Doctor Who: Bad Therapy (9 page)

‘Leave it,’ he’d said, his voice cold and hard.

‘I only wanted to look at it,’ Jack had complained, rubbing his stinging fingers and feeling a little hurt.

‘Looking is one thing,’ the Doctor had chided before wandering off to explore the rest of the room.

44

The Doctor now returned from examining a large glass globe like an outsized crystal ball, which sat on a small table at the other side of the room.

He was tapping his lip lightly with the handle of his umbrella, his other hand gripped his lapel. To Jack, the Doctor looked like a school teacher deep in thought.

‘It’s over,’ Jack whispered to him, as the flames started to shrink back in the metal wastepaper bin, leaving only smouldering ashes. ‘I’m safe.’

‘I wish I could share your certainty, but I rather suspect that the end is further away than we think.’

‘What do you mean? We’ve destroyed all the evidence, haven’t we?’

‘What? Oh, yes. The blackmailer’s hold over you and all their other victims is gone.’ The Doctor nodded, hurriedly. ‘We can talk about this later. We should leave now. There’s no sense in hanging around here waiting to get caught.’

‘Bit late for that, I’m afraid,’ a new voice said, before letting out a high pitched giggle.

A man was standing at the bottom of the stairs. He was young, in his early twenties. His face was thin, emphasizing his prominent cheekbones. Large eyes stared unblinkingly at them from below a high forehead. Even in the fading light from the fire, Jack noted that his Brylcreamed hair was fiery red.

A livid wound ran down one cheek. It looked fresh, still smudged with blood.

Jack noticed all of this in the tiny moments before his attention was violently arrested by the cut-throat razor which the man held delicately between his forefinger and thumb.

‘Right,’ the scarred man said, his voice bright with enthusiasm. ‘Who’s first?’

45

4

At Your Own Risk

‘I’ve had a shave today, thank you,’ the Doctor quipped, but Jack could see that his expression was grim. ‘And I doubt my young friend here needs one.’ The Doctor stepped forward and moved in front of Jack, putting himself between the two men.

The scar-faced man advanced on them. ‘That’s all right, ’cos I ain’t no barber.’

‘Really? Then you should put the razor away. There might be an accident.’

The man looked with genuine affection at the knife in his hand. ‘That’s the general idea,’ he added, and giggled softly.

‘You don’t have to try to hurt us,’ the Doctor said, suddenly serious. ‘You can just let us go. There’s nothing to be gained from harming us. We’ve already destroyed your blackmailing operation. It’s over.’

The man stepped forward until he was only a few feet from the Doctor. The embers of the fire lit the young man’s face from below, making his features look skeletal in the halflight. ‘I don’t have to hurt you. Oh, I should, I know.

My brother won’t tolerate anyone interfering in his affairs. Particularly not filthy little queers like you. But that’s not why I’m going to stick my knife into you. I’m gonna do that just ’cos I want to, that’s all. ‘Cos it’ll give me a thrill.’

And then he moved. Quickly. Too quickly for Jack to see the whole movement. The arm that held the knife arched down towards the Doctor. The blade slicing the air close to his throat.

The Doctor dropped into a fighting stance, knees slightly bent and arms protecting his face. Stepping forward, he swept his left arm out in front of him, blocking the attack. In one movement, the Doctor spun one hundred and eighty degrees, crouching slightly until he was under the thug. He tucked his hip into the man’s groin and straightened his leg quickly. The power of this movement was more than enough to send the ginger-haired man sailing over the Doctor’s shoulder, to land on his back on the hard cellar floor.

‘Venusian hip throw,’ the Doctor explained as if he were instructing a class at a dojo. ‘It’s actually designed for people with five arms, but it’s still effective on those of us who have to get by with two.’ He reached for Jack’s arm. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’

47

The ginger-haired man had climbed quickly to his feet and moved to the stairs, blocking the only means of escape. He looked shaken, clearly not expecting the little man to put up such a struggle, but he was unhurt.

‘You don’t get away from me that easily.’

The Doctor directed Jack towards the far wall of the cellar. Jack backed away quickly until he was standing by the little table. He was relieved to be out of the action. He hadn’t been involved in a fight since junior school and felt completely out of his depth.

