Doctor Who_ Father Time - Lance Parkin [26]
‘What’s that book?’ Barry asked.
‘I got it from the library. It’s about chess. I’m looking for hints. I need to get into practice again if I’ve got any chance of beating the Doctor.’
‘I don’t want you to see him again,’ Barry told her flatly.
‘He’s teaching Miranda Dawkins. I’ll have to see him.’
‘He’s weird. I bet he listens to Kate Bush.’ He held up his paper to show what had led him to that conclusion. It was a picture of a young woman with staring eyes and not much on.
‘Instead of ogling her, you mean?’
‘Yeah. If you want to put it like that, yeah. There’s something wrong with him. I mean, look at that.’ He decided to follow his own advice and returned his attention to his newspaper.
Debbie felt a little sad. Barry didn’t know it, but he was right. There was something wrong with the Doctor, or rather the world he’d found himself in. A place, where if you were different, or if you showed just the slightest imagination or kindness, people looked at you suspiciously and... she’d kissed him, and just for a moment, both their problems had gone away.
She looked at a photo of the chess game. It was an old photograph, colour, but that odd, watery colour that old photos have, as though they weren’t sure whether to be black-and‐white or not. Two men, bending over a chessboard, surrounded by people in fifties suits, and women in those tailored dresses and hats they used to wear. It reminded her of her childhood, just a few years after this photo had been taken.
Debbie looked again.
One of the men was wearing a long black frock coat. He had a mane of dark hair, and sad-looking eyes, and seemed to be looking straight at her.
She checked the date of the photograph. The caption said it had been taken in Stalingrad in 1951. Four years before she had been born, and on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
And if it wasn’t the Doctor... then why was he wearing the Doctor’s coat?
* * *
Mr Cosmo welcomed the Doctor as he entered the newsagent’s. A couple of the children recognised him and said hello.
‘The usual, Doctor?’ he asked.
The Doctor nodded, handing over his money. ‘Make it half a pound, would you – I’m running a bit low.’
Mr Cosmo smiled, and shook a few more jelly babies out of their jar.
The Doctor was looking down at the Evening News laid out on the counter.
‘Are you reading about that man at the hospital? A very strange business.’
A man with a broken leg had vanished from his hospital bed – and had managed to get out of his plastercast. There was a photo of the empty bed on the front page, the plastercast hanging from the traction gear.
‘You seem a bit down today,’ Mr Cosmo told the Doctor. ‘Is it the weather?’
The Doctor seemed to force himself to smile. ‘No, I like the snow. Those two, out there, do you recognise them?’
Mr Cosmo peered out of the window into the gloomy evening. A young man and woman were sitting on the wall on the other side of the road. They wore similar modern clothes, and Mr Cosmo thought there was something sinister about them. The young man seemed to be playing with a camera – not taking photographs, just checking the back and fiddling with it.
‘They were there yesterday,’ one of the boys told the Doctor.
The Doctor didn’t seem surprised.
‘Are you sure, Daniel?’ Mr Cosmo asked. ‘I don’t remember them.’
‘They were,’ Daniel insisted.
‘And they were in the park yesterday,’ Stephanie piped up. ‘They were on the swings and wouldn’t let us on.’
Mr Cosmo looked over to the Doctor. ‘They could be tourists, Doctor. There are quite a lot of people in the village at the moment. They may be here because of the UFOs.’
The Doctor hadn’t taken his eyes off them. ‘They may indeed.’
The children started looking out of the window. ‘We could ask them,’ one suggested.
‘No. Remember, don’t talk to strange men,’ Mr Cosmo advised.
The boys and girls all nodded