Doctor Who: Bad Therapy (10 page)

Everyone tried to leave at the same time.

On the floor, Chris rolled over twice to suffocate the burning petrol which had landed on the back of his jacket. He felt the heat through the material but he wasn’t hurt. Staying low to avoid the smoke, he made a quick assess-ment of the situation. Already a bottleneck had formed at the door to the club. Those at the back of the crowd were trying to push their way through, only increasing the pressure on the people squeezed in the hallway. It was the classic result of panic. No one was thinking. Instead, like animals stamped-ing, everyone was gripped by the primitive need to survive. Ironically, it was precisely that which was going to kill them. In internal building fires, people were rarely burnt to death, more often it was the smoke or being crushed which killed them.

Chris began to pull off those men at the back of the crowd, telling them to kneel down and keep their heads by the floor where there was less smoke. He gave out the instruction in a calm reassuring voice. It wasn’t an act: Chris felt calm. It was as if the fire was an abstract problem and he wasn’t in any real danger himself. He had a procedure to deal with the fire, and as long as he followed it everything would be all right. After the last few weeks of listless 51

wandering, tackling this emergency was a relief. It felt good just to be doing something.

The doorway began to clear a little, and Chris started to guide the rest of the crowd through. He was coughing continuously now – each breath felt hotter than the last. As he joined the last of the men trying to leave, he heard what he took to be the primitive siren of whatever passed for emergency services in this decade.

Chris was about to make his escape, when he heard Patsy calling him. He looked around trying to locate her in the smoke. He hadn’t seen her since the fire bomb and had assumed that she had been among the first to leave. Her voice sounded close and oddly calm, but he couldn’t see her. It was only when she spoke for the second time that he realized he was hearing her voice inside his head.

The Major. He didn’t get out. He’s still in there.

Guarding his face with his hand, Chris crawled back into the room. Every time he opened his eyes they watered immediately, turning the room into a fierce orange blur. If the firefighters in this era had enhanced visual and breathing equipment then he was taking a stupid risk. But if they didn’t, the heat was going to prevent anyone without them from mounting a rescue in this room in a few minutes’ time.

Chris felt rather than saw the Major, coming across one of his feet as he crawled along the edge of the room. There was no time to establish whether he was still breathing; instead Chris just got hold of his leg and dragged him back into the hallway. Then he picked him up, put him over his shoulder and carried him down the stairs and out on to the road.

The cold air hurt as he gulped great lungfuls of it down. His eyes were streaming with tears. Blinking through them he could see the shapes of fire engines and ambulances. The customers from the Upstairs Room must have fled, because none were in sight, although a crowd was gathering to watch the building burn. Chris allowed the Major to be lifted out of his arms, and felt himself guided towards what he assumed was an ambulance.

‘I’m fine,’ he muttered, his voice hoarse as he was helped into the back of the vehicle. ‘I’m not hurt. I just need to get my breath. I don’t need a doctor.

I don’t need to go to a medical centre. Honestly.’

‘Hospital?’ questioned a gruff male voice nearby. Chris’s hands were tugged behind his back, and he felt the cold metal grip of handcuffs close around his wrists.

‘You’re not going to hospital, mate. You’re under arrest.’

The Doctor had asked for an ice pack but Jack didn’t have a refrigerator, and he didn’t dare go down and ask Mrs Carroway if he could take some from 52

hers. He couldn’t think of a legitimate reason why he might need any. Not in October, anyway. Instead he soaked a tea towel in cold water, of which there was plenty, and hoped that would be sufficient.

The Doctor was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the room Jack shared with Mikey. He took the tea towel from Jack without question and used it to gingerly dab his face, which was already beginning to swell after the beating: he had the beginnings of a black eye, and his lip was cut and puffy. The Doctor must have seen the expression of concern on Jack’s face, because he tried to grin reassuringly, but only succeeded in making his lip start bleeding again.

