Authors: Daniel O'Mahony
He felt a hand press against his shoulder. Reassuring.
‘I think we should leave the argument, Doctor. I mean, the blood loss could be… we should do something, get medical help.’
‘Then we’d better get started. What do you suggest?’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Truman.’
‘Hi. I’m Ace.’
Beat.
‘I said, “hi”. You deaf or stupid or what?’
Beat.
‘Is there anyone in there? Am I getting through to anyone? Helloooo…?’
Beat.
‘You don’t say much, do you?’
Beat.
‘Why do you wear that mask?’
Beat.
‘Acne, is it? I used to suffer myself, until a friend introduced me to Spot‐
Away…’
‘Shut up.’
‘It talks! It sings, it dances, it plays the bagpipes. You’re a thug. Hired muscle. I’ve seen hundreds like you, mate.’
Beat.
‘Where are you taking me?’
‘To Winterdawn.’
Beat.
Ace and Truman marched on in silence.
On the second‐
floor landing, the silence was shattered.
‘You don’t seem to understand.’ A woman’s voice, not one Ace recognized. The tone was reasonable going on hysterical, trying to sound calm and collected when they really wanted to scream their head off. Ace knew this, she’d sounded like it herself on many occasions. If you can keep your head when all about, and all that shit.
The woman’s diatribe was cut off by a low, muffled voice. That
was
calm and collected. Ace couldn’t quite get the gist of it, she guessed that it was something reassuring.
Truman seized her by the shoulders, squeezing so it felt like his fingers were digging into the bone. Ace put up a token struggle – she had a right to, he was bloody hurting her.
‘Journey’s end,’ Truman whispered in her ear. ‘Now, you’re going to be very good for me, keeping quiet and still while I introduce you. Got that?’
‘Get… aaah!’ There was a wrenching pain as the masked man twisted her arms behind her back.
‘I’d enjoy hurting you,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t give me an excuse.’
Ace scowled. Pointless – it wasn’t as if he could see her face. She wanted to scream something loud and abusive at him, but he might try something permanently painful. Not that she couldn’t take it, but at the moment, it would be useless.
She’d seen hundreds like him before.
The woman was shouting again.
‘I’m telling you, there’s this mad bitch wandering round the house! She’s already attacked me! And you’re just sitting there…!’
‘Do you expect me to do anything else?’ Low and reassuring rumbled, briefly audible. Deep. Male.
‘You know what I mean. Someone’s got to go for the police.’
‘In we go,’ Truman whispered. He shoved Ace through the door, keeping a firm grip on her arms.
‘We
can’t
call the police. Not…’
‘Look what I’ve found,’ Truman announced.
Ace glanced around the room, drawing in first impressions of her captors and their environment. The room was plainly decorated, starkly furnished – a few scattered chairs and a table. Ace’s eye was caught by a pile of video equipment on the table, but she swiftly refocused on the others in the room.
At first she only saw the woman. Dark‐
haired, mid‐
twenties, rather attractive. She watched Ace with an unnerving and creepy stare. One of her cheeks was slightly bruised, dull purple showing brightly under the electric light.
Truman’s grip loosened. Slightly.
Ace didn’t see the man for a moment, concealed as he was in an awkward position behind the door. Truman jerked her round and she was able to see him glide from the shadows, watching her with a cocktail expression of suspicion, fear, disgust and curiosity.
He had probably been a tall man. Ace guessed that he was no more than sixty, but he seemed much older. There was a weight, a weariness, on his face that reminded her that one day she could look and feel just the same. His features were fine and sharp, arched eyebrows and hollow eyes giving him a dark, satanic look. His hair was combed into a flow of grey and white, his eyes hid behind a pair of wire‐
rimmed glasses, but he peered constantly over them, as if they were for effect only. Despite the sense of age that surrounded him, there was also something young and fiery. The resemblance between this man and the young woman was unmistakable.
The old man was dressed in a dark, crumpled suit. His legs dangled, useless and painfully thin, at the front of his wheelchair.
‘Who are you?’ he hissed. ‘What are you doing in this house?’
‘She claims her name is Ace,’ Truman said, leisurely sceptical. ‘I found her in the attic store‐
room. She spun me some yarn about a monster hiding in the wardrobe.’
A smile flickered on the old man’s icy features.
‘The creative imagination is alive and well. What’s she doing here? A burglar, or something else?’
