Doctor Who: Bad Therapy (7 page)

She rooted through her dressing-gown pockets, pulled out a half-eaten chocolate bar and bit off a chunk. ‘Christ, I need a drink!’ she exclaimed 33

with passion.

‘You need to rest,’ Jeffrey blurted out, unable to stop himself. ‘You should take some time off. It’s ridiculous putting yourself through this. There’s no reason for it. No one will think any less of you if you took a holiday after. . . ’

Jeffrey paused, realizing what he was about to say. ‘Well, after what you’ve been through.’

‘Hah!’ Patsy shouted dramatically, and clambered to her feet. ‘You think I care what anyone thinks?’ She pulled her favourite black cocktail dress down from where it hung behind the door.

‘Turn around,’ she ordered and started to struggle out of her costume. Jeffrey automatically obeyed. ‘They can go to hell for all I care. But I won’t leave my audience, they’re all I have.’

She pulled her short fur jacket over her cocktail dress. In a quieter voice, she said, ‘I doubt that you could understand, but now that Robert is gone. . . ’

She paused and took a deep breath. ‘Now that he is gone for ever, the punters are all I have. Without them. . . well, I wouldn’t last a week.’ She chuckled hollowly. ‘And they aren’t enough. Not nearly enough.’

‘I. . . I don’t know what you mean,’ Jeffrey managed. The singer wasn’t making any sense. Was she ill? Certainly he’d never seen her so pale and drawn. Patsy’s skin seemed translucent, as if somehow she was physically fading away. Jeffrey shuddered.

‘Look, just think about taking some time off. The producer’s been in to see the show three times this week. There are rumours going around that he’s putting feelers out, looking for another singer to head the bill. He’s worried about the bad publicity.’

The telephone interrupted them. Patsy snatched it up, listened intently for a few moments, and then spoke a man’s name out loud, obviously repeating it back to the person on the other end of the line.

‘I’ll be right there,’ she said, and slammed the receiver down.

And then she smiled, her old wicked smile. And Jeffrey realized that he hadn’t seen her smile since Robert Burgess had died.

‘Do you know,’ she laughed, looking genuinely relaxed, ‘I think I may take some time off after all. Call me that cab, I’m going to the club.’ She buttoned up her fur, stuffed the last chunk of chocolate into her mouth and headed for the door.

Jeffrey watched her go, open-mouthed. What on Earth was going on? Who had been on the other end of the telephone? And what had they done to drag the singer from the depths of depression in such a short time? As Jeffrey picked up the telephone to call a cab, he recalled the name that Patsy had spoken on the phone – she’d repeated it very carefully, as if she had been 34

committing it to memory. It was an uncommon name; Jeffrey couldn’t decide whether it was foreign or not. He tried saying it out loud, experimentally.

‘Kwedge. Christopher Kwedge.’

Gordy Scraton was a man with plans. Big plans. As he stood on the balcony overlooking the busy dancefloor of his nightclub, he thought about the future and smiled greedily to himself. The nightclub was a nice little earner and provided a cover for his more serious ‘business’ ventures, but it was still peanuts when compared to what he knew he was destined for.

Since his older brother’s death in the summer, Gordy had inherited the position of head of the family business. No small task for a young man of twenty-six, especially when the family trade was extortion, blackmail and unlicensed gambling. But Gordy had his sights set higher than ordinary crime, for Gordy knew that he was special. After all, he thought, how many men had cut a deal with the devil himself?

Gordy chuckled as he walked from the noisy club into the quieter office at the back of the building. His office housed a large desk from which he liked to give orders to the few men remaining in his employ. The desk had belonged to his late brother, Albert. It was made of a dark wood and smelt old.

When Gordy sat behind it he remembered his brother and he felt powerful and important. He liked that feeling.

But he didn’t sit down at his desk tonight. Instead he ran his fingers along the lip of the desktop until he located a small switch. Behind him, in the corner of the room, part of the wall silently fell away to reveal sharp wooden steps leading down into the darkness. Taking an electric torch from an otherwise empty desk drawer, he slipped down the steps and into the room below.

The room was small, cold and damp. The only light came from the torch in his hand. Gordy didn’t like to admit it, even to himself, but he was secretly terrified every time he came into his little shrine. He was always frightened when the devil appeared before him; but he was more scared that one night the voice wouldn’t answer his call and he would be left alone.

