‘Appropriately informative and necessarily vague,’ he said when he’d finished.
‘Perfect.’
39
RHYS WAS SLUMPED at the Coopers’ kitchen table, a half-finished beer next to him. His wrist was in a cast, his eyes red-rimmed, his left one circled in purples and yellows. Panic and worry were the only things keeping him from collapsing from exhaustion.
Gwen’s attack on Rhys, her subsequent arrest and now her escape from the hospital had made the national news – ‘Madwoman on the Loose’ – including the drive-time phone-in show on Red Dragon radio that had been debating her plight with a variety of mostly uninformed sources. One of the callers claimed to have a contact in the Welsh police department who revealed that ‘This Cooper girl is a violent nutter that should have been sent straight to jail’ and that ‘the police should be taking a much tougher stance on these attacks, but they aren’t because they were women what was doing them.’ Within hours, this supposed leak had scratched and clawed its way up to Andy’s superiors, who wanted to know what the hell was being done to find Gwen.
Andy had returned to Swansea after his afternoon shift with more information for Jack about the other women who’d experienced public breakdowns around the same time as Gwen’s. He had promised more help that night, but since the ‘leak’ he’d been reassigned to set up a phone bank, taking tips on sightings of Gwen. The news that these breakdowns were now worldwide was sinking in and had also resulted in a deluge of calls from men and women in the area wanting to report their own family members for being ‘off their effing rockers’.
Jack poured Rhys another beer, setting it next to a frozen dinner he had zapped in the microwave. ‘Andy has squads monitoring the motorway, Cardiff airport, the train stations and all the ports. If Gwen tries to leave Wales, he’ll find her. The press are all over Gwen’s story, and he thinks that will help.’
‘He’s wrong,’ said Rhys.
‘I know. Gwen isn’t going to leave you or Anwen. I think she just wants to come home.’
‘Andy will have some of his boys watching the house, too, then,’ said Rhys. ‘He’s turning into a smart lad.’
Jack nodded. ‘I spotted one on the street, doing a pretty good job of standing casually outside the bookie’s having a smoke. If you see him, congratulate him on his choice of tracksuit. Showed off his bottom magnificently.’
For a while the two men sat in silence, listening to Anwen chatter to herself, telling stories about angry giants as she built a tower for her dolls and then crashed her truck into it.
‘What about all the other women?’ asked Rhys. ‘Did they hurt themselves too?’
Jack opened the files that Andy had left that afternoon. ‘The most violent clusters in the UK so far are women in the Scottish highlands, one cluster on the west coast and one near John O’Groats. Each of the women severely mutilated themselves, then attacked a close family member. In two cases, the woman murdered a loved one. Andy says the total as of this afternoon is 264 women across the UK. More internationally.’
‘Bloody hell,’ said Rhys, his wrist throbbing, his dinner congealing on the plate in front of him. He looked about as pathetic and troubled as Jack had ever seen him look. ‘What the hell’s going on, Jack?’
‘Wish I knew, Rhys.’ Rolling up his shirt sleeves, Jack lifted Anwen up and set her in her high chair, tucked a bib under her chin, and sliced bananas and toast onto her tray, most of which she tossed back at him, giggling.
‘You’re good with her, you know,’ said Rhys, popping open another beer, quickly heading from numb to useless in any research tasks Jack had in mind for him that night.
‘She’s a good baby,’ said Jack, handing her a triangle of toast slathered in Marmite.
‘It’s bloody Torchwood again, isn’t it?’ said Rhys, who had spent most of the past few nights at the hospital, returning in the morning only to check on Anwen, shower and change his clothes and pick up some clean ones for Gwen. Jack was afraid that he might lose himself in his drinking if they didn’t figure something out soon.
‘Well, I’m fine,’ said Jack, wiping Anwen’s face which was smeared in Marmite. At least she was eating, thought Jack, forcing down a corner of her toast, the taste repulsing him.
