BBC Cult - Printer Friendly Version
The Dying Days - Chapter Four

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Gratuitous Violets

The powerful beam of light swept down, petering out after two hundred metres. After walking through a short tunnel, all four of the astronauts had entered the cavern. The cavern was irregular in shape, made up of the black volcanic rock common on Mars. Cut into the floor of the chamber was a circular pit, twenty metres in diameter, fifty times as deep at least. Commander Michaels wasn't looking at the pit, but rather what was inside it.

He had kept his radio mike open all the time, and was keeping up a running commentary. The Command Module had informed them that the pictures from Bob's camera weren't getting through properly - the volcanic rock was interfering with the signal. Michaels struggled to find the words. 'The pit is full of large structures, solid blue crystal. They are, er, stalactites.'

'Stalagmites,' Andi's voice corrected him, ' "Tites come down".' Andi took up the commentary. 'They project up from the floor, narrowing at the top. Stalagmites the size of cathedral spires. The low gravity means they can grow so much taller than they can on Earth.'

'Are they a natural feature?' A male voice crackled from the Command Module. The sound was becoming as erratic as the pictures - Michaels couldn't even identify the speaker for certain.

'Good question. What do we think?'

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The four astronauts stepped forward, right to the edge of the abyss. They looked across at the spires and then back to each other. Andi, Bob and Campbell all shook their heads.

'Negative,' Michaels stated, 'These are artificial in origin.'

'Is that ice in there?' Bob asked. Michaels checked his wrist monitor. It was cool in here, with no atmospheric water vapour.

'There's so little water on Mars, how could it be ice?' Campbell objected, bringing a torch beam to bear on the nearest spire.

There was a shape inside, a humanoid shape.

Eve checked her make-up and hair in the mirror.

'OK Alan?'

'Sure,' her cameraman grunted. 'Ready to roll.'

'Do I pass muster?' Lord Greyhaven asked. He was the picture of English elegance in a single-breasted suit with a silk tie and matching handkerchief. There was something classy about a man that had over a billion dollars but didn't feel the need to exude wealth.

Not that he'd got his money because his great granddad was at Agincourt. While she was researching this story, Eve had often seen footage of Edward Greyhaven, then a fortysomething politician with a black quiff and some very sharp suits. He'd managed to get the Treasury to pour money into R&D back then, and the British had led the world in the field of pure research. Every month he'd open some new project that promised to revolutionise the way people lived their lives. Not all of them had failed, either. If only the rest of British industry had been in a state to exploit all that new technology. Greyhaven had made his fortune as a consultant after he'd left office. Twenty years on, he looked more distinguished, but there was still a mischievous twinkle in his eye.

'You look good. Er ... before we start, I've got a question. How - ?'

'You can call me Teddy, or Edward if that's too informal.'

Eve was caught out, something that rarely happened. 'How did you know that's what I was going to ask?'

'I've been interviewed by Americans before, Mrs Waugh. You don't have to address me as "Your Lordship". And my name is spelt with an \x91e\x92, not an \x91a\x92.'

'You don't have to call me "Mrs". I'm not married.'

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'I'm afraid that I am,' he replied, chuckling. 'Is this your first time in London?'

'No. Who's doing this interview, me or you? It's the second time this year. I covered the general election. No need to ask you about the result.'

Greyhaven smiled. He had flourished regardless of which group of politicians happened to be in charge. 'Which hotel are you in?'

She told him. He brightened. 'Oh yes, an excellent place. If you're eating in the restaurant there, I recommend the lamb. If not, try the Thai place around the corner.'

'Thank you. Shall we begin? Ready Alan?'

'Still ready.'

The picture on the screen at London showed the three astronauts venturing towards the archway, their torch beams coming on and leaving streaks of light across the Martian landscape. These were five-minute old pictures.

'I must ask you all to leave.'

The Doctor turned his attention away from the screen for just a second. The large young men wore black wool suits that might have been tailor-made to make them look like secret service agents. There were only three people left in the observation bay now: Bambera, Bernice and the Doctor himself. They'd sent three men to get them out. Each guard picked a target and began to advance.

