Текст книги "Doctor Who- Beautiful Chaos"

Автор книги: Gary Russell

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SUNDAY

When she was growing up, Donna had heard the phrase ‘the shot that was heard around the world’ used to describe the effect the assassination of US President John Kennedy had on the whole of western civilisation. People always said they could remember where they were when it happened.

As a child of the 1970s, she grew up hearing about things like the moon landing, the murders of both Kennedys and Martin Luther King, and Winston Churchill’s state funeral, but never wholly understood them. In a childhood of spacehoppers, Donny Osmond, chopper bikes and Green Shield Stamps, words like ‘Blitz’

and ‘rationing’ and ‘bubble and squeak’ just meant the old people were reminiscing about twenty years previously and probably moaning that the youth of today never knew when they had it so good.

The first time Donna had found herself saying that – to

one of the neighbourhood kids who’d scratched her late father’s car – she was appalled at herself. She had finally become exactly what she’d derided in her parents and grandparents when she was their age. Nowadays there was nothing she liked to hear more than Granddad Wilf go on about the war, his life in the parachute regiment or Nanna Eileen’s days as a Land Girl.

Today was a day like 22 November 1963 – a day when another shot would be heard around the world.

Sunday had, to be honest, started pretty badly. Donna had woken in her bed (this was a good thing), although she’d only had about two hours’ sleep (this was a bad thing).

Veena’s tattered dress was chucked on the floor (bad thing); next to it, a receipt she had got from the minicab driver (bad thing – who was she gonna claim that back from?) who had driven her from somewhere called South Woodham Ferrers back to Chiswick. The receipt was for £225 (very, very bad – her account had to be empty by now). Wilf had been awake when she got back in (very good thing) and had listened as she told him everything that had happened at the Copernicus Array. He had held her tight, promised that they’d find a way to rescue the Doctor and sent her to sleep it all off.

Donna had been furious with herself – she’d left the Doctor there, she’d abandoned him in a way he’d never do to her (bad thing). But she was also practical. He’d told her to go, and that had been right because otherwise she’d have been killed (definitely a bad thing).

Donna felt like death but needed to get help and go

back to the Array.

Perhaps she could track down Martha Jones and her mates at UNIT – she liked Martha and knew she’d drop everything to help.

As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she picked up the Yellow Pages and was already halfway to U when she realised that UNIT was unlikely to be there, filed under Military Organisations Dedicated to Wiping Out Martians (neither good nor bad, just a bit trigger-happy).

‘Well good morning, madam,’ Sylvia Noble snapped across the hallway. ‘I was worried about you last night.’

‘Why?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Crawling back in at the crack of dawn after a night clubbing with the Doctor? At your age?

I mean, clubbing’s great when you’re 21, but when middle age is only a few birthdays away—’

‘Oi!’

‘Whatever. Point is, it’s time to grow up, young lady.’

‘Thanks, Mum. Too old to go clubbing, not too old to live with my mother. Great.’

‘No one forces you to live here,’ Sylvia said, putting a cup of tea in Donna’s hands. ‘Not that you do much these days. Off with Daddy Longlegs for weeks on end.’ Sylvia tugged at Donna’s dressing gown, tightening the belt, straightening out the collar. ‘And where’s he today, then?

Dragged your granddad off up the allotment, no doubt.

And it’s not a warm morning, and he’s left his thermos here.’ Sylvia licked her forefinger and de-smudged a mark on Donna’s left cheek. ‘Still, I imagine they’ll both be back for lunchtime. Sunday roast and all the trimmings?

Ha! They wish. Tell you what, it’s a trip to the Jolly Lock Keeper and the all-you-can-eat for a tenner today, my girl.

Those days of my slaving over beef and Yorkshire pudding went with your dad, let me tell you.’ Sylvia eased Donna’s red hair behind her ears and flicked her fringe.

‘And there was a note left for you last night, found it when your granddad woke me up, staggering in after you’d dropped him off. I didn’t read it, but it’s from those Carnes boys the Doctor was on about.’

