The Time Traveller's Murder by Andrew S. French

Author:Andrew S. French
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Neonoir Books

18 ARE YOU READY FOR THIS?

Cohen stopped Harry from falling off the chair.

He wiped at his mouth. ‘What is this?’

Hazell laughed at him. ‘Your brain must be pickled. Don’t you mean who is this?’

He gazed at the woman as she approached him, the murdered Amy Croft with the same blue eyes, sculptured cheekbones and dark bobbed hairstyle reminiscent of Louise Brooks.

She stuck her hand out to him and he noticed her perfect skin.

‘Hello, Harry. I’m Amy.’

He gripped her hand, feeling the warmth of her touch increase the rapid beating of his heart.

Then it hit him.

‘You’re an earlier Amy, from before…’

He couldn’t say the words, so she finished the sentence for him.

‘From before my murder?’

He felt stupid doing it, but he nodded anyway.

‘You know about that?’

Hazell laughed behind him. ‘Of course she does. How are the two of you going to solve the crime if she’s not aware of it?’

Once, a long time ago – after his sister’s disappearance – his parents had taken him to the funfair. It was one of the few memories he had of his mother, of her golden hair and glittering smile, and the day had been great until he’d fallen from a ride and cracked his head on the ground. They’d rushed him to the hospital, where the diagnosis was a fracture with a light concussion. He’d bragged about it later at school, had shown the girls his scars as a badge of honour, but the whole of his skull had felt like it was inside a vice. He’d never experienced pain like that again, apart from his time in a war zone in a foreign field.

Until now.

It started in the back of his brain, travelled through every synapse until it settled behind his eyes and burnt his retinas like devils stabbing him repeatedly with tiny pitchforks.

He returned to the bottle of whisky, nudged Hazell out of the way, and filled his glass without water or ice. Then he drank it in one go, hoping its fire would quash the raging volcano inside him. Instead, his throat felt like the centre of the sun as he looked at the resurrected woman.

No, not resurrected – a different version.

‘They went back in time and told you you’re going to die in your future, and they need you and me to solve the murder. Is that right?’

Croft took the bottle from him and poured herself a small measure with ice. She held it to her mouth, but didn’t drink it.

‘Not quite. I said I’d only give them what they want if I discovered who murdered me.’

‘What they want?’ Harry said. ‘You mean the secret of the pills and time travel?’

She sipped at the drink and he watched her lips glistening.

‘Precisely. If it happened to you, Harry, wouldn’t you want to know who’d killed you?’

He peered into her eyes, trying to discover who she was.

‘I guess so. Which point of your timeline are you from?’

Cohen answered the question. ‘We could only get as close as six months to Amy’s death.

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