MIXED DOUBLES
Duggan wove through the streets of Paris, not letting his quarry out of sight for a moment. There was an art to surveillance which was actually pretty simple to learn—most people went through life without suspecting for a moment that they were being followed. Blameless, boring souls, they never looked over their shoulders as they pottered from the building society counter to the Co-Op till because there would be no reason for them to be followed. A camel could follow ninety-eight per cent of people and not be spotted. But there would be no point. It was the remaining two per cent you needed to be careful of. Half of them were guilty of something terribly mundane and domestic—adultery, fingers in the cash register, poisoning next door’s goldfish. They’d glance over their shoulders, they’d boggle, they’d break down sobbing, waste police time, and only occasionally reveal that granny was under the patio. You could eliminate them fairly easily because they just looked Too Guilty. Which left a final one per cent. The carefully sly. Frequently their sheer casualness was a dead giveaway. No innocent person laid down a false trail, ducked into a shop and out the back, loitered near a payphone. Following them without being detected was tricky, but even someone with Duggan’s bovine build could pull it off.
As his chief had told him wearily after yet another partially successful operation, ‘Your problem is—’ Actually, most pronouncements from the Chief started like that. ‘Your problem is that you look like a policeman. Even disguised as a clown you’d look like a copper. As soon as anyone glimpses you, they’ll start whistling the Z-Cars theme. They can’t help it, any more than you can. Next time—’ So, there would be a next time, eh? Good old Chief. ‘—just make sure you’re not seen.’
Duggan had become an expert ducker. The excellent thing about Paris was that it was full of things to duck behind. Newspaper kiosks, flower markets, pissoirs. He peeped through a postcard rack, feeling just a little like Inspector Clouseau.
His quarry marched on, seemingly two people without a care in the world. Which was extremely suspicious given their recent behaviour and their rather hasty exit from the Louvre. If they’d really been innocent British tourists, they would be curled up in embarrassment at the side of the pavement, not striding through a bric-a-brac market, down towards a café on the banks of the Seine.
Duggan slunk after them, stealthily. Completely unaware that he was himself being followed.
* * *
Paris can be exceedingly subtle. The texture of foie gras, the flavour of cheese, the exact point that a road ends and a café begins. At some time an agreement had been reached between the Notre-Dame cathedral and the café opposite it. At a certain point between the two, cars could race through the plaza. A little further beyond that, with no appreciable change in the surface of the road, pedestrians could meander, and, a little further still, tables could perch quietly outside the café and make the most of the view.
Romana was unfamiliar with these subtle, smoky distinctions. To her it looked rather as though the Doctor had decided to sit down in the middle of a motorway. This did not surprise her one bit. He indicated that she pull up a chair opposite, and, a little uncertainly, she did.
A lorry did not run her over. Well, that was something.
Romana didn’t need to say anything. Clearly, their holiday was over. Something was very wrong with Paris. Since travelling with the Doctor, Romana had grown used to sentences like this which would have previously seemed completely outré.
A waiter bustled out of the café and handed them a menu. Romana noticed ironically that they served bouillabaisse. Sadly, now was not the time for fish stew. She leaned forward. ‘Doctor, you do know we’re being followed?’
Running his fingers through the pastry section, the Doctor nodded grimly. ‘Yes, all the way from the Louvre, by the idiot with the gun.’
Romana was slightly disappointed. ‘Oh. You did notice.’
The Doctor buttered some crusty bread and popped it into his mouth airily. ‘Of course I noticed.’
‘What do you think he wants?’
‘Look in your pocket,’ said the Doctor surprisingly.
Romana did so.
‘Other pocket.’ The Doctor sounded just a little annoyed.
Romana fished out a bracelet.
The Doctor had the air of a conjurer delighting a children’s party.
‘What’s that?’ Romana wrinkled her nose.
‘It’s the bracelet that woman I bumped into was wearing,’ the Doctor admitted bashfully.
‘What? You mean you stole it from her?’ This was a worrying new development. Perhaps it was a good job they hadn’t gone shopping after all.
