Doctor Who_ Warlock - Andrew Cartmel [3]
She took one of the delicatessen bags out and looked inside. It contained small dark brown bottles sealed with rubber stoppers. Each bottle had a small label with a skull and crossbones neatly printed on it. ‘Oh, great,’ said Ace, her stomach rumbling. But the second bag contained croissants, fresh and golden with delicately flaking pastry. She put three of the plumpest ones on a baking sheet. That was when she found the missing box of electrical components. Luckily she looked in the oven before she switched it on. The box had been hastily stuffed in there by someone too lazy to find a proper place for it. Too lazy or in too much of a hurry, Ace thought.
She put the box on the window‐sill in the space where the kettle had been, resisting the impulse to play with the glass shapes.
She was carrying her coffee and croissants through to the breakfast room when the alarm went off.
The sideboard in the breakfast room had a scale model of the kind architects use. It featured a miniature of the house and grounds made of balsa wood and clay, carefully painted. An electrical cable snaked away from the model into a wall socket. Several strings of Christmas tree lights had been glued to the model and wired to the alarm system. Now a blue bulb was flashing on and off by the gate on Allen Road.
That was where the intruders were trying to break in.
Ace ran through to the sitting room, leaving her coffee and croissants to get cold. The black kimono fell open, flapping around her naked legs as she ran to the television set that sat on a three‐legged ebony table in the middle of the threadbare Persian carpet.
She switched the TV on and punched zero, a channel dedicated to the security cameras that ringed the estate. Or at least it was supposed to be. The TV hummed to life, but instead of seeing a view from the camera nearest to the alarm site Ace found herself watching a Ren and Stimpy cartoon being broadcast from Luxembourg, with subtitles in French and German. It was the one where Ren has a toothache. Or is it Stimpy?
Ace cursed. Someone was always messing with the defence system. She ran upstairs. The alarm was still sounding, a shrill jangling of electric bells echoing from the kitchen behind her.
In her bedroom Ace pulled on a pair of jeans, tucking the black kimono in like a shirt, jammed her bare feet into a battered old pair of DMs and pushed the gun into the waist of her white cotton knickers.
As she raced out of the front door and across the lawn she realized the small ginger cat was trotting through the long grass, following her like a dog.
‘Go away,’ she hissed, ‘this could be messy.’ But the cat ignored the warning.
Chick liked Ace, liked the way she moved. Her posture promised excitement and he was eager to see what form that excitement might take.
He was a small, limber cat with precise, delicate movements, loping excitedly through the wild garden, matching Ace’s pace as she passed the wrecked Victorian greenhouse. Then past the apple tree which still showed the scars of an incident years ago when a car had exploded in the garden.
Now they were nearing the garage and the driveway that led down to the gate. In the centre of the drive was an island of lawn with a bed of tulips gone wild among the thick long grass.
Chick hurried through the rich green growth, the grass pleasantly damp and cool as it rubbed against his slim furred ribs. He plunged through the tulips, the fat white flowers shaking as he parted their stems. Ace was on the other side of the flower‐bed, standing beside the fountain.
The fountain was a tall stone structure which had once been bright and cleanly whitewashed. Now mossy green growth encroached on it. Chick watched as Ace paused by the dry fountain. He jumped up onto the rim of the structure then hopped into the broad empty bed of it. He picked his way carefully among the crumpled beer cans.
The cans, the discarded syringes and the graffiti which spattered the fountain were reminders of the last time intruders had got into the grounds.
Ace had been prepared to chase