space behind the one-way mirror was now vacant as well, and that any recording equipment would have been turned off. He'd managed to swindle a chance to talk to Jake alone, and Jake knew exactly where the conversation would lead them.

"Mr Hingham, we both know what's going to happen here. The fact is, you are either going to tell the truth or not, but it won't make much difference. It's just the word of a liar against that of a high-ranking police officer in good standing. Who do you think they're going to believe?"

Jake didn't respond. He didn't speak or move, allowing the policeman to continue. "The point I'm trying to make is this: You cannot make a difference. If you try, I'll squash you." There was the same harshness Jake heard in his car this morning while being strangled. Now DI Arnold was threatening his freedom instead of threatening his life.

So that was it. As far as Jake could see, this was as far as he could go. He'd tried to save five lives and had managed to save four. An eighty per cent success rate was good in some circles, but not in saving lives, not as far as he was concerned.

He was led from the room to a holding cell at basement level in the station. They had another day to question him and locate evidence sufficient to charge him, but Jake was not really concerned about that at the moment.

If time was still going backwards then he'd be fine. He'd wake up tomorrow with the Bradys still alive, and out of police custody.

All he could do for the rest of the day was sit on an uncomfortable metal bench in a bland concrete cell and wait for the day to end. He would have to sleep on a back-breaking bed and hope that tomorrow was yesterday.

CHAPTER 9

**Tuesday 27** th **January, 7:30am**

Jake's eyes shot open and he was relieved to see the familiar surroundings of his own bedroom once again. He'd spent the final hours of his previous day sitting and lying on an incredibly hard mattress. He could have sworn that someone had replaced the usual springs and stuffing with gravel or bricks. It certainly wasn't soft enough to ever be considered a mattress by most people. The whole bed was more like a giant paving slab on solid metal posts.

One thing was clear to him: Whatever happened he was not going to do anything to get in trouble with the police again - or at least, he wouldn't get caught again.

Yesterday – or tomorrow - had been quite a disastrous day. He had saved the lives of only half of the victims he'd set out to save. The record wasn't too bad, considering he knew nothing of what was going to happen, nor did he know where. It might be considered quite admirable that he achieved a fifty per cent success rate, but he kept telling himself that his statistics were human lives. Anything less than one hundred per cent needed to be considered a complete and utter failure.

Jake considered his ability to think quickly at previous points in his life. Throughout his entire life as far as he could remember, his ability to come up with a good lie or excuse in a split second could have been seen as impressive. It even amazed some people, including past employers. Within a second of anything going wrong, he had at least three excuses lined up, ready to explain away some of the incident, or at least his involvement in it. He needed to think as quickly as that when faced with a difficult situation. He needed to retrain his brain to turn bad circumstances into positive actions. If he could do that, he'd be able to act quickly enough to save the remaining people's lives.

Jake thought about the Brady family again and the loss they were about to suffer if no one intervened. That led him to consider the difference he was really making as a result of all of this. He imagined that he was either stuck travelling backwards, or he would continue to do so until he fixed something that required fixing. If only he knew what that something was. What was the point in saving lives in each of these days, if every time he awoke the person would be alive again anyway? Maybe, if this came crashing down somehow, his past intervention would still have saved these lives. He hoped that would be the case or his efforts on each of these days was all but worthless. The only other benefit was the potential for gleaning information that could help stop these killings from ever taking place. If he continued to move backwards, without saving lives or finding out why these people were being killed, he would be achieving nothing. If so, it would be better for the Universe, or whatever was controlling this, to correct time for him, rather than let him waste it.

In the back of his mind he knew he needed to succeed to save his family from a threat that could occur the next day, the next week, or a year from now. He needed to make a big difference to a situation he still did not understand.

He readied himself for work with the usual routine. He showered, dressed, and headed downstairs for breakfast, all the time trying to decide on his next move.

He turned on his mobile phone and a thought occurred to him. He couldn't save the Bradys yesterday but he could give them advance warning today.

He relocated their phone number, which he vaguely recognised from yesterday, and left an anonymous message to warn of tomorrow's exploding van. He hoped they would take the warning seriously on their return home. If not, tomorrow would be the same with one difference: The police would have this telephone message as evidence against him to add to whatever else they would gather.

Bringing his mind back to the present, he'd run out of leads yet again. There was no link between the two victim families, despite the conversation with Joseph Brady yesterday which had resulted in his spending the night in a police cell. He had no idea who was next on their list, nor did he know how to go about finding out.

His only hope was the factory, if indeed there was anything there to find. That was his best option. It was also his only option. He needed to head for that factory and search for more clues.

Breakfast with his family was enjoyable as usual, but his mind was on possible events of the day ahead. He was soon on his way out of the house, having the same conversation with his children about not giving them a lift to school, with the same result. He would drive to his destination and they would walk to theirs.

He kissed his wife and waved his kids goodbye. Climbing behind the steering wheel of his silver car, he saw something that grabbed his attention. That was strange, because this was something he'd seen every day that he'd lived on that street. He had seen the house over the road in his rear-view mirror.

A moment from two days ago flashed into his mind. One of the thugs who paid his family a visit had let slip that he and his family had been watched from the other side of the road for several days before the incident.

He knew he could not hesitate for too long, because the guy over the road would be expecting him to move at any second. Without giving much thought to what he would do next, he pulled out of his driveway and started on his daily journey. As he drove around the corner he stopped the car by the side of the road, where he was sure he could not be seen from the offending house, or from his own.

He was once again on the move without knowing what he was going to do. Instinct had served him reasonably well over the past couple of days, and he decided that he made better decisions when he didn't have the time to sit down and weigh up his options.

He couldn't walk past the front of the house. He would be seen by whoever was in there, the person who had been watching him for days. He knew he needed to force his way into the house from the rear to have surprise on his side.

Jake walked past the fence of the neighbouring house, deciding that it would be too conspicuous to risk climbing the fence and running through someone's garden in broad daylight. He would undoubtedly be spotted and would risk getting the police involved. That had not worked well previously.

As he walked past the fence he noticed a small alley behind the two houses lined by concrete panel walls. Of course that was there!

His sons often went across the road, down that alley to a small patch of grass in the middle of a group of houses. That was where they played most of their football, with friends and neighbours or just the two of them. Jake had accompanied them on the odd occasion. That alley would provide him the perfect way into the residence, to find the spy who had helped to destroy his family several days ago.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jake wasn't expecting to get inside the house so easily. The solid wooden back door was locked, but the window immediately next to the door was partially open. It didn't take much imagination to pull the nearby plastic rubbish bin under the window so he had a platform to reach the narrow gap where the window had been left open.

Within seconds his head and both arms were on the inside of the window, but it took much more time to squeeze the rest of him through the small gap. He thought it fortunate that the house was empty. The window ledge was bare, meaning he wasn't going to knock anything over with his unusual entry, thereby alerting anyone inside.

From the outside the house looked empty. It was a shock to discover that someone had been watching him for days from inside this vacant property. It had seemed bare and undisturbed for several months, and it hadn't looked any different lately.

Even from the inside the house looked as if no one had lived there for a while. Dust lay undisturbed in places. There were no light fixtures, no furniture, and not even any flooring. It seemed the previous residents had chosen to leave nothing behind on their departure. Had it not been for an open window, Jake might well have turned around, assuming that the spy hadn't arrived there yet. Now that he had successfully dragged himself through the top half of the window, it didn't look any more lived-in from the inside.

The kitchen was straight ahead of him, through an archway. As he entered, he discovered a modern room strewn with almost every conceivable built-in appliance in stainless steel. The kitchen clearly cost at least twice as much as the one recently fitted in his own house, but it also looked as though it had not been used for quite some time. There was a smell of stale dust in the air, the kind of smell you only get from buildings that are left empty for more than a couple of weeks.

He had a quick look in the refrigerator, and for the first time saw something other than emptiness. There was milk, cheese, bread, and two tomatoes. He closed the fridge and opened the freezer. There wasn't much there - just a bag of frozen peas and a bag of oven chips, both in the top compartment. This guy had put enough food in here to last him a few days. He closed the freezer door and suddenly had a thought.

Jake had to quash the uneasiness which was rising inside him again. He was inside the house with this guy and he still had no idea what he was going to do. He didn't need to hurt this person, but he did need information. Maybe he would need to resort to hurting the guy to get information, the way he'd seen on TV. He didn't know whether he was prepared to do such things.

Interrogation was something Jake had never thought he'd have to resort to, but this was a desperate time and it required desperate measures. He'd already managed it once, with some success, over the past few days.

He needed a weapon. All he'd seen so far was food, but there must be other things in the house. He started looking through cupboards and drawers. There was nothing else. No rolling pins, no knives, nothing remotely like a weapon. He searched more of the downstairs of the house. There was nothing in the spacious dining room or in the narrow living room. This guy was obviously living upstairs with very little in the way of home comforts.

A single thought came into his head. Maybe he could use some of the food as a kind of weapon when confronting the spy. He went back to the freezer, opened one of the drawers, and pulled out an open pack of frozen peas. He poured a couple of them into his hands and squeezed one between his fingers. They were solid, but probably not solid enough. He dropped a couple of them onto the floor and stepped on them.

The idea seemed like something out of a cartoon, but he considered pouring them onto the landing and hoping the guy would slip on them like marbles. That didn't seem like it was going to work, and would likely only result in the guy being upset that his dinner had just been stepped on. Frozen peas would never support the weight of a person.

He kept his attention on the bag of peas. He dropped the bag into one hand from the other, and decided that there was not enough weight behind it to knock anyone over. He put the bags back in the freezer and decided he would have to make do with his hands and his mind to defeat this guy.

Jake was thinking hard and coming up with very little. All he'd seen was food. The weapon idea clearly wasn't going to work. He needed something to distract the spy upstairs long enough for him to get up there and see what he could find out.

Jake had a sudden spark of inspiration. He opened the freezer again, and took out the open bag of peas. He shut the door and quietly made his way up the stairs.

The top of the stairs was dark. All the doors leading onto the compact landing were closed. He needed to make this person believe that there was someone downstairs. The stairs and the landing had been stripped of its carpet, leaving floorboards exposed. This would make it harder to be quiet when moving across the landing. He heard shuffling from the door facing the stairs. Opening the bag as much as he could, Jake poured the peas onto the stairs and the floor below, then he let go of the bag.

The clattering sound of a couple of hundred peas on wooden floors was enough to alert the watchman. Jake quickly moved to the side of the door opposite the stairs.

"Who's there?" Jake heard the man ask. He had a weedy sounding voice. Jake suspected he was not a tough, meat-headed thug like those he'd dealt with previously. Then footsteps approached the door. The handle moved and the door opened. Jake pressed himself against the wall as much as he could in the hope that he wouldn't be seen.

The guy stood at the top of the stairs and peered down, seeing the bag of peas below. He was around five and a half feet tall and was as thin as a rake. Jake was sure he could easily take him in a fight, but still hoped to avoid one.

The man continued to look to the base of the stairs. Jake had never seen anyone actually scratch his head in confusion until that moment, and he had to hold back a brief laugh at the sight of the man's reaction.

The watchman started walking down the stairs to investigate. When the hallway was clear, Jake sneaked into the bedroom unseen through the open doorway.

A large pair of binoculars stood near the window. Jake picked them up and walked to a sports bag in the middle of the floor, finding only spare clothes inside.

Jake's head spun around as he heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Still holding the binoculars in his right hand, he hid behind the door. He seemed to have been doing a lot of that lately. He could see through a gap where the hinges held the door. This stranger was about to walk through the doorway.

Jake readied himself for a fight, and started swinging his right hand. As if choreographed, the guy walked into the room just as the binoculars came swinging around the door. They hit him full in the face. A small thud was made by a small object hitting the floor, apparently dropped by this man.

With the blow to the face, the man keeled over and clutched his face, letting out a pained cry. At the same moment, Jake brought the binoculars crashing down on the back of his head. With the second blow, he hit the floor, and was now motionless. If Jake could have taken and used the binoculars before the assault, he certainly couldn't have used them afterwards. A couple of the lenses were now cracked, indicating that the two blows were harder than Jake had realised.

Jake discarded the binoculars and thought perhaps he should make sure the guy wasn't awake. He nudged him, prodded him, and shook him, but there was no movement. The guy was out cold, but Jake had no idea how long he would remain that way.

He searched quickly through the bag in the middle of the floor before he checked the man's pockets. Inside were several pieces of paper, some keys and a wallet. He also discovered that the small object he had heard falling to the floor earlier was in fact a mobile phone. He took all of the objects and made his way downstairs. He wasn't about to hang around to find out what was going to happen when the guy woke up again.

This man might only be unconscious for a couple of minutes. Jake was going to make quite sure that he was long gone by the time the guy realised what had happened. He unlocked the back door, exited and locked it again. With this man's possessions, he now had enough to continue his own investigation, and hopefully to make the guy's surveillance job a lot more difficult.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jake was sitting at his office desk for what seemed to be the first time in weeks.

In his suit jacket pockets were the articles he had acquired during the morning's activities. He held a cream coloured business card belonging to the man he'd immobilised in his hand. "L. Miller Private Investigator" was printed along the top of the fancy looking card in dark red lettering. This guy was a professional P.I. He must have been hired at some expense by the people behind these attacks, to make sure they received reliable information.

Jake wondered if L. Miller had any idea what his investigations were leading to. Surely he had a professional reputation to uphold, didn't he? Even a P.I. had to operate within the law, and such activities would make him an accessory to murder, at the very least. The police would undoubtedly want to question him if they found out he'd been investigating people who would eventually be eliminated by his clients. Either L. Miller had no idea what was happening as a result of his investigations, or he was being paid enough that it didn't matter to him what would happen to the unknowing subject of his spying.

Maybe Jake was thinking about this too deeply. He could concentrate on these things later, but now he had to figure out who was next on the list for the killers.

He had searched through the investigator's bag while he had been inside the house but he had found nothing. He hadn't bothered taking it, but now he wondered whether perhaps he should have done. He may have missed vital information in his hurry to leave.

He retrieved the papers from his pockets. These scraps of paper had small details of his family's life scribbled on them. There was a chart to record his family's actions. Everything he found related purely to his family. This guy seemed to know nothing of the other targets, or if he did he had not written them down. It seemed, from the information he'd found, that this guy might be completely unaware of what he was involved in.

Jake still hadn't looked at the guy's phone. He was sure he'd find nothing there but clients and family contacts. He turned on the phone, but there was a crack in the screen. It must have happened when he was hit with his own binoculars using considerable force, causing the phone to tumble to the bare wooden floor. It meant that only half of the screen worked. He couldn't read anything on that display.

Just as he concluded that the phone was useless to him, it started ringing. He couldn't make out enough of the number displayed for it to be useful to him. He couldn't decide whether to answer it or not.

This could well be the people who had hired him to spy on Jake's family. On the other hand, it could be a new client. It could be someone the P.I knew, who would instantly recognise that this was not Mr Miller's voice.

With indecision setting in, he let instinct take over again. He held the phone to his ear and said, "Miller."

"I wondered if you'd ever answer." It was a man with a deep, menacing voice. "We have a family set for tomorrow, you'll come in after that. Do you have enough information?"

"I do. The family have a set routine day to day, so they are ready when you are." Jake responded, and then thought he'd take a risk. "What about the others? Have they been taken care of?"

The other voice responded with a harsher tone than before, "That is no concern of yours. You're getting paid to do a job. Just do it."

"That is not good enough, sir," Jake responded. "I mean, I have my reputation to consider. I need proof that I'm not being set up to take the fall for something."

"Reputation? You're a P.I. You guys barely have a reputation above politicians and rodents. Why can't you just stay out of things and be happy with a few grand at the end of it?"

"I guess I'm never happy unless I know everything. I'm just an inquisitive fellow I suppose. Where can we meet to discuss this?"

"The factory. Meet me there in an hour and you'll have your proof. Then I want to hear no more about this." With that, the mysterious man hung up.

Jake had an hour to formulate a new plan. This guy would be at the factory in an hour or less. Jake needed to surprise him with something, but what?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jake looked at his watch again, even though he'd looked at it just seconds before. The first time he had looked at it he didn't really pay attention to the time it showed. That was his entire objective in looking at his watch, but he was so distracted by his thoughts that somehow his mind hadn't registered what his eyes had seen.

The time was still just after 10:30am. The man with the evidence would be there any minute, and Jake would be waiting, along with a large piece of wood he found lying on the floor of the factory.

The factory was the way it had been when he'd first seen it. The furniture was back, allowing Jake to wait comfortably behind the elaborate desk. He sat in the leather chair and rested his makeshift weapon against his side of the desk. He had already checked the desk for clues but had found nothing. It seemed he had been lucky to find something useful in the drawers on a previous visit. His only chance of information would be the guy on his way to this spontaneous rendezvous.

He heard the heavy but worn factory door open and close, followed by footsteps on the bare concrete. He had arrived. After a few seconds the footsteps approached the door to the room in which Jake waited. He spun the chair to face the window to keep the element of surprise. He didn't want this guy recognising who he was, or who he wasn't, and then run before Jake could get his hands on the details of the killing spree.

The door opened. "Take a seat," Jake requested, sticking out his right arm, indicating his location. The man obliged, sitting in a much less expensive seat on the other side of the desk.

"I don't see why we're doing this. My boss is gonna be mad when he finds out I showed this stuff to anyone, let alone a P.I." The man had a thick East London accent with a deep, gravelly tone to his voice.

"Don't you trust people in my profession?" Jake asked accusingly as he spun the chair around, fully expecting to see a reaction from the man sitting opposite him. The guy didn't flinch. He had obviously never met this private investigator face to face but had communicated solely by brief telephone conversations. It was likely any exchange of information was done using some kind of mail-drop.

The man was a very heavy set individual. He was the kind of person who may be asked to purchase an extra seat by an airline when taking a flight. Jake wondered if he'd eaten someone his size for breakfast that morning. It looked like such a thing was certainly possible. The man had dark eyes and an evil stare. He had thick eyebrows that seemed to almost meet in the middle above his ski-slope nose and had thinning black and grey hair covering the top of a high forehead.

The large man placed an A4 sized manila envelope on the desk and slid it towards Jake. He opened it, withdrew about ten pages, and scanned them, trying to commit as much as possible to memory.

"Why is this all happening?" Jake asked.

"I'm not answering that one. You've already asked too many questions. All I'll say is that all these people should never have been poking their nose into other people's business." The man responded in a less than polite tone. "This conversation is over." he said, standing up. He reached across the desk and snatched the papers out of Jake's hands.

Unluckily for Jake, he happened to be on a page with pictures of him and his family. "What the hell?" he yelled. "You're not Lauren Miller. What the hell are you doing here and what's going on? Where's the P.I?"

Jake needed to shut this guy up quickly. In a flash he'd grabbed the large plank of wood and whacked the big man across the face with it. He fell to the floor in an instant, groaning. The large piece of wood made a surprisingly loud thudding noise when contact was made with his head once more. With that, Jake grabbed the papers from the desk with one hand, dropping the wood he'd held in the other. He ran as fast as his legs could take him out of the factory towards his car. He thought the man wouldn't be far behind him, despite his size, and would be trying to recover the situation if he managed to catch him up.

Jake made it to his car, hurriedly climbed inside and started the engine, ignoring the beep signalling he was not wearing his seatbelt. He put the automatic in drive, removed the handbrake with the button to the left of the steering wheel with a clunking sound, and pressed his right foot on the accelerator as hard as he dared.

The car flung forward, thrusting Jake into his seat. He had not been so aggressive in his driving since getting the car and was surprised at how quickly it could move with a bit of prompting. He was driving out of the concrete car park at speed when he heard the all-too-familiar sound of a gunshot behind him. His left wing mirror shattered and he realised this guy was actually quite a good shot. That no doubt made up for his size and the lack of speed that came with it.

As he turned right out of the entrance and headed as far away as possible, a thought occurred to Jake. This man now knew that he knew something. He would have access to Jake's details within minutes. Very soon he would know where he lived and worked, and he had nowhere he could hide. Jake's best move for now was to keep driving. He had a mostly full tank of petrol and a heavy right foot. He could get a long way from this place, where the overweight thug would have no chance of finding him.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jake had been driving for two and a half hours, and was sure there was no one following him. He was a couple of counties away in a motorway service station. He sat at a table of the small diner on the site, holding the evidence in his hands.

The diner in which he sat was typical of hundreds all over the UK. They were known by their bright red sign showing a chubby character with a smile on his face – not exactly a logo to encourage healthy eating, but it was indicative of the type of food on the menu. Every meal seemed to include at least one type of fried food. Most dishes included several.

He was now sitting at a round wood-effect laminated table, with a portion of French fries and a cheeseburger on an oversized plate being placed there by a young and thin smiling waitress. He suspected she didn't eat much of this type of food herself. To the right hand side of the plate were several pieces of paper containing the names of the people that had been targeted by D.I Arnold and with whoever he had been working.

There was a list of perhaps twenty names. Jake's family were perhaps fourth or fifth down the page. For each family named, there was a sheet containing their details. This was a big cover-up. He wished he knew what they were covering up. These people must all have something in common. They'd all been somewhere and seen something recently, but what had they seen? What could Amy and the kids have seen that he didn't see?

The more Jake discovered about this whole series of events, the less it made sense to him, and the larger the conspiracy was becoming. He felt very much as though he was in over his head, and there was no one he could talk to about this. He had felt alone at various points over the past few days, but now he felt more alone than ever. No one was going through what he was going through. No one could understand his plight.

Jake had another look through the names that had already been "taken care of" and realised that no one was due to be attacked today. For the rest of the day there was no one left to save but himself.

He needed to hide away and study the information he had in front of him. If he could last until the end of the day, and commit this information to memory, he would have an advantage over these people tomorrow. There were three to save in the course of the day and he needed to hit the ground running if he was to succeed in saving them.

He left the cheap diner and booked himself into the nearby roadside hotel. The hotel was basic and cheap. It was apparently run by the same people as the diner in which he had just eaten, judging by the meal deals and bed and breakfast offers thrust at him when he asked for a room. He opted for just the room, knowing that he would not be there by the time breakfast was served. The room into which he entered by virtue of a plastic key card had one double bed, a small cream coloured plastic en-suite and some unusual artwork on the walls. The television was small and the remote barely worked, but this was of little concern to Jake. He would spend the rest of the day studying the paper in preparation for the following day.

He had to keep his head down and prepare for tomorrow. His tomorrow – their yesterday - would be a very busy day, and there was no margin for error when lives were at stake.
CHAPTER 10

**Monday 26** th **January, 7:30am**

Jake awoke in his own bed after spending the rest of the day in a lonely cheap hotel room a couple of hundred miles away. Today he was glad to be back in familiar surroundings once again. He remembered his reaction on waking up when this Monday first rolled around, now nine days ago to him. He didn't much enjoy work, and so had a feeling of dread deep within him every time he awoke knowing he had a whole week of work ahead of him.

This time, he wasn't sure what he felt. He was still confused by his unique situation. Why was this happening? How long would it continue? He still didn't know what these killers had done, or what they had tried to do. The only information he had received about the original incident was that all future victims had somehow interfered with something.

He had so many questions that he didn't know which one to try to figure out first. He figured that he'd just let the day unwind and see if anything became clearer than it was at that moment. It seemed with every passing day that a little bit more information was added to what Jake already knew. Unfortunately for Jake, the added information each day seemed to confuse more than assist.

Whatever happened, he was in for a busy day. According to the papers he'd spent all of his previous night studying, Julie Clark, Peter White and William Spalder were the targets for that day. It seemed to have been well-planned. Julie was hit at 10:30am, Peter at 12pm, and William at 2:15pm. According to the papers he'd seen, everything went like clockwork. At least that was until Jake would arrive on the scene to disrupt things. He was about to change all of that.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The light green walls of his office never looked as dull to him as they did that day as he sat behind his desk at Nannotek.

He had experienced so much over the past few days that his office, by comparison, seemed like the most boring place on earth. He had been in an exploding van, had been shot at several times, spent the night in a police cell and had come through it all relatively unscathed. The injuries he had received had now been evaporated due to time rewinding again. He felt for a moment like he was invincible, and the day-to-day work he'd undertaken over the last few years was now beneath him. Of course, he knew he was not really invincible, he was just lucky. If time were to suddenly move in a forward motion again he would realise how invincible he was in reality.

Jake managed to relieve the boredom between complaint calls by searching the Internet for time travel information. In the search engine results he had seen several intriguing websites listed, such as "How Time Travel Would Work" and "Time Travel for Beginners." He smiled at the second one, and asked himself, "How many people are not beginners when it comes to time travel?" Maybe people had actually done it and were keeping quiet? Ridiculous! But then again, with the reaction he had received every time he told anyone about his experience, he could understand why a person who had actually done so wouldn't tell anyone about having travelled through time.

He found it interesting that time travel hadn't been ruled out by science. He read a bit about the space-time continuum, stating that time cannot exist without space, neither space without time. It all sounded interesting, but way beyond his ability to understand. He didn't have enough time to figure out how it was all working, nor did he think he would succeed in figuring things out where hundreds of more intelligent people had failed.

All Jake cared about was using his time wisely. He looked at the clock on his wall. He had only half an hour to get to the scene of Julie Clark's attack. Luckily for him, it was only a short drive away.

The attempt on Julie Clark's life was a hit-and-run on Duke Street – a busy street in the middle of the town. He had no idea where this woman lived or worked, so all he could plan on doing was to intercept her and try to prevent her from putting herself in danger.

He'd seen a picture of her. She was probably around the age of forty, with blonde hair and glasses. She looked like any typical businesswoman. He had enough information to prevent this attack. Now he just needed to find an excuse for getting out of the office for a little while.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Stretching like an arrow, pointing in a straight line towards the Town Centre, was Duke Street. Lined with the typical ageing Edwardian and Victorian Era terraced brick buildings, it was very busy for most of the year. A number of locals referred to the end of the street where Jake was standing as Estate Agent Central. It was an appropriate name as nearly every shop front marked another independent estate agent, each with a window full of colour pictures of houses available to buy or to rent. There were, of course, other shops. There was an exclusive-looking opticians, a number of small clothes shops and the occasional shop representing various charities. In addition to the retail establishments, this street was a popular choice for cheap parking, assuming a space could be found by the side of the road.

The number of people passing by had been greatly multiplied on account of the January sales with a substantial number of shoppers going about their business, locating car parks close to the centre of town. There was only one lane of traffic flowing in each direction on a narrow road, aside a packed pavement and parked cars on either side filling every possible space. It seemed impossible that someone could drive fast enough to cause an accident on this road. Between the various crossings and road junctions, there was not a long enough piece of road to build up any speed.

Jake suddenly felt overwhelmed by the size of the street. It was perfectly straight, but it wasn't particularly long. It was, however, long enough to cause him a problem. He didn't know exactly where the hit-and-run was going to take place and there was no information available to him to reduce his search area.

He looked at the street, trying to get inside the mind of a killer. He needed to figure out how and where someone would plan something like this attack. Towards the bottom of the street was a long segment of road, which ended with a right turn, but the road itself continued into a pedestrian zone, with brick paving replacing tarmac.

Only delivery vans and similar types of vehicle were allowed down the road during the day, but there was no barrier preventing others from driving down it, should they choose to ignore the multiple signs indicating that a fine may be issued on driving into the area.

On closer inspection, Jake discovered that there were usually two bollards at the entrance to the pedestrian area, but for whatever reason they had been removed. It seemed that part of the planning could well have been the bribing of the man that held the key to the usual blockade, making sure it was open today. Maybe his friend, the corrupt policeman, had ordered that the route to the brick paved road should remain open and clear of obstruction.

He deduced that this must be close to where the "accident" was going to happen. He glanced at his watch, and then around him as he stood in the middle of the pedestrianised portion of the road, surrounded by people and shop-fronted two storey buildings of various ages and states of repair. Occasionally older buildings had been torn down and replaced with newer but uglier buildings. He did not have time to consider the architectural merit of his surroundings, however. He had a task to complete within the next couple of minutes.

Once again he looked at his watch twice in just a few seconds, realising that he wasn't paying attention when he looked at it previously. He needed to get out of the habit of doing that, but it was obvious that his mind was elsewhere. When he needed to stay focussed, he would make sure he kept his mind on important things.

Looking up from his watch again, he could see Julie. She was approximately five and a half feet tall, was wearing a light grey trouser-suit and had her blonde hair tied back, but was wearing the same glasses that she was wearing in the picture Jake had seen. She had a thin face that seemed to typically wear a slightly withdrawn look.

There were still two or three minutes until someone was due to hit her. She was walking straight towards him as he stood in the middle of the pedestrianised section of the road. He thought hard to find words to say that might distract her enough to stop her getting run over. She was just a couple of feet away from him in that busy street when he blurted out her name. She stopped dead and stared at him, trying to figure out whether she knew his face from somewhere.

"Do I know you?" she said with a puzzled look crossing her face.

"In a way, you do. I live in the same apartment block as you." Jake took a risk with a blatant lie.

"Oh, right!" she replied, feigning recognition. "Two flats below me?"

"That's right. I moved in recently," Jake lied, playing along, hoping she was not talking about a neighbour she had had for several years. "I could do with drinking something. Have you got time for a coffee?"

"Not really. I'm in a hurry," she told him. And with that, and rather abruptly, she walked off. Jake turned to follow her, but Julie got suspicious. He suspected she had seen through his lies. She started walking faster, apparently worried that Jake was some kind of stalker. He wouldn't care what she thought, as long as she moved to a place where she wasn't in danger, but instead she was moving swiftly into the middle of the bricked road, close to the place where bollards would usually be situated.

He looked at his watch. It was exactly 10:30am. He looked at the busy road ahead of him. A red sports car was approaching at some speed, indicating to turn to its right into a car park when the main part of the road ended.

