The House That Jack Built

by Guy Adams

  'Very temporary!' Alexander shouted. 'I've resigned twice since these Neanderthals started manhandling me. A man of my qualifications gets used to being treated with a certain amount of respect!'

  'Oh, shut up, you miserable old git,' Jack said with a chuckle. 'If I'd known I was employing Old Man Steptoe, I'd have thought twice.'

  Ianto wheeled Alexander over to the examination table which Jack was lowering to a more practical working height.

  'Thank you, young man.' Alexander gave Ianto a smile and a half-wave towards Gwen. 'Nice to meet you, probably.'

  'Gwen Cooper,' she replied, 'and I'm afraid there's nothing nice about what you're going to see under there.' She pointed at the table.

  'I've seen things you wouldn't believe, my dear,' Alexander replied. 'Walked knee-deep in the meat of alien battlefields. Worked the front line of a war fought by species advanced enough to liquidise an enemy at the flick of a switch.' He looked up at Gwen. 'Have you any idea how disconcerting it is when your patients arrive in the form of broth?' He tugged the sheet free, leaving it to fall to the ground, where Ianto was quick to tidy it away. 'Though I must admit,' Alexander continued, looking at Danny Wilkinson's body, 'this is certainly bizarre.'

  He began to wheel himself around the table. 'All external signs of violence – the shattered mouth, the chafing where the skin has torn against the tarmac in his efforts to free himself – would seem to make it clear that death was due to either shock or suffocation.'

  'Suffocation?' Ianto asked.

  'You try breathing a pavement and see how far your lungs get.' He checked the boy's mouth. 'Given the angle of his neck and throat and the fact that he obviously took some time to die, I'm assuming the pavement somehow infiltrated his mouth but not the rest of him.' He looked at Jack. 'If the pavement had appeared inside the rest of his body, he would have died instantly. This leads us to the conclusion that it must have been the pavement that lost physical cohesion and not the boy.'

  'Oh yeah,' muttered Ianto, placing the carefully folded sheet away in a drawer. 'It'll be that old liquid pavement problem again. The council were looking into it, I believe...'

  Alexander chuckled and nodded his head towards Ianto. 'I like him. He definitely deserves his own office.'

  'Is there a list?' Gwen said. 'Somewhere I can put my name down? I'd like a pot plant, too, if the budget will stretch.'

  'Ooh...' Ianto smiled. 'There's a Venus Flytrap in the containment chamber you can have. Saves me having to feed it.'

  Jack looked at Gwen. 'Careful, it eats thirty kilos of fresh meat a day. We found it in the Brecons after following up reports on missing hikers.'

  'It just loves Kendall Mint Cake.' said Ianto.

  'God save me from your world,' Alexander muttered, running his fingers along the surface of the tarmac. 'I'm going to need access to your chemical stores and maybe that greenhouse upstairs.'

  'Sure,' Jack replied. 'What are you after?'

  'I want to mix something up that will dissolve all this tarmac and leave the body intact. You might want to take a sample first. Run some broad-range scans.'

  Ianto held up a finger, walked to a drawer, pulled a lump hammer out and struck the edge of the tarmac with enough force to chip a piece off.

  Gwen stared at the mallet. 'Don't you ever ask to tap my knee with that.'

  Ianto smiled. 'Good for tenderising plant food.'

  'And in box number two...' Jack said, yanking open one of the large drawers to reveal the body of Gloria Banks.

  'Burn victim?' Alexander shrugged. 'What's the connection?'

  'The location. They were found only metres and hours apart,' Jack replied. 'Also a large chronon surge at the time and location of death in both cases.'

  'I'm a physician and chemist, not a physicist,' Alexander noted, 'so it's not really my field. However,' he smiled, 'I'm also excruciatingly clever and in love with the sound of my own voice, so I'll comment anyway. Chronon particles aren't proactive enough to do damage themselves, even in extraordinarily high doses. They are a symptom not a cause.'

  'Agreed,' Jack replied, 'but they're also our only lead to what's going on.'

