by Mark Gatiss
‘Mr Trickett?’
His voice sounded thin and a little hysterical. He cleared his throat and called Trickett’s name again, this time using the authoritative tones he had perfected for his role as Buffalo Bill the previous Christmas.
When this failed to work, Max banged his fist on the desk and pressed his face close to the frosted-glass screen. He could see the constable on the other side.
‘Constable Trickett? Could you come round, please. It’s an emergency.’
Despite the fact that the policeman’s face was only inches from his, Trickett seemed not to notice Max’s plea.
Baffled, Max made his way sharply to the end of the desk where a door led into the back room. This too was open. He pushed his way inside, his gaunt face flushed with rage.
Despite the darkness, there was enough street light spilling in through the windows for Max to see that Trickett was sitting in a swivel chair, his back towards him. To Max’s astonishment, he still didn’t turn round.
Max’s hand fluttered to his throat. ‘Mr Trickett! I am not used to being ignored like this! Particularly when the matter is an urgent one.’ He tried the light switch in this room, but, again, it didn’t respond.
Max paused, breathing heavily, and a chill ran through him. He’d seen things like this in the films all the time. Trickett was dead. He was sure of it. If he moved forward now and spun the chair around, the policeman would slump to the floor, face upwards, a small, neat bullet hole in the centre of his forehead. He swallowed nervously and shuffled one foot after the other, his shaking hand stretched out.
‘Mr Trickett? John?’
He fixed his eyes on the heavy, dark blue cloth of the constable’s uniform and placed his hand on Trickett’s shoulder. With a deep, gulping breath, he swung him round. A small scream was rising in him at the expected horror.
Constable Trickett, however, was very much alive. In fact, he seemed rather pleased with himself. He was grinning all over his face.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE WIND TUNNEL
Whistler recoiled as the back of Bliss’s hand connected with his cheek.
He felt her sharp nails cut into his flesh and raised his own hand in instinctive defence. Bliss grabbed his wrist and twisted it painfully. The old man cried out, his eyes narrowing in agony.
There were already countless cuts and swellings disfiguring his weathered face and one tooth had been completely knocked out by his interrogator’s fist.
‘By God,’ hissed Whistler between gritted teeth. ‘If you were a chap I’d swing for you.’
Bliss stepped back, an almost noiseless exhalation bubbling from her lips, the nearest she came to a laugh. ‘I’ve no doubt that, were you not tied to the chair, you’d have “swung for me” before now.’
Whistler looked up and peered through his puffy eyes at the darkness. He could taste little rivulets of blood running into his mouth from the cuts on his cheek. His mind was reeling with fragments of thought. The lorries barrelling through Culverton. Legion International’s showy display in the church hall. The sleek black coffins he and Noah had found up at the aerodrome. And Bliss, the tall, flabby woman in well-cut black clothes, her pale, grinning face like that of a Victorian doll. Her eyes, huge and black as tar-pits. Whistler shifted in his chair, weak with fear and pain.
‘Have you finished?’ he croaked.
‘Hardly.’ Bliss cocked her head to one side. ‘You’re strong, for such an old creature,’ she said flatly. ‘But you can’t last for ever. Why don’t you tell me what I want to know?’
Whistler let his head sink on to his chest. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Bliss marched up to him and pulled back his hair savagely. Whistler yelled in agony. ‘Show me!’ she bellowed. ‘Show me the ninth key!’
Whistler sat up. This was new. ‘The ninth key?’
Bliss plucked at her blouse as though angry with herself.
‘The ninth key to what?’ persisted Whistler.
Bliss didn’t speak. Instead, she moved to the side of the room where a small table had been set out next to the humming computer banks. Laid out on a white cloth were about half a dozen metal objects. Whistler struggled to make them out clearly in the gloom. They appeared to be chromium in texture but fashioned in such strange shapes that he had no idea what purpose they served.
