Doctor Who_ The Devil Goblins From Neptune - Keith Topping [61]
'In the mortuary. Dr French is about to do an autopsy.'
'I'll bet he was pleased about getting dragged out of bed in the middle of the night,' said Yates with a slight grin. 'He's not used to dealing with human corpses, is he?'Yates crossed the room to the terminal where Lieutenant Carson, UNIT'S senior computer expert, was knee deep in printouts.
'Do you live here, David?' asked Yates sarcastically.
'What? Oh, morning, Mike. This is a right mess-up,' said Carson, tearing another perforated page from the printer. 'If somebody had told me that Billy Donald was capable of these juvenile shenanigans, I'd have... Well, you know...'
'I'd hardly call throwing acid in some poor sod's face schoolboy antics,' said Yates sharply. But he felt a certain empathy with Carson.' it was never easy finding that one of your trusted team is, in fact, an enemy. Yates had experienced similar shock after the Auton invasion. Friends and colleagues had been kidnapped and replaced by exact replicas, destroying what little trust he'd had in humanity.
'You never had cause to suspect Donald of being involved in anything?' asked Mike.
'He just did his job,' said Carson in frustration. 'You know Billy, Mike., he's a good lad. A bit of a bottom-pincher, if you know what I mean, but he knows his stuff. I've played darts with him in the Red lion more times than you've had hot dinners' He made another note on the sheet in front of him. 'I still can't believe it'
Yates glanced down at the printouts. 'It looks like Greek to me.' he commented.
'Hexadecimal notation,' said Carson. 'Amounts to the same thing, I suppose.
'Anything out of the ordinary?'
'No. If this was sabotage, I'd have expected the worst.
Files messed about or deleted. There's nothing like that.
Some surface damage that a six-year-old could have come up with, but nothing that can't be put right in ten minutes. I can even tell where the last message was sent to'
'Really?' Yates raised his eyebrows.
'It's to the New Mexico office.' said Carson.
'Unfortunately, I can't tell what it was yet.'
'Right,' said Yates, a clear course of action opening up to him. 'We can get into the who's and whys later. The desk sergeant said t hat his car was seen leaving at speed?'
'Yeah, a white MG,' replied Carson. 'I've been in it loads of times. Very nippy.'
'Then the first thing to do is find the murdering animal and string him up by his goolies.' He turned sharply. 'Carol, get on your bike down to police liaison and get Green Door into operation'
Bell nodded quickly. Green Door was the UNIT code name for an operation to track a fugitive. It was usually handled in conjunction with the local constabularies, and involved circulating photographs of the wanted person and setting up road blocks and checks at air and sea ports.
'Anything else?' she asked.
'Yes,' said Yates. 'Get me a coffee and two aspirins'
* * *
The hotel manager had been very obliging, not only lending the Brigadier his car when Lethbridge-Stewart explained that due to certain 'operational necessities' he was unable to use official UNIT transportation, but also in giving directions to the Rue Voltaire.
After slipping out of the back entrance of the hotel, the Brigadier drove through the narrow streets of Geneva's right bank. He found himself thinking about Aden, and Private Bull who had been condemned, on the orders of then Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart (with support from the Chief of General Staff), for cowardice in the face of the enemy. And the last thing he had said to Lethbridge-Stewart before sentence had been carried out. 'War is hell, Colonel. Death can't be worse than that.'
And then they shot him.
The Brigadier rubbed a hand across his forehead, trying to massage away the pain. If the pain went then, perhaps, the doubt and the guilt would go, too.
He parked the car a street away from his target and prepared to execute his orders - unsigned, unconfirmed, worthless in international