Jack had breezed in, but so had several gallons of water, and the reception floor was awash. ‘We’re gonna need some sandbags out there, Ianto, if this rain keeps up.’
‘Yes, the neighbourhood’s gone to pot,’ said Ianto. ‘Maybe we should move.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Jack. ‘Imagine how many tea-chests we’d need to pack. That, plus we’d need to get the stationery reprinted.’ He shook himself like a wet dog, and rainwater spattered across the room. His trousers were soaked up to the knee, and he decided it would be a good idea to grasp the material and squeeze water out of the legs right there and then.
Ianto resisted the strong temptation to tut loudly. Instead, he plucked a handful of tissues from a box and mopped the worst of the splashes off the paperwork at the desk. He was able to rescue the flyers for the Redflight Barcud event at the Millennium Centre, but a pile of Tredegar House information leaflets was as good as ruined.
They had disguised the Bayside entrance to the Torchwood Hub as a Tourist Information Centre. And not a particularly salubrious one at that because, obviously, they didn’t want to encourage a steady stream of eager visitors asking for directions to the Pierhead Building or opening times for the Norwegian Church. Not that Ianto couldn’t answer those questions, of course. He prided himself on his arcane local knowledge, whether Cardiff indie bands or the history of Tiger Bay. Mostly, though, they only wanted to know the reason why the word ‘Brains’ was stencilled on a city centre chimney stack. This had all proved useful cover on an awkward occasion when a film crew from a BBC Wales travel programme wouldn’t take no for an answer when looking for an interview.
Ianto helped Jack out of his wet coat. ‘You’ve got a big hole in your sleeve,’ he said.
‘Nothing escapes your eagle eye.’
‘I see you’ve got a new watch, too.’
‘I’m trying it out. Though it’s an old watch. Antique.’
Ianto looked at it admiringly. ‘Very nice. Perhaps you should have one for casual and one for best.’
‘I don’t think so.’ Jack shucked off his sopping wet shoes and kicked them into the corner. ‘A guy with a watch knows what time it is. A guy with two watches is never sure.’ To Ianto’s dismay, he proceeded to peel off his socks and wring them out into the waste bin. ‘Are Tosh and Gwen back?’
‘Waiting for you downstairs,’ said Ianto.
‘You’re not wearing any socks,’ Gwen told him.
‘Nothing escapes your eagle eye,’ replied Jack. ‘Have you admired my watch yet?’
He plonked down into a Boardroom chair, and waited for Toshiko to complete her presentation materials. ‘That flooding is getting critical. We’re gonna have to seal the side entrance. Or put Ianto on a steroid regime, so he can get the door closed.’
Gwen pointed through the Boardroom’s glass wall and into the main Hub area. She could see the water at the foot of the stainless steel tower was rippling. ‘The basin is tidal, isn’t it?’
Jack followed her directions. ‘Yeah. And look how much higher that’s got. Tosh, have we got a valve control on that thing to prevent it flooding the Hub?’
‘Yes,’ she told him, ‘but I can’t promise that the rest of the place is waterproof. There’s a pool of water building up against the exterior window of the Autopsy Room. It would only take one careless accident for that to break.’
‘Owen had better be careful then. He around?’
‘I think Ianto knows where he is,’ said Gwen.
Toshiko tapped the display screen to get their attention again. ‘As for the rest of Cardiff, they’re a lot worse off. Three hundred thousand people are staying at home to avoid getting their feet wet. We’re supposed to have thirty-six inches of rain a year, and we’ve had twenty-four inches in as many hours.’
‘The Oval Basin is starting to fill up with water,’ agreed Gwen. ‘It was like a river raging through there when we walked back from the car. If it carries on like this, by tomorrow morning only the people on the top floors of St David’s Hotel will still be dry. And they probably won’t notice until the caviar runs out.’
Toshiko showed a few more graphics on the display. ‘They did a lot of groundwater modelling studies when they were proposing the barrage for the Bay. I’m going to tap into their instrumentation…’
Gwen laughed. ‘Very good.’ Toshiko didn’t look pleased by this interruption. ‘Sorry, I thought you were joking. You know, water… tap…’
‘Tosh doesn’t joke about her work.’ Jack wagged a finger at Gwen in mock admonishment.