Bliss stepped up to the table and passed her hand over the objects, settling on the third in line. She lifted it close to her milk-white face and Whistler made out a network of glittering blades, like the razor teeth of a lamprey, set into its circular head.
Bliss pressed a switch and the chrome instrument emitted a high-pitched whirr.
Whistler began to breathe very hard indeed.
Outside, on the catwalk, the Doctor strained to hear what was going on in the office. Frustratingly, a light seemed to have been switched on, but it did no more than illuminate what looked like the side of a man’s face. The voices within were rendered indecipherable by the thick plate glass.
He pressed his face to the window and tried once again to peer inside. Could that be the Wing Commander? And was he being held against his will?
A bulky shape moved into the path of the lamp and the view was once again obscured.
Sinking to his knees, the Doctor turned away from the window and tapped his finger thoughtfully against his teeth.
Below him came the sound of booted feet crunching on gravel. The Doctor tensed and tucked himself under the lip of the window, looking down to see who was coming.
A Legion trooper, resplendent in his black uniform, was patrolling below. He was looking about alertly, his machine gun slung over his shoulder.
The Doctor slowed his breathing and tried to keep still. The trooper was directly below him and, despite the darkness, had only to look up to see him.
Shifting his weight only a fraction, the Doctor knew at once that he had made a mistake. The metal gantry creaked and the trooper tensed, pulling his machine gun down to waist level and pointing it into the shadows.
He looked left, then right, the muscles on his neck standing out like whipcord. Then he looked up, his face fixed in a crazed and disturbing smile.
The Doctor seized the moment and flung himself from the catwalk. Cloak blossoming behind him, he fell like a great bat, cannoning his legs into the trooper’s chest, sending him crashing into the gravel.
Not anxious to be caught when he had found out precisely nothing, the Doctor instantly took to his heels, racing from the gravel on to the broken tarmac of the old airstrip.
The trooper rolled over and jumped athletically to his feet, machine gun poised. He was about to open fire but then seemed to think better of it, shouldered his weapon and ran after the Doctor.
Putting at least two hundred yards between himself and his pursuer, the Doctor’s immediate thought was to get back to Bessie and drive back to Culverton as quickly as possible. He had learnt nothing from his sortie except that Legion International were armed and dangerous. Jo was alone with Mrs Toovey and would be wondering where he’d got to.
However, he found himself diverting from the direct route back to the perimeter fence as soon as he saw the old hangar, looming through the darkness like the hump of a great whale. His insatiable curiosity got the better of him and he slowed to a fast walk, casting a glance behind him to check whether he was still being followed. The clatter of the trooper’s feet on concrete told him he was, so he ran swiftly up to the hangar, turned the corner and flattened himself against the wall.
The trooper raced past, seemingly tireless, dark eyes fixed ahead.
The Doctor waited until he had gone and then walked back to the front of the old structure. Two massive doors designed for war planes to pass in and out stretched up into the darkness. For the sake of convenience, a smaller, man-sized door had been cut into one of them. The Doctor pushed it and, to his delight, it opened.
He peered through into pitch darkness, then glanced back towards the fence.
He should get back to Jo, of course, but he had come to the aerodrome to find some answers. Perhaps this old hangar would provide them.
He stepped through the door and closed it softly behind his back.
Feeling in the pockets of his smoking jacket, he found a thin pencil torch and clicked it on. A narrow shaft of light sprang from it, immediately illuminating a landscape of filthy rags and metal fragments. Oil stained the floor everywhere, the relics of hasty repair jobs on fighter aircraft thirty years previously.
The Doctor swept the beam of the torch around the hangar. Benches and chairs had been stacked none too carefully against the wall, looking as though they might crash down at any moment. Then he saw why they had been moved out of the way. There were signs of recent activity. Part of the floor had been scrubbed clean and there were now over a dozen black, leather-upholstered surgical tables arranged in a row, stretching away into the gloom.
The Doctor examined the closest, fingering the heavy-duty straps that were firmly attached to its sides.
