BooksBarbecue
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Chapters (45)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Contents
  4. Prologue
  5. 2046
  6. One
  7. Two
  8. Three
  9. Four
  10. Five
  11. Six
  12. Seven
  13. Eight
  14. Nine
  15. Ten
  16. Eleven
  17. Twelve
  18. Thirteen
  19. Fourteen
  20. Fifteen
  21. Sixteen
  22. Seventeen
  23. Eighteen
  24. Nineteen
  25. Twenty
  26. Twenty-One
  27. Twenty-Two
  28. Twenty-Three
  29. Twenty-Four
  30. Twenty-Five
  31. Twenty-Six
  32. Twenty-Seven
  33. Twenty-Eight
  34. Twenty-Nine
  35. Thirty
  36. Thirty-One
  37. Thirty-Two
  38. Thirty-Three
  39. Thirty-Four
  40. Thirty-Five
  41. Thirty-Six
  42. Thirty-Seven
  43. Thirty-Eight
  44. Thirty-Nine
  45. About the Author

‘Nah thanks, mate.’ Ben pauses, hesitating and awkward. ‘Tired . . . I’ll, er . . . see you in the morning then . . .’

They watch him go and hear as he pauses under the hissing air jets then walks down the corridor to the doors. Safa sighs.

‘Only been a week,’ Harry says quietly, nodding at Safa to pass him another beer.

‘Get your own, you lazy shit,’ she says, arching an eyebrow. ‘Oh, stay there, old man,’ she huffs as he makes a meal of preparing to stand up. She grabs two more bottles and sits down in Ben’s vacated chair.

‘Ta,’ Harry says, taking the beer.

‘He’ll be fine,’ she whispers, taking a swig from the bottle.

Harry nods, staring down into the valley. ‘I’m sure he will be.’

‘He will,’ she asserts, shooting him a hard glare.

Harry pauses. His silences speaking as much as ten sentences sometimes. ‘We had chaps join up . . . tough chaps too . . .’

‘Save it. Heard it. He’ll be fine.’

He swigs from the bottle. No offence taken at her blunt tone. ‘How long you going to give him?’

She swigs from her own bottle. He is Ben Ryder. He was seventeen when he took on a gang of hardened men high on drugs. He could have run away. He could have hidden. He was terrified but he still did it. Same with Holborn. He was terrified but he still did what hundreds of other people couldn’t do. While everyone else ran away, Ben ran towards. That means something.

‘Long as it takes.’

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Four

‘It’s been almost four weeks.’

‘I’m fully aware of that.’

‘And he isn’t getting any better.’

‘He’ll get there.’

‘Harry?’ Roland says, looking from Safa to Harry across his desk. Harry stares ahead, wanting to say something but abiding by his sense of loyalty to Safa. In the end he says nothing, which again speaks volumes.

‘We’re running out of time,’ Roland says heavily. ‘You’ve had him running and training and stripping those blasted guns apart every day.’

‘Time?’ Safa asks, Roland groans and sags back in his chair.

‘Time, Safa! Time.’

‘Got a time machine.’

‘Again? Is that going to be the answer every time we have this conversation?’

‘Got a time machine.’

‘Four weeks. It has been four weeks—’

‘Almost four weeks and, er . . .’ She pauses, looking him in the eye. ‘We have a time machine. We could take four years and it wouldn’t make a fucking difference. We can go back to any point in history . . .’

‘Yes, but at some point you will have to make the decision that Ben is just not suitable.’