Border Princes

by Dan Abnett

  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 a
nything 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.’

  SEVENTEEN

  Dean Simms was nineteen years old, but reckoned he passed for early twenties in his Top Man suit. He was always particular about his presentation: mouthwash, a haircut once a week, always cleanly shaven, and a nice splash of smelly, though nothing too strong.

  His old man had once told him that the real secret to selling was clean fingernails. ‘They always look at your hands, son,’ he’d said, ‘always at the hands. What you’re pointing to, your gestures. And nothing kills a deal quicker than closing with grubby hands. If you get the papers out to run through them, and you’ve got dirt under your nails, forget it. Client’s looking right at your hands at that stage, looking at the dotted line you’re pointing to. Oh, yeah, and have a nice pen. Not a biro.’

  Dean’s old man had spent twenty-three years on the road in Monmouthshire and Herefordshire, flogging steam-cleaning systems door-to-door, so he knew the up and down of selling. Or ‘non-desk-based retail’ as he had preferred to call it. Dean had grown up paying close attention to his dad’s pearls of wisdom. His old man had always brought in decent money.

  When Dean left school, his old man had tried to get him a job with the steam-cleaner company, but the Internet had been murdering face-sales by then, and there had been no openings, not even for ‘a lad with good selling potential’. A year later, his old man had been given his cards. That had killed him. Without a job at fifty-eight, he’d just withered away and died.

  Determined to prove something, Dean had got himself a commission-only job with LuxGlaze Windows, but it had
been a slog, and the product hadn’t been all that, and LuxGlaze always sent him to areas where the homeowners had been pre-pissed off by LuxGlaze’s carpet-bomb approach to telephone pitching. Twice, Dean had been chased off a plot by dogs, once by a man with a rake.

  He’d switched to VariBlinds, then to Welshview EcoGlass, then back to LuxGlaze again for one awful, thankless, six-week effort to get himself a proper patch and actual customers.

  There had come a time when Dean had started to think that maybe he wasn’t ‘a lad with good selling potential’ after all.

  Then he’d got his break, and found his feet, and these days he was in business for himself. He stuck to his old man’s basic rules of salesmanship: presentation, clean nails and a nice pen. He’d always had the patter too, the charm factor that his dad had set plenty of store by. But Dean had something else, something his dad had never had. Dean knew the real secret of selling, and it turned out it wasn’t clean fingernails.

  Dean Simms had the real secret of selling in his briefcase.

  He checked himself in his rear-view mirror, checked his teeth for specks of food, checked his nails, checked his tie and got out of his vehicle. Game on.

  The street was quiet. His vehicle would be all right where it was for an hour or so. He crossed the road.

  His old man had always talked about ‘his patch’ with a genuine measure of proprietorial pride. Dean knew what his dad had meant. These streets were Dean’s patch, and he worked them hard. In return, they paid him well. Another few months, he reckoned, and he’d have to move area. Just to freshen things. You could go back to the well once too often, as his old man used to say.

  He walked down the path, opening his zip-seamed briefcase, and looked at his list. It was easy to forget faces from one visit to the next. Early on, he’d hit the same house twice in a fortnight. Of course, the woman hadn’t recognised him, but he had no wish to repeat the mistake. He had a list of addresses printed off the electoral roll, and he ticked them off.

  Number eight. Mr and Mrs Menzies. He consulted his watch. Two oh five. Just after lunch. Perfect.

  He walked up the pathway of number eight and pressed the bell, hearing it ring deep inside the house. He waited, whistling softly.

  The door opened. Ignite smile.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Menzies?’