Doctor Who

SKIN DEEP

By R A Henderson

Episode I: Medicine

Nurse Newman took the calendar down from the wall and flipped the chart onto the new month. As she hung it back up again, she stared at the first date on the chart, wondering how different things would be in this new decade. What would the 1950s have to offer that people couldn't have enjoyed in the 1940s (if there hadn't been a war)? There were rumours that the Japanese were inventing things – newer, more modern alternatives to the wireless and things like that. There was all manner of talk like that about these days, but so much could be said of every time a new decade, or probably even a new century, was ushered in. Deep down the world wouldn't change all that much, the nurse thought sadly. Even if there were not any more wars there would still be men who wanted to kill other men, and some who would go and do it, and there would still be poverty and homelessness and poor creatures like these to look after. She turned and looked at the beds in the ward. Just kids, these were. There were a good few adults, mostly women and the elderly, in the wards upstairs, but these were just kids and the state of them... And all for the sake of one crackpot who wanted to take over the world. What was the human race coming to? Thank goodness, thought Nurse Newman, for the tiny handful of folks there were in the world like the men who had set up this fine hospital. Kind, wealthy humanitarians whose influence could buy a new lease of life for some people, even after those people had been debased and disrupted by war. The Estensen brothers and their project had given people hope. They dabbled in new scientific ideas, and had discovered a means of grafting good skin over disfigured or corrupted tissue. The brothers did not promise people that they would get their old faces back, but they did promise that these new 'cosmetic surgery' procedures might at least give them a face that people could see in the street without feeling sickened or frightened. Men, women and children had come in droves, and there had been quite some success. Two severely disfigured girls had gone home pretty and smiling last year, and for that something had to be said.

'Happy New Year.'

The soft voice startled Nurse Newman and she whirled round to see one of the patients standing at the end of the ward. The little girl had a half-and-half face. One side was normal, a pretty round face with a bright green eye and tresses of wavy red hair. The other side was pinkish-brown, blistered and misshapen, the eyelids melted shut, the hair a mess of lank silver knots. It was almost as if she wore a Halloween mask. It was like that all down her body, the nurse knew. The little girl wore her nightgown now, but Nurse Newman had dressed her many times. Half-and-half from head to toe, an invisible line separating the pure, clean right side of her chest, her abdomen and even her genitalia from the parched, deformed left side. One arm smooth and white, the hand with normal, flexible fingers; the other arm brown and blistered and twisted, the hand a club with fingers fused together in pairs like a bestial claw. Nurse Newman glanced down at the 'claw' and the ragged, threadbare teddy that hung from it. She never let that thing leave her side. 'Go back to bed, Maisie,' the nurse said quietly. 'It's only just after midnight. You should be asleep.'

She turned back to the calendar and checked to make sure it was straight. Mr Ustad was something of a perfectionist and he liked everything to be exactly in order. She turned away from it and walked down the ward to the double-doors. She could still feel eyes – or an eye – burning into her back like a cutting flame. She turned back. 'Maisie,' she sighed. 'Go back to b...'

There was no one there. The ward was empty but for the children asleep in their beds.

Nine weeks later

'I do not think I like Brighton, Doctor,' Leela declared as she sat on the end of the pier in the purple and white striped late-1940s-cut bathing suit that she had found in the TARDIS wardrobe. She was used to brief clothing – better for a warrior to bear as few physical encumbrances as possible – but the wind was cold and her skin was reddening and becoming chapped. There was no one on the pier and no one on the beach, and the cafes, amusements and ice-cream stands were all shuttered up. Earlier in the day a man had walked a dog along the beach, but nothing more exciting than that had happened.

The Doctor's head burst spontaneously from a red-and-white striped changing tent and he looked as though her statement had taken him completely by surprise. 'You don't like it?' he hooted in absolute incredulity, which then suddenly changed in its usual irritating way to an almost childlike curiosity. 'Why not?'

'It is cold,' Leela replied flatly. 'And there is no one here. I wear almost nothing and just sit here on the end of this... this...'

'It's called a pier,' said the Doctor. 'And it's one of the most famous piers in Britain. People are always coming here for short holidays to amuse themselves.'

