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called Douglas, she seemed to recall; and a swarthy, dark-haired chap with a fine, livid scar along his right jaw. He rubbed his hands vigorously as he and his friend went to the bar.

Sipping halfheartedly at her drink, she wondered whether Michael, too, had fallen into Sooal’s clutches. Maybe he was down in the spaceship as well, wired up to the machine alongside the Doctor, having his mind turned inside out. She shook her head; she was growing maudlin. After what she’d seen over the past couple of days, maybe she had good reason to. With a sigh, she heaved herself out of her seat and crossed to the bar.

‘No sign?’ asked Claire as Douglas and Scar-face installed themselves in a far corner and began a game of dominoes. Ace shook her head. ‘Maybe he’s gone looking for this Joyce woman.’

‘Maybe.’ Ace wondered whether she should tell Claire about what was going on up at the house.

‘Maybe he’s actually found her.’

‘Could be.’

Claire leaned across the bar. ‘They’re very good, you know,’

she said. ‘Up at Graystairs. They’ve worked miracles with some people.’

Ace realised that Claire had assumed that Ace’s ‘grandfather’

had just had a ‘funny turn’, and that Ace was worried about his dementia. Maybe she was. Maybe this would be how she felt if, by some miracle, she ever got close to Mum, and if Mum got Alzheimer’s. She didn’t want to think about it.

Claire tapped her on the arm and she looked up to see Claire staring at the door with a smile on her face. Ace turned. In the doorway was an elderly man in a dark grey cardigan – and, at his side, was the Doctor.

Sooal put down the telephone in the laboratory and smiled at the Tulks assembled around him, edgy and impatient. Their snowy hair shone like watery blood in the orange light. ‘One of the care assistants,’ he said. ‘Someone’s told them that they’ve seen an elderly man and a stranger with a cream hat going into the pub in the village.’

‘Can we be sure it’s him?’ asked a frail woman, her voice hard, her eyes glinting like steel.

Sooal nodded. ‘Eddie? I think so.’ He chuckled as if at some private joke.

The woman looked round the small gathering, taking in the familiar faces, seeing them clearly for the first time in three years.

Friends, colleagues. She turned to Sooal. ‘Forget the Doctor, whoever he is. He’s not the important one.’ She looked at the-others. ‘Follow me,’ she said. ‘We have a job to do.’

‘I think he needs a brandy,’ the man said as the Doctor settled himself onto one of the bar stools and gave Ace a not-altogether-focussed smile.

‘Water will be –’

‘Just have the brandy, Professor,’ said Ace, barely able to contain her joy at seeing him. She clasped his cold hands in hers and squeezed them as hard as she could, ignoring his wince as she did so. ‘You look as if you need it: With a gentle nod, he acquiesced. ‘Where the hell have you been – I’ve been worried sick about you.’

‘It’s a long story, Ace. Well,’ he grinned ruefully, ‘not so much long as puzzling.’ He shot a glance past her to the man with whom he’d come in, watching Claire pour a Guinness. ‘And blue still leaves a funny taste in my mouth.’ He pinched his nose confusingly and looked up, smiling lopsidedly. ‘You haven’t met a woman called Stacy Chambers, have you? Or maybe Tracy.

Norma wasn’t too sure.’

Ace pulled a shrug with her face. ‘Can’t say I have. Why? She important?’

‘I really don’t know. Norma seems to think she is.’

‘Maybe she’s one of the ones that’s vanished.’

‘Perhaps. Perhaps.’

‘Anyway,’ said Ace, as she realised the Doctor’s new friend was hovering at her elbow with a pint of Guinness in his hand.

‘Who’s your mate?’

‘Ace, this is Eddie. Eddie – Ace.’

They shook hands awkwardly.

‘So what happened?’ Ace turned back to the Doctor.

‘I’m not sure – after you and Michael left me, I think Eddie came along and took me to the boathouse down by the loch. I had a bit of a nap, Eddie told me about what they’ve been doing to him up at Graystairs, and then we came back here. I had a feeling