He sucked his lower lip thoughtfully then moved deeper into the hangar.
After a while, he came upon another door. This was new and had seemingly been carved from the wall. There were scorch marks around the steel frame and the Doctor examined them closely.
‘High-intensity beam,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Laser?’
The light of the torch showed up what looked like a complex entry-coder but this didn’t seem to be finished. Wires hung from it in a clump, like seaweed.
Shrugging, the Doctor pushed at the door. It swung inwards noiselessly.
The room beyond was vast and brand-new. The Doctor could smell the fresh plastic, even though he could see very little. For a moment he considered risking switching on the lights but decided against it.
‘That’s if there are any lights,’ he said quietly.
Ahead of him, he could make out a semicircle of machinery, divided into sections like metal teeth. There was a swivel chair in front of each section and the Doctor sat down on the nearest one.
He clamped the pencil torch in his mouth and span round twice, then tensed as he heard a noise from the hangar beyond.
Just as he grabbed the torch from his mouth, the metal door sprang open and the trooper threw himself inside.
The Doctor didn’t have time to react and took a direct punch to the side of his face. He crashed to the floor and tried to point the torch at his attacker but it was knocked from his hand, landing on top of the machines and spinning round and round, creating a dizzying halo of light.
The trooper came at him again, slamming a booted foot into his ribs. With a winded groan, the Doctor fell back against the ring of consoles and tried to grab hold of his assailant’s leg.
The trooper was ready for him, though, and as the Doctor managed to haul the man’s leg into the air, kicked savagely. The Doctor was sent flying. His chest barrelled into the nearest console and suddenly the whole room flickered into life.
The consoles whined and whole banks of lights blinked on. The Doctor saw that the back wall was made of thick plate glass and beyond stretched some kind of tunnel. Lights flickered along its entire length, like a runway.
The trooper stood with legs wide apart and unholstered his machine gun. He levelled the weapon at his opponent and prepared to fire.
The Doctor gazed into his big, dark eyes. An idea flashed into his head and he dived for the torch. He swung the beam directly into the man’s eyes and the trooper hissed like a snake, shielding his eyes with a gloved hand.
‘I thought so!’ laughed the Doctor triumphantly.
Taking advantage of the trooper’s disorientation, he delivered a chopping blow to the Legion man’s chest, sending him smashing back into the consoles. A whole bank of switches clicked into life. Soundlessly, smoke began to stream into the tunnel beyond the glass. The Doctor cast a rapid glance towards it and made out the massive shape of a jet engine at the far end. It was a wind tunnel.
Still unaccountably smiling, the trooper struggled to his feet. The Doctor kicked out with a cry and caught him in the ribs. The man fell back again but this time managed to wrestle his machine gun from under him. Mindlessly, he opened fire.
The Doctor dived to the floor, covering his head with his hands as bullets sang off every available surface. Rolling over and over, he flung himself into the corner just as a whole volley of shots hit the plate glass, shattering it into fragments. Immediately, the room was filled with the roar of the jet engine in the tunnel beyond, as though a typhoon had been bottled and trapped there.
Wind tore at the Doctor’s hair and cloak.
The trooper staggered towards him, the flesh around his grin buffeted by the incredible strength of the wind tunnel. He raised his gun again.
The Doctor grabbed a swivel chair just by him and sent it crashing into the trooper’s knees. As the man crumpled, the Doctor jumped over him, landing on top of the consoles like a tightrope walker. But the trooper was ready for him, springing back to his feet like an unstoppable machine and pumping at the trigger of his machine gun.
Nothing happened. Something was jammed.
He glanced down and the Doctor span balletically round, his foot connecting with the weapon and sending it crashing against the wall.
Roaring like a beast, the trooper hurled himself at him and together they fell through the shattered glass and into the wind tunnel.
The force of the engine was incredible and the Doctor struggled to stay on his feet as the wind whipped and tore at his clothes.
