TEN
Owen woke up with a murmur, rolled over, and fell off the armchair.
‘Bollocks,’ he groaned. He blinked. Some awfully cheerful pop music was blaring from the bedroom. He was in the lounge, on the floor. Things did not add up.
Nor could he make them add up for a moment. He had a vice squad raid of a headache kicking from room to room in his skull, and a mouth like the Lambies at low tide. His lip throbbed and every other ache and pain he’d taken the previous Thursday night seemed more acute than when they’d been inflicted.
‘Bollocks,’ he said again, and coughed. What day was it?
He took stock. The drapes were open, and pale daylight flooded in. He was still dressed. One shirt sleeve was torn, and there was mud on one leg of his trousers. He had no memory of a heavy night. In fact he had no memory at all.
He got up. That hurt. He swayed, dizzy. Swaying hurt too. He hobbled into the bedroom. Music was blaring from his clock radio. The clock radio on the bedside cabinet beside his unslept-in bed.
A nauseatingly upbeat DJ segued in. ‘... and that’s the fabulous Four Play. Coming up on half nine now this Tuesday morning, and it’s the news with Gayle...’
Tuesday. Right, Tuesday. That fits.
Half nine? His alarm had been playing for two hours without waking him. Even given that he was in the other room, that was good going.
‘Christ,’ he said. He started dragging off his clothes.
As he hopped through the lounge, unlacing one boot, he saw the plate on the table. The takeaway, untouched. A two-thirds-full bottle of beer beside it, standing in a small ring of water.
He stopped hopping, because that really hurt.
‘What the bloody hell did you do last night, Harper?’ he asked himself.
He went into the bathroom, turned on the shower, threw all his clothes and his boots into the laundry basket, cursed, fished his boots back out, and turned to look at himself in the mirror.
The hot rush of the shower was already beginning to steam the edges of the mirror over the sink. Owen saw his pale face looking back through large letters that had been scrawled, wildly, on the mirror in lipstick.
One word.
BIG.
‘So where is everybody?’ asked Jack.
‘Well,’ replied Ianto and made an open-handed shrug.
Jack looked around the Hub. ‘And I thought I’d slept in,’ he yawned.
‘Coffee’s on,’ said Ianto.
Jack breathed in the aroma. ‘I know. At least something’s right with the world.’
‘Other aspects are marginally more wonky,’ said Ianto, handing Jack a piece of paper. ‘This flagged up first thing this morning. I thought you’d want to see it as soon as.’
Jack read the page, nodding. ‘You know what this is?’
‘I seldom like to hazard a guess.’
Jack shook the piece of paper. ‘This is a busy day ahead of us.’
‘One other thing,’ said Ianto.
‘Shoot.’
The cog-door rolled open, and Toshiko hurried in, stifling a yawn. ‘Sorry,’ she called. ‘Sorry, I slept right through the alarm.’
She started taking off her coat. Jack came over to her.
‘You wanna talk about it?’ Jack asked her quietly.
‘About what?’
‘Oversleeping?’
‘Nothing to talk about, I’m just tired. Ever since last week. I can’t shake it. Every morning I think I’m going to be back on form and—’ Another yawn overtook her. ‘Sorry. It seems to be getting worse. And the headache. I feel like I’ve been put through the pinger.’
‘The what?’
‘The ringer.’
‘You said “pinger”.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘You did, actually,’ Ianto called over.
‘Well, that’s how tired I am.’
Jack looked quizzically at Toshiko. ‘That thing had real nasty after-effects, didn’t it?’
‘About that,’ said Ianto, joining them. ‘The thing I wanted to mention.’
‘Oh, yeah. Go on.’
Ianto pointed over at Toshiko’s work station. ‘Should it be doing that?’
They crossed to the desk. The day before, Toshiko had locked the Amok away in its containment box. They could hear it. It was tapping against the metal insides of the container.
‘Wow,’ said Jack.
‘I heard it when I came in. At first, I thought Owen had got himself locked in the cells again.’
Toshiko peered at the box. ‘It was dormant when we first got it contained.’
‘It’s not dormant now,’ returned Jack. ‘It’s sounding quite feisty.’
