Another Life

by Peter Anghelides

  Gwen kicked at some of the splinters of wood from the broken door. ‘I didn’t need John-Paul’s help to find you. I could have just followed the trail of debris.’

  ‘John-Paul?’ asked Toshiko.

  ‘Private Wisniewski,’ said Gwen. She glanced at him, and his polite smile told her that she’d got the pronunciation correct.

  Toshiko passed some of the glossy photos to Gwen. ‘We made a connection with Guy Wildman.’

  ‘There were underwater photos at his apartment. Not to mention some wildlife in his bathroom.’ Gwen was rummaging in her pocket, and brought out a small Geiger counter. She switched it on, and it clicked reassuringly at the lowest end of the scale. The two soldiers had stiffened, their eyes showing their alarm. Before they could say anything, Gwen spoke reassuringly to them. ‘Nothing to worry about. Entirely routine.’ She showed them the readings. Toshiko noticed that they didn’t seem much more reassured.

  ‘Here’s another of the three divers,’ noted Jack.

  Gwen and Toshiko looked at the photo he had held out. A trio of divers on a boat, ready to drop into the blue water behind them, their masks on and their thumbs raised. ‘We saw that picture at Wildman’s apartment,’ agreed Gwen.

  ‘Wildman, Bee, and another one,’ mused Toshiko. ‘And this could be the third. She’s quite a looker. Girlfriend?’

  ‘I don’t think “quite a looker” is likely for Wildman, do you?’ laughed Gwen.

  ‘That’s one of the other instructors,’ said Private Foxton. Toshiko had been unaware that the two soldiers behind them had been looking at the photographs too. ‘That’s Sergeant Applegate. She was another sub-aqua enthusiast. Hwntw, the two of them.’

  ‘They were what?’ asked Toshiko.

  ‘South Waleans,’ explained Gwen. ‘Perhaps she was having a thing with Bee, though. The MO wasn’t very forthcoming, but he said that some of the officers thought Bee was too familiar with the other soldiers. Do you think that’s code for “shagging the staff”?’

  Toshiko passed her the photograph. ‘I don’t know. What do you reckon – would you?’

  At first, she thought Gwen might have been offended by her teasing question. As soon as she saw the photograph, Gwen’s expression had hardened. She twisted the photograph so that Jack could see it more clearly.

  ‘I would,’ said Jack, but there was little humour in his voice. ‘But then I have a thing about blondes with legs that go all the way up to their ears.’

  ‘It’s Betty Jenkins!’ Gwen said.

  Toshiko laughed. ‘The pensioner at Wildman’s apartment?’

  ‘No,’ replied Gwen. ‘The woman who claimed to be Betty Jenkins.’

  Jack leaped from the table and made for the door. He paused in the shattered doorframe and snapped a question at Foxton. ‘Where is this Sergeant Applegate? We need to see her now.’

  Foxton looked flustered for the first time. ‘I don’t know sir. Sorry.’

  ‘What kind of outfit is this?’

  ‘No, sir. I mean, no one knows. She’s been absent without leave for three weeks.’

  Jack screwed up his eyes tight and bellowed at the ceiling in frustration. He slammed at the open door with his clenched fist, and winced. ‘I wish I had time to go and slap the Lieutenant-Colonel in his stiff upper lip. He knew this and told us nothing when we got here. It’s obstruction, pure and simple.’

  ‘It’s trust,’ Gwen told him quietly. ‘It’s not right, but it’s understandable.’

  ‘No time for polite conversation,’ Jack decided. ‘Well, we know Applegate wasn’t at Wildman’s flat to feed his plants.’

  ‘Unless she was feeding them to that disgusting starfish thing in the bath,’ Gwen agreed. ‘And all that squeaky nervous behaviour? That was a routine. She’s a trained soldier, she wouldn’t be scared of guns or violence.’

  Toshiko saw that Jack was picking slivers of wood from a cut in the side of his hand. He had slammed his fist into a broken section of the door, and caught a bunch of splinters. ‘Maybe you were right, Tosh. I should have used the handle.’

  ‘Not locked,’ she agreed. ‘No guard.’

  Jack stared at her, astounded. ‘No guard!’ he yelled. ‘That’s right. But there was a guard at Wildman’s apartment. Wasn’t there, Gwen?’

