Doctor Who_ Father Time - Lance Parkin [66]
‘We should kill the woman,’ he told the Deputy.
‘She could still be useful.’
‘The Doctor’s our prisoner. He’s not going anywhere.’
‘You have never faced him in battle, My Lord. We should keep the girl alive, as a possible hostage. If he escapes, rescuing her will be his priority.’
Ferran nodded. He’d read enough of the archives to know the Deputy was right. He thought about killing the Doctor while he had the chance, finding the Last One for himself, but accepted that this was the most efficient way to obtain her location. ‘As you wish. Begin the mind probe.’
The Interrogator stepped to the control box. He was a small man who looked like a toad. He began turning dials with clear relish for the task ahead.
‘The Doctor possesses a great many mental techniques and defences,’ the Deputy told the Interrogator. ‘I suggest you concentrate on the mental link between the Doctor and his TARDIS.’
Ferran frowned. ‘What good will that do us?’
The Deputy smiled. ‘The Doctor is never far from his police box, you can’t imagine him without it. But it’s not within a hundred miles of here, or we would have detected it. So the Doctor is based elsewhere.’
‘Find the TARDIS and we find the Last One?’
‘That is the theory, My Lord. He and the TARDIS have a symbiotic link. Logically, the TARDIS will provide the safest place to secure the Last One.’
The Interrogator bent over the controls. ‘We should be able to follow that link, My Lords.’ He took a circlet from its compartment on the console and placed it on the Doctor’s head. The Interrogator was already wearing the matching one.
As the Interrogator set about his work, the Deputy began examining the case the Doctor had brought with him. Ferran looked over his shoulder. Half the case was taken up with a bulky piece of equipment, the other half was packed with odds and ends.
‘Components salvaged from the saucer,’ the Deputy said. He took a few items out, then something caught his eye.
He pulled it out, brandished it.
Ferran snatched it from him.
This was the knife, blessed by his brother, imbued with his sacred duty. This was the knife with which he would carve out the Last One’s hearts.
‘The instrument of his destruction,’ he laughed. ‘He kept it. He didn’t understand what it symbolised.’
The Deputy was watching him, silently pleading for his master to show more reverence.
‘It is destiny,’ Ferran hissed.
* * *
Joel lay back on his silk sheets. He was full of champagne and amphetamines.
Kirst lay alongside him, smelling of perfume, diamond earrings hanging from her ears like bunches of grapes catching the candlelight.
‘Can’t beat going straight,’ he said.
Kirst was worried, he could tell.
‘We’ve not stolen anything,’ he reminded her. ‘It’s that transmuter they’ve got.’
‘They’ve got a girl tied up downstairs,’ she reminded him. ‘It says on the news that the police are looking for her; they say she’s a teacher and her husband was stabbed to death.’
‘You heard what they said, Kirst: that’s why they’re here. Three people. That’s all they want. The bloke they’ve killed, the Doctor, that Last One they keep going on about.’
‘Do you know who that is? I asked Sallak. It’s the Doctor’s daughter. They want to kill a sixteen-year‐old girl.’
‘We don’t know what she’s done.’
Kirst slammed her hand down on to Joel’s chest, squeezing the air out. ‘Sixteen,’ she repeated. ‘What could she have done?’
Joel sat up. ‘What do you want to do, then?’ he asked. ‘In two or three days, Sallak and Ferran go back to outer space, we get to keep all this.’ He reached out to the fruit bowl, dug his hand into the pile of gemstones and let them trickle through his fingers.
‘If we’re not caught.’
‘I keep telling you: we’ve not done anything wrong.’
Kirst leaned over, took a ruby from the bowl. ‘So we buy things with these from now on – we go into a shop and hand over a ruby and ask for our change in emeralds?’
‘No, we sell them.’
‘Where?’
‘Jewellers,’ he said, annoyed. ‘OK – we fence them. I know people.’
‘Yeah, criminals. Your