‘We should check it,’ Toshiko said, shooting a sidelong look at Jack. He nodded.
She popped on her eye-guards and slid the containment box back into the field zone of the containment console. Stainless-steel clamps automatically gripped the base of the box and rotated it into alignment with a whine. Toshiko closed the Lexan cover. The touch of a switch brought suspension fields up, bathing the box in a pulsing blue glow. Graphic analysis display projected across the dome of the Lexan hemisphere.
‘I’m setting level ten safeguards. Maximum focus blockers, everything we have, and additional inhibitors. Grade K firewalls, Ianto. We know how aggressive this thing can be.’
Ianto nodded. At a neighbouring sub-console, he ran his fingers over the keyboard. Graphics scrolled on his relay screen.
‘OK,’ said Toshiko. She depressed a switch. The interlock collar of the containment box unbolted magnetically, and slid back. The suspension field flickered.
The Amok, manipulated by delicate hawsers of gravity, rose up out of the box and hung in the blue glow, revolving slowly. The graphics on the Lexan dome, and those on Toshiko and Ianto’s screens, went into overdrive.
‘The Killer Sudoku from the Planet Mind-Screw is not happy,’ noted Toshiko.
‘That much is obvious,’ said Jack, staring.
‘Firewalls?’ Toshiko called out to Ianto.
‘It’s eaten through three, but we’re holding it now.’
Toshiko pointed at the projection display. ‘Elevated energetic behaviour. Some heat dissipation. There’s some edge-spectrum stuff there I don’t begin to understand. Nasty. Very agitated. Very angry.’
Jack nodded. ‘I don’t think it likes the fact we spoiled its games. I don’t think it likes the fact we locked it up in a box that deprived it of all external sensory input.’ He looked at Toshiko. ‘I think it wants someone to play with it.’
Toshiko shuddered. ‘I know we’ve got bleeding-edge inhibitors screening us from its effect, but I’m feeling ill just looking at it.’
Ianto raised a hand. ‘Headache,’ he reported.
‘Psychosomatic,’ said Jack. ‘It’s just freaking us out. It can’t stand the fact it can’t get to us.’ He leaned closer and grinned at the rotating metal solid. ‘Can you?’
He glanced back at Toshiko. ‘Even so, box it up, lock it tight, and put it in an isoclave in the vault until we’ve got time to deactivate it or even disassemble it.’
‘We don’t have that time now?’ asked Toshiko.
‘No,’ Jack replied. ‘Pressing matters.’ He handed her the sheet of paper Ianto had give him.
Toshiko read it. ‘I don’t understand this...’
‘Seeing as no one else has turned up for work, looks like this one’s down to you and me. Ianto, maybe you could give everyone a call and remind them they work for me?’
‘On it,’ said Ianto, reaching for his cell.
‘I still don’t get it.’ said Toshiko. ‘Where are we going?’
‘We’re going to the chapel, baby,’ said Jack.
Despite careful oiling, the barrow’s wheel still squeaked.
Davey trundled it up the path to the allotments. The sky was bare and white, like plain paper. A nothing day, caught in a trough between bits of weather. At least there was no rain yet.
The ground smelled strongly of the overnight downpour: rich earth smells and raw vegetation. Drains gurgled as they drank down the overspill. Birds sang in the hedges with sharp, whetted voices.
He’d intended to evict his guest in the small hours, after the dream. The storm had blown out around four thirty, and the sky had cleared so suddenly there had been stars. Davey, dressed in readiness by then, had put on his digging jacket and gone out into the wet blackness.
But it had been a cold, sinister hour. A dome of sky like polished jet, the prickle of stars, the amber glow of Cardiff. Roofs and chimneys were key-tooth silhouettes against the air. Somewhere, a dog-fox was barking her pitiful saw-edged yap. It was coming from streets away across the plots, the baleful cry of winter’s onset.
It had made Davey feel solitary and vulnerable. He went back indoors and decided to wait for morning.
He flicked on the light in the bathroom and sat down again.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but I’ll have to move you back tomorrow. I can’t—’
He had paused. The hum intoned softly.
