Doctor Who_ Atom Bomb Blues - Andrew Cartmel [80]
A low chuckle came from behind her. ‘The little woman thinks I’m going to cut her throat.’ Ace felt her bonds go tight around her arms, and then suddenly loosen. There was a spilling, thudding sound as the cut length of rope fell to the floor. Lady Silk came around in front of her and kneeled before her as if in supplication. But she was busy with the knife again. The blue blade passed smoothly through the ropes that held her ankles to the chair, slicing the fibres apart.
Ace was free. But she found she still couldn’t move. She had been tied up in the same position for so long that her body wouldn’t function. Lady Silk rose to her feet and went across the room and cut the Doctor free. He didn’t seem to have Ace’s problem. He sprang to his feet immediately and seized Lady Silk’s wrist. ‘Ow,’ she said. ‘That hurts.’
The Doctor said nothing. He took the knife from her and put it in his pocket, then hurried over to Ace, who was beginning to feel the first hot agony of returning circulation. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I will be in a minute.’ She tentatively put a foot forward and tried to apply some of her weight to it. She immediately buckled and had to sit down again.
‘Don’t try to move just yet.’ The Doctor turned to Lady Silk. ‘Don’t you move either. In fact why don’t you just sit down?’
‘Certainly.’ Lady Silk sank down into the chair and crossed her legs while she unbuttoned her jacket. ‘May I smoke?’
140
‘No,’ said the Doctor. ‘This is a smoke-free zone.’
Lady Silk chuckled throatily. ‘You know, that’s one of the things I love about this world. You can smoke anywhere. Imagine that. Being able to smoke in a restaurant in Los Angeles. Hell, I can smoke in hospital if I want. I can smoke in the children’s ward of a hospital.’
‘And I’m sure you do,’ said Ace. She tottered to her feet as Lady Silk laughed appreciatively. Ace’s limbs felt like she’d slept on them, all four of them. They were slabs of dead meat. But sensation was slowly returning to them with a painful pins-and-needles prickling She took a few steps forwards with the Doctor hovering behind her in case she fell. Ace felt like a convalescent taking her first steps after a long illness.
‘What do we do now?’ she said.
‘Hmm,’ said the Doctor. ‘Well we’re not doing badly. We have retrieved Ray safely, and taken Lady Silk captive.’
‘I always wanted to be taken captive,’ drawled Lady Silk. ‘Pity it couldn’t last.’ Ace and the Doctor looked at her and she nodded at something behind them. They turned to see the Storrows standing there. The couple had emerged silently from the spiral staircase, moving with impressive stealth, particularly in the case of the large Elina. They were bizarrely dressed in hooded white robes with big, bright red circles in the centre of their chests.
They were both holding Thompson sub-machine-guns.
Lady Silk reached into the pocket of her jacket and took out a pack of cigarettes. ‘I think I’ll smoke now,’ she said.
The Storrows hadn’t lied about the basement of the house being a chapel.
It was a single large room with a high ceiling with a ring of electric bulbs glowing in the centre of it. There were also lights set in recessed sconces at intervals in the wall. The ceiling had been painted white as had the top half of the walls. There were rectangular windows set high in the wall, presumably at ground level outside, with milky opaque glass that prevented anyone seeing out, or in. Ace noticed that several of the windows were open. But they were high up the wall, about ten feet above the ground, too high to allow any easy escape. The lower half of the walls and the floor were uniformly covered with white tiles, except for a circular space in the centre of the floor that had been decorated in red tiles. This large red spot on a white background echoed the motif of the robes the Storrows were wearing.
‘It’s like the Japanese flag,’ said Ace.
‘Yes, the post-war Japanese flag, oddly enough,’ murmured the Doctor. Lady Silk heard what they