"And I am not about to screw up. I got something good coming to me when this is all through." He tightened his grip on Mike"s lapels, caught and twisted the skin beneath. "But how about you, Mike? You going to screw up?"
"No," Mike gasped. He opened his mouth, willing himself to say the words he"d rehea.r.s.ed so carefully for so many months now.
"And you wouldn"t be thinking of bailing on me... would you?" Basalt smiled. "That wouldn"t be friendly. Not when we"ve got something so good going for us here..."
Mike cleared his throat. "Well, it"s funny you should mention "
"Would you?" Basalt shoved him back against the slimy wall of the narrow alley.
He winced. "No! No, I wouldn"t! Please, Mr Basalt... someone"s already attacked me today."
"So I saw. That dark-skinned girl... still chasing round after him." Basalt smiled again. "When you told me he"d gone through your desk I had him tailed. She followed our little Guy-Spy out of your offices and waited for him at his place."
Mike frowned. "The temp?" He gingerly cupped his tender crotch, disturbed that there seemed to be a connection there. A definite connection.
Basalt shrugged. "He gets there, something weird goes down, they split, and the girl puts him up for the night. Now, that"s not normal behaviour for our man, right? And I bet it"s not normal for her, neither." He paused, then turned to look down at something behind him. "She was hanging round outside her place when I came looking this morning," Basalt went on. "Looking for him, I guess... but finding you."
"We told Erasmus we were going out," a girl"s voice whined. "We were allowed." She stepped out from his shadow and into Mike"s sight. She was blonde, could only be about eight or so. And her eyes...
Jesus.
"Look, Mr Basalt," he said, taking a wobbly stab at his most authoritative Fisheries Officer voice, "why don"t I just..."
"Yeah, why don"t you." Basalt let go of Mike and stepped disdainfully away. "Get back to work. There"s stuff you need to see to."
"Or not see to, eh?" He chanced a grin. Saw Basalt wasn"t laughing, and cleared off sharpish.
Chloe looks up at her "Uncle" Daniel. She hates him. She hates all the things that are necessary and cruel.
"What were you doing outside the dark girl"s place?" he asks her.
She squeezes her dolly more tightly. "Playing."
"Who is she?"
"I don"t know."
Jamais sidles out from the shadows of the deserted alley and snuffles over to sit beside her. Basalt spares him a brief glance before turning his cold attention back to Chloe.
"So you didn"t speak to her."
"No." Chloe links her hands behind her back, puts on her best dippy little girl smile. "I have this book, you see, and sometimes the stuff I read in it comes true "
"Spare me the fairy tales, freak-girl." Basalt starts to turn away, but Jamais growls threateningly, and he freezes. Just for a moment, his composure is broken; Chloe lives for moments like these.
"Call off your dog."
"He"s not a dog." She smiles sweetly. "A dog would only bite you."
Basalt looks first at her, then at Jamais. Then he smiles, thinly. "So it was just a coincidence, right? OK, I"ll buy that. For now." He clicks his fingers as he turns to go. "Come on. I"m through talking to kids. I need to talk with Erasmus."
Chloe shrugs at Jamais and tucks her dolly under one arm. Jamais gives the doll a dirty look. As Chloe wriggles her arms through the straps on her rucksack, she feels her heavy book dig a corner into her back.
"There"s no such thing as coincidence," she tells her dolly quietly in case she"s been taken in by the exchange. "And no such thing as chance meetings."
Chloe follows on after Basalt, Jamais close beside her.
Twelve.
Drowning, murder and breakfast The Doctor was drowning.
A foul, salty torrent of sea water was flooding down his throat, filling his lungs till they felt packed with ice. But he barely noticed. The mist that surrounded him was so thick and impenetrable, his senses were too busy trying to find a way through. It was like voices were calling out, trying to reach him. But were they taunting him or trying to teach?
He was sinking, pulled out with the black tide. Another voice nagged at him. It was Chloe"s.
Chloe had found him in the TARDIS at the point of death, and saved him. Some people you could save, and some had to die. He"d asked why, and she"d shown him pictures in a book as if that explained everything. There was Sabbath and himself, and a woman who looked sad, and what would prove to be a good likeness of Guy. What was it that primitives believed? That cameras could capture your soul?
