Doctor Who_ The Sleep of Reason - Martin Day [37]
She loved her dreams, and the freedom they insinuated, but there was no connection between her subconscious fantasies and reality. If she was sure of anything, she was sure of that.
She looked down at her arms again, at the water that flowed over every scar, every hair, every inch of too-pale and despised flesh. They certainly looked like scratches from an animal – nothing as savage as a great hound, of course, but as if some over-enthusiastic pet had taken a shine to a jumper and persisted in pushing its jagged claws into your body.
As she looked down – the water spiralling away from her, the soapy suds that were beginning to gather at her feet – she distractedly reached for her throat. She rarely wore anything around her neck, but within moments of putting it on, the dogtooth pendant felt like it belonged. It had become part of her, had brought comfort – but now it was gone.
She turned off the shower, all thoughts of the dog in her dreams now gone.
Where the hell was the necklace? Still wet, she pulled on her gown and began searching through the clutter on the bed and floor. To have discovered it again, after all this time, only to lose it. . .
She simply had to find it.
‘And did you?’ asked James.
‘No sign of it,’ said Laska. ‘I thought maybe I’d broken it, but. . . I pulled off the sheet, checked inside the quilt, under the bed. . . Nothing.’
They were sitting in a glass-covered communal area that looked towards a central courtyard. At some point – in the sixties, if the architecture was any guide – someone had knocked down the entire external wall of a redundant wide corridor and replaced it with glass. This would have been a commendable step, had not the new structure, like an emaciated conservatory, been north-facing. Worse still, it looked out at nothing more than other walls and windows of the Retreat. In more recent times someone had at least tidied up the courtyard, and a fountain sat in the middle, water bubbling over an abstract pile of rounded stones. ‘All very Charlie Dimmock,’ James had causti-cally observed on one occasion, ‘but – and call me biased if you will – I think that money would have been better used, you know, on buying medicine or paying the staff.’
63
Laska didn’t know why she’d told James about the missing necklace – it didn’t amount to much, one item of misplaced jewellery, in the wider scheme of things. And yet its absence had niggled at her all morning, almost seeming to say – and at this point she knew she was overreacting – that this would be the first of many things that would go wrong.
James sat on a rattan sofa and watched the fountain. ‘Do you know what my gran used to do?’ he asked. ‘If something went missing she’d get a pin and stick it in a cushion or something and shout out “I pin the devil” – and, it’s weird, but it worked every time.’
Laska snorted. ‘Child sacrifice and voodoo are next on my list.’
‘Always thought it was a bit odd myself. Poor old God gets the blame for every hurricane and famine, but what’s the Devil guilty of? Hiding last week’s Radio Times and Gran’s hair rollers.’
Laska looked at James closely, who seemed very relaxed and comfortable on the chair. Usually, when he was anywhere near her, he was like some sort of frightened animal, always glancing around to make sure they weren’t being watched and bounding off into the distance at the slightest opportunity.
‘Haven’t you got a job to do?’ she asked – and, as always, it came out more savagely then she’d intended.
‘Ah, I’m running errands for one of the doctors at the moment,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a message for you. Now, I happen to know where you tend to come at this time of day – but I can quite legitimately say I was searching for you.’
‘What message?’
James wasn’t really listening. ‘I don’t know about you, but I reckon that Dr Smith’s up to something. Him, and those so-called researchers of his. They’re always whispering and flashing each other meaningful glances.’
‘The message, James,’ said Laska.
‘Dr Smith wants to see