Twice more the ginger-haired man attacked. The first time the Doctor tripped him as he lunged, and he sprawled at the Doctor’s feet, swearing loudly. Just as in the first attack, once the man hit the floor the Doctor disengaged, stepping back and allowing him to clamber to his feet. The Doctor had the opportunity to really hurt the man once he was on the ground, but instead he waited patiently for his adversary to climb to his feet and attack again.

The third and final time that the scar-faced man attacked, the Doctor’s mar-tial arts didn’t help him. He applied a painful-looking wrist-lock, but the ginger-haired man managed to pull an arm free and brought his elbow crashing into the Doctor’s stomach. The Doctor folded over, winded. As he gasped for air, the thug kicked him to the ground.

This time the scar-faced man didn’t waste time with boasts or threats. He dived on to the Doctor, straddling him, and started to pummel his head with his fists. The Doctor squirmed beneath him, trying to protect his face from the increasingly savage blows.

‘Jack!’ he shouted, his voice muffled by his hands. ‘Jack, please.’

Jack stared at the horrifying scene playing out in front of him. He wanted to run past them, up the stairs and get out of this place. Suddenly he couldn’t believe that he had been persuaded to come here in the first place. He fought an absurd impulse to go and kneel next to the Doctor and apologize for being so useless. But he didn’t. Instead he picked up the glass ball from the low table and walked quickly and certainly over to the fight. The globe was heavy, the glass felt thick and strong. Jack lifted it high into the air and then brought it down on the ginger-haired man’s head. He felt the globe crack beneath his hands and the thug toppled across the Doctor, blood escaping from a long, shallow cut on the crown of his head.

‘Stop!’ Light flooded the room from the top of the stairs. Jack was forced to blink as his eyes adjusted. A man was silhouetted in the doorway to the office. ‘Put it down.’ The voice screamed again, ‘Now. Put it down now.’

It was the crew-cut man they had spied upon from the roof. His eyes were full of fear and panic. He edged into the room, as if afraid that any sudden movement would cause Jack to drop the globe. ‘You don’t know what you’re doing. It’s already damaged. If the connection is lost. . . ’

48

Instinctively, Jack moved back until he was far out of reach of the newcomer.

He held the globe out to one side, balancing it on the palm of one hand. The man flinched visibly when he saw what Jack was doing.

‘I’ll break it some more if you take a step nearer, I promise you. One step nearer and I will.’ Jack had no idea why the globe was important, but as long as it kept the man away he didn’t care. He stole a glance at the globe when he was certain that the newcomer wasn’t about to launch himself at him. Its surface was etched with tiny pictures: faces, animals and strange squiggles, like Egyptian writing. A deep crack ran across the globe.

The man was standing motionless on the stairs, holding his arms out in front of him, silently begging Jack to give him the globe. In the quiet after the noise of the fight, all Jack could hear was the pounding of his own heart.

The Doctor was clambering slowly to his feet, gingerly exploring his bruised jaw. He appeared shocked, as if he wasn’t used to feeling physical pain. There was no way that the Doctor was going to be able to negotiate their release.

Jack looked from the Doctor to the crew-cut man. It was going to be up to him to get them out of here.

Filling his voice with as much authority as he could muster, he ordered the man on the stairs to walk to the far end of the room. The man complied, but paused when he reached the spot where their attacker lay, begging Jack to let him tend his brother. Jack ordered him on, letting the globe slip between his fingers dramatically to make the seriousness of his threat clear.

The Doctor finally looked at him and smiled weakly.

‘Get out, Doctor. Get up the stairs.’ Jack nodded towards the exit and they slowly began to edge out of the room. The Doctor used his hands to steady himself as he climbed the stairs, crawling up like a spider. Jack mounted each step slowly, keeping his eyes fixed on the crew-cut man.

It was when they reached the top of the short flight of stairs that Jack began to think that they might escape with their lives. He turned to face the two men who’d made his life a misery with their threats and blackmail.

‘Catch!’ he shouted, and threw the globe high up into the room. The last thing he saw before he turned and fled, was the crew-cut man launch himself through the air, arms out-stretched, like a cricketer diving for the ball.

