EIGHTEEN
The rain squalled around them during their sprint across the barracks, so the front of their clothing was swiftly soaked. Privates Foxton and Wisniewski trotted behind them, keeping pace and not trying to overtake. It must have looked to the troops marching on the parade ground that a bedraggled trio of visitors was being casually chased off the Caregan grounds by two soldiers.
They reached the visitors’ car park, skittering to a halt in the puddles by their vehicles. Jack ignored Foxton’s request to sign out, slipped into the SUV driving seat, and started the engine. Gwen tossed her Saab keys back to Toshiko. She knew what to expect back at Wildman’s apartment, and planned to travel back there with Jack.
The SUV slewed backwards across the rain-soaked gravel of the car park, crunched into gear and skidded forward, off and out of the barracks.
Gwen watched the blur of the chain-link fence as the car speeded up. The vehicle’s suspension was superb. The main evidence that it was scudding over the rutted roadway were the sprayed sheets of water, like blankets cast out to the side of the car, as the wheels plunged into frequent rain-filled potholes.
The front wipers swished on fast setting, and through the windscreen ahead of them Gwen could see the bruise-black sky that lowered over their destination. A huge swathe of boiling cloud that was turning the afternoon dark. A monstrous presence awaiting their return.
‘Insufficient information,’ said the navigation system. ‘Attempting to locate fourth satellite.’
Jack switched it off. ‘I think we know the way back.’ He punched the phone’s speed dial, and it connected with a rapid series of beeps.
Gwen didn’t see which number he’d dialled. ‘Are you calling the police? We should warn them about the apartment, so they know to stay out of it. And they can put a call out for Sandra Applegate. Then we can listen in on their frequencies—’
‘They already know to stay out of the place. So what are they gonna do, flood the area with cops? That’s not gonna happen. We don’t want it to happen, for sure. They’ll get in our way, and we haven’t got the time. Ah…’ The line connected with a chirruping sound. He had dialled the Hub. ‘How’s it going, Owen?’ The line was distorted, and Gwen thought Owen said, ‘What do you care?’
‘Sounds like the storm’s wiping out the phone network, too,’ Jack said. ‘So, listen up. Are you still irradiated, Owen?’
‘Yeah, I’m lit up like a novelty lamp.’
‘OK, well you can still make yourself useful. Need you to do a search on Sergeant Sandra Applegate. Training instructor at Caregan Barracks, Southern Welsh Regiment. Lives at the barracks, but spends time on scuba-diving activities off of it. Find out known associates – we already connect her with Wildman and Bee, so skip those, she ain’t gonna be visiting them much now. So, who else? Where she hangs out. Clubs she’s a member of. Whether she has a Tesco Clubcard. How many library books she has overdue. You know the score.’
There was a pause in which Gwen thought she could make out swearing. ‘Can’t Tosh do that?’ Owen moaned.
‘Not while she’s driving the other car,’ explained Jack.
‘I thought she had hands-free.’
‘What were you planning to do in the meantime,’ snapped Jack, ‘work on those pecs, maybe?’
‘Oh, come on Jack. I’m not your data guy, I’m not your gadgets guy either. I’m a doctor. I was born a doctor, I live every day a doctor. I will die a doctor.’
‘Sooner than you think, Owen. Get on with it.’
By the time they arrived back in Cardiff, thick dark clouds had blotted out every scrap of sky. It was more like late evening than late afternoon. The drainage system in the centre had collapsed, and the SUV had to surf a filthy stream of debris that washed down the angled streets that led into Splott. Fast-food cartons bobbed and jostled with shreds of paper, discarded cans, empty bottles, all the floating detritus from dozens of overturned bins and ripped garbage sacks.
