Doctor Who_ The Dying Days Part 8

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 hal way 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.

The door to the flat slammed shut behind them. Bernice looked worried by that, so he a.s.sured 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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 kil ed 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 s.p.a.ce 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 doorbel . 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 s.p.a.ce Centre.' Every single disk had been snapped in two then put back in the box.

'We have to tel 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 s.p.a.ce Centre, and he wanted to tell us something.'

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

'Very useful,' Bernice answered as she began hunting through the bookcase. 'Every ca.s.sette has been smashed, too.' She held up the tangled remains of Tw.a.n.g: 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.'

35.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 pa.s.sed 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!'

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 stil 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 a.s.sistance.

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 roofs.p.a.ce, 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 a.s.surance 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.

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 enigmatical y.

A huge smile crossed the Doctor's face. 'The murderer ... the real murderer escaped this way. He would have pa.s.sed 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.'

36.

Chapter Five

The World At One

'This is the World at One, I'm James Naughtie. The headlines: "I'm on the surface chaps". The Mars 97 mission has reached the Red Planet. Much more on that in a moment. On a related but far less happy note, it has just been announced that the last Mars astronaut, Colonel Alexander Christian has escaped his high security prison and is on the loose in Kent. Police say that he is believed to be in the Canterbury area, and warn members of the public not to approach him, as he is armed and dangerous. Twenty years ago, "Lex" Christian savagely murdered his crew on the return journey from Mars with an axe. Police are ruling out the possibility that he was responsible for the death of s.p.a.ce Centre technician Timothy Todd, 23, who was found stabbed to death at his flat in South West London. They want to question a couple in their thirties who were in the area at the time.'

'What is the world coming to?' Alexander Christian sighed, stoking his pipe. They were sitting in the s.p.a.cious lounge of Lethbridge-Stewart's house in Pyecombe. The Brig's wife was in the kitchen making a pot of tea and a spot of lunch. They'd been listening to the Test Series, but Lethbridge-Stewart wanted to check the news.

'They can't have any trace of you, Lex,' the Brigadier told him. 'That means that we can concentrate on the matter in hand. Now, what you encountered sounds very much like an Ice Warrior to me.'

Christian shifted in his sofa. The idea that Alistair had left the Scots Guards to fight aliens took a little getting used to. He'd heard of UNIT, of course, back when he was in the s.p.a.ce Service, but had always a.s.sumed it was a peacekeeping force or something of the sort. 'What's an Ice Warrior, then?'

'That's what Miss Grant called them.'

'Josephine Grant?'

'That's right. She was on my staff for a couple of years. Her uncle worked for the UN.'

'Good heavens, it's a small world. I knew her when she was doing her A-Levels. I think she blames me for failing General Science.'

Doris Lethbridge-Stewart came in with a tray piled high with sandwiches. 'Talking about the good old days again, Alistair?' She was younger than her husband, but just as self-a.s.sured.

'You have a lovely pad here,' Christian told them, 'I didn't think that a Brigadier's pension would run to this.'

'That's a sore point,' Doris said sweetly. 'If they'd promoted him to General when he retired like they usual y would have done, it would be over ten grand more.'

'Spoken like a true economist,' Alistair chuckled. 'You see, Lex, my secret is out: I'm a kept man. Doris here inherited the place from an aunt, and her salary more than looks after the both of us.'

'I'm not working today because of the Mars Day holiday,' she explained. 'I'l probably put a couple of hours in with the laptop this afternoon, though.'

Christian smiled, pretending he understood what she was talking about.

'Whyever weren't you promoted?' Christian asked.

'Politics,' the Brigadier replied curtly. 'Now, let's get back to these Ice Warriors, shal we?'

Christian looked over to Doris. 'Is she ... ?'

'Am I security cleared?' Doris interjected, 'No, but I don't need to be. Once you've heard one story about how UNIT didn't know what was going on until the Doctor turned up and saved the day you've heard them all.'

The Brig harrumphed. 'Actual y, Doris, we did manage by ourselves more times than not. The Doctor wasn't around when the Bandrils tried to destroy the ozone layer, was he?'

'No dear.' Clearly this was another sore nerve.

'We managed to beat the Drahvins without him, didn't we?'

'Yes dear, so you've said.'

'Well, then, there you go.'

'I'll just be in the study,' she said sweetly, kissing him on the temple. She took her mug and disappeared upstairs.

'Who is this Doctor, then?' Christian asked.

'He was my Scientific Advisor back in the seventies,' the Brigadier explained. 'He had ... particular expertise in the field of alien life forms. Miss Grant was his a.s.sistant for a short while.'

37.Christian had worked it out. 'So, she found out about the Martians while she was working with this boffin.'

'Yes that's right. Now, UNIT never encountered these chaps, but the Doctor and Miss Grant did on their travels. I always used to debrief her when she returned. Something to do with the planet Paladin, as I recall. It sticks in the memory because I remember Miss Grant tel ing me that at first the Doctor thought that these Ice Warriors were up to no good, but in the end it turned out they were on the side of the angels. It was usually the other way round.'

Christian shook his head. 'I've seen the fiends, Alistair. They are savage creatures, warlike. We infiltrated one of their cities - everything there is run like a barracks. As far as I could gather, these Martians were fighting a rival group. You should see their weapons and what they can do with them.'

The Brigadier took a swig of tea. 'It makes you wonder what the Martians would make of it if they landed in Bosnia.

Or Belfast, for that matter.'