He knelt before a small altar he had fashioned himself out of a wooden crate and an old drape. He began to murmur the now familiar incantation under his breath. On top of the altar, the large glass sphere sat dark and lifeless, waiting patiently for him to finish. He stumbled through the prayer selfconsciously, fearful of being found kneeling in the dark, whispering to himself.

He sighed audibly as the glass ball on the wooden crate in front of him began to shine with an eerie emerald light. Gordy stared deep into the glass, watching the intricate flames which flickered and whirled inside.

‘I’ve done what you told me,’ he whispered, his face so close to the glass that his warm breath left patches of moisture behind as he spoke. ‘I sent Carl 35

to see to the boy – just like you told me.’ The globe didn’t respond; Gordy carried on anxiously. ‘Carl will do the job, you don’t have to worry on that score. He’ll be back soon, you’ll see.’

There was a long pause, and then the crystal ball sighed with evident pleasure, reminding Gordy of a cat stretching after a nap by the fire. When it spoke its voice was a deep and melodic whisper.

‘There will be others,’ it breathed. ‘There will be many others.’

Gordy swallowed. ‘What about the things you promised me, you said –’

The voice from the centre of the fiery ball cut him short. ‘
I said,
’ it started sharply, clearly annoyed, making Gordy flinch. Then it restrained itself, its tone becoming softer and more conciliatory. ‘I said that if you lay down and serve me then all the riches of this city and many more will be yours. But before that there is work to be done.’

Gordy wanted those riches now. Riches he could use to build his business, hire more men to work for him, until he owned every square inch of the West End. Then he’d show all those that had doubted that he could run the firm after his brother had died.

A noise on the wooden stairs brought him quickly to his feet.

‘Who’s there?’ he cried, hating the fear that had gripped his voice. Gordy relaxed as his younger brother padded into the room, illuminated by the soft green light.

‘Carl! You almost scared me half to death. You know you’re not to come down here.’

Gordy ushered his brother back up the stairs and then followed him out, taking one last look back down into the room before he closed the concealed door. The fire in the glass sphere had died, returning the little room into an impenetrable blackness. The devil had gone, returned to whatever place was its home.

‘Well,’ Gordy demanded, expectantly, ‘how’d it go?’

Carl sniggered. An ugly sound, even to Gordy, that threatened to slide into hysteria. Gordy took hold of his brother by his arms. You had to treat Carl gently, information had to be teased out of him piece by piece. Gordy loved his younger brother dearly, and yet even he had to admit that Carl infuriated him. He knew that the men who were still willing to work for Gordy joked about Carl, about how he was different. They said that he was backward and slow. They never said it to Carl’s face though, they feared his skill with a razor too much for that.

‘The boy – Dennis. Did you see to the boy, like I told you?’

Carl looked away. When he spoke there was a nervous tone in his voice, like a child who thought he was about to be punished. ‘Someone came. They got in the way.’ And then he started to giggle again. ‘So I did him instead.’

36

Gordy’s eyes opened widely in panic at this news. ‘Who? Who’d you kill?

For Christ’s sake, Carl! This isn’t a game. The police are crawling all over Soho as it is. I don’t need more bloody investigations.’

Carl stretched out his hands, offering a little blood-soaked bundle to his brother. ‘Don’t worry, Gordy. It was Eddy Stone, that boy hairdresser. He came sticking his nose in, just as we was about to see to the boy. It’s OK

though, Gordy, innit? I mean he was next on the list anyway? I just got ’im early, that’s all.’

Carl dropped the stained parcel into his brother’s cupped hands. Carefully, Gordy unwrapped the piece of material and smiled as he saw what was revealed there. He tucked the parcel away in his desk, and then gently wrapped his brother up in an embrace. Carl closed his eyes, leant his head against his Gordy’s chest and smiled with contentment.

‘Don’t worry Carl, you’ve done well, you’ve done us proud.’ Gordy hugged his brother tightly, imagining the riches that would surely soon be theirs.

‘Nothing’s gonna stop us now. No one can even touch us.’

Chris tucked his scarf into his collar and pulled his anachronistic hat down on his head. The trilby was typical of the Doctor: right century, wrong decade.

