Doctor Who_ Last of the Gaderene - Mark Gatiss [50]
Max looked up. The sunlight slanting through the kitchen window threw a bar of shadow across his face. It suddenly made his eyes seem very large and dark. ‘Another policeman.
An important one. He’s coming from Scotland Yard.’
Jo had bathed and changed into a clean T-shirt and bellbottom cords. A sweater was knotted around her waist and she tightened it as she popped her head round the door of the front room in Whistler’s cottage.
‘Ah, Jo,’ said Mrs Toovey brightly, wiping her mouth with a napkin. ‘How are you this morning, love?’
‘Much better for a good night’s sleep,’ said Jo sincerely, stooping to pick up a piece of toast. ‘Do you mind? I’m starving.’
Mrs Toovey got up and headed for the little kitchen. ‘I was just waiting for you to get up. Would bacon and eggs be all right?’
‘Smashing,’ mumbled Jo, her mouth full of toast. ‘What do you reckon that bloke was looking for last night?’
Mrs Toovey rubbed her ring finger. ‘I wish I knew. You were ever so brave, you know. I was frightened out of my wits.’
Jo smiled. ‘Well, I’ve been trained to just about hang on to mine.’
She looked into the middle distance thoughtfully ‘It was really dark up there but I’m sure he wasn’t just waiting around to scare us. It was more like... he was looking for something.’
‘You mean he was just a burglar?’
Jo shook her head. ‘I think the Legion International people have set their sights higher than your candlewick bedspreads.
Mrs T.’
The old woman gave a small, sad smile then straightened up, hands on hips. ‘Well, if the Wing Commander’s taught me anything it’s the importance of positive action. He’s been missing long enough. If we can’t get our constabulary interested, we’ll get on to the county coppers. See what they think. They’ll sort these aerodrome buggers out, once and for all.’
She clapped her hands together. ‘Now, love. How do you like your eggs?’
Jo gave a groan of happy expectation but was interrupted by a knock at the back door.
She shot a quick look at Mrs Toovey and got to her feet, but the housekeeper held up her hand. ‘No. I’ll go. It’s about time I stood up for myself.’
Jo followed her through into the kitchen; a beamed room cluttered with pots, its ceiling blackened by the fumes of three centuries’ dinners.
The back door was gated into two halves like a stable door. It rattled again as someone knocked twice on the outside.
Gingerly, Mrs Toovey unbolted it and swung open the top section. She gave an audible sigh of relief as a sunburnt old man in a battered straw hat was revealed.
‘Morning, Annie,’ he cried.
Mrs Toovey laid a hand flat against her chest. ‘Oh, Jobey, thank heavens it’s only you.’
She stepped back so that Jo could see the newcomer. ‘This is Jobey, my dear. He does a few odd jobs for me from time to time.’
‘Hello,’ said Jo.
Jobey Packer raised his straw hat in greeting and leant over the bottom half of the door, crossing his brawny arms.
‘The Wing Commander said you wasn’t at the pub the other night, Jobey. He was quite concerned,’ said Mrs Toovey, taking down the big, iron frying pan from the wall. ‘Where’ve you been?’
‘Oh,’ said Jobey, his mouth widening into a huge smile.
‘Here and there.’
The tiny point of light was almost white in its brilliance.
It moved across the concrete like a searchlight until it found its intended victim. The spider sat immobile, its hairy abdomen throbbing gently, its legs clustered together, unaware of what Anthony Ayre had in store for it.
The boy was sitting on the concrete drive which led to his father’s garage, dressed in football shorts and a moth-eaten towelling shirt his mother made him wear when he was
‘playing out’.
In one hand he held the thick lens from Graham Allinson’s spectacles which he had stolen and broken the day before. He was putting the lens to good use, he thought, with a chuckle as he angled it towards the blazing disc of the sun and watched the focused beam crawl towards the spider.
He had caught the creature and slapped a piece of sticky tape over it to keep it rooted to the spot. It wriggled