  Ianto dashed up the stairs and over to his desk, reappearing next to Gwen on the railings. He held up what appeared to be a mobile phone. 'This can be used to trace chronon particles.' He looked at all three of them in turn and shrugged as they didn't say anything. 'I'll get my coat then, shall I?'

  Later, Ianto sat down in the dry of a bus stop, eating fish and chips in the company of a couple of empty crisp packets, a carrier bag, several crushed beer cans and a stray cat that eyed him – or rather his fish – from the other side of the shelter.

  'There's no end to the glamour of life in Torchwood,' he told the cat. 'It's just like James Bond except more... really, really crap.'

  Perhaps the cat didn't believe him. Certainly it was happy to risk the rain until he threw it a few flakes of cod. 'Thank you,' he said, as it decided to hang around. 'I hate eating alone. The menu isn't what it could be either.' He held up the fish. 'You should try Brenda's on St Mary Street. Much tastier.' He smiled. 'The service isn't bad either. Ask for Patrick.'

  He'd spent the last couple of hours wandering up and down the streets, trying to pick up a trace of chronon particles. He'd hung around the road where Danny Wilkinson's body had been found but, noticing a few curtains beginning to twitch, had decided to head up to the high street and keep his head down for an hour. Last thing he wanted was a slanging match with nosy suburbanites.

  He flung the cat as much of his fish as he could dig free of the batter and ketchup mush he had created and dumped the rest in a wastepaper bin. Digging a wedge of serviettes from his jacket pocket, he began to scrub his hands clean with rainwater and dedication.

  He decided it was probably safe to head back towards the Land of Twitching Curtains. He should give the place another thorough sweep for an hour and then call it quits. Opening his umbrella, he stepped back out into the rain.

  A group of kids were sheltering under the awning of a convenience store. Cigarettes and a two-litre bottle of strong cider passed between their lips, the usual night-time sports whatever part of town you were in. A smart-looking woman gave them a wide berth as she aimed for the store entrance. A couple of wolf whistles followed her inside, but she ignored them.

  'Look at that poof,' one of them said as Ianto walked past. He tried to think of something scathing to shout back, but he could come up with nothing that didn't sound desperate rather than witty, and he didn't want to give them more ammunition.

  He crossed the road and tried to walk as nonchalantly as possible. Ridiculous... He'd faced off alien invasions with a quip and a spring in his step, but put him up against a bunch of chavs and his nerve went. Pathetic.

  He heard them wolf whistle again and turned to see the smart-looking woman leaving the shop with a bottle of wine in her hand. She marched straight into the road, taking as wide an angle away from the kids as she could while still heading home. 'Fancy joining the party?' one of the boys shouted, much to the hilarity of the others. 'Swap you some of your booze for a bit of tongue!' He waggled it for her, but she kept her attention fixed firmly on the road.

  Little bastards. Ianto was walking back towards them when the scanner in his pocket began squealing. The woman stared at him, a hint of panic in her eyes. Ianto clawed the scanner out, trying to look both reassuring and apologetic.

  'The poof's got a rape alarm!' one of the kids shouted. 'He should be so lucky!'

  The scanner was going haywire, and Ianto could make neither head nor tail of what it was trying to tell him. He looked up, hoping to at least reassure the panicking woman. He smiled at her and there was obviously enough sincerity there as she was beginning to smile back when something collided with her from behind. Her body spasmed into a star shape that would have been almost funny were it not for the look on her face and the distinct cracking of bone that carried between the electronic bleeps of the scanner. Her umbrella – a
small affair decorated with autumn leaves – popped into the shape of a cocktail glass and fell from her hand. She appeared to hover for a few seconds, then she fell forwards and began to roll, over and over, coming straight at him.

  The kids outside the shop were running away in the opposite direction, they could see that the night had taken a bad turn and they'd be best placed anywhere but here.

  As the woman drew close, tumbling over herself, arms and legs spinning at angles that proved them free of their sockets, Ianto became aware of another noise between the bleeping of his scanner: the grinding of metal wheels on tracks. There was a taste of ozone on the air, as faint as a memory of childhood fairs.

