Unwilling Adventurer

Ian is so adorable in this story. Look at him with his trousers...

Wed, 22 May 2013 16:09:47 +0100

Ian is so adorable in this story. Look at him with his trousers rolled up to go adventuring. Then all the Thal women (and one man) seem to want to feed him fruit or something and he’s casually flirting with them all, then he goes in the TARDIS and just as Susan is about to take a bite out of some food he steals it from her and eats it himself. He’s such a dork, love him.

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Wed, 22 May 2013 16:04:00 +0100

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Wed, 22 May 2013 15:32:48 +0100

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Wed, 22 May 2013 12:26:03 +0100

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Wed, 22 May 2013 12:25:00 +0100

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Tue, 21 May 2013 18:35:00 +0100

I wanted to let you guys know that you're one of my favourite blogs on tumblr and I really hope that you enjoy making these posts as much as I enjoy reading them. Have a splendid day.

Tue, 21 May 2013 17:35:07 +0100

Aww thank you so much! And yes, we very much enjoy doing the posts and are so glad you enjoy looking at them. And have a very splendid day yourself :) xx

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Tue, 21 May 2013 17:32:00 +0100

First Era Guide (Or why everyone should try the One era!)...

Tue, 21 May 2013 17:23:41 +0100

First Era Guide (Or why everyone should try the One era!) powerpoint.

Hey, you don't have to publish this if you don't want people to know anon is back on. But as one of your tumblrless followers who love your blog I just wanted to say I'm glad it's back and I hope you're both doing well. :)

Tue, 21 May 2013 10:12:37 +0100

Aww thank you! We don’t mind publishing it… as people will know its back on anon at some point anyway, and we don’t like having anon switched off, it doesn’t seem right for us. We’re doing ok thank you for asking, and hope you are well yourself :D x

tardiswanted: Can you imagine how difficult this must have been...

Mon, 20 May 2013 21:24:29 +0100

tardiswanted:

Can you imagine how difficult this must have been for the Doctor?

Susan’s not just a Companion, she’s family. And he didn’t have to come to terms with losing her because of something he couldn’t control. No, he had to willingly let go so she could be happy.

Ian and Barbara in the Keys of Marinus.

Mon, 20 May 2013 21:21:25 +0100

Ian and Barbara in the Keys of Marinus.

fuckyeahianandbarbara: William Russell in Coronation Street in...

Mon, 20 May 2013 19:01:29 +0100

fuckyeahianandbarbara:

William Russell in Coronation Street in (1992) as the adorbs Ted Sullivan

"…The ambition and enthusiasm imbues every page of the script, which is so beautifully..."

Mon, 20 May 2013 18:12:48 +0100

““…The ambition and enthusiasm imbues every page of the script, which is so beautifully written-even down to the stage directions-and so rich in character, so vivid in detail, so joyful in its comic invention that it is simply breathtaking. And the dialogue, oh the dialogue. As was custom in historical dramas of the day, Whitaker writes speeches that are redolent of Shakespeare without ever sacrificing clarity; a combination of Shakespearean rhythm and poetical devices, but with an entirely modern vocabulary.””

- - Jonathan Morris about ‘the Crusade’ and David Whitaker’s script (from DWM: The Missing Episodes)

Just love this. It’s so nice to hear some praise for the beautiful serial that is ‘The Crusade’. All these elements are why its one of our top Doctor Who stories of all time. It’s so breathtaking!

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Mon, 20 May 2013 16:25:26 +0100

RICHARD: Saladin sends me presents of fruit and snow when I am...

Mon, 20 May 2013 11:21:01 +0100

RICHARD: Saladin sends me presents of fruit and snow when I am sick… and now his brother decorates you with his jewels. Yet with our armies do we both lock in deadly combat, watering the land with a rain of blood, and the noise of thunder is drowned in the shouts of dying men.

The Crusade.

We’re reading our First Doctor missing episode tele-snap magazine and it’s fascinating. ...

Mon, 20 May 2013 11:00:34 +0100

We’re reading our First Doctor missing episode tele-snap magazine and it’s fascinating. It’s talking about Marco Polo and it’s saying that when serials were broadcast back in the 60’s, Radio Times only announced episode one and therefore the viewers didn’t know how many episodes there’d be, would there be four or eight?

