Doctor Who: Bad Therapy (26 page)

‘That would certainly fit with your translation, but, well, what difference does it make now, Highness?’

‘What difference does it make? Ala’dan, it makes all the difference in the world. Don’t you see? She made a choice. In the end her choice was between a life with Moriah or death. And she chose death.’

Ala’ dan looked puzzled. ‘And was that a wise choice?’

‘It was
a
choice. Sometimes that’s enough. It must have been Tol’gar who betrayed her; he was probably reporting back to Moriah all along. Moriah must have confronted Petruska before she could leave. The bastard beat her up –’

‘And removed one of the spheres in the circle in order to prevent her escaping?’ the old chancellor suggested, looking up from the translation Gilliam had jotted down in her notepad.

‘Yes. And that’s a part of all of this which I don’t really understand, because the circle is complete. Complete and functional after all this time. It was the warmth from the bird/globe that kept me alive last night.’

‘Someone must have replaced the missing sphere later.’

‘But who?’

‘Highness, how else could Moriah have fled Kr’on Tep never to be seen again?’

‘You mean Moriah put the sphere back after taking it away?’

Ala’dan nodded. ‘Who else?’ he asked, and walked to the doorway of the bedchamber, before turning back to face her. ‘He would have returned to her rooms sometime after their argument, perhaps racked with guilt for hurting the woman he loved.’

‘I wouldn’t count on it,’ Gilliam muttered.

Ala’dan shook his hand and gave her an admonishing look. ‘Come now, Highness, this man was in love with her to the exclusion of all else, of course he would feel guilty. He would be looking for forgiveness from his love.’

Ala’dan mimed entering the room and searching for the queen.

Gilliam smiled as she watched him cross to the hole in the floor. Ala’dan was caught up in his performance, like a detective acting out the crime in a movie’s final scene. Gilliam was reminded of how important the story of Moriah and Petruska was to the people of this planet. Several sects still worshipped Moriah as a god. They weren’t going to like her new version of events.

145

‘And what would Moriah have found down there in the darkness?’ Ala’dan asked, rhetorically, as he stood at the edge of the pit. ‘He would have found the woman he worshipped dead. Killed by her own hand. And all because of his own terrible actions.’

Gilliam joined the old man and looked down into the depths. ‘So he replaced the sphere and fled Kr’on Tep.’

Ala’dan nodded. ‘Before anyone could learn of his folly. And so his son became king, a line of rule which has continued to this day.’ He put a hand on her shoulder. ‘And so you have the answers to the questions which brought you here. Will you now return to the king’s side?’

Gilliam looked away. She hadn’t expected Ala’dan to be so direct.

‘Highness. . . Gilliam, do you doubt his feelings? You need not, for he loves you above all others.’

‘I know,’ she said, her mouth tight.

‘It is not easy for a husband to explain why his wife does not wish to sit beside him. It is harder still for a king. For all his bluster, the king is a private man, but I know that his heart aches, and he has been so patient –’

‘Enough, Ala’dan!’ Gilliam hadn’t meant to shout. ‘That’s enough,’ she said, more quietly, back in control.

The sudden silence between the two old friends was painful for Gilliam to bear. Perhaps it was painful for them both. Gilliam didn’t know how to break through it.

‘I should inform the king of what you have discovered here,’ the chancellor said, his voice carefully formal. ‘No doubt he will wish to come and see for himself.’

‘Whatever,’ Gilliam murmured.

Ala’dan made to leave, but something held him back. ‘You won’t. . . touch anything, will you, Highness?’ he said, and then gathered up his robes before hurrying from the chamber.

Gilliam walked around the room, rereading some of the familiar passages on the walls, the chancellor’s words echoing in her mind all the while. The unspoken meaning of them was clear. He was really asking her not to leave.

Not to try and use the bird/globe device to flee her husband, just as Petruska had once tried to and failed.

The task was over. There wasn’t any reason to stay in the ruined palace any longer. If she intended to remain with the king then she might as well return to the royal barge now. There were meetings to be rescheduled, ambassadors to be apologized to: all the usual components of royal life aboard the
Jewelled
Sword
.

Or.

146

Or she could gather up the few possessions which she had brought with her and – well, leave. Standing in Petruska’s room, the choice felt unavoidable.

