by Barry Letts
Then she looked down.
And froze.
It was at that moment that it started to rain. And the low rumble of distant thunder promised a downpour. For a moment her nerve failed her and she was on the point of turning back. But whether it was her professional pride, or just the plain stubbornness of a true Liverpudlian, her curiosity had to be satisfied. She had to know what the locked door was hiding.
Inch by inch, her fingertips clutching vainly at the smooth wet stone behind her, she made her way to the ornamental railing of the next balcony, and, after a few convulsive breaths, managed to loosen her grip and climb over.
But the curtains were drawn. Utter frustration...
Hang on! There was a crack between the curtains, and if she pushed her face really close to the glass she could just see enough to be able to scan the room from the double door on one side to the other door in the far wall. It was an ordinary room, with chairs and a big table. And there in the middle: the Skang!
It was a shimmering bronze statue (an idol?) the height of a man and roughly of the same dimensions throughout, save for the head, which was at least twice as big, with great eyes.
It patently represented the same being as the one in the painting. It was sitting cross-legged on the floor, holding a large bowl in which the tip of its proboscis was resting.
As detailed as a rococo carving, the thing seemed to be a cross between a reptile and a giant insect. But in spite of its grotesque features, there was something about it that Sarah found strangely beautiful.
She pulled the Polaroid camera from her bag and, blinking the raindrops from her eyes, took as good a shot of it as she could manage. She’d just have to hope that the automatic flash would take care of the lack of light.
She’d got what she wanted. This was going to be quite a story.
But as she stuffed the camera back into her bag, ready for the terrifying journey back along the ledge, she heard a sound - and the curtains were flung back. She threw herself flat against the wall as the world was bleached by the first lightning flash of the coming storm.
Whitbread! He must have still been in the room, and seen the flash!
Not daring to move, Sarah held her breath, waiting for the window to open and the humiliating confrontation. But the thunder broke the heavens apart, the rain sheeted down, the lightning danced around the rooftops of South Hill Park Square - and the curtains were closed again.
She’d got away with it.
‘No,’ said Clorinda.
‘But I’ve checked, and if I go by Garuda - that’s the Indonesian airline - it’ll only cost me... er, you... two hundred and fifty pounds return, and I -’
‘No,’ said Clorinda.
‘But if I join this Mother Hilda’s ashram -’
‘No,’ said Clorinda. She peered into a small mirror from her handbag. ‘India’s swarming with kids dressed up in white or orange or sky-blue-pink, thinking they’re going to save the world. One, the world probably isn’t worth saving, and two, they’re not going to do it with my money.’
She sucked at her front teeth, but whether this was an expression of her contempt for Sarah’s project, or an attempt to remove a smear of lipstick, Sarah was uncertain.
‘And while we’re on the subject of what I’m paying for, where’s your think-piece on fish? It had better be good. I’ve waited long enough for it.’
‘Yes, well... It’s nearly finished. I’ve had to do a lot of research... Honestly, Clorinda love, this Skang thing could be really big! And it all started in India, so -’
‘Why are you so fired-up about it, anyway? They’re doing us a favour, aren’t they, getting Jeremy off our back?’
There Sarah had to agree. But still... This needed to be approached from a different direction. She took a deep breath and launched into Clorinda-speak. ‘Tell you what, we could plan a whole campaign! “Is the New Age old hat?!” “All you need is love? We say no!” “Will meditation give you a fat bum?” That sort of thing. And I could go out to Bombay and -’
‘No,’ said Clorinda.
Why was she so fired-up?
The whole Skang set-up was on a par with most of the other new cults that had been springing up over the past few years. Why did she feel there was something there that was fundamentally wrong - evil, almost?
It was then that she thought of the Doctor.
This was right up his street, surely? A strange alien-looking creature; kids being brainwashed by a shady politician... If anybody was on the side of the good guys... And, after all, in spite of his being attached to the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, he was his own man. (Would you call a Time Lord a man?) Surely she could get in to see him after all that they’d been through together?
But there was something she had to do first...
‘I went back, you see Doctor, and applied all over again. But I thought that Whitbread might have banned me, so I went as somebody else...’ She giggled at the memory.
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 l
ooks 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.
CHAPTER THREE
‘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.