time. If I'm unsuccessful, we'll know that the Shoemaker girl is the one and I'll need your help to find her. I must go now.'
'Good-bye, Edward.'
Oxford nodded and strode out into the grounds. He looked back over his shoulder and saw the orangutan silhouetted in the doorway. He started to laugh again. Ridiculous world. None of it was real. He jumped.
He was still laughing when he landed on Wix's Lane, between Battersea and Clapham, at seven in the evening on August 2, 1861. He immediately vaulted over a fence into an area of waste land which local residents used as a rubbish tip. A shout from the street told him that he'd been spotted. He hopped away over piles of rubbish.
Moments later, he arrived at the back of the houses on Taybridge Road. He identified the fifth one along and approached its high back wall. He was just tall enough to look over it.
A gas lamp was on in the kitchen and through the window he could see a woman washing dishes in a basin. Last time he'd seen her, she'd been just fourteen years old. Now Lizzie Fraser was thirty-eight. She looked careworn and exhausted, with a haunted expression around her eyes.
A young girl came into view: the daughter, Marian.
The mother said something.
Marian replied.
She moved away from the window.
The back door opened.
The girl stepped into the yard and walked over to a small chicken coop.
She bent over it.
Edward Oxford vaulted over the wall, landed behind her, pressed a hand over her mouth, wrapped an arm around her slim body, lifted her off her feet, and leaped back over the wall, clutching her tightly.
An agonised scream came from the kitchen.
Damn! The mother had seen him!
He whirled the young girl around and grabbed her by the upper arms, shook her, and growled: 'You're Marian Steephill, yes? Answer me!'
She nodded, her face contorted with fear.
The screams from beyond the wall became hysterical.
Without further ado, Oxford grabbed Marian's dress and ripped it away. He clawed at the slip beneath until her skin was bared.
There was no birthmark.
He pushed her away and ran back into the rubbish tip, took three giant strides, soared into the air, and landed in Patcham Terrace at ten in the evening of September 6, 1861.
It was a warm night. The street was empty but he could hear a vehicle approaching. He pressed himself into the shadows as it passed: a motorised penny-farthing, leaving a cloud of steam behind it. He shook his head and chuckled. Impossible. There was no such thing!
Lucy Harkness, the daughter of Sarah Lovitt, lived at number 12 with her parents. It was Friday; her mother and father would be at the Tremors public house.
Oxford walked up to the door, which opened straight onto the pavement-there were no front gardens in this road-and knocked on it. He bent to bring his height down below the transom window.
'Who is it?' came a muffled girl's voice.
'Constable Dickson,' said Oxford. 'Lucy Harkness?'
'Yes.'
'Has there been a break-in here?'
'No, not at all, sir.'
'Would you allow me to check your back windows, miss? There's an intruder in the area.'
'Wait a minute.'
He heard a bolt being drawn back.
The door cracked open.
He threw his weight against it, knocking the girl backward onto the floor.
Slamming the door shut behind him and crouching so as to avoid the ceiling, he paced forward until he was next to the prone girl.
She was shaking so hard that her teeth were chattering.
He reached down and pulled apart the buttons of her blouse.
She didn't resist.
He pushed aside her underclothes.
No birthmark.
All of a sudden, her body arched upward and her eyes rolled into her head. She was having some sort of fit.
Oxford backed away nervously, fumbled with the door until it opened, stepped out, and jumped.
He thudded into the ground at five o'clock in the morning on Thursday September 19, 1861. He'd landed on a dark, misty pathway in Hoblingwell Wood near Mickleham village.
He ducked into the cover of the trees and waited.
A few minutes later he saw the light of an oil lamp approaching.
He stepped out.
'Who's that there?' demanded a girl's voice.
Suddenly she turned and started running.
He sprang after and caught her, yanked her around, and savagely rent her clothing, ripping it wildly until her naked skin was exposed. Bending her backward, he placed his face close to her chest. Blue light from his burning helmet reflected off her pale, unmarked skin.
He looked up into her face.
'Not you!'
Then he dropped her and jumped away-but landed in the same time, and in the same place.
'Shit!' he spat.
The leap from Battersea to his current location had drained the suit's power. Now he'd have to wait until dawn, when the sunlight would recharge it.
He paced along the path, out of the woods, across a road, and into a field. He sat beneath a gnarled oak, the mist curling around him, and waited. A feeling of drowsiness overtook him.
Is this what I've come to? he thought. A man who rips the dresses from teenage girls, like some sort of sexual pervert? God, I want to go home! I want to have supper with my wife! I want to put my hand on her belly and feel the child kick.
About thirty minutes later, he was roused by a shout.
He looked up.
A crowd of people were charging toward him, waving pitchforks and clubs.
He hauled himself upright and ran away.
His legs ached.
He was exhausted.
When was it he last slept? He couldn't remember. Probably years ago. Literally!
He stumbled on. The villagers followed.
Sometimes he outdistanced them and stopped to rest. Then they'd come back into view, yelling and brandishing their makeshift weapons like crazed animals.
If they caught him, they'd kill him, of that he was sure.
As dawn broke, Spring Heeled Jack, Edward John Oxford, the man from the distant future, sprang on his stilts from one field into the next, over hedgerows and across roads, over a golf course and into the shelter of some woods.
He pushed through the trees, leaned against one, and tried to regain his breath.
The sun was up but it was misty and the light too weak to recharge his batteries quickly.
Something irritated his ear-a distant vibration, the sound of a machine.
