Doctor Who_ Last of the Gaderene - Mark Gatiss [20]
The Doctor pressed his foot down and Bessie put on a turn of speed, taking on the narrow corner of a lane with amazing dexterity. Jo gripped the car door to steady herself and turned to the Doctor, her sunglasses glinting.
‘We all missed you, Doctor,’ she cried above the roar of the little car’s engine.
The Doctor nodded absently. ‘Did you?’
‘Of course. The Brig was in quite a state. I don’t think he’d quite know what to do with himself if you weren’t there.’
The Doctor gazed ahead, his eyes disappearing into a mass of lines as he squinted into the sun. ‘Well, he’ll have to get used to it, Jo. I can’t hang around here for ever, you know.’
Jo nodded a little sadly. ‘I know.’
The Doctor changed gear. ‘I mean, there’s little point in having my exile lifted if I choose to stay put on twentieth-century Earth, now is there? I have my reputation to think of.
People will go around saying I’ve become institutionalised.’
Jo’s puzzled look was visible through her large sunglasses.
‘Pardon?’
‘Institutionalised. An old lag. Someone who comes to depend on their imprisonment.’
Jo shook her head. ‘Oh, I’d never think that. But you must... you must...’
The Doctor looked quickly across at her before refocusing on the road ahead. ‘Must what?’
Jo shrugged. ‘Well, I mean, it must mean something to you. UNIT, the Brigadier... me, or else why are we going to East Anglia instead of Metebelis whatever?’
‘Three, Jo,’ said the Doctor levelly. ‘Famous blue planet of the Acteon galaxy.’
‘I know,’ smiled Jo. ‘Well?’
‘Well?’
‘You haven’t answered my question.’ Jo looked hard at the Doctor.
He was silent.
Charles Cochrane MP wasn’t used to travelling by the tube.
Even during the thankfully brief period he’d spent as a member of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, he’d managed to use his family connections to wangle a car with a driver. He was very careful never to use it when travelling around his grim little Northern constituency, of course, but then politics was chiefly about the art of concealment.
He walked swiftly down the escalator at Tottenham Court Road station, uncomfortable in the shabby clothes he’d adopted as a disguise. The jacket was too small and horribly constrictive in this hot weather and the trousers were far too big, forcing him to keep them pulled together at the waist.
Despite the rush and his worry about the whole situation he was still feeling rather pleased at the neatness of his ruse.
The voice on the phone had told him to come to an address in the East End, without his usual round-the-clock security guard. It had been difficult to convince the officer but, in the end, Cochrane had succeeded.
‘I’m going undercover,’ he had said. ‘It’s a way to connect with the voters again and find out what people are really thinking.’
What concerned him most, naturally, was what the voters would really think if they saw those photographs splashed across the Sunday papers...
He changed trains at Liverpool Street, threading his way through the commuting crowds, and made his way east, shrugging a bulky holdall over one shoulder. Tired of standing, he finally found a seat on the packed, oppressively hot vehicle but an old man, head lolling, kept falling asleep on his shoulder. Cochrane grimaced and wiped some of the man’s drool from his cheap suit, then adjusted the sunglasses which disguised most of his face. He hugged the holdall to him.
It was dangerous, of course, to give in to a blackmailer, but the alternative was too frightful to contemplate. Anyway, there was something else inside the bag, in addition to ten thousand pounds in cash. His father’s revolver. Just in case these crooks had anything nasty in mind.
Cochrane got off the tube at a dingy, decrepit station which he’d never even heard of. It still had wooden escalators, the corner of each stair packed with paper and old cigarette