Another Life. Part 12

The largest box contained a mesh duffel bag, black with red details and the word 'Edge' printed on one side. It was almost empty. Tos.h.i.+ko pulled out three items. She found a yellow and white snorkel with reflective tape at the surface end. Beside that, still in its packaging, was an SL951 close-up lens for a SeaLife Reefmaster camera. The third thing was a squarish, zippered bag that contained a circular black and silver device that Tos.h.i.+ko did not recognise.

'It's a diving regulator,' Jack told her.

'Spadey was a sub-aqua enthusiast,' explained Foxton.

'Where's the rest of the equipment?' asked Tos.h.i.+ko. 'No wetsuit, for example?' She explored the wardrobes, but the rails were bare, empty except for a handful of jangling metal hangers. 'Do you mean snorkelling?'

'No, I mean scuba,' said Foxton. His voice was pensive as he started to recall something 'Spadey was always telling us about his latest trip. Loved to take pictures of the fish.'

'That would explain the lens,' said Jack. He continued to rummage in the other boxes, and located a clutch of film negatives. 'A bit old-school, don'tcha think? Thirty-five millimetre, not digital. So I wonder what happened to the rest of the photos? Ah, here we go.'

Jack had found a s...o...b..x, labelled 'SGWBA' in neat capitals, and filled with glossy prints. Jack started to spread them out on the desk. They had not been sorted, so out-of-focus shots were mixed with other, clearer pictures of exotically coloured marine life. Some included divers, anonymous in their dive masks, exploring underwater.

Tos.h.i.+ko realised the difference between these pictures and the photos she had seen earlier in the soldier's quarters. 'No pictures of his family.'

'Didn't have any immediate family,' Foxton said. 'No known next of kin. But he went on dives with a regular group of friends.'

'I've seen this somewhere before,' Jack said. He pa.s.sed one of the photographs to Tos.h.i.+ko. It showed three people suited up for a dive, all masked. The vivid colours in their wetsuits echoed the images of divers in the other photos.

With the pile of glossies scattered over the desk, Jack eventually found a handful of pictures that included some shots of the divers without their masks on.

'Well, hey!' Jack slid one of the photographs across the desk so that it was in front of Tos.h.i.+ko. 'Recognise this guy?'

He had the defined torso that a well-fitted wetsuit gives to any man who isn't very overweight. The figure's wet hair was plastered to his head, darker than its usual grey. It took her a moment, and then Tos.h.i.+ko remembered.

The last time she'd seen him, he hadn't looked much like this. There hadn't been that much of his face to recognise after it had hit the pavement. She only knew what he should look like from seeing the ident.i.ty pa.s.s photo she'd obtained from the Blaidd Drwg security database. 'It's Guy Wildman.'

They rummaged around in the pile for more photos.

'Have you been making a mess?' said a familiar voice from the door.

Tos.h.i.+ko looked up to see Gwen coming in, accompanied by her escort, the dark-eyed soldier from earlier who looked like he might be Russian. Private Foxton had jumped into a more alert mode as he heard Gwen arriving. He now relaxed a little and nodded a greeting to the other soldier.

Gwen kicked at some of the splinters of wood from the broken door. 'I didn't need John-Paul's help to find you. I could have just followed the trail of debris.'

'John-Paul?' asked Tos.h.i.+ko.

'Private Wisniewski,' said Gwen. She glanced at him, and his polite smile told her that she'd got the p.r.o.nunciation correct.

Tos.h.i.+ko pa.s.sed some of the glossy photos to Gwen. 'We made a connection with Guy Wildman.'

'There were underwater photos at his apartment. Not to mention some wildlife in his bathroom.' Gwen was rummaging in her pocket, and brought out a small Geiger counter. She switched it on, and it clicked rea.s.suringly at the lowest end of the scale. The two soldiers had stiffened, their eyes showing their alarm. Before they could say anything, Gwen spoke rea.s.suringly to them. 'Nothing to worry about. Entirely routine.' She showed them the readings. Tos.h.i.+ko noticed that they didn't seem much more rea.s.sured.

'Here's another of the three divers,' noted Jack.

Gwen and Tos.h.i.+ko looked at the photo he had held out. A trio of divers on a boat, ready to drop into the blue water behind them, their masks on and their thumbs raised. 'We saw that picture at Wildman's apartment,' agreed Gwen.

