Another Life. Part 9

Gwen stared desperately around the room. A hairdryer had fallen from the cupboard, and she picked it up as though it might give her some inspiration.

'What the h.e.l.l are you gonna do?' bellowed Jack. 'Backcomb it to death?'

'Nowhere to plug it in,' she admitted. It's a bathroom, she thought. No plugs.

Gwen cast the hairdryer aside, and it bounced off the sink and clattered to the floor, where it landed next to two empty tins of dog food that had been incongruously abandoned by the far wall. She scrambled over the toilet and back out through the door to the lounge area.

Betty was still sitting in the armchair, staring towards the bathroom with a curious, strangely calm air about her. Gwen could understand that she might be in shock. 'Get out!' she shrieked at Betty. 'Get out of here now!'

The blonde woman didn't need any more encouragement. She struggled up out of the armchair, pulled her coat around herself and fled through the hallway and out of the apartment. The sound of her flat heels trip-tripping their way down the concrete stairs in a flurry of noise quickly faded.

Gwen shoved the armchair savagely to one side. She ran to the socket by the TV to ensure it was switched on. She seized the two-bar fire, flicked it on, and raced back towards the bathroom. The extension lead snaked and coiled behind her. For a second she thought it was going to tangle around the coffee table, but she freed it with a sharp tug that caused the dirty crockery to clatter onto the carpet.

Jack was now lying lengthways on the soaked bathroom floor, parallel to the bath. His right arm was almost engulfed by the tentacle. Worse still, the second nearest limb was starting to slide out of the bath towards his leg.

Gwen could feel the heat from the two-bar fire on her face now. She clambered up onto the toilet seat, hefted the fire above her head, and lobbed it over Jack and into the centre of the bath.

The fire looped overhead, snaking its electrical lead behind it. It splashed into the water.

Immediately the room was illuminated by a huge flash. Blue-white sparks arced over the surface of the water. The repellent creature didn't make a sound, but its three unattached limbs flailed and thrashed. They slapped repeatedly against the wall tiles, and cracked the shower screen from top to bottom. Water slopped over the edge of the bath and onto the linoleum.

The tentacle that had wound its way around Jack's arm whipped away with a slurping sound as the suckers detached themselves. Jack sat up abruptly. 'Don't touch the water!' Gwen yelled at him, and he held his hands high up above his head in acknowledgement. He was able to shuffle out of the room and into the living area.

After a few seconds, the blue sparks disappeared and the starfish ceased its thras.h.i.+ng motion. The limbs slid lifelessly down the wall, and the entire creature slid under what remained of the water in the bath.

'Power's off,' Jack shouted from the other room.

Gwen slumped in relief. She stepped down from the toilet, and picked her way carefully out of the drenched bathroom.

'What the h.e.l.l is it?' she asked him.

His expression confirmed that he was as baffled as her. 'Sure looked like the daddy of whatever Wildman puked, didn't it? And what was the deal with that aftershave?'

'You're right,' confessed Gwen, 'it would have taken too long to break its hold with that.'

'No, I mean who wears that c.r.a.p? It smells disgusting. Wildman is a sad single guy. Well, hel-lo. He'd get luckier if he wiped his face with his haemorrhoidal towelettes. Ow!' Jack started shrugging his greatcoat off. 'Ow! Ow!'

He continued to struggle with the coat. Once he had shucked it onto the floor, he hurried back into the bathroom, still yelling in pain. He pulled off his sleeveless jacket, and slipped his braces off his shoulders so that they hung to either side of him. He wrenched his s.h.i.+rt off so quickly and violently that its b.u.t.tons pinged off across the room. Jack plunged his right arm into the washbasin, and spun the top of the cold tap around with his left hand. He sluiced down his right arm, rubbing at his flesh with a towel that he'd seized from the nearby rail.

Gwen picked up the blue cotton s.h.i.+rt from where Jack had thrown it. 'Careful,' he warned her. 'The thing was digesting it.' Jack finished patting at his skin with the towel. He s.n.a.t.c.hed a second one from the rail, soaked it in fresh water, and carefully wound it around his forearm. Then he turned to face Gwen.

'G.o.d,' she said. 'That really is a horrible smell.'

'Told ya,' said Jack. 'The great smell of Lonely Bachelor for five dollars a pint.'

'Not the aftershave,' she smiled. 'That thing in the bath.'

In the aftermath of her rescue, Gwen had not looked again at the creature. Now she could see that the thing had shrivelled up in the bath. It looked like a grey, pulpy ma.s.s, slowly disintegrating and clouding the water. There were four plastic plant pots floating at one end of the bath, and under the shower were three more empty tins of dog food and a can opener. A small metal watering can was propped at the other end of the bath, as though abandoned.

