Doctor Who_ Blue Box - Kate Orman [56]
Cobb’s job was to wrest that component away from the guy in Salisbury. River provided a slush fund in four figures to help persuade the collector to give up the goods. Cobb had dealt with the man before; he knew the chances of prying the item away from his bosom were pretty low, especially once the collector realised it was valuable.
Over a period of six months – always begging more funds from River – he tried everything he could to win the component. He offered the collector all sorts of bribes and trades. He paid him a ‘consultation fee’ (large enough to make Swan whistle) just to whet his appetite. When his patience started to run out, he switched his tactics. Small hints became minor harassment became outright threats. The collector found his phone disconnected and phone books for exotic countries delivered to his door, COD. His home number mutated daily, making it impossible to call him. Finally, Cobb hired a thug to break into the collector’s basement. The thug didn’t even get close; the place was wired and armoured like the vault of a bank.
Cobb was astonished when River decided the best idea was to talk to the collector in person. His employer had somehow got it into his head that where greed and fear hadn’t worked, simple honesty would. River would sit down with the man, explain everything, and the collector would be only too happy to hand over River’s property.
Cobb had never seen River in the flesh. He turned out to be a bland-faced man in his thirties, wearing a dark suit and hat. He had a pet parrot which went with him everywhere. It was the only strange thing about him; everything else was entirely forgettable. In an email to a friend, just before it all went wrong, Cobb admitted he had trouble remembering what the man looked like.
River arrived early in the morning and knocked on the door until Cobb tumbled out of bed. The man was happy to sit in the living room, in the dark, while Cobb got a final couple of hours of sleep. When the sun had come up, they set out for Salisbury.
That was where Cobb’s emails ended. The rest of the story Swan was able to piece together by breaking into the accounts of the people he had shared his secrets with, and reading their emails. One quoted an entire news article, which told her everything worth knowing about what happened next. The collector was dead. Cobb was dead. Even the parrot was dead.
Of the component and River, there was no sign.
On the long drive, the Doctor and I swapped travel stories, while he tinkered with whatever it was he was making.
When I was small, my family would stay in a caravan park in the country town of Parkes. Or was it Forbes? Or perhaps it was the small city of Dubbo, and my childhood memories are even vaguer than I thought. I must try to find an atlas with enough detail of the New South Welsh countryside to work it out.
Anyway, the point was that we would drive from Parkes to Forbes (or was it the other way around?). My father said that the two towns were exactly eleven miles apart; he would get the three of us to watch the odometer, counting down the miles.
But the biggest thrill was always the visit to the thirty-one flavours ice cream shop in the town of Orange. One flavour for each day of the month, a sign said. ‘I remember we arrived in Orange late one night after a long day’s drive. I bawled my eyes out because the shop was closed. I’ve been to Baskin Robbins, sure. But it’s not the same thing.’
Peri said sleepily from the back seat, ‘Did you ever see a horseshoe crab?’
‘Ah, we don’t have ’em Down Under.’ As if on cue, that bloody song came on the radio. I flipped the dial impatiently.
‘I did see a lot of jellyfish at Bateman’s Bay, though. I could never understand the point of going on a beach holiday where it’s too dangerous to swim. I saw a dogfish and a manta ray there, too. And a spider with orange legs that lowered itself in the back of the car and made my little brother scream.’
‘We