The Doctor flashed his most disarming grin. ‘Look at it.’
Romana took the bracelet. It tingled slightly with an unmistakable energy. ‘It’s a micromeson scanner.’
The Doctor nodded approvingly. ‘She was using it to produce a complete record of all the alarm systems round the Mona Lisa.’
‘She wants to steal it?’ Romana was surprised. I mean, it really didn’t seem worth the fuss.
‘It is a very pretty painting,’ the Doctor offered.
Romana put the bracelet firmly down on the checked tablecloth. ‘And this is a very sophisticated device for a level five civilisation.’
‘That?’ the Doctor huffed. ‘That is never a product of Earth technology.’
‘You mean an alien wants to steal the Mona Lisa?’ Romana got to the end of the sentence and giggled.
The Doctor shrugged. ‘It is a very pretty painting.’
He fell silent.
Romana picked the micromeson scanning bracelet up again. Was this really alien? It seemed so very old, and the carving suggested . . . she squinted, her eyes adjusted as the TARDIS’s telepathic circuits struggled to render them and failed. If those were hieroglyphs then they were from an extremely ancient civilisation. Tricky.
‘Romana . . .’ The Doctor broke into her chain of thought.
‘Mmm?’ Romana didn’t look up from rubbing her finger along the inlay. There was clearly a sophisticated internal power pack with a half-life decay of—
‘Romana,’ continued the Doctor airily, ‘I think something very odd’s going on. For instance, you know that man who was following us?’
‘Yes?’ Romana was tracing the power threads back to their source.
‘Well, he’s standing behind me poking a gun into my back.’
Romana looked up.
The Doctor was not lying.
* * *
Duggan was in command, he was in control, he had the gun. Whatever the story of these two was, he’d get to the bottom of it.
Suddenly finding himself in the road, he stepped out of it to avoid a coach. He weaved around a group of tourists pushing past to taking pictures of the cathedral. As it wasn’t on the map, they ignored his gun.
The Doctor and Romana were still sat at the table, placidly watching all of Paris go by.
Duggan’s grip on his gun did not waver.
‘Shall we go inside?’ he suggested.
* * *
The café owner barely batted an eyelid when Duggan marched the Doctor and Romana in at gunpoint. The Doctor, who had his hands theatrically up in the air in surrender, favoured him with a friendly waggle of his fingers. ‘Patron! Three glasses of water, please. And do make them doubles.’
Refusing to feel out of his depth, Duggan marched them over to a table in the corner. No escape. A chance to interrogate them. He waved his gun around the bar, not exactly pointing it at anyone, but ensuring that everyone was aware that he had a gun, was allowed to use it, and they really needn’t bother calling the gendarmes. He was slightly disappointed to realise that no one was paying him the slightest bit of attention. Paris had a venerable history of ignoring tourists seeking attention.
The Doctor and Romana sat down opposite him, hands still politely in the air.
‘I’m the Doctor,’ announced the Doctor. ‘This is Romana. I would shake hands, but . . . well.’ He gestured to his hands, still, somehow insolently held in the air.
‘Now then,’ began Duggan, but the Doctor shushed him.
‘No, no,’ he whispered confidentially. ‘Let’s wait for our waters.’
* * *
In the library of the House of Questions, the Countess was having to provide a lot of answers.
The Count was wearing his most dangerous smile. She hated Carlos when he was like this. He’d go from being the most charismatic, charming man she’d ever known to this strangely detached creature. She felt she was being observed down a microscope. A bacteria.
It brought out the worst in her. It reminded her of the clinical appraisals she’d been subjected to by her father’s clients back in Switzerland. Very pretty, but what is she thinking?
When she was a little girl she’d shuddered. But now she became petulant. There was so much about Carlos she didn’t know. Odd really. Now she wasn’t wearing the bracelet, couldn’t hear that inaudible buzzing, it almost felt as if her head was clearing.
When she’d first put the bracelet on, Carlos had been dismissive about the buzzing. ‘A buzzing? Really, my dear? Pay no attention to it. Only the stupid can hear it.’