Jake walked in Julie's direction, but the walk turned into a run as the car's approach quickened. "Julie!" Jake shouted. "Get out of the way!" With every pedestrian gazing on the scene in the middle of the street, Jake continued his chase.

With every passing second the car drew closer, and Jake was soon within a couple of steps from the woman he was trying to save. Sadly, his chase caught her attention more than the car ahead of her and she continued to move into the path of the oncoming car.

When she was within reach, Jake flung himself at her, knocking her out of the car's path. His own momentum caused him to tumble clear of the speeding vehicle as it rushed past his feet.

Jake rolled along the ground to the sound of screeching tyres, and the scream of a frightened woman.

It took Julie several moments to realise that Jake had in fact saved her life. After yelling at him for the minor injuries she had sustained, she calmed herself and quietly apologised, then thanked him for his heroism. The thought occurred to Jake that he could have easily lost his own life in an attempt to save the life of a stranger, but he was currently more concerned about her safety than his own.

"You'll not be safe until you get far away from here," he said. "Somebody wants you dead and I'm here to make sure you don't fall victim to them."

Julie's eyes widened. Jake could almost see her mind working. She was probably thinking of the current injustice of it all; Thinking of how she'd never hurt anyone, nor deliberately offended anyone, and how there were people far more deserving of dying than her. He thought she might be having such thoughts, because he had had them several days earlier.

"However crazy this sounds you'll do well to believe me. What almost happened to you was no accident. You've seen something and someone wants you out of the way so you can't interfere. You must find a safe place to go immediately," Jake added.

"Where should I go?" Julie responded. "Do they know where I live?"

"They will not only know where you live, they'll know about your family, your history, they'll know what you had for breakfast this morning," he replied. "Get to a car if you can and get as far away as a tank of petrol will get you. Failing that, if you follow me I'll take you somewhere safe, where they won't know to look for you."

Panic seemed to envelop Julie. She turned on her heels to face away from Jake, and ran away as fast as she could. "Get out of town immediately or they'll find you!" he called after her, his final instruction to her as she rounded a corner and disappeared from view. He hoped she would listen, or the cuts and bruises they had both just sustained would be for nothing.

He looked at his watch again. 10:32am. One person saved - at least for now - and less than an hour and a half to go until the next attack. There was no time to sit and wonder what would happen to Julie, or about what he would do next.

The driver of the red sports car had emerged from the car that was inches from crashing into a baker's shop front. The man was roughly five and a half feet tall, covered in tattoos and, despite his lack of height, looked as if he was about to squash Jake. He was walking swiftly in Jake's direction with a somewhat demonic look on his face. He took another couple of steps and started to reach inside his jacket with his right hand. It was clear to him that this man was about to take action to stop him interfering. It was time for Jake to make a speedy retreat from the scene before the man considered shooting, and before anyone recognised him. He turned and ran down a narrow alleyway between two shops, and away to eventual safety.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jake had spent several minutes looking through a phone book for P. White. After several call attempts and a number of apologies, he found the right phone number and address. He had driven to the house and was currently parked outside.

Olympic Street was made up of a long line of two bedroomed Victorian era housing on both sides of the road. The houses were all two storey with grey slate roofs. Above the ground floor was a small red tiled roof that acted as a porch area across the front of each house. Almost every house he could see had an almost identical partially glazed white PVC front door. He wondered what this street would have looked like before double glazing salesmen had prowled the area.

He walked to the door of a house somewhere in the middle of the row, not knowing what he was about to say. He knocked on the door, and waited. A few seconds later he was faced with a middle-aged woman, asking who he was. "I am Officer Hampden from the Homicide division of Durham Constabulary. Your husband's life is in danger. I must know where is at this very moment."

"He's at work. He works at Swannay Insurance, just down the road," she replied hastily, nodding her head in the direction of the office as though it was next door. Jake knew where the place was. He drove past it on the way to work every day. It was barely at the end of the road. "There's a chance we may need to locate his car. Can you describe it for us?" he asked.

"It's a red Suzuki four-by-four. The registration number is PK 03 XXC." she responded. Jake was surprised at how open she was, especially as he had not shown any identification. He had nothing but a driving license to show if she had asked, and that of course would have his real name on it, not the fake name he'd just used.

"Thank you. We will locate him and keep him safe until the threat passes. We will of course keep you up-to-date." With that, she thanked him and soon he was making the short drive to the workplace of Mr White.

Within a couple of minutes Jake was in the car park of the small business park on Yarm Road that housed four different small, local businesses. The large car park sat in the middle of four new light coloured brick buildings with a royal blue trim, with windows and doors in the same colour and shade. The park was well landscaped with a number of types of tree and bush dotted around, separated by a light coloured gravel. The whole business park was well-kept and quite an attractive location for any business. An office here was probably not cheap.

He located the building with a gold engraved plate indicating that Swannay Insurance was inside. He tried the door and found it to be locked. There was a light on inside and a man walking past a large logo for the company. The logo was comprised of a large blue circle containing two small white ellipses positioned towards the top right and bottom left. The logo seemed like a poor attempt to make the letter "S" out of circles.

As the man walked in front of the logo Jake knocked on the glass door marking the entrance, causing the man inside to turn his head quickly to meet Jake's gaze.

The man walked towards the door, and Jake recognised him as Peter White. The door opened and Jake explained for the second time today that this man's life was in danger. Peter's less-than-pleased response included the phrase, "I'm hungry and I don't have time for this," and he left the building and walked towards his car so he could go and get some lunch.

Jake followed him to his car, trying to convince him. "My name is Jake Hingham. Someone attempted to kill my family a couple of days ago, and since then they've tried to kill me and three other people. I'm not lying when I say this." Peter rolled his eyes, but said nothing. The reaction made his disdain and disbelief obvious. "Why would I be making this stuff up?" Jake retorted.

"Who knows?" Peter snapped back. "You probably believe it too. Some people are just crazy, I suppose."

"Listen to me!" Jake said, almost shouting at him. "You witnessed something recently that caused people to put out a hit on your life. I'm trying to protect you."

"This is how you protect people? Stalk them and fill their head with paranoid delusions?" Peter snapped again. "I'm a nobody and I'm not worth attacking. Believe me, I'm perfectly safe." Jake knew he wasn't going to get through to this man, and he had a feeling time was running out.

By this point in the conversation both men were standing, frustrated, next to the door of the large red car. Peter unlocked the car doors and opened the driver side door before climbing into the seat. He moved to close the door. Desperate, Jake grabbed the door, and wouldn't let it close. After a brief wrestle, Jake let him go. He couldn't save someone who didn't want to be saved. The door slammed shut and Jake turned his back on Peter and his car, hoping his warning would at least cause the man to be more cautious.

Jake was walking away when he heard that the car was failing to start, then failing to start again. He stopped about twenty feet away, and turned around to face the red vehicle.

Jake took two steps towards the car in time to see it blow up in front of him, the blast almost deafening him and releasing a wave of blistering, forceful heat which threw him several feet through the air like a child's doll before allowing him to tumble back to earth. The blast sent pieces of the vehicle as high as almost a hundred feet into the air. Whoever had targeted this man certainly wanted to make sure there was no doubt about the outcome. There was enough explosive to demolish a house, let alone kill the driver of an average sized vehicle.

He hit his head on the ground when he came back to earth with a bump, but before he could assess the injury he noticed a large sharp red piece of twisted metal spinning and heading straight for his head. He deemed the metal to be a greater and more immediate threat to his life than his head injury, and so quickly rolled out of the way, but didn't quite move fast enough. The piece of metal landed on his left shoulder as he rolled. Jake yelled as he felt something cut him deeply, possibly cracking something. Injured in more ways than one, he raised himself onto his feet. He could still move his left arm without excruciating pain so he hoped it wasn't too bad an injury. Even though he was in a good deal of pain, he was glad to still be alive and to still be in one piece. Rewinding to yesterday would fix his injuries anyway. He struggled to his feet and hobbled further away from the blast site. He looked back over his shoulder to see the twisted base of the car sitting in a burning crater in the middle of the car park.

A frail looking grey haired man came rushing out of another door on the ground floor of one of the larger business buildings. He was wearing a black coat with SECURITY printed in large white block letters on the front and back of it. He looked stunned by what he was seeing. The security guard shouted at Jake, "Don't move! I'm calling the police!"

"The police did this! If you make that call you'll be starting the cover-up" Jake shouted back. The security guard looked shocked and he didn't respond. He stood there, motionless, clearly wondering what to do next. Jake took the initiative and moved as quickly as he could towards him.

"Look," Jake said when he was within ten feet of him, "My name is Jake and I tried to stop this. I'm hurt. I think it's safe to assume that the guy in that car is dead." The man nodded. Jake carried on with his instructions. "I need to know who did this, but I need your help to do it."

The man cowered a little, but seemed to pull himself together. "Follow me. Security cameras record everything from several angles," he said.

Inside the Security office, as they both stood hunched over the security monitor. Jake and the security guard watched cars whiz in and out of the car park, viewing the security footage at high speed. Suddenly they saw someone with a large suitcase approach the car, crouch down, and slide underneath. This was obviously the man planting the bomb underneath the driver seat. They watched several minutes of video, but couldn't zoom in close enough to see the man's face. The digital videos just showed as blocks when they zoomed in any closer. He wondered whether anyone could really enhance video footage in the way guys on crime investigation TV shows could. Now he just thought it was a way for screenwriters to get themselves out of a difficult situation.

The man who had slid underneath the car arrived on foot and had departed the same way. There was no way to trace him. Other cameras were not pointed at any part of the incident, so no further footage would help with identifying this man. They didn't know who he was, where he had come from, or where he had gone.

Jake needed more information, but he wasn't going to find it now. The police were arriving, so Jake knew he would have no hope of getting near the car to hunt for any evidence. Not that it would help anyway. He was no explosives expert, despite the fact that he seemed to constantly find himself next to exploding vehicles. He assumed that a couple of run-of-the-mill officers would show up to deal with the scene, and afterwards the corrupt policeman he knew would contaminate any worthwhile evidence, preventing the case from going anywhere.

He didn't think the man responsible for these attacks would bother to show up to document what had happened. He would simply wait for the evidence to turn up and make sure that none of it pointed back to him, or the assigned officers would be reassigned and the case filed away somewhere. True to his instinct, within seconds they heard police sirens approaching. For the first time in a while Jake did not feel the urge to run in the opposite direction on hearing a police siren. The feeling of calm on their approach was quite a relief.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Two bog-standard police officers had spent more than half an hour deciding on the extent of the crime scene, and blocking off everything possible from being publicly accessible. They'd put on gloves and put every speck of dust in the car park into its own polyethylene evidence bag. They had managed get to a point where someone could question Jake.

In a police van outside of streams of yellow "CRIME SCENE - DO NOT CROSS" tape, Jake was asked to give his account of the explosion he'd witnessed first-hand. One officer watched as the other tried to use a small flat surface as a desk for Jake's written statement.

"So, sir, I understand you spoke to the gentlemen shortly before the incident," the senior officer asked.

"Yes, I had an appointment to discuss an insurance claim," Jake replied. The policeman seemed to believe Jake's story as he wrote it down as part of his statement. "Did you see anything suspicious?" the officer asked.

"No I didn't. I had no idea what was going on," Jake responded.

"Is there anything you wish to add to your statement?" the officer asked, staring at Jake. He seemed to be hoping for some additional information that would benefit the case. Unfortunately for him no such information was forthcoming.

"Not that I can think of," Jake answered. The statement was short, and excluded most of Jake's story, but he hoped they wouldn't search for the holes in his statement. He didn't need the trouble that the police could land him in if they found out he had been lying to them. He had already had enough run-ins with the police over the past few days.

He had been able to get some basic treatment for the damage to his shoulder. Neither the security guard nor the two policemen believed anything was broken or seriously damaged, despite what Jake was telling them.

They treated the wound and bandaged up his shoulder. It still hurt like hell when he tried to move his arm, but it seemed he would have to grin and bear it. It wasn't going to drop off, even if it felt like it might do just that from time to time. He figured he would try to avoid using it, but he didn't know how successful he would be at saving a life if he was having difficulty moving.

Just a few minutes later he was free to go. He'd signed his statement, the security guard had been mostly honest, and the two stories matched. Jake was grateful for this old man's help to get him away from suspicion as well as the crime scene.

He jumped into his car and started to move away when he remembered the pain in his shoulder. Immense pain shot through his left arm when he tried to hold the steering wheel. That wasn't going to work. He'd have to try and drive with just his right hand. Luckily he was behind the wheel of an automatic. He had seen others drive with one hand, but he had never previously attempted it himself.

He was of the belief that if two arms were available for steering, then both should be used. However difficult one-armed driving might be, it was still better than walking or relying on public transport, especially when lives were at stake.

He looked at his car's instrument panel. The time was 2pm. William Spalder was running out of time and he didn't even know it.
CHAPTER 11

**Monday 26** th **January, 2:00pm**

William Spalder currently had fifteen minutes to live. He probably wasn't aware that was the case. Unfortunately there were no details about the attack whatsoever. No address, no photograph, only a name. It was an unusual name, so Jake hoped that the phone book or a directory enquiry line would be able to help him with his task when he arrived back at the office.

He was contemplating his next move when he heard police sirens behind him and could see red and blue lights flash in his rear view mirror. He looked down at his car's speedometer. He was driving at around twenty seven miles per hour in a thirty limit. He wasn't speeding. He had obeyed every traffic law, not even going through lights on amber, staying in the correct lane. He had not put a foot wrong. There was some other reason for a policeman wanting to pull him over.

He moved to the side of the road and came to a complete stop, leaving the car in Drive. The police car pulled up about three metres behind him with its lights still flashing. Jake watched intently using his rear-view mirror.

There were two officers in the car. The one in the driver side opened his door first and stepped out, but was hesitant. The other officer opened his door and stepped out quickly and with determination. Jake's heart raced as he saw the face of the second policeman.

D.I Arnold walked towards Jake's car with a colleague. Jake remembered their conversation in an interview room, only a matter of hours ago as far as he was concerned. Of course, D.I Arnold was not aware of that conversation having happened yet. Jake needed to be careful to prevent a repeat of it today. He waited until both officers were a couple of steps away from the front doors of his car.

When they were within reach, and Jake could hear their footsteps on the tarmac and see a hand reach for his door handle, he took off the handbrake slammed his foot down on the car's accelerator pedal, speeding away as fast as his car would take him. He was flung back so hard into his seat he felt like someone had literally thrown him back into it. He had never tested out the speed of his car from a standing start before and he was hugely impressed. He felt an adrenaline rush and felt more alive at that moment than he had felt in a long time. This was a dangerous situation, but in a strange way it was more exciting than a large percentage of the events of Jake's life had been so far.

He heard shouting behind him, and saw the two men running back to the car they'd just left. He figured he had an advantage of at least twenty seconds, maybe more. That might be enough to lose them in narrow streets on the edge of the town.

After turning left twice he saw traffic lights ahead of him. They were on red, but Jake knew he couldn't afford to stop. He slammed his foot on the accelerator and ran the red light.

He thought he'd luckily avoided collision with any other vehicle as he passed the halfway point of the crossroads. The thought came too soon, and the back of the car was struck by another vehicle, knocking the back of the car with enough force to knock Jake off his straight course.

The collision was followed by his car swerving all over the road. Someone had hit him with exactly enough pace to send his car bouncing from side to side, hitting everything possible. He'd probably damaged seven or eight cars in less than five seconds. This was causing a huge scene, and the police a couple of streets away would undoubtedly find him there if he was foolish enough to stop.

Jake's car was a little worse for wear, but it was still moving. He turned off the road into a small street and stopped the car. Nothing screamed 'arrest me' like driving around in a severely damaged car just streets from a major traffic incident.

He ditched his car by the side of a quiet nearby street in a new housing estate and started running. He didn't know where he was, and he certainly didn't know where he was going. It was 2:08pm when he left his car, and he still had no idea where the next victim would be. He heard the sound of police sirens in the distance. He shook his head when he thought of how many times he'd heard them in the past few days. He was a self-made fugitive for two out of the past three days.

Jake ran through a small alley with a brown brick, brown tiled house to his right and an dark orange coloured wooden panel fence to his left. He could see a street on the other side of the alley. As he cleared the alleyway a black car screeched to a halt right into his path. He stopped in his tracks, coming to a halt within an inch of the shiny new-looking black car, and for some reason was expecting some gangster to wind down the window and point a submachine gun in his face. The window came down and the driver spoke to him. "Jake Hingham?" he asked.

"Yes." Jake was hesitant in his response, fearing the worst by admitting his name whilst on the run.

"Get in. I'll get you away from these people," the driver said.

"And who might you be?" Jake asked, as if they had just met in a swanky restaurant and he was seeking a polite introduction.

"I'm Will Spalder. I believe you've been looking for me," came the reply. Jake was stunned and beyond confused. How did this man know who Jake was, what he was doing, and where he was at that very moment? Even Jake did not know where Jake was.

"I have been following you for a little while," Will said. "You didn't see the explosion coming, then?" He turned his head to look at Jake. There seemed to almost be a smirk on the man's face. Jake did not find any of this amusing.

He looked at his watch. "I've still got a couple of minutes left to live," William added with a sarcastic tone to his voice.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jake was grateful to be in an executive car with blacked out windows. It would be very bad luck if the police still managed to find him in there.

He looked over at Will Spalder. He looked younger than he had imagined. He had a couple of white hairs, but was probably no older than forty. He wore a small pair of round rimmed glasses on his slightly chubby face despite an otherwise thin figure and seemed to have an almost permanent grin.

Jake was waiting for Will to start explaining himself. The explanation did not start as quickly as Jake had expected. More than a minute of silence had passed since Will had mentioned the exploding car.

"I can help you find what you're looking for, Jake. I have answers to your questions." Every word Will said caused Jake to become more and more confused.

"How do you know what I've been asking? How do you know anything about what I've been doing, or what I've been looking for?" Jake asked.

"Time is short, Jake. Rarely shorter than it is at this very moment. Let me first say that if we get interrupted for any reason, you need to find me tomorrow," Will responded.

"Tomorrow's not good for me-"

"Yesterday then!" Will snapped back, getting very heated very quickly. Suddenly the seemingly permanent grin had disappeared. He clearly showed signs of having had a stressful day. He calmed himself with a slow, deep breath and then continued. "Whenever, but we don't have time to go into this now. Find me at 42 Evergreen Place in the morning. Remember that: 42 Evergreen Place."

"Okay, but we do have some time now." Jake watched the clock in the car tick past 2:15pm. He looked puzzled. Will was not supposed to still be alive. Maybe Jake's actions had somehow delayed the attack on his life.

"We have more time than you had thought, but less time that you may now be hoping for. I knew you would get your hands on that information, so I changed some details," Will said, trying to clear up the confusion. "We have another ten minutes or so before we are likely to encounter any difficulties."

"Difficulties?" Jake repeated. He was concerned for his own safety all of a sudden.

"You are running around trying to save people who reported a crime committed the day before yesterday," Will said, clearly dodging the one-word question Jake had just asked.

"They were targeted for reporting a crime?" Jake asked in disbelief. "Is this Arnold's work?"

"Yes it is. He found the names and has been trying to eliminate the evidence ever since. They had seen too much and could potentially destroy the man," Will added.

"I'd thank you for not referring to my family as mere 'evidence'." Jake said.

"My apologies Jake, but you have already saved them. You've effectively changed the course of your own history. Now you're trying to change the history of others too."

"I guess so," Jake said. "But it could all happen again."

"We'll address that subject more tomorrow," Will said. "Today we discuss what's been going on. You need to know this."

"Wait. Do you know what's been happening to me?" Jake asked.

"I do, but we can't discuss it now. You'd be more confused if you got half an explanation as opposed to none at all. Find me in the morning." Will looked across at Jake for a second, and added, "No matter how crazy things might seem at any one moment, you need to understand that someone somewhere will always understand what you're going through."

Jake nodded. "What crime did they witness?" he asked, bringing the conversation back to an earlier point.

"It was a drugs sale. Someone bought ten kilos of cocaine from our friend in a police uniform." Jake was shocked, but he let Will continue. "You see, D.I Arnold had been investigating someone for various drugs and armoury offences, and found him doing a weapons trade here three days before."

Jake had never thought so much crime would ever happen in their mild mannered north eastern town. It seemed nowhere was immune from such problems these days.

Will continued, "He was a good cop, but the man behind the arms and drugs deals threatened his family and career, and blackmailed him until he gave in and joined this man."

"So good cop turns bad to protect his family?" Jake asked.

"Correct. It seems a chain of trades has been set up, all orchestrated by one man, using threats against people. He doesn't do the deals himself," Will said.

Jake had been watching the clock constantly since he got into the car. It now read 2:24pm. Will had mentioned he only had ten minutes. It seemed his time was about up. He was fully expecting Will to pull over and let him out, but there was no sign of that happening. In fact, it seemed he was going faster with every passing second.

Jake looked at Will Spalder, whose face now wore a panicked look. "What's wrong?" Jake asked.

"You're not going to like this," Will answered tensely. "The brakes don't work. They've been cut!"

They were out of the town and travelling southwards at sixty miles per hour along a country road. They continued driving along, being unable to bring the car to a halt. They travelled round a bend and down a shallow incline.

In the distance were several dark vehicles, covering the whole width of the road. They weren't police cars. This was some kind of unofficial road block. They were heading straight for it, but they couldn't stop.

"Grab hold of something!" Will shouted. Jake groped around for anything sturdy onto which he could hold.

The road block was fast approaching, and they had no chance of avoiding a collision with it. Jake cringed and braced himself for impact.

Will pulled at the wheel and tried to move the car out of the way, but all he did was cause the car to skid out of control. The car started tilting before tipping over entirely and going into a roll. Jake saw the ground and sky spinning in front of him as the car rolled once, twice, then a third time. There were further rolls but Jake lost count before the car came to rest on its roof.

Hanging upside down in his seat with blood, twisted metal and broken glass in all directions, Jake looked over and saw Will lying unconscious behind the steering wheel. The man had obviously not taken the crash very well. Jake was lucky to still be conscious. He looked out of the shattered front windscreen and saw two men walk towards him. He could hear their conversation as they approached.

"Who's the other guy?" one voice asked.

"No idea. We were told he'd be travelling alone," replied the other guy. "It makes no difference if we have to get rid of one body or two."

With an almighty shriek of metal struggling to move, they tore open the passenger side door. All Jake could see were the feet of whoever stood closest to the door. A pair of expensive-looking dress shoes, most likely with steel toe caps, was staring back at him. The right foot lifted up, then moved back, then hit Jake square in the jaw. Blackness covered everything and Jake was out.
CHAPTER 12

**Sunday 25** th **January, 8:30am**

Jake opened his eyes and sat up in bed in one sudden movement as if he'd woken up from a horrific nightmare. The difference was that he knew it was not a bad dream. Yesterday really did happen.

He thought it was even more frightening that he didn't wake up after 2:25pm. Would those people really have eliminated him for just being there? Would someone do that without any attempt to identify him or find out why he was there? He assumed that William Spalder was either killed when the car rolled, or that he was taken out of the equation shortly afterwards.

He thought about what Will Spalder had said to him in their brief conversation yesterday. It had been too much information to process all at once. His head was still spinning after a full night's sleep.

A drugs sale had happened, and anyone who had reported it was then added to a hit list. It didn't seem right that someone who had dedicated his life to law enforcement and the fight against crime could be so easily corrupted. On the other hand, it made so much sense of the events of the past few days. If Jake was a desperate, high ranking policeman and he needed to get rid of some people, there was a chance he would have done exactly the same thing. He had already tortured people to try and help save his family. He knew he could go further if he needed to do so.

He slipped his feet into a nearby pair of slippers while staying perched on the edge of the bed. He continued to let as much of the conversation as he could remember float around his head.

He recalled the start of the conversation, in which Will had said he didn't have much time. He mentioned an address where he could be found. It was forty two... something. Yesterday really seemed more like a dream than the previous repeated days had seemed. The dream-like memory of yesterday's events was fading from his mind with every second of the day. He got out of bed, went into his study down the hall, sat down in his black swivel chair, picked up a pen and started to write down what he could remember on a wide ruled yellow telephone note pad.

He wrote that these events were the latest in a chain of drug and weapons trades. He wrote the names of the victims he'd tried to save. He wrote down that D.I Arnold was threatened until he agreed to become part of it all. He was obviously spotted, reported to another police department, and he was left to clear up his own mess before anyone could find out how involved he had really been. He felt a little disgusted with himself for referring to his family as 'Arnold's mess' in his own thoughts. He had criticised Will for a not-too-dissimilar comment the previous day.

At the bottom of the sheet of paper he wrote 42. He could not remember the street, even though Will had said it twice. Ever-something came to mind. He wrote that down. He picked up an A-Z street map of the town, and turned to the street index at the back.

The letter E seemed to be a common letter to start street names with in this town. East Street, Earl Court, and many others were listed. Towards the end of the list he found the word Evergreen. That was it. It was definitely Evergreen.....something.

There was a Street, Place, Terrace, Garden, Square, and Road. Nearly as many variations as anyone could possibly think of, but which one was it? Forty two Evergreen... Place. It was definitely Evergreen Place. It seemed to ring true with Jake's fading memory.

Jake returned to the bedroom, but just to change. He put on a t-shirt and tracksuit bottoms. Amy stirred, sat up, and looked at Jake curiously. "And where might you be going so early on a Sunday morning?" She asked, in a tone of voice that she might have used if she had found him with his hand in a forbidden cookie jar.

"It's a New Year's Resolution I made a little bit late. I'm going to start running in the morning, and I'll be making use of that gym membership I keep paying for," he answered.

"Won't that upset your routine?" she asked with more than a hint of sarcasm.

"I plan to get a bit fitter, starting today." He put a hand to his stomach. "I need to work off this stomach fat." Amy smiled in response, but said nothing.

"I'll have my mobile phone with me," he said. "I'll be out for a couple of hours. I'll call if I'm going to be out longer."

"Isn't that a little ambitious for your first run?" She asked concerned.

Jake quieted Amy's concerns and assured her he'd be fine. He had his mobile phone with him and would call if he needed help. With that, she let him go.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jake's idea for getting out of the house was not great. It was a clever excuse which had not aroused suspicion, but it meant he was without his car, and he would have to walk to wherever he would be going. He had a map in his pocket, and after a relatively short walk was now just a street away from his destination.

He had been walking for about twenty minutes, but it would only have taken five minutes or less to drive the same distance.

He found the street. It was not very wide with substantially sized red brick detached Victorian houses topped with black roof slate lining both sides of the road. There was the occasional overgrown tree dotted along the pavement, with roots bulging up through the tarmac, exceeding the bounds of the circular cut-outs into which the trees had originally been planted. The houses were well-kept and every house had an expensive car of one sort or another in its driveway. The area in which Jake lived was not cheap, but he suspected that it paled in comparison to the prices of these houses. Whatever Will Spalder did for work, he was undoubtedly successful at it.

Jake located number forty two. He did so after recognising the black car in which he'd been a passenger. It was definitely the car he had been inside yesterday as it swerved, tipped, and rolled to a halt. Seeing the car brought vivid images back to Jake's mind which brought with them a sense of panic that he had to fight hard to quash when he envisaged the foot of Will Spalder slamming onto the brakes to no avail. The images of the car rolling, and of a black steel toed dress shoe swinging towards his head caused his heart to start pounding again.

He shook off the panicked feeling as he walked through the black metal gate and up to the solid wood blue front door. He gave the apparently ancient doorbell a forceful push, hearing a bell ringing for as long as he pressed it. The faint sound reminded him of the much louder bell he heard many times a day at school several years ago.

He could almost smell the polished linoleum floor from school days gone by as a blond haired middle aged woman answered the door. "Can I help you?" she asked. She looked as if she was trying to recognise him at first, but she resigned to staring at him with a blank look.

"My name is Jake Hingham. I believe Will Spalder is expecting me," Jake said. With that, the woman nodded with recognition for the first time since opening the door, and let him in. "He's on his way downstairs. He'll join you in the lounge in a minute or two." She led him through the hallway, and left him alone as he entered the lounge to his right.

The room seemed to have been styled by someone in their mid-sixties, far too old for the tastes of the average person Will Spalder's age. There was a lot of dark furniture and the occasional doily under decorative items. The carpet was a large dull floral pattern in dark shades of red, green and brown. The whole room looked like part of a house that had travelled forward in time by about fifty years, with the exception of a large ten year old television in the corner.

Jake sat looking at a dark wood clock on the mantle piece. It was almost exactly a minute between Jake sitting down, and him hearing a voice behind him.

"Jake Hingham. How are you doing today?" He recognised it as the voice of Will Spalder. He turned around and started to stand as Will entered the room. "You have too high an opinion of me if you're about to stand when I walk in the room," he said. "I'm far from being considered royalty, or indeed the president of anything."

Will walked into the room, closed the door, and sat in an ageing dark green armchair, across from the brown leather couch on which Jake was sitting. "So, we've already met," Will said, half posing it as a question, half as a statement of fact.

"Yes we have. You took me for an interesting drive yesterday." Jake responded as if it had been a question, reminding Will of events that had not yet happened. "You told me about the chain of drugs and weapons trades, and why my family was targeted," he added.

"Okay. Today we're discussing something else, I guess," Will suggested.

"Yes. I know this will sound crazy, but," Jake hesitated. "My family were the victims of an attack nearly a week ago. I woke up the next day to discover it was the same day again. I was able to stop the attack on them and save their lives, and since then, I've woken up every day to discover it was the day before. I've been able to try to stop the other attack victims who were on D.I Arnold's hit list, and eventually ran into you tomorrow – or yesterday for me." He stopped talking to see what Will thought of it.

