Doctor Who_ The Dying Days - Lance Parkin [37]
One storey below them, the front door crashed open.
The Doctor dropped the violets, scooped up both the disks and pushed Bernice towards the door. 'Come on!'
They reached the door just seconds before the police did. Vital seconds. Without needing to be prompted, Bernice dived the other way, hurtling up the next flight of stairs. The police were stil too startled to react as the Doctor ran past them. They quickly regained their wits, and now one was shouting at them to stop, the other was calling for assistance.
Bernice had reached the end of the next landing, and she continued to climb. The Doctor's mind raced as he wondered what to do when they reached the top. If there was a firehose ...
The policeman chasing them was getting out of breath. The other had stayed behind to check the flat. Ahead of him, as she reached the next staircase, Bernice was also slowing. There were more sirens outside: a police inspector arriving with a couple of colleagues, possibly also an ambulance. Within ten minutes vanloads of uniformed men would surround the place.
They reached the top landing. It was identical to all the others, except that the door to the flats was missing.
Bernice ducked inside and the Doctor followed, the policemen behind swiping at him.
They were in roofspace, or would be if there was a roof. Skeletal wood beams arched over them, the road was fifty feet below. This being London there weren't any convenient flat roofs, everything sloped at an alarming angle.
Bernice hopped from duckboard to duckboard with the assurance of someone who hadn't thought through what she was doing. The Doctor followed her, trying to match her grace.
The policeman hesitated for the first time. 'Come down,' he called after them. He was staying firmly inside.
Bernice had reached the waste disposal chute.
'That's how we get down!' In one fluid movement she grabbed the edge of the chute, pulled her legs up and pushed herself down. The Doctor allowed her a couple of seconds, before following.
The Doctor bounced from the sides of the chute.
The surface was rough, composed of bucket-like segments. It was meant for bricks to drop down, not people, and whoever had designed it had clearly not worried too much about the state of the bricks at the end of the process.
The Doctor crashed into a mattress on top of a half-full skip, narrowly avoiding his companion.
Bernice groaned, pulling her dress back into a more decorous shape. Her hat had disappeared at some point and she was covered in bruises and grazes.
The Doctor produced a handkerchief and dusted her down. 'Are you all right?'
She rubbed her head, nodding. 'That'll teach me to come up with escape plans when I've spent the morning drinking champagne.'
The Doctor helped her upright. 'We were lucky there was a mattress.'
'No we weren't,' Bernice said enigmatical y.
A huge smile crossed the Doctor's face. 'The murderer ... the real murderer escaped this way. He would have passed us on the stairs otherwise. When did you work that out?'
'Somewhere between the third and second storey.'
He helped her clamber up and over the side of the skip. The Doctor managed to get out under his own steam.
Bernice was uninjured, and had no difficulty running. They walked straight past three empty police cars.
'We need to find a computer to read these disks,' Bernice said.
'Yes, in good time,' the Doctor replied. 'First of all, you need to change out of that dress.'
Bernice raised an eyebrow. 'Why?'
The Doctor clutched the lapels of his frock coat. 'My dear Bernice, you're far too conspicuous in that outfit.'
36
C
hapter Five
The World At One
'This is the World at One, I'm James Naughtie. The headlines: "I'm on the surface chaps". The Mars 97 mission has reached the Red Planet. Much more on that in a moment. On a related but far less happy note, it has just been announced that the last Mars astronaut, Colonel Alexander Christian has escaped his high security prison and is on the loose in Kent.