Doctor Who_ Bad Therapy - Matthew Jones [45]
‘I don’t want to lose this one, Doctor. I don’t want to have the strangest case I’ve ever encountered snatched out of my hands. It’s not so much that I do believe you, but that I don’t have anything else to go on.’
The Doctor stood up, and exhaled. ‘But are you ready for where it may lead you, Chief Inspector? Shall we go?’
Harris was baffled. ‘Go? Where?’
‘I think it’s time that you met a friend of mine. Or rather a friend of Eddy Stone’s.’ The Doctor’s eyes twinkled. ‘And then we might try and hail a taxi.’
‘There’s one good thing about being a widow,’ Patsy murmured absently as she tugged her wallet out of her suit trousers, ‘you don’t have to keep asking your husband for money.’
Chris stopped in his tracks, just as they reached the door of the pub. ‘I didn’t know you’d lost your husband. I’m sorry.’
Patsy stood in the open doorway for a moment, her back to Chris, framed by the soft light of the saloon bar. Then she turned around, with what looked like a brave smile on her face. ‘Don’t be. It was a long time ago. Five years.
I’m a different person now. Come on, let’s find this contact of the Major’s.’
Every eye in the pub turned to look at them when they entered. The conversation actually stopped for a few long seconds. Chris tensed; half expecting a burly local to swagger over to them and snarl, We don’t like strangers here.
However, no one did. Patsy stared aggressively back at the men who eyed her up as she made her way to the bar to order drinks.
‘You’d think they’d never seen a famous person before,’ she said loudly, as Chris joined her.
‘Actually, Patsy, I think it’s the suit.’
Patsy laughed heartily, turning several heads. She appraised Chris’s flashy clothes. ‘Yes, you might have something there, I don’t think even the people around here still wear Zoot suits.’
Chris blushed. ‘No, I meant your su– What? Are my clothes out of date?’
She reached over and played with the wide lapel of his jacket. ‘Christopher baby, if this were 1948, you would be the height of London fashion. However, I think most Zoot Suiters are claiming their pensions. I mean where do you buy your clothes? The Shop That Time Forgot?’
Chris made a mental note to personally jettison the TARDIS wardrobe. He paid for the drinks and they took a corner table. After being in the pub for only 75
a few minutes, a thin-framed man in his early fifties, who introduced himself as Pop, sidled across from where he had been playing dominoes with a few other men. ‘I’ll meet you outside, five minutes,’ he whispered, without once looking directly at them, and then headed off in the direction of the Gents.
‘Well you wouldn’t exactly make detectives,’ Pop scolded, when he found them waiting amidst the beer crates at the back of the pub.
Chris decided not to say anything.
‘Half the village is talking about you two.’ He spared a particularly harsh look for Patsy. ‘Women wearing suits – I ask you! You might do that sort of thing up in London, but not around here.’
Despite his gaunt face and stooped frame, Chris guessed that Pop was a military man. Something about the casual way that he took charge, behaving as if his opinions were absolute truths and therefore not negotiable. Chris could tell that Patsy had taken an instant dislike to the man and was preparing her own brand of sarcastic retaliation. Ever the peacemaker, Chris got in first.
‘We’re here as a favour to the Major, and are acting on his behalf. I appreciate that we could have been a little more inconspicuous, but we’re here now.
What do we need to do?’
Pop looked Chris up and down, and then nodded, grudgingly accepting this.
He scratched at his stubbly chin for a moment. ‘It’s all set for tonight. Here’s where we’ll meet. . . ’
The Petruska Psychiatric Research Institute.
From the clinical notes of Julia Mannheim, MD PhD.
Strictly Confidential.
Case #541.
The mannequin is lying sprawled in a plastic chair. The director is standing in the corner of the room, looking impassive.