Island of Death (3 page)

Her mother, the ultra-genteel daughter of a Harrogate vicar, used to be teased by her dad (Liverpool born and bred) calling her ‘the foreigner from across the border’; and her mum had responded with traditional Yorkshire aphorisms, like
Wheere theere’s moock theeres brass
! or
Niver do owt for
nowt!,
all in the broadest possible accent.

So, with her hair slicked back, a pair of outrageous horn-rimmed spectacles and her mum’s even more outrageous Yorkshire accent, Sarah had called herself Daisy Peabody -

and nearly got caught. She’d claimed that she was a champion chess-player - almost grandmaster level - on the grounds that they wouldn’t know much about it, and it would prove her ‘superlative intelligence’. But her interviewer had turned out to be a club player herself; and had only grudgingly given her the benefit of the doubt.

And all to get a sample of the happy drink.

‘I pretended to swallow it, you see, and then nipped off to the loo and spat it into an aspirin bottle. And here it is!’

Sarah looked at the white-haired figure, dapper in his velvet jacket, and felt a sensation so familiar to her when dealing with the Doctor - a sort of affectionate exasperation.

Had he even been listening?

Every so often as she had spun her tale, he had grunted.

But, at the same time, he seemed to be aiming a piece of apparatus - which looked like the inside of a doorbell connected by some sort of electronic circuit to a pocket flashlight - at a fish tank that contained a sleepy-looking goldfish.

‘Excuse me,’ he said, and disappeared inside the TARDIS, which was standing in the corner of the cluttered lab. Sarah’s affection almost extended to the old police telephone box as well. Without it (or should it be ‘without
her
’?), she’d have been stranded in medieval England, or on the planet of Parakon on the other side of the Milky Way, or... On the other hand, without the TARDIS, she wouldn’t have been in either place to begin with.

The Doctor returned with a minute silver button (or that’s what it looked like), which he carefully fitted into the middle of his lash-up.

‘Stand clear,’ he said and flicked a switch.

A swoosh, a flash, a fountain of bubbles, and the goldfish shot out of the water like a leaping dolphin.

‘Doctor!’ said Sarah. ‘Are you experimenting on that poor fish?’

‘Certainly not,’ he replied. It’s an ongoing project. Inter-species communication...’ And turning to the tank, he stuck his lips out, and wiggled them, pouting like a goldfish blowing bubbles.

What on earth?

‘What on earth are you doing now?’ said Sarah.

‘Asking him if he’s feeling better.’

The goldfish came to the front of the tank, nuzzling the glass, and waggled its tail vigorously.

‘Good,’ said the Doctor. ‘Gary’s a friend of mine,’ he went on as he started to dismantle the equipment, ‘and he was a bit under the weather. So I gave him a re-charge. A quick shot of coherent bio-energy waves. Analogous to the laser.’

‘But he looks just like an ordinary goldfish!’

‘For the very good reason that he is an ordinary goldfish.’

‘But...’

‘Well now, I suppose I’d better have a look at this photo of yours,’ said the Doctor, obviously changing the subject.

So he had been listening!

The moment she handed it to him, his whole manner changed. ‘I owe you an apology, Sarah,’ he said. ‘I thought you were indulging in the usual journalistic hyperbole.’

Cheek!

‘Do you recognise what it’s supposed to be then?’ she asked.

‘Never set eyes on the creature. Where’s that aspirin bottle?’

It was on occasions like this that Sarah had the feeling that investigative journalism was rather like trying to sprint across a soggy ploughed field in gumboots. The Doctor was interested, certainly, but he didn’t seem to see the urgency of the matter any more than Clorinda had.

‘Come back in the morning,’ he said, unscrewing the cap and giving the little bottle a sniff.

Ah well, she thought as she made her way back to the office, at least it would give her time to think about Clorinda’s ridiculous fish article - a supposedly topical subject, the peg being the quarrel with Iceland. She hadn’t even started the piece yet and Clorinda had now demanded it for the next morning.

