Jack peered at him through his dark fringe. 'Unless of course you can tell me how this happened?'
The ME shook his head. 'Sorry. Never seen anything like it. It doesn't make sense.' He paused. 'If you figure it out, could you let me know?'
'No can do.'
'Thought not. Bloody Torchwood.' He turned to leave, and for a moment Gwen remembered what it had been like policing when she thought all there was to worry about were human dangers. She found that hard to comprehend, with everything she knew now. God, she hoped Jack never had to Retcon her again. Even if it took all the pain and anger she sometimes felt because of Torchwood, it would also be like turning all the lights out on the world.
'Just one thing.' Jack stood up. 'Was he alone here?'
The ME shook his head. 'No, he was rehearsing with five others. Some classical singing group. One was in the toilet when it happened; the other four have been taken to hospital.'
'Injured?' Gwen asked.
'No, but completely traumatised. None of them would speak. They were just sitting on the front pew huddled together. If that bloke that was in the loo hadn't called the police, they'd probably all still be sitting there now.'
'Thanks.' Jack looked over at Gwen and she nodded. She didn't need telling to make sure they had the names of the witnesses by the time they left. There was a moment of awkward silence.
'Right. I'll leave you to it, then.' The ME sighed. 'I presume you don't want him in here either?' He glanced at the constable down by the church door.
Jack smiled warmly at the man. 'Thanks. We'll let them know outside when we're done. We're going to want to take the body back with us. Oh, and one more thing.' He pulled a small notebook and pen out from somewhere deep in his overcoat and scribbled a number on it. 'Give that to DI Cutler. Tell him I want to know if he sees anything else like this.'
'Will do.' The plastic slippers the ME wore over his shoes whispered as he made his way down to where the constable was waiting, and it was only when the soft thud of the church door shutting echoed through the high archways around them that Jack stood up, his hand on his hips.
'So, what do you think?'
Gwen took a deep breath and looked again at the body that lay spread-eagled in a large pool of congealing blood. She tried not to really see the piece of sheet music that had turned crimson, dropped during the attack and soaked in warm red, the notes all blurring into each other; the music gone for ever from the paper. She tried not to look into the open eyes, whose expression was a photograph of the dead man's last feelings: empty horror, fear and that awful disbelief that something so terrible didn't always happen to other people.
Looking at those things would make her throw up. Those things would muddy her thinking with her feelings, and there wasn't any time for that now. Jack needed more from her. Especially now the team was so much smaller than it had been and had too many of its own empty spaces. She bit the inside of her cheek, enjoying the sharp moment of pain that forced her to focus on the necessity of her job. Taking care to avoid the blood, she moved around the body, assessing it.
The man was in his mid-forties, balding and, judging from the chubbiness in his pale cheeks, probably a little on the overweight side of healthy, but it was hard to truly gauge his mid-section. Something had sliced him open from his chin to his pelvis in what looked like one neat incision. His clothes, skin and the membrane casing beneath were peeled back and lay under his prostrate arms as if he'd unbuttoned a shirt and spread it wide on the floor around him. His freed guts spilled slightly over the edge of his pelvis, a slick grey trail of rotten sausage, but, from what she could make out, the rest of his organs seemed in place. Not that she was an expert on the inner workings of the human body.
'It doesn't look much like a Weevil attack to me,' she said finally.
Jack nodded. 'You're right. A Weevil didn't do this. Weevils are aggressive. Everything about their attacks is uncontrolled and violent. This...' He crouched by the dead man's head. 'This is precise. I want to examine the cut when we get back to the Hub. I'm betting he was opened up with one movement. Amazing.' He looked up at Gwen. 'Notice anything missing?'
'What, apart from his skin and any sign of life?' She snorted.
Jack raised an eyebrow. 'Serious moment, Gwen. Look at the body.'
She stared into the red mess. 'I'm not a bloody doctor, Jack. How am I supposed to know?' I'm not Owen, that's what she'd really wanted to say, but that would do no one any good. And it was there, unspoken, anyway. She could see it in a moment's clouding in Captain Jack's dark eyes.
