Doctor Who_ The Gallifrey Chronicles - Lance Parkin [29]
‘If you want to.’
‘You’re not planning to be there, though, are you?’
‘Where you come from, people have jobs for life. Here, we have careers. I was planning to hang around for a year or two, then move on.’
Fitz tried to do the maths, but he had no idea how long it was since he’d met Trix. His best guess was that she’d been around more than a year, less than two.
‘I don’t think of it as a job,’ he said. ‘It’s my life. Last time we were here, the Doctor asked me about it. We were walking through the woods and I think he was hinting that I should go.’
‘He’s not really the subtle-hint type, is he? If he wanted to get rid of you, he’d tell you.’
‘Even then, I didn’t want to leave. Couldn’t even imagine it. But I’ve changed.’
‘You haven’t, though.’
‘I’ve changed by not changing at all.’
‘Is this about him or you?’ Trix asked.
Fitz thought about that. ‘Both,’ he said. ‘He’s hiding things, I know it.’
‘We all do that. Everyone nudges things about their life under the carpet.
The Doctor may have some skeletons in his closet, but –’
63
‘I know what he did,’ Fitz said, clearly surprising Trix. ‘And I’ve spent so long biting my tongue. I’ve known for a while. I got my memories back months ago on Espero. I know why he’d want to avoid the subject – it’s hard for me just to think about it.’
‘You think he has all his memories?’
Fitz nodded. ‘I think so. I get a hint of it every so often. He’s avoiding the subject – but how can you avoid something so well if you don’t know what it is?’
‘We all have secrets.’
‘Not like this.’
Trix gave an uncertain smile. ‘Er. . . How bad could it be?’
Fitz shook his head.
‘No.
I can’t.
Just. . .
of all the horrible things
we’ve seen, all the dead bodies and atrocities. Everything we’ve been fighting against. It was worse. And he knows it. But that’s not the worst of it. . . ’
She was looking at him, but he held up his hands.
‘I’m not going to tell you,’ he repeated. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything about it in the first place. Sorry, I didn’t mean to. . . ’
She seemed to accept that. ‘What about Mars?’
It took a while for Fitz to remember what she must mean.
‘Make a go of it? Take it slowly. Be normal for a bit. I’d need to get a job, of course, and –’
‘You wouldn’t need to get a job.’
‘I wouldn’t?’
‘Oh, look at your eyes light up. No. I have a little nest egg tucked away, for when I was ready to settle down.’
‘You’ve found time to set up a savings plan?’ Fitz asked. ‘I barely have time to eat breakfast, let alone put aside any of my wages. . . Hang on a second, what wages?’
Trix looked at him, forgivingly. ‘If we’re going to set up here, we should make an appointment with my financial adviser. I’ll go and tell the Doctor we’ve got something to do.’
Trix found the Doctor sitting at a desk in a back office in the police station, working on a computer.
‘Five minutes ago, they were about to arrest you for being a nutter who was wasting their time.’
‘I talked them out of that, and now one of their PCs is letting me borrow their PC. Very PC of him, I thought,’ the Doctor explained. He was typing frantically, but barely seemed to be concentrating on what he was doing.
‘And they brought you a coffee.’ Trix had just noticed the plastic cup on the desk.
64
‘If it’s any consolation, it’s not very nice coffee.’
‘So, do you think whoever did this will have a police record?’ The Doctor shrugged, and finally stopped typing. ‘I just needed access to the Internet. I’m hacking into the CCTV cameras around the churchyard.’
‘You think there will be one there?’
‘There are four million CCTV cameras in the UK. The average Londoner is seen by three hundred of them a day.’
‘Police stations don’t have direct access to CCTV systems, do they?’ Trix asked.
‘Not normally, not yet. The rules governing