With a couple of seconds before the guard reached him, the Doctor turned back to the screen. The astronaut with the camera followed his colleagues into the tunnel, and the picture became darker, more grainy.

The Doctor was grabbed from behind, and pulled away from the window. The giant screen lurched out of view. Benny was kicking and shouting, trying to wriggle free.

Bambera was more calm, although her voice was just as loud: 'I am a member of the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce.'

'No sudden moves,' one of the men warned.

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The Doctor snatched another glance at the screen. The astronauts were still in the tunnel, there was more static now than picture. His head snapped back to look at Bambera and her antagonist.

'I'm reaching for my ID,' Bambera said sternly. 'Believe me, son, if you want to play Top Trumps with our security clearances you'll lose unless you're the Secretary-General herself.' When Bambera held up her security card, the guard recoiled like a vampire at the sign of the cross.

The Doctor and Bernice weren't so lucky. They were now being dragged across the room to the door, and both had found it impossible to break their captor's grip. The guard clasping the Doctor was paying particularly little attention to how he held his charge, choosing to dig in his nails and shake him as he moved.

'Stop this!' the Doctor yelled. Everyone in the room stopped and faced him.

'Winifred, I am the Doctor and this is my friend Bernice. We have to get down there, to Mission Control. There might still be time to save those astronauts.'

'The Doctor? Ancelyn and Lethbridge-Stewart both said that you could change your - '

'Come on! We haven't time for this now!' he shouted.

'These people are with me,' Bambera informed the guards firmly. The one in charge shrugged, and let all three out of the observation bay.

'Through here for mission control,' he ordered, opening up a door for them. All three piled through.

The door slammed shut and to their acute embarrassment the Doctor, Bernice and Bambera found themselves standing in an empty alleyway on the wrong side of a fire door.

They quickly determined that it had been barricaded from the inside and that nothing short of an ATR would open it.

'I can't believe we just fell for that,' the Doctor groaned.

'I need to get in touch with UNIT HQ,' Bambera snarled, plucking her radio from her breast pocket. 'Seabird to HQ. Seabird to HQ. Hey! Where are you going?'

The Doctor and Bernice were already running off.

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Staines found Lord Greyhaven as he stepped out of the Gents.

'That all went rather well didn't it, Teddy?'

Greyhaven smiled. 'Of course it did, dear boy. A marvellous speech, by the way.'

The Home Secretary grinned. When Lord Greyhaven praised you it was like getting a special mention from the Headmaster at morning assembly. Staines decided to try for another positive response. 'It was no more than you deserve, Teddy.'

This time he was rewarded with only a faint tic at the corner of the mouth. Walking side by side like this, Staines was surprised to notice how short the former Minister for Science was.

'Are you well, Lord Greyhaven?'

'Everything is wonderful, Staines. There's an Englishman on Mars, the FT index is up ten percent on the day and I've just been interviewed by a lovely American girl younger than my granddaughter who gave me her telephone number.'

'Golly. What did you do?'

'I gave her my card and told her that I would be happy to help in any way that I could.'

'How do we top that? Lunch at the club?'

'No, Staines, I think that now I should get down to Mission Control and see if I can be of any help down there. By all means come with me.'

Lethbridge-Stewart hadn't taken his eyes of Alexander Christian since he'd first seen him. They'd walked down the footpath to the railway station in silence, and all the time the Brigadier had kept him covered with his pistol. Christian was nervous of being spotted, but the streets were deserted: everyone was inside watching the Mars Landing on television. About ten minutes ago there had been a rowdy cheer from inside the pub on the corner. There was an Englishman on Mars again. The Brigadier couldn't let that distract him. Much as he wanted to hear that the mission was a success, much as he wanted to hear the first words of the astronauts as they were spoken, he couldn't predict what Christian's reaction would be if he watched the coverage, so they couldn't risk a cafe or a pub.

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They sat down on a bench, catching their breath. Neither of them were young men any more, although Christian had a ten year advantage over him.

'All right, Lex. Tell me.'

'They buried me, Alistair. They buried me for over twenty years. I'm not mad. I didn't kill my crew.'

'I saw the photographs.'