"You're right. It does sound crazy, and if you'd have told me this more than a couple years ago I would not have believed you." Then Will repeated what he had said the previous day. "No matter how crazy things might seem, you need to understand that someone, somewhere will understand."

"I'm beginning to understand that. You said the same thing yesterday, err, tomorrow," Jake answered.

"I know what you mean," Will nodded as he spoke. "Anyway, the matter at hand is not a small one. All of this may take some time to explain, so I hope you have plenty of time... and a good attention span." Jake nodded at Will and he continued.

"I'm sure you remember September the eleventh 2001," Will said. Jake wasn't sure if it was a question or a statement, but he nodded anyway. "What you won't remember is what happened almost exactly a week afterwards."

"Not a lot. It took the US and UK governments almost a month to sort themselves out and go after the terrorists in Afghanistan," Jake answered, deciding to assume Will was asking questions. "Some kind of bombing starting in early October to attack Al Qaeda, I believe."

"Correct. However, it was nearly very different. Early, very shaky US Intelligence suggested that almost the entire Middle East conspired to set up the attacks on the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon and the failed attack on the Whitehouse. They believed that several governments from neighbouring countries in that region were responsible for forming Al Qaeda. They believed that governments not only did nothing to stop an uprising of Al Qaeda, but they assisted them in attacking the United States."

Jake couldn't believe the things he was hearing. This didn't make sense to him, and none of it correlated with his own memory of the events of September and October 2001.

"Every piece of evidence they could get would point towards Al Qaeda, and they took Al Qaeda to be a branch of a combination of the Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan governments. They were set to bomb the hell out of the entire Middle East, and no one was going to stop them." Will seemed far too laid back in describing these events. He obviously knew a few things that Jake didn't, such as the happy ending. Was all of this happening behind the scenes, unknown to most of the public?

"Armies were prepared. Navy, Air and Special Force vehicles headed straight for the Middle East, starting with Iraq. The objective was to eliminate the government of each of those countries, and therefore cut off Al Qaeda at the source of its support and funding. Of course, we know now that this course of action was wrong, but it's what they wanted to do. Government officials were looking for an excuse to invade Iraq, and now they had one. The resources of the country were worth fighting for, once an excuse for invasion was deemed valid."

As interesting as this story was, Jake could not see what it had to do with him. "Forgive my interruption, but I have no idea what this has to do with me," Jake said.

"Be patient, Jake. You will understand why you need to know this when I have finished," Will said, trying to convince him to continue listening.

"So, you're telling me that the US government almost went to war with the entire Middle East?" Jake asked.

"Oh no, Jake. They did go to war with the entire Middle East. Full out war in less than a week. The only trouble was that most of the civilised world objected to such swift action, especially in the light of very little evidence, and started to wage war on America. It was the beginning of a world war, Jake."

"But none of that actually happened..." Jake butted in, and then it started to dawn on him. "Wait a minute. Are you telling me that someone has already done the same thing I'm doing?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes," he answered. "Someone working for the government found himself moving backwards through time, and was able to clarify the evidence they had, and persuade the heads of the military and government that they needed more time to gather further and more accurate evidence. The result was that they discovered there were no grounds for their initial accusations, other than senior government officials who wanted to profit from a war in Iraq. They found Al Qaeda to be an independent organisation and targeted them in a well-planned attack, with the governments' permission."

Jake's head was spinning. He didn't know what to make of what he'd been told. He obviously appeared to Will to be struggling to process this information. He wondered how much more information would be dispensed today that he would have to attempt to absorb.

"I know this is a lot to take in. It's taken me a long time to understand it all."

Jake nodded, but said nothing.

Will met his gaze. "I don't expect you to understand it in a few minutes," he said. He paused for a couple of minutes, leaving Jake to think it all over.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jake had several minutes to get his thoughts straight. Will had offered Jake a drink and a snack, and he had accepted. He had a few minutes of silence to digest the mind-blowing information he'd just received.

He was not alone in his experience, but how did Will know about all of this?

"Here you go. Some cookies my wife baked yesterday, and a drink of cola, as requested," Will said, placing them on the coffee table in front of Jake. All of a sudden Jake wanted something much stronger to drink.

Whilst drinking and snacking, Jake must have opened his mouth to speak five or six times. The trouble was that he didn't know what to say. He finally spoke. "So, how does this work?" was the question that kept coming to mind, and the first one out of his mouth. "I mean, scientifically, there must be a way to explain it, or is time travel granted to anyone who might wish for it?"

"Okay, as for why it happens, I'm not sure. But I can explain how."

Jake sat forward in his seat awaiting the explanation.

"I don't know if you know anything of the space-time continuum, but what most people know is not entirely accurate," Will responded, and Jake looked confused. Will continued what he was saying. "When you see diagrams of people's interpretation of the space-time continuum, you will usually see something resembling a piece of paper or a length of ribbon – something smooth and straight. This is typically the case, however this can change."

He continued. "Every now and then, anomalies, bumps and folds appear in what is usually straight. When an event coincides with this anomaly, it can affect how someone might perceive that event. Scientists don't know how time travel happens, but they do not doubt that it should be possible. People just don't know how to do it yet."

Jake nodded, as if he knew exactly what was going on. Time was not to be understood as a piece of paper or a ribbon, whatever that was supposed to mean. His confusion was clearly showing again, and Will noticed it.

"Maybe I'm not explaining this very well," he said. He pulled out a piece of ribbon from a small cupboard by his chair. After a few more seconds of rummaging, he found a piece of string. He then held up the ribbon and continued. "People seem to believe that time is a smooth sequence of events that happen all around us. This is not true. For a start, time is just how we as a race measure events and the aligning of the planets. In that sense, time doesn't really exist. Are you following me?"

Jake was following, but he felt like he was falling some way behind the conversation.

"Time is just a unit of measurement, and isn't a ribbon or a piece of paper," Jake said, trying to prove he was listening.

"Exactly!" Will confirmed, very enthusiastically. Jake found this man to be very unusual. He was the kind of person Jake would usually humour, and then learn to ignore at every subsequent meeting. However, he knew he needed to understand this conversation, because lives might depend on it. For him to listen carefully he needed to ignore the fact that this man met every requirement of the geek stereotype, and would have easily been the kind of person Jake would have picked on in school. His mind was prone to wandering, but he could tune it to a conversation when necessary, and this was one of those times.

Jake just thought to himself that he'd put a great deal of faith in a guy he knew very little about. There had never been any formal introduction. There was no proof that Will was who he said he was. He didn't even know the name of Will's wife. This man was unusual, but so was Jake's current situation. Somehow, Will fitted into this part of Jake's life like a perfectly formed piece of a jigsaw puzzle. All of this seemed a little bit too rehearsed to Jake. He could see that this was not the first time Will had tried to explain all of this. It was almost a pre-prepared monologue for anyone who would listen to his ramblings. Jake felt for a few seconds like a willing victim.

"For the sake of this conversation, we'll assume time is the actual passing of time, not just a measurement," Will said, and Jake knew he'd have been confused by just that statement just an hour ago. "But, the passing of time isn't like a ribbon," Will went on, putting the ribbon to one side. "It's more like this piece of string. It isn't smooth, but has a texture and bumps to it. It consists of various strands woven together, allowing a traveller to find an event if they could navigate through time."

"So time is not smooth, but rough, and there's a kind of pattern to it?"

"There is definitely a kind of pattern. By learning how to recognise the patterns in space-time, you learn how to navigate to any point in history you care to go to." He paused again, and looked at Jake, who was nodding away.

"That's incredible," Jake exclaimed. "So if we know the theory why has no one managed to do this yet, and why does time travel only happen by chance?"

"It seems to be more difficult to apply this theory than anyone has thought."

"So it remains a theory that no one on earth can put into practice."

"Indeed. Regarding the part of all of this that involves you: The part that comes down to chance. There appears to be some powerful force behind the passing of time, which has the ability to intercede and cause the alteration of events and time. This can include the ability to change how an entity travels through time. This power can cause people to move forwards and backwards through time. Let me explain what this force is doing to you." He raised the piece of string again, and held both ends together, forming a kind of loop, pointing at specific points, indicating Jake's journey through time. "You have hit a glitch and a fold in space-time. The glitch has caused you to encounter a fold. Each fold takes you back one day. Each day you revisit, you change. The reincarnation of this day replaces the original incarnation. All of this hangs on the earliest point in space-time you change. So far, nearly a week has been changed, which week has been transplanted in place of the original. Thus replacement occurs in space-time."

Will described this further, using the string in his hands. "Let's say your life up to this point currently goes to the end of this string. It will go further, but this is to give you a better understanding of this."

Jake nodded.

"If you were travelling along this string, and a single strand of the last section was folded over, you'd continue to move forward, when actually you're moving backwards. It's something like that happening every day, with only you on this strand, and thus the only person in this kind of loop."

Jake was starting to make sense of this, which scared him a little bit. He had never needed to spend this long talking to someone so obsessed with science, but he could see it was essential that he heard what Will Spalder had to say. He continued to listen, without interrupting.

"This particular scenario in which you find yourself has been repeated several times. It has been studied, and has even been given a name. It is known as the Time and Event Replacement Phenomenon, or just the Replacement Phenomenon. Sadly no one has come up with a punchy name for it yet."

Jake decided that despite a requirement to listen without interrupting, he needed another break from this conversation to make sense of it inside his head. He broke free to use the bathroom, ready to return to Will's unusual monologue.

So Jake discovered that he was not alone in travelling through time. Others had done it, changed things for the better, and had even named the process. He felt less alone than he had felt at the start of the day. He felt as though there might be some hope for the future, assuming he could correct the past.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jake looked at his watch on the way back to the lounge. He had been away from home for a little over an hour. If this conversation went on much longer, he'd need to call Amy and say he'd run into a friend, and that he'd be home shortly.

He walked into the lounge, and found Will staring at a single sheet of paper in his hand. Jake was about to ask what it was, but assumed he would find out if it was important to Jake's objectives.

"So I'm the latest person to have been introduced to this Replacement Phenomenon." Jake said, expecting that to be enough to tear Will away from the paper he was so intent on reading. Will just sat there, looking at that sheet of paper.

Jake wondered what it was that Will held in his hand that drew his attention so completely. Just as Jake opened his mouth to ask, Will's head shot up as if he'd woken up from a snooze he wasn't entitled to. "Sorry, Jake. You said something?" Will asked.

"Yes I did. So you're saying I'm the latest in this craze of the replacement thing," he said.

"Correct... Except this isn't a trend. A trend is usually a short-run thing. This is a phenomenon that has been around for a long time," Will answered.

"How long is a long time when you're dealing with its measurement?" Jake asked.

"Maybe it's as old as the earth. It may be even older," he responded.

Jake was thinking hard about all of this. "So I'm just the latest in a long line of special people to move backwards through time?" he questioned, getting more confused the longer the conversation went on.

"Tell me something about your family, Jake," Will requested. Jake wasn't sure he heard that right. That seemed to be such a random, sudden shift in conversation that he thought he had misheard what Will said. "My family?" Jake asked.

"Yes. I know nothing about them. This whole thing started when you shouted into the sky when your family had been killed. It helps to put things into context when I know something about who you are protecting."

Jake's brow creased with his face now wearing a look of confusion. In their conversation today, and their conversation yesterday, Jake hadn't mentioned his shouting into the night sky, nor had he said his family was actually killed. Maybe he had said more during the previous day than he remembered. He must have said something along those lines, and he couldn't recall everything he had said in the past day or two, especially when the previous day had ended in the way that it did. "My wife Amy, and I, have been happily married for nearly ten years," he said.

"Happily married for nearly ten, but how many altogether?" Will asked with a big grin on his face.

"We've been _happily_ married the entire time actually," he replied with a slight smile. His face straightened again and he continued. "I have two sons named Jason and James."

"And how old are they?" Will asked, seeming genuinely interested.

"Jason is eight, and James is six."

"Sounds like a wonderful family. Do you get to spend a lot of time with them?" Will asked.

"Not as much as I would like. It was quite a relief to know I had the chance to see them again when I thought I'd lost them." Jake was glad for the chance to talk to someone about the things he'd thought and felt over the past few days. The more he spoke, the more he felt as if a weight was being lifted from his shoulders.

He could feel his shoulders drop a little as he let go of some of the tension which had been building up for nearly a week. He was a little concerned that the only person he could talk to about emotion and pressure was a stranger who was obsessed with time travel. There was silence for another couple of seconds. Jake welcomed it. There had not been any real quiet in Jake's life for quite a while.

Jake thought he would change the direction of the conversation himself this time, but only slightly. "So how long will this replacement last?"

"How long is a piece of string?" Will answered with a look of resignation on his face. Jake wasn't sure if he was referring to his own time-space analogy, or if the comment was just a coincidence. "It will take as long as it has to take for you to change what needs to be changed."

Jake felt his shoulders slump again. "You must be able to give me some idea. Will it last another week, a month, a year?" he asked, feeling himself getting more desperate for some kind of straight answer. "You told me something about why I'm doing this yesterday. When did this drug and weapon thing start?"

"You're not going to like my answer," Will warned.

"Liking it has nothing to do with having to hear it," Jake responded.

"The man responsible for all these trades..." Will paused, took a breath, and continued. "His nickname is The Iron Man. Obviously derived from his surname, Ironside – first name Paul. He's an unconscionable man who makes millions from criminal activity. He forces others to work for him, and occasionally treats these people like pawns in a game of Chess. He carefully calculates his criminal activity, and impulsively plays sport with these people's lives. More than once law enforcement have visited a scene after a trade and found the remnants of some kind of death game between his victims. He's a very cold human being who does not care in the slightest for others. All of law enforcement are desperate to catch this man and stop the terror he causes."

"Are these law enforcement people close to catching him?"

"They get close from time to time. He has been tracked by the CID as well as other Specialist Services, with help from the SAS for the past three years. They believe he started the chain shortly before that time." Jake's shoulders slumped further. He could not believe he might have to go backwards day-by-day for three years or more.

"Three years could be substantially cut short," Will added. "It seems that if you can break the chain and prevent Paul Ironside from restarting that chain somehow, you will, more than likely, return to normal."

That sounded a little bit better to Jake. "So if I tracked down this Ironside and got him arrested and stopped D.I Arnold's involvement, I will have prevented the latest attacks, and the chain will be broken," Jake said, expecting a reply.

"Most likely, that will happen. That is, unless another possibility is true." Jake's eyes widened. He prompted Will to go on. "No one is sure this is a chain, and not a tree. If it is a tree, you may have cut off every branch of this tree to stop it."

"Is any of this good news for me?" Jake asked, growing more and more downhearted.

"Yes, I think so. I believe it to be a simple chain that you can break. In any case, if you get Ironside, you'll stop everything. You'll cut off his schemes at the source." Will had one last thing to add. "The problem with this is that most of this country's law enforcement has been trying to do just that for years."

Jake was beginning to wish this guy didn't bother finishing expressing his thoughts. If he just stopped two sentences before he wanted to, then he would dispel so much more good news, and very little bad news.

"There must be an average for those who have experienced this process?" Jake asked. "How long did it last for them?"

"Well, it has varied, in the accounts I've read about it. For some people it lasted just a day or two, for others, it lasted a couple of weeks," Will said in response.

"Sounds simple. Take this a day at a time until I fix everything."

"Exactly."

"What can you tell me about the other times this has happened? You mentioned the aftermath of September eleventh. What other examples are there?"

"Just think of an event in history, and someone probably replaced most or part of it. Have you ever heard of some disaster on the news, with a death count much lower than people expected?"

"Probably because of a replacement," Jake answered. He had some answers to his current predicament, but he still had questions, one in particular about being drawn to a futile exercise. Maybe Will had more answers. "Can you answer me one more question?"

"I can certainly try," Will said.

"I feel drawn to save the other victims of all of this. If I'm constantly travelling backwards, what benefit is there in me saving people every day?"

"You feel like your efforts are futile because you can't see the results?"

"I suppose that's what I'm saying."

"What happens when you relive a day, based on what I've explained today?"

"The new version of the day replaces the previous version."

"So what happens to the people you've saved if you don't succeed in breaking the chain?"

"They live for another day, I suppose."

"Indeed they do!" Will said enthusiastically. "You've just answered your own question."

"So, I don't see what I'm causing because I'm still going backwards."

"But you're still driven to succeed because you can save those you weren't able to save the first time round."

"And if I succeed in breaking this chain then those who I have saved will be permanently free, rather than temporarily spared."

"Exactly."

Jake looked at the clock on the mantel piece. It was time to go. Any longer and Amy would start wondering what had happened to him. "I've got to get going, so if there's anything else I should know..." he said, half as a question.

"Well, there's something else. Déjà vu," Will answered.

"Déjà vu?"

"Yes. This phenomenon provides an explanation for déjà vu. You see, when people have a feeling that they've done that exact thing before, they probably have. As time passes memories are formed in the brain. When time rewinds, it returns to a point where those memories don't yet exist. The mind frequently struggles with the forming and removing of these memories, causing some actions to echo what has been experienced before." Jake had stopped listening towards the end. His brain had received enough information for one morning. He excused himself, thanked Will Spalder and ran home at a gentle pace before his family would start wondering where he had been.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The rest of Jake's Sunday was spent mulling over the information which had been thrust in his direction that morning. He was wholly unprepared for the sheer volume of information dispensed. He imagined it was the learning equivalent of standing by with a bucket to catch the discharge of a fire hose at full force.

He spent the remainder of his day with his family. During every activity undertaken, his mind was on what he needed to do so that his life would return to normal and his family would be safe.

Tomorrow for him would be a crucial day. He needed to stop his wife, and everyone else involved, reporting the drug sale they had witnessed.

He needed to eventually stop D.I Arnold from becoming involved, and find a way to bring down the entire drug and weapon trade chain he had been told about.

As for the day at hand, all Jake would do was try to kick back and relax with his wife and two children, regardless of what was going through his head.
CHAPTER 13

**Saturday 24** th **January, 8:00am**

Jake lay in bed, his eyes wide open. Everyone else in the house was still asleep, and his alarm was set to go off in about an hour. He didn't see himself falling asleep again in that time.

Today was such an important day. He was busy thinking and there was so much he needed to figure out. He didn't know where Amy went on Saturday, or where this drugs trade took place. He could ask Amy what she was planning on doing, and where she was planning on going, or he could just go with her. The latter seemed like the most sensible solution.

He thought about Detective Inspector Arnold. He still did not know this man's first name, but decided it wasn't important. When he had come face to face with that man several days ago, he had come out believing he was a bad guy. He had decided as he finished the day in a police holding cell that the man who had put him there was pure evil. He had misjudged him. D.I Arnold had merely been pulled into this whole thing, and was doing what he believed he had to do to protect his family. He didn't know what threat was made against the corrupt policeman, but he guessed that he would certainly find out over the coming days.

Several minutes had passed, and Jake continued to lie there staring at the ceiling. He thought of the many people who had experienced this time travelling experience before him. He thought of how many disasters had been prevented. He thought of car crashes, earthquakes, and other incidents where people had miraculously escaped without injury, or where casualties had been much lower than expected. He thought about stories of a stranger coming out of nowhere to save a life, disasters, and lucky escapes. How many of these were the result of pure good fortune, and how many were the direct result of the replacement phenomenon?

He wondered why this series of events had been considered important enough for him to be called to fix things. It wasn't a world-changing event. He only ever wanted to repeat one day, but he thought about what he'd actually said. His exact words had been "I wish I could turn back time!" He decided he needed to be more specific in his wishes in the future.

Jake couldn't switch off, forget everything, and get back to sleep. He had been lying there without sleep for nearly an hour. All he could do was get up and actually do something.

He decided to get up and do a little bit of research of his own on the subject he couldn't stop thinking about. He walked to the study, turned on his computer to the usual beep, and found his regular web search engine within a couple of minutes.

He typed in "reliving days" and received results of no apparent relevance. He then typed in "replacement phenomenon" and thought he would see what results were shown. Initially he found very little on his chosen subject. The list contained several references to dentistry and medical research about organs and tissue damage. He added words such as time and travel, and found one or two listings that seemed relevant. He clicked on the first link and braced himself for what he was about to see.

He found a small personal web site that had an introduction to time replacement and a detailed account of someone's own experience. The explanation for time and event replacement was simple, and much like an abbreviated version of the explanation he had heard the previous day from Will Spalder. He had spent a considerable amount of time on the Internet in recent years, and seemed to have finally found something that he thought was worth the effort of reading. He read several screens worth of text about this man's experience.

He worked at a local university, where new structures were going up all the time. The university was rapidly expanding, and was constantly building to keep up. One day he discovered a student looking up at a half completed building for several minutes. He asked if anything was wrong, but the kid said he was an architecture student. This man thought nothing of it and returned to work, only to discover in the evening that the same student had jumped from the top of that new building and died on impact.

The man woke up the next day to find that it wasn't really the next day at all, but the same day again. When he saw that student he tried to reason with him and persuade him not to take any drastic action, but the young student wouldn't listen. He spent most of the rest of the day trying to tighten up security, and make the police aware of what the student might do. All of his efforts worked, and the kid survived. He was able to finally get through to him and the student was now the head of a successful company, and was enjoying life.

It seemed that every time this replacement phenomenon occurred, it righted a wrong which would have otherwise remained. Every instance of it was not world changing, or incredibly dramatic.

He found other stories, some of which led to the saving of many people, some just to prevent serious injury to another. This phenomenon covered everything from global disasters to people losing their jobs.

There was certainly no set pattern to any of this. Some people's travels lasted one day, others two days, and yet others who doubled back through time involuntarily for several weeks.

Jake looked at the time in the upper right hand corner of the screen and decided he would view one more web site before returning to the bedroom to get ready for the day ahead. He clicked on the last link on that page of search results, and froze when he saw the page that came up on the screen.

Below the large bold words, "My Replacement Experience" Jake saw a large black and white picture. It was grainy, but it was obvious who the subject was. It was William Spalder. The picture looked as if it was forty or more years old, but Will still looked exactly the same as he had yesterday. He thought perhaps it was simply a bad picture.

He read the story, discovering that a woman's experience had happened in June of 1958. She had spent a week moving backwards through time and had run into the man pictured, even though he did not tell her his name. He explained replacement in the exact same way as he had done to Jake. This was surreal. He was clearly not old enough to have even been born then, but there he was. This man now had some explaining to do, but now was not the time to interrogate him.

Although the Internet was not always the best source of reliable information, Jake had not found any instances of time travel or replacement before 1958. Will had said it had been around as long as the earth, but no proof of that existed as far as Jake could see. Maybe older accounts of this phenomenon would be recorded in paper archives somewhere. Maybe other events had happened but had not been documented. He had no way of knowing the truth of it all.

More puzzling was this man's involvement in what appeared to be the first occurrence of this phenomenon. He needed answers, but figured he would get them at some point in the future, or at some point in the past.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Amy seemed quite happy that her husband had accompanied her on a clothes shopping trip. Although they were surrounded by the hustle and bustle of a noisy shopping centre, Jake enjoyed the peace and quiet of shopping without the children. Lynn had volunteered to babysit when Jake had spoken to her that morning, and they could hardly refuse the offer. The first time the Saturday had rolled around Amy was quite happy to take the boys with her and to spend some time picking out some new clothes for them. It seemed Jake's agreeing to go shopping had persuaded her to treat the whole shopping trip differently. It was now an opportunity for a couple of hours that didn't involve either of them chasing after kids and helping them find toilets every few minutes.

Jake's reservations about going along with Amy on such shopping trips were based on his limited stamina. He couldn't much stand shopping for more than half an hour. His feet, back and mind was not able to handle much more than thirty minutes of retail therapy. It boggled the mind how some women treated it almost like a sport or a hobby when all Jake felt was a stiffness creeping into his back from standing around in female clothing departments. To Jake shopping was something that needed to be done when someone was running out of food or their clothes were wearing out. This was not something Jake could ever do for fun.

It seemed that Amy still did not own enough pairs of shoes, a fact that Jake swore could not possibly be true. At the last count Jake thought Amy had enough shoes to wear a different pair every day for about a month. Jake probably had three pairs: One smart black pair, one casual pair of slip on shoes, and one old pair that were falling to pieces, which he wore for gardening and DIY projects. That seemed to be enough to go with every outfit he had, or that he could even think of wearing. This was clearly a guy thing, and he was willing to consider the other side of things. There was a growing attitude among men that an interest in clothing and shoes was not only acceptable, but that it was becoming increasingly necessary. This was not a view Jake felt he could ever share. He was a follower of comfort over fashion.

With a lot of women Jake had known, every time they bought any part of a new outfit, they needed to buy new accessories and shoes to go with it. Jake knew he would never understand why this was the case, so he just let his wife buy whatever she liked within budget.

Several times during their trawl from shop to shop, Amy offered to spend some time looking for something for Jake, but he refused. He wanted to keep everything as close as he could to how Amy experienced that day the first time around, despite not having the children with them. There was a fear that he would miss something important because he was busy looking at sweatshirts or new jeans that he didn't need anyway. He also feared that the day had also changed significantly because Amy was not being worn out by their children's shopping antics. Maybe she would miss the trade she witnessed because she was not standing by a children's shop or stopping to buy a treat for the boys if they were behaving themselves. He hoped that she would still keep to a similar pattern and he could witness what he needed to witness. He did, however, think of the upside if Amy and the children did not witness the trade that sparked a murder streak. If she didn't see it she would not report it. If she did not report it then his family was safe. All of a sudden Jake was determined to keep Amy so busy that she did not witness the trade, wherever it was due to take place.

Jake had never taken the time to admire the vast expanse that was the relatively local indoor shopping centre named the MetroCentre. He looked around it as they sat in a food court in the central pavilion surrounded by approximately ten different concession stands offering everything from hot dogs to sandwiches and even fried chicken. The sit down offered a welcome break from the slow walking and standing around of the previous two hours. Above him was an angled glass roof made entirely of glass. Surrounding it was corridors lined with famous shops, each corridor with a glass roof shedding light on every corner of the centre. He was facing away from the area that had once been home to Metroland, one of the largest indoor theme parks in the country. The section had been redeveloped and was now named The MetroCentre Qube. Rather than being home to a Ferris wheel, a pirate ship and a roller-coaster, the Qube boasted several big name restaurants, a family fun section that included ten-pin bowling, and a new ten screen cinema that included 3D and IMAX screens. It was the first cinema of its kind in the North East of England.

Built on an old waterlogged ash dump, the MetroCentre had built its reputation on being the biggest. Opening in 1986 it was the biggest out of town indoor shopping centre in Europe. As newer shopping centres opened elsewhere, the MetroCentre expanded to reclaim its title. It now contained almost 350 shops over an area of almost two million square feet. In addition to this title, Metroland, opening in 1988 was the largest indoor theme park in the country. While being positively massive, the centre was treated almost like four separate malls joined together, each one colour-coded as either red, yellow green or blue. In addition to the mass-produced feel, there were three smaller themed malls. One with an Ancient Roman feel, one built like an old British cobbled street, and one built like a typical Mediterranean village. Although the place was more than twenty years old, it was still as popular as ever, especially when January sales were underway.

Jake sat the other side of a small table from Amy and glanced around the central pavilion. He looked around him and paused when he noticed a figure he recognised. This person was standing by the entrance of a catalogue shop a short distance away. It was the woman he had saved from a speeding car several days earlier. She was carrying a couple of bags from some of the most high-class shops within that centre.

"Are you enjoying your sandwich?" Jake heard Amy's question. "You seem to be enjoying the smell of it while looking at attractive women nearby," she added in a sarcastic tone, with a smile on her face. Jake didn't speak in response, but put on an over-the-top shocked look at his wife's accusation.

He looked around the food court and was not surprised to see the man whom he had witnessed being blown up in his own car just two days before.

Jake could also see several strategically positioned men wearing dark glasses seated nearby. One was reading a newspaper, and another seemed to be pretending to talk on a mobile phone. It looked like something was about to happen here, and whatever it was, it would be well observed by more people than the organisers expected.

Interrupting his thoughts, two men in suits, each carrying a briefcase, sat down four tables away. Jake tried to watch what was going on, constantly looking elsewhere so they wouldn't think he was spying on them.

The two men lifted their briefcases onto the table, opened them, and continued their quiet conversation. After a few seconds it was obvious that both of them were carefully examining the contents of one of the cases. They seemed to almost hide behind the open lid of one of the briefcases. They were looking closely at whatever one of them had brought to the conversation, and Jake was intrigued. Despite the ambient noise of the food court, if these suited men started to talk any louder than Jake would be able to make out at least some of what they were saying.

Both cases closed quickly and both men seemed to be getting more frustrated with each other. Their subtle and pleasant meeting was quickly becoming nothing more than an argument.

They were now speaking loudly enough for Jake to make out some of the conversation. He heard words like agreement, money, and car park. Hearing such a fragmented argument wasn't going to be of any use to him, even when he already knew roughly what was happening. Their argument didn't seem to be resolving itself and it showed. It was almost at the point of getting physical.

One of the employees of the food court was moving over, seemingly to ask them to calm down or move elsewhere. He was at the next table and getting closer, when one of the men stood up and pulled a handgun from his suit jacket.

Jake had never seen anyone move as fast as the approaching employee. He was on the floor before the annoyed man had finished pointing the gun at his friend's head.

Amongst the panicked screams of passers-by, the other man calmly waved his hand at the man. He waved away the threat dismissively and pointed to the table, encouraging his associate to put down the gun.

After what seemed like an eternity of shouting and pointing with guns, the man lowered his gun inside a near empty food court. The only people who now remained were lying on the floor. The men quickly picked up their cases and made a swift exit. Due to the sudden exhibition of weaponry, no one on the scene was keen to detain them until someone with authority arrived.

