Doctor Who_ Bad Therapy - Matthew Jones [44]
‘Right-o, sir.’ Bridie looked for a moment at the Doctor, who was playing absently with his tie. He shook his head and left.
Harris got up and closed the door behind him, turning the small key in the lock. He didn’t want the whole station to hear this. The Doctor looked a little relieved that Harris had left the key in the door.
After rummaging in his desk drawer for his emergency bottle of scotch, Harris poured out two small glasses and set one of them in front of the Doctor, who eyed it as if he suspected that it might be poison.
‘Doctor, I think you’d better start at the beginning, don’t you?’
They booked into the guest house under the names of Mr and Mrs Christopher Cwej, although it was clear from the look the housekeeper gave that she didn’t believe them for an instant. She led them up to a small, cold room at the top of the house.
‘Hey, I like this,’ Patsy exclaimed sarcastically, as she surveyed the grubby room. ‘Early Nothing.’
Chris winced. Mrs Hardly merely pursed her thin lips and snapped, ‘I lock the door at ten. Breakfast finishes at eight. No animals and no exceptions.’
73
With that she marched off, her heavy footsteps loudly sounding her disapproval on the wooden stairs as she descended.
Chris set down the bags he’d been carrying from the station at the bottom of the double bed. ‘Well, at least the place looks lived in.’
‘Yeah, but by what?’
He joined Patsy at the window which provided a view of the village green.
Healey was a pretty if rather unremarkable place; just a hotchpotch of houses clustered around a square of grass. Despite the cold, a group of boys were playing an anarchic game of football on the muddy green. Their hair was cut short, and neatly side-parted. In their long grey macintoshes they looked like miniature grown-ups. It didn’t look like the kind of place where people from another planet would choose to land. A bizarre image of a silver flying saucer – all flashing lights and fins – descending on to the village green popped into Chris’s head. Take me to your leader. Or more likely, Take me to your wine bar, if the people he’d met were representative of the race.
‘I’ve arranged to meet the Major’s contact in the pub.’
‘You do surprise me,’ Chris commented, and started to unpack.
‘Doctor, I just don’t see how these incidents are related.’
‘Nor do I, Chief Inspector, but it’ll be interesting finding out, don’t you think?’
Harris was pacing his office, whisky glass in hand. ‘You’re suggesting that someone is kidnapping people off the streets of London in a black cab.’
‘I rather suspect that it’s the cab itself that’s doing the stealing.’ He ignored Harris’s look of astonishment and took his hat off and idly spun it on his finger.
‘People disappearing just as others appear. Turning up without pasts.’
‘Turning up dead.’ Harris went to take a sip of his drink, but the glass was empty. Bridie had returned from his investigation to confirm that the dead boy was indeed Eddy Stone, although the sergeant hadn’t learnt much more than that. Harris stopped pacing and turned to face the Doctor. ‘My sergeant thinks you should go back to your hospital – mind your own business and leave well alone. Actually, I rather suspect that he thinks you’re a few shillings short of a pound.’
‘I know more than just a couple of people who would agree with him.’
‘If you’re trying to reassure me, Doctor, you’re not doing a very good job of it. Look I only have your word that people are disappearing. I only have your word that there is some mad taxi out there eating people up.’ The look Harris gave the Doctor clearly said that his word didn’t currently count for much.
‘So why are you still talking to me, Chief Inspector? I do hope that you’re not merely humouring me. I should be upset.’
74
Why indeed? Harris considered. The Doctor had withheld the information about the dead boy, Eddy Stone. And the story about the taxi was, frankly, ridiculous. But at the end of the day the Doctor was his last hope. Harris had realized some weeks ago that he wasn