Part 2 (1/2)

'I took the registration number of the Range Rover. P876 - '

' - XFL,' the Doctor completed, beaming. 'Almost certainly a forged plate, but worth looking up.'

'What's going on here, Doctor?'

'I don't know.'

'I mean really.'

'I mean really,' he objected.

She straightened up. 'You real y mean that, don't you?'

The Doctor smiled helplessly. 'Yes Bernice,' he laughed, 'I real y mean that I really mean it. Obviously it's got something to do with whatever's in that test tube. Caldwell said it was ”soil”. The policeman I talked to seemed a great deal more interested in the test tubes than in the injured man. Caldwell also said ”Christian escaped”.'

'It seems a lot of trouble to transport soil around,' Bernice muttered. 'If only I'd pocketed one of those test tubes when I had a chance we might have some clue.'

The Doctor smiled. 'Well, as a matter of fact...' He held up the test tube he had palmed earlier. 'We'll a.n.a.lyse it in the TARDIS labs. After you've had your breakfast and finished your shower, of course.'

Elsewhere, a telephone rang. It was picked up after two rings.

'Alexander Christian has escaped,' a gruff voice said, 'The helicopter crashed.'

There was a moment's pause.

'The specimens?'

'Recovered from the crash-site.'

'Understood.' The handset was replaced.

Chapter Two

Foreign Soil

Alexander Christian stood perfectly still on the patio, catching his breath. He'd half-run, half-crawled the hundred or so yards to the house, the nearest man-made structure.

It was a big place built in the last century, but now in some state of disrepair. The gardens were overgrown.

Christian had seen the owners, a couple in their thirties, hurrying over to the crash-site. He'd ducked down in the long gra.s.s and they'd run straight past him. The police Range Rover had missed him completely, driving up a dirt track fifty yards away to the south. His first five minutes of freedom had proved a success.

Judging by the furniture, the man's clothes and the ”police box” sitting by the kitchen door, the owners of the house were Victorian enthusiasts. This eccentricity seemed to extend to not owning a telephone: he couldn't see a cable leading into the house. They didn't mind electricity, though: a portable television sat on the garden table. A young woman was dancing around in front of a couple of puppets. In the bottom right-hand corner was a digital clock reading 8:23. Christian watched the spectacle, fascinated, for a couple of seconds. How long had they been broadcasting television at this unG.o.dly hour?

The owners had been in the middle of breakfast. There was a tray next to the telly loaded up with a plate, a b.u.t.ter dish and a coffee pot. Christian lifted up the tray and plucked out the newspaper underneath. The Mirror. He scanned the header for the date: May 7th 1997. Price: 30p. Page-three girls had made it to the front, he noted. It was only a matter of time. More interesting was that the picture was in colour and that the newsprint didn't come off in his hands. Man hadn't reached Venus in the last twenty years, but clearly some things had improved.

There were more sirens: fire engines, ambulances, perhaps more policemen. He needed to get away from here. It would only be a few minutes before tracker dogs were brought in and there would be roadblocks in a ten-mile area within half an hour.

Christian tried to prioritise: he needed civvies, antiseptic for the cut on his head and to make a single phone cal .

He glanced up at the police box. Even if there was a telephone behind that hatch, calling the nearest police station was not the wisest move. He'd need to find a pay phone, and he'd need some change for it. The paper cost five times what it used to, so the phone probably did too.

Clothes, antiseptic and some 10p pieces. All three items should be in the house.

If the couple who lived here had children they'd be heading to school by now. There might be other people living or staying here, but there was no evidence of them. Christian knew he'd need to be careful. He had a couple of advantages, the main one being the element of surprise: the owners didn't know they had an intruder. He should be able to keep hidden, even if they came back. If not, he'd be able to overpower them.

Clothes and change: Bedroom. Antiseptic: Bathroom.

Christian kept hold of the newspaper and stepped through a dilapidated wooden door into the kitchen. One hi-tech item sat incongruously amongst the pre-war range and an old tin bread-bin. It looked like a TV set, but a nameplate said it was a microwave oven. Everything else looked like it had been sitting there undisturbed since the fifties. The kitchen lino was faded, and curling up at one end of the room. Christian began searching the drawers and cupboards. He briefly considered taking a bread-knife, for self-defence, but decided not to. He'd not taken a gun from the helicopter, either. He a.s.sembled the most basic of survival kits: a box of sugar cubes, a candle and a handful of the matches from by the cooker, a couple of black bin bags and one of the bars of chocolate from the refrigerator. After a quick search, he couldn't find any salt or tea bags.

