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

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

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

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

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

This time, however, there was a problem.

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

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

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

‘Well? What is it?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He cleared his throat.

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

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

‘Jam?’

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

‘I am not bringing you apricot jam.’ Mandeville had, over the years, acquired a deadpan delivery which worked wonderfully when firing people.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The newspapers barely stirred in the breeze.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then the threatened rain made good on its promise.

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

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

It was raining blood.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The art critic pushed her way through the throng. A minute before, she’d been rather intimidated by all this celebrity. Now it was as though they’d all melted away. She stared up at the paintings – at beautiful boats sailing into sunsets; at noble Romans dying nobly; at shoemakers laughing; at vases of flowers – and she just couldn’t believe it.

‘The Reissmann Collection,’ she started yelling, over and over.

Eventually, someone Googled it on their phone and gasped. Two minutes later, everyone in the entire room was an expert on the Reissmann Collection.

Back in the 1930s, hundreds of thousands of precious artworks were stolen by the Nazi Party from doomed Jewish families. After the Second World War, grieving relatives set about trying to recover them, but the process was long and difficult. Occasionally a petitioner would strike it lucky – perhaps they’d be having a meeting with a bureaucrat about a certain work of art and realise it was on the wall. Mostly, it was all very mysterious and murky.

For years, the Reissmann Collection had topped the list of mysterious murkiness. All that remained of a family with exquisitely good taste was a group of amazing paintings – believed to have vanished into a Swiss vault. The Swiss banks had professed themselves entirely innocent. By complete coincidence, Lord Ascot owned a Swiss bank. He’d once told a journalist that he’d love to help, but his bank had never had any Nazi clients, and, even if they had (which they did not), they’d now be long dead. Under the terms of their account, the contents of their private vaults would have been emptied, and he would have, naturally, returned the artworks to their rightful owners.

Only here was the entire Reissmann Collection, adorning the walls of the Ascot Gallery. Alongside framed photos of Lord Ascot posing with some of the more remarkable works of art. Here he was with a Goya, there with a Van Gogh, ah, and pretending to dance with a Michelangelo statue. In each picture, Lord Ascot was wearing SS uniform.

Five minutes later, the waiting photographers were treated to the sight of Lord Ascot running from his own gallery, out into the terrible red rain, rain that had soaked into the walls of his building and was now splashing around in scarlet puddles.

It was only the fear of that horrible rain that caused the furious mob behind him to draw back, watching the panting, pot-bellied man run onto his bridge.

Lord Ascot made it to the middle and then stopped, a stitch snatching at his heart. Catching his breath, he noticed the figure watching him from the other side. She was smiling under her umbrella.

If a spider could smile, it would have smiled that smile.

‘You!’ gasped Lord Ascot, recognising the woman from his club. ‘You!’

The figure nodded. ‘I promised I’d make you sorry.’

‘You’ve ruined me.’

The figure shrugged, then checked her watch with elaborate boredom. ‘Time I was off,’ she said. ‘Could I trouble you to say something nice?’

‘What?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ the woman tutted. ‘Just a pleasantry. No?’

She turned and walked away into the rain.

No one quite got to the bottom of what happened next. Many people claimed that the stampede across the bridge had weakened it structurally. Some people came up with some elaborate theories.

What everyone could agree on was that the Ascot Bridge suddenly and dramatically collapsed, plunging Lord Ascot into the churning red waters of the Thames and burying him under the rubble. Even more remarkably, at that precise moment, it stopped raining, and a ghastly sun shone on a river stained the colour of cheap red wine.

That was the last that was ever heard of Lord Ascot.

Bobo Braithwaite woke up tied to some train tracks and wondered if it was another of his stag-dos. It would be just like the boys to pull a stunt like this.

‘I really have to give up drinking,’ Bobo sighed. ‘And getting married.’

Mind you, he thought as he tried to scratch an itch on his nose, he was almost sure he’d know if another marriage was looming. For one thing there’d have been meetings with lawyers. Probably saying, ‘Oh Bobo, not again.’ Then again, his lawyers were always saying that.

