Yo sunhill crew if you are there!

I was meant to write a chapter of my thesis this week, but this came
out instead.  I keep tinkering, but have to stop for the sake of my
income, so apologies for any bits wot need fixin - hopefully not too
many

It's for kel, if she wants it :)

VMG xx

**********************************************

Title:       Suspicious Minds

Fandom:      The Bill/Doctor Who

Rating:      PG

Length:      14,229 words

Summary:     One good solid hope is worth a cartload of certainty

Disclaimer:  These characters are not mine.  The Bill belongs to Thames
TV.  Doctor Who belongs to the BBC.

****************************************************************

Suspicious Minds by Viv Martella's Ghost



"-and so you see, that's how I came by the first edition.  Because the
other mistake I made was to sell volume 37 at a very low price, not
realising its true value.  That is-"

Laura didn't mind foot patrol with Reg.  The rambling stories of his
surprisingly unordinary life provided a meditative backdrop to a long
day's walking.  She tuned in and out as she pleased, and he didn't seem
to mind.  Two sons, successive thin walled flats, and inescapable urban
traffic meant she was used to background noise.  It kept her alert,
where silence always made her feel that she had forgotten something
important.

"-so he said, `I'm sure you'll be suitably entertained by the
experience - hold out your hand.'  Which is when I said, `How could you
be here if you didn't exist-'"

"Reg, will you look at this?"

They'd only passed this warehouse earlier that afternoon, and it had
seemed secure.  Now there was a panel of windows smashed, with glass
covering the footpath, and a door that was damaged by fire.

Reg withdrew his hand from its glove and tentatively touched fingers to
the door.

"It's still warm."

Laura's eyes took in the darkening overcast sky and the top floor of
the building.  "I can smell smoke - can you?  Old smoke - there's no
sign of a fire still burning."

"No."  Reg peered through one of the broken windowpanes.  "There is a
glow inside though.  It could be a small fire.  Sierra Oscar from 171."

"Go ahead, 171."

"Have there been any reports of arson in the Harrow Road area today?"

"That's a negative, Reg."

"Oh.  Well, thanks."

"Shall we investigate?" suggested Laura, cautiously pushing open the
door.

"Oh, er.  Yes," agreed Reg, following.

Once inside the large stockroom of the warehouse, they heard the echoes
of voices coming from out the back of the building.  The direction
coincided with the orange glow, now brightly visible through a doorway.

"Should we have called for back up?" whispered Laura.

"Yes.  I know what you mean," Reg quietly replied.  And then, "Hallo!"
he called out.  "Police.  Is anyone there?"

"Best not to take them by surprise?" Laura said, smiling.

"Something like that," muttered Reg.  "Hallo?"

The voices stopped.  They were replaced by the sound of footsteps.

Just as Reg and Laura reached the back of the stockroom, two figures
appeared in the doorway - a tall man and a shorter woman.

"Ah, good evening, officers," said the man.  "I'm so glad you've
finally arrived."

 ***

 She stood by the CID balcony doors, watching the world through the
gritty, grimy glass.

He sniffed quietly as he approached, so as not to startle her.  "Penny
for 'em."

She shook her head, smiled broadly at him, searched his face through
mysterious, dark eyes, then looked back out at the grim weather and the
dusky street.  "Do you ever feel like you've done all this before?"

"Every day.  Copper's lot."

"Yeah," she said, clicking her front teeth together softly.  "That
could be it."

In the distant sky a plane flew overhead, lights flashing into the
night.  The sound of a siren reached them from the yard, then stopped.
A pigeon landed on the balcony rail - she was sure it was the same one
as yesterday.

She pressed her fingertips to the glass, and her breath turned a patch
of it foggy.  He drew a smiley face in the condensation, and gave it an
evil frown and goatee.

"Tell you what," he said.  "There's a new bar opened on Jamaica Lane.
DJ plays eighties trash.  Want to check it out after?"

She turned to him.  "Are you asking me out on a date, Terry?"

"What do you think?" he said lightly.  "Just thought it'd be soming
different."

Another new bar opening.  Another DJ playing eighties trash.  Another
night of half drunk half flirtation to `Tainted Love' with a man who
was really more like a brother to her.

"I'll have a think about it," she said.

"Good," said Terry, and went back to his desk.

 ***

 "Excuse me, Smithy," said Laura, knocking at the doorjamb of the
sergeants' office.  "I mean - sorry - sarge."

"Wot is it?"

"Have you heard of this United Nations Intelligence Taskforce?  Only
we've got a live one in custody - claims to be their scientific
advisor.  Sergeant Ackland said you might know something about it."

Laura showed Smiffy the pass the man had given her.  He opened it and
gave it a cursory glance.

"Yeah, I know UNIT.  Got a mate who's a UNIT corporal as it goes.  Let
me have a word."

"Righto."

They walked back out to custody, Smiffy flicking the UNIT pass against
his hand.

"He's over there in the Austin Powers get-up."

"Cheers, Laura.  Excuse me, sir."

The man in question was indeed attired in a velvet smoking jacket and
frilly white shirt, with tall, black, dramatic leather boots reaching
to his knees.  He was seated on the custody bench between Reg and a
female companion.

"Well, it's about time!" the companion exclaimed in girlish indignation
upon Smiffy's arrival.

The man stood up to speak with him.  "I do hope we can clear up this
misunderstanding, sergeant, er-"

"Sergeant Smith.  Where'd you get this?"

"UNIT headquarters," the man replied.  "I believe that's generally
where they issue them."

"And you are?"

"Doctor John Smith.  Though I'm usually known simply as the Doctor.
Can you read, sergeant?"

The man loomed a few inches taller than Smiffy.  He had a big presence
in the room with his sensual, theatrical clothes and white, woolly
hair.  His eyes were wise, and warm, and piercing, and at the moment
imbued with arrogant purpose.

But Smiffy was not one to be intimidated.  "Look, I don't know what
your game is, mate.  But this pass expired before most of my relief was
a twinkle in their old man's proverbial.  So it won't do you no favours
round here."

"I see.  Well, sergeant, allow me to do a favour for you.  By informing
you that you, sir, are even more of a closed-minded buffoon than the
soldier who issued me that pass-"

"What the Doctor means to say, " interjected the female, "is that he
has a long-standing association with UNIT, and he's certain if you
phone them up they'll vouch for his credentials.  And mine too, for
that matter."

"And what's your name?"

"Josephine Grant," she said, importantly.  Then she flashed her most
winning smile.  "Or Jo, if you like."

She was small, but sparky.  Like her tall companion, she too had
presence, with her big shiny eyes and short (short!) miniskirt and
fluffy faux-fur coat, and her own pair of tall, black boots.

Smiffy habitually gave her the once over, but he wasn't convinced.
"Don't worry, I'll be phoning UNIT awright.  We're well acquainted.
And in all my time I've never seen a UNIT soldier dressed like you
two."

"Oh, we're not soldiers," said Jo.  "We're scientists.  Well, the
Doctor is, and I'm his assistant.  And when your officers arrested us
we were in the middle of an important investigation."

Smiffy ignored her and turned to Laura.  "What are they charged with?"

"We arrested him for arson and criminal damage at the old warehouse on
Harrow Road.  There had obviously been an explosion of some sort among
some fancy electrical equipment.  He showed us where it happened."

"That don't mean he started it."

"No, but he kept telling us none of this was down to her and he's sorry
he dragged her into it.  Sounded a bit suspicious, and he couldn't
account for his presence in the warehouse, despite admitting to
damaging the equipment with a screwdriver.  So we arrested him.  She
insisted on coming along to keep him company."

The Doctor was growing impatient.  "Now look, sergeant, I assure you
that this a complete waste of everybody's time.  Can't you listen to
reason, man?"

"That's right," said Jo.  "The Doctor didn't start that fire - he
stopped the whole room from going up in smoke!  You should be thanking
him not locking him up.  You've arrested the wrong man!"

"Yes, well never mind that, Jo.  This is far more serious than wrongful
arrest.  Sergeant Smith, as I've been trying to explain to your
officers, your detaining me could seriously endanger us all.  One of
the most devious criminal minds the Earth has seen for - well, for
thirty odd years - is masterminding a dangerous plot from the back room
of that warehouse.  It's only by sheer luck that we stumbled across his
base of operations, and I was able to dismantle some of his equipment,
and as Jo says, stop the place from going up in smoke.  But the man
himself was absent, and I should think it would be the priority of the
local authorities - by which I mean you - to find him and lock him out
of harm's way as soon as humanly possible.  Or preferably, sooner."

"Okay," said Smiffy shortly.  "Who is this geezer then?"

"Well," The Doctor rubbed his neck.  "I don't know his name."

"That's convenient."

"What I mean is, I don't know the name he'd be using.  He goes by many
names.  But I can guarantee you that whatever it is, it'll be some form
of the word `master'."

"Well what's he look like, this master?"

The Doctor rubbed his neck some more.  "I can't tell you that either."

"I suppose he goes by many faces."

"Yes.  Yes he does as a matter of fact."

Smiffy sighed.

"Well what's he sposed to have done then?"

"Now that I do know.  He's put in place a temporal recursion loop that
operates on a local spatial scale of approximately three miles radius
from the core generator in that warehouse."

"What's that when it's at home?"

"It's a powerful force that dooms anyone trapped within its influence
to an eternity of ethological circularity."

