Doctor Who_ Bad Therapy - Matthew Jones [17]
‘I’m afraid,’ the croaky voice rasped, not sounding afraid at all, ‘that the interest on your debt has been increased. The people I represent are keen to make the most out of their investment. But they are not greedy. They want just one more payment; if that isn’t made they will be forced to take extreme action. Letters will be sent. Statements will be made. Public statements, if you catch my drift?’
The Doctor’s face hardened. It wasn’t a loan: Jack hadn’t borrowed any money. It was extortion. Jack Bartlett was paying to keep the photograph secret. Paying to keep that touch, that moment in the park quiet. The photographs in the envelopes were to remind Jack of the blackmailer’s hold over him.
The Doctor placed the envelopes back between the pages of the magazine and pushed it back into its hiding place in the folds of the exercise magazine.
The coyness of the magazine had suddenly lost its charm.
The Doctor climbed slowly and calmly out from under the bed. Jack’s ‘guest’
was a stooped, elderly man with rheumy eyes and a pinched, vicious face. On seeing the Doctor, the old man let out a whinny of laughter.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize that I was interrupting something.’ He raised an eyebrow, somewhat theatrically. ‘There’s just no stopping you little devils, is there? I wonder if I should let my employers know about this little 28
liaison. They’re always on the lookout for new clients. And who might you be, Mr?’
Jack shouted that it wasn’t like that. The Doctor only calmly brushed the dust from his jacket with his hat.
‘It’s not Mr, it’s Doctor, actually.’
The old man’s lined face broke out into a grin, displaying a few yellowing teeth. ‘It gets better and better. In our business we find that men who have much, are always willing to work that little bit harder to keep hold of what they’ve got.’
The Doctor reached into his jacket pockets and dramatically emptied their contents on the bed. Without looking at the debris, he said, ‘Two apple cores, a catapult, fourteen inches of string, a cricket ball, twenty-three Arcturian pounds, the key to an obsolete blue telephone box and three gobstoppers –
one’s half sucked. That’s all I have in the world.’
The blackmailer looked at the Doctor as if he were mad. The Doctor continued, his voice measured and even. ‘I don’t have anything. No job, no employers for you to contact, no colleagues for you to whisper to. My doctorate is entirely my own invention. I am a traveller. I have no home here. No spouse and no children. I am not a member of the Rotary Club and the police do not know my name. In fact, I don’t even have a name. Not any more.’
‘You’re lying,’ the old man sneered, but he sounded unsettled in the face of the Doctor’s calm sincerity. ‘No one can live like that. Everyone’s got something they’re scared of losing, something they’ll pay to protect. We’ll find out all about you, don’t you worry.’
The Doctor shrugged and leant forward on his red umbrella-handle. ‘I am not worried. There’s only one very small thing about you that interests me.
Your work must be very lucrative, am I right?’
The old man glanced at Jack and sniggered. ‘Well, we can’t complain.’
‘I’m sure that you must have made a lot of money out of people, people who can’t possibly refuse your demands. You can go on and on until you’ve drunk them completely dry, and even then there’s nothing to stop you going through with your threat.’
The old man looked pleased that someone appreciated how powerful and clever he and his friends were. ‘Oh we often expose people even after they’ve paid up. The publicity persuades anyone who might be thinking of refusing us to come around to our way of thinking.’
‘That must prove to be most effective,’ the Doctor commented. ‘So why, if it is so successful, so perfect, are you letting this particular “client” off? It’s this strange act of generosity that interests me.’
‘What do you mean?’
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‘You said a moment ago that your employers only wanted one more payment from Jack. A large payment and earlier than usual. Why?