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Later, in his office, Seers listened grimly to Hetherington's report of the exchange between the Doctor and Emmeline, the weaselly man's voice issuing from the jellyfish-like communications device that Seers held in his hand.

When Hetherington had done, Seers said, 'This Doctor is even more intelligent and resourceful than I thought. He cannot be allowed to interfere with our plans.'

'Shall I terminate him, Commander?' Hetherington asked eagerly.

Seers turned the matter over in his mind. Finally he said,'No. I will deal with the Doctor myself. I will deal with the Doctor and the girl.'

***

'Careful,' hissed Jack Howe as Albert's spade slid through die last thin layer of dirt and clunked against the coffin lid. 'We don't want to bring the peelers down on us.'

Albert Rudge cringed, his eyes like saucers above the manure-smeared rag he wore over his diin, lugubrious face.

'Sorry, Jack,' he said in a hushed voice.'I never realised I was so close to the wood. I diought we had a ways to go yet.'

'You wants to keep your mind on the job and not on the money,' Howe said.

'I don't want to get my neck stretched just because you wasn't paying attention.'

'Sony, Jack,' Rudge repeated.'It won't happen again.'

'It had better not,' Howe warned,'or there'll be a fresh body in that box to replace the one we're taking with us.'

Rudge quailed, and bent to his task with renewed concentration, taking extra care not to make a sound as he scraped the last of the dirt from the roughly hewn coffin. Despite the claims of his companion, it hadn't been the money he had been thinking of. Of course, he couldn't claim that the money was anything other than a godsend, but that still didn't prevent him hating every minute of what he and Jack had to do to earn it. It wasn't the cadavers that bothered him particularly - he had seen so much death in his forty-one miserable years that it had long ago become a familiar if unwelcome acquaintance. No, it was the fear of getting caught, of having a noose placed over his head, of dropping through a hole in the floor and his neck breaking like a stick.Would he hear the crack of his own bones? he wondered.Would he die at once or hang there in the darkness for a while, twitching in agony? He knew that Jack thought himself invincible, knew too that greed was making his companion fearless, but Albert had fear enough for both of them; that, and a clear enough mind to realise that if they continued to do what they were doing night after night after night, then sooner or later their luck was going to run out, and when that happened no amount of money in the world was going to save them.

Each morning, waking up in the hovel that he called a home, Albert decided that this would be the day he would tell Jack that he no longer wanted to be part of the grisly task that his colleague had bullied and cajoled him in to, that he no longer wanted to spend his evenings touring the cemeteries of East London, that he no longer wanted to be privy to the nightly assignations with their mysterious employer. And each day Albert's resolve would be fierce right up until the time he actually saw Jack, and then it would melt away, like ice in a sudden thaw, and he would think: I'll tell him tomorrow. I'll tell him tomorrow, for sure.

The thing was, Jack was not a man to trifle with. Aside from being physically big, he was unpredictable and possessed of a vicious temper.Albert had seen him break men's heads without a qualm, even when sober; had seen him hold a man down by his throat and grind jagged glass into his eyes, blinding him permanently. He had even once seen him bludgeon to death a young child who had been too persistent in begging for a morsel of bread. Violence for Jack Howe was not, therefore, a rare occurrence, but something he meted out every day, to friends and enemies alike. Thus far, Albert, who was careful not to bait Jack, had received no more than a few hefty cuffs, an occasional