by Gary Russell
‘Me neither. So why am I terrified of going into Tretarri?’
Gwen looked at him as he drove. ‘My God, you are.’
Ianto was sweating profusely and was looking decidedly green around the gills. ‘I don’t know why,’ he moaned. ‘I know this is completely irrational, I keep saying to myself this is completely irrational but I’m pretty much bricking it.’ He looked at her quickly. ‘Sorry.’
She held a hand up. ‘Not a problem. You want me to drive?’
‘No, nearly there.’ He pointed ahead. ‘Years ago, there were plans to bulldoze this place, create a Cardiff Bay Retail Park rail station.’
‘What happened?’
‘Plans got bulldozed instead. How many Earth pennies d’you want to bet that if we found the sign-off form blocking it, it’d have Bilis’s signature on the bottom?’
‘Oh I think you’d win that one fair and square.’
Ianto stopped the SUV near the retail park and suggested they walk the rest of the way. They went past the gasometer, and Gwen noticed the giant furniture store where Rhys had wanted to buy that hideous cream leather sofa. Apparently, he’d always liked the Swedes – although she was gratified to learn when they were at uni that he wasn’t a great fan of Abba, since men at uni who were Abba fans tended not to be interested in Gwen. Or women generally. ‘Do you like Abba?’ she found herself asking Ianto. As non sequiturs went, it was a good one.
He looked at her. ‘Is this going to lead to a “Jack” conversation?’
‘No.’
‘Fine. Then I admire the Andersson/Ulvaeus writing partnership as craftsmen and songsmiths. I believe “One Of Us” may be the best song written about relationship breakups ever, and I have a soft spot for the fusion of witty lyrical content and poptastic danceability of “Voulez-Vous”, but let me make this absolutely clear: I bloody loathe “Dancing Queen”. All right?’
Gwen stopped walking and just looked at him.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘You’ve had this conversation before, haven’t you?’
‘Might have.’
‘Jack?’
‘You honestly think Jack knows anything about music after 1948?’
‘Who then?’
‘Doesn’t matter.’
‘Who?’ She starting walking again. ‘Come on. I might die tonight, never knowing.’
‘Me mam.’
‘Aww. When she found out about Jack?’
‘When I was fourteen.’
Gwen stopped again. ‘I dunno which scares me more – that your mam worked you out ten years before you did, or that the fourteen-year-old Ianto Jones used the phrase “poptastic danceability” without getting beaten up.’
Ianto stopped suddenly. ‘She didn’t work me out, Gwen. No one has. And if I ever do, I’ll let you know.’
Gwen smiled, nudged his arm. ‘Oh come on, smile. Lisa, Jack… being bisexual is hardly a crime. Best of both worlds, isn’t it?’
And Ianto pushed her away. ‘No, Gwen. No, really it’s bloody not. It’s the worst of any world because you don’t really belong anywhere, because you are never sure of yourself or those around you. You can’t trust in anyone, their motives or their intentions. And because of that, you have, in a world that likes its nice shiny labels, no true identity. For Torchwood’s “Little Miss Sensitive”, you don’t half talk crap sometimes. So do me a favour and shut up about it, all right?’
They didn’t speak again till they reached Tretarri.
Gwen had planned to make straight for Coburg Street, but now she was wondering if it would be better to let Ianto take charge for once. She had been stung by his response, but she was also a bit alarmed. Ianto, the least highly strung of the team, seemed to be really ready to fly off the handle. She hoped that was something to do with the Tretarri effect and not a symptom of anything deeper.
‘Where shall we start?’ he said suddenly.
Gwen pointed down Coburg Street. ‘You up for a bit of ghost-hunting?’
‘No, but let’s go anyway. I want to find Tosh.’
They made their way down the darkened streets, wary and alert. Ianto knelt down to the pavement. ‘Freshly laid brickwork, and these uplighters are new, too.’
‘Gonna look nice when it’s all lit up, then,’ said Gwen.
‘Why here, though? I mean there are areas in Cardiff that need this treatment more than this old place. Places where real people live real lives.’ Ianto straightened up, and tapped a notice taped to a lamp-post. ‘Big street party, tomorrow at midday.’ He stopped and looked about them. ‘Gwen, this is weird.’
