Doctor Who: BBC Past Doctor Adventures [007] - The Face of the Enemy by David A. McIntee

Author:David A. McIntee
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science-Fiction - Doctor Who
ISBN: 9780563405801
Publisher: BBC Books
Published: 1998-02-12T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

Boucher could hardly believe his eyes. Even before he entered the hotel, he could see a dusting of broken glass and concrete chippings spread over the road. The fire brigade had managed to put out the burning cars and helicopter.

He had been horrified at the scale of destruction in the Magnum Bank, but this made that robbery look like a kid going shoplifting to impress her mates.

The hotel’s main doors and the glass faces to either side were totally gone, shattered by the blast when the helicopter crashed. People were milling around the lobby, wearing the sort of dazed and distant expression that Boucher usually saw only in news reports from Middle East trouble spots.

Some were demanding explanations, others wanted to check out. The few who were smart enough to realise that they wouldn’t be allowed to check out of the ruined building until after they had given statements were cursing and swearing about that.

There didn’t seem to have been any actual warfare in the lobby itself, so Boucher took the working lift up to the penthouse.

The circular suite was a slaughterhouse the likes of which Boucher had never seen. Chunks of singed flesh and shredded organs were scattered like leaves in a garden. The bodies – over a dozen at first glance – were jumbled up with what was left of the furniture, jagged shards of wood soaked in enough blood to be indistinguishable from the bone fragments amidst them.

SOCOs in their white bunny suits searched through the wreckage, while Special Branch examined every corner.

He had been told that there were another four dead gangsters packed in the lift on the floor below, but he hadn’t been interested in stopping there.

Boucher occasionally had cause to think that maybe mankind didn’t deserve to survive the disasters that befell it from time to time. Standing here in this dank, meat-scented ruin was all the proof he needed that that attitude was right.

He wasn’t going to give the culprits the satisfaction of making him throw up, even though they would never know about it. Like so many important things in George Boucher’s life, it was a matter of principle.

He had to stick to those principles now, more than ever. He’d lost one of his family, his partner, as well as the confidence of the Super… His principles were just about all he had left. Lose them, and he might as well give up and die. He would too, if Rob Thorpe’s life could be restored in return.

So far Boucher had managed to avoid reporting to Superintendent Morgan that the case he had been assigned to had dovetailed into the Magnum Bank case. When the Super found out, he would have no choice but to pull Boucher out, due to the rules on personal involvement. He doubted that he could hide the fact any longer. Morgan would want – and need – to know every detail of how this massacre had come about. Then Boucher would have no way of being involved with the hunt for the killers, no way to make amends for bringing his nephew to his death.

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