‘I can’t have you in the house, I don’t think. Sorry. I need my sleep, and I can’t be having dreams like that. Your dreams, weren’t they?’
No answer.
‘I think they were. I think I just brushed against them. Anyway, sorry.’
In the cold daylight, he wheeled the barrow up to the shed and unlocked the door. A few things had blown over in the night, but nothing had suffered human disturbance.
He took it inside, and propped it up carefully, the way it had been before.
‘You’ll be safe in here, I promise. You won’t get disturbed. I’ll be back to check on you.’
Davey turned to go. ‘You can dream all you like in here,’ he said.
Back in his kitchen, the kettle and the radio on, Davey rummaged around in a drawer for his bus pass. He had already decided on a trip to the lending library.
He put a bowl of food down, and banged the tin with a fork, but the cat did not appear.
The flat was a mess, frankly, and smelled a bit stale. Dirty dishes were lined up on the counter, as if Rhys was in training for some washing-up record attempt, and the bins needed emptying. A carrier bag full of overflow hung from a drawer handle.
Gwen started in the bedroom, and filled a hold-all with a few clothes, some clean undies, two pairs of shoes, and a few personal items from the dresser.
She’d decided not to take much, just a handful of essentials to begin with. Clearing her stuff out wholesale while his back was turned would have been plain nasty. Besides, she didn’t have very long. She was late as it was. They’d overslept.
Some favourite earrings from her jewellery box, a necklace her mother had given her, a locket that had belong to her nan. From the bathroom, her favourite soap and shampoo, her expensive perfume. Not the one Rhys had bought her duty free that time, which she wore to please him. The other one, the one she treated herself to because she really loved the scent.
Gwen carried the hold-all back into the lounge. Books, DVDs, CDs... sorting through them seemed particularly petty. She knelt down and slid her trinket box off a lower shelf. Her box of lovelies.
It was an old shoebox, covered in pretty gift wrap, and adorned with coloured twine and faded petals glued on with Pritt Stick.
She took off the lid.
Birthday cards, Christmas cards, congratulations-on-your-new-job cards; a dried flower from a wedding they’d been to; some photos; a week-to-view diary from 1994 with a kitten on the cover; old invites, still in their envelopes, clamped in a bulldog clip; a champagne cork with a coin cut into it; postcards from here and there; an interlock puzzle out of a cracker; a dead watch she’d worn in her teens; a charm bracelet that she’d been given when she was eight; some foreign coins; three old letters from a boy she’d loved a long time before Rhys, tied up with now-colourless ribbon; glitter-edged gift tags, ‘To Gwen, with love’; a shell she’d kept for reasons that now escaped her; a broken fountain pen; some keys that no longer fitted anything; a tacky little ddraig goch in a snow globe.
There was a black and white photo of her aged three, on a tricycle. One corner had a fold across it, crazing the emulsion. Gwen turned the photo over, expecting the explanatory caption ‘The Heartless Bitch, at an early age’. There was nothing written on the back.
The front door lock jiggled open. Gwen stood up very quickly.
Rhys came in. He stopped dead and looked at her. His face looked puffy, as if he’d been sleeping too little or drinking too much.
‘Gwen,’ he said, genuinely surprised.
‘Hello,’ she managed.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I needed some stuff,’ she said. Nice footwork, Gwen. Not at all pathetic.
He looked at the hold-all beside her feet and sniffed. ‘Moving out, are we?’
‘No.’
‘Coming back, then?’
‘No,’ she frowned. ‘I don’t know what’s going on. I just—’
He waved his hand. ‘Please, spare me the “I need some space” bit, all right? Would you, please? Otherwise it’s all going to get a bit too bloody EastEnders for my taste.’ He hesitated. ‘You looking after yourself?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. You got someplace to stay?’
‘Yes.’
‘With a friend?’
‘With... yes.’
‘Got a number? A forwarding address?’ He slouched off his coat.
‘It’s not like that.’
‘What is it like, then, Gwen?’ he asked. He walked into the kitchen and filled the kettle.
‘I didn’t know you’d be here—’
‘Morning off, me. Dentist. Sorry to bugger up your plan to sneak about behind my back.’ He was losing his surprise and gathering a little confidence and momentum.