"Circuwhat?"

"Put simply, sergeant, repeating yourself.  Doing the same things over
and over again."

"So what you're telling me is, this bloke's guilty of boring us to
death."

The Doctor's mouth twitched in the shadow of a smile.  "Yes.  I suppose
that's exactly what I'm saying."

"You're right," said Smiffy.  "He is evil."

He cast a glance at June behind the custody desk, who shared a
sympathetic smile.

"But you've sorted him out now?" piped up Reg from the sidelines, with
more sincerity than Smiffy was comfortable with.

"I simply reversed the polarity of the neutron flow," explained the
Doctor.  "But the damage that did won't hold the Master up for long.
And the only reason he hasn't boosted his recursion loop to engulf the
whole of London - or possibly the world - is that his energy source
overheated, causing the warehouse explosion.  But once that's
repaired…"

"You've just got to let us go!" pleaded Jo.  "The Doctor's the only one
who knows how to stop the Master!"

Reg nodded, pursing his lips, his grey eyes thoughtful.

"So, sergeant," said the Doctor with an optimistic lisp.  "Will you
help us find the Master and put an end to his operation before it's too
late?"

"Fraid not."

"May I ask why?"

"You may," said Smiffy.  "It's because you are, at the risk of sounding
a bit Shakespearean, what we in the Met commonly refer to as an utter
nutter."

"Now, look here-" the Doctor started angrily.

"Yes, hold on!" exclaimed Jo.

"Lock him up, June.  Laura, it's arson, pass the case on to CID.  Reg?"

Reg took the Doctor by the arm.  "Come along, sir."

"And you," Smiffy said to Jo, "you can come wiv me.  I know someone
who'll want to hear your story."

"I'm not leaving the Doctor!"

The Doctor turned back to Jo.  "It's all right, Jo.  I'm sure we can
get this sorted soon enough.  Just do as they say."

He smiled kindly at her, and she smiled back with complete faith and
resignation.  "If you say so, Doctor."

"I do."

"Sir, if you wouldn't mind," repeated Reg, and nudged the Doctor
towards the custody desk.

Jo shrugged to Smiffy.

"All right then, sergeant," she said.  "Drag me away to be sacrificed
or tied up or married off or mind probed, or whatever it is you want to
do with me."

"With any luck," muttered Smiffy, leading her through the internal
doors of the station, "in ten minutes that won't be my problem any
more."

 ***

 "What a pair of crackpots!" exclaimed Laura as they went upstairs to
CID.  "I thought we had enough weirdos on the Coal Lane, but I can see
I've led a sheltered life."

"Yeah.  Well.  There was a sort of consistent internal logic to what
the man was claiming, wouldn't you say?"

"If I could understand a word of it, I might think so.  But as it is…"

"I mean, did he look like an arsonist to you?"

"I don't know.  What's an arsonist look like, Reg?"

Reg shook his head.  "If you ask me, it's a rare pleasure to meet this
type of old school gentleman.  Nobody values chivalry anymore."

"Chivalry?"

"Well, honesty.  Taking a principled stand in the face of hostility."

"You believe that rubbish?"

"Well…"  Reg scowled, vacillating.  "All I'm saying is, perhaps we
should have given him the benefit of the doubt."

"Perhaps we should've.  Bu it isn't up to us anymore, Reg."

"No, unfortunately.  I can only hope that CID will treat him with the
respect he deserves."

Laura regarded Reg for a moment, somehow not at all surprised.

 ***

 Interview 1

She was already in the soft interview room, waiting.  Sitting up, on
the edge of her chair, with her shoulders hunched over.  Her hands,
emerging from loose black sleeves, were tucked under her stockinged
thighs, and her fluffy jacket rested across her lap.  She seemed
forlorn, perhaps.  A little bit lost.

Ramani put her pen between her teeth and juggled her coffee cup,
notepad and shoulder bag to open the door.

"Hello," she said over the pen as she entered.  She put down her coffee
cup and took the pen from her mouth.

"So, Jo, is it?" she asked, with her warmest smile.

"That's right."

"My name's Ramani."

"Hello, Ramani," said Jo sweetly.

Ramani sat down in the chair opposite Jo with her notepad resting on
her skirted knee.

"Now, Jo," she said.  "Sergeant Smith wanted me to have a word with you
because he was concerned that you might need some help, that you might
be in some sort of…trouble?"

"Well, yes.  That's rather an understatement I'm afraid."

"Okay," smiled Ramani.  "Do you mind if I take some notes as we talk?"

Jo shook her head.

"Can I get you anything?  A cup of tea, glass of water?"

"No, I'm fine, really.  If we could just get on."

"Right.  Sure."  Ramani crossed her legs beneath her skirt and put on
her serious listening face.

"Well the first problem is that you've got the wrong man under arrest.
The Doctor's the one who's trying to stop the Master!  And he suggested
that you - that is, the police - might be able to help us find him.
Only when he asked those two constables for help, they arrested him
instead and brought us both here.  But you must understand, it wasn't
the Doctor who caused the warehouse fire - it was the Master!"

"Okay, Jo.  Can you slow down a bit.  The doctor is trying to stop…the
master?"

"That's right.  The Doctor believes he's the one responsible for -
well, for everything, really.  Everything bad, that is.  But in
particular for putting this temporal thingamajig on Sun Hill.  And if
we don't find him in time, the whole world will be trapped in it, and
we'll never be able to stop him."

Ramani nodded, not quite able to keep the frown from her face.
"Right," she said.  "So you are helping the doctor to find the master?
Is that why you were at the warehouse?"

"In a way.  We weren't planning to at first - we were on our way to
visit some - some old friends of his.  But the TARDIS - which is our
vehicle if you like - got sort of snagged on this temporal force field
and that's how we ended up here."

Ramani nodded and made a note.

//snagged on temporal force field.//

"Okay.  I'd like to go back a step, if that's…all right… The doctor -
he's your boyfriend?"

"Why, no!" exclaimed Jo, and she couldn't help letting a lively laugh
escape with the words.  It transformed her anxious righteousness to
wild sunshiny mirth in an instant, and Ramani couldn't help smiling
along with her.  "He's a friend," Jo went on, warmly.  "Well officially
I'm his assistant, but I'm not very good at science.  So I suppose
we're just travelling companions."

"And do you do a lot of travelling together?"

"Well, yes - if we're not being ordered about by UNIT, that is.  But
the Doctor recently got his TARDIS fixed, so he can leave whenever he
likes, and these days he's chuffing off somewhere every ten minutes.
And I'd be an idiot not to go with him.  You see, the places he travels
to are so very - exotic."

Jo clasped her hands around her knees, keeping her booted miniskirted
legs politely together.

She was quite delightful to watch, like a little doe-eyed pixie.  A
child of the universe, thought Ramani.

"But I'm sure he'll be feeling altogether grounded in his cell," Jo
admonished seriously.

"Well two of our best detectives are looking into his case."

Jo sighed.  "Look, I appreciate you trying to help, Ramani, really I
do.  But the best thing anyone can do is to let the Doctor go.  He
didn't do it, you know.  And he ought to be out there looking for the
Master."

"Well if he didn't do it, the detectives on his case will find that
out."

This came out more harshly than Ramani had expected it to, so she leant
forward to squeeze Jo's forearm.  "Okay?"

Jo had to be satisfied with that.  "Yes," she said, forcing a grateful
smile.  "Yes, of course."

Ramani sat back and sucked lightly at her bottom lip.  The girl was
lovely, of that there was no doubt.  And compassionate, probably well
meaning.

But.

"Jo.  I understand how anxious you must be feeling about what's
happened today.  But I have a few more questions I need to ask you."

"All right."

Lightly, as if enquiring about the quarter past bus, Ramani asked,
"Are you - or the Doctor - taking any medication at the moment?"

"No," Jo said simply.  "We're quite well, thank you."

Ramani took a moment to consider this chipper response, wondering if
the apparent naivety was genuine.

"Okay.  And what's your home address?"

"Well the TARDIS is where we live at the moment."

"And the tardis is your car, caravan…?"

"It's not mine, it's the Doctor's.  And it's not a car, it's more of
a…a…"

Ramani raised her eyebrow expectantly.  "More of a…?"

"A wooden box?" ventured Jo.

"So you're living in a wooden box," said Ramani as flippantly as
possible, having heard much worse many times before.

"Only temporarily," said Jo uncertainly.  "While we're travelling."

"And do you have a permanent home?"

Jo paused.  "Well originally I'm from Hampstead."

"Oh, nice," offered Ramani encouragingly, feeling that she was finally
getting somewhere.  "Do you have family there?  Friends?"

"Um," said Jo.  "I'm not sure.  I used to but they might have…moved
on."

"When was the last time you lived there?"

"It's a bit difficult to say," said Jo.  "It might have been 1973."

Ramani was rather surprised by this answer.  "You must be older than
you look," she said as she wrote it down.  "How old are you by the
way?"

Jo didn't answer right away.  "I'm not sure you'll believe it," she
said finally.

"Well I would have guessed you'd be twenty one, twenty two.  But if you
lived in Hampstead in 1973, then you must be at least
thirty…something…"

Jo bit her lip.  "I'm twenty four."

Ramani frowned.  Her hand wandered to her head to worry at her
hairline.

"You know maths was never my strong point but twenty four years ago
was…1981?"

