Doctor Who_ Deep Blue Part 2

In many ways she was viewing this holiday as a make-or-break period for all of them. Whatever happened between her parents, it would certainly be a watershed of sorts. This time next year she would be eighteen, and, if her suspicions were borne out, the mother of a child. She wasn't certain certain that she was pregnant, but she intended to pluck up the courage to take a test some time within the next few days. Here, away from the stifling familiarity of everyday life, she had a.s.sured herself that it would be easier to bear somehow. And if the test proved positive, she would tell Mum and Dad and take it from there. that she was pregnant, but she intended to pluck up the courage to take a test some time within the next few days. Here, away from the stifling familiarity of everyday life, she had a.s.sured herself that it would be easier to bear somehow. And if the test proved positive, she would tell Mum and Dad and take it from there.

She glanced at her brother, Chris, in the vain hope of a little moral support, but he was being his usual moody self.

He had hardly strung two words together since they had started out early this morning, and not for the first time Charlotte found herself wondering whether it was their parents' problems that were causing him to withdraw into himself or whether his behaviour was simply that of a typical acne-ridden, rebellious fourteen-year-old. Not so very long ago she and Chris had been quite close, but these days he was behaving as if she and their parents were the three people on the planet he'd least like to be with.

'Come on,' Charlotte said with mock cheerfulness, hefting her suitcase, 'let's see what our rooms are like.' She climbed to the top of the steps and stretched out her hand to the doorbell. Before she could press it, the door was yanked open.

The tall, thin-faced man in his late twenties looked almost as surprised as she must have done. He was hurrying out of the house and had to stop dead to avoid barging straight into her. They both apologised in unison, then laughed. 'Are you staying here too?' Charlotte asked, immediately blus.h.i.+ng and hoping she hadn't made it sound as if she wished that he was.

'Just for a night or two. Here on holiday?'

She nodded. 'What's it like?'

The man grinned. He had a pleasant smile, easy and unselfconscious. Glancing behind him, then leaning a little closer, he murmured, 'Oh, it's fine, just as long as you watch out for the dragon.'

The sun had climbed to its zenith, and even though sweat rolled down Mike's back as he hurried along, he couldn't afford to take off his suede jacket because of the gun he wore strapped to his torso. The distance to the mouth of the fis.h.i.+ng harbour was further than it had appeared. By the time he arrived at the edge of the police cordon, the crowd had grown. The majority were rubber-necking tourists, but there were also a number of locals, frustrated because they couldn't get to their boats.

He excused his way quietly and politely through the throng, offering a conciliatory smile and an apology when people scowled at him, not wis.h.i.+ng to draw attention to himself. It was ironic really; the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce was a top-secret organisation, and yet the Doctor, who usually undertook such investigations for them, did nothing but draw attention to himself. Mike imagined how different the scene would be if the Doctor and Jo Grant had been here. draw attention to himself. Mike imagined how different the scene would be if the Doctor and Jo Grant had been here.

The Doctor would no doubt have been elbowing his way through the crowd, Jo in tow (and she alone was enough to draw the attention of most men), proclaiming, 'Do excuse me, old chap,' in that loud, theatrical manner of his. Then, flouting authority, he would no doubt have ducked under the police barrier without explanation, leaving Jo to root out their UNIT pa.s.ses to avoid arrest.

Mike smiled to himself. The Doctor's showmans.h.i.+p and his blatant disregard for protocol used to drive the Brigadier to distraction, and sometimes still did. Still, at the end of the day, the Brig was first to admit that if the Doctor came up with the right result then a little unwanted attention was a small price to pay. In some ways, Mike thought the Doctor's flamboyance worked to UNIT's advantage. It caught people off-guard, made them take the Doctor less than seriously, which often proved to be their undoing.

He reached the barrier and leaned towards the uniformed constable standing a few feet away. 'Excuse me.'

The constable ignored him, just as he was ignoring all the other comments and questions being hurled in his direction.

