Trace Memory

'Yes,' said Michael.

Gwen turned to Toshiko. 'Where's Owen?'

'He's down in the Autopsy Room. He said he had to check something.'

'OK,' said Gwen, 'can you go get him? We need to start looking into this.'

'What about Jack?' asked Toshiko.

'He's in his office. Something's wrong with him. I just don't know what.'

Gwen looked at Ianto, hoping he might have an answer, but he looked as puzzled as she was.

'Ianto,' she said. 'Can you carry out a search on the names Cromwell and Valentine? Can't be many people in Cardiff called Valentine in 1953.'

Ianto nodded stoically and left the Boardroom, and Toshiko followed.

Gwen turned to Michael. 'You rest a while,' she said. 'We're going to…' Her voice trailed off.

'Going to what?' Michael asked.

'I don't know,' said Gwen. 'We're going to help you.'

Michael looked away from her, forlorn. He didn't seem convinced by her reassurance.

'I mean it,' she said. 'It's what we do.' And then, smiling, 'No mystery too big, no puzzle too… erm… puzzling.'

Michael smiled, for the first time since she'd seen him, and Gwen felt something, a flicker of recognition, and an uneasy sense that this was going to be a long night.

FOUR

Owen Harper opened his eyes and saw a ceiling he didn't recognise. Not that he was an expert on ceilings, of course, but he knew his own ceiling when he saw it, and this wasn't his ceiling.

Next up was the awareness that his mouth was dry. No, not just dry… His mouth was desiccated. And then there was the headache. It felt like somebody had put his head in a vice and was still cranking it up. It felt like his head was going to explode.

But first was the matter of the ceiling and the hard floor beneath him. Reaching out with his fingertips, he felt the bristly surface of a carpet and, reaching further, his fingers delved into the dusty mess of an overflowing ashtray. He recoiled in disgust, and his hand brushed against the side of a can, tipping it over on its side. He heard the glug-glug-fizz of beer pouring from the can and soaking into the carpet. This wasn't a bed, and this wasn't a bedroom.

Through his one open eye, he saw a television in one corner of the room, and on the wall several posters of Johnny Depp.

If it wasn't his ceiling, then it wasn't his living room, and if it wasn't his living room, then whose living room was it?

The answer came in a voice from the nearest doorway.

'Oh, you're awake. Did you fall off the sofa or something?'

He sat up straight, and that was when his head really began to throb; a dull pulsating agony that started in his temples and reached all the way in behind his eyes. The medic in him lectured him on the dehydrating effects of alcohol, how it leached moisture from the brain, causing it to shrink, pulling on all the microscopic fibres linking it to the skull and resulting in a headache. The human in him was simply practising the art of suffering.

In the doorway stood a goth girl in pyjamas. The pyjamas weren't particularly goth; pink with pictures of Hello Kitty. She was a goth girl only from the neck up, a shock of black hair and slightly smudged mascara left over from the night before.

His heart sank. Had they…?

'Where am I?' he asked.

'Our living room, silly,' replied the goth girl, giggling.

'And… where is your living room?' asked Owen.

'In our house. In Cathays,' said the goth girl. 'Near the uni.'

Owen sat fully upright and, with weak arms, hoisted himself onto the sofa. He rested his head in both hands and let out a long, traumatised groan.

'Hung over?' asked the goth girl.

'A little,' said Owen. 'What happened last night?'

The goth girl laughed again. 'You don't remember?'

Owen shook his head. Even that hurt.

'Your friend's upstairs,' she said, 'with my housemate, Kirsty. I'm amazed they didn't keep you awake. They were a bit, um, noisy.

Mind you, you just kind of passed out.'

His friend? Oh, that was right. A little bit of memory came back to him now; a mere shard of recollection. Lloyd was upstairs. With Kirsty, whoever Kirsty was.

Owen looked at the goth girl, wincing at the question he was about to ask. 'And did anything… I mean…'

The goth girl raised one eyebrow, and shook her head. 'You're fully dressed,' she said. 'Or hadn't you noticed?'

He looked down at himself, and realised he was indeed still wearing all the clothes he'd worn the night before. He was dismayed to see a gory dash of chilli sauce down the front of his shirt. At least he'd remembered to take his shoes off.

'And you've got a girlfriend,' said the goth girl, smiling sweetly now. 'In fact, you didn't stop talking about her. Would you like a coffee?'

Owen shook his head. That throbbing pain again, and a sudden, violent stab of nausea. 'Um…'

Work. The word exploded in his brain like a firework, like it was lit up in neon or carved in bloody great big stone lettering. Work.

'Actually… I've probably got to make a move. I've got work.'

'Work? When?'

He looked at his watch. It was nine o'clock. And his shift started at half ten.

'An hour and a half,' he said, quietly. 'Where am I?'

The goth girl laughed. 'Cathays. I just told you.'

Owen sighed. Cathays. Just outside the city centre. It could have been worse. It could have been Swansea. He was still struggling to piece together the last few hours of the night. There had been the Cross Inn and, at some point after two or three pints, the urge to grab a takeaway and a video had left him, and they were in a taxi and heading into town. That was when it started to get just a little hazy.

But Cathays wasn't too far. It was further away from the hospital than his flat and, thinking about it logically, going home first was no longer an option, which meant he'd have to go in wearing the same clothes he'd worn the day before, but that wasn't the end of the world.

'Can I use your shower?' he asked.

The goth girl nodded. 'Top of the stairs, first on the right. There's towels in the airing cupboard.'

Owen lifted himself up from the sofa with a nauseous groan and tiptoed out of the living room, nodding a wordless 'thank you' to the goth girl before climbing the stairs.

It was while he stood under the hot spray of the shower that further fragments of information came back to him. The trawl around Cardiff's coolest bars and a few that weren't so cool before they wound up in Metros nightclub. They'd looked a bit out of place, Owen and his fellow doctors, all of them in their Ben Sherman shirts and shoes, while around them kids with spiky multicoloured hair and piercings, most of them dressed from head to toe in black, bounced around to System Of A Down and Green Day.

Lloyd had started talking to another goth girl, the girl he assumed was Kirsty, and then introduced him to Kirsty's friend, the girl who was now downstairs in Hello Kitty pyjamas. Quite what Lloyd was playing at he wasn't sure; perhaps angling for some kind of orgy; Owen could never tell with Lloyd.

Whatever his game was, Lloyd had persuaded Owen to join them in the taxi back to Cathays, stopping at a