Doctor Who_ Last of the Gaderene - Mark Gatiss [35]
Bliss’s fat fingers were splayed out in a fan on the desk, over a heavy sheet of blotting paper. Now they curled up into a tight, angry ball.
‘Yes,’ she said again, a hint of frustration creeping into her carefully modulated tones. ‘The operation is proceeding perfectly smoothly,’ she insisted. ‘To speed things up would only increase suspicion.’
The voice on the end of the phone seemed mollified by this. Bliss’s balled fist relaxed and she began to drum her fingers softly on the cool surface of the desk. She nodded again and smiled, making a tiny, ticking sound as her lips parted.
‘The swine are being gathered?’ she asked.
The answer from the other end of the telephone seemed to please her. At length she hung up.
Bliss sat in silence for a few moments longer, enjoying the canopy of darkness which surrounded her. Then she leant forward, as though to flick an intercom. Instead, she spoke to the still and dusty air.
‘Bring him in,’ she said softly.
Chapter Fourteen
Night Takes Bishop
Graham Allinson was an awkward boy.
He had been born prematurely and, for the first few years of his life, had worn callipers on his skinny legs. Even at night, he’d had to keep them on, those great metal encumbrances, cutting into his skin, preventing him from playing outside with the other children.
Now the braces were gone, but he had grown uncommonly tall for his age, like a nine year old’s image in a distorting mirror. Together with his thick, pebbly glasses and shy manner he was always going to have trouble fitting in. But, just now, with the school holidays only a few days old, Graham Allinson’s life was becoming unbearable.
The reason was the arrival of Culverton’s new boy: Anthony Ayre, a big, bluff lad with messy hair and mean, stupid eyes. As soon as he’d turned up for his first day at Culverton Junior Mixed and Infants, Graham knew he was in trouble.
It had taken Anthony little more than a day to challenge Dawson, the school’s reigning bully, to a fight, beat him and install himself as the new ruler. A clique of fawning hangers-on had risen around him with disgusting speed and, naturally, Graham had been instantly singled out for their attention.
For five miserable weeks, the bullying had got worse and worse until the blessed relief of the holidays. But if Graham thought he was to be spared, he was sadly mistaken.
He rode through the village that night on his old Raleigh bicycle, embarrassed by the clips his mother made him wear over the flares of his pale denim jeans. He’d spent the afternoon in the wood, splashing about in the little stream, looking for frogspawn and mayflies. Now he was heading home and hoping that his mother would have beans on toast ready for his tea. The last thing he expected to see under the yellow glare of a streetlamp was Anthony Ayre, but, as he pedalled furiously past the church and round the corner, he saw the bully sitting on the lichen-covered wall, chewing gum, a smug, arrogant look in his eyes.
Graham tried not to slow down, tried to keep going past the wall but Anthony jumped up and stuck a branch into the spokes of the bicycle. With a sickening lurch, Graham felt himself thrown forward and over the handlebars. He crashed on to the road with a groan and heard the Raleigh scrape its gold paintwork over the road.
Anthony walked towards him, laughing. All Graham could see was the front wheel spinning, spinning, spinning.
‘Where’re you off to, Bongo?’ sneered the bully, using Graham’s hated nickname.
Graham didn’t reply. He tried to raise himself up on his spindly arms, wincing from the cuts on his palms and elbows.
Anthony came closer and grabbed Graham’s T-shirt. He pulled the boy close to his flushed face. His breath smelled sweet and sickly, like baby’s vomit. ‘I said –’ he began.
Then both boys looked up as the night sky turned from midnight blue to flashing white.
The strange summer lightning had come again.
The street was dark save for the occasional bedroom light as Charles Cochrane let himself into the mews flat he kept for himself off