Doctor Who_ Father Time - Lance Parkin [51]
The mindeater had lived up to its name. Barry was still alive, still breathing without help, his body doing all the things you didn’t need to think about. But there was nothing in his mind. He’d been asleep for five years. He looked peaceful. After all this time without exercise, his muscles had atrophied; he had lost several stone.
Well, Debbie thought, she’d lost weight, too.
She loved him. It was ridiculous, but she still wore her wedding ring, and Barry still wore his. She couldn’t even think of looking for someone else. She dreaded the day that they withdrew treatment. The law seemed so inadequate here. They couldn’t give him a quick injection to put him down, but they could stop feeding him and let him starve to death over a few weeks. He wouldn’t feel it, but it seemed cruel.
But a long time ago Debbie had realised she wanted him to stay like this. She wanted to visit him twice a week, tell him her news. She wanted to be stronger and healthier than he was, she wanted to have the upper hand. She finally had him where she wanted him.
She thought about her life. Still teaching Class Six, still living in the same house, still playing chess on Tuesdays and attending the local poetry group. What had changed? She didn’t drive any more; she hadn’t gone to the Dragon since it was renamed the Flying Saucer. She’d cut down on smoking; she’d started doing aerobics.
She’d met a time traveller, she’d been aboard a UFO, run away from a giant robot, nearly been killed by an alien king.
And it hadn’t changed her life.
She looked down at Barry’s pale, wasted face.
Living death.
* * *
‘So how did he escape?’ Anderson asked. Sallak’s cell was empty, except for a couple of telltale signs on the table – tiny screws and clipped lengths of wire.
‘One of the warders let him and his cellmate out.’
Anderson looked up. ‘What?’
‘He doesn’t know what happened. He led them straight to the car park and handed over the keys to his Rover. He thinks he was hypnotised.’
‘You believe that?’
‘It was Sutherland, Dr Anderson, he’s got ten years’ experience. He says Sallak had a device in his hand.’
‘A hypnotic ray?’ Anderson laughed. ‘Check out Sutherland. Sallak paid him off, blackmailed him, threatened him.’
The prison officer was shaking his head.
‘Do it!’ Anderson insisted.
Dr Anderson had the psychiatric report on Sallak in his hand, but he didn’t need to refer to it.
‘John Sallak,’ he said out loud. The subject that had taken up so much of his time in the last five years.
Sallak was a genuine mystery. He’d appeared one day, killed a married couple – the husband by beheading him with a samurai sword, the woman with a machine gun. He’d had a colleague whom a member of the public had shot and killed. The police also suspected he was linked to two big explosions in the area that night, but had been unable to prove anything.
That was when Anderson had been called in. The judicial process needed to assess Sallak’s psychological state to know whether he’d spend the rest of his life in prison or in a secure hospital. Interviewing Sallak, running every test in the book, getting other specialists in to discuss his case – none of it had helped. Sallak was disciplined, intense. He’d killed two people, but he’d done it like a soldier, not a psychopath. His motive was unclear, but all the psychological tests suggested that Sallak was goal-orientated, focused on the mission at hand. Unlike a lot of killers, he didn’t have any cranky religious beliefs to justify what he did. He had a high IQ, but not one so high that it gave him a sense of superiority or invincibility. While on remand – and subsequently in prison – he’d fitted easily into the hierarchical system, seemed almost at home. That suggested he was used to institutions – children’s homes, the army, prison. He respected the authority of his warders, but wasn’t easily led or particularly suggestible. He interacted normally with the other inmates and the guards – but he’d never given anything about