Chapter 1
The office was dark, and the inspector could barely see the large map of London on the wall opposite him. He muttered something under his breath, and angrily crossed out the page of notes that he had written. Briefly his hand wandered over the long pistol that he had ordered from America, and now wore in a holster by his armpit.
"Over twenty people, all within the City of Westminster and with nothing in common," he said to himself aloud.
He stood up and walked over to the map, tracing the gap between a number of pins with his finger. The inspector gave a start as the office door opened with a loud creak.
"Damn it all, Hathaway, are you trying to give me a heart attack?" the inspector said, clasping his hand to his chest.
"Begging your pardon, Inspector Travers, but you did ask to be told sir," Hathaway said awkwardly. Travers frowned.
"What is it?"
"We've found another one sir,"
***
"So this is the Mary Celeste?" Rose Tyler asked sceptically as she stepped out of the TARDIS, twirling the skirts of her Victorian dress.
"Yep," the Doctor said, hopping out behind her, putting his glasses on "but I'm telling you, it isn't that interesting. Dalek follow me in, crew jump overboard, I leave, daleks leave. Or something like that. All very dull,"
"How come there's a brick wall, then?" Rose asked.
"Eh?" the Doctor muttered, looking vaguely surprised to find himself in a dingy alleyway with a dubious stain in the corner.
"You've done it again, haven't you?"
"Done what?" the Doctor asked innocently, a smirk flickering at the corners of his mouth.
"Gotten us lost," Rose said, crossing her arms and pressing her lips together in a pose that the Doctor had come to refer to as 'the Look'.
"That's entirely possible," he said, nodding agreeably.
"What is it with you and this century!" Rose said, throwing her hands up in the air.
"Come on then," the Doctor said, offering her his arm "I'd hate to have made a wasted trip,"
The pair walked down the alleyway through the dense fog, Rose leaning her head on the Doctor's shoulder slightly.
"Okay, so at a guess I'm going to say London, late 19th century," the time traveller said, grinning down at his younger friend.
"Oh yeah? And how did you work that out, genius?" Rose asked. The Doctor winked at his companion and pointed to an old newspaper that was fluttering around the alleyway in the brief wind.
"You should've brought your umbrella with you," he said "it's going to start bucketing it down in a minute,"
"Right, of course it is," Rose replied, rolling her eyes.
"Hey, trust me on this! I'm a Time Lord, we can feel this kind of thing in the atmosphere," he said, flashing her a grin.
Rose raised an eyebrow. In her experience whenever the Doctor brought them any way into the past, they would always end up in Victorian London. And he never even dressed the part, like she did. He always stuck to the same blue suit and trench coat these days, though she supposed it was better than the whole 'U-Boat captain' thing. She was about to voice that opinion when she noticed that the Doctor had stopped completely.
"What is it?" Rose asked.
The Doctor frowned and moved his head slightly from side to side, before looking at her with the most intensely worried expressions she had ever seen.
"Can't you smell that?" he murmured under his breath, almost to himself. Rose instinctively drew closer to him as a cold breeze sent a chill through the alley.
"Smell what?" she asked.
"Blood," he whispered "so much blood that I can almost taste it,"
He made a few sounds like he was trying to chew through a particularly tough piece of meat, then pulled out his sonic screwdriver. Rose would have laughed at how predictable he was if the Doctor didn't seem to think that the situation was so dangerous. After a few seconds fiddling, the screwdriver lit up the alleyway with it's eerie blue light, making it's familiar and slightly comforting hum.
"This way," the Doctor said, striding down the alleyway with his screwdriver held aloft over his head like a torch. Rose hurried after him, hiking up her skirts so that she could keep up, but still never managing to keep pace with the man. When she finally caught up with the Time Lord in a spot where the dank alleyway opened up, she almost wished that she had not.
The Doctor was crouched down over a body, his long brown trench coat spread out so that it covered the most part of it from Rose's view. As she approached, he shuddered visibly and took off his coat. For a second , Rose had a vision of a pretty, but pallid face, contorted in terror and covered in splatters of blood, before the Doctor lay his brown trench coat over her and sat back on his haunches.
"She's already dead," the Doctor said needlessly, shrugging slightly and subconsciously trying to wipe the blood from his hands onto the bottoms of his suit.
"What happened to her?" Rose asked "Is this Jack the Ripper or something?"
"No, nothing like that," he replied, looking at the covered body guiltily "It looked a little like something had tried to rip her throat out, but I don't think that's it,"
"Why not?" she asked, noting the slight tremor in his voice, and how pale his bony face was.
"Puncture marks," he breathed, almost to himself "the castle door is creaking open,"
Before Rose could ask what on earth he was talking about, there was a sharp intake of breath from the alley entrance. A big, broad policeman with a ruddy face and a tall blue helmet stood looking at them. The Doctor started and held up his bloody hands.
"Hang on a minute!" he started, but was cut off when the policeman put the whistle around his neck to his mouth and blew.
It started to rain.