Doctor Who: Bad Therapy (5 page)

Frustration and confusion got the better of him. ‘You stupid fat cow!’ Jack swore at Madge. ‘You’ve gone and spoilt everything.’ He swept the drinks on the table in front of him on to the floor with his arm.

Several things happened at once. Madge screamed and went to slap Jack around the face but missed, and only succeeded in knocking the rest of the drinks over; Fred the barman lunged for Jack while angrily informing him that he was barred for life; and the small man in the tweed jacket, whom Jack had seen enter earlier, suddenly appeared in the middle of the scene and shouted at the top of his voice: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please!’

Everyone was so shocked by this sudden intrusion that they stopped what they were doing and stared at him.

Impossibly, the little man produced a huge bunch of long-stemmed white roses from his sleeve. He handed the flowers to a bemused Fred, and bowed low. When no one applauded, the little man looked up, an expression of mock hurt on his face. ‘Ah, I see that you are a most discerning audience, unimpressed by such childish illusions. I shall have to win you over with my world famous disappearing chicken trick.’

The little man winked privately at Jack. With a flourish, he produced a rubber chicken from his right sleeve and threw it high into the air. Aiming his finger at the bird, he shouted, ‘One finger can be a deadly weapon!’ There was an ear-shattering explosion, the chicken disappeared in a ball of blinding scarlet fire, and customers of the Fourth Magpie were showered with hundreds of tiny chocolate eggs.

When the spots had cleared from their eyes, the regulars of the Fourth Magpie discovered that the little man had vanished, taking Jack Bartlett with him.

By the time the cab dropped them outside his lodgings in Notting Hill, Jack had sobered up. The smog was thick tonight and he could only just make out the grubby front of his own house. Jack was wondering how he was going to get the Doctor passed old Mrs Carroway downstairs, when it occurred to him he hadn’t told the Doctor where he lived.

Jack wanted to ask the Doctor how he knew his address, but the little man was caught up in an argument with the cab driver. From where Jack stood 22

it looked as if he was attempting to pay the fare with tiny faintly luminous cubes.

‘What do you mean “You can’t accept them”?’ Jack heard the Doctor exclaim. ‘I was assured they were legal tender on all the civilized planets in this Galaxy.’

The taxi driver must have tired of the argument because eventually he swore angrily at the Doctor and accelerated away, making a rude gesture out of the window as he went. The Doctor only raised his hat politely in response.

Jack couldn’t help smiling. The little man was as mad as Lady Docker.

Jack couldn’t quite remember leaving the Magpie or the journey back in the cab. He put his lapse of memory down to the beer. He wouldn’t normally have accepted the lift, except the Doctor had said he wanted to talk to him about a mutual friend. From his tone, Jack had wondered whether the Doctor meant Eddy. Jack shivered, remembering the expression on the Doctor’s face when he’d told him. He had looked awkward and embarrassed, like a policeman bringing bad news.

Having dealt with the taxi driver, the Doctor was walking over to Jack, preoccupied with putting his strange currency back into his pocket. For a moment Jack thought he saw a mischievous, self-congratulatory grin on the Doctor’s face, as if the business with the cab fare had been a scam, like the magic trick in the pub. But then car lights in the smog behind the Doctor threw him into silhouette and Jack could only see the distinctive outline made by his hat and umbrella.

Jack tensed as the light behind the Doctor grew brighter. He heard the sound of a car engine, shrill and high. The driver would have to be a maniac to drive so fast in this weather. The Doctor appeared to be oblivious to the noise and Jack started towards him just as a car hurtled out of the smog. A black cab. Heading straight for them.

Jack threw himself at the Doctor and together they crashed over the low wall that bordered Mrs Carroway’s tiny front garden, collapsing amongst the unkempt shrubs.

Jack heard rather than saw the taxi hit the kerb, bounce crazily off it and hurtle away into the night.

The Doctor was on his feet in an instant. ‘Road hog!’ he exclaimed, clearing the wall in a single leap. He shook his fist at the now empty road, before turning excitedly back to Jack.

‘Tell me,’ he spluttered, waving his hands excitedly in front of him, ‘did you notice anything strange about that vehicle?’

