Doctor Who_ Rags - Mick Lewis [33]
Rod screamed, and twisted round to face the tor again.
The figure was waiting for him, stepping out from the shadows of the tower.
A shredded cloak hung from its body, stirring idly in the night breeze. Rod was shaking and crying aloud because he knew that in a moment he would have to look at the face he had climbed all 82
the way up here to see - and that now he would do anything, anything, not to see it.
And so they stood together for a timeless moment or two. Then one of them made a gesture and the other stopped crying.
Stopped everything.
Stopped...
And at the bottom of the hill PCs Roebuck and Williams were being relieved by their colleagues PCs Luton and Smith. Roebuck and Williams had been sitting in their squad car for the last five hours, watching and waiting for something to happen; and, as it had turned out, without anything to report. Now they could go home, and home for both of them was only a few miles away in Wells. They were both looking forward to a good sleep and maybe a cuddle with their respective wives. Upon reaching their houses, however, they chose to do something rather significantly different instead. They woke their wives with a detached precision, stared at them for a moment ignoring all puzzled inquiries, and then set about systematically slaughtering them. In PC Williams’ case, there was a particularly troublesome teenage daughter to be dismembered too. He did that after bludgeoning his wife’s brains all over the bedroom wallpaper with a golf club. The screams would stay with both constables for the rest of their lives. From the moment they left Glastonbury, picking up their own cars from the station, to the time they were led from their homes sleeved in blood a mere two hours later, they uttered not a single word. In PC Williams’ bedroom the words ARE WE FORGIVEN? were written in his wife’s blood in big spiky letters on the wall.
83
Chapter Nine
‘I’ve got just the man for you, Doctor.’
The Doctor looked up from his interminable study of the sensor probe. It was now lashed to a device resembling a dentist’s drill which the Brigadier was sure could serve no earthly purpose whatsoever apart from being there just to baffle him... like just about everything else in the Doctor’s lab, come to that.
‘Oh, really?’ The Doctor looked drawn and tired. His investigations must be leading him up a blind alley then, the Brigadier thought with a mixture of smugness and impatience.
Couldn’t the damned fellow do something more positive instead of continually poking at that infernal object? Five days he’d been buried in his lab now Maybe this news would spur him on to some action.
‘And who might that be?’ the Doctor asked, blinking sleepily.
Obviously been tinkering around the clock, to boot, by the look of him. Wouldn’t he ever learn that a disciplined mind resulted from a disciplined lifestyle? A good night’s sleep was essential for rational thought and decision. The Doctor looked crabby and haggard.
The Brigadier told him the name of the agent he was sending in and the Doctor looked suitably relieved, as well he might. Then he told him about the Prime Minister’s decision to replace the police with UNIT as the force to shadow the convoy and, as he had expected, this item of news was not received quite as well as the first one.
‘What the devil does he want to go and do a foolhardy thing like that for?’ The Doctor was blustering with righteous rage. The whole point of letting the tour go ahead is so that we can monitor it covertly and hopefully discover what their intention is. ‘We’re not going to be able to do that