Leela glanced around. 'Well, there is no one here now,' she said. 'And there is nothing to amuse us.'

The Doctor stepped out of the changing tent, very much unchanged, still in his usual coat, waistcoat, shirt, trousers, boots and large broad-brimmed hat, not to mention the enormous and rather ridiculous scarf. 'It's just the wrong time of year, that's all,' he shrugged. 'You know, I really must get the TARDIS seen to.'

'You say that many times, Doctor,' said Leela. 'And never do it.'

'All right,' the Doctor replied huffily. 'I will! I'll take her in now for her five hundred year service!' and he turned on his heel and marched away along the pier.

Leela scrambled to her feet and jogged to catch up with him. 'We are going back to the TARDIS?'

'Yes,' the Doctor confirmed. 'It'll give you a chance to put some proper clothes on.'

The pair walked back up the deserted pier toward the street upon whose corner the TARDIS was parked. The Doctor had explained to Leela that it would be perfectly fine there with the 'Out of Order' sign hanging on the handles, as Police Boxes were rather commonplace in Britain in this time period and no one would give it a second look. Leela had reserved her judgement, but the Doctor had been totally confident.

Which was why it was such a shock to him when he arrived on the corner to find that the TARDIS was gone...

The door closed behind the two men as they stepped out into the driving rain and started to walk back to the car. The battered Ford 2GA was marred with patches of rust and scratched paintwork, and it was generally unreliable and inclined to break down at the drop of a hat, but that didn't keep it from presenting a rather welcome refuge to the two police detectives who clambered into it and slammed the doors tight shut against the weather. Chief Inspector Gideon took off his dripping trilby hat and threw it in his usual casual manner over his shoulder onto the back seat, and Sergeant Hobbs did the same. 'What a day to be out in it,' Hobbs grimaced through the passenger window. 'They pick the best weather, don't they?'

'Crime isn't football, Alec,' Gideon replied sternly. 'Rain stopped play? I don't think so, son.'

Alec sighed. 'No, I suppose not. Hardly the crime of the century, though, nicking a police box.'

Gideon started the car, or rather attempted to start the car, grunting as he fiddled with the choke and shuffling his feet on the pedals. 'Well we've had a look at it and now it's somebody else's problem,' he told his sergeant flatly. 'If anyone else can open it.'

The car spluttered into life.

As it rolled up to the junction at the end of the road, Alec Hobbs opened the glove box and removed, of course, his gloves, which he pulled on quickly. 'Well, what are we doing now, then?' he asked, remembering that the Chief Inspector had received a phone call while at the station in Brighton from his own people at Scotland Yard and been very enigmatic about it.

'We've got something else to investigate,' Gideon told him. 'Something a bit more what you'd call tasty.'

'Oh?' asked Alec, intrigued.

'A dead body,' exclaimed Gideon with over-dramatised excitement.

Alec raised an eyebrow in surprise. 'Tasty,' he said.

'Mr Lea!'

Philip Lea stopped as he heard someone call his name and turned to look up the corridor to see who it was. Staff Nurse Bennett was trotting toward him, giving the awkward smile she always put out when she was about to ask a favour that she really oughtn't to ask. He made an effort to give her a reassuring smile back. 'What can I do for you this morning, Norah?'

'I was wondering if I might see Mr Ustad this afternoon?' Norah said. 'I think I have a Grade Four selectee for the Estensens' approval.'

'Really?' Lea was suddenly interested. 'Which of the patients were you considering?'

'Wright,' Norah told him, handing over a clipboard with the patient's details on it. 'Ward 14A. She's the neediest of the children, and I think she fits the criteria.'

Lea checked over the charts on the clipboard, chewing his lip. 'I'm not sure,' he murmured. 'We've not tried the procedure on any of the children before. Of course they're as entitled to the surgery as any of the adults, but you can understand with the young ones we have to be careful.'

'And we will be,' another voice smoothly added itself to the conversation and a white-gloved hand carefully but firmly took the clipboard from Lea's. 'Now let's have a look at this, shall we?'

Lea turned and really put on a smile this time. 'Mr Ustad,' he said fawningly. 'What an unexpected pleasure, sir. And how are Messrs Estensen?'

