The girl had long, straight, hair which was a little too pale to be called mousy. Her washed-out blue eyes stared at Gwen without interest. At first glance, the girl looked painfully thin, but then Gwen noticed the supple bulge of muscles on the girl’s bare arms and the etched lines of tendons which showed under that white skin. She wasn’t skinny. She was lean and sinewy.
The girl reminded Gwen of some people she’d come across a few years ago, who’d run a yoga ashram, placid celibates with the same kind of colourless look, sort of healthy but unhealthy at the same time: washed out, pale skin, colourless hair as though deprived of something vital. At the time, Gwen had assumed it was sex.
‘Are you all right?’ she said.
‘Yeah.’ The girl nodded as if she’d just exchanged a passing everyday pleasantry with a nodding acquaintance and turned away, busily pushing her pram across the car park as if nothing had happened.
Gwen watched her for a moment, then hurried after her. ‘Wait a minute,’ she called, but the girl didn’t slow down. Gwen had to run to catch up with her. The girl was setting an impressive pace, the pram wheels buzzing across the stained tarmac.
Falling into step beside her, Gwen said, ‘Can we talk for a minute?’
‘Got to get on.’ The girl kept moving and didn’t look at her.
With some effort, Gwen managed to keep pace with her as she walked, and she tried to draw the girl out, but the girl remained monosyllabic and unforthcoming. Gwen might also with some justice have added ungrateful and surly – but perhaps this would have been reading too much into that pasty, blank, hangdog face. It was a beaten-down face. A victim’s face.
They crossed the road and reached the east gate of the Machen Estate, at which point Gwen simply gave up. The girl seemed determined to ignore her, to brush off any attempt at help. So be it. Gwen watched the girl go, pushing her pram into the shadows of the concrete jungle where she lived. Gwen watched with a mixture of frustration and regret. Just then she saw Jack emerge from the west gate down the street. He had seen her and was beckoning to her. He looked pleased with himself. They met on the pavement, halfway between the two gates. He had taken off his greatcoat and was using it to cover an object slightly smaller than a cricket bat.
‘You’ve found it,’ said Gwen.
‘That’s right. In a flat in Bowmen House. Ground floor. I went in and retrieved it.’ He opened the coat to show her what, for all its strange alien contours and curvature and nacreous gleam, was obviously a gun of some kind.
‘How did you get into the flat?’
‘I used a highly sophisticated device I’ve perfected for breaking into locked domiciles.’ Jack winked at her. ‘I smashed a window with my elbow.’
‘You take very naturally to vandalism, Jack Harkness.’
Jack grinned. ‘Baby, I’m a vandal and a Visigoth too.’
‘Speaking of babies, I just saw the most beautiful one.’
Jack glanced at her in surprise. There must have been a reminiscent tenderness in her tone of voice she couldn’t quite conceal. ‘Hey!’ he said. ‘You’re smitten.’
‘Honestly, Jack, he was so adorable.’
Jack shook his head. ‘It pays for babies to be adorable. That’s kind of a baby’s business. It’s their raison d’être, so to speak.’
‘You’re just an old cynic.’
‘No, seriously. Nothing wrong with a baby being cute. It has high survival value.’
Gwen was about to repeat some variation on her accusation of cynicism, but there was the sound of running footsteps behind them and she turned quickly, her hand on her gun. She was half-expecting an onslaught of reprisal by the drugs gang. On reflection, they seemed to have been all too easily cowed.
But instead it was the man in the corduroy jacket and fishing hat. He had apparently been sitting in his car eating a sandwich. The door of his silver Volkswagen, still parked across the street, was open and the man himself was still clutching the half-eaten sandwich, a bright red shred of tomato dangling from it as he hurried towards them.
‘Wait, please,’ he called. ‘I saw what happened—’
‘What happened?’ said Jack, stopping and carefully holding the wrapped weapon so there was no danger of the man seeing it.
‘Your colleague here. . .’ The man looked at Gwen.
‘Who said she was my colleague?’
‘I saw you together earlier.’
‘Perhaps she’s my sweetheart. Maybe we’re not colleagues at all.’
