Author's Note: OK, I wasn't going to do this, I really wasn't. I should be writing some of my other fics. But I could hear the conversation in my head and I had to write it down before I forgot it. So, here it is, another speedy update.
Big thanks to the following people for reviewing: Romana-II, CJaMes12, Catelly, KlinicallyInsaneKoschei, xxTeam-Masterxx, Jiwa, 3LWOOD, mericat and Aietradaea.
CHAPTER SIX
"What if she's not?" Sam said, the uneasiness in the back of his mind forcing him to speak, even though he knew what he was suggesting made no sense at all.
"What if she's not what?" Gene asked, clearly not understanding the question.
"What if she's not as nutty as squirrel shit?"
Gene stared at him incredulously. "Tyler, she thinks you're the bloody Prime Minister of Britain. And that you assassinated the President of the United States. Not to mention the fact that she seriously believes a stone angel is prancing around Manchester killing people. It doesn't take a University degree in Applied Bollocks to see that she's not playing with a full deck!"
Both Ray and Chris burst out into loud laughter at this. Sam had to admit, when it was put into words, the whole thing did sound absolutely ludicrous. But somehow, he still didn't feel like laughing.
"She's as bad as that black Cockney geezer the uniforms nicked for drunk and disorderly down the shopping centre a couple of years back," Ray spluttered. "Remember him, Guv? He kept raving on about stone angels too."
Gene gave a snort of amusement. "Oh yeah, I remember him. Bloke was a right nutter."
"What bloke?" Sam asked, raising his voice to be heard over the laughter of the other two. "Who are you talking about?"
"Before your time," Gene replied. "Billy, his name was. Billy...?"
"Shipton," Chris spoke up, tears of merriment at the memory rolling down his face.
"Yeah, that's it," Gene agreed. "Billy Shipton. The uniform boys found him wandering up and down the High Street, ripped to the tits. Kept going on about being a copper in London in the future...2007, wasn't it, Raymundo? Until this moving angel statue touched him and he got sent back in time. He gave Ray a full statement about it. Never even realised Ray was only taking the piss."
"Talk about a laugh!" Ray sniggered. "I even wrote the whole thing down!"
Sam felt a sick feeling stirring in the pit of his stomach. Except for the mention of the stone angel, the story could have been his own. Struck by a car, touched by a stone angel, there wasn't much difference...for some inexplicable reason, he and this Billy Shipton had both been snatched from their own time and dumped back here. His heart clenched in empathy for the unknown man, cast adrift in a sea of strangers, trying to cope by drinking too much, then reaching out for help, only to encounter the sting of Ray Carling's neanderthal mockery.
"Yeah, making fun of a drunk, mentally-disturbed man," he said coldly. "Good for you, Ray."
Ray's eyes flashed with pure hatred. Sam wasn't surprised. Ray had resented him ever since he had set foot in the station, unwittingly taking the position of Detective Inspector which Ray considered to be rightfully his. They had been at loggerheads ever since, with Ray only just barely managing to maintain a thin facade of respect towards his superior officer.
"What would you have done, Boss?" he sneered now. "Given him tea and sympathy, I suppose?"
Sam ignored his comment altogether. "What happened to him?" he demanded. "When you'd finished getting your jollies?"
"We let him go, Boss," Chris interposed, as always trying to keep the peace between his fiery colleague and his DI. "After he'd slept it off a bit, like. S'pose he went back to London, where he came from."
"What does it matter, Tyler? He was a headcase and we're well shot of him," Gene said dismissively. "We've got more important fish to fry. Now go home, all of you, and get some kip. There's nothing more we can do tonight and tomorrow's going to be a big day. Whoever this killer is, I'm going to find him, and then he's going to be very sorry he was ever born."
Ray and Chris both mumbled something unintelligible and made a beeline for the door before the DCI changed his mind and found some more jobs for them to do, with Ray managing to throw one last hate-filled glance over his shoulder at Sam before he disappeared into the corridor.
"You too, Dorothy," Gene said briskly. "Or haven't you got a home to go to with Cartwright away? Missing the old slap and tickle, are we?"
"I'll stay on for a bit," Sam answered absently, his mind still on the puzzle of Amy Pond and Billy Shipton. "I've got some reports to finish up."
Gene shrugged and walked towards the door. "Suit yourself."
"What about you, Guv?"
"I'm supposed to be taking the missus to the ballet tonight. Bunch of wankers poncing around the stage in tights and frilly dresses, enough to give a man a bleedin' ulcer," Gene grumbled. "I'd rather support Man United for an entire season than go anywhere near it. So I'm going to hide out in the office until I know she's left and can't catch me. Then I'm going to nick down to the pub to get well and truly bladdered."
Sam couldn't help giving a wry grin as he followed his boss out of the room. "Sounds like a plan," he said diplomatically, wondering not for the first time how Gene's wife had managed to put up with him all these years.
Outside, the thunder rolled and cracked across the sky, not so loud now, as the storm retreated across the horizon. Nobody was left to notice the faint movement of the green canvas on the floor, as if a slight breeze was disturbing it. Or, perhaps, as if something was stirring inside...
Amy huddled on the uncomfortable, narrow bed in her cell, trying to make herself breathe deeply in an effort to keep calm. The two-tone walls – the bottom half forest green and the top half dirty beige – seemed to be closing in on her. The air was laden with a disgusting smell of stale vomit and disinfectant.