  ‘Applegate?’

  ‘No! The thing in the bathroom! We know that Wildman could puke up those things. He musta barfed one into the tub to guard whatever he’d hidden there. C’mon, we gotta get back. Whatever it was guarding… it could still be there!’

  EIGHTEEN

  The rain squalled around them during their sprint across the barracks, so the front of their clothing was swiftly soaked. Privates Foxton and Wisniewski trotted behind them, keeping pace and not trying to overtake. It must have looked to the troops marching on the parade ground that a bedraggled trio of visitors was being casually chased off the Caregan grounds by two soldiers.

  They reached the visitors’ car park, skittering to a halt in the puddles by their vehicles. Jack ignored Foxton’s request to sign out, slipped into the SUV driving seat, and started the engine. Gwen tossed her Saab keys back to Toshiko. She knew what to expect back at Wildman’s apartment, and planned to travel back there with Jack.

  The SUV slewed backwards across the rain-soaked gravel of the car park, crunched into gear and skidded forward, off and out of the barracks.

  Gwen watched the blur of the chain-link fence as the car speeded up. The vehicle’s suspension was superb. The main evidence that it was scudding over the rutted roadway were the sprayed sheets of water, like blankets cast out to the side of the car, as the wheels plunged into frequent rain-filled potholes.

  The front wipers swished on fast setting, and through the windscreen ahead of them Gwen could see the bruise-black sky that lowered over their destination. A huge swathe of boiling cloud that was turning the afternoon dark. A monstrous presence awaiting their return.

  ‘Insufficient information,’ said the navigation system. ‘Attempting to locate fourth satellite.’

  Jack switched it off. ‘I think we know the way back.’ He punched the phone’s speed dial, and it connected with a rapid series of beeps.

  Gwen didn’t see which number he’d dialled. ‘Are you calling the police? We should warn them about the apartment, so they know to stay out of it. And they can put a call out for Sandra Applegate. Then we can listen in on their frequencies—’

  ‘They already know to stay out of the place. So what are they gonna do, flood the area with cops? That’s not gonna happen. We don’t want it to happen, for sure. They’ll get in our way, and we haven’t got the time. Ah…’ The line connected with a chirruping sound. He had dialled the Hub. ‘How’s it going, Owen?’ The line was distorted, and Gwen thought Owen said, ‘What do you care?’

  ‘Sounds like the storm’s wiping out the phone network, too,’ Jack said. ‘So, listen up. Are you still irradiated, Owen?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m lit up like a novelty lamp.’

  ‘OK, well you can still make yourself useful. Need you to do a search on Sergeant Sandra Applegate. Training instructor at Caregan Barracks, Southern Welsh Regiment. Lives at the barracks, but spends time on scuba-diving activities off of it. Find out known associates – we already connect her with Wildman and Bee, so skip those, she ain’t gonna be visiting them much now. So, who else? Where she hangs out. Clubs she’s a member of. Whether she has a Tesco Clubcard. How many library books she has overdue. You know the score.’

  There was a pause in which Gwen thought she could make out swearing. ‘Can’t Tosh do that?’ Owen moaned.

  ‘Not while she’s driving the other car,’ explained Jack.

  ‘I thought she had hands-free.’

  ‘What were you planning to do in the meantime,’ snapped Jack, ‘work on those pecs, maybe?’

  ‘Oh, come on Jack. I’m not your data guy, I’m not your gadgets guy either. I’m a doctor. I was born a doctor, I live every day a doctor. I will die a doctor.’
/>   ‘Sooner than you think, Owen. Get on with it.’

  By the time they arrived back in Cardiff, thick dark clouds had blotted out every scrap of sky. It was more like late evening than late afternoon. The drainage system in the centre had collapsed, and the SUV had to surf a filthy stream of debris that washed down the angled streets that led into Splott. Fast-food cartons bobbed and jostled with shreds of paper, discarded cans, empty bottles, all the floating detritus from dozens of overturned bins and ripped garbage sacks.

