Doctor Who BBC872 - To the Slaughter

‘You’re new here, aren’t you?’ said a firm, female voice.
Trix started, turned away from the window. A woman with black flapper
hair and a youthful but dispirited face was watching her from the far side of
a very long table. Her cheekbones looked sharp enough to wound. She was
putting on a shoe.
‘It’s obvious,’ the woman went on. ‘They’re all like that when they first see
the view.’ She smiled icily. ‘But do try to remember it’s our view, not yours.
Gawp like that again and you’ll be reprimanded.’
Trix nodded and gave a little curtsey. I’m gobbing on your quiche, she
thought.
A tall, broad-shouldered black man walked in. From the way the flapper
stiffened he was someone important. Now that she came to look, his fine suit,
dark and silky, his imperious gaze, the impressive rings stacked on his fingers
like he was trying to outdo Saturn, all told the same story: this man was the
boss.
He glanced at Trix for a moment, then snapped: ‘Get the food ready to
serve.’
Trix nodded meekly and started steering the table over to the back of the
room.
‘Tinya, do you have the revised rough cut for the infomercial?’ the boss-man
asked. ‘Halcyon will be arriving any moment. I want to check it myself.’
‘Right here, Falsh.’ The slapper with the flapper smugly patted a credit-cardthin
keypad, and a sort of bubble flickered into life above it. Quiet, scratchy
little noises started up. Trix was intrigued to see more, but a trim little man
with an elfin face and eyes too wide apart was waiting anxiously for her at the
back. From his black-and-white uniform, he must be a fellow waiter.
‘Thought you were never going to get here,’ hissed the waiter reproachfully.
Contrition had never sat well with Trix; by now she was terminally bored
with apologising. ‘Well, you know, with the security alert and everything. . .
I’ll just leave you to it. See you!’
‘Very funny,’ he hissed. ‘Fix a chiggock salad for Falsh, and I’ll prepare a
plate for Halcyon.’
‘It’s a buffet. Can’t they help themselves?’
‘Where’d they ship you in from?’ The waiter’s look made it clear that while
Falsh could doubtless help himself to most things, a buffet wasn’t one of them.
Then he became conspiratorial. ‘You know, I’ve served Halcyon before.’
Poached or scrambled, thought Trix. ‘Oh yes?’
The waiter preened like the news made him cock of the yard. ‘He likes
everything perfectly arranged. Well he would, wouldn’t he – an artist like
him.’ He had a distant, lovelorn look in his eye, which swiftly startled into a
sharp focus on the doorway. ‘Oh! He’s here!’
13