Silhouette

by Justin Richards

  They found a section of wall down by the ice-covered Thames. The Doctor dusted the snow off it and spread his coat out for them to sit on. Strax insisted on standing.

  ‘One must remain in a constant state of battle-readiness,’ he explained. ‘In case of attack.’

  ‘By what?’ Jenny demanded. ‘Snowflakes?’

  ‘It has been known,’ Strax told her.

  ‘I suppose,’ she conceded.

  Having made themselves as comfortable as they could, Clara gave a brief account of her visit to Milton’s empty factory. The Doctor listened attentively, occasionally interrupting with a question before allowing Clara to continue with her story.

  ‘Lucky Strax was there,’ Jenny said as Clara reached the end of her tale.

  ‘Not luck,’ Strax insisted. ‘Strategy.’

  ‘Well, whatever it was,’ the Doctor said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘A warrior requires no thanks.’

  The Doctor shrugged and inspected his fingernails. ‘Oh, well, I take it back then.’

  ‘But in this case,’ Strax said, ‘your gratitude is acceptable. I am pleased Miss Clara was not badly injured in the despicable attack.’

  ‘So you accept I’m female, then,’ Clara said.

  Strax blinked. ‘Does the rank of “miss” also apply to females?’

  ‘It’s not a rank,’ Clara said. ‘Or actually, maybe it is.’

  ‘You think these paper birds are something to do with the shadow puppets?’ Jenny asked.

  ‘Huge coincidence if not,’ the Doctor said. ‘And we’re finding too many things that could be coincidences. I’m guessing they’re nothing of the sort.’ He pushed himself off the wall and retrieved his coat, pulling it from underneath Clara and Jenny so that they too had to jump down. ‘Maybe Michael the Strong Man can enlighten us. He must be finishing his show soon, I would think. We said we’d meet him by the Shadowplay tent, so perhaps Silhouette will be back. In which case, a few words with her wouldn’t go amiss.’

  As they made their way back through the crowd, Jenny caught sight of a familiar face. ‘I’ll catch you up,’ she told the others, and made her way over to where Jim was watching a fire-eater.

  ‘You still here, then?’ she asked.

  He grinned. ‘There’s so much to see and do. I’m off to find the mermaid next. Apparently she’s in that tent over there.’ He nodded to the entrance to the exhibition.

  ‘Yeah, well, don’t hold your breath,’ Jenny warned him.

  ‘I’m not expecting too much,’ he assured her. ‘You want to come along? Or are you with someone?’

  ‘Just my friends. We have to go and talk to the Strong Man.’

  ‘Hoping to get a few tips?’

  ‘Hoping to get some information. I’ll maybe see you later.’

  Jim nodded. ‘I’ll look forward to that.’

  Jenny caught up with the others outside the Shadowplay tent. There was no sign of Michael yet.

  ‘He’s probably still juggling weights or lifting boulders,’ Clara said.

  ‘Both worthy occupations,’ Strax assured her.

  ‘He performs near the gate, doesn’t he?’ the Doctor said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Jenny said. ‘I’ve seen him there a couple of times. He has a small tent close to the fortune teller where he gets ready and keeps his stuff.’

  ‘May as well go and find him then,’ Clara said. ‘If he’s finished, we’ll meet on the way.’

  ‘Just what I was thinking,’ the Doctor agreed.

  ‘Great minds think alike,’ Clara told him.

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. It was probably just another coincidence.’

  There was someone waiting inside the tent. Michael almost didn’t see the figure standing in the shadows at the back as he put down his weights and turned to leave. Just a hint of movement caught his attention.

  ‘Silhouette?’

  She stepped forward, the red cloak spilling over her shoulders and touching the ground so that she seemed to glide. Everything about her was calm, serene, elegant.

  ‘Are you leaving so soon?’ she said.

  Michael shifted nervously. ‘I have to see someone,’ he mumbled.

  ‘I know.’ She tilted her head to one side, black hair pooling like a shadow over the red cloak. ‘Oh, Michael,’ she said sadly. ‘I thought I could trust you. I thought we had an arrangement.’

