Doctor Who_ Warlock - Andrew Cartmel [120]
Pam spooned coffee into her cup with trembling hands. Then she went back to the bench and took a pair of heavy animal handling gloves out of a drawer. She kept an eye on the cages as she slipped them on, her hands gradually steadying.
‘Now, if my theory is correct, three human minds have found their way into animal bodies.’ She flexed her fingers in the heavy blue gloves and turned to the cages. ‘And yet there are five of you. Which means that there is a forty per cent chance that I am about to begin experimenting on an ordinary animal. A forty per cent chance that you humans will survive the first test procedure.’ Pam smiled a thin smile. ‘An interesting notion, isn’t it?’
Then she opened one of the cages, took out an animal and set to work.
* * *
Chapter 28
Creed walked through the beaded curtain that separated the bathroom from the small bedroom. There was a faded rug on the green linoleum floor, a battered pine dresser, two mismatched chairs and the sagging double bed with its fake brass frame.
The room had been rented to him by a Cypriot couple who had been eating supper in the back room and watching some Euro‐soap on the TV when he arrived. Their tiny stucco‐fronted establishment was located three streets across from the patch of waste ground with the statue. It was the nearest hotel, and that was its only attraction.
As soon as he received Justine’s message Creed had run out of the restaurant looking for her. He was much too late. She had already found a passing taxi and vanished.
Creed had wondered for a moment where Justine had got the money, but there had been plenty of opportunities for her to pocket some when they were shopping.
He’d gone back inside Dewer’s and settled his bill, the red‐haired waitress flashing him a look of sympathy, and then walked slowly back to his Porsche in the Mall. There was no urgency now because he had no idea where to go.
Operating on instinct he’d driven north again, getting onto the Euston road and heading for Marylebone. Navigating mostly by memory he eventually returned to the Bayswater street corner with its statue and convent.
Truth to tell, it was the only place he knew in London.
But the street had been quiet and empty, the only sign of life a lone cat prowling through the long grass on the patch of waste ground. At that point he’d simply given up, parked the car in a cobbled mews and checked into the nearest fleabag hotel.
Now Creed wandered to the window of his third‐floor room and forced it slowly open, decades of sloppily applied paint shrieking in protest. He wedged it in place and leaned out to breathe the cool night air, staring at the rooftops of London. Justine was still out there somewhere.
If he didn’t find her the whole mission was over and it would be his fault. Creed tried to decide how he felt about that. It would mean dismissal from IDEA and he might even get kicked off the force. He couldn’t begin to imagine what life would be like without his job. He doubted that he would last long.
In an odd way, staying on the police force had seemed to keep Anna alive. Or at least, prevent her death from becoming absolute and final. If he had to quit they might as well zip him up in a body bag with her.
‘That’s a healthy attitude,’ Creed said, speaking aloud in the empty room and smiling for the first time since Justine had escaped.
He went over to the bed