She’d never complained about it since, only . . .
Silly thought. She had never seen him clean his teeth. Why was that?
‘And then?’ the Count asked, finishing his crème de menthe.
She ignored the question, flicking through a book of such rareness that she enjoyed slowly folding down the corner of the page to mark where she’d got to. Then she wandered over to a table, pouring herself some champagne into a flute. She sipped at it, looking down at the peacocks in the gardens.
‘And then?’ repeated the Count. He was barely smiling at all now. A rare event.
The Countess shrugged. ‘Oh, I followed that fool of a detective.’
‘Why?’
Another shrug, a sip of champagne. It was too warm to be properly enjoyed, but who cared. ‘Reasons.’
The Count leaned forward, seizing her wrist with surprising force. He took the glass from her hand, drained it, and then put it down. All the while, he kept gripping her arm.
‘Do not play with me, my dear,’ he breathed. As ever, his breath smelt of nothing.
It took an effort, but the Countess managed a twinkle. ‘What else have I been doing all these years?’
The challenge hung in the air between them.
‘Following instructions,’ the Count replied, and the smile flicked back on his face. He walked over to a window, looking down into the courtyard where they had once had burned a cardinal alive. He inhaled deeply as though he could still smell the cooking fat. ‘Continue with your story.’
The Countess crossed to a sofa, settling down in it, flicking through the pages of American Vogue. ‘The detective, Duggan. He annoyed me. He’s stopped watching me and started watching the painting.’
The Count clicked his tongue as he turned back from the view. He looked almost surprised, but his face seemed unable to quite manage the emotion. ‘So . . . Duggan’s shown a glimmering of intelligence at last.’ He appraised the Countess’s figure. Was he, she thought briefly, jealous? Was that it? ‘Perhaps we should deal with him.’ His smile warmed up. That was it! He was jealous! The Countess wondered if she would miss Duggan. Would the Count let her watch when he killed him? She felt a tiny thrill of pleasure.
One which the Count swiftly dispelled. Rubbing his right eye, he folded himself casually into a chair opposite her. He plucked the magazine from her hands, dropping it to the floor. He held her hands in his, staring into her eyes, his gaze a mixture of love and challenge. ‘But no. I think Duggan is too stupid to bother us seriously. Don’t you?’
‘Except . . .’ The Countess stood up, letting his hands fall away. Was she nervous? Perhaps. Just a little. She went over to the escritoire, its pigeonholes overflowing with invitations. ‘The Marquise would consider it an honour . . .’ ‘The Chief Auctioneer politely inquires . . .’ ‘M. President requests the pleasure . . .’ If only they knew. She toyed with a jewel-handled letter opener, picking at imaginary dirt under her fingernails. ‘Something else happened today,’ she began steadily. ‘In front of the painting.’
‘Oh yes?’ The Count pretended only mild interest.
‘A tall man I had not seen before fainted.’
The Count chuckled. It really was most unlike her to get distracted by overexcited tourists. He hoped this wasn’t the first sign of nerves. That would be unfortunate. ‘You are getting jumpy, my dear,’ he purred. ‘Probably overcome by your charms. A man can faint if he wants to.’
‘Except . . .’ The Countess put down the letter opener and turned to face him, biting her lip. She was afraid to make the admission. ‘Except that by the time he hit the ground he had somehow got the bracelet off my wrist.’
‘What!’ The Count sprang to his feet, genuinely incredulous. He was staring at her arm. Why had he not noticed it before? He’d just taken it for granted. ‘Wear it always,’ he’d said when he’d first placed it on her wrist. ‘Wear it always and think of me.’ And she’d have had no choice in the matter. How had someone managed to release the isomorphic clasp? Clearly the pickpockets of Paris were excelling themselves. But still. He found he couldn’t contain his anger and something else, something that felt like fear. ‘And you let him take it?’ he roared. He realised he was now towering over her, his smile furious. She was staring at him, the terror plain on her face. Well, good.
