"Doctor Who - Just War" (1996)
Posted: Mon Oct 19, 2020 4:19 am
I've been trying to find this scene for years. Once of the most elusive and difficult to find Doctor Who novels. The scene is from Chapter 10. The heroine, Bernice "Benny" Summerfield, is being held captive in a Nazi hospital...
Dampness on her face. Water.
Benny Summerfield was awake. Benny Summerfield was alive. Benny Summerfield was relieved. She opened her eyes and was surprised how quickly they focused. The nurse, Kitzel, was on the other side of the room, her back towards her. The nurse was hunched over something on the table.
They were alone. Benny pulled herself upright. Hearing the movement, Kitzel looked over her shoulder, a wave of blonde hair falling over the epaulette of her uniform. The nurse had Slavic features and grey eyes. In other surroundings, in different clothes, she would be beautiful. She reminded Benny a little of an old friend from her early teens. She had been beautiful, too.
‘You are awake?’ Kitzel spoke in stilted English.
‘I can tell you’ve got medical training.’ Benny wasn’t surprised when the nurse failed to recognize the sarcasm.
They were in her cell. Where was that? An underground complex, Steinmann had said. There was a bed here, a chair, an empty bucket in the corner. The door was ever so slightly ajar.
‘I have prepared you some food,’ the nurse droned. She had brought over a metal tray with a steaming bowl of tomato soup and a hunk of bread. There was even a knob of butter on the side of the plate. Benny took it from her, resting the tray on her pillow.
‘There isn’t a spoon. I haven’t anything to spread the butter with,’ Benny snapped. The nurse passed the cutlery over, her face impassive. She stood, watching her prisoner.
Benny sipped at her soup. It had been watered down, but it was still too rich for her palate after so many days without proper food. The hot food burnt her tongue and the taste stung the side of her mouth.
She found the bread easier to digest, but could only nibble at it. It would be a while before she could hold down a full meal.
Pausing between bites, she made conversation. ‘Do you know where the Doctor is?’
'You need medical attention?’
‘No. My friend the Doctor. He must have been captured on the beach. If he was, he’d have been brought here.’ The thought had only just occurred to her.
‘You are the only prisoner in the complex.’
‘Where else would prisoners be taken?’ Benny was standing now, surprised how unfamiliar the soles of her feet felt with weight on them. She stretched her legs, arms and spine in turn.
‘Criminals would all be in normal police cells.’
'What about military prisoners?’ Benny began massaging her right shoulder, easing away some of the stiffness. Her left shoulder would have to wait: her right hand was still in a splint.
‘There aren’t any.’
‘If there were?’
‘Here at the complex.’ Her eyes were watering. The woman was almost on the verge of tears.
‘Nowhere else?’ Benny insisted.
‘Nowhere else. Even if he was dead he would have been brought here.’ Benny’s stomach lurched. She pitched over towards the slops bucket, her nose suddenly full of the smell of disinfectant and vomit. The Doctor couldn’t be dead. The possibility didn’t exist. There had been too many times before when she’d thought he was dead and he wasn’t.
She straightened up. That wasn’t exactly logic, was it?
He hadn’t rescued her. He knew what Nazis did to their prisoners. If he was alive he would have dropped everything and come running to save her in the nick of time. Wouldn’t he? She’d learnt that the Doctor s definition of ‘a nick of time’ occasionally left a bit to be desired, but by any calculation he should have rescued her by now. She remembered the single shot, now. He’d been on the beach when there was a shot.
No burst of machine-gun fire. No Germans shouting warnings. A single shot. She hadn’t seen the Doctor since.
Kitzel handed Benny a flannel to wipe her mouth.
‘Nurse. I’m an archaeologist. On one of the first digs I went on, I discovered a great hoard of daggers. At least that’s what I thought at first. It doesn’t matter where this dig was, but the civilization we were excavating was meant to be pacifist. If these were daggers, then all previous notions of their culture would be overturned and I’d be famous. All this so early in my career. It turned out that it was just a cutlery drawer. One of the senior archaeologists took me to one side and said that there was something I had to remember, and I do, I remember the exact words: “The distinction between a dagger and an inoffensive knife blade is hard to draw and may never have been clear cut.” ’
Before Kitzel could react, Benny was holding the butter knife at her throat.
‘Now, you’re going to take me to the morgue. If we are challenged, you are going to stick up for me. If you don’t, if you even speak, I cut your throat. Understood?’
