Dr. Who - BBC New Series 25

Ghosts

of

India

MARK MORRIS

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

Published in 2008 by BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing.

Ebury Publishing is a division of the Random House Group Ltd.

© Mark Morris, 2008

Mark Morris has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

Doctor Who is a BBC Wales production for BBC One Executive Producers: Russell T Davies and Julie Gardner Series Producer: Phil Collinson Original series broadcast on BBC Television. Format © BBC 1963. ‘Doctor Who’, ‘TARDIS’ and the Doctor Who logo are trademarks of the British Broadcasting Corporation and are used under licence.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

The Random House Group Ltd Reg. No. 954009. Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at
www.randomhouse.co.uk.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 846 07559 9

The Random House Group Limited supports the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), the leading international forest certification organisation. All our titles that are printed on Greenpeace approved FSC certified paper carry the FSC

logo. Our paper procurement policy can be found at
www.rbooks.co.uk/environment

Series Consultant: Justin Richards Project Editor: Steve Tribe Cover design by Lee Binding © BBC 2008

Typeset in Albertina and Deviant Strain Printed and bound in Germany by GGP

Media GmbH

For Nel, for everything

Recent titles in the
Doctor Who
series: WISHING WELL

Trevor Baxendale

THE PIRATE LOOP

Simon Guerrier

PEACEMAKER

James Swallow

MARTHA IN THE MIRROR

Justin Richards

SNOWGLOBE 7

Mike Tucker

THE MANY HANDS

Dale Smith

THE DOCTOR TRAP

Simon Messingham

SHINING DARKNESS

Mark Michalowski

‘
Where now?’ the Doctor said. He was like a kid at a funfair, trying to decide which ride to go on next. He stood poised, waggling his fingers, his face glowing green in the light from the TARDIS console.

Donna thought he looked like a string bean in a blue suit. A string bean with trainers and sticky-out hair.

‘Dunno about you,’ she said, ‘but I could do with a breather.’

‘A breather!’ he said, aghast.

‘Yeah, we’re not all Martians, you know. Us humans need a little sit down and a nice cup of tea every so often.’

All at once her eyes widened. ‘You know what I’d
really like?’

‘Astonish me.’

‘A curry.’

‘A curry?’

‘Yeah, I could murder a curry. I’m starving.’

The Doctor looked at her as if she was a prize pupil who had handed in a sub-standard piece of work. Then inspiration struck him, and he was off again, bouncing round the console, slapping and poking and twiddling things.

‘Curry, curry, curry,’ he muttered. ‘If I can just… yep, there we go.’ The grinding bellow of the TARDIS’s engines started up and the Doctor straightened with a grin.

‘Donna,’ he said, ‘prepare yourself for a taste sensation.’

In a narrow alley between two tenement blocks, dust began to swirl. The trumpeting groan of ancient engines rose out of nowhere, and as they built to a crescendo the faded outline of an old blue London police box began to solidify. No one saw the box arrive except for a famished yellow cat, which ran for its life. For a few seconds the box stood, immobile and impossible, dust settling around it. Then the door flew open and the Doctor sprang out, still in his blue suit and trainers, and now also wearing a red plastic sun visor on a piece of black elastic.

‘Come on, Donna,’ he shouted. ‘You were the one who couldn’t wait to stuff your face.’

‘And you were the one who said I should dress for a hot climate,’ she retorted, emerging from the TARDIS in a flowery long-sleeved sundress, sandals and a wide-brimmed hat. She looked around. ‘Where are we?’

‘Calcutta,’ he said, ‘1937. Brilliant city, full of bustle and colour. Still ruled by the British Raj, but it’s the heart

of India. Centre of education, science, culture, politics—’

‘What’s that smell?’

She was wrinkling her nose. The Doctor sniffed the air.

‘That,’ he said, ‘is the scent of burning cow dung.

Bellisimo
. Come on.’

He strode off, Donna hurrying to catch up. She looked around at the shabby tenements with their peeling shutters and corrugated iron roofs. The ground was hard-packed earth. Flies buzzed around her head.

‘Not exactly salubrious round here,’ she said.

‘Well, we don’t want to be ostentatious. Don’t want to frighten the goats.’

He grinned and she smiled back, linking her arm with his.

‘So where you taking me?’

‘Select little eatery. Belongs to an old mate of mine –Kam Bajaj. Helped him out once with an infestation of Jakra worms.’

