Doctor Who_ Warlock - Andrew Cartmel [29]
‘How do you propose to do that?’ said Larner.
‘Warlock will do the job for us,’ said the older Mayan.
‘What?’ said Larner. ‘You’re going to give him an overdose?’
‘No. Don’t be so unimaginative,’ said the Mayan. ‘We’re going to make him fall off the edge of the world.’
* * *
Chapter 5
Jack came back from the bar carrying two dark pints of beer and, delicately balanced between them, a fresh gin and tonic for Ace.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘This is all very convivial.’
‘You bet.’
‘Convivial but time‐consuming. I thought we had business.’
‘Just a quick drink and then we’ll set off.’ Jack sat down in the dark booth opposite them. ‘The labs are only a short drive from here. Our act of urban terrorism can wait.’
‘I thought you said it was just a reconnaissance mission.’
‘Whatever.’ Jack sipped from his pint and set it down on the table, leaving a pale patch of beer froth clinging to his scraggy red beard.
‘You’re saving some for later,’ said Shell. Jack immediately rubbed his face with the sleeve of his shirt, looking sheepish, and she helped him. For an instant the pair seemed to Ace like an old married couple, with their own deeply engraved habits and rituals.
But then Jack grinned and the impression passed; he was too wicked‐eyed and mischievous to imagine as an old man. Or a married one. His eyes gleamed at her. ‘Do you know how Shell and I first met?’
‘Do you always have to tell everyone?’ Shell had to shout to make herself heard. The pub was packed and noisy.
Ace approved of the place. Located on a narrow cobbled street near the Westgate in Canterbury, it was small, dark and smoky, with a Chinese paper dragon stretched across the ceiling and Lou Reed strumming resonantly on the juke box.
A crowd of students jostled at the bar and monopolized the dartboard. One of them had a skinny dog with a piece of string attached to its collar sitting obediently by the brass footrail. Ace wondered if Jack and Shell had remembered to leave the windows open in the Volkswagen so that Sheba would be all right.
The glossy black dog was on heat and they’d decided it was wisest to let her stay in the van. Ace had opened the roof hatch on her own Mazda and left Chick curled comfortably on the back seat. Ace had reached down to stroke him before she locked up the car and the small cat had responded to her caress with a lazy, negligent purr.
‘You’re getting repetitious,’ Shell was saying to Jack.
‘You can say that again.’ Jack leaned across the pub table towards Ace. ‘I’ll tell you the story anyway. Shell was working as a checkout girl. At Marks and Sparks here in Canterbury, if you can credit it. She was a respectable girl in those days. Pushing barcodes across the scanner and wearing her little M&S pinafore.’
‘I’m surprised they let you work there with your tattoos.’ said Ace.
‘They didn’t know I had them.’ Shell rubbed her hands across her face, stretching the skin so the brightly coloured patterns distorted across her broad cheekbones. The dog, the cat, the tiny phoenix and the butterfly all stretched and resumed their contours under her massaging fingers. ‘In those days I only had them on my body,’ said Shell.
‘And what a body it was,’ said Jack. ‘I mean is,’ he hastily corrected himself, and Ace stifled a smile.
‘There were tattoos all over my body,’ said Shell. ‘But they stopped above the wrist and below the neck.’
‘The soul of discretion. Anyhow, there she was working in Marks and Spencer, just up the road from here, and one day I went in to buy something. I forget what.’
‘Italian bread with herbs,’ said Shell. ‘And some Brie and a bottle of burgundy.’
She looked up from under lowered eyelids, her expression almost shy, gazing across the table at Jack.
‘Stop it, you’re making me hungry.’ He was staring back at her, trying not to smile, almost glowing with pleasure. Ace realized with some surprise that under all the bickering these two were in love.
‘So anyway, I went up to the till with my purchases, not even noticing who was on it. And it turns out to be this spaced‐out hippy chick. Oh no, I’m thinking,