Doctor Who: Bad Therapy (6 page)

‘I’m afraid,’ the croaky voice rasped, not sounding afraid at all, ‘that the interest on your debt has been increased. The people I represent are keen to make the most out of their investment. But they are not greedy. They want just one more payment; if that isn’t made they will be forced to take extreme action. Letters will be sent. Statements will be made. Public statements, if you catch my drift?’

The Doctor’s face hardened. It wasn’t a loan: Jack hadn’t borrowed any money. It was extortion. Jack Bartlett was paying to keep the photograph secret. Paying to keep that touch, that moment in the park quiet. The photographs in the envelopes were to remind Jack of the blackmailer’s hold over him.

The Doctor placed the envelopes back between the pages of the magazine and pushed it back into its hiding place in the folds of the exercise magazine.

The coyness of the magazine had suddenly lost its charm.

The Doctor climbed slowly and calmly out from under the bed. Jack’s ‘guest’

was a stooped, elderly man with rheumy eyes and a pinched, vicious face. On seeing the Doctor, the old man let out a whinny of laughter.

‘Oh, I’m
so
sorry, I didn’t realize that I was interrupting something.’ He raised an eyebrow, somewhat theatrically. ‘There’s just no stopping you little devils, is there? I wonder if I should let my employers know about this little 28

liaison. They’re always on the lookout for new clients. And who might you be, Mr?’

Jack shouted that it wasn’t like that. The Doctor only calmly brushed the dust from his jacket with his hat.

‘It’s not Mr, it’s Doctor, actually.’

The old man’s lined face broke out into a grin, displaying a few yellowing teeth. ‘It gets better and better. In our business we find that men who have much, are always willing to work that little bit harder to keep hold of what they’ve got.’

The Doctor reached into his jacket pockets and dramatically emptied their contents on the bed. Without looking at the debris, he said, ‘Two apple cores, a catapult, fourteen inches of string, a cricket ball, twenty-three Arcturian pounds, the key to an obsolete blue telephone box and three gobstoppers –

one’s half sucked. That’s all I have in the world.’

The blackmailer looked at the Doctor as if he were mad. The Doctor continued, his voice measured and even. ‘I don’t have anything. No job, no employers for you to contact, no colleagues for you to whisper to. My doctorate is entirely my own invention. I am a traveller. I have no home here. No spouse and no children. I am not a member of the Rotary Club and the police do not know my name. In fact, I don’t even have a name. Not any more.’

‘You’re lying,’ the old man sneered, but he sounded unsettled in the face of the Doctor’s calm sincerity. ‘No one can live like that. Everyone’s got something they’re scared of losing, something they’ll pay to protect. We’ll find out all about you, don’t you worry.’

The Doctor shrugged and leant forward on his red umbrella-handle. ‘I am not worried. There’s only one very small thing about you that interests me.

Your work must be very lucrative, am I right?’

The old man glanced at Jack and sniggered. ‘Well, we can’t complain.’

‘I’m sure that you must have made a lot of money out of people, people who can’t possibly refuse your demands. You can go on and on until you’ve drunk them completely dry, and even then there’s nothing to stop you going through with your threat.’

The old man looked pleased that someone appreciated how powerful and clever he and his friends were. ‘Oh we often expose people even after they’ve paid up. The publicity persuades anyone who might be thinking of refusing us to come around to our way of thinking.’

‘That must prove to be most effective,’ the Doctor commented. ‘So why, if it is so successful, so perfect, are you letting this particular “client” off? It’s this strange act of generosity that interests me.’

‘What do you mean?’

29

‘You said a moment ago that your employers only wanted one more payment from Jack. A large payment and earlier than usual. Why?’

The blackmailer narrowed his eyes. ‘That’s none of your business.’

‘Oh, everything is my business,’ the Doctor scoffed. ‘You’re letting him off because you know something. You know something about the other boy in the photograph. I’m right, aren’t I?’

The Doctor took a step forward and the old man nervously scuttled to the door. ‘You knew before you came here that something had happened or was going to happen to the boy in the picture.’

The old man slipped a hand around the door handle, preparing to leave.

‘Who are you?’ Beads of sweat appeared on his wrinkled brow. ‘How can you know all this?’

