Part 12 (1/2)

'He was carrying a rail card with his name and address on it,' DI Worthington said. 'Our enquiries led us here. We were given this address by a neighbour of yours.'

'Mrs Ramirez,' said Charlotte dreamily. 'She's looking after our house while we're away.'

DI Worthington nodded. 'I understand what a terrible shock this is for you, but I'm afraid the body must be formally identified, and as quickly as possible. Christopher may have died in suspicious circ.u.mstances. We need to carry out a post mortem immediately to ascertain exactly how.'

Charlotte felt light-headed, not quite rooted in reality. She stared at DI Worthington with tunnel vision, oblivious to everything else around her. 'What do you mean, ”suspicious circ.u.mstances”?'

He s.h.i.+fted uncomfortably in his seat. 'There was extensive... damage to the body. It may have been caused by rocks, but then again...' He clasped his hands together and gave a grimace of apology, sympathy, discomfort.

All at once Charlotte was jolted back to reality by her mother's scream. It was a terrible scream, like an animal in intense pain. Charlotte jumped, then sank back, shaking, as her mum dissolved into tears beside her.

The grief was frightening in its intensity, emotion so raw it seemed to possess an awful destructive power that Charlotte felt sure would tear around the room like a hurricane if unleashed. Suddenly everything seemed too stark, too real.

Charlotte saw DI Worthington cross the room and drop to his knees in front of her mum, trying vainly to comfort her. She saw the tall man she'd b.u.mped into on the doorstep yesterday enter the lounge, to be immediately confronted by Worthington's colleague, who peeled himself from the wall and held up his hands as if to physically repel the man back into the corridor.

'I'm Captain Mike Yates from UNIT,' she heard the man say, raising his voice above Mum's hysterical wailing. 'I'm afraid I couldn't help overhearing what your colleague said, and I think it might have some bearing-'

Charlotte lowered her head, squeezed her eyes tight shut and pressed her hands over her ears. She didn't care what the men were talking about; she didn't care about anything.

Chris was dead, and there was an unwanted baby growing inside her, and Mum and Dad hated each other, and her whole world was falling apart. At that moment, she realised, she envied her brother more than she grieved for him. She wished with all of her heart that she could be dead too.

The Brigadier slammed the phone down in frustration. Surely those idiots in Whitehall ought to realise by now that he asked them for aid and co-operation only when absolutely necessary? He'd saved them from getting a considerable amount of egg on their faces over that Global Chemicals business, and how did they repay him? By continuing to put barriers in his way.

He hadn't even managed to get through to the Prime Minister this time; no doubt the fellow was too embarra.s.sed to speak to him following his misjudgement over the Llanfairfach incident. He had left it to one of his minions to inform the Brigadier that quarantining the town would be tantamount to martial law and therefore out of the question.

Martial law! Did the fellow have no inkling of how UNIT operated, of how many times the planet had been saved from invasion or annihilation by the Brigadier's small but highly trained force? Given UNITs track record they ought to be allowed carte blanche carte blanche to take whatever steps they deemed appropriate in any situation. to take whatever steps they deemed appropriate in any situation.

But no. Still the Brigadier had to put up with government fat cats droning on about 'public interest' and 'civil responsibility', knowing all the while that the only responsibility they felt was to themselves and to the retention of their parliamentary seats. Actually they were less like cats and more like turtles, retreating into their sh.e.l.ls, unwilling to stick their necks out, refusing to acknowledge that if they continued to decline to untie the Brigadier's hands every time he asked for a little leeway, then sooner or later their gutless reaction might well lead to some hostile alien force or devastating home-grown threat reducing them and their precious parliament to so much turtle soup.

The Brigadier opened his clenched fists in an effort to release his rage, but it didn't work. He tried to focus on the positive aspects of the discussion he had just had, which were pitifully few, but better than nothing. The oily-voiced cretin had promised him that the government would 'look into' the alleged connection between seafood and illness and that they would encourage - though not order - the local authorities to put up signs warning people that there was a danger of pollution along the coastline and that bathing was inadvisable.

Unless something happened that required a military response - and no one wanted that because it would mean that things were getting quickly out of hand - the Brigadier was therefore stuck in the familiar situation of twiddling his thumbs and waiting for the Doctor to come up with something. He thought about the fish he and his men had eaten last night and hoped that this new fellow was up to the job. If not, then before very long they might all be in a great deal of trouble.

'Nothing,' said the Doctor dejectedly, his eyes scanning the results scrolling down the screen in front of him. 'Nothing at all.'

