Doctor Who Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Authors

  Title Page

  Dismemberment by James Goss

  Lords and Masters by Cavan Scott

  Teddy Sparkles Must Die! by Paul Magrs

  The Liar, the Glitch and the War Zone by Peter Anghelides

  Girl Power! by Jacqueline Rayner

  Alit in Underland by Richard Dinnick

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Six brand new stories featuring your favourite Time Lady…

  Dismemberment

  The leading lights of Missy’s private members’ club bar her on the grounds that she’s female. They’re going to regret it.

  Lords and Masters

  With her TARDIS hijacked, Missy is forced to take on a dangerous mission for the High Council. But she’s nobody’s puppet…

  Teddy Sparkles Must Die!

  Missy isn’t exactly cut out to be a 1920s governess, but a wish-granting alien teddy bear will make anything worthwhile.

  The Liar, the Glitch and the Warzone

  Trapped in Venice between two time-zones, pursued by militaristic Gryphons, Missy will do anything to survive.

  Girl Power!

  The world would be a better place with women in charge, and Missy goes online with the past to prove it…

  Alit in Underland

  While the Doctor recovers on floor 507 of the Mondas Colony Ship, Missy and the Master hunt for their own way out – with a stowaway in tow.

  About the Authors

  PETER ANGHELIDES has written award-winning and best-selling titles for BBC Books, BBC Audio, Virgin Publishing and Big Finish Productions. His original novels, audios and short stories include Doctor Who, Torchwood, Blake’s 7 and The Sarah Jane Adventures. His website is anghelides.org

  RICHARD DINNICK is a writer for the BBC, ITV and Disney – most recently writing on the TV series Thunderbirds Are Go. He has written books and short stories for Doctor Who, Sherlock Holmes and Stargate.

  JAMES GOSS has adapted three Doctor Who stories by Douglas Adams for BBC Books (City of Death, The Pirate Planet, and The Krikkitmen). He’s also written several original Doctor Who and Torchwood books.

  PAUL MAGRS has written numerous novels and short stories for adults, teens, children and Doctor Who fans. His most recent book is Heart of Mars, which is the final part of the ‘Lost on Mars’ trilogy published by Firefly.

  JACQUELINE RAYNER is the author of over 40 books and audio plays, including number one bestseller The Stone Rose, the highest-selling Doctor Who novel of all time, and two World Book Day Quick Reads titles.

  CAVAN SCOTT has written for such popular series as Star Wars, Star Trek, Pacific Rim, Vikings, and Doctor Who. The writer of Titan Comic’s ongoing adventures of the Ninth Doctor, Cavan became a UK number one bestseller with his 2016 World Book Day title, Star Wars: Adventures in Wild Space – The Escape.

  Dismemberment

  James Goss

  There is a tradition, and there is a chair to go with it.

  The Scoundrels Club was one of London’s oldest, most exclusive private members’ clubs. The blasphemous bard Christopher Marlowe was a founder member, as were a whole host of spies, knaves and pirates – the very, very worst people that the British Empire had ever produced. All of them holding court in the club’s marbled halls, scheming over the billiard tables, conniving over cigars, or simply dozing and dreaming of scandal in the club’s wealth of leather chairs (some of the leather was fashioned from the hides of extinct species, or, in one case, an unwanted wife).

  A particular seat had, for a considerable number of years, been the Master’s home from home. He liked the light from the fire, the view it afforded of St James’s Park, and it was right by the bell, which summoned a butler from behind a bookcase to attend to his every whim.

  The Master had a tradition: whenever he changed body, he headed for the Scoundrels, he settled himself down in his chair, and he gathered his wits about him. Like most habits, he had no idea how he had acquired it, but it appealed to him. Plus, he knew that if the Doctor ever found out about it, it would annoy him no end. No matter how battered the Master was in spirit or body, he could sit here and remember former glories – the time he’d sat down for cigars with the Chinese Ambassador (shortly before having him devoured by dragons); the occasion he’d sold Lord Sutcliffe a giant whale over dinner; why, his copy of Magna Carta even hung in the map room (bringing back fond memories of his attempt to alter history with a singing robot).