Every week they’d follow the story, not knowing when it was going to end. In episode 5 of Marco Polo there is a cliff hanger, the bit where you think they’ve made it safely to the ship and then bam….they are captured. Well imagine watching that, thinking the story was over and then in the last minute you realise you’ve got to wait another week to see the story continue even further and you still don’t know when it will end. It must have been so tense and exciting not knowing everything like we do now.

Might do some posts about Marco Polo and the Crusade because this magazine is talking so beautifully about them and we have intense feelings now.

timeywimeyness: Classic Who Gifs | The Daleks: The Escape |...

Mon, 20 May 2013 00:05:00 +0100

timeywimeyness:

Classic Who Gifs | The Daleks: The Escape | “But the Daleks were teachers, weren’t they?”

Work in progress of the fic inspired by this post. We’re not entirely happy with it but its...

Sun, 19 May 2013 22:51:09 +0100

Work in progress of the fic inspired by this post. We’re not entirely happy with it but its still got a long part of the story to go. This is the first 5000 or so words. We also decided to have it told from Ian’s perspective.

…

I saw the silhouette of her through the glass in the door. The door was locked, had been since that morning when I shut myself inside to sort through my papers. My only company that day had been a bottle of whiskey and the voices from the other end of the telephone line.

I knew it was her from the way she stood. Nothing in this world could stop me from recognising the outline of her body, the way she held her head high, and her shoulders back in a manner of command and authority. There was also the way she knocked on the door. It wasn’t quiet and soft; it was the knock from a determined hand, from a person who’d been here before. And I was right.

She walked into the office with a casual stride that gave the air of over confidence. Her gloved hands extended out to mine and we shook hands in a moment of mutual understanding as though we had never been introduced before. I suppose in some respects we were like strangers, never really knowing what was going on, waiting intently for that explanation.

“It’s been a long time, Barbara,” I said finally, motioning for her to take the seat opposite me.

She sat on the desk instead, stretching her legs in front of her like she was trying to get my attention.

“I’m in need of your assistance, Ian,” she said as she pulled out a cigarette from her handbag.

I pulled out my lighter and lit her cigarette before she even had the chance to ask. I watched her take a drag from it, watched as she exhaled and the smoke billowed around the office. I lit my own cigarette and waited for her to talk.

“I didn’t know who else to ask,” she said. “I know you’re going to tell me I’m imagining things.”

“I’m not going to tell you anything, you came to me, and you’re going to talk.”

“My sister is missing,” she replied. “She’s not run away; I haven’t seen her in days. I want you to find her and then find who’s responsible.”

I took in her words, considered what she was saying, and pictured the sister in my mind, her younger sister Claudia Wright, the girl I knew well. Why would Claudia have been taken? I thought for a moment, I could see Barbara’s eyes upon me, waiting for my response.

“Sure, I can find her,” I let out.

There was a brief smile. “That’s why I came.”

“Even at the cost of the two of us working together, being in the same room?”

“My sister is missing Ian, I need results.”

“Well….we’ll have to find her then, won’t we?”

“Thanks for the ‘we’.”

…

We hadn’t been a ‘we’ for five years. I hadn’t spoken to Barbara Wright since that fateful day we’d broken up for good in the middle of a devastatingly hot summer. We said we needed space between us, or time, we needed a whole universe between us- that would be the only thing to stop us fighting. We’d been happy once, in love, planning to get married, but most of the time we couldn’t stand the sight of each other. All the things I loved about her were also the things I despised, and all the things I loathed about myself she loved about me.

She’d been with me on my 30th birthday; we’d been out celebrating the occasion with a drink at the nightclub she worked at. It was a great little place, a real hive of characters; some shady, some otherwise, some thinking they owned the place; some too scared to come out of the shadows, and some too drunk to even realise they were there at all.

“I think we should head home,” she had said as her arms draped around me, and she stroked my neck. My hands returned the favour as they slipped down her body tenderly. Her ruby lips pressed against mine, and the smell of her perfume was intoxicating. I kissed her for a moment and then led her by the hand to the doors of the club. I opened one of the doors and we strolled out into the darkness.

Outside the city was shrouded in a deep fog, a blanket of mist that stretched high onto the skyscrapers above us, and there was a dim light from a street lamp desperately trying to shine through the despairing grey. There had been rain earlier that day, puddles left behind like echoes of the past. The reflection of the dim lamp light distorted in the image of the water. Barbara’s high heeled shoes crashed through the puddle, the image splattered and sailed away, water flying across the path of our feet, the cobbled streets loud underneath the sound of our footsteps.

