Doctor Who: Rags (9 page)

‘I want you to follow this tour wherever it may go. I have a feeling your young friends won’t want to miss out on anything either. And I’m sure the tour has a destination of some sort or other, just as I’m sure it’s an important one. I need you to stick close and find out what it is. But remember one thing...’ He leant closer, and his eyes were deadly serious. ‘Whatever you do, stay away from that truck.’ He gestured briefly out across the moor to where the metal vehicle waited, apart from the encampment like a filthy outcast. ‘And if you discover anything unusual, let the Brigadier know at once.’

He stood up. Was that it? Was he just going to leave her here with near strangers and no explanation? But instead of questioning him further, she merely nodded. She felt lonely and excited at the same time. Something was definitely... happening...

The Doctor smiled fondly at her. ‘Well goodbye, Jo. I’ll see you at the other side.’ And he was gone.

The other side?The other side of what? She realised Sin was staring at her intently, still smiling that fragile, offbeat smile. The other side of the tour of course, the eyes seemed to be telling her.

Come along, itsgonna be one hell of a time...

Jeremy Willis flicked the channel button on his remote and the news footage of the Oblong Box was immediately replaced by Terry Wogan hosting a game show. He hit the off-button angrily.

‘Can’t we watch Blankety-Blank?’ Celia whined, as he’d 64

expected her to. He ignored her and reached for the telephone beside the leather settee.

He was a tall thin man, impeccably dressed, even now while he was supposedly relaxing. The open top button and the absence of a tie were the only signs that marked him out as enjoying leisure time. He was even still wearing his jacket. His hair was sliced neatly by a conservative side-parting, his tidy moustache was only slightly touched with grey. His companion was big-breasted, brunette and eighteen years old. She looked well under half the age of the proud but haughty-looking woman in the photograph tilted next to the phone that Willis was now using.

Willis was decidedly not pleased with the man on the other end of the line. When Celia’s hand slipped suggestively on to his knee he transferred that ire to her. ‘Will you leave me alone for just a moment?’ he barked. She pulled away and moved across the settee, a dumb look of hurt on her callow features. ‘No, I mean really leave me alone. This is an important call. Go and talk to the neighbours for five minutes.’ He was slipping. He had become so inured to her lack of character that he’d almost forgotten she was there at all. He should be more careful, especially when talking to the man who was on the line right now.

‘We don’t have any neighbours,’ Celia whined. That was certainly true: the nearest house was half a mile down the road.

‘Well, go out and talk to the bloody squirrels then; they might enjoy your conversational skills.’

Celia got up, close to tears, and left the room. When he was sure she was out of earshot he returned his attention to the man on the phone.

‘Listen: if you want the princess then you’re going to have to work a lot harder for your money. Perhaps I should have some escaped lunatics on my payroll, they seem to be doing a better job than you at kicking up a stink.’

He listened for a moment, then cut in abruptly: ‘I don’t want to hear your excuses. I just want some results.’ He dropped the receiver in its cradle and picked up the remote thoughtfully.

65

‘Blankety-Blank’s on, darling,’ he called and hit the on-button.

Of course, when Jimmy heard the encampment was preparing to follow the cattle truck on the next leg of its tour, he was the first to suggest they should also follow it. Sin leapt at the idea eagerly.

Rod leant against Jimmy’s camper van, saying nothing. Nick looked at Jo, who had joined them an hour before.

‘What do you think?’

‘What are you asking her for?’ Sin blurted, jumping down from her seat on the camper’s step.

‘I’m asking everyone.’ Nick touched Sin’s shoulder placatingly.

She shook him off, still glaring at Jo.

Jo attempted a smile. ‘I really don’t mind,’ she stammered. ‘But I think it might be fun.’