Absorbed in the patient charts on the clipboard, Ustad waved Lea away casually with his free hand and then glanced up. 'It's a little early in the morning for sycophancy,' he said. Then, as Lea walked away to get back to his work, Ustad looked at Norah Bennett. 'Why wasn't this patient brought to my attention sooner, Staff Nurse?' he demanded calmly but with definite authority.

'As Mr Lea said, sir,' explained Norah. 'You've not worked on any of the children yet. We were wondering if perhaps either Mr Estensen might be putting it off until you were ready. Children are a lot different from adults, aren't they?'

'We're all human,' Ustad replied casually. 'Children have precisely the same organs as adults, just rather smaller.' He gave the clipboard back to Norah. 'Prepare Maisie Wright at once for complete cosmetic enhancement of her left side. I'll be operating tonight.'

Norah nodded. 'Yes sir,' she said as she left.

The Doctor barged through the doors of the police station with all the delicacy and discretion of a hippopotamus riding on a shopping trolley and charged the front desk with equal calm, peaceful reservation. There was a sergeant manning the desk who looked like he'd seen better days, his hair greying and wispy, his face round and a little too rosy and his uniform pinching at his blubber. He had been leafing through some custody sheets for the sake of something to do on this boring day when the weather seemed too miserable for even the robbers and brawlers to be out, and then suddenly the doors had parted like the Red Sea and this wild-eyed, wild-haired nutcase had stormed in. Well, Sergeant Hubert John Gladstone Knox was not going to have a bar of him. Sergeant Knox pushed out his chest and chin (as best he could in his ill-conditioned state) and looked sternly at the entering stranger. 'Now, then,' he cautioned. 'What's all this palaver, eh?'

The wild man slammed the palms of his hands down on the desk and stared right into Knox's eyes. There was something distinctly odd about him. 'I'm looking for a police box,' he announced as if such an enquiry were a normal everyday thing in this place.

Knox's expression drooped. Definitely completely round the bend. 'Well, we don't keep them on station, sir,' he explained drily. 'Normally they're littered about the town. But if you have a crime to report, there's no need for a box, sir. You can do it here in the station.'

The nutcase seemed to change in that instant, and his wild, mad look became a delighted grin, his eyes seeming suddenly friendlier. 'Oh,' he beamed. 'Well, in that case, Sergeant, I'd like to report a theft.'

'A theft, sir,' Knox nodded, producing his notebook and a pencil. 'And what precisely has been stolen, sir?'

'A police box,' the Doctor replied.

Knox put his pencil down and sighed. 'No disrespect, sir,' he said tiredly, 'but are you pulling my leg?' The madman didn't answer, his expression changing again to one of surprise. 'Police boxes are the property of the police force, sir,' Knox continued. 'It's impossible for...'

'This one isn't,' the Doctor said, this time wearing a completely serious face. 'This one belongs to me.'

'Are you a member of the Brighton Police, sir?'

'No.'

'Are you a member of any British Police Force, sir?'

'No.'

'Are you a representative of the Home Office of Her Majesty's Government, sir?'

'No.'

Knox sighed again. 'Then, with respect, sir, the police box...'

The Doctor rummaged in his pockets and produced a wallet, which he flipped open to reveal an identity card. He counted himself fortunate that he had not for once left this one in the TARDIS. He held it up in front of Knox's hawk-like nose. '...Is my property,' he said quietly, finishing the sentence with firm finality.

Knox blushed. 'I'm sorry, sir,' he blustered. 'Perhaps if you'd told me you were with the Secret Service...'

'Ssh!' the Doctor hissed, raising a finger quickly to his lips. Then he leaned in conspiratorially and said in a hushed voice, 'Well, I can hardly go around telling everybody, can I? What kind of Secret Service agent would I be if I couldn't keep a secret?'

Knox nodded, fighting to smile. 'Oh, yes. Of course, sir.'

Suddenly the Doctor was upright and loud again. 'So, about my box?'

'We did have a police box brought in this afternoon,' Knox informed him. 'Was a bit of a mystery – till you came on the scene, that is – because no one knew where it had come from. It certainly wasn't supposed to be there. We've got records showing the locations of every one we have. A couple of our bobbies tried to open it, but nobody's been able to get in. We popped open the telephone and had a go on that too, but it wasn't connected.'