‘Wouldn’t have thought pest control was your kind of thing,’ Donna said.

The Doctor shot her one of his sidelong, raised-eyebrow looks. ‘Jakra worms are from the Briss Constellation. They’re eight-foot-long carnivores. Imagine a Great White Shark sticking out of a hairy wind sock and you’ve pretty much got it. Anyway, old Kam said any time I fancied a free dinner…’

‘Oh, charming,’ said Donna. ‘Cheap date, am I?’

‘That’s one advantage, yeah,’ the Doctor said, smirking, ‘but the food is out of this world. Macher jhol that melts in your mouth, beguni to die for, kati roll,

phuchka. And the puddings…
caramba!
Rasagolla, sandesh, mishti doi…’ He kissed his fingers like a chef.

‘Chicken korma and a poppadom’ll do me,’ Donna said.

‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,’ he replied.

They walked for twenty minutes, the Doctor leading them through a labyrinth of streets without once hesitating. Gradually the streets widened as they moved away from the poorer areas of the city, but even the change of surroundings didn’t help Donna shake off a feeling of unease, a sense that something was not right.

The Doctor didn’t seem to notice the shuttered shops and burned-out buildings; the debris scattered on the ground; the rats crawling around the stinking piles of uncollected rubbish; the gangs of young men who glared at them in baleful silence as they strode by. He kept up a constant jabber about Calcuttan life, one second talking about the August monsoons, the next about how he was once voted man of the match at the Calcuttan Polo Club.

As they passed yet another group of silent men, some of whom brandished staffs or simply thick branches stripped of leaves, the Doctor raised a hand and called, ‘Hello there!’

None of the men answered. One spat on the ground close to the Doctor’s feet.

‘Probably just shy,’ the Doctor muttered as Donna took him by the arm and led him away.

‘Blimey, for the biggest genius in the universe you can be incredibly thick sometimes,’ she said.

‘Oi!’ he protested, then asked her more reasonably,

‘What do you mean?’

‘Just look around you. Even a mere earthling can tell that something’s about to kick off here. You can virtually smell the testosterone in the air.’

The Doctor’s eyes darted around. ‘I suppose the atmosphere
is
a bit tense,’ he admitted.

‘Maybe we ought to head back to the TARDIS,’ she said, ‘settle for the Taj Mahal on Chiswick High Road.’

‘Kam’s place is only a couple of minutes from here. It’s a lot closer than the TARDIS.’

Two minutes later they were standing outside Kam’s place, looking up at it in dismay. It had been gutted by fire, the interior nothing more than a burnt-out hollow.

Face grim, the Doctor placed his hand on a door frame that was now just so much charcoal.

‘No residual heat,’ he said. ‘This happened a while ago.’

‘Two weeks,’ said a cracked voice to their left.

Donna looked down. An old man was squatting on his haunches in the shaded doorway of the building next door.

He wore nothing but a turban and a pair of loose white cotton trousers. His skin was lined and leathery, and an unkempt grey beard covered the lower half of his face.

The Doctor darted across and squatted beside him.

‘What happened?’ he asked softly.

The old man shrugged. ‘When men fight,’ he said, ‘their judgement becomes clouded. They bombard their enemies with stones and kerosene bombs and beat them with clubs. But if they cannot find their enemies, they simply destroy whatever is close by. They claim they fight

for a just cause, but when the madness takes them they don’t care who they hurt.’

‘Yeah,’ the Doctor murmured, ‘I know the type. But what about the people who lived here? Kamalnayan Bajaj and his family?’

‘They are gone.’

The Doctor’s eyes widened. ‘You don’t mean…?’

The old man shook his head. ‘No, no, they are alive and well. But they have fled Calcutta. I don’t think they will return.’

‘Not to this address anyway,’ said the Doctor ruefully.

‘But this can’t be right. I know for a fact that Kam was here in 1941. I came for Navratri. I brought fireworks.’

‘What’s Navratri?’ Donna asked.

‘Hindu festival. Lots of dancing.’ Thoughtfully he said, ‘So either someone’s mucking about with time or…’ He turned back to the old man. ‘What year is this?’

‘1947,’ the old man said.

‘
Forty
-seven!’ the Doctor exclaimed, and jumped to his feet. ‘Well, that explains it.’

‘Does it?’ said Donna.