  ‘But he can help us,’ Michael protested, her voice strung out with nerves. ‘He can help you.’

  ‘I don’t need help.’

  ‘You’re not the same,’ Michael said. ‘Not since … Not for a while. Talk to this Doctor, Silhouette. At least hear him out.’ He coughed, finding it suddenly difficult to speak. His chest was tightening.

  ‘I’m sorry Michael,’ she said quietly. ‘But we can’t have you telling anyone our little secrets, can we? I thought we agreed that.’

  ‘No, Silhouette – please!’

  His voice was barely more than a gasp. What was happening? It was like someone was tightening a vice around him. He looked down, and his gasps became more frantic. The chains tattooed across Michael’s chest were moving. Not with his body, not as his muscles expanded and contracted or as he breathed. They were sliding over his skin, knotted together, twisting. Tightening. Forcing the breath from his lungs.

  ‘Silhouette!’ The plea was barely recognisable as a word.

  She shook her head and sighed. Then she pulled the hood up, before stepping over the body that lay silent and still on the ground.

  Chapter

  12

  There was no sign of Michael as they made their way through the Carnival. It was getting busier as the day wore on. The smog had cleared somewhat, and the snow was holding off, but it was still cold. The air was clammy and damp against Clara’s face. At least her cuts and scratches were no longer stinging. Whatever Strax had found in his first-aid kit to clean them seemed to have helped them heal as well.

  They reached the performance area close to Michael’s tent to find that he had finished his show. There was no sign of the Strong Man.

  ‘Probably packing away,’ Jenny said.

  ‘Proper storage of equipment and munitions is essential,’ Strax agreed.

  ‘I’ll see.’ The Doctor strode over to the tent and pushed open the flap of a door. ‘Michael? Are you …?’ His voice tailed off. He stepped back out, letting the tent flap fall back into place.

  ‘No one home?’ Clara asked.

  ‘Oh he’s in there all right,’ the Doctor said. ‘Strax, you come with me.’

  ‘What about us?’ Jenny said.

  ‘You’d best wait out here. Small tent. Don’t want it getting too crowded.’

  ‘So what don’t you want us to see?’ Clara demanded, pushing past. She pulled open the flap and went into the tent. A few moments later she wished she hadn’t.

  The others filed in behind her. The Doctor sighed, pushed past Clara, and knelt down to examine the body. ‘Well, he’s dead.’

  ‘But was it an honourable death?’ Strax said. ‘Did he face his enemy? Did he inflict terrible wounds and injuries on them before succumbing to superior numbers or firepower?’

  ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say he’d suffered a heart attack.’

  ‘But you do know better?’ Clara said.

  ‘It would be a very convenient heart attack.’ The Doctor pointed to Michael’s chest. ‘And you can just see where the bruising is beginning to come out. Inflicted before death, I’d say. Not that I’m an expert.’

  ‘So if it wasn’t a heart attack, what happened to him?’ Jenny asked.

  The Doctor was carefully feeling the upper torso. ‘Several ribs are cracked. This one’s broken … And another.’ He dusted his hands together and stood up. ‘It’s like he’s been crushed.’

  ‘But what by?’ Clara said. ‘He can’t have dropped a weight on himself, can he?’

  ‘It would still be here if he had. And the bruising would be in one spot, the point of impact,
not right across the upper body.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Death is death,’ Strax said. ‘You overcomplicate things.’

  ‘Overcomplicate?’ Clara said, irritated by his casual attitude. ‘This man was killed. Murdered.’

  ‘And it is too late to come to his aid now,’ Strax pointed out. ‘Better to determine his murderer’s strategy and lay our own plans.’ His tongue licked out briefly over his thin lips. ‘Shall I fetch the fragmentation grenades?’

  ‘That won’t be necessary,’ the Doctor told him. ‘But you’re right. The question isn’t so much how was he killed as why was he killed?’

  ‘To stop him speaking to us,’ Jenny said. ‘Don’t take a genius to work that out.’

  ‘But what was he going to tell us?’ Clara wondered.

  ‘Something about the shadow puppet show, about the people here,’ Jenny said.

  ‘So what now?’ Clara asked.