'Well, you'd better spend some time studying that wall chart of the human body that's hanging in the Autopsy Room.' His voice was soft, and his own hurt vibrated loudly in it. Her grief was his grief too. Sometimes, she hated herself for getting far too caught up in the ups and downs of being Gwen Cooper to remember that.
She smiled gently, crouching beside him. 'I'll take that as an order.' She peered into the mutilated body. 'So what's missing then?'
Jack pointed at the man's throat just under where it had been cut. 'The voice box and vocal cords.'
Gwen stared. On reflection, the man's neck area did look empty around the spinal column, but she couldn't see any real indication of trauma. 'Were they ripped out?'
Jack shook his head. 'His Adam's apple is fine and the larynx and folds should be under it. But it looks more like they were never there. Which would make singing pretty impossible.' He frowned. 'I can't think of any human instrument that could remove something so precisely.'
He touched the almost invisible Bluetooth device in his ear. 'Ianto. You there?'
He paused, and Gwen thought of Ianto Jones sitting in the warmth of the Hub, probably drinking coffee. What he was going to make of this body, she'd be curious to find out. Pizza probably wouldn't be on the menu for dinner.
'Has there been any Rift activity in the area of Gadalfa Street tonight? We're at the Church of St Emmanuel.' Still focused on the call, Jack stood up and Gwen followed. Jack nodded, the reaction to whatever was said in his ear automatic. 'OK. We'll be back at the Hub in about thirty minutes. We're bringing the body with us, so get the Autopsy Room set up.'
The conversation with Ianto over, Jack turned back to Gwen. 'Whatever did this definitely came through the Rift. There was a spike about an hour ago. Ianto said it started rising a couple of streets away and then peaked here. Here and gone within minutes.'
Smiling, Gwen rested a hand playfully on one tilted hip of her jeans. 'I could have told you that when we first got here. Without any of your missing vocal cords and Rift spikes.'
'Oh really?' Jack's eyes danced. 'Then share, PC Cooper.'
Looking upwards, Gwen pointed at the once-impressive stained-glass window high against the wall. It had shattered inwards, coloured shards decorating the area hidden in shadows along a far wall.
'No human criminal would come through a window that high when they could just use the bloody door.' Grinning slightly, she raised an eyebrow and swung her hips as she strode past Jack up the aisle and towards the exit. 'I'll tell the uniforms they can come and clean up now, shall I?'
Jack was staring up at the window, smiling. 'I guess the pizza's on me for that then, huh?'
Gwen laughed, and headed out into the rain.
TWO
The lift purred quietly as it lowered Ianto Jones down into the hidden heart of the Hub.
His suit jacket was damp from the rain that had been falling all evening, but he didn't mind. He'd needed a quick natural freshen up to help give himself some extra energy and, although the doughnuts that were still warm in the bag he was carrying probably weren't the best brain food, they'd certainly go well with the fresh pot of coffee he'd left brewing.
His shoulders ached slightly from sitting peering at the various computer screens for far too long and, for a few moments after he'd stood up, his tired eyes had had difficulty focusing. No wonder Tosh had worn glasses. Ianto was finding that as the days wore on without her, his a
dmiration for his dead colleague's abilities was growing. And it wasn't as if he'd lacked respect for her while she was alive.
His face tingled pleasantly from the rain, but it was going to take more than a five-minute walk outdoors to relax him. It seemed like he'd been trying to figure out the intricacies of Tosh's various computer programs for ever and, while he was no IT dunce, Toshiko had been in a different league. Even with her little pop-up help icons, a lot of what she'd set up was way beyond him.
The heavy metal door slid open and he stepped into the warm light of the Hub, ignoring the computer stations and heading towards the Autopsy Room. The pop-ups had made him smile though, even if each one had sent a needle of grief into his heart. Typical of Toshiko to have planned for every eventuality.
'And once again Cardiff is alive with the sound of music as the city prepares for the fifth annual Welsh Amateur Operatic Contest...' The TV screen quietly delivered the news and, putting the doughnuts down, Ianto looked for the remote. He sometimes liked background noise while he was working, tonight being one of those nights, but Jack definitely didn't. 'The best singers from across the nation have arrived in preparation for the finals which will be held in front of a star-studded judging panel eleven days from now, in a live television broadcast from the Millennium Centre...'
