‘Deleted.’
‘Ah,’ Rhys said. ‘What’s up with your hands, babe?’
‘I hurt them. It’s nothing.’
‘How d’you hurt them?’
‘Work.’
Rhys was silent for a moment. ‘You know, there comes a point…’ he began.
‘What sort of point?’ Gwen asked.
‘The sort of point when “work” ceases to mean anything, or be an answer for anything. It’s the ultimate excuse, the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card. It’s like faynights.’
‘What?’
‘Faynights. You never say that in the playground? You’re it! Faynights. You’re tagged! Faynights. To cover all excuse. Diplomatic immunity.’
‘Have you had a drink, babe?’ she asked him. She’d lost her appetite. The sandwich went down on the counter.
‘You say “work” the same way. You do.’
‘Rhys, I’ve had a bugger of a day and I don’t fancy a row right now.’
‘A row? How could we have a row? Everything I say, you’d just answer “work”. Where have you been? “Work”. Why haven’t I seen you this week? “Work”. Why are you out so late? “Work”. Why haven’t we had a shag in a month? “Work”.’
‘Oh, give over! It’s not like that!’
‘It bloody is! It bloody is, Gwen!’
Gwen’s head was kicking off again. She threw the butter knife into the sink and pushed past Rhys.
‘Gwen?’
‘Shut up!’
‘Where are you going?’
She looked back at him. ‘You know, this evening, someone I have very little regard for suggested I should chuck you.’
‘Why don’t you then?’ Rhys roared back.
She glared at him. ‘I have no bloody idea,’ she replied. She turned and headed for the front door.
‘Where the hell are you going now?’ he yelled after her.
‘Work!’ she replied, and slammed the front door after her.
It was only after fifteen minutes of wandering the streets looking for a taxi that Gwen began to cry.
High above the city of Cardiff, Jack Harkness stood in the cold breeze and looked out at the stars. Sirens whooped in the amber streets below him.
Up high, he had time to think. To clear his mind. Being up high always put him in an expansive mood. He looked down at the city, the lit thoroughfares like interlocking bars of light in the black continuum below. He heard the throb of the late traffic, the wail of emergency vehicles plying the streets, their chopping lights moving like cursors along the bars.
His mind was easing a little. Tough night. Rough night. One of the worst, and it still wasn’t over. Today, or the next day, or the next, the night was going to last forever. Even so, he began to relax a little. He felt safe and powerful up there, confident that he was the only being in Cardiff who could ascend so high and regard so much without being seen.
In both particulars, Jack Harkness was entirely wrong.
Mr Dine waited, crouching down below a parapet. He could feel the pull. He resisted. He had to check first. Be sure. It might just have been a false alarm.
He stood up and stepped into space.
Twenty metres below, he landed effortlessly, and began to run across the slanted roofs.
Owen Harper poured himself another measure of Scotch, and toyed with the glass. By his own standards, he was falling down drunk. Luckily, he was in his own apartment overlooking the Bay.
He gazed out at the lights.
‘I used your soap, is that all right?’ the girl said, coming out of the en suite.
Owen looked around. ‘Yeah, sure.’
What the hell was her name again? Lindy? Linda? The only thing he was sure of was that she had the most tremendous rack in the history of tremendous racks.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
He stared at her. She wasn’t wearing anything, and that helped to remind him why he’d brought her home with him in the first place. He took a sip of Scotch.
‘Looking at you,’ he said.
The bath was neck-deep and warm, and suffused with fragrant oils. Toshiko Sato turned the lights down until only the candles made a glow, and slipped off her bath robe.
She sank into the bath. The warm water enveloped and embraced her, soothing her bruises and her tired, weary body.
She lay back, and reached for her glass of wine.
James Mayer paused the television remote and cocked his head. Someone was definitely tapping on his door.
He got up, gingerly, feeling the pain in his body, and padded barefoot to the door.
‘Hello,’ said Gwen.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.
‘Is me being here a problem?’ she asked him.
‘Hell, no, I was just surprised. I didn’t expect-’ He looked at her. ‘You know today is Friday, just, don’t you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And you know the Andy Pinkus Marathon doesn’t start until Saturday?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Gwen?’
‘Are you telling me I can’t stay here until Saturday?’ she asked.
‘No,’ James replied. ‘Have I ever?’
Her mouth met his. He pulled her into the flat.
Later, during a brief intermission, she got up, naked, closed the door, and turned the deadbolts.
SIX
Monday morning, with a sky like a dirty fleece above Cardiff.
As the kettle boiled, Davey Morgan fed the cat, and then made up his flask.
‘So, anyway, I left it in the shed,’ he said, bringing his story up to date. ‘It didn’t seem to want to be disturbed, so I thought, it’s doing no harm here, I thought, and left it there.’
He took his digging jacket down off the door-peg in the little back kitchen. It was the top half of an old suit. He reckoned he’d been married in it, in ’48, but Glynis had always insisted he’d been wearing it when they’d first met, at the social in Porthcawl, which would have been ’46. Glynis had always had a keen memory for such details, either that, or she had always been better at asserting her version of the truth. He missed her.
The jacket had been pretty done in by the mid 1950s, but she’d refused to let him throw it out, for ‘sentimental reasons’. So it had become his digging jacket, her name for it, reserved for the allotment in cold weather. Pretty good run it had had since then, for a demob suit with feeble stitching.
‘I suppose I’d better check on it,’ he said. The cat was as indifferent to this remark as it had been to the rest of his story. Bowl cleared, it sat down like a Degas ballerina, toes en point, and began to lick its arse.
‘You be all right here for an hour or two?’ Davey asked. The cat looked up briefly, the tip of its tongue slightly protruding, then went back to its ablutions. He wasn’t talking to the cat anyway. He was talking to the picture on