'Fakes. You didn't see the bodies, did you?'

'No, whyever should I have done? What about the radio messages?'

'What messages, old chap?'

'You ranting and raving. A radio ham picked one of them up and sold them to the American television stations.'

There was a pause, the silence broken by the sound of a helicopter in the distance. Both men looked up at it.

'The radio antenna was destroyed in the attack. I couldn't broadcast. They were fakes, too. That's a police helicopter, Alistair, they're coming for me. We have to go.'

'We'll go when I say so. What do you mean "attack"?'

Christian turned to him, looked him square in the eye and without hesitating said, 'My crew were murdered on Mars. Not by me.'

'Cosmonauts? Are you telling me now that the Russians got to Mars?'

'Worse.'

'The Americans?'

'Worse.'

'Give me a straight answer, please Lex.'

'My crew were killed by Martians.' Alexander Christian paused. 'I was the only survivor. I ran back to the capsule and launched it, leaving behind the bodies of my crew. I radioed Earth, warned them about what I'd seen. And when I got back I was arrested and thrown into a mental institution.' He took a deep breath. 'Do you know how difficult it is to get out of a mental ward when you have to convince two doctors that you are sane, but you're too stubborn to let them hear what they want? I did see a Martian city. I've never doubted it for twenty years, not once. Of course they think that I'm mad. You have to help me convince the government that there are aliens out there. But you think I'm mad, too, don't you?' He looked up at Alistair again, frowning. 'You don't think I'm mad. Why not?'

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'The British government has known about the existence of extraterrestrial life for over a century. Twenty years ago I was the commanding officer of a United Nations task force that tried to contain alien incursions. Describe these Martians,' the Brigadier ordered quietly.

The scientists at Mission Control watched helplessly as the picture and sound continued to break up. In between the bursts of static and the shouts of the astronauts there were just impressions that couldn't be assembled into a coherent narrative:

Hissing.

The sound of a visor cracking.

Red eyes, looming over them, burning like hot coals.

One of the torch beams snapping off.

A grunting, barking sound all around.

A claw like a giant crab's.

The camera lurching around.

Great slabs of green detaching themselves from the walls.

A woman's screams, cut short.

A pulsing sound, like air folding in on itself.

The picture and sound went dead.

David Staines tried to take a step back. He took a deep breath and turned to see what Lord Greyhaven was doing. No-one else in the room was looking at Greyhaven, and why would they when they had so much to do? The former Minister of Science was standing at the back of the Mission Control room, and surely his expression would be the one of horror worn by everyone else in the room. But no. He stood impassively, watching the screen as though it were some science fiction blockbuster. All his plans were in ruins, but he stood there like a rock.

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The scientists were shouting their jargon:

'I've lost lifesigns on all four of them, sir.'

'The camera on the Lander just went off-line.'

'I've lost telemetry on the Lander.'

'Lander transponder dead.'

'They're dead, or else the signal is completely blocked.'

'There isn't anything else.'

'Re-establish contact with the Command Module,' Greyhaven suggested softly to the scientist who was manning the post immediately in front of them. Before his government positions, Teddy had been a captain of industry. Now all that authority was asserting itself.

The loudspeaker began crackling. Simultaneously, data that had been collected and stored for this moment flooded across the screens. The main screen flickered into life and the picture quickly resolved into the face of Astronaut Singh. He wore the standard issue plain blue coveralls, and looked worried. He was in the Command Module, the part of the spacecraft that remained in orbit above Mars.

'London Control, this is Mars 97 Orbiter. Time 11:02 Zulu. Update: have not, repeat have not, been able to re-establish contact with the Lander. This is not, repeat not, a technical fault. I have no transponder response from Lander. Am forwarding all data collected from the surface. Please advise. Over.'

By the clock mounted on the wall, Staines worked out that the signal was already five minutes old.

Computers began chattering as more information from the Command Module reached them. Quickly, the staff at Mission Control readied their response. It was quite a skill, coming up with the best possible response, keeping the time-lag to an absolute minimum, but at the same time sending as much useful information or instructions as possible. Within a minute they had transmitted their response.