Even standing still and doing nothing until Ala’dan arrived with the king was, in effect, a choice.

Later, when she thought back to this moment, she couldn’t put her finger on exactly what it was that had finally made up her mind. Perhaps it was the noise of a shuttle crossing overhead which just might have turned out to be the king? All she could remember was turning very deliberately on her heel, collapsing the thermo-tent and stowing it in her holdall, before adjusting the control on the null-gravity belt and gliding down over the side of the pit and into the darkness.

147

10

You’re Gonna Need Someone On Your

Side

‘Sergeant, I really don’t have time for this!’

‘You’ve got all the time in the world, all the time in the world.’

‘If you would just contact Inspector Harris, he’ll explain everything. In fact, you ought to contact him immediately. I’m informally assisting him with a murder inquiry and he’ll be very angry that you’re keeping me down here.’

‘Is that right?’ Sergeant Bridie pulled a packet of Players out of his pocket and lit one, offering the packet to the Doctor who was seated opposite him.

The Doctor shook his head irritably, and drummed his fingers on the table.

‘I packed that in centuries ago. Knocks years off your life.’

‘Centuries ago?’ Bridie chuckled. ‘You don’t seem to have done so badly,’ he said and blew out a cloud of smoke.

‘Would you mind not doing that? I’m sure I must have the right to clean air or something?’

‘You have the right to a solicitor. You’ve already refused to see the duty solicitor.’

‘Why would I want to speak to a solicitor?’ the Doctor said, looking genuinely puzzled. ‘A spot of late-night conveyancing perhaps? What I want is to see Chief Inspector Harris or, better still, to be released.’

‘Well, Chief Inspector Harris doesn’t want to see you. You’ve caused him a considerable amount of professional embarrassment.’ Bridie leant forward.

‘Why did you do it, anyway?’

‘Do what?’

‘Well, there’s impersonating a hospital pathologist, for starters.’

The Doctor sat back in his chair. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You know about that, do you? I never actually claimed to be a pathologist. I was just, well, mistaken for one.’

‘When Chief Inspector Harris found you, you were conducting an autopsy in the Middlesex Hospital.’

‘Ye–es.’

‘Are you employed by the Middlesex Hospital?’

149

‘Not exactly.’

‘Not exactly?’

‘Not at all, actually.’

‘You see, “Doctor”, that doesn’t surprise me, particularly as you appear to hold no medical qualifications whatsoever.’

‘Not on this planet anyway.’

Bridie narrowed his eyes. ‘I really can’t decide whether you say these things just to annoy me or because you’re actually completely unhinged.’

‘Sergeant, I’ve already had to prove my sanity once this weekend,’ the Doctor said, wearily. ‘Please don’t make me have to do it all over again.’

‘Then tell me, what you are up to, Doctor? Tell me why you’ve got yourself involved in all of this?’

The Doctor fanned the sergeant’s smoke away with his hand. ‘It really is very simple. I’m just trying to help. I realize that you humans can find it hard to accept that others might act out a sense of altruism, but it’s true. I have no personal agenda in any of this.’

‘I find that very difficult to believe.’

‘Which is precisely the point I’ve just made. Well, you’re not the first, but for once it’s true. I arrived on this. . . I arrived in Soho on Friday night. I came across an injured boy lying in an alley. I took him to hospital, I tried to save him –’

‘That was you! I should have known.’

The conversation wasn’t going quite the way the Doctor had planned it.

The more he tried to explain himself the deeper he seemed to dig himself into trouble. Still, there was nothing for it now –

‘Yes, that was me. I suspected that Eddy Stone wasn’t. . . well, wasn’t. . . ’

‘Normal?’ Bridie supplied. ‘Well, it’s bloody obvious that he was a queer.’

‘No,’ the Doctor frowned, ‘that’s not it. Actually I suspected that he wasn’t human.’

Bridie burst out laughing. ‘You think he came from another planet?’

‘No, I did think that for a little while, but I was wrong. He is a native of this planet. But he’s not human that’s all. Humans are born, generally speaking, and Eddy Stone wasn’t so much as born as, well, grown.’

Bridie stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette. ‘I see,’ he said. His voice sounded calm, but something about his tone was ringing warning bells in the Doctor’s head. ‘Grown? Like a fruit perhaps?’ Bridie sneered.

