Kent had forgotten about all of these details until he hadclapped eyes on the ball ticket. This visual clue, along with the Batmancostume, had triggered his brain to release a host of long-forgotten memoriesfrom deep within his mind. It seemed that these long-term memories had not beenpermanently deleted. They just needed some sort of stimulation to pull themback out of the archives. Now that he was actually here in 1994, he was findingit a lot easier to piece together these fragments than when trying to rememberfrom a distance.
Kent’s mission was clear. All he had to do was think of away to prevent Glen from taking Kay to the ball. As long as Glen failed to turnup at her house to escort her, there was nothing to stop Kent taking his place.He was sure she would not mind the switch, not if the feelings she had revealedin the pub were true. He hoped they were true and not just the desperate ramblingsof a middle-aged divorcee who had lowered her expectations.
He had mulled over a number of possibilities in his mind butstill not settled on a definitive answer. One thing he had vowed not to do wasinflict any sort of violence. He had got a real sense of satisfaction out ofwhat he’d done to Gideon Summerfield but he had no desire to pull a similarstunt, even if he was in the consequence-free cocoon that was Universe 2.0. WhateverGlen had done to Kent in the past, he hadn’t inflicted any sort of physicalharm on him.
A less drastic option was to find some way of physicallyrestraining him so he couldn’t make it to the ball. The best way would be toget him locked up somehow, but Kent couldn’t think of any realistic way of achievingthis. He could hardly go around to his house and barricade him in his room. Hewould only have to shout and his mum and dad would let him out.
If it had been 2018 when he still had his job, it would havebeen easy. He would have just brought him into the station on a trumped-upcharge and chucked him in the cells for a few hours. He had made enough wrongfularrests over the years that one more wouldn’t make any difference.
But this was 1994, which predated Kent’s policing career bya good few years. The only way to get Glen arrested by the current police wouldbe to frame him in some way but he dismissed that idea as well. It would be fartoo elaborate to set up something that would be guaranteed to succeed in the shorttime he had available to him.
An idea that had a more realistic chance of succeeding was toget Glen out of town, far enough away that he couldn’t come back. All he neededwas to get him into a car and drive. If he could get him out into the middle ofnowhere and abandon him, it would be highly unlikely he would be able to makehis way back in time.
This was the idea Kent was leaning towards when he openedthe bathroom cabinet and found another possibility staring him in the face.Right in front of him were his dad’s laxative powders, a whole packet full.
Now why hadn’t he thought of that before? If he could find away of getting Glen to take an overdose then that would well and truly put himout of the game. He could incapacitate him without doing any long-term damage, aswell as giving him a thoroughly unpleasant experience – which he well and trulydeserved. He was pretty sure the laxatives wouldn’t kill him, but even if theydid, it was only Universe 2.0 after all.
His dad had suffered from constipation for years and he hadseen him stirring the laxatives into his coffee as if they were whitener. Thatmeant they were easily soluble and he was pretty sure his dad had told him thatthey barely tasted of anything. This was ideal for his needs. All he had to dowas get them into something Glen was drinking.
Kent thought back to when they were young. What did Glen usuallydrink? Then a long-forgotten memory flooded into his mind, about a particularlyannoying and arrogant thing Glen used to do. The seeds of a plan began to formin his mind. All he had to do was get Glen round to the house.
He worked through the details as he got dressed. The firstthing he needed to do was to get hold of Glen on the phone. This seeminglysimple task was to prove remarkably tricky. Forgetting where he was for amoment, he looked around for his mobile phone, non-existent in 1994. Fairenough, he would use the landline, but what was Glen’s number? He would haveknown it when he was young but he hadn’t had to commit a phone number to memoryfor years. Once a number was tapped into his mobile there was no need.
Try as he might, he couldn’t remember Glen’s number. Thiswas one piece of information that he couldn’t retrieve from his archives. He wouldhave to find it out some other way. Surely he must have it written downsomewhere? He searched in vain around the room for an address book or anything tohelp, but he came up empty. He remembered having kept all his numbers in asmall, red, leather-bound book but he had no idea where it was at this moment intime.
Perhaps his mother would know. It was worth a try. His parentswere bound to have Glen’s number; they had been friends since primary school. Hewent downstairs but there was no sign of her. Of course, there wouldn’t be. Shealways went to Tesco’s on Friday lunchtimes, regular as clockwork. Perhaps thatwas just as well. If he was going to carry out his diabolical scheme with thelaxatives it might be better if there was nobody