‘I had no choice!’ She broke away from him. ‘There was a rush, confusion. Well-organised, I’m sure.’
‘But by the heavens . . .’ The Count’s brain was catching up with the implications of this. Could Duggan possibly know about the bracelet? He doubted Duggan would even have the intelligence to comprehend what the bracelet really was if he was given a colouring book about it. ‘That bracelet . . .’ Well, this would not do. This would not do at all. If an idiot like Duggan was acting on a hunch, then they were all right. But if that bracelet fell into the hands of someone with a brain. Who could guess what it was. Or rather, what it could be . . .
The Countess was suddenly wreathed in cool smiles and warm reassurances. As though a maid had spilled soup on his favourite cravat and lost it at the dry cleaner’s. ‘Don’t worry, my dear. We will get it back. The matter is in hand.’
The Count forced himself to nod. His right eye was itching abominably. He rearranged his features, making his smile thirteen per cent that’s fine and thirty per cent more apology accepted. But deep inside, Count Scarlioni felt worried. Not just for himself. But for everyone. He realised he was still standing in the middle of the library, like a hero in a drawing room comedy. He made himself stride over to the marble fireplace, leaning nonchalantly against it. He lit a cigarette and smiled familiarly over at his wife.
‘My dear,’ he purred, ‘I do trust you will be . . .’
As ever, she finished his sentence. ‘Discreet?’ She tapped her cigarette holder against the mantel. ‘Of course.’
* * *
‘What bracelet?’ asked the Doctor innocently, a gun to his head.
You can be as rude as you like in a Paris restaurant so long as you don’t insult your waiter. The appearance of two men with guns seemed to be testing this rule. But, unlike most tourists, they knew what they wanted as soon as they walked in, which marked them out as true Parisians. And they were only pointing a gun at foreigners, so live and let live. The customers of the bar had already turned a blind eye to one incident of people being held at gunpoint. Well, why not two?
The manners of Parisians are baffling. Waiting your turn and queuing are frowned upon. People are pitied for giving correct directions, and sneered at for insincere politeness. Yet, Parisians are also famed for their charm, their enthusiasm and their immense kindness. Such are the Parisians’ contradictions between their good nature and their bad manners that the Japanese Embassy maintains a special helpline for tourists who find it all a bit much.
Romana, Duggan and the Doctor sat at their table. Duggan was waiting for the Doctor or the girl to react. But they didn’t. Their hands were held placidly in the air as though they belonged there.
The two men (sharp faces, sharp suits) frisked them quickly. It took them seconds to find it.
‘Ah,’ remarked the Doctor. ‘You mean that bracelet.’
The two men pocketed the bracelet, nodded politely to the waiter and left without another word.
The Doctor and Romana sat there, arms still in the air, seemingly without a care in the world.
‘Romana, are you all right?’ the Doctor asked.
‘Oh, I’m just relaxing and enjoying Paris,’ she said.
They put their arms down on the table, calmly waiting to see what would happen next. They turned to favour Duggan with identical, polite grins.
Duggan leaned back in his chair, applauding slowly and sarcastically.
‘All right,’ he sneered. ‘Very good. Nicely staged but you don’t fool me.’
The Doctor and Romana exchanged a quick glance. Romana considered their situation. Imminent threat to the fabric of space-time? Yes. Weapons pointed at them? Double yes. And now mistaken identity. If things ran according to her projection, they’d be locked up in a dungeon within the hour. ‘What are you talking about?’ asked the Doctor, courteously.
‘Your men who were in here just now.’ Duggan had perfected sounding bored from endless interrogations.
‘My men?’ The Doctor pointed to himself in a pantomime of outrage. ‘Those thugs?’
‘Your thugs.’ Duggan nodded slowly. Now, my friend, now we’re getting to it.
The Doctor pointed to the café door. ‘Are you suggesting those men were in my employ?’
‘That’s exactly what I’m suggesting.’
