Doctor Who: Rags (5 page)

The Doctor looked at her closely, the cracks around his eyes deepening as he frowned. ‘You took your time, too, Jo.’

What the hell did he mean by that? She felt indignant and annoyed and was about to give him a curt answer, when he smiled compassionately at her.

‘Go and have that drink, Jo.’ He waited, hands on hips; a dramatic figure, cloak blowing slightly in the late afternoon breeze from the moors. She nodded and left him.

‘You’re that newswoman, aren’t you?

Charmagne looked up from her glass of red wine. The hippie she’d been interviewing at the pub table looked up too. For a bizarre second, she thought she had found fame and fortune at last. Of course, though, the biker who had asked the question wasn’t directing it at her, but rather at the BBC anchor girl who had just entered the pub along with a rotund cameraman. She felt an irrational jealousy prick her. This was her story. They had no right.

She frowned at herself. What the hell did she mean by that? An hour and a half ago she’d been in Plymouth, writing reports on neighbour from hell feuds and parrots sucked up by vacuum cleaners. This wasn’t her usual sort of scoop. And why did she have such a personal interest in it? Her editor hadn’t been convinced she should cover it, but she had practically hauled him up against the wall. She remembered the startled expression in the

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tubby little prat’s eyes. I’m doing this, her tight lips and narrowed eyes had told him, without her having to say another word.

Of course he’d let her. She’d have bloody gutted him if he hadn’t.

She turned back to the hippie opposite. He was scanning the TV

girl’s arse with more than casual interest.

‘You were saying about the band?’ she prompted with some impatience.

‘Uh?’ The hippie dragged his gaze away from the glamour girl and blinked at Charmagne. ‘Any chance of another of these, love?’

he held up his near-empty pint and dragged on his cigarette, squinting at her.

‘You said you saw them arrive?’ she insisted. He’d get another pint, but only after she’d got the whole gruesome story out of him.

‘Never seen nuthin’ like it. Thought this lot were crazy bastards...’ He gestured at the jukebox. What is this that stands before me? Figure in black which points at me, the singer was droning. ‘But this bunch just... ‘ Yeah, you’re lost for words, aren’t you mate, Charmagne thought. Full of admiration: I can see it in your eyes. They just instigated a mini-massacre and you’re proud of them.

‘S’ like all this punk shit, that’s coming out now. I expect you’ve

‘eard it. I mean, it was like them, but it wasn’t. Know what I’m sayin’?’

Actually, no. That’s why I’m buying you a drink, so you can tell me. She bit back her frustration. She concentrated on scribbling down some of his words, vague as they were. But there was something else fuelling her frustration - the biggest burst of excitement she had felt for a long time. This was big. Not just the murders, but something else behind them; maybe something to do with this band that played a gig, watched people die to their music and then simply strolled away. That was what excited her.

And this long-hair was alluding to that big thing without being eloquent or intelligent enough to nail it. And that frustrated her 35

immensely. Maybe she should talk to someone else. And then she knew she didn’t need to.

A mummer had entered the pub.

The Beast had never seen the Elbow so busy Even if it was full of scruffy-looking bastards he’d never seen before. He wished the town could see in a few more riots and murders, just to help his trade along a bit, you understand. He grinned as he collected empty glasses from a table and awarded himself a glance at the TV chick’s legs. Mmmm.Can’t beat the odd atrocity for bringin’

out the talent. Yeah, he was a Beast, and he knew it. Admitted it to himself. But he had a heart of gold, y’understand.

Heart of bleeding Gold...

‘That’s right, my girl,’ he winked at the TV girl, er, whassername... Truly Goodlegs, or somethin’. ‘You tell all the good folks out there in TV land what’s been goin’ on. I can fit ‘em all in here, see.’

She looked at him doubtfully. Like he was some sort of dog splat on her shoe. Just buy some more G&T’s, ya bitch. Let my good old till chime. Anyroad, what right had she to give him a look like that when there was this dodgy crowd in here.Jeeeee-sus. Look at ‘em. He would have refused to serve the whole bleedin’ lot of ‘em ‘cept for the fact that he had a heart of gold.