‘Look, I’m intruding,’ Ace decided to risk Truman’s wrath and try a reasonable approach, ‘But it’s an accident. We didn’t mean to… to come here.’ She stopped, realizing how pathetic it sounded.
‘Try and stay in the realms of the everyday.’ The old man was incredulous. Ace didn’t blame him. ‘Who’s “we”?’
‘Her accomplice is the man I’ve already seen,’ Truman interceded. ‘A medical man apparently.’
‘I can speak for myself,’ Ace hissed.
‘So you can,’ the man in the wheelchair agreed. ‘Well, Ace – if that’s your real name, something I doubt very much – welcome to my home. I am Professor Jeremy Winterdawn and this is my daughter, Cassandra… But you’ve already met.’
Ace glanced at the silent woman, a stranger. Winterdawn was trying to get her off‐
guard.
‘Sandra, is this the woman who attacked you?’
Ace froze, forcing herself to do a double take. Winterdawn wasn’t being obscure, this was mistaken identity. Both she and the Professor were staring at Cassandra now, waiting for the answer.
‘Well, come on. How many burglars can we possibly have? It must have been her,’ Winterdawn snapped impatiently.
No, it couldn’t, Ace thought. It must have been Benny. Wouldn’t hurt a fly normally, but capable of great violence.
‘I can’t tell.’ The woman shook her head, still staring at Ace with a force that should have made her eyes bleed. She looked as if she was on the verge of tears. ‘I couldn’t see properly. I
can’t
tell!’
There was a short, awkward silence. Ace kept quiet.
‘Truman,’ Winterdawn said at last. ‘Go and find her accomplice.’
There was a
swish
of air behind her, and Truman’s vicelike grip vanished. Only when he was out of the room, the door closed behind him, did Ace relax.
‘I’m sorry about him,’ Winterdawn said evenly, hiding any hint of emotion. ‘He enjoys his work too much. What am I going to do with you?’
‘Call the police,’ Cassandra said, so quietly that Ace barely heard her.
‘My daughter has a problem with her sight,’ Winterdawn continued, in the same even tones as before. They were too reasonable, Ace realized, too deliberate. ‘Five years ago, pieces of a car managed to lodge themselves in her optic nerves. She’s had surgery of course, but the results are patchy. Her sight comes and goes. What sort of human being
are
you?’ Winterdawn dropped the blandness and exploded, his anger directed solely at Ace, ‘How could you attack a
blind
woman!’
‘I didn’t…’ Ace began, but she was cut short by Winterdawn.
‘What am I going to do with you?’ he growled again, calmer, but more threatening than before. There was hate in his eyes, and something else, something potentially dangerous. They scared her.
Wedderburn was beginning to doubt the authenticity of this ‘Doctor’ character. His sudden appearance, the questions he asked, his ignorance of details he should have known inside‐
out… he hadn’t even mentioned his proper name. He was, Wedderburn considered, a little too good to be true.
Wedderburn had suppressed his doubts at first, too consumed by guilt to pay them much attention – he had, after all, almost been responsible for this woman’s death. Once things calmed down, the doubts resurfaced. Who was this woman? How did the Doctor know her? What was she doing in the conservatory?
He’d helped the Doctor carry her to Sandra’s bedroom. It was close and convenient and there was a medical kit stowed away under Sandra’s bed – the first place Wedderburn thought of. The Doctor immediately began to rummage through the white tin box, rooting out bandages, cotton wool, plasters, clotting pads – anything to staunch the bleeding. His concern for the woman was obvious and genuine, Wedderburn realized, but in all other things he was a liar. He’d incriminated himself, asked who Sandra was. A black mark against him – everyone on Keightley’s team had heard of Sandra. Jeremy loved talking about her. It was inconceivable that the Doctor could be genuine and not know the name.
‘Another one of the team?’ Wedderburn asked as they gathered round the unconscious woman, working on her wounds with the plasters. He adopted a simple, honest smile, and the Doctor had nodded automatically, ‘Getting younger, aren’t they? Mind you, Keightley was only twenty‐
three when she started brow‐
beating people with that paper on temporal logic…’
‘Moore,’ the Doctor looked up sharply, ‘be quiet. Please.’ From then they worked in silence.
Laid out on Sandra’s bed, Bernice Summerfield resembled a cold stone effigy. Fake or not, Wedderburn didn’t want her death on his conscience and he threw himself into the task of helping the Doctor stem the bleeding. It wasn’t, he discovered, as bad as they had first feared. Thank God. The moment this was done, he’d get away. Find Winterdawn. Get the truth.