  The Master knew that he could stride in here, no matter how different he looked, and no one would raise an eyebrow. He would simply adopt his chair, summon a pot of something reviving, and peruse the paper, looking for the cartoons, or any really funny wars.

  This time, however, there was a problem.

  Harrison Mandeville was the Head of the Scoundrels’ feared 1702 Committee. Nothing happened at the Scoundrels without his knowledge. He ran the place just how his members liked it – with the air of a miserable English public school. The heating went on every November 1st and came off on March 12th. The food was expensive but awful. The porters wore starched blazers. There was even a cricket team (which never played). Mandeville took a particular pleasure in blackballing African dictators’ membership applications, though only after they’d bribed him handsomely. And if the bribes came from funds intended for hospitals, so much the better.

  Mandeville occupied a secluded corner of the upper library where he could enjoy the view of traffic wardens at work. He was seldom disturbed, and that was how he liked it.

  He let the butler stand before him for a full minute before he acknowledged him.

  ‘Well? What is it?’

  ‘Sir,’ the butler stammered. ‘The most terrible thing has happened.’

  ‘Indeed?’ Mandeville raised an eyebrow. He knew terrible. He’d once run a fashion show in North Korea.

  ‘Sir. There’s a … a woman in the members’ lounge.’

  Mandeville blanched. The Scoundrels had harboured many awful people over the years. Hawley Crippen had hidden out in its chambers before fleeing the authorities, Oswald Mosley had taken shelter from a mob, the bank robber Lytton had kept bullion in the cellar, but never, never, never before had the Scoundrels entertained a woman. Well, not a living one.

  ‘She is sat in his chair – you know, second from the fire – and she has ordered afternoon tea.’

  Mandeville stood, eyes blazing with the happy fury of a man who knew that he was completely in the right.

  ‘Very well. Something must be done,’ he announced, tugging at his whiskers. ‘And I’m the man to do it.’

  Mandeville sensed all eyes on him as he prowled across the lounge (the carpet had been torn from a mosque during the fall of Constantinople). Hands shook as they gripped newspapers. Ice cubes jingled angrily in tumblers. Throats were cleared menacingly. Every man expected Mandeville to do his duty.

  Mandeville reached the Master’s chair and stared, freshly aghast.

  Not only was a woman sat in the chair, but she embodied absolutely all the worst aspects of his childhood – the flowing plum skirts of his nanny, the distant, cruel beauty of his mother. She was currently smearing strawberry jam on a slice of cucumber.

  He cleared his throat.

  She loaded a dollop of clotted cream on the cucumber, then looked up at him with a smile. Her eyes possessed that cold burn you got from holding ice. Her smile twitched this way and that, as though constantly changing its mind.

  ‘Ye-es? Have you brought me more jam?’

  ‘Jam?’

  ‘Oh yes, I was begging for apricot.’ She bit down on the slice of cucumber with a snap that echoed from the walls.

  ‘I am n
ot bringing you apricot jam.’ Mandeville had, over the years, acquired a deadpan delivery which worked wonderfully when firing people.

  ‘Then you can go.’ The woman waved him away, picked up another slice of cucumber, applied some more jam to it, and this time nibbled at it with the delicacy of a piranha.

  ‘The person who is going, madam, is you,’ announced Mandeville, enjoying his moment.

  ‘Me?’ The cucumber was dropped into a cup of tea, where it floated uncertainly. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’ Her lips tugged themselves unwillingly towards a grin. ‘And certainly not before I get some apricot jam.’

  ‘This club,’ Mandeville’s voice bulldozered on, ‘is for gentlemen only. Gentlemen who are elected. Gentlemen who are revered by their peers. It is not a watering hole for lady shoppers who wander in off the streets.’

  The woman picked up a teaspoon and, with no effort at all, scored a noughts and crosses board into the marquetry of the table. ‘I am a member. I have been a member since the Great Fire Of London.’ A pause. She brightened, remembering something. ‘I was the one who organised the fireworks party on the roof.’ She flicked the teaspoon up and tapped it against her teeth. ‘Look at me. You can see who I am. This is my chair. I’ve sat in it wearing several different bodies and once as a snake without a murmur. Don’t be boring.’