‘I think you are,’ said the man obstinately. ‘And what’s more I think you’re some kind of police unit.’
‘No,’ said Jack.
‘Well maybe sort of,’ said Gwen at the same moment.
‘I knew it!’ said the man. ‘I’ve learned to recognise you – fellow professionals – doing the work I do.’
Jack shook his head dubiously. ‘And what work is that?’
‘Social worker. Here, my card. Kenrick Jones.’ He handed them a business card. Jack glanced at it and pocketed it.
‘Well,’ he said, smiling one of his bright, charming smiles. ‘Nice to meet you, Kenrick, now if you’ll excuse us. . .’
‘More specifically, I am the social worker assigned to Pam Feerce.’
‘Who?’ said Gwen.
‘You met her. You helped her. She’s the one those boys were bothering, before you helped her.’
‘Pam Feerce?’
‘Yes. That’s what she’s called. Hence the nickname, I suppose. Pram Face.’
As they stood there on the pavement in front of the Machen Estate, Jack obviously itching to be gone, Kenrick Jones insisted on telling them about the girl’s case. It was a troubling one. She had been a friendless teenager, so fat that nobody even noticed she was pregnant. Gwen found it hard to reconcile this description with the tautly drawn, sinewy figure she had just encountered. But the other details of the social worker’s story accorded with the drab, blank-faced girl. Deeply introverted, her only passion, indeed her only interest in life had been the school chess club.
‘Second only to the science club in winning friends,’ said Jack.
Kenrick Jones frowned. ‘No, being in the chess club is actually very unpopular among coevals.’
‘Yes, we get that,’ said Gwen evenly.
The social worker nodded and went on, describing how the baby had become the sole focus of Pam Feerce’s life. Spending all day caring for the child, she had isolated herself completely. Her few friends (more like acquaintances, really) from the chess club had been unceremoniously dropped. She had equally little trouble cutting herself off from the surviving members of her (highly dysfunctional) family. And she had also cut herself off from society at large.
‘She has never even registered her baby’s birth. She and the child have no official existence. They are in danger of slipping through the system entirely.’
‘OK,’ said Jack with forced patience. ‘Fascinating. Both sad and fascinating. But why are you telling us all this?’
‘Because I want your help.’
‘Our help?’
‘I saw your colleague face down the Dillard gang,’ said Kenrick. ‘You can help me. I know you can.’ He paused and looked at the ornate brick façade of the Machen Estate. ‘This is a no-go area for social workers. The police can’t help me.’ He looked at them. ‘The ordinary police, I mean. They don’t have the resources. If anybody can help, it’s you.’ He tried a tentative smile.
Gwen was tempted to say yes. But Jack had other ideas. ‘We’re not social workers.’
Kenrick Jones tightened his shoulders and lowered his head in the same manner Gwen had seen when he was preparing to run the gauntlet of the gang. He shook his head stubbornly. ‘Like it or not, she’s your responsibility.’
‘How do you figure that?’ Jack’s voice had taken on an edge and Gwen could see the situation going downhill rapidly. He was giving Kenrick Jones a hard look now, staring straight into his eyes.
But the social worker sta
red back levelly and said, ‘When your friend intervened with the gang, they lost status. They lost face.’ He glanced at Gwen. ‘She humiliated them. And now they’ll be out for revenge.’
Jack grinned, but his eyes were hard. ‘They’re not going to harm one hair on Gwen’s head.’
Gwen was annoyed at Jack’s obtuseness in the matter but she didn’t have to say anything to set him straight. The social worker was already busy explaining it for her.
‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘I meant they’ll go after Pam Feerce. She’s a marked woman now.’
‘Right,’ said Ianto. He steepled his fingers and frowned thoughtfully. ‘Let’s decide who has confiscated the most interesting weapon.’
On a rectangle of smooth black cloth spread across a workbench in front of him were two very dissimilar guns: the gleaming chrome revolver Gwen had taken from Nobody Knows I’m a Lesbian, and the alien heat-weapon Jack had found in the Machen Estate. Gwen watched with a crooked smile. She knew what was coming. Jack was sitting there, also smiling. He knew too.
