Doctor Who_ Atom Bomb Blues - Andrew Cartmel [9]
‘Uranium?’ said Ace. ‘So the Manhattan Project wasn’t about renovating the architecture of New York?’
The Doctor shook his head. ‘Regrettably not. It was about building the atom bomb.’
A butterfly fluttered past, a darting, small, black-and-orange shape. Loud drunken laughter rang out from the house. Ace looked at the Doctor. ‘The atom bomb?’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘What have you got us into this time?’
Butcher parked the car outside his quarters, popped open the trunk and dragged the luggage inside. He got a beer from his ice box and sat down and inspected the stuff. Two large steamer trunks, both ocean blue with bright brass fittings. One was stencilled with the initials JS PhD. The other had ACE
16
on it. Acacia Cecilia Eckhart, thought Butcher. So that’s where she got the nickname.
Both trunks were sealed with heavy, formidable-looking padlocks. It took Butcher just under thirty seconds to open them with a bent hairpin. He searched the girl’s first, to get it out of the way. It mostly consisted of clothing, including many pairs of shoes and an amazing amount of underwear – some of it of astonishing brevity. The only item of any professional interest to him was a used train ticket for the journey from Chicago to Lamy.
Some of the suspicion eased off Butcher’s mind, like a rucksack coming off his shoulders after a long day’s forced march. He relocked the girl’s trunk and delved into the Doctor’s. Here he found another train ticket from Chicago, more clothing, an umbrella, thankfully only a few pairs of shoes and the most ordinary of boxer shorts, numerous letters, which he took out, spread on the floor and laboriously photographed, a large number of books on physics, which he found incomprehensible but leafed through nonetheless (remembering the girl he had once known in New Orleans and the twenty dollar bill), finding nothing. Some of the textbooks were in German, but that was only to be expected. At the bottom of the stack of books he found two hardcovers with lurid jackets and a dog-eared paperback. The three books were Yellow City, Hell’s Inheritance and The Hawk of Gibraltar, all by Rex Butcher.
Butcher stared at them. They were all well thumbed and had been read numerous times. Of course, he told himself, they might have been purchased second-hand. He opened the books and found the name John Smith written inside each one in distinctive angular handwriting. That didn’t necessarily mean anything, either. The Doctor could still have purchased them second-hand, writing his name in afterwards. It certainly didn’t mean he’d been devotedly reading and re-reading them. Butcher flipped through the novels just as he’d done with the physics texts, looking for concealed papers. All he found were a number of underlinings and marginal notations, all very obviously in the same angular handwriting as the name at the front of the books. The passages marked were all pieces of prose of which Butcher was himself particularly proud. Indeed, they represented a keen selection of what he regarded as his finest writing. The comments written in the margin were things like Excellent. Vivid. Sharp. Hilarious! Wickedly subversive! Concise and beautiful.
Verging on the profound.
He hastily snapped the books shut and returned them to the trunks along with the texts, the letter and the clothing. As always, he placed everything back in the reverse sequence to taking it out, ensuring that the original order of packing was restored. He had done this so many times before it was second nature. But he had never done it with quite the nascent sense of shame he felt now.
17
Butcher relocked the Doctor’s padlock and dragged both trunks back outside. He smoked a cigarette, gathering his strength, and then put the trunks in the car again. He went back inside, took the film from the camera and locked it in his desk to be developed by one of the technicians on the Hill that night. He would read the content of the Doctor’s correspondence at his leisure tomorrow. He’d already recognised the handwriting on at least