  ‘If what you say is true, you’ve just ruined a table and the club’s reputation,’ Mandeville coughed. ‘Once a fellow is a member, he stays a member for life. We do not discriminate. We do not ask questions. But we do ask that he remains a he. The one thing that the Scoundrels Club has never been is fashionable.’ He glowered at her. ‘The door is over there. The waiters will be delighted to show you to it.’

  The woman yawned, a yawn so deep that she could poke her vocal cords with the teaspoon. So she did. Then she stood up, and looked at the chairs around her.

  ‘Oi, you lot,’ she bellowed. The men in the chairs hid further behind their papers. ‘You all know it’s me. You do. I’ve just been through a traumatic experience. What I need is a sit down, a cuppa and to put my feet up – if not on a pile of dead bodies then a stool will do fine. The simple fact is I’m tired, and this place – in its own silly way – feels like home.’

  The newspapers barely stirred in the breeze.

  The woman put her hands on her hips. ‘You lot – you’re the closest things I have to friends. By which I mean you’re awful, loathsome people – but you’re my kind of people. Lord Ascot – remember when I helped you out with those naughty Swiss bankers by arranging that skiing trip for them on Everest? And Bobo – how many of your wives have I taken to the zoo … after dark? And what about you, Surgeon?’ She kicked the chair nearest the fire which housed Harley Street’s finest sawbones. ‘Who do you come crying to whenever you need human test subjects? And don’t I always deliver – kicking, screaming and quite free range?’

  Her appeal met with unanimous silence. Even the Surgeon merely tutted.

  ‘Listen to me. I need refuge, I need succour, most of all, I need a scone. What do you say? Guys? Lads? Boys?’

  The Scoundrels Club had a grand entrance with polished brass and a polished doorman. It also had a door for trades, rubbish and laundry. Through this was flung the woman. She landed heavily on the pavement in a heap of crumpled cloth.

  She looked back at Mandeville, flanked in the doorway by three of the burliest porters.

  ‘So,’ she said, holding up a broken umbrella. ‘This is how you want to play it?’

  Mandeville nodded. ‘There is no place for you here.’ He reached into a pocket and pulled out a jar. He tossed it at her. ‘Your jam.’

  It broke on the pavement. For a moment, he thought she was going to cry. Instead she dabbed at the mixture of jam and glass and licked her finger. ‘Almost worth it,’ she considered. She stood, brushing down her skirt.

  Standing in front of the Scoundrels Club, she looked tired, she looked ill, and she looked crumpled. But her lips were curled and her teeth were bared. She raised a fist and shook it at the club.

  ‘You may think I have the body of a weak and feeble woman. But I have a time machine and absolutely zero morals. Plus, I’m exceptionally spiteful.’

  She curtsied, turned around and skipped off down the pavement. Mandeville snorted and went back inside.

  Lord Ascot was not only a leading light at the Scoundrels Club, he was also a dynamo of the London art world. No one quite knew where his money came from, and it was rude to ask, but he’d paid for the Ascot Gallery, and for the Ascot Garden Bridge which spanned the Thames and led up to the gallery door. The gallery occupied a patch of the South Bank that had recently been quite nice council flats. Well, until that unexplained gas leak, which saw the tenants temporarily moved to Blackpool … only then the flats had been suddenly condemned, and approval had been rushed through for Lord Ascot’s glass and steel gallery.

  The Garden Bridge was his lordship’s greatest gift to the nation (although, strangely, it was often closed to the public so it could be hired out at great expense to private functions). The whole complex ensured that, as far as the United Kingdom was concerned, Lord Ascot was a champion of the people.

  After all, what greater sign was there of his good will and philanthropy than his making his entire collection available to the nation? Even if it wasn’t free of charge, he was still a great man, and all his cultural largesse distracted from the secret deals with shady characters, and even the very curious rumours that most of the crates labelled ‘Ascot Art’ that were waved through Customs contained anything other than paintings.