No point in subterfuge now, they decided, especially as Wildman’s place would be guarded by a uniformed officer when they got there. Jack pulled the car up outside the apartment block, with the wheels propped up on the pavement to get them out of the torrent that coursed along the gutter. A flare of lights from behind them showed that Toshiko had arrived too. It was a wonder she’d been able to keep up, the speed that Jack had been doing on the journey in, though Gwen knew the Saab handled well. Or it did in normal conditions, so perhaps the low-profile driving position had been more of a struggle for Toshiko when trailing the SUV all this way.
Gwen scrambled over the driver’s seat to follow Jack out and avoid the stream that was running along the road on her side of the vehicle. When she’d clambered out and shut the door, she found Jack stooped over something by the main entrance. Toshiko was standing beside him, her face pallid after seeing what Jack had found.
It was the police officer who had been stationed by the doorway. The body lay in a stream of water that spilled from a broken gutter far above. Gwen could tell he was dead from the crazy angle of his neck, and the way that Jack was standing and not helping. She clicked on her pocket torch and examined the body, flicking the light over the face. At first she worried about who she would find, and then she immediately felt ashamed at the relief she felt when it was not someone she knew from her old station. That would be nothing to the guilt she’d feel later, once Toshiko had concocted some Torchwood cover-up story – probably about how the officer had wandered off during his duty period and fallen into the river. It would have to be a big distraction to hide this massive and fatal attack.
Something had ripped into the back of the young officer’s neck. Or rather, someone had. Brain and bone was visible in the maw of the wound, washed clean continuously by the downpour. There was very little blood visible, and it was even washing out of the young lad’s shirt collar. He lay crumpled in the shrubs. A young lad, Gwen thought bitterly. A young lad they could have rescued with a phone call.
‘We could have stopped this,’ she told Jack coldly. ‘One call and we could have saved this boy.’
‘We don’t know that,’ Toshiko told her.
‘He wouldn’t warn them. On the journey here. It would have been one phone call.’
Toshiko put a hand on the sodden shoulder of her jacket. ‘We still can’t know for sure.’
Jack was already moving away. Gwen jumped back to her feet, half wanting to argue the point with him. But when he turned, maybe it was just the rain running down his face that made his blue eyes seem so watery as he stared back at her.
He jerked his head in the direction of the street, a contemptuous gesture that seemed to accuse the whole neighbourhood. ‘What’s happened to your curtain-twitchers now?’
Gwen couldn’t hold his gaze. ‘Staying away from their windows because of the rain, I imagine.’ And she knew there would have been no witnesses to the attack in this weather, either. The young officer had died alone.
Jack shoulder-charged the doors to the apartment. On the third attempt, the lock burst apart and they were able to dash into the dingy hallway and out of the rain.
‘No shopping bags this time,’ Gwen said.
‘Yeah, well, I’m not great at queuing.’
The three of them hared up the stairs, several at a time. On the upper landing, the real Betty Jenkins was poking her head out from behind her door with an angry look. Toshiko ushered her back into her apartment, and told her to keep her door closed while the environmental health team conducted a fumigation of the stairwell.
‘This place has gone…’ muttered Miss Jenkins as she retreated and closed her door.
On the next landing, they found the sprawled body of another policeman. There was no rain to wash away the blood. It had spurted out of a main artery in his neck, spraying up the nearest wall before running down and creating a congealed pool of dark reddish-brown liquid. Again Gwen felt that electric tingle of fear, relief, and shame as she examined the officer and found she did not recognise him.
‘She’s right,’ murmured Gwen. ‘This place has gone to hell. Completely gone to hell.’
Wildman’s apartment door stood ajar. Gwen rose from examining the dead policeman, and hesitated.
‘Come on!’ hissed Jack. He drew his Webley, kicked open the front door, and angled his weapon into the hallway.
The way seemed clear, so Toshiko charged in, her weapon at the ready. She was barely into the main room when Sandra Applegate sprang at her from beyond the living-room door. Applegate knocked Toshiko to the floor, and loomed over her. Even from the front entrance, Gwen could see Applegate was a mess. Her face was bloodied, and her chest was stained.