‘You don’t count,’ snapped Rhys. ‘And if you did you’re not exactly proof that Torchwood isn’t at fault considering that you’re the only one still standing.’
‘Hey, you’re still standing,’ said Jack. ‘And you’re doing fine, too.’
He walked over to his laptop and pulled up the TV news. Water traffic in the channel had been restricted. A parade of international scientists and geologists were trying to get close enough to the geyser to examine it. The geyser was slowly turning silver.
‘Look at that,’ whistled Jack. ‘It’s actually quite a magnificent sight.’
The geyser looked like an explosion of silver fireworks against the setting sun. Jack stared at the jet’s pulsing spray, letting the images and the noises in his head rise to a deafening roar, knowing that the answer to what was causing this madness and this geological anomaly were locked inside his mind.
40
FLIPPING OPEN THE notes he had made earlier in the day and the file that Andy had given him, Jack went back to the original three police reports and spread them out across the table. The three woman whose files Andy had homed in on were of different ages and ethnicities – the university librarian was white and middle-aged; the second woman was black and in her thirties; the third, Lizzie, was the madwoman from the supermarket. Jack lined up their photographs next to each other.
‘All of these women are, according to their families and their friends, peaceful and law abiding,’ said Jack, ‘and yet in all three cases, like Gwen, they behaved in a bizarre manner and in the process of their… their madness, they physically harmed themselves.’
Jack picked up the photograph of the librarian, handing it to Rhys. ‘Ginny Davies plucked out her eyeball with no mind to how painful it must have been. She told the student who sat on her until the medics arrived that,’ Jack picked up the notes in the file and read, ‘that she “couldn’t look at the world that way any more.”’
‘That’s horrible,’ said Rhys, looking sadly at the attractive woman who had partially blinded and seriously disfigured herself. ‘Do the police have any idea what she meant?’
‘The police have no clue, but I think she may’ve been seeing things, hallucinating perhaps, and whatever she was seeing broke her mind.’ Jack stopped and stared at Rhys.
‘What is it?’
‘Nothing… nothing,’ said Jack, going to the sink and pouring himself some water. When he’d thought of the second woman’s mind breaking, he felt as if the memory he’d been trying to snag last night in the SUV had for a fleeting second flashed fully formed across his mind. Then it was gone, leaving a thin trail behind, a lingering bad taste in his mouth.
Jack gulped the water before returning to the table.
‘This is Moira Firth, 24, a waitress. She’d just served dessert to her family of four when she headed into the kitchen and confronted her husband, the chef, with a long rant about his adultery and then she picked up a butcher’s knife and tried to cut out his heart.’
‘Jesus,’ said Rhys, taking the photo of Moira from Jack.
‘Think yourself lucky that I showed up when I did,’ said Jack, ‘and that it was only your face Gwen was sick of.’
‘I’ve never seen these women in my life before, and I’m pretty sure Gwen hadn’t either. But here’s the thing, Jack. Gwen was raging at me, but she was really angry at herself too, at not being able to be the action woman she used to be, at how she was a terrible mother. It was like she’d let out all the frustrations she’d always kept inside about being a mum and a wife and the sacrifices she made for Anwen and me.’ Rhys wiped his sleeve across his eyes. ‘But I made sacrifices too, you know, Jack. I’ve always supported what she wanted to do, and I’ve protected her the best way I know how
.’
Jack turned quickly. ‘What did you just say?’
Rhys cowed a bit under Jack’s stare. ‘Well, maybe my job wasn’t always all about saving the world from aliens or anything but it was still important to me.’
‘Rhys, don’t be such a— Not that part. The Gwen part. Say again what she was yelling at you about.’
‘Mostly about how she was a bad mum, and a bad wife and how she didn’t want to be one any more,’ Rhys choked back a sob. ‘I can’t believe that was my Gwen saying all those awful things.’