‘I’m the Doctor,’ he thundered. ‘And the answers to my questions are written in the fear on your face. You can give your employers a message. You can tell them that they are in trouble. You can tell them that they should expect a visit from me.’

With no answer to give to this, the old man just snarled a threat at the Doctor and left.

Closing the door after him, the Doctor’s mood changed dramatically. The darkness left his eyes and, suddenly filled with energy, he ran over to the bed and started to refill his pockets. ‘Right, that will have put the wind up him.

We’d better follow him to their lair while the trail’s still hot.’

When Jack didn’t answer him, the Doctor turned to find the boy staring at him.

‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ Jack said quietly. ‘Eddy’s dead.’

For a moment there was silence.

‘Eddy. I didn’t know his name.’ The Doctor looked away for a moment, and then met Jack’s gaze and nodded. ‘Yes, I’m afraid he is dead. He was murdered earlier this evening. He was dying when I found him. I tried to save him but I. . . couldn’t.’

Jack sat down heavily on his bed and buried his face in his hands.

The Doctor could only stare down as the teenager was gripped by the first spasm of grief.

‘Bugger off! It’s members only!’

The indignant voice from the first floor of the building was quickly followed by three football supporters who hurried down the iron staircase, forcing Christopher Cwej to stand to one side to let them pass by on the narrow stairwell.

‘Bitch!’ One of the men spat venomously, but not loudly enough for the woman upstairs to hear. Chris watched them go, before gripping the rail and 30

continuing on his way up. He hoped that the proprietor remembered making her invitation.

The Tropics was on the first floor of a shabby town house on Dean Street –

one of the short roads which connected Soho to the main streets of London’s West End. It had taken Chris a little while to find the place; the Tropics didn’t advertise its presence and few of the houses on the street displayed their numbers. It was only by a process of elimination that Chris had finally located the club. The name had suggested something rather grand and colonial, but this was belied by the filthy, fire escape, surrounded by dustbins which had disgorged their sodden contents over the ground.

‘Christopher,
deah
,’ Tilda announced, as she caught sight of him. ‘Drag that fabulous body of yours in here this instant. I have an undeniable urge to grab hold of a piece of it.’

Chris couldn’t help grinning boyishly. He pulled off the trilby that the Doctor had selected for him from the TARDIS stores and entered the Tropics. Tilda was perched on a corner stool next to the door, smoking a filterless cigarette.

She reached up and pulled him towards her, kissing him lightly on either side of his face.

‘Welcome to the Tropics. Welcome to my domain. You are in for a treat, I’m really most particular about who I let through that door.’

‘I met three who didn’t make it on the stairs.’

Tilda took a long drag on her cigarette and blew out a steady stream of blue smoke. ‘Ergh, barbarians!’ She leant closely to him and whispered conspira-torially, ‘I have a suspicion that they thought this was a brothel. I mean, do I look like a working girl?’

Chris didn’t understand the reference, and worried that he might make a
faux pas
, decided to say nothing.

Tilda narrowed her eyes. ‘The correct answer, little Miss Cwej, is, “No”.

Now go and get yourself a drink from Saeed or Andrew – whichever one of those dour queens is deigning to serve my punters at the moment – and I shall join you when you’ve settled in.’

The ‘club’ proved to be little more than two dimly lit rooms, cluttered with assorted chairs and tables. An upright piano stood in a corner of one room, another was dominated by the bar, from which one of Tilda’s barmen served Chris with a glass of greasy Italian red wine. Despite Tilda’s disparaging remarks, Saeed was friendly and attentive, asking Chris which gym he ‘worked out’ in and flattering him on his pectorals.

Chris settled at an empty table and spent a few moments people-watching.

The club was about half full, with an equal balance of men and women. The men wore suits, as did a few of the women, although most were wearing simple dresses adorned with floral patterns. Loud chatter filled the room.

31

Chris looked up as Tilda joined him at the table – a wineglass in one hand, a bottle in the other.

‘How do you like them?’

Chris was nonplussed.

‘My punters. They’re my life’s work. Some people paint on canvas, others write for the stage. This is my art: the atmosphere that I create in my two little rooms.’

