Another Life. Part 7

Ianto looked s.h.i.+fty. 'I might ask you the same thing, Dr Harper.' There was another big whoop from the R&R area that suggested Jack had reached another level. 'But perhaps I won't.'

With a swipe of his hand, Owen disconnected Tos.h.i.+ko's equipment. Glendower's costume dissolved into the ether around him. 'If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.' He gestured towards Jack. 'Has he been here all night?'

'No,' replied Ianto. 'He got back about thirty minutes ago.'

Owen nodded and moved off.

In the R&R area, he found Jack was enthusiastically engaged in a shooting game. It had amused him some months previously to install Zombie Death Zombie Death alongside the other twenty-year-old arcade t.i.tles like alongside the other twenty-year-old arcade t.i.tles like Asteroids Asteroids and a pinball machine themed around and a pinball machine themed around Bat Out Of h.e.l.l Bat Out Of h.e.l.l.

'Jack!' Owen adopted a tone of breezy familiarity. Better to try and blag it at this stage. 'How are you getting on?'

'I'm wiping you off the scoreboard buddy,' Jack replied. 'All those high scores you had? Not any more!' He hefted a plastic gun, designed like an old-style revolver and attached by a stout cable to the base of the arcade game. On the display screen, a phalanx of the slavering undead menaced a cowering crowd of hospital patients and nurses. 'Tosh told me about her 3D game technology. But you know, I'm kinda traditional about these things. Prefer the cla.s.sic look. Retro.'

You're telling me, thought Owen as he studied Jack's collarless s.h.i.+rt and braces.

'I thought I'd try it left-handed today,' continued Jack nonchalantly, 'to give you a chance.' He loosed off a brisk string of shots. The machine pinged in approval as the zombies exploded into dusty pixels on the screen. Jack gave another great whoop of celebration. 'Oh yeah! See that?' He pulled Owen closer to the machine and tapped the screen with his finger. 'That means I get an extra life. But...' He affected to look forlorn. '... I can't stay here all day. OK, you take it from here.' He tossed the gun in a short arc through the air so that Owen could catch it. Owen decided he wasn't going to be fazed by this challenge, and took up position in front of Zombie Death Zombie Death.

Jack stopped at the door on his way out, and considered Owen's posture. 'Have you done something to your t.i.ts?'

Owen couldn't stop himself touching his chest self-consciously. 'No. I switched the game off.'

'Well, you gotta start working harder on those pecs, buddy. I can recommend a good gym. Is the Wildman autopsy done?'

Owen tried not to let his 'Oh, s.h.i.+t!' feeling show on his face. He still had to complete that, because he'd got sidetracked by Second Reality Second Reality. 'Sure, I'll finish up shortly,' he lied. While Owen was looking at Jack, in the Zombie Death Zombie Death game his character was dragged to the ground by the attacking monsters and devoured. game his character was dragged to the ground by the attacking monsters and devoured.

Jack laughed. 'Bring the results to the Boardroom in an hour.' He turned his back on Owen as he left the area. 'Or sooner if you run out of lives.'

The walk in from Riverside normally took less than half an hour. But today, there were repeated delays. The night-time thunderstorm had not eased off so, after kissing Rhys goodbye over his cornflakes, Gwen grabbed a taxi outside their flat in the hope of staying dry. A two-mile walk turned into a five-mile drive, but she was held up as even the normally light Sunday morning traffic ground to a halt along the drenched Penarth Road. Finally, she stood for a few moments on the paving stone by the stainless-steel water tower, waiting to descend into the Hub. Through the rain, she studied the armadillo shape of the Millennium Centre. 'Creu Gwir fel gwydr offwrnais awen,' the text read. 'Creating truth like gla.s.s from the furnace of inspiration.' It always amused her to read these words while she was concealed in the deceptive invisibility of the paving stone that led into the even more secret underground facility of the Torchwood Hub.

Jack waved away her apologies for lateness as she entered the Boardroom, and then indicated her seat. Tos.h.i.+ko returned to studying her laptop, where she was making notes in one window, studying some calculations in another, and displaying live video feeds in two more.

Owen stared at Gwen from where he stood at the plasma screen, bristling with ill-concealed irritation at having his presentation interrupted.

'Death rejoices,' Jack said. 'Why was he so happy about it?'

'I don't understand,' Gwen said.

'It's what you see in some mortuaries,' Owen told her. 'Hic locus est ubi mors gaudet succurrere vitae.' The Latin words sounded strange in his London accent. 'It means "This is the place where death rejoices to teach those who live." You know, to cheer them up that they're cutting into dead people.'