‘I don’t know if you noticed’—the Doctor cleared his throat and leaned forward, confidential, sharing a secret—‘but those men were pointing a gun at me. I’m sorry, but if anyone in my employ did that, I’d sack them on the spot.’
Romana nodded solemnly.
Duggan was having none of it. ‘Except that I know you arranged for them to hold you up as a bluff.’ His tone was triumphant. ‘You’re trying to put me on a false scent.’
There was a pause.
‘You’re English, aren’t you?’ The Doctor rhymed it with stupid. Dismissing Duggan, he turned to le Patron. The café owner, who had so far displayed a magnificent unconcern for the goings-on in his café, materialised by the Doctor’s side, solicitous for his every need. ‘Patron! I thought I ordered three glasses of water!’
‘M’sieur.’ Le Patron scowled and went to run a tap.
Romana and the Doctor settled back to wait for their drinks.
Feeling snubbed, Duggan felt the urge to get violent. In about two minutes, maybe three, he would be very much enjoying hurting this man. ‘Listen you,’ he began. He always said this. Which was odd as there was rarely much to hear except the sound of his fists hitting things.
The Doctor could sense the mounting threat but was completely unconcerned by it. He’d noticed on the menu a slightly unusual ordering of the ingredients for a Salade Niçoise. Anchovies received undue prominence over the boiled egg. He wondered if this was deliberate, and if so, what difference that would make to the flavour. He held out a hand. Duggan shook it automatically.
‘Let’s start again,’ said the Doctor. ‘Where were we? Ah yes. I’m the Doctor. This is Romana. You are?’
‘Duggan,’ said Duggan. As they clearly weren’t bothering to tell him their real names, he couldn’t see why he should give them his first name.
Le Patron brought over three glasses of tap water, putting each one down on the table with a casual yet loud slam. ‘Bonne dégustation,’ he muttered sourly as he slumped away. The Doctor toasted his retreating back, sipped the water and relaxed in his chair, beaming merrily.
I’ll soon wipe that grin off your face, sunshine, thought Duggan. He tried a direct question. Even if you got a denial, there was always some tell-tale giveaway.
‘What’s Scarlioni’s angle?’
‘Never heard of it.’ The Doctor dismissed the question. He passed it over to Romana. ‘You were good at geometry. Have you ever heard of anything called Scarlioni’s angle?’
‘Whose angle?’ Romana shrugged facetiously. Duggan had never seen a facetious shrug before. He didn’t like it.
‘Scarlioni,’ Duggan growled.
‘Who’s Scarlioni?’ As though politely listening to a dull anecdote, the Doctor stifled a yawn.
This was too much. ‘Count Scarlioni. Everyone in the world’s heard of Count Scarlioni.’
‘Ah well, we’ve only just landed on Earth.’ The Doctor favoured Duggan with his broadest, most disarming grin.
And we’re done. Duggan glared at them both, stood up, consigned them to the loony bin. ‘All right. I give up. Forget it. You’re crazy.’
Duggan left and got on with his life. The Doctor and Romana drank their water and then got on with their holiday.
Only . . .
‘Crazy?’ the Doctor called after him. ‘Indisputably. But crazy enough to steal the Mona Lisa?’
The café paused for just a second. Despite not paying any attention to these three ghastly tourists, everyone was dying to know what would happen next.
Duggan returned to the table. For once in his life, all the fight left him. He pulled out a heavy iron chair and slumped into it. The Doctor pushed a glass of water to him, and Duggan took it.
‘Or, at any rate,’ the Doctor beamed, ‘are we crazy enough to be interested in someone who might want to steal it?’
* * *
The Count was surveying the bracelet. It was intact.
The two suits were standing to one side, as nervous as it was possible for gorillas in suits to look. Satisfied that all was in order, the Count laid the bracelet down on an exquisitely engraved table and smiled at them warmly.
‘Good, thank you, you may go.’
The two suits left gratefully and without a word.
The Count leaned back in his chair, stifling a yawn. As he did so he caught Hermann’s eye. The butler swept forward.
‘Good,’ sighed the Count. ‘But not good enough. Kill them.’