‘What?’ Jack rubbed a bruised knee. ‘Beside the fact that it was trying to run us down – on the pavement?’ Jack paused and thought for a moment –

there was something nagging at him. Something that wasn’t quite right. That 23

was it.

‘Do you mean that the light on top was the wrong colour?’ he asked.

The Doctor shook his head impatiently, tapping a rhythm on his lips with his fingers. ‘I was more concerned that there didn’t appear to be anyone in the driving seat. The interior was entirely opaque. And I had the distinct impression that there wasn’t anyone in that taxi at all.’

24

3

Half-A-Person

As the curtain fell for the final time that evening, the stage manager watched with mounting sadness as the star of the cabaret staggered from the stage to her dressing room.

How much longer can this go on? Jeffrey thought. The woman was visibly falling apart. Patsy Monette was a shadow of her former self. Her considerable stage presence was fading, and her full and sensuous voice had become weak and stretched since her husband’s accident earlier in the week. It was as if she were only half-a-person without him.

Jeffrey had always liked Patsy Monette and felt protective towards her. She, in turn, treated him with more respect than assistant stage managers could usually expect from the stars they serviced. She wasn’t too bright of course, but with a face as pretty as hers that hardly mattered. Jeffrey had often heard her late husband boast that he liked his women that way. It was not without reason that the style magazines referred to her as England’s Monroe. Not only was she beautiful, but she had an impish smile that always seemed to suggest that she had just managed to get away with something really improper.

The late Bob Burgess had exploited this, having her record old show classics and then milk even the slightest double-entendre in the lyrics for their every last innuendo. When Patsy Monette sang ‘All of Me’, it was no longer the appeal of a spurned lover but an invitation to bed. Unsurprisingly, the nation’s youth had taken her straight to their hearts. Girls wanted to be like her, and boys just wanted her full stop.

However, Jeffrey suspected that this public infatuation might soon come to an end. Physically, Miss Monette looked terrible, and if the public became aware of her point-blank refusal to take time off and mourn her husband respectfully, her fortunes might well take a change for the worse.

The manager of the Top Ten Club had been in three times that week to see her show and there were rumours flying around that he was already looking for someone else to take top billing. Steeling himself for the task ahead, Jeffrey set off to try to warn the singer.

Jack’s window opened, letting in a blast of night air and the Doctor, who was carrying a little boy in his arms. It was Dennis.

25

‘I found him on the fire escape. Is he a friend of yours?’

Jack nodded, lifting the boy out of the Doctor’s arms and laid him down on Mikey’s bed. ‘My roommate’s little brother.’

Dennis’s whole body was shaking violently. His dark brown eyes were glassy and unfocussed, his teeth chattered noisily. Dennis didn’t appear to hear anything that was said to him. Jack looked up at the Doctor. ‘What’s the matter with him?’

‘Shock,’ the Doctor replied. ‘He needs to rest.’ He leant over the boy and gently touched his finger to Dennis’s forehead. There was a fizzing sound like a badly wired plug and Jack tasted a tang in the air, like electricity, and then Dennis relaxed into a deep sleep. It was as if the Doctor had just turned the little boy off like an electric train.

‘There,’ the Doctor said, as he tucked Dennis in. ‘He should sleep for a few hours.’

Jack watched as the Doctor carefully examined Dennis’s head and neck.

The Doctor probed the little boy’s throat with his fingertips, as if he were searching for something beneath the skin. Jack wondered whether he should stop the Doctor. After all, he didn’t really know anything about him. What would Mikey say if he came and saw the Doctor here? The little man didn’t look like a real doctor in his funny hat and clothes. He looked more like a magician or someone from the circus. Someone who travelled. But there was something about his hands. They moved over Dennis’s body with the keen but impassionate interest of a healer.

‘I didn’t thank you,’ the Doctor murmured, still intent on his examination.

‘What?’

‘For saving my life. Outside. You were very brave.’

‘Oh.’ Jack had never saved anyone’s life before. An embarrassed grin started to creep across his face. ‘You. . . you’re welcome.’

‘But please, please don’t do it again. You might get hurt, and I have too much blood on my hands as it is.’

