PC Hodge couldn"t face going back in to the station. It would only remind him of what had happened and his head was already full enough. He had spent the night scrubbing at his hands until his fingers were rubbed raw, but he couldn"t seem to get the blood out from under the fingernails. He burnt his uniform but he couldn"t get the smell away from his body.
Finally, it became too much. Hodge got his father"s service revolver from the war out of its hiding place in the front room.
It was still loaded, in case trouble ever came calling. Hodge"s father had died two winters before, but he had shown the gun to his son before the end.
Hodge"s father had been so proud of his son"s plans to join the police force. Now the uniform, the job it would all just be a reminder of how that pride had been twisted and perverted by the aliens. Hodge climbed up on the roof of the terraced house and walked out to the edge of the building. He pressed the end of the barrel to the side of his head and started praying.
"Our father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth, as it is in Heaven."
Tears streamed down Hodge"s sobbing face as he pulled the trigger.
The Doctor and Sarah emerged from the TARDIS at midday.
Sarah had spent a restless night in her bedroom, tossing and turning as her mind tried to resolve all that had happened. She could hear the Doctor pacing back and forth along the time machine"s corridors. He never needed much sleep but the encounter with the Xhinn had disturbed him too.
The smog was growing thinner and there was even a hint of weak sunshine in the sky. The Doctor examined a small gadget he held up in his hands. "Yes, the worst of the smog is over.
London should be free and clear of it by Wednesday."
"That"s good news!" Sarah replied, trying to cheer him up.
"But the damage has already been done, my dear. Ambulance men and undertakers will still be removing bodies from homes for weeks yet. The terrible cost of this tragedy in human lives is only just beginning."
"But we won! We defeated the Xhinn! Surely that counts for something," she said, her eyes full of pleading.
"Yes, you"re right." He pocketed the gadget and strode towards St Luke"s. "Come on, let"s go see how the clear-up is doing."
Tommy Ramsey had appointed himself as taskmaster for the restoration of the church building. A dozen men were inside repainting the walls and scrubbing away all the scorch marks from the columns. A pile of broken and partially disintegrated pews had been made outside the front doors. Billy and Charlie carried another shattered bench outside and dumped it on the pile. Tommy was still barking orders at the men when a sheepish figure shuffled into view. It was Billy Valance. "h.e.l.lo, Tommy.
You okay?"
"Where the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l have you been?"
"Sore throat. Think it must have been the fog. Knocked me for a right wallop. I only got my strength back this morning,"
Valance explained weakly.
"Get out of my sight," Tommy hissed.
"But I was sick, really. I was "
"I said get out of my sight!"
Valance slunk away towards Whitecross Street. He was dismayed to see the Doctor approaching him and quickly changed direction. Valance had already suffered twice at the hands of the watchmender. He didn"t want a third helping.
"Still making friends and influencing people?" Sarah said to Tommy. The Doctor continued past them, heading for the bread factory.
"Where"d you get to?" Tommy replied. "I"ve been looking all over for you."
"Why? I thought I made my feelings pretty clear yesterday."
"We all say things we regret in the heat of the moment."
Sarah shook her head. "I meant every word of it. I do believe Arthur was worth ten of you. He was kind and gentle. He only did your dirty work out of a misplaced sense of loyalty. He didn"t enjoy hurting people."
"Me neither." Tommy protested.
"The Doctor told me what you did to Detective Valentine."
"Well, that was personal."
"You can"t just make arbitrary decisions like that, Tommy!
What"s wrong is wrong! Don"t you understand?"
The mob boss shrugged and smiled. "Sorry, Sarah, but I live in a different world from you. Your morals don"t work for me."
Tommy noticed Billy and Charlie loitering by the pile of broken pews. "You two, stop earwigging my private conversation and look lively! Go inside and make yourselves useful!"
Sarah decided to change the subject. "How"s Vera?"
"Mum? Back to her usual self, dispensing tea and scolding bad manners. I ain"t told her about the incident with the knitting needles. She"d be mortified and it"s not like it was really her trying to kill me. Anyway, she"s got her hands full at the moment."
"How come?"
"The woman across the street disappeared yesterday. We think she must have been one of the unlucky ones the old bill "evacuated". G.o.d only knows whether she"s dead or alive. So Mum"s decided to look after the two girls."
"Mary"s dead?" Sarah asked, her face suddenly ashen.
"Probably. I didn"t see her in the bread factory, so, chances are..."
Sarah sank down on to the steps, her legs suddenly giving way beneath her. "So much death and destruction. So many good people dead and for what?"
Tommy sat beside her and slid an arm around her shoulders.
"Saved the world, didn"t we? Ain"t that enough?"
Sarah shook her head. "Not for Mary. Not for her girls, who have to grow up without a mother. Not for all the other people killed, or lost, or hurt..."
