Doctor Who_ Warlock - Andrew Cartmel [130]
He had been absolutely certain, but that didn’t mean anything. The drug was affecting his mind. Warlock had led him here. Creed felt suddenly angry at the drug, as if it was a person that had let him down.
Justine’s life was in danger and here he was, wasting time, lost in a hallucination about his dead girlfriend.
The woman was near enough for him to touch now. She had her back to him and all he had to do was reach out a hand and put it on her small shoulder. He could turn her around and look in her face and see if she was Anna.
Instead Creed made himself turn away. He didn’t need to see her face. He already knew the truth. Anna was dead. He was striding out of the back room, heading for the brightly lit front of the café, when he saw the jacket.
The leather jacket was draped over the back of a chair in a dark corner booth. Creed recognised it. He ought to. He had paid enough money for it, in a boutique in Floral Street only a few hours earlier. It was the jacket he’d bought for Justine.
Creed slid into the booth opposite the chair with the jacket draped on it. There was a fresh cup of coffee on the table and a newly opened pack of cigarettes. Whoever was sitting here was coming back.
As he sat waiting, Creed saw a short, middle‐aged woman walk past, carrying a piece of cake balanced on a plate. She had the healthy ruddy complexion of an outdoor enthusiast who’d just been for a bracing walk and she looked like someone’s energetic and sexless maiden aunt. She walked with a certain military briskness. It was the woman he’d mistaken for Anna.
Creed smiled as he watched her pass, the resemblance evaporating the more he saw of her. The woman was sitting down at a table nearby but Creed lost track of her now.
Because the owner of the jacket was back.
A teenage Japanese girl sat down on the chair opposite Creed. She hardly glanced at him as she pushed her arms into the sleeves of the leather jacket. She shrugged the heavy jacket on over her shoulders and began scooping up her cigarettes and coffee cup. Finally she looked at Creed.
‘Excuse me, but I prefer to sit alone. I think I’ll change tables.’ She smiled at Creed, a glowing, insincere smile on her beautiful doll‐like face.
‘Don’t go,’ said Creed. ‘I really like your jacket.’
The Japanese girl froze in the act of rising from the chair.
‘Thank you,’ she said. Then quickly, ‘Excuse me. I must –’
‘My friend has one just like it.’
The girl beamed at him, zipping the jacket shut. ‘Oh, there are many in this style,’ she said.
Creed reached over and tugged gently at a plastic tag dangling from the elbow of the jacket. It was a security tag embossed with the logo of the Floral Street shop. ‘Not with the price still on it,’ he said. Then he jerked hard on the tag, pulling the Japanese girl back down into the chair opposite him. He grinned at her.
‘I found this jacket –’ said the girl quickly.
‘No you didn’t. You got it off Justine and you know where she is. Now you’re going to take me to her.’
The girl suddenly reached into the inside pocket of the jacket. But just as quickly Creed leaned across the table towards her, both his hands out of sight underneath it. He spoke quietly, confidentially.
‘That cold piece of metal you feel on your right leg is the barrel of a stripped‐down ten‐gauge shotgun. You try anything and all you’ll have left below your knee is a bloody stump.’
The Japanese girl instantly stopped moving and Creed smiled across the table at her. Then, at the edge of his vision he saw a flicker of movement and a voice spoke in his ear.
‘That’s rather an ungallant thing to say.’
The voice came with a ticklish sensation of someone breathing on his neck. The breath was warm and smelled of gin. Creed turned and looked into the face of the short woman. The ruddy‐faced gym teacher. She was holding her plate, her piece of cake