Nick walked away from the van, smoking a cigarette. The Damned’s latest album was playing on the van’s dashboard stereo: their best one yet, according to Jimmy. The music was fresh, fast and exciting; it smacked of spring-sunshine anarchy and drunken chaos. Yet the song playing now seemed like a warning - ‘I Just Can’t Be Happy Today’.Why did Nick feel he should heed it?

Wasn’t that a stupid question, anyway? Of course he should be careful about what they did next. Three more people had just been murdered. And now that the band were tucked away again in their filthy truck, like children’s toys discarded for the day, he had lost some of the wild enthusiasm of the previous night. He looked at Sin. She looked sexier than he’d ever seen her: pert, sensuous, lascivious even. As if the events of the last few days had broken her free of her previous uptight inhibitions.

The priests hang on hooks; the radio’s on ice, the telly’s been banned. The army’s in power; the Devil commands!

‘I say we go,’ Jimmy shouted over Dave Vanian’s croak.

All around them, the dilapidated vehicles that had arrived throughout the night and much of the day were grumbling into life. The cattle truck had crawled on to the road, where it lurked, engine idling, waiting.

66

Waiting for them, Nick knew.

‘Let’s go then,’ he said, and flicked his cigarette away.

Nobody noticed Charmagne as she wandered among the crowd of people who were now breaking camp and spilling into whatever vehicles would accept them. Why should they? Even though she didn’t exactly look part of the scene with her refined features and clean blonde hair, she wasn’t making any undue efforts to draw attention to herself. The only person she’d spoken to was Farris, the shaken landlord of the Oblong Box, and he’d told her all she needed to know. She didn’t need to bother any of the punks and hippies and general disenchanted youth who clung to the pub as if they were searching for some kind of meaning. She watched as the encampment broke up, turning into a convoy, and realised with a shock that she was shaking. Not with fear, but with the purest excitement she had ever known.

It was only three in the afternoon, yet Kane was already in the gutter.

He woke up with the sun blazing on his face and rolled on to his side, groaning. A beer can crumpled under his weight. He shoved it away, causing a hollow rattle like metal bones.

He sat up. He was still too pissed to have cultivated a hangover.

The church tower swung into his line of vision, rocking like a fat mast. He tried to focus on it, wondering what he was doing lying outside the churchyard. Ten pence rolled out of his pocket as he struggled to his feet, but nothing more. He looked at the squashed litter of cans around where he had crashed and grinned ruefully.

‘Sod ‘em,’ he said to no one in particular. ‘Sod ‘em all.’ He stumbled towards the gate that led into the small village churchyard. If they wanted to treat him like the scourge of Cirbury, he’d bloody give ‘em the real thing... He picked the grave with the biggest bunch of flowers nestling on top of its mound and unzipped. He etched a pattern of piss over the engraving on the headstone, sniggering as he did so. His snigger died when 67

Simon King’s face popped into his head for no good reason whatsoever. His stream of urine died too, choked by memories.

Worms. Worms and slugs and spiders.

He walked away from the desecrated grave, fumbling for cigarettes in his denim-jacket pockets and finding none. He swore.

He could still taste the worms.

He could still feel the weight of Simon’s gang holding him down in the school playing-field on a warm spring afternoon very much like this one. The other boys had marvelled at Simon’s inventiveness, but then all boys loved cruelty.

Slugs.

In his mouth, bitter and slimy on his tongue.

When he had cried himself to silence, choking on his own vomit and a mouthful of wriggling things, the boys had begun to lose the taste for their work. Simon had spurred them on. He could do that easily, with the power he - and his family - wielded over the village. The boys’ dads liked their labourer jobs, didn’t they?

Wouldn’t want to lose them. After all, Simon’s father owned the biggest land development company in Wiltshire.

Kane stooped and picked up a stone vase laden with tulips. He aimed it at the nearest stained-glass window, then stopped when he saw the cleaning lady watching him from the church door. She was smiling almost conspiratorially. He dropped the urn.