We caught a taxi, headed home to our studio flat in the depths of the city. It wasn’t perfect; in fact it was a mess, two personalities who were so different that nothing remained constant. She was the organised one, the one who kept order, and me, though the one who worked as a detective for a living- well I was the one who messed it all up.

We got out of the taxi and stood outside the towering block of apartments. Looking up at the magnificence of the building made your neck ache, it was even worse when the sight was obscured by the invasion of fog that accumulated around us.

It started to rain, I remember that rain well, remember the way the droplets of water fell from her hair onto her cheek. We kissed in the rain, and let our skin taste the water. It was so passionate; we always were when we were together, passionately in love, or passionately hating one another, sometimes I wasn’t even sure if there was a difference.

It was raining that night of my birthday…and it was raining the day she came back.

…

I looked through the blinds on my window frame, looking at the droplets that formed across the glass. “It’s raining,” I said to her as she still sat on the edge of my desk with that air of over confidence.

She looked up at me and there was a brief smirk on her face. I wondered if that meant something.

“Look Ian, can we talk about what I’m asking you to do here? It’ll still be raining later I’m sure.”

I nodded and she handed me a piece of paper from her handbag.

“It’s from Claudia; she left this in my letter box the day before she vanished.”

My eyes skimmed over the page. There was definitely something not right with the words that Claudia had supposedly written. They were not her words at all; the writer of the note seemed so inconsistent and unsure. Claudia on the other hand was focused and responsible, not likely to leave a poorly constructed note in her sister’s letterbox and let her worry about her.

“She didn’t write this,” I said.

Barbara nodded. “Well that’s one thing we agree on. She wouldn’t write to me to tell me she was leaving for a few months, not just like that. It’s not like her. Someone else wrote this before they took her.”

“What makes you certain she was taken? She’s young, perhaps she met someone…”

Barbara leaned in close to me and blew her cigarette smoke into my face. “Don’t pretend that’s what you think, you know that’s not what happened.”

“I want to be sure we’re on the same page.”

“Our pages are written entirely different; Ian, but we want the same ending, don’t we? The safe return of my sister?”

I nodded, and told her that I was desperate to right this wrong doing, I’d been fond of Claudia and the thought of her being taken and subjected to something cruel and horrific made me shudder and feel utterly sick. Barbara was staring at me intently again, there was a fury in her eyes that was unmistakable, she was so passionate about things, always had been, once she had an idea in her head it was hard for her to let go. She was never going to back down on finding Claudia…and neither was I.

“There’s a girl, comes by the club a lot, I thought she might know something,” she suddenly let out and she stared at me with those fluttering eyelashes I found impossible to resist.

“Started the investigation without me I see.”

“Not without you, just offering a starting point if you’ll agree.”

“Who is this girl?”

Barbara paused and then looked at me a lot more seriously. “Susan Foreman, do you know her?”

“Name doesn’t seem familiar but then I’ve not been in your club for quite a time now.”

I stood up and paced the room carefully, closing the blinds as I did so. “Who is this Susan?”

“A complete mystery, a girl so strange you’d swear she was from another planet entirely,” Barbara told me.

“And what’s so strange about her?”

“Something she said a week or so ago, something that struck me as a bit…peculiar.”

…

“I said I’ll have the same again,” Susan had told Barbara as they’d sat on either side of the bar in the Coal Hill nightclub.

“You’ve been knocking them back a bit, drowning your sorrows?” Barbara had asked her in a friendly manner. She was used to providing the charm. Owning a bar had resulted in her treating customers like her friends as well as her punters. She certainly treated me like a friend when we’d first met there. That was the place we’d fallen in love, or maybe lust, it was difficult to tell.

“So?” Barbara had asked her again after the young woman had given no answer.

Susan shrugged her shoulders, her eyes were downcast, and she was not being responsive in the way Barbara was used to. “Maybe, who knows?”

“What does that mean?”

“Who knows anything anymore, who knows anyone?”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Susan had pouted, refused to talk any longer, and rummaged through her handbag as if she was trying to avoid some sort of emotional connection with another human being. Some people were the flying solo sort of people. Barbara said Susan was one, I was one, and Barbara was one. There was a lot of us in the world, flying solo, doing our own thing, damaging the lives of anyone we came across, all because we didn’t want to get close to people, or because we couldn’t.

