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The student bar was almost empty.

Bartok finished his third pint and said, That séance.'

Which one?' Ralph asked.

"The one we've been talking about. The one in Norswood.'

'Oh right, yes.'

I don't suppose you managed to contact anybody did you?'

'On the other side you mean?' Meg said sardonically. No we didn't.'

'Chloe thought we had,' Tommy said.

'Chloe's a bit suggestible,' Ralph said.

Meg said, 'Why don't you say hysterical, Ralph? It's what you think.'

'You don't know what I think.'

Hysterical girlies.'

'That was Josh, not me.'

'You agreed with him, 'Meg said. 'Admit it. All men think like that.'

We are given to generalising on the subject of women,' Tommy agreed.

'Unlike you, of course, and men.'

'Amanda Joslin wasn't killed there you know,' Bartok interrupted. 'She was dumped in the wood but she wasn't killed there.'

The three students looked at him. They couldn't hide their surprise.

Josh didn't mention that,' Tommy said.

'So you do remember it was Josh then, do you?' Ralph said.

Amanda Joslin,' Meg said. 'Was that her name?'

'Most murders are domestic,' Bartok said. He had their undivided attention and he was finally enjoying himself. My governor reckons her father did it.'

'Does he have any evidence for that?' Tommy asked. 'Or is Joslin an Irish name?'

'He's one of the professors in this place.'

'Joslin?' Ralph said. 'What department's he in?'

Bartok shook his head. 'Finer. His name's Finer'

'You said her name was Joslin,' Meg said. Make up your mind, which is it?

Joslin or Finer?'

'Finer's ex-wife remarried. His daughter took her stepfather's name.'

'Professor Finer was her father,' Tommy said. "There's a striking coincidence.'

'You were trying to contact this dead girl and you didn't know where she died or who she was,' Bartok said. He was gloating a bit. 'Sloppy or what?'

'It's obvious how Josh got to hear about it then,' Tommy said.

'Of course it is,' Meg said.

'Obvious,' Ralph agreed.

Bartok waited, but it was clear they were not about to volunteer information.

'So how did he get to hear about it?' he asked.

Tommy pushed his glass forward. 'Mine's a pint,' he said.

The other two pushed their glasses across the table.

'You did say you could claim these on expenses didn't you?' Ralph said.

Meg chortled. 'I think I may have misjudged you, Ralph. I think you've got hidden shallows.'

The Doctor came round slowly. Whatever the drug was, it had hit him hard.

He lay where he had fallen. For a moment or two his eyes wouldn't focus.

Slowly he propped himself up on his elbows. He could tell he was in an underground room of some kind, but there was something incongruous about the floor covering.

It was an odd greyish, brownish colour and it was moving. It was a fur carpet that was twisting and turning, pulling back and slipping forward. It took him a moment or two longer to realise what it was he was seeing.

They were live animals. It was a carpet of rats. He sat up quickly and scrambled backwards so that he was sitting against the wall. As far as he could tell he was in a cellar full of rats.

The Doctor looked at them over his knees and the rats all stopped moving and stared back at him. He had never found rats threatening but these particular ones seemed to be acting together and there were lots of them.

He knew he was still groggy from the drug so he could be misinterpreting what he was seeing.

He concentrated blearily. They were definitely rats and they were definitely not afraid of him, but that didn't mean they were a superspecies. It did mean he was possibly in trouble. He fished about in his pockets and came up with some pieces of string which he tied round the bottoms of his trouser legs. Now, according to what he had once read about ratting, all he needed was a heavy stick and a Jack Russell terrier. He stood up.

He felt a mist of small sharp minds settle across his consciousness, probing for ways to understand and use him; testing him for threat. I'm imagining this, he thought.