Doctor Who_ The Paradise of Death - Barry Letts [12]
‘That’s why it’s got claws, I suppose,’ said a rather dim columnist with scatty straw hair who normally wrote about the vicissitudes of living with her loveably madcap family.
‘To get at the meat,’ she explained helpfully.
‘That’s right,’ said Kitson, eyeing her disingenuous bosom, which casually contrived to look as if it were about to spill out of her shirt. ‘Though I don’t suppose he’d object to a morsel of ready-shelled journalist’
She nervously joined in the laughter.
Now! But Sarah started to pull the camera out of her pocket she felt Kitson’s eye on her.
It’s no good, she said to herself. If he didn’t see me, that security guard certainly would. It wouldn’t help much to get thrown out.
‘I say,’ Jeremy breathed in her ear.
‘What?’
‘Aren’t you going to take a photo?’
‘Oh, shut up!’ she said.
Billy Grebber sat in his car and rubbed his damp palms with the clean linen handkerchief which, even in the midst of his morning turmoil, he’d remembered to select from the dozen or so in his drawer. He’d come a long way from his brickie days, he thought as, with trembling hands, he folded it carefully and stuck it back in his top pocket.
Where did that Freeth get off, talking to him like he was his office boy? He was a flipping councillor, wasn’t he?
And if he played his cards right, he’d end up mayor.
A spasm of fear and anger clutched his belly. Why should he risk it all? It was murder, no two ways about it.
And if it came out, he’d get done as an accessory, just because he was there, and because he’d lied to that Doctor geezer and said he didn’t know nothing.
Suppose he went and got it off his chest? But if he did...
He heard again the screams and the sound of tearing flesh.
Tragan’s face flickered across his mind. He started to shake. He fumbled for his handkerchief and frantically tried once more to dry the cold sweat from his hands.
Chapter Five
Tragan covered the telephone mouthpiece with a bony hand. ‘Do come in, Chairman,’ he said, and watched with no discernible interest as Freeth turned diagonally to manoeuvre his immense width gracefully through the door.
Freeth said, ‘Well?’
Ragan held up a hand. ‘Thank you; you’ve been most helpful,’ he said and put the phone down.
‘I’ve found out what we need to know about the Doctor,’
he said, anticipating Freeth’s next question.
‘And how did you manage to do that?’
‘I rang UNIT and asked them.’
‘A cunning ploy indeed,’ said Freeth, sinking onto the sofa, which he neatly filled, designed as it was to accommodate two.
‘The fools fell over themselves to give me the information. As much as they had, that is to say.’
Freeth frowned.
‘Nobody seems to know where he springs from,’ Tragan went on. ‘He’s the resident adviser, as the Brigadier said.
He has a doctorate in practically all the scientific disciplines but he’s a specialist in cosmology, space research and alien life forms.’
Freeth dug into his pocket and produced a small paper hag. ‘Well, well, well. Maybe friend Grebber has good reason to be worried, after all. Where is he, by the way?’
‘The Doctor?’
‘Grebber.’ Freeth started to unwrap a treacle toffee. ‘In the circumstances I don’t like the idea of his running around loose. He could be a problem.’ He placed the toffee in his mouth. His tongue flicked out and licked his finger and thumb.
Tragan rose from his desk and moved to the door.
‘Maybe the problem needs a solution,’ he said. ‘A terminal one.’
Freeth chuckled. ‘You’d enjoy that, wouldn’t you, you wicked old Tragan, you?’ he said, chewing stickily.
‘How well you know me, Chairman,’ replied Tragan without a smile and departed to look for the luckless Grebber.
Jeremy was thoroughly enjoying visiting the various monsters. Even the Giant Ostroid, he thought. A bit like an oven-ready turkey on stilts, she was.