Doctor Who_ The Paradise of Death - Barry Letts [21]
He looked up at the mass of flesh sitting opposite. His face was as impassive as ever, but his normally flat voice was rich with overtones of gratified desire.
‘I played him like a fish, Freeth, letting him go and reeling him in, with his fright all the time growing in intensity; growing, growing; and at the end, his mortal dread of dying. I couldn’t resist going with it. It was ecstasy, I tell you, utter ecstasy!’
Freeth shuddered. ‘Delicious,’ he said.
Tragan stood up and stretched. ‘We’ve been given a bonus,’ he said. ‘We can relax. We shan’t have any more trouble from that meddlesome Doctor. He came over with me. The Doctor’s dead.’
Chapter Eight
Sarah turned away sadly as the flashing of the ambulance disappeared. Jeremy was quietly waiting and watching.
‘Did you know him well?’ he asked.
How could she begin to explain to anybody else how she was feeling? She couldn’t even explain it to herself.
‘Not really,’ she said. ‘But he was a good man. And a brave one. It’s silly, I know, but I feel as if – as if I’d lost my best friend.’
How inadequate words were, after all!
‘I don’t think it’s silly at all.’
She looked at his concerned face, and then felt guilty that she should be surprised. ‘You’re rather sweet, Jeremy,’
she said.
The excited crowd which had gathered was melting away. A uniformed constable was removing the temporary barriers which had been erected around the area. Sarah looked for the Brigadier – to keep in touch with him would almost be like being with the Doctor still – but there was no sign of him. He was probably with the police somewhere. He’d have plenty of official stuff to keep him busy. She was being childish.
‘This is no good,’ she said. ‘Life must go on.’
‘Well, that’s what he would want, isn’t it?’
He’d surprised her again. ‘You’re right, of course. Come on. We’d better get back to the office and get these pictures developed.’
As they walked the length of Galaxy Avenue, with its alien water-sculptures (to call them fountains would be an insult; how could a simple fountain twist into such shapes?) Sarah could hear a sound like the roar of an impatient football crowd. As they approached the main entrance, the gates swung open and Space World’s first real customers started to pour through in their hundreds.
Life would go on, with or without the permission of Sarah Jane Smith.
By the time the CID man from Golders Green had satisfied himself that the double death was probably not connected with the body on the heath, the Brigadier was getting impatient. They’d been closeted together in the little room Kitson had found for them for what seemed like hours. At last, he closed his notebook with a snap.
‘Seems clear enough,’ he said. ‘We’ll need to find out a bit more about Mr Grebber’s background, but that apart...
and there’s the autopsy, of course. But that’s more or less a formality in the circs.’ But the Brigadier was hardly listening. The Doctor’s death didn’t mean that his own investigation had come to a full stop. So what now?
‘My dear Brigadier, I cannot begin to tell you how devastated we are,’ said Freeth, rising nimbly from his gargantuan swivel chair to greet his visitor.
‘Kind of you,’ grunted the Brigadier.
‘We have our own occasion of grief, of course,’ Freeth continued. ‘The man Grebber, poor foolish troubled soul.
But nothing compared to the loss of a colleague – and a friend?’
His unctuous voice vied with the fleshy solicitude of his face. He seated himself on the sofa, which was covered with a richly coloured Gohelin tapestry, by a coffee table surfaced in mosaic – an apparently genuine ancient mosaic, as if from a Roman villa, but portraying a fearsome alien beast under a hyacinth sky. He motioned to the easy chair opposite. This is a social occasion, the gesture said. Let us be intimate together, let us mourn together.
The Brigadier remained standing.
‘Be that as it may,’ he said. ‘I am here on official business. I have to ask you to cancel the opening of