'I usually like fried fish,' sniffed Jack from behind her. The room still stank of burning flesh. 'Calamari, mmm.'

'I thought that was octopus,' Gwen said. 'Or maybe squid?'

'Get me some vinegar and a fork. We can do a taste test.'

'No thanks,' replied Gwen. She pointed into the bath. In the sc.u.m forming on the water's surface she could make out silver slivers of plant spikes. 'No point in Betty feeding his plants. He was feeding them to the starfish. That and a regular diet of Pedigree Chum.'

Jack had slipped his jacket back on now, and was examining the arm of his greatcoat. 'It was secreting digestive juices that can dissolve organic matter. It's eaten through my sleeves, look.' There was a large patch in the forearm of his coat and, when she checked, Gwen found a smaller matching hole in his s.h.i.+rt. 'Pure cotton," sighed Jack. 'I'm never gonna get a replacement s.h.i.+rt that good.' He winced again.

Gwen helped him unpeel the towel from around his arm. There was a raw red patch, an irregular circle about five centimetres across, oozing blood.

Jack gestured to the remnants of the bathroom cabinet scattered around their feet. 'Reckon there's a big enough sticking plaster somewhere?'

'Er...' Gwen hesitated, half-considering his request. 'We've got a first aid box in the car.'

'Nah. Give it half an hour,' said Jack. 'These flesh wounds sting like h.e.l.l, but they heal up if I leave them uncovered. Made the mistake of putting a s.h.i.+rt back on over a knife wound once, and had to have the material cut out again. That was hard to explain to the nurse in triage.'

The smell of burnt flesh was less noticeable in the living room. The apartment was eerily quiet, with only the patter of rain against the window to break the silence.

'Betty's safely out of the way,' observed Jack.

'Will she go to the police, d'you think?' pondered Gwen. 'Or to the press?'

'Or to the pub for a stiff drink and a chat with the locals,' Jack suggested. 'If you think kicking the street door down would get the curtains twitching, imagine what this will do for the neighbourhood.' He gave a disappointed little groan as he examined the hole that now penetrated his coat sleeve. 'Better get this place sealed until Owen can get across here and examine that... starfish corpse in situ. Let's give the local cops a call, have them post a guy on the front door.'

Gwen made the call to the local police. Like all the Torchwood mobiles, hers had a direct line. It connected them immediately to the major crime investigation team, whether the police wanted it or not. She was impressed the way that Torchwood not only had the technology to break into the police systems, but also that it was smart enough to accommodate the hierarchy and the standard admin procedures of incident teams. There was the right balance to strike between the need to get officers involved at all and the need to avoid getting the police crawling all over something they could not properly handle.

'OK,' she explained to Jack, 'they have officers on the way to stand guard. Just in case Betty gets enough courage to come back to water the plants again.'

They stepped out onto the apartment's landing. Jack pulled the front door shut, and pushed it to ensure it was locked again. 'Watering the plants,' he mused as they started down the stairs. 'How? She was there when we arrived. The watering can was in the bathroom, along with the remains of most of the plants. And she'd obviously not met the calamari when we got there.'

The rain had got even heavier outside. Gwen b.u.t.toned her jacket, and Jack pulled his damaged coat over his shoulders like a cloak. They hurried back down the side road, the only people on foot in the whole area.

Jack took the driver's seat this time. Gwen's mobile was ringing as they climbed into the SUV. She slotted it into the speaker attachment by the pa.s.senger seat.

Tos.h.i.+ko's calm voice filled the car from sixteen stereo speakers. 'Do you fancy a drive out into the countryside?'

'In this weather, what could be nicer? Why do you suggest that?'

'Because I got an interesting match on that artefact in Wildman's neck, Jack. I did a cubic search that gave a ninety per cent correlation-'

'Cubic?' puzzled Jack. 'What does that mean?'

'Q.B.I.C.' Tos.h.i.+ko's tone of voice revealed how pleased she was to explain. 'Query By Image Content. It's content-based visual information retrieval, really good for fast multi-resolution image search-'

'Very impressive, Tosh,' said Jack indulgently. 'Try again. What does that mean mean?'

'Oh, I see.' Tos.h.i.+ko sounded more abashed now. 'Well, the thing in Wildman's neck matches another one. And that was found in the corpse of a soldier at the Caregan Barracks. Sergeant Anthony Bee. He was shot dead in an attempted armed robbery recently at the barracks itself. I was just going out there to interview the senior officer.'

'OK. Taking Owen, too?'

'He'll have to stay here at the Hub. Still decontaminating.'

'We'll meet you at Caregan, Tosh. Thanks.'