Within seconds they were both gone, and people started to return to their tables from whatever they had been hiding behind. Those who were too afraid to watch were told by food court staff that the crazy gun-toting men had departed.

Jake was startled when a head popped up next to his table at some speed, and then he calmed down instantly when he realised it was Amy. He was surprisingly jumpy at that moment. When the gun came out Amy must have hit the deck like everyone else. "You are either far too curious," she said, "or you have nerves of steel." Jake looked puzzled. She continued to explain, waving her right arm in a large haphazard circle, pointing in nearly every direction. "Everyone else here went for cover when that man pulled out a gun, but you didn't move."

Jake had not even realised that he was the only one who had not moved at all during the whole incident. "You're even still holding that sandwich in your hands," Amy said, half laughing, nervously.

Jake did not know what to say to that. It was true. Everyone else panicked and had ducked behind tables, chairs and pillars. Jake simply sat there, perfectly still, holding his sandwich and looking on as if he was watching a movie. Of all of his experiences during his past week, that one had seemed more surreal than anything else.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It was only just after midday, and Jake and Amy had finished their shopping and were heading for their car, walking exhausted through the maze of corridors with various types of tiled floors. The gun incident had happened just a few minutes earlier, and unsurprisingly they had lost the desire for shopping. It seemed that almost every other visitor had come to the same decision. Jake had never had the desire to shop anyway, and he was relieved that their trip was at a premature end. He was not much of a shopper when circumstances were typical, and was even less keen on the pastime when the shopping centre was busy, or when there was a chance of being shot.

They walked through the centre and were soon treading the tarmac on the top of the multi-storey car park attached to the yellow section of the gigantic shopping centre. They had not spoken very much on their walk back, and finally Amy broke another uncomfortably long silence. "What do you think all of that was about?"

"I have no idea," said Jake, "but it didn't look like your typical argument."

"Do you think we should report it to anyone? We were close to the incident and we could probably give a better description of those people than most other shoppers."

"You can't move in a shopping centre without being caught on a few CCTV cameras. I'm sure our descriptions would be vague in comparison to the footage they have."

"You might be right."

"Of course I'm right. It was probably drugs or something worse that we should steer clear of getting involved in."

"You might be right," she said again, apparently unaware she had just said the very same thing just a few seconds earlier. "But I still feel like we should do something about it, like we would be doing something wrong by keeping it to ourselves."

As they reached the car, Jake unlocked the doors with the press of a button and they climbed inside. Jake, as was traditionally the case, would drive them home. Amy was capable of driving but due to some unspoken agreement between them Jake was the usual family driver when they were both around.

For a brief moment Jake drifted off in his own thoughts. He hoped that Amy was not going to try to persuade him to report the incident in the food court. His reason for not doing so had sounded so pathetic that even he failed to really believe it himself. In any normal circumstances he would of course encourage the reporting of anything even remotely illegal they had witnessed. The only thing that made this any different was Jake's knowledge of future events. Reporting today's activities would result in someone hunting them down. If Jake could stop Amy reporting the event in the shopping mall he would have succeeded in saving the lives of his family.

He looked out of the front windscreen and felt a chill run through him. Almost directly in front of them were the two men who had held that heated conversation inside the shopping centre. The briefcases were gone, and they were walking to the back of an old blue hatchback.

Jake was hoping they would not look in his direction. They would most likely recognise him as the sandwich-holding man who couldn't stop staring at them earlier on the food court. Both men glanced around them, but didn't look carefully through any car windows, so they thought they were safe.

The men stood by the open boot of the car, pointing and gesturing with their arms. Jake realised that the event inside the shopping centre was merely a prelude to a trade that was happening in front of his eyes. This was where the real thing happened. Both men were standing and talking when the driver door of the car opened and a third man joined the conversation.

Jake instantly recognised him as a very nervous looking Detective Inspector Arnold. The trade was about to happen just in front of him. The briefcases reappeared, and one was apparently exchanged for the car and its contents.

The corrupt officer had picked the quietest corner of the quietest car park belonging to the shopping centre. Jake wondered why he had opted to complete the trade there. Surely he was always going to be seen by someone watching? Maybe there was some kind of security in doing dangerous deals in public places.

It seemed to be the same twisted logic as was used by people confronting family on daytime talk shows when revealing deeply held secrets. There was some unusual form of security in doing something dangerous when someone, anyone was nearby. He was not convinced that the same logic should apply to illegal trades. Surely witnesses did not provide any security for such events, but would in fact do quite the opposite.

Regardless of what Jake was thinking, it didn't change what was actually going on. A police officer was corrupting himself before Jake and Amy's eyes.

"Do you recognise him?" Amy asked, always able to read Jake like a book.

There was no point in lying about it. "Yes I do," he answered. "He's a local police officer."

Amy thought he must be mistaken. "It must be some kind of sting operation or something," she speculated.

"Sadly, it isn't," Jake responded.

"And how would you know what it is, Mr Detective?" she asked with a cynical tone.

"I'm not the Detective, he is," Jake responded with a similar tone to his voice. He then hushed his voice again and said, "I'll tell you later." Jake turned his attention back to what was happening a few yards in front of them.

Eventually, after lengthy discussions, D.I Arnold ended up with a briefcase, and handed the keys for the old car to one of the other men. It seemed their deal for a crummy car and its contents had been completed until one of the men mentioned something to the policeman.

Mr Arnold suddenly got very agitated. He had clearly been told something that caused him to get very angry. Jake guessed he had not seen the heated debate in the shopping centre's food court, and that he was told how the other party pulled out a gun in front of a large number of weekend shoppers. The officer started shouting at the other man, waving his arms everywhere. He was not at all pleased with his colleague and he was going to make sure he knew it.

Jake pulled his eyes away from the scene to discover that he was not the only one watching. The Brady & Sons van drove by. The red four-by-four owned by the Whites was also parked nearby, and he could see two people sitting inside. The last time Jake had seen those vehicles they were being blown up in front of his eyes.

His observances had now covered all of the people he had saved, or tried to save, over the past week. All of them had witnessed at least one half of the trade.

He had now seen everything that they had seen first-hand. Every one of those witnesses was going to report the suspicious activity they had seen, and in turn, they would end up dead or nearly dead within one week.

After the shouting match was over, D.I Arnold and one of the men walked away, and the other man opened the boot, closed it again without affecting its contents, and then climbed into the car and drove away. Jake followed suit and, before long, he and Amy were on their way home.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"So, you're asking me to just pretend all of that didn't happen?" Amy asked, sitting in their living room.

"Not exactly. I'm telling you not to report it to anyone." Jake responded.

"You're telling me that I should not report an illegal trade I witnessed because you are paranoid about some possible backlash," Amy confirmed.

"It's not paranoia. These people will hurt us if we report this," Jake retorted. "It is very complicated, and the whole thing would take a long time to explain properly."

"We could make a start right here. With your sudden fear of everything, it's not like we would be going anywhere," she said. Jake could see no obvious way out of what would definitely be a very unusual and uncomfortable conversation, but seeing no apparent alternative, he started to explain.

"Last Friday, I returned home to find the worst scene I could possibly imagine. It was worse than any mock-up scene from a slasher movie or crime drama because this was real." Jake could see Amy struggle to think of what Jake might have seen. He did not wait for her to ask him what he meant. He simply continued, "As I drove into our driveway I found you, Jason, and James lying in front of the house, dead."

By then Amy's look of confusion turned to one of very obvious shock and concern for her husband. She seemed visibly concerned that he was going crazy. "You had all been shot from close range by hit-men just a few seconds before. The police could do nothing and I was devastated, obviously." His voice was trembling as he recalled the scenes, and as the emotions he felt the other day rushed back to him.

"I don't understand. We've always been here. None of that has happened," she said in a caring tone, but looking perplexed.

"You're right. It hasn't happened yet," Jake responded. "Let me explain. That evening, I shouted into the sky that I wanted to turn back time. I woke up the next day and it was the same day again." Amy looked at him as if he'd just told her about a weird dream.

"So you repeated the day and stopped it all from happening?" Amy guessed.

"I did exactly that. But since then, every day I have woken up on the previous day. So, I have now learned a thing or two since then about why all of this stuff is going on."

It seemed that Amy had no idea what to make of all of this. Every now and then her head would shake, and she would open her mouth to speak, but would decide against it, and continue to sit there in silence.

Jake was about to break the silence when Amy finally spoke. "Why?" It was one word in response to a monologue, but it was a valid question.

"You were not the only ones that someone had tried to kill during the past week. There were several others, all of whom witnessed the drugs trades today. I saw them all nearby," he answered.

"Who came after these witnesses? What did they do with them?" It was starting to make a little bit of sense to Amy, but she still looked like she had a lot of questions. She had clearly seen the emotion with which Jake spoke and she knew he believed what he was saying.

"Remember the policeman I mentioned when we saw him get out of the car?" Amy nodded in response. "That's the guy. He got a list of details of everyone who had reported anything that might lead back to him, and he had them targeted. He has already tried to kill me, and he has arrested me one day for interfering and ruining his plans."

Amy looked horrified at what she had just heard. Not only was this man a corrupt police officer, but he was cold-blooded enough to start killing people who went up against him. This was one of the senior police officers in their quiet town?

Jake went on to explain why D.I Arnold was doing what he was doing. He mentioned the events of previous days and how he was blackmailed into his barbaric actions, but Amy still could not believe that someone would change from law enforcer to savage lawbreaker so quickly and so easily.

Jake had not given that point much thought in recent days, but it was true. He tried to enforce the law, his family were in trouble and he snapped. He wondered how he would fare in similar circumstances. If his family's safety was used against him, would he do whatever he had to in order to keep them safe? On that first day he relived he learned something of how far he would go to protect his family. Breaking the law was of little consequence to a passionate father when it came to protecting his family.

He started to think about the things he had done over his past week. He had been attacked several times, but he had responded in like manner when he had needed to. He came to the conclusion that no one could possibly predict how they would cope if put in a position of choosing between what was right, and what they loved.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The afternoon and evening had been quiet and peaceful. The rest of the day was such a change of pace to what Jake had dealt with over the previous days. If he was not rushing around trying to save someone's life, he was trying to make sense of an enormous amount of information he had been given.

He had time to think about the days ahead for him. He knew he had wake up tomorrow and no one would understand his situation again. Several people had heard his story and had understood, and had even been very helpful, but once again, he would be on his own.

He could not wait for this run of days to draw to a close. He needed a break from all of this, and there did not seem to be any respite for him from the incredible journey he was destined to make.

As he sat there in a brief contented moment, Amy walked into the lounge looking nervous. Jake felt his heart drop, certain of what he was about to hear before Amy opened her mouth to speak. "You said earlier that you've already saved us in the future?" she asked.

"I did. The guy I met yesterday explained that every repeat of a day replaces the previous version."

"I still think the incident should be reported somehow," she said, changing the subject slightly.

"There will be time to do that, but with any luck I can prevent the thing that started it all, and there will be nothing to report."

Jake wondered how long Amy would be able to resist the urge to report an illegal trade that had happened right in front of her. She was a woman of conscience and stubbornness, and she had to sit on this information for longer than she felt comfortable doing.

Regardless of her thoughts of reporting the event, tomorrow would soon come, and Jake might be able to stop D.I Arnold from making a huge mistake with disastrous repercussions. Only time could tell what was going to happen, but Jake was certain that time was on his side, and not on the side of Mr Ironside and his various gangs. For them, there was nothing that could be done to stop the man they did not know existed from disrupting a plan they had already executed. For the first time since this thing started, Jake saw his reversal through time as a major advantage over his enemies.
CHAPTER 14

**Friday 23** rd **January, 7:30am**

Jake opened his eyes and was not exactly sure what day he was in. Yesterday was Saturday, and so he fully expected today to be Friday. He glanced around the room as the alarm went off, checking the daily calendar to his right on the bedside cabinet. He soon realised his assumption was correct.

He looked down at his bedside cabinet again, remembering the incident several days ago when he dropped it on the head of a contract killer standing next to his front door. This whole scenario had seemed so much simpler on that first relived day. Jake caught himself in a nostalgic frame of mind for events that were in fact several days in the future, and he wondered whether anyone else had ever fondly remembered future events in the same way.

Part of Jake wondered whether he would continue to rewind through time if he had succeeded in saving his family yesterday. The rest of him knew that he would not have woken up on this day unless he had something to do. He had been unable to prevent the trade yesterday, and he was also not entirely convinced that he had been able to persuade his wife let the matter rest. He could see genuine concern in her eyes, but it was possible it was out of concern for his sanity, rather than concern for the safety of the family.

He thought about other mothers he knew. Most would freak out at the mere suggestion of their family being unsafe. Amy was not such a mother. Knee-jerk reactions were not in her nature. Instead she considered problems from various angles before deciding on anything. He feared she would view his concerns rationally as some kind of paranoia, and do the seemingly logical thing in reporting yesterday's trades to the authorities. It seemed that despite his greatest exertions, some things would likely not change as the days rewound. With Jake still moving backwards he clearly had some other, possibly greater task to perform than those of previous days.

He dragged himself out of bed and went about the usual routine to get ready for the day, which was much more difficult than he had anticipated. His family would be expecting him to go to work, as would the bosses of Nannotek. He could call and find an excuse for not going in today, but he did not know what else he would do if he went somewhere other than to work.

Perhaps he needed to find D.I Arnold and convince him not to follow the instructions of Mr Ironside. That was not likely to be an easy task, nor did it seem like a conversation he wanted to have. He had no idea what had happened to Mr Arnold that would force him into his future course of action, so he therefore had no idea how he could possibly stop it from happening.

He could talk to D.I Arnold until he was blue in the face, but unless he knew the leverage Ironside had over him, there was little he could do to convince the police officer to follow a different course of action.

He was growing weary of waking up every day without knowing what he was supposed to do next. At least when the days followed the standard forward-moving pattern he could learn with the passing days. Unfortunately everything he did on a given day was always undone again before he had even dragged himself out of bed. It was almost demoralising enough for him not to bother.

As he thought that, he remembered again why he had found himself travelling gradually back in time. The survival of his family was at stake. Not only that, but many more families would be ruined by the events over the coming days. From what he had learned, it seemed likely that a chain-reaction would affect many other people, and possibly an entire community.

He was the only one who could stop this whole thing from happening. There was no one else who could do this if he failed to do it. Everything he loved and held dear would be affected if he gave up now. He also remembered that his own future looked grim when he considered that he would either end up in prison or he may even end up dead. Even when he did not consider his own plight, he had a family's lives to fight for. That was all the motivation he needed to get himself moving.

Jake needed to believe that he was able to make a difference. It seemed that whatever cosmic force had landed him in this situation also believed in him to succeed. He believed that he would not be in his present predicament if there had been nothing he could do to stop the upcoming tragedy.

He decided that he should treat the day as any normal day until he discovered what he could do to change the future. All he knew was that Ironside seemingly forced D.I Arnold into a drug trade to take place on the following day. He did not know how, and he did not really know why. All he knew was that there would be reasons for all of this, and that he needed to find out what those reasons were.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

There was no getting away from the fact that Jake did not like his job. Even with his mind working overtime to figure out his next move, he was still bored. Nothing in his office or even in the building was likely to stimulate any interest for him anymore. This place just did not inspire him after the week he had experienced. He still saw his life moving in a different direction as soon as time began to move in the right direction again, and everything returned to normal. That new direction would undoubtedly lead to a change in job and maybe a change in career.

Jake was not about to leave work to go and pursue a career in some death defying sport, but he needed something more interesting in his life than his mind-numbing desk job. He sat and considered the contrast between the two incarnations of the previous week.

During one of those weeks, the highlights involved wearing a new tie to work. Nobody commented on the tie, but he liked it. Other high points had been the feeble winding up of colleagues, and other mundane events. Compared to the newer version of each of those days, that was as dull as someone's life could get. In this newer version of the past week he had saved several lives, and had tried to save others, as well as being shot at, being involved in more than one major car accident, being injured in several different ways, and he had even been arrested for a murder that he had not committed after being on the run from the law.

Jake was never likely to have another week in the rest of his life as adventurous as this one had been, nor did he want a week like this every week. It was far too exhausting. He considered both extremes and concluded that some kind of unexplored happy medium must exist which could fill his working life.

He thought of his days sat behind his desk doing very little and wondered how he would cope with the complete antithesis of that. He had seen TV shows involving government agents involved in remarkable death defying feats to help prevent the latest threat to their country. He could see his own reflection in the glass of a picture frame on his desk and could not picture himself saving the day like these gun-toting macho men.

He wondered whether he could find the middle ground, as far as his career was concerned. He would be unlikely to find a job advertisement for 'Part-Time Government Agent / Part-Time Desk Clerk.'

Whilst thinking about his future, as well as his past week, his eyes were fixed on the phone on his desk. He was responsible for dealing with difficult customers and those who needed to speak with a senior staff member in order to resolve their complaints.

Occasionally he had seen lights flash, indicating that someone had called his department, but none of the calls were being transferred to him. He was not looking at the phone in anticipation of receiving a call, but with thoughts of making one of his own.

He stretched out his arm, picked up the receiver and pressed the number nine to access an outside phone line. He dialled a number scribbled on a pad in front of him, and waited for someone to pick up on the other end. After three rings, someone answered.

Jake responded. "Hello. This is Officer Jacobs of the Metropolitan Police High Tech Crime Unit. May I speak with Detective Inspector Arnold concerning a case?" He expected to hear a sceptical objection, but he was instead given a polite response. This officer evidently believed his lie.

"I'm sorry, Officer Jacobs," was the response. "He's been called away on urgent business." Jake thought his idea was falling flat on its face, but he was suddenly given hope. After a quiet second or two the officer spoke again. "I can give you his mobile phone number if it is important."

"It's very important. Thank you for your help," Jake responded. He reached for a paper and pen, and had a smile on his face when he thought how easy it was to fool an administrator in law enforcement. He hoped the rest of their staff were not so easily fooled.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

There was nothing unusual about the home of D.I Arnold. It was part of a new housing estate. With every house built of the same red bricks with the same red pantile roofs and white UPVC windows, they looked almost identical to each other with only slight differences in size and shape. Some houses offered two bedrooms, some three, and some four. He remembered the whole estate being built only a couple of years earlier. It had been built on ground in the dilapidated Faverdale area of town which had stood pretty much desolate for years. The old industrial area had been considered a toxic area until it was cleaned over a period of several years prior to the new housing estate being built.

It was the kind of housing development Jake had seen in every housing company brochure he had ever looked through. The estate had a surprisingly narrow winding road, leading eventually to number 78.

He parked at the end of the Arnold property but stayed in the car. There were no other cars on their property, so wherever the policeman was, he had not yet returned home.

Jake had managed to get an uncomfortably large amount of information from the guy who picked up the phone in the police station. Not only had he been able to get D.I Arnold's home and mobile phone numbers, but he had been able to find out where he lived.

It was quite alarming to him to discover how liberal some people were with private information. The administrator, after giving away everything but Mr Arnold's life history and bank details, had offered to leave a message for D.I Arnold. Jake had tried calling the man himself, but had not been able to get through.

His last chance to contact the man was to drive to his house and wait for him. He had no idea whether or not the guy would be expecting company when he returned home. He had no idea how long he would have to wait to find out.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Detective Inspector Andrew Arnold sat in the comfortable leather front seat of his new car, looking directly in front of him. Through the windscreen he could clearly see the abandoned factory. He had seen this place only once before, a couple of days earlier, when this whole thing had started. It was not particularly large, but would easily be big enough for his needs. It had been suggested as a good place to conduct business by Paul Ironside, and it seemed that when that man made a suggestion people listened or they would soon regret it. He had even been told that there was a comfortable office already set up inside for him to use.

Andrew Arnold did not want to take part in any of this, but what choice did he have? His family had been threatened. His daughter was already missing, and he was certain they would be watching his home. He was sure that they would be watching every aspect of his life, and so they would know everything that his wife was doing. They could take her just as easily as they had taken his daughter.

He found himself wallowing in self-pity again. He was in this mess because he had done his job several days before. Every detail was planned. Every possible scenario had been accounted for, but somehow his team had it all wrong.

For months they had been tracking Ironside, following every deal, and they had a good idea of how he worked. They knew he managed to oversee every deal done in his name, even if he was not at the exact location when it happened. They also knew that he had the area well-guarded, and another outer ring of guards to protect the deal, as well as himself, from any interference.

Unfortunately, no one had found any proof that there were yet more guards. Another perimeter was set up around the two levels of guards already there.

Thinking back to the ordeal, it was quite amazing that they had managed to get out of the area alive. The police officers had taken out what appeared to be the outer level of guards when they were surrounded by yet more.

They could have all been killed right there, but instead they were brought before Mr Ironside. He held a 'private meeting' with Andrew where he promised to spare their lives if he himself would agree to do the next trade.

Did he really have a choice? He could have said no, which would have meant sacrificing the lives of almost an entire police force, but he said yes. He did not so much care about his own life at that moment, but his colleagues and family were involved as well. Anything he refused to do would result in someone being hurt. He could have handled that if the only person being hurt was him, but it needed to be an instant decision that would affect everyone connected to him.

The deal could have been worse than the one proposed. Ironside offered to spare his life, the lives of his family, and of every officer in his force. In addition, he had offered him a substantial amount of cash. As unattractive as his involvement was, the money would set him up for life. He could leave this place and his career behind him in order to make a fresh start elsewhere. He would not earn his police pension but he would not need it if everything happened as Ironside said it would happen.

As much as he hated to admit it, the money was a small but contributing force to his actions. He could feel himself becoming less and less honest with every passing hour, and he needed to reach the end of all of this. However, he still doubted that Ironside would simply pay him and let him go. To Ironside, a corrupt Detective Inspector might be extremely useful.

Andrew Arnold was still thinking about possible alternatives to what he was now doing when he heard a mobile phone ringing. He reached into his pocket, realising that his phone was turned off. After hunting around, he found another phone in the glove compartment. He did not recognise the phone or the number, but he knew who would be on the other end of the call. He had no interest in speaking to the man, but he felt that he had little choice. "Hello."

"Andy! How are you?" He recognised the voice of Mr Ironside on the other end of the line, speaking far too enthusiastically for his liking.

"I've been better," Andrew responded. "And it's Andrew, not Andy, if you don't mind."

"Well, Andy," came the response, blatantly ignoring the correction, "You appear to have a visitor."

Andrew looked around him, and in his car mirrors, and saw no one. "He's not there with you... He's outside your house." Andrew froze, eyes widening. This man was not only watching his home, but he was watching him inside his car as well. He had managed to get in and plant the phone and some kind of remote transmitting camera without setting off the alarm. He was clearly dealing with a very clever professional.

"You're probably wondering what I'm about to ask you to do, but I'll get to that in a little while." Mr Ironside seemed to be enjoying the corruption of a policeman. "First of all, you need to deal with the person outside of your house. Your wife has never seen him before, but I have a feeling you have." The phone went quiet for a minute or so. "Andy, you have half an hour to get here and remove this man from this situation or I will get involved. I'm sure you know what I'm capable of, so don't make me angry." With that comment, the line went dead. He was obviously in no mood for pleasantries. He suspected the man was never in the mood for saying hello, goodbye, please or thank you.

By D.I Arnold's watch, it was 2pm. He had only a short amount of time to figure out what was going on. There was a strange man outside his house and he needed to get rid of him within half an hour or Ironside would get rid of his wife. Simple, but also far too complicated for his normal everyday life.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jake had been outside the house for nearly half an hour and D.I Arnold was still nowhere to be seen. He had tried phoning his mobile phone again, but there was still no answer. He must have been doing something important to be away from work in the middle of the day, and to have cut off contact with everyone.

He could see some movement inside the house. The guy's wife was still inside, and was probably watching him, wondering what he was doing there.

He was on the verge of starting his engine and heading out of the street when he heard a car approaching. A new black Audi estate car, still with the paintwork sheen of a showroom, pulled into the driveway of number 78 and stopped. He could see D.I Arnold getting out of the car with an angry look on his face. It seemed wherever he had just been, he had not received any good news. He swung the door of his car closed and stormed towards Jake.

Jake was startled. He had expected a look of confusion on the officer's face, not one of anger. He did not know what to make of the reaction but it did not look good. Did D.I Arnold somehow recognise him, or was he just in a bad mood?

The policeman knocked on Jake's window, and Jake opened it with the usual button to talk with him. "Who the hell are you?"

D.I Arnold had no intention in waiting for Jake to wind the window all the way before asking his question. "I-"

"I don't really care!" He didn't let Jake explain himself. "Just get out of here."

"I'm here to stop you making a mistake," Jake added.

"Well, you've already made one. You shouldn't be here."

"Why not?"

"You're causing me problems by just being here," D.I Arnold said, growing red faced with anger.

"How?"

"I can't tell you. It's none of your business. Just go."

"No. Not until I talk to you about what you're about to do."

"How could you possibly know what I am about to do? I have no idea who you are!"

"I know more than you think."

D.I Arnold's phone rang, interrupting Jake's comments. "Yes!" He shouted impatiently.

"I can see and hear everything you're doing," came the voice over the phone. "There is a directional microphone pointed right at you. I'll give you one minute to get rid of him." He did not recognise this voice. It must have been one of Ironside's helpers.

"Okay," replied D.I Arnold, emotionless. With that he ended the call and put the phone in his pocket. Turning to Jake he said, "Whoever you are, and whatever you're doing here, you must leave now."

"Not until I talk to you about tomorrow!" Jake shouted in response.

"What can you possibly know about tomorrow?"

"I know what you're planning, and I'm here to stop you giving in to Ironside's demands."

D.I Arnold stepped back, shocked. It was as if he had been told some horrifying news. "How could you have any idea who Ironside is?" he asked with a panicked tone to his voice. Jake opened his mouth to answer, paused to think of the words, and then Arnold's phone rang again.

"What?!" Arnold shouted down the phone.

"Your time is up," said the man on the other end.

"What do you mean? It's only been a few seconds."

"He knows too much. He needs a little encouragement to get moving."

"And what do you suggest?" he retorted. "I'm doing my best."

"You'll see." The phone was silent. He'd hung up. D.I Arnold turned his head and looked through his living room window. He could see a figure approaching the window. He looked closer. It seemed like a man dressed in all black clothing, and he was holding something. He looked back at Jake. His phone rang again, and he pulled it from his pocket. "What?"

"I thought you might like to hear this. It's the sound of the consequences of your actions." The man stopped speaking, but this time he stayed on the line.

He could hear the noise of someone moving in the background, and something small and heavy being moved. The next sound was unmistakable. It was the clink of a handgun being cocked. He heard mumbling which was almost certainly his wife. The mumbling became louder as the man clearly walked towards her holding the phone and a gun. He listened intently to any background noise. Without any warning a loud bang caused Andrew Arnold to move the phone away from his ear, lessening the deafening sound erupting from the handset. As he did so, he knew the sound all too well, and he felt a chill run down his spine. That loud bang, which he could hear without the aid of his phone, was the sound of a handgun being fired.

He listened again. There was no more mumbling in the background noise. His eyes widened and he started to panic. "Hello?" There was no answer. He raised his voice to an almost ear splitting shout. "Hello!"

"I'm still here," came the answer from the man on the other side of the window. "However, someone else is not here anymore. You know who to blame, and if you don't eliminate him now then I will." No more words were spoken and the line went dead again.

D.I Arnold turned to face Jake again. "You have no idea what you have just done!" he said. Jake looked confused. "Your being here has just ruined my life. Now I intend to ruin yours."

The look on Jake's face changed from one of confusion to one of concern, then panic as the officer spoke. He continued, "And if I don't do something to you," he paused and pointed to his own living room window where Jake could see someone's hand moving a net curtain to allow them a clear view from the front of the house. He continued to speak with emotion breaking his voice, "If I do nothing, the man staring at you from the other side of that window over there will do something to you, and then to me." With that, he turned and walked back to his car.

Jake had heard a muffled bang that suggested someone inside had been the unintended victim of his own interference, and he had a rough idea of what was about to happen. He watched D.I Arnold walk to his car, open the driver door, reach under the seat, and place something in his pocket. This did not look good.

Jake started his car engine as quickly as his fumbling fingers allowed him to turn the key in the ignition. D.I Arnold spun around. Jake put the car in reverse, then reached down and took off the handbrake. He needed to act quickly. He was quite certain that two people in his eye line were determined to hurt or kill him.

With no further thought, Jake slammed his foot on the accelerator, flinging the car back at break neck speed to the sounds of squealing rubber and amid a new cloud of smoke. In the next few seconds Jake heard rapid gunfire, and everything breakable on his car was shattered almost in an instant. He ducked out of the way of the bullets flying around him, below the top of the dashboard, and the hole where his car windscreen had been just a few seconds earlier.

He had no idea where his car was going, whether he was close to any parked cars, or if anything was driving the other way down the road. The clunking sound of bullets piercing bodywork ceased, and he assumed that both men had run out of ammunition, or that they could see no sense in shooting randomly down a residential street. It made a lot of sense for the two of them to stop shooting at him, and he agreed wholeheartedly with that decision. The problem was that this meant that they would now start chasing Jake as aggressively as they had been shooting.

He lifted his head up and looked out of the gaping hole that used to be his rear window. The road was curving and he needed to turn the car around. He turned the wheel hard to the right and pulled on the handbrake, spinning the car around in a perfect one hundred and eighty degree spin. He had never done a manoeuvre like that before and was surprised and pleased with himself at how well he pulled it off.