'Yes,' the Doctor nodded. 'I'm afraid it's not a real police box.'

'I see, sir. May I ask what it is that you've seen fit to disguise as a police box?'

'I'm afraid I couldn't possibly answer that. Top secret, you see.'

The policeman nodded and put away his notebook and pencil. 'I'll have it signed out to you at once, sir. I take it you can verify that you have the right to claim it?'

The Doctor nodded. 'Just make a telephone call to Whitehall and tell them the Doctor wants his police box back.'

It was raining.

The rain was hard and heavy, continuing and relentless like the onslaught of a powerful tribe driving into war, the hammering of the fast, heavy raindrops on roofs and walls like the jungle drums sounding the order to attack. It was cold and the sky was grey, and the ground beneath Leela's feet was grey, and the walls around her were grey. The people of this world seemed to care a lot for gaunt, hard, grey things. Even the windows of the grey buildings were streaked with grey dirt that even the rain from the grey sky didn't wash away. Leela pulled the Doctor's coat and scarf around her and hoped that he would find the TARDIS soon. Beneath the coat she was still practically naked, and she was beginning to feel ill. Also she wasn't armed. There weren't many places in a bathing suit where one could stash a blade. That made her feel undressed and unsafe more than the simple brevity of her clothing ever could. Two men stepped out of the door near to where she was, as per the Doctor's instructions, doing her best to conceal herself. He had said that a young girl walking around with hardly any clothes on might be looked upon rather negatively, and that the police might decide to lock her up in a cell if they found her, which was ridiculous considering that it had apparently been perfectly all right to wear this tiny garment on the beach. The two men strode down the steps toward a black machine. Since their arrival in Brighton, Leela had seen a few of these travel machines moving about. The Doctor had called them cars. The men entered the machine and sat inside it for a moment, the doors closed, apparently talking.

Then the Doctor stepped out, accompanied by one of the Blue Guards that he called 'police', like the word on the TARDIS, but not like, as he had once explained, much to her further confusion. Sometimes she thought he did it deliberately, that he thought her stupid and teased her. Sometimes it made her angry. He passed her a bag. 'Clothes,' he said. 'From the TARDIS.'

Leela took the bag gratefully. 'Where will I dress?'

'You'll have to do it in the car,' the Doctor told her. 'Don't worry. Constable Marsh is a gentleman. He won't look.'

The car that the other two men had been talking inside suddenly gave a roar. Constable Marsh glanced at the Doctor. 'Shall we go, sir?'

The Doctor nodded. 'I think we'd better. Come on.'

'Body is certainly the word, Chief Inspector.' Dr Watts rubbed at his hands with a square of linen as he led the two detectives into the mortuary. The body lay uncovered on the slab, white and grey and cold and inert, and with quite a few pieces missing. 'As you can see, all we have here is a torso with arms and legs. The head, hands and feet have been cut off.'

Chief Inspector Gideon looked down at the body, slowly shaking his head. 'That's nasty. Who'd want to do a thing like that?'

'That is your province to find out, Chief Inspector,' said Watts. 'I can't even identify him for you. No one can. I expect that's why those body parts were taken away in the first place. I can only tell you that the deceased is male, and I can only tell you that because the killer didn't feel the need to remove the penis or testicles.'

'Thank you, doctor,' grimaced Gideon. 'So they cut off the head so that no one would recognise his face...'

'Or be able to identify him by his dental records. Teeth can tell a tale or two, you know. And his hands and feet to prevent him being identified by police by fingerprints or footprints. So it's very likely he had a criminal record, and because footprints aren't widely used, I'd say it's for something the chap did with his shoes off.'

'That's a lot of use. Where was he found?'

'Jammed between a couple of rocks in a weir about five miles from here. Not all that far from that new hospital with the fancy foreign name. You know the one, all that 'cosmetic surgery' stuff, patching up disfigured faces and such.'

'The Estensen Cosmetic Research Hospital,' Sergeant Hobbs said from the back of the room, where he stood in order to keep himself from looking at the remains on the slab. He hated morgues. 'Up in the country.'