But she sat at her desk all afternoon and found no inspiration at all. Her mind just wouldn’t get into gear. Why couldn’t the Doctor have analysed the stuff straight away?

Surely it couldn’t be all that difficult for somebody like him?

It was no good. Every time she tried to concentrate, the monstrous (but somehow fascinating) image of the Skang floated into her mind.

Bloody fish! At six o’clock she gave up. She’d have to write it at home, even if it meant sitting up half the night.

‘I don’t understand, sir,’ said the young constable behind the reception desk at Hampstead Heath police station. ‘Are you reporting some sort of incident?’

‘It’s a clear enough question, I should have thought,’ said the Doctor tetchily. ‘I’ll ask it again. Have there been any bodies found near here - on the Heath, perhaps - which give the impression that the person concerned starved to death?’

The PC hesitated. ‘Er... I won’t keep you a moment,’ he said, and disappeared.

‘So why do you want to know?’ said Detective Constable Willard, after the Doctor had repeated his question yet again.

‘That, Officer, is my business.’ The Doctor’s mood had hardly been improved by his being forced to wait in the bleak interview room for over twenty minutes.

‘I think you’ve made it ours as well, sir. You can’t expect us to reveal all our info to any Tom, Dick or Harry who wanders into the nick, now can you?’

‘My name is neither Tom nor Dick. And do I look like a Harry?’ The Doctor’s words were clipped, as he tried to keep his temper.

‘Well now,’ said the CID man, taking a fountain pen from his pocket, ‘that’s as good a place as any to start. What
is
your name?’

‘I am known as the Doctor.’

‘Your name, I said.’

For a moment the Doctor was tempted to give this plodding oaf his original, Gallifreyan name, just to watch him wrestle with the spelling. But then he sighed, and produced the pseudonym that had served him so well in the past. ‘My name is John Smith. Now, can we get on with it?’

‘John Smith? Is that so? Well, well, well...’

As Sarah left the path with its reassuring lights to trudge across the muddy grass - her usual short cut over the Heath from the tube - she glumly tried to find a fishy angle.

Fink Yourself Fin!

Get real...

She could go to the library tomorrow and look up demonic figures. If the Skang was part of Tibetan folklore, for instance...

She wrenched her mind back to the matter in hand. Eating fish was supposed to boost intelligence, wasn’t it? What about... something like...
Brains, Boobs and Beauty...?
Bit downmarket for Clorinda, perhaps. But maybe there was a smidgen of an angle there. Intelligence... The intelligence of fish gravely underestimated... After all, look at the Doctor’s goldfish...

She stopped dead. What was that noise? A rustle... She peered into the little thicket of evergreen nearby.

Nothing. It must have been some sort of creature: a dog or a cat; or a fox.

She resumed her gloomy trek up the hill, and her gloomy cogitations. Something a bit raunchy perhaps?
The Fishy
Way to Fulfil Your Feller...
Oh, for God’s sake!

It might even be Japanese, the Skang. Some of their demons were pretty peculiar. Though the name didn’t sound particularly Japanese. But then it didn’t sound like anything she’d ever heard of before.

Sarah Jane Smith, lost to the world, walked into the autumn darkness.

Unaware.

The Doctor’s lip-reading skills had often proved as useful as a diploma in advanced telepathy. Although the detective constable was a good thirty feet from him as he talked to a stern-looking colleague, the Doctor could see him through the partition, and could make out his words as clearly as if he were a yard away.

‘...a right nutter. Obviously a false name - and he
does
seem to know more than he should about the bodies...’

Bodies! So he was right. And more than one!

He stood up as the door opened. ‘Thank you, gentlemen,’

he said, still tight-lipped. ‘I’ll be going.’

‘You’re not going anywhere, mate,’ said the newcomer. ‘Sit down.’

‘And who might you be?’

‘DS Harrap. There are a few more questions I’d like to ask you.’