He drove out of the new estate as fast as he could, knowing that D.I Arnold, as well as the mystery shooter, would be after him within seconds. Not only was a random shooter and an apparently vengeful person about to be on his tail, but one of them was a policeman. The man would certainly use the tools at his disposal to capture Jake. He needed to hide and he needed to do so very well and very quickly. His life depended on his making good decisions in the next few minutes.
CHAPTER 15

**Friday 23** rd **January, 2:49pm**

It had been almost ten minutes since Jake had hurriedly left the street where the Arnolds lived. In that time it had seemed like he had checked his rear view mirror about five hundred times. There were no other cars on the road behind him. It would be difficult for them to keep up anyway. He was driving as fast as the roads, and his bullet-ridden car would allow. Of all the damage the car had sustained, the most significant was the removal of the windscreen. This limited the top speed of the car to whatever wind speed his face could stand. That was still a fair amount above thirty miles per hour in residential areas. He thought about racing drivers and how the most powerful cars in the world had no windscreen. These were, however, driven by guys with strong necks and stronger helmets. He had neither of those.

Despite the damage to the car Jake could still exceed the speed limits with relative ease. He knew that by doing so he was risking being caught speeding by traffic police, but he would be in more trouble if a certain off-duty police officer caught up with him first.

He had woven in and out of side streets several times and could almost guarantee that he was not being followed. The trouble was that D.I Arnold knew his car, and would now know how to find it without the need to follow him. Within the hour there would be someone at his home looking for him. The police would also likely be told his car had been involved in something illegal and that Jake should be apprehended on sight. No doubt the story would be vastly different from the actual events, and he would be accused of the murder of Mrs Arnold. By being in the wrong place at the wrong time he was once again a fugitive. The police would look for him at home and at work, so he needed to go somewhere completely different, somewhere no one would expect him to go.

His car was not exactly inconspicuous in its current state. There was very little glass left in the windows, and the body was riddled with bullet holes. He doubted it would even go much further before some engine or electrical fault stopped the car from functioning. He needed to ditch it and find something else, and the quicker he could do that, the more chance he had of surviving the day and staying away from a prison cell.

The police would have ways of tracking him. He could not use any of his bank cards, and there was nothing to be gained from talking to any of his relatives. He was on his own, but only for the rest of the day. Tomorrow he would wake up in his own bed and in a different day again. He just had to do what he could today and ride out any difficulties.

He thought about his yesterday. He had witnessed the second half of D.I Arnold's drug deal, but he remembered Will Spalder telling him that the first half had happened today. He had no idea where, when or how, but he could still do something to prevent it from happening.

He was now almost in the centre of the town. He had driven past many second hand car dealerships without finding anything he deemed cheap enough, and was now driving along the main routes in and out of the town, trying to find a suitable car to replace his beaten up Mercedes-Benz. He had just over a hundred pounds in his wallet that he hoped was enough for a deposit on a beaten up car from a less-than-desirable dealership. He would no doubt have to fill in financing forms and provide personal details, but he hoped that it would take until at least the end of the day for the police to know about the purchase in his name.

As he drove he considered the town in which he lived. He found Darlington to be a strange town. It was the home of the Stevenson Rocket, the first steam powered locomotive, which had been crucial during the industrial revolutions he had learned about in school. It had been one of the two towns involved in the first passenger train journey in the world, the other being Stockton, a short distance away. Since then, however, he had no idea what Darlington had actually done for the world. Something still drew people here, but it was difficult to see what that was. A couple of companies had large headquarters here, but the same was true of most towns.

While other towns had mining, steel, cotton or fishing industries in their history, no obvious trade surrounded the town. Despite the lack of obvious industry the town was growing rapidly. Every time he drove a different route from his usual one he would spot another one or two housing developments. The town was somewhat of an enigma to him because of this recent expansion.

He was driving at a much slower pace now and with much less purpose through the town, not sure how successful he would be in hiding for the remainder of the day. A drive up North Road led him to the entrance of another dilapidated industrial estate.

In amongst the run-down buildings now visible in every direction, he noticed a second-hand car showroom built of corrugated sheet metal and large badly fitted windows. The dealership's poor construction was covered largely by brash, bright coloured signs with phrases such as "Cars from £100 deposit" and "Drive away in 15 minutes". Despite all of this, the part of the dealership that caught Jake's attention was the very front of the forecourt where he noticed the very same pale blue car he had seen in the exchange he had witnessed the day before. The fact that the car was still sitting in a forecourt suggested that D.I Arnold had not yet made moves to acquire the drugs to be used in the trade the following day. Jake's plan of finding a new car had changed the moment he set eyes on that car. If he could keep his eye on it, he could find out where the drug pick-up would take place, and he could maybe have some influence over what was about to happen.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The old blue Ford hatchback in front of Jake had most probably been purchased in a hurry from an obscure location for a very good reason. D.I Arnold would not want to be seen driving this car all over town by anyone who was likely to recognise him.

Jake had parked across the road and was now watching the car from his own. Looking at it, it was amazing that it would even get as far as the shopping centre so many miles away. He would not trust it to get him from one end of his street to the other, and his street was not exactly long.

He figured that if anyone recognised D.I Arnold driving such a beaten up old car they would be suspicious. There would be something not quite right about seeing a senior policeman on a good wage driving around town in the smallest, cheapest, oldest running car.

He wondered how late in the day this pick-up would happen. It was now nearing three in the afternoon and this car place would probably be closed within the next couple of hours. A thought occurred to Jake as he sat there, looking on. He had forgotten that he was sitting in a car that was half the vehicle it had been that morning. If Arnold turned up at that car showroom now, he would see the shot-up Mercedes and know that Jake was there. With that thought on his mind he turned the key to start the ignition.

Unfortunately, the car responded by making a couple of low whining and gurgling noises, then the engine failed to start. This car was not going to move anywhere any more. He stepped out from the driver's seat, crouched down on one knee, and peered underneath the engine. There were at least two different kinds of liquid leaking out on to the road. The streaking colour in one fluid suggested it was oil, and the strong smell of the other could only be petrol. A couple of lines had been punctured by the gunfire aimed the car earlier. A lack of oil and petrol would be enough of a reason for the car to remain stationary. He knew little about cars but he was sure the lack of oil and petrol was a very big problem. He was not exactly in a position to buy more of both to get the car moving, especially as he had to keep an eye on the car immediately in front of him.

He walked to the front of the car and surveyed the damage for the first time since the incident. There were small holes covering the bonnet and all of the lights were shattered. No one looking at the car now would recognise it as the car Jake drove first thing this morning. He did not dare lift the bonnet and look at the engine itself.

Close inspection led him to the conclusion that this car would never be driven again in this condition. Even with new oil and additional petrol, this thing probably would not start anyway as several key parts of the engine would likely have been punctured by gunfire. He was without transport for the rest of the day and he was a couple of miles from home. His concern at the moment, however, was not the distance from home but the distance from the car D.I Arnold would soon be purchasing.

As he stood looking at his wreck of a car, wondering how he would get around, he heard a vehicle approaching. He turned his head and was rooted to the spot. He saw a car park by the side of the road, and a familiar figure stepped out of the driver side. D.I Arnold was here to buy a car.

Jake darted behind his car, out of sight. He hoped the officer would be too preoccupied to notice his battered Mercedes next to the car lot. He kept his head down and hoped for the best.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It had been close to twenty minutes since D.I Andrew Arnold had arrived to buy a suitable car. There were things he would rather be doing after experiencing the death of his wife earlier. He knew he had to do this because it was the only way of seeing his daughter again.

He had been there a matter of minutes and already found a suitable car, had the customary look at the interior, he had kicked the tyres, and had bartered on the price. Even though he was unaware of it, all of this had happened right in front of Jake.

Andrew had not been paying attention to anything else around him, and had not yet noticed either Jake or his car as a result. He was now inside the shack of an office completing the necessary paperwork. He had managed to keep the paperwork to a minimum. Paying with cash, and using a false name, he figured it would be difficult to trace back to him in the event of something going wrong. Given the trust issues he clearly had with Ironside, he fully expected something to go wrong.

After signing the forms placed in front of him, he exited the office holding the keys. A gleeful salesman walked swiftly in front of him to the car and proudly removed the price banner stuck on the windscreen. He looked happy to be rid of it, and Jake could not blame the man. He could see patches of rust from the other side of the road in twilight.

Andrew was looking at the keys in his hands as he walked over to the driver door. He reached the door, heard the salesman wish him good luck (as if he knew he would certainly need it with this car), and was about to get into the car when he looked straight ahead.

In front of him, just on the other side of the road, was the car he had fired at earlier. It looked like it had driven through a war zone. The driver, and the man responsible for his wife's death, had now been identified as Jake Hingham. He believed he was probably still nearby. He thought he might have seen a head duck behind the far side of the car's bonnet.

This man knew something about him, and he was going to find out how he knew so much, and why he was determined to get in the way. For him to be in the same place as him yet again, he must know more than he had previously thought.

He realised he had been looking at that car for a couple of seconds. He wanted to avoid spooking the driver and sending him running. He was also aware that chasing the man now would draw attention to himself. He needed to drive away, and return for this man. The car was a mess and it clearly was not going anywhere in a hurry.

He started the engine, reversed out of the space, thanked the salesman again, and left the car lot. He called the last dialled number on his phone using his Bluetooth headset. The call was answered before the second ring. "Hello Boss. What can I do for you?"

"I need you to collect my car from the north end of town. I have something to do here and I need my car returned home safely," he said.

"Okay. I'll be there in five minutes. Someone will drop me off."

"Good. My actions this evening are best kept quiet. No one can even know I was out here. Is that understood?"

"Yes sir."

He now had the opportunity to figure out exactly what was going on.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jake was surprised when D.I Arnold had apparently made eye contact with him, then had ignored him and driven off. He suspected he had not gone far.

He considered trying to start the car again, but knew it would be a waste of time. He could run off, but he would not get very far in an area unfamiliar to him. The only other option he had was to arrange for a friend to pick him up.

He pulled his phone from his pocket, and noticed he had seven missed calls. In all the excitement of the afternoon, he had not paid any attention to it. He listed the numbers of the missed calls. In the list were his boss, his wife, his sister, and the local police station. A lot of people seemed to want answers concerning his whereabouts.

He ignored that list and called Alan, a former work colleague. He had helped the man move house a couple of months earlier, and had been informed that Jake was owed a favour. It was time to call it in. He found the number, hit the call button, and heard the phone on the other end ring.

"Alan's house," Alan stated as he picked up the phone.

"Hi Alan. It's Jake Hingham. How are you?" he asked.

"I'm fine, Jake. It's been a while since we talked. How are things with you these days?"

"Everything's fine," he lied. "I could do with a favour though. My car has broken down and I could do with a lift. Yours was the first number in my phone book so I thought I would try you first." The truth was he was the only one who would not have heard of how Jake shot some woman and fled the scene.

"Okay," he answered, sounding sceptical. "Where are you?"

Before Jake could answer he heard the screech of tyres behind him and turned his head. It was getting dark and the car approaching had its lights on, but Jake recognised the dim lights as those of the cheap blue car bought in front of him minutes earlier.

The car came to a sudden stop beside Jake. Arnold was leaning over to the open passenger side window, pointing a gun at Jake. "Hang up the phone. Now," he said with a quiet, but frightening tone to his voice. Jake pressed a button on his phone and ended the call abruptly. "Now put your phone on the ground in front of you." Arnold demanded. Jake did as he was asked, and knew what the next request would be. "Get in the car, Jake. We need to have a little chat." Jake climbed into the passenger seat of the policeman's car and closed the door. He expected D.I Arnold to drive off in a hurry, so he was surprised when the man had decided to interrogate Jake without first finding a more secluded location.

"I'm sure you know what I'm on my way to do, Jake. The trouble is that I don't know how you know," Arnold said, facing Jake who was sitting on his left in the passenger seat. "You are on your way to ruin your life, and a man you don't know told me all about it," Jake answered.

"It's funny that you're still trying to tell me what to do when I have a gun pointed at your head. I have to give you credit. You're very brave... or very stupid."

"I just don't want to see you throw away your life and career."

"Jake, Jake," he said patronisingly. "My life is already ruined. My daughter is being held hostage. My wife is dead. The rest of my family are being monitored by the man asking me to do all of this." Jake could see where this was going. "So you see, my life is already ruined, and I'll end up with enough money to disappear forever. I think that sounds like a good replacement for my shattered police career, don't you?"

Jake could see he wasn't going to persuade him. "How much is Ironside paying you to keep quiet and to do this drugs trade?"

D.I Arnold was puzzled. "How do you even know his name? How do you know any of this?"

"I can't tell you."

"Oh, you can," Arnold said menacingly. "And you will." He pulled something from his pocket. It was a hypodermic needle filled with a clear liquid. "The fun thing about my job is that I have access to all kinds of seized drugs. You'll probably be familiar with this one. It's called Sodium Pentothal."

Jake recognised the name from various films and books he'd encountered. It was commonly called truth serum. Before he could resist or refuse, he felt the needle stick in his neck and he had been injected with the serum. He had never seen its effects in reality and hoped they were minimal.

His explanation sounded ridiculous when he was not under any influence. He could not imagine what it would sound like when he had been drugged. He thought he would be rigorously interrogated now, but D.I Arnold sat back in his seat. "I don't really know how well that drug mixes with this one," Arnold added, pulling a small polythene bag filled with white powder from his pocket, "but we'll see."

Jake read a hand-written label: PHENOBARBITAL. He had no idea what that was. "This is usually in the form of droplets or tablets. It's commonly used to treat animals with epilepsy." This man knew his drugs. "It was used on people about seventy years ago, but isn't used much these days. It's a shame because it works well in aiding with sedation and hypnotism."

Jake was feeling very concerned. Arnold added something else. "By the time I'm done with you, there won't be a single part of you that feels normal."

Jake thought that sounded particularly ironic. Nothing had felt normal to him since time had started going backwards. He felt more and more like an English spy held by some foreign mob.

Arnold set the gun down, tipped some white powder into the palm of his right hand, set the bag down, and then covered Jake's mouth. He held the powder up to his nose, but Jake exhaled sharply, creating a cloud of dust which settled over the dashboard and the detective.

Arnold immediately picked up the gun again and held the barrel hard against Jake's right temple. "Do that again and I'll just shoot you, with or without the information I want. I'll at least know you won't get in my way again."

Again, Jake smirked at the irony. He knew he would be involved in this guy's life again tomorrow, whatever happened to him now.

D. I Arnold did the same thing again, but this time he waited for Jake to breathe out before placing the powder in front of his nose. Jake tried to resist, but he could not help but breathe in, inhaling the powder. It had a bitter taste that reminded him of something but he could not put his finger on what that something was. He felt anxious about this whole situation. It would be hard not to feel anxious when a corrupt police officer was drugging him at gunpoint, and he had been accused of the murder of a stranger he had never even met.

In just a minute Jake felt strange. He was light-headed. He tried moving his left arm. It was a mammoth struggle to lift it an inch, and it did not even feel like his arm any more. He was not thinking straight, and he could not move properly. He felt almost like he was on another planet, or caught in a strange dream.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Andrew Arnold was beginning to think that this was a complete waste of his time. This man had been under the influence of a couple of substances for the past two hours, but was still speaking nonsense. He kept spouting off some story about travelling through time and being chosen by an omniscient force to prevent a tragedy. To him it sounded like he had memorised the opening dialogue from an old and popular science fiction television series he had watched a few years earlier.

They had moved from the side of a car dealership to the car park of a warehouse which had been left empty and was unguarded at night. They were more inconspicuous there.

The drugs pick-up had happened an hour and a half previously, meaning this interrogation was his last task for the day. He would have considered the old factory for questioning, but did not know whether his friend in the passenger seat would be able to stand up on his own and walk the distance to the only seats in the building.

He did not expect Jake's reaction to the cocktail of drugs to be quite so drastic. He must have given him too much of the epilepsy treatment. He had only discovered what it was after finding the packet in some corner of a cupboard at the police station and looking it up on the internet. For all he knew it was actually a much stronger drug in the bag.

He was losing patience with Jake. Not only was he giving him some tall tale while under truth serum, but he found it difficult to understand him anyway as he was slurring his words. He needed answers, but was not going to get anything sensible out of Jake any time soon.

It was not good to have someone around who knew what he was planning, regardless of how crazy he seemed. If it hadn't been for the fact that he intended to frame this guy for the murder of his wife earlier that day, he would probably have shot him by now. The whole thing was becoming massively frustrating to him, stuck in the middle of a situation he absolutely hated being in. In his entire police career, he had never had to kill anyone before, and would have preferred it if he could keep it that way. He still needed to find a way to keep this man quiet, whatever he did. Jake would soon be held for Mrs Arnold's murder, but he would no doubt tell them of Arnold's involvement in everything. If he spoke to them in this way no one would believe him.

The real question was that of proof. In all of his years working for the police, he knew that stories meant nothing more than the words from which they were composed. People were not convicted by witness statements alone very often. Courts needed cold, hard evidence. Everything the police did these days came down to gathering and preserving evidence. Without this evidence, a case would never even reach a court. Without reasonable cause, it would not even reach as far as a search warrant. Why would they believe the story of some lunatic who would say anything to get out of a murder conviction? There was no chance of anyone believing anything else he was likely to say anyway. Why believe part of his story when the rest was so absurd? The problem was that he needed to show case prosecutors that he could prove beyond all reasonable doubt that Jake was responsible for the death of his wife. He could make evidence point to Jake. There would be witnesses on his street who could be convinced that they had seen Jake do it. He felt that someone somewhere might doubt those events on hearing the words of a desperate man.

He decided to ask one or two more questions, after which he would dump him near his own house and would call the station with an anonymous tip about his abandoned car.

He looked at his watch. It was nearing seven o'clock. After relinquishing Jake, he would go home and plant as much evidence as he could in order to place Jake at the crime scene with his late wife, before reporting the murder and playing the part of the distraught bereaved husband. He wouldn't have to act, anyway. He was certainly distraught, that was true. It was everything else which was a lie.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jake's eyes opened, and at first he expected to find himself at home, on the morning of the previous day. He was disoriented and confused. He vaguely remembered the events he had gone through since sitting in his wrecked car opposite a used car showroom. He was lying fully clothed, face-up on a pavement, with rain falling relentlessly on him. His drenched clothing suggested he had been there for a little while. He lifted up his left arm and looked at his wristwatch. It was almost 8:00pm. This was evidently the same day, but he could not figure out where the day had gone.

Fuzzy memories of the evening came to mind. He had been asked a lot of questions, and had been open and honest in his responses – perhaps a little too open and honest. This officer would now probably consider him to be some kind of nutcase. He would have thought so, too, in D.I Arnold's shoes.

He remembered small fragments of their conversation. Arnold was being forced to do this drugs trade because of... something. Ironside had something of his, but Jake could not remember what it was. Arnold was being threatened with something, but Jake's head was so messed up that he could only remember snippets of the interview and interrogation that the policeman had so kindly inflicted upon him.

Jake brought himself back to the present and looked around. He knew where he was. He was outside the west entrance to the train station, just over half a mile away from his house. He picked himself up, straightened his clothes a little and started walking home. It was hardly worth running to get out of the rain when he had clearly been out in it for so long.

He wondered how he would explain what had happened to him to his wife and kids, assuming he could get near his house without being arrested. As far as the family were concerned, he was wanted for murder and was a fugitive from the law. There was no doubt that they would know about his activities by now, although the alleged true version they would have been told would be wildly different to his own version of events. Assuming they would be likely to believe an official series of events as told by a police officer, he hoped the effects of the truth serum had worn off. He had about ten minutes to come up with a valid lie.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Andrew's mobile phone started to ring, and he picked it up to answer the call. "Hello."

"Make sure you can't be heard by anyone," said the voice on the other end. He instantly recognised it as that of Mr Ironside.

"I'm actually alone. My wife's gone and you know where my daughter is."

"Of course I do. Well Arnold, how did your conversation with the guy go this evening?"

"He's crazy. He says he knows this stuff because of time travel. Even if he went to the police with his story, they would probably just humour him, then section him under the Mental Health Act and call the men in white coats to drag him away."

"You may be right, but somehow he still knows something. He would arouse suspicions, which may be enough to get the police sniffing around."

"I _am_ the police. If I say there's going to be no investigation, there will be no investigation."

"There's still a risk of someone taking this further. You need to silence this man for good. Call me when it's done."

The line went dead, and D.I Arnold was left trying to figure out what to do. He knew where Jake lived. He had ordered the police to stand down from the man's house earlier, as nobody really expected Jake to be dim enough to turn up at his own address while being hunted as a murder suspect. They had already found and removed Jake's car from outside the used car lot, and were of the opinion that Jake had to be miles away by now.

Arnold doubted that, however. He had a plan of his own. He had of course been granted immediate compassionate leave, following his wife's murder. He had politely refused the company of Police Family Liaison officers, telling them that he would travel to stay with relatives instead. Nobody questioned the grieving D.I.'s decision. Nobody would be expecting him in at work for some time. That would allow him the opportunity to pick Jake up when he inevitably returned to his own home and do whatever was necessary to 'silence this man for good' as Ironside had instructed.

He knew he needed to plan this carefully if this idea of his was going to work. He figured a late night assault on Jake's house would work best. Now he just had to figure out how to do it.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A bang caused Jake to wake up with a jump. He expected to wake up in the previous morning again, not in the middle of the night. Once again something was not right.

Amy turned over in bed. "Did you hear something?" She had been kind enough to stand by him, believing his version of events and refusing to inform the police of his arrival home.

Jake nodded in response.

"I'll go and check it out. Stay here." He got out of bed and reached for his dressing gown. He knew where the wooden floor creaked, and was careful to avoid that spot as he crept silently to the door.

He could definitely hear someone moving around downstairs. He reached for the door handle. He opened the door slowly and silently, pausing on the landing while he gathered his wits and his courage. He needed to make his way downstairs to confront them.

As he reached the top of the stairs, he stopped and looked around. He had nothing he could use as a weapon. The intruder would certainly be armed with something, so Jake needed something too. It would make no sense for him to put himself in danger without some means of self-defence.

As he stepped back, trying to think of something suitable he could use, someone or something came rushing up the stairs with the force of a train, knocking him to the floor a couple of feet away. A dark figure fell on him and they crashed through the bedroom door. They both fell together amongst the splinters of wood as he heard his wife screaming in the background.

A rag was placed over his nose and mouth, leaving behind a taste of some kind of alcohol based substance. He could not help but breathe it in. He started to feel dizzy, and soon the screams, and everything else, faded into blackness.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jake was beginning to tire of waking up in the same day. Nothing about today had gone well, and he just wanted it to be over. He could not wait for yesterday to start.

Each time he woke up, the situation in which he found himself was much worse. This time, he was sitting in the old blue car where he had been drugged earlier. His hands were taped to the steering wheel with a strong looking grey duct tape. His feet were also tied and his mouth was sealed with the same tape. He could not move or speak. The best he could do was to make grunting noises. He wondered what on earth was going on, but it hardly needed a genius to figure out that D.I Arnold had found him again.

He glanced into the rear view mirrors. He could see someone walking up to the car from behind. The door opened and, as expected, D.I Arnold was looking down on him. Jake was growing weary of seeing his face today. He suspected the man was tired of seeing Jake's face as well.

"I have orders to find a way of keeping you permanently quiet. Ironside doesn't think my getting you convicted will work as well as I do, so I've decided to do something else." D.I Arnold sounded vengeful and frankly quite evil. It was clear that he was beyond reason.

Jake started to panic. He realised where the car was parked. He was on a slight hill by the side of the river Tees. They were next to an old stone bridge dividing two villages four miles south of Darlington. Ahead of him lay the river bank lined with trees which belonged to the village of Croft in North Yorkshire, with the River Tees between it and the bank that belonged to the village of Hurworth and the smaller neighbouring village of Hurworth Place.

Jake generally liked the apparent beauty of the area and had in fact considered moving there when he and Amy had just married. The cost of transportation into Darlington was the only drawback. With petrol prices constantly climbing he decided to move somewhere a little closer to work. He considered that to be a shame as the quaint villages were picturesque. He now looked out over a darkened, tree lined river bank. The thing of concern to him at that moment was the rather deep section of the river between both villages. There was easily enough water for the car to be immersed completely. It would probably go unnoticed for several days as he suspected the river was rarely used for sailing activities. He figured that the river was his obvious destination as he sat in the car.

A look to his left showed the handbrake was not engaged. All it would take was one swift push and the car would end up in the water, taking him with it. This was obviously what Arnold had meant by keeping him permanently quiet.

Jake tried to struggle, but to no avail. He wasn't going to get out of that seat.

"I don't know what you're going to see after this life, but if there's anything else there, say hi to my wife for me." This man was not just an unfortunate policeman caught up in a horrible situation. He was a man waiting for a chance to show his true colours.

Before Jake could make any sound in response, Arnold had closed the door, walked to the back of the car, and was pushing the car gently onto the slope leading into the river. Jake felt the car start to move forward. With every passing second the car picked up speed. It took no time at all for the front end of the car to hit the water, with greater force than Jake had expected.

After a few seconds the car started to sink beneath the surface of the river with water quickly flooding inside. Jake's feet were soaked, and before he knew it the water level was just below his knees. He looked behind him to see D.I Arnold disappearing along the street. He was not about to hang around in a public place and risk being seen near a sinking car.

The water on the outside of the car was up to the windscreen. Jake was certain that this would be the end of his life. He was not sure if he had actually died at any previous point, but now he felt that he was going to know what dying would feel like for sure. There was no way out. In just a minute the car would sink entirely.

The inside was now almost entirely filled with water. Jake had a couple of seconds to inhale his last breath. As he did so, the car gurgled down under the water. If Jake didn't find a way out he'd be dead very soon. He had never been able to hold his breath for very long. However, even great escape artists would struggle with this one.

Jake started tugging on the steering wheel, noticing that the tape was starting to peel away from his wrists and that his feet were looser than they had been several seconds earlier. It appeared that D.I Arnold was not particularly expert in securing people without the aid of handcuffs and zip ties. The tape he had used was obviously not fully waterproof. Jake could not believe his luck. Okay, he was trapped underwater in an old car and was still facing a herculean task which would be beyond the skills of Houdini, but the tape was coming loose and things were looking up, even as he was sinking.

Jake wriggled his left hand free of the tape and the steering wheel, losing most of the hairs on his wrist in the process. It hardly mattered in the circumstances. He was then able to free his right hand with his left and yanked the tape from his ankles. All he had to do now was get out of the car.

He noticed the doors were locked from the outside and the keys were gone. He tried lifting the small peg inside the door. It failed to move. The door would not unlock. It seemed to be jammed, which was not surprising given the low cost of the car. And of course Arnold would have planned it this way.

He tried moving to his left to try the passenger door and realised his seat belt was holding him in place. D.I Arnold had been curiously safety conscious about someone he was trying to kill. He may have sent Jake into almost freezing water, potentially ending his life, but at least Jake would not hurt himself if the car crashed into anything.

He unbuckled the seat belt and was a little bit surprised at how easily he could open the passenger side door. His lungs were burning with the need to breathe out and then in again, but he was still several seconds away from being able to do so. He scrambled out through the door, ready to rise to the surface of the water.

He exhaled, hoping the pain in his lungs would ease. Unfortunately that made things far worse. It felt like his chest was about to collapse in on itself, as if someone had somehow power-kicked him in the chest underwater. It seemed like an eternity before he broke through the surface of the water and could finally breathe again. He gasped for air, taking great heaving breaths and feeling elated to be able to breathe again.

The simple act of getting oxygen into one's lungs had never seemed so sweet to him as it seemed at that moment. His body relaxed and be could feel the tension leave his muscles as if being washed away by the water that surrounded him. He spun around in the water, realising that he was surprisingly far from the river bank. The current had dragged him and the car further away than he had expected. He swam for the side, reaching safety within a couple of minutes.

Jake clambered up the grassy bank then up onto solid ground, and fell onto the ground in a heap. It was not raining any more, but it really didn't matter. Why would it? He could not have been any wetter than he already was. He had had an exhausting day, and needed to rest. He had no energy, no more strength and no desire to move a muscle. He was falling asleep at that very moment, and he did not care enough to fight it. He collapsed on the top of the grass bank, lying on his back. His heavy eyelids closed and he was out like a light.
CHAPTER 16

**Thursday 22** nd **January, 7:30am**

Happy to wake up in another yesterday, Jake climbed out of bed and readied himself for another day of work. By the term 'work' he was not thinking of his seemingly endless job at Nannotek. It seemed like a million years since he had been living his normal working life. No, he was consumed by thoughts of the effort which would still be required in preventing the deaths of several innocent people in his town over the next week.

He did not have an action plan for the day. He needed to remember what he could from yesterday to help with today. The trouble was that his head had been so badly messed up yesterday that he would probably have difficulty making sense of what he knew. D.I Arnold had divulged several things during the interrogation yesterday, but Jake had been under the influence of at least two different drugs at the time and his memory of what had happened was hazy at best.

He pieced together what he could remember. Arnold's wife had been shot by someone working for Ironside to confirm the threat to him. Arnold was being blackmailed into doing the drug trade, and he had gone along with it in the hope of getting his family back, as well as making enough money to safeguard his future in the process. It had seemed that Arnold had already made up his mind before Jake's influence had made things worse. The man's mind had probably been made up during his previous involvement with Ironside.

He remembered D.I Arnold describing how he had got into this mess. He had been part of a giant operation to bring down Ironside. A large weapons trade had been due to take place on 21st January. According to intelligence gathered, they knew where it was, they knew who was involved, and they knew the time. What they did not know was the exact size of the trade or the number of people involved.

Using most of the local police force, and some reinforcements from a neighbouring force, D.I Arnold set up a perimeter around the place where the trade was due to happen. The plan was to catch them in the very act. They had not counted on Ironside setting up his own perimeter outside that of the police.

Just as the trade had been about to start, every police officer involved found themselves surrounded. Ironside pulled Arnold from the crowd and gave him an ultimatum. If he agreed to do the next trade, he would let every police officer go free. In addition, D.I Arnold would be compensated for his efforts. If he failed to agree, then he, his officers, and his family would not live to see the end of the day.

