Doctor Who_ History 101 - Mags L. Halliday [38]
Anji smiled and returned to the copy of La Batalla she was working on. She’d got as far page two when she had wanted to throw it all away. Each article had to be read slowly, her mind translating as well as possible using her French and rapidly increasing Catalonian vocabulary but she still had another list of words to check with the others.
Un guarda PSUC en Parc Güell abandonó su poste, demandando que un murciélago gigante lo atacó...
Murciélago? Still staring at the sentence, she reached down by the side of the narrow bed and pulled up a card-bound notebook. It took her a few moments to find the word.
A guard in Parc Güell left his post, claiming that a giant bat attacked...
She looked up at the map that had been scribbled on a tablecloth and pinned to the bare wall at the foot of the bed. Parc Güell. It was on the outskirts and had several markers over it. There were clusters all over the city. The early ones, the ones marked when they’d first drawn the map to see if they could plot a pattern, were in pen with a date scribbled next to it. After a couple of weeks, they’d managed to convince Pia to steal a packet of map pins from the Comintern’s office and now Anji took one from the cardboard box, wrote the reference number for the article on it and got up to stick it in place. She checked the other Parc Güell references whilst she was stood there but, as always, this latest report failed to create order out of the events.
Twelve weeks. The map represented three months of work. Since the day of Durruti’s funeral, Anji had spent every day trying to make sense out of the situation the best way she knew how. She had collated information, cross-referenced it, studied it for trends. All the time looking for something that would explain what had happened. Nothing: she couldn’t create a coherent causality. She had been ill, the Doctor had collapsed in the foyer and then –
There was a knock at the door. She stayed where she was, arms folded, trying to make the disparate parts into a picture. ‘Who is it?’ she called.
‘Me.’
Anji rolled her eyes and walked over to unlock the door. Trust him to say that. Opening the door, she found him leaning on the doorjamb, his hands stuffed in his trouser pockets. His face had the first shadow of a beard growing on it. Anji frowned.
‘You’re not trying to grow that bloody beard again, are you? It didn’t suit you last time.’
The Doctor scowled at her.
‘I liked that beard.’
Anji snorted and stepped back to let him in the room. The Doctor shook his head.
‘I’m going down to see her,’ he said.
It was the same words every day. She half-hoped that one day he wouldn’t say it. That he’d come in and they’d have breakfast and then work without this daily torture. Then again, she half-hoped that he’d come back with a wide smile and whisk her down to the square and they’d get away. Neither hope had been fulfilled as yet. In the first few weeks, Anji had gone down every day as well but it had started to depress her and she now restricted herself to one try each week. And today was the day. She could feel her stomach quiver in nervousness already.
‘Wait, I’ll come with you.’
She grabbed her wool overcoat and her handbag whilst he hovered in the doorway. She noted absently that his eyes were half-lidded, shadowed. It was as if half his energy had been taken after that day. After the collapse.
‘Ready,’ she told him, ignoring the fact that her nerves were telling her not to do it.
* * *
They were almost at the bottom of Las Rambles, close to the Plaça Reial, when the siren started. Rising steadily into a scream and then falling away. Anji rolled her eyes.
‘Now?’ she asked wearily. ‘It’s still daylight.’
The Doctor picked up speed, grabbing her forearm and hurrying her along. The avenue was rapidly emptying as people ran for cover. The Doctor ignored the nearest REFUGI sign and led them through an archway and into Plaça Reial, fumbling around his neck with his spare hand until he had the chain free. Anji could hear the first distant thrum of the Italian