Doctor Who_ Warlock - Andrew Cartmel [16]
‘What’s wrong with tomatoes?’ said Miss Winterhill.
‘They’re in the deadly nightshade family, right?’ said Larner. ‘Packed with natural toxins.’
‘That’s why we got yours with extra topping,’ said the older Mayan, chopping a piece of pizza with a fork and shovelling it into his mouth.
‘Look, how long do we have to hang around here?’ said Creed. The sudden sharpness of sounds and smells in the room was beginning to bug him. His own piece of pizza was lying untouched on its plate. Creed thought it looked like something left over from the autopsy of an alien life‐form.
He was coming down from the coke and the energy flowing between him and the hooker was beginning to make him feel fretful and nervous in a way he didn’t care to identify. Creed was getting twitchy.
Larner, on the other hand, was now relaxed and expansive, leaning forward to wolf down his wedge of pizza, consuming it hungrily with no further complaints and no apparent sense of irony. It was as if he and Creed had abruptly swapped attitudes.
Creed had finished the cava without noticing he’d drained his glass. Now he was restlessly lifting the beer bottles off the table as if they were tall glass chess pieces, looking for residue to swill. As if picking up on his nervousness, the hooker got up and went out of the room.
Creed watched his hands shake as he searched through the beer bottles. Things were beginning to move too quickly for him. A flood of sense impressions were racing through his mind, faster than he could analyse. Sounds echoed metallically in the room. Everyone’s movements seemed a little jerky. And there was that all‐pervading subtle liquorice smell.
Now the small room seemed hotter than before. Creed was sweating profusely. So was everyone else. The room was heavy with the various smells of their aftershave and perfume. But, over all, the liquorice smell. Creed’s heart was racing. Maybe he was doing too many drugs of too many different kinds.
He knew just what he needed. He needed to calm himself down. Creed reached for the boo and a cigarette lighter. That would do the trick. As he inhaled the resinous smoke he suddenly realized that he wasn’t sure whether he had spoken a moment ago, or whether he’d just imagined it. ‘When is this stuff going to arrive?’ he said.
‘Maybe it arrived just now,’ said Larner. ‘A little delivery with the pizza man. Very tricky.’
‘No, it arrived a couple of hours ago.’
There was suddenly silence in the room and everyone looked at the older Mayan.
‘Julie here brought it,’ he said, grinning, drawing his girlfriend to him. He was making a big show of kissing her when the hooker came back through from the kitchen, carrying two bottles of beer and a church key bottle opener. She timed her arrival so that she had to brush past the couple and break up their big romantic clinch. Neatly planned, thought Creed.
‘’Scuse me,’ said the hooker, crossing the room and sitting down on the coffee table again near Creed, her knees touching his. She popped both the beers and handed one to him. The slender glass of the bottle was cool in his hand. They sipped the beers, relaxed and easy. Larner and Miss Winterhill, on the other hand, were suddenly tensed up again. It was as if there was a wave of anxiety that was circulating in the room, visiting each of them in turn.
Larner was setting his pizza aside and wiping his mouth with the back of a clenched fist. You could see he was getting angry. ‘You mean to say you’ve been keeping us waiting and the merchandise has been here all this time?’
‘Security,’ said the younger Mayan.
‘And we’re going to keep you waiting some more,’ said his brother. He led his girlfriend to the door of the apartment and kissed her again. The girl went out and he turned back to face the people in the room.
‘I’ve got the merchandise all right,’ he said. ‘But I’m not even showing it to you until Julie phones and tells us she got out of here without being picked up by the police.’
‘Christ,’ said Larner, looking at his watch, a vintage platinum Omega. ‘I’m supposed to be taking the