'Mars Orbiter, this is London Control. Time 11:08 GMT. We confirm communications lost with surface. Advise redeployment of survey satellites. Show us the surface of the Mare Sirenum. How are you all up there? Over.'

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It was going to be a full ten minutes until the brief response. 'Well done, everyone,' Lord Greyhaven congratulated the scientists, leaning awkwardly over one of the consoles to shake Theo Ogilvy's hand.

Something about that was bothering the Home Secretary until Theo Ogilvy stood up to make an announcement, interrupting his train of thought.

'There is nothing more we can do for the time being, ladies and gentleman. If any of you need a coffee or to stretch your legs then do it now.' A few of them left, but most stayed at their posts.

The Doctor bought a bunch of violets from the flower seller by Charing Cross tube station as Benny studied the note he had been passed again.

'Do you know where Chesterton Road is, then?'

'No, but that lad knew that I'd be able to get to it in plenty of time.' The Doctor ducked into a newsagents, Benny followed in his wake. Her ballgown was getting her funny looks now.

The Doctor had found the rack with the street maps and tourist guides on it.

'Ah, there we are.' He flicked through to the right page. Benny smiled wanly at the young Asian woman at the till. 'And that's the nearest tube station.' He measured out the distance with his thumb. 'Only about two minutes' walk away.'

Benny looked at him in his frock coat, eyes gleaming as he leafed through the A-Z, still clutching that bunch of violets in his hand.

'Have you any idea why he wants to see you?' she asked tentatively.

'No,' the Doctor said happily, replacing the A-Z. 'Do you?'

'Well ... I was just wondering if he'd want me to come along.'

'What do you mean?'

They stepped out of the shop and out onto the busy pavement. The Doctor stood waiting for the answer, forcing the pedestrians to flow around him.

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Benny collected her thoughts and began. 'Doctor, your new body is very ... well, I say "very", that doesn't mean that I personally think ... I mean, compared to the way you used to look, of course, but not everything goes on looks. But when it comes to the initial, y'know ... ' She blushed, realising she might be implicating herself here.

'Bernice, I don't understand what you are trying to say.'

'What I'm saying is that he might just want to see you because he fancies you.'

The Doctor looked blankly at her. 'Don't be ridiculous.'

'Who's being ridiculous?'

A big, fat man walking past glanced at her dress and smirked knowingly. Benny replied with one of her more severe frowns.

The Home Secretary stepped over to Ogilvy.

'Anything I can do, Professor?'

Ogilvy smiled wanly, 'There's nothing any of us can do for the moment.'

Staines nodded and returned to Greyhaven's side.

'What do we do, Teddy?'

'We wait. All is not lost.'

'How can you say that? Those poor men.'

Suddenly, in front of them, there was a commotion.

'Sir! Signal from Mars.'

'Mars Orbiter to London Control. 11:14 Zulu. Roger that. Estimated one hour eighteen minutes to realign camera. We're fine, Professor, don't worry. Will contact when satellites redeployed. Over.'

The sense of relief was tangible. It didn't last.

Screaming, and shouting.

'Airlocks!' one of the astronauts was yelling over the sound of rushing wind.

'Sir,' one of the scientists shouted from the next row of controls. 'The airlocks just opened of their own accord. All the interior hatches have been blown.'

The Home Secretary was aghast. 'My god ... how?'

Greyhaven leant over the microphone and said calmly. 'Singh, this is at London. How did the airlocks open? Over.'

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Ogilvy shook his head. 'There's a five minute delay, Lord Greyhaven, look at the clock.'

It was twenty-five past eleven. Singh had sent his message five minutes ago. Greyhaven's question wouldn't arrive until half past. It had already happened.

'Can we close the airlocks from here?'

Theo Ogilvy ran over to one of the control panels, the one just in front of where Staines and Greyhaven had been standing all this time. 'The airlock override is here, but it will be five minutes before ... ' he stabbed the control, because it was the only thing that he could do.

Staines looked up to see Singh staring into the camera, his clothes whipping as the air from the cabin was blown out past him.