  No point in subterfuge now, they decided, especially as Wildman’s place would be guarded by a uniformed officer when they got there. Jack pulled the car up outside the apartment block, with the wheels propped up on the pavement to get them out of the torrent that coursed along the gutter. A flare of lights from behind them showed that Toshiko had arrived too. It was a wonder she’d been able to keep up, the speed that Jack had been doing on the journey in, though Gwen knew the Saab handled well. Or it did in normal conditions, so perhaps the low-profile driving position had been more of a struggle for Toshiko when trailing the SUV all this way.

  Gwen scrambled over the driver’s seat to follow Jack out and avoid the stream that was running along the road on her side of the vehicle. When she’d clambered out and shut the door, she found Jack stooped over something by the main entrance. Toshiko was standing beside him, her face pallid after seeing what Jack had found.

  It was the police officer who had been stationed by the doorway. The body lay in a stream of water that spilled from a broken gutter far above. Gwen could tell he was dead from the crazy angle of his neck, and the way that Jack was standing and not helping. She clicked on her pocket torch and examined the body, flicking the light over the face. At first she worried about who she would find, and then she immediately felt ashamed at the relief she felt when it was not someone she knew from her old station. That would be nothing to the guilt she’d feel later, once Toshiko had concocted some Torchwood cover-up story – probably about how the officer had wandered off during his duty period and fallen into the river. It would have to be a big distraction to hide this massive and fatal attack.

  Something had ripped into the back of the young officer’s neck. Or rather, someone had. Brain and bone was visible in the maw of the wound, washed clean continuously by the downpour. There was very little blood visible, and it was even washing out of the young lad’s shirt collar. He lay crumpled in the shrubs. A young lad, Gwen thought bitterly. A young lad they could have rescued with a phone call.

  ‘We could have stopped this,’ she told Jack coldly. ‘One call and we could have saved this boy.’

  ‘We don’t know that,’ Toshiko told her.

  ‘He wouldn’t warn them. On the journey here. It would have been one phone call.’

  Toshiko put a hand on the sodden shoulder of her jacket. ‘We still can’t know for sure.’

  Jack was already moving away. Gwen jumped back to her feet, half wanting to argue the point with him. But when he turned, maybe it was just the rain running down his face that made his blue eyes seem so watery as he stared back at her.

  He jerked his head in the direction of the street, a contemptuous gesture that seemed to accuse the whole neighbourhood. ‘What’s happened to your curtain-twitchers now?’

  Gwen couldn’t hold his gaze. ‘Staying away from their windows because of the rain, I imagine.’ And she knew there would have been no witnesses to the attack in this weather, either. The young officer had died alone.

  Jack shoulder-charged the doors to the apartment. On the third attempt, the lock burst apart and they were able to dash into the dingy hallway and out of the rain.

  ‘No shopping bags this time,’ Gwen said.

  ‘Yeah, well, I’m not great at queuing.’

  The three of them hared up the stairs, several at a time. On the upper landing, the real Betty Jenkins was poking her head out from behind her door with an angry look. Toshiko ushered her back into her apartment, and told her to keep her door closed while the environmental health team conducted a fumigation of the stairwell.

  ‘This place has gone…’ muttered Miss Jenkins as she retreated and closed her door.

  On the next landing, they found the sprawled body of another policeman. There was no rain to wash away the blood. It had spurted out of a main artery in his neck, spraying up the nearest wall before running down and creating a congealed pool of dark reddish-brown liquid. Again Gwen felt that electric tingle of fear, relief, and shame as she examined the officer and found she did not recognise him.

  ‘She’s right,’ murmured Gwen. ‘This place has gone to hell. Completely gone to hell.’

  Wildman’s apartment door stood ajar. Gwen rose from examining the dead policeman, and hesitated.

  ‘Come on!’ hissed Jack. He drew his Webley, kicked open the front door, and angled his weapon into the hallway.

  The way seemed clear, so Toshiko charged in, her weapon at the ready. She was barely into the main room when Sandra Applegate sprang at her from beyond the living-room door. Applegate knocked Toshiko to the floor, and loomed over her. Even from the front entrance, Gwen could see Applegate was a mess. Her face was bloodied, and her chest was stained.

  Jack threw himself down the short hallway with thundering steps, and cuffed Applegate behind the head with the butt of his revolver. Applegate spun away into the room, tipping over a table and collapsing by an armchair.