‘That’s just it,’ said Jack. ‘I don’t think it was the Gwen who loves you and Anwen. I think it might’ve been the part of Gwen that’s always been locked in her subconscious that somehow took over and wanted to hurt you.’ Rhys looked appalled at Jack’s train of thought. ‘Perhaps that part of her doesn’t want to be a wife any more.’
‘I don’t believe that’s how Gwen feels. Not deep down,’ said Rhys. As he spoke, he slumped further over his beer and the photographs lined up in front of him.
‘This is going to get much worse before any of these women get better,’ said Jack, ‘but it will get better. And you will get Gwen back.’
‘Do you reckon there’s something in the drinking water?’
Jack shook his head. ‘There’s definitely something connecting what’s happening to all these women here and abroad, but it has nothing to do with the water. I think something alien is attacking these women.’
‘I don’t get it,’ said Rhys, slurring his words, exhaustion and lager finally breaking him.
Jack turned back to his laptop, staring at the image of the geyser, believing that he finally did. The lip of the sun was kissing the horizon. Jack’s fingers tingled at the sight, the geyser like a stiletto stabbing the centre of the sun.
41
AFTER DINNER, JACK drove to the university library. The hunch that had gripped him when he was looking at the sunset still held him in its sway.
A librarian accosted him as he stood staring at the shelf on the History of Religions in the Reference room. The woman was in her mid-sixties, short white hair, dressed in grey slacks, a crisp white blouse with a string of pearls at her neck. A pair of pink plastic reading glasses were perched on the end of her thin nose.
‘Sir, may I help you? You look lost.’
‘More than you’ll ever know.’
She smiled at him as if she knew exactly what he meant, even though Jack was no longer sure that even he did.
‘You do know we’re closing in thirty minutes.’
‘I know,’ said Jack, following the woman over to her desk. ‘I’d like some information.’
‘I can sign you on to one of our computers, but you’ll have to finish your search in fifteen minutes, I’m afraid.’
‘Actually, I’d like the help from you, if that’s possible.’
‘From me?’ she said, putting her hand on her chest and exclaiming as if he’d offered her a bouquet of roses and a box of chocolates.
‘Yes,’ he said, smiling, offering her his hand. ‘Captain Jack Harkness.’
‘Bernie Sanger.’ She shook Jack’s hand.
‘Honestly,’ said Jack. ‘I’d rather have you help me instead.’
‘Are you serious?’ she said, offering him a seat in front of her desk. ‘Is this one of those reality shows, and I’m going to be viral on YouTube tomorrow?’
‘Of course not,’ laughed Jack. ‘That would be a mean thing to do.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Of course it would, but that hardly seems to matter much nowadays. We like watching bad things happen to people. We’ve become a mean-spirited society. Look at the way everyone’s treating the families of those poor women, as if they’re lepers. You’d think we’d travelled back in time and hadn’t learned a thing about psychology.’
‘I couldn’t agree more,’ said Jack, taking out a sheet of paper with a picture of the design Gwen had carved on her arm.
Jack believed that, in a fleeting moment of lucidity before she had attacked Rhys, for some reason Gwen had wanted to remember the image. Jack knew Gwen well enough to believe that the image was a message of some kind for him. This image was somehow vital to saving Gwen and the other women.
‘It’s just that I never get asked for help much here any more,’ continued the librarian. ‘I’ve become nothing more than a glorified room monitor or a polite guide to the nearest toilet. I don’t even have to re-shelf books much, so few are checked out.’
‘Sad, isn’t it,’ said Jack. He looked round the impressive room, its wood-panelled walls, wide windows, and rows of books looking the same as it had in the nineteenth century, when he had first been there. There was something comforting in being surrounded by books all day every day, thought Jack, even for someone like him who was finding comfort in so few things now.
