9
COUNT DOWN
Very few things in the universe shut the Doctor up. But six Mona Lisas did the trick.
Duggan was blissfully catatonic.
It was rather nice. It gave Romana a moment or two to think. Just her, alone in a room with six smiling women. Romana looked again at the expression on the woman’s face. ‘You’ll work it out,’ she seemed to be saying.
I do hope so, Romana thought.
For a start, these six paintings had to be genuine. You wouldn’t go to the trouble of bricking up six colour prints for half a millennium. Logic got her to this point and then had to have a sit-down and a cup of tea. Why would you paint six Mona Lisas and then brick them up? These hadn’t been left in cupboards and forgotten about. They had been deliberately placed here and sealed away. In a cave deep below the ground. Quite impervious to bomb blast. They’d survived a few tremors and floods. Bricked up so tightly that the Château above could burn down and these paintings would still be here. Smiling away to themselves.
Actually, thought Romana, I wish they’d stop smiling right about now. Another thing about computer paintings. You could change the expressions.
The Doctor had begun moving. In Romana’s experience this usually meant some noise would be starting up soon. He was tenderly stroking one of the paintings. ‘The brushwork’s Leonardo’s.’
Duggan nodded in glum agreement.
‘How can you tell?’ asked Romana.
‘It’s as individual as a signature.’ Leonardo had been a pioneer in many things, including the materials he worked with. An earlier version of the Mona Lisa had been painted on canvas, but, for the final work, just for the hell of it, he’d switched to a thin poplar board, painting in oils of his own devising, using a carefully blended brushstroke he’d come up with, so that the overall painting glowed like a photograph. This haphazard whirligig of invention accidentally made the painting almost impossible to forge. The Doctor’s fingertips danced delicately over the surface of the board. ‘The pigments are his, too.’
‘Is that true of all of them?’
‘Every last one,’ the Doctor sighed.
They went quiet again.
‘What I can’t understand is . . .’ muttered the Doctor and then petered out. He chewed the end of his scarf thoughtfully for a while. ‘Why does a man who already appears to have six Mona Lisas want to go to all the bother of stealing another one?’
Duggan knew why. This was a surprise to everyone in the room. ‘Oh, pull your head together, Doctor,’ he growled impatiently.
The Doctor stared at Duggan. Clearly he thought he had the answer. But the Doctor couldn’t see it for the life of him.
‘I just told you.’ Duggan sounded exasperated. Did no one ever listen to him? ‘There are seven people in the world who would buy the picture in secret. But none of them are going to buy a Mona Lisa while it’s still hanging in the Louvre.’
‘Of course,’ exclaimed Romana. ‘They would each have to think they were buying the stolen one.’
That made perfect sense, Duggan thought for a moment, before his head spun round again. Seven buyers. Exactly seven buyers. Exactly seven pictures. How could that possibly happen? That was such a massive coincidence.
Such a massive coincidence that Romana was already calculating it in her head and getting the sorts of numbers that required chewing carefully before swallowing.
‘Seven Mona Lisas . . . Seven buyers . . .’ The Doctor shook his head ruefully. ‘I wouldn’t make a very good criminal, would I?’
‘No, Doctor,’ announced the Count. ‘Good criminals don’t get caught.’
The Count was lounging in the doorway to the chamber. He was wearing a fabulously expensive dressing gown and covering them with a rather lovely gun. He smiled his most amused smile. He did not look the least bit surprised to see them there. His entire appearance was that of a genial host who finds his house guests helping themselves to the biscuit barrel.
‘I see you have found some of my pictures.’ He waved at them casually with his gun. ‘Rather good, don’t you think?’ He smiled graciously, then counted the paintings with the gun. ‘Five . . . Six. And after tonight I will have a seventh. The operation is already in hand. Any questions?’
The Doctor suddenly found he rather missed being the most bizarre thing in the room. A trifle dejectedly, he pointed a sad finger at the paintings. ‘Can I ask you where you got these from?’
‘No,’ beamed the Count.
‘I see. Or how you knew they were here?’
‘No.’
‘They’ve been bricked up for centuries.’
