18: STUDYING ODDS

‘Don’t worry, Matey,’ Kai Diamonde assured his colleague who had been frantically consulting his phone as the car they were in made its way back onto English soil having negotiated the old Severn Bridge. ‘When we reach Bristol we will stop at a bookies so you can place your bet.’

Glen Mower’s fevered concentration dissipated in an instant and his attention switched from his smartphone to the man in the know on his right.

‘How do you know I want to place a bet?’ he asked, somewhat tentatively for he realised another revelation was perched on the horizon and he adjusted himself in his seat like a driving examiner preparing for their call for an emergency stop.

‘Because, Matey, you have not long been fed a subliminal image on your phone of the windowless house. Not that you needed one having not long viewed that very natural light deprived property.’

‘And?’

‘Well, yes, Matey, that’s it in a nutshell. And. You and hundreds of other historians in the country. You have been fed that picture as brief as brief can be as a subliminal image and now the UN Security Council will keep tabs on betting trends as you historians feel compelled to wager on an odd feeling you have.’

‘I’m still trailing behind the hare with this, I’m afraid.’

‘Simples, Matey, the name of the horse that the vast majority of historians bet on gives the Security Council a strong idea as to what the windowless house means as an indicator to something changing in history. Actually, pretty well what you ever bet on proves to be what it is. You have an uncanny knack for backing the right horse, so to speak, Matey.’

‘But I want to bet on Lass Light the 50-1 shot in the four-thirty at Ripon. What the Hell has that to do with history?’

‘Oh my God!’ Kai Diamonde, exclaimed which prompted Glen Mower to look at the stretch of motorway ahead half expecting an errant motorist to have provoked the animated response from the driver. ‘Lass Light, that’s obviously The Lady with the Lamp, Florence Nightingale. It’s her. That’s what it’s all about. Amongst the documents we have on Route 1066 is one where a time traveller thought it a bloody hoot to persuade the famous nurse to ditch her lamp in favour of a clamp as it would be more profitable but only if it was a wheel clamp. It seems like it’s coming to fruition. This is a major, major, major alarm.’

‘What the Hell has a windowless house got to do with Florence Nightingale?’ Mower asked.

‘Everything,’ came the reply as Diamonde shook his head wishing he had reached a different conclusion. ‘Matey,’ he said drawing upon a deep breath to avail him of the necessary oxygen to deliver his chilling forecast. ‘One of the triumphs of Florence Nightingale’s illustrious life is that her pioneering social and health reforms enabled people to live twenty years longer. Thus, with her being lost to the parking exploitation industry with her bloody clamp everyone is living twenty years fewer. Obviously, when that house was originally built it had windows installed by someone who was already in the last two decades of their life. Life that had been extended by Flo’s reforms. With Nightingale now gone the windows have disappeared too.’

Before they arrived at their destination, Kai Diamonde parked up at The Black Castle and provided his travelling companion with more documents to digest.

‘You will need to be up to speed with all this first, Matey. Before we enter the War Rooms.’

‘The War Rooms?’

‘Yes,’ Diamonde responded with a gravity which matched that of Neville Chamberlain in 1939. ‘This world is at war with the future to protect the past.’

Glen Mower said nothing as Kai, after flicking back his blonde fringe, applied his digits to a tablet from which a steam of the latest intelligence broke forth including more Route 1066 material as well as classified information compiled by the UN Security Council.