Jack threw himself down the short hallway with thundering steps, and cuffed Applegate behind the head with the butt of his revolver. Applegate spun away into the room, tipping over a table and collapsing by an armchair.
Gwen rushed in and covered the fallen woman with her gun, a double-handed grip just like Jack had taught her in the Torchwood firing range. The weapon was recoilless, a neat feat of alien engineering applied to a standard-issue army weapon, but a two-handed grip made aiming truer. In the corner of her eye, she could see that Toshiko had fallen awkwardly against a sideboard and was slumped against the wall. Jack hunkered down next to her, checking that she was all right. And, for a moment, Gwen was distracted.
Applegate sat up abruptly next to the armchair and made a deep gurgling sound from somewhere in the pit of her stomach. Gwen’s gaze snapped back to Applegate. The woman clutched at her stomach and made a profound retching noise. In horrified fascination, Gwen saw her mouth open wide, so wide that she could see Applegate’s lips stretched tight in a circle around her bared teeth. At which point, Applegate heaved again, and spat a spongy yellow mass across the room at Gwen.
It hit Gwen’s trigger hand, and she instinctively ducked and fired. The shot went wide. Applegate was on her feet at once, charging for the door. She shouldered Jack aside, surprising him so that she was able to get past. He recovered swiftly, stepped briskly into the hallway after her, and loosed off two shots in quick succession.
Gwen thought she heard a cry and then a great crash of glass. But then the pain in her hand hit her.
The spongy yellow mass was a small starfish-shaped creature. Its main body and one of its four arms were firmly attached, and starting to burn her flesh. She heard another shrill cry, and was shocked to realise it was herself. She dropped her handgun, collapsed into the arm chair, and stared in revulsion at the thing that clung to her hand.
Beside her, Toshiko groaned as she began to recover. Jack rushed back into the room, looked at both of the women. Gwen stared at him beseechingly. ‘It’s burning. Get it off me!’
Jack looked wildly around the room. He spotted something on the sideboard by the doorway, snatched it up, and hurried over to Gwen.
‘Hold still,’ he told her.
Jack had seized a letter opener. With his free hand he pinched two of the revolting creature’s legs between his fingers, and peeled them away from Gwen’s hand. She could tell from the way this made him wince that the vile thing was burning his skin too. Now that its underside was exposed, Gwen could make out a central mouth that had been biting into the soft flesh of her hand. Jack plunged the letter opener into the centre of the creature, and pushed hard. There was a rubbery squeaking sound as the dull blade of the letter opener pierced the yellowy skin. The point burst from the upper side, and a greenish ichor sprayed across the room and onto the carpet.
Almost at once, the starfish released its grip on Gwen’s hand. Jack leapt up, the creature still attached to the letter opener, and he plunged the blade into the wall above the sideboard. The point pierced the plasterboard wall, and when Jack let go of the handle the letter opener had skewered the starfish to the striped wallpaper. The creature spasmed for a moment and then went still.
Gwen ran into the kitchen area of the apartment, and ran water over her wounded hand. The tap slowly ran cold, and the smarting pain seemed to ease a little. Jack joined her at the sink, and stuck his burned fingers under the tap.
‘Thanks,’ Gwen told him. Their hands met briefly in the cold water, so she stroked the back of his hand with a light touch.
Toshiko gave a little groan from where she had been dumped on the horrid shag pile carpet. Jack pulled his hand away, took a towel and went over to check on Toshiko.
Gwen had to dry her hands on a stained tea towel. The back of her right hand was blotched with circles and small scratches, but the skin appeared to be unbroken.
Toshiko was dazed, but not injured. Jack helped her back to her feet. ‘What happened to Applegate?’ she asked him. ‘Did you…? Eww!’ Toshiko had spotted the starfish spiked into the wall, level with her head. It had shrivelled still further, and was dripping yellow-green gunk down the wallpaper and onto the sideboard. ‘God, I thought the decor in this place was dismal, but that’s just disgusting!’
