Part 18 (2/2)

If wishes were fishes . . .

'Look,' Cwej said finally, 'if, and I repeat, if the Adjudicator Secular is involved in some kind of cover-up, then we go above her head. Talk to her boss, the Adjudicator Spiritual.'

'And tell her what?' Forrester snapped. 'We need proof. All we've got at the moment is suspicion.'

'We've got the mind probe recording.'

'Yeah, and what does it prove? That somebody tampered with it. We've got no real evidence that Adjudicators are involved. There's nothing to say that she and her friend didn't do it themselves.'

Bernice could almost feel the thumb being jabbed towards her back. 'Who's ”she”?' she called back over her shoulder, 'the cat's mother?' It was a phrase she'd heard Ace use before, and she quite liked the sound of. G.o.d knew what it meant, but it seemed apt.

'Shut it,' Forrester growled.

'Yeah, shut it,' Cwej repeated dutifully.

Or not, as the case may be.

She turned to face them. The elliptical shape of the s.p.a.ceport loomed behind them, set atop five spindly towers and surrounded by a cloud of small s.h.i.+ps arriving and departing. Somewhere on its upper surface, the Imperial Landsknecht scout s.h.i.+p that Beltempest had lent them would be preparing to leap into the clear blue sky. Good luck to it. Bernice's journey from Purgatory to Earth, locked in the s.h.i.+p's hold, had been uncomfortable, but mercifully short, and if she never saw the inside of a military vessel again between now and the end of time it would be too soon.

The sun was in Bernice's eyes, and all she could see of the two Adjudicators was their silhouettes. Both of them were holding weapons. She wouldn't be able to make it more than a few steps without getting shot, and that wouldn't help her or the Doctor in the slightest.

'Can I ask a question?' she said, shading her eyes with her hand. 'Does the concept ”innocent until proven guilty” mean anything to you?'

Cwej looked at Forrester. 'Does it?' he asked her.

'Not to me,' she replied. 'Far as I'm concerned, some people are innocent and others are guilty. Innocent until proven guilty sounds like a dangerous philosophical concept. I hate ambiguity.'

The walkway had emerged from the other side of the building by now, and its edge sliced across the sun, casting a shadow over all of them. Bernice s.h.i.+vered at the sudden chill. 'So, where now?' she said.

Forrester hesitated for a moment. 'We have a problem,' she said finally.

113.'You surprise me.'

'Your friends in high places '

'My supposed supposed friends in high places. For the record, I haven't got a clue what you're talking about.' friends in high places. For the record, I haven't got a clue what you're talking about.'

'Your supposed supposed friends in high places want us off this case. Unfortunately for you, we're not going to let ourselves be taken off. That means we can't go back to our lodge, so we're going to have to find somewhere else to interrogate you.' friends in high places want us off this case. Unfortunately for you, we're not going to let ourselves be taken off. That means we can't go back to our lodge, so we're going to have to find somewhere else to interrogate you.'

'Interrogate? Do you have to use that word? Can't we just have a chat?'

'Whatever you want to call it, we're going to have to do it somewhere quiet and private.'

Bernice thought for a second. Something about what Forrester had said bothered her. 'Hang on a second. Am I right in thinking that you suspect your own superior officer this Adjudicator Secular person is implicated in this plot?'

Forrester grimaced. 'Yes,' she admitted.

'So does that mean that you went all the way to Purgatory to collect the Doctor and me without actually having official permission?'

'Er . . . yes,' Forrester said, abashed.

'Wow,' Bernice said. 'I'm impressed.'

The walkway began to curve to the left. Looking over her shoulder, Bernice could see that it diverged in a smooth arc around a spiky building another of those oddities of architecture that Earth seemed to go in for in the thirtieth century.

'Hey!' Cwej said suddenly. Bernice turned back to face him and Forrester.

'I've got an idea!'

'Treat it gently,' Forrester murmured, 'it's in a strange place.'

Bernice tried to suppress a smile, but failed. Her eye caught Forrester's. The Adjudicator's lips twitched slightly, and she looked away. Bernice suddenly felt a laugh welling up within her. Great, she thought, here I am, sentenced to death for murder, light-years away from the Doctor, and I'm sharing private jokes with one of my captors. Life's odd sometimes.

Cwej looked from Forrester to Bernice, aware that something was going on but uncertain what it was. 'What's the big laugh?' he asked plaintively.

'Forget it, golden boy,' Forrester growled. 'What's your great idea then?'

'My family!' he said proudly.

'Your what what?'

'We can hide out with my family. They'll be glad to see me.'

Forrester gazed at him.

'There's no way of breaking it to you gently, Cwej, but if I was your family and you turned up on my doorstep on the run from the Adjudicators with a 114prisoner you wanted to interrogate, I wouldn't be glad to see you.'

Cwej smiled sunnily.

'You don't know my family,' he said.

As she swallowed another sizzling piece of food, Voroneh Madillah tried to remember how she came to be sitting cross-legged in a square in the Undertown, overlooked by weathered gargoyles, her fingers and face smeared with hot fat.

'All right,' she remembered saying, in time-honoured Adjudicator tradition, as she had turned the corner and approached the knot of underlife, 'what's all this, then?'

At the sight of the stocky Adjudicator in her black hooded robes and iri-descent blue and gold body armour, most of the underlife had scuttled away into the shadows on various sets of legs, tentacles and organic castors. She definitely remembered that. Three had remained: a bulky horned creature cowering against the wall and two small rodents with knives almost half their own body size. She recalled settling her hand on the b.u.t.t of her judicial blaster and thinking that this one looked like trouble.

'Just a domestic dispute,' one of the rodents had squealed. No problem remembering that.

'And what's your story?' Madillah had asked the alien with the horns. Was that when her headache started? She tore off another piece of meat and chewed it reflectively. Yes, it probably was.

'They wanted my money!' the alien had hissed, nostril flaps flicking back and forth as it spoke. 'I asked them if . . . '

Madillah had missed the end of the sentence as a spike of sick pain suddenly blotted everything out. Had she raised a hand to her temple? She thought so.

'Hey,' one of the rats had said, 'the law's not feeling too well!'

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