Ahead of his Time by Adrian Cousins (read novels website .TXT) 📗

Good cars, you know. I could look at doing you a deal … shall we talk business?”

“Err … maybe. You said, ‘talk of the devil’, were you talking about me?”

Mr Thacker had a quick look left and right and took a puff on his cigar. He raked his hand over his greying hair and nodded his head to beckon me inside.

“Mr Apsley, we had a strange thing happen, and I just can’t put my finger on it. It’s bizarre to the point that I’m considering I’ve lost my marbles!” He removed a blue-spotted handkerchief from his double-breasted suit pocket and dabbed his forehead, although it was bloody freezing in there.

“Oh, what’s that then?” Thinking it can't be half as nuts as my time-travelling mate turning up in my old yellow Cortina.

“Your Cortina! We took it in on Saturday morning, then this morning it’s disappeared – vanished as if in a puff of smoke! I was just going to ring the police to report it stolen, but there on my desk was the sales invoice and a roll of cash on top.”

“Who sold it? Was it one of your salesmen?” I asked, not sure why selling a car was odd for a second-hand car sales garage.

“This is the odd part. I sold it yesterday morning at seven-thirty. However …” he paused as if awaiting the drumroll. “… I didn’t, did I? As we don’t open Sundays,” he said, waving the invoice in the air.

I reached out and took the invoice from his hand, and there it all was in neat fountain-pen handwriting. Sold by Charles Thacker, dated and time-stamped seven-thirty on January 16th 1977. The invoice displayed the buyer’s details at the bottom. Purchased by Mr Martin Bretton, with his signature. A signature I knew very well. My mouth dropped open and my jaw sagged down as I stared gormlessly at the invoice.

“Do you see my point, Mr Apsley? I’ve gone barking mad … mad! Barking mad.” He flung his arms in the air. “And another thing, I priced the car up in my book on Saturday afternoon. I was going to let it go relatively cheaply as the new MK4 Cortina has just been released, but the cash left here is two grand! Look, it’s on the invoice … two grand! It’s not worth half that!”

“Yes, this is very odd. I know it’s a bit irregular, but could I borrow this invoice? I’ll bring it back in a couple of days.”

“Oh … err, what for?” he questioned. Charles brought his hands back down out of the air and rammed his cigar back in his mouth again, puffing at it like Churchill.

“I just thought I’d do some checking on the buyer. Is that okay?”

“Yes, yes, to be honest it’s put me in a bit of a spin today. I’ll be glad to see the back of it.”

“Thanks, Charles, appreciate that.”

“What about the Hillman Hunter? Only one lady owner from new, so can we discuss a deal?” He returned the cigar to his mouth again and delivered a machine-gun laugh that sounded far too similar to Boycie.

I smiled at him and waved the invoice, “When I bring this back, we’ll have a chat about it.”

“Don’t wait too long as that car will be snapped up soon.”

I liked Charles, but he was a true second-hand car salesman, always half an eye on a deal.

7

Flux-Capacitor

Considering the complete madness of the past five months, the past twenty-four hours miraculous events should’ve been a walk-in-the-park. However, discovering my old yellow Cortina was a time machine or some kind of portal that received time-travellers was a significant discovery and somewhat difficult to comprehend. Since September, my life had slotted into place. David Colney was dead, so no longer a threat to Beth and those five women he murdered in forty years’ time. I’d settled into my perfect life with my new family and teaching career. But now I felt I’d been catapulted back five months and was being forced to start over.

Don confirmed Martin hadn’t ventured out of the house all day and, as I stood on the doorstep banging on the door, I could see that the curtains hadn’t been opened from where I’d drawn them last night. With no response from Martin, I rummaged through my pockets for the spare key and let myself in.

“Martin, it’s me. Are you okay?” No response. Where was he? I whizzed through the downstairs, then vaulted up the stairs.

“Martin?”

Pushing open the bedroom door, revealed him sat on the bed with his knees up around his chest, staring into space. “Martin, I was calling you … Martin?”

He glanced around with that new hollow vacant look which he’d acquired. His glasses were on the bedside table, and his face had a few days of dark stubble, giving him a tramp-like appearance. I’d never seen it before, never clicked, but Martin reminded me of someone else. Although at this point, I just couldn’t think who.

The hair was different, and I was used to seeing Martin in clothes that fitted into the era of 2019, not his current attire that definitely belonged in the ’70s. Hang on, I thought, Martin always smiled, but now with the few days’ stubble and the solemn look without his glasses on, he oddly looked like Paul Colney as if he was his twin and not Patrick. A cold shiver slithered down my spine. Perhaps I was seeing things as I was tired, and this morning’s events had sent my mind back to times I wished to forget.

“Martin, have you eaten?”

He shook his head, then looked down between his knees at the bed covers, wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and sniffed.

“Come on, I’ll make you some dinner … Martin, come on.” I lobbed the green rucksack I was carrying onto the bedroom floor.

“I’ve brought you some clothes to get you through the next couple of days. I’m only a bit bigger than you, so it should all fit. There’s a denim