‘Yes.’
‘I do like concise answers,’ sighed the Doctor.
‘Good.’ The Count’s smile dwindled like a merry firework. ‘You know, I came down here to talk to Kerensky.’
‘Oh?’
‘But he doesn’t seem to be able to speak to me.’
‘Oh.’
‘Can you cast any light on the matter, Doctor?’
‘No.’
‘But I can,’ said Duggan, hurling the lamp at Count Scarlioni’s head. The Count’s gun fired, miraculously hitting neither the lamp nor any of the paintings. Dazed by the sound of the gun, Romana and the Doctor stumbled backwards while Duggan lunged forward, picked up a brick, and drove it into the Count’s head.
Count Scarlioni dropped without a word.
Romana checked the body anxiously. Still breathing but dead to the world.
The Doctor shook the buzzing out of his head and surveyed the Count furiously. ‘Duggan, why is it that every time I start talking to someone you knock them unconscious?’
Duggan rubbed at the back of his neck, a trifle sheepish. ‘Well, I didn’t expect him to go down that easily.’
‘Perhaps,’ the Doctor offered, ‘if you don’t understand heads you shouldn’t go around hitting them?’
‘Well, what would you suggest I did?’ snarled Duggan. He felt that the Doctor was being a touch ungrateful.
‘Duggan!’ roared the Doctor and then stopped. For a moment, just a moment, he had forgotten that they were standing next to six Mona Lisas. Lowering his voice respectfully he continued. ‘I thought you had a job to do. Stop the Count’s men stealing the Mona Lisa.’ He stopped, chewing the air. ‘The other Mona Lisa. Come on.’
* * *
Getting out of the Château wasn’t that easy. Romana knew precisely the way they’d come, but the Doctor refused to believe her. Soon they were hopelessly lost in the huge and echoing hallways. In places damp had got in. Paintings that had once been carefully hung now sagged from the walls. Rugs squelched underfoot. Mould and moss flowed through beautiful frescoes. A lot of the paintings in this area had been left to rot. Once prized, the names of their painters were long forgotten, the paint itself starting to seep and flow into the wall. These works had been left to die because they no longer mattered.
Hearing footsteps, they ducked into a chapel. The seats were dusty from neglect, but the air still smelt of incense. An entire corner of the chapel was given over to a reliquary where the purported bones of long-dead, long-forgotten saints all sat in a jumbled heap. Someone still came in here to light candles occasionally. Duggan thought he caught a whiff of the Countess’s perfume.
They moved through into another chamber. It had once been a vast drawing room, built up around a central mosaic of a one-eyed Medusa. The mirrors were all splintered. The wallpaper bubbled as insects crawled underneath it. A warped and legless harpsichord splayed forgotten on the floor.
The whole Château had been falling down for centuries.
Romana recognised a Constable. The Doctor wasn’t convinced—they all looked alike to him. But Romana was quite firm. Turn left at the Constable she insisted, right at the second Matisse, and down through the corridor of gloomy Dutchmen and they’d be back into
the main rooms of the Château.
Which is where the Count’s men found them.
The fight was brief and bloody and mostly up to Duggan. There were six of them. They all had guns. Using his fists like a Whirling Dervish being thrown out of a nightclub, Duggan accounted for five. The Doctor, when he was entirely certain that no one was watching, knocked the sixth unconscious with a snatched-up picture frame, finishing off a once-priceless canvas that the maggots had been at.
Duggan surveyed the heap of bodies and chose the nicest gun. ‘Amateurs,’ he sneered.
Romana examined the bullet holes in the wall. At a glance she could see the many different layers of paint and decoration which had taken place over time. Like the rings on a tree, taking her all the way back to lathe and plaster. And, beneath that, stale air and the distant scrabbling of vermin.
Duggan, happy to have a gun in his hand again, led them towards the main door. He’d get them out. He’d see them through. Just a few more steps and then freedom, and the glory of bringing down the Scarlioni Gang for ever.
A spray of bullets sent them all diving for cover as chips of plaster and shredded pot plants spun up into the air.