‘The detective and his friends, Excellency?’ suggested Hermann.
‘No Hermann, those two fools.’ The Count jerked a thumb towards the door.
‘With pleasure, Excellency.’ Hermann bowed and went to kill them.
Hermann had originally thought he’d been hired to keep the Count’s hands clean. He’d discovered that the Count, although exquisitely lazy, relished getting his hands dirty from time to time. But he was more than happy to leave the routine killing to Hermann. A situation which Hermann enjoyed considerably. For Hermann, no death was ever routine.
Magnificently unconcerned by all this, the Countess sat in a corner of the library, flicking idly through some unpublished scandal letters of the Marquise de Sévigné. The Count walked over to her, tapping the bracelet against the side of his face. Oddly, he didn’t feel it.
‘So,’ he declaimed, ‘one of them was interested in you and the painting, the other in this bracelet?’
The Countess didn’t look up from her reading. ‘Yes.’
‘Hmm,’ the Count said. ‘I wish to meet them.’
‘Of course,’ the Countess said as casually as if he’d suggested inviting extra guests for dinner. ‘Just tell Hermann.’
‘No, my dear,’ purred the Count. ‘You tell Hermann.’
The Countess put down her letters, rose with little grace and went to find Hermann.
Alone, the Count lifted the bracelet up to the light. Hopefully all the data within it was intact. He scratched at that itch above his right eye.
* * *
‘So, do you work in crime as well?’ asked Duggan.
‘Work? Not as such, no.’ The Doctor chuckled, swatting away the question. He’d tried having a job once. It had all been so terribly routine. Even the aliens had been expected to invade during office hours. He drained the last of his water and pushed his glass across the table to Duggan.
‘Same again?’ the detective asked.
‘Well, if you’re buying.’
It was Duggan’s round. He ordered some more waters.
Le Patron heartily wished someone with a gun would turn up. What was it with the English and water? A century ago a man called Wallace had arrived in Paris, realised the city had no clean drinking water, and insisted on building fountains that provided it, free of charge, to whoever wanted it. Ever since, Parisians had regarded the English as unnecessarily obsessed with water. And here were three of them, taking up a table which could be used for the drinking of wine. No wonder people kept pointing guns at them.
* * *
Romana couldn’t see what the fuss was about. She’d studied the History of Art on the Planet Earth extensively (well, she’d read a book about it that morning) and had emerged from the experience baffled.
Humans had been making art for almost as long as they’d been humans. The idea seemed to have come to them in a cave. Initially it had made up for a lack of language, providing an effective way of inviting your friends out for a pleasant afternoon’s bison hunting simply by drawing one on a wall. The next step had been commemorative, drawing a picture of that afternoon’s jolly good bison hunt to raise a smile on the long ice-age evenings. And then people had started drawing bison simply because they liked looking at bison.
After that, Romana thought it had all got out of hand. For a long time, art had been about great warriors and hunters and their food and that was fine. Then, unable to make up their minds about the existence of higher beings, humanity had started including them in their paintings. Quite a lot of these showed gods turning up to surprise young ladies in the bath. The resulting trouble allowed for even more paintings of glorious battles and nice meals.
Maybe it was because gods and food stopped being interesting, but art gradually turned its attention to other things—flowers, sunsets and the seaside and so on. This was all very well, as it was what people wanted to look at because it made them somehow feel good about themselves. But for some reason artists then decided that that wasn’t the purpose of art at all, and started painting things that weren’t so nice to look at.
As Romana had reached the end of her book on art, she’d decided that artists were now doing this to be deliberately annoying. It was no good asking them for pictures of flowers and sunsets and bison. Instead, art galleries were full of things which made people think and so made them unhappy. In Romana’s experience, human beings were at their happiest when they weren’t thinking. In their short lives they were so rarely happy that the idea of creating a leisure activity that deliberately made them miserable seemed rather mean.