Jo nodded in a resigned `here we go again' sort of way.  "I'm afraid
you're probably right about that."

"Is that the year you were born?  Or 1980?"

Jo said nothing.

It was heartbreaking.  Ramani could go along with psychotic delusions
up to a point.  But beyond that point - which she seemed to have
reached - it stopped being fun, and duty forbade her from indulging
them any further.

She smiled, sympathetically.  "Your story doesn't make sense, Jo.  Do
you see that?"

"Yes," Jo smiled back, warily.  "I can see it doesn't make sense to
you, Ramani."

"Right," said Ramani with a thoughtful knuckle at her mouth.  "Um, is
there anyone you'd like us to contact?  Do you have a phone number of a
parent, or, or-"

"No," said Jo, smiling gratefully.  "Thank you.  But that sergeant did
say he'd contact UNIT for us.  I'm sure once he does that a lot of this
confusion can be cleared up."

"Mm, that's right."  Ramani consulted a page in her notepad.  "Sergeant
Smith did make contact with UNIT just before he asked me to meet you
here.  But the person he spoke to wasn't aware of your names being
among their personnel files, as scientific advisors or otherwise.
They've no record of you."

Jo sighed.  "Oh.  I see."

"So, I'm not sure-"

"Did he tell them we were former UNIT personnel, not current?  They
might have to look up old records, perhaps thirty years old…"  Jo's
voice petered out in defeat.  "I'm not going to convince you, am I?"

Ramani took a long, thoughtful breath, her eyes roving over Jo's face
as if searching for something there.  "Look, Jo, can I be honest with
you?"

"Please."

"I'm concerned that this man - the Doctor - has told you some very
convincing stories about UNIT and somebody he calls `the master', and
has you under his influence as a result.  And I'm worried that he might
lead you into all sorts of trouble - has led you into trouble already,
today, with this warehouse fire.  And I'm worried that one day you
won't be able to get yourself out of it."

"Oh," sighed Jo.  "I thought you might say something like that."

Her big brown eyes had lost their lustre.  No longer a child of the
universe, she looked much more worldly and weathered all of a sudden.
Ramani blinked at her, and wanted very much to fix what she'd killed.

"The Doctor means a lot to you, doesn't he?"

"Oh, yes.  Yes, he does.  Oh, I know you think he's a criminal, or - I
don't know - some sort of a loony.  But he's not, really, he's not.
His manner, it's just…unusual, that's all."

"It's not just his manner, though, is it now?  I mean - it's all these
stories of yours that just don't add up."

Ramani hated every word that came out of her mouth.  She picked up her
coffee mug, the pale polish on her fingernails gleaming white against
the blue china.  Then straight away she put it down again.

"I'll get you a cup of tea," she said, and fussed for a moment with her
pen and paper before leaving the room.

While Jo, on the opposite chair, looked terribly, terribly forlorn.

 ***

 "Oh.  Sarge.  Have a moment?"

Smiffy didn't bother to look up from his paper shuffling.  "Wot is it
Reg?"

"Yes, well, I've had a look on the PNC, and cross-referenced it with
what I could deduce from thesaurus dot com, phrases dot org and the
google translation interface, and I've come up with a list of possible
suspects."

"Wot are you bangin on about?"

"This `master' that our Doctor Smith in custody was talking about."

"Did I tell you you could waste police time on that?"

"No, but, I thought some initiative… You see, if you type in this name,
Marquess-"

"Reg," barked Smiffy.  "Go and get Laura and get back out on foot
patrol.  It's a CID investigation now."

"But, you see-"

"Did you 'ear me?"

"Oh, er, yes, sarge.  Sorry, sarge.  I'll leave this here then.  If
you'd pass it on to CID?"

Reg left his notes on Smiffy's desk and left.  Smiffy eyed the pieces
of paper warily.

"You'll be the death of me, Hollis," he muttered, and swept them into
the bin without a second glance.

 ***

 Interview 2

Terry tossed the folder onto the table.

He cleared his throat.

He screechingly pulled his chair out to sit in it.

He pressed `record'.

He looked at his watch, and began speaking in a lax, distracted manner.

"Interview commenced 18:37.  Present is the suspect Doctor John Smith
a.k.a. `the Doctor', officers present DC Perkins and DC Masters.  The
suspect has waived his right to legal representation."

"I'm sorry," the Doctor interrupted from the other side of the table.
"But what did you just say?"

Terry glared at him, not in the mood.  "You just told us you didn't
want a brief."

"No, I didn't mean that part.  What did you say your name was?"

"DC Terry Perkins."

"And yours?" said the Doctor, turning to the other officer.

"DC Jo Masters."

The Doctor pondered for a moment.  "Are you making fun of me, madam?
Sir?"

The officers exchanged sidelong glances.  "Now why would we do that?"
asked Terry.

"You don't see the humour in the name `Jo Masters'?"

"Nope," said Terry, shifting his jaw.

Jo folded her arms, amused.  "What's so funny about it?"

The Doctor stood up to rub his neck.

"Would you sit back down please, Doctor Smiff," warned Terry.

"I need to think-"

"Doctor, can you sit back down," said Jo firmly.

"Oh, very well," said the Doctor, and he sat.  "Look, I arrived here
with my companion Jo Grant in search of a man calling himself `the
Master'.  Are you telling me your name is mere coincidence?"

"Yeah," said Jo.  "I am.  Here."

She reached into her pocket and brought out her warrant card.  The
Doctor examined it carefully.  "Well I admit, it looks real enough.  As
do you.  Regeneration, I expect.  Or did you finally find a way to
parasitise the bodies of  innocent Tellurians?"

Jo cocked her head at him, unsure how to respond.  She looked at Terry,
who shrugged.  She looked back at the Doctor, and "Innocent
Tellurians?" were the only words that came out before the Doctor spoke
again.

"I see.  So may I ask what you were doing earlier today, in the
vicinity of the Harrow Road warehouse?"

Jo scoffed in surprise.  "I think you'll find, Doctor, that it's me who
should be asking that of you."

"Oh?  Afraid it would make things awkward for you with your colleague
here?  I'm sure you could make short work of him if he found out too
much."

"Listen, mate," grumped Terry.  "You're the suspect and we ask the
questions.  You got that?"

The Doctor eyed them both carefully.  "Yes.  I've seen this kind of
thing before, Perkins.  Concentrate, man.  Fight it.  You don't have to
do as she says, you are free to choose."

The Doctor snapped his fingers twice in rapid succession close to
Terry's face.  Terry grabbed them.  He held them in his hand, and said,
annoyed, "I know."

"Terry," warned Jo.

Terry let go.

The Doctor gave him a knowing look, and Terry scowled.

"So tell me, Doctor," said Jo more temperately.  "I'm interested.
Exactly what is it you're accusing me of?"

"Well if you are who I suspect you are, arson, to begin with.  And
murder, undoubtedly.  But only in the service of a much more serious
crime."

"And what's that?"

"Enslavement.  Of the human race."

Terry squinted at him.  Jo continued.  "You'll have to excuse my
ignorance, Doctor, but if I've done that, how is it that we're all
still walking around free?"

"You haven't achieved it yet, because I temporarily disabled your
recursion loop generator.  And even if you did succeed, the human race
would still be walking around.  But they most certainly wouldn't be
free - they'd be dead in the mind.  Brain-dead servants to your
unquenchable thirst for power."

Terry and Jo nodded for a moment.

"Barking," muttered Terry.

"Yep," said Jo.

"I think you've got the wrong, er, man," said Terry.

"Just who is it that you think I am, Doctor?"

Jo's pale eyes were inquisitive and open, genuinely curious.  The
Doctor looked at her for a long time.  His furrowed brow gradually
shifted to apologetic amusement.  He sighed.  "Yes.  For a moment I
really did believe it."

"Believe what?"

"That you were the Master."

Jo shrugged, prompting for more.

"An old friend.  Now my deadliest enemy."

"A close friend?"

"Yes, once upon a time.  We were students together, among other
things."

"Until he got stuck on turnin people into zombies with his insatiable
lust for power?"

The Doctor's smiling mouth behind his steepled fingers spoke a quiet,
"Yes.  Actually, more often homunculus than zombies, but you've got the
right idea."

"But how did you mistake me for 'im?  I imagine I don't much match his
description."

"No," agreed the Doctor.  "Now that would be rather difficult to
explain.  And I'm not sure we have sufficient time, my dear."

Terry, meanwhile, was chewing a fingernail.  "Look, Doctor," he said.
"Before this interview goes any further I think it would do us all a
world of good if we was to schedule you a session with the borough
forensic psychiatrist."

The Doctor raised his head defensively.  "I assure you, sir, there is
nothing amiss with my psyche."

"I beg to differ," said Terry.  "And I ain't arguing.  Jo?"

Jo, after a little while, nodded agreement.

"Right," said Terry.  "Interview terminated at 18:43.  Come on, Doctor.
You're going back to your cell."

 ***

 Ramani's eyes followed the rise and fall of Jack's cricket ball in his
hands as she made her impassioned argument.  "I think she's the victim,
guv.  This Doctor's clearly got delusional and paranoid ideas about the
way the world works, and he seems to have dragged her from pillar to
post to help him solve these - imagined - problems of his."

"Well I trust your judgement, Ramani.  What do you want to do with her?
Or let's begin with him - Terry, what evidence do you have that he
committed the arson at the Harrow Road warehouse?"