  Just before the ghost of a tram hit him, Ianto had the good fortune to disappear, leaving behind the woman, who came slowly to a halt as the present day reasserted itself.

  EIGHT

  And still the feeling wouldn't go away. Steve had left for the prior commitment of a pub quiz in town, and Rob was at the point where he was so tired all he could do was stand and stare at the mess around him without being able to usefully interact with it. Last time she'd seen him, he had been staring at a half-built wardrobe, clearly wishing the bloody thing would just have the decency to screw itself together.

  Julia was drinking wine. Not enough to become as wrecked as the house, but enough to make her not care so much about the mess.

  The mess and the ghost.

  Not that she would let herself use that word.

  She kept seeing him, the fat man. She had caught a glimpse of his colourful tie – red paisley, autumnal swirls – while filling the kitchen cupboards with their mismatched crockery. She had seen him in the bathroom mirror as she filled the cupboard with half-full bottles of medicine and ran her thumb across the ageing bristles of their toothbrushes. She had seen him in the shadows of the top-floor landing as she had dumped yet another box of belongings she couldn't face in one of the spare rooms. She had even felt his breath on the back of her neck as she had taken down the thick, musty curtains that hung in the main lounge. It had smelled of fried onions and sweat.

  God, but she wished he would go away.

  Rob rolled the screwdriver from one hand to the other and imagined punching the man who invented flat-pack furniture squarely on the nose. Throwing the screwdriver on the floor, he rubbed at his face and tried to find the energy to get on. He picked up the instructions – which were even more difficult to read now that he had crumpled them into a ball and thrown them across the room – flattened them out and stared at Fig 4b until his brain began to melt.

  He could hear the sound of running water and felt an urge to ditch all this and go and help Julia have the bath she must be running. Better not, she'd only take the mick if he left the wardrobe unfinished.

  Take bolt X and make of insert into apartures F with use of key of provision.

  'Key of provision'? Don't be an idiot, did they think he was stupid enough not to guess that the Allen key wouldn't be in the box as promised? He had a set of his own, thank you very much.

  Making care of not for bend, with end flash agin rear panel, take bolt MM and...

  'And stick it up our translator's arse?' Rob muttered, rubbing his eyes again. It would be easier without the damn things, surely?

  The rush of the bath taps continued to call to him.

  He threw the instructions to the floor and walked over to the wardrobe, placing his hand on one side. It swung into a skewed parallelogram, and he was quick to right it before the strain pulled one of the bolts out of the soft wood. 'Damn thing may as well be made from cardboard,' he muttered, turning the frame around so that he might be able to fix some strengthening slats to the back of it.

  The sound of running water changed from the deep sloshing of a filling bathtub to the patter of water spilling onto wood and tile. It was overflowing.

  'Bloody hell!' Rob growled, his patience finally snapping. The water was bound to soak through and damage the floor below. More work...

  He kicked the wardrobe hard in his anger, almost relishing the sound of splitting chipboard as he stormed out of the bedroom. He drew to a halt on the landing as he realised the sound of water wasn't coming from the bathroom but rather the spare bedroom. He changed direction, opened the door and stared at the impossibility that flooded the room beyond it. He could see a bathtub, a big old metal affair, overflowing with the water that rushed into it from ghostly taps. He looked down at his feet and watched the impossible water touch the toes of his boots and then roll around them as it found its way past, flowing beyond him and towards the open door. He lifted his foot and the water actually dripped, thick like mercury, from the bottom of his boot. He rubbed the sole. It felt dry. Suddenly his entire body cramped and then, right in front of him, having walked through him, was a naked woman. She walked towards the bathtub, stepped inside, dropped to her knees and then opened her hand to reveal the glint of a razor blade.

  'Don't...' Rob whispered, stepping forward even as the image of the woman lowered her arms into the warmth of the water and began to cut. He tried to grab at her but her flesh slipped through his fingers with the stinging sensation of stroking a nettle. Blood began to fill the tub and she turned and lay back in the water so that he was leaning over her like a lover. He dropped to his knees, tears coming to his eyes as he continued to try and grab the dying woman in front of him.