Kitzel nodded, her mouth clamped shut.
----------------------
Professor Summerfield was in front of Kitzel, the cutlery knife concealed up her left sleeve.
The young nurse struggled to remain calm. It was still very early in the morning, and there was no one around yet.
She had already judged that escape would be impossible.
‘How far is it to the morgue?’ Summerfield demanded.
‘It is the next door down,’ Kitzel said quietly. Summerfield seemed at home in these featureless corridors. There was a spring in the older woman’s step again, even though, as far as Kitzel understood, she now thought that one of her friends was dead. Perversely, the archaeologist seemed almost relaxed.
Summerfield glanced up at the sign. “LEICHENHAUS”.
'The morgue?’ Kitzel nodded. Summerfield pushed down the handle and stepped inside, holding open the door for Kitzel to follow.
The morgue was cool and brightly lit. Kitzel had never been in here before, but it was almost exactly the same as the morgue in the Cologne sanitorium where she had done her training. An autopsy table in the middle of the room, cold storage drawers on one wall, a basin and a row of lockers on another. The attendant, a little bespectacled man in his forties, stood as they came in.
‘You’ve brought this one in prematurely, nurse. You want me to arrange something?’ He leered at her. The young nurse recoiled. She had heard stories about this nasty little man, and she believed them.
‘Bolt the door, Kitzel,’ Summerfield ordered. Kitzel did as she asked. The attendant was suddenly worried.
‘Who are you?’
‘I’m the Professor, and this is my friend Kitzel,’ Bernice announced.
‘What’s going on here?’ He looked from Summerfield to Kitzel.
‘Liberation,’ said Summerfield simply.
There was a flash in the morgue attendant’s hand, a lightning-swift response from Summerfield: a slashing motion, a yelp of pain and a clatter as something fell to the floor. The attendant clutched his wrist. Then Summerfield was poised on tiptoes, her knife in hand.
‘In case you missed that, Kitzel,’ Summerfield was explaining, ‘he tried to pull a scalpel on me and I cut open his wrist. Hold this.’ She tossed Kitzel the knife. Before the nurse could react, Summerfield had grasped the back of the terrified attendant’s head and brought it down hard on the edge of the autopsy table. His legs buckled and he fell against the tiled floor. Kitzel felt the weight of the knife in her hand, and decided to lay it down.
‘Is he dead?’ Kitzel winced.
‘Well, he’s come to the right place if he is,’ Summerfield said dismissively. Kitzel bent over. The attendant was still breathing. The nurse made him comfortable, examined his cut wrist and then glanced up at Summerfield, who was opening up one of the large army lockers. She dug around in the contents for a moment then pulled out a shapeless dark blue piece of cloth.
‘It’s my coat,’ Summerfield explained, dusting off some of the dried mud. As she was doing that, something else in the locker caught her eye and she glanced back. Summerfield swallowed, and reached inside, pulling out a long black umbrella. Its handle was red bakelite, shaped to resemble a fragezeichen.
Summerfield was examining something sewn to the material. ‘It’s a little name-tag. It says “This is the property of Doctor — ” — I can’t read the name, it’s covered by a patch of oil — “if lost please return to Portland Street Library, Paddington, London”.’
‘This is your friend’s umbrella?’
‘Yup,’ said Summerfield absentmindedly, as she flicked through a set of notes on the clipboard. ‘There are only two bodies here. Drawer 3 and Drawer 7. It doesn’t say what date they arrived, it only says “March”. One of them might be the Doctor. You’ll have to help me.’
Summerfield moved over to Drawer 3, and tried to pull it open. Kitzel joined her. The drawer still wouldn’t budge. They tried again, and Summerfield grunted some curse. Kitzel tapped the keyhole.
‘There’s a lock,’ she said lightly. They caught each other’s eye and smiled. Kitzel regained her composure as she realized what she was doing, but this only made Summerfield chuckle again. The older woman had already found the key on the floor by the attendant, and was slotting it into the lock. This time the drawer opened without resistance, sliding out and locking rigidly into place.
The body was that of a boy, about Kitzel’s own age.
Naked, with a shaved scalp, the corpse was pale and virtually hairless, except for a patch of light brown pubic hair. There was a large entry wound in his abdomen that had been cleaned up. The boy had been shot at point-blank range. His eyes had been closed. It was nothing she hadn’t seen before; a lot of young men had died in this war, but it shocked her anyway. Summerfield was sitting down on the autopsy table.