“I don’t talk to strangers about my problems,” Susan had said.

“Ah so there is a problem?” Barbara had asked.

“One minute it’s all there, right in front of you, the next thing, well they just take them away from you…”

…

“…she said ‘they take them away from you’ like she meant someone had taken someone,” said Barbara.

I paced the room again, running my tense fingers through my dark hair. “But you said this was a week ago, before she was taken. She couldn’t have been referring to the disappearance of Claudia.”

“Well that’s what I want you to find out Ian…sorry…I mean… detective Chesterton. Well I don’t have to tell you how to play your own game.”

“There are some things Barbara that are not possible to do.”

“Since when have you been a stickler for the rules? I thought you took things as they come?”

I laughed, she knew me so well, probably better than I knew myself. “I do. Let’s meet…tomorrow night, your club eight thirty. You think she’ll be there?”

“I expect so; she’s been in there most nights since Claudia vanished. I wonder if that’s a clue.”

Barbara got up and she met me at the door. We stood and stared into each other’s eyes for a minute, both trying not to blink and ruin the moment. Finally, I looked away with embarrassment and I reached for the handle on the door.

“Tomorrow night then?”

She nodded and left the room. I watched until she had completely left my eye line and then I headed back to my desk, time to do some digging.

…

I spent most of that evening in my office, alone. I looked through the filing cabinet contents over and over hoping to find some leads, some names, anything that would help kick start the investigation before I was to meet my ex flame the next day.

I opened the drawer at the bottom of my desk and took out the vodka bottle, it was nearly empty so I thirstily drunk the last of the liquid and wiped my mouth quickly. I took off my tie, my hat, rolled up my shirt sleeves until I was a lot more comfortable.

In the bottom of the drawer I saw some photos; I pulled them out and sifted through them, discarding most of them onto the floor. Finally I stopped when I pulled out a photo of myself with Barbara and Claudia. Claudia was on my left, her arm draped around me, her pretty face staring ahead to the camera. I didn’t remember the photo being taken, didn’t remember anything about that night. I stared harder at the image of Claudia. Where was she?

It had been a good five years since that photo had been taken and I suspected Claudia was not the same girl I had once known. Something wasn’t right and something told me that there was more to Barbara’s story than met the eye. I folded the photo into the pocket of the blazer on the back of the chair and stood up straight in front of the mirror that hung on my wall. I stared at my worn and tired face, the purple bags that hung under my eyes were an awful sight and the lines around my face showed my increasing age. I wondered if Barbara had seen the difference, after all, she looked no older. It didn’t seem like life had affected her in the same way, she was still confident and beautiful, still the same Barbara, still living her life the way she wanted to. She would call and I’d run to her side, no questions asked. But this was the first time she called in five years.

There was a small part of me that wanted to turn down the case, hand it over to some other detective and let the past stay where it belonged, but Barbara and I had a history that I didn’t want to forget, a history that became as much a part of who I was, as the job I spent my lonely days devoted to.

I slept on my desk that night. I don’t remember falling asleep but my eyes had been heavy the entire day, and the vodka clearly hadn’t helped. The times when I was asleep brought the biggest relief to my existence that I couldn’t experience when I was awake. Sometimes being asleep felt more real than the times I wasn’t. It felt so easy to just stay asleep forever.

…

I walked into the nightclub at eight thirty three, three minutes late, that would bother her a little; she’d expect me to be early, she liked me to be early. She was waiting for me at the bar; she was wearing a black dress, it was very fitting on her, I liked it. I caught her looking at her watch, so when I approached her I wasn’t surprised with the rather unimpressed look she gave me.

“Sorry I’m…”

She waved off my apology and kicked out a bar stool so I could sit down next to her. The stools were in such close proximity that our legs were touching.

“That’s her over there,” she said whispering in my ear.

I looked over at the girl. She was very young, about eighteen, and she was very beautiful. She had mid-length dark hair that fell loosely onto the shoulders, and the dress she was wearing cut low at the back and revealed her skin. She had an almost elfish face that portrayed a sense of cunning and shrewdness, and yet a playful quality that so many of the other women in the bar lacked. Barbara was right about her, there was something different about the way she presented herself; there was an unearthly quality, someone who stood out, like a rose blooming in the snow.

“Let’s talk to her,” I said, and we approached the girl. She was sitting at one of the booths.