What had she been thinking? God, when would she ever learn? Hadn't twelve years of waiting for the Doctor taught her anything? No-one ever believed you when you tried to tell them there was more out there, more than their own narrow little human minds could ever comprehend. Years of visits to the hospital, the specialist clinics, the endless child counsellors, the four different psychiatrists. All the cognitive therapies, all the multi-coloured medication. All the worried looks from her Aunt, all the mockery from her classmates at school, until finally, finally, she had learned to shut her mouth and not to speak of the Doctor. Until she had allowed them to convince her that she had made it all up, that she was wrong, that the Doctor had never existed except inside her own head.
But she had not been wrong then and she was not wrong now. She looked down at the dust smeared across her fingers - dust that had fallen from her own eye - and shuddered. The Angel that had briefly taken over the visual centres of her mind back on The Byzantium had been destroyed, just as the Doctor had promised. But, judging by what had happened today, it seemed that there was just enough of it left to react whenever another Angel was nearby.
Great, she thought glumly. My eye has become some sort of Angel early warning detector system!
It wasn't going to help her much, trapped here in this cell. She was a sitting duck, if the Angel decided to come for her. And she had a very bad feeling that she was going to be high on the list of the creature's potential victims. The Doctor had explained to her long ago that by travelling in the TARDIS, her body was absorbing certain levels of temporal energy from the Time Vortex. She remembered asking him if there was likely to be any negative side effects, a question he had carelessly brushed aside in his usual irritating manner. But she knew from her experiences on The Byzantium that there was nothing the Angels liked to consume more than temporal energy. As far as negative side-effects went, becoming a meal for a Weeping Angel did seem to be a fairly big one.
Restlessly, her mind went back to Detective Inspector Sam Tyler. He had seemed different to all the others. Something about his eyes, something less closed in, something less resistant. For a moment, just one little moment, she had thought he understood, that he might actually listen and believe her. She sighed, cradling her aching head on her hunched up knees. Fat chance of that. He thought she was crazy too, just like everyone else.
Overhead, the yellow fluorescent light hummed and flickered. Off. On. Off. On. As though the power was fluctuating. Amy looked up in fear, knowing that this was no ordinary power drain.
The Angel was on the move.
And when the darkness finally came...they were all dead.
Sam waited until Gene was settled comfortably in his office, immersed in his Playboy magazine, before slipping surreptitiously next door into the Collator's Office. Nobody was there at this time of night. Hurriedly, he made his way towards the huge banks of filing cabinets, heading for the drawers dedicated to cases starting with the letter "S". It had taken him a long time to get used to the haphazard filing system utilised back in the Seventies, but he had finally gotten the hang of it out of pure necessity. He still missed computers though. What wouldn't he give to be able to tap Billy Shipton's name into a search engine right now?
Fortunately, he located Shipton's file almost immediately, something which was never guaranteed in this place. The beige manila folder had been well-thumbed. Sam couldn't help cynically wondering how often Ray had pulled it out just for a giggle.
Just then, the lights fizzed and flashed off and then on again. Sam looked up at them in annoyance. Not more bloody power cuts. It had been bad enough last year, during the energy crisis, when they were having them every five minutes. Surely they weren't starting that rubbish all over again!
Taking the file with him, he retreated back to the main office and spread the contents out on his desk. There wasn't much in there, just the basic arrest paperwork taken at the front desk when they brought Shipton in and an A4 size statement sheet covered with Ray's messy, loopy handwriting.
A loud snore echoed from Gene's office. Turning around, Sam peered in through the door and saw his boss reclining in his chair, his feet up on his desk, with the Playboy magazine over his face, obviously fast asleep.
With a small grin of amusement, Sam returned his attention to the statement sheet in his hand. As he read, the grin slipped away, to be replaced by a frown. He had to admit, Ray was right. It certainly was some story. According to his statement, Billy Shipton had been stationed in London around 2005, when he began investigating the disappearance of multiple individuals near an abandoned estate called Wester Drumlins. Eventually, anyone who reported someone missing in the vicinity was automatically referred to Shipton. During Shipton's investigations, numerous vehicles were impounded, their occupants missing. In the end, the collection had grown so large it had been humorously dubbed the "Wester Drumlins Collection". In 2007, Shipton's investigations led him into contact with a woman named Sally Sparrow, who was herself investigating the disappearance of her friend Kathy Nightingale from Wester Drumlins. Sally and Billy had apparently hit it off immediately, with Shipton convincing her to give him her telephone number, after showing her the "Wester Drumlins Collection." But moments after she had left, he had noticed some weird stone angels grouped around one of the pieces in the "Collection", a 1960s-era Police Box. He had gone over to have a look, blinked, felt the touch of a cold, stone hand on the back of his neck and had woken up in 1969. He had been greeted by a strange man called the Doctor and his companion, Martha Jones, who had explained that the Weeping Angels had sent him back in time in order to consume the potential energy of all the days he might have had in the future.
Sam sat back in his chair, running his hands over his face, trying to get his mind around what he had just read. If Shipton had not been mad...if he had been telling the truth...if there really were psychopathic killers out there disguised as stone Angels... No, it wasn't possible...was it?
But then again, Sam's own story should not have been possible either. Written down like this, it would have sounded just as bizarre, just as insane. And now there was not only Billy Shipton, but also Amy Pond, telling almost exactly the same tale. Could it possibly be a coincidence?
Suddenly, like a blast of the lightning still flickering outside, it came to him. The thing that had been bothering him all along, scratching insistently at the back of his mind. Amy Pond's shoes. They were Converse All-Star high-tops – a style of shoe he knew quite well were not available in 1974.
A style of shoe that did not come into fashion until the twenty-first century.
"Shit!" he exclaimed loudly, throwing the Shipton file back on to his desk and jumping to his feet. "SHIT!"
And then he was racing for the stairs, heading down to the cells as fast as he could.