Doctor Who_ Warchild - Andrew Cartmel [128]
Ricky went out through the revolving doors into the street.
They were waiting for him.
Chapter 35
‘Your daddy got stuck in this elevator one Christmas. Just before our office party. Bet you didn’t know that.’
‘No,’ said Eve McIlveen dutifully.
Grown-ups always liked it when you put that dutiful tone in your voice. They didn’t seem able to see through the transparent insincerity. Eve knew that sort of behaviour would never fool another child. In the complex and dangerous world of childhood Eve had adapted swiftly. ‘I didn’t know that,’ she said, making her eyes wide.
The man called Buddy Stanmer grinned with satisfaction.
He held Eve’s tiny four-year-old hand in his powerful hairy fist. Eve was in awe of the man’s great size and his almost animal-like hairiness.
She remembered the way he had looked when she met him, fierce and sweating and bulging with muscle. At the gym. And then he had hit her father in the arm and her father had grabbed Stanmer’s hand and made him go pale with pain. Eve had felt a fierce surge of satisfaction in her tiny heart when her daddy had done that to the man. He was a nasty man. He’d been trying to bully her daddy.
‘Why did you bring me here?’ she demanded hotly. She looked up at Stanmer. The big man shrugged.
‘It’s like this,’ he said. ‘Because there are some people after Creed. I mean after your dad. Think of them as the bad guys.’ Stanmer squeezed Eve’s fist in one of his big hands.
He was holding his other hand at a funny angle, out of Eve’s sight. He was holding something in that hand and he didn’t want her to see it.
Eve tried to see what was in his hand, craning her head around. But then Stanmer looked down at her and she had to pretend not to be looking.
‘And I’m one of the good guys,’ he said. ‘I’ve rescued you.
You’ve been rescued by the good guys.’ He looked down at her and smiled, but there was something forced and false about that smile.
‘Why?’ said Eve to the man who stood so tensely beside her.
‘Because we’re, well, some bad guys are angry at your daddy. And we’re afraid that someone might want to hurt his little girl.’
There was silence in the elevator. It was a long uncomfortable silence. Finally, to break it, Eve decided to restart the conversation. Mr Stanmer obviously wasn’t going to say anything so it was up to her to put him at his ease. He seemed very uncomfortable with her. Maybe he wasn’t used to kids.
‘Is that why you came to get me? Is that why you came into my house without anyone hearing and took me away?’
‘That’s right, baby. We did it to protect you. We had to get you out of there before the sh—’ The man stopped himself before he said the naughty word, and looked all embarrassed, the way that grown-ups always did. ‘Before the doodoo hit the fan,’ he finished lamely. ‘I had to bring you back here to your daddy’s office building. So you’ll be safe.’
‘But why are we going up in this elevator?’
The man called Stanmer suddenly wouldn’t meet her gaze. He looked up, instead, at the numbers flashing by.
‘Like I said, baby, so you’ll be safe. I’m going to put you somewhere very safe.’
Stanmer finally relaxed his hand so that Eve could see what he was holding. It was a gun of course. Like the one her daddy had. Once, Ricky had sneaked it out of the bedroom and shown it to her and Cynthia. A blunt ugly metal thing that grown-ups used to kill each other.
‘Why are we going up?’ said Eve, with a sudden new urgency in her voice.
Buddy Stanmer sighed with exasperation. ‘I told you,’ he said.
‘But if we go up in this elevator then the bad thing will happen.’
‘Nothing bad’s going to happen, honey.’
‘Yes it is,’ said Eve adamantly. ‘If we go up there then the bad thing will happen.’
‘Stop worrying. We’re almost there. Hey!’ Stanmer quickly reached out and grabbed Eve’s hand. The little girl was standing up on tiptoe, straining desperately upwards, trying to reach the control panel. Stanmer wrenched her hand back with more force than was necessary.
Eve looked up at him with tearful eyes. ‘Please. I know something bad is going to happen.