The Doctor’s eyes narrowed. He moved towards the door -

only to find his way blocked by Willard. ‘Will you get out of my way!’

‘Best do what the Sergeant says, sir.’

He turned back. ‘This is intolerable! Let me go at once!’

‘Please sit down, sir.’

The Doctor didn’t move. ‘I have no intention of staying here.

You’d have to arrest me.’

‘If that’s the way you want to play it.’

The Doctor gave a little laugh. ‘On what charge?’

‘Oh, I’ll think of something... Obstructing the police in the performance of their duty? That’d do nicely. Don’t you agree?’

It was becoming obvious that he would have to play their ridiculous game. He sighed. ‘Oh very well,’ he said, and sat down.

‘That’s better,’ said the sergeant. ‘Now then, let’s try again.

What’s your name? Your real name.’

‘I’ve already told your colleague.’

‘Yes, sir. John Smith. Have you any means of identification?’

An image of the Doctor’s UNIT ID pass flickered briefly across his mind’s eye; tucked behind Gary’s tank along with the stack of official rubbish (income-tax returns and the like) that he habitually ignored. ‘If you don’t believe me,’ he said, ‘I suggest you ring your Commissioner at Scotland Yard. He’ll vouch for me.’

‘Friend of yours, is he?’

‘You could say that. I was able to put in a good word for him when the appointment came up.’

The sergeant lifted an eyebrow to his partner standing by the door. ‘I’m sure you did, sir. Very well, I won’t insist. John Smith it is. And maybe Mr John Smith would like to explain how it is that he knows so much about these bodies...’

The last stretch of the short cut led through a little spinney up a track that had been worn into the grass by the feet of the small army who shared its secret with Sarah.

Sarah could see the lights of the paved path that led to the gate glittering through the leaves some fifty yards away and hastened her steps slightly. Even the thought of her typewriter sitting on her desk awaiting fishy words of wisdom couldn’t detract from what was uppermost in her mind.

She could murder a cup of tea.

But then she heard them, the footsteps. She stopped, and so did they.

There was nothing behind her, save the darkness, and the distant lamps of the proper paths and the streets beyond.

And silence, apart from the far-off traffic, and the faint barking of a dog.

Come on! She wasn’t a child, to be frightened of the dark. It was just her imagination.

She turned and hurried on, trying not to break into a run.

The hill was quite steep now, and she soon found herself gasping. But when she paused for a brief moment to get her breath she heard it again, the sound of running feet, abruptly coming to a halt.

She looked despairingly around. She could see nobody to whom she could appeal for help. The only thing to do was to escape from the darkness. She turned off the track and plunged into the trees, aiming for the sanctuary of the lights.

Now she was running, running, running for all she was worth, the pounding of the following feet sounding ever nearer. Another fifteen yards... ten... five... and then the root of an aged tree caught her toe and she plunged headlong into a squashy carpet of long-dead leaves. Rolling onto her back, she automatically put up her arms to protect her face - but not before she caught a glimpse of the black shape that was her pursuer, not a dozen feet away.

And now, no longer was she Sarah Jane Smith, investigative journalist, the bright secure product of thousands of years of civilisation. Instinct took over. Even her panic retreated into a white blankness as her body crunched itself into a primeval foetal ball to await the inevitable attack.

Time vanished.

Then a shout - ‘Oi, you!’ - and the footsteps again; but now they were retreating, at speed.

Still she could not move - until a touch on her shoulder awoke the terror inside. ‘No!’ she cried. ‘Get away!’ She opened her eyes, shrinking back, her hands held out in futile defence against an attack that no longer threatened.

‘Are you all right, miss?’

She recognised him then. She’d seen him often, the old codger with the ancient bull terrier. She sat up, trying to find herself in the turmoil of feeling that came flooding back.

‘Yes... yes. I’ll be all right. Thank you...’

‘Just happened to catch sight of him in time. Best to stay in the light, you know. Shall I call the police?’