Jack beckoned to Toshiko and Gwen to follow him out of the apartment. Out on the landing, rain was washing in through a fresh hole in the half-landing window. ‘I shot her. Upper arm, I think. Maybe the shoulder. She was running down the stairs, so the momentum carried her on and through that window.’
He trotted down the half-flight of steps. He considered the rain and wind gusting in through the hole before twisting the latch and opening the shattered remains of the window. He took a swift look through the gap, pulled his head back in. He obviously couldn’t believe what he’d seen, because he bravely took another look in the face of the storm.
‘I can’t see the body,’ he said. ‘C’mon, two floors down, who’s gonna survive that?’ He studied Toshiko and Gwen’s reactions. ‘OK, we should check on the way out.’
They returned to the apartment, and went into the bathroom. As soon as the door opened, an overpowering stench of rotting fish assailed them. It was enough to make Gwen’s eyes water.
The remains of the larger starfish had dissolved into a slimy gloop in the bath. Gwen didn’t argue when Jack said he would conduct the search. Hidden behind the side panel of the bath he found a heavy grey box. He pulled it out onto the bathroom rug, and slid it across the room. Gwen switched on her Geiger counter, which ticked quietly. Jack lifted the lid of the box, and the ticking abruptly became a machine-gun rattle of alarm.
Jack snapped the lid shut. ‘OK,’ he said calmly. ‘We appear to have the missing fuel rods.’
They had to make two journeys down the stairwell. On the first they carried the lead-lined box, and pushed it into the boot of the SUV. Second time, they wrapped up the policeman’s corpse in a blanket from Wildman’s apartment, and hefted the body down the stairs. By the time they’d put the other copper’s body in the boot, all three of them were drenched in what felt to Gwen like equal measures of sweat and rainwater.
Jack slammed the boot closed. ‘You two go back to the Hub and get changed. Take the Saab. I’ll deliver the fuel rods to Blaidd Drwg and join you later. Tosh, you can start working on the cover story for these two in the back.’ He checked his watch. ‘Difficult to tell when I’ll get back in this weather.’
‘I hope that’s waterproof,’ Toshiko said.
‘It’s the best,’ Jack told her. ‘American military watch, 1940s. Twenty-four-hour display, a nice piece.’
Toshiko peered at it in the rain. ‘Where did you get it from?’
‘That was a long time ago,’ smiled Jack. He shot his cuffs so that the watch was out of the rain again. ‘That was a whole other life.’
Jack closed the door and steered the SUV upstream and out of the street. Gwen got into the Saab and watched the wake that the SUV left behind. She sat for a while gripping the steering wheel, studying the marks on the back of her hand and thinking about the two young policemen. What creative thinking would Toshiko employ to explain away their absences? Their deaths. She hardly dared ask her, even though she was now sitting next to her.
It was while contemplating these things that Gwen was startled by the sound of her mobile going off. A quick glance at the display revealed that it was Rhys. Was she coming home for dinner tonight? Gwen smiled sheepishly at Toshiko. Not sure, she told her boyfriend. Rain’s really terrible, so she’d need to take it steady. No, she was fine, being over-cautious probably. She’d call him when she knew.
He loved her, he said. She missed him, she replied.
When the call ended, Gwen sat silently for a few more moments in the car. Thinking again about the inventive excuse that Toshiko was going come up with to cover the policemen’s absence. Pondering the excuse she herself was going to offer Rhys tonight when she’d missed dinner again.
Ianto found it surprisingly difficult to close the front door. There was a gale blowing straight across the Bay, and that meant straight at the entrance to the Hub from Mermaid Quay. He put his shoulder to the edge nearest the frame and, after a bit more effort, he was able to get the door to click into place. He shot the bolts securely across the top and bottom, and leaned back against the door, exhausted.
Jack had breezed in, but so had several gallons of water, and the reception floor was awash. ‘We’re gonna need some sandbags out there, Ianto, if this rain keeps up.’
