‘Stop,’ said Andy, pointing to the corner of the screen as the librarian came into view. ‘Can you get any closer?’
Tommy zoomed in on the librarian’s shoulder’s and the side of her face.
‘Jesus! What the hell?’ said Tommy.
‘That girl didn’t hurt the librarian,’ said Andy, staring at the blurry angle of the side of the librarian’s face, and what looked like the librarian’s eyeball resting on her cheek. ‘I think the girl was trying to restrain the librarian. Stop her from mutilating any more of her own face.’
‘Now that’s seriously messed up.’
‘Seriously,’ said Andy.
27
GWEN BLINKED FAST, shaking her head, but she kept her gun pointed at Rhys, ignoring her daughter teetering against the door jamb.
‘I think I need to go,’ Gwen said, the words coming out in a strange squeaky pitch. But instead of taking a step back, Gwen took two steps towards Rhys, making any shot she took at him sure to hit Anwen too.
Keeping his eye on Gwen, Rhys shifted over to the centre of the hallway, his arm a dead weight against his side, his fingers throbbing. If he could keep Gwen talking, maybe she’d come to her senses, but he still had to get Anwen out of the line of fire.
‘What’re you thinking you want to do here, Gwen, love?’ he asked taking two steps back towards the living room door where Anwen was playing with the fringes on the end of the carpet runner.
‘You need to give me time to think. I need time to think!’ Gwen said, her voice heavy with rage. ‘Let. Me. Think!’ She banged the side of the gun off the side of her head. One, two, three times, as if she was trying to pound sense into it. Rhys gasped, horrified the gun might go off, but before he could move, Gwen turned it back on him.
Holding the gun steady, she aimed at his chest, but her gaze was locked on a point directly over his shoulder. Gwen’s concentration was so fierce that Rhys was sure someone was standing behind him.
Gwen was now muttering under her breath as if she was talking to someone, having an angry conversation that wasn’t going her way. Gesticulating wildly, she began to toss the gun back and forth from her left to her right hand as if someone was trying to grab it from her.
With his wife’s focus distracted, Rhys decided this might be his only chance to move. But which way? Forward to try to disarm Gwen, risk her firing the gun and Anwen becoming collateral damage? Or backwards, remove Anwen from the situation, and take his chances with Gwen and the gun?
Gwen steadied the gun at Rhys’s head. She released the safety. Rhys made his decision. He pivoted, reached down and shoved Anwen onto the living room floor, then reached back, slamming the door quickly, praying she’d be safer loose in the living room than in the hallway with her deranged mother.
Gwen screamed, ‘No! No!’
The gun edged up a little and she fired, shattering the mirror behind Rhys. He threw himself to the floor. Gwen fired again. Rhys rolled against the door to the basement, cracking his shoulder against the hard wood. Still screaming, Gwen fired wide and missed again.
Stunned, Rhys understood what she was doing. Gwen was fighting with herself, her face twitching madly, her eyes narrowed one second and then wide and panicked the next, trying desperately to stop whatever was in her head telling her to shoot her husband.
Cowering in the corner, Rhys watched helplessly as the angry Gwen took aim at his head. The Gwen who loved him, who adored their daughter, was not winning this fight.
A horrified expression crossed Gwen’s face. Her shoulders stiffened, her head tensed, and with blood trickling down her arm, she tightened both hands on the grip of the gun. Her stance wavered a fraction of an inch. Gwen’s face reddened, her concentration bulging the veins on her neck. She fired.
The shot went high. Rhys scrambled further into the shadows, broken glass stabbing into his knees. At least if she keeps shooting at me, he thought, she can’t hurt Anwen.
‘Stop moving, you stupid, stupid man.’ Gwen’s voice was a low growl. ‘You’re only making this harder on yourself.’
Rhys clambered up and stepped out of the corner. ‘Gwen, you’ve got to try to fight this… whatever this is that’s telling you to hurt me. You need to think about all of the good times we’ve had together and all of the good times that we can have with Anwen.’
‘Will you please shut up, Rhys,’ Gwen sobbed, the gun shaking in her trembling hands. ‘It’s just all so sour. Nothing matters any more.’
Gwen lifted the gun, aiming directly at Rhys’s chest. This time there was no chance she’d miss.
