Doctor Who_ Christmas on a Rational Planet - Lawrence Miles [51]
Who starts the carnivals? Who makes the music?
Prendeville Silkwood had policed Woodwicke for most of his adult life, but he had never, not even in the days of the Revolution, seen anything like this. There were perhaps half a dozen of the men, all dressed in day-to-day clothing, all with ridiculous grey hoods pulled over their faces. The townspeople that stood at a discreet distance around them – a crowd, despite the fact that it was getting on for eleven – should have been laughing, but they actually seemed to take the overblown (and, in some cases, overweight) figures seriously. As he’d reached the top of Eastern Walk, Silkwood had listened to the whispers that laced the crowd, and heard words that he never thought he’d hear outside of some morally questionable supernatural romance.
‘Mr Catcher has already informed the council,’ one of the fat hooded men was now telling him. ‘We have special powers to deal with this, this special situation.’
Silkwood looked around. Somebody – not even one of the hooded men, just an ordinary, God-fearing inhabitant of Woodwicke – was having an argument with John Ormond the banker, hissing and cursing in low and dangerous tones.
Ormond was defending himself by babbling hysterically.
‘There is no situation.’ Silkwood poured three decades of authority and experience into his voice. ‘Whatever happened at the church, sir, is over. It’s Christmas Eve, and we should all be at home with our families. I want to see everybody here indoors and off the streets.’
His words were forceful, direct, and spoken with absolute conviction. And he was alarmed to realize that nobody was listening to him.
‘We have reason to believe that diabolists are at work among these attractions,’ the fat man continued. His spluttering voice suddenly sounded familiar.
‘Monroe? Walter Monroe? Is that you?’ Silkwood let out a deep and throat-rattling laugh, then tried to pull the man’s hood off. Monroe caught him by the wrist.
‘Special powers,’ he repeated.
There was the sound of a struggle. Silkwood turned his head, his hand still in Monroe’s grip. Evidently Ormond had attempted to leave; someone had tried to stop him, and now a few of the townsfolk were clustered around the man, blocking his way. He looked terrified.
‘What?’ Silkwood heard someone ask. ‘What is it you’re scared of?’
‘Let the man go,’ Silkwood demanded. He turned back to Monroe, forced his wrist out of the fool’s grip. ‘In the name of the Lord, Monroe, what is it you think you’re doing?’
But Monroe didn’t answer. All around him, Silkwood could hear the sounds of stalls and tents being pulled and poked, searched and dismantled. He felt the crowd move in around him. There was a sharp exclamation from Ormond.
‘Why’s he trying to get in the way?’ someone asked.
The next thing he knew, there was the brief sound of violence. Ormond fell silent.
Someone threw something at the back of Prendeville Silkwood’s head.
Matheson Catcher’s muscles felt as if they were about to give up entirely, strung taut as mainsprings between his joints. The man had kept asking him questions, and he’d kept answering them without knowing quite why, the Watchmakers occasionally punishing him by tightening the springs