He heard the wicket gate swing shut. They were back. Christian stuffed everything he'd col ected into a plastic carrier bag and moved deeper into the house. There was nothing in the hall except doors to other rooms and a staircase. The bathroom and bedrooms would be upstairs, so he had no choice but to climb. Every step squeaked as he made his way up. Outside Christian could hear their voices: she was a Home Counties gal, her husband's accent was harder to place.

'I'll wait for you here,' the man said.

'Won't be long. Oh, Doctor, it looks like we've run out of bin bags.' She was inside the house as Christian reached the top of the first flight of stairs. He was halfway up the second flight when she began climbing up after him.

Christian reached the landing. A big water tank sat in one corner, but it wasn't big enough to hide behind. There were three doors and another, shorter, flight of stairs up. One door was open: to the bathroom. The other two were closed. Why was she coming upstairs? Chances are it was to have a wash or to use the loo, so she'd be heading for the bathroom, but the woman could just as well be looking for a book, her make-up or an item of jewellery, so she'd end up in her bedroom.

Christian chose one of the bedrooms, hoping she'd pick the other. He closed the door behind him. The curtains were drawn back, the sheets were freshly laundered and neatly folded: this was not the room the owners slept in.

14.It was someone's room, though, a teenager's judging by the model aeroplanes hanging over the window. There was a gla.s.s ashtray on the windowsil - it contained a handful of change and a couple of small keys.

The woman reached the landing. Christian ducked behind the bed, but as he had expected, she carried on up the short flight of stairs. Christian started to breathe again, and checked the wardrobe. There were about a dozen items in there, mostly T-s.h.i.+rts, but thankful y they were in adult sizes, in fact they would fit a chap even bigger than he was. One of the T-s.h.i.+rts bore a slogan that made Christian laugh: 'My Friend Went to San Francisco and All He Got Me Was This Lousy T-s.h.i.+rt'. Another one read 'It's p.r.o.nounced ”Cwej”'. Christian pulled out the smart grey suit and cotton s.h.i.+rt that hung at the other end of the rail.

The ceiling above him creaked as the woman moved about upstairs.

Christian ran his finger very slowly down the seam of his coveralls. The Velcro parted silently, but it seemed to take an age.

The woman was coming back downstairs as Christian stepped out of his prison uniform. He crouched behind the bed, pul ing the suit trousers down to him, but she walked past the door. He waited a couple of seconds, but the woman didn't go back downstairs. Instead he heard pipes rattling, and a shower splutter then burst into life.

Christian pulled the trousers on, and half-b.u.t.toned up his s.h.i.+rt. He took the provisions he had taken from the kitchen and distributed them around the pockets of the jacket. He slipped the jacket on and tested that the weight of the items was evenly spread-out and that nothing rattled when he moved.

He moved back over to the windowsil . Out across the rol ing country, the straight line of the A2 was visible, sunlight glinting off the windscreens of a string of cars. There was also a good view of the woodland from here: the crash-site had been surrounded by emergency vehicles. Shouts and engine noises drifted across the fields from time to time. Their efforts seemed concentrated towards the crash itself, no-one was looking for him yet. It was only a matter of time. He plucked fifty pence in change from the ashtray. The coins were odd, and at first he thought they were foreign. The five and ten pennies were smaller, there was a twenty pence piece that was a peculiar shape.

Christian tiptoed over to the door. The shower was still running, he could hear the woman moving around underneath it. He pulled down the bedroom door handle, guiding it open with his other hand. Then he edged forward.

The bathroom door was wide open.

Christian could have frozen, but he didn't, he carried on past the doorway and down onto the first of the stairs. He tensed, prepared to grab the woman when she came to investigate. Only when he was ready for that did he allow himself to piece together what had happened. He'd glimpsed her: the first woman he'd seen for nineteen years, in the shower stal , water dripping from her back and down the side of her breast. She'd been half-facing away from the door, bent over to rinse off her hair. She hadn't seen him.

Christian wanted to talk to her, he wanted to explain things, to tell her the truth. He wanted to see her again. He hesitated.

The shower shut off. Christian lurched down the stairs, forgetting at first the noise the boards made when they had weight on them. He reached the bottom without a plan. He had a minute to collect his thoughts: the woman was going to have to dry herself and get dressed before she came down. He couldn't get out through the kitchen door, the husband was out there. He opened up one of the other doors and discovered that it led down a short corridor into a hal way. Christian followed it, finding the front door just as the woman was coming downstairs.

'A coup? I find that very difficult to believe, Home Secretary.'