‘Well, I’m afraid,’ said Ianto finally, ‘that it has to be Jack. Very good attempt though, Gwen, with this highly polished example of drug-dealer bling.’ He prodded the revolver with a pencil as though it was a distasteful specimen of some small dead pest.
‘It’s a Colt Python .357 with a four-inch barrel, actually,’ said Gwen. ‘A fairly dangerous weapon.’
‘Good try, Gwen.’ Ianto paused to sip his coffee. ‘But I’m afraid however long its barrel is—’
‘That’s a short barrel, as a matter of fact.’
‘Or however short it is,’ continued Ianto, unperturbed, ‘it just doesn’t hold a candle to this.’ He tapped the alien heat-gun with his pencil. The pencil was reflected, a soft polychrome shape, in the smooth rainbowed curves of the weapon. Ianto tossed the pencil aside and lifted a corner of the black cloth. He folded it so that the revolver was covered, leaving only the pearly shape of the heat-gun on display. ‘In the end, there’s no contest, really.’ He took a sip of his coffee. ‘Jack confiscated the best gun by far today.’
‘Well, thank you, Ianto,’ said Jack, putting his hand to his chest and offering a slight bow.
Ianto set his cup aside. ‘Just one thing, Jack.’
Jack’s eyebrows angled upwards in polite enquiry. ‘Yeah?’
‘I checked this heat-weapon against our catalogue of alien guns. . .’
‘We still have one of those?’
‘On our database, yes.’
‘How cool is that?’
‘Yes, but unfortunately, Jack, as a result of checking this database and learning a bit more about this weapon, its specifications and so on, I’ve uncovered a disturbing fact.’
‘How disturbing?’
‘I’ve discovered that it has never been fired.’
Both Gwen and Jack were staring at him now. Gwen felt a cold feeling starting deep in her stomach.
‘What?’ said Jack.
‘This particular weapon,’ said Ianto patiently, ‘has never been fired. The factory seal is still intact, so to speak.’
‘So it’s not the gun we were looking for,’ said Gwen.
‘No, that one would still be at large.’
‘Back to square one,’ said Gwen with a note of bitterness in her voice.
‘It’s a goldmine of information,’ said Jack, who sounded much the same, ‘this database of yours.’ He looked at Ianto.
‘It certainly is,’ said Ianto.
The cold feeling of dread in Gwen’s stomach had time enough now to have turned to anger. ‘In fact, there could be any number of these guns out there.’
‘I think just one more,’ said Ianto.
‘How can you be sure?’
‘Well I’m not sure, but it’s an educated guess, based on the aforementioned goldmine of information. You see, the database also told me that this gun normally comes in a twin configuration.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Gwen. ‘Do you mean like a double-barrelled shotgun?’
Ianto nodded. ‘Yes, if you can imagine a shotgun that instead of merely having two barrels was actually two complete weapons, linked together.’
‘Siamese twins,’ said Jack.
‘Exactly. You could use such guns as a double unit or separate them whenever you wanted.’ He touched a kind of circular socket on the side of the gun. ‘There. You see that indentation there? That’s where it locks onto its twin. Each part can be used individually as a weapon in its own right but it’s also rather cleverly designed to join up in the paired unit which, rather alarmingly, would provide twice the firepower.’
Gwen closed her eyes and tried to imagine what twice the firepower of this thing would imply. Two versions of Rhett Seyers cut into a total of four pieces. And no doubt things much worse.
‘So to sum up, yes, Gwen you’re right. It’s exactly like a double-barrelled shotgun, except a thousand times more powerful and dangerous.’ Ianto looked at her, smiling.
‘No need to be pedantic,’ said Gwen.
‘The point is,’ said Jack, ‘we don’t want it to fall into the wrong hands.’
‘Hard to imagine what the right hands would be.’
‘Well, they’d have four fingers and an opposable thumb for a start.’
‘You think this gun would be safer if a human being got hold of it?’
Jack nodded. ‘As opposed to an alien who understands its full capabilities and knows exactly how to exploit them? Sure.’
