Doctor Who_ The King of Terror - Keith Topping [27]
Fourth-and-goal. End zone.
Turlough moved to the drinks cabinet and saw an envelope resting under a bottle of whisky. Eva Oblon, it said. He poured himself a triple whisky and drank it in one throat-burning gulp.
Fourth-and-goal.
End zone.
‘Nice place you have,’ he said slumping on to the sofa.
‘It’s surprisingly expensive,’ said Eva coming to the door. She was wearing a purple blouse with a daringly plunging neckline. ‘It belongs to the company I work for.’
‘What do you do?’ asked Turlough, as his eyes bulged briefly out of their sockets then popped themselves back in.
‘I’m in computers,’ said Eva, moving with cat-like elegance across the room, hips swishing, glossy lips slightly curved into a smile of sensuality. ‘I make things happen.’
‘That’s nice,’ said Turlough, unable to think of anything else to say.
She sat in a chair opposite him, drinking wine. ‘Tell me about yourself,’ she said.
Turlough wanted her. Passion burned like a forest fire. He could feel every emotion within him screaming at him to take her.
50
‘I . . . travel,’ he said. He took another huge drink of whisky. The fire burned even more strongly. But when Eva crossed her legs a cold spasm of anxiety ran down Turlough’s spine. ‘I also have some connections with a covert paramili-tary organisation.’ He laughed. It was a hollow, mirthless chuckle that came from God knows where. Turlough almost bit his tongue off at the stump.
Eva nodded. ‘UNIT?’
‘Yes,’ said Turlough. If he was surprised he didn’t show it. He was trying to stop himself talking but he kept on babbling, his voice growing slurred and in-distinct as he became a detached and distant observer to his own speech. ‘I’m not from your planet. I travel in time and space with a Gallifreyan Time Lord called the Doctor. I’ve been his companion for almost a year. The machine we travel in is called the TARDIS, which stands for Time and Relative Dimensions in Space. I don’t understand the physics, but fourth-and-fifth-dimensional mechanics are involved.’ Finally Turlough was allowed to pause in his litany of deceit and betrayal. ‘Some sort of truth serum?’ he asked; at last his words belonged to him again. ‘Please don’t hurt me.’
He slumped to one side. He could see Eva moving towards him at an angle of forty-five degrees. She knelt beside him and gently planted a solitary, comforting kiss on one cheek. He knew he’d been drugged. He’d seen similar results during the early days of the revolution when the insurgents had been taken to the Presidium.
‘Don’t be frightened,’ said Eva. ‘You and I are going to have lots to talk about.’
She stood and picked up the telephone. There was a lengthy delay whilst she waited for someone to answer it, during which she gave Turlough a sideways glance.
Those magic eyes were now lifeless pools. Opaque and dead, the colour of phlegm. Under normal circumstances Turlough would have screamed until his lungs burst. But he found himself tongue-tied and mute. An effect of the drug, perhaps. Still Eva looked at him, as though he were something that she was examining under a microscope.
‘I think I may have what we’re looking for,’ she told the person on the other end of the line.
Turlough felt a cold sickness at the pit of his stomach. It was terror. He knew its embrace well. He began to cry.
51
Chapter Six
Bittersweet Symphony
A black cat ran across Roman’s path as he reached his destination.
Startled, the animal turned its head to look directly at him. Its eyes glowed green, reflected from a distant source – possibly a car or a streetlight. It hissed, angrily.
It knew.
Ryman inclined his head to one side. An interesting creature, operating purely by instinct. Survival its only goal. Mankind tried to domesticate it,