Jack moved to disconnect the phone, but Gwen reached out and put her hand on his arm. 'Hang on a moment, Jack.' It was intended as casual gesture of polite restraint, but when her fingers touched the bare skin of his arm she noticed that his wound was less raw, and surrounded by new, pink skin. The whole thing was now only the size of a ten pence piece.

'Don't worry,' he said softly. 'Stings a little. Stings a lot lot, actually. Always does when the flesh heals.'

'Can't hear you,' said Tos.h.i.+ko over the phone.

'Nothing to worry about, Tosh.' Jack had raised his voice again. 'Bring me a clean s.h.i.+rt, will ya? I got a bit of a scratch, and this one's ripped.'

Gwen smiled at him. 'If you're OK, then I think I'd like to check on Betty Jenkins. Let her know that the police are on their way, and to stay away from Wildman's apartment. She's probably cowering under the duvet in her own place.' She spoke slightly louder so that Tos.h.i.+ko would hear her. 'Tosh? Can you tell me which apartment in this block Betty Jenkins is in?'

'Hang on.' They waited, imagining Tos.h.i.+ko initiating a search on her computer. 'There you go, I'm sending it through to you now.'

The small display screen in front of Jack flickered into life. It showed an aerial view of Splott, which zoomed in to a street-level image. This changed into a schematic of the apartment block, and finally a wireframe image of the building with one of the apartments picked out in red. 'Elizabeth Mary Jenkins, flat number four.'

'See you at the barracks, Tosh,' said Jack. 'Thanks.' He disconnected the phone, and handed it back to Gwen. 'I should drive you round to the apartment block. No point running through the streets in this rain again.'

'And the curtain-twitchers?' asked Gwen.

'They'll have plenty to look at once the police arrive.' He started the engine, and steered off into the rain. The SUV's lights flared on the wet roadway. 'How is it you get to check up on the good-looking blonde with legs all the way up to her ears?'

'You're not her type,' Gwen admonished him as the car drew up by the apartment block. 'I'll see you back down here. See if you can get the direction-finder programmed for Caregan Barracks. I promise not to take too long with Betty.'

It was a short dash across the pavement to the door of the apartment building. Gwen wasn't sure what the first thing she'd say to Betty would be, or how she'd persuade the terrified woman to let her back in to the building. As it turned out, she didn't need to use the buzzer, because another resident was just leaving. He was distracted in a fumbling attempt to put up his golf umbrella before he stepped out into the downpour, so Gwen was able to catch the front door before it locked in the closed position.

On the first landing, Gwen rapped the bra.s.s door knocker of number four. There was a long pause, so she rapped again more firmly.

'All right,' said a petulant voice from the other side. 'Keep your hair on.'

The door opened a crack, and a wrinkled face peered out past the security chain. The mouth puckered in censure. 'I don't want any groceries,' said the face. 'I've got someone from the Social who gets mine in for me, you know.'

It was the old woman who had let them in, and then looked so disapprovingly at them as they'd dripped on her clean linoleum.

'Is Ms Jenkins in?' Gwen was aware that she'd inadvertently raised her voice.

'I'm Miss Jenkins,' retorted the woman. 'And I'm not deaf.'

'No, I mean Betty Jenkins.' Gwen offered the old woman her most winning smile, the one she used to try out on suspicious witnesses during door-to-door inquiries. 'Is your daughter in?'

The old woman breathed out sharply in irritation. 'I told you. I'm Betty Jenkins. Miss Betty Jenkins. I don't have a daughter. Who are you?'

It was apparent that this was the real Betty Jenkins. Not a scared mid-thirties blonde, but a somewhat scary spinster in her mid eighties, determined to guard her privacy.

'I'm sorry,' said Gwen. She took a step back from the door to rea.s.sure the woman. 'I've made a mistake. I'm sorry to have disturbed you Miss Jenkins.'

'I should think so,' said the old lady, closing the door. 'All gone to h.e.l.l these days.'

The SUV's engine was still running. Jack was drumming his fingers on the steering wheel when Gwen got back into the pa.s.senger seat. 'How's the good-looking blonde?'

'The experience has aged her,' said Gwen. She told him about the real Betty Jenkins in flat four. 'Should have noticed,' she concluded. 'Strange that she wore that big blue coat while she was in Wildman's flat. If she lived in the flat downstairs, why would she need to put a coat on to go up and water his plants?'

'Because she doesn't live downstairs,' agreed Jack. 'Any way we can trace where she went?'

'Not a chance. Streets are empty in this rain. House-to-house would be a long shot, on the off-chance anyone saw which way she went. And that'll only give us a general direction. No CCTV round here, so she's impossible to track.'

'All right.' Jack had reached a firm decision. He revved the engine. 'Let's go with what we know. I've told the direction-finder we want to go to Caregan Barracks.'

