Doctor Who_ Trading Futures - Lance Parkin [16]
All this wholesomeness was beginning to nag at him. He fished out the packet of nicopills, and discovered he’d already had the last one.
‘Er, miss?’ he asked the tour guide, who hurried up the coach. He’d found out on the way over from the airport that her name was Barbara Millicent Roberts, that she’d been a guide at Neverland for over a year, and discerned that he have more chance of getting a shag at a Cliff Richard concert.
‘Yes, sir?’
‘I don’t suppose there’s anywhere here where I can buy nicopills? Or ciggies? Ciggies would be better.’
She looked like he’d just asked if he could strangle her pet hamster.
‘No, sir. That would go against the whole spirit of Neverland. Before he left this Earth –’
‘Left the Earth?’ Fitz asked.
‘He now lives in a mansion in the grounds of LunarDisney, sir,’ she told him, as if explaining that the sky was blue and the sea was wet. ‘Even on Earth, the founder of Neverland never smoked or took drugs.’
‘It’s not really a drug,’ Fitz squirmed.
‘– he didn’t drink alcohol or caffeine. There’s a very strict policy of enforcing those rules throughout the whole Neverland complex,’ she completed.
She went back to the front of the coach.
Fitz wasn’t feeling very well disposed. He shook the packet, wondering if one of the nicopills had got loose.
He was surprised when a small metallic disc fell out. He turned it over in the palm of his hand. It looked for all the world like a little microphone.
Malady had given him the packet. She must have known where he was and what he was doing since he’d met her. In that time, he’d gone back to the Doctor, they’d discussed plans. She’d know all about Athens and Neverland, and the briefcase.
Best not to mention this little debacle to the Doctor, next time they met up, Fitz concluded. Least said, soonest mended.
He squished the microphone with his thumb.
* * *
Malady’s eyephones beeped to warn her that the microphone had been destroyed.
She’d always known it was going to be found, and she’d got all the information she needed, anyway. She wasn’t sure she could stand any more of Fitz humming to himself. Although she was impressed he could hum Revolution 9 – she’d have thought that was physically impossible.
Fitz stayed true to form. Seeing him at first, Malady had wondered if the bewildered expression and casual attitude was a mask, whether he was one of Cosgrove’s men. After two minutes, knowing there was probably someone following him, he’d just walked back to a couple of friends on the beach. A pretty Anglo‐Indian woman, about Malady’s age, and a slightly older man in an absurdly heavy coat.
Malady was heading for Athens, on the only scheduled flight of the day from the island. Fitz’s associates – ‘the Doctor’ and ‘Anji’ – ought to be on the plane, unless they had their own transport. She hadn’t been clear on that. The Doctor had mentioned something about ‘taking the TARDIS’, but she wasn’t familiar with the term (and it wasn’t on her database). Was that a plane, or some sort of weapon? Whatever it was, the signal had broken up for a couple of minutes, then Fitz had been in an airport. Then it hadn’t made much sense – from the things he was saying, he seemed to think he was already in America.
Fitz had struck Malady as a little confused, generally.
The Doctor and Anji, though, from what she could gather from the short time she was able to listen in to them, were operators – professional, focused, organised. Malady instinctively knew she’d have to stick close, and lie low.
The two of them weren’t on the plane. She’d checked, discreetly, first by hacking the unhackable airline security and checking the photos on the boarding passes, then with a quick physical search of the small plane, on the pretext of trying to find a glass of water.
During the flight, she’d had a call: new instructions from