Donna wanted to ask how she knew who it was from if she hadn’t read it, but that way led to whole kettles of fish about notes from headmasters when Donna was twelve to letters from Martyn Hart when she was fifteen and who had opened which of those when they were addressed to the other, so she kept quiet.

Donna also had a pang for roast beef and Yorkshire pud, conjured up by her mum, covered in fantastic gravy.

Dad carving. Granddad and Nanna over for the day, blathering on about train times and the car collectors club and long walks in Windsor Great Park. Suddenly she wanted to be ten again.

And wanted to cry.

‘Mum?’

‘What?’

‘I miss Dad.’

And Sylvia Noble hugged her daughter in a way she hadn’t for quite a long time. Then pulled away, almost as if she’d remembered that Sylvia Noble’s preset was to be grouchy and uncompromising and not tactile and warm.

Especially with her wayward daughter.

But it was enough of a moment to make Donna happy.

Because it had been a real instinctive gesture.

‘Can you call your granddad, please, find out when he’s back and whether your Doctor is joining us at the pub.’

‘And Netty?’

(Ooh, very bad thing)

‘If we must.’

Eager to change the mood, Donna opened the front door to check on the weather.

‘Mum, why d’you say Granddad’s gone to the allotment?’

‘What else does he do? It’s either the veggies or Netty.

When they’re not one and the same.’

Donna shot her a look and Sylvia had the decency to apologise. ‘Sorry. Get used to being on my own so much, I forget that I shouldn’t say to other people things I say out loud to myself.’

‘We’ll worry about you and Netty later. Granddad’s taken the car. Which he doesn’t need for the allotment.’

Sylvia frowned. ‘He didn’t say he was taking it. Said he was going to meet the Doctor.’

‘So you assumed it was at the allotment?’

‘Like the other night, yeah.’

Donna was dialling her grandfather on her mobile, but it was switched off. The silly beggar was on his way to Copernicus, wasn’t he? And he’d left Donna behind.

At which point that ‘shot heard around the world’

moment occurred.

Donna would always remember that she was in her

dressing gown, standing at a slightly open door, a note from the Carnes boys in her hand (unread, by her at least), staring at a space where a car should have been, her mum just behind her. There was a fresh mug of tea by the Yellow Pages. Over the road, old Mister Lyttle was walking his dog. A small black thing of indeterminate breed that always smelled of wet fur. To the left, a real peripheral vision type thing, a blue van was parked.

And dominating the blue sky was a massive, ferociously awful pillar of pure bright light, the very edges suffused with a faint purple glimmer.

Donna heard her mum say, ‘Oh my God, not again, not the sky on fire again.’

But it wasn’t entirely on fire. Just this one column, accompanied by a sound like a gas flame on the cooker, but ramped up by ten thousand decibels.

Donna just knew that something awful was happening where that column of light hit the ground, somewhere to the west of Chiswick. Although she didn’t know it then, all around the world, no matter what time zone, similar columns of heat energy were doing the same.

And in the sky, that leering face of stars was still up there, the hideous grin seemingly wider and broader than ever before.

‘Mum, inside, now. Lock the doors, let no one in except me. Or Granddad. Or the Doctor. Especially the Doctor.’

‘And why is he so special?’

‘Oh, just say you’ll do it, will you.’

‘All right,’ Sylvia muttered. Then: ‘And where are you

going?’

‘I need to try and find him. Both of them actually.’

‘Aren’t they together?’

‘That’s what I’m worried about.’

‘Well, you can’t go out like that.’

Donna realised she still wasn’t dressed and ran upstairs, throwing off her dressing gown when she was barely through the door of her room.

‘Don’t leave that lying on the floor,’ Sylvia called.

Donna picked it up, hung it on the door hook and sighed.

‘Priorities, Mum,’ she muttered.