Equally perverse was what humans valued in their art. As it was all so terribly fragile, bits would fall off, get cut off, eaten or just generally damaged, and instead of throwing it away and making a new one, humans simply valued it all the more. As far as she could tell, humanity seemed to reward things for being old and mostly intact. They didn’t even have to make that much sense. On that basis you may as well put the Doctor in a museum. Actually . . .
* * *
Duggan was in full flow, his face lit up with a rather piggy enthusiasm. ‘So you can imagine the furore . . .’
‘The what?’ Romana tried to show that she was paying attention.
‘The uproar.’
‘Oh, the uproar.’ She rested her head on her hand and stared through the café window. Outside, it looked as though Paris was having such a fun day, and all this sounded so complicated. Duggan was explaining how in recent months the whole Art World had been plunged into a furore and an uproar. Masterpieces that had apparently been missing for centuries just started turning up in auction houses across the world.
‘All fakes of course,’ interjected the Doctor airily.
‘Well, they’ve got to be, haven’t they?’ said Duggan. ‘Haven’t they?’
‘Are they?’ Romana asked.
Duggan paused. ‘They’re very, very good ones. They stand up to every scientific test.’ He made it sound as if there was something wrong with science.
The Doctor was finally, properly intrigued. ‘And the only connection in all this is the Count?’
Duggan explained how the Count’s name kept on cropping up. The great auction houses of Europe prided themselves on their discretion. Sellers were rarely named (for fear of revealing a reversal in the fortunes of a country, or worse, a famous family). Even so, it was sometimes possible to find out who was selling what. Very rarely would the Count ever directly be the vendor. Occasionally he would be acting on behalf of one of his many friends. Sometimes a piece was being sold by one of his dear friends. Maybe the Count would appear in an auction room on the Drouot to bid on some rarity (which cleared him, of course. It was unthinkable that Count Scarlioni would bid on his own auction even if he never won). Perhaps the Countess would be there, flicking ash as she leafed through the brochure, smoking through a cigarette holder and looking quite beautifully bored. Occasionally they would be spotted at a soirée, making a beeline for a boorish American billionaire, smiling pleasantries as they listened to tiresome anecdotes about frogs’ legs and snails. Sometimes Hermann, the Count’s right-hand man, would be seen driving back across from the Italian border. After one such trip, a hasty inspection at a garage had uncovered what might just have been a repaired bullet hole. Once, when the Count had been in Tokyo, Hermann had been to Buenos Aries. Visiting relatives, he had claimed.
‘But nothing dirty can be proved,’ Duggan concluded ruefully. ‘The Count’s absolutely clean. So clean he stinks.’
‘He isn’t clean any more.’ The Doctor tapped the side of his nose. ‘The Countess has that bracelet.’
Good point, thought Duggan. Or was it? The Doctor had, after all, stolen it. The Countess had simply retrieved it. And Duggan only had the Doctor’s word that the bracelet was in any way unusual. What was it he’d said? Something about a hidden camera in it or something? Come to think of it, that sounded a bit fishy.
Suspicious of everyone and everything was Duggan’s natural state. ‘How much would you say that bracelet is worth?’ he asked. What if the Doctor really had just been trying to steal it? What if he’d just traded confidential Department secrets with a Parisian pickpocket? Oh, that would look bad. The Chief would no doubt say something withering.
‘What’s the bracelet worth?’ The Doctor lowered his voice mysteriously. ‘Well, that rather depends on what you want to do with it.’
Romana coughed.
The Doctor straightened up, neatening his scarf. He nodded and waved, as though to an old acquaintance across a crowded room.
Two men in suits had come in. Two different men in suits. Holding guns.
Le Patron pointed immediately to the table of foreigners. The men nodded their thanks.
Everyone else in the bar suddenly looked elsewhere.
‘Do you know’—the Doctor already had his hands in the air—‘I rather think we’re being invited to leave. The dear Countess, I shouldn’t wonder.’
Romana broke into a radiant smile and put her hands up enthusiastically. Sounded like fun.
Le Patron watched with relief as the foreigners were led out of his café at gunpoint. One of the men in suits nodded to him, and left a generous tip on their table. A true Frenchman.