  Gwen rushed in and covered the fallen woman with her gun, a double-handed grip just like Jack had taught her in the Torchwood firing range. The weapon was recoilless, a neat feat of alien engineering applied to a standard-issue army weapon, but a two-handed grip made aiming truer. In the corner of her eye, she could see that Toshiko had fallen awkwardly against a sideboard and was slumped against the wall. Jack hunkered down next to her, checking that she was all right. And, for a moment, Gwen was distracted.

  Applegate sat up abruptly next to the armchair and made a deep gurgling sound from somewhere in the pit of her stomach. Gwen’s gaze snapped back to Applegate. The woman clutched at her stomach and made a profound retching noise. In horrified fascination, Gwen saw her mouth open wide, so wide that she could see Applegate’s lips stretched tight in a circle around her bared teeth. At which point, Applegate heaved again, and spat a spongy yellow mass across the room at Gwen.

  It hit Gwen’s trigger hand, and she instinctively ducked and fired. The shot went wide. Applegate was on her feet at once, charging for the door. She shouldered Jack aside, surprising him so that she was able to get past. He recovered swiftly, stepped briskly into the hallway after her, and loosed off two shots in quick succession.

  Gwen thought she heard a cry and then a great crash of glass. But then the pain in her hand hit her.

  The spongy yellow mass was a small starfish-shaped creature. Its main body and one of its four arms were firmly attached, and starting to burn her flesh. She heard another shrill cry, and was shocked to realise it was herself. She dropped her handgun, collapsed into the arm chair, and stared in revulsion at the thing that clung to her hand.

  Beside her, Toshiko groaned as she began to recover. Jack rushed back into the room, looked at both of the women. Gwen stared at him beseechingly. ‘It’s burning. Get it off me!’

  Jack looked wildly around the room. He spotted something on the sideboard by the doorway, snatched it up, and hurried over to Gwen.

  ‘Hold still,’ he told her.

  Jack had seized a letter opener. With his free hand he pinched two of the revolting creature’s legs between his fingers, and peeled them away from Gwen’s hand. She could tell from the way this made him wince that the vile thing was burning his skin too. Now that its underside was exposed, Gwen could make out a central mouth that had been biting into the soft flesh of her hand. Jack plunged the letter opener into the centre of the creature, and pushed hard. There was a rubbery squeaking sound as the dull blade of the letter opener pierced the yellowy skin. The point burst from the upper side, and a greenis
h ichor sprayed across the room and onto the carpet.

  Almost at once, the starfish released its grip on Gwen’s hand. Jack leapt up, the creature still attached to the letter opener, and he plunged the blade into the wall above the sideboard. The point pierced the plasterboard wall, and when Jack let go of the handle the letter opener had skewered the starfish to the striped wallpaper. The creature spasmed for a moment and then went still.

  Gwen ran into the kitchen area of the apartment, and ran water over her wounded hand. The tap slowly ran cold, and the smarting pain seemed to ease a little. Jack joined her at the sink, and stuck his burned fingers under the tap.

  ‘Thanks,’ Gwen told him. Their hands met briefly in the cold water, so she stroked the back of his hand with a light touch.

  Toshiko gave a little groan from where she had been dumped on the horrid shag pile carpet. Jack pulled his hand away, took a towel and went over to check on Toshiko.

  Gwen had to dry her hands on a stained tea towel. The back of her right hand was blotched with circles and small scratches, but the skin appeared to be unbroken.

  Toshiko was dazed, but not injured. Jack helped her back to her feet. ‘What happened to Applegate?’ she asked him. ‘Did you…? Eww!’ Toshiko had spotted the starfish spiked into the wall, level with her head. It had shrivelled still further, and was dripping yellow-green gunk down the wallpaper and onto the sideboard. ‘God, I thought the decor in this place was dismal, but that’s just disgusting!’

  Jack beckoned to Toshiko and Gwen to follow him out of the apartment. Out on the landing, rain was washing in through a fresh hole in the half-landing window. ‘I shot her. Upper arm, I think. Maybe the shoulder. She was running down the stairs, so the momentum carried her on and through that window.’

  He trotted down the half-flight of steps. He considered the rain and wind gusting in through the hole before twisting the latch and opening the shattered remains of the window. He took a swift look through the gap, pulled his head back in. He obviously couldn’t believe what he’d seen, because he bravely took another look in the face of the storm.