Mike sighed, reached into his back pocket and produced his UNIT pa.s.s. He held it out for the policeman's inspection and said with a little more urgency, 'Excuse me, but would you mind having a look at this, please?'

The policeman's eyes flickered in his direction, focusing on the pa.s.s. Mike gave him time to read it, then asked, 'Would it be possible to come through, do you think?'

The constable reached for the pa.s.s. 'May I take this, sir? I shall have to make an enquiry.'

'Of course.'

A couple of minutes later, the policeman was back. He returned the pa.s.s to him, and lifted the tape barrier for him to duck beneath. 'If you'd care to follow me, sir?'

Mike heard a few comments behind him as he followed the policeman along the jetty. Someone muttered something about MI5 and several people laughed. A plain-clothes detective was waiting for Mike on the jetty beside the trawler.

He had a square, pockmarked face and a C-shaped scar on his chin. His green suit sagged on him as if he had been wearing it for a long time without a break, and the top b.u.t.ton of his s.h.i.+rt was undone beneath the fat knot of his tie.

'Mr Yates,' he said, offering Mike a strong but sweaty handshake, 'Detective Inspector Pickard.'

'Inspector,' said Mike. 'Good of you to see me.'

'Not at all. I'm a bit intrigued to be honest. I'd have thought something like this would be well outside UNIT's area of interest.'

Mike shrugged. 'Perhaps it is. To tell you the truth, I'm only here on a hunch. I saw some of what was going on from the window of my boarding house.'

'I see. So what really brings you to Tayborough Sands? Oh no, don't tell me. The so-called UFO that came down in the sea?'

Mike smiled, a little embarra.s.sed. 'I don't expect anything to come of it, believe me, but UNIT is obliged to look into such matters.'

'Of course it is,' said Pickard, struggling to conceal his smirk. 'But if you're thinking what happened here is related to your flying saucer, then I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed.'

'And what did did happen here?' asked Mike, hiding his irritation behind a mask of breeziness. happen here?' asked Mike, hiding his irritation behind a mask of breeziness.

'Murder,' said Pickard bluntly. 'Multiple murder to be precise. Six-strong crew and not a single one left alive. Very nasty. Bloke who did it must be a madman.'

'Do you mind if I take a look?'

'Help yourself. Hope you've got a strong stomach, though, Mr Yates.'

'Cast iron,' said Mike evenly.

Pickard raised his eyebrows and Mike followed him on to the trawler. The deck was wet, oily. The stench of rotting fish was almost overwhelming. Pickard said, 'The stink was even worse when we found the boat this morning It was reported missing last night by the skipper's wife and we spotted it at first light, drifting on the sea. The murders must have happened right after the catch was winched aboard. There were dead fish all over the deck. We reckon there must have been some sort of argument. It's a bit early to say, but what we think is that the killer may have been mortally wounded by the last man left alive, who then died of his injuries.'

'How did the men die?' asked Mike.

Pickard fixed him with a deadpan gaze. 'Why don't you take a look for yourself.'

Mike held his gaze for a moment, then smiled and nodded.

'Thanks.' He moved to the nearest red blanket, noting the thick runnels of now-dried blood that meandered from beneath it and ran into the drainage gutters on both sides of the deck. He had seen death before in many forms and lifted the edge of the blanket without hesitation. He saw an arm that looked like it had been torn from its socket, lying in a pool of blood that had congealed to the consistency of black glue. The arm was mottled blue, purple and black in the places where the blood that was left inside had settled. On the bicep were four small circular bruises that could have been caused by the tight grip of a human hand.

Mike replaced the blanket and straightened up.

'What do you think?' said Pickard, in a challenging tone.

Mike had not been wholly unaffected by what he had seen - he was aware of the quick pumping of his heart - but he was calm enough for his response to sound clinical, considered.

'The arm wasn't severed by a blade. It was torn off. Which means that, unless I'm missing something, your killer had incredible strength.'

Pickard nodded as if in satisfaction and moved to the second blanket. 'What's under here is even stranger,' he said, and lifted a comer of the blanket up for Mike to peer beneath.