* * *
Cinq à sept is a rich Parisian tradition you won’t find in the guidebooks. Between the hours of 5 and 7 p.m., the city is at its most discreet. They are the hours when husbands announce they must, regrettably, work late, and when wives suddenly bump into an old friend in town and just have to have a catch-up. They are also the hours when certain hotels fill temporarily with the sounds of laughter and popping corks.
Between cinq and sept, the minds of all good Parisians are on anything other than the whereabouts of their spouses. To even ask would be unthinkable. And yet, this particular afternoon, the Countess was bored.
The Countess had nothing to do. She had ordered Duggan brought to the Château, she had watched Hermann executing his henchmen, and she had finished her letters. An empty patch of time stretched ahead of her. There was no sign of Carlos and nothing to do. So it was that some neglected wives took to eating chocolates and growing fat.
Idly, she tugged at a bell pull and Hermann entered the library, his uniform surprisingly immaculate.
‘My lady?’ he enquired.
‘Hermann, where is the Count?’
‘Down in the laboratory, my lady.’
‘With that professor again.’ She didn’t bother to hide her distaste. She knew she had no right to criticise his diversions. She knew it was all something to do with one of the Count’s grand schemes. And yet, well, that windowless room, that terrible little man, and all that equipment. How frightfully dull.
‘No, my lady,’ Hermann corrected her gently. ‘The Professor is resting in his room.’ Hermann had carried the exhausted man there himself.
‘Oh. Thank you, Hermann.’ The Countess dismissed him, puzzled. What would Carlos be doing down in the cellar alone?
She wandered through the halls of the Château, past several Rembrandts, half a dozen Canalettos and a Matisse that could do with a clean. She ignored a dusty row of the Count’s family portraits done in oils, a series of men, all with a strong resemblance—that same wonderfully bored smile. Her fingertips strayed over a collection of vases so beautiful a pasha had put out the potter’s eyes so he could make no more. She didn’t even see them. Rotten floorboards bounced beneath her feet as she traversed a corridor skirted with entwined marble lovers by Bartolini. She paused to use the proffered conch of a Michelangelo nymph as an ashtray, then crossed to a door leading down to the cellar. She had, she’d decided, come to see what Carlos’s Great Project was all about.
The door was locked. Oh.
‘Carlos?’ she called. She rattled the handle.
* * *
Down in the cellar, the Countess’s voice drifted through the wine racks, past the banks of the mighty computer and echoed off the great glass spires of the Professor’s device.
But the Count did not hear her. Or if he did, she was not important. Not right now.
Count Carlos Scarlioni’s right eye was twitching.
It had started as an itch. It had grown.
The Count had been wandering through the basement, altering a setting here, a dial there, really little more than tidying up (and, in the process, advancing the Professor’s work by a good few months).
He’d caught up with his face in a shaving mirror. That smile.
He was struck by a thought, one that started to make sense of everything.
He’d always known and yet he’d never quite known.
He was transfixed by his own reflection. And yet it wasn’t his reflection. Not really.
He scratched again at the skin above his right eyebrow.
He paused.
He touched the skin again, delicately. It felt, for the first time in his life, odd.
He caught sight of his smile. It was broad now. Eager for him to know.
He reached up to touch the skin again and instead of scratching, he tugged at it, curiously, wondering what would happen. With horrid ease, the skin came loose. He carried on pulling at it, a strip of it peeling away and opening out, falling across in the centre of his face. Curiously, he didn’t feel any pain, or any sensation at all.
Count Carlos Scarlioni didn’t feel anything as he pulled his face slowly, methodically apart. Piece by piece.
As he opened up the flesh, the voices came pouring out.
And this time, he knew what they were saying.
They were calling his name.
The last of his face fell away in ribbons to the floor. The Count continued to stare into the mirror.
There was no blood. There was no skull under the skin.
The single eye, the green tentacles that made up the true face of Scaroth, the last of the Jagaroth, stared back at him.