“May we talk to you?” Barbara asked her. She didn’t wait for an answer and pulled herself down next to the girl. I slid in the booth on the other side so that Susan was in the middle. Her friends who had been loitering around the table seemed to disappear like they knew who we were; perhaps they did. I was a well known detective after all and detectives were not the kind to accumulate friends.

Susan lit her cigarette and ignored us. I noticed her hand was trembling as she did so.

“A girl’s gone missing,” I said. “I was wondering if you could help with our enquiries.”

“What makes you think I know anything about that?”

“You know my sister Claudia,” Barbara added.

“I know a lot of people.”

“But you know Claudia, and that’s who we’re asking you about. When did you last see her?” I asked firmly.

She looked up at me, sadness spread across her face and I sensed a vulnerability hidden beneath the bravado of her answers.

“She was my friend. I last saw her the day before she disappeared. I’m as worried about her as you are. But I don’t know where she is.”

Barbara shuffled closer to her, she seemed sympathetic now and her compassion swept over her as it always seemed to. “Do you have any idea where she could be? Did she have any friends that were no good?”

Susan shrugged. “We all have those, don’t we?”

“Anyone in particular who might want to harm her, an ex-boyfriend or something?” I asked forcefully, attempting to get an actual answer out of her.

“I don’t know of anyone. Look Barbara, I know you’re concerned for your sister, but it has nothing to do with me so you’re wasting your time!”

Susan motioned that she wanted to get up from the table and so I let her stand, and I got out of her way. She started to head for the door. I pulled her back by her arm, she didn’t like the way I held on and so she shook me away with a face that displayed anger and irritation.

“Do you need a lift anywhere? It’s still foggy out,” I asked her.

“I’m fine, besides I like the fog, it’s mysterious.”

I nodded; she was not going to listen to me, which was clear. I let her leave.

…

We decided to follow her. There was something about the unearthly girl that troubled me, something in the way she seemed so distant that struck me as strange. Barbara had noticed it too and we headed to my car, both dressed in almost identical trench coats, both marching with the same determined stride. The drive across town as we followed her was relatively short, and not before long we turned a sharp corner into Totter’s Lane. We reached the end of the road; a dead end greeted us at what appeared to be an old and battered junkyard. The name on the gates read ‘Foreman’, the name Barbara had given me as the girl’s surname. We waited a few moments as we watched her disappear through the gates and we wondered what to do next.

“Reminds me of the days we used to sneak into old junkyards for a quick snog, perhaps she’s meeting a boy.” I said.

Barbara let out a laugh. “Good times I’ll admit.”

“You’ve never had better than me, admit that!”

Barbara ran her fingers through my hair and then held my face in her hands, her long fingernails almost digging into my cheeks. She looked like she was examining me under a microscope, checking to see how much I’d changed.

“See anything you like?” I asked her.

“You’ve got a lot more lines,” she said with a grin.

“Every one of those lines comes from another year without you.”

“Don’t you mean every line comes from the years we were together? Admit it, I drove you mad.”

I nodded in agreement and didn’t press the matter any further. I opened the car door. Barbara followed me onto the dark and deserted street, the fog still persisted, and it was hard to see the car as we left it behind and reached the old gates of the yard.

“Come on; let’s see what lurks behind those doors, what has Susan been getting up to?” I said.

I led the way as the gates creaked slightly as we pushed them inward. Barbara clung onto my arm as we walked slowly in the almost darkness until we arrived at the further end of the yard. We couldn’t see Susan but I was aware of some whispering to our left. I told Barbara to crouch down and we quietly and carefully squatted behind the remains of an old burnt out sofa. It was a man’s voice and after a moment or two we heard another man’s voice, this time a deeper pitch.

We looked on eagerly as we witnessed the men step out into our eye line. It was hard to make out their features because of the darkness, but we could see the general identities of the two men that stood before us. Both were in suits, finely dressed and groomed- and were in what appeared to be a heated debate. Their voices were not loud however and all I could see were their lips moving. It was intensely creepy with the low mumbling voices and the image of their lips opening and closing in almost rhythmic fashion.

I wondered whether to intervene for a moment; it was the sort of thing I was used to getting involved in…you know…the odd scuffle, stopping people getting into fights. But I felt Barbara’s hand on my arm and I knew that this was her way of telling me to stay where I was and remain quiet. I watched as the man with the silver hair and checked suit- made his way closer to where we were, had he spotted us? He looked like he was going to crouch down beside us, uncover our whereabouts, and antagonise us, but instead he picked up something that he had dropped on the floor, though what the object was I had been unable to determine.

