The House That Jack Built: The House That Jack Built

'Thank you for the geekless subtitles.' She smiled. 'But how does weird time poo do that to a pavement?'

'Normally, I'd say it doesn't,' Jack replied. 'But I guess that's what we have to find out, isn't it?'

Ianto walked over to his toolbox and pulled out a small pen-shaped object.

'You might want to step back,' he warned Jack and Gwen. 'This thing's lethal.'

He placed his coffee at the far end of the tent before walking back over to the body. He twisted the object in his hand, and there was a high-pitched whine. He pointed it at the ground and began to trace a line around the body, a wedge of road surface — about four or five centimetres wide — vaporising as he passed. Finally, back where he started, he turned the machine off and placed it back in his toolbox.

'Pocket pneumatic drill?' asked Gwen. 'Handy.'

'I just bet it's sonic.' Jack smiled.

'Tosh's notes say 'molecular', actually,' Ianto replied. 'It isolates the construction of the physical object you're pointing it at and removes that object completely within specified parameters. Bit like erasing stuff in Photoshop, only more dangerous… I sincerely doubt you can make your foot vanish at the ankle using Photoshop.'

Ianto walked out of the tent, went to the back of the van and unloaded a chunky-looking trolley, like a hospital gurney but more capable of off-roading. Wheeling it into the tent and alongside Danny's body, he squatted down and sighed.

'Unfortunately, nobody's thought of a cool way of doing the next bit.' He looked up at Jack. 'Cop your end, then,' he said. 'I'm not getting a hernia on my own.'

Jack came over and forced his fingers around the edge of pavement Ianto had left intact. The pair of them gave a roar as they hoisted it onto the trolley.

'Such manliness,' Gwen sighed. 'I'm almost overcome. Now hunt me bison.'

Neither of them graced her with a reply as they covered the body with a sheet and wheeled the trolley back out to the van.

Jack brushed fragments of grit from his palms as he watched Ianto pull away from the kerb and set off back to the Hub.

'I'll pay a visit to the kid's parents,' he said to Gwen.

'Sure?' she asked. It wasn't a part of the job any of them relished.

'Sure. Just set the boring paper trail running for me, would you? Traffic accident, no witnesses.'

'You sure we can contain this that simply? Loads of people are bound to have seen something.'

'Nobody'll believe it. The family are the only ones who'll cause a fuss. The neighbours will just make gossip, and nobody believes that.' He grinned. 'If I'm wrong we'll just add a little something to the water supply. Again. You want to ring PC Plod and tell them they can have their tent back or shall I?'

'I'll be politer,' she replied, pulling out her mobile.

'Yes you will.' He looked up at the sky where grim and weighty clouds clambered over one another, eager to give Cardiff a soaking. 'Tell 'em to make it quick if they want to be back indoors and curled up with their sweet tea and chocolate digestives before the rain comes.'

'Try and remember I used to be on the force, Jack,' Gwen sighed, selecting Andy's phone number on her mobile speed dial.

'Yeah, but then you got a proper job. No more chasing scallywags and rescuing cats from trees for you.'

Gwen rolled her eyes, turning her back on him and getting into her car as Andy answered the phone.

Jack walked along the road, stopping in front of Jackson Leaves. It looked so tatty compared to the other houses in the street.

'Rotten tooth in an expensive smile,' he said. 'Scrub up, lick of paint — nobody would know how old you are.' He smiled at the idea. 'You and me both.'

He spotted movement at the front window, a momentary flash of red beyond the dirty, cracked glass. He turned away, not wanting to draw any more attention than they already had, and strolled back to the SUV.

Getting behind the wheel, he brought up the Wilkinson family's information on the built-in palmtop and was about to set the GPS when the street name clicked into place. He knew it; it was only just around the corner.

The first fat drops of rain exploded against the tinted glass of the windscreen, blurring the view outside to a dripping watercolour. He stared at the old houses as they appeared to melt. It was so easy to superimpose the city he once knew over the top of the one around him now. To look at these Edwardian stacks and remember them as new, as modern. But he fought against the temptation. He had always been a man — despite the affectation of his clothing — who tried to look forward. With the amount of history he held in his head, he could ill afford to do anything else. If he didn't box it up and lock it away, he would soon lose himself in it. Despite his best efforts, he still sometimes found himself panicking in a crowd, throwing second glances everywhere as the curve of a nose or twitch of a smile reminded him of someone he had once known. Ianto had once asked him how many lovers he had had. Jack had refused to answer, not to spare either of their feelings, more out of the fear that he might be unable to list them all. That would have hurt too much.

He put the wipers on their fastest setting, bringing the outside world back into sharp clarity, and drove to Danny Wilkinson's house.

Ianto pulled into the underground car park beneath the Millennium Centre, wincing as he always did when in the van. (He knew he had a spare few centimetres to clear the overhead barrier, but it didn't look like it, and he always expected the sound of tearing metal to accompany him into the gloom.) He hated having to sneak things into the Hub by this, the 'tradesmen's entrance'. He felt too exposed.

In the early days of Torchwood Cardiff, there had been access to the lower storage areas via submarine. Submarine … How cool was that? Who said things always improved over time?

He parked the van in its registered bay, stepped out and checked around to make sure he was alone. He had made it his business to know all the users of the car park, their details filed away in his head. He used the Loci — or Memory Palace — technique, allocating visual triggers to the information so as to be able to store and recall everything quickly. He pictured the owners of each of the cars around him and then — using an expanded mental layout of the house he had grown up in — he checked each one of them off, placing them in a line of cupboards that he visualised in his old kitchen. For example, if he opened the cupboard just above the sink — the one with a Fiat 500 key-fob hanging from the handle — he would see David Thompson, the jolly young man who dealt with the intranet at the Welsh Assembly, sat on a tin of baked beans. In his hands he held the jack of clubs (Blackjack: giving his age as twenty-one in Ianto's system), and a photograph of Kelly Rowland (Thompson's flat-mate was called Kelly). If Ianto were to lean in and look at the time on Thompson's watch — a scratched souvenir from Disneyworld, Mickey waving his gloved hands cheerily as the seconds ticked away — he would see the hands pointing to five past nine: Thompson started work at nine and finished at five. It sounded complex, but Ianto found he could store huge quantities of information using the system, and storing information was a big part of what his life was about.

He finished his quick sweep around the bays on the lower level — everyone in their right place and nobody to see what he was up to — before opening the back doors of the van. The trolley's legs dropped down onto the concrete floor, taking the weight of Danny Wilkinson and the chunks of tarmac still attached to him. Ianto wheeled it over towards the door marked 'Private' that led to the Hub. He raised his face so the retinal-scanning software in the security camera could check him against access protocols. After a couple of seconds, the lock clicked to open and the doors parted slightly. Moving as quickly as possible — the doors were on a timer system of nine seconds — he wheeled the trolley into the short tunnel on the other side and pushed the doors firmly closed behind him.

The tunnel badly needed sorting out, the damp having encouraged moss to cluster around the light fittings like bushy green beards. It smelt bad too, though he was unsure whether there was much he'd be able to do about that. He hated getting behind in his housework. The Hub had gone to pot over recent months.

He walked through the weapons store — trying not to think about the amount of dusting that represented — then into the Hub itself.

Gwen had beaten him back.

'Took your time,' she said as he wheeled the trolley past her desk.

'I mind the speed limits when I have dead bodies in the back of the van,' he replied. 'Has Jack called that old friend of his yet?'

'Alexander Martin?' Gwen shook her head. 'Don't know. He was dealing with the boy's parents.'