Gideon nodded decisively. 'Then we'll make that our first port of call. Maybe he worked there.' And he marched toward the exit. 'Come on, Alec.'

Suddenly a man burst in, accompanied by a uniformed constable and a woman in an Argyll sweater and thick trousers. 'I need to take a look at that body,' the man announced.

Dr Watts stepped back, taken by surprise. 'Who are you, sir?' he demanded.

'We'd all like to know that, sir,' Gideon announced as he stepped in.

The Doctor produced his wallet again. 'I'm an investigator for the Secret Service,' he snapped, darting for the body and crouching beside the slab to examine it closely. 'I've been sent to enquire into the possibility of a forthcoming invasion.'

Gideon looked concerned. He'd heard that there was a lot of unrest between the Americans and the Russians these days. People were calling it the 'Cold War' and Britain was getting dragged into it by the ankles. 'Russians, is it?' he asked. 'Planning a strategic move to occupy us so they can get one over on the Yanks?'

'Something like that,' the Doctor murmured. 'Leela, come and look.'

Sergeant Hobbs looked shocked. 'That's no sight for a lady, sir!' he blustered.

'Leela's no lady,' the Doctor said. 'She's a savage. An... an Amazon. She knows more about brutal killings than anyone in this room.'

Leela was examining the lump of meat on the slab. 'It is like an execution,' she said. 'He has offended the leader of his tribe and there is no redemption. So foul is he that the leader of his tribe has declared that no one, not even the Gods, shall know him. So they cut away all the things that give him a name. A large blade is used, heavy and sharp, so that each hand, each foot and the head can be cut away with a single blow.'

The Doctor smiled grimly. 'A bit of a primal way of putting it, but I'd say more-or-less accurate.'

'You think this was some kind of gang ritual?' asked Hobbs.

'That's not what I said,' the Doctor answered darkly. 'I'm going to need your help,' he said, rounding on Chief Inspector Gideon. 'With all the unrest between the East and West at the moment, my department is spread rather thinly, and so I'm going to have to enlist support from whatever authorities are available locally. I trust you're not averse to doing your public duty, for the good of your country, Chief Inspector?'

'I wasn't averse to it when I volunteered to go and fight the Nazis,' declared Gideon, piercing blue eyes staring at the Doctor brightly. 'I'm certainly not bloody well averse to it now.'

'Good man,' said the Doctor. 'Then let's go.' And he made for the door. Leela followed him.

'Go where?' asked the Sergeant.

'To the Estensen Hospital,' the Doctor called from the corridor outside. 'I have a feeling the answers will be there!'

Gideon and Hobbs glanced at each other, grabbed the constable and followed.

The Estensen brothers were twins. That was quite interesting. It wasn't often one saw twins, especially working in an office together. They were what people called identical twins, looking but for a few near-imperceptible details exactly alike, and for that reason alone Maisie Wright liked them instantly. She also liked them because they promised that they would give her back her normal face, make it pretty like it was before her accident. She had been fetched from her bed by Nurse Newman that evening, just after supper, and taken to Mr Ustad's office. Mr Ustad had asked Maisie if she would like to be the next to have the procedure, and the child had of course jumped at the chance. She had been living in the hospital now for eight months – residency had been mandatory for those who wanted the procedure – and she'd begun to wonder if they'd ever allow her to have the treatment. Often she'd look at her gnarled, twisted claw-hand hatefully, and she'd even bite it and make it bleed, as if she were punishing it. For a time Mr Ustad had been forced to order her placed on 24 hour self-harm watch so that if she tried to hurt herself she could be caught and stopped before doing any serious harm. Ustad had insisted that Maisie should not be punished for harming herself. He'd explained to the doctors and nurses that people who harm themselves are often deeply upset with themselves, and chiding and scolding them would only make it worse. The best thing they could all do for Maisie was be kind, sympathetic and understanding. Take her hand from between her teeth gently, tell her what a poor thing she is, hug her and give her a biscuit. Tell her they understood and weren't angry. All the children were allowed to see their parents, and Maisie's mother and father often visited her, bringing her soft toys and sweets. No one took any of the things away from her, or any of the children. This was a hospital where everyone was truly cared for. And now Maisie had the chance to actually meet the two kind, caring gentlemen who had made it all happen, created this amazing place and filled it with hope. Mr Ustad had, after Maisie had agreed to undergo the procedure, telephoned her father and asked him to come and sign a waiver allowing for the operation to go ahead. Mr Wright drove out to the hospital that instant and signed the form, tenderly kissing the pretty side of Maisie's face through tears and promising her she'd 'be so pretty' when he saw her again. She cried too, and smiled, and then Daddy went home and Mr Ustad took Maisie up to the very top floor to the office of Messrs Estensen. The office was cosy and luxurious, wood-panelled and furnished with a large mahogany desk and comfortable leather-upholstered chairs, quite like Daddy's study really. The identical twin brothers, both bald despite obviously not being particularly old, one spectacled, one not, both wearing grey suits and navy blue ties, sat in armchairs smiling and offered Maisie and Mr Ustad chairs. Maisie was sitting in a chair next to Mr Ustad, smiling back at the brothers.