'Only this guy...' Jack's casual gesture encompa.s.sed several images of the dead Wildman before them. '... he didn't look worried about dying at all, last I saw of him.'

'He changed his mind about that, after the first fifty feet,' observed Owen.

Gwen frowned at this. 'Well, who really wants to die, eh? Like that programme about smoking last night on Channel 4, eh Tosh?'

Tos.h.i.+ko didn't look up from her laptop computer. 'I wouldn't know. I don't watch TV.'

'No TV at night?' Gwen affected astonishment. 'G.o.d, I don't know what me and Rhys would do without watching telly.'

'Talk to each other, maybe,' suggested Tos.h.i.+ko.

Owen coughed. 'Shall I start this all over again, then?' He was asking Gwen, rather than Jack. Jack was just smiling, amused by Owen's reaction.

'I'll catch up,' Gwen rea.s.sured him. Owen was looking pretty rough this morning. She'd seen him roll into the Hub before, looking like he'd slept in his clothes, lost his razor, and come straight in without changing. But this morning the circles under his eyes were almost as dark as the stubble on his chin. At least he looked a bit better than Wildman's corpse in the autopsy pictures.

It was only a few months now since Gwen had seen her first autopsy. She'd never had reason to attend one as a police officer, and she'd always dreaded the day that she'd have to. She'd heard the stories of strapping lads from her station who'd collapsed onto the scrubbed mortuary floor on first witnessing the clinical dissection of a dead body. Lads like Jimmy Mitch.e.l.l, throwing up their canteen lunch. So her first autopsy had been here at the Hub, when she'd watched Owen dissect a woman of sixty-five who'd managed to get on the wrong side of a Weevil.

Owen had delighted in making Gwen help him, testing the new girl, trying to make her collapse or weep or throw up or just run from the mortuary. She'd determinedly refused to give him that pleasure. She'd approached the whole thing with the detachment she brought to bear when examining a scene of crime. Observing the hanging scale for weighing removed organs, with a round clock-face marked off in kilos and a stainless-steel pan underneath that was like the one she weighed her fruit in at Tesco. A Bunsen burner on a counter was the same as she'd used at school. The severed grey remains of brain, heart, bowels in jars around the room were harder to dismiss. OK, they were like the specimens in GCSE Biology. She had survived the ordeal and been pleased by her own calmness and by Owen's obvious disappointment.

That night, back home, when the normality of the sofa and the chicken chow mein and EastEnders EastEnders on the telly had calmed her, she'd suddenly remembered the old woman's pale grey eyes, revealed when Owen had casually peeled back the lids. And to Rhys's surprise, Gwen had rushed to their bathroom and vomited so hard and so long that she'd ended up dry-retching, nothing left to spew into the toilet bowl. on the telly had calmed her, she'd suddenly remembered the old woman's pale grey eyes, revealed when Owen had casually peeled back the lids. And to Rhys's surprise, Gwen had rushed to their bathroom and vomited so hard and so long that she'd ended up dry-retching, nothing left to spew into the toilet bowl.

That was then. Now, she was hardened to it. Or was she simply harder?

'I used that Bekaran deep-tissue scanner for some of these,' Owen was explaining, 'so I could get some initial snaps without any invasive procedures.' The images were displayed on the wall screen, bright red and cream images of flesh and blood and bone. 'Amazing, innit? It's like it peels away the outer layers, or makes them invisible, or something.'

Tos.h.i.+ko looked up idly from her laptop screen. 'So why bother with the autopsy, then? Even without that, you've got MRI scans, ultrasound, nuclear medicine, molecular testing... It's not hard to work out how he died, is it? His head hit the pavement at thirty miles an hour. Case closed.'

'Wait and see,' Owen admonished her.

He ran through the images on the display. Many of the pictures showed Wildman's corpse with its arms spread, skin flayed back, the chest exposed and the abdomen open. The traditional Y-shaped incision had been made from shoulders to mid-chest and on down to the pubic region. Wildman's head had struck the bus, and then he had landed on his front. His face was smashed into an unrecognisable pulp, even after it had been cleaned up. Owen explained that he'd considered removing the brain through the big hole in the front of the skull, rather than the more conventional second incision across the head just below and behind the ears. 'He's not gonna end up in an open casket, that's for d.a.m.ned sure,' agreed Jack.

There were more pictures. Owen had cut the cartilages to separate the ribs from the breastbone. 'They were smashed up on landing,' he explained, 'and when I entered the abdominal cavity you could see that the large intestine had been lacerated by a penetrating injury sustained on impact. So freeing up the intestine took some time. Nothing of great interest for most of the organs. No bacteria in the blood. No interesting results from the bile and urine a.n.a.lysis. Non-smoker, slightly enlarged liver suggests he enjoyed a drink. No indication of drug use, prescription medicines or poisons.'

