Doctor Who: Bad Therapy (36 page)

The Doctor snorted. ‘Yes, they might have asked you some rather difficult questions.’

‘When I heard that my descendent, Yr’canos, had brought back a human female from Earth to be his queen, I set the gateway for this world.’

The Doctor ran his hands through his hair, feeling the heavy weight of responsibility settle upon him. Every decision, every event created ripples in the Universe. The ripples could merge, rebound off the infinite dimensions of time and space in unforeseeable ways. But why did so many of them have to lead directly back to
his
actions!

‘Don’t you see, Moriah? You only make me more determined to stop you. I cannot allow you to continue to trample on these people.’

‘If you do not return the Toys to me, I will unleash more of the gelatinous devices upon this city. Return the Toys to me. They are mine by right.’

‘No, Moriah, you lost the right to the Toys a long time ago.’

‘It is your choice, Doctor. Return the Toys to me or this city will become the site of my revenge.’ Moriah stared at Tilda for a moment before turning on his heel and striding out of the dancehall.

‘Stay in the car!’ Carl ordered Jack, as he clambered out to help Gordy. Jack immediately tried to escape, only to find the back doors of the Rover were locked and wouldn’t open. He started to climb over the front seat, but Carl pushed him back over as he returned, dragging a raving Gordy behind him.

Jack looked at Gordy Scraton in horror. The man had completely lost his marbles. He sat in the passenger seat, his eyes wild and unseeing. He was clenching and unclenching his fists in his lap and muttered constantly under his breath. ‘I’ll show ’em,’ Gordy murmured. ‘I’ll show ’em all, oh yeah. I’ll get that little bastard. I’ll kill him, just like I promised.’

‘I would’ve got the kid before,’ Carl said as the car pulled away, sounding worried that this might all turn out to be all his fault. ‘I would’ve, but Eddy Stone stuck his nose in, so I ’ad to do ’im instead.’

‘You dirty stinking bastard,’ Jack raged. Not caring that Carl was driving, he started to pummel the back of the thugs head. ‘I’ll kill you, do you hear?

I’ll kill you
!’

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‘Hey, get off me you stupid little –’ The car swerved wildly before Carl brought it to a shrieking halt, the force knocking Jack forward and then back into his seat.

By the time Jack had recovered, Carl was leaning over the seat, his arm pulled back, readying a punch. Jack didn’t even have time to raise his arms to protect his face.

Everything went black.

As they turned into Silchester Road, Dennis ran ahead of Mikey preparing to scamper up the fire escape so Mrs Carroway wouldn’t see him. Mikey followed his little brother’s progress with his eyes. The streets in Notting Hill were dangerous. If it wasn’t the drunks hassling you for beer money, then it was bored Teds looking for a bit of aggravation to liven up their day.

Mrs Carroway must have been listening for the sound of his key because she opened her door and waylaid him as he tried to slip across the downstairs hall.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ she muttered, looking disappointed.

He only nodded a greeting in reply. She never seemed to demand anymore from him.

‘If you see that Jack Bartlett, you can tell him that he’s gonna be out on his ear if he don’t come up with his rent by tomorrow.’

Mikey just shrugged and took the steps two at a time.

‘I mean it,’ she shouted after him. ‘I’ve been too easy on you two. You’re taking me for a ride.’

As Mikey entered their room he saw that Jack was lying, motionless, face down in the middle of the room. The window was open, but Dennis wasn’t in sight. Mikey hauled Jack over; one of his eyes was bleeding and he wasn’t making any sense, but he was breathing.

Someone started screaming outside. A young, high voice.

Dennis!

Mikey let Jack fall back to the floor and hurtled out of the window and down the fire escape. Below him on the street, Carl Scraton had got hold of Dennis’s collar and was struggling with him, razor in hand. Dennis was kicking and screaming: doing anything which might loosen the thug’s grip on him.

Mikey had never run so fast, taking the steps of the fire escape three at a time, but he knew he wasn’t going to make it to them before Carl got a chance to use his knife. He reached the last step of the fire escape and sprinted towards them just as Carl tucked his blade under Dennis’s chin.

It was too late.

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Suddenly, Carl Scraton was jerked backwards. Two heavy-set black men in builder’s overalls had stepped on to the pavement from between a car and a van and witnessed what Scraton had been about to do. They pulled him off the boy, looking at him not with fear or rage, but with complete and utter disbelief and surprise.

