Doctor Who_ The King of Terror - Keith Topping [57]
We’re planning a live box-set, so I have meetings with them whenever they’re needed. They were playing in New York a couple of months back and I went along. We had dinner after the show, it was good.
‘I saw you at the Marquee in ’91 on the Seems Like a Freeze Out tour,’ said Dave, any non-gushing-fanboy pretensions fully exorcised by now. ‘Best gig I’ve ever seen.’
‘We were a cracking live band back then, just before it got too big and we stopped enjoying ourselves,’ noted Johnny. ‘So, what you doing in America?’
‘Same as you, I expect. Working!’
Johnny Chester laughed, and he and Dave clapped palms in a show of working-class solidarity. ‘Who shall I make these out to?’
‘Dave,’ said Dave.
‘Nice one, Dave. Listen, if you ever get over on the East Coast, look me up, we’ll have a beer, yeah?’ He passed his business card to Milligan who pocketed it and shook Johnny’s hand.
‘Look after yourself man,’ he said, and turned to leave.
‘You too, mate.’
Someone in the queue was asking Johnny what he was listening to these days. He started to reply, talking about how much he admired Boards of Canada, Mutant Mirrors, Jeff Hart and the Ruins and Dingoes Ate My Baby, but his attention became focused on the young woman with auburn hair standing next to Milligan as he paid for his CDs and left the shop, and his voice trailed away.
‘Tegan?’ asked Johnny, a lump in his throat the size of the Isle of Wight.
But she was gone.
‘You look disappointed,’ said Tegan as Milligan followed her from the shop clutching the CDs and the book. ‘Did he turn out to have feet of clay then?’
‘No,’ said Milligan. ‘Nothing like that. Just the opposite in fact.’
‘Then what?’
Milligan shrugged. ‘They say never meet your heroes . . . ’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘He was a nice guy,’ said Milligan. ‘Gave me a freebie and his card. Told me next time I was in his neighbourhood to give him a bell and we’d go for a drink.’
109
‘Sounds really down to Earth,’ Tegan noted.
‘That’s the problem,’ noted Milligan. ‘When I was sixteen I had a poster of that man on my bedroom wall. I learned to play the guitar because I wanted to be just like him. I learned every song, read every interview, dressed like him, thought like him . . . ’
‘I still don’t see what the problem is,’ said Tegan.
There was a quiet despondency in Milligan’s voice. The sound of shattered teenage dreams. ‘I didn’t want him to be “down to Earth”,’ he noted sadly. ‘I wanted him to be like a god.’
After two hours of discussing every avenue open to them, the UNIT meeting had broken up. A vague plan had been formulated. Paynter and Barrington would continue to investigate InterCom undercover whilst the Doctor explored what he euphemistically referred to as ‘other options’.
Barrington and Paynter took the elevator to the underground car park beneath UNIT headquarters discussing how best to regain entry into the InterCom site.
‘Security’s going to be tighter than a camel’s eye in a sandstorm after the bomb,’ noted Paynter.
‘We’ll think of something. We always do.’
‘Getting in isn’t, necessarily, the problem though. I’m more worried about how we deal with whatever we find . . . ’ Paynter paused and scowled angrily.
‘Damn and blast it,’ he said, turning back from the car and making for the elevator.
‘What’s the matter?’ called Barrington.
‘The camera,’ said Paynter. ‘I forgot to give the Brig and the Doctor the film of whatever it was in that clean room. I’ll be down in a minute.’
Barrington sat in the driver’s seat and shook his head. ‘He’d forget his head if it wasn’t screwed on,’ he muttered as he put the key into the ignition, turned it and died.
The blast was huge in the confined space. The low ceiling amplified the noise of the explosion, popping Paynter’s ears as he found himself falling, flung face forward on to the wet concrete beneath him. An absurd thought crossed his mind as he hit the ground sickeningly, headfirst and hard,