Ianto clicked her off and followed the crisp scent of fresh coffee to the bubbling machine. Coffees in hand, he took the steps down into the Autopsy Room. He froze as he saw the body.
'Jesus.'
Jack looked up. 'Not even close. This is Richard Greenwood, 45, from Newport.'
'What happened to him?' Ianto had completely forgotten about the coffees, but dimly noticed Gwen taking them from him. 'Don't tell me a Weevil.'
'Then I won't.' Jack moved round to the other side of the exposed corpse and carefully lifted one flap of peeled-back skin. 'And it wasn't. Whatever did this was something else.' He frowned. 'He was opened up in one movement from his throat all the way down, but look, this is fascinating...'
'I think I can see well enough from here.' Staying where he was and watching his two colleagues peering intently at the mutilated man, Ianto wasn't sure whether he should be envious or slightly nervous of Jack and Gwen's ability to cope with gore on this level. He knew his own limitations.
'I see it!' Gwen exclaimed. 'The skin and his clothes.' She looked up. 'It's like they've been melted together.'
Jack nodded. 'More like fused. Weird, huh?'
Gwen came round to the other side of the examining table and lifted the man's skin, his blue, bloodstained shirt rising with it. 'See?'
Ianto gritted his teeth and nodded. 'That's... great.'
Jack raised an eyebrow. 'Brings a whole new meaning to a fitted shirt.'
Leaning back against the wall, Ianto reached for his drink. The coffee didn't seem as appealing as it had ten minutes ago, but the scalding taste of it was just what his system needed to fight the vague sense of nausea that drifted through his gut. The doughnuts were a definite pass though.
'Any reason for the attack?' Deliberately ignoring the body, Ianto looked across at Jack.
'Not as far as we know. We'll need to run some deeper checks on the victim, but he worked in a bank, paid his mortgage on time, a wife, but no kids. Pretty much an ordinary Joe.'
'Except that now he's dead.'
'Yes, and whatever killed him took his vocal cords and larynx as a souvenir.'
His nausea overwhelmed by his curiosity, Ianto looked into the exposed neck of the victim. 'Why on Earth would someone do that?' He paused. 'And how?'
Jack shrugged. 'I guess that's what we need to find out.' He reached for his own coffee. 'So tell me about the Rift.'
'Well, there seems to have been an increase in activity since that electrical storm four nights ago, but mainly low-level stuff. I've been running some more analysis on that data and from what I can tell...' Ianto looked from Jack's expectant gaze to Gwen's and back again. 'Well, remembering that I'm not an expert, I think maybe that storm wasn't an entirely natural phenomenon.'
'What do you mean?'
'I think there was a storm over Cardiff, but I think the electrical part of it came in from the Rift, and the two mixed as they met. Maybe that storm was also the arrival of something alien.'
Jack frowned over at Gwen. 'Didn't we check the storm's readings at the time?'
'Don't look at me.' Gwen shook her dark hair. 'I was at home tucked up in bed with Rhys and we were whipping up our own electrical storm, thank you.'
Jack turned his attention to him, and Ianto felt his face burn as he stumbled over his words. 'We were here, but we were... busy.'
Jack suddenly grinned. 'Oh yeah, so we were.'
From the corner of his eye, Ianto could see Gwen looking from one man to the other, and he concentrated on sipping his coffee. It wasn't as if she didn't know about him and Jack, but it still felt strange whenever there was any open reference to it.
Gwen giggled, breaking the awkward moment. 'It seems like we all had our eyes off the ball, then.'
Jack flashed his best boyish smile. 'Or on it, depending on your perspective.'
'So, what next?' Listening to the banter, Ianto gave up feeling embarrassed.
'Let's get the body on ice for the night, and then see if you can find any connections between the Rift activity from the storm and the spike from tonight. At least then we'll know we're dealing with a recent arrival.' Jack looked over to Gwen. 'You might as well go home. We can go to the hospital and talk to the witnesses in the morning.'