The book said that Guy had become the most special man in the universe, but the reason why was over the page and Chloe wouldn"t let him turn it. The Doctor wanted to read what the book said about him but Chloe had s.n.a.t.c.hed it away. Perhaps it was as well. You should never believe your own reviews unless they were good, of course.
Was it written in that ancient print that he would die here, his punishment for setting this universe on a stable course once more? Was that what the child had hidden from him?
The voices were growing louder. His body felt heavy and desensitised but he could somehow hear through the star-speckled blackness that "Breathe, G.o.d d.a.m.n it!"
The Doctor sat up abruptly and retched up what seemed like a gallon of salt.w.a.ter. He coughed and choked, spitting out the rank stuff.
Strong hands ma.s.saged his back. "Easy. I gotcha. It"s OK." It was a woman who held him, American by the sound of it. A thermos cup of warm coffee was pressed into his shaking hands. He gulped it back in one hit and tilted his head to see his rescuer in the moonlight.
She was a handsome woman who looked to be in her late thirties. She was wearing a wetsuit, and a scuba mask hung round her neck. Her hair was long and blonde and curled in tight ringlets. Her eyes were a little too far apart, and pale like her skin.
"You"re safe now," she told him.
The Doctor gave a long, plaintive sigh, and his head fell forwards on to his chest.
"Is that not good news?" The woman frowned at him. "What was that sigh for?"
""For the cold strange eyes of a little mermaiden, and the gleam of her golden hair"," he replied vaguely, looking round for any sign of Chloe nearby.
"A quote?"
"Matthew Arnold. Champed and chafed and tossed in the spray, I felt quite the forsaken merman."
She seemed unimpressed as she handed him a towel. "Did Matthew Arnold give you the clothes as well as the lines?" She indicated his cravat and waistcoat.
"No, these are my very own."
"Gotcha." She looked at him dubiously. "Well, do you know any nice poems that say "Thank you for rescuing me"? Or were you actually trying to kill yourself?"
"No!" The Doctor stared at her, horrified. "I"m very grateful to you, Miss...?"
"I"m Stacy. Stacy Phillips."
"Do I know you, Stacy? I"m sure I recognise you."
"Don"t think so."
"Well, no matter. I"m the Doctor, and I adore continental roasted." Taking the hint with a bemused look, she poured him another cup. Again, he gulped it straight down, then started towelling his hair. The night wasn"t so cold. He stripped off his soaking jacket and slung it on to the pebbled sh.o.r.e, then began on his shirt. "How did you find me? I mean, with all that mist..."
"Mist?" she said warily. "There"s no mist tonight."
"You didn"t see it then," he muttered to himself. "The manifestation was meant only for me..."
She rose, a tall shadow; the thick insulated material of her wetsuit did little to conceal her willowy figure. "I never met a doctor who recommended a midnight const.i.tutional in the freezing sea," she said archly.
"And I never met a nocturnal scuba diver. Surely there"s not a good deal you can see?"
She shone a powerful torch in his eyes. He cried out in annoyance and threw the towel over it. Stacy took it with satisfaction and began to dry her own hair.
"You come prepared," noted the Doctor.
"And you don"t. No change of clothing?" She frowned as he began to undo his trouser b.u.t.tons. "Were you planning on removing all your clothes here?"
"Well I can"t leave them on!" he protested. "I could catch my death!"
"Where are you staying?"
"I don"t know. Where are we, anyway?"
"OK, fine." She sighed, put the torch in a large holdall and hefted it on to her shoulder. "You"re a total wacko. I"ll just leave you to your moonlit skinny-dipping and find me a different stretch of beach." She crunched off over the stony sh.o.r.e. "Try not to drown again, OK? Bye."
"Wait!" he called. "What are you looking for out here at night, when there"s no one about?"
"The fish off Newhaven are something else," she called back to him. He could hear the frustration in her voice. "Really. Goodnight, now."
The Doctor pondered her disappearing figure. In her haste she had dropped something. A yellow tag, a band of thick plastic scored with cracks. In blurred black ink was recorded a reference number of some kind.
He watched her dark figure retreat up the beach, only her blonde hair dimly visible in the gloom. Then he went back to the TARDIS, twirling the tag round his finger, thoughtfully trying to place her face.
