Doctor Who_ Father Time - Lance Parkin [92]
But he knew.
‘I had to do it,’ she told him. ‘He was right: this was the only way to end it.’
Not a hint of doubt in her voice. The same cruelty and cowardice that he’d heard from Zevron, Ferran and Sallak.
They could hear the police cars screeching to a halt. Shots had been fired, so the police would keep back for a minute or so while they assessed the situation. The Doctor had no idea where the nearest armed unit would be – there almost certainly weren’t any locally.
‘Hand me the gun,’ he told her, ‘then go.’
‘I’m willing to take the consequences,’ his daughter told him.
‘You won’t have to,’ he told her.
She handed him the gun. ‘You lied to me. All this time, and you were lying to me.’
The gun was warm in the Doctor’s hand. Miranda showed no remorse. She’d just killed someone, but didn’t seem even slightly disturbed by that. ‘The police haven’t had time to get round to the back of the house. They’ll be there in a minute, maybe less,’ he said. ‘Find your own destiny.’
She looked at him, fixed him with those blue eyes of hers. ‘I love you,’ she told him. ‘You know that, don’t you?’
He couldn’t reply.
He watched her hurry away, through the house, stopping only to grab her coat from its hook in the hall.
‘Police!’ a megaphone voice shouted. ‘Drop your weapon!’
The Doctor held his arms out, then tossed the gun over on to the lawn.
The Deputy was staring at him, defiant even in death.
‘Let them in, would you, Debbie?’ he asked.
* * *
* * *
Part Three
‘Defenders of the Earth’
The Late 1980s
* * *
Chapter Twenty-one
All Around the World
A clear November night, a little cold, but the crowds out on the streets didn’t care.
There were fireworks, now. Western camera crews at every vantage point. Men in bright jackets and designer jeans helping their countrymen up on to the Wall, or even through the gaps that had begun to emerge in it. They looked like lifeguards, pulling shipwrecked survivors out of the sea. There were men and women swarming across the abandoned checkpoints. The border guards and their guns had just melted away.
You could feel history changing around you, the Doctor thought. The Cold War that had defined history and humanity for half of even his lifetime was over. But the details were what made this special – the people who had clearly dressed quickly to be here, the smiles, the fact that no one could quite believe what was happening and needed to be here to make sure it was true.
Everything had changed tonight.
‘Here, here,’ Dieter Steinmann was telling him, urging the Doctor to take a sledgehammer.
The Doctor held up his hands. ‘This is your moment,’ he told the young man.
‘But you –’
‘My contribution was nothing,’ the Doctor insisted. ‘And whatever I achieved here, it wasn’t really what I came to Berlin for.’
Dieter lowered the sledgehammer. ‘Miranda. She is not here. I am sorry. You have helped us, but we have not been able to help you find your daughter.’
The Doctor nodded sadly. ‘I have to get back to England. There may have been other leads.’
He walked away, through the Brandenburg Gate, against the flow of the crowd.
* * *
An hour after dawn, the day was already hot, and smelled of spice and dried flowers. Miranda’s companion was fast asleep beside her, worn out from the night before. He smelled of pot and cheap beer. It wasn’t too difficult to extricate herself from him.
Miranda stood and stretched, smiling with the body-memory of the night before.
She saw his rucksack at the foot of the bed. Perhaps if she searched it, she’d find some ID. He’d told her his name at the beginning of the evening, but she had been distracted by the TV. He was West German. No, news update: last night he’d been West German, but this morning he’d wake up – assuming he did ever wake up – a German. They’d watched satellite TV in the hotel bar, seen crowds surging through Checkpoint Charlie, scaling the Wall, attacking it with sledgehammers. Unable to speak Hindi,