Dressed in a T-shirt and an old tracksuit she couldn’t believe she ever wore but knew would be warm, Donna headed back downstairs, grabbing a heavy coat.

Out in the street, she could hear people and cars revving up. Everyone had seen the pillar of light and now they were seeing that awful face in the sky.

Give it half an hour and it’d be panic on the streets, rioting, looting and police everywhere. She had to get out of London fast.

‘No car,’ she cursed to herself.

She opened the front door – that blue van.

So wrong. So wrong, Donna Noble. So wrong.

Then she was at the driver’s window, looking at the seat. The dashboard. The lack of keys. The locked door.

Poor Miss Oladini had made it look so easy when she’d hotwired that car, but Donna didn’t have a clue where to begin.

Great.

She tried the door just in case.

It was open.

She glanced up the street but no one in the mêlée of people was yelling at her or claiming the van as theirs.

She hauled herself into the driver’s seat and put her hand under the seat to adjust it. God knew why – she wasn’t going anywhere, because no one in this day and age was stupid enough to put their keys under the seat of an unlocked van.

She brought up her hands, a bunch of car keys in them.

‘And I want a tricycle and a pony and a lifetime’s supply of milk chocolate,’ she said aloud, putting her hand back under the seat just in case her Christmas wishes from when she was eight came true too.

No ponies, no bikes, not even a melted chocolate bar.

But the keys – that was good.

She ramped the van into reverse, and seconds later she was on her way back down towards Chiswick High Road, planning her second journey out towards Essex in twelve hours.

She threw a last look in the wing mirror at her house as she swung the van around and then shot off, hoping that her mum hadn’t seen her do this. Cos then there’d be hell to pay. And quite right too!

Before she had even got to the main road, the crowds were in the street, staring and pointing, and she could hear sirens from ambulances, police and fire engines all around her, all heading down towards the west, towards the M4.

Towards where the pillar of light had struck the ground.

She was heading towards London and that side of the street was relatively empty, even for a Sunday.

Donna’s attention was drawn by the number of people outside the various electrical shops that dotted both sides of the street. Chiswick High Road had mostly been cafés and show shops when she was growing up, but this invasion of gadget shops was weird. She remembered the Doctor saying he’d met the Carnes boys in one.

All this went through her mind in a brief second, probably because there on the streets in front of her were Lukas and Joe Carnes.

Like they’d been waiting for her.

Literally.

Standing in the street. One minute, the road had been empty. The next, two lads were right in front of her.

Donna hit the brakes, and just avoided skidding to a halt, actually making quite a graceful stop, although a man behind her hit his horn.

‘Yeah? What else didja get for Christmas, sunshine?’

she screamed back at him. ‘Shove it up yer—’

The passenger door opened, and Joe and Lukas clambered in.

‘Joe says we need to be somewhere called Copernicus,’

Lukas said quietly. ‘He also knew you’d be here. At this time.’

‘Course he did,’ Donna replied, driving forward as the irate driver overtook her, one hand off the wheel and gesturing at her. Shrugging, Donna continued driving towards Hammersmith. ‘Morning, Joe,’ she called to the boy, who was now in the back.

Joe didn’t reply but got something out of his pocket.

‘What’s that then? New MP3 thingy?’

‘It’s an M-TEK,’ Lukas replied on Joe’s behalf.

‘You what?’ Donna tried to sound interested, but wasn’t. She was more focused on how they’d known she would be there.

‘It told him where you’d be,’ Lukas continued. ‘It talks to him.’

That sort of answered her question, Donna decided, but annoyingly threw up a couple of dozen other ones. ‘Is that how he knew the Doctor’s name the other day, then?’

Lukas shrugged. ‘Dunno. Man in the shop gave it to him. Said it was a demo version. Gave out about ten of ’em. Said Joe was the right person to have one. He didn’t tell me till we’d got home and I found him downloading music onto it.’