It took Mike a few moments to work out what he was looking at. Finally he said, 'My G.o.d, that's part of a ribcage, isn't it? And that... that must be a heart.'

Pickard let the blanket fall back. 'Ribcage, heart, lungs and some surrounding tissue. They're quite badly crushed, but it's as though -'

'- someone or something reached in and ripped them out of the body with their bare hands?'

Pickard nodded. 'Exactly.'

'And you don't think that's at all unusual, Inspector?'

Pickard s.h.i.+fted uncomfortably. 'Well, of course it's unusual.

To tell the truth I've never seen anything like it. But crazy people are capable of performing incredible feats of strength you know, Mr Yates.'

'Captain,' said Mike quietly.

'Pardon?'

'I hold the rank of Captain.' Then he smiled. 'Not that it matters. I'm just a bit of a stickler for detail, that's all.'

Pickard looked a little baffled.

'So is this all you have to show?' Mike continued briskly.

'Butcher's leftovers? No complete bodies?'

'There's one,' said Pickard. 'We haven't had a formal ID yet, but we think it's the skipper's son, Terry Robson.'

'But the entire crew have been accounted for?' said Mike. 'I mean, among all these bits and pieces?'

Pickard shook his head. 'It's still too early for that. We won't know for sure what we've got here until later this afternoon. Unofficially we reckon we've got the bits of at least five bodies here.'

'And the sixth crewmember?'

'Dead too, I'd guess.'

'What makes you so sure?'

Pickard led the way across to a blanket beside the wheelhouse. The bulge beneath this blanket was more substantial than the others. Glancing back at the police line at the end of the jetty - Mike guessed to ensure that the public couldn't see what he was about to reveal - Pickard pulled the blanket back.

The man was lying on his back, eyes partially open and glazed with death, head lolled on to his left shoulder. The exposed side of his neck and throat was ripped and gouged as if he had been attacked by a wild animal. His clothes and the wooden deck of the boat beneath him were soaked with blood. By his side, inches from his hand, was a stubby handgun with a wide muzzle.

'Flare gun?' said Mike.

Pickard nodded. 'I think Terry here fired it point-blank at his attacker, who then either fell or was blown overboard.'

'And Terry died later from loss of blood,' murmured Mike.

Pickard let the blanket fall back over the corpse. Mike straightened up.

'Well, thanks again for your help, Inspector. You will keep me informed if there are any developments, won't you?'

Pickard smiled thinly. 'If that's what you want. Though I don't think we'll be arresting any little green men from Mars for this.'

Mike matched Pickard's smile with a disarming one of his own. 'You never know, Inspector,' he said. 'You never know.'

Guy Elkins woke up thinking about who in the world he would most like to kill. Just lately his mind was refusing to turn itself to any other subject. If his mates started talking about football or motorbikes or girls they'd like to sleep with, his thoughts would begin to slip and a strange buzzing would start up in his brain, drowning out their words. The last time he had been in the pub, four days ago, all he had been able to think about was smas.h.i.+ng his beer gla.s.s on the counter and ramming the jagged edge into Carl Collier's throat.

Carl was his best mate, they had known each other since they were babies, but the thought of Carl's blood spurting out filled him with a shudder of excitement he could barely control. He had felt sweat spring up on his brow, had clenched his teeth and gripped his beer gla.s.s so hard it was a wonder it hadn't exploded in his fist. Carl had noticed the state he was in, had frowned and asked Guy if he was feeling all right. Guy had known what Carl was saying despite his words being drowned out by a buzzing so loud it was like having an electricity pylon in his head.

The only reason he hadn't slashed his best friend's throat on that occasion was that he had forced himself, with a mighty effort of will, to let go of the gla.s.s, shove Carl out of the way and stagger out of the pub. He had set off for home at a stumbling run and hadn't stopped until he got there. He had no idea whether Carl had come after him to find out what was wrong. Certainly Guy hadn't seen him since he'd left him sitting bemusedly in a pool of beer on the pub floor.