‘Why?’
‘I was here yesterday. With Jack. None of this was done, it was still a wreck. How do you renovate an entire block like this in one day?’
‘With skill, expertise and a degree of savoir faire.’
They had their guns drawn and aimed at Bilis Manger before he’d finished speaking.
‘Oh my,’ he said. ‘You do seem to always want to point guns at me. And I don’t really see the need.’
‘Where’s Toshiko Sato?’ demanded Gwen.
‘Safe.’
‘Yeah, cos I’m really gonna believe that.’
Bilis walked towards her and Gwen found that she couldn’t take her eyes off him, couldn’t fire her gun, couldn’t move.
Her eyes flicked sideways. Ianto was the same, a statue, looking ahead, even though Bilis was parallel to him now, next to her.
‘Let me show you how safe she is,’ he purred and clicked his fingers.
Some way away, the door to number 6 opened, and Gwen could see a figure walking down the steps, almost as if in a trance.
It was Toshiko, though. Gwen knew that from her outline, the slight sashay to her steps. And she gasped as Toshiko turned towards them.
Half her face, her right, was painted white, and her eye had livid red streaks, outlined in gold, three going up, three down, like fire, or blood. And her lips were whitened, too. And there was something in the way she stood…
Gwen wanted to call out to her, but her mouth wouldn’t work. And now she couldn’t even blink.
‘It’s a trap you see,’ Bilis whispered in her ear. ‘A trap for the man you call Captain Jack Harkness, but known to me as… Well, no, that’s between us. And you, Gwen Elisabeth Cooper, you are the bait.’
He reached over and eased the gun out of her hand and held it aloft. It vanished, just as she’d seen Bilis himself do before. Then Bilis stepped right into her field of vision, obscuring both Ianto and Tosh.
His eyes were gone, replaced by a blazing white light that seemed so strong it was going to burn its way out of his skull.
‘The war between the Dark and the Light is never ending, Gwen. And I can only apologise – if there was any way I could avoid doing this, I would strive to find it. But I can’t. I’m as much a victim in this as you.’
He took her hands in his. And leaned right in to her face, his white eyes roaring with the power contained there.
‘I’m sorry. I am really very sorry.’
FOURTEEN
Ianto Jones was screaming inside. And there was nothing he could do; he couldn’t move, couldn’t seem to blink.
He was aware Bilis was close to Gwen, but couldn’t turn to see what he was doing.
Then he saw Toshiko, half her face painted white. And red.
Bilis entered his field of vision.
‘What have you done to Gwen?’ Ianto shouted internally, but his mouth, his vocal cords, possibly even his lungs, weren’t moving.
What had Bilis done? How had he done it?
Ianto’s gun just vanished. One second it was there, the next he could feel it was gone.
Feel. So he could still feel, which meant that his nerves worked, which meant that muscles worked on some basic level which meant—
‘Oh, do stop fretting,’ Bilis smiled. ‘So much noise in your head. And so many histories tell us that, in your brief Torchwood career, they always thought you were the quiet one. The o
ne who wouldn’t say “boo” to a goose. I wonder if they ever knew you, Ianto. I wonder if Jack Harkness ever knew you.’
Ianto felt Bilis take his hands.
‘I don’t want to do this, you have to believe that. But there is a good reason. A very good reason. Good for me, anyway. You see, one man’s light is another man’s dark.’ He squeezed Ianto’s hands. ‘But for what it’s worth, I’m awfully sorry.’
As Bilis leaned in, Ianto got a glimpse of Toshiko. The white make-up seemed somehow alive, stretching right across her face. The last he saw of her, her whole face had become white: white skin, white lips; the only colour was the livid red and gold tearing from above and below her closed eyes. Her hair was moving, bunching, and, on either side of her head, hanging from the front of her hair, two cloth rollers. At the back were two long pins, forming the top of an X at the back of her head.
Then Bilis’s head blotted out Ianto’s view, and all he could see was the old man’s face obscured by a fierce light that raged across his face, leaping from his eyes.