That made sense to Donna, although it didn’t really make any sense at all. When you travelled with the Doctor, you began to accept that things that didn’t make sense really did make sense in a not-making-sense-to-normal-people kind of way.

So this M-TEK thing made Joe Carnes know things. Or it told him things. Things to attract the Doctor’s attention.

‘Didn’t your dad ever tell you boys about accepting gifts from strange men?’

‘My dad did,’ Lukas said, glancing at Joe. ‘Joe’s dad didn’t stick around long enough.’

Well, thought Donna, that’s a conversation killer. She made a sudden turn into the Hammersmith roundabout that caused someone to toot their horn. Maybe it was the same driver as before, but she didn’t know or care. She turned onto the Talgarth Road.

It was empty. Really empty. This was a big six-lane roadway towards Central London, via Earls Court then Knightsbridge, then Hyde Park and eventually into Piccadilly. It should’ve taken twenty minutes, maybe thirty to get to Piccadilly on a Sunday lunchtime, and that was without any road works. Donna did it in ten and she wasn’t exactly speeding.

It was as if all the people in London were going away… no, going towards something. That light. They were all heading towards that.

Rubberneckers, eager to take photos on their mobiles and say ‘oh look, we saw the carnage!’ or something more sinister? In which case why wasn’t she affected?

‘Scuse me, boys, more law-breaking…’ Donna got out her mobile as she drove and called her mum. No reply.

That wasn’t good news.

So here she was, in a stolen transit van, driving through a deserted London, off to darkest Essex to rescue her granddad and her friend from killers, unable to contact home, complete with the Children of the Damned at her side.

‘Cheers, Doctor,’ she said to no one in particular.

Some twenty miles away from Donna and the boys, there was a massive police and ambulance presence around the Ruislip Woods area, with even more emergency services arriving from nearby RAF Hillingdon.

The massive bolt of white energy had struck the woodlands – one of Britain’s first protected woods –although there wasn’t too much to protect right now. It had created a massive bowl-shaped crater about a quarter

of a mile wide, decimating the trees, grasses and shrubbery. A small waft of smoke drifted on the morning air and crowds of startled onlookers huddled close by, partly out of amazement, partly out of shock, but mostly out of fear.

Was it a plane crash? An al-Qaeda bomb? Something from the RAF base gone wrong? Casualties? Oh my God, my kids were playing here? Has anyone seen my dog, a lab cross? Excuse me, have you seen my husband, he was out jogging? Have you seen that awful face in the sky? Is it a movie stunt? I never trusted that IRA ceasefire…

Police Sergeant Alison Pearce was trying to control the crowds and her own officers and get the emergency crews through. The Sunday morning shift had seemed such a good idea. Three kids meant that doing night shifts was out, but her mum could babysit on a Sunday while she did her shift. Normally, she’d be home by ten, see them asleep and get them off to school in the morning. She’d already called home and warned her beloved mother that grandparental care might be the order of the next couple of days. The paperwork alone on this would keep her busy. And that’s assuming she ever actually got away from the site.

‘Oi, you, excuse me?’ she yelled out to a young guy who was trying to get under the red and white tape. ‘Sir?

You can’t come through…’

The man ignored her. Sergeant Pearce grabbed her radio and called a couple of colleagues over as she stepped under the line herself and hurried over to him.

‘Welcome back,’ he said to… well, to nothing. Just to

the fine white ash that had once been trees and goodness knows what else.

‘Sir, I must ask you to get back behind the line. This is a crime scene.’

The man continued to ignore her, and Pearce noticed that five other people had done the same thing all around the perimeter. ‘Guys,’ she said into her radio, ‘what’s going on?’

One of her constables reported back. ‘We couldn’t stop them, Sarge, they just got away from us.’

Pearce sighed and reached out to the man, but he was on his knees now, reaching out to the ashen ground.

‘Welcome back,’ he said again.

And his fingers connected with the ground as Sergeant Pearce reached out to his arm.

She felt a shock, small, electrical, but powerful, and found herself a good couple of feet away, flat on her back, shaking her head to clear it.

