Doctor Who_ The Algebra of Ice - Lloyd Rose [46]
‘Good to meet you.’
Unwin gripped the steering wheel with both hands, ignoring any sounds from behind him. Brett had given him Ethan’s keys and made him go up to the flat and erase his message from the answering machine. He’d been terrified the whole time that he’d be seen. He felt like hell. He was afraid he was going to throw up.
This was a mad idea. Mad! Kidnapping! And there’d be murder at the end of it if he knew Brett, and he knew Brett. Knew him better and better every day and wished he didn’t. Had he been this way at Oxford? He’d been aloof and self-contained, arrogant, but no one had dared rag him. That could only have been because something about him frightened them. Maybe Unwin himself had been frightened, even then. But it was nothing compared to now.
‘Couldn’t I just talk to him?’ he had asked Brett. ‘You know, old colleagues, what have you been up to, oh really that sounds interesting?’
96
The Algebra of Ice
‘It’s not merely a matter of gaining information,’ Brett had replied coolly. ‘He has to be stopped.’
Stopped. Unwin shivered. But surely not until they had got all they could from him. They needed his help. Brett understood that. Amberglass was alive as long as the project continued. And well as long as he cooperated. Unwin hoped to God he cooperated. He didn’t want to think about what Brett would do if he didn’t.
Tears of self-pity stung Unwin’s eyes. What had he got himself into? He was only an idealist. A genius who had needed support and recognition and had got neither. Whose fault was that? He felt sick again. He mustn’t think about any of this. He’d think. . . He’d think about the way Amberglass had built on his work. Wonderful stuff. Indicated all sorts of new possibilities. . .
When he reached the house and got out of the car, the night was a clear, almost tangible cold. Unwin shivered in earnest. He opened the car’s back door and saw that during the trip Brett had cuffed Ethan’s wrists behind him and tied a rag in his mouth and another over his eyes.
‘Is he all right?’
‘He’s fine,’ Brett said shortly. ‘Give me some help here.’
Between them, they half-walked, half-dragged Ethan through a side door.
‘Cellar,’ said Brett.
‘Oh really,’ Unwin objected. ‘You must have half a dozen bedrooms. We could lock him in –’
‘Cellar,’ Brett repeated, and Unwin helped him manoeuvre Ethan down the steps. He stumbled and wavered, pulling against their grip, but Unwin thought this was less a struggle than the result of stiffness from being held immobile in the car. Poor bastard was too weakened to fight. He was so small. Unwin was suddenly badly afraid for him.
‘Sherry,’ he said weakly, ‘is this really –’
‘Yes,’ said Brett. ‘Shut up.’
Light from the upstairs hall fell narrowly down the steps, striking gleams in the shadows from the glossy wood of discarded furniture. Brett pushed Ethan into an overcarved chair, then ripped some ragged fabric from a sofa and secured him. He took Unwin’s arm and marched him firmly up the steps.
‘I need a drink, don’t you?’
‘What are you doing?’ Unwin tried to keep the quaver out of his voice. ‘You can’t leave him tied up in the cellar.’
‘Of course I can,’ said Brett, striding toward the sitting room. ‘I have.’
‘But it’s cold down there. And if he’s tied for hours he’ll be in awful pain.’
Chapter Eleven
97
‘Exactly.’ Brett poured himself some Scotch. ‘Something for you? This is a nice single malt from Skye. Ten years old.’
‘He could never get out if we locked him in one of the upper bedrooms.
What’s the point of leaving him like that?’
Brett inhaled the aroma of the Scotch appreciatively. ‘I want to give him time to think things over.’ He smiled his rictus smile. ‘Time to become afraid.’
Well, the Doctor thought, Ethan was up and out early. Gone for a fry-up, no doubt, to get the day started. The Doctor looked over the work from the day before. Nice, very nice. Bright lad. More than bright. The Doctor’s eyes darkened unhappily.
He looked around the room. Something seemed not