And Ianto was screaming again.
Jack stood inside the great Victorian morgue that dominated the basement area many levels beneath the Autopsy Room. He was facing that special row of trays that contained past Torchwood members.
According to Ianto’s notes, Tray 18 was designated for Gregory Phillip Bishop, who was reported dead in late 1941. Of course there was no body in the tray, but Ianto wouldn’t have known that.
At least Jack hoped Ianto didn’t know that. If he did, it would suggest a somewhat unhealthy obsession with frozen bodies, and that was an area even Jack didn’t venture into.
‘Gotta have some standards,’ he thought wryly.
With a deep breath, Jack looked at Tray 78 (most of the Trays were deliberately non-sequential to prevent someone grave-robbing an entire Torchwood team’s past in one fell swoop).
‘Hello, Dr Brennan,’ he said quietly to the tray marked up as Matilda B Brennan. ‘It’s been a while. I wish I could speak with you, find out why you made a deal with the devil. Wonder if you knew who or what Bilis Manger was back then. And if you did, I sure as hell wish you could tell me now.’
He wrenched the tray out, knowing what he’d find in the black body bag. After all, he’d helped Rhydian clear up after the event, so he’d actually placed Tilda’s corpse in there.
The alien cryo-tech that Torchwood used to freeze the dead was something Jack had never truly understood. He doubted anyone had, least of all Charlie Gaskill’s team that had first discovered and utilised it in 1906. Nevertheless, Jack knew it was an important part of their arsenal – one day, a way might be found to bring back an operative who could help a current case. It was something, like an early death, all Torchwood staff were prepared for.
Tilda Brennan wouldn’t be brought back – being minus the top half of your head kind of ruled that out – but it wasn’t her body he wanted. It was the scorched remains of the diary he’d secreted there with her, knowing that one day the ‘Revenge for the Future’ schtick would come back and haunt him.
And here it was. In the form of the enigmatic Bilis Manger, time-hopping killer and bon vivant, charm and danger all contained in the apparently frail body of an old man.
They’d first met in 1941, and again when Bilis had released Abaddon, but Jack still had no idea who the man actually was. He seemed human enough, so he got his abilities (Jack refused to think of them as powers, that sounded like something out of a comic book) from somewhere else. Bilis worshipped Abaddon, and Jack had destroyed ‘the Great Devourer’, but there had to be more to it than that. This was no two-bit villain with one ambition in life – he was simply too good for that.
A mercenary? A man from the future, living in the past? A really, really well-disguised alien?
The solution that nagged at Jack’s conscious mind more than any other was the most disturbing. What if Bilis was a Torchwood officer, not from Cardiff (Ianto had checked, double-checked and checked forty times more) but from Glasgow? From the Institute in London? Or, God help them, from Torchwood Four. That wasn’t a pretty thought.
He’d demonstrated the ability to plant false images of the future into people’s heads. Poor Gwen had fallen for it when Bilis told her Rhys was going to die – and then killed him, knowing that Gwen would open the Rift to bring him back (which it had – but bringing Abaddon along for the ride). He knew from conversations with the others that they’d seen the people that they most missed from their pasts come back too, solid projections that Bilis had controlled and manipulated, suggesting a deep-rooted knowledge of his team. And also the ability to spy on them as, in Owen’s case, the image he’d seen had been of someone he’d lost so very recently.
So, he knew what Bilis could do, just not why and how.
‘Great investigator, Jack,’ he muttered. ‘I thought “Revenge for the Future” referred to Abaddon. But what if it’s more?’
He tapped his ear, activating the almost invisible communications device everyone in Torchwood wore. ‘Owen?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Watcha doing?’
‘Testing your blood for those chronon particles you asked about. Whatever they are. I mean, I know what they are, theoretically, but forgive me for being a doctor – and a bloody good one at that – but I like to work with realities rather than fantasy.’
‘You wound me, Owen,’ laughed Jack. ‘What am I if not your fantasy?’
‘A right pain in the arse, Jack, that’s what you are. And I don’t mean that in a way you’d find charming, before you ask. What do you want?’