Tommy offered her a handkerchief but she refused it. Sarah would always remember Mary, the courage she showed as her daughter was dying. Sarah determined to find out what happened to the girls, when she got back to her own time. It was the least she could do.
Tommy stood up and looked at the mess around him. "Will the true story ever be known, Sarah?"
"Who"d believe it? The Government will use D-Notices to suppress anything that could compromise national security. And then there"s the coronation next summer..."
"Don"t want to spoil the Queen"s big day," he agreed.
"It"ll rain, you know."
"What on the day of the Coronation? Never."
"Oh yes. A right downpour," Sarah said, standing up again.
Tommy scratched the stubble on his unshaved chin. "Hmm, might be worth a flutter on that. I wonder what the odds are?"
Sarah jabbed an elbow into his ribs. "Don"t you dare!"
The Doctor returned from the ruins of the bread factory.
"Well, no sign of the Xhinn vessel. It must have been consumed by the Time Bomb"s fallout."
"So it"s all over? We can go home?" Sarah asked.
"We can go home," he agreed. "But this was just a Xhinn missionary force. The main colonisation fleet may still be on its way to Earth, homing in on the final signals from its scout ship."
Tommy was aghast. "So the Xhinn could still attack Earth?
When?"
"Not for another fifty years, if what the triumvirate told me was true," the Doctor replied. He was looking up at the steeple of St Luke"s. The structure seemed out of proportion to the church below it. "I wonder..."
Tommy was still doing his sums. "That means they could turn up in..."
"2002 or 2003." Sarah supplied the answer.
"Well, I won"t be around to see them," Tommy said happily.
He pulled a battered packet of cigarettes from his jacket pocket and lit one.
"You won"t be if you keep smoking those," Sarah noted quietly.
"You what?"
"Nothing."
"Excuse me, but do you know what"s happened here?" Two men had joined the trio outside the church. The man speaking was clutching a pencil and notebook, while his colleague held a camera. "My name"s Terry Sharp, I"m a reporter for the Bethnal Bethnal Green News Green News. This is our photographer, Bob Cohen."
The Doctor, Sarah and Tommy looked at each other.
"A gas leak."
"An explosion."
"A fire."
The words had come out as a simultaneous gabble from the threesome. Terry just looked confused. "Sorry, just one at a time if you don"t mind. My shorthand isn"t bad but I can"t cope with three people all speaking at once."
"There was a gas leak," the Doctor said, "inside the church."
"It caused an explosion," Sarah added.
"Which led to a fire," Tommy said, finishing the explanation.
"Right. Could you tell me a little bit more?"
Sarah excused herself from the conversation. The last thing she wanted was to return to her own time and find herself quoted in a local newspaper article from 1952. Life with the Doctor was complicated enough.
She looked up at the church. The Doctor had told her about the warpshadow. She could just make out the ripples in the church"s structure.
A pigeon flew down and sat on the church"s wrought iron fence. The smog had wiped out so many of London"s animals.
But now the deadly shroud was lifting, and life was returning to the city. Sarah remembered Arthur and his dying pigeons on the roof. He had been so sad. He was dead himself just a day later.
What was it the Doctor had said to her in the TARDIS? "We want to save everyone but we can"t." So Mary and Bette and Arthur had died, and a murderer like Tommy Ramsey lived to fight another day. It didn"t seem fair.
The photographer was taking pictures of the scenes outside the church. He caught Tommy and the Doctor on film just as they were saying goodbye to each other. Sarah smiled the photographic prophecy had been fulfilled.
The Doctor was saying goodbye to Tommy. "I have to thank you, Mr Ramsey. With your help a much greater tragedy has been averted here."
Tommy grinned. "I know how much it must hurt to give me any praise. But you deserve all the credit, Doc. I was just the brawn you were the brains behind this operation. If you ever want a job..."
Sarah could see the Doctor"s nostrils flaring. "Time to go!"
she announced and grabbed him by the arm. "Goodbye, Tommy!"
"Maybe I"ll see you again some day!" Tommy called after them. He noticed the reporter lurking, still looking for a better angle.
"So if a gas leak started the fire in the church, what happened to the watchmender"s shop?" Terry pointed at the burnt-out remains of Fixing Time across the road.
Tommy"s good mood swiftly evaporated. "Mind your own b.l.o.o.d.y business before I mind it for you! Don"t you know who I am?"
Epilogue.
London August, 2000 The old man stamped his boots on the footpath outside St Luke"s Church, trying to keep his feet warm. The temperature was unseasonably cold and it seemed to chill him to the bone.
He could still remember the events of 1952 as if they were yesterday. The Doctor, the Xhinn and that terrible smog.
Sometimes he thought he could still taste its acrid stench at the back of his throat. It had been a terrible time.
The churchyard was overgrown now, the windows of St Luke"s long since gone smashed in by kids with stones, probably. There were chains and padlocks on the wrought iron gates. The church itself had stood empty since the late 1950s.
The building had been declared unsafe due to subsidence.