'London,' he croaked, trying to suck air into his lungs, 'There's nothing - '

He lost his grip, and was hurled backwards in a storm of loose items: plastic cups, clipboards, sheets of paper. There were no signs of the other three astronauts.

'I've lost lifesigns from the Command Module.'

'Air pressure zero.'

There was absolute silence at mission control.

'It's over,' the Home Secretary whispered.

'No,' Greyhaven said, determined. 'We continue.'

'How?'

'We continue,' he repeated firmly.

Eve opened up the door to their hotel room with her keycard. With all the interviews and other footage in the can, they'd come back to the hotel, dropped the tapes off and had lunch - lamb, as Lord Greyhaven had suggested. That afternoon they would take a taxi over to the editing suite they leased from one of the satellite stations based in Docklands and edit everything into shape. One advantage of working in England was that you could spend all day working on the report for the lunchtime news.

'I'm going to get this make-up off and have a shower,' Eve announced, holding the door open for Alan. He thanked her.

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He and Eve had been working together for a couple of years, and this wasn't the first time that the cheapskate network had put them up in the same room. At least it was a twin room this time, and quite a large one. There was a chance for some privacy: not like that guest house in Berlin. It had always been awkward for Alan - he was a married man, and a pretty shy one at that. Alan never held anything back from his wife Melanie - he'd told her about the logistics of working abroad for a network who's foreign affairs desk was still trying to save money after spending so much covering the Gulf War. Melanie knew that it was part of her husband's job description to spend a lot of time alone in close quarters with his reporter.

'Unzip me, would you?' Alan obliged, and Eve stepped out of her dress.

She had danced semi-professionally while was at college and was used to getting undressed in front of other people. More than that, she had nothing to worry about when she did. Back home, Melanie read magazines full of pictures of thin, toned women and articles saying that she shouldn't worry because not everyone could look like a model. Melanie was good-looking, but she was a thirty-seven year old waitress with three kids. Eve was twenty-five with a hundred thousand dollars in the bank, a personal trainer and membership of a gym. When Alan was at home, he lay in bed with Melanie, telling his wife that she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, but they both knew it wasn't true.

The funny thing was, Eve was more jealous of Melanie than the other way around. When they'd covered some event at EuroDisney, Alan and Eve had shared a double bed thanks to another booking error. They'd got drunk and had a big heart to heart. If nothing else it proved that their relationship was going to stay Platonic no matter what. Eve had told Alan that she envied him his wife, she didn't have anyone back home. Whenever she met someone now, she could never be sure whether they wanted her or her fame. So she stayed lonely.

Eve was standing there in that lace underwear she'd paid a thousand dollars for in Paris. Alan was the only person who had ever seen her in it.

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'Alan ... ' she warned.

He frowned and looked around the room.

They had been burgled, by experts. They were both good at spotting the signs. As a matter of routine Eve left little bits of sticky tape on doors and on her suitcases to see if they'd been tampered with, and she was obsessive about noting exactly where she'd left her stuff. Over the years, Alan had begun to share this paranoia - it wasn't just mad dictators who didn't want their dirty little secrets exposed. In their time, Alan had had material stolen by the owners of a rat-infested old peoples' home and even by the manager of a fast-food restaurant who paid below minimum wage.

He was already checking his videotapes. 'Someone's been here, but they've not taken anything,' he announced. The combination on the case had been altered, it had shifted slightly.

'The tapes could have been wiped.'

He shook his head. 'It's a hell of a lot easier to take them or smash them up. I'll check, though.'

Eve was looking through her notes and clippings. They'd picked the lock of her document wallet, but they hadn't removed a single disk or piece of paper.

'This is depressing,' Eve moaned.

'Why?'

'Nothing's been taken. Someone thought we were on to them, so they burgled our room, but they couldn't find a single thing. They didn't even trash the place to warn us off.'

Eve slumped on the bed.

Chesterton Road was a five-storey Georgian terrace that a hundred and fifty years ago would have been a row of town houses for affluent families. Since then times had changed and the rich had gone elsewhere - the buildings had been converted into flats, and regular maintenance had fallen by the wayside. Now the street had a vibrancy to it that the Victorians would have frowned on - the doors were painted in a rainbow or different colours, and hanging baskets and bright pots were scattered around, brightening the place up even more.