Jack drummed on the table. 'You're saving up the best bits for last, aren't you?'

'Yeah,' said Owen with relish. He put up some new images. 'Examination of the oesophagus, stomach, pancreas, duodenum, and spleen. Non-human elements there...'

'That creature that he threw up at Jack,' interrupted Gwen.

'Genius,' said Owen laconically, and continued as if nothing had been said. 'There's also an alien device inserted in his spine. Attached to the spinal column, actually, quite near the top. And here it is.'

He produced the thing with a flourish. It was spherical, about the size of a large marble, but with a dull chrome finish. There were three short spiked attachments to one side of it, which Gwen a.s.sumed were how it had been fixed in place. Tos.h.i.+ko took it from Owen, and placed it into a small black container about the size of a box of matches. She that to her laptop, and started to scan its contents. 'Is that round thing what killed Wildman, then?'

Owen rolled his eyes. 'He died of concrete poisoning. What do you think killed him?' To make his point, he flashed back to a SOC picture that showed the mangled remains of Wildman, sprawled in the street. 'Technically, you know, we'd call that a depressed skull fracture and cerebral bleeding.'

'What about that stuff you were saying yesterday about the spinal fluid?'

Owen flicked back to his notes. 'Confirmed what you thought, Jack. The blood and skull fragments and brain fluid were from three different DNA sources, including that smelly bag of s.h.i.+t we found yesterday.'

Gwen stiffened in her chair, and felt her face flush with anger again. 'That bag of s.h.i.+t was a person.'

'Not any more,' Owen replied.

'All right,' interrupted Jack. 'Good work on the autopsies, Owen. Tosh, what have you got?'

Tos.h.i.+ko smiled. 'Search results are coming through.' She touched her keyboard and her screen replaced Owen's on the huge plasma display on the wall.

Owen sat down and stared at the screen with envious eyes. 'Look at that,' he said. 'She gets the jobs that take her a couple of minutes and then this whizz-bang technology does the grunt work for her while she sits back and does her nails. Why do I get all the jobs that mean spending two hours up to me elbows in someone else's cold dead guts?'

Tos.h.i.+ko patted his arm on the table to make him shut up. 'It'll take a while, because it has to do a content search on multimedia databases around the UK. Oh, and Jack, I had no luck with that search you asked about yesterday. No UK hospital examinations or autopsies contain info about binary vascular system. Negative for overseas hospitals too. I did the last three years, like you suggested. Shall I extend to five?'

Jack shook his head. 'Never mind. Stay focused on the current problem.' But Gwen could see Jack was trying to hide his disappointment. That wasn't like him, he preferred to encourage and support his team. 'What else have you got?'

'I checked out the security reports from the place Wildman worked, the Blaidd Drwg nuclear facility. Do you think it's too much of a coincidence that a number of their new, experimental nuclear power packs have gone missing?'

Jack's eyes widened. 'Didn't see that on the evening news.'

'Well, it's not something they've made public, obviously,' admitted Tos.h.i.+ko. 'I wonder what...'

Her voiced trailed off as an extraordinary figure entered the room. The inflated white suit and c.u.mbersome cylindrical helmet made it difficult for him to get through the doorframe. When he managed this small feat, he waddled across the meeting room towards them. Gwen could hear his breath hissing through a speaker to one side of the helmet. It took her a moment to see through the visor that it was Ianto.

'It's the Michelin Man!' laughed Owen.

Jack seemed unsurprised by the new arrival. 'The cut of that suit does nothing for you. It doesn't even look comfortable.'

'It's comfortably protecting my t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es,' responded Ianto's voice from the speaker.

Jack considered this unexpected news. 'I could talk to you about your t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es all day, Ianto,' he said. 'But I imagine you have something even more important to tell us.'

The helmet speaker coughed apologetically. Ianto brandished a Geiger counter at them. It was already clicking alarmingly. Gwen wondered fleetingly about where she could go to escape the radiation. But what was the source?

'I took the liberty of scanning the corpses in the mortuary,' Ianto began. 'And I regret to say that one of them is highly radioactive.'

'OK,' said Jack calmly. 'Not too much of a coincidence after all, Tosh.'

Ianto was quickly scanning them each in turn. The ratcheting sound of the Geiger counter didn't increase when it ran over Jack or Tos.h.i.+ko. It stayed the same when Ianto motioned it against Gwen, too, and she released a rush of air from her lungs that she hadn't consciously been holding. She stepped out of the way to let Ianto waddle further into the room alongside the table.

