Doctor Who_ Island of Death - Barry Letts [0]
BARRY LETTS
DOCTOR WHO:
ISLAND OF DEATH
Published by BBC Worldwide Ltd,
Woodlands, 80 Wood Lane
London W12 OTT
First published 2005
Reprinted 2005
Copyright © Barry Letts 2005
The moral right of the author has been asserted Original series broadcast on BBC television Format © BBC 1963
Doctor Who and TARDIS are trademarks
of the British Broadcasting Corporation
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
ISBN 0 563 48631 7
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Commissioning editors: Shirley Patton and Stuart Cooper Editor and creative consultant: Justin Richards Project editor: Vicki Vrint
Cover imaging by Black Sheep © BBC 2005
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CHAPTER ONE
‘Is it vampires, Prof? Or did she starve herself to death? Or what?’
Professor Mortimer Willow, consultant forensic pathologist to the Met in North London, grinned happily at the grizzly remains lying on the table in front of him. He loved a puzzle.
‘What indeed, Sergeant. No, not vampires - for two reasons.
One, vampires are a myth; unless you’re talking about a member of the species Desmodus rotundus. I suppose one might conceivably have escaped from Regents Park, but it would have to have been a very large bat indeed to have done this to the poor lass. As for starvation...’
He leaned forward and picked up the bony hand. Anybody who had anorexia nervosa - or who had been deliberately deprived of food - would have been dead long before she’d reached this degree of emaciation.
‘And the second?’
‘Mm?’
‘The second reason it’s not vampires.’
‘What are you talking about, Sergeant? Do try to stick to the point!’ Glory be to Gladys, the man was a fool! Removing the entire contents of the circulatory system would merely produce a slightly thinner and extremely pallid version of the victim. The weight of the blood would be only about eleven pounds. Less than a stone.
The chestnut-haired young woman must have been quite a beauty: the structure of her skull, clearly delineated under the tight skin, made that quite apparent; her sojourn in the shallow grave on Hampstead Heath had been too short to affect the smooth complexion; and the fox that had revealed her to the early morning jogger had soon given up any hope of a decent dinner.
Doctor Prebble, the professor’s assistant, peered at the body through his thick glasses. ‘Could it be a virus?’
‘When in doubt, eh?’ said the professor. ‘The all-purpose get-out! Where would the medical profession be without its pet viruses? I think not, Brian.’ And he pointed to a mark on the base of the victim’s neck, just above the breastbone. ‘The skin has been punctured.’
Prebble whipped out his tape measure. It was a cut an inch and a half long. ‘Doesn’t look like a knife wound,’ he said.
Ah well, we’re not going to find out by goggling at her like a bunch of tourists at Madame Tussauds...’ The professor held out his hand, without looking, and as he expected his assistant placed within it the razor-sharp scalpel he would use to open up the chest and the abdomen. And, as was his wont at these moments, he abruptly burst into song. „Che gelida manina..‟.
And as suddenly stopped.
He would learn nothing from the internal organs of the deceased; nothing from the lungs, the heart, the liver, the kidneys; nothing from the gut, from the oesophagus to the rectum; and for a very good reason.
There was nothing there.
The dead girl’s body was literally just skin and bone.
Arimiggle arimoggle frendog Skang!’
At least, that’s what it sounded like to Sarah Jane Smith, as she stood at the back of the white-clad bunch of about a dozen young