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The Doctor and Bernice had walked uphill from the tube station and quickly located the right road. Finding the green door after that was simple enough - it was about halfway along the street. If it hadn't been lunch time there would be builders up on the roof, dropping slates down the big plastic chute into a yellow skip. The Doctor rang the doorbell.

The Doctor checked his watch. They were two minutes early.

The intercom buzzed. 'Come up. Flat Two,' a gruff voice told them.

The door unbolted itself. The hallway inside was unfurnished. Bernice followed him in and closed the door behind her.

'Upstairs,' she told him.

The Doctor climbed the stairs, two at a time. Bernice lagged behind. 'Do try to keep up,' he called down to her.

The door to Flat Two was at the top of the second flight of stairs. The door was already ajar. He walked in, brandishing his bunch of violets.

'Oh, at least knock,' he heard Bernice plead as she reached the top of the stairs.

The flat was small. Three rooms and a little hallway linking them.

First, the Doctor stepped into the kitchen. There was a neat little breakfast bar as well as a gas cooker and a big fridge-freezer. On the fridge door there were half a dozen photos and a couple of postcards. Happy smiling couples in a park. The Doctor moved aside to let the newly-arrived Bernice examine the pictures.

'That's him,' she said, pointing.

'Yes, I know,' the Doctor said impatiently. His fingers found something. A packet full of gold rings. He pressed one of them up to the polythene bag, and was disappointed to discover that they were just plastic.

'Curtain rings,' Bernice scowled.

'They might be important. Or they could come in useful.'

Bernice sighed. 'I suppose if we had to break into anywhere disguised as interior decorators ... '

The Doctor had pocketed the bag and had moved on to the next thing.

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The door to the flat slammed shut behind them. Bernice looked worried by that, so he assured her that it had just been a gust of wind.

They went through into the front room, a combined bed/sitting room. A computer sat on a big desk in the corner, there was a small bookcase full of chunky computer manuals and square-bound magazines. A couple of posters were hanging there: a detail from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel showing God and Adam and a black and white picture of Kermit the Frog in Calvin Klein underpants.

A sofa bed lay unfurled along one wall, a duvet with an Op-art pattern was arranged over it. The body of the young man who had passed the note to the Doctor lay half-in and half-out of the bed. His eyes were closed. The Doctor gently prised out the knife that had killed him, a single blow between the ribs to the heart.

Behind him, Bernice swore under her breath and began searching the room.

'There's a man dead here, Bernice,' the Doctor reprimanded her.

'And your fingerprints are now all over the murder weapon,' she replied, more than a hint of apprehension in her voice. She found a card with a magnetic strip and a photograph. 'His name was Timothy Todd, and he worked at the Space Centre at Devesham.'

The Doctor didn't look up. The man was so young, he couldn't long be out of university. 'A life has been taken here. He died less than five minutes ago. The murderer was still here when we rang the doorbell. That was his voice we heard.'

Bernice was opening up a plastic box full of computer disks. 'He must have been a programmer at the Space Centre.' Every single disk had been snapped in two then put back in the box.

'We have to tell the police,' the Doctor protested.

The sound of sirens was dopplering along the main street.

'Don't you see, Doctor? Someone's already told them. We've been set up. He worked at Space Centre, and he wanted to tell us something.'

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'He already has,' the Doctor corrected her, 'Violets.'

'Very useful,' Bernice answered as she began hunting through the bookcase. 'Every cassette has been smashed, too.' She held up the tangled remains of Twang: More Than Thirty Years of John Smith and the Common Men.

'Commander Michaels said that there was a beautiful violet sky. Then five minutes later he said "Condition violet should now be in place, you've had your ten minutes".'

Bernice stopped in her tracks. 'A code phrase?'

The Doctor nodded. 'Telling Mission Control to cut the live feed because there was a problem that they couldn't tell the TV audience about.'