Jack didn’t stop to see if he made his catch.

Patsy pressed the bell on the unmarked door for a second time, and stamped her feet impatiently. ‘Come on, come on.’

After a few moments, a small slot cut into the door at head height was slid back, revealing a pair of anxious eyes which darted between Chris and Patsy.

‘We’re closed,’ a male voice snapped from behind the door. ‘There’s no entry after eleven.’

49

‘We’re here to see the Major,’ Patsy informed the slot. ‘Open the door.’

‘Do you know the password?’

Patsy raised her eyebrows. ‘Don’t be silly, of course I don’t know the password. I’ve got a message from Mother. Now let me in.’

The door opened and a young, nervous-looking man ushered them inside.

‘Why didn’t you say that Mother sent you? The Major’s upstairs. Come on up.’

Chris followed them up to a room on the first floor, negotiating several young men in white military uniforms who lay passed out on the stairs. Show tunes played softly from a gramophone which perched perilously on a lone dining chair. Chris guessed that there were at least thirty men crowded into the small room. Patsy was the only female guest. A few of the customers danced slowly in each other’s arms, silhouetted in the pale amber light which leaked through the thin curtains from a street lamp outside the single window.

Other men stood in small groups chatting quietly, laughing and drinking ale from small bottles.

Patsy introduced Chris to the Major. He was sitting by a small kitchen hatch, through which the nervous man who had admitted them was now serving drinks. The Major was in his early sixties, with watery blue eyes and grey, wispy hair. He took a sip from his bottle of ale and raised it in warm welcome.

The Major murmured ‘Bad show, bad show’ as Chris relayed Tilda’s message. ‘We’d better batten down the hatches, tuck ourselves in for the night.’

He rubbed at a small scar on his forehead. ‘I don’t want any more trouble from the Scraton brothers. Funny, I thought we were free of them since old Albert died. I’ll pass the word around. Make sure that no one leaves on their own.’

He left Patsy and Chris together as he wandered through the dancers, stopping briefly at each of the little groupings to warn them of the threat. Chris watched the old man as he moved gently through the crowd – he looked like the host of a diplomatic function. Chris was surprised and a little amused that such a respectable man should be running an illegal drinking den. He turned and realized that Patsy had been watching him with those large almond-shaped eyes of hers.

‘He’s a sweet old thing, the Major,’ she purred. ‘If he wasn’t they wouldn’t dare come. It’s his respectability which makes his punters feel less insecure about drinking here.’

‘Is it really so dangerous?’

Patsy didn’t get to answer the question. She was interrupted by the sound of breaking glass. Chris glimpsed a small object as it hurtled across the room to strike the far wall with a heavy thud. There were a few yells of panic, and chairs were overturned as the men hurried away from the broken window.

The curtain billowed out in the cold night breeze, like a sail. Someone turned 50

off the gramophone, dragging the needle across the record as they did so, bringing the party to an end with an unpleasant and loud scratch. The room fell into an uneasy silence.

‘It’s only a brick,’ the Major called, trying to sound reassuring and failing.

Chris was already sidling up to the window, his back to the wall, peering through the gap in the moving curtains. His hand automatically reached for his shoulder holster before he remembered that he wasn’t armed, that he didn’t carry a gun any more. Grimacing, he wondered if he was always going to behave like a police officer.

Peering out into the night, Chris was aware of movement in the shadows at the base of the building. There were two, perhaps three figures – although without nightglasses he couldn’t be sure. He wondered what they would try next. That they hadn’t fled immediately after the attack was not a good sign.

A light flared in the darkness of the street. Chris glimpsed the milk bottle a second before it was thrown.

‘Get down!’

he shouted, diving on to the floor as the Molotov cocktail smashed against the windowsill. Broken glass and burning petrol were sprayed across the men in the tiny club. The clothes of those nearest the window were doused in the hot liquid. Panic spread through the crowd faster than the fire. Men screamed as they frantically tried to pat out the flames which quickly spread up the front of their suits. It took only a few moments for the curtains to burn; the fire crept up the walls, blistering the thick paint.

The room started to fill with thick, acrid smoke.