The Romance Of Crime Part 4

The Doctor's face fell. 'And there's another one.'

'What are these people doing here?' Pyerpoint asked Margo. 'Why are they wearing disruptive clothing?'

She struggled to explain. 'They are not detainees, sir. They were first seen earlier this evening in the refreshment zone.'

Pyerpoint turned to the intruders. The Doctor gave him a toothy grin and a cheery wave. 'h.e.l.lo, there. You must be in charge.'

'Do not address me in such familiar terms,'

snapped Pyerpoint. 'I am a High Archon and the station administrator.'

'Are you really?' The Doctor took Pyerpoint's hand and shook it vigorously. 'That must be very interesting.' He gestured about vaguely. 'Do you administrate all of this? How clever.'

Pyerpoint pulled his hand away. He stared at the Doctor suspiciously. 'Are you a lunatic?'

Spiggot emerged from a lift on level seven of the Rock and checked the time. At this time of night there'd be only minimum security on duty at computer control. Artificial night had already fallen. A softer light shone from the lamps positioned at intervals along the stone-flagged walkways.

The call to Pyerpoint had come at exactly the right moment.

Spiggot couldn't have prayed for a better distraction. With the station administrator off his back, he was free to roam the corridors unchallenged. He liked it that way. The people he pa.s.sed didn't know him and he didn't know them. He enjoyed the feeling of freedom that brought him. It was so different back on Five, where he was always being recognized and pestered for his autograph. But then, that was the price he had to pay for being so successful at his job.

The station's computer control centre was up ahead, at the end of this long corridor. He watched from a shadowy corner as an overalled worker emerged from the huge oak doors and signed himself off by running a card through a reader built into the decorative stonework of the wall. The worker nodded to him as he pa.s.sed. That was the trouble with this place, thought Spiggot. They were complacent, couldn't imagine anyone trying it on. He'd seen this sort of thing before. It was a disaster waiting to happen. And it was his job to prevent that, because someone had to.

He reached into his inside pocket and pulled out a black plastic scrambler card. He'd bought it from an informer from the lower north capital, his old neighbourhood. Sure, it wasn't standard police equipment, and sure, if headquarters ever found out he was using it they'd haul his a.s.s over the coals.

But h.e.l.l, they knew the way he worked by now.

He ran the card through the reader and sneaked through the big doors into computer control.

'Now, let me see if I've got this right,' said the Doctor, who was getting rather tired. 'You're accusing us of being spies and saboteurs?'

Pyerpoint nodded. 'That is correct.'

On the other side of the cell, Margo was preparing the truth serum. She broke open two phials of green liquid and poured them into hypodermics that had thin, glistening needles. The Doctor noted that Margo was breathing deeply, as if she was trying to hold down her temper.

'Well, pardon me for saying so,' he went on, quite unmoved by this gruesome display, 'but I don't think Romana and I would make very good spies, do you? I mean, look at us.' He twirled the ends of his scarf. 'If I was the leader of some subversive organization and one of my operatives walked about dressed like this, I wouldn't send him on a high risk mission to a top security area, I'd sack him.'

Margo edged closer to Romana. She prepared the hypodermic, squirting a few drops of the serum from its tip.

'Roll up your sleeve,' she ordered. Her voice was less confident than it had been earlier, thought the Doctor, as if the presence of her superior made her nervous.

Romana sighed and did as she was instructed. 'I don't suppose it will make any difference. This situation is absurd enough already.'

Margo readied the needle. The Doctor leant closer to Romana. 'Do you know, this is going to hurt you more than it's going to hurt me,' he whispered.

Before Margo could inject the fluid, her communicator bleeped. She looked to Pyerpoint for instructions. He nodded.

She flicked open the channel.

'Ma'am,' said a voice from the communicator, 'Shom here.

The security net registers an intrusion.'

Margo frowned. 'Not again. Where?'

'At computer control itself, ma'am,' Shom replied. 'Your orders?'