The man was standing now, back to the crater of ash.

Pearce realised that the other people, now seven in total had done the same. It was like they were guarding the site.

The young constable who had spoken to her over the radio was at her side. ‘You OK, Sarge?’ he said, helping her up.

She pushed him away. ‘I’m fine, Steve. What the hell is this?’ PC Steve Douglas shrugged. Sergeant Pearce tried her radio but all she got was static crackle.

PC Douglas tried his. Same result. ‘OK, this is dead weird,’ he said.

Sergeant Pearce walked away and back under the line,

telling Douglas to stay put and keep an eye on them. ‘But don’t go near them.’

She hurried over to a growing group of fire and police officers, which now included her superintendent. ‘Sir, we have a problem,’ she reported, and explained that seven people were guarding the crater.

Superintendent Shakiri frowned and started to move forward, towards the perimeter. ‘Get the public further back, Sergeant. Move the line another six metres.’

She nodded, but still her radio wasn’t working. Shakiri tried his. Nothing.

‘It was working ten minutes ago,’ he muttered.

‘So was mine,’ Pearce said. ‘It must be something electrical.’

‘Why’d you say that?’

She told him about being touched by the man and the shock she’d had.

‘Get yourself seen to by one of the paramedics, Sergeant.’

‘I’m fine, sir…’ she started, but he waved her away.

‘Delayed reaction, Sergeant. You’d tell anyone else to do the same. And if they say you’re fine, I’ll see you in five minutes.’ He smiled at her. ‘Please?’

Sergeant Pearce shrugged and walked towards one of the ambulances, while she listened to Shakiri yelling orders that the line was to be manually eased back.

As she reached the waiting paramedic, something…

something instinctive made her look back. It was like a slow-motion moment in a movie, so much happened at once, she couldn’t tell whether she saw it all or her brain

pieced it together later.

A flash of purple light, like a bolt of electricity shot through the crowd of onlookers, flooring each and every one of them.

PC Steve Douglas vanished, although, for a split second, Pearce was convinced she saw him throw his arms up to protect himself from the purple flash, and she could see him – no, his skeleton – just for a second, then he was gone.

The seven ‘guards’, no longer hidden by the crowds, had stretched out their arms towards one another, and the purple electricity was connecting them all, like a rope.

Superintendent Shakiri threw himself down, dragging a couple of other officers with him in a rugby tackle, probably saving their lives.

There was a flash in the sky, like a sunburst, just for a second, and Pearce swore the whole sky flashed purple.

And then it was over. Sort of.

People were getting up and running further away. No one wanted to be near the electrical whatever-it-was. This was good in the sense that the public were going, but it was disorganised, and that was dangerous. If just one person fell… She remembered the story of a disaster in an East London tube tunnel during the war when it was being used as a shelter to hide from air raids. As the panicking public had scampered down the steps, one woman fell, bringing the whole crowd to the ground, killing almost two hundred people in the crush.

The panic going on right now, whilst not as confined, could be just as deadly. She saw Shakiri haul himself up,

shouting to the officers around him to try and help the public. He threw a glance at where Steve Douglas had been standing – so he’d clearly witnessed it, too – and then back at her.

Waving the paramedic away, she ran over to join him at the scene. ‘What the hell was that?’ she breathed.

He pointed at the seven ‘guards’ around the crater. ‘I imagine they wanted us all to go away.’ He looked at the fleeing crowds. ‘Any casualties?’

Pearce just looked at where her young PC had been.

‘Would we know?’ she said. ‘There’s nothing left of Steve Douglas.’

Shakiri caught her eye. ‘And that’s why we need to know if there are others. If we hold them accountable for one death, we need to hold them accountable for any others.’

Both their radios crackled into life.

