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 greenish 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.
‘I can’t see the body,’ he said. ‘C’mon, two floors down, who’s gonna survive that?’ He studied Toshiko and Gwen’s reactions. ‘OK, we should check on the way out.’
They returned to the apartment, and went into the bathroom. As soon as the door opened, an overpowering stench of rotting fish assailed them. It was enough to make Gwen’s eyes water.
The remains of the larger starfish had dissolved into a slimy gloop in the bath. Gwen didn’t argue when Jack said he would conduct the search. Hidden behind the side panel of the bath he found a heavy grey box. He pulled it out onto the bathroom rug, and slid it across the room. Gwen switched on her Geiger counter, which ticked quietly. Jack lifted the lid of the box, and the ticking abruptly became a machine-gun rattle of alarm.
Jack snapped the lid shut. ‘OK,’ he said calmly. ‘We appear to have the missing fuel rods.’
They had to make two journeys down the stairwell. On the first they carried the lead-lined box, and pushed it into the boot of the SUV. Second time, they wrapped up the policeman’s corpse in a blanket from Wildman’s apartment, and hefted the body down the stairs. By the time they’d put the other copper’s body in the boot, all three of them were drenched in what felt to Gwen like equal measures of sweat and rainwater.
Jack slammed the boot closed. ‘You two go back to the Hub and get changed. Take the Saab. I’ll deliver the fuel rods to Blaidd Drwg and join you later. Tosh, you can start working on the cover story for these two in the back.’ He checked his watch. ‘Difficult to tell when I’ll get back in this weather.’
‘I hope that’s waterproof,’ Toshiko said.
‘It’s the best,’ Jack told her. ‘American military watch, 1940s. Twenty-four-hour display, a nice piece.’
Toshiko peered at it in the rain. ‘Where did you get it from?’
‘That was a long time ago,’ smiled Jack. He shot his cuffs so that the watch was out of the rain again. ‘That was a whole other life.’
Jack closed the door and steered the SUV upstream and out of the street. Gwen got into the Saab and watched the wake that the SUV left behind. She sat for a while gripping the steering wheel, studying the marks on the back of her hand and thinking about the two young policemen. What creative thinking would Toshiko employ to explain away their absences? Their deaths. She hardly dared ask her, even though she was now sitting next to her.
It was while contemplating these things that Gwen was startled by the sound of her mobile going off. A quick glance at the display revealed that it was Rhys. Was she coming home for dinner tonight? Gwen smiled sheepishly at Toshiko. Not sure, she told her boyfriend. Rain’s really terrible, so she’d need to take it steady. No, she was fine, being over-cautious probably. She’d call him when she knew.
He loved her, he said. She missed him, she replied.
When the call ended, Gwen sat silently for a few more moments in the car. Thinking again about the inventive excuse that Toshiko was going come up with to cover the policemen’s absence. Pondering the excuse she herself was going to offer Rhys tonight when she’d missed dinner again.
Ianto found it surprisingly difficult to close the front door. There was a gale blowing straight across the Bay, and that meant straight at the entrance to the Hub from Mermaid Quay. He put his shoulder to the edge nearest the frame and, after a bit more effort, he was able to get the door to click into place. He shot the bolts securely across the top and bottom, and leaned back against the door, exhausted.
Jack had breezed in, but so had several gallons of water, and the reception floor was awash. ‘We’re gonna need some sandbags out there, Ianto, if this rain keeps up.’
‘Yes, the neighbourhood’s gone to pot,’ said Ianto. ‘Maybe we should move.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Jack. ‘Imagine how many tea-chests we’d need to pack. That, plus we’d need to get the stationery reprinted.’ He shook himself like a wet dog, and rainwater spattered across the room. His trousers were soaked up to the knee, and he decided it would be a good idea to grasp the material and squeeze water out of the legs right there and then.
Ianto resisted the strong temptation to tut loudly. Instead, he plucked a handful of tissues from a box and mopped the worst of the splashes off the paperwork at the desk. He was able to rescue the flyers for the Redflight Barcud event at the Millennium Centre, but a pile of Tredegar House information leaflets was as good as ruined.
They had disguised the Bayside entrance to the Torchwood Hub as a Tourist Information Centre. And not a particularly salubrious one at that because, obviously, they didn’t want to encourage a steady stream of eager visitors asking for directions to the Pierhead Building or opening times for the Norwegian Church. Not that Ianto couldn’t answer those questions, of course. He prided himself on his arcane local knowledge, whether Cardiff indie bands or the history of Tiger Bay. Mostly, though, they only wanted to know the reason why the word ‘Brains’ was stencilled on a city centre chimney stack. This had all proved useful cover on an awkward occasion when a film crew from a BBC Wales travel programme wouldn’t take no for an answer when looking for an interview.
Ianto helped Jack out of his wet coat. ‘You’ve got a big hole in your sleeve,’ he said.