"Circumstantial," said Terry, leaning back against the windowsill, eyes
also on the ball.  "Laura and Reg arrested him at the scene.  The fire
was out, but he'd been mucking about with some electrical equipment
that had obviously overheated and blown up, according to the SOCO."

"So his actions caused the explosion."

"Unknown.  It's possible the explosion occurred prior to his
interference."

"So who's responsible for this electrical equipment?  Does it belong to
the warehouse, is it electrical mains, what?"

"Unknown," said Terry.  "Though the Doctor's accused Jo - our DC
Masters that is - of installing it to further her ambitions for world
domination."

Jack's eyes twinkled at Jo, who said, "He's off his rocker, guv."

Jack chuckled.  "Has he made threats against you?"

"No," Jo replied.  "Quite the opposite.  He was the perfect gentleman
when he realised he'd mistaken me for someone else."

"Have you had run ins with him in the past?"

"Never seen him before in me life."

"Okay.  So what you're saying, Terry, is that this Doctor seemed to
know what the equipment was for, and nobody else does, not even the
SOCO.  He's admitted to damaging the equipment, whatever it is.  And it
seems that he's arbitrarily put the blame on DC Masters or some other
unknown person in order to justify his own actions.  At minimum, it's
trespass, and possibly criminal damage.  Whether or not he's guilty of
arson, to me that sounds like solid grounds to keep him in custody
pending further enquiries."

"I just think he's a few planks short, guv," said Terry.  "He might
respond better if he didn't feel so threatened by us - we've probably
triggered his paranoia by arresting him."

"He may not be the full quid," said Jack, "but I'm not satisfied that
this man isn't a danger to himself and others."

Ramani nodded.  "I agree, Terry.  I mean, this man has this woman Jo
Grant living in a wooden box.  She has no contact with other friends or
family.  She has no sense of what year it is, what she's done with her
life, and her only reality is the pursuit of this `master' who she now
believes is at the bottom of everything that's wrong with the world."

"So you want him banged up?" asked Jack.

"I at least want him kept away from her.  I think if they're separated
I might be able to get some answers out of her."

"And she had nothing to do with the arson?"

"I wouldn't have thought so.  She obviously has poor technical
knowledge, and frankly I think she's just along for the ride, to
appease his ego and reinforce his psychosis."

"But what does she get out of that?"

"Well, I can't help wondering if he's got some kind of hold over her.
If she's become delusional under stress to avoid dealing with the
reality of a bad situation.  She's coping, guv.  She's stuck."

"Is there a sexual element to their relationship?"

"No.  It's unlikely.  She specifically referred to him as her friend,
she denied a sexual involvement."

"Besides, guv, I'm guessing he's a bit ginger for that," put in Jo.

"He thinks our Jo's his boyfriend," added Terry.

"Ex," corrected Jo.

"And that makes him gay?" asked Jack, confused.

"Long story," said Terry.  "Don't mind it."

"Okay," said Jack, putting down his cricket ball.  "Let's get the
psychiatrist down here for him and see what that turns up."

"Guv," said Terry.

"Ramani.  Do you think you can get through to this Jo Grant if you
spend some more time with her?"

"I think so.  I've already made some progress - she's admitted her
story doesn't make sense.  I don't think there's permanent damage
there.  Perhaps to get well again she just needs a friend, someone to
talk to."

"Like Margaret Barnes did?" muttered Terry.

"Oh, leave it out, Terry," said Ramani.

"Well you be careful, Ramani," said Jack.  "You can't mend people, you
of all of us should know that.  But you can at least try and get the
truth out of them.  Let's give it twenty four hours, and if we've got
nothing by this time tomorrow, we'll hand them over to social
services."

 ***

 She thought the canteen would, if nothing else, make a change of scene
from the soft interview room.

"Are you hungry?" she asked Jo on the way, smiling brightly.

"Famished.  I haven't eaten in twenty two years," replied Jo, who
seemed to be more cheery too.

Ramani tugged the resident elastic off her wrist and twisted her hair
up into a knot.  "Well we might make it before the hot food goes off.
I can't recommend it, though, and whatever you do don't order the steak
and kidney pie.  Terry was throwing up for a week."

"Eeargh, not likely.  I only eat simple food when I'm away.  I've been
to too many places with the Doctor that have very unpleasant - and
often not quite dead - ideas about cuisine."

Once she had ordered her food, Jo took out her purse to pay for it -
though not before exclaiming "How much?" when she was told the price.
She tipped the contents of her purse into her hand, and began to count
out coins.  To Ramani's discomfort, it appeared Jo didn't have any real
money at all - her coins looked like they had come straight out of a
Christmas stocking.

Not wanting Jo to be humiliated, she said, "Here, let me," and reached
for her wallet.

They sat at a table by the far wall, and Jo wolfed down her food.  It
was only after she had finished two cheese sandwiches that Ramani had a
sudden sinking realisation.

"Could I have another look at your money, please, Jo?" she asked, and
Jo - with a half eaten apple in one hand - emptied her purse out on the
table.

It was not play money.  It was old currency.

Ramani's gaze was immediately drawn to the sixpences.  She must have
been nine the last time she'd seen one.  She picked one up, turned it
over on both sides, and felt the weight of it in her hand.  There were
also oversized 5p, 10p and 50p coins in the purse, and two pound notes
folded neatly.  It did not escape her notice that all of the coins had
been minted prior to 1973, yet many still looked relatively shiny.
"Where did you get them?" she asked.

"Oh - the usual places," Jo retorted with a grin, her big brown eyes
searching Ramani's face knowingly, hopefully.

Ramani picked up Jo's purse from the table.  "May I?" she asked, and Jo
said, "I'd rather you did, actually."

There wasn't much in it.  No ATM card, no credit card, no video shop or
gym membership.  There was a piece of paper that declared itself to be
a driving licence issued in 1969.  There was also an unbanked cheque
for three pounds, from a bank Ramani had never heard of, dated 15
February 1973.  And a scrap of newspaper with the name `Mike' written
on it beside a seven-digit number that looked suspiciously like a phone
number, though the arrangement of digits was unusual.

And then there was the UNIT pass.  It was her only photo ID.  Ramani
scrutinised it at length.

"You know, this driving licence gives your birth year as 1949."

"That's right," said Jo.

"You told me you were twenty four."

"Yes."

 "And this UNIT pass was reissued in 1973."

"Correct."

"Which is also when you told me you lived in your most recent house, in
Hampstead."

"Just so," said Jo, clearly entertained.

Ramani sighed.  "So if you do the maths, it adds up.  I mean, in
itself, your story makes sense."

"Well, I should hope so.  It's the truth, after all."

Ramani sipped some of Jo's tea as she looked again at the documents.
Jo watched her do it, and when Ramani looked up again, Jo had a broad
cheeky smile and glanced at the white cup in her hand.

Ramani followed her gaze to the cup and immediately put it down.  "Oh,
god.  I'm so sorry, I'll get you another one."

Jo shook her head, "Really.  It doesn't matter."

Ramani's hair was already falling out of its knot again, and she pushed
it back off her face.  "You know what I think?"

"What do you think?"

"I think this is all real.  This driving licence, this UNIT pass.  This
money."

"You know what I think?" replied Jo.  "I think you're right."  She
laughed, and her face lit up again in wicked contagious glee.

Ramani felt immense relief and pleasure at this.

And something else.

A little nauseous swoon of terrible excitement hollowed her intestines.
It was one of those moments when her life seemed suddenly, thrillingly,
larger than usual, as though she had unexpectedly found herself
standing on the edge of a cliff.

She had been wrong.  Blinkered, boorish and boringly wrong.

This person - this case number - that she had filed under `sad
delusional victim type A' had morphed into something else entirely.
Ramani's initial assessment now seemed pathetically knee-jerk and thin.
Perhaps Jo's girlish laugh did not indicate that she was simple.
Perhaps her righteous outrage arose from genuine emergency, not
psychotic irrational fear.

Jo was actually a mystery.

Ramani saw her in a new light, as a vibrant, confident young woman, who
held unknown secrets behind carelessly messy hair and funky clothes.
Who had been terribly patient with Ramani's condescension.  It was like
the light had changed, and before her, staring straight at her, was a
person she didn't realise was there before, quietly saying `boo'.

With an uncertain shake of the head, Ramani spread out her palms before
her, giving up, then folded her hands together on the table.

"I don't understand," she said.

Jo smiled at her sympathetically, warmly, genuinely.  She placed her
hands over Ramani's and squeezed them.

"I know you don't."

For a minute, there was only the movement of searching curious eyes,
the firm clammy touch of skin on skin, the warm metal of Jo's rings,
the tickle of her fluffy coat cuffs, the clink of tea cups in the
background.

Then Ramani's hands gave a little reflexive twitch beneath Jo's.  Jo
took the opportunity to disengage her hands.  Ramani grabbed at them,
held them.  Smiled breathily, apologetically.

"It's okay," said Jo, and she held Ramani's hands tight across the
table.  She wasn't letting go.


************************************************

 Reg took the stairs two at a time.  He'd been grumbling away at Laura
for the past hour, and was feeling slightly bad about it.  It wasn't
because he didn't like her - on the contrary, he found that they had a
lot in common.  Or at least she didn't tell him to `shut it' every time
he made an observation.  No, he'd been grumbling because he was anxious
to get back here and catch up on what had been discovered.