Coughing, the Doctor looked up carefully, hat clasped protectively to his head.
The Countess was standing at the end of the corridor, blocking their path. She was holding a mini-Gatling gun and tutting theatrically.
Well, this had not been part of the plan.
The Countess, grinning sweetly, strolled towards Duggan. She could afford to take her time over this. She blew him a kiss and tightened her finger on the trigger.
She had made the terrible mistake of ignoring Romana. As the Countess passed the alcove she was pressed into, Romana snatched up a vase and brought it down on the Countess’s head. She went down like a sack of turnips.
Romana was slightly surprised at herself. She frowned.
‘Not you as well.’ The Doctor was staring at the Countess’s prostrate figure.
‘You know, I rather enjoyed that.’ Romana was biting her lip.
‘Well, I should hope so.’ The Doctor sadly picked up a few shards of the vase. ‘That was late Ming Dynasty and absolutely priceless.’
Duggan propped the Countess up against a wall. Even unconscious she looked quite beautiful.
* * *
Seconds later they were out on the street. All around them, Paris got on with being rather splendid by night. Couples ran down a nearby boulevard laughing. Cars swerved and hooted at each other in curiously endearing ways. A nearby café spilled out onto the street. And, because it was night time, the Eiffel Tower was lit up. Of course it was.
Just for a moment, the giddy fun of that afternoon (really, had it only been this afternoon?) came flooding back to Romana. Yes, there were dangerous time experiments and impossible paintings to contend with. But there was also Paris. A whole city to go out and enjoy. Perhaps they could just . . . She looked across at the Doctor and could see the grin forming on his face. He was thinking the same.
It was Duggan’s single-mindedness which saved them. ‘Come on,’ he growled. ‘We’ve got to get to the Louvre.’ He started off towards the museum.
For a moment the Doctor looked disappointed. Then he strode off in a different direction entirely. ‘No, Duggan. You have to go to the Louvre.’
What? thought Romana. Were they really bunking off and leaving Duggan to it?
‘Romana, you stay with Duggan, look after him, stop each other hitting people.’ The Doctor continued to walk off into the night.
Romana was stunned.
‘Where are you going?’ she demanded.
‘I’m going to see a middle-aged Italian,’ the Doctor called out. ‘Well, late Middle Aged. Renaissance in fact.’ The Doctor’s laugh echoed as he was swallowed up into the night.
* * *
The singing finally finished. Harrison Mandel felt as though his head had been filled with chalk scraped from a blackboard by fingernails.
The nightclub audience broke into enthusiastic applause.
‘But that was dreadful,’ he groaned.
Elena looked at him and tutted. ‘It was, darling, it absolutely was. But we mustn’t say so.’ She stood up. ‘Brava!’ she called. ‘Brava!’ She hastily sat down again. ‘Don’t think I could stand another encore.’ She laid a hand upon his leg. ‘No. The art of these things is to express oneself while not expressing oneself.’
The applause died and the audience started to make a hurried exit. Harrison stood reluctantly, sad to give up Elena’s hand on his knee. ‘You see, one does not say that that was dreadful wailing by a singer who can’t sing, mon cheri, although, undoubtedly, that is exactly what it was. That is not done.’ They spilled out into the bar, where there was an audible air of relief. ‘One says that it was a bravura voyage into atonalism.’
‘One does?’ Harrison echoed uncertainly.
‘One absolutely does.’ Elena paused, clearly expecting him to say something.
‘Well,’ began Harrison haltingly, ‘I did like her dress.’
Elena very clearly didn’t show her disappointment. ‘Out there in Paris is something beautiful, waiting just for you. And when you see it, you will find the words.’ She took his arm. ‘Come, let’s go and do something fun.’
* * *
The Louvre was not the only art gallery broken into that night. About ten minutes’ walk from the Eiffel Tower is a street full of galleries, the kind that sells cheap fakes to expensive tourists.
