Doctor Who_ Bad Therapy - Matthew Jones [11]
‘Won’t you be missed? You must have duties?’
‘I don’t think that will prove to be a problem. Sometimes I don’t think the staff even know that I work here,’ the Doctor added, grinning like a schoolboy.
Chief Inspector Harris said that he knew exactly what the Doctor meant.
It was nine o’clock by the time they left the hospital. The Doctor arranged to meet the chief inspector the following morning before taking his leave and heading back into the depths of Soho.
The sound of rock-and-roll being played with more enthusiasm than skill echoed through a quiet side street. The Doctor followed the sound to a small café squeezed between a drab pub and a grocery shop.
It took him a few minutes to order a cappuccino from the pasty-faced teenager behind the counter, as she was deeply engrossed in an intimate conversation with a young black man who kept leaning across the bar to steal kisses from her. The Doctor slid into a quiet booth at the back and took a sip from the tannin-stained cup.
The café was one of many, usually short-lived, venues which Soho sprouted from time to time. Two serious-looking teenagers stood on a makeshift stage struggling through three-chord skiffle songs on cheap electric guitars. The 18
stage, like the rest of the café, was lit by candles. The proprietors had ripped up the linoleum floor replacing it with wooden boards and there were gashes on the wall where the previous fittings had been torn out. A jukebox stood neglected in the corner – clearly no one thought it cool enough to use.
The Doctor was the oldest person in the café by at least nine hundred years.
London’s youth were flexing their muscles for the first time. Teen boys and teen girls were staking their claim, marking out their territory in the heart of the city. This was the first generation of youth to have money in their pockets and their very own shops to spend it in. Grown-ups were beginning to feel a little threatened by their children’s hedonism and independence, although the Doctor knew that the happy mindlessness of this tiny nation’s youth was going to be rudely shattered by the violence which was brewing even as they danced and kissed. This was London, 1958; the Notting Hill Riots were just around the corner and nothing was ever going to be the same again.
The Doctor offered a sympathetic smile to the teenagers who stared at him with expressions of open hostility, before turning his attention to the business at hand. He pulled the thick card envelope from one of his jacket pockets and spilt the contents out on to the table.
There were pitifully few items. Some coins, a small black wallet, a solitary key and half a packet of chewing gum. Earlier in the day they had been rattling around in the blond boy’s pockets and now they were all that remained of his life. Absently, the Doctor slipped a stick of gum into his mouth and chewed slowly as he turned the items over in his hands.
He had been in two minds as to whether he should hand over the dead boy’s possessions to Chief Inspector Harris. The Doctor felt a little guilty for robbing the police of their only lead; but on the other hand they were unlikely to make any progress on a case as unusual as this. He eased his conscience by telling himself that he would slip the envelope back to the hospital the next day.
There was a photograph in the wallet. Two young men, sixteen or seventeen, standing together in the street. They had their arms around each other’s shoulders and were squinting in the bright autumn sunshine. The Doctor recognized one of the boys as the murder victim, although in this picture his hair was dark. He was standing square on to the camera, looking confident and happy, as if he had everything that he wanted. The other boy looked a little younger, perhaps sixteen, with sandy-coloured hair. He was frowning and smiling at the same time. His smile was awkward, as if he were somehow expecting the worst.
The Doctor almost missed the address. It