Then the ugliest bleeder he’d ever clapped eyes on entered the pub.

Jo was sipping her half of bitter nervously. In fact, she didn’t think she’d ever sipped a beer more nervously than she was now.

Thanks, Doctor. Thanks for bringing me to the most threatening-looking place I’ve ever been to. Ogrons, Axons, Daleks: they were nothing compared to these freaks and villains. She’d never really adjusted to punk. Too violent, too nihilistic. The flower child in her would take some banishing. But, looking around her, she realised this crowd could kick it out of her in seconds.

Spiked hair; multicoloured hair; leather.Spiked belts.Big boots.

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Most of them hadn’t been here at the start of the gig, she realised.

they’d just sort of materialised as the day wore on. Drawn here, like the TV crew and the Doctor. And herself. Still, there were a lot of hippies about too, and bikers. They seemed almost conservative now, or at least conventional, and wasn’t that strange? The jukebox hadn’t acclimatised to the change in the musical environment either: Hawkwind was blasting out right now, and some of the punks didn’t look too amused by that. One of them spat on the floor next to her at the bar. She turned away, her anxiety deepening. She wished the Doctor would hurry up. It had been a good thirty minutes since she’d left him.

And yet, strangely enough, part of her didn’t want to leave.

You’re a mixed up girl, Jo, she told herself and smiled wryly.

Someone next to her turned to her and smiled wryly back. Not the punk who’d spat, but a young man with a black mohair jumper and dark jeans. His eyes were a little lost-looking, his face thin but friendly. Of course, his hair was a little too spiky for Jo’s tastes, but he was kind of sexy. Then a cute little Chinese girl came up behind him, close enough for Jo to get the hint they were an item, and she smiled again, this time a little wistfully.

‘You all right?’ the young man asked her, and Jo wondered how many more people were going to say that to her tonight.

‘Well, considering I’ve just seen two men brutally murdered, I think I’m not shaping up too badly.’

‘You saw it too, then? Thought you might be a TV person.’

The Chinese girl was frowning at her as the young man spoke.

Her eyes were quite cold, and Jo imagined she could have an evil temper on her.

‘No, I’m just... just a traveller,’ she said and sipped her beer.

Where was the Doctor?

‘You don’t look like a traveller.’ The Chinese girl’s voice was accusatory.

‘I’m Nick,’ the young man said a little too quickly, and grinned sheepishly at her. ‘This is Sin. And going out with her is one, believe me.’

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‘You’re such a corny bastard, it’s embarrassing.’ Sin grimaced and fired up a cigarette, grudgingly offering one to Jo. Jo shook her head and smiled her friendliest smile.

She was struck again by the unreality of the situation. Here were these two, having a domestic in front of her. She glanced around at the rest of the pub clientele. The mood was losing its initial tenseness. Boozy banter was replacing the stone-wall antipathy she’d met upon entering the Devil’s Elbow. People had even stopped discussing the incident - and then it struck her.

Stopped? They’d never started! Apart from Nick, she hadn’t heard a single other person mention the band or the murders. She glanced at Nick again, and maybe recognised the same confusion in his eyes.

Just then the mummer walked in and everyone... Everyone went silent.

‘What the hell... ‘ said Jimmy, moving up alongside Sin and Nick at the bar,’... is that?’ Then even he apparently forgot how to speak.

Rod was also staring at the bizarre figure. Of course he was, the whole damn pub was staring. The mummer didn’t even seem to notice the effect he had made on the pub crowd. Jimmy wasn’t sure if it was the clothes (and, after all, they weren’t any odder than those worn by the band) or the face, or something about the weird aura of the character that demanded everyone’s attention.

The face was certainly powerful enough. The nose was hooked, the jaw long like a wolf’s. A profusion of dandelion-coloured hair sprouted from under the tilted minstrel’s cap. The mouth was too large for the face, voluptuous and cruel, like a hedonistic shark’s.

