A figure I thought might be Peterson lay in a heap. Not moving.
I saw Perkins, Clerk, and Prentiss, their helmets off, being pushed against a wall and made to kneel. Dirty, defeated, and angry.
All the courage. All the spirit. All the bloody-mindedness. All gone.
The Time Police were kicking open doors and pulling out people who had their hands in the air. Everyone was shunted down into the Hall. All those not actually unconscious were kicked into a kneeling position, their hands behind their heads.
Something was missing.
Even as I stared, Colonel Albay, helmet off, his face streaked with sweat and dirt, glanced up.
‘Dr Maxwell! Please join us. Is that a hostage? How kind, but it’s not a bring your own, you know.’
I preferred him before he had a sense of humour.
‘Please take care on the stairs.’
He wasn’t joking. Lack of ammunition had not been a problem. We’re St Mary’s. We can fashion a heat-seeking missile out of two toilet rolls and an elastic band. I remembered the tangle of equipment behind Dr Dowson and Professor Rapson. They had been letting rip with medieval anti-personnel devices, and with some success, it appeared. The stairs glistened with oil. An old medieval trick, oiling the staircases and ramps. Simple, but effective. Judging by the smears on their uniforms, quite a few of the Time Police must have come crashing down.
Two of them were kicking homemade caltrops to one side of the Hall. Caltrops are two or more nails, twisted together in such a way that one wicked spike always points upwards. Not something you want to fall on if you’ve just slipped on a patch of oil.
And the third part of their unholy trinity – sand. You heat buckets of sand – something with which St Mary’s was always liberally provided in the form of fire buckets – and tip it over the battlements onto the attackers below. As anyone who’s ever eaten a sandwich on the beach knows, sand gets everywhere. In your hair, down your neck, inside your armour … and hot sand, baking-hot sand, is no different. And it retains its heat. And it doesn’t shift. It gets into all your nooks and crannies, and even when it cools, it’s still chafing away, driving the victims insane. I sometimes wonder if Professor Rapson did his training in one of the circles of hell.
I felt a momentary surge of pride. We’d taken on a superior force and we’d given them a run for their money. They knew they’d been in a fight. We’d fought with every last weapon at our disposal. I suspected the professor had even had a plan to prise up the stone flags and throw those as well.
But we’d been defeated …
It was a measure of the completeness of his victory that Albay didn’t even bother to send an escort for me. There was nothing in the world I could do that would threaten him in any way. If I resisted, he’d simply have someone shot.
Since I had no choice, I pushed Barclay ahead of me. Given her recent history with the Time Police, she was probably as reluctant to go down there as I was, because, somewhat dramatically, as we reached the top of the stairs, she collapsed.
I sighed. Nothing but trouble.
My foot, never a limb over which I’d had a lot of control, made one of those inadvertent nudges and she fell down the stairs. She came to rest on the half landing, and since she’d come so far, it seemed unkind not to help her the rest of the way. Her head hit every single stair with a kind of thudding, booming noise. Her arms and legs whirled limply. I thought I heard something crack. She lay in a tangle at the foot of the stairs. If she hadn’t been unconscious at the top, she certainly was at the bottom.
Slowly, I followed her down and was relieved of my weapon.
‘And where is Dr Bairstow?’
I said, dully, ‘Here, somewhere,’ and looked vaguely around.
‘Do I really have to tell you what will happen if you lie to me again?’
‘She shot him.’
He nodded and two officers peeled off towards his office. Good luck to them. He had a blaster.
The occupiers were clearing rooms and gathering weapons. Over in the corner of the Hall, someone was setting up a series of portable lights.
I wondered how Hawking looked and whether there was anything left. I wondered if Dr Bairstow had managed to get away. I hoped to God that he had because I really didn’t want him seeing this. I looked around at a defeated St Mary’s and had to blink hard to keep back the tears.
The lights came on, illuminating the Hall but leaving everywhere else in deep shadow. I looked around at the groups of people being herded together and realised what was missing. Or rather – who. Where were the civilian staff? Oh, my God. Had they already been removed? I had a sudden dreadful picture of them being shoved into some closed vehicle, shocked and hurt, and driven – where? And for what purpose?
I stared hard at the stone flags, impotent rage and despair boiling inside me, forbidding myself to cry.