To the Doctor's surprise, it was Pyerpoint who reacted most noticeably to this news. 'd.a.m.n him!' he snarled. He flicked open his own communicator. 'This is Pyerpoint. Send a squad to computer control immediately. I want the intruder brought to the detention area, cell forty!'

'Right away, sir.'

Margo looked anxiously at Pyerpoint. She lowered the hypodermic needle. 'What is going on, sir?' she demanded.

Her thick eyebrows knotted in a frown. 'Two security alerts in under an hour. Are these incidents connected?'

Pyerpoint stared at the Doctor. 'Oh yes. Your role as a decoy suddenly becomes very clear.'

The Doctor smiled at him innocently. 'Not to me, it doesn't.'

Spiggot looked around the large control centre. It was different in design from the rest of the station. More modern. A cl.u.s.ter of consoles faced a wide screen that displayed a constantly shifting pattern of data. The walls were lined with gadgetry and computer banks. The night watch consisted of only five officers, relaxing in their padded chairs. Some were drinking coffee, others were playing games. The atmosphere was relaxed and comfortable.

Yeah, thought Spiggot. Wide open. He sauntered over to a line of consoles ranged against a wall. He sat down and started to work on the entry codes he would need to access information from the security net. As he'd expected, the codes were triple variant, the toughest of the lot. If somebody had the skills to enter a system like this and play about with it, they'd have to be a genius. He let his fingers dance over the keyboard, and waited for the inevitable outcome.

'There!' a voice shouted behind him. He spun round in his chair. Three uniformed guards had entered the control centre, blasters raised. 'Get away from that console!' their leader shouted nervously.

Spiggot grinned and stood up. 'All right, sonny. Don't worry yourself.' He tapped the console. 'It's all in one piece, you know.'

He raised his hands. 'Back to see Mr Pyerpoint, then, is it?'

'You are agents of Planet Five police,' Pyerpoint said.

'Confess your involvement with Spiggot.'

The Doctor was confused. 'Hold on, hold on. A minute ago, we were spies. Now you think we're police. I wish you'd make up your mind.' He looked around the bare metal cell.

'I'm feeling rather tired. How long have we been standing up, Romana?'

'Forty-nine minutes and twenty-one seconds.'

'You can drop this facade,' Pyerpoint continued. 'Stop attempting to confuse the issue.'

'Me, confuse the issue?' the Doctor spluttered. 'My dear fellow, you're doing a very good job yourself. I mean, I'm not even sure what the issue is any more, and even if I did, the last thing I'd do would be to attempt to confuse it.'

'Stop talking,' Pyerpoint ordered.

He stalked over to the corner where Margo was standing.

She was staring at the floor and breathing deeply. The Doctor strained his ears to pick up their conversation. They were an odd couple.

'You've been on duty for twenty hours, Margo,' Pyerpoint told her quietly. 'Return to your cabin. I will deal with this matter.'

Her head jerked up sharply. 'Are you questioning my competence as chief of security?' Her lower lip juddered.

'Of course not.' He lowered his voice. 'However, I now understand the situation. These two were acting as decoys for that police officer from Five.' His face twisted with anger.

'The police treat us like fools.'

Margo frowned. 'That does not explain how they came to be aboard, sir.'

'I will discover that,' he rea.s.sured her. 'Now, please, Margo, return to your cabin.' He laid one of his wrinkled hands on her shoulder in a protective gesture. 'I don't want to have to order you.'

Margo brushed him off and left the cell. He stared after her, his expression unreadable.

The Doctor exchanged a glance with Romana. 'She's very uptight,' Romana observed.

'They both are,' said the Doctor. 'But she seems to be heading for a nervous breakdown.'

'Hmm. Hypertension? The result of a lifestyle of constant self-denial. Could an incident like this be enough to set it off?'

'Well, I hope not. I should feel terribly guilty.'

