SIXTEEN
Jack watched the sun rise from the roof of the St David’s Hotel. Wednesday. Let it be a quiet day. A business-as-usual day, where everything turned out to be a false alarm. They deserved that.
The Cardiff skyline gleamed and shone in the first rake of daylight, like some heavenly city, like one of Blake’s visions of Jerusalem. A beautiful city. A beautiful day. Let it be a beautiful day.
‘This is nice.’
‘I thought so,’ said Jack.
‘Very nice. A very nice start to the day.’ Toshiko smiled at him. ‘Can we do this every day?’
‘Probably not. I thought I’d save it up for mornings where I had to check up on my friends.’
Sunlight streamed in through the café’s wall of glass. Coffee and brioche had been delivered to their table.
‘So, getting that part out of the way, are you OK?’ asked Jack.
Toshiko nodded. ‘Amazingly. I didn’t think I would be. I was a wreck last night, exhausted and everything. I really didn’t think I’d be right for days or weeks.’
‘But you’re OK?’
‘Well, you being nice to me like this helps, but yes. Really. Clear-headed. Calm. I slept well. I don’t think we realised how much that thing was in our heads until it went away.’
Jack asked a passing waitress for some water.
‘How about you?’ asked Toshiko.
‘Famously robust,’ Jack replied. ‘Full of rude health.’
Toshiko buttered a slice of brioche. ‘Do me a favour?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Don’t start apologising. It’s not like you and it freaks me out. What happened yesterday happened. I’m fine. Just get to being flippant and cocksure and slightly devil-may-care. OK?’
‘Sure. OK.’
‘That’s the Jack I know.’
‘OK. This breakfast is on you, by the way.’
She grinned. ‘Better. You’re getting it.’
‘There was this thing I was going to ask you, though,’ said Jack. ‘Just one thing and then I dump the sentiment completely, I promise.’
‘Go on?’
‘How long do you think I can keep people for?’
‘Keep people?’
‘In Torchwood. All sorts of things might whittle down the ranks, but I never considered attrition.’
‘That you’d wear us out?’
Jack steepled his fingers in front of his face. ‘That the work would wear us out. All of us, Tosh. Time was, not long ago, we’d handle a case every week, or every two, not counting false alarms. Then it was two or three a week. Now look at us. Look at this week alone. I’m trying to keep the team on track, and I’m thinking, “Wow, we’re understaffed.” I’m also thinking, “For God’s sake, we’re going to burn out.” It’s twenty-four seven, and it seems to be getting worse, not better.’
‘We’ll just have to take it as it comes,’ Toshiko said.
‘I never thought,’ Jack said, waving a butter knife at her, ‘that people would quit or, I don’t know, die on me due to pressure. Nervous collapse. Mindmulch.’
Toshiko sipped her coffee. ‘If you’d asked me this yesterday, I’d have shared your worries, because yesterday was horrible. But today isn’t, and it’s not going to be.’
‘You sure about that?’
‘I’m a scientist. I have graphs, with arrows on them.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘The law of averages owes us a quiet few days. A few Bartoks.’
Jack nodded. Then he half-frowned. ‘Why do we call them that?’ he asked.
He examined his bruised ribs in the bathroom mirror and flexed his arm. Not so bad.
Gwen called out something from the other room, but he couldn’t hear her over Torn Curtain playing on the stereo.
‘What?’ he called back, rinsing his razor under the tap before rubbing shaving balm into his cheeks.
She wandered into the bathroom behind him, and dropped a bundle of clothes into the laundry basket. She was pretty much already dressed for work.
‘I said, where did we put the sleeve of the Andy DVDs? And also, aren’t you ready yet? We’re going to be late.’
‘I’m there,’ he said.
‘You all right?’
James smiled. ‘Weird dreams last night.’
‘About what?’
‘Haven’t a clue. I just remember them being weird.’ He really couldn’t remember them. They were a solid aftertaste in his mind, but try as he might, he couldn’t actually bring back their content. ‘You’re very perky,’ he remarked.
‘I feel great.’ She went out again. Then she called out from the other room.
‘What? If you turn the music down, I can hear you.’
Torn Curtain dropped away a couple of dozen decibels.
‘I said Andy. The box for the Andy disks.’
‘It was there on Saturday.’
‘I know. It’s not here now.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Nothing. Acting out of guilt.’
He was about to ask her what she meant by that when his nose tickled. He dabbed it. A tiny nosebleed, from the same nostril that had bled the previous day. James got some loo roll and blotted it. Just a tiny trickle. He peered at his face in the mirror, rotating his jaw and opening his eyes wide.
‘Stop looking, I’ve found it,’ she called.
James blinked, not hearing her. He continued to stare at his reflection. ‘Gwen?’
‘I said, I found it.’
‘Gwen!’