One or two tired-looking scholars and a handful of eager students were hunched over the long rectangular tables. All of the patrons had laptops open next to them; only one had a stack of books. The room was quiet except for the occasional cough or throat-clearing, the low burring of an incoming text message, and the tap-tapping of fingers on keyboards. But in Jack’s head the noises were ever present, the flashes of faces and fragments of memory bordering his vision every minute.
Since that afternoon, the image of the beautiful woman from the mirror had haunted Jack’s peripheral vision, reinforcing for him that his visions, especially the woman’s face, and the sighting of the puma, were related to whatever was happening to female synaesthetes around the world, and he had a strong feeling that all of these things were preludes to something much worse, something he needed to get ahead of before it was too late.
‘They mostly come in here for the free Wi-Fi,’ said the librarian.
‘Or a nap,’ said Jack, nodding towards one of the scholars, whose chin was resting comfortably on his chest.
The strange woman’s face lingered faintly in Jack’s peripheral vision.
‘Bernie, I need some research done on a few items, including some information on an Inca tribe called the Cuari,’ said Jack, slipping two sheets of paper across her desk. ‘I’d be happy to compensate you for the work if it cuts into your day.’
She scanned the two pages. ‘That won’t be necessary. For a few days, let them find the toilet on their own.’
‘Oh,’ said Jack, standing to leave, ‘and I’d appreciate it if you kept this between us.’
‘Captain, I may not be as fast as the internet, but I can keep a secret.’ She folded the paper and slipped it into her desk. ‘How may I reach you with the results?’
‘I’m leaving the country soon,’ said Jack. ‘If you could email the information to me, that would be great.’
42
DR OLIVIA STEELE lived in a whitewashed Georgian mansion off the St Andrew’s Road, west of Dinas Powys Common. The house was tucked in the woods, its closest neighbour barely visible in the deepening dusk, except as jags of orange light bursting through the trees.
Jack stopped in front of the iron gates at the entrance to the driveway. The only evidence that he had found the right place was a small brass plaque beneath an intercom on the gates that read, ‘Steele Manor’, which Jack thought appropriate for a doctor who healed people’s heads or a confused superhero. Jack had called ahead to make an appointment. When he pressed the bell to announce his arrival, the gates swung open immediately.
The winding canopied approach was long and narrow. The road eventually opened onto a large circular driveway fronting the house. Dr Steele was waiting for Jack at the front door. She led him into a marbled foyer where another woman, dressed in a black jersey dress, revealing ample hips and a perfect décolletage, took Jack’s coat while Jack tried his best not to stare.
‘My assistant, Win.’
Win smiled, accepting Jack’s coat while asking if he’d like tea or coffee. Jack said coffee, then followed the doctor to a sitting room off to the left of a wide, carpeted staircase.
The
room was comfortable and warm, expensive without being excessive. A fire burned in a marble hearth, an original Mary Cassatt hanging above it. Jack smiled. He had met Mary in Paris once or twice during the War. She would have appreciated the irony that one of her paintings hung in a psychiatrist’s sitting room in the twenty-first century.
Jack settled in a high-backed leather chair. Dr Steele sat opposite him on a matching leather couch. In white linen pants and a loose yellow shirt, her skin soft and pale, she looked, Jack thought, ten years younger than he remembered.
She folded her hands on her lap, crossing her legs at her ankles. ‘Captain Harkness, I must say your phone call intrigued me, especially since currently I have a full ward of women experiencing breakdowns similar to your –’ she arched her brows – ‘sister’s. And, according to many of my colleagues around the country, mine is not the only psychiatric floor full of female patients.’
Her assistant carried a silver tray into the room with a decanter and two crystal glasses on it. Setting it down on the table between them, she said, ‘I thought you both might prefer a cocktail instead of coffee.’ She rested her hand on the doctor’s shoulder in a way that suggested she was more than just an assistant.
‘What would I do without you?’ The doctor placed her hand on her partner’s.
‘A great many things, I’m sure, but none of them with drinks served on time.’
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