‘I love you, Gwen Cooper.’
Gwen fired. Rhys jumped. Gwen’s shoulder jerked forward and she collapsed at Rhys’s feet. He lunged for Gwen’s gun, prising it from her fingers and tossing it over her body to the tall figure in the military coat who loomed in the doorway.
Holstering his Webley, Jack Harkness rushed to Gwen’s side.
‘Why’d you wait so bloody long?’ screamed Rhys, clambering into the living room to rescue Anwen. ‘I spotted you through the window when I put Anwen in here.’ Rhys pressed his frightened daughter to his chest. ‘She could have killed me, you bastard.’
Jack smiled and shrugged, kneeling next to Gwen, who had hit her temple on the floor when she went down and was moaning, drifting in and out of consciousness. Checking her pulse, Jack sighed with relief. It was strong.
Rhys glared at him. If it hadn’t been for Anwen, he’d have bloody well punched the sod.
‘I had to be sure she was really going to shoot you, didn’t I?’ said Jack, grinning. ‘I couldn’t risk shooting Gwen for no good reason. I like her better than you, remember?’
‘You’re still a bastard, you know that,’ hissed Rhys, keeping his attention on Anwen who had spotted her wounded mother lying on the hallway floor. ‘But thank you.’
‘Mummy sleeping?’
‘Yes, Anwen, your mummy’s sleeping,’ shushed Jack, taking off his coat and placing it carefully under Gwen’s head. ‘We need to get her to the hospital. This is a nasty wound on her head and her shoulder’s going to need a little work.’
‘I think it’ll have to be a prison ward,’ said Andy’s familiar voice from the front door. ‘I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I need to arrest Gwen.’
28
WHILE ANDY RADIOED for an ambulance, Rhys called Mary and told her what had happened to Gwen, giving as few details as possible.
While they waited, Jack sat at Gwen’s side and Rhys paced the floor with Anwen drowsy on his shoulder.
‘You could put Anwen in her cot,’ said Jack. ‘I’m not going anywhere. I’m sure Gwen’s going to be OK.’
‘I’m not leaving you alone with my wife! You might shoot her again.’
‘Hey, don’t forget it was you she was trying to kill, not me.’
‘Gwen’s been acting really strange for a few days now,’ said Rhys. ‘I don’t know what’s got into her.’
‘It not just Gwen,’ said Andy.
‘What do you mean?’ said Jack, already working through possible scenarios in his own mind for what might have driven Gwen to such violence. As the sirens grew louder, Jack saw yellow dots bounce in his peripheral vision.
Andy filled them in on what he’d learned at the station, why he had to arrest Gwen and the strange pattern he’d uncovered of other women in the area losing their marbles. ‘And it’s not just that they’ve gone a bit balmy,’ added Andy. ‘They also hurt themselves in pretty disgusting ways.’
The arrival of an ambulance and two panda cars interrupted him. ‘I’ll ride with you and Gwen to the hospital,’ Andy said to Rhys, ‘and then we’ll see where to go from there. But it makes you wonder, doesn’t it?’
‘Wonder what?’ asked Rhys.
‘Well, if maybe there’s something in the water that’s making women, you know, bonkers.’
Jack hid a wince at Andy’s expression. ‘How many other women did you say have lost their senses and mutilated themselves?’
he asked carefully.
‘Since yesterday,’ said Andy, ‘three more round here and at least three or four further north. Could be more by now.’
‘I’m pretty sure,’ said Jack, checking Gwen’s pulse again, then packing a second clean tea towel against the wound on her shoulder, ‘that whatever’s going on, it’s not in the water. But when you get back to the station, Andy, you might want to alert everyone to a possible increase in domestic violence.’ He paused, grinning at Rhys. ‘I’m guessing Gwen might not be the only wife who wants to shoot her husband.’
‘Very funny,’ said Rhys. ‘Since you’re so smart, what do you think’s happening?’
Before Jack could answer, Gwen moaned and slowly opened her eyes. Jack tasted peaches. He loved peaches, but he hadn’t been thinking about them at all. He wasn’t even hungry.