‘They’ve got over two hundred boreholes recording groundwater levels every thirty minutes,’ persisted Toshiko. ‘And they measure other environmental parameters like rainfall, obviously, and atmospheric pressure. Tide and river levels. That lot should give us some idea what’s going on.’
Jack leaned back in his chair, put his bare feet up on the table, and waggled his toes. ‘There are some people round here who still talk about the Bristol Channel floods of 1607.’
‘I imagine there may be some who are old enough to remember it,’ muttered Gwen.
Toshiko was more impressed with the information, however. ‘Thousands died. Houses and villages were swept away. Livestock got destroyed when farmland was inundated. The surrounding region was set back for more than a century. And there’s a recent theory that it was a tsunami. If today’s water levels continue to rise like this, it could do the same kind of damage.’
‘But not as fast,’ observed Gwen.
Toshiko switched off the display screen. ‘A slow tsunami? Well, that would still cause devastation. Wreck the local economy. And kill tens of thousands this time.’ She closed the lid of her laptop. ‘If I’m right.’
Ianto came into the room to offer them coffee. He looked disapprovingly at Jack’s bare feet, so Jack removed them from the table. ‘OK, let’s have your program run overnight Tosh, and see what it tells us tomorrow. Go home now, it’s late. Have a lie-in tomorrow. You too, Gwen. Better take the scenic route, because I think Ianto here has welded the side door shut.’
Gwen knew better than to protest. She heaved herself out of her chair, and made her way to the exit platform with Toshiko.
‘Doesn’t your boyfriend mind you working this late?’ asked Toshiko.
‘He said he was going out to an all-night Star Wars marathon,’ lied Gwen.
Toshiko looked unconvinced. ‘In this weather?’
‘They’re Star Wars fans,’ explained Gwen. ‘They’d crawl over boiling lava to avoid missing their fifteenth viewing.’
‘Ah,’ said Toshiko, ‘I understand. Otaku.’ She smiled when Gwen frowned. ‘Geek.’
‘Otaku,’ repeated Gwen.
The platform began to lift them upward.
‘And gemu otaku is a video games geek,’ Toshiko said.
‘I think that’s pronounced “Owen Harper”.’ Gwen looked up above them and sighed. ‘You realise that we’ve forgotten the umbrellas again.’
The pavement slab opened up overhead, and the cold rain showered in on them.
Jack watched Ianto polish the table where his feet had been propped. Ianto could tell that his boss didn’t really approve, but he thought that Jack would dislike it even more if the place got to be a mess. At the moment, he had other things to worry about though.
‘Gwen tells me you know where Owen is, Ianto.’
Ianto stopped polishing. ‘No. His radiation readings reached normal, and so he decided to go out. On a date, he said.’
‘A date? What about the work I asked him to do?’
Ianto produced a buff folder of printouts. Balanced on the top of it was the radiation sponge. ‘He asked me to give you these. He said that there’s a lot of information about what a brave and resourceful soldier Sergeant Applegate is, fine service record. And she has 450 Nectar points, in case that’s important.’
‘I could kiss you, Ianto.’
‘No you couldn’t, sir.’
Jack flipped open the fo
lder and stood up. ‘I’m gonna take this down to my office.’ They both walked out of the Boardroom and made their way down the spiral staircase to the main Hub.
Ianto noticed how the water in the centre had risen higher, and seemed to be slapping higher against the edge of the basin. The view through the portholes in the wall above them also seemed to be more turbulent, with fragments of weed whirling past in the dark water and fewer fish visible than usual.
Jack walked away towards his office. ‘You can go home now.’
‘Thank you. I have a bit more filing to do. In the basement. I’d like to finish it.’
Jack laughed. ‘You may as well live here, Ianto,’ he shouted before he closed his office door.
I could say the same thing about you, Ianto thought as he set off to the basement to continue his own work.