She poked her head around the bathroom door. ‘It was under the ficus.’
‘Not that. Look at my eyes.’
‘Your eyes?’
He turned from the mirror to face her. She came closer. ‘Look at my eyes,’ he repeated.
‘Is this some kind of trick to get me in grabbing range, because we do not have time?’
‘Gwen—’
She inspected his eyes. ‘They’re lovely. What do you want?’
‘They’re OK?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘Just for a second there, they looked like they were—’
‘What?’
‘Different colours.’
‘Your eyes?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Let me look again.’ She stared more carefully this time. ‘Two lovely brown eyes, check.’
‘The right one looked blue just then.’
‘You imagined it. Now shake your tail-feather, we got to go.’
She walked back out of the bathroom. James took a final look at himself in the mirror. His eyes were brown.
‘I just need to find a shirt,’ he called.
‘I ironed you one,’ she called back.
‘What?’
Gwen reappeared in the bathroom door and held out a clean, pressed white shirt for him.
‘You didn’t have to iron me a shirt,’ he said, taking it.
Gwen thought about that for a second. ‘Bloody hell, I didn’t, did I?’ she said, with genuine surprise. ‘Sorry. Must be the guilt.’
‘Yeah, what was that about guilt?’ he asked, pulling on the shirt as he followed her into the lounge.
‘I haven’t even been here a week, and your flat was beginning to look like someone had conducted controlled explosions of your books, clothes and crockery.’
James buttoned his shirt and glanced around. ‘Blimey,’ he said. ‘It looks like—’
‘What?’
‘It looks like... like the maid’s been in.’
She grinned, cheeky. ‘Like that, would we? Me in a little French maid’s outfit and a feather duster?’
‘You didn’t have to tidy, or iron me a shirt.’
‘I was feeling guilty,’ she replied, picking up her phone and carkeys. ‘Six days I’ve been staying here—’
‘Living. I thought it was living?’
‘Whatever it is I’m doing here, I’ve been doing it for six days, and it was starting to show. I never thought of myself as a slob, but your place was always so neat and tidy.’
‘What are you saying? That I’m compulsive?’
‘No. I’m saying I was a bit too free and easy with your home. I got up this morning and just noticed. Wine glasses on there. Plates stacked under there. Eighteen – eighteen! – mugs on that shelf. CDs everywhere. All the Andy disks out of the box, and it was Saturday we were watching those. And I won’t tell you what I found behind the sofa.’
‘Tell me what you found behind the sofa.’
‘I won’t.’
‘Was it knickers?’
‘Yes, it was knickers.’
‘Gwen, you didn’t have to straighten the place up.’
She looked at him. ‘I didn’t want you chucking me out because I was a messy bitch.’
‘I’m not going to chuck you out,’ he said.
‘You promise?’
He kissed her instead.
They were on their way downstairs to the car when her phone rang.
‘That’ll be Ianto,’ she said, taking her phone out. ‘Hello? Oh, hello Rhys.’
Gwen looked at James and shrugged helplessly.
He shrugged back.
‘No, I’m off to work right now. Fine, fine, you?’
James opened the front door as gently as he could and picked up some mail. She walked out past him onto the path, still talking. ‘Yesterday? No, no, my phone was busy a lot yesterday. That’s probably why. Sorry. Lot of important calls I had to take.’
James locked the front door and followed her down the tiled path into the street. It was a clean, fresh morning, with a golden tint to the sky.
‘No, OK. Maybe at the end of the week. Or the start of next. See how things go. All right. All right, Rhys. Gotta go. All right. Yes. Bye. Bye now.’
She hung up.
‘Everything all right?’ he asked.
‘Oh, he just wants to meet for a drink. Have a talk about stuff.’
‘You ready for that?’
‘Got to do it, haven’t I?’
They got in the car. ‘Do you think you and I should have a conversation before I have one with Rhys?’ she asked.
‘About what?’ he asked. ‘Why?’
‘About... us.’ Gwen looked at him. ‘Splitting up with Rhys is a big decision to take. For me. For Rhys too. I’d hate to make a decision like that without consulting you.’
‘OK,’ he said.
‘Moving on,’ said Jack, sifting through the papers in front of him. ‘The lights seen over Roath?’
‘Bartok,’ said Owen.
‘Really?’
‘Kids playing with a box of fireworks.’
‘OK. The reports of vibrations and “odd, persistent humming noises” in St Fagans? I’m hoping that’s not going to turn out to be another one of those harmonic tesseract thingies.’
‘Nope,’ smiled Owen. ‘Bartok. It was traced to a gang of road-menders using a poorly positioned generator. Natural acoustics did the rest.’
Jack nodded. ‘Great. OK, item six... “man-thing” reported on the commons by Sandhill Way?’
‘Weevil,’ said Owen. ‘We got positive ID off the CCTV footage we borrowed from the police.’