I could hear his voice now. I could hear that he was angry, could hear the odd words as they escaped his lips. The other man was backing away from him with fear and apprehension, stumbling into bits of old junk as he did so; old china plates crashed against the floor and broke into hundreds of pieces. Barbara and I jumped in shock but remained as silent as we could.

“I said get out of here!” the silver haired man shouted at the other man so that I could finally hear his voice. It was deep, lived in, well spoken, the sort of voice that made you listen; the voice of someone with a great deal of life experience.

The other man turned sharply for the doors and made no attempt to turn back. He seemed to be walking at an extremely fast pace. Whoever the man was, he was terrified out of his wits.

“That’s it run away, run boy, run, run, run!” the silver haired man shouted.

The voice of the silver haired man seemed familiar to me now, eerily familiar, and as he turned in our direction, I caught a great view of his face and its calm and chilling expression. I recognised his face, though I still couldn’t place him. It was a strong face, there was a scar on his left cheek and his skin was lined deeply with age, but there was also a handsomeness about him that softened the image a little, not much, but a little. There was also a hint of youthfulness and ambiguity about him, a streak of the rebellious teen. I had an overwhelming urge to meet the man. In some circumstances he seemed the sort of man one could get on with rather well, though it was clear to anyone he was dangerous.

“Who’s there?” he suddenly said as I realised I had accidentally kicked my foot out into his view. I knew he’d seen me so I made no attempt to hide again. I was actually quite eager to speak to him now and the fear I had felt seemed to have dispersed and been replaced with curiosity.

I pulled Barbara out from her hiding place and together we stood opposite the silver haired man who eyed us up and down as he witnessed the faces of the two intruders. He seemed just as intrigued by us as we were by him, but he also seemed strangely cautious and afraid for such a strong character.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I’m detective Chesterton, this is my associate Miss. Wright, we’re looking for a girl.”

“A girl you say?” the man said almost dismissively.

“Yes, we followed her into this yard,” Barbara began, “Susan Foreman, she’s helping us with some enquiries involving a missing young woman, Claudia Wright.”

The man’s eyes narrowed and he twiddled with his fingers as he adjusted his bow tie and then slowly reached and clutched his lapels in a gesture of defiance.

“I don’t know a Claudia Wright, and as for Susan, I suggest you leave her well alone. She’s my responsibility not yours.”

“Your responsibility?”

“She’s my granddaughter, but she’s not here, she slipped out of the back before you trespassed here and spied on my actions.”

“And you are?” I asked him.

“John Smith,” he replied quickly and without hesitation. I wasn’t sure if it was a lie but I wasn’t going to bother interrogating him about his name, it didn’t seem so important. I handed him my business card.

“Can you tell Susan to give me a call? She may have vital information about Claudia.”

“She doesn’t.”

Barbara was angry at his lack of care and she squared up to the silver haired man with determination. “I don’t know who you think you are, but you’re not above answering questions are you?”

John Smith chuckled and waved away her qualms. “Oh go away!” he said flippantly. “I have a business meeting here in ten minutes.”

“In a junkyard?” I asked.

“Yes, in a junk yard, now go away and investigate your little crime elsewhere hmmm?”

Barbara stepped forward in anger, but I held her back this time. “Come on, Barbara,” I said shoving her away from the man she was about to start a confrontation with. “Let’s go.”

As we were leaving I saw a look of cunning on the man’s face, he knew more than he would tell us; he was part of something bigger than I had ever expected. We’d meet again, I was certain of that.

…

Back at the nightclub I stayed with Barbara right until the last customers left at 2am. I watched as she bolted the doors from the inside and started clearing away the last of the glasses. She finished her tidying and I followed her to the back room. She began to undress, just like that; she took her dress off and got changed into a pair of trousers and a loose fitting jumper with a rolled neck. She smirked when she saw me staring at her.

“Shut your mouth you goldfish,” She said. “You’ve seen it all before, haven’t you?”

“Not for five years.”

“Yes, well anyway, let’s get out of here, I’m awfully tired and just want to get to bed.”

I laughed and pulled her back by the arm. “Nice…battle dress,” I said with a big grin spreading across my face.

