Doctor Who: Bad Therapy by Matthew Jones Read Free Book Online

carefully examined Dennis’s head and neck.
    The Doctor probed the little boy’s throat with his fingertips, as if he were searching for something beneath the skin. Jack wondered whether he should stop the Doctor. After all, he didn’t really know anything about him. What would Mikey say if he came and saw the Doctor here? The little man didn’t look like a real doctor in his funny hat and clothes. He looked more like a magician or someone from the circus. Someone who travelled. But there was something about his hands. They moved over Dennis’s body with the keen but impassionate interest of a healer.
    ‘I didn’t thank you,’ the Doctor murmured, still intent on his examination.
    ‘What?’
    ‘For saving my life. Outside. You were very brave.’
    ‘Oh.’ Jack had never saved anyone’s life before. An embarrassed grin started to creep across his face. ‘You. . . you’re welcome.’
    ‘But please, please don’t do it again. You might get hurt, and I have too much blood on my hands as it is.’
    Bemused and deflated by this remark, Jack looked away, the smile dying on his face. His eyes settled on the Doctor’s hands. There were reddish-brown stains framing his fingernails and shirtcuffs. It looked like. . .
    ‘Jack,’ the Doctor started, as his examination came to an end. He paused and took off his battered fedora, placing it carefully – no, respectfully – on the bed next to him. ‘Jack, I have some bad news for you.’
    The front doorbell sounded. Saved by the bell, Jack thought. A voice deep down inside of him was whispering that he really didn’t want to hear whatever it was that the Doctor had to say. Jack swallowed down the anxious feelings that accompanied that thought, waved the Doctor into silence and hurried 26
     
    to the door. In the gaps between the posts of the banister, he could see Mrs Carroway open the front door downstairs and let in. . .
    Oh, no.
    ‘Under the bed, quick.’
    The Doctor opened his mouth to protest, but such was the panic on Jack’s face that he allowed himself to be ushered under the other single bed in the room. A moment later there was a knock at the door. As he lay there in the dust, staring at the criss-cross of wire that formed the base of the bed, he was aware that Roslyn Forrester would have had a few arch comments to make about him being secreted away in a young man’s bedroom.
    He heard the door being opened and the heavy footsteps of a large man enter the room. From his low vantage point, he could only see the newcomer’s black shoes and trouser bottoms. The man’s voice was old and low. He said he had come to collect some money. The implied threat he made when Jack replied that he didn’t have it suggested that the man was not from a bank or a reputable company. A loan shark? The instalment due sounded considerable and the Doctor wondered what Jack had needed the money for. The young man didn’t seem to own much, the room he shared was barely furnished, and Jack’s clothes were neither new nor expensive.
    Well, he wasn’t going to find the answers to his questions down here. Despite Jack’s strange request for him to remain hidden, the Doctor was about to climb out from under the bed and ask, when he caught sight of a magazine tucked beneath the mattress – presumably by Jack. As he pulled it through one of the diamond-shaped gaps in the wire frame, a few small brown envelopes slipped from its pages.
    The title of the magazine was Physical Strength and Fitness . The Doctor grinned. He’d forgotten how innocent mid-twentieth century Britain could be. It was a magazine for weight trainers. Most of the text was made up of dietary advice for those in training and excited reports of national competi-tions and championships – presumably included to encourage the dispirited.
    However, the Doctor suspected that it was the pictures which had attracted Jack to the title. They were all of young men exhibiting the results of the hard work they’d done in