Gwen regarded him sardonically. ‘Unlike an ignorant human being who might accidentally press the wrong button and blow the whole thing up, along with a substantial portion of Cardiff.’
‘Actually, it’s funny you should say that,’ said Ianto, ‘because it does in fact have a self-destruct facility. Not exactly a button, more a—’
‘OK, OK,’ said Jack. ‘You’ve convinced me. The only safe hands are Torchwood hands. So let’s get out there and find the damned thing.’
The afternoon sun was shining down on the Machen Estate as they pulled up outside. Gwen was secretly quite glad to be back there. Ever since they’d left the place that morning she had been worrying about what might have happened to Pam Feerce. The social worker’s words were still echoing in her ears.
She tried again to convince Jack, but he just shook his head and said, ‘You can’t take responsibility for that girl.’
‘Jack, I also can’t let her come to harm.’
‘Fine. So what are you going to do? Mount a guard on her twenty-four hours a day?’
‘Obviously not. No, I thought I’d have a word with Nobody Knows I’m a Lesbian. Put the fear of God into him.’
Jack smiled. ‘Well, there our interests coincide. That heat-weapon may not have been exactly the one we were after, but I’d still be very interested to find out where that joker and his gang got it. Once we do that we’ll be a lot closer to finding its twin.’
They got out of the SUV and immediately heard the shouting. It was coming from the direction of the supermarket. There were shouts of rage and abuse and high-pitched shrieks of pain.
There in the car park in front of the Happy Price, a milling mass of bodies was moving in a violent parody of a folk dance, surging abruptly in one direction and then another, following the abruptly shifting focus of the violence.
Gwen instantly broke into a run. Jack was already in motion, at her side. They pelted across the road, towards the car park, where Nobody Knows I’m a Lesbian and his gang were attacking Pam Feerce. Although, as they grew nearer, they realised it would be more accurate to say that Pam Feerce was attacking the gang.
As Gwen approached the heaving mass of bodies, a figure was thrown through the air towards her, slamming to the ground to lie painfully still at her feet. She recognised the youth with the blond cornrows whom she had placed in an arm-lock earlier. He was in even worse shape now, beginning to writhe on the dirty car park tarmac, gasping for air and clutching his side. As she ran past him – no time to sto
p now – she fleetingly diagnosed broken ribs, judging by the angle of the foot she had seen flash out of the crowd as it kicked him across the car park.
A foot that belonged to Pam Feerce.
The girl wasn’t just kicking, though. She was also punching, with considerable effect. Gwen arrived just in time to see her drive her left fist into the belly of one of the gang members and, a fraction of a second later, her right fist into the throat of one of the others in what looked like a brutal, and potentially fatal, blow. As she threw the second punch, her left elbow came up into the face of a third attacker.
All three of them went down, writhing.
‘OK, that’s enough!’ shouted Jack, pulling out his gun.
There were six of the gang left on their feet at this moment, confronting a pale, sweating, but very focused and determined-looking Pam Feerce. Three of the gang members ignored Jack, or perhaps didn’t hear him. They were already in the act of throwing themselves on the girl. Three other members of the gang hesitated, standing back from the fighting. Of these three, one was a boy Gwen didn’t recognise, the second was Sleepy, the boy who had been guarding the bus, and the third was Nobody Knows I’m a Lesbian.
At Jack’s command the first two instantly raised their hands in surrender. But Nobody Knows turned and ran. ‘Shall I go after him?’ asked Gwen.
‘No, let him go.’ Jack held his gun on the other two for a moment, then decided they were no threat and turned to deal with the seething mêlée that was Pam Feerce and the three boys.
One boy had grabbed her left arm, another her right. The third threw himself down to grab her legs. He received a swift and well-aimed kick in the face for his trouble but bounced back up gamely and threw himself once again at the girl, who was now being held securely by the other two lads, unable to land a blow with both her arms pinned.
Jack moved in to intervene and Gwen started to do the same, but then she noticed the direction in which Nobody Knows was running. Towards the doors of the supermarket where, parked among a battered assortment of shopping trolleys, was the pram containing Pam Feerce’s baby.
Consequences Page 11