The Geiger counter crackled and spat violently when Ianto placed it against Owen. From the look on his face, Owen wasn't entirely surprised. 'Up to me elbows in the corpse,' he shrugged. 'For two hours. What did you expect?'

'The rest of you are within safe limits,' Ianto confirmed.

Gwen was faintly ashamed to discover that she'd unconsciously positioned herself at the end of the table, as far away from Owen as possible. Tos.h.i.+ko b.u.mped up close to her, she noticed. Owen glared at them accusingly from the other side of the room. But where had Jack gone?

Ianto was still explaining. 'I'm afraid that Owen's close proximity to the irradiated cadaver means that he will need decontaminating.'

Jack reappeared through the door. He carried a wooden box, teak with bra.s.s hinges and an elaborate clasp. He placed it on the table, unfastened the clasp, and from the velvet-lined interior of the box withdrew what looked like a squat loofah.

Owen eyed this novel new item. 'If you think I'm going to scrub it all off with that...'

Jack held out the loofah, and waggled it at Owen until he took it from him. 'This will soak up six types of radiation.'

'Six?' Owen looked impressed. 'I can only remember three types.'

'Well, I got a deal on that thing,' Jack explained.

Owen was considering the radiation sponge more closely. He was starting to look less enthusiastic. 'This is it? Shall I just stare at it until the vomiting and intestinal bleeding starts, or should I wait until all my hair's dropped out?'

Jack gave Owen one of his disconcerting grins. 'That thing is so effective, I have to store it in this lead-lined box most of the time. Keep it with you, probably for the rest of the day.' He took the Geiger counter off Ianto, and handed it to Owen. 'You should stay in the Hub until the rem count for your absorbed dose gets down to here...' Jack indicated a reading on the counter. It looked as though Owen was going to complain bitterly about this, but Jack quashed his unspoken protest with a look. 'Tosh, you can keep him company while you complete the search for that thing in Wildman's spine. Gwen, you're coming with me to search Wildman's apartment for the source of this radiation. I think we can guess what that is, but if it's as radioactive as Wildman, we should make it safe. Ah, thank you, Ianto...'

Ianto had brought two more Geiger counters, each the size of pocket calculators. Jack put one in his jacket, and handed the other to Gwen.

Gwen held it at arm's length across the table, towards Owen. The dial flicked up into the danger zone. 'You should have said we were going to Wildman's, Jack. I could have met you there in the first place, saved myself a journey in here.'

'What?' asked Jack, leaving the Boardroom and strolling out into the Hub main area. 'And missed seeing Owen glow in the dark? Not to mention the pleasure of my company?' He stopped beside the stainless-steel fountain that stood so incongruously in the middle of the area. Jack pressed a b.u.t.ton and Gwen could see, far above them, a piston pus.h.i.+ng aside a paving stone in the ceiling. It was immediately obvious that the weather had worsened since she'd arrived. A sprinkling of rain started to spatter down on them, and water began to flow over the sides of the hole.

Jack leapt out of the way of the downpour, and immediately closed the gap again. 'OK, that's not gonna work for me. Let's go out through reception.'

TWELVE.

You're not the kind of woman who stands out in a crowd. Not the kind who wants to. Your hair has never been too bright, your shoes have always been sensible, your lipstick was never too vivid.

Even as you ponder this, you can hear your father's voice commending you on your safe, uncontroversial choices. Science subjects for A level: 'Quite right, Sandra, none of that arty nonsense for you, you'll want a career.' A university close to your parents: 'So much more financially convenient to live at home, Sandra.' Regular attendance at church, sitting between your parents, trying to look inconspicuous although you're excruciatingly aware of your father's fluting voice rising above the standard murmur of the congregation during the Lord's Prayer: 'Ein Tad, yr hwn wyt yn y nefoedd, sancteiddier dy Enw...'

Dad's mantra was that you should get stuck in, and not stick out. And yet his own insistence on being the most conventional, the most ordinary, the most outspokenly moderate man in Lisvane meant that he himself stuck out in the community more than anyone. 'Don't embarra.s.s us,' he'd tell his family at the restaurant or the cinema. He'd rather die than be embarra.s.sed in public.

Two weeks after he died, you abandoned the second year of your Physics course and signed up for the Royal South Regiment. It was only when, one night in bed with Tony Bee, you were discussing your father's idiosyncrasies that Tony had reminded you of the irony in your regimental motto. 'Gwell Angau na Chywilydd,' he whispered as he moved his hands slowly over the moist curves of your body. 'Better Death than Dishonour.'