‘I’d forgotten. I forgot all about him.’
‘This is your friend?’ Kitzel had expected someone older.
‘No, this is the man I killed. Gerhard.’
‘You are feeling guilty, now?’ she said reprovingly.
‘I felt pretty damn guilty when I did it,’ Summerfield snapped. Abruptly she stood, and pushed her hip against the drawer until it slammed shut. Gerhard vanished. Kitzel moved to Drawer 7 and unlocked it. Summerfield pulled it open.
Together, they peered in.
The contents were twisted, blackened. So much so that it took Kitzel a moment to realize that the object had once been human, and wasn’t some sculpture or tree trunk. It must have happened quickly: the skin had been carbonized. She glanced at the face. It was grinning, with pearl-white teeth. Its dark eyes were open. It smelt of roast pork. Kitzel was sick over it.
‘It’s no improvement, Kitzel, he still looks a mess.’ Kitzel shot Summerfield a glance, and it was enough to make her blush and apologize.
‘Is this your friend?’ Kitzel asked, wiping her mouth.
Summerfield shook her head, but checked the name-tag tied to what remained of the corpse’s left foot.
‘No,’ she confirmed. ‘Could you close it up?’ Kitzel did as she asked, grateful that the burnt body was no longer in sight. As she did this, she heard Summerfield opening up a third drawer. The tall woman grasped Kitzel’s shoulder.
‘How tall are you, nurse?’
‘Five feet, four inches.’
‘Nearly six inches,’ Summerfield cursed.
‘What do you mean?’
The knife was suddenly jabbed between her ribs. ‘I mean you’re six inches too short. Where I come from, women are taller than they are here. You’ll have to do. Strip.’
Kitzel hesitated, but not for very long. She had to step back to take off her jacket That done, she began unbuttoning her blouse. Kitzel watched as Summerfield looked across at the unconscious attendant. This would have been her last chance to resist, but Summerfield kept the knife poised above Kitzel’s midriff. Kitzel watched as the taller woman scooped up the blouse and began to put it on over her prison uniform. Kitzel pulled down her skirt, and was beginning to unclip her bra before Summerfield motioned her to stop.
‘I draw the line at second-hand underwear. Sit down.’
Kitzel fell back, the drawer buckling under her weight.
Summerfield had pulled off her uniform trousers and shrugged herself into the skirt. Kitzel glanced down at her arm, which was prickling with goose bumps. Not just from the cold. Summerfield leant over and patted Kitzel’s wrist.
‘I’ll have the wristwatch, please,’ she said. It was gold, an expensive present from her father on her sixteenth birthday.
Kitzel undid it, and passed it over.
‘Christ, is that the time?’ the tall woman joked as she put it on. Kitzel didn’t react.
‘Do you think I’d pass muster?’ Summerfield asked. The skirt was loose, but it was barely below her knee. The blouse fitted, just, but the jacket was pinched at the shoulders and was almost ridiculously short.
‘No,’ said Kitzel.
Summerfield laughed. 'At least you’re honest. When I put the coat on it won’t look quite as bad.’ Summerfield reached over for the coat and umbrella.
‘What happens now?’ Kitzel said nervously, her arms crossed over her chest. It was cold in here.
‘Now I pose as a Nazi nurse, march out of the base unchallenged and go to the docks. No guards will stop me, but I’ll get wolf-whistled. Then, I convince a fisherman to take me to the mainland. He’ll think I’m a Nazi, I’ll point out that the uniform is obviously stolen and I’ve got two black eyes. I’ll say that if he takes me I’ll give him this wristwatch. He’ll agree. I’ll cross the Channel in his fishing boat, which will take about seven hours. I’ll use that time to catch up on my sleep. I’ll arrive in Dover at,’ she checked the watch, ‘about two-thirty this afternoon. Then I’ll catch the 14.57 to Waterloo, I’ll catch the tube and meet up with my friends at Portland Street. One final question, before I go: do you think these drawers are airtight?’
Before she could react, Summerfield’s palm had shoved against Kitzel’s shoulder, pushing her flat on her back. With her knee, Summerfield slammed the drawer shut. Kitzel felt herself slide backwards, watched the crack of light at her feet vanish and gasped for breath. She was facing the wrong way, there wasn’t enough room to turn around. It was dark and cold. Was any air getting in? There wasn’t a chink of light from the opening. If she screamed would she just use up her air? She heard the key turn in the lock of the drawer. A moment later, the door to the morgue slammed shut. She kicked out at the drawer door, but it didn’t budge. Kitzel screamed.
