Doctor Who_ Warlock - Andrew Cartmel [89]
‘I didn’t want to say anything because it would just worry you. It worries me. Ace has disappeared. I’m afraid that something might have happened to her.’
‘How long has she been gone?’
‘Since the night when I last spoke to you in New York. Like you, she couldn’t endure simply waiting. She went out and found something to occupy herself with. And now I don’t know where she is.’
‘Oh come on, Ace can take care of herself.’
‘I sincerely hope so. But I have a bad feeling about it.’
Benny couldn’t remember ever seeing the Doctor like this before. Angry or worried, but never displaying this sort of fatalistic foreboding. She moved closer to the Doctor to see if she could small the liquorice fragrance of the tablet. Perhaps just the smell of warlock was enough to affect someone’s mind. Even the Doctor’s. Benny had acquired a healthy respect for the drug. But even so, she wouldn’t say no if the Doctor changed his mind and asked her to take the pill. She imagined swallowing it. Feeling that first strange rush as the warlock took effect –
‘I feel that some very unhappy things are about to happen.’ The Doctor’s voice broke in on her thoughts. He stared bleakly up at Benny. His unnervingly bright eyes might have belonged to a fierce old man or a prematurely disillusioned child.
Benny smelled the liquorice smell rising strongly around him, obliterating the damp morning smells of the garden. She decided to change the subject. ‘You scared the life out of me in New York, you know.’ She smiled at the memory. ‘When you sent me that message in the laboratory.’
‘What message?’ said the Doctor. But suddenly he was on his feet, knocking the canvas chair over as he ran for the garden gate.
‘What is it?’
The Doctor gestured for silence as Benny ran up beside him. Then she heard it. The scraping of a garage door swinging open. Followed almost immediately by the gunning of an engine and the squeal of tyres.
They ran around to the front of the house in time to see the car pulling away. As it disappeared around the first corner Benny caught a glimpse of a man and a woman sitting in it. She turned back to the Doctor who was looking at the empty garage. The door was still gaping open. He walked over towards it.
‘Was that them?’ asked Benny. ‘Was that Vincent and Justine?’
The small man said nothing. Birds had woken and begun singing in the trees all around them, as though triggered by the sudden activity. The Doctor reached up, grasped the heavy garage door and slammed it shut with echoing force.
* * *
‘Are you going to explain what’s going on?’ Justine was twisting around in the back seat, pulling on a pair of jeans.
Vincent had made her leave the house the way she was, with a bundle of clothes under her arm. He’d watched her in the rear view mirror, sucking in her belly to make the jeans fit. At two months, her pregnancy had only just begun to show as the faintest bulge. ‘Just trust me,’ he said. ‘You didn’t cut your feet, did you? On the broken glass on the stairs?’
‘You should have let me clean that up. It’s going to be a right mess by the time we get back.’
We might not be going back, thought Vincent; but he didn’t say anything.
He was north of the river now, over Wandsworth Bridge, accelerating eastwards through the thin early‐morning traffic along the embankment. Justine leaned forward so that her mouth was beside his ear. ‘Stop the car.’
‘What? Why?’
‘I want to get in the front beside you. And in my present condition I don’t feel like scrambling over the seat.’
‘Your condition my arse. We agreed you wouldn’t start using that for leverage until you were at least three months gone.’
Justine grinned. ‘But it’s so much fun.’
He drove on for a while before he found a place to pull in on the approach to Albert Bridge. But no sooner had he parked than Justine climbed out of the car and turned and walked away. For one dizzying moment the universe