‘Thank you.’ As soon as she’d realised that she’d be heading back to Earth with the Doctor in the TARDIS, Ace had asked Sam to get in touch with Sanaul and make sure they had alternative transport available.

‘If you could bring them back intact this time, it would help the figures for this quarter.’

Ace grinned. She’d rolled a Range Rover during a mission in the Gobi desert a few months back, and he wasn’t going to let her forget it in a hurry. ‘I’ll do my best.’

Slipping her phone back into her jeans, Ace turned to the Doctor. ‘Right, we’ve got a lead. An address for the girl in the documentary who claims that she was the victim of a failed abduction attempt. Gotta be worth having a chat?’

‘Oh, definitely!’ The Doctor clapped her hands excitedly. ‘Nice work, Ace!’

Ace gave an embarrassed smile, unsure how to respond to this warm, enthusiastic Doctor.

Her phone rang again. This time is was Chantelle.

‘Hi Chantelle. What’s up?’

‘I think that I had a little bit of a close encounter last night …’

Ace glanced across at the Doctor. ‘Hang on a sec, I’m going to put you on speaker.’

Tapping the speaker icon on the phone, she beckoned the Doctor over. ‘OK, Chantelle, what’s been going on?’

Chantelle related her encounter with the strange, hunched figures in the alleyway and their mysterious disappearance. The Doctor and Ace listened, not interrupting, until Chantelle had finished her story.

‘I should have called you straight away, but, to be honest, I was freaked out, so I went out with the girls and got more than a little bit tipsy. I tried to call you this morning, but you weren’t answering your phone.’

‘Yeah, I was … out of town.’ Ace wasn’t about to explain to Chantelle how she had been to the Moon and back. ‘Look, Chantelle stay put, OK? Either I’ll come over myself or I’ll send someone. In the meantime, stay out of that alleyway, all right?’

‘Oh, don’t worry. I’m not going down there alone again in a hurry.’

‘I’ll see you later.’

Ace hung up and turned to find the Doctor looking at her carefully. ‘Perivale seems to be where everything is going on these days,’ she said quietly. ‘Missing girls and now this …’

‘Well it’s a good thing that you’re travelling mob-handed these days, isn’t it, Professor?’

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. ‘Split up?’

Ace nodded. ‘There should be two Range Rovers waiting for us in the yard. We can get to Perivale in under an hour. Someone can come with me to interview the girl, whilst everyone else checks out Chantelle’s alien hoodies.’ She raised an eyebrow at the Doctor. ‘Do you want to be on Team Ace?’

The Doctor grinned. ‘Wicked.’

CHAPTER TEN