They had run for what felt like hours after they fled the nightclub. The Doctor always a little ahead, occasionally glancing over his shoulder to check that Jack was still behind him. At first, Jack had been scared that they were going to be followed, but there had been no sign of that. And once he had realized that they had escaped from those awful men, that they had got away with it, he had started to laugh as he kept pace with the Doctor. For the first time in months he felt safe and free. He deliberately jumped in the puddles as he ran, soaking his trouser bottoms. And when trying to laugh and run at the same time had given him a stitch, he called to the Doctor to stop and they walked the rest of the way to Notting Hill and home.

Mikey had returned from work by the time they got back. The tall, lanky, West Indian lad was in his usual bad mood, grumbling about the people he worked with on the building site. Jack hadn’t been sure what Mikey was going to say about the Doctor staying over. Mikey had frowned when Jack opened the window to let the Doctor in, but so far he hadn’t said anything. Ever since Mikey’s little brother had come to stay with them, they had made a sort of unspoken alliance to help keep each others’ guests secret from Mrs Carroway.

The Doctor was sitting by the small gas fire, the blue light from little jets making his eyes twinkle. Jack made the three of them tea, and sat down beside the Doctor.

‘We’re not going to be safe here, are we?’

The Doctor looked from Jack to where Mikey sat on the bed, sipping his tea and gently stroking his little brother’s hair. ‘I think we can rest tonight.’

‘But they know where I live. They’ll come after us, won’t they? Those men, I mean.’

The Doctor nodded. ‘Yes. They will come after us. We’ve inconvenienced them a little too greatly for them just to let us alone.’ The Doctor replaced his solemn expression with a reassuring smile. ‘We can worry about that in the morning. But we may have to leave here for a while. You may have to leave here for good.’ The Doctor surveyed the small, sparsely furnished room. ‘Is this place important to you?’

‘No,’ Jack said, deciding to come clean. ‘I was ready to run away this 53

evening, before you came back.’

‘I’d rather formed that impression.’ The Doctor grinned, and then winced because it hurt. ‘London isn’t your home town, I take it?’

‘Darlington. My mum and dad still live there. We get on and everything.

They love me, they just wouldn’t understand. . . ’ He paused, uncertain of how much he could confide in the Doctor. ‘I always knew that I was going to leave. Even when I was a little kid I knew I wasn’t going to stay there. Wasn’t going to get a pound-down house and the Hoovermatic on the never-never, a mortgage and the payments on the car.’

Jack hugged his knees, the gas fire was making them uncomfortably hot.

‘I always knew that I was different. That I didn’t belong.’ He looked at the Doctor. ‘You know?’

‘Oh yes,’ the Doctor said, his eyes full of dark fire. ‘I know.’

Jack found himself telling the Doctor a little about his life in Darlington.

Much more than he usually told anyone. The Doctor listened attentively, particularly, Jack thought, when he began to talk about Eddy.

The Doctor only interrupted his story once, and Jack thought that it was a strange comment to make. When Jack mentioned that Eddy came from Leicester, the Doctor shook his head and muttered, ‘No, I think he came from rather further away than that.’

When Jack finally finished his story, the Doctor asked him what colour Eddy’s hair was. Jack was a little bewildered by the question.

‘Brown,’ he answered. ‘Almost black.’ And then he remembered his angry confrontation with Madge in the Magpie earlier that evening. Remembered that she’d sacked Eddy for dying his hair.

‘At least it was. I think he bleached it before. . . well, you know.’

‘Ah, I see,’ the Doctor interrupted softly. ‘He must have cared for you very deeply.’

‘This man needs a doctor. Hello. I know you can hear me.’

Chris peered through the grill in the door, but all he could see were the white tiles on the wall of the corridor opposite. He banged his fist angrily against the metal door, which rattled on its hinges. Several other occupants of the cells further down the corridor started shouting in response to the noise.

Most telling him in no uncertain terms to keep quiet, and a couple of others just wordlessly and piteously wailing.

Chris let himself slump against the heavy door and looked across at the other occupant of the cell. The Major sat on the edge of the long concrete bed staring straight out in front of him and rocking gently back and forth. Initially, Chris had put the Major’s condition down to shock, but it was clear that this 54

was something more than that. The old man was running a temperature and a constant stream of what sounded like nonsense escaped from his mouth.