‘What did you think. . . ’ One of them started to say, shaking his head.

The other had pulled Carl’s razor out of his grip and was staring at it in total astonishment.

The first man’s surprise was beginning to turn to anger. ‘A boy? He’s just a boy. What kind of –’

Carl Scraton was standing between them, looking shaken, unsure whether to run or fight.

Mikey hit him with all the force he could summon, pushing him on to the floor and screaming a string of curses at him. Some cool, quiet part of his mind decided then and there to kill Carl Scraton. It was the only way he was going to be able to make sure that Dennis would be safe. Safe for ever.

Mikey wasn’t aware of the two men trying to pull him off Carl, or off the Teds who, on seeing what looked like a lone white man being set upon by three blacks, decided to join in. All Mikey could see was Carl Scraton’s face alive with fear and pain as he hit him and hit him and hit him again.

And from those tiny moments in the shadow a battered van on Silchester Road in Notting Hill, the violence started to spread. Tensions which had been smouldering since the riots in the summer were ignited like dry newspaper under a magnifying glass. Cars were overturned and set alight. Windows smashed and shops looted. By midnight, the number of people injured would be up in the hundreds. Several of them wouldn’t ever recover from their injuries.

Jack awoke on the floor of his room. His head ached terribly and his vision was blurred in one eye. Orange light flickered into the room from the window.

Outside, Silchester Road was ablaze. Everyone who lived in the area appeared to be out on the streets. Some were fighting, although most were just standing around waiting for something exciting to happen. A few kids were throwing bricks at the houses across the street. Hardly any of the windows in the street had any glass left in their frames to break. A bunch of Teds were wrecking a car; a few of them stood on its roof, leaping up and down gleefully, while others kicked its doors in.

Further down the street an old white woman was trying to protect two Sikh kids who had taken shelter in her front yard from an angry gang of whites.

The small crowd shouted filthy curses at the boys and chanted, ‘Bring ’em 211

out’ and ‘Lynch ’em’. The old woman was yelling at the mob, ‘Go home! You should be bloody ashamed of yourselves!’

Leaning out of his window, Jack felt as if he were watching a Pathe newsreel at the cinema; it didn’t feel as if it were really happening at all. And then he saw two figures on the streets and he knew it was real. He swung his legs over the windowsill and hurried down the fire escape to where Mikey and Dennis stood on the edge of a crowd of West Indians, Sikhs and older whites.

Mikey saw him coming and gave a grim smile of welcome. ‘Your eye looks bad, Jack Bartlett.’

‘What? Oh yeah, I know. Feels worse than it looks. What happened to the Scratons?’

Mikey led him over to a van, which had lost all of its windows. In its shadow lay Carl Scraton’s corpse.

‘Blimey,’ Jack swore. He only recognized the body by its clothes. The face of Carl Scraton’s corpse was entirely featureless. Just blank flesh where eyes, nose and a mouth had once been.

‘I killed him,’ Mikey said, in a flat voice. ‘And I’m not sorry. At least now Dennis is safe. We all are.’

Somewhere in the distance a police siren began to wail. The Teds who were smashing up the car, dropped their makeshift weapons and started to scatter.

‘No,’ Jack said. ‘Not yet, we’re not.’

The news of the riot spread through the city: smaller disturbances sparking off in other parts of the capital. Gordy listened to the reports on the radio as he drove back to Soho, scared and alone. He felt ashamed and guilt-ridden for having abandoned Carl, but when some Teds had started to kick the doors of the Rover he had, automatically, put his foot down and accelerated out of Notting Hill.

He had abandoned his brother.

People were already on the streets of the West End. The air was thick with the expectation of violence. Gordy was forced to slow to a crawl as he drove down Wardour Street, the crowds thickening as he neared the centre of Soho.

His gang were still at the nightclub when he got back, edgy and excited by the prospect of a riot. Gordy was relieved that the devil hadn’t taken back his men. Afraid that they might ask him what had happened to Carl, he ordered them out on to the streets.

I’ll show them, Gordy muttered to himself as he loaded his father’s service revolver. He led his men on a tour of destruction through Soho: he watched them as they threw flaming, petrol-filled milk bottles into the queer pub on Old Compton Street; cheered them on as they threw bricks through the win-212

dows of the Jewish-owned shops; and laughed as they ran riot through a Chinese laundry, chasing the petrified young women out on to the street.

