Doctor Who_ Illegal Alien - Mike Tucker [1]
He pulled a packet of Lucky Strike cigarettes from his pocket and lit one. As he watched the smoke curl towards his office ceiling he rattled the packet. Two left. If he lived through the night he would have to head over to O'Rourke's or Mama's Bar and restock. He inhaled deeply a taste of home. He thought back to what he had left behind. Not much if truth be told. A good string of enemies and a good string of failed relationships. McBride had never been good with the opposite sex. A lot of women had liked him, but very few had loved him. The relationships that had got started rarely lasted long and never ended well.
He could still see the look on Delores's face as he had boarded the boat for England. She was one of the few who had genuinely cared for him. If he'd asked, she would have married him there and then. She'd been a client of his. He had helped clear her father's name in a nasty little blackmail scandal. He could have left Chicago far behind him and settled down with a good job in her father's company it had been offered. Instead he had run, though few people would accuse him of taking the easy way out. He had thought that he'd be safe in England, but 'safe' was a relative term. When this onslaught had started, two months ago, McBride couldn't have been in a worse place.
He had come over on the pretence of joining the Volunteer Ambulance Corps, but had made inroads with the local criminal fraternity almost as soon as the boat had docked at Southampton. Within days he had been able to set up his business in East London. The old Jew he rented the rooms from had been less than happy to discover that there would be a private detective in the building, but McBride's money was as good as anyone else's.
The dull crump of an explosion, much closer than before, pulled McBride from his reverie. He swung his feet from his desk and drained the last of the whisky from his glass, crossing to the safe. With a practised hand he spun the dial back and forth until the door opened with a satisfying clunk.
Inside stood another, full, bottle of whisky, a soda siphon and four cutcrystal glasses. The glasses were expensive; the whisky wasn't.
McBride put the cheap tumbler that he had been drinking from on the top of the safe, reached inside and pulled out one of the fancy glasses and the bottle. Cracking the seal, he poured himself a very large drink. The glasses had been a birthday present from Delores, and the only thing that he had brought with him from America. He took another deep drag on his cigarette and crossed over to the window, twitching the curtain back and contemplating the deadly firework display being played out in the sky in front of him.
He held the glass of whisky up to one eye, watching the lights of conflict through the cut crystal, turning death and destruction into a miniature kaleidoscope in his hand. In his drunken state, McBride found the lights almost hypnotic, and felt his eyes becoming heavy.
A searing flash brought him back to his senses and he snatched the glass away from his face, spilling whisky down the front of his shirt. Cursing loudly, McBride rubbed at his dazzled eyes, desperately searching for the source of the flash. In the night sky, amid the tracer fire and smoke, a brilliant ball of light plummeted into the tangle of nearby buildings with an impact that shook the windows of the small office.
McBride placed the empty whisky glass on the table, watching as the brilliant glow slowly faded amid the rubble.
'Holy Mother...' Suddenly sober, McBride snatched his trench coat and fedora from the hat stand and dashed from his office, vainly trying to remove some of the whisky from his sodden shirt with a