Dampness on her face. Water.
Benny Summerfield was awake. Benny Summerfield was alive. Benny Summerfield was relieved. She opened her eyes and was surprised how quickly they focused. The nurse, Kitzel, was on the other side of the room, her back towards her. The nurse was hunched over something on the table.
They were alone. Benny pulled herself upright. Hearing the movement, Kitzel looked over her shoulder, a wave of blonde hair falling over the epaulette of her uniform. The nurse had Slavic features and grey eyes. In other surroundings, in different clothes, she would be beautiful. She reminded Benny a little of an old friend from her early teens. She had been beautiful, too.
‘You are awake?’ Kitzel spoke in stilted English.
‘I can tell you’ve got medical training.’ Benny wasn’t surprised when the nurse failed to recognize the sarcasm.
They were in her cell. Where was that? An underground complex, Steinmann had said. There was a bed here, a chair, an empty bucket in the corner. The door was ever so slightly ajar.
‘I have prepared you some food,’ the nurse droned. She had brought over a metal tray with a steaming bowl of tomato soup and a hunk of bread. There was even a knob of butter on the side of the plate. Benny took it from her, resting the tray on her pillow.
‘There isn’t a spoon. I haven’t anything to spread the butter with,’ Benny snapped. The nurse passed the cutlery over, her face impassive. She stood, watching her prisoner.
Benny sipped at her soup. It had been watered down, but it was still too rich for her palate after so many days without proper food. The hot food burnt her tongue and the taste stung the side of her mouth.
She found the bread easier to digest, but could only nibble at it. It would be a while before she could hold down a full meal.
Pausing between bites, she made conversation. ‘Do you know where the Doctor is?’
'You need medical attention?’
‘No. My friend the Doctor. He must have been captured on the beach. If he was, he’d have been brought here.’ The thought had only just occurred to her.
‘You are the only prisoner in the complex.’
‘Where else would prisoners be taken?’ Benny was standing now, surprised how unfamiliar the soles of her feet felt with weight on them. She stretched her legs, arms and spine in turn.
‘Criminals would all be in normal police cells.’
'What about military prisoners?’ Benny began massaging her right shoulder, easing away some of the stiffness. Her left shoulder would have to wait: her right hand was still in a splint.
‘There aren’t any.’
‘If there were?’
‘Here at the complex.’ Her eyes were watering. The woman was almost on the verge of tears.
‘Nowhere else?’ Benny insisted.
‘Nowhere else. Even if he was dead he would have been brought here.’ Benny’s stomach lurched. She pitched over towards the slops bucket, her nose suddenly full of the smell of disinfectant and vomit. The Doctor couldn’t be dead. The possibility didn’t exist. There had been too many times before when she’d thought he was dead and he wasn’t.
She straightened up. That wasn’t exactly logic, was it?
He hadn’t rescued her. He knew what Nazis did to their prisoners. If he was alive he would have dropped everything and come running to save her in the nick of time. Wouldn’t he? She’d learnt that the Doctor s definition of ‘a nick of time’ occasionally left a bit to be desired, but by any calculation he should have rescued her by now. She remembered the single shot, now. He’d been on the beach when there was a shot.
No burst of machine-gun fire. No Germans shouting warnings. A single shot. She hadn’t seen the Doctor since.
Kitzel handed Benny a flannel to wipe her mouth.
‘Nurse. I’m an archaeologist. On one of the first digs I went on, I discovered a great hoard of daggers. At least that’s what I thought at first. It doesn’t matter where this dig was, but the civilization we were excavating was meant to be pacifist. If these were daggers, then all previous notions of their culture would be overturned and I’d be famous. All this so early in my career. It turned out that it was just a cutlery drawer. One of the senior archaeologists took me to one side and said that there was something I had to remember, and I do, I remember the exact words: “The distinction between a dagger and an inoffensive knife blade is hard to draw and may never have been clear cut.” ’
Before Kitzel could react, Benny was holding the butter knife at her throat.
‘Now, you’re going to take me to the morgue. If we are challenged, you are going to stick up for me. If you don’t, if you even speak, I cut your throat. Understood?’
Kitzel nodded, her mouth clamped shut.
----------------------
Professor Summerfield was in front of Kitzel, the cutlery knife concealed up her left sleeve.