Chris realized that he must have looked unimpressed, because she added after a moment, ‘Oh, I know they don’t look like much but they’re a marvellous mix. From titled folk to impoverished artists: all human life is here. Well, except for the dullards and the drearies – I really haven’t any time for them at all.’

Chris looked again at the people in the bar, trying to see what could be so special about Tilda’s guests. His eyes fell upon a small, unremarkable-looking woman in a long coat talking quietly in a small group. ‘What about her?’ Chris said, describing the woman. ‘Is she a great artist?’

‘Ah, now she’s new to me. I think she is with the art crowd. Drab little number, isn’t she? Dreadful raincoat and poor skin. Probably one of those abstract expressionists. Yes, very abstract I should say.’

Tilda called over a friend to identify the woman for her. Tilda’s opinion changed radically when she learnt that the woman in question was a young aristocrat and among the richest women in England. ‘Really?’ Tilda gasped, gazing back at the woman with new interest. ‘Now that you say that, her complexion does seem more radiant and her hair has gained new lustre. Yes, very attractive number that little one. I shall have to have a little chat with her after I’ve dealt with Miss Cwej here.’

‘Dealt with me?’ Chris laughed. ‘That sounds ominous. What did you have in mind?’

‘Well to start with I should like to know everything about you,’ Tilda said, her tone light and conversational as she refilled Chris’s glass and poured a larger one for herself. ‘You really are very different to most of the people around here. At first I thought you might be a labourer, but your hands are too soft and well-manicured for that. A boxer, then? But no, your pretty face hasn’t taken that kind of punishment. A bodybuilder, perhaps?’ Tilda leant back in her seat to appraise his impressive form. ‘Possibly. But then I wondered why a bodybuilder would be hanging around Soho with. . . well with whatever your friend the Doctor turns out to be. I don’t know quite what to make of you, young Christopher. You like girls, blonde ones particularly.’

Chris raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh yes?’

‘Oh yes,’ Tilda continued. ‘I’ve seen you giving a few of the women here the once over. You’re less accustomed but not necessarily uninterested in the 32

attention of men – mind you, you completely missed Saeed’s attempt to chat you up. And then there’s your clothes. They look new and they’re certainly expensive, but they’re twenty years out of date.’ She raised her glass in a toast. ‘You interest me strangely, Christopher Cwej, and frankly, few men of your age do.’ She drained her glass and added, ‘So tell me?’

‘Tell you what?’

‘Everything.’

‘Can’t a girl get any peace?’ Patsy Monette’s disembodied voice wailed from the other side of her dressing-room door. Jeffrey waited for a moment and then opened the door, only to close it hurriedly to avoid being struck by a low-flying stiletto.

Jeffrey sighed and knocked on the door.

‘Leave me alone,’ she yelled. There was a slight pause before the singer added, more reasonably, ‘Unless, you’ve something to drink.’

Patsy Monette glanced up at the mirror in front of her as Jeffrey slipped into the room, guarding his face with his arm, ready to fend off any more airborne shoes. On seeing who it was Monette’s expression slipped from mild interest to tired dismay.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ she slurred, turning away. ‘Whatever it is that you want, the answer is no. Now be a good little boy and call me a cab. I want to get home.’

The singer slumped back in her chair and started to dab unenthusiastically at her stage make-up with a tissue.

Jeffrey watched Patsy Monette as she worked. The young woman was a complete mess. She hadn’t even bothered to change out of her sequined stage costume; just wrapping a grubby dressing gown around herself. Even the thick pancake make-up couldn’t hide the dark rings under her eyes. Her face was drawn and her usually perfect skin was coated in a light dusting of pimples.

Yet there was something deeply appealing about her vulnerability, and secretly Jeffrey wanted nothing more than to take her home and look after her.

She rummaged in her purse for a couple of tablets and swallowed them down with the dregs of a gin and tonic. It hurt Jeffrey to see her being so self-destructive.

‘I wish you’d ease up on those,’ he started, but Patsy cut him off sharply.

‘Are you still here?’ she complained, swivelling around in her chair to stare fiercely at him. ‘It’s bad enough that everyone else is moaning on at me without you having a go as well. Oh and do stop looking like a kicked puppy or I shall be forced to thump you one. Something – I feel I must warn you – that will give me a great deal of pleasure. Didn’t I tell you to get me a cab?’