Arnold did not consider that he had any choice. He made the deal and everyone was permitted to leave. Ironside, as a means of confirming the threat, kidnapped Arnold's only daughter the following day. His sister also met with an accident, which was beyond coincidence. She was in a critical condition, and the prospects for her survival did not look good.

Jake figured he had two things to do today. He needed to save Arnold's sister from being badly hurt, and prevent the kidnapping of the man's daughter. He could remember where the Arnolds lived, but had no idea where to find D.I Arnold's sister. Perhaps a return to the Arnold home would provide some leads.

Jake decided not to bother with the façade of going into work again. He suspected that if he could replace the start of these horrific events with a day that could prevent all of this from occurring, time would start to move forward again, and he could get back to a normal way of life. He would be able to go back to work without having to worry about saving people's lives.

He let his mind drift into what he now considered fantasy: Normal life without lifesaving or life risking. The idea that he could wake up the following day instead of the previous one would be complete bliss, and despite the occasional day of complete boredom, Jake had a longing to return to a normal life. This journey now felt as if it was close to reaching its conclusion, and he had a stronger desire than ever to finish this, although he suspected there was more danger to come.

He thought of how he would go about tracking down Arnold's sister. He had already tried the phone book when searching for the Arnolds the first time around. There were far too many names to go through in order to find the right one. He didn't even know the first name of the sister. Thinking back, he wished he had asked, but it was quite possible he would not have remembered it through the drugs haze anyway.

In a flash of inspiration, he suddenly knew where to look. He used his computer to log onto the internet, and found a site where he could check local electoral rolls. Everyone registered to vote in his town would be on the list. He checked the Arnold's address and discovered that a woman by the name of Jennifer Arnold was registered at that address, as well as Andrew Arnold and his wife Rebecca. He remembered Arnold mentioning his daughter was only seventeen, and so as she was not old enough to vote. As a result she would not be on that list.

That was it. All he had to do was keep an eye on where Jennifer Arnold went after leaving home. He looked at the clock on the wall of the study. It was twenty minutes to eight. He would have to be there as soon as possible to make sure he didn't miss her leaving the house.

He hurriedly got dressed and left the house earlier than usual, barely speaking to his family in the process. He told Amy that he was behind with some paperwork and needed to catch up. There was no sense involving her in all of this again. He hoped to arrive at the Arnold house before anyone left. This time he would be as inconspicuous as possible.

There was no way he could handle another confrontation like yesterday.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Only a single light was illuminated inside the Arnold house as far as Jake could tell. With dawn just starting to break, anyone moving around would still need light to see where they were going. He had no way of knowing whether Jenny Arnold still lived there, but he had nothing to lose by waiting there to find out.

He did not park directly outside the Arnold house as he had done the previous day, but was farther down the street in a turning area, still close enough to see most of what was happening inside the house, and everything outside of it. His engine was off, and no lights were on either inside or outside the car. It would take a very observant person to notice he was in the car at all. No one in this house would even know that Jake existed yet, so he definitely would not be recognised by any of them.

It was several minutes before the single bedroom light in the upper left corner of the house was turned off and replaced by the light in the living room at the front of the house. Jake was certain that someone was getting ready to leave.

A problem occurred to Jake concerning his plan to follow Jenny Arnold. There was only one car outside, and he knew that it belonged to Andy, the corrupt policeman. If his sister left the house, she would probably do so on foot. There was no way that Jake could follow her in his car if that was the case, and he was not confident about following someone on foot without them becoming aware of it. He needed to think of a way around this or he might miss his opportunity to prevent the events of the day.

Several more minutes went by, and more lights were turned on inside the Arnold home. It appeared that everyone was now getting ready for the day. Jake had little time to wait before someone left for work.

His attention sharpened as the front door of the house opened and two people got into the car. Jake recognised one of them, but he had a new problem. The only person he could positively identify was D.I Arnold. The woman by his side could be his sister, daughter or wife. She looked several years younger than he did, and as such he figured she was too young to be his wife. He looked like he was nearly fifty, and she looked as though she could easily be ten years his junior. That would also mean that she was too old to be his daughter. His deductive reasoning led him to believe that this was indeed his younger sister, and that her policeman brother was giving her a ride to work.

Jake waited for the car to start and then move out of the end of the cul-de-sac before starting his car to follow them. For the next ten minutes he was able to stay several cars back, keeping an eye on every turn they made. He felt like some kind of spy, and reasoned that he was actually making a good fist of it. They would probably have no idea he was following them. Most people would only be on the lookout for someone following them if they had a reason to expect that someone would do so. As they would not be looking for him, they would not notice him. It was a theory that he had only just come up with, and he hoped it was true.

After a couple of turns into side streets, Jake was now just one car behind theirs. He had been so focussed on following them that he had not realised their apparent destination. They drove down Park Place before turning to their right into the car park of Darlington's main police station.

Jake drove slowly past the car park entrance and came to a stop in a lay-by immediately on the left. Both D.I Andy Arnold and his sister walked into the station. For some reason, Jake had not expected to discover that she worked at the police station. Her manner of dress is not suggest that she worked as a police officer, so Jake concluded that she was probably one of a group of typically unseen civilian administrators.

He knew it was going to be difficult to track the activities of a woman working in a large police station. He could not exactly walk in through the door and follow her around. It was unlikely that she would come to any harm within that building, in any case. And yet she would be the victim of some kind of accident, but how and where would that take place? All he could do was sit and wait, and watch the doors of the building through a gap in between a couple of small buildings, the other side of around twenty parked cars.

Jake considered the amount of time he had recently spent just sitting in his car. He had learned that while his car was comfortable for driving, it was not the most comfortable car for surveillance. He had decided that any car he owned in the future would be as comfortable as possible for such tasks, just in case he should find himself in a spy-like role again. Doing so would mean that he would not come out of such situations with a stiff back.

Maybe he would invest in some in-car gadgets to keep him amused. He could not believe the state of boredom he could achieve whilst doing something so important. The past few days had taught Jake that life as a spy would not suit him. It appeared to be rather glamorous and exciting on TV, but in real life it turned out to be much less impressive. All he seemed to do during surveillance was to stare at the outside of buildings whilst trying to stay awake.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jake's eyes opened and he realised he had fallen asleep with his head resting against the top of the steering wheel of his car. He lifted his head and looked at the clock on the dashboard. It was nearly ten o'clock. Not only had he fallen asleep, but he had been out for a considerable amount of time. This was another indication that a career in surveillance was not for him.

He looked at his reflection in the rear-view mirror. As he feared, he had a large red mark crossing his forehead in an arc where the steering wheel had been. It looked quite ridiculous, and although he knew no one in this neighbourhood, he hoped he would not have cause to get out of the car.

He forced his sleep-affected groggy head to concentrate on the matter at hand. Once again he tried to recall as much as possible from the previous day's interview. He thought he remembered Arnold saying that his sister had been in intensive care in the hospital for most of the day. That would suggest her accident had happened quite early. Suddenly he feared that he might have missed the incident already.

He picked up his mobile phone, searched for details of the police station in front of him, and called the phone number listed. The call was connected, and he heard one ring before it was answered and he was greeted with a generic police introduction.

"Hello. Can I speak with Jenny Arnold please?" he asked politely.

"She's busy at the moment, I'm afraid," came the reply. Then there was a slight pause. "Are you the man she's meeting with at lunch?"

Jake had just caught another break. "Yes I am. There's been some confusion at my end about the venue. Could you possibly ask her to confirm that for me?"

"It's in her schedule in front of me... twelve thirty outside The Sandwich Bar."

"Ok. That's all I needed to know. Thank you very much." Jake hung up before the woman could respond. He knew where the meeting place was located. It was a popular place at lunchtime, on the corner of Bondgate and Skinnergate, close to the centre of the town. In fact, by his recollection it was far too popular at lunch time, as it was difficult to fight a way through the crowds in order to obtain food. The Sandwich Bar had only recently taken up a retail space on the corner of the two streets next to the pedestrianised section of the street, near the old indoor shopping centre named Queen Street. The sandwich outlet was also within view of the former town cinema, now home to a snooker hall. They made fresh sandwiches to order, at a more reasonable price than local fast food restaurants. The food tasted better, and was healthier by comparison too.

He figured that this would be the place where the accident would happen. He simply needed to make sure he was in the same place at the same time in order to prevent it. This also meant he had another couple of hours to kill until lunch time.

He could easily sleep until lunch time. The past few days had worn him down more than any other time in his life. He set his mobile phone to wake him up in plenty of time to stop the accident, and let his head rest against the steering wheel again. He knew he would have an unsightly red mark across his forehead again when he woke up, but at that moment he was so tired that he didn't care.

It seemed he had barely closed his eyes when he heard the sound of his mobile phone. He opened his eyes, looked at the clock on the dashboard, and was surprised to see it was almost twelve o'clock already. He could not fathom where the time had gone. It seemed to him as though he had only just closed his eyes. This had happened to him on other occasions throughout his life, and he hated it.

He felt no less tired than he had done when he had rested his head against the steering wheel for the second time almost two hours earlier. Regardless of where the time had gone, it had nevertheless gone. He needed to wake himself up and get to the Sandwich Bar.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

As Jake stood on the corner of Skinnergate and Bondgate, outside the aptly named establishment known as "The Sandwich Bar", he wondered what the recent fascination was with businesses using obvious names. The pattern of "The" followed by a description seemed to result in large nationwide corporations. It seemed people were more likely to give their custom to shops with such conservative names.

Another sandwich shop was located several doors down with similar prices and a similar product, but the name was an Irish surname and seemed not to provide what so many potential customers wanted. Jake had eaten from both and, in all honesty, had not tasted any difference, the prices seemed almost identical, and so he decided the bold and ridiculously obvious title must be the difference.

The white on bright red sign and colour scheme throughout was far more eye-catching than the dark green of the other sandwich place. It seemed that retail establishments were redesigning logos and store fronts to be as bright as possible with the brightest greens, yellows, oranges and reds. The simplistic plain looking shops of previous years seemed to be a thing of the past, although Jake hoped simpler shop fronts would return at some point in the future. The end of the street closest to the centre of the town looked more like it had been influenced by a five year old with crayons than image consultants for various large retail companies.

He started to wonder whether he would recognise Jenny Arnold when she showed up. He had only seen her in dim light from a distance. He realised that he would probably be unable to pick her out in an identity parade, let alone in a crowd outside a busy shop at lunchtime on a weekday.

He thought he saw her walking towards the store front. As the woman got closer he was almost certain that it was her. He had no idea what to do next, and was about to call out her name when someone behind him beat him to it. She looked across the crowd and walked right past Jake to the man standing immediately behind him.

At least Jake was in a prime position to find out why she was meeting with this man. What had he said to persuade her to meet him here? He was about to find out.

Jake tried his best to block out the noise of a rowdy, impatient lunchtime queue but it was anything but easy. Although the conversation was happening less than three feet away from him, he could hardly hear a word of what was being said.

He could hear Jenny ask what this was all about. "I have some information about your brother," the stranger said, "and you'll see why it's important in just a minute." He moved away from the crowd slightly, towards the corner of the street, and beckoned Jenny to stand in front of him. She moved and was now standing on the very edge of the kerb.

Jake was too far out of range to hear what this man was saying. He caught the occasional word. He thought he heard 'conspiracy', 'trade', and 'factory' in the conversation. It appeared to become quite heated. He guessed that this man knew about Arnold's suspicious dealings and was telling his sister everything he knew. She clearly refused to believe it and was going to make sure he knew it.

Jake's first thought on seeing them move away from the crowd was that this man was going to set up this accident. Seeing the sincerity of this man now led him to believe otherwise. If he was trying to position her for an accident, why would he risk telling her the truth about all of this?

Something did not fit, and in an instant, Jake knew what was wrong. He spied another man, dressed in a dark outfit with dark glasses, breaking from the queue in the sandwich shop and racing towards Jenny and her informer.

Jake knew what was happening. There were a couple of cars travelling down the road at around thirty miles per hour. One nudge could send either one of the unsuspecting couple into the path of a car before the driver could brake or move out of the way. A stranger had broken from the lunchtime queue and was heading for Jenny Arnold and her apparent informer. This guy had to be one of Ironside's men, and Jake needed to stop him from harming either of these people.

Time seemed to slow down as Jake turned around and tried to intercept the man. Jenny and her informant seemed so wrapped up in their own conversation that they had not yet noticed the guy charging towards them. Jake's close proximity to them increased his chances of stopping the assailant.

As he approached them he was behind the other man. If he didn't do something very quickly, he would not be able to prevent what was about to happen.

He threw himself at the man in the dark outfit, effectively rugby tackling him to the ground. The guy hit the pavement hard, a yard or two short of the two people for which he was aiming. Jake came out of the tackle unscathed, having landed on top of his target.

Jake looked up to see the eyes of Jenny and her friend widening. Jake realised he had just completed his first task of the day. He hoped the other guy had hit the ground hard enough to knock himself out. He looked quite vicious and Jake didn't want to make yet another enemy.

He got to his feet and the guy on the ground did not move a muscle. Jenny Arnold was staring at him, and seemed to want an explanation.

"He was going to push you off the pavement in the way of a passing car," Jake began to explain in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. "I don't know why, but I do know you should probably keep an eye out for people like this. I would also suggest not standing so close to busy roads."

Jake had no desire to wait around for any kind of response. He certainly did not want to be there when the man woke up. He had effectively assaulted the guy and stopped him achieving his goal. He was not about to see the reaction when he discovered what had happened. Jake made his way through the crowd and was out of the sight of everyone involved within a few seconds. Just a few minutes later he was back at his car. Now he had to figure out what was going on with Arnold's daughter.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jake's heart sank as he approached the Arnold house for the second time that day. From a distance he had seen flashing lights of red and blue, and he had hoped they were not an indication of his failure to complete his second task. He entered the street and found D.I Arnold's car and two police cars.

Officers seemed to be out in force, searching for clues concerning the disappearance of the Arnolds' daughter. He was too late. He was not sure how Ironside would have felt about the involvement of other police officers at this stage. He had been given the impression that Ironside would not stand for anything that would interfere with his plans.

He drove away again before he was spotted. He had been accused of enough concerning the Arnold family over the past few days, albeit in the future as far as everyone else was concerned. He did not want another accusation looming over him.

He quickly left the area and drove towards home. He wondered whether that was the right thing to do. Amy would be wondering what he was doing home so early in the day, but he needed somewhere quiet to think.

He found himself on his usual route home from work, seeing familiar buildings pass by. The streets were emptier than usual, but he was used to travelling to and from work at peak times on weekdays. Lunchtime on a Thursday was very different.

As he approached his home street he resisted the urge to turn right and head for home. There would be too many questions about why he was absent from work. Instead he carried on along the road, not really knowing where he would end up.

With no plan and no ideas, he was becoming frustrated. There was no obvious way for Jake to get the day back on track. He had managed to save Arnold's sister, but the guy's daughter was being held hostage by Ironside. He did not know how he was going to find her or, failing that, he had not yet figured out how he could stop the trade.

He found it hard to imagine that he could persuade Arnold to risk the safety of his daughter and abandon Ironside's trading plans. The only way to stop this trade was to get Arnold his daughter back. To do that, he needed to find her.

His drive took him to a retail park on the edge of town. The place was busy, which made it difficult for Jake to find a parking space.

He could never understand how so many shops served so many customers during the day. He had always believed that the people with money to spend would be working in the middle of a weekday. He realised there was an element of hypocrisy in thinking that. After all, here he was, at the same place in the middle of the day when he was supposed to be at work. But none of these other shoppers could be doing what he was doing.

He stopped the engine and pulled his mobile phone from his pocket without knowing who he was going to call. He pressed a couple of buttons, bringing up a list of previous calls he had made. At the top of the list was the police station. Maybe it was worth talking to Jenny Arnold to see whether she had any useful information.

He hit the green button on the phone to initiate the call and received the same greeting he had received earlier. "Hello, is Jenny Arnold there?" He asked. There was a long pause.

'"I'm sorry, but she's not here." The woman responded hesitantly. Jake was on the verge of hanging up when the woman spoke again. "I assume you haven't heard what happened."

Jake was suddenly concerned. "I haven't heard anything," he said in reply.

"She's not here because she's in hospital. She was walking back here when she was stopped just along the street by a man who mugged her. The man stabbed her and ran off."

Jake was rocked by the news. He expressed his condolences and said he hoped she would recover quickly. He thanked the woman for letting him know, and then hung up. Why hadn't he seen this coming? The guy he had stopped earlier had clearly been determined to carry out his assignment one way or another. If he wanted Jenny out of the way he was prepared to do whatever it took to get the job done.

He wondered how such a thing could have happened right outside a police station. This guy must have been desperate to stop her from doing something. He needed to find out why she was targeted. Either she knew something as a result of the conversation outside The Sandwich Bar, or she was about to do something that would affect Ironside's plans. Alternatively it was simply that she was Arnold's sister, and they needed another lever to make him do what they wanted him to do. He had to find out.

If Jake could get to the hospital and see her, he might be able to find a clue. Maybe she had a diary or a mobile phone in her purse that might contain something useful. He started the car and made his way to the hospital. He had now failed in both of the day's tasks, but perhaps he could use this latest twist to prevent this day from getting any worse.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jake stood outside of the security doors of the Intensive Care Unit of the Darlington Memorial Hospital. He had tried the intercom several times, but no-one answered. After what seemed like half an hour, someone finally answered.

"I'm here to see Jenny Arnold," he said. "I was told she had been brought here. I'm her younger brother, Jake." He decided to take a risk by using his real name. He lacked the imagination to come up with another name when there was no real reason for doing so. He fully expected the nurse to tell him she had no brother by that name and that he should go away, but instead the magnetic lock on the door clicked and he was granted access.

The Victorian hospital was huge, and seemed to always be in the process of being renovated and updated. Bare corridors led off in every direction from the entrance. Signs were placed along each hallway in case visitors managed to get completely lost in the few yards since the previous sign. He had followed a couple of the signs himself, but was more lost after following them than he would have been without them. It had taken him more than ten minutes of wandering to find the right part of the hospital. He considered the Intensive Care Unit to be quite important and was surprised at how hard it was to find from the main entrance of the hospital.

Everything about the massive building screamed Sixties style, despite the constant efforts to update the interior. All of the extensions to the original ageing structure were seemingly built at the same time. Bird's eye view photographs dotted along the walls showed the sites at various stages of construction. By the time he had found where he was going, he had seen the hospital at almost every stage of construction as it evolved from a basic old building to one that occupied a massive plot of land in the town.

This place had the same look as every other hospital he had ever seen. Every hospital he had ever set eyes on seemed to have been of concrete construction in a style typical of the Sixties. He really could not imagine what sick people did before then. Every hospital had the same block concrete feel, but each one must have replaced some older hospital. Some parts of the old hospital seemed to remain, and were now simply joined to each other and newer sections by glass lined corridors of the same concrete construction.

He was pointed in the direction of Jenny. As he walked down the sparsely furnished, narrow corridor he found the room where she was lying. She was apparently in a stable condition following the attack, and sleeping comfortably.

He looked through a glass panel in the door to discover he was not her only visitor. There was another man standing by her bedside, although he was doing more than simply standing there. He appeared to be fiddling with something, with his back towards the door through which Jake was looking. Jake hoped it was someone other than D.I Arnold. If it was him, then his cover would be blown, and he would be out of the hospital too quickly to obtain any information at all. But it surely would not be him. His daughter had just gone missing. He would be needed elsewhere.

The man inside the room lifted his head and looked around. Jake moved his head quickly away from the window to avoid being seen, but he had already been spotted.

Jake instantly recognised this man. He was not a relative of the Arnold family, but the same man Jake had intercepted outside the sandwich bar earlier. He must have been responsible for putting her in hospital, and had probably come here to finish her off.

This mysterious man dropped something on the floor and darted towards the door. Jake moved away as the door swung open. The man, still in the same outfit as earlier, charged out of the room and hurried quickly away, looking over his shoulder every few seconds.

Jake ran into the room and looked at the equipment monitoring Jenny's status. The heart rate increased dramatically within a few seconds of him watching. Blood pressure went through the roof. He was no doctor, but this was not a good sign. After another couple of seconds everything started beeping. It was clear this man had done something. Jake knew something to be wrong and did not wait to see exactly what would happen. He had a sinking feeling for the second time today. He knew that without immediate help, this woman would not live for more than the next few seconds.

"Nurse!" Jake shouted. It brought an immediate response. Within five seconds the room was filled with doctors and nurses struggling to keep her alive. One nurse calmly ushered him from the room.

As she turned around and headed back in, Jake left the unit and chased after the man in the dark outfit, hoping he hadn't got too far ahead. He ran out of the Intensive Care Unit as fast as he could, being halted temporarily by the magnetic lock on the door. He reached the dark empty hallways and began to run.

He could see the man ahead of him in the distance. "Stop that man!" he shouted as loudly as he could while running as fast as he could, pointing ahead of him. "He's just killed a patient!"
CHAPTER 17

**Thursday 22** nd **January, 1:21pm**

Jake was apparently a much faster runner than the person he was chasing. In a couple of hundred yards of corridors he had shortened the distance between them. He needed to get closer but there was still some way to go before he ran out of hallway.

His shouts for other people to intervene and stop this man went unheard, or perhaps the few people around had no desire to help. Perhaps they considered him to be a madman, or perhaps they had problems of their own to worry about. Either way, he was going to have to catch this man on his own.

He was gaining ground rapidly on the assailant and was almost within reaching distance. They were approaching another junction of hallways when a wheelchair came from the left in the gap between them. With nowhere to go to get out of the way, Jake collided with what he hoped was an empty wheelchair. Luckily there was no one along for the ride as Jake tumbled to the ground along with the nurse pushing the mobile obstacle.

He scrambled to his feet and, after a mumbled apology to the startled nurse, went after the murderer again, now almost a hundred yards away again.

The hallways were more and more crowded as he neared the entrance. He was struggling to keep up with the guy whilst also trying to avoid collisions with so many visitors. He caught elbows and knees and he darted through any gap he could find in oncoming traffic. He would likely pick up bruises for his troubles, and had probably handed a couple out to people he knocked as he ran through the hallways, but that could not be helped. Catching this man meant everything to Jake in his current quest to save his family and others from future events.

He saw the dark figure of the man he was chasing at the main doors. He would be there himself in a couple of seconds. He rushed through the crowd and reached the main doors. He came to a halt outside and looked around, hoping to find him. Out of the corner of his right eye he saw a figure move between parked cars, then turn and run towards the furthest part of the large car park.

The surface of the car park was a cold hard tarmac. It was an unforgiving surface that would absorb the noise of almost every light impact.. That would make it difficult to track down the man he was chasing, but easier to sneak up on the guy.

He ran between the parked cars and saw the man further ahead in the car park. He suddenly vanished from sight. The assailant had apparently crouched down and had stopped moving. As Jake was still not sure exactly where the man had been when he disappeared, this made finding him infinitely more difficult.

He moved towards where he thought he had last seen the man, crouched down and looked around. He glanced to his right, then to his left, and finally saw the slightest of movements further ahead on the left.

This man seemed to be by the side of his own car and was probably about to climb in and drive away. The car was a dark blue BMW saloon that looked a few years old and in poor condition for its age with rust showing at the base of the car's bodywork. Jake waited for the figure to sneak to the driver side door before creeping towards him, staying as low to the ground as he could. He approached the passenger door on the other side of the same car, confident he had done so quietly enough to avoid detection. The other guy wasn't at the driver's side yet, but he had paused long enough for Jake to be certain he was about to unlock this car. He crept around to the front and could see the man's feet.

He could hear him breathing heavily. He was catching his breath after the unexpected run, perhaps believing that he had lost his pursuer.

Jake had not realised how exhausted he was by the chase until he saw and heard the other guy. He had failed to realise just how heavily he was breathing himself. He now doubted whether he could creep up on anyone with his lungs burning like this. He could only hope his heavy breathing was masked by the equally heavy breathing of the killer.

Once again he needed to act quickly if he was to have the advantage of surprise. He jumped from the front of the car and threw himself towards the man, knocking him to the ground. His head hit the ground again, but this time he was still conscious and moving, having not hit the tarmac as hard as he had done earlier in the day after Jake's rugby tackle.

Something fell out of his left jacket pocket and slid along the ground. Jake looked up and saw a handgun staring back at him. Instinctively he reached for it, and his hand closed around it a split second before the killer, who was now trapped beneath him.

Jake stood up and aimed the gun straight down at the man on the ground. A couple of startled visitors in the car park fled in the direction of the hospital entrance, and Jake knew he would have only a few seconds before the police or hospital security arrived on the scene.

"Who are you?" he demanded. Silence. "I know you work for Ironside. I just want to know your name." Still no answer was forthcoming.

"Get in the car," Jake ordered. "You're going to take me to wherever the Arnold girl is."

"What makes you think I know?" the man growled sullenly.

"If you don't know, you'll be able to find out. Now get up and let's get going."

Jake hauled the man up from the floor and escorted him to the driver's door, holding him at gunpoint until he was safely in the seat. He kept the gun on him as he walked around the car to the passenger side.

"Take me to where the girl is, and then we'll discuss what to do next," Jake barked. The man merely nodded submissively. The engine started and they drove away, the tyres squealing as they sped out of the main entrance. He did not know what he was going to do when they got to their destination. His driver would take him to the girl, but as yet he had no plans for what he would do when they arrived at their destination. The next stop: Uncertainty.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

There was something unusual about the man Jake was holding at gunpoint. For a hired goon, he seemed to have given in very easily. He always expected thugs, terrorists, and other people of a similar vein to be more defiant when confronted. It all seemed just a little too easy.

Jake also found it odd that this man appeared to know exactly where the girl was being held. He would have expected someone like Ironside to keep his cards close to his chest, and to tell his staff only what they needed to know. If this man's task was to kill the sister, why would he need to know where the daughter was being held?

However simple it all seemed, he was under the impression that they were almost at their destination. He still had a gun, and he had a getaway car. All he needed now was the hostage. It all seemed so simple in his head, but he was well aware of the fact that theory rarely played out in the real world.

He still had no idea how he would go about achieving the required rescue. He would expect the place to be heavily guarded. He would need the driver to get him close to the kidnap victim.

"Pull over. Now," Jake demanded. The driver asked no questions, shrugged his shoulders, and stopped the car by the side of the road. "I'm going to get in the back and lie down behind the front seats," Jake told him. "The gun will still be pointed at you through the back of the seat, so don't try anything."

His voice sounded more threatening than he could have imagined it would sound, possibly due to several days of frustration at attempting impossible tasks. He climbed into the back of the car and within a minute they were driving again.

Quietly, Jake removed the clip from the gun to see how many bullets he had. Nine bullets. That would be plenty, he hoped - especially as he was not planning on firing a single shot, if he could help it. He wanted this to go as peacefully as possible.

The car came to a stop. Jake could see two shadows looming over the car. Two guards were trying to figure out what was going on. "Mr Ironside requested no visitors. What are you doing here?" one of the guards asked.

"There's an emergency and I need to talk with the boss as soon as possible," the driver explained.

"You couldn't just call him?" asked the other guard.

"Not secure enough. I need to speak with him face to face."

The guards hesitated, and then a phone rang. After a few short seconds he heard the guard say, "Yes Sir," and they were let through.

Everything seemed to be going according to plan. Not that he had a plan, yet. "How many guards are there?" Jake asked.

"I have no idea. There could be as many as ten," the driver said in reply. If there were as many as ten then Jake could quite possibly find himself in trouble. He was aiming for a peaceful rescue, but there was no guarantee of that. He would only have enough bullets if he hit someone with every shot, or if he was lucky with a "through and through" or two. Jake reflected that he was considering how to shoot real human beings, something which he had never considered himself capable of doing. If that happened, he realised that he would be a wanted killer for real. He had to avoid that scenario, if at all possible. As yet, however, there was no sign of anyone else in the grounds.

The car stopped outside the entrance to a large, very grand Georgian mansion. The building was built of red brick with decorative stone surrounds to giant windows and an impressive canopied front entrance. The stonework would have taken weeks or months to produce in the period in which this house was built. This house would have once belonged to a very wealthy man. Despite seeing how the factory office had been furnished, Jake had not expected the crime lord to be operating out of such a lavish location. Inconspicuous was obviously not a word that Ironside was familiar with.

With trades in broad daylight and luxury homes, it was remarkable that the police had failed to stop him thus far. He wondered idly how many other D.I. Arnolds there had been, prepared not only to look the other way but to help Ironside carry out his illegal trade.

Jake lifted his head and looked out of every window of the car. There was still no sign of anyone. He picked himself up and climbed out of one of the back doors of the car. Still there was no one around. It was eerily silent, and Jake didn't know what to make of it.

They stepped inside the impressive main entrance. Jake peered down corridors to his left, then to his right. Thick carpets covered the floors of the ornate hallways, whose walls were decorated with expensive textured wallpaper and large pieces of gold-framed artwork. Other than the artwork, the corridors were empty, still with no sign of guards.

"There seem to be less people than you thought," Jake said, fully expecting to be confronted by twenty armoured bouncers when he rounded the next corner.

He was relieved to find the next corridor as empty as the last. He could see a large person standing at the end of the long corridor. He suspected that this was his man.

This was the mighty crime lord he had been determined to stop. This was the man who had eluded Law Enforcement for several years. He was probably only five and a half feet tall, but his width was what made him look so large. He had to be close to twenty stones. He was not the largest person Jake had ever seen, but he was far from being the smallest. As Jake approached he could see that Ironside was facing a large picture with his back towards his guests.