Guy and Carl, both eighteen now, had been getting into trouble together almost since they could walk. They'd been done for affray, burglary, vandalism, shoplifting, stealing cars. They knew each other's strengths and limitations, knew they could rely on one another in a crisis. At least, they did until about ten days ago. It was then that Guy's mind had started to... change.

Guy, like Carl, had always enjoyed a good sc.r.a.p. He believed there was nothing better than hearing the crunch of somebody's nose breaking beneath his fist, of knocking somebody to the ground, spilling somebody's blood. Just recently, though, the desire to inflict violence on other people had grown into an obsession, an addiction. It was as if something had taken him over, latched on to that desire within him, and had begun to feed it. In turn, the desire had responded, growing and flouris.h.i.+ng like some rampant weed in his brain, and in the process strangling all other thoughts and needs. Today Guy didn't just want to hurt people, he wanted to kill them, wanted to rip them apart, bathe in their blood. The sheer ferocity of his thoughts was terrifying and exhilarating. Yet although his bloodl.u.s.t had engulfed him to the point where he could barely function on any social level, he had never felt more alive.

All week he had been roaming the streets for stray animals or raiding people's gardens for their pets, bringing them back to the house, torturing and killing them in his room. It a.s.suaged his desires a little, but it was not enough. Sooner or later he knew he would have to move on to people. The only thing that had held him back was the extra attention it would bring, the fear of getting caught.

It was not prison that scared him, though; far from it. He was simply terrified of being deprived of what he needed to feed his addiction. The buzzing urge to kill was so overwhelming that, were he to be denied the opportunity, he honestly believed his body would be ripped apart by the build-up of pressure inside him.

So, who to kill? Who would he most like like to kill? His drunken widower of a father who had never given a sod for him? Mrs Raymond, the vicious old cow of a headmistress who'd expelled him? Sergeant Weathers, who never got off his case, even when he wasn't up to anything? Or how about that stupid bird, Janice Crooks, who had shrieked with laughter when he'd asked her out in the pub a few months ago? to kill? His drunken widower of a father who had never given a sod for him? Mrs Raymond, the vicious old cow of a headmistress who'd expelled him? Sergeant Weathers, who never got off his case, even when he wasn't up to anything? Or how about that stupid bird, Janice Crooks, who had shrieked with laughter when he'd asked her out in the pub a few months ago?

Anyone would do, right now. If an opportunity were to present itself where he knew knew he could kill Carl, his life-long mate, and not get caught for it, he'd do it. He'd kill old women, little kids, babies... he could kill Carl, his life-long mate, and not get caught for it, he'd do it. He'd kill old women, little kids, babies...

Through the buzzing cacophony of his thoughts he heard the doorbell ring downstairs. Was this it? Was this what he'd been waiting for? Had a victim come to his lair? He scrambled out of bed and ran downstairs, only half-aware that he'd been wearing the same crumpled T-s.h.i.+rt and jeans for several days now, that in all that time he hadn't washed or brushed his teeth or combed the lank, shoulder-length hair that he kidded himself made him look like Charlie George.

He saw the man blink in shock and disgust as soon as he opened the door, saw it in the split-second before he covered it up. Guy was disappointed. The man looked lean and fit, as though he'd be hard to kill if Guy decided to try it, as though he wouldn't go down without a fight.

The frustration gnawed inside him, seemed to awaken the terrible itching that constantly simmered just beneath the surface of his skin. He wanted to tear at his own chest and arms with his fingernails. He gave an involuntary moan and the man looked at him curiously.

'Are you all right?'

'I...' Guy's voice was a croak; his face felt like a loose rubber mask he was trying unsuccessfully to control. With a gargantuan effort he pulled himself together, though his voice sounded slurred and rasping. 'What do you want?'

'My name is Mike Yates,' the man said. 'I'm looking for a Mr Derek Elkins. We have an appointment.'

As the information seeped slowly into his brain, Guy could only stare at him.

'Er... I was told he lived at this address,' the man added helpfully. 'Perhaps I was incorrectly informed?'