That the Major hadn’t been sent directly to a hospital was another indication of the barbarism of the age. Chris had been astonished and angered to find the Major sitting in the cell when he’d been brought down. He’d tried to reason with the sergeant who’d escorted him, but the young Irish man took no notice of his protests, adopting a strategy of wilful deafness that Chris knew only too well.

All Chris’s possessions, as well as his jacket, belt and shoelaces, had been removed before he was incarcerated. His handkerchief had been confiscated, along with the rest, so Chris ripped the cuff from his shirt and used it to mop the old man’s brow.

‘Nothing. . . I’m nothing. . . ’ The old man’s voice was an anxious whisper. ‘I can’t feel them. . . the club. . . anything. . . I can’t feel anything. . . what am I to be?’

‘It’s all right. Try to rest, it’s all right.’

Chris jumped when the Major suddenly broke out of his melancholy trance and sat up, gripping Chris’s arm tightly. ‘It’s not all right, young man,’ he exclaimed, his fingernails digging painfully into Chris’s forearm. ‘It’s not all right at all. Mother. You must take a message to Mother.’

‘I will,’ Chris promised. ‘We can take it together when they let us out of here.’

The Major shook his head. ‘No. They won’t let me go. Disorderly house and all that. No bail for the likes of me. You must do it for me.’

The message the Major gave him didn’t make any sense to Chris, but he committed it to memory anyway. The Major’s moment of coherence was lost and he lay back against the cell wall, muttering and shaking his head.

Chris watched him for a few minutes, before curling up to try to get some rest himself. His lungs still ached from the fire and his clothes and hair reeked of bitter smoke. He’d drunk far more than he usually did and his mouth felt thick and swollen. He lay on the uncomfortable bench, thinking about the strange events of the evening. He found himself thinking about Patsy, the way it had felt when her thoughts had slipped into his mind. It had been a pleasant feeling, warm and reassuring, like the first sip of hot coffee after being out in the cold. It reminded him just how caught up in his own thoughts and feelings he’d been over the last month. How alone he’d been.

He hugged himself to try to keep warm in the cold cell. He drifted off to sleep, his thoughts full of the strange people he’d met that evening.

55

Interlude

Gilliam’s Story

The royal barge, the
Jewelled Sword
, floated quietly in the skies above the capital city of Kr’on Tep. The queen’s shuttle, tiny against the bulk of the enormous interstellar craft, detached itself and dropped away from the curved underbelly of the barge and headed towards the planet below.

The pilot of the shuttle was the queen herself. Her hands moved expertly over the instruments which controlled the craft. After she punched the course information, the automatics took over and the queen tugged the release of the seat’s harness and slipped down on to the deck.

She was going to get into trouble for this. Her schedule had been carefully arranged for the next two years. Glancing at the time she realized that she had already missed two engagements – one of which was with the Thordon ambassador itself. There would be an uproar. Particularly when her husband found out.

Well that was just too bad. This time she’d had enough. Queen Gilliam dressed in her cabin, exchanging her silk robes for a pair of rough canvas trousers and one of her husband’s old shirts. She tied her shoulder length blonde hair back into a ponytail, and pulled on the heavy boots she had shamelessly stolen from one of her bodyguards.

One of the many problems with being queen was that no one would let you wear anything remotely practical. On more formal occasions, her clothing was so intricate and unwieldy that two handmaidens were required just to allow her to be seated. The suffocating constraints of royal clothing was only a reflection of the tight organization of a queen’s life. Gilham’s day began shortly before sunrise and royal business was rarely finished before the sun had set. In addition to being the nominal Queen of Kr’on Tep and its Seven Systems, she was personally the Governor of seven worlds, as well as the director of several health and education initiatives on the planet below. The concept of a ‘holiday’ was unknown to the royal courts of Kr’on Tep.

Until now.

Queen Gilliam tossed the last of her equipment into a holdall, threw some underwear on top of the assorted instruments and headed for the airlock.

She arrived just as the shuttle’s engines were powering down. The craft had 57

brought her to its programmed destination. After a few short moments, she was standing on the hot surface of the planet of which she was queen. It was the first time she had been alone in the open air in more than twenty years. A wicked grin snuck across her face; they would be going crazy up on the barge.