Chief Inspector Harris tried to force his way down the centre of Brewer Street.

The streets were packed and in chaos, reverberating with the sound of breaking glass and shouts of fear and delight.

A young man ran up to him, eyes wide with shock and blood streaming down his face, a rounded shard of brown glass protruding from his cheek.

Some bastard had pushed a beer bottle into his face. Harris tried to calm him down and sat him in the doorway of a shop.

There was a police box up ahead, Harris hurried towards it. If he could get through to Charing Cross then he could call for reinforcements and an ambulance. The plaque with its reassuring message was ajar, he pulled the little door open and reached for the receiver inside.

It wasn’t there. Someone had ripped it out of its socket; the cord hung limply down the side of the box. With mounting frustration, Harris tried to slam the little door shut, but the cord prevented it from closing properly and he was denied even that small satisfaction.

Damn. There probably wasn’t much point anyway as all of the available cars would have been sent to Notting Hill. Cursing, he made his way back to the injured boy.

213

15

Whatever Happens, I Love You

The Doctor stood at the window of the Tropics looking down on the activity on the streets; the lights from the fires below flickered over his stern expression.

Gilliam joined him just as three young men ran down the street, yelling gleefully, one of them brandished a burning torch.

‘What are you going to do?’ she asked.

‘About this? Nothing. It’s just the pages of history turning.’

‘And Moriah?’

‘Ah, yes, Moriah. What do you think should be done?’

She turned and leant against the windowsill. The Doctor continued to stare at the chaos beyond her. ‘He won’t stop,’ she said. ‘He’s spent thousands of years building up to this moment. He’s not going to let it go now, not without a fight.’

The Doctor nodded. ‘He’s not going to let the Toys have what he has been denied.’

‘He’ll be back?’

‘Oh yes, you can count on that. I don’t think he makes idle threats, do you?’

‘Then he must be stopped, before he kills anyone else.’

‘I agree. Are you volunteering for the job?’

She’d been expecting this question. ‘I’ll come with you if you need me.’

‘And would you kill him?’

‘What?’ Gilliam looked away for a moment. ‘I. . . I don’t know. Will it come to that?’

‘After what happened this afternoon, everyone is assuming that I’ll lead an attack on the Institute. Rally the troops. Start a small war. You know, the usual boys’ stuff.’

‘And will you?’

The Doctor sighed and hooked his umbrella handle on to his top pocket.

‘People will get hurt. And I include Moriah in that.’

‘It sounds like a difficult decision.’

The Doctor shook his head. ‘Oh, not at all. Not for me. Not anymore.

Deciding that you won’t use violence to solve your problems is relatively easy.

It’s working out a viable alternative that’s the tricky bit.’

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‘And have you got an alternative, a better idea?’

‘Oh yes,’ the Doctor smiled, looking down at the chaos on the street. ‘There are always better ideas than fighting.’

At that moment, Tilda’s barmen entered the room, dragging one of Moriah’s inert mannequins between them. It was still dressed in its orderly’s uniform.

Andrew and Saeed looked expectantly at the Doctor. ‘Where do you want it?’

they asked in unison.

‘Anywhere on the floor will be fine.’ The Doctor tipped his hat in thanks and turned back to Gilliam. ‘What would be the simplest way to get rid of Moriah?’

To kill him? Gilliam thought, but she didn’t give voice to her opinion.

‘Why not give him what he really wants? Why not give him his queen?

Wouldn’t he be a happy little maniac then?’ she said. ‘Can you do that?’

‘Perhaps. Or at least the illusion of her for a little while. But I’ll need your help.’

‘Doctor, I said I’d come with you.’

‘I don’t need a companion for this trip,’ the Doctor said, waving away the idea with his hand. ‘In fact, I won’t be able to afford the distraction. No, I need your knowledge of Petruska. I need your memories.’

Chris had spent the evening searching Soho for Patsy. He’d tried the bookshop, the Tropics and the restaurant where they’d eaten earlier that day, but Patsy wasn’t at any of these places. As he trudged the streets, he realized that he had no idea what he was going to say if he did find her. He’d been so preoccupied with his thoughts that he’d barely been aware of the tension building on the streets of the West End. When the fighting had broken out, he’d sheltered in a launderette with a few other shocked Sohoites.