  Tonight was the grand opening of the Ascot Gallery, and the great and the good put aside their little qualms about the big man (after all, it was free to get in and there’d be free champagne), put on their finest clothes and trooped over the garden bridge to marvel at the gallery.

  One or two guests glanced up at the sky. It looked like rain. It is oddly unpleasant to be on a bridge during the rain; the world feels flimsy.

  Only one of the people on the bridge had thought to bring an umbrella. Like her dress and petticoat it was purple. She greeted everyone heading towards the Ascot Gallery with a cheery wave, and quite a few nodded back, wondering if they recognised her. Had she been on reality TV? Was she that woman who went round dodgy B&Bs? Whatever, she blew them all kisses, and a few blew them back.

  Then the threatened rain made good on its promise.

  At first the people pretended not to notice. They were loyal Londoners and had long ago learned to ignore rain. They simply pulled up their collars, tilted their chins and pressed on. London expects nothing less.

  But then the screams started. At first little yelps that caused people to look around in confusion – where was the noise coming from, who was making it and would someone please shut them up? But then the screaming spread.

  It was raining blood.

  Not the cheery ketchup of horror movies, but a deep abattoir crimson that splashed across faces, stained white shirts and cream dresses, poured into eyes and gaping mouths, and caused a stampede across the bridge towards the doors of the gallery. Behind them, the puddles of blood dripped from the sides of the bridge.

  The gallery was not yet open. At the stroke of 7, the doors were going to be thrown wide, heralded by a specially composed aria sung by the winner of Britain’s Got Talent. Instead, the luckless chanteuse was first at the locked double doors, pounding against them and sobbing hysterically. Two hundred other people pressed up behind her, screaming for the doors to be opened and shouting at the press cameras to stop taking photos.

  The press did not, of course, listen, and made sure to catch everything, including the moment that the doors were finally opened and the crowd fell in, scrambling over, biting and tearing at each other as they crawled into the gallery.

  Had anyone had time to look they would have noticed that the bloody clouds were being eerily specific, raining down only on the bridge and the gallery. Even the press photographers were c
ompletely dry.

  Once the guests were out of the way, one woman strode across the empty bridge, snug under her purple umbrella. She paused outside the gallery, admiring the scarlet rain dripping down the side of the building and the tattered mess of banners and abandoned shoes.

  ‘That’s what I call a red carpet,’ she said.

  Inside the lobby, the horrified guests stood, dripping, sobbing and queuing anxiously for the dryers in the bathrooms.

  Lord Ascot stared at them in horror. He had enough problems – the caterers were using the wrong kind of salmon; his jacket pinched; and now he was being accused of some bizarre publicity stunt. However, he’d dealt with this kind of thing before. People could, he had long ago learned, always be shouted at, and if they couldn’t be shouted at, they could still be bullied, and, failing that, they could be bought.

  Waiters scampered around with flutes of wine. The singer made a brave attempt at that special aria, but her heart wasn’t really in it, and when blood from her hair dripped into her wine glass, she gave up entirely.

  Lord Ascot abandoned his speech, muttered a few impromptu remarks making it sound as though his guests were the victims of terrorism, insisted that ‘London was stronger than that’, glared at them all and then unlocked the door to the exhibition hall. That, he knew, would shut them up.

  The graffiti taxidermist, Tanksy, had been lured out of retirement on his private Spanish island to curate a series of masterworks depicting Modern Urban Poverty. Guests were supposed to be greeted by ‘Cerberus’ – a three-headed dog made out of three pickled Rottweilers.

  Only there was no trace of Tanksy’s exhibition behind those doors. Instead the walls were covered with paintings. Old-fashioned, simple, beautiful paintings. Paintings showing smiling women, brave men, dead birds and fruit decaying in bowls. All the paintings were at least a hundred years old.

  At first no one knew what to make of the paintings. Luckily, the art critic of a newspaper had turned up (there’d been a spare ticket and her editor hadn’t found anyone famous to go).