"Jake Hingham!" bellowed a voice down the hall, causing Jake to stop dead. "Here to reclaim little miss Arnold, I hear." Jake opened his mouth to respond, but no words came out.

"Somehow you know who I am, and I know who you are as you've been tracking Mr Arnold and his family all day, so there is no need for a formal introduction," Ironside said in a perfect Queen's English accent. "You have the appearance of an intelligent man, Mr Hingham. Why did you walk straight into my trap?"

Jake did not know how to respond to that, so he simply kept quiet and let Ironside speak.

"I like to have fun with my victims before I make them suffer." Ironside's voice was unusual. Everything he said was so eloquent, with a polite and surprisingly quiet tone – even his threats.

"Oh, come on Jake. You must have some questions to ask me. I will not do all the talking." He turned around to face Jake. Jake felt a shiver run down his spine, and slowly looked over his shoulder to see at least ten armed thugs behind him. Even if he was a crack shot he would not succeed in taking out all of them with his gun. He now had to come to terms with the fact that he was probably not going to get out of there alive.

"I know who you are, Jake. I know what your purpose is in coming here," Ironside paused, "but I don't know why you're doing this. You don't seem to fit into any of this as far as I can tell. I've been trying to figure out your association in this since your number plate was traced first thing this morning." Ironside faced Jake. Jake had expected him to be younger than he now appeared. He seemed to be almost pensionable age.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you how I got involved," Jake spat out. The words sounded more bitter and rude than he had intended. He could hear the sound of feet approaching from behind. Suddenly he was seized by several pairs of hands. His right arm was twisted behind his back and the gun he was holding slipped from his grasp and fell to the floor as he was restrained by at least two men. He could not move without causing himself severe injury.

"I am a kind man, Mr Hingham. Come inside for a pleasant chat." He didn't have much of an option. He was propelled into the room by the two men and was forcefully shoved into an antique wooden chair. Jake had an idea that the chat was going to be far from pleasant.

Ironside started talking again. "So, you think that if you can free the girl and return her home that you would stop Arnold's involvement with me?" He laughed out loud, shaking his head. "You don't really know Detective Inspector Arnold very well do you? He would have done all of this for the money I offered alone." Jake was surprised by that. "The other threats were just to make sure he didn't involve anyone else."

"Like me, for example?" Jake asked.

"Exactly like you, sir." Jake could not believe how charming and polite this man appeared. He had an evil heart - if indeed he had a heart at all - but a voice of velvet.

"So, you're telling me that if I somehow managed to rescue the daughter and return her home, Arnold would still do the drug trade in a few days?" Jake asked.

"Indeed. I don't know how you know so much, or even who you really are, but I find this fascinating." Ironside was being anything but condescending. He seemed to really be enjoying this conversation. "Tell me Jake, how do you know about any of this?"

"You'll think I'm crazy," Jake warned.

"My friend, you walked into my house expecting armed guards holding nothing but a pistol. I already think you're crazy." He smiled, as did Jake.

"My family were the victims of an attack, and the trail of their killers led me to you."

"That doesn't sound too ridiculous."

"It does when I tell you the attack hasn't happened yet."

Ironside looked confused. "I see." He clearly didn't see at all.

Jake related the abbreviated version of the story, and Ironside listened intently. Ironside even provided drinks and biscuits for him. Anyone viewing from outside would think this was just a casual conversation between two friends. If the armed men had not been covering every possible exit, he would have believed it too.

"Well, I suppose you'll want to see the girl you've come to rescue." Ironside was talking down to him now like a misguided schoolboy. He stood up and beckoned Jake to follow him. This he did, again without much choice thanks to armed brutes either side of him. "It'll be nice for her to have a visitor." Ironside found the whole thing amusing and he spoke with light-heartedness and scepticism lacing his voice. Jake was not sure what to make of this man. The following hours would afford him the chance to get to know his nemesis a little better.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

When Jake heard himself described as a 'visitor', for some reason he expected something other than to find himself sitting next to the Arnold girl as a second prisoner. Ironside made it sound much nicer than that, but this was undoubtedly what he had meant.

He was now sitting next to a seventeen year old blond haired girl who was about five and a half feet tall and far too thin for her height. He determined that she looked nothing like her father. From what he had seen of her, she did not act much like him either. That was perhaps because she was still young and innocent enough to not be drawn too deeply into the crazy games of men as psychotic as Ironside.

At least they were being held in comfortable surroundings and could expect tea and scones every now and then. Ironside certainly knew how to treat his prisoners. He felt like he was being treated better than the staff, none of whom seemed very happy to be there.

As he was beginning to get comfortable in the large well-decorated 'prison cell', a surprisingly thin and weak looking man walked in holding a rifle. "Mr Hingham, will you please follow me?" It was a question, but he knew it was really a demand. "Mr Ironside requires your presence in the next room." Jake nodded and followed the man, able to do so as Ironside's prisoners were not chained or cuffed to anything, just heavily guarded.

He walked through a couple of doors into a dark room. It was late afternoon, but the room was pitch black. Just a single small spotlight shone on a hard wooden chair.

"Jake!" He recognised Ironside's overly enthusiastic voice. "Thank you for joining us. Your co-operation is much appreciated." Cordial as always, he continued, explaining the purpose of this small meeting.

"You're probably wondering what this is about. The truth is the room is terribly decorated and I'm ashamed to show it to anyone." This was obviously intended as something of a joke, but Jake knew he was probably half serious about the comment.

Without warning, Jake was forced into the seat and tied down. "I'm a patient man, Jake." He could only hear voices now. The light had gone out and room was now perfectly black. "I believed half of your story, but only half. I'd appreciate the real story now, please." He suddenly sounded less polite and less patient than he had seemed previously.

Jake was lost for words as to what to say next. He guessed he was about to find out why some people referred to him as the iron man. Without warning a shot was fired, with a deafening sound filling the room. At the same time Jake felt an excruciating pain in his left leg half way up his shin. He was starting to recognise the painful sensation of having just been shot.

When ears had stopped ringing from the shot being fired, Ironside spoke again, loudly. "As I said, I'm a patient man, but some things try my patience: Bad drivers, comb-overs, reality TV shows, and anything to do with rugby, to name just a few." Jake could not see why Ironside had to take so long to say anything. He was in pain and he wanted to know exactly what he could do to ease it as soon as possible. "I was always a football man myself," Ironside continued.

"So am I," Jake responded, trying not to shout it in pain. He hoped Ironside would soon get to the point of the conversation.

"If you tell me where you got your information from I will get someone in here to ease your pain."

"And if I don't tell you?"

"I would have thought one option was enough here, but you'd like a choice... If you do not tell me anything else, you may find a similar pain in other parts of your body."

"Are you going to kill me?" Jake asked, not really wanting to know the answer.

"Oh no. I only do that when I have to. Sometimes death is the easy way out, don't you agree?" Jake could almost hear him smile. If the voice had been a little less distinctive, Jake would have sworn that this was a different person from the one he'd had a cosy chat with not too many minutes earlier.

"The truth is," Jake prepared to lie, "my family did lead me here."

"I guessed that," Ironside responded.

"I talked with Arnold about it, and he tipped me off. He told me what he was being threatened with, but failed to mention the money he was being offered."

"So he set you up?"

"It appears that way. You probably had nothing to do with my family's deaths, and I realise that now. He just wanted me to fall into a trap."

"Jake, I'm so sorry." He sounded sincere. "So where did that story come from about time travel?"

"That's what Arnold told me to tell you. He said you would believe a far-fetched story ahead of a sensible one." Ironside roared with laughter. The sheer volume caused Jake to jump.

"He's exactly right! I confess I'll usually believe anything!" It seemed as if he would be laughing for hours. "My dear fellow, I am so sorry he involved you in all of this."

Jake thought he would be released from the bands in a matter of minutes, but he was soon disabused of that idea. "I don't usually let people go free when they know as much as you."

Jake's heart raced. He sat in silence now, with the room still dark. He expected a bullet in the chest to end the day.

"I'll tell you what, I'll put you back in the next room and I will give some serious thought as to what I should do next. And of course, we will deal with that nasty wound in your leg." He spoke as if he had stumbled across Jake in this condition, rather than being the person responsible for it.

The light was turned on, flooding the room with bright light. Jake blinked rapidly as his eyes became accustomed to the sudden change in brightness. Almost before he knew it the pain in his leg was numbed by a painkilling injection, and had been well bandaged. From that point on, Ironside treated him like royalty. Jake, however, doubted whether Ironside would let him go at the end of it all.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"My dear fellow, I'm sorry again for shooting you," Ironside apologised for about the five hundredth time. "I'm sure you understand."

Jake nodded. He had forgiven him vocally several times already.

They were now well into the evening. It had been explained to Jake that he was technically a prisoner, but was in reality a guest. He would not be permitted to leave just yet, but would be able to do so within the next couple of days. After that, the knowledge he had would be redundant and he would be free to tell anyone about his adventures, sell his story, or do anything he wanted to do without interfering with Ironside's future plans.

As they sat in a beautiful drawing room, Jake talked with Ironside about everything from football to religion to politics. Even though this man was, in very many ways, evil to the core, Jake had been able to see the amiable side of the man. His views on most of the everyday topics of conversation were not radical or ridiculous. They were much like the views of most of the people with whom Jake had worked throughout his career. The main difference was, of course, Ironside's willingness to opt for terrorism and crime ahead of something more befitting someone of his mentality. If he had chosen a more respectable line of work he would have been considered quite the gentleman by all, rather than as a tyrant by many.

He looked at the man sitting across the room. He was wearing an expensive suit. His hair was going grey, but it showed no signs of thinning. Jake guessed he was nearing sixty. He was not at all how he had pictured this man. He had assumed him to be an aggressive middle-aged man with no heart. He had expected anything but a clever, charming and quite amusing older man.

If Jake had not seen the evil side of this man earlier he would never have believed he was capable of inflicting pain on anyone or anything. Even when he became annoyed his features were soft and he still looked like a gentle old man.

The evening was coming to an end and Jake would soon be waking up in the previous day. "I know it's a bit cheeky," Jake started, "but could you indulge me with the story of how you caught Arnold?"

The suggestion was met with a sceptical, one-eyebrow-raised look from Ironside. "I can't see the harm in that. Consider it the final part of my grovelling apology for hurting you earlier." Jake agreed, and Ironside spoke again. "It's a long story, but we have plenty of time. Make yourself comfortable, Jake. I think you'll find this story quite fascinating."
CHAPTER 18

**Wednesday 21** st **January, 7:45am**

Jake sat at breakfast considering the day he had just gone through. The alarm had already sounded several minutes earlier, and he was almost ready to head out to work.

He cast his mind back to yesterday's events. He had no memory of going to sleep last night, but he must have drifted off at some point. The last thing he remembered was talking with Ironside about the events of today. He was happy to wake up today knowing exactly what had happened and exactly what he had to do. He knew almost every detail of the trade that would happen thanks to Ironside's willingness to share every detail he remembered. He even knew where Arnold was standing when he was apprehended.

Ironside had laid out every detail of the trade including location, time, and even who had been standing where inside the building. He was precise in his telling of the story. As far as he was concerned, it was all in the past and there was no harm in telling Jake all about it. If the man had considered Jake's first explanation as being plausible, he would not have been so willing to give away so much.

Jake could only describe Ironside as a gentleman's gangster. On the surface he was kind, considerate, and quite harmless, but underneath he was ruthless whenever occasion required him to release that side of his character.

As he cleared away his breakfast and finished getting ready for work, a thought occurred to Jake. This was potentially the last time he would wake up in yesterday. If he succeeded today, life would return to normal. He had thought up a plan yesterday and would hopefully be able to carry it through without a hitch.

He picked up his suit jacket and walked to the door, then remembered that he needed something. Amy had noticed him pause in mid-stride and simply smiled, then asked, "What have you forgotten?"

Jake had an object in the house that he had not even touched for a few years. He wondered whether he would be able to find it in just a couple of minutes of looking. He went up the stairs and went straight to the spare room, where they stored such unused items.

On the top of a set of bookshelves were several white cardboard storage boxes containing old toys he had kept possession of in case there was ever a need for them. If his memory served him correctly he would find the thing he was looking for in one of those three boxes.

He looked through the first box, finding toys suitable for toddlers and small children, the search being accompanied by the occasional squeak and two-toned musical jingle caused by catching the buttons on various brightly coloured objects. The second box contained a number of old school reports and a couple of plastic bags. In one of those bags he found the item for which he had been looking.

During his misspent youth he had played around with several things, including various kinds of toy gun. He had discovered one which was powerful enough to hurt someone without bruising, but which was not powerful enough to do any real damage. It was a BB gun which fired small round plastic pellets towards whoever it was aimed at. To him in his youth, this was the ideal weapon. He could shoot someone, have them blame him, and deny all knowledge. The people he shot could never prove anything without bruises.

In any case, the actual use of the gun had no real bearing on Jake's reason for taking it with him. This particular gun had been made as an exact replica of a popular handgun. From more than a couple of feet away, most people would be unable to tell the difference between a genuine handgun and a replica. He was hoping it would be realistic enough to fool Ironside and his men. He was not exactly sure how he might use his toy weapon, but he suspected that it could help him, and he would need all the help he could get.

He managed to get the gun into his briefcase, thus hiding it from Amy and avoiding any awkward questions from her concerning his reasons for taking such an item to work. Before he knew it he was in his car, ready to drive to his office. He reversed out of the driveway, and left the street.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jake had thought carefully about how he might get the better of Ironside. He was trading from the same factory that Jake had visited several times over the past few days. He knew the place well by now, but hoped that this would be the last time he would have to look around it.

The lavishly decorated office had been prepared for Ironside the previous day. The rest of the building would remain in whatever state they had found it.

In order to stop this trade and get Ironside arrested, Jake had come up with several options. Obviously it would not be possible for him to take down all of Ironside's guards with a BB gun. The problem was, only by removing these guards could he prevent the ambush of the police officers at the scene. Another option was to let the police be captured, hoping that the guards would be distracted, allowing him to move in unnoticed and find a way to save them. That idea also had its flaws.

The only viable option he had was to already be waiting inside the factory when Ironside and his crew arrived. They had set up the building the day before and would show up to do the trade several minutes before it was due to take place, and then they would leave almost immediately on its conclusion.

Once inside the factory he found surprisingly few places to hide. The old building was almost an empty shell. Several old chairs, tables, and pieces of wood were lying around. Jake moved three large pieces of chipboard into the far corner of the big empty space in the centre of the factory.

Thanks to Ironside's detailed description, Jake knew he was at least fifty feet from where the actual trade would take place. The building was almost a hundred feet long, but quite narrow. The chances were that Ironside's people would not even concern themselves with this end of the factory. There were no doors or windows on that side of the building, and there was no logical reason why someone would be situated there.

Jake was now crouched in a dark corner, flanked by solid brick walls and shielded from view by some old wood, hopefully as inconspicuous as possible.

He had the replica gun in his hand as he sat on the floor in his chipboard hiding place. Jake looked at his watch and saw the time was 9:30am. Ironside's men would be there with the goods in about an hour. The other party to the trade would arrive fifteen minutes later.

Jake knew how the trade was to work. It would be 11am when Arnold and his men were paraded before the thugs inside the factory. By 11:30am a deal would have been made and Arnold and his colleagues would walk free.

The whole plan seemed a little bit weak, and Jake decided he needed more of a backup plan. He picked up his mobile phone, searched for and then dialled the number for the police station he had called yesterday. "Hello. I'd like to leave an anonymous tip-off, please." The woman who answered seemed surprised and confused by the request. It seemed people were not usually so polite in leaving anonymous information.

He was put on hold, and had to endure several minutes of what seemed like out-of-tune choir music. It was almost enough to make him hang up the phone and call back. He stayed on the phone, however, and was soon rewarded with the end of the horrible hold music.

"Okay sir, what is it you'd like to tell us?" a woman asked. She actually sounded rather bored. Jake suspected the long pause had not been to allow for her to pick up a piece of paper and a pen. The chances were that this call was now being recorded or traced, or both.

"Detective Inspector Arnold is planning on apprehending Paul Ironside at a factory on the outskirts of Darlington at about eleven o'clock today. Ironside operates with an outer ring of guards who will trap the police officers if they keep to their planned positions."

His statement was greeted with silence. "Is there anything else you wish to tell us, sir?" the woman asked. Jake was now a little more specific with his details of the location of the factory, and the nature of the trade that the police were intending on interrupting. He told them enough about the trade so they would know he was genuine, and he told them exactly where, and at what time they would be trapped.

"I suggest more officers be stationed at a perimeter further out, so they can stop Ironside's guards from interfering." The woman thanked him for the information and the call ended.

He was anything but convinced that they would take his tip-off seriously enough. He needed to call someone else. He dialled another number.

"Directory Enquiries. What number would you like?" the man who answered the call asked politely."

"Andrew Arnold of Rainhill Way, Darlington, please," he requested. The operator found the number. Within seconds Jake was calling the Arnold home. A woman answered.

"Hello Mrs Arnold. This is Officer Hingham. I need to contact your husband urgently, but he seems to be out of his office. Do you have a mobile phone number I can reach him on?" She obliged, he thanked her, hung up and then called the number.

"D.I Arnold." were the first words spoken when the call was answered, by way of an introduction.

"You don't know me, but I need to tell you something about the trade you're trying to intercept today."

Arnold was obviously shocked that anyone else knew about the trade or their plans. Jake got the impression his message was getting through to him. He was assured that his information would be acted upon, and thanked him. Jake hung up and was grateful for directory enquiries for probably the first time in his life.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Having been waiting in the corner for only half an hour, Jake was not yet expecting to hear any movement, so he was surprised when he heard footsteps. They were coming towards him.

"Jake!" The voice sounded familiar, but a lot of voices now sounded familiar. He had met a lot of people over the past week. He was also concerned about the fact that everyone seemed to know his name all of a sudden "We haven't talked in a few days, Jake. I thought that we could catch up." It hit him in an instant. It was the voice of William Spalder.

With Jake having travelled back a few days since their last meeting, Will should have not even have known who he was at this point in time. "I followed you here, Jake. I know what you're planning," he continued. "It won't work."

Jake stood up from behind the chipboard and pointed his gun at Will. "How can you be sure?" Jake asked.

"I know how the future looks Jake, and as far as I can see there are only two options."

"How do you even know who I am?" Jake asked.

"I met you a few days ago." Jake was confused. "I've been travelling backwards, too."

"So why are you here?"

"I'm here to make sure the future doesn't change."

Jake could not believe the contradictory words he was now hearing from Will. None of this made sense.

"I've been put here to stop all of this," Jake stated. "My wish was granted and I've been put here to save the victims-"

"Do you really believe some mystical force put you here?" he laughed. "It's all a big accident, Jake. Pull up a chair and I'll explain it all."

Jake stood his ground, unmoving. Will came a little closer, seemingly content enough to hold the conversation while standing.

"Are you familiar with Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity?" Will asked as he was pulling out a gun, pointing it at Jake.

"Everyone knows his theory of relativity," Jake responded.

"I mean his special theory – the one about time travel."

Jake's puzzled expression showed he had no idea what he was talking about. "His special theory states the faster a person travels, the slower time goes. Therefore, it has been assumed that if one travels fast enough for time to stop and beyond-"

"He can begin to travel into the future." Jake finished off the sentence.

"Exactly." Will confirmed. "The trouble is most people thought he was talking about actual speed of travel in miles or kilometres per hour, by vehicles such as a boat, car, or any other form of transport."

Jake nodded. "But that isn't the case?"

"No. It's about matter. Everything is made up of matter. The density of this matter depends on the speed at which the molecules inside move around. The faster they move, the less dense the matter."

Jake had no response, so he let the man carry on talking.

"My father discovered that if you accelerate the molecules in an object, the object's density can become so low that the object appears to be invisible. If you accelerate them further, the object disappears completely. But instead of the object simply vanishing, it travels into the future."

This conversation was so far over Jake's head that he did not even bother trying to understand. He let the man continue with his monologue.

"As a result, my father was the first person to build a working time machine. He documented his experiments, and tried the last one with the subject being himself. His theory was that a person would continue to travel forward in time until his molecular structure started to stabilise again, and the body's density returned to normal. Because of this, all time travel was likely to simply be guess work." He paused, and Jake wondered what any of this had to do with this situation.

"My father disappeared while he was performing the last of his experiments. People assumed he had found an elaborate way to commit suicide." His voice changed. He sounded upset. "I still believe he travelled forward in time, but I don't know how far he went ahead."

"What does this have to do with anything?" Jake interjected.

"When someone travels through time, he effectively fractures the fibres of space-time in the process. These fractures are necessary to help slow molecular speeds, increase density, and halt any travel through time by leaving markers at specific points in time. These fractures lead to anomalies within the space-time continuum. One of these anomalies has been named the Time and Event Replacement Phenomenon."

Jake shook his head. Was he really saying his father caused all of these time travel phenomena by travelling through time himself, and his situation had occurred entirely by accident?

"After a few years, I got hold of the documentation, and I followed the example of my father." Will started to sound like a madman. His speech had become more rapid and monotone and his eyes were growing wider. He seemed to have allowed himself to be obsessed with his father's dream. "It's my destiny to find my father."

"I saw pictures of you from years ago," Jake stated. "Did you travel forward through time to find your father?"

"Yes I did. I've built the same time machine several times in several different years. Each time I have travelled ahead to find him."

"So you've caused further anomalies?" Jake asked.

"After travelling forward, somehow I ended up stopping at apparently random points in time. I was stopping wherever these phenomena occurred. I was experiencing these things with the other person experiencing them. It was then that I discovered that my destiny was not to find my father, but to fix these errors. It was to stop people like you screwing with time, and messing with destiny."

"Why do you care about other people's destiny?"

"Because any change in events causes shifts and further errors in space-time. It is also more likely to change the future, destabilising my father's existence. By minimising change, I minimise damage to space-time, and I increase the chances of keeping my father alive in the future where I will eventually find him."

"I still don't really know what this has got to do with me," Jake stated.

"It has _everything_ to do with you, Jake," Will responded. "You're trying to change the destiny of these people. The people you have saved so far were supposed to die. What happens if one of those drastically changes the future? You're messing with some serious forces."

"Those forces put me here!" Jake shouted in reply.

"An _accident_ put you here!" Will shouted back. "My father didn't foresee the impact his time travel would have on the space-time continuum as a whole. These problems were side effects."

"I believe I'm here to change these people's destinies," Jake countered.

"You believed a lie. I told you that lie to get you here."

"Why would you do that?"

"I needed to undo the damage you had already done before I met you," he responded. "I told you before that you had two choices. Option one is this: You can leave now and let your family and the others die like they were supposed to."

Jake shook his head forcefully. That idea was a non-starter. He could never sit idly by and wait for his family to die. His life was certainly not worth living without them.

"Your other option is to stay here and let these people catch you – because they certainly will. When that happens, you can sacrifice yourself to save your family."

Jake was becoming confused. He was tired of trying to make sense out of all of this.

"So if I let these people kill me, then my family won't die?"

"They'll be distraught by your death. Your wife won't go to the shopping centre on Saturday, and she will never put herself in the way of D.I Arnold. Everyone else you saved will still die, and most of the balance will have been restored."

Jake's head was spinning from all of this. Once again he had no idea what he should do. Will had travelled back in time, just as he had done. Will clearly felt his goal in life was to make sure the Replacement Phenomenon did not alter events in time. Jake believed that entirely the opposite was true. It was all about making the most of second chances.

"It's your choice, Mr Hingham." Will had not called him anything other than Jake before. His tone reflected that of Ironside the day before; One of formality to portray the gravity of the situation. He had seen a softer side to both men, but he now believed their true colours to be showing. Both behaved like mad men, crazed and obsessed.

"You can either return to normal life without your family, or you can allow your family to live a long life without you." He turned away from Jake and started walking towards the door. "It's your decision, Mr Hingham, and you don't have much time left to make it."

Will walked out of the door and Jake sat back down in his hiding place, covering himself once again with the chip board.

Jake could find no form of resolution in the conversation he had just had with Will Spalder. There were conflicting statements running through his head. Should he die? Should he let his family die again? Who was right about all of this, and was there a third option which would allow both himself and his family to survive this?

Will believed fixing situations altered space-time. He believed all of these anomalies and phenomena were some cosmic by-product of a time travel experiment. Jake, by contrast, believed that some divine power had placed him here to put things right.

Either his romantic notion was correct, or Will's rather bleak, matter-of-fact outlook was closer to the truth. Which one was correct?

Regardless of who was right, Jake was determined to succeed at his self-appointed task, whatever the space-time continuum was doing.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

As Jake watched Will walk out of the factory door, then sat back down, he heard the sound of a car. It was not the sound of Will leaving, but of another car arriving. Car doors opened and closed. Will was still just outside the factory entrance. He heard several voices outside. "Who the hell are you?" one man asked.

"No one important," Will answered nonchalantly. "I'm just looking around."

"You shouldn't be here."

"Do you think I'll interfere with your illegal trade?" Jake winced at Will's question. It was definitely not the right thing to ask.

"How do you know about that?" There was silence. "Answer me!" he shouted.

"I don't want any trouble." He could hear fear in Will's voice. "I'm just leaving. I don't really know anything."

"I don't believe you." Jake heard distant beeps like someone dialling a number on a mobile phone. He heard the man talking, but his voice was becoming quieter. He was walking away so the others would not be able to hear him. His voice grew louder again as he returned to the factory entrance. "Yes sir."

The next thing Jake heard was unmistakable. He heard two gunshots – one immediately after the other with absolutely no warning.

He did not know who had been shot. He assumed everyone involved in this illegal trade would be carrying their own gun. Either Will or the others were dead. The door of the factory opened again and he had his answer.

Two men were talking. "I'll call Ironside and tell him we took care of that guy."

"He seemed crazy to me, anyway," the other man replied.

"I took him out quite efficiently though."

"You shot him twice in the chest. I bet you were aiming for his head." One of the men laughed.

"I was not! I'm a good shot."

"Prove it. You see that wood in the corner?"

"Of course I do."

"Fifty pounds says you can't hit the very top right corner of that piece on the top."

Jake started to sweat now. If this guy wasn't as good a shot as he believed himself to be, he'd likely end up shooting Jake through the wood. Jake hoped that he was either a very good shot, or a very poor shot. He would be safe if this man either hit the piece of wood he was aiming for, or if he missed the wood altogether. Either way, he had no intention of ending up full of holes simply because some guy wanted to prove he could shoot accurately. Jake's life was entirely in the hands of people who did not even know he existed.

"You're on," the man agreed with a chuckle. A gun cocked, and Jake was scared for his life. He could almost feel the guy's finger on the trigger with a gun pointed at his head.

At the very point that Jake was almost certain he would be shot somewhere, the door to the factory opened again.

"That's enough silliness. We have a job to do." It was the timely arrival of Ironside. Jake had been so afraid that he had not heard the approach of another car. "I'll be setting up in my office. I'll have open channels of communication with you, as well as my head guard. He'll be stationed with the rest of my staff at a safe distance from the factory. If anyone approaches they'll stop them. I also have a police radio scanner so I can hear if they're coming for us."

Ironside seemed to have thought of everything. He had a backup, and then he had a backup for his backup.

The door to the lavishly furnished office closed, and the two men began talking again. "Is that Ironside?" one asked.

"I guess so," replied the other. "That's not how I pictured him."

"Me neither."

"When will the others be here?"

"In just a few minutes." They had either forgotten about or had given up on their shooting game. That was another lucky escape for Jake, and in an unexpected turn of events, Ironside had unwittingly saved Jake's life.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Having been sitting on the floor for almost an hour, Jake had heard the arrival of everyone involved in this trade. Weapons in crates were stacked in the middle of the floor. Ironside was paying attention to every detail of what was going on from his comfortable seat in the office. Nothing had changed hands yet, but it seemed the deal was about to commence.

A few seconds later it seemed that the whole place had erupted into chaos for no apparent reason. Something had happened, but no one really knew what had just changed. They could hear footsteps approaching the factory. Lots of footsteps, moving fast. The door flung open and in stormed a crowd of people. The guards had found the police officers.

Ironside charged out of his office. "Well, this changes things."

Jake guessed at what was going on. He could only hear, whilst staring at the dark inside of his chip board hiding place. He was tempted to sneak a look, but he refused to give in to that temptation. Doing so would give away his position to the people around him, and that would not be a good idea. He preferred to picture the events in his head.

"Who is the officer in charge here?" Ironside asked the crowd of policemen.

"That would be me. Detective Inspector Arnold," came the response.

"Let's have a chat in my office."

Jake was listening intently, then unexpectedly his mobile phone rang. He had forgotten to set it to silent earlier, meaning a popular Eighties television theme tune filled the air.

"Damn!" he whispered, trying to pull his phone from his pocket to switch it off, knowing that every second his mp3 ringtone continued the more people became aware of his position.

He knew his cover was blown. He turned off his phone and put it back in his pocket. Then he grabbed the gun and stood up, only to find thirty men pointing larger guns straight back at him. Another problem for Jake was that their guns were real. His was not so real. His plastic pellets would be no match for their firepower.

Ironside turned around and looked at Jake. He appeared angry, shocked, and confused. He did not recognise Jake, of course, but why would he? They had yet to meet. "Who are you?"

"I'm Jake and I'm here to break your illegal trade ring and stop D.I Arnold getting involved."

Ironside laughed very loudly and heartily, just as he had done several times the night before. "I was on my way to discuss a deal with D.I Arnold here, but now I think we should have a little fun first."

Knowing Ironside's reputation for crazy death games, Jake did not like the sound of that. "I like the look of that gun. Can I see it close up? I promise no one will shoot you."

What could Jake do? With so much heavy weaponry pointed at him, he could not exactly say no. Ironside approached and took the gun gently out of his hand.