The young nurse struggled to remain calm. It was still very early in the morning, and there was no one around yet.
She had already judged that escape would be impossible.
‘How far is it to the morgue?’ Summerfield demanded.
‘It is the next door down,’ Kitzel said quietly. Summerfield seemed at home in these featureless corridors. There was a spring in the older woman’s step again, even though, as far as Kitzel understood, she now thought that one of her friends was dead. Perversely, the archaeologist seemed almost relaxed.
Summerfield glanced up at the sign. “LEICHENHAUS”.
'The morgue?’ Kitzel nodded. Summerfield pushed down the handle and stepped inside, holding open the door for Kitzel to follow.
The morgue was cool and brightly lit. Kitzel had never been in here before, but it was almost exactly the same as the morgue in the Cologne sanitorium where she had done her training. An autopsy table in the middle of the room, cold storage drawers on one wall, a basin and a row of lockers on another. The attendant, a little bespectacled man in his forties, stood as they came in.
‘You’ve brought this one in prematurely, nurse. You want me to arrange something?’ He leered at her. The young nurse recoiled. She had heard stories about this nasty little man, and she believed them.
‘Bolt the door, Kitzel,’ Summerfield ordered. Kitzel did as she asked. The attendant was suddenly worried.
‘Who are you?’
‘I’m the Professor, and this is my friend Kitzel,’ Bernice announced.
‘What’s going on here?’ He looked from Summerfield to Kitzel.
‘Liberation,’ said Summerfield simply.
There was a flash in the morgue attendant’s hand, a lightning-swift response from Summerfield: a slashing motion, a yelp of pain and a clatter as something fell to the floor. The attendant clutched his wrist. Then Summerfield was poised on tiptoes, her knife in hand.
‘In case you missed that, Kitzel,’ Summerfield was explaining, ‘he tried to pull a scalpel on me and I cut open his wrist. Hold this.’ She tossed Kitzel the knife. Before the nurse could react, Summerfield had grasped the back of the terrified attendant’s head and brought it down hard on the edge of the autopsy table. His legs buckled and he fell against the tiled floor. Kitzel felt the weight of the knife in her hand, and decided to lay it down.
‘Is he dead?’ Kitzel winced.
‘Well, he’s come to the right place if he is,’ Summerfield said dismissively. Kitzel bent over. The attendant was still breathing. The nurse made him comfortable, examined his cut wrist and then glanced up at Summerfield, who was opening up one of the large army lockers. She dug around in the contents for a moment then pulled out a shapeless dark blue piece of cloth.
‘It’s my coat,’ Summerfield explained, dusting off some of the dried mud. As she was doing that, something else in the locker caught her eye and she glanced back. Summerfield swallowed, and reached inside, pulling out a long black umbrella. Its handle was red bakelite, shaped to resemble a fragezeichen.
Summerfield was examining something sewn to the material. ‘It’s a little name-tag. It says “This is the property of Doctor — ” — I can’t read the name, it’s covered by a patch of oil — “if lost please return to Portland Street Library, Paddington, London”.’
‘This is your friend’s umbrella?’
‘Yup,’ said Summerfield absentmindedly, as she flicked through a set of notes on the clipboard. ‘There are only two bodies here. Drawer 3 and Drawer 7. It doesn’t say what date they arrived, it only says “March”. One of them might be the Doctor. You’ll have to help me.’
Summerfield moved over to Drawer 3, and tried to pull it open. Kitzel joined her. The drawer still wouldn’t budge. They tried again, and Summerfield grunted some curse. Kitzel tapped the keyhole.
‘There’s a lock,’ she said lightly. They caught each other’s eye and smiled. Kitzel regained her composure as she realized what she was doing, but this only made Summerfield chuckle again. The older woman had already found the key on the floor by the attendant, and was slotting it into the lock. This time the drawer opened without resistance, sliding out and locking rigidly into place.
The body was that of a boy, about Kitzel’s own age.
Naked, with a shaved scalp, the corpse was pale and virtually hairless, except for a patch of light brown pubic hair. There was a large entry wound in his abdomen that had been cleaned up. The boy had been shot at point-blank range. His eyes had been closed. It was nothing she hadn’t seen before; a lot of young men had died in this war, but it shocked her anyway. Summerfield was sitting down on the autopsy table.
‘I’d forgotten. I forgot all about him.’
‘This is your friend?’ Kitzel had expected someone older.