‘Yes, the neighbourhood’s gone to pot,’ said Ianto. ‘Maybe we should move.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Jack. ‘Imagine how many tea-chests we’d need to pack. That, plus we’d need to get the stationery reprinted.’ He shook himself like a wet dog, and rainwater spattered across the room. His trousers were soaked up to the knee, and he decided it would be a good idea to grasp the material and squeeze water out of the legs right there and then.
Ianto resisted the strong temptation to tut loudly. Instead, he plucked a handful of tissues from a box and mopped the worst of the splashes off the paperwork at the desk. He was able to rescue the flyers for the Redflight Barcud event at the Millennium Centre, but a pile of Tredegar House information leaflets was as good as ruined.
They had disguised the Bayside entrance to the Torchwood Hub as a Tourist Information Centre. And not a particularly salubrious one at that because, obviously, they didn’t want to encourage a steady stream of eager visitors asking for directions to the Pierhead Building or opening times for the Norwegian Church. Not that Ianto couldn’t answer those questions, of course. He prided himself on his arcane local knowledge, whether Cardiff indie bands or the history of Tiger Bay. Mostly, though, they only wanted to know the reason why the word ‘Brains’ was stencilled on a city centre chimney stack. This had all proved useful cover on an awkward occasion when a film crew from a BBC Wales travel programme wouldn’t take no for an answer when looking for an interview.
Ianto helped Jack out of his wet coat. ‘You’ve got a big hole in your sleeve,’ he said.
‘Nothing escapes your eagle eye.’
‘I see you’ve got a new watch, too.’
‘I’m trying it out. Though it’s an old watch. Antique.’
Ianto looked at it admiringly. ‘Very nice. Perhaps you should have one for casual and one for best.’
‘I don’t think so.’ Jack shucked off his sopping wet shoes and kicked them into the corner. ‘A guy with a watch knows what time it is. A guy with two watches is never sure.’ To Ianto’s dismay, he proceeded to peel off his socks and wring them out into the waste bin. ‘Are Tosh and Gwen back?’
‘Waiting for you downstairs,’ said Ianto.
‘You’re not wearing any socks,’ Gwen told him.
‘Nothing escapes your eagle eye,’ replied Jack. ‘Have you admired my watch yet?’
He plonked down into a Boardroom chair, and waited for Toshiko to complete her presentation materials. ‘That flooding is getting critical. We’re gonna have to seal the side entrance. Or put Ianto on a steroid regime, so he can get the door closed.’
Gwen pointed through the Boardroom’s glass wall and into the main Hub area. She could see the water at the foot of the stainless steel tower was rippling. ‘The basin is tidal, isn’t it?’
Jack followed her directions. ‘Yeah. And look how much higher that’s got. Tosh, have we got a valve control on that thing to prevent it flooding the Hub?’
‘Yes,’ she told him, ‘but I can’t promise that the rest of the place is waterproof. There’s a pool of water building up against the exterior window of the Autopsy Room. It would only take one careless accident for that to break.’
‘Owen had better be careful then. He around?’
‘I think Ianto knows where he is,’ said Gwen.
Toshiko tapped the display screen to get their attention again. ‘As for the rest of Cardiff, they’re a lot worse off. Three hundred thousand people are staying at home to avoid getting their feet wet. We’re supposed to have thirty-six inches of rain a year, and we’ve had twenty-four inches in as many hours.’
‘The Oval Basin is starting to fill up with water,’ agreed Gwen. ‘It was like a river raging through there when we walked back from the car. If it carries on like this, by tomorrow morning only the people on the top floors of St David’s Hotel will still be dry. And they probably won’t notice until the caviar runs out.’
Toshiko showed a few more graphics on the display. ‘They did a lot of groundwater modelling studies when they were proposing the barrage for the Bay. I’m going to tap into their instrumentation…’
Gwen laughed. ‘Very good.’ Toshiko didn’t look pleased by this interruption. ‘Sorry, I thought you were joking. You know, water… tap…’
‘Tosh doesn’t joke about her work.’ Jack wagged a finger at Gwen in mock admonishment.