‘Good morning everybody everywhere around the world.’ It was a female voice, speaking clear, precise English. ‘My name is Madam Delphi and I am the only voice you need ever listen to. I’m speaking to you all on every wavelength, every radio, TV, PC and PDA the world over. You have now seen what I can do and will continue to do. This planet is mine. You can all go back to your dreary little lives and wait for me to tell you what to do next. I now return you to your scheduled programming.

Oh, sorry, except for those countries currently broadcasting any version of Big Brother. Sorry, all the contestants and presenters of that show, wherever they are, are dead. You can thank me later.’

The two police officers looked back at the seven people guarding the crater, that purple electricity still binding them together.

‘Tell you one thing, sir,’ Alison Pearce said, as she looked upwards to where it had all begun.

‘What’s that, Sergeant?’

‘That scary face in the sky has gone.’

Miss Oladini was seriously thinking of handing in her notice. This was not a good enough job to be worth all this aggro.

Last night she’d been chased, had electricity chucked at her, been nearly blown up in a car and, worst of all, someone had nicked her bike. She hoped it was that redheaded woman who had been with her in the car, because that would mean she too had escaped the blast.

Miss Oladini wasn’t entirely sure how she’d done it herself, but knew it had involved a lot of rolling along the ground, ignoring the heat and running into a bush and holding her breath for what seemed like an hour but could only have been a minute or two before her pursuers assumed both women were dead.

She had no idea what was going on at Copernicus, but her body had given in to the shock and she’d fallen unconscious in the grounds of the old mansion house, eventually waking up again, cold, damp and very hungry.

And minus a bicycle.

She waited a while to see if anyone was watching her, then made her way back inside the house for warmth.

After a couple of minutes, she found a couple of abandoned coats. She knew she was in shock. Her body

needed protection and warming up.

She put on the coats, one on top of the other, then headed for a tiny closet. She could hide there, and its cramped conditions would help retain the heat she needed.She found a half-drunk bottle of water on a table top and took that with her, too.

After a couple of hours, she felt strong enough to venture out of her closet and see if the people were still there, see if Professor Melville was still with them.

She’d been creeping quietly down a corridor when she jumped, because a load of radios and TVs and a couple of desktops burst into life, and she listened to Madam Delphi’s portent of doom, feeling cold again.

Now she had recovered enough from last night’s ordeal, now it was daytime, it was time to get away from Copernicus. Forget Professor Melville and those people, this was too much for her to deal with, and she suspected that radio broadcast was connected. The police, maybe the army, they needed to know that something was going on here. She began to creep slowly towards the big staircase when a hand came out of nowhere and wrapped around her mouth, cutting off any noise she could make.

Miss Oladini thought this was it, she was going to die.

‘Please be quiet, sweetheart,’ said a voice in her ear.

‘My name is Wilfred Mott, and I don’t want to hurt you.’

He moved his hand away from her face, and Miss Oladini pulled away. She looked at the man, old, but not weak, clearly. His eyes burned with intelligence, but there was nothing threatening.

‘Why are you here?’ she asked bravely.

‘My granddaughter was here last night. She told me about things going on here. I’m looking for the Doctor.’

‘Granddaughter? Redhead?’

‘That’s Donna. You must be Miss Oladini? She thought you were dead, she’ll be so pleased you’re OK.’

Miss Oladini wasn’t sure about this. Those people that had attacked her could know all this. But would they know about…?

‘How did Donna get away?’

‘On a bike. Was it yours? She left it near a police station somewhere. South Woodham Ferrers, that was it.’

He smiled at her. ‘She got home so late last night and I’d been waiting up. She told me everything that happened, and after I got her off to sleep I decided to check on this place myself.’

Miss Oladini frowned at him. ‘You didn’t believe her?’

‘Course I did! Donna doesn’t make things up. But I wanted to find the Doctor and keep Donna safe at the same time. She’d been through enough. So I left her sleeping and crept out of the house this morning.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Right now she’ll have worked that out and be creating merry hell, I reckon.’