  ‘Now,’ the Doctor said, ‘we shall have to rely on my other informant here at the Carnival.’

  Refusing to be drawn further, the Doctor led them out of the tent and across to the exhibition of Never-Creatures. Clara thought it seemed rather callous just to leave Michael’s body in the tent. But the Doctor insisted he didn’t have time for awkward questions, and whoever found it next would see that it was reported. Any medical examination was likely to conclude that the poor man had suffered a heart attack.

  ‘So, you having second thoughts about the mermaid skin, then?’ Clara asked as they entered the large tent. ‘Decided it might be real after all?’

  ‘Oh, I think they have something far more interesting on display here now,’ he told her, leading the way past the various exhibits towards the back of the tent.

  ‘What is the purpose of these trophies?’ Strax asked. ‘Are they vanquished foes displayed as a triumphant assertion of power?’

  ‘They’re just exhibits,’ Jenny told him.

  There was a small crowd gathered at the end of the exhibition. People were standing expectantly in front of a curtain that had been drawn across the end of the tent.

  ‘You’ll enjoy this,’ the Doctor told them all as they joined the back of the group.

  Strax shoved several people out of the way so he could see. Clara stood beside Strax so she could see too.

  There was a man standing in front of the curtain. He wore a rather battered suit and a grey bowler hat, and his patter was evidently holding the crowd enthralled. There was something vaguely familiar about him, Clara thought. The way he moved, the way he spoke … She had probably seen him introducing other attractions or acts at the Carnival, she decided.

  ‘… yes, ladies and gents, behind this curtain lurks a unique specimen. Not a dead exhibit like what we have on the tables and in the cases around you, oh no. You may have been to other fairs and carnivals, you may have seen bearded ladies and twopenny freak shows. But the Carnival of Curiosities is the only place in London, in Britain, in the world, that can boast a specimen such as this.’

  ‘What is it?’ Clara hissed at the Doctor. ‘An alien?’

  He shook his head. ‘Oh no, a native of this planet, I assure you.’

  ‘Then what?’

  He put his finger to his lips and nodded at the showman as he continued with his introduction.

  ‘And so, ladies and gents, without further ado, I shall reveal to you this unique find. You are among the first, the only people, ever to clap eyes upon such a sight.’

  With a flourish, he drew back the curtain. The crowd gasped. But in fact, Clara thought, there was little to see. A lone figure sitting on a wooden chair at the back of the tent. A figure wearing a plain, dark dress and simple hat, with a black veil pulled down over her face. The woman stood up, and stepped into the light. Her hand went to her veil.

  ‘I give you,’ the showman announced, ‘the legendary Lizard Woman!’

  The woman lifted the veil to reveal the green, scaly face beneath. There was a collective intake of breath, followed by applause.

  Clara and Jenny looked at each other in total surprise.

  ‘Madame Vastra?’ Jenny breathed.

  Jenny insisted on staying to make sure that Vastra was all right, and to pass on what they had learned so far. The Doctor, Clara and Strax took a cab back to Alberneath Avenue.

  ‘There’s nothing more we can do at the Carnival for the moment,’ the Doctor explained on the way. ‘Vastra can get far more from talking to the other Carnival people than we can by hanging around.’

  ‘Not least because someone’s on to us,’ Clara pointed out. ‘They know we’re asking questions, that’s why Michael was killed.’

  ‘And why you were ambushed at the factory,’ Strax added. ‘Do we have time to stop at Paternoster Row and collect heavy weapons?’

  ‘No,’ the Doctor told him.

  Even without his heavy weapons, Strax insisted on leading the way down the alley and through the shattered doorway into the factory. The Doctor spent a moment examining the electronic keypad on the other door. He used the sonic screwdriver to open the casing, and examined the spaghetti mess of wires that spilled out from inside.

  ‘Remote access control. That’s how they locked you in.’ He jammed the cover back into place, giving it a thump to make it stay put. ‘So where are these homicidal origami birds, then?’

  ‘Vaporised,’ Strax said proudly. ‘Obliterated.’

  All that remained was a charred black powder scattered across the floor. But the Doctor seemed more interested in the brackets attached to the floor.

