Doctor Who_ Deep Blue - Mark Morris [55]
He demonstrated by pressing a pinhead-sized button and producing a scroll of figures and symbols across the screen.
Tegan held up a hand. ‘All right, all right, I believe you.’
Suddenly the look of irritation on her face changed to one of dawning horror. ‘Oh my God!’
‘What is it?’ asked Turlough.
‘I’ve just realised what might be wrong with Andy.’
‘Andy?’ enquired the Doctor.
‘Someone I met. My date. I’ve got to make a phone call.’
She leaped up and ran to the pay phones beside the main doors. The Doctor watched her with an intent expression as if he was trying to read her lips.
Two minutes later she was back, looking anxious.
‘What’s wrong?’ Turlough asked.
‘It’s Andy. He’s not answering his phone. You don’t think…’
She couldn’t go on.
The house seemed empty, though somewhere a radio was playing so faintly that Mike couldn’t make out the song. The Mayburys’ accommodation was on the landing below Mike’s attic room. He and Charlotte passed the room that Chris Maybury had never even slept in, and on to the one at the end of the landing that Charlotte’s parents shared.
Before knocking, Mike offered Charlotte a brief, reassuring smile. She twitched her lips back at him, though her eyes still retained that haunted, sunken look. He turned and rapped authoritatively on the door.
‘Mr Maybury,’ he said, ‘Mr Maybury, are you in there?’
There might have been a groan, a vague movement. Mike imagined Charlotte’s hungover father turning over in bed.
‘Mr Maybury,’ he repeated, raising his voice, ‘my name is Captain Mike Yates of the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce. I have your daughter, Charlotte, here with me. We have something very important to tell you.’
This time there was a definite series of groans, though Mike got the impression that they were being made regardless of, not in response to, him. He turned again to Charlotte. ‘I think we’d better go in.’ Charlotte nodded and Mike pushed the door open.
He recoiled immediately. The smell was worse than the army changing rooms at the end of the annual rugger tournament. He looked around for its source, but could see nothing. Behind him Charlotte gagged and Mike said, ‘I’ll open a window.’ Taking a deep breath, he plunged into the room.
As he threw open the curtains and fumbled with the window catch, he was only peripherally aware of Tony Maybury as a hunched shape beneath crumpled, twisted covers, tossing from side to side in his bed. The man was moaning as if in pain, and it occurred to Mike, as the catch came free and the bottom section of the casement window rattled upwards, that Charlotte’s father may have more wrong with him than a simple hangover.
Gratefully Mike gulped in several lungfuls of air that seemed as fresh as any he had ever tasted, then turned back into the room. From outside came the ubiquitous cries of gulls and the distant jingle of an ice-cream van.
‘Dad,’ Charlotte said uncertainly, taking a step forward,
‘Dad, are you OK?’
Tony gave no indication that he was even aware of their presence. Charlotte glanced pleadingly at Mike, and he strode forward from the window to the head of the bed.
All he could see of Tony Maybury was his hair, a dark, sweaty clump poking out from beneath the sheets. Mike leaned forward. ‘Mr Maybury,’ he said loudly and clearly, ‘can you hear me?’
Still no reply. Mike raised his eyebrows at Charlotte, who was standing at the foot of the bed, watching her father’s writhing form with a mixture of deep concern and anxiety.
Then he reached forward and started to pull the sheet from the upper half of the man’s body.
It did not come easily. It seemed to snag on the man’s skin, and as Mike tugged harder he actually felt it tear in several places. Remembering the man in the mortuary, Mike suddenly knew what he was going to see before he saw it. He allowed the sheet to fall back over Tony and turned to Charlotte. ‘Perhaps it might be better if -’
He got no further. At that moment