Your affair with Tony has been the most uncharacteristic thing you've ever done. You're still content to just to be another face in the crowd. Guy Wildman wasn't like that, of course, he always aspired to be more. But, by trying harder, he just seemed to become more insignificant, easier for people to ignore, more invisible. With you, it's the opposite. You're content if you appear to be saying to the world: 'I'm just average; there's nothing special about me.' Maybe that's why you persuaded Tony to bring Wildman on the sub-aqua trips, maybe it provided cover for your relations.h.i.+p with Tony.

You know from living with your father all those years that the best way to avoid getting noticed is to take time to get the little details correct. The Army catches people who do things wrong, not those who do things right. Same thing in life. You never park in the disabled bays at Sainsbury's in Thornhill, and you always take your trolley back to the shop to collect your pound coin.

Since your return, you've been home and chosen sensible clothing for a wet, dark night. That also gave you the opportunity to shower, to remove all the traces of blood and bone that you inadvertently smeared down your face and clothes when you killed and devoured that vagrant. You did that discreetly, of course, in a back alley. And with compa.s.sion, too you snapped his neck first, so that he would feel no pain.

And now the deep hunger in you has been a.s.suaged, here you are in Splott, confident that your walk up to Wildman's apartment block will draw no attention from anyone. You wear a green A-line dress, mid-length, no stockings, and a pale green cardigan in thin cotton. You chose flat-heeled, patent leather shoes, round toe, st.u.r.dy enough to keep out this rain. You're wearing a fitted boned coat, your favourite, in a soft navy-coloured material that keeps you half-hidden in the dark; you could see the weather was deteriorating before you set out, and didn't want to risk drawing attention by struggling with an umbrella in the wind and rain.

Not that there are many people around to see you, as the rain sets in. The few that you see in these side streets are scurrying for cover, watching out for puddles not people. You move up the steps to Wildman's apartment unseen, and even the sound of your footsteps is masked by the persistent hiss of rain and the hoot of a train further to the east in the direction of Tremorfa.

Once inside, it's different. The hallway is large and the clanking radiator is set too high, so that the windows are steaming up. The octagonal green and yellow tiles on the floor are even louder than the radiator.

You don't need a photographic memory to remember things. All it takes is practice. Your dad used to remind you: 'You've got two ears and one mouth, Sandra. Use them in that ratio.' And that's been true since you joined the Army, whether it's in weapons briefings at Caregan, open water training for sub-aqua, or just the lads' drunken conversations down the Feathers about fast cars, slow flankers, and easy women. Wildman has told you in the past all about the area where he lives, the way he's equipped his flat, the peculiarities of his neighbours. Of course, there's nothing you don't know about Wildman now.

Wildman's apartment is two floors up. The stairs beneath the worn carpet creak under your weight, but there's no sign of anyone else, and the only indication of any other life is the sound behind one of the doors of Sunday Wors.h.i.+p Sunday Wors.h.i.+p on Radio 4 played too loud. Wildman's immediate neighbours on the same landing are John and Marcus who work at Club X, and Betty Jenkins who resolutely does not. You know all about Wildman's recent meetings, conversations and disagreements with them. You're ready for anything, if you meet them. It's only since Wildman died that you've realised how lonely he really was, and understood his protective instinct for Betty Jenkins, his frustration with John's casual indifference to commitment, and his never-articulated fantasies about Marcus. on Radio 4 played too loud. Wildman's immediate neighbours on the same landing are John and Marcus who work at Club X, and Betty Jenkins who resolutely does not. You know all about Wildman's recent meetings, conversations and disagreements with them. You're ready for anything, if you meet them. It's only since Wildman died that you've realised how lonely he really was, and understood his protective instinct for Betty Jenkins, his frustration with John's casual indifference to commitment, and his never-articulated fantasies about Marcus.

You can be calm, logical, reasonable, without being unemotional. That was true of your relations.h.i.+p with Tony, as he used to tell you. Now that he is dead, you've moved on literally. And what should be your grief is no longer helpful, no longer appropriate. It's still there, in the background. A curious feeling, buried deep, sublimated. Unnecessary. Do you really understand it any more? These people have a bewildering array of loose social constructs, half-formed affections, unspoken desires and occasional pa.s.sions. It's only since he died that you realise how much Tony Bee loved you. You can examine those feelings dispa.s.sionately too the ache in him when he was away from you, when he surfaced again, when he returned to the Caregan Barracks. Until the newer, primal ache in him had overwhelmed that.

Set that aside, now. You're here for a reason. Being distracted by those memories is a very human thing to do. And in your current circ.u.mstances, you find that amusing.

The key clicks and turns in the lock of Wildman's apartment, and your search begins.