  ‘The metal’s not corroded or rusty on the inside edges,’ he said. ‘And there’s oil. Marks in the dust – I mean, apart from the ones you obviously made blundering about.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Clara said. ‘So whatever was fixed down here was moved recently?’

  ‘Seems likely.’ He stood up and paced out the shape of one of the areas surrounded by brackets. ‘Big stuff. Not easily moved. So, we’re looking for—’

  ‘An anti-gravitational lifting apparatus,’ Strax said.

  ‘Unlikely I think,’ the Doctor told him.

  ‘Then robotic maintenance loaders.’

  ‘Also unlikely.’

  ‘So what are we looking for?’ Clara asked before Strax could make another suggestion.

  ‘People. Someone must have helped Milton move the equipment, and they will know where it went.’

  ‘So we ask around,’ Clara suggested. ‘See if anyone in the area knows anything. If there is anyone in the area,’ she added, remembering how deserted it had seemed.

  ‘Excellent.’ Strax announced, thumping his fist into the palm of his other hand. ‘Interrogation!’

  The curtained-off area at the back of the exhibition tent was available to Vastra for private time alone. With her heavy veil, and disguised in a dark cloak with a change of hat, she could move around the Carnival without being recognised. She had already spoken to several of the stallholders, and of course to Jenny. But for the moment, all that any of the Carnival workers wanted to talk about was the sudden and unexpected death of Michael Smith, the Strong Man.

  Vastra returned to the private area of the Never-Creatures exhibition tent to think through her next move. It was interesting, and rather gratifying, that everyone who worked here seemed to have accepted her for what she was. No questions, no lingering stares, no jibes. Alfie, the man who introduced her to the public and drew back the curtain, treated Vastra with the same polite deference as he seemed to display to all the other acts and exhibits he introduced. She was not yet sure of how the Carnival was organised and managed, but if anyone was in charge it was him. Alfie seemed to have a natural way with people, getting on with everyone.

  The people who came to see her unveiled were rather different. They made no effort to hide their curiosity and fascination. But that was, Vastra supposed, rather the point. And many of them would assume that she was wearing make-up or a mask …

  She was alone, with a while before the next
‘unveiling’ when she had a visitor. The curtain twitched, and a voice called:

  ‘Excuse me?’

  A sibilant, hesitant voice.

  ‘What is it?’ Vastra replied. Perhaps it was someone who had heard she was after information. She pulled down her veil. ‘You may come through if you wish.’

  The figure that pulled aside the curtain and stepped through was slight of build, about the same height as Vastra. From his voice, and his attire as well as the way he moved, she assumed it was a man. But as he politely removed his top hat, she saw that his face was covered by a mask. It looked as though it was made of soft, dark leather. There were holes for the eyes, a narrow slit for the mouth.

  ‘Can I help you?’ Vastra asked.

  ‘Forgive me,’ the masked man replied. ‘But just knowing that you are here – that you even exist – is a great help to me.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘I’m sorry. Let me introduce myself. My name is Festin. And I believe that I can help you.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘You are interested, I think from the questions you and your friends have been asking, in a man named Orestes Milton. Is that not so?’

  Vastra nodded warily. ‘What of him?’

  ‘I too share your interest in this man. I have been observing him for some time now. I know what he is doing. I know where he is. And your friend the Doctor is right, he is dangerous and must be stopped. Come with me, and I can show you.’ He turned, looking nervously over his shoulder. ‘But it must be now. The Strong Man is already dead, and we shall be next if we don’t act.’

  Vastra leaned forward. ‘And why should I trust you?’

  There was a sigh from behind the mask. ‘Because of this.’ He reached up and slowly unfastened a catch at the back of the mask, easing it away from his face with a black-gloved hand.

  Vastra gasped, her hand going to her mouth, and meeting the veil that obscured her own features. Fumbling, she lifted the veil, to be sure she was actually seeing clearly.

  It was like looking into a mirror.

  The deep-set eyes of another human-lizard stared back at her from a face of green scales. High ridges swept back from the lizard-man’s forehead. A long thin tongue licked out as he looked back at her.