'Now, Maisie,' smiled Mr Estensen On The Left. 'Perhaps you could explain to us how you developed such unusual disfigurements. It's very strange for a person to have a perfectly straight line down the body, dividing the deformed side from the perfect.'

'Please don't feel pressured to answer,' said Mr Estensen On The Right. 'We understand that your condition is quite upsetting.'

Maisie smiled. 'It's all right,' she said bravely. 'I can talk about it.'

Mr Estensen On The Right nodded. 'Please go on.'

'It was the war,' said Maisie. 'I was only a baby.'

'How old are you now, Maisie?' asked Estensen-Left.

'Eleven, sir,' she told him. 'I was born right at the beginning of the war. Don't even remember most of it. But I remember when I got burned. I was supposed to get evacuated, but I was at the train station with Nanny and I got upset. I...' Maisie blushed. 'I wet myself. Nanny had to take me into the toilet and change my clothes. We missed the train and Nanny took me home. We said we'd get the train tomorrow, but then on the night the house got bombed.'

'Where were you, Maisie?' asked Estensen-Right. 'When you heard the air-raid siren?'

'I was sitting under the table,' said Maisie. 'Playing. I heard all the panic, and Mummy looking for me. Then the bomb fell. It never hit us. It hit the road outside, but the whole house shook. The table fell on me, landed half-on me, like a line down my middle, and Mummy had made soup for six.'

Estensen-Left nodded. 'The soup was piping-hot and poured all over the exposed side of your body,' he concluded.

'The table prevented it getting to your right side,' added Estensen-Right. There was an odd synchronicity about them, as if they were some sort of double-act. 'I see. Severe scalding, matched with the fact that there was a crisis and there wasn't time to get you immediately to a hospital...'

'Yes,' agreed Estensen-Left. 'I see how it happened. Mr Ustad, do you think you can successfully carry out the necessary procedure?'

Ustad, who had been hitherto silent, observing the discussion, nodded. 'Certainly, sirs,' he'd purred smoothly. 'I'm confident that I can make an enormous difference to at least one side of this young lady's life. A few grafts and her sinister side can be as aesthetically charming as her dexter.'

'And you have a signature of consent from her father?' asked Estensen-Right.

'Of course,' said Ustad.

'Then begin at once,' said Estensen-Left. 'Let's have this young lady's smile shining by tomorrow.'

Then Mr Ustad had stood up and led the dressing-gowned young girl back down the stairs, this time all the way down, to the converted basement, once an enormous wine cellar, that had become the Operating Theatre and Appended Departments. As she had descended the stairs, Maisie had been glowing and tingling from head to toe. Everything was about to change. At last she would be beautiful.

Leela turned away from the window of the car and looked at the Doctor, who sat beside her on the back seat. Beyond him sat Constable Marsh, who had dozed off to sleep. Still cautious, however, Leela kept her voice a whisper. 'How did you know about the body?' she asked.

Equally quietly, and doing his best not to move his lips much, the Doctor told her, 'I overheard that policeman on the telephone.' He nodded toward Gideon.

'Telephone?'

'It doesn't matter. I heard him talking to someone about the body and I decided to investigate.'

'Do you think there will be an invasion?'

'I don't know. Initially the body just sounded interesting, but now that I've seen it I can't help thinking something's very wrong here.'