'Are you sure?'
'Sure I'm sure.' He winked. 'Now get out of here.'
Ianto picked up his coffee. 'Right, I'll get on with that analysis.'
'Not so fast, big boy.' Jack nodded towards the body. 'You can take the feet end. We need to get him on a trolley.'
Groaning, Ianto reached for the shoes, and hoped he wasn't grimacing. There were some things he was never going to get used to about working at Torchwood.
THREE
The windscreen wipers on the old Ford Escort squealed gently as they battered the rain from side to side with the regular beat of a metronome. Peering out into the night, Dyllis Llewelyn clutched the handbag on her knee a little tighter. There weren't even lights on this section of the road, and there hadn't been for the past few miles. She let a small sigh out into the slowly building tense atmosphere. It felt like they'd been on this journey for an eternity.
If they'd left the farm at three like she'd suggested, they'd have been in Cardiff by now but, as it was, Barry had to make sure everyone had their instructions four times over before picking up the car keys, and it had been gone seven when they'd finally driven out of the gates. As if their boys didn't know the farm like the backs of their hands. They'd been working it since they could walk; both she and Barry had insisted on that. Theirs was a family farm, and it was going to stay that way.
Her brow furrowed, trying in vain to make out any shapes in the darkness, but all she could see were drops of rain smearing down her passenger window. She glanced at the dials on the dashboard. The clock glowed 11.15, and she stifled a yawn. Barry would no doubt blame her for their late arrival at the B & B, but she'd had to stop for dinner, even if the Happy Cook was 'an overpriced rip-off'. Since her illness she had too many pills to take, and if she took them without food they would make her sick. Still, it wasn't Barry's fault that she probably hadn't explained that to him. They didn't have the kind of marriage where you talked about things. You just got on with it and made do.
Next to her, his eyes firmly on the white line in the road whose dashes added silent harmony to the windscreen wipers, Barry hummed through his octaves, up and down, over and over. Even just doing something as simple as those exercises, anyone could hear that he had a beautiful voice. It was a true Welshman's voice, full of the natural power of the solid land and valleys that had bred it, hundreds of years of history and courage carried in every tune. There was nothing namby-pamby about the way Barry Lle
welyn sang, not like those pancaked West End performers from London. When her Barry sang, people noticed.
Still, as she watched the slightly smug tilt to her husband's chin, for the first time his singing voice seemed a little sour to her. She couldn't help but think he was happy they weren't singing as a couple this time around, and that made her sad. It was singing in the church that had brought them together all those years ago; she the best soprano and he the best tenor, and neither of them had been a bad looker along with it.
She thought of how her own hair was greying and, looking at the creases and crags that covered her husband's face, she wondered what had happened to those two young people who loved to make music together. In fact, they'd loved doing a lot of things together back then, but twenty-odd years of marriage and hard farm life could knock that out of the best of couples.
Ahead, the lights of Cardiff appeared glowing in a distant pool of light that only served to make the darkness around the car even more suffocating. Or maybe it was the atmosphere inside the car that was strangling her. Looking at the knots and veins that had appeared on the backs of her hands over the past few months, she wondered if Barry ever thought of her affectionately any more. She'd always believed that even though they never really talked or laughed together in the way she saw people do on the telly, they'd had a quiet foundation of love underneath it all.
When the national singing competition had begun, a light had come back on in Barry's eyes and they'd started smiling at each other again. And they hadn't done badly, coming second and third in their category in two of the four years it had been running. She'd known she was the weaker singer, but she hadn't thought it really mattered.
Not until she had the stroke at any rate. Her dry fingers rose and touched the slight dip at the left edge of her mouth. No more singing for her. Apart from losing some of her ability to shape the sounds, her bloody brain couldn't guarantee her all the words to a song any more. It made her feel like a helpless, ugly fool. Not that they'd talked about that either. They'd just got on with it and made do. But she was sure she'd seen the glint in her husband's eyes when the doctors had told her she wouldn't be taking part in this year's competition, and it was a look that broke her heart. He badly wanted to win, and she'd never realised. Was his life lacking so much?
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