The Doctor stepped over to the window, laying the knife down on the desk. The sirens had stopped, which meant that the police had arrived. He narrowed his eyes. At the end of the street a patrol car had been parked behind a van, in an attempt to obscure it. Two uniformed officers, a PC and sergeant were making their way down this side of the street, again trying to keep out of view. There was no sign of any other police activity. They are responding to a 999 call.

Bernice was hunched over the magazine rack. 'But Tim passed you the note before then. It was while we were waiting for the astronauts to come out.'

'Yes,' the Doctor declared triumphantly. 'He knew that there was going to be a problem before Michaels did.'

'Who's Who and What's That?' Bernice gasped.

'Where?' the Doctor asked.

'No. It's a fanzine - for UFO-spotters and conspiracy theorists. I've seen copies of this at my dad's place. It's gone upmarket since 1983. Look, glossy paper and a colour cover.' She pulled it out of the magazine rack. The Doctor twisted his head to take a look at the cover. There was a photograph of a thundercloud over a ruined tower, and a bold caption: 'Storms Over Avallion: Exclusive Photos from Carbury'. Bernice held the magazine upright so that the Doctor could get a better look. Two computer disks plopped out.

One storey below them, the front door crashed open.

The Doctor dropped the violets, scooped up both the disks and pushed Bernice towards the door. 'Come on!'

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They reached the door just seconds before the police did. Vital seconds. Without needing to be prompted, Bernice dived the other way, hurtling up the next flight of stairs. The police were still too startled to react as the Doctor ran past them. They quickly regained their wits, and now one was shouting at them to stop, the other was calling for assistance.

Bernice had reached the end of the next landing, and she continued to climb. The Doctor's mind raced as he wondered what to do when they reached the top. If there was a firehose ...

The policeman chasing them was getting out of breath. The other had stayed behind to check the flat. Ahead of him, as she reached the next staircase, Bernice was also slowing. There were more sirens outside: a police inspector arriving with a couple of colleagues, possibly also an ambulance. Within ten minutes vanloads of uniformed men would surround the place.

They reached the top landing. It was identical to all the others, except that the door to the flats was missing. Bernice ducked inside and the Doctor followed, the policemen behind swiping at him.

They were in roofspace, or would be if there was a roof. Skeletal wood beams arched over them, the road was fifty feet below. This being London there weren't any convenient flat roofs, everything sloped at an alarming angle. Bernice hopped from duckboard to duckboard with the assurance of someone who hadn't thought through what she was doing. The Doctor followed her, trying to match her grace.

The policeman hesitated for the first time. 'Come down,' he called after them. He was staying firmly inside.

Bernice had reached the waste disposal chute.

'That's how we get down!' In one fluid movement she grabbed the edge of the chute, pulled her legs up and pushed herself down. The Doctor allowed her a couple of seconds, before following.

The Doctor bounced from the sides of the chute.

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The surface was rough, composed of bucket-like segments. It was meant for bricks to drop down, not people, and whoever had designed it had clearly not worried too much about the state of the bricks at the end of the process.

The Doctor crashed into a mattress on top of a half-full skip, narrowly avoiding his companion.

Bernice groaned, pulling her dress back into a more decorous shape. Her hat had disappeared at some point and she was covered in bruises and grazes.

The Doctor produced a handkerchief and dusted her down. 'Are you all right?'

She rubbed her head, nodding. 'That'll teach me to come up with escape plans when I've spent the morning drinking champagne.'

The Doctor helped her upright. 'We were lucky there was a mattress.'

'No we weren't,' Bernice said enigmatically.

A huge smile crossed the Doctor's face. 'The murderer ... the real murderer escaped this way. He would have passed us on the stairs otherwise. When did you work that out?'

'Somewhere between the third and second storey.'

He helped her clamber up and over the side of the skip. The Doctor managed to get out under his own steam. Bernice was uninjured, and had no difficulty running. They walked straight past three empty police cars.

'We need to find a computer to read these disks,' Bernice said.

'Yes, in good time,' the Doctor replied. 'First of all, you need to change out of that dress.'

Bernice raised an eyebrow. 'Why?'

The Doctor clutched the lapels of his frock coat. 'My dear Bernice, you're far too conspicuous in that outfit.'

NEXT WEEK: An old friend joins the battle.