Miss Oladini still wasn’t convinced, but he didn’t seem to have the zombie-ish approach of the rest of the people here. ‘You’re looking for a doctor? Which one? They’re all doctors and professors here.’

‘He came with Donna. Tall bloke, daft hair. Talks a lot of rubbish.’

‘Sums up most of the Copernicus workers, frankly, Mr Mott.’

‘Wilf. And no, he doesn’t work here. He was asked to come here by a Professor Melville. That’s why he and Donna turned up so late.’

‘I spent most of last night hiding and being blown up, I didn’t see Donna till we escaped. No idea if there was anyone with her at all. Sorry.’

Wilf seemed to deflate. ‘Oh. I was so sure he’d be here.

I think he’s the only one who can save us from all that Madam Delphi stuff we just had to listen to.’

‘Why’d you think that?’

‘It’s the sort of thing he does. Save us.’

‘Some sort of vicar is he?’

Wilf laughed. ‘No, no, not at all. So, where is everybody, then?’

Miss Oladini shrugged and explained she was thinking of getting away.

‘Give me fifteen minutes,’ Wilf said. ‘If we don’t find my friend, I’ll drive you back home, how’s that?’

Miss Oladini weighed up her options, and then agreed.

There was, after all, no other way home as easy as this.

And Wilf Mott didn’t seem to be very threatening.

She led him down the stairs, through the shattered French windows and out into the back garden, pointing over at the radio telescope, explaining that was what the whole place was about.

Wilf nodded. ‘That face in the sky, that was made up of stars, right? I reckon that observatory thing is where the Doctor would be.’

Miss Oladini shivered and pulled her coats tighter around her. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t want

to go back there.’

‘Why not?’

But Miss Oladini couldn’t explain. There was just something about it, something about the way the telescope had always seemed a safe place to work but now…

Wilf gripped her shoulder. ‘All right, you wait here and I’ll pop over and see if the Doctor’s there. Won’t be long.’

Miss Oladini watched as he wandered off. She shivered again. For one brief moment she had felt safe with this strange old man, and now she was alone again, she…

She caught up with him in seconds. ‘Entrance, this way,’ she said.

He smiled at her. ‘Good for you, girl,’ he said. ‘Didn’t fancy going in alone. To be honest.’

They smiled at each other.

‘So, Donna’s your granddaughter, then?’ Miss Oladini said. ‘Glad she got away.’

‘Me too. Be lost without her. Family’s an important thing to keep a hold of.’

Miss Oladini considered this. ‘I don’t know where my family are,’ she said. ‘Probably back in Nigeria.’

‘How come you lost touch?’

She smiled. ‘Oh, you know how it is, came to the UK

for university, lost my status, stayed hidden here, signed on to the agency to find me work under a false name, usual stuff.’

‘That’s very brave of you,’ Wilf said. ‘Risky, too, working here.’

‘Right under the government’s nose,’ she replied.

‘Easiest way to disappear off the radar is to hide in plain

sight. That’s what my dad said last time I spoke to him.’

Wilf agreed. ‘Used to say that about spies, during the war,’ he said. ‘Best way to infiltrate was to be seen, so no one got suspicious. Just become a member of society.’

‘That’s what I did. Look where it’s got me. Frightened for my life.’

Wilf winked at her. ‘You’ll be all right.’

They were at the door of the radio telescope. It was slightly ajar and they crept in.

Professor Melville was dead. There was no doubting that, his neck was at such a strange angle, and although Miss Oladini had never seen anyone dead before, she just knew it. Her hand was over her mouth, stifling the cry in her throat. Wilf checked the poor man for a pulse, but gently lifted his hand away.

It looked like he had been working at the guidance systems for the array when he’d died. When he’d been killed, Miss Oladini thought. After all, people didn’t break their own necks.

Wilf was climbing up the small ladder that led to the upper deck, where the telescope itself was housed. It wasn’t an old-fashioned tubular telescope, but a series of computers arrayed across the room, linked to the radio dish on top of the building.