He found Terry and Jo comparing notes by the CID coffee machine.

"-don't think so.  She'd spend the 'ole time whining." Terry was
saying.

"What about Zain?"

"Not likely.  Too pretty.  You?"

Reg removed his hat and cleared his throat.  "Excuse me, Terry.  Jo."

"Reg."

"I was just wondering - was there anything useful in my notes?  On the
case - the John Smith case?"

Jo frowned at him.  "What notes, Reg?  You mean your pocket book?"

"Er, no.  These were notes I gave to Smithy to pass on to you."

"Seen 'em?" Terry asked Jo.

"Nope," she replied.

"Sorry," said Terry.

"Oh," said Reg, disappointed.  "Well have you been looking into it?
This `master' an all that."

Terry scratched his stubble.  "What do you mean, looking into it?"

"Well the identity of the man in question.  The master's alias, if you
like."

Terry stopped scratching.  "Smiff's a fruitcake, Reg.  Did you miss
that episode?"

"Oh," said Reg, nodding along with him.  "Only I thought, for the sake
of the public safety, that it might be worth looking into all avenues.
In case he's telling the truth.  You know, if there is a plot to place
Sun Hill under a temporal recursion loop."

"Reg," said Terry, "there's no plot."

"Well how can you be sure?"

"I'm sure.  Trust me."

"On what basis?"

Terry's eyes flicked to Jo.  "Help me out here."

"You're on your own, chum."

He rolled his eyes.  "Reg.  I'm only going to say this one more time.
There.  Is.  No.  Plot."

"Oh," Reg replied equivocally.  "Well if you say so."

He nodded vague insincere thanks in Terry's direction and walked out of
the office.

Nothing new, he thought to himself, don't take it personal.

It was hard though, because it was always personal.

 ***

 "So exactly who are you?" Ramani asked, reaching into the pocket of
her suede jacket for a roll of mints.  She offered them to Jo, who took
one and popped it in her mouth.

"If I explain it to you, will you believe me?"

Jo's eyes challenged Ramani, with dark and insistent daring.

"I'll try."

Jo took a deep breath.  "You see, the Doctor and I are travellers in
time."

Ramani, sucking on her mint, chewed her bottom lip, and frowned.

"If you can just believe that part," continued Jo, "the rest is easy."

"No, you see…that's not really what I expected you to say."

Ramani craved the solid contact of Jo's calloused, wiry hands again to
reassure her.  When she'd held them, they'd been real, dependable.  But
once she had let them go - which she eventually had, out of sheer self-
consciousness - it was hard to get them back.  And now there was all
this plastic tabletop in between the two of them, fostering cold Sun
Hill reality, and doubt.

Demons rose up from the table to meet her.  She had made mistakes.  No
major ones in recent times, except Maggie - but that was a big
`except'.  The woman was clever and it had shaken Ramani, because she'd
found herself in a misty place where truth and fiction got blurred.
She lost faith in herself, unable to tell the difference.  Falling for
Maggie's lines, stepping over boundaries she shouldn't have gone
anywhere near, her disastrous choices spilling over into the rest of
the station.  Ramani had been wrong, as it happened.  It went awry, as
it happened.  She had tried not to let that affect her trust in other
people, her uninhibited curiosity about them, her desire to find the
hidden wonderfulness that most of them held inside, her inclination to
take them as they were, not as they were boxed to be.  But it would be
easier if Jack and Terry and the others didn't continually remind her
that she'd stuffed up.

She spread her fingers out face down on the table in front of her,
reaching for Jo with her mind, but not brave enough to move her hand
forward.

"The thing is, Jo, that I want to believe you.  Part of me is saying,
forget about all of these rational doubts, this forensic scepticism.
But another part - the part that I have difficulty ignoring - knows
that if I believe you and I'm wrong, then I'm derelict in my duty of
care for you.  I have a responsibility to look out for your welfare,
that's my job.  And if I don't do it properly, that job is on the line.
No - that's not what I mean - it's not the job so much as the question
of integrity.  I'm here, talking to you because my boss and my
colleagues trust me to be doing it.  If I fail you, I'll lose that
trust, and rightly so."

"You won't," Jo said gently.

Ramani licked her lips.  She smiled sharply, exposing her crooked
canine in a dubious, sceptical grin.  "I want to believe you.  But I
need evidence."

"Right then," mused Jo thoughtfully.  "Evidence.  What about the
Master's machine?"

"You mean at - at the warehouse?"

"That's right.  If it's really high tech gear, that only a Time Lord
could build, would that be evidence enough for you?"

"Jo, I need to call my neighbour to set the video - high tech equipment
of any sort would have little meaning to me."

"Well what about the effect of it?  From what the Doctor's said, that
equipment has put a sort of spell on all the people who live nearby.
He said it makes the same things happen over and over."

"Well life has been pretty monotonous."

It made a sort of sense.  There were the big things - the deaths - the
running joke with Terry about when the next bomb would go off.  And the
little things - the locker room conflicts - the interminable lack of
talent round the office.

Hadn't she said as much to Terry only a few hours ago?

"I don't think it's enough.  I mean if you're going to come up with a
conspiracy theory that will ring true for ninety nine percent of the
population, it's that their lives are unbearably tedious and
repetitive.  I can't be sure it's not a coincidence.  With all due
respect to the Doctor," she added.

Jo set her jaw firmly.  "There's only one thing for it then.  I'm going
to have to show you the TARDIS."

"Your…wooden box?"

"That's right.  Our wooden box."  She smiled.

"So - I'm not sure - what will that achieve?"

"Oh, Ramani!" scolded Jo with exasperation.  "It's the Doctor's time
machine of course!"

Of course.

Jo stood up and began to walk.  "Well come on, then."

"Now?"  Ramani too got out of her seat, and buttoned up her jacket.

Jo stopped.  "There's one problem, though.  The Doctor has the only
key."

"Well don't worry," said Ramani.  "If my rank's useful for anything,
it's sweet-talking custody sergeants."

 ***

 "Jo!"

"Doctor!"

As soon as the cell door had opened, she was running into his arms.

"It's nice to see you alive, at least.  Are you all right?"

"Oh, Doctor, I'm fine.  How are you?"

"Well, unlike the TARDIS, this room is a great deal smaller on the
inside than it seems from out there."  He scratched his head.  "But I'm
fine.  They're feeding me, at any rate, if you can call this food."

"Doctor, this is Ramani…Ramani…  Ramani, what is your surname?  Do you
know I didn't even ask!"

"I'm Acting Detective Inspector Ramani de Costa," said Ramani from the
doorway.  She felt a bit silly to be sounding so important when what
she was about to do seemed so utterly ridiculous.

"How d'you do?  I'm known as the Doctor."

He extended his hand towards her, and she found herself shaking it.  It
felt warm, firm, and underneath it all…magical?

"I think Ramani can help us," said Jo.  "But I need the TARDIS key.  I
said I'd show her inside, to prove we're telling the truth."

"Good idea, Jo.  But the key was taken from me upon my arrest."

"Yes, I realised that."  She handed him a piece of paper and a pen.
"You have to sign this form before they'll hand it over."

"Well if I must," said the Doctor, and signed it with an illegible
squiggle.  "I must say, it'd make an agreeable change for somebody to
believe our story."

"And she will, Doctor.  I know she will."

"Good.  Perhaps then we can resume our search for the Master."

They both spoke with such unselfconscious conviction.  Ramani felt as
though she was on the frontier of a strange new world.  It was
seductive, very.  Time travel, space travel, but more than that, it was
simply the lure of something completely foreign to her.  She was torn
between commitment to the daily grind of what she knew best, and
letting herself be seduced.

Actually, she wasn't really torn - that was a lie.  She was falling
willingly, indulging a perpetually suppressed longing for the possible
and new.  But she thought she ought to feel torn.  She was sure that
Jack would be horrified at how easily she shrugged off years of
training in the police art of pragmatic distrust.  "The manual strictly
forbids-" she heard him lecturing, but she wasn't interested.  She
turned that thought off.

And tuned into Jo saying her name.

"Will it be safe to take Ramani back to the warehouse?" Jo was asking
the Doctor.  "You don't suppose the Master will be lurking about
waiting for us?"

"I don't know, Jo."  The Doctor gave it some thought, stroking his chin
with his finger.  "By now he will have realised that his recursion loop
generator is damaged.  He could be there."

They both looked over at Ramani.  "If need be," she said cautiously, "I
can arrange for armed backup."

"There you are then," said the Doctor, smiling.  "Your very own twenty-
first century Brigadier, Jo."

They both laughed.

Ramani, despite not getting the joke, recklessly laughed along with
them.

 ***

 "So what you gonna do?" asked Terry, swaying on his revolving chair
when Ramani returned to the CID office.  "Take her to the refuge?"

Ramani laughed hesitantly, "I don't think you want to know, Terry."

She went through to the DI's office and began to gather her things from
her disastrously messy desk.

He'd been wondering when she'd return, why she'd taken so long, what
the sod she thought she was doing.  Well, actually, he had a few ideas.
But he'd hoped she'd prove him wrong.

He followed her into her office.

"Tell me you're joking," he said.

"About what?"

"You know what I'm talking about.  Aylesbury on the fly with Maggie.
Don't go there again."

"Nice," said Ramani, and went on looking for her keys.

"Ramani.  The best thing to do is hand it on to social services.  Don't
get involved."