‘They’ve got over two hundred boreholes recording groundwater levels every thirty minutes,’ persisted Toshiko. ‘And they measure other environmental parameters like rainfall, obviously, and atmospheric pressure. Tide and river levels. That lot should give us some idea what’s going on.’
Jack leaned back in his chair, put his bare feet up on the table, and waggled his toes. ‘There are some people round here who still talk about the Bristol Channel floods of 1607.’
‘I imagine there may be some who are old enough to remember it,’ muttered Gwen.
Toshiko was more impressed with the information, however. ‘Thousands died. Houses and villages were swept away. Livestock got destroyed when farmland was inundated. The surrounding region was set back for more than a century. And there’s a recent theory that it was a tsunami. If today’s water levels continue to rise like this, it could do the same kind of damage.’
‘But not as fast,’ observed Gwen.
Toshiko switched off the display screen. ‘A slow tsunami? Well, that would still cause devastation. Wreck the local economy. And kill tens of thousands this time.’ She closed the lid of her laptop. ‘If I’m right.’
Ianto came into the room to offer them coffee. He looked disapprovingly at Jack’s bare feet, so Jack removed them from the table. ‘OK, let’s have your program run overnight Tosh, and see what it tells us tomorrow. Go home now, it’s late. Have a lie-in tomorrow. You too, Gwen. Better take the scenic route, because I think Ianto here has welded the side door shut.’
Gwen knew better than to protest. She heaved herself out of her chair, and made her way to the exit platform with Toshiko.
‘Doesn’t your boyfriend mind you working this late?’ asked Toshiko.
‘He said he was going out to an all-night Star Wars marathon,’ lied Gwen.
Toshiko looked unconvinced. ‘In this weather?’
‘They’re Star Wars fans,’ explained Gwen. ‘They’d crawl over boiling lava to avoid missing their fifteenth viewing.’
‘Ah,’ said Toshiko, ‘I understand. Otaku.’ She smiled when Gwen frowned. ‘Geek.’
‘Otaku,’ repeated Gwen.
The platform began to lift them upward.
‘And gemu otaku is a video games geek,’ Toshiko said.
‘I think that’s pronounced “Owen Harper”.’ Gwen looked up above them and sighed. ‘You realise that we’ve forgotten the umbrellas again.’
The pavement slab opened up overhead, and the cold rain showered in on them.
Jack watched Ianto polish the table where his feet had been propped. Ianto could tell that his boss didn’t really approve, but he thought that Jack would dislike it even more if the place got to be a mess. At the moment, he had other things to worry about though.
‘Gwen tells me you know where Owen is, Ianto.’
Ianto stopped polishing. ‘No. His radiation readings reached normal, and so he decided to go out. On a date, he said.’
‘A date? What about the work I asked him to do?’
Ianto produced a buff folder of printouts. Balanced on the top of it was the radiation sponge. ‘He asked me to give you these. He said that there’s a lot of information about what a brave and resourceful soldier Sergeant Applegate is, fine service record. And she has 450 Nectar points, in case that’s important.’
‘I could kiss you, Ianto.’
‘No you couldn’t, sir.’
Jack flipped open the folder and stood up. ‘I’m gonna take this down to my office.’ They both walked out of the Boardroom and made their way down the spiral staircase to the main Hub.
Ianto noticed how the water in the centre had risen higher, and seemed to be slapping higher against the edge of the basin. The view through the portholes in the wall above them also seemed to be more turbulent, with fragments of weed whirling past in the dark water and fewer fish visible than usual.
Jack walked away towards his office. ‘You can go home now.’
‘Thank you. I have a bit more filing to do. In the basement. I’d like to finish it.’
Jack laughed. ‘You may as well live here, Ianto,’ he shouted before he closed his office door.
I could say the same thing about you, Ianto thought as he set off to the basement to continue his own work.