Doctor Who_ Warchild - Andrew Cartmel [32]
Occasionally he and Justine needed this. They needed to blow off steam. And she always loved it. Creed imagined the delight he’d see on her face when he suggested it.
Just then Justine finished her beer and suddenly scooped up the hose again. She pounced. Ricky and his friends hollered as Justine nailed them with the hose, a spray of water refracting in a rainbow over her head. Creed heard her laughter over the laughter of the kids, and he quickened his pace.
Something in Ricky’s manner changed. His friends suddenly stopped running around the car. They’d sensed Creed’s arrival. Still holding the dribbling hose, Justine was chuckling but she stopped when she saw Creed.
She turned and set the hose down, but in the instant before she turned away Creed caught a hot flash of rage from her eyes.
He just got that one look but it was enough.
Suddenly he knew that sex was the last thing Justine had in mind for him this evening.
Chapter 12
Jessica flinched at a sudden, small sound. She looked at the bedroom door, but it was solid and safely shut. Scooter was outside but he couldn’t get in. She was safe.
Then the sound came again and Jessica realized that it wasn’t the dog. It couldn’t be. It hadn’t come from the door at all. It had come from the window.
The sound came a third time. A delicate clattering.
Jessica went to the window and looked down. There in the moonlit garden, like a figure in a dream, stood Mrs Woodcott clutching an improbably large and ugly handbag in one hand.
She had a pebble in her other hand, ready to throw at the window, but when she saw Jessica she let it drop back on to the dark lawn.
‘Hello, dear,’ she called up in a loud whisper. ‘Are you all right?’
‘What are you doing here?’ said Jessica. Her voice sounded hoarse and childish, and quite strange even to herself.
‘Well, I turned on the car radio as soon as you got out.
Official radio, special frequency to keep us updated about the emergency, dear,’ Mrs Woodcott explained. ‘I’d hardly driven any distance at all when I heard an emergency call being patched through. It took me a minute, but I worked out it was the address I’d just left. It was you.’
Jessica heard a quizzical guttural sound outside the door. With his keen ears Scooter had heard the old woman’s voice.
‘Mrs Woodcott-’ said Jessica.
‘They were patching you through to the armoured car units.’
‘The French windows,’ said Jessica desperately. She could hear Scooter pounding down the stairs.
Mrs Woodcott smiled up at her, not listening, intent on finishing her anecdote. Scooter would be down the stairs now. ‘But they said anyone in the vicinity should help. And I was very much in the vicinity.’
‘Close the French windows!’ said Jessica. Nightmarishly, her voice seemed to have sunk to a hoarse whisper. Could Mrs Woodcott hear her? Scooter would be down the stairs and halfway across the sitting room by now. Halfway to the French windows, sharp teeth ready.
‘What’s that?’
Halfway to Mrs Woodcott.
‘Close the French windows.’ Jessica was leaning out of the window. She was straining but her voice had sunk to a harsh, barely audible mutter.
‘The French what, dear? Oh look, the doggy’s coming!’
Mrs Woodcott stepped towards the house. She reached into the open French window, grabbed the nearest glass panel and slid it briskly.
Jessica could hear the whisper of the French windows sliding neatly shut below her, followed immediately by the sound of Scooter’s blunt skull bouncing off the reinforced, burglar-proof glass.
This painful sound was followed by a long liquid growl of rage and frustration.
‘Not a very nice doggy, though,’ said Mrs Woodcott, peering through the glass, shaking her finger. She leant forward, wagging her finger in a reprimand at the snarling muzzle hovering just beyond the glass. ‘Until your manners improve you can just stay in the sitting room.’ Jessica could hear the insane snarling as Scooter began butting the glass repeatedly, trying to get at Mrs Woodcott.
She didn’t seem at all worried.