NINETEEN
The sodium glare from the streetlights cast a jaundiced pall across the sodden T-junction. Owen sat listening to the howl of the wind and the battering percussion of rain above the Boxter, and wondering if the roof latch would hold. No wonder he’d got a deal on the car. Too good to be true at 18K, even with 40,000 miles and schlepping all the way out to Colchester for it. He should have bought the Honda S2000, like he’d first thought. But he’d gone for style and speed, so now he found that the windstop on this 1997 model Boxter didn’t hook properly and ended up rattling.
And windstop was what he needed right now. The storm outside buffeted the car, and rain lashed the windscreen until it was awash. Owen flicked on the wipers. They swiped the water aside so that he could peer through the glass at Megan’s place across the road. Her maisonette was the top floor, up an L-shaped flight of steps at the gable-end of the house. Two windows were visible. One was unlit, with opaque glass. The other was much wider, bold red curtains illuminated. He thought he saw a shadow at one point, but through the downpour it was hard to be sure. The window was partly obscured by a large plane tree, that must have been planted by a pessimistic urban planner who’d not expected the houses to still be there once the tree had reached its final size.
He’d sat here for ten minutes already, kidding himself that he was just waiting for the rainstorm to ease off, just rehearsing what he was going to say, devising the best and most logical explanation for Megan. In reality he felt like he was a student again, the first time he’d arranged to meet her. Then, he’d stood outside the Angus halls of residence, uncertain, nervous.
She’d made all the running in the refectory earlier that day, and he’d hardly believed his luck in persuading her to go out that evening. Actually, she’d persuaded him to persuade her, he’d work out afterwards. And thus, his fresher insecurities fuelled, he’d worried about everything from then on — was he wearing the right T-shirt, was he heading for the right room in the hall, would he pronounce her name right, should he rehearse his line or would that sound too rehearsed, had he chosen the right film, was she allergic to Chinese food…
Another wild gust rocked the Porsche. The sallow glow of the streetlight revealed where he’d been tapping his fingertips. He noticed with a mixture of embarrassment and annoyance that it looked like he’d been doodling in the dust on the dashboard. Did that shape look like a heart? Not what he’d intended, at any rate. And what would Megan think if he ended up giving her a lift somewhere later and she saw it? He scuffed over the doodle with his palm. The result was a great smeared patch in the dust that somehow made the dashboard look even grubbier. Owen tugged a cuff up over the heel of his hand, and swiped over it. That looked better, at least. But now he’d got a tidemark of greyish dust over his left sleeve.
He blew an exasperated sigh, leaned back against the head restraint, and looked around the rest of the Porsche. Under his coat, the passenger seat had three old crisp packets on it, one only half-finished. Beside them was a bent plastic teaspoon with an uneaten raspberry yoghurt that he’d grabbed off his desk at the Hub thinking he might finish it on the way out. He slipped off his seat belt to look in the footwell, where he found bits of gravel, three Post-it notes containing grid references, plus a couple of forgotten AA batteries. Probably dead, but he stuffed them in his jacket pocket just in case.
He was experimenting with doing the same with the crisp packets when he thought: that’s just stupid. He’s arranged to see her for the first time in over five years, and he’s bringing her a pocketful of empty crisp packets and a raspberry yoghurt. He should have stopped off to get her flowers. Roses, she liked roses, didn’t she? Or was that too cheesy? A bottle of wine, at least. But he’d never been very good on vintages, always went for the third least expensive bottle in Threshers. Megan used to tease him about it, because she’d been to a wine appreciation group at Uni and could tell her Merlot from her Camembert. He recalled little about it now, except stuff about macerating the must, and how cross Megan got when he joked about ‘length’.
Owen unlocked the glove compartment. The light flicked on, and he could see the dull sheen of the Bekaran tool. That was a better idea. Never mind the wine and roses. The alien device felt cool in his palm as he slipped it into his jacket pocket. He shoved the crisp packets and the plastic spoon into the compartment, and shut it.
He hadn’t changed before leaving the Hub, and was still in his Torchwood standard: black jacket, dark trousers and shirt. Probably ideal for getting knocked down in the dark by a careless driver racing through Whitchurch on his way home to Cyncoed. Owen hadn’t driven home for different clothes either, because that would have delayed him getting to Megan. So it seemed daft to sit here, just peering up at her room. He wasn’t that uncertain undergraduate now, no way. He certainly hadn’t been that awkward kid any more when he and Megan had split up. When he’d left her.