Jimmy gazed into the man’s eyes.

Rod took in the tatterdemalion clothes, bright rags stitched together over shards of leather. The gloves, old leather again, the fingers gnawed away by the elements. The boots, split and caked with the dried mud of centuries. The mummer looked like he’d just strolled down a summer lane that stretched back to the 38

seventeenth century, maybe casually deadheading daisies along the way, nonchalantly playing his lute.

He was playing his lute now. Rod looked up, into the man’s eyes.

And he knew the pint of beer clutched in his fist just wasn’t strong enough.

He was playing a merry air, and his eyes were fixed on Sin. He saw past the pout, he saw past the paranoia. He saw the child within, reading Moomin books beside a muttering stream as evening stained the sky. She looked up at him with a welcoming smile, and stretched out a ten-year-old hand. The stream changed tune, and was only the mummer-minstrel’s lute, a quiet trickle of olde melody that was yet as loud as a waterfall in the silent pub. The jukebox had shut up too, almost as soon as the mummer entered, but Sin barely registered that. Her hand was still reaching out for the figure with the childhood-restoring eyes, and now he had stopped playing, was reaching inside his tatters and pulling something out to give to her.

Charmagne saw the pretty Chinese reach for the paper the mummer held out, and the spell she was under broke. She reached past the girl like a jealous child snatching a sweet from a favourite uncle and held the square of paper tight, as if her life depended on it. Maybe her career did depend on it, a voice told her - the inner voice of compulsion, which had carried her this far on a whim and would carry her so much further because of this day, because of this character. She knew this, and read the flyer.

The Chinese girl snapped out of her bewilderment and snatched the paper back. By then Charmagne had read it, memorised it, no longer needed it. She looked up at the mummer and he was smiling at her with eyes that were the colour of treacle.

‘Welcome to the Beginning,’ he said to Charmagne, in a voice that danced like the notes trickling again from his lute. ‘And welcome to the End.’

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Then he turned, and she was shut off from him, left with the memory of his words and the endless space of those eyes.

Jo looked over Sin’s shoulder and read the flyer. The Chinese girl read it aloud for the benefit of Nick, Jimmy and Rod. The mummer was busy distributing more flyers around the pub, and Jo could see that everyone was taking them.

The flyer said:

THE UNWASHED AND UNFORGIVING TOUR. JOIN THE

RAGGED ARMY HATE IS THE SWORD OF US ALL.

Underneath the bold red capitals was the venue: The Oblong Box Inn, Postgate, Dartmoor. Tuesday, 10th May.

‘Two days,’ said Sin, and Jo met her eyes. The Chinese girl’s expression was as ominous as her words. Sin looked away, resuming her icy guard.

‘What’s the story here, then?’ asked Jimmy, scratching his hair through the worn Confederate cap. ‘Some sort of crusade?’ Nick shrugged, but looked wary.

Sin sniffed. ‘Might be a laugh.’

Might be a laugh. Again the words sounded hollow to Jo. She followed the progress of the mummer as he finished doling out flyers to punks, hippies, bikers and anyone who looked interested

- anyone who looked hungry, or desperate for something, she realised. The mummer had plugged into something and the air was electric with raw need. She took a step towards the door, hoping the Doctor would flounce in and chase away the cold that had suddenly filled the pub, and noticed with a deeper coldness that it was pitch-black outside. The night had caught them all unawares.

She smelt him before she noticed he was near her. A barn smell, a fog smell, a compost smell. A hand like a mottled turkey’s claw settled on her hand. She had brushed it off before she could stop herself and the revulsion tugged at her mouth.

He was grinning at her, and the row of teeth in his upper jaw were whiter than snow-capped Alps; the bottom row held only 40

the graves of teeth - grey and worn. She sucked in a scream and a laugh fell out instead, a shocked, terrified laugh, because his eyes were like muddy tarns, with no whites and no irises, and of course that was ridiculous, just a trick of the failing light and where...