Bemused and deflated by this remark, Jack looked away, the smile dying on his face. His eyes settled on the Doctor’s hands. There were reddish-brown stains framing his fingernails and shirtcuffs. It looked like. . .

‘Jack,’ the Doctor started, as his examination came to an end. He paused and took off his battered fedora, placing it carefully – no,
respectfully
– on the bed next to him. ‘Jack, I have some bad news for you.’

The front doorbell sounded. Saved by the bell, Jack thought. A voice deep down inside of him was whispering that he really didn’t want to hear whatever it was that the Doctor had to say. Jack swallowed down the anxious feelings that accompanied that thought, waved the Doctor into silence and hurried 26

to the door. In the gaps between the posts of the banister, he could see Mrs Carroway open the front door downstairs and let in. . .

Oh, no.

‘Under the bed, quick.’

The Doctor opened his mouth to protest, but such was the panic on Jack’s face that he allowed himself to be ushered under the other single bed in the room. A moment later there was a knock at the door. As he lay there in the dust, staring at the criss-cross of wire that formed the base of the bed, he was aware that Roslyn Forrester would have had a few arch comments to make about him being secreted away in a young man’s bedroom.

He heard the door being opened and the heavy footsteps of a large man enter the room. From his low vantage point, he could only see the newcomer’s black shoes and trouser bottoms. The man’s voice was old and low. He said he had come to collect some money. The implied threat he made when Jack replied that he didn’t have it suggested that the man was not from a bank or a reputable company. A loan shark? The instalment due sounded considerable and the Doctor wondered what Jack had needed the money for. The young man didn’t seem to own much, the room he shared was barely furnished, and Jack’s clothes were neither new nor expensive.

Well, he wasn’t going to find the answers to his questions down here. Despite Jack’s strange request for him to remain hidden, the Doctor was about to climb out from under the bed and ask, when he caught sight of a magazine tucked beneath the mattress – presumably by Jack. As he pulled it through one of the diamond-shaped gaps in the wire frame, a few small brown envelopes slipped from its pages.

The title of the magazine was
Physical Strength and Fitness
. The Doctor grinned. He’d forgotten how innocent mid-twentieth century Britain could be. It was a magazine for weight trainers. Most of the text was made up of dietary advice for those in training and excited reports of national competi-tions and championships – presumably included to encourage the dispirited.

However, the Doctor suspected that it was the pictures which had attracted Jack to the title. They were all of young men exhibiting the results of the hard work they’d done in the gym. Some of the models had been photographed nude, but the publishers had discreetly superimposed black underwear over the offending parts of the photographs. To the Doctor, this coyness seemed somehow representative of the age.

There were some loose pages that had obviously been torn from other exercise magazines. Pictures of healthy looking young men flexing muscles and lifting weights. All of the models in the pictures had cherubic expressions and 27

golden hair. The Doctor was reminded of the boy who died at the hospital.

Reminded of the blood making pink streaks in the fair hair.

The envelopes, which had been secreted between the pages of the magazine, were all addressed to JACK BARTLETT, ESQ and also contained photographs. Or rather, the Doctor discovered after examining them, each contained a single copy of the same picture. From the grainy texture of the image it was clear that the picture had been taken from a distance, probably with a telephoto lens. The picture was of two young men sitting on a bench facing each other. Despite the poor quality of the photograph, the two men were easily identifiable. The blond boy, his hair dark in this picture, was reaching out to touch Jack’s face.

There was something familiar about the envelope. A fault in the typewriter had meant that the ‘Q’ in ‘ESQ’ had been printed slightly lower than the other letters in the line. The Doctor had seen this before. When he’d called at the flat earlier that evening, there had been a similar letter for Jack on the sideboard in the hall. He’d noticed it while Mrs Carroway had been bitterly sounding off about the inadequacies of her tenant – three months behind with the rent and coming in at all hours from
those
pubs in the West End.

Jack’s voice, raised in anger, brought the Doctor into the present. ‘That’s too much! I can’t get my hands on that much. They’re already asking questions at work. I’ve given you money this month. I just can’t get any more.’