"Terry.  Don't."

"She's a case, Ramani.  Not to mention an 'eadcase.  We get dozens of
her sort every week.  Stick her in a refuge and deal wiv it tomorrow."

Ramani paused in her `organising', put a hand to her forehead and
sighed.  "There's been a development."

Terry set his jaw firmly, sceptical.  "What?"

"Did you notice her clothes, the way she wears her hair, her boots?"

"Yeah.  So she's on the game and dressed by oxfam - where's the
newsflash?"

Ramani scoffed, shaking her head.  "I don't expect you to understand.
Nor do I have to justify my actions to you."

"Turn it up.  I didn't come down with the last shower - I'm your
friend.  I want you to be sensible, is all."

"You're gonna have to trust me, then."

She shoved her phone into her bag, shouldered it, and left the DI's
office, switching off the light.

Terry emerged from the darkened office and went to sit back at his
desk.  But he couldn't stomach returning to the report he had to write.
He flicked a paperclip at Jo.  "Oi!  Master!"

"Watch it.  Or I'll turn you into a - hunk?"  She laughed, flinging it
back.  "What was that word he used?"

"I dunno.  I thought he said homo…someink," said Terry, and they both
pissed themselves laughing.

"Poor old dear," sighed Jo.

"Listen, you up for a pint later at that new bar in Jamaica Lane?  I
think I've lost my date."

"Last minute substitute, is it?  Story of me life."

"Is that a yes?"

"Course it is, you desperate bastard."

 ***

 By the time Ramani got back down to custody, Jo had the TARDIS key in
hand and was flirting with PC Casper, who was filling in behind the
desk.  Jo smiled such a lot, such an authentic, generous smile, that it
made Ramani smile again too.

"Well thank you ever so much," said Jo to Dan when Ramani came through
the doors.  "It's been absolutely fab to have such lovely company while
I waited."

"Just part of the service," he replied, blushing.

Ramani felt a little bit jealous.

"Are you going to be warm enough?" she asked, angling her head to
assess the length of Jo's miniskirt.

"I'll be okay, thanks.  There's whole rooms of clothes in the TARDIS if
I do get cold."

Ramani smiled.  "It's this way," she said, and pointed with her car
keys.

It was night already as they walked down the ramp to the car yard, and
the cool air struck their cheeks.  The clanky sound of Jo's boots on
concrete echoed off the walls.  Ramani fidgeted with her hair, which
had again fallen about her ears.

"I think you're wonderful, Ramani, for doing this," said Jo.  "You've
been so very kind to me."

To which Ramani had to give a low throaty laugh to herself, because
just then she entirely stopped feeling jealous.  "It's my pleasure,
Jo."

She pointed her remote key towards her car and unlocked the doors.  Jo
followed her to the car, but stood beside the passenger door, waiting
to be let in.

"It's unlocked," said Ramani.  "But - oops!  Hold on.  Let me clean
this up."

There were folders and sweet wrappers and parking tickets and plastic
bags and CDs and orange peels and god knows what all over the passenger
seat.  Ramani quickly filed the junk into `back window', `back seat'
and `back floor' categories, then brushed off the seat cover.  "Okay,"
she said, and Jo got in.

Jo snuggled down into the comfortable seat, laughing "What's this?"
upon seeing plastic Elvis dangling from the windscreen.  She gyrated
his hips with her finger.

"You ought to know better than me," said Ramani.  "And put your
seatbelt on."

Ramani reversed the car out of the yard while Jo got her head around
the automatic seatbelt.

"It's odd, you know," said Jo, snagging the belt on the brake stop
repeatedly.  "I've been to the future before, but only the very distant
future, with space ships and aliens and intergalactic wars and things.
But for some reason this seems even more futuristic than that does,
because it's all quite similar, but quite different too."  She looked
over at Ramani.  "Am I making any sense at all?"

Ramani concentrated on her three-point turn.  "Probably.  But having
never been in a spaceship myself it's not for me to say."

She paused the car.  The engine revved.  "So where are we going?"

"To the warehouse, naturally!"

"Right."

The sky was dark, but the streetlights were bright.  Jo watched out the
window with wonder, pointing out familiar landmarks amongst the
newness, and Ramani enjoyed the excited rise and fall of her voice over
the hum of the engine.

"Put the radio on if you like."

It took a bit of trial and error for Jo to get the stereo to work, but
finally some of Ramani's bhangra thumped out at them.  Ramani
apologised and turned the volume down.

"Groovy," said Jo, and Ramani had to smile.

"What sort of music do you like, Jo?"

"Oh, you know.  Whatever's happening.  I haven't had much time for
music since joining UNIT.  Though I must say, I do think that T-rex
chap is rather dishy."

"Marc Bolan?"

"That's the one.  Are you a fan too?"

"Um.  No, not in particular.  My mother, though, I'm quite certain, had
one of his records."

"Now that's a strange thought," mused Jo.  "I suppose I must be old
enough to be your mother!  And I've just had another thought.  What if
there's another, older me walking around London right now, at this very
minute?"

"I don't think you should dwell on that thought," said Ramani, scanning
the rear vision mirror just in case.

"No.  I don't think I will.  I wonder what I'm doing, though.  I wonder
if I'm happy.  Perhaps I have some good advice to give myself."

Good advice, thought Ramani.

Hold my hand?

Hold my hand.  Stay here with me, and show me what's inside you.
Change my life, make it different, let me see things I'd never
otherwise see and do things I couldn't let myself do.  Tell me how I
can never grow up.  Please be happy.  Don't lose that laugh, that
smile.  Make all of this be true.

She had come too far.  She was invested now.  If she had to go back to
work tomorrow and put Jo in the psych ward, she'd probably have to
stick her head in the oven on Friday.

She turned off the engine.

Her head leant back against the headrest and rolled to the side to look
at Jo.

"Don't disappoint me, will you?"

Jo's expression was flushed with confidence, reassurance, and sexy,
satisfied triumph.

"Come and see."

 ***

 He'd been having it a lot lately.  A nagging feeling, a can't-quite-
catch-it, on-the-tip-of-my-mind, slight, sort of, i'm-probably-just-
being-paranoid feeling.  Of de ja vu.

The day would start off a bit wrong, a bit tired, a bit been-there-
done-that, a bit i'm-sure-i-already-drank-this-tea-didn't-i?-well-
obviously-i-didn't.  And it was never anything he could put his finger
on.  Maybe he was just getting old.

But then the day would develop into a drama, and there would be bits of
the drama that made him puzzle and draw back, and think - there's
something not right here.  I've dealt with this case before.  I've
solved this problem before.  I thought I'd finished with this.

No one else had noticed, or if they did, they didn't say.

The tea spilt a little as he opened the cell door, but he hoped Doctor
Smith wouldn't mind.

The Doctor lay flat on his back with his hands behind his head and his
long left leg crossed over his right.  His eyes were closed, and didn't
open when he said, "Constable Hollis.  To what do I owe the pleasure?"

Reg closed the door to just ajar behind him.

"I brought you some hot tea - here, and there's sugar as well if you
want it."

"Thank you.  Much obliged."

The Doctor sat up to receive his tea.

"D'you mind?" asked Reg, and sat beside him.  "I wanted to ask you
something.  If you don't mind."

"Not at all.  What is it?"

"Well I was wondering, is it possible that the temporal recursion loop
is somewhat haphazard?  By which I mean, that it fluctuates in
strength, thus allowing for some temporally localised events that have
no subsequent repetition?  Only I've noticed some things never changing
while others change very rapidly."

The Doctor was pleasantly surprised to have a receptive audience at
last.  "I should say so," he said.  "Yes, I think that would be
possible.  Particularly when the energy source is unreliable, such as
the one the Master was tapping into."

"So would it be correct to say that the loop operates as a field of
probability, rather than a simple linear process?"

"Exactly right."

"Oh.  That's very interesting."

The Doctor regarded Reg curiously.

"I say, old chap.  Do you think you could see your way to getting me
out of this cell?"

"Well, sir, I-"

"Please.  Most people call me the Doctor."

"Oh, Doctor, is it?  Well, no.  I don't have the authority to do that.
That would be up to CID."

"How unfortunate."

"Yes, it is rather.  But on the bright side, while you're here I
thought I'd take the opportunity to discuss some possible candidates
for who is the Master in disguise, so to speak.  I tried to show this
to CID, but, well, they were following up other leads I suppose."

Reg gave the Doctor the page of notes that he had carefully retrieved
from Smiffy's bin.

"Excellent," murmured the Doctor, reading down the page.  "Hollis, I
believe you've just saved me a very large amount of time and a good
deal of hard labour."

"The list is in order of priority, from most likely to least likely
suspects.  This name at the top is the one I'm really most interested
in, and you can see why."

"Thank you, old man.  Where would I be without you?"

"Well actually.  If it weren't for me you'd most likely not be under
arrest."

"Quite true," agreed the Doctor amicably.  "But things always happen
for a reason.  Obscure though it may be."

Reg considered this.  "That's a very mystical position for a person of
your intellect, I would have thought."

"Not at all.  Since the beginning of time, the universe has been built
on the complex interplay of primary forces and universal laws.  The
complexity makes it nigh impossible to calculate the exact path leading
up to any particular event.  Nonetheless, the universe is little more
than a very complex machine."

