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threatening-looking place I’ve ever been to. Ogrons, Axons, Daleks: they were nothing compared to these freaks and villains. She’d never really adjusted to punk. Too violent, too nihilistic. The flower child in her would take some banishing. But, looking around her, she realised this crowd could kick it out of her in seconds.
    Spiked hair; multicoloured hair; leather.Spiked belts.Big boots.
     
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    Most of them hadn’t been here at the start of the gig, she realised.
    they’d just sort of materialised as the day wore on. Drawn here, like the TV crew and the Doctor. And herself. Still, there were a lot of hippies about too, and bikers. They seemed almost conservative now, or at least conventional, and wasn’t that strange? The jukebox hadn’t acclimatised to the change in the musical environment either: Hawkwind was blasting out right now, and some of the punks didn’t look too amused by that. One of them spat on the floor next to her at the bar. She turned away, her anxiety deepening. She wished the Doctor would hurry up. It had been a good thirty minutes since she’d left him.
    And yet, strangely enough, part of her didn’t want to leave.
    You’re a mixed up girl, Jo, she told herself and smiled wryly.
    Someone next to her turned to her and smiled wryly back. Not the punk who’d spat, but a young man with a black mohair jumper and dark jeans. His eyes were a little lost-looking, his face thin but friendly. Of course, his hair was a little too spiky for Jo’s tastes, but he was kind of sexy. Then a cute little Chinese girl came up behind him, close enough for Jo to get the hint they were an item, and she smiled again, this time a little wistfully.
    ‘You all right?’ the young man asked her, and Jo wondered how many more people were going to say that to her tonight.
    ‘Well, considering I’ve just seen two men brutally murdered, I think I’m not shaping up too badly.’
    ‘You saw it too, then? Thought you might be a TV person.’
    The Chinese girl was frowning at her as the young man spoke.
    Her eyes were quite cold, and Jo imagined she could have an evil temper on her.
    ‘No, I’m just... just a traveller,’ she said and sipped her beer.
    Where was the Doctor?
    ‘You don’t look like a traveller.’ The Chinese girl’s voice was accusatory.
    ‘I’m Nick,’ the young man said a little too quickly, and grinned sheepishly at her. ‘This is Sin. And going out with her is one, believe me.’
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    ‘You’re such a corny bastard, it’s embarrassing.’ Sin grimaced and fired up a cigarette, grudgingly offering one to Jo. Jo shook her head and smiled her friendliest smile.
    She was struck again by the unreality of the situation. Here were these two, having a domestic in front of her. She glanced around at the rest of the pub clientele. The mood was losing its initial tenseness. Boozy banter was replacing the stone-wall antipathy she’d met upon entering the Devil’s Elbow. People had even stopped discussing the incident - and then it struck her.
    Stopped? They’d never started! Apart from Nick, she hadn’t heard a single other person mention the band or the murders. She glanced at Nick again, and maybe recognised the same confusion in his eyes.
    Just then the mummer walked in and everyone... Everyone went silent.
     
    ‘What the hell... ‘ said Jimmy, moving up alongside Sin and Nick at the bar,’... is that?’ Then even he apparently forgot how to speak.
    Rod was also staring at the bizarre figure. Of course he was, the whole damn pub was staring. The mummer didn’t even seem to notice the effect he had made on the pub crowd. Jimmy wasn’t sure if it was the clothes (and, after all, they weren’t any odder than those worn by the band) or the face, or something about the weird aura of the character that demanded everyone’s attention.
    The face was certainly powerful enough. The nose was hooked, the jaw long like a wolf’s. A profusion of dandelion-coloured hair sprouted from