Doctor Who and the Scales of Injustice | Page 5

UNIT
funds on.' Picking up his swagger-stick and flicking it under his arm, the Brigadier
marched out.
Liz crossed to one of the lab's huge arched windows and stared down onto the canal
below. It had stopped raining and the sun was just breaking through the clouds. A
colourful narrow-boat was navigating the lock, a tan shire horse waiting on the towpath,
given a brief respite from providing the barge's horse-power. The morning seemed to be
getting better. Liz smiled; she liked sunny days.
Behind her a low moan went up. Or singing, depending on whose definition one
accepted:
'Raindrops keep falling on my head...'
Liz threw a clipboard at him and stormed out of the lab.
---
Daylight. Can't be done in daylight.
Night. It has to be night, or someone might see, might try - no, will try - and stop me.
Can't let that happen.
So cold. Why is it so cold? The sun is up. Bright sun but it seems... further away? No,
must be an illusion. But the sky. Look at the sky. A haze. Dust and dirt between us and
the blue sky.
Air is dirty. This world is polluted. Probably irreversibly. Why couldn't they look after it
better?
Ridiculous fools. Pathetic idiotic primitives. Cretinous apes!
Once upon a time Jossey O'Grahame had been an actor. Once upon a time he had been
Justin Grayson, star of stage, screen and radio. He had been there in the golden days of
Ealing comedies, Lime Grove dramas and Riverside support features. He'd worked with
Guinness, Richardson and Olivier in films during the fifties. He'd had to shoot a young
Johnny Mills in 'Policeman's Lot', marry Jane Wyman in 'The Game's Up' and assault
Trevithick in 'They Came from the Depths'. The sixties had been good to him, radio and
television making the most of his talents.
'There's no higher responsibility than great potential,' his agent had once said. But then

there'd been that scandal with the silly young model - he couldn't possibly think of her as
an actress after he'd worked with the likes of Dora, Ashcroft and Neagle - in that aborted
comedy film about the power crisis, 'Carry on Digging'. He'd been thrown off the
Pinewood lot, his contract and reputation in tatters, and the production company had sued
him for compensation over the scrapping of the film. And all because the little tart had
written a stupid letter and taken too many sleeping pills.
The papers had proved to be fair-weather friends. Their coverage of the story had been
relentless and unforgiving.
Eventually Jossey had 'retired' to the south coast and had spent eighteen months touring
the holiday camps, bingo halls and small clubs, re-hashing old Galton and Simpson
comedy material until finally he couldn't take it any more, and his bank manager couldn't
take any more of him. He was bankrupted, washed up for good.
So here he was, living in the cheapest bed-and-breakfast he could find, leeching off
charity and the public purse. With no future, every day became the same. He spent his
few waking hours watching the waves spray against the rocks at the foot of the local
lovers' leap, clutching a bottle of cheap whisky, and wondering over and over again
whether he should take the plunge himself.
As he stared once again at the endless ebb and flow below, and listened to the screeching
of the seagulls as they circled over the small town below the cliff, Jossey knew that he
lacked the courage to jump. Besides, this place was a lovers' leap, and no one had ever
loved him, nor him them, so what was the point? He tugged his worn overcoat around his
thin frame; it was cold for late March, and the wind across the cliff-top was brisk and
bitter. The half-empty bottle of whisky glinted at him, and he took another dram to keep
out the cold, keep his spirits up. Something would happen to change all this, he was sure.
His brief moment in the public eye wasn't over yet. One day, his name would be in the
papers again.
There was a strange hissing sound. Had it been there a while, and he hadn't noticed it? It
crossed his mind that there must be a car or motorbike parked behind him on the cliff-top,
and one of the tyres had sprung a leak. Hefting himself around, he was intrigued to see
nothing. No car, no bike, nothing hissing. The wind whipped through the thin grass
around his bench, but this was a different sort of noise.
'Who's there?' he muttered.
No reply. He peered down towards the edge of the cliff Nothing. Maybe it was something
to do with the old cottage a few hundred feet away, the one the hippies