Leela was puzzled. 'How can you tell?'

The Doctor lowered his voice further still, making it a whisper. 'You were right about the head, hands and feet sliced off with a single chop,' he told her. 'But wrong about a large blade being used. The edges where the appendages were severed were slightly cauterised.'

'What is cauterised?'

'It's when animal tissue damage self-seals because it was burnt. Like a wound closing because of the skin around it being melted.'

Leela was none the wiser. 'What does it mean?'

'It means those body parts were chopped off with a laser beam,' said the Doctor. 'A laser beam of remarkable power and precision, nothing the like of which could exist on this planet at this time.'

Leela was silent, pondering the thought.

'We're here,' called Hobbs from the front passenger seat. 'Wake that twit up!' And as the car stopped he opened the door and got out onto the gravel drive.

The Doctor nudged Marsh. 'Come on, Constable!' he said. 'Look lively!'

Marsh groggily opened his door and stepped out. He straightened his uniform jacket and smiled sheepishly at Chief Inspector Gideon. 'Sorry, sir,' he said pathetically.

Gideon sighed. 'We'll worry about it later,' he said decisively. 'Let's get moving.' And he walked through the gates toward the large house.

'Impressive,' observed the Doctor. 'Almost a stately home. This Estensen chap must be quite wealthy.'

'There are two Estensens,' said Hobbs. 'Brothers, and they are quite wealthy, yes. They've invested money in Azerbaijani oil and Japanese electro-whatever... I dunno... anyway, they can easily afford a place like this.'

Gideon nodded as they all made for the main entrance doors. 'But they came in from Denmark and bought the place at lightning speed, and less than a month later it was a hospital advertising life-changing surgery.'

'Life-changing in what way?' asked the Doctor.

'The Estensens call it 'cosmetic' surgery,' said Gideon. 'Don't know the ins and outs of it myself, but from what I can gather the procedure corrects deformities in some way, all but fixes physical ugliness.'

The Doctor quickened his pace. 'I've heard of cosmetic surgery,' he said. 'Have you ever seen the results?'

'Two girls came out of this hospital last year,' said Hobbs. 'When they went in they had severe burns all over their faces, when they came out you'd never have known it was the same girls. They looked exactly like photographs taken before their accidents.'

The Doctor started running for the doors.

Leela rushed to catch up with him. 'What is it, Doctor?' she shouted. 'What is wrong?'

'Cosmetic surgery procedures that advanced aren't available anywhere in the world in 1950,' the Doctor answered as he reached the doors and barged through. 'Someone in this building has access to higher technology and must be stopped.' He stepped, almost fell, into the reception area. There was a long curved service desk with no one behind it, mounted with a small bell of the kind one might find on the reservations desk of a hotel. Opposite the desk stood an ornate wooden staircase. Leela went to investigate the stairs while the Doctor rang the bell. No one answered.

Gideon and his fellow officers filed through the doorway. 'What's happening?'

'Nothing,' said the Doctor. 'It's deserted.'

'Doctor?' called Leela nervously.

The Doctor looked over to his companion, who crouched at the foot of the stairs in a fighting stance, tensed to engage an enemy. 'What's the matter?' he asked. She didn't answer and he joined her at the foot of the stairs, following her eyeline.

A little girl, perhaps ten or eleven years old, with long flame-red curls stood on the fifth step. She wore an Alice In Wonderland style dress and a large, cheerful blue ribbon, tied in a bow in her hair. She was offering a hand, as if her intention were to greet the visitors and shake hands with them, though the Doctor could see instantly that this was not the case. 'Hello,' he said quietly to the child, his voice calm and soothing. 'I'm the Doctor. What's your name?'

The child didn't answer. Instead she smiled, and her smile dripped with evil.

'Beware of her, Doctor,' Leela warned as he placed his foot on the first step.

'Oh, come on!' scoffed Hobbs. 'She's just a kid!'

The Doctor kept his eyes fixed on the child. 'She's rather more than that, I'm afraid, Sergeant,' he said, looking up at the girl. 'But not quite an Auton, eh?'

The girl giggled and the fingers on her extended left hand dropped away on an invisible hinge.

To be continued...