Doctor Who_ Rags - Mick Lewis [40]
Some of the suits made a break for the door. But Lionel had retreated there to take up his new occupation as wine-bar bouncer. Only this bastard didn’t let anybody out he didn’t like.
And his scythe agreed with his philosophy.
‘If your name ain’t down...’ he croaked, ‘You ain’t getting out!’
The scythe swung and dug, swung and dug.
Cliff, Hedges and Nose were doing fine too.
The Money Tree at number twenty-nine Corn Street had once been executive heaven. In the space of fifteen minutes it had been transformed into executive hell.
98
Chapter Ten
Once more a blood message had been left. This time scrawled by the winos all over the decorous walls of the exclusive wine bar.
Charmagne Peters read it along with her journalist peers; the police had finally allowed them access. She turned to study the looks on the faces of the other hacks. A lot of hard-bitten stoicism, some poorly hidden glee, and just a little revulsion - not a lot, but some. To them it was an opportunity for a great story.
To her, it was something different.
Although what that was, she could never have said.
Personal. Yes, this was in some way personal, and she resented all the other journalists for being there.
She recognised a few of them from Princetown and the Oblong Box, some from the nationals, others from local rags. But none of them had been on the story right from the start - the first reporter on the scene at Princetown had been herself, so maybe that was why she felt so defensive.
It was more than a story.
She remembered her dream. (Keep running, cos it’s nightmare time.) It was recurring almost twice a week now. And it had been five years since she’d been to Romania as a student and seen the sewer children. They had not advanced on her like in the dream; she had not been on her own in a deserted side alley. Yet nevertheless the children of Sighisoara had haunted her ever since, and the image of them begging from the tourists and more affluent members of their own society at café tables, driven away by angry - indignant - proprietors, was what had inspired her to become an investigative journalist in the first place: she wanted to correct these wrongs. And that wasn’t just naive self-righteousness, it was something she felt deeply. (just like she could feel this tour burrowing deep inside her, like it was part of her) But she’d certainly never dreamt of them since her visit - not until the night before the Princetown gig.
99
And now this.
This blood graffiti.
This, this reached a deep secret spot as well. Not for her the superficial satisfaction at the chance for career advancement that was evident in the reactions of the journalists milling like cockroaches around the scene of the crime, cameras blitzing.
This was something else.
REND THE RICH, the blood graffiti told her, dribbles spiralling down from each letter to congeal on the marble floor.
UNWASHED AND UNFORGIVING...
The Brigadier allowed the police access to the encampment reluctantly. While he was at odds with the Doctor on one score, namely that the tour should be given free rein at all - he was all for disbanding it immediately - he agreed with him that harassing the bloody hippies would only cause further trouble. And what would the police be able to discover anyway? The actual perpetrators of the crime at the wine bar had been taken away, blatantly meths - and blood-sozzled. So what were they hoping to prove here? That the band had subliminally brainwashed some local alcoholics to butcher a bunch of stockbrokers? What did the civil boys think they had on their hands here, a punk-age Charlie Manson and his family?
The Brigadier frowned. The analogy was a little too close for comfort. But it seemed to fit: some crazy cult working their evil influence on impressionable minds. Why had it taken him so long to come to that rather obvious conclusion? His perceptions seemed to be a little dimmed lately. The band were a death cult.
Maybe he ought to pass that little nugget of inspiration