‘No, this is the man I killed. Gerhard.’
‘You are feeling guilty, now?’ she said reprovingly.
‘I felt pretty damn guilty when I did it,’ Summerfield snapped. Abruptly she stood, and pushed her hip against the drawer until it slammed shut. Gerhard vanished. Kitzel moved to Drawer 7 and unlocked it. Summerfield pulled it open.
Together, they peered in.
The contents were twisted, blackened. So much so that it took Kitzel a moment to realize that the object had once been human, and wasn’t some sculpture or tree trunk. It must have happened quickly: the skin had been carbonized. She glanced at the face. It was grinning, with pearl-white teeth. Its dark eyes were open. It smelt of roast pork. Kitzel was sick over it.
‘It’s no improvement, Kitzel, he still looks a mess.’ Kitzel shot Summerfield a glance, and it was enough to make her blush and apologize.
‘Is this your friend?’ Kitzel asked, wiping her mouth.
Summerfield shook her head, but checked the name-tag tied to what remained of the corpse’s left foot.
‘No,’ she confirmed. ‘Could you close it up?’ Kitzel did as she asked, grateful that the burnt body was no longer in sight. As she did this, she heard Summerfield opening up a third drawer. The tall woman grasped Kitzel’s shoulder.
‘How tall are you, nurse?’
‘Five feet, four inches.’
‘Nearly six inches,’ Summerfield cursed.
‘What do you mean?’
The knife was suddenly jabbed between her ribs. ‘I mean you’re six inches too short. Where I come from, women are taller than they are here. You’ll have to do. Strip.’
Kitzel hesitated, but not for very long. She had to step back to take off her jacket That done, she began unbuttoning her blouse. Kitzel watched as Summerfield looked across at the unconscious attendant. This would have been her last chance to resist, but Summerfield kept the knife poised above Kitzel’s midriff. Kitzel watched as the taller woman scooped up the blouse and began to put it on over her prison uniform. Kitzel pulled down her skirt, and was beginning to unclip her bra before Summerfield motioned her to stop.
‘I draw the line at second-hand underwear. Sit down.’
Kitzel fell back, the drawer buckling under her weight.
Summerfield had pulled off her uniform trousers and shrugged herself into the skirt. Kitzel glanced down at her arm, which was prickling with goose bumps. Not just from the cold. Summerfield leant over and patted Kitzel’s wrist.
‘I’ll have the wristwatch, please,’ she said. It was gold, an expensive present from her father on her sixteenth birthday.
Kitzel undid it, and passed it over.
‘Christ, is that the time?’ the tall woman joked as she put it on. Kitzel didn’t react.
‘Do you think I’d pass muster?’ Summerfield asked. The skirt was loose, but it was barely below her knee. The blouse fitted, just, but the jacket was pinched at the shoulders and was almost ridiculously short.
‘No,’ said Kitzel.
Summerfield laughed. 'At least you’re honest. When I put the coat on it won’t look quite as bad.’ Summerfield reached over for the coat and umbrella.
‘What happens now?’ Kitzel said nervously, her arms crossed over her chest. It was cold in here.
‘Now I pose as a Nazi nurse, march out of the base unchallenged and go to the docks. No guards will stop me, but I’ll get wolf-whistled. Then, I convince a fisherman to take me to the mainland. He’ll think I’m a Nazi, I’ll point out that the uniform is obviously stolen and I’ve got two black eyes. I’ll say that if he takes me I’ll give him this wristwatch. He’ll agree. I’ll cross the Channel in his fishing boat, which will take about seven hours. I’ll use that time to catch up on my sleep. I’ll arrive in Dover at,’ she checked the watch, ‘about two-thirty this afternoon. Then I’ll catch the 14.57 to Waterloo, I’ll catch the tube and meet up with my friends at Portland Street. One final question, before I go: do you think these drawers are airtight?’
Before she could react, Summerfield’s palm had shoved against Kitzel’s shoulder, pushing her flat on her back. With her knee, Summerfield slammed the drawer shut. Kitzel felt herself slide backwards, watched the crack of light at her feet vanish and gasped for breath. She was facing the wrong way, there wasn’t enough room to turn around. It was dark and cold. Was any air getting in? There wasn’t a chink of light from the opening. If she screamed would she just use up her air? She heard the key turn in the lock of the drawer. A moment later, the door to the morgue slammed shut. She kicked out at the drawer door, but it didn’t budge. Kitzel screamed.
