Doctor Who_ The Banquo Legacy - Andy Lane [62]
‘Perhaps he has a taste for the artificially picturesque,’ I said, slightly stunned at Wallace’s Napoleonic ambition. ‘But what’s this about blasting? You mean he has access to explosives?’
‘Yes, sir. Keeps them in the shack, he does. Blasting powder, Express Dynamite, Saxonite, detonators; he’s got it all.’ He chuckled. ‘Some of the poachers around here would pay a pretty penny to get their hands on that, I can tell you.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Kreiner said.
‘Fishing, sir. Drop a lighted stick of dynamite into the water, then scoop up all the fish that drift to the surface after it’s gone off. Stunned or dead, it makes no difference, sir. They all go into the pot.’
I shuddered. Ever since the Yard had been bombed in 1884, the Metropolitan Police went in fear of explosives. I had been in the force for several years then, and had recently been transferred to London for personal reasons. If I hadn’t taken a day’s leave on private business, the infernal device might have claimed my life. A number of my colleagues were maimed in the explosion.
‘I hope the stuff’s kept under lock and key,’ I muttered. ‘Poachers or whatever, it could be very dangerous in the wrong hands.’
‘Don’t worry, sir,’ said Baker as he walked over to the shed. ‘It’s sturdier than it looks, and it’s always kept locked. I check it whenever I’m in the area.’
He grasped the padlock on the door and gave it a tug.
‘Hmm. Where does Sir George get it from?’
‘I believe it comes via a colleague of the late Professor Harries. A foreign gentleman sends it over. Swedish, I believe.’
We walked on, past the shack. There was a small, grimy window in one side, and on a sudden suspicion I walked over and peered in.
‘Anything interesting, sir?’
‘Nothing that looks remotely like Dr Friedlander or Richard Harries,’ I replied. We walked on.
As it turned out, we did not have to look much further for the Doctor. As we topped the crest of the hill the ground fell away steeply, almost like a cliff face, where the dynamite had been used to artificially gouge half the hillside away. Baker extended an arm, partly to prevent me from slipping and falling into the grotto but mostly, I realised later, to preserve the evidence. The signs of a fight, where the snow was churned into slush. The broken branches. The splash of blood, bright crimson against the virgin snow.
Thirty feet below us, down in the artificial hollow where George Wallace was intending, next summer, to sit with his bottle of crusted port, the Doctor’s body lay crumpled, face down. His arms had been broken and twisted grotesquely by the impact with the ground, his legs seemed to be buckled beneath him, and his head was hidden by his hunched shoulders.
‘No!’ Kreiner cried, and threw himself towards the edge. Baker and I grabbed hold of his arms.
‘It’s too dangerous!’ Baker shouted as Kreiner scrabbled closer to the almost sheer drop. ‘The sides are covered with ice and snow. You’ll never get down in one piece.’
‘It’s true,’ I said, knowing that Baker was, in part, talking to me as well as to Kreiner. I grabbed him by the shoulders and stared deeply into his eyes until his gaze locked on me and not on the wild phantoms of his own grief. ‘It’s true. Mr Kreiner – Fitz – you have to keep control. We need you.’
‘But –’ His struggles began to subside. ‘But the Doctor… the Doctor…’
‘He’s dead,’ I said.
‘You can’t know that. We need to get down there. We need to –’
‘Kreiner, trust me. He couldn’t survive more than five minutes in this weather without protection. The fall must have broken most of the bones in his body. He’s dead.’
A great sob racked Kreiner’s body, and as I let go his shoulders he slumped to his knees, heedless of the white blanket covering the ground. Turning to Baker, I said quietly, ‘Can we get down there?’
‘There are other routes round to the bottom, sir, but they’re all pretty treacherous. I wouldn