"Oh, do you think so?  Only I've read recently that the relationship
between that which we call cause and that which we call effect is not
always as deterministic as the rational sciences have traditionally
held."

The Doctor, at that point, had to tug on his earlobe.  "Touché,"  he
said.  "I can see I've underestimated you, Hollis."

"Oh," said Reg dismissively, forgivingly.  "Never mind.  It's not as
though you'd be the first."

 ***

 Ramani lifted the police tape for Jo to slip under.  The warehouse
door's lock was too badly damaged to function, but the SOCO team had
left a temporary padlock and bolt on the door to keep people out.

"Damn," muttered Ramani.  "I didn't think."

"Let me handle it," said Jo.

She drew a ring of keys from the pocket of her fluffy coat, and began
to test them one by one on the padlock.

"I'm going to have to pretend I didn't see this," said Ramani, and
turned to watch the street.

"Now, hopefully," said Jo as she finally found a key that fit, "this
means that the Master isn't inside."

She snapped off the lock and pushed open the door.

The orange glow that had been present earlier in the day had faded
substantially, so the warehouse was very dark.  Ramani switched on her
torch and led the way inside.

"Perhaps I should go first," whispered Jo.

"You don't have to worry about my safety, Jo," Ramani whispered back.

"But you don't know the Master.  I do - all too well - and he's not
very friendly."

"Jo, I'm a police officer.  I can handle myself, you know."

For some reason Jo giggled at this, and took Ramani's hand.

"Then we should go together."

Which was fine by Ramani, who happily let their fingers intertwine.

The place was utterly silent.  They trod quietly across the stockroom
floor to the back door, and stopped.  Ramani turned off her torch.  The
only light left was a dull ambient glow from the back room that cast
the white fluff on Jo's coat in an eerie blue.

Jo peered cautiously round the corner of the door.

"Come on."

They tiptoed, ever so slowly, into the room, waiting for their eyes to
adjust to the light.

It was empty.  The Master had not returned.

Ramani turned her torch back on and shone it around the room.  Along
the full length of each wall was a bank of fancy looking electronic
equipment.  Much of it was blackened with soot or melted, though one
machine appeared to be in working order.  It was this that created the
ambient light.

"This way," said Jo, and pointed to a blue police box at the far end of
the room.

"Wow," said Ramani, her heart sinking.  "This is your wooden box?"

"I thought you'd be impressed."

"Is it a…real police box?"

Jo gave her a reproving look.  "Of course not."  She put they key to
the double front doors to unlock them, while scowling at Ramani with
melodramatic crossness.  "Are you coming inside or what?"

"Inside?"

"That is what we're here for,"  Jo reminded her sternly.  Her face was
expectant and serious.  "Ramani.  Have faith in me."

Ramani found it hard to resist this.  She had promised to try.

She followed Jo through the doors.

"Welcome to the TARDIS," said Jo.

Ramani found herself inside a large, white room.  The most striking
thing about it - aside from its inexplicable size - was how bright it
was, how unbelievably immaculately clean looking.  It gleamed pure
white from every surface.  "What is it?" she couldn't help but ask.

"Are you going to say it's bigger on the inside than the out?"

"No.  Well, yes, that too.  But it just looks so…alien."

She was drawn to the hexagonal console in the middle of the room.
Lights flashed on and off all over it, and data panels lit up with
streams of numbers.  There were so many knobs and switches in such
bizarre arrangement that Ramani could make no sense of it at all.  It
seemed to lack order entirely.  Not that she had the first clue what
the instruments were for, to have any idea of how they might be ordered
better.

"Do you know how to work these?" she asked Jo.

"I've got absolutely no idea."

"So you can't make us go somewhere.  Or sometime."

Jo shook her head.  "You'll have to ask the Doctor for that."

Ramani turned her attention to the walls.  They seemed to glow, as if
something alive was gestating behind the strange round panels.  She
touched one - it was softer than she expected, though it wasn't
yielding.  It was felt the hard ball of fish roe she'd once found at
the beach - at once firm and organic.  The panel was also warm, though,
like flesh.  It vibrated ever so slightly beneath her fingers.  Indeed,
she thought she could feel the whole room tremble and hum.

Despite its strangeness, there was nothing intimidating about the room.
It wasn't scary at all.  In fact, she felt completely safe.  Loved,
even.

"I don't quite know what to think."

Jo was leaning back against the console.  In this alien environment,
her theatrical clothes no longer seemed out of place.  Nor did she.

"You look like you're right at home," said Ramani, folding her arms
lazily.

"I am," said Jo.

"You've even got a telly."

Jo followed her gaze to the far wall.  "Yes, but I've tried, and it
doesn't pick up BBC 1."

Ramani found this very amusing.  It was a space joke, and yet it made
perfect sense.

It seemed she had crossed the frontier.

"So," said Jo in a very sober tone of voice.  "Is it enough to satisfy
your forensic scepticism?"

The question was redundant, and Jo knew it.  Her calm confidence was
written all over her face.

Ramani pondered her.  The girl simply oozed mystery and promise.  At
the same time, she made herself completely present and available.  It
was a very pleasing combination.

"Let's get your friend the Doctor out of my nick."

Jo smiled broadly.  "Thank you, Ramani."

She hopped off her leaning spot on the console and planted a hefty kiss
on Ramani's cheek.

As Jo made to leave the room, Ramani took one last look around.
Something really had to be done.  But it was bad.  She wasn't sure if
the criminal damage act applied in here, but even if it didn't, it was
rude.

"Give me one minute," she said to Jo.

She rummaged through her jacket pockets, and after emptying her mints,
a tissue, her warrant card, a bus ticket, a dying roll of sticky tape
and a single woollen glove onto the console, she eventually succeeded
in finding a pen.  "Do you think the Doctor will mind?"

Jo's eyes were immediately filled with naughty pleasure.  "I shan't
tell him if you don't."

They searched the room for an appropriate spot.  It wasn't easy amongst
all that unnatural white.

"What about under here?" Ramani suggested, examining the bottom of the
console.

"That's the first place he'll see it.  He's always tinkering away on
something down there."

In the end, they chose an anonymous round panel close to the floor.
The lip of the panel was indented slightly, providing just enough cover
to make a discreet shadow.

They knelt down by the panel.  Ramani's unfocused gaze rested on Jo as
she contemplated what to write.  But it was a no-brainer really.

//Ramani was here with Jo September 2005//

Once she'd written it, she wished she'd misspelt it properly.  She
licked her finger and rubbed out some words to do it again.

//Ramani + Jo woz ere September "05" Peace//

She was tempted to write something about Tupac, but thought that was
going a bit too far.

Then she had a brilliant idea.

//Elvis lives!//

"Is Elvis dead?" asked Jo, a bit disconcerted.

"Oops.  Sorry, Jo, I forgot."  She placed a comforting hand on Jo's
shoulder, though it was a bit hard not to laugh.

 They were silent, walking back through the warehouse to the car.
Ramani didn't dare look down, for fear of finding that she'd walked
straight off the cliff into empty space.  If she was walking on air
though, it felt pretty damn fine.

The `bipbip' sound her car made when she unlocked the doors with her
remote key sounded freakishly foreign, and the indicator lights
flashing were like a ridiculous parody of what flashing lights could
be.  She sat behind the steering wheel with the keys in the ignition,
not at all sure that she was up to driving, nor even sure that she
could remember how to drive this primitive machine.

"Do you want to drive, Jo?" she asked, and turned to look at her
companion.

Jo's pupils were dilated in the dark.  She was large as life, she was
attentive, she was lovely and sexy and fun.  And then, a moment later,
she was kissing Ramani.

It was wet, and squishy.  It was nice.  Ramani could smell Jo's breath
when she pulled back - it smelled of her own mints.

"You know what?" said Jo.  "Travel does broaden the mind."  And she
giggled sweetly.

Ramani kissed her back.

 ***

 "After all that," said Terry, slamming down the phone, "the shrink's
not available till tomorrow.  So we'll have to leave him in the cells
overnight."

"I'm not sure that would be good for him," replied Jo, tippexing a
report.

"No.  But what choice do we have?"

"We could give him another crack.  Perhaps after a few hours in custody
he'll have seen the error of his ways."

"Yep," agreed Terry.  "I wish Ramani was here, though.  She said
there'd been a development, only she didn't say what.  Or I didn't
listen.  Something about… something… miniskirts… I dunno.  Maybe it
don't matter."

"Give her a call."

"We sort of had a fight.  Can you do it?"

He grinned at her, pleadingly.  Jo shook her head at him and picked up
the phone.

"Guv?  It's Jo.  Masters, that's right, glad you haven't forgotten."

 ***

 "No, of course I haven't forgotten, Jo.  What's the problem?"

It was dark in the car, and steamy, at least Ramani felt quite flushed.
Beside her, Jo twisted bits of Ramani's hair around her fingers, and
then had to spend some time disentangling the hair from her rings, and
stopping herself from laughing as Ramani's head played tug of war
between Jo's rings and her mobile phone.

"Let him go," she was saying into the phone.  "He didn't do it.  I just
know, trust me.  No, I don't have solid evidence, but I'm convinced
beyond all doubt that he didn't do it.  Just do it, Jo - do I have to
order you to?  Right.  I see.  Well I know you're going to find this
hard to believe but I don't think he has psych issues at all.  Can we
discuss it later?  Well tell Terry it's all a misunderstanding and I'll
explain it when I see him."

