Doctor Who_ Island of Death - Barry Letts [3]
‘In Bombay,’ said Whitbread. It’s no secret. The ashram was the first Skang centre in the entire world.’
‘You mean... you mean there are places like this in other countries? How many? How many kids have got caught up in this?’
Whoops. Not the most tactful way of putting it! She’d blown it.
‘I’ve said enough,’ snapped Whitbread, turning away. ‘Print what you like.’
She pulled out the small camera. ‘Oh, Mr Whitbread...
Brother Alex!’
He turned back. ‘What?’
Got him!
His reaction was extraordinary. With the speed of a cobra’s strike, he lunged towards her and whipped the camera from her hand; and all in one movement he took out the film, pulling it from the cassette, letting it fell into useless curls.
Dropping the open camera at her feet without a word, he turned back to the door, taking a key from his pocket.
The bastard! He wasn’t going to get away with that!
‘One last question, Mr Whitbread. What’s through that door? Why do you keep it locked?’
But his only answer was a resounding slam.
CHAPTER TWO
It was Jeremy’s mother and, indirectly, his Uncle Teddy (who just happened to own about thirty per cent of the company that published Metropolitan), who had been the prime cause of Sarah’s incursion into the further reaches of the New Age.
‘Here,’ Clorinda had said, tossing a letter with an impeccably engraved letterhead towards Sarah. ‘You’d better look into this. I’ve just been glad to see the back of the little creep.’
Jeremy hadn’t come into work for something like three weeks. Since his absence had little or no effect on the output of the editorial department, it was hardly noticed, apart from giving rise to the occasional brief sigh of relief.
When, however, Sarah reluctantly went to see his Mama’
(as he always called her), it appeared that she looked on the matter somewhat differently.
‘The poor boy is so trusting,’ she’d said to Sarah, dabbing at her eyes with a scrap of a handkerchief. ‘I’m just afraid that somebody’s got wind of his trust fund. And he’s generous to a fault, as I’m sure you know.’
Generous? The last time he bought a round, there were riots in Fetter Lane. Well, not quite, but Sarah wouldn’t have been surprised.
‘Trust fund?’ she asked.
‘A legacy. Granny Fitzoliver left him a few shares. And when he turned eighteen...’ She’d dabbed at her eyes again and taken a sip from the half-filled tumbler in her other hand. The aroma of Chanel No. 5 had mingled with a whiff of neat gin.
‘He moved out, you see. Slumming it in Knightsbridge...’
Compared with Eaton Square, y-e-e-ss, I suppose you could say that, Sarah had thought.
‘... and the last time I saw him was about three weeks ago.
Popped in to get his cricket togs, he said. Cricket? He hated cricket at school!’
‘Paid three months’ rent in advance and took off after a week,’ said the caretaker of the block of flats in Knightsbridge where Jeremy had been living. ‘Here, I’ve got a forwarding address somewhere... Not that he’s had any post...’
And it had transpired that he’d gone even further down market than Knightsbridge (or so Mama would have thought)
- to Hampstead. Number 115 South Hill Park Square, NW3: a stone’s throw from the Heath and, for that matter, from Sarah’s own little attic bedsitter (dignified by the name of
‘studio flat’ because it had a bath in a box next to the kitchen sink). And when Sarah had put the new address under surveillance, having had no joy with a direct approach at the front door, sure enough there he was, resplendent in his cricket flannels, having slipped out to buy some fags.
‘You won’t have to wear white as a guest,’ he’d said (as if she was worried!), after he’d told her the glad news of his own acceptance into the bosom of the great Skang. ‘It’s all a gas.
Chanting and stuff... and... and things. You’ll love it, Sarah, honest. And you’re only just in time!’
‘Just in time? For what?’
Jeremy’s happy expression had disappeared. For a moment, he’d looked like a naughty little boy - a guilty little boy. ‘Oh... er...’ His face had cleared. ‘In time for today’s celebration, of course.