He struggled into his coat, determined not to get out of the car before putting it on because he knew he’d be drenched within seconds. The maisonette was thirty metres away. Owen popped the car door, levered himself out, double locked the Boxter with a flick of his wrist. The wind and rain formed an almost physical barrier as he ran for the cover of the tree. He huddled against the trunk, his feet straddling where the tree’s roots had cracked the pavement. Then he scurried over to the L-shaped steps.
The house end offered protection from the worst of the storm, and so despite the rain he took the steps slowly, one by one. At the top, he pressed the doorbell, a button indicated by a small backlit circle. There was a ‘ding’, and then a prolonged hum as the button refused to pop back out. Owen pressed it again, to no effect. He slapped at it with his palm. He was whacking it with the heel of his clenched fist when the door opened, light spilled out all around him, and Megan stood in the doorway studying him. Appraising him.
‘No dong,’ he said to her apologetically. He pointed to the doorbell, which was still buzzing furiously.
She broke into her familiar chuckle. ‘I hope you don’t say that to all the girls.’ She flicked at the doorbell with her fingernail, and the button popped back out again.
Owen looked at her for a few seconds that lasted forever. ‘Are you going to invite me in?’ he asked.
Megan stepped aside and held the door open. ‘What are you, some kind of vampire?’
‘Don’t even joke about it,’ said Owen as she beckoned him in. ‘I mean it.’
Megan told him to remove his wet shoes and, when she saw his socks, those too. She peeled off his sopping coat to drape on a wall-hanging peg, before making him stand barefoot on the cold linoleum while she went to fetch him something to dry his hair.
He watched her disappear through the nearest doorway, her thin cardigan flapping behind her. Megan was still as slim as he remembered, accentuated by her Wrangler jeans. He discovered the raspberry yoghurt in his jacket pocket, so he set it down beside a pile of junk mail on a small table by the door.
Megan’s voice echoed from the little bathroom, telling him how he would have to take her as he found her and that she’d barely had time to tidy up her paperwork, let alone run a Hoover around the place. Owen
thought about how he’d been imagining her South Wales accent all the time they’d been talking in the Second Reality game, and now that he could hear it for real it was exactly as he remembered it. He closed his eyes, and imagined himself back in their Balham flat, calling from one side to the other as they caught up on the events of their day at the university.
When he opened them again, she was waggling a green crotchet-edged hand towel at him. ‘Cleanest one I’ve got, I’m afraid.’ She watched him towel his hair for a bit. ‘I’ll put the kettle on now you’re here. Go on through. Thank you for the yoghurt.’ She waved in the opposite direction as she disappeared into an unseen kitchen on the right.
Owen half-stepped into the bedroom. Big double bed with a pink paisley-patterned duvet, matching pillows. Picture of a piano in a sunlit room on the wall above. Piles of paperwork on one bedside table, just a simple lamp on another. A square wicker laundry basket stuffed so full that its hinged lid poked up.
He padded straight out again, barefoot, and into the room she’d meant. The lounge-diner was evidently the largest room in the maisonette, but felt cramped because of the amount of stuff crammed into it. He could smell the remains of a Chinese meal, not quite disguised by floral air freshener. A paper globe shade in the centre of the ceiling was unlit, but two art deco lamps on opposite walls cast a warm glow across the room
On the outer wall, pushed up near the window, a gate-leg dining table was unfolded and covered with a cream damask tablecloth. Four fabric-covered chairs, blue with no arms, were pressed up against three sides.
A small portable with a circular aerial sat in one corner. Owen noted that it made a little ‘crack’ noise that suggested the plastic case was cooling down because it had only just been switched off. The rest of the room was dominated by a battered leather sofa that dwarfed a tiny glass-topped wicker coffee table, and a crumpled green armchair so huge that he couldn’t work out how it could originally have been brought into the room. He saw his own reflection wrinkling its nose in an octagonal mirror above the sofa.
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