‘And when you say “borrowed”...?’ said Gwen.
‘All right, “stole”,’ replied Owen. ‘It was a Weevil, anyway. Gone to ground now. We’ll keep watching and move on it when it shows again.’
Jack turned another page. ‘Missing pets in Cathays?’
‘Gone quiet,’ said James.
‘Probably another Bartok,’ said Owen.
‘Let’s keep an eye on that too, though,’ said Jack. He flicked another page over. ‘This one from yesterday. An adult male run down on City Road around lunchtime. It’s flagged because, according to witnesses, the guy stopped the car that hit him dead and remained on his feet.’
‘There’s not much more available on that,’ said James.
‘The eye-witnesses also report the man as behaving oddly prior to the RTA,’ said Gwen. ‘General consensus is he was off his face on something Class A.’
‘Probably wound up in A&E the moment he came down,’ said Owen. ‘I’ve seen that happen. People so high they wander around with a broken leg until the buzz wear’s off and they notice.’
‘OK,’ said Jack. ‘Put that one in pending. Right... the metallic object found on the construction site on Tweedsmuir Road?’
‘Good thing we didn’t move on that immediately,’ said Toshiko.
‘Yeah,’ agreed Owen. ‘We’d have looked pretty stupid storming in there mob-handed.’
‘Why?’ asked Jack.
‘Because it’s a Bartok,’ said Owen.
‘Why?’ asked Jack.
‘Because... that’s what we call false alarms, isn’t it?’ Owen replied, glancing at the others for corroboration.
‘No,’ said Jack, ‘I meant why is it a Bartok?’
‘Because... uhm...’ Owen answered, pausing again, as if it was a trick question, ‘James’s third-favourite TV show is Eternity Base and, between Seasons Three and Four, they changed the actress playing feisty head pilot Lauren Bartok, and the replacement actress was such a disappointment, there was a huge fan outcry, and the producers got the original actress back in for Season Five—’
‘Owen,’ said Jack.
‘... hence “Bartok” meaning a disappointment and, by extension and usage, “false alarm”—’
‘Owen,’ Jack repeated.
‘... What?’
‘I know why we call it a “Bartok”,’ said Jack calmly, ‘I meant why is this a Bartok?’
‘Ooooh,’ said Owen. ‘Sorry. Well, because it turned out to be the cylinder block from a Hyundai.’
‘A Hyundai?’
‘Or a Subaru. Definitely a cylinder block, though.’
‘You’re remarkably happy today,’ Jack said to Owen.
‘I am. I really am,’ Owen grinned. ‘I feel great.’
Jack looked at the others. ‘Good. So, summing up, everyone feels great, the sun’s out, the day has nothing for us but false alarms, it’s a wonderful time to be alive, and Owen’s gone all geek on us. Anything else?’
‘Costings,’ said Gwen half an hour later, dumping a stack of files on Jack’s desk. ‘As requested.’
He looked up. ‘Thanks. And the viability reports and evaluations?’
‘Just getting to those.’ She hovered, dawdling.
‘Anything else?’
‘No.’
Jack looked up at her again. ‘You look bored.’
‘That’s very perceptive.’
‘You might as well have been wearing a Chairman of the Bored T-shirt,’ said Jack. ‘Come on, the week we’ve had and you’re complaining about a slow day?’
‘No, just the bloody paperwork. I was thinking...’
Jack pulled an overly dramatic face and gripped the sides of his desk with both hands. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘I’m braced. Go on.’
‘You’re so droll. I was thinking about that thing you showed us.’
‘The trick with the paper clips?’
‘No, that thing... the thing in your pocket.’
‘I’m just as God made me, Gwen.’
‘Oh, stop playing! The tile thing. The flashing thing. The secret you decided to share with us.’
‘What about it?’ Jack asked.
‘Well, it’s obviously bugging you that we don’t know anything about it, not properly. I was wondering if I should go up to that Cosley Hall place and see if I could find anything out.’
‘This wouldn’t have anything to do with paperwork, would it?’ Jack asked.
‘No. Yes. But it’s a cause for concern, isn’t it? You’re worried about it and you want to know what it is.’
‘I do,’ said Jack. He got up and removed the flashing black tile from his coat. ‘But I’ve been up to the Hall on dozens of occasions. Been over the whole place with a fine-tooth comb. I don’t know what you’d find that I didn’t.’
She shrugged. ‘Neither do I unless I look. Fresh pair of eyes and all that?’
‘Torchwood’s been studying this ever since it got hold of it,’ Jack said, staring at the small black tile. ‘Thanks for the offer, but I think there are more useful things you could do today.’
Gwen sighed.
‘Hey!’ Toshiko called from her work station below. ‘This is potentially a live one.’
They quickly gathered around her station.
