The Time Bubble Box Set 2, стр. 37
“Same for Vanessa,” she said with a look of astonishment,there being no evidence of her place ever being occupied.
“And Henry’s been gone an awful long time. I’m going tocheck the toilets,” said Josh. He got up and made his way to the back of therestaurant.
The gents seemed empty, with no one at the urinals. Therewere two cubicles, but a quick push of both doors confirmed they were bothunoccupied.
Wherever Henry was, he wasn’t in here. That’s if he wasanywhere at all.
It seemed that he had completely vanished.
Chapter Twelve
May 2058
Back at the table, Josh could see Alice was still inconversation with the waiter.
“You really can’t remember the other couple who were diningwith us?”
“Madame, it has only ever been you two.” Was that a slightsmirk she detected on his face? He wasn’t taking this seriously.
“Answer me this, then,” said Alice. “If there really wasjust two of us, why did you seat us at a table for four on such a busy night?”
“If I recall correctly, you booked a table for four, butwhen you arrived your friends didn’t turn up,” said the waiter.
“There’s an easy way to check,” said Josh. “Could we haveour bill please?”
“Of course, monsieur,” replied the waiter. “Uno momento, ifyou please.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s Spanish,” said Josh. “Your accent’sslipping.”
Ignoring the jibe, the waiter headed back towards the tillarea as Josh sat back down.
“What’s happening?” asked Alice, with a look of concern.
“I’m not sure but I’ve got some very worrying suspicions,”said Josh.
“It’s as if they were never here,” she added. “And thewaiter doesn’t remember them.”
“That’s what worries me,” said Josh, as the waiter returnedwith the bill.
Josh opened the small, black wallet which he quickly tookand perused in detail. Ordinarily he would have been delighted to discover thatthe bill was significantly less than expected, but this was no ordinaryoccasion.
“It’s just as I suspected,” he said. “Our meals and drinksare on here but there’s no sign of theirs, and I can only think of one possibleexplanation. You remember what Henry was saying earlier about merging universesinstead of creating copies?”
“Yes – do you think that’s what he’s done and changed somethingso that he wouldn’t turn up here tonight? But why?”
“All I can hope is that this is just another littleexperiment to test out the theory and not anything more sinister,” said Josh.
“What I don’t understand is that if he really has changedhistory, how come we can remember him being here? And even more curiously, howcome we can remember them being here, but the waiter can’t? That doesn’t makeany sense at all.”
“I think we had better get back to the lab and investigatethis right away,” said Josh.
“Really? Now? It’s gone 10pm,” said Alice.
“I don’t think this can wait,” said Josh.
They paid their bill and made their way out of therestaurant. As soon as they started to make their way up Little ClarendonStreet towards St Giles’ their attention was drawn by a commotion in front ofthem.
A police car sat at the end of the street, its blue lightflashing on the top, but with no siren. As they approached, they could see that‘Police line – do not cross’ tape was stretched across the end of the street.
A couple of uniformed officers were preventing pedestriansexiting via the pavement to the left, while what looked like a forensics teamwere carrying out tests on the ground.
“What’s happening here?” said Josh to one of the officers.
“Please move along, sir, this is a crime scene,” respondedthe officer, his impassive face giving nothing away.
“He’s hardly going to say anything, is he?” said Alice.“You’re asking the wrong person. As you’re so fond of saying to me, watch andlearn.”
There was a café on the right-hand corner where amiddle-aged waitress was just clearing away the final few outside tables beforeclosing for the night. She would have been there all evening and must have seensomething.
“Excuse me, do you mind if I ask what happened here?” saidAlice.
“Oh, it was awful,” she said. “It was a hit-and-run. Thisbig car came out of nowhere and mowed down this poor man right in front of thecafé.”
“How long ago did this happen?” asked Josh. He looked acrossat Alice who had a fearful look on her face. She was doubtless thinking thesame as he was. He really hoped that they were both wrong.
“A couple of hours ago,” replied the woman. “This fellow wasjust crossing the road when this car zoomed up St Giles’ at about 60 miles anhour and hit him square on.”
“That’s about the time we arrived at the restaurant,” saidJosh, adding further fuel to his theory.
“Do you have any idea who the man was?” asked Alice.
“Some big guy in a Hawaiian shirt,” replied the waitress,delivering the devastating confirmation of what they had feared.
“Oh no,” exclaimed Alice, her face crumpling and tearswelling up in her eyes. “Poor Henry.”
“You knew him?” asked the waitress.
“We worked with him at the university,” replied Josh. “Doyou know how badly he was hurt?”
“I don’t know for sure, but it didn’t look good. He wasn’tmoving,” replied the waitress. “They took him away in the ambulance.”
Josh put his arm around Alice who was now openly sobbing.
“Thank you, you’ve been most helpful,” he said to thewaitress, as he led Alice away.
“How can this have happened?” sobbed Alice. “To Henry of allpeople. He didn’t deserve that.”
“No – he certainly didn’t, and nor do we. I think we need toget off the street right away. We could be in danger.”
“What do you mean?” asked Alice. Despite the tears runningdown her cheeks at learning of the likely death of their friend, Josh could seea noticeable shift as a look of fear appeared in her red, tear-stained eyes.
“I’m sure Henry’s death was no accident. Think about it. Hetells us all about how he’s figured out how to merge universes, alteringhistory. Then he and Vanessa have that huge row and she storms off, saying wehaven’t heard the last of it. Then, within the hour he’s been erased from theevening’s events and we find out that he was the victim of a hit-and-run beforehe even got to the restaurant.”
“Vanessa must have done it,” said Alice.