Doctor Who_ Illegal Alien - Mike Tucker [46]
The air was fresher. The air was normal!
There must be a surface drain really close.
Frantically, she ran from wall to wall, shining the dying torch into the overhead gloom. At last she found it. An alcove a mansized groove running straight up the wall as far as she could see, and inset with metal rungs.
'Yes!'
Her shout echoed and bounced between the walls as she pulled herself, rung by rung, up the ladder of salvation. At the top was a cover, similar to the one by which she had entered this strange world. Please, let it open... The cover tilted up and fell back to the street with a clang. Ace's head and shoulders, bruised and filthy, emerged slowly to the long shadows of darkened buildings, silvery in the moonlight.
CHAPTER 12
Sharkey sipped at his whisky and fingered the thing in the pocket of his overcoat. He didn't normally drink whisky least of all Mama's overpriced bourbon but tonight he was both celebrating and in need of as much Dutch courage as he could get. He was exhilarated and terrified.
Sharkey had never been a likeable figure, and had therefore never been much liked. He had grown up sly and solitary, always on the outside of things, always the spectator. Watching, observing, had become his main pastime. As a youth he had been fascinated by the goingson behind the brightly lit windows of other people's homes. It was easy in a city as densely packed as London. Watching, listening, remembering. Information had become his trade.
The poverty of his upbringing had more or less inevitably led to a life on the fringes of the criminal world. He had begun by carrying tales between the different crooks operating around the capital, selling them out, one to another, for a few quid here and there. Never giving enough to do any real damage or to bring their wrath down on his head, of course. Then had come the cops, and the private investigators.
He had never been a powerful player. He had made a small but adequate living, and that had been enough. Then everything had changed. Nowadays he never gave any information to anyone at all without explicit authority from above. No informer in London did they valued their lives too much. As one body they continued to watch, to note, but now they were the eyes and ears of a single great organising mind. All that they learned was channelled up the secret network; all that passed the other way was by express authorisation only. There was no money in it for Sharkey or for anyone. There was only the fear of what would happen if he dared to disobey.
Tonight he was daring to disobey.
Tonight, for the first time in years, he was his own man.
For the first time in his life he had something that was really worth selling. Information was power that was what Sharkey believed, and that was what He believed.
Him.
Sharkey blanched at the thought. Why did He keep returning to his mind? They said He knew everything that went on in this city, however inconsequential. And tonight, for the first time in his life, Sharkey was far from inconsequential.
Tonight he was unique. Tonight he was a power player.
If He found out He'd tear Sharkey limb from Sharkey downed the whisky and slunk up to the bar for another. He was playing the most dangerous game of his life.
Again he fingered the thing in his pocket the thing he had picked from the pocket of the funny little man. He didn't know what it was it looked like some kind of huge grub, part metal, part flesh. Disgusting. It was broken, of course, or dead, or whatever word was most appropriate for the thing. Shot to pieces by the look of things. But it was still central, Sharkey was sure, to whatever it was McBride and his friends were after, whatever it was the military were after, and whatever it was the higher powers that he served were after. For the first time in his life Sharkey knew something really worth knowing.
This was his big chance. He had made the crucial telephone call. Now all he had to do was wait.
'Sharkey?'
The Doctor had looked