As Stacy approached the weathered, peeling porch door of the building she knew she was back in the old nightmare.
Sure enough and good as gold she started picking her way through a bas.e.m.e.nt apartment. The light didn"t work in the hallway, but no great loss since there was nothing there to see. All the belongings were stored out back, crowded in together as if for comfort. You had to feel your way down a gloomy pa.s.sage till you came to the windowless bedroom, large and square with thick walls. Throws on the bed, ugly, patterned things, chosen by someone crazy. The TV with the busted tube was set to the listings channel, telling her everything she might watch if her head could just hold on to any of the details long enough.
And he was there again, waiting for her, though this home wasn"t hers. He was pulling her to the bed. The tight bruise of his grip made her feel alive for a moment or two and she fell back unresisting and then she was waking up in a soaking nightshirt and damp nylon sheets and sitting up straight, panting.
All a dream, just a dream.
The little room was cool, the chintzy curtains glowing with morning sunlight. The blanket on the bed was plain pink, no patterns. She pulled the collar of her nightshirt away from her neck, sank back into her stiff pillows. It was OK. All OK.
Another fine day welcomed her, and she would waste it once more down in the depths.
Stacy noticed Mrs Doland was looking at her oddly as she came down for breakfast. Was it the heavy bags under her eyes? She felt she"d barely slept a wink last night. Was her skirt tucked into her knickers? She couldn"t even be bothered to look.
Some vacation this was. Yet another day and night"s futile searching, yet another icky breakfast from Ye Olde English B&B, served up in the dining room taste forgot.
"You have a visitor for breakfast," she said, her pouchy face impa.s.sive. "I wasn"t going to seat him since he don"t want a room, but he"s polite, even if his hair is too long. Student, probably."
"What?"
"He says he"s your doctor." She sniffed. "Besides, he"s paid for the full English but only ordered the continental. That"s the sort of guest I like. No bother." She looked at Stacy meaningfully, then stepped aside to let her pa.s.s.
Her doctor?
Now Stacy did did check her skirt wasn"t tucked into her knickers, before going through into the dowdy dining room. It was like a 1950s front room had collided with a 1970s thrift store. The wallpaper was red and flocked but the tables were draped in laminated plastic blue gingham. Brown velvet curtains fiercely fought back any sunlight that might dare encroach, so most light came from an orange spherical black-and-white TV perched on a wormy oak dresser, which offered flickering views of the breakfast news. check her skirt wasn"t tucked into her knickers, before going through into the dowdy dining room. It was like a 1950s front room had collided with a 1970s thrift store. The wallpaper was red and flocked but the tables were draped in laminated plastic blue gingham. Brown velvet curtains fiercely fought back any sunlight that might dare encroach, so most light came from an orange spherical black-and-white TV perched on a wormy oak dresser, which offered flickering views of the breakfast news.
And there, the only guest, was the madman from last night, further confusing the period decor in his Edwardian dress. He was sitting engrossed in his breakfast, weighing a bread roll experimentally in his hand.
"What are you doing here?" Stacy snapped.
"You saved my life," he said, without looking up. "I wanted to do something for you."
"How did you find me?"
"By asking for you at every B&B and hotel in the area until I got lucky." He looked up at last, his eyes smiling as he gestured round the room. "And didn"t I get lucky! Sit down and help me with this bread roll. I"ve known atoms that were easier to split."
Stacy smiled a little. He was crazy, sure, but she"d rather look at him than at a black and white TV.
"You left this behind, last night." He delved in his pocket and pulled out the yellow tag.
She stared at it. "Oh, that." It must"ve fallen out when she"d yanked out the towel for him. "Well, I don"t really need it. I checked it out already."
"It"s been in the water some time," the Doctor observed. "What was it tagging, do you know?"
She looked at him appraisingly then let him have it. "At one point, a body." He didn"t react. "James Edward Cuthbertson, died 1977 in Hastings after a brain haemorrhage, aged 82. He was a fisherman who wanted to give something back to the fish who sustained him. All properly catalogued and referenced, all above board."
"But below sea level." The Doctor smiled. "You seem disappointed. Were you hoping to find someone else?"
At that point, the door opened and Mrs Doland walked in. Stacy swiftly ordered her usual: "A bowl of muesli and a Greek yoghurt, please."