And it was always the little things that people noticed. Tilda certainly had; picking up not only on his clothes but his accent and phrasing. Initially he had been flattered by her interest, but he’d quickly become a little unsettled by the barrage of questions she’d fired at him. He’d been left feeling as if he were attending a job interview, and had decided to slip away when Tilda excused herself to make a telephone call. He’d waved goodbye from the top of the stairs and made his exit.

It was good to be back on the street, although the autumn night was cold and the smog gave a stale taste to the air, almost like sulphur. He spent a moment getting his bearings. To his left were the brighter lights of Old Compton Street, which would lead him back to the TARDIS, and home. A black cab was pulling up on the far side of the road as he left the Tropics.

Chris paused to watch as an attractive young blonde woman wearing a fur clambered drunkenly from it and rummaged through her handbag for the fare.

She wore a childlike frown of concentration across her face as she swayed in the middle of the road, oblivious to all else as she counted out her money.

Chris sighed to himself. Was everyone in 1950s England a drunk?

The smog in the street reduced visibility to only ten or fifteen metres, so Chris heard rather than saw the car. His long love affair with motor vehicles of all kinds alerted him to the speed the car was travelling when he first heard its strained engine. He felt himself move into policing mode, making a series 37

of judgments about distance and speed. And he was already running forward when the vehicle’s headlamps lit up the smog like a cloud in a lightning storm.

Chris sprinted across the street and, barely breaking his stride, threw his arm around the blonde woman’s waist and pushed her into the back of her taxi as a dark shape hurtled past them. There was the sharp screech of tearing metal as the door of the stationary taxi was ripped off its hinges by the speeding car, then bounced and skittered across the road.

Chris found himself lying on top of the young woman on the floor of the cab. In spite of her brush with death, she was looking up calmly at him, an amused expression on her face.

‘Hello you,’ she said, arching a painted eyebrow. ‘Well what’s on your mind?

As if I didn’t know.’

Chris, who had been expecting her to be shocked, relieved or at least grateful to be alive, found himself momentarily lost for words.

The noise had brought a few of the Tropics’ patrons out on to the street.

Leading the way was Tilda, who, ignoring the shocked and angry cries of the cab driver, poked her head into the back of the taxi where Chris and Patsy lay in their uneasy embrace.

‘Well I can see that formal introductions are going to be a little unnecessary.

I’m pleased that you’ve managed to break the ice,
deahs
, but why not come upstairs and have a drink with Mother before you go any further?’

Jack pulled the drawstrings of his duffel bag tightly closed and sat back down on his bed. It had taken him less than five minutes to pack the few possessions that mattered enough to take with him. He’d sold his watch and his bicycle to pay the blackmailer’s first demand. He’d naively thought that they’d stop when he didn’t have anything left. But the old man had just smiled and told him that he’d have to find a way to get more. So Jack had stolen from work to meet the next payment, and the next, and the next. And he’d done it all to keep Eddy out of trouble. To keep what they had safe. To keep it secret.

He should be upset, crying or something. But every time he thought about Eddy he just felt numb.

Jack decided to sit and catch his breath for a minute before he headed off.

He wasn’t exactly sure where he was going to go. He had a vague idea that he would make for the coast. Portsmouth or maybe Southampton. He had twenty quid on him. Enough, he felt sure, to buy himself a job as a steward on a ship sailing to France. That ought to be far enough, oughtn’t it? he thought to himself. Far enough to keep himself out of the hands of the blackie and the Law.

He couldn’t stay here. The police would be around soon enough. Then it would all come out. They’d find out about the blackie and the money he’d 38

been quietly pilfering from work every Friday. They would find out about the money and they would find out about the photograph. They would find out about him.

‘I can’t stay and face the Law,’ he’d told the Doctor. ‘I’ll end up spilling the gaff, I know I will.’

He would as well. Once they got you into one of their cells you didn’t stand a chance. Jack had heard all the stories from the older men who drank at the Magpie. Stories about those who’d been unlucky enough to be caught in a lay or a park. It wasn’t just the beatings, although they did beat you of course. It was the letters they wrote to your family, the visits they made to your workplace, and the publicity of the trial. Jack had heard of three men who’d hanged themselves rather than have to face the court and see their names printed in the papers.