Inside her shoulder bag, which had not moved in the struggle, she found the canister of lighter fluid. Ute’s fingertips and toes began to sparkle. Her bladder muscle trembled. She jammed the can into her attacker’s mouth. It could not suffocate her, but that was not the intention. She twisted the can savagely so that it caught on the woman’s teeth. The thin metal tore and Ute pulled it free. The stranglehold lessened as the woman realised that her prey now had a weapon with a razor’s edge.
Ute did not wait. She rubbed at the woman’s throat to the right of her windpipe. The skin opened like a second month. The woman’s grip relaxed and, for the first time, her cat-eyes dropped away. She pushed off to escape into the mannequins. The air was blue-grey with smoke.
The woman slithered away. She had almost gone. Only her ankles remained. Ute grabbed one and pulled her back. The woman yelled.
Don’t do it, said a high-up voice. Kill her and she wins. She’s taken your life. Take control.
A deeper voice said: She deserves to die. Kill her now.
Ute reached for the other ankle. The woman jammed the cold ball of her foot in her throat. The pain stopped time. When finally she tried to move, she could see only the expressionless mannequins and their hard, plastic fingers. They seemed to crowd her. They were dead. They wanted her dead too. There was no up or down. And from the gaps between one mannequin and the next there issued only smoke, not air. She screamed.
The coffin lid would not budge. She was in the undignified oven of a crematorium. The darkness was no longer absolute. Cracks appeared. She saw her simple funeral clothes by orange light. She would escape her coffin now, oh yes, into a fire that might let her linger, let her relish the last few moments of life with a height of sensation she had never known. The crackling flames. Smoke. Distant organ music. The murmurs of David Proctor, thanking the priest for a lovely service. Saskia would have wanted it that way.
Saskia.
The hawk that returned.
The Time Machine (II)
Ute was back. Her ghostly passenger, who, according to Bruce, had been the late Kate Falconer, was gone.
She remembered her first kiss. It had been on tiptoe behind a supermarket. She saw the face of a local shopkeeper, Herr Horst, the faces of her foster parents, some fellow schoolchildren, and a poster of Saturn she had won at a fair. Spending hours learning to hula-hoop. A school trip to France. Her favourite film was The Daughter-in-Law. Her foster mother’s name was Fride. They had lived in Cologne. Her Uncle Wolfi had once saved her from drowning. He had died within the year from skin cancer.
In the darkness, a woman said something. Ute decided it was Jennifer. David was here too. Jennifer spoke again. It was English. Ute didn’t speak English. “Ich verstehe nicht, was du sagst,” she replied. “Ich habe vergessen, wie man englisch spricht.”
“OK, lass uns deutsch sprechen,” Jennifer replied.
David asked, “Ist…alles klar, Saskia?”
“No,” she replied. She kept her sentences simple. “I feel strange.”
There was a gun in her hand, but she did not know how to hold it. She let it drop. Her memories blazed.
“You will feel strange for a while,” said another voice.
“Who are you?”
“I am Ego, David’s personal computer,” the voice said in flawless German. “But before I was given to him, I was in your possession. I have some information for you.”
“Tell me.”
“It is a message from Saskia.”
“Ach so,” she said. Her thoughts were disordered. But an undercurrent was clear: she mourned the loss of half her mind. “If the message is from Saskia Brandt, this must mean that I will travel backwards in time. It must also mean that the chip will be reactivated. I am Ute, now, but I’ll become Saskia again.”
“True,” Ego said. “Her message is: ‘Look in the envelope’.”
“Which envelope?”
“The one you found in the West Lothian Centre.”
“I remember. But I can’t see.”
A dim glow appeared in the centre of the floor. Ego grew brighter until the pale faces of David and Jennifer appeared. They looked like timid animals on the boundary of a campfire. Ute knelt and shrugged off her shoulderbag. As she opened it she noticed the dark polish on her nails. She never wore polish. Her long hair cascaded over her face. She always tied it back. In the bag was her badge, a handkerchief, some tissues and the transparent wallet that contained the white envelope.
There was neat bullet-hole through its centre.
It was fastened with a metal popper. She opened it and withdrew the envelope. Once white, it was now spotted with black mould. The edges had yellowed. On the front it read: “Do not open this envelope”.
She ripped the seal and pulled out of the contents. It was a single sheet of A4-sized paper with some hand-written German text. Her handwriting. It read:
Dear Ute
Remember the fates. Clotho, she spins the thread of life. Lachesis, she determines its length. Atropos, she cuts it. Together we are two, but we make a third: our combination.
Follow him and stop him. What he did to you he can do again.
Love
Saskia
PS To prove this is me, there will be a bullet hole just about here:
An arrow projected from the last sentence. Ute pushed her little finger through the hole. It was precisely at the arrow’s tip. Without Ute, Falconer was no more than a memory. Her body had, perhaps, been dumped at sea or in building foundations, or fed to pigs.
Hartfield was getting away. He had killed Falconer to capture her ghost. That ghost wanted revenge. It was something that Ute understood. She had lived in Kate’s shoes just as Kate had lived in hers. She loved her, and she loved her.
“Ego, can you