Skilled hands saw to a lock and deactivated both alarms in seconds. M. Bertrand’s gallery was crammed full of absurd things at absurd prices. Thieves can tell a lot about a Paris gallery by the number of alarms it has. Two systems says that there’s nothing really worth stealing and you may as well not bother picking the lock. In this case, M. Bertrand was playing the thieves at their own game. There was actually a fabulously valuable Barbara Hepworth sculpture at the back, but as he’d had to get permission from the council to take a wall down to fit it in, he wasn’t that worried about thieves stealing it.
The intruder did pause to admire the Hepworth. He even stroked it gently. He was perhaps the only person in Paris who could have removed it without knocking a wall down. But no.
Instead he worked his way carefully through the gallery, torch playing over various paintings. Some watches melting in deserts were clearly derivative. Several early impressionist works were clearly fakes. And some of the string-and-twine sculptures screamed ‘bought from a bric-a-brac stall’. The thing that drew the thief was the new exhibit.
M. Bertrand had failed to notice the new exhibit. If he had he would have screamed in surprise while hastily scribbling out a price ticket. The truth was that M. Bertrand’s long lunch yesterday had been so long it had lasted until the following morning. He’d crawled in so late he’d barely had time to drink an espresso and shrug before heading out for lunch again. Because of this, M. Bertrand had entirely missed his remarkable new exhibit.
The intruder did not. He was only mildly distracted by the need to return and admire the Hepworth again. Other than that, he more or less made a beeline for the new exhibit.
It was a blue box, well over two metres high by about a metre wide. M. Bertrand would have been delighted by it, partly because it was such an unusual thing. When he’d been in London in the 1960s, they were everywhere. Police boxes were a convenient way for policemen to phone the station, while giving them somewhere handy to have their sandwiches and store their criminals (so long as the criminals didn’t eat their lunch). With the rise of the radio and the sandwich bar, the police box had gradually been phased out. Which was a shame, as there was something about the sheer boxiness and the blueness of it and the words ‘Police Box’ that made the box really so very reassuring. Plus the fact that it hummed to itself.
Not that every police box hummed to itself. Just this on
e. It was a happy little ‘all’s well with the world’ hum which sometimes, it had to be said, seemed very much at odds with the things going on around it. But anyway, hum it did. It was all part of how reassuring the box was. ‘I’m perfectly content to be here,’ the box seemed to be saying, ‘so that’s not a problem for you either is it?’
Even the sign on the front of the humming blue box was reassuring, if misleading:
POLICE TELEPHONE
FREE FOR USE OF PUBLIC
ADVICE AND ASSISTANCE OBTAINABLE IMMEDIATELY
OFFICERS & CARS RESPOND TO URGENT CALLS
PULL TO OPEN
The intruder went up to the reassuring door of the reassuring box and fitted a key to it. It opened and, with only a short pause to hoick his scarf out of the way, he strode inside and the door closed again.
Things stayed that way for a minute or two.
And then the hum got a little louder, as though the box was thinking about something very hard. Then, as if this had been the plan all along, the box went elsewhere loudly.
* * *
The Doctor had vanished.
Impossible man. Romana found a small iron bollard and kicked it soundly.
One minute he’d been there, ordering them to go and save the Mona Lisa, the next he’d vanished into the night and literally off the face of the Earth. The penny had dropped a second too late. She’d hurried after him, and found herself standing in a street full of geraniums and absurdly empty of Doctor.
The Doctor really was surprisingly good at making himself scarce when he wanted to. When some trigger-happy guard with a staser pistol was firing at him, or when Romana wanted to know what the Moog Drone Clamp was doing in the kettle. These were just normal, boring everyday disappearing acts. But this was it. This time he’d pulled the big one.
He’d done it. He’d gone and abandoned her on Earth. He’d raced back to the TARDIS, full of confidence. Quick trip off into time and then back. The terrible truth was that the Doctor could end up anywhere. He was hopeless at piloting the TARDIS. Really, truly utterly hopeless. He was best off sticking to the Randomiser. But no, the Doctor was so absolutely delighted at how much better he’d got at flying it recently that he’d completely failed to notice the remarkable coincidence of Romana’s arrival. She’d quickly mastered the art of leaning over the controls to tell him how marvellous he was while subtly tweaking the Mandril Condensors before he landed them inside a sun.
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