'Wildman, Bee, and another one,' mused Tos.h.i.+ko. 'And this could be the third. She's quite a looker. Girlfriend?'

'I don't think "quite a looker" is likely for Wildman, do you?' laughed Gwen.

'That's one of the other instructors,' said Private Foxton. Tos.h.i.+ko had been unaware that the two soldiers behind them had been looking at the photographs too. 'That's Sergeant Applegate. She was another sub-aqua enthusiast. Hwntw Hwntw, the two of them.'

'They were what?' asked Tos.h.i.+ko.

'South Waleans,' explained Gwen. 'Perhaps she was having a thing with Bee, though. The MO wasn't very forthcoming, but he said that some of the officers thought Bee was too familiar with the other soldiers. Do you think that's code for "s.h.a.gging the staff"?'

Tos.h.i.+ko pa.s.sed her the photograph. 'I don't know. What do you reckon would you?'

At first, she thought Gwen might have been offended by her teasing question. As soon as she saw the photograph, Gwen's expression had hardened. She twisted the photograph so that Jack could see it more clearly.

'I would,' said Jack, but there was little humour in his voice. 'But then I have a thing about blondes with legs that go all the way up to their ears.'

'It's Betty Jenkins!' Gwen said.

Tos.h.i.+ko laughed. 'The pensioner at Wildman's apartment?'

'No,' replied Gwen. 'The woman who claimed to be Betty Jenkins.'

Jack leaped from the table and made for the door. He paused in the shattered doorframe and snapped a question at Foxton. 'Where is this Sergeant Applegate? We need to see her now.'

Foxton looked fl.u.s.tered for the first time. 'I don't know sir. Sorry.'

'What kind of outfit is this?'

'No, sir. I mean, no one knows. She's been absent without leave for three weeks.'

Jack screwed up his eyes tight and bellowed at the ceiling in frustration. He slammed at the open door with his clenched fist, and winced. 'I wish I had time to go and slap the Lieutenant-Colonel in his stiff upper lip. He knew this and told us nothing when we got here. It's obstruction, pure and simple.'

'It's trust,' Gwen told him quietly. 'It's not right, but it's understandable.'

'No time for polite conversation,' Jack decided. 'Well, we know Applegate wasn't at Wildman's flat to feed his plants.'

'Unless she was feeding them to that disgusting starfish thing in the bath,' Gwen agreed. 'And all that squeaky nervous behaviour? That was a routine. She's a trained soldier, she wouldn't be scared of guns or violence.'

Tos.h.i.+ko saw that Jack was picking slivers of wood from a cut in the side of his hand. He had slammed his fist into a broken section of the door, and caught a bunch of splinters. 'Maybe you were right, Tosh. I should have used the handle.'

'Not locked,' she agreed. 'No guard.'

Jack stared at her, astounded. 'No guard!' he yelled. 'That's right. But there was was a guard at Wildman's apartment. Wasn't there, Gwen?' a guard at Wildman's apartment. Wasn't there, Gwen?'

'Applegate?'

'No! The thing in the bathroom! We know that Wildman could puke up those things. He musta barfed one into the tub to guard whatever he'd hidden there. C'mon, we gotta get back. Whatever it was guarding... it could still be there!'

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 Tos.h.i.+ko. 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 a.s.sociates 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 sc.r.a.p 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 Tos.h.i.+ko 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 Tos.h.i.+ko 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. Tos.h.i.+ko 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 Tos.h.i.+ko 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 ma.s.sive 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 was.h.i.+ng out of the young lad's s.h.i.+rt 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,' Tos.h.i.+ko told her.

'He wouldn't warn them. On the journey here. It would have been one phone call.'

Tos.h.i.+ko 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. Tos.h.i.+ko 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 h.e.l.l. Completely gone to h.e.l.l.'

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 Tos.h.i.+ko 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 Tos.h.i.+ko 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 b.u.t.t 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 Tos.h.i.+ko 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 ma.s.s 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 gla.s.s. But then the pain in her hand hit her.

The spongy yellow ma.s.s 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, Tos.h.i.+ko 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, s.n.a.t.c.hed 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.