Gwen stared up at Jack, gasped, panicked, tried to sit up, but couldn’t. ‘What happened?’ She whimpered, her memory flooding back, her eyes widening. She cried out, touching her hand to the wound on her shoulder, grimacing at the sopping towel.
Rhys crouched next to her. ‘I’m here, love. So’s Anwen, and we’re both OK. Really.’
Gwen burst into tears, looking first at Rhys, then at Anwen, and finally back at Jack. Outside, two medics were dashing towards the front door, a police constable jogging behind them.
‘Who shot me?’
‘I did,’ nodded Jack, sweeping her damp fringe off her face.
‘I guess it was my turn,’ said Gwen, taking Jack’s hand and squeezing it. Then her eyes fluttered closed and she drifted once again to unconsciousness.
As Jack released Gwen’s hand, he noticed her forearm was bleeding. ‘What happened here?’ He rolled up her sleeve, staring at a recent wound sliced into her arm.
‘Christ,’ said Rhys, his face draining of colour. ‘That must have been what she was doing in the bathroom. She was cutting herself.’
Jack slid his phone from his pocket and before the medics insisted he get out of their way, he clicked a picture of the three overlapping circles Gwen had razored into her flesh.
*
Later, Jack sat in the house waiting for Mary to arrive. He struggled to remember where he’d seen that shape tattooed on Gwen’s arm before. On his phone, he looked more closely at the design, puzzled.
With Anwen playing at his feet, Jack sketched the shape on a sheet of paper, over and over again. He stared at it intently, ran his fingers over it, feeling a familiarity with its overlapping lines and its strange ancient aesthetic, but whenever he thought he had a sense of where he’d seen it before and what it meant, whenever he tried to concentrate, to get his mind to snag the memory, it was useless. Whatever this image was, it kept collapsing under his scrutiny.
The Ice Maiden
29
North Atlantic, same day as the supermarket incident
A FIERCE STORM was buffeting the Ice Maiden, a survey ship trawling in the North Sea near the cusp of the Skaggerak Strait. Henry ‘Cash’ Collins, a brick-house Scotsman – handsome, solid, dependable – stood in the wheelhouse, tucking his flannel shirt into his unzipped jeans, an unlit cigar clamped between his teeth. He checked the radar one more time to be sure. This one was going to be bad. He could feel it in his arthritic knees. Pressing a button on the control panel, he gave the orders to lock the ship down.
The Ice Maiden was a beam trawler, equipped to navigate the violent northern seas. Years earlier, Cash and his father had dragged for blue-mouthed redfish in between survey trips for British Petroleum and Exxon – plus more than a few covert drilling operations around the globe for organisations only one or two folks knew about. When his father died, Cash changed the ship’s name, retrofitted it with air cannons, state-of-the-art sonar trawls, acoustic sensors and a full deck of mostly illegal electronic equipment, chartering the Ice Maiden’s services out to oceanic and geology departments of universities and scientific institutes. Only on the rare instances when he needed money would Cash prostitute the trawler’s services to a government or an agency that wanted a mission run under the radar.
This was one of those times.
Cash’s principles had nothing to do with his politics, which were situational, and everything to do with his intense-to-the point-of-obsessive curiosity about the world’s oceans. Henry ‘Cash’ Collins had never met an authority figure he could stomach for more than ten minutes, including, if truth be told, his own father.
Before the storm hit, Cash had been losing a game of strip poker to his second-in command, and current ex-wife, Dana, the daughter of a Swedish shipping magnate. Dana was tall and athletic with short blonde hair. She had once worked with MI5 on a mission using the Ice Maiden. She now considered the ship her home, loving it as much as, if not a wee bit more than, she loved Cash.
Clipped to a safety harness out on the aft deck in full storm gear – a hooded slicker, thigh-high black wellingtons and skintight black rubber trousers – Dana looked like a lanky teenager dressed as a Storm Trooper as she punched through the driving wind and sheets of rain to reach the main sonar winch. Cash was watching her from the wheelhouse, realising, and not for the first time, that he’d really screwed up when he’d, well, really screwed up.
Cash had already secured the computer gear in the wheelhouse with two of the trawler’s crew, Nick Finley and Byron Austin. Both had been dishonourably discharged from the US Navy for dealing in contraband prescription drugs.