Jake could do nothing to hide the fact that this was a replica gun. Ironside was seconds from discovering that this weapon was in fact a BB gun. Any leverage he might have had was suddenly gone. Ironside smiled, but he said nothing for a few seconds. He just looked very closely at the gun.

Jake was surprised by the first thing Ironside said. "CAUTION Made in Taiwan," he read from the underside of the gun. "I guess you're not supposed to put those two things together, or maybe the Taiwanese can't make good guns."

Ironside smiled, looking at Jake. Jake smiled back nervously.

"Boris!" Ironside bellowed. One of the guards broke from the pack and almost ran to stand next to Ironside. It was one of the men who would be assigned to murder Jake's family in a little over a week. He thought he would never see those goons again. "You have a Heckler and Koch, don't you?" Ironside asked. Boris handed him a H&K P8 handgun – the gun that Jake's replica was modelled on. "Remarkable. It's identical."

Jake was suddenly very aware that he was unarmed in a weapon-filled room.

Ironside hid the guns under his jacket for just a second, and then he spun on his heels and walked back towards the middle of the room, holding both guns in the air. The real gun was in one hand and the replica was in the other. He pointed both gun barrels into the air and said, "I have just thought of a game. Let's have some fun."

Jake knew he was about to see the sadistic side of Ironside. "We're going to have a shootout, Wild West style."

Everyone in the room was surprised by that. They were about to be even more surprised.

Ironside suddenly seemed energised by the prospect of a shootout. He was like a giddy child getting ready to play his favourite game. "Jake and this officer will stand in the middle of the room, back to back. Jake will then walk to that end," he said, pointing to Jake and the wall behind him, "and our Detective Inspector will walk to the other end." He pointed with his other hand towards the door. The whole atmosphere of the place had changed from one of fear and trepidation to something akin to a lethal game show, with an excited crowd of spectators.

Ironside volunteered to shuffle the two guns. He was apparently not bothered about the outcome of his latest death game, but his decision would ultimately be responsible for the death of one of these two men. Both guns were similar, but not quite identical. However, one could only tell them apart when seeing them next to each other.

"Let's make this interesting," Ironside added. As far as Jake was concerned, this whole situation was already pretty interesting. This guy obviously got bored very easily.

"When you reach your respective positions, you both pick up the gun in front of you and fire at the same time. One gun is real, and one is not. If you have the real gun, Jake, then D.I Arnold here will be shot. If he has the real gun then you will be shot."

Jake had figured that much out already. Ironside turned to D.I Arnold. "If you survive, you and these tiresome police officers can go free. However, if Jake survives, your officers must do a deal with me to save their lives, and he will be free to go." That sounded fair, or as fair as anything could be in a crazy shoot-out situation such as this.

Ironside was now standing at the side, between both ends of the factory floor. In the middle of the factory floor Jake and D.I Arnold stood back to back. A gun was placed at each far wall by two men under instructions from Ironside, who considered himself the independent adjudicator. He was close to them, but was far enough away to be out of the firing line between the two of them.

As Jake stood back to back with this potentially corrupt police inspector, he heard a whisper intended for his ears only. It seemed D.I Arnold had a plan to get out of this. "I suggest we point the guns at each other, and then both divert them at the last moment to Ironside."

Jake liked the idea, and he was fairly sure no one was close enough to have heard the whispered instruction. Nothing more needed to be said by either of them. Doing so would likely cause others to realise that they were planning something, and their escape route would be closed off.

"Detective Inspector Arnold, Jake, walk to your positions. I will say when to draw," Ironside instructed them. A few seconds of silence followed as they both took the heavy footsteps towards their weapons.

Jake's heart was pounding so hard he felt as if it would thump straight out of his chest. He was suddenly feeling light-headed and adrenaline was pumping through his entire body. He felt strangely detached from it all, but in reality he had a fifty-fifty chance of being dead within a minute. Even if he and D.I Arnold decided to shoot Ironside instead of each other, one or more of these heavily armed guards would probably shoot them both for doing so.

His palms were sweating as he looked at the gun lying on the floor in front of him. He hoped Ironside would never say the dreaded word, but was certain he would. He was not a big fan of the Detective Inspector and what he was likely to become, but he also did not want to shoot him. The only possible way out of this situation was to go along with the new idea.

The only alternatives on offer seemed to be to kill or be killed. He had to focus on Ironside instead of Arnold. Both had tried to kill him more than once over his past week, but D.I Arnold was about to make amends for a course of action he had not yet taken. Jake had to trust that he was not about to be double-crossed.

They both reached their own ends of the factory and picked up the guns at their feet. Jake looked over at D.I Arnold again as his heart pounded within his own chest. He made direct eye contact, raised his eyebrows, and flicked his eyes to one side, in the direction of Ironside, as if reminding Jake about his idea. Jake had certainly not forgotten what he was supposed to do.

As he was wondering if Ironside would ever say the dreaded words, the man shouted, "Draw!" Jake said a quick prayer as he pointed the gun towards the other side of the factory, paused, and then pulled the trigger.

CHAPTER 19

**Wednesday 21** st **January, 11:41am**

The moment he picked up the gun, Jake knew which one he was holding. He had picked it up, aimed and fired his weapon in tandem with D.I Arnold.

His arms shot back as he pulled the trigger and he knew he had fired a real gun for the first time in his life. As his eyes followed the path of the bullet, he was surprised to see how accurate his first shot had been. Jake had changed his aim at the crucial moment in line with the whisper and subsequent non-verbal message from the D.I. across the factory from him. He had aimed and fired at Ironside, and had a direct hit.

He looked over at D.I Arnold. He had also fired his gun, but not towards Jake. The barrel of the gun was still pointing squarely at Ironside as he stood to the side, near the middle of the floor. Jake had heard a second loud bang that he had assumed to be the echo from his shot. It seemed, however, that he had also fired a real gun. What had Ironside done with Jake's replica, and when had he made the switch?

Ironside was more devious than he had thought, clearly hoping they would both aim and shoot at each other, eliminating any problems that Ironside might face from either of them. He had apparently not counted on both of them aiming and firing in his direction. With both Jake and Arnold firing real handguns, the chances of him being hit had been greatly increased. Jake had done exactly what D.I Arnold had hoped he would do, and D.I Arnold had done exactly what he had said he would do.

Jake was some distance away so could not see exactly where his own bullet had hit. All of a sudden Ironside fell to the ground, creating a small cloud of dust in the air around him.

After a few seconds which seemed to last much longer, everyone began moving slowly towards Ironside's prone body. He lay perfectly still, not moving a muscle. The place had once again fallen completely silent. No one seemed to grasp what had happened at first, nor did they know how to react to this new scenario. Every other person in the building was waiting to see whether Ironside would be getting up.

Jake could hear the gasps of shock from everyone. No-one had expected to see the initiator of the illegal trading chain hit the floor, motionless. It seemed that Jake and D.I Arnold had killed him.

It seemed strange that Ironside would risk so much and stand so close to the participants of his impromptu game when most other people would have stood well back. How had he not seen that coming? He must have expected to be the target in a situation such as this eventually. For someone who had so carefully built a chain of criminal activity which had earned him millions, he had lacked foresight at a crucial moment.

The bullet which Jake had fired had struck home just below Ironside's left shoulder, at the edge of his chest. He suspected D.I Arnold would have aimed higher, but he could not see the other side of the body to determine where the second bullet had hit.

The fifty-fifty gamble had somehow worked in his and Arnold's favour, but for how long? It seemed that their plan was now about to backfire on them.

Panic gripped Ironside's staff. They were struggling to decide on what to do next.

As one of Ironside's senior henchmen began speaking, everyone turned their attention away from the man lying on the floor.

"They killed Ironside. Time for things to be evened up," he said with menace in his voice, raising a gun towards Jake.

"Not so fast," came a croaky voice from the floor. Ironside was badly wounded but he was clearly not dead. "Well done, Inspector, well done, Jake. You both found the flaw in my little game."

Ironside cleared his throat and spoke loudly enough for everyone to hear. "I made a deal with them that the survivor would be free to leave. Let them all go."

There were murmurs of surprise from the surrounding crowd.

"Excellent shot, Jake. Better than the shot from the Detective Inspector. You and these officers are free to go." Ironside's voice was becoming weaker. Without medical help he would not live much longer.

The realisation dawned on Jake that he had just shot another human being. He felt a cold sweat wash over him when he realised that this man was about to die because of him. In about a minute he would have played a substantial part in another man's death.

Ironside had barely finished speaking when at least thirty men dressed in black outfits charged into the factory. In a couple of seconds the room was filled with heavily armoured police marksmen. They all wore heavy jackets with POLICE in a large motif on the back and either 'SO13' or 'CID Special Branch' on the left breast. D.I Arnold had obviously called in for some kind of backup, and they had arrived. A medical team accompanied them and they moved straight to Ironside.

Jake knew a thing or two about police organisation, including the knowledge that a small section of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) was given over to the Special Branch to counter terrorism, and mostly to provide security from attacks.

SO13, so he was about to discover, was the internal code for the Anti-Terrorist Branch under the Specialist Operations part of the police. They were responsible for the same kind of things with more emphasis on intercepting and preventing terrorist activity. These were very specialist groups and Jake was surprised to see their involvement in what seemed to be a relatively minor incident in the grand scheme of criminal activity in the UK. Maybe this was bigger than Jake had thought.

The first thing any of these forces saw when entering the factory was Jake and D.I Arnold, each still holding a smoking gun, with Ironside lying on the floor in his own blood. The captured officers sprang into action as they seemed to suddenly remember who they were.

Everyone involved in the trade scattered, as if running for their lives inside this space, which suddenly seemed far smaller. By shooting Ironside it seemed he had cut the head off the beast.

The trade chain was broken, possibly never to be repaired. Jake had fired the shot that brought down Ironside. D.I Arnold had fired a second shot, wounding the man further. The Detective Inspector would never make that agreement with Ironside. The deal in the shopping mall would never take place. His family and all the other victims over the coming weeks had been saved.

He had seen movies and TV shows in which someone had accomplished a specific task and a happy ending resulted. He was not sure if this would be the case here. It looked likely that instead of sacrificing his life, he may well have sacrificed his freedom. He had just shot someone, and that carried a punishment, even if the person he shot was one of the worst criminals ever seen in this country.

Jake looked down at the gun in his hand. He looked ahead of him at Ironside, lying on the floor and now surrounded by paramedics treating him. A grim realisation dawned on him that things could have ended very, very differently. For a minute or two, Jake wondered if any of these officers had actually seen him. Rather than speak to him and get him away, they were all more interested in capturing the thugs who were trying to make a getaway. He continued to stand there, holding a recently fired handgun, in the midst of all the madness.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Things were starting to settle down inside the factory. Most of the men had been apprehended and were in custody. Jake still stood motionless in the middle of the room, holding a gun. He was still shocked by what had just happened, so much so that he failed to notice D.I Arnold standing next to him. "I'm sure you were aware that we have been chasing after Ironside for a while," he said, making it sound like a question.

"I've heard that, yes," Jake answered.

"He was one of the most wanted men in the country. He has been responsible for illegal trades worth more than eight hundred million pounds."

Jake had known Ironside was rich, but he had no idea he was that rich. Arnold continued to explain. "Most of those trades were done by others, but were supervised by Ironside. They have all happened within the past three years. Goods ranged from weapons and drugs to illegal immigrants. He was the organised crime equivalent of the guy on the market stall who sells fake Rolexes one week and bathroom furniture the next. Whatever he could find, he would do a trade in it. It is believed that his trades have led to at least six terrorist attacks in this country over those three years, and possibly to terrorist activity elsewhere in the world."

"So why did it take so long to catch him?" Jake asked in a tone that he hoped sounded more inquisitive than accusing.

"He was really elusive. He had moved from town to town, from county to county, every time there was a chance of getting caught. He was creative in his organisation to the point that it took over a year to get real evidence linking him to these trades. It was always the same story. By the time the local police realised who he was, and tracked him down, he moved on again. No more than two trades happened in any one town before moving to the next place."

"Then how did you know he was here?"

"Another Constabulary recently arrested someone who had participated in a trade. He had sprayed the money he used in the trade with an invisible isotope. It was a means of protection to him – a kind of insurance, if you will. It proved to be useful to him and to us. After his arrest, he made a deal to help the police bring down Ironside. They tracked the isotope to this town and informed us."

Jake nodded, signifying that he understood.

"After that, we simply followed local leads and intelligence, which led us here today."

Jake was still concerned about his part in all of this. "Mr Hingham," Arnold continued, "Did you know we had a price on his head?"

"What do you mean?"

"You've heard the phrase 'Wanted: Dead or Alive', I presume?"

"I have heard that, yes."

"That's what we said about this guy. There was a reward for his capture. You have also helped to save the lives of several officers and the reputation of this police force."

Jake was surprised by news of such a reward. He had no idea that the British Government would ever actually hand out money when someone helped to apprehend a criminal. He assumed law enforcement would take the credit and the guy that assisted would simply get a "thank you" and a handshake.

"So you're telling me I'm not going to prison for shooting Ironside?" Jake asked.

"On the contrary Mr Hingham. You had no other choice. In any case, they are stabilising Ironside and are confident he will recover. We wouldn't have succeeded here today without you and your tip-off. You are to be rewarded for what you've done today. Who knows what might have happened if it hadn't been for your bravery," D.I Arnold added. Jake could answer that, but he decided to leave it as a rhetorical question.

Jake wanted to ask how large the reward would be, but felt the question could be asked at a more suitable moment. "We'll need to take down your statement of the events, and see how it compares to those of the others involved. My statement, the statements of the other officers, and those of the parties involved in the trade will have to agree with yours. This may take some time."

"How do I know you're not trying to get me to admit to having a part in all of this?" Jake questioned, a little suspiciously.

Arnold laughed. "I'm actually outranked here now. The head officer for SO13 is in charge. If you wait around long enough he will tell you the same thing I have just told you."

D.I Arnold pointed out the man in charge. "His name is Commander George Keeble. He's the head of SO13 and the senior ranking officer on-site."

D.I Arnold walked away, and Jake was finally approached by Commander Keeble. He was about six feet tall and built like a house. Despite having a name that sounded to Jake like a cartoon character representing a breakfast cereal, this guy was huge.

"Mr Hingham, I believe," he said. His voice was much more high-pitched than Jake would have guessed. Jake nodded and shook the hand offered by the man. "Detective Inspector Arnold may have mentioned the reward associated with Paul Ironside."

Jake nodded again. "Yes, he did."

"I need you to make a statement, and then we can begin to process all of the necessary documentation. Before you know it you'll have your official letter of recognition from the Police Commissioner, and you'll be presented with a suitable reward." He started to walk away from Jake, then turned back to face him. "I presume he told you how much you'd get as a reward?"

Jake shook his head. "No sir."

He seemed surprised that this bit of information had not yet been communicated to Jake, and then smiled, apparently eager to hand out some good news. "Currently, the reward for finding and helping apprehend and convict Paul Ironside stands at five hundred thousand pounds."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

After Jake had recovered from the shock of Commissioner Keeble's words, he agreed to do anything the police asked of him. One officer took the gun from him and placed it into a plastic evidence bag. The officer scurried off, attached a label over the seal, and wrote the necessary details on it. Jake wondered whether he would ever be able to claim back his replica weapon, but decided against asking the question. Besides, with half a million pounds he could afford as many of those weapons as he liked. On reflection, he had probably outgrown such a toy anyway.

Another policeman took Jake to a police van outside. He climbed in through the open sliding door to the back of the van where a pen and some letter-headed paper had been placed on a small plastic shelf, ready for his written statement.

After spending half an hour writing his version of events, Jake had the statement read back to him by the officer. He then signed it, had his fingerprints taken as a formality, then he was allowed to go. He returned to his car and drove the relatively short distance home.

It was now just after three o'clock in the afternoon. The police processing had taken some time and would likely go on into the night, maybe even for several days. Everything that might have been considered evidence needed to be photographed, forensically examined and documented, before being boxed up and removed to the police vaults as evidence. Scene of Crime Officers took photographs of the spot where Ironside had been shot from every conceivable angle. They were still there long after the man had been moved to the hospital and replaced with a hundred yellow plastic tags that looked almost like name cards for a funky dinner party.

As he made his way home through the school traffic, Jake thought about the difference he had seen in D.I Arnold. It still unnerved him that someone with a high rank in the local police force would be so susceptible to corruption. It had taken very little to change him from law upholder to lawbreaker. He wondered if everyone could be broken so easily when their own family was at risk. He hoped that for the majority of people, the switch to killer from law abiding citizen would not happen so easily, but how could one know for certain, unless through one's own experience?

The thought of receiving five hundred thousand pounds was of course hugely exciting for Jake. Without needing to consider his options, he decided that he would quit work and try to do something he really wanted to do. He had not yet figured out exactly what that was, but it certainly was not customer support or anything to do with spying or law enforcement. He had experienced more than a week of the grim reality which surrounded life as a spy, and that had been more than enough for his entire lifetime.

He had no idea how Amy would respond to his news. He figured her first response would be laughter, followed by disbelief, followed by acceptance, then finally excitement.

Jake had just endured the most hectic and stressful time of his life, and now he could look forward to an evening of celebration, followed by normality. Now that the wrongs had been righted, he would soon experience time moving in a forward motion again. That fact alone would be enough to make him deliriously happy.

He could not wait to get home and tell Amy and the kids that their lives had just changed for the better forever. They would take some convincing, he knew, but his actions were on record as fact, so this time he could prove it.

He just hoped that now he had definitely succeeded, and that time would start going in the right direction.

CHAPTER 20

**Saturday 31** st **January, 9:03am**

Jake's eyes opened and he looked around the room. His head was pounding and he felt nauseous. His mouth was dry and he felt like he had been beaten heavily from head to toe. For some reason it felt like he had awoken from the worst hangover he had ever suffered in his entire life.

He cast his mind back to his yesterday to ease the pain he was suffering. The day had been fantastic, and he was certain he was going to wake up where this had all started. He looked at the alarm clock. It was just after 9am. He looked across the room at the daily calendar on his bedside set of drawers. It was the Saturday after his family had been killed. Life seemed to have been put back to normal.

The end of this instance of the Replacement Phenomenon had obviously flung him back to the point in time he had left several days earlier, skipping the previous week and a half. He was confused as to how he had lived through two versions of the previous days, collecting memories of events that no longer existed. What had happened over the past week and a half? Had he been on autopilot? There were a number of questions whizzing around in his clouded mind, and he would likely never be able to answer them.

He turned over in bed to discover the other half of the bed was empty. Amy must have woken up early. He put his arm on her side of the bed. It was cold. She had been out of the bed for some time.

He got out of bed, threw on his dressing gown, and went to the balcony. He saw the empty bottle of wine he had left there the night following the incident that started all of this, now several days ago as far as he was concerned. Why was the bottle still there?

He opened the large doors and walked onto the balcony, somewhat afraid to peer below to see the state of the Mercedes Benz on the driveway. His car had some substantial damage on the driver's side of the bonnet. The gatepost looked like it was about to fall over, all indicative of the accident he had been involved in previously.

Yellow "Crime Scene" tape marked the perimeter of his garden.

Jake was suddenly panicking, unable to breathe. He hunched over and clung to the railing on the balcony, almost involuntarily sending himself flying over the railing to the front garden below. He was gripped by fear and panic in a way he had never been before. He had gone through all of the stress, aggravation, pain and torment of the past ten days, and yet his family were still gone.

All the signs suggested that his rewind through time had no impact on his life whatsoever. The house was quiet, and the upstairs looked as if an indoor tropical storm had hit it. The whole house seemed to be the way he had left it the night following his family being taken from him.

He knew the Replacement Phenomenon had actually happened to him, but he feared that it was somehow a very long, very strange dream. Surely no one could create all of that in their head as they slept, let alone someone with the limited imagination of Jake. All of this was real. He knew it had been real. Why was his life no different now?

He managed to pull himself back inside and closed the doors. He knelt on the floor where he had been standing, with his back towards his balcony. He had nowhere to go from here.

Surely he had made some kind of a difference. He could not have gone through everything he had gone through for nothing. He covered his face with his hands and was about to burst into tears when he heard noises downstairs. He walked to the top of the stairs and listened. He heard cutlery clattering off bowls and plates. He heard Amy's voice. He heard his children talking and laughing.

Excited, he charged down the stairs, almost losing his footing on more than one occasion. He rounded the corner and hurried through the dining room into the kitchen. There he saw Amy, Jason and James sat at the table eating breakfast. Relief rushed through every inch of his body as he caught his breath. They all looked at him as if he was acting strangely. This was clearly not normal behaviour for Jake and he knew it. "Is everything okay?" Amy asked.

"Everything's fine now." He said. "A bad dream I guess."

"It's no surprise after last night's excitement." Jake realised that something must have happened, and he had no idea what. Amy clearly noticed his confusion.

"Have you forgotten?" she said. Then she laughed. "Two drunk guys wandered into our garden and whacked the car as well as anything else they felt like. It was quite frightening. Not the kind of thing we usually get on our street."

"And the police tape? Is that really necessary?" He asked.

"The police regarded it as a crime scene and are still treating us like royalty after your heroics last week." She smiled at him, shaking her head slightly. "You really don't remember that do you?" Jake shook his head.

"You must have really had a bad night." She said.

"You have no idea." Jake confirmed.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

With everything that had happened recently, Jake was going to make the most of a day with his family. After breakfast they walked to South Park with its vast green football fields. Jake enjoyed an hour or so of kicking around a football with his two sons. They clearly enjoyed it too, despite the cold January weather.

He found it hard to block out everything bad that he had experienced, but he put it all to the back of his mind and tried to concentrate on just enjoying himself.

As he stood in between the goal markers made from their own coats, Jake was distracted for a moment. He noticed Peter White with his wife walking a dog through the park.

It had been a few days since he had been chasing around trying to save Arnold's victims. In the distance he had just seen some further evidence of his success. This day was getting better with every minute. His sons made him look amateur in goal, but he was anything but surprised by that. They played football regularly and he had not played in about five years, and even then he had little skill to display.

After returning home for lunch they journeyed into the town centre for a bit of light shopping. They were about to be presented with a large sum of money and couldn't resist a look at what they would be able to buy. As they walked from one shop to the next, he recognised the face of Julie Clark walking past them on the street. There was another victim he had managed to save.

At the end of their shopping trip, Jake suggested buying the family several items from a local bakery. There was one that he had passed many times before, but had never tried. They crossed the road and he entered the B. Brady & Sons Butchers and Bakery. He was pleased to see Brian Brady doing what he had been doing for years, with his son Joseph rushing around in the background. The family enjoyed the various pastries they had bought, and then happily made their way home.

The day was nothing remarkable or terribly exciting, but to Jake it was one of the best days of his life. Someone had taken his family away from him, but he had somehow been given a second chance. Not only that, but he had given many other families a second chance in return, and they had no idea Jake even existed.

He was not aware of who had first said it, but there was a great deal of truth in the statement "you don't know what you've got until it's gone."

He would never let himself be anything other than happy with the life he had. He had a wonderful wife and two great kids. He had let himself be distracted from them in the past, all with seemingly insignificant things, but that would never happen again. One traumatic event, which had now been completely undone, had awoken him to the most important thing in his life.

He would remember the feeling of losing them every day of his life. Yesterday – the original yesterday – had handed him the lowest of lows, but today had lifted him up again. His family were alive and happy and that was more than he could have hoped for a week and a half ago.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It was now late into the evening. With the children in bed, Jake and Amy sat in the lounge looking at the biggest cheque they were ever likely to behold. It still seemed inconceivable that he could be paid for shooting someone, regardless of how bad people perceived him to be.

The on-site medical team had treated Ironside quickly, and his life had been saved as a result. He was recovering in a secure hospital and would remain in police custody until standing trial for a string of offences ten times longer than the family's weekly shopping list.

The police were happy to pay out a substantial reward to Jake due to the eventual confiscation of all of Ironside's assets on successful prosecution. It all seemed strange to him, but he was not about to argue. Jake would soon pay off his mortgage and could live comfortably, thanks in part to the efforts of Ironside and Jake's own willingness to put himself in danger to apprehend him.

He was thrown off his train of thought when Amy left the room for a minute, then returned, apparently with something on her mind. "I have some news. I wanted to make sure before I said anything." He wondered what she was going to say next, but he thought he had some idea. "I'm about three weeks pregnant." Even though Jake was not expecting the news, he was neither surprised, nor scared by it. It seemed life was looking up in every possible way. Life with three children would be a challenge, but not as much of a challenge as living the rest of his life without any of them.

The whole family, including Jake's parents and sister, had attended a special police awards ceremony earlier that evening at the Darlington Police Station. He felt uncomfortable during his entire involvement in the event. He knew the police were usually reserved with the use of words like "heroism" and "bravery", and he was humbled by the warm appreciation he had received. One of the police officers at the presentation had stated that he had committed the lesser of two evils in shooting this man who was now going to be locked away for a very long time. Ironside was described as a torment, a plague and a terrorist and everyone was hugely relieved that his activities were at an end.

He was called a hero and a brave man. He still did not believe that he qualified for such praise. He was simply there to save his family, and consequently several others, from an awful fate. He believed any father would certainly do the same thing. If he had told them the full story he was afraid they would have replaced the cheque with a one-way ticket to a mental institution.

His feelings over the week and a half had changed from depression to hope, from hope to determination, then from determination to revenge. Although he had his family back, someone was still on the path to taking them away until he had taken Ironside out of the picture.

The Chief of Police had told him earlier in the evening that he had probably saved them hours if not days and weeks of police time, as well as millions of pounds worth of resources. The more he heard about this Ironside character, the more surprised he was by the scale of the investigation by the country's law enforcement agencies.

Jake thought about the other people he had saved besides his own family. There were Arnold's victims, and there would potentially be many more. He remembered the chill he felt when he discovered that his family were target six of a potential twenty one for Arnold. The trade chain would have continued. More innocent people would have lost their lives. More people would inadvertently become involved and have to be "taken care of". By breaking the chain Jake had probably saved hundreds of lives.

He turned his silent thoughts to someone he could not have saved. He could only guess at what had happened to Will Spalder. The police had never spoken of a body outside the building. They would surely have discovered it while Jake was there. The man seemed to have simply disappeared – much like his father.

Jake remembered the conversation with this man in the factory. He had said this phenomenon was just some kind of cosmic accident. His father had created time travel and had damaged the fibres of the space-time continuum. So much of this was theory, and it was the theory of a madman and a son willing to carry the torch. Jake would not concern himself with what crazy people thought about all of this.

He contrasted all that he had learned about the Replacement Phenomenon with his own experience. He remembered the wish he had expressed from the balcony of his home. He was probably quite drunk at the time, but he was certain he had seen WISH spelled by the lightning outside. It would also be far too coincidental that he had stopped travelling backwards through time on the exact day in which he achieved his goal.

This series of events was certainly not caused by some accident. Ruptures in the space-time continuum no doubt caused all of this, but Jake was certain that some higher power was responsible for this in some way, guiding people along these ruptures. He was certain the phenomenon was not the result of some crazed scientist building a time machine in his basement. He knew where he stood as far as religion was concerned and that was nowhere. The events of previous days had prompted him to reinvestigate the matter. He now believed some force or being was watching over him, and he should probably learn how to say thank you. He could not say whether that was God, but there was definitely something there.

Will had talked of consequences to Jake's inevitable actions. It was possible that his positive action could prompt a negative reaction, but Jake did not believe such consequences to be as disastrous as he had been led to believe. The very fact that the earth, space, and time still existed meant he had not somehow destroyed the universe by doing the right thing.

There was some truth in the words spoken by Will Spalder, but there were also large chunks of fiction. If space-time was everything he thought it was, errors would have always existed and would continue to exist. The suggestion that saving lives could result in catastrophic errors in space-time was preposterous. It was science fiction mumbo-jumbo.

In any case, if further anomalies were likely to occur because of his actions, would that be a bad thing? If these anomalies resulted in more phenomena that could save lives and change history for the better, he had probably have done the world and everyone in it a huge favour.

Another thought occurred to Jake. He had seen D.I Arnold during that the award ceremony that evening at the town hall. He had been recognised as a 'major contributor' to the destruction of Ironside's trading chain. Such things illustrated to Jake that his successes were more than simply keeping people alive. He had changed this man's life forever.

He felt privileged to have been able to witness a change in history. He knew he was called upon to do what he did and no one would ever be able to convince him otherwise.

After making his was upstairs to the master bedroom, Jake prepared for retiring to his bed for some well-deserved sleep. He turned on the silver stereo he remembered throwing over the balcony several days earlier. The small stereo was used at some point on most days, but it seemed like it had been turned off, sitting dormant for weeks. It was playing another track from the Frank Sinatra album that had caused him to hurl the stereo through the bi-folding doors in the original yesterday to the tarmac below. The track "All My Tomorrows" was much more uplifting, but equally as fitting as the last track had been at the moment he had heard it.

Once again he listened to the words of the song as Frank seemed to be singing Jake's own thoughts. "Today I may not have a thing at all except for just a dream for two, but I've got lots of plans for tomorrow, and all my tomorrows belong to you."

For the first time in a long time he thought about the future. He needed to sort a few things out in his own life, such as finding a new job, but he thought about the future in a more general sense.

How many more people would experience the Replacement Phenomenon? What dramatic world events would be changed when someone else woke up to find time running backwards? He could not imagine the scope of it.

Obviously bad things still happened to good people, and most of the bad things in the world could never be undone. As long as people could choose between right and wrong, some people would choose to hurt rather than help others.

He just counted himself among a very lucky few who had the chance to change history for the better. He had lived through many yesterdays and had improved them where he could. Now all he had to do was to look to the future and make the most of tomorrow.