She hung up.

"Sorry about that."

Jo yanked a hair from the metal lacework of her thumb ring.  "Is that
it then?  Are they going to let the Doctor go?"

"I think so.  They're not happy about it.  But I don't even know how to
start telling them why."

She caught Jo's hand, and played with it.  Their fingers got all
entwined and there was a bit of a thumb fight, and somehow it ended up
in more kissing.

After an appropriate interval, Jo said, "Ramani, when they release the
Doctor I'll probably have to follow him about town looking for the
Master.  I don't think I'll be able to - you know - hang around."

"Should I have told Jo and Terry to leave him in overnight?"

"No," laughed Jo.  "That would just be cruel.  I'm not sure I'd ever be
forgiven for that.  Anyway.  He is my friend."

Ramani was frowning.  "Well do you have to do it tonight?  This search
for the Master, I mean - can't you leave it till morning?"

"That's up to the Doctor.  And usually with him, it's go go go."

"He can do without you for one night, can't he?"

Overnight, tonight, one night - Ramani clamped her lips shut for her
assumptions, or at least for how she sounded.  The two things were in
fact not the same.  Her demands for Jo's company for the night were
rooted in blind panic, that this new and wondrous thing would - like
Cinderella's coach - suddenly disappear into thin air at midnight.

But Jo hadn't seemed to notice any lines being crossed or inappropriate
assumptions being made, and was instead rather thoughtful.  "If we
don't go back," she speculated, "then I'm sure he'll assume I'll catch
up with him tomorrow.  We often get separated.  As long as he knows I'm
not in danger."

"Well, if he needs to know where you are, someone at the station can
phone me.  They have my number.  Will he think to ask?  I mean, does he
know about mobile phones?"

"I should think so.  The Doctor has a good idea about most things.  I'm
sure I don't need to worry."

"But will he miss your expertise?  I mean, does he need you for certain
tasks, or…"

"Not likely," said Jo with good humour.  "The truth is that I'd
probably just be in his way, although he never says as much.  I'm not
the best assistant he's ever had.  I've ruined his experiments, nearly
blown up his lab, and usually I haven't the first clue what he's going
on about.  I didn't even pass general science."

All of which sounded like recommendations to Ramani.  Not to mention a
really good excuse.

"Great," she said, looking sidelong at Jo.  "By which of course I mean,
I'm sure none of that is true."

"It is true," said Jo.  "So I shouldn't say he'll miss me one bit."

She smiled at Ramani.

"But don't think I'm a complete cloth-head," she said, taking Ramani's
hand.  "You can't travel 4 million light years without learning
something."

 ***

 Terry grumped his way down to custody.

Ramani had finally gone off the deep end as far as he was concerned.
Or got her end in deep.  Either way, it wasn't promising.

But ultimately, beneath his grumbling and his dark suspicions (and was
that jealousy?), he did trust her.  Completely.  She was like a sister
- he knew her, without even asking, inside and out.  And through the
bickering, he'd be there.  So here he was, doing as he was told.

The cell door was ajar, and he nudged it open.

"You're free to go," he said to the Doctor.  "Guvnor's orders."

The Doctor got up to stretch his legs.  "I'm glad your `guvnor' has
more common sense than you do, Perkins."

"Yeah, enough of the lip."

Terry held the door open for him and for Reg, who was still in the cell
with him.

"DC Masters is getting your belongings."

"Good.  I'd like to apologise to her for the unfortunate - though
perfectly understandable, I hope - accusations I made earlier.  And,
er-"  The Doctor rubbed his neck.  "I should also like to apologise to
you."

"Forget it," said Terry, a bit sorry for the old man.

The Doctor took a seat on the custody bench, with Reg sitting down
beside him.  Terry slouched back against the desk and sniffed.

Presently, Jo returned from the property store carrying a brown paper
parcel.

"Here you are, Doctor.  Hope your stay was a pleasant one."

"Thank you, my dear.  I'm sure it was very pleasant indeed.  Now, about
what I said before…"

"It's nothing," said Jo, smiling at him pleasantly.  "Water off a
duck's."

Terry peeled himself from the custody desk.  "Let's get the sod out of
here," he said, and he left, taking Jo with him.

"So. Doctor," began Reg with exaggerated flippancy.  "I imagine you'll
be going then?"

"Well I was going to wait for my companion, Jo.  But she did say she
was going to the warehouse, which is also the best place for me to
resume my search.  So perhaps, yes - I should be going, as you say."

"I'll be sorry to see you leave."

Reg extended his hand for shaking.  The Doctor looked at it.  "Well I
do hope this isn't goodbye just yet.  I was rather hoping you'd join
me."

Reg's eyes blazed, just for an instant.  "Oh.  Yes, well.  I'd like
that very much, as it goes."

 ***

 The night air was still.  But the night was not yet old.

Ramani and Jo sat on the bonnet of the car with their legs dangling
over the engine grill, and they looked up at what would most likely be
stars, if this wasn't London.

"Up there is Arcturus," said Jo, pointing to the thick blanket of cloud
that covered the sky.  "And over there, that's Alpha Centauri."

"What's that one?" asked Ramani, pointing further to the left.

"You mean the one in a constellation of four?"

"No.  Have a look where I'm pointing."

Jo leaned over, pressing her cheek against Ramani's, to look along the
line of her arm.

"Oh yes.  Now that has got to be Metebelis 3."  Jo giggled like a
child, and Ramani smiled into her skin.

Hands crept around lean limbs and curves.  Fingers slid across suede
and beneath faux fur, finding their way to warm folds of cotton and
crevices of nylon and silk.  Breaths came noisily, heavily.  Kisses
were magnetic.

There were long minutes, and short ones, but whatever their lengths the
minutes kept coming, and going.  Ramani knew there was something about
time not going in a straight line, but she suspected, when she looked
at her watch, that it probably wouldn't help her much by the time the
sun started rising.

Their faces were warm as they kissed.  Jo's arms were snug about her
body.  The metal of the car was cold beneath them, and the traffic
noise from the adjacent street continued its perpetual hum.  And there
was nowhere, nothing, no one that Ramani wanted more.

 ***

 When the Doctor and Reg entered the warehouse, they heard a loud voice
with a northern accent jabbering excitedly in the back room.

"Is it the Master?" whispered Reg.

The Doctor listened for a moment.  "No," he said, with noticeable
relief.

Reg continued to walk towards the door.

"Hollis, wait," the Doctor whispered loudly.

"But I thought-"

"Shhh!"

"Right, then," the voice said, "you're taken care of, the Master's gone
for good, I've saved the world again, and we've still got time to drop
in on your mum.  But honestly, what she don't know won't hurt her, so I
say we go and have ourselves a bag of chips on the canal.  What do you
say to that?  Fantastic or what?"

"Not bad for an old bloke in a young bloke's body," said another voice,
then added, "Well, youngish!"

The Doctor smiled to himself.  "Something to look forward to," he
explained to Reg, who didn't understand.

A door clicked shut in the other room.  Then there was a blue flashing
light and the sound of a noisy engine that gradually faded to nothing.

"We can go in now," said the Doctor.

Reg cleared his throat.  "Doctor?  Am I to gather from that
conversation that the Master has been suitably taken care of?"

"That's right."

"So we don't have to search for him anymore?"

"I shouldn't think we'd find him now even if we tried."

The Doctor made a beeline for the blue police box at the far end of the
room.  "Still in one piece, my dear old thing?" he said to it, and
patted it affectionately.

Reg was left to toy with a piece of charcoaled plastic on what remained
of the recursion loop generator.

"How disappointing," he said, wiping the soot from his fingers.  "Now
I'll never know if I was right."

 ***

 She waited at the traffic lights, watching the world through the filth
of her unwashed windscreen.

There were some things left - a blonde hair on the seat cover, an
elusive hint of scent.  Not much, all up.  And they'd disappear into
the disorder of her life soon enough.

It was not a mundane pain.

She had had something within her grasp and lost it.  Had been unwilling
to spoil it by asking for more, fearing the answer.  And as a result,
there was no more that she received.

Reg had been there when they'd left.  She'd ignored him almost
completely, having eyes and time only for one more, two more kisses
with Jo, and the unspoken words that went with it: I really haven't
finished with this yet.

And then…nothing.  Literally nothing - Jo had slipped into the police
box and closed the door, and Ramani had held onto it with both palms
flat against the blue panels.  Then it simply melted away beneath her
hands, and it was gone.

Reg had nodded at her - sadly it seemed today - and left without a
word.

The traffic light changed to green, and Ramani turned the familiar
corner of Canley Road and Limehouse.  The traffic was shite today.

No one else had seen it.  There were no witnesses who knew it happened,
who heard the hum and the words, who felt the ripples.  She had to
remember it all herself, and she had already forgotten some things.
What colour was the stone in the ring on her thumb?  What pattern was
the weave of her stockings?  How exactly was it again that her voice
changed when she smiled?  It was disappearing with the minutes, and if
she didn't speak it, it would go.

Terry wouldn't want to hear it - of that she was certain.

But there was Reg.

Reg, she thought as she drove into her parking spot ten minutes late
(again).  Reg, as she checked her lippy in the mirror (missing the
clump of hair sticking straight up at the back of her head) and got out
of the car, banging the door shut with her hip and then opening it to
lock it again because it didn't close properly the first time.

Talk to Reg.

 The End.