'Make a legal U-turn,' the machine told him in its prim schoolmistress tones. 'And then a slight left turn in...' It paused thoughtfully. '... seventeen miles.'

Jack reached into the back and pa.s.sed an RAC road map to Gwen. 'I don't think Tosh got all the glitches outta this thing yet.' He slammed the SUV into gear, swerved it around in the street, and put his foot down, oblivious to the twitching of curtains all along the street.

FIFTEEN.

Glendower Broadsword waited patiently with his feet up on a table at the Pork Barrel Arms and sipped his virtual c.o.c.ktail. Vodka, tequila and lime. He couldn't taste it, but he liked the idea of it. He'd waited like this for an hour, and he'd wait another three if he had to. Glendower was expecting Egg Magnet to turn up. Owen Harper was looking for Megan Tegg.

An earlier search of the food district had turned up nothing. He wondered initially if he'd spotted her outside the Surer Square again, when one of the occupants had thrown someone through a window, but the figure had gone by the time he checked out the venue. She wasn't in any of the streets nearby, nor by the balcony where they'd last talked.

Owen knew she could reconfigure her avatar, but he'd kept looking for that distinctive white trouser suit and the sparkling silver hair. He knew also that she might have more than one persona in Second Reality Second Reality, so he had worn the Mage's sungla.s.ses to check out everyone's true ident.i.ty. It was hard to guess how many people he should expect online right now because, although it was late on a Sunday morning for him now in Wales, it could be any time of the day or night for the other partic.i.p.ants all round the world. Their IP addresses told him they were mostly from North America, predominantly East Coast, with a handful from elsewhere around the world. And it was somehow disheartening, a let-down to be honest, to discover that the mult.i.talented 'Harley Hydrurga' was actually only Colin Townsend from Wichita, Kansas, and not the juggling seal he appeared to be.

Owen smoothed his hand over the nearby table-top, and it transformed into a display screen. The results of a conventional web search rippled into view on the surface, information from his real world shown to him in Second Reality Second Reality. It told him that Dr Megan Tegg had worked as a Senior House Officer at Cardiff Royal for the past six months. She lived in Whitchurch, over in the north-west of Cardiff. There were a couple of published papers, no criminal history, and no evidence that she was married or divorced or had kids.

What was he expecting after all this time?

A couple of albino twins peered across at his display screen from across the table. He extinguished it with a flick of his fingers and then threw the remains of his c.o.c.ktail over the twins. They spluttered with indignation, rose stiffly from their chairs and walked quickly away to a nearby phone booth. They were probably trying to phone their mum to have a good cry, decided Owen the sungla.s.ses told him they were Jane Lawson and Tricia Lawson, using the same IP address in Timperley, Ches.h.i.+re.

A cheering row of flame-haired midgets wiggled past Owen in a conga, stopping briefly only to light an Eskimo's cigar with their heads before snaking off into the nearest bar. Everyone around Owen was laughing or dancing or entertaining other enthusiasts. Owen wriggled lower in his chair, frustrated and powerless. This was so stupid. He could drive out to Megan's place in Whitchurch now. Her real place. Knock on her real door and say, 'Hi, remember me? I'm the boyfriend who abandoned you in London six years ago. You wanted to get married, I wanted to get away. So, how's it worked out for you, then, eh?'

His jaw clenched, and the tension rose in his neck and shoulders. He jumped out of his chair and stalked over to where a crowd had gathered to watch Harley Hydrurga. The seal was balancing a stack of chairs on his whiskery leather nose. Owen strode around the back of him, made a little jump into the air and landed as heavily as he could on the seal's tail. Harley gave a yelp, the chairs all tumbled, and the crowd scattered out of the way.

He wanted to laugh at the reaction and attempted a sarcastic wave at the furious Harley. But his Glendower avatar refused to move. It was as though the figure was locked like the screen had frozen, except that everyone else was able to move around him.

A stern-looking policeman marched across to him. He looked like one of the Keystone Cops with a handlebar moustache and a comedy truncheon. When he reached Owen, a blue light on his helmet started flas.h.i.+ng. 'Time out!' said the policeman, and everything started to fade away around Owen.

A couple of seconds later, he found himself standing on an endless square stairway atop a tall brickwork turret. Each leg of the walkway was two metres wide and formed an open square that vanished into a mist far below. It was just like an Escher engraving, except there was some sort of additional, invisible wall that prevented him from leaning over the edge to peer down. A blue sky with fluffy white cirrus clouds stretched in every direction. And on the opposite side of the square stood the distinctively brilliant outline of Egg Magnet.

'Busted, huh?' Egg Magnet called. 'Me too.'

Owen took a few of the steps on his side of the turret, and found he was going uphill. So he turned round and took the steps in the other direction instead. They were uphill, too, so he stopped trying.