‘It all depends now,’ the Doctor said, squatting wearily on the end of the bed, not caring to meet Wedderburn’s gaze, ‘on how much blood she lost in the first place.’
‘She’ll live,’ Wedderburn told him, with conviction. ‘The plants are used by the local tribes in ritual blood‐
letting. Most survive. According to their legends, the valley is blessed by the gods. Blessed or cursed.’
‘It’s entered their culture?’ The Doctor considered this information carefully. ‘Yes, that makes sense. For the mutation to be so widespread suggests that this valley has been subject to it for generations.’
‘Yes, that’s what I thought, so we…’ Wedderburn cut himself off as the door to the bedroom was flung open. It wasn’t, as he’d hoped, Jeremy or Sandra. Just the familiar, shambling shape of Justin Cranleigh.
‘Is Sandra…?’ Justin began, glancing anxiously around the room. ‘Laura,’ he said, as his eyes lighted on Bernice, but he lost interest and began to stare at his feet, hugging himself compulsively. He seemed even more distracted than usual – something had clearly upset him.
‘She’s not here, Justin,’ Wedderburn told him. ‘She won’t be long.’
Justin sagged with disappointment.
‘I’ll sit in the corner,’ he said, ambling across to the corner of the room and sinking into an awkward cross‐
legged shape, saying nothing more. He had captured the Doctor’s attention for the moment, and Wedderburn took advantage of this distraction to slip from the room. Checking that he wasn’t being followed, he slipped along the passageway towards the stairs. Jeremy would probably be in his study or Jenny’s old room…
A blank, white face grinned at him suddenly. Wedderburn almost had a heart attack on the spot.
‘Sorry,’ Truman said. ‘I didn’t hear you coming.’
Wedderburn pressed a hand to his chest. Truman
grinned
. ‘You haven’t seen a man – short, dark hair, white suit?’ he asked. ‘Professor Winterdawn’s getting anxious about him.’
‘Oh, the Doctor,’ Wedderburn replied, smiling expansively. ‘He’s in Sandra’s room.’
‘Are you going to call the police?’ Ace asked drably, without any hint of aggression. There was no point in aggravating the situation. Still, she was hoping to provoke some reaction. Winterdawn was upset by the attack on his daughter; it seemed at odds with his earlier refusal to contact the authorities.
‘No.’
Maybe he had something to hide?
‘Not tonight.’
Something tonight? Something that could be cleared away by the morning?
‘I didn’t attack your daughter.’ Ace underlined her words with conviction. ‘Believe me.’
‘How can I believe you?’ Winterdawn snapped. ‘Give me one good reason.’
That was the problem. There wasn’t a good reason. There was only her word and, since she’d already been collared as a burglar, that would carry no weight. She switched her stare to Cassandra, offering a silent appeal for help to the woman. She didn’t acknowledge it.
‘I can’t,’ Ace said, pained.
‘I say we lock her in one of the cellar rooms,’ Cassandra said. ‘We can keep her there until you see fit to call the police.’
‘You could let me go,’ Ace suggested. That was a stupid mistake – she realized that the moment she’d opened her mouth. Winterdawn wasn’t laughing.
‘When Harry gets back, he can take her.’
‘I could…’ Sandra began. Winterdawn interrupted with a curt ‘No.’
‘I’m not incapable.’
‘She might kill you this time.’ Ace had killed more than a few people in her time but only people who deserved it, or non‐
people like Daleks. Being described as a potential murderer was something she almost found offensive.
‘I’m prepared this time,’ Sandra continued coolly.
The stalemate was broken by the arrival of another man whom Ace didn’t recognize. Tall, sun‐
burnt, the same age as Winterdawn but athletic compared to the hunched shape in the wheelchair. Twenty years ago, Ace might have found him attractive.
‘Jeremy, I need…’ The newcomer checked himself, noticing Ace.
‘Moore, this is Ace. She’s a mugger,’ Winterdawn introduced her without enthusiasm.
‘Ace.’ The old man smiled at her. ‘One‐
fourth part of the Hand of Fate, right?’ Ace managed a Truman‐
like grin.
‘Moore, I’m busy at the moment,’ Winterdawn fidgeted, but his protests were blocked by Sandra who stepped forward and seized Ace by the shoulders, taking over where Truman had left off.
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘Ace is just leaving.’ With less force but more grace than Truman displayed, Sandra manoeuvred her captive from the room. Outside, her grip loosened.