‘It’s not like that,’ she said. ‘I came round this morning because I needed some things. I came when you were out because I don’t know what to say to you. Not yet. And really, that’s all.’
‘Sounds very much like sneaking about behind my back to me.’
‘It isn’t. Not the way you mean. I’m not ready for a confrontation or a—’
‘A what?’
‘A long, meaningful talk.’
Rhys nodded. ‘When will that be, then? When will that be, you suppose? Next week? After Christmas? Can you pencil me in around work?’
‘Rhys—’
He saw the trinket box on the floor. ‘Your box of lovelies. And you tell me you’re not moving out?’
‘I was just looking at it.’
‘Bloody hell,’ he muttered, shaking his head. ‘How cowardly... how bloody spineless can you be? Coming in here to pick the place clean while I’m at work. Very classy, that. I’ve known burglars show more—’
‘I don’t want this!’ she protested. ‘Not now. Can’t you grasp that? This is exactly why I dropped in when I thought you’d be out. I don’t want this.’
‘OK. Just so long as you can sort out what you want, we’ll be fine. Just so long as you get what you bloody want—’
‘Rhys!’
He glowered at her.
‘I’m not ready to do this,’ she told him. ‘I’m really sorry this happened today, but I’m not ready to do this yet.’
The kettle began to steam.
‘I gotta go,’ said Gwen.
‘You got a number, then? Somewhere I can reach you if I need to?’
‘You can call me on my mobile.’
‘Apparently, I can’t,’ he said. ‘God knows, I’ve tried.’
‘I’ll answer you, promise I will.’
‘We’ll see.’
She put on her coat and picked up her hold-all. She paused to slide the trinket box back onto its place on the shelf.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ll call you.’
‘Right,’ he nodded. He was staring at the window, not looking at her. The muscles in his jaw were tense.
‘I will. Soon. Soon as I can.’
‘Right.’
‘Take care of yourself, all right?’
‘Yeah. No one else will.’
She walked out and pulled the front door closed behind her.
Rhys sighed, and bowed his head. He turned the kettle off and looked at the front door.
‘Oh, also, I love you,’ he whispered.
She’d parked her car around the corner. Morning traffic hissed by on the damp road: a turquoise Cardiff Bus, a minicab, an Alpha Course transit conveying chattering OAPs to a church lunch, a courier van, a big-boned Chelsea tractor with a tiny mum at the helm. Somewhere a car alarm was whooping, and a crossing signal was pinging. Engines idled. Tail pipes quivered, fuming.
Gwen felt sick and she felt bad and, most of all, she felt wrong.
She got into the black Saab. The windows had steamed up. James was dozing off in the passenger seat.
‘All done?’ he asked, opening his eyes as the door shut.
She pushed her hold-all back over onto the rear seats. It wedged against the head rest. She gave it an angry shove to send it on its way.
‘Gwen? What is it?’
Gwen fumbled with the keys, then sat back. ‘Rhys was there.’
‘Shit. Did he give you a hard time?’
‘No,’ she said, sternly. ‘He’s not like that—’
‘OK, OK. I was just—’
‘Don’t.’
‘Sorry.’
She looked around at him. ‘He was so sad. So messed up.’
‘Gwen...’
‘I did that to him. Me. My fault. I tried to explain why I was there, but it looked bad, you know?’
‘Everything will sort itself out,’ James said.
‘Is that a promise?’
‘Yes it is.’
‘Wish I had your confidence. It’s going to get ugly.’
‘It’ll be fine.’
‘I hate the lying.’
‘So you said.’ James waited a moment. ‘So, did you tell him anything?’
‘Like what?’
James shrugged.
‘No. Nothing about that. It’s too soon.’
‘OK. You’re right. Too soon.’ He looked a little downcast, but right then she didn’t especially care.
He wiped the window with his cuff and looked out. ‘Ianto called.’
‘Did he?’
‘Wondered where I was. Wondered if I knew where you were. Something’s gone off.’
She started the engine. ‘Hub?’ she asked.
‘No,’ said James. ‘I’ve got an address. He told us to meet Jack there.’
She pulled out into the traffic.