“Nice dimples,” she teased back as she squeezed my cheeks. “Are you going to escort me home or not?”

I nodded, but thought I’d have some fun first. “Of course, I mean, you’re going to need my protection, the streets aren’t safe…a woman like you needs a man to look out for her.”

She shot me a look. It hadn’t worked, she knew I was lying, knew I was causing trouble. I could lie to anyone usually, that’s how I solved most of my crimes, I could bluff my way out of any situation, convince anyone and deceive them, but when it came to her, she got me every time; she just knew.

“How do you do it?” I said to her as she began to pull me out of the doors to the club by my tie.

“Body language, Ian, you might want to learn to read up on it yourself, you’re a detective aren’t you? It might come in handy!”

I grabbed her in my arms and pulled her close to me, so close now that our noses were touching and I could feel her false eyelashes tickle my cheek. She didn’t resist and for a moment I felt her lips on mine, it was brief, but something worth remembering. And then it was finished, she spun away from my grasp, and acted like it hadn’t happened.

“I’ll get a taxi,” she said finally as she began signalling into the air to gain the attention of one of the cab drivers.

“No, I can take-“

“Ian, we have to find Claudia alright? That’s why I called you, that’s why you’re here, no other reason. We find her, and then I’m gone, you got that? We leave all this and go our separate ways.”

“I’m only going to make sure you get home safe, no other intentions.”

“When are we two ever safe when we’re home together?” she let out and she raced ahead as she saw the taxi approaching. She flagged it down and got inside without looking back at me. I watched as the cab started to depart, through the window she gestured a phone signal and that I was to call her for what was our next approach in finding her sister…

But the truth was…I didn’t have a clue.

…

I’d fallen asleep at my desk, this time it was midday, I was losing it, and I’d never fallen asleep in the middle of the day before, I was usually alert. Barbara was on my mind, thoughts of her had a way of clawing into my brain and clinging onto my every nerve, really clawing, and not letting go. I thought I’d gotten over her, and now here she was back in my life. I had to stop thinking about her. It was Claudia who was missing, an innocent girl, she was my priority, and she was only twenty-three, vibrant, beautiful, and intelligent. Why was she taken? Was she taken? I wondered.

The ringing of the telephone was what startled me and forced me awake. The sound was bleeding into my dreams and I knew I had to wake up and answer the call. For some reason I had a strange feeling it was some important news or a new lead. I picked up the phone and waited to hear the voice on the other end. There was silence for a moment, but I could hear someone breathing. Finally there was a voice, it was quiet and deep and unnerving.

“I have information for you,” it whispered.

“Who is this?”

“Surely you recognise my voice Mr. Chatterton?”

“It’s Chesterton,” I corrected him.

“We spoke yesterday in the junkyard, you were being a nuisance, and you were following my granddaughter like some little spy.”

“I’m a detective, we detect. I was doing my job.”

“I thought about what you told me, about the missing girl. I believe I can help you find her.”

I didn’t answer straight way, I hesitated trying to think of the best way to answer him. Many men had tried this trick before, lured me into a meeting, into an alliance, and then betrayed me at the last moment when I could no longer go back. I feared the same outcome.

“Are you still there?” I heard him say. The phone line was beginning to crackle and hiss.

“Yeah,” I stuttered. “But how can I trust you?”

“You can’t. Trust needs to be earned, detective.”

“I’m calling the shots here ok? I’ll meet you, an hour’s time at the multi-story car park on Adam’s Parade. Will you be there?”

There was another moment of silence; I could tell he was considering it. “Yes, I’ll be there.”

The phone line went dead and I put down the receiver and stared at the phone. I had a strong feeling of dread as I considered what I was about to do and who I was about to get involved with. Just as the phone cut out there was a hideous knocking on my office door, so loud that I jumped back in my seat. I wondered why I was so jumpy, something was getting to me, the phone call had really set me on edge.

“Ian, open up, it’s me Barbara, I have new information.”

I rushed over to the door, slowly reached for the handle and flung the door open. She stood there with an envelope in her hands, a brown envelope, a large one.

“These photos were left in my letterbox,” she said. “You really need to see them.”

…

Apparently we’re going to go cinema now and see Star Trek, Dad is treating us and paying for...

Sun, 19 May 2013 16:23:16 +0100

Apparently we’re going to go cinema now and see Star Trek, Dad is treating us and paying for it all. Bless him.