“Barry for short,” said Barry.

“Balbereth!” said the other Will. “You think to taunt me by assuming my form.”

“He’s a nutter, chief. You’ll get nothing here. It’s a waste of time.”

“Deja vu?” said Will. “I recall you saying the same about Mr Wells.”

“There,” said the other Will. “Converse with your demon. I am weak now, but if I had my strength I’d—” And the other Will raised a fist, rose feebly, then sank back into his chair.

“Feisty, ain’t he, chief?”

Will did not reply.

“I’ll kill you too,” said the other Will. “You’ll die. You’ll all die. I’ll kill you all.”

“You really don’t want to kill me.” Will drank further Large.

“I really do.” His other self did likewise.

“Ask me anything,” said Will. “Anything that only you know. That I couldn’t possibly know if I wasn’t you.”

“I won’t play your evil games.”

Will shook his head. “I don’t know what to say to convince you. But you and I are the same person. We’re both here from the future. How did you get here; will you tell me that?”

“I need to go to the toilet.”

“All right,” said Will. And, “Barlord,” he called to the part-time barman, “where is your gentlemen’s toilet?”

“Door to the left there,” the part-time barman pointed.

“Go on, then,” said Will.

“Chief, he’ll be out of a window in a shot. It’s what you’d do, isn’t it?”

“I thought you wanted to be rid of him.”

“Again.” The other Will pointed a feeble hand. “Again you converse with your familiar.”

“It isn’t what you think. I’ll accompany you to the toilet.”

“I’ll stay here then. I was only hoping to escape through a window.”

“You’re me,” said Will. “And I’m you, somehow, and I don’t understand how. Please tell me. I’ll let you go if you do. I promise.”

“And why should I believe your promises?”

“What have you got to lose? If I’d wanted to kill you, I could have done it by now. And if I’d wanted to torture some information out of you, I would have hardly brought you into a public bar.”

“Your evil trickery knows no bounds.”

“Oh, I give up,” said Will. “Things are complicated enough for me already. I really don’t need this. Drink your beer and go your way. I have pressing matters to attend to. My mentor was murdered and I mean to bring his assassin to justice. If you’re me then you’ll survive. I have no idea what you’ve been through, but it seems pretty bad. But I’d survive it somehow. Drink up and go. I won’t try to stop you.”

The other Will considered his pint, then took it up in a trembly hand and drained it to its very dregs, not that there were any dregs, this being the finest ale that there was.

“I can leave?” he said.

“Go on,” said Will. “But please take care. I have no idea how this works. But it might be that if you were to die, I might also. So please be very careful.”

“And I can just leave?”

“I’ve told you that you can. Go on.”

The other Will put his hands on the tabletop and eased himself up. “Really leave?” he said.

“Just go,” said Will. “Here, take some money.” And he fished into his pocket.

The other Will sat back down again. “Silver,” said he, “give me silver.”

“As you please.” Will fished out a handful of silver coins and dumped them on the table.

“Yes,” said the other Will. “All right. Yes.”

“You like silver?” said Will.

“You crossed the river,” said the other Will. “And now you handle silver. You’re not one of them.”

“The lad knows his stuff,” said Barry.

Will didn’t answer him.

“I’m not a witch,” said Will. “If that’s what you’re thinking. I’m you. I’m really you.”

“Thank God.” The other Will put his hands to his face and began to weep.

He sobbed and he sobbed, and Will looked on and didn’t know what to say. He’d have liked to have hugged his other self, for after all it was him, but he knew that he didn’t dare.

“Don’t forget about what happened to David Warner in Time Cop,” Barry kept saying.

When the other Will had finally sobbed himself dry, he wiped the last tears from his eyes, looked across at Will and said, “Fetch me another drink.”

“Are you all right now?” Will asked.

“I’ll be fine,” said his other self. “And I’ll be a lot finer with another glass or two of this Large inside me. Take the silver and purchase further pints. Go to it, then.”

“Right,” said Will and he took himself off to the bar.

“Your brother seems somewhat distressed,” said the part-time barman, as he pulled two more perfect pints.

“A family matter,” said Will. “Do you have any pork scratchings?”

“Certainly do,” said the part-time barman. “Two packets?”

“Yes please.”

Will returned to his table with two pints and two packets. He placed all down and took his seat once more.

“You really don’t know, do you?” said his other self as he tucked greedily into the pork scratchings. “About what happened to me?”

“No,” said Will.

“So you’ve never met the witches? Somehow you got into this time too, but you’ve never met the witches?”

“No,” Will shook his head. “But the women who came to the police station, they were witches, weren’t they?”

“They were.”

“So, will you tell me your story?”

“I will,” said the other Will. “And when I’m done, you’ll really know what kind of trouble the both of us are in.”

“Oh good,” said Will. “I’ll really look forward to that.”

24

“It’s no fun being the Messiah,” said the other Will, tucking into his pork scratchings. “In fact, it’s a really crap job.”

“I’m sure it is,” said Will. “But what has that got to do with anything?”

“Because I am the Messiah. And it is a crap job.”

“He’s as mad as a bucket of spanners, chief,” said Barry. “Let’s get him committed to a nice lunatic asylum and head on to Chiswick.”

Will ignored Barry’s advice and said to his other self, “What are you talking about?”

“The Promised One,” said the other Will. “That’s what they call me. The saviour of Mankind. The lad who travelled back into the past and thwarted the evil witches’ schemes to change history. Ensured the wondrous future to come. That’s me, for what it’s worth.”

“I really don’t understand,” said Will, who didn’t.

“When I was born, upon the first of January in the year two thousand, two hundred and two” said the other Will, “there was rejoicing throughout the world. My family had always lived under the protection of the state, but when I was born I was taken into the London fortress, that had been specially constructed for my protection, where I would be taught all about myself. Who I really was and the fate that I was born to. Then, when I was older, and upon the date that was foretold, the third of March, two thousand, two hundred and twenty, I would enter the time machine and be dispatched back here to do my thwarting of the witches and save the world.”

Will shook his head and made a puzzled face. “I don’t get this,” he said. “You were born here in Brentford, on the same date as me, and you travelled back in time upon the same date as I did. But I’ve never heard about any of this Promised One business. Which sky tower were you brought up in?”

“I was born just around the corner. Number seven Mafeking Avenue.”

“No.” Will shook his head. “All the streets around here were demolished in the twenty-first century. There are twenty-three sky towers, a tramway connecting the borough with London Central, some supermarkets, of course, and—”

“No,” said the other Will. “You fail to understand me. That is the future you come from. It’s not the same future I come from.”

“Oh,” said Will. “Can you just stop there for a moment. I have to use the toilet.” Will got up from his seat and looked down at his other self. “You won’t run away or anything, will you?”