But he didn’t forget the sensation of spiders crawling across his tongue. Of worms slipping between his lips, fed from a filthy jar by the hands of a vicious fourteen-year-old.

All the way back to UNIT HQ, the Doctor worried about whether he had done the right thing. The sensor, back in its sheath in Bessie’s dashboard, was silent now, at peace.

As he opened the door to the Brigadier’s office the Doctor had almost made up his mind to ask his old friend to authorise a ban on the tour, to impound the cattle truck, like the glorified policeman that he was. But one look at the Brigadier’s 68

complacent air of self-importance brought him up short. He didn’t know why what he saw should reaffirm his initial conviction that the tour should be allowed a free head of steam, but somehow it did.

The Brigadier cocked an eyebrow at him from behind his desk.

A mug of coffee steamed in the sunlight from the window. Official files were positioned neatly next to the fountain pen which was set down exactly parallel to the blotter pad. It was a picture of order and convention.

‘Dartmoor, Doctor,’ the Brigadier said gravely. It wasn’t quite a question, more an understated demand for some kind of report or explanation. It could remain understated as far as the Doctor was concerned; understated to the point of being completely ignorable. However, he was far too concerned about recent events to be irritated.

‘I need your best man, Brigadier,’ the Doctor said, leaning over the desk and confronting the military man in the no-nonsense fashion he always adopted when he wanted to cut through small talk and other nonessentials.

The Brigadier sat back, lifting the mug to his lips. He was waiting for the Doctor to elaborate. And for once UNIT’s scientific adviser was happy to oblige.

‘There’s something very wrong afoot in the Southwest, Brigadier. Something I can’t yet identify or understand, which is why I’ve returned here. I’m going to need complete peace and quiet while I do a detailed analysis on some readings I’ve received

- and that means under no circumstances am I to be disturbed...’

He gave the Brigadier a meaningful look. ‘Frankly, it’s going to take all the facilities my lab has to offer. But in the meantime, I need your help.’

‘And Miss Grant?’ The Brigadier had an irritating knack of always putting his finger clumsily but unerringly on the most sensitive area. It was one of his more endearing traits. ‘I couldn’t help noticing you arrived alone.’

The Doctor straightened up defensively. ‘Yes, well, that’s exactly 69

why I need your assistance. You’ve no doubt heard about the large gathering in Dartmoor associated with the murders? I’ve left Jo there to keep an eye on things... but well, I’m a little concerned.’

‘Quite rightly so, Doctor.’

The Doctor gave him a guilty frown. ‘I’d like you to send someone else there to keep an eye on her. An undercover agent, if you like. Someone who can slip into the crowd incognito, without arousing suspicion, who can also protect Jo from any possible danger.’

The Brigadier looked at him quizzically. ‘You want one of my men to pretend to be a long-haired hippie?’

The Doctor frowned even more deeply, and his voice was angry.

‘Yes, that’s exactly what I want, Brigadier. Now, do you think you are capable of providing me with one?’

Sin.

Sin Yen.

Sin!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nick woke. And Sin was still there. She was sitting next to him on the seat of Jimmy’s camper, with Jo behind and Rod across the narrow aisle. The Dead Boys were blaring from the stereo.

Perhaps that had woken him, and not the fact that he was screaming Sin’s name. Apparently he hadn’t made a sound, because nobody was looking at him. Outside it was dark and misty. The camper had been following the other vehicles for three hours. The convoy was moving very slowly, creeping through the countryside like a battered metal snake. They had left Dartmoor behind and were winding through north Devon. Just after the fog had come down to seal the convoy off from the rest of the world, Nick had fallen asleep.

In his dream, Sin had gone. She had turned cold and hard, like a woman made out of a gravestone, and then she was gone.

And then she was dead.

He put a hand on her knee and she turned to him, smoking a joint, her unfathomable black eyes that could sometimes show 70

such passion now just empty holes. He gave her a smile to coax a response from her and she didn’t return it. Then part of his dream had come true already.