Finn was a wiry Irish-American, whose nickname was not only a natural result of his surname, but also because he’d spent most of his young adult life negotiating the treacherous waters of the Baltimore docks, where only sharks survived. Using a brick-sized remote control, Finn was now locking down and securing the satellite dish.
His colleague Byron was an African-American from Chicago, whose grandfather had served with Cash’s father in the Second World War. He was double-checking their munitions hold. Given the increase in piracy in many of the oceans in which the Ice Maiden had sailed recently, their weapons were as important as any of their sophisticated sonar and computer equipment.
Below deck, the ship’s cook, a dangerous-looking ex-shrimp boater from New Orleans named Hollis, and the head engineer, a lithe Canadian named Sam, were ignoring the boat’s increasingly rolling gait. They were watching a football match on the flat screen bolted to the wall. When Finn shut down the satellite dish, a wave of static rippled across the television and the picture went black.
‘Well, Jesus, marry my mother and have a cow,’ said Hollis, his southern accent at its thickest when he was pissed. He pushed away from the table and walked to the door, his legs steady despite the ship’s rocking movement. He looked both ways down the empty passageway, then lifted the com unit from the wall and depressed the button. He listened for a few seconds.
‘No one in the wheel house,’ he said, returning to his beer and to Sam, who was shuffling a deck of cards.
‘A storm,’ said Sam, who’d been raised in a commune outside San Francisco, cultivating hemp and sixteen varieties of tomatoes. Sam had a chip on his shoulder the size of Mount Rushmore and hated any conversations that required he talk about his hippy family or his mixed racial ethnicity. He was the perfect recruit for this crew, a man with no real ties to a country and a conscience easily adapted to the needs of a situation. ‘I heard the whistle in the boiler room. Could be a long cold night.’
‘So what’ll it be, then?’ asked Sam, arching his eyebrows. ‘Poker, a movie or what?’
Hollis grinned at him, a smile that could sink ships. ‘Oh, ah’m thinking the “or what”.’
‘Or what, nothing,’ said Dana, stepping into the room, stripping off her wet gear until she stood in front of them in damp long-johns, her short hair plastered to her head. ‘Cash and I haven’t eaten since breakfast and this storm’s already on us. We need all hands on deck, boys, not on each other.’
‘Dana, darlin’,’ said Hollis, stepping around Sam but not without giving him a light slap on
his cheek. ‘Your meal’s right here, hon, hot and delicious,’ he turned and winked at Sam, ‘like me.’ He slid two lidded plates from the galley’s top oven. ‘Anyway, Cash always thinks the worst of any storm.’
Sam began shuffling the cards as Cash stepped into the mess, handed Dana a thick towel and accepted his plate from Hollis.
‘Poker, it is,’ said Sam.
*
While at sea, the Ice Maiden flew under the research flag of the United Nations, a banner that afforded her a certain camouflaged mobility, but when they docked for supplies they displayed either the New Zealand stars or the Canadian maple leaf, both about the most friendly non-combative symbols and nations’ flags under which you could fly.
With the exception of Cash, and, so everyone in the crew assumed, Dana too, the rest of the group did not know what (or who) was funding this latest enterprise. Since the mission began, the crew’s wages had been deposited into their accounts from an organisation called the International Institute of Geological Defense with an IP address and a PO Box that suggested headquarters in the Faroe Islands and Puerto Rico. The benefits were generous, and although the ship’s shell and hull had seen better days, the deposit from this current mission had meant Cash could afford a long overdue upgrade to his crew’s quarters, the facilities in the kitchen, and one or two pieces of sophisticated (and once again illegal) trawling equipment he’d been eyeing for a long time.
For this mission, the crew of the Ice Maiden had been tasked to monitor the earth’s oceans like a newborn, checking her temperatures from every possible geological angle, observing the slightest changes in wind currents, charting weather patterns and tidal changes, migration shifts and marine population fluctuations. In the past months the crew had sunk so many devices deep into the oceans and recorded so many sonograms from the Indian Ocean to the South Pacific from the Antarctic to the North Atlantic that the Ice Maiden had gathered an overwhelming mass of data. Cash had been transmitting their findings to the Institute for Geological Defense, but he doubted that anyone, even there, could possibly be making any sense of it.
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