'Don't worry, Doctor. I imagine you've set off quite a few nervous breakdowns in your time.'

'Really? How kind of you to say.'

Spiggot shook off the restraining arms of the guards as they escorted him into the detention area. 'All right, sonny. I'm a big boy now. I can look after myself.'

He looked at the rows of cells. Even millions of miles out in s.p.a.ce, in the middle of an asteroid, a prison still smelt like a prison. They could scrub up and slop out as much as they liked, but it was still there. The stench of too many hard luck stories.

The woman he'd seen earlier, outside Pyerpoint's office, was hurrying past. He raised a hand in greeting, but she'd already pushed past him. Her expression told him all that he needed to know. Intriguing. She was losing it, cracking up under the strain. He'd seen it too often to mistake the signs.

And she was the chief of security. He'd found another weakness up here.

He was pushed into cell forty. As he'd expected, Pyerpoint was standing there, rouged cheeks stretched in indignation.

But standing nearby were two real freakos. There was a guy who looked, well, big. He was tall and had a weird, intense expression. His big blue eyes looked as if they were about to pop out of his head. He'd probably been at the happy pills, whoever he was. His hair exploded from his head in wild curls and he had huge white teeth. He was wearing clothes that had gone out of fashion, if they'd ever been in, hundreds of years ago.

The girl with him was equally striking, but for very different reasons. She was a stunner. Long blonde hair, knowing smile. There was something about her that intrigued Spiggot. He thought he knew everything about women, but this one was something special. She had a kind of haughty, untouchable air about her.

'Mr Spiggot,' Pyerpoint said, 'it is within my authority to arrest you and your colleagues on counts of unlawful entry, trespa.s.s and causing an affray. What do you say?'

Spiggot thought quickly. Colleagues, old Pyerpoint had said. He took a quick look at the freaks. Who in starfire were they? They looked like Romanies. 'Colleagues?'

Pyerpoint became even angrier. 'It's obvious that you sent them here to distract us from your activities.'

Spiggot considered his options. It was the kind of quick-fire thinking under pressure that made him the man he was.

Perhaps this was just what was needed. A handy distraction.

And it couldn't do him any harm to keep in with this pair and find out what they were up to. They didn't look like crims, but how had they got aboard?

The tall man spoke. His voice was unlike anything Spiggot had heard before. It was deep and resonant, with an air of authority to it, cultured, but its origins were unplaceable. As if the guy had sprung out of some strange nowhere. 'Er, Administrator,' he said to Pyerpoint. 'I'm afraid that I've never met this gentleman before.'

Spiggot stepped forward and sighed theatrically. 'It's all right. Don't bother.' He turned to Pyerpoint. 'They are with me.'

'I knew it,' said the High Archon. 'On this occasion, the police have gone too far.'

The tall man held up a finger. 'Excuse me, but, as I seem to keep saying, I have no idea what's going on '

He was interrrupted by a bleep from Pyerpoint's communicator. A voice said, 'Shom, sir. We've just received a coded instruction from Planet Five police. Message reads: Accord every access to Detective Inspector Frank Spiggot.'

Yeah, thought Spiggot. Right on time.

Pyerpoint bristled. 'On what authority?'

'The order was countercoded with the ministerial seal, sir.

Top priority.'

'Yes, thank you, I do understand what that means.'

Pyerpoint clicked the channel off and raised a hand to his head. A pulse was throbbing on his left temple. Well rattled, thought Spiggot.

'It appears the situation has changed somewhat,' he said, as calmly as he could.

Spiggot grinned and tried to restrain himself from looking too pleased. 'That's quite all right, sir. All charges against me dropped?'

Pyerpoint nodded. 'Of course. I shall be lodging a formal complaint with the police authority regarding your methods.'

'Think nothing of it,' the tall stranger said graciously. 'This kind of thing happens to us all the time, doesn't it, Romana?'

The girl nodded. 'Almost too often. Er, shall we be going, then, Doctor?'