Doctor Who_ Blue Box - Kate Orman [10]
‘Why do I have to dress up like a guy!?’ said Peri.
‘Oh come on,’ said Bob.
‘Oh come on, what?’
A girl like you, delivering heavy computer equipment?
No-one will believe that.’
‘Well, what are we supposed to do? Stick a moustache on me?’ The grin was on Bob’s face just long enough for her to notice. ‘Oh my God,’ Peri said again.
They stuck a moustache on her.
Peri pushed her bleached hair up under a baseball cap and pulled on a pair of red overalls. Luckily for their ruse, her slight figure was convincingly boyish once they’d stuffed a couple of folded pillowslips down her front to pad out her belly. She wiped off her makeup and cut her long nails.
Their first stop was the university, where Bob swapped his car for a van no-one was using at the time. He found a pair of faded lime-green overalls which just about fit him, and added a baseball cap to match Peri’s. On their way to the supply company, Bob pulled in at a party store. He emerged with a reddish-blonde stick-on moustache in a plastic bag. Peri attached it and stared at herself in the mirror on the back of her sunshade. With the cap pulled down over her face, she could possibly be mistaken for a teenage boy with unusually clear skin. Wish you could see me now, Doctor, she thought.
She spoke in the deepest, most gravelly voice she could manage. ‘How do I sound?’ Bob just stared at her. ‘You better do the talking,’ she said weakly.
It had been an hour since the call to Keyworth Computers.
They ran into the lobby, looking panicked, Bob pushing an upright trolley. ‘We are in deep trouble,’ Bob told Trina. ‘The boss wanted this new machine installed an hour ago, and we were out on another call.’ Trina asked for the invoice.
Smoothly, Bob said, ‘Oh, no. Didn’t the courier get here before us? I can’t believe these guys. Do you mind if I use your phone?’
He spent a minute shouting down the phone at a nonexistent secretary. Peri slouched, shoved her hands into her pockets, and kept her gaze on the floor. She could feel the woman’s eyes on her. She had a sudden, itching urge to giggle. This was so ridiculous.
‘She says she’s only just handed it to the courier,’ sighed Bob. ‘The boss is going to barbecue us.’
Trina had dealt with Swan in person a couple of times; she knew these ‘workers’ could easily lose their jobs if they didn’t keep her happy. ‘Listen – if I can get your signature now, I can match it up with the invoice when it gets here.’
‘You’re sure? That’d be great. ‘ Bob scrawled something illegible at the bottom of a form. Trina handed him their carbon and pointed them to a huge cardboard box.
Peri helped Bob load up the trolley. She could feel her
‘belly’ slipping inside the overalls, and the fake moustache was itching as though a spider was crawling around under her nose. At any moment, she was certain, the woman would expose them both for the con artists they were.
This was not, in short, her idea of glamorous, high-tech computer crime.
They loaded the new computer into the borrowed van, rolled up at the TLA building, and manhandled their purloined package up to the main doors. Bob tapped on the glass, and the receptionist buzzed them in. A security guard lounged next to the water cooler, leaning on the wall while he talked to the receptionist. Peri looked away from the gun hanging at his hip.
‘We’ve got a work order to install this Lisp box,’ Bob explained. ‘Can you just sign at the bottom here? Thanks.’ He showed her the invoice the Keyworth Computers woman had given them, now attached to a plastic clipboard. ‘OK, where do you want it?’
‘The compute centre is on the first floor,’ said the receptionist. Peri coughed behind her hand, checking that her moustache was still in place.
She helped Bob lug the box to the computer room, both of them following the receptionist, who seemed perfectly comfortable with the whole thing. Thieves were hardly