‘I’ve been noting this for a fortnight now,’ she said, tapping on her keyboard and calling up a spreadsheet. ‘Llandaff/Pontcanna area. Complaints to the police and to the Chamber of Commerce about a bloke going door-to-door selling double glazing and loft insulation.’
‘Oh my God, that’s inhuman!’ said Owen.
‘Listen,’ Toshiko said, ignoring him. ‘Eighteen complaints, and six more came through today. The man is very nice, very polite, very credible. Comes cold calling, lovely chat, cup of tea. Then the homeowner signs up on the spot and forks out money. Cash.’
‘How much cash?’ asked James.
‘As much as he can get. Sometimes he drives the homeowner to a nearby bank or cashpoint to get his payout. No cheques. He’s making a killing.’
Jack shook his head. ‘Look, I know everyone is anxious to find something to do, anything to get them out of here on a sunny day, but that’s just fraud. A consumer protection issue. Goes on all the time.’
‘Except,’ said Toshiko.
‘Except?’
‘The police are unwilling to take action because they can’t even get a partial description of the man. He spends hours at a time in the company of his victims, and afterwards they’re at a loss to say what his hair colour is. Total blank. And he’s not just praying on vulnerable people, pensioners or whatever, but affluent homes, people who should know better than fork over cash without a cooling-off period. People who already have double glazing and loft insulation.’
‘Really?’ said Jack.
‘Really. This guy’s getting money out of people who don’t even want what he’s selling. People who tell the police afterwards they have no idea why they did what they did. No idea at all.’
‘Maybe that is a live one,’ said Jack admitted. ‘Print me out what you’ve got.’
‘I’ll go have a nose around,’ offered Gwen. ‘I’ve only got paperwork.’
‘No, thanks,’ said Jack.
‘Why?’
‘Because you’ve got paperwork. I’ll go check it.’
‘Why?’ asked Gwen.
‘Because I haven’t got paperwork.’
The SUV whispered up Cathedral Road into Pontcanna. The day was crisp and autumnal. Street cleaners were scooping up the carpet of fallen leaves into barrows. They drove past an ice-cream van tinkling along.
‘So, what do you think? Hypnotic suggestion?’ asked James.
‘Got to be something of that order,’ said Jack, at the wheel. ‘A suggestion or perception technique. Maybe a piece of found tech.’
‘Someone using something they shouldn’t, you mean?’ asked James.
‘Usually the way in this town,’ said Jack.
James peered out at the residential streets flickering by. ‘Any suggestions how we look for a man without a description to go on?’
‘Well,’ Jack replied, ‘I’m thinking he’s going to look like exactly what he pretends to be. A salesman. Smart, suit, well-groomed, going door-to-door.’
‘Because?’
‘Because he’s got to look the part to get inside in the first place, to walk down the street even. Whatever he pulls, he pulls it once he’s in. Like close magic. If what he’s using had a more powerful scope or range, there’s a good chance we’d have picked it up already. No, I’m betting he looks exactly like a salesman.’
James nodded. ‘And if anyone, like the police, did stop him in the street, he’d pull his trick on them too, and walk away?’
‘Right. You’ll notice from Tosh’s printout that he’s confident. He’s not afraid of hitting the same street several times, on the same day if he feels like it. He’s not afraid of being approached.’
‘What’s going to prevent him doing that to us?’ asked James.
‘We’re Torchwood,’ said Jack.
‘Right.’
They drove on.
‘Any particular reason you asked me to ride along with you?’ asked James. ‘Gwen was busting for an excuse to get outside.’
‘No reason,’ said Jack. ‘Except... there was something I wanted to ask you.’
‘What?’
‘Everyone seems full of beans today. After yesterday, I was worried, but everyone has bounced back. Except you.’
‘Me?’ James asked. ‘I’m fine.’
‘You don’t seem as fine as everybody else. Any headache? After-effects?’
‘God, no,’ said James. ‘I’m bright as a button. Like Tosh and Owen both said, once the Amok stopped playing with us, everything felt so much better. We hadn’t realised how it had been crippling us. You too, right?’
‘Sure.’
‘My ribs ache a little,’ said James. ‘And I had some weird old dreams last night. But that’s all it is, I think.’
‘Weird dreams? What about?’
‘No idea. Can’t bring them back to mind. But they were just weird dreams, that’s all. Not alien mind-twisting crap.’
‘All right, if that’s all it is.’
‘Yeah. I was telling Gwen about it when we—’
James paused.
‘What?’
‘I was telling Gwen about it, earlier.’
Jack smiled. He pulled the SUV over to the kerbside. ‘You know I know, right?’
‘Oh. Right.’
‘It’s cool,’ said Jack.
‘Why have we stopped?’ asked James. ‘We’re not going to have some kind of formal talk are we?’
‘Get over yourself,’ said Jack. He pointed down the street. ‘Look what I see.’