'You can't find an antidote?' said Turlough, hovering at the Doctor's shoulder.

The Doctor spun round. 'Worse than that. I can't even identify the infection.'

'But I thought you said you had some of the most sophisticated equipment in the Universe in here?' Turlough reminded him.

'Oh, I do. But the infection is continuing to prove impervious to a.n.a.lysis. It appears to have no physical characteristics whatsoever.'

Turlough looked irritable, as if the Doctor was being deliberately obtuse. 'But that's impossible.'

'Yes,' said the Doctor thoughtfully. He pivoted slowly on his heels, eyes roving around the vast laboratory as if searching for something specific. 'I wonder.'

'What -' Turlough began, but the Doctor was already off, striding along the aisles between the cluttered benches, cream coat flying behind him. Turlough caught up with him beside a pair of double doors, which he had a.s.sumed led deeper into the TARDIS. They were made of some heavy dark wood, each one carved with the stylised representation of a s.h.a.ggy tusked beast rearing up on its hind legs. The Doctor threw the doors open with such force that Turlough had to jump back to avoid being hit in the face.

When he recovered he saw not the expected corridor, but a large cupboard. Though Turlough had never seen spiders in the TARDIS, the jumble of scientific equipment heaped haphazardly on the shelves was festooned with cobwebs.

'Aha!' the Doctor cried, and dropping on all fours crawled into the cupboard, dipping his head to duck beneath the bottom shelf. He reached in and grabbed something, then backed out, hauling the object with him.

It was a green metal cabinet with a panel of b.u.t.tons on the front and a small screen inset at an angle into the top. The cabinet was on castors and the Doctor pushed it gently in Turlough's direction. 'Look after this for a moment, would you?' he said, then plunged back into the cupboard again.

Turlough stopped the trundling cabinet with his hand, grimacing at the sticky dust that adhered to his fingers. The screen was cracked and there was a mess of multi-coloured wires hanging out of an open panel at the back.

The Doctor back-shuffled out of the cupboard again, this time dragging what appeared to be a large green hair-dryer on a tall metal stand. It was only when he had pulled the object fully out into the light that Turlough realised it was a rather more sophisticated piece of equipment than he had first thought. The exterior of the cone-shaped helmet was studded with lights that were evidently linked to a maze of circuitry within the helmet itself. Like the cabinet, the 'hair-dryer' was covered in dust and cobwebs - as indeed, by this point, was the Doctor himself.

'What is this thing?' Turlough asked, prodding at the cabinet with his foot, sending it trundling a few inches across the floor on its squeaky castors.

'It's an Image Reproduction Integrating System - IRIS machine for short. It translates thoughts into pictures.'

'Does it work?' Turlough asked.

'Oh yes. But the only time I used it, someone died. I haven't tried it since.'

Turlough looked dubiously at the two pieces of equipment, battered and covered in grime like so much sc.r.a.p. 'Will it still work?'

'I don't see why not,' said the Doctor, plucking threads of cobweb from his hair. 'All it needs is a bit of spit and polish.

Come on.'

He bent and picked up the 'hair-dryer' and carried it - its jointed metal stand sc.r.a.ping the floor behind it - over to his main area of operations. Turlough followed, pus.h.i.+ng the cabinet on its squealing castors. The Doctor placed the 'hair-dryer' on a clutter-free work bench, took a large maroon handkerchief from his pocket and wiped away the worst of the grime. He handed the handkerchief to Turlough, then pored over the interior of the cone, prodding connections, hmm'ing and 'hah'ing as he worked. Turlough half-heartedly wiped dust from the cabinet, grimacing all the while as if the task was beneath him. He had almost finished when he heard a familiar sound.

'Doctor, listen.'

The Doctor looked up, strands of cobweb still clinging to his fringe. Hmm?'

'We're materialising'

The Doctor's face cleared, 'So we are. I wonder where.'

Leaving the IRIS machine for later, he hurried out of the lab, Turlough scurrying behind him. They crossed a courtyard with a white marble fountain in the shape of a cherub, and strode along a narrow cobbled street reminiscent of Victorian England, complete with what appeared to be a starry night sky overhead, before finally emerging in one of the TARDIS's innumerable, identical corridors. The Doctor halted, raised a finger as if to point right, then abruptly spun to the left. Several twists and turns later they reached the console room.

The Doctor dashed inside and began to scamper around the console, making all the necessary checks. Turlough stood to one side, arms folded, but turned his head when the Doctor operated the scanner to see what awaited them outside.