‘I’m heading out. I’ve read everything Ianto found for me and have a few ideas zooming about my head, but I need more. I need to find me an expert on old books. And I know just the guy.’
‘See yas,’ said Owen and broke comms.
Jack took one of the back routes out of the base, bypassing the Hub and walking up a long, long (really quite long) flight of stairs that brought him out behind Ianto’s tourist information office. He went through the little room and out into the night air.
People were milling around by the big pub above the doorway, whilst others were flocking to the Turkish restaurant that stood over the water. There was the faux French restaurant (good chain, Jack quite liked the flans and quiches they did), a couple of Italians on the upper level, and a number of bars, coffee houses and, down Bute Street, a series of shops, galleries and even a comedy club.
Fifty years ago, he’d walked an alien disguised as an evacuee child along here, all mud flats and dampness. The warehouse that the Hub was accessed by in 1941 had long since been demolished, and roughly where it stood there was now a pizza parlour. Whenever Jack went in there, it always seemed to be full of very tall Welshmen with booming voices, entertaining their diminutive Welsh mothers, with their soft sing-song voices. Jack loved Wales, the Welsh, the whole spirit and pizzazz of the place. If he had to spend 150 years somewhere on Earth, there were worse places he could’ve gone.
Imagine if there’d been a space-time rift in Swindon. Of course Swindon was quite nice, and certainly had an interesting roundabout system that could fool any passing aliens, but Torchwood Swindon didn’t have the right ring to it.
Or the nice bay.
Jack passed the bars and hotels of Bute Street, stopped off at Jubilee Pizza (not as nice as the restaurant in the Bay, obviously, but faster for takeaway) and towards one of the recent housing developments, Century Wharf, a strange riverside collection of apartments that could never quite make up its mind if it was in Butetown or Grangetown – not that it really mattered greatly.
He wandered into the gated community, his wrist-strap controls overriding the electronic ‘Residents Only’ security system, and headed towards the block he wanted.
He buzzed the number, knowing that it had a video entryphone and he’d get short shrift once the occupant saw who he was.
Charm offensive, Jack. Gets ’em every time.
‘Hey, it’s me,’ he sai
d when the buzzer was answered.
There was a beat, followed by a command to go away that could’ve been termed more politely.
‘I brought dinner,’ Jack added, and waved the pizza at the camera. ‘Hawaiian, with extra mushroom.’
The door clicked and Jack was in. He took the stairs, and was soon on the fourth floor.
The door to the apartment was open, and Jack went in, noting the smell of freshly showered human male. A couple of uplighter lamps illuminated a large living room with three glass doors overlooking the River Taff and the city beyond, lit up like it was Christmas.
Idris was in a dressing gown, hair damp. He wasn’t smiling.
‘What do you want?’
Jack offered the pizza box, which Idris took and opened, yanking off a sliver and eating it.
‘Yeah. Good food,’ Idris said. ‘So, what do you want?’
‘A slice of pizza?’
‘Get your own.’ Idris ate another bit.
Jack pulled the book out of his coat pocket.
‘I have people in trouble. I need answers about this book.’
‘It’s a diary,’ Idris said without touching it. ‘Broken lock, so personal. I imagine it’s not yours.’
‘It is now.’
Idris rinsed his hands in the sink, dried them thoroughly and sat down at the kitchen table, switching the overhead lights on.
He flicked quickly through the burnt diary, not bothering to comment on the damage.
‘Well?’
Idris shrugged. ‘Well what? You want first impressions? I’d have thought you had the technology at Torchwood to tell you everything you needed to know.’
‘Those people in trouble? One of them’s Toshiko Sato. She’d be the one to tell me what I’m having to ask you.’
Idris frowned. ‘Japanese girl, parents used to be something in the military. She used to be at some low-rated MoD place, yeah?’
‘You know my staff?’
‘I know my job,’ Idris snapped. ‘Keeping a step ahead of you is impossible, but knowing who your people are, that’s a work in progress.’ He tapped the diary. ‘Overlooking its charred state, it’s a diary. Probably Edwardian, the cover’s faux leather, the locking mechanism, a bit later, 1920s perhaps, replacing the original.’