The Doctor sighed at the bitter joke. This wasn’t going to be easy. ‘No, not like a fruit. Eddy Stone was an artificial person. Grown from human cells collected by the black cab. But I’m beginning to think that Moriah had underestimated his Toys.’

150

Bridie’s anger surged out of nowhere. ‘Who do you think you’re dealing with? A complete fool?’ Bridie raged. The Doctor suddenly realized that he had misjudged the sergeant’s mood entirely. The sergeant was furious with him, furious and scared. It was as if the Doctor’s presence threatened him somehow.

Bridie reached over the table and pulled the Doctor towards him by the collar of his shirt. ‘Don’t you see how much trouble you’re in?’ he shouted.

‘The way you behaved at the hospital we could probably do you for murder.

And all you can do is tell more of your stupid lies.’

‘That’s ridiculous. Why would I have taken the boy to the hospital if I was the one who attacked him?’

Bridie appeared lost for words for a moment and then started, somewhat desperately, on a new tack. ‘I saw you coming out of the Scraton brothers’ nightclub. They’re prime suspects in this investigation. You’re working for Gordy Scraton, aren’t you? You probably killed Stone at the hospital on Gordy’s orders.’

Bridie was pulling back his fist, preparing to strike the Doctor, when the interview-room door swung open and Inspector Harris ran in accompanied by two constables. He took one look at his sergeant, cursed, and then pulled him off the Doctor.

‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing, Bridie? They can hear you all over the station.’ Harris turned to the constables. ‘Get him out of here.’

The Doctor rubbed at his throat. ‘No. Wait,’ he rasped, hurrying around the table. Something the sergeant had said was troubling him, something about the Scratons. ‘How do you know that Gordy Scraton is involved? I thought the police didn’t have any suspects for the murders?’

‘We still don’t,’ Harris interrupted, looking at the Doctor with undisguised contempt. ‘At least not until now.’

The Doctor met the Chief Inspector’s gaze evenly. ‘So why am I being accused of being in league with the Scratons?’

‘Scratons?’ Harris snapped. ‘What is this interest in them about? Albert Scraton is dead. There’s only Gordon left and he couldn’t hold the gang together. They disbanded months ago.’

‘Try telling that to Carl Scraton.’

‘Carl Scraton? You mentioned him before. I’ve never heard of him.’

‘Ask your sergeant. He seems to know all about them.’

Harris turned to Bridie, who was being held between the two constables.

‘Well?’

‘The Doctor’s off his head, sir,’ Bridie whined, his discomfort evident. ‘You said so yourself.’

151

Harris just stared at his sergeant, then he gestured to the officers to take him out of the room. ‘Let him cool off outside for a bit. I’ll talk to him later.’

When they were left alone in the sparsely furnished room, the Doctor straightened his tie and shirt collar. ‘I’d be careful of your sergeant, Chief Inspector. He seems to have access to information that he couldn’t possibly have access to unless –’

‘Unless he was as deceitful as you, perhaps?’

‘I was going to say unless he was in league with the people behind the killings,’ the Doctor said, ignoring the insult. He gripped his lapel with one hand and rubbed his chin with the other. ‘Yes, Moriah would need to have agents throughout London searching for the escaped Toys. How long has your sergeant been employed here? Was his transfer unusual in any way?’

The Doctor was taken aback when Harris got hold of both his shoulders and shook him roughly. ‘You just don’t stop, do you? I’ve had enough of you and your stupid ideas, Doctor whoever you are. Do you hear me? Not only have I been taken off this case, but I’ve been bloody suspended because of you. There’s going to be an inquiry into why I allowed an imposter to become one of my advisors. So, I don’t want to hear another word out of you. You’ll be held here overnight and charged in the morning.’ He rapped on the door.

‘Constable. I’m done in here,’ he shouted through it.

There was an awkward pause. Eventually, the Doctor said, ‘I’m sorry that I lied to you, Chief Inspector. When you discovered me in the mortuary I didn’t have much choice but to play along with your assumptions.’

‘Nonsense, Doctor. You could have told me the truth.’

The Doctor glanced down at his shoes. ‘Yes, yes I suppose I could have. It’s just that I didn’t think that you would believe me.’

‘I see. And what exactly is it that I wouldn’t believe?’

The truth tumbled out of the Doctor. ‘That I’m a traveller in space and time.