Bobo was an entrepreneur – he built motorways, he ran trains, he jumped out of aeroplanes (he owned a fleet of them) – and, gosh, everyone loved Bobo. He wasn’t conventional. He said outrageous things, all of them muttered through a mop of untidy hair. And if you wanted someone to launch your event, then he’d not only parachute in, he’d do it wearing a Union Jack nappy.

Even the people who hated Bobo still admired him in a way. He was a dynamo, a powerhouse. He created jobs, he made things happen, and everyone wanted a piece of him. He was being talked about as a possible transport minister. ‘But gosh,’ he’d said when asked about it. ‘What can they want with me? Politicians are clever chaps, and I’m just a big mouth and I’m always popping my foot in it. No no no. I’d much rather get on with it and get the job done on time and without spending too much dosh.’

After that carefully calculated outburst, the cries to make him transport minister had only grown in intensity. Bobo didn’t intend to take the job, of course, but the talk of it made sorting out contracts for his various ventures much more easy.

But why was he tied to a train track? Bobo gave up trying to scratch his nose and pondered his situation. The train track was not comfortable, but his surroundings were idyllic. What a lovely bit of unspoilt countryside to put a train line through. ‘God’s own country,’ he thought.

Then he understood. That was why he was tied to a train track, of course! Silly Bobo!

‘Publicity stunt,’ he said, happily, and looked around for the cameras so he could give it his Best-of-British all.

Any minute now, why, yes, the director would appear, telling him how splendidly he was doing. Classic Bobo. Doing an advert for his new high-speed train line strapped down to his own track.

Why, he could see a figure wandering towards him across a meadow. Now, if it had been a stag-do then she’d have made a very odd kissogram – dressed up in flowing plum skirts, poking at the daisies with her parasol. Mind you, she was probably the director of the advert. They let women do all sorts of things these days. And very splendidly they did them too.

The woman stopped, seemed to notice him for the first time, and acted with pantomime surprise at discovering him. Bobo laughed along.

‘Hallooo there!’ he called to her. ‘How am I doing? Hope I’m not being too hopelessly dreadful.’ Always good to come across as eager to please. People liked that.

‘Oh no,’ the woman replied. ‘You’re doing a simply lovely job … of being a victim.’ She hopped over a low fence and slid down the narrow embankment onto the line. As she did so she said, ‘Wheeeeee.’

Bobo frowned and blew some hair out of his eyes. Crikey. This woman seemed familiar. Vague memory of her seeming to be quite angry and vowing revenge. Which, given Bobo’s experience of the opposite sex, didn’t really narrow it down that much.

No. Wait.

Gosh.

‘I remember you,’ he said, and, for the first time he felt a slight shiver in this perfect summer’s day. ‘From my club. The woman … well … the woman who wanted to be a member.’

‘I am a member!’ she said, exasperated. She angrily picked up a buttercup, and started to coo, ‘He loves me, he loves me not’ as she pulled at the petals.

‘Oh, well done you!’ Bobo wriggled against the rope tying him down. ‘You don’t need a stuffy old club. Why, look at you – directing this advert. I say. It is an advert, isn’t it?’

The woman dropped the beheaded flower and leaned over him, confidential. ‘Little secret. It’s not an advert.’

‘Oh.’

The woman did an impression of a steam train, including pistoning her elbows.

‘Why are you doing that?’

‘Chuff chuff chuff. Doing what? Chuff chuff chuff.’

‘Pretending to be a steam train.’

‘Because you like trains, Bobo dear. Poot, poot.’ She stood up, surveying the track. ‘And what a train line this is! High speed. Whoosh. Going through some quite dolly fields at vast public expense and a staggering amount of corruption.’ She winked, slyly. ‘That’s between you and me. But I’ve read the accounts.’ She yawned. ‘What a lot of naughty numbers.’

Bobo harrumphed. That was just how one did business. Something showy and public and very exciting. Oodles of profit for yours truly and no promises broken because one never quite made any.

‘Forgive me if I’m being a dense duffer, but why am I tied to this train track?’

The woman laughed. ‘It’s because I’m going to marry you.’

Ah, thought Bobo, miserably. It had been a stag-do after all. And he really was getting married again. He looked at the woman, uncertainly. Crumbs. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t recall—’