  'Julia!' he shouted, though whether he wanted her to help or simply to prove that what he was seeing wasn't for his eyes alone, he couldn't say. 'Julia!'

  She appeared at the doorway behind him, her hand shooting to her mouth to stifle a shout. That was all the proof he needed that she shared this hallucination. He became aware of the feeling of water on the palms of his hands, the soft brush of the woman's skin, as if she were becoming more real... He looked down and watched as a damp shadow of water spread across the legs of his jeans and the belly of his shirt. He made another grab at the woman and the water exploded around him, splashing his face and blooding his tongue with the taste of copper, before it vanished leaving him soaking wet in a bone-dry room.

  'You saw that?' he asked Julia once he could find the strength of mind to speak.

  'Yes,' she replied, but could think of nothing else to say.

  They stayed there in silence for a few minutes, Julia watching as Rob started to shiver in the cooling, impossible water that covered him from head to toe. Thinking of something she could do, she left the doorway and went to the airing cupboard for a towel. Opening the door, her shocked silence snapped and she screamed as a well-dressed young man fell out of the airing cupboard and onto the floor at her feet.

  NINE

  Gwen parked the car and sat for a few minutes watching the rain paint patterns with the streetlights on the windscreen.

  She often sat in the car for a while before going up to the flat she shared with Rhys. These few minutes of silence were an emotional airlock between her working life with Torchwood and her marriage. When she had first started, she had found it near impossible to keep the two apart in her head. After joining the police force, she had gone through a period of fear that was common in new recruits: the job gave you a heightened awareness of what bad things the world could offer and the result was that, for a while at least, you became convinced danger was around every corner. That feeling had trebled when joining Torchwood. She would watch Rhys sleeping and imagine him a mess of Weevil bites. It just felt so damn dangerous in Cardiff, and she couldn't quite believe that the violence wouldn't reach them. How could it not? It was everywhere...

  She had calmed down eventually of course. She would have gone mad otherwise. When your day can be anything from the living dead to extraterrestrial infections, you need to be able to compartmentalise. This was part of that, just leaning back in the car seat, closing her eyes and pushing it all away. Today, the image that stuck to the back of her eyes, like chewing gum, was that of Danny Wilkinson's serrated teeth as they tried to chew their way through tarmac. She had seen worse t
hings, but there was something about it that made her belly churn more than normal. It was a pain she could almost relate to... Almost. There was the smell of Gloria's body too, a black sweetness that clung at the back of her throat. She bit her lip, forcing the thought away before it made her gag.

  She ferreted in the door compartments for a brolly but came up with nothing more useful than an empty water bottle and a crisp packet. Grabbing them for the bin, she opened the door and made a dash for dryness.

  Upstairs, having been alerted by the sound of the car engine, Rhys watched Gwen out of the window, as he opened a bottle of chilled Sauvignon Blanc – her favourite, so why would he buy anything else? He'd noticed a long time ago how she sat outside for ages after returning from work. The first time he'd caught her at it, he'd been terrified, his head buzzing with all the imagined reasons she might be nervous about coming in. Convinced she was going to confess to an affair by the time she finally appeared, he'd been on edge all night, snappy with her, waiting for the axe to fall. Of course it never had. Wasn't he always his own worst enemy in the end?

  He poured two glasses of wine as he heard her feet on the stairs and the involuntary moan as she shook cold rainwater from her hair. As the door opened, he put a glass in her hand and a kiss on her lips.

  'Now that's service!' she laughed, still pulling her damp hair away from her face.

  'Damn right. Now sit down, and I'll fetch a towel for your hair.'

  She took off her boots and did as he asked, taking a sip of the chilled wine and nudging the James Bond boxed set that was on the carpet with her foot.

  'Been getting pointers?' she asked as he came back with the towel.

  'Eh?'

  She nodded at the DVDs.

  'Oh, aye... Passes the time while you're saving the world.' He smiled and draped the towel over her head. 'Have you?'

  'Have I what?' she replied rubbing at her wet hair.

  'Saved the world of course? It happens so often I sometimes forget to ask.' He grinned as he headed to the kitchen.