The trooper advanced on him, teeth bared in his grinning face, hair streaming in the hurricane. The Doctor ran at him and gripped him in a bear hug. If he could only get the man on to the floor. He’d probably never be able to get up again… Squinting as the wind slapped at his face, the Doctor tried to force the trooper down, kicking at his calves in an effort to unbalance him. The Legion man fought back, strong arms moving to clamp around the Doctor’s neck.
As they wrestled, the Doctor happened to glance upwards. To his astonishment there seemed to be another tunnel, like a great chimney, stretching high up towards an impossibly distant ceiling.
On the wall, just visible in the dim light, were two large buttons. One glowed red, the other a muted green.
The trooper pushed his opponent away from him with a grunt and the Doctor fell back against the wall. With a roar, the man raced at the Time Lord but the Doctor stepped out, struggling against the incredible wind, grabbed his wrist, twisted it and threw the trooper over his shoulder.
He slammed against the raised buttons and the green light suddenly flared brightly.
At once, the force of the wind altered. The distant jet engine cut out and another, high above their heads, powered up. This time, however, it was sucking the air upwards.
The Doctor felt the massive tug at his cloak and scrabbled at the floor like a cat trying to find purchase on wet tiles.
The trooper shot into the air, arms and legs flailing, but managed to grab hold of the Doctor’s ankle.
Fingernails digging into the floor, the Doctor managed to grip on to a plastic tile. He could feel the glue coming away even as he did so, but it might hold long enough for him to reach the red button…
The trooper and the Doctor were strung out like acrobats, the latter clinging desperately to the floor, the former clutching on to the Doctor’s leg as the huge engine overhead sucked air into its heart.
The Doctor twisted his neck round. ‘Hold on!’ he cried above the din.
The trooper had no intention of letting go, his grinning face seemingly untroubled.
One whole corner of the floor tile came loose.
The Doctor cried out, feeling his body jerking upwards like a cinder in a chimney flue.
He gripped the tile in both hands and tried to swing both himself and the trooper closer to the wall. They hung in the air like two links in a paper chain.
The Doctor swung again and this time he heard the trooper’s foot smack agai
nst the metal wall.
‘Try and hit the red button!’ he shouted.
The trooper didn’t react.
‘Can you understand me?’ yelled the Doctor above the colossal roar of the jet engine. ‘Hit the red button! Kick it, man!’
He swung them again. The trooper’s whole body slammed against the wall. His grip on the Doctor’s leg loosened and he slipped back, his hands sliding until they came to rest on the heel of the Doctor’s shoe.
‘Don’t let go!’ bellowed the Doctor. ‘You can reach the button. Try again!’
Sliding his hands deep under the floor tile, he swung his body again. There was a loud crack and three-quarters of the tile came loose.
The trooper’s hands scrabbled at the Doctor’s foot but it was no good. The whole shoe came away and, still clutching it, the man was sucked remorselessly upwards. He didn’t scream and the strange smile never left his face even as he was pulverised by the deadly blades of the jet engine.
The Doctor swung himself wildly at the wall, just as the floor tile gave way. He felt the wind rushing past his face as he flew upwards but lashed out frantically with the foot that was protected by his remaining shoe as the red button flashed by. His toe banged into it with devastating force and, at once, the distant engine overhead shut down.
The Doctor fell a good ten feet to the hard floor and groaned as his chest connected with the tiles.
Panting with exertion, he struggled weakly to his feet and limped out of the wind tunnel.
Behind him, blood began to rain down on to the gleaming white tiles.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
JO ALONE
Plumping up a cushion, Jo rearranged herself on the sofa and smiled.
Mrs Toovey shook her head and wiped a tear from her eye. ‘Oh it’s been such a tonic having you here, my dear,’ she said, laughing. ‘I’ve not enjoyed myself so much in ages.’ She gazed into her teacup. ‘Now… where was I?’
‘The Wing Commander,’ said Jo.
Mrs Toovey passed a hand over her face and let out a short squeal.