Doctor Who_ Attack of the Cybermen - Eric Saward [1]
As Charlie watched two raindrops race each other down the window pane, the door of his bedroom eased open.
Silently, a small, black shadow stealthily entered, then raced across the open space to the bed and jumped onto it.
‘Hallo,’ said Charlie, lifting the sheet and allowing the cat to enter his safe, snug world. The creature purred loudly, which made him feel good.
Charles Windsor Griffiths had been named after the Queen’s eldest son. There the similarity ended. Although his Ma had worked hard to provide him with the material comforts of life, circumstance had connived against her.
Lacking a resident father to boost the family income, Charlie had decided, at a very early age, to subsidise his mother’s meagre earnings with a little, gentle shop-lifting.
At first he had been successful, but his lack of imagination (he always robbed the same department store) soon led to his capture. At the age of eleven Charles Windsor Griffiths became a convicted criminal. At twenty-one, a criminal psychologist declared he was a recidivist. By the time he was thirty-two, he had spent eight years and seven months in prison. It seemed likely that he would continue to spend the rest of his life in and out of gaol.
But then he met Mr Lytton.
And his luck changed.
Overnight Charlie became a success. Gone were the days when he would be picked up within hours of committing a crime. Gone too were the months, while waiting for the next job to come along, of living on nothing but Social Security payments and loans from his Ma. Nowadays Charlie received a good salary plus a bonus after each successful heist. Not only did he have money saved, expensive clothes, and a flash car, but he had also developed a sense of self-respect and purpose he had never experienced before.
Yet in spite of all this, the answer to one fundamental question still haunted him: why had Lytton employed him in the first place?
He knew that he was loyal and dependable, a valued commodity in criminal circles, but he was also aware of his many limitations, especially the ‘loser’ tag which years of imprisonment had earned him. With Lytton’s proven ability to organise and execute daring crimes, he could have had the pick of London’s best villains. Charlie knew this, which only added to his determination to learn the truth, whatever the cost to his ego.
‘Breakfast’s on the table, son.’
‘Sure, Ma.’
Charlie sat up and stretched. As he did, the cat popped her head from under the sheet and scowled.
‘Gotta get up, kitten. You heard what Ma said.’
Gracelessly he threw back the duvet and scrambled out of bed. A moment later he was half-heartedly engaged in his usual warm-up exercises. With the ritual completed, he picked up the crumpled heap that was his dressing-gown and shuffled over to the window. Outside, the grey street was enlivened by the presence of a red double-decker bus which had paused to pick up several bedraggled passengers. As it pulled away, Charlie watched a corpulent, middle-aged man, his arms waving frantically, run from a house further up the road. As the bus drew level it braked and the fat man clambered gratefully on board. Cheered by this small act of kindness, Charlie suddenly felt better about the day.
In spite of the rain, he decided, it might not be such a bad one after all.
A dark blue Granada turned into Milton Avenue and pulled up outside number thirty-five. Impatiently the driver sounded the horn, then lit a cigarette. His name was Joe Payne and he was also a member of Lytton’s team.
Although it was only ten o’clock, Joe was already halfway through his second packet of cigarettes. This wasn’t unusual. In fact, such was his huge consumption of tobacco, he had earned himself the nickname of ‘Coffin Nail Joe’. Even without the ever-present cigarette, the all-year-round ebony tan sported on the index and third fingers of his right hand bore witness to his habit.
Joe was not a healthy man.
The horn sounded again.
This time the ground floor net curtains of number thirty-five were drawn back and Charlie, now dressed in jeans and a black