she felt brave enough to venture out, the pteranodon was pecking at the shrivelled, charred remains. Toshiko was sure she could see a glint of Cretaceous amusement in those reptile eyes.
The whole Hub smelled of heat and charred flesh. Toshiko slumped into her workstation chair, and wiped the back of her hand across her perspiring forehead. She started to bring the CCTV back online, and smiled at the thought that her vanquishing of the creature had not been caught on camera. As she worked, she began to think what else might connect the creatures she’d seen – the bat-thing, this pseudo-diplodocus, even the Weevils… and then she had it.
It was that catalogue device they’d stored away some three months ago. After some thought, Ianto had named it the Vandrogonite Visualiser, though Jack had quibbled that just because it was found in the possession of a Vandrogon that didn’t mean the race had manufactured it.
Toshiko decided that it was time to get the Visualiser from the Vaults.
FOURTEEN
The front wheels of the chair jarred against the ambulance door for the third time, and Jack gasped in pain. ‘Sorry,’ said Owen, who was steering. ‘I’d usually ask a porter to do this.’
‘I’m honoured,’ winced Jack, who had insisted on getting into the wheelchair in the first place. He wanted to escape the ambulance before it left the zoo.
Owen warned him that the foot was ‘hanging by a thread’. Except that he used medical terms that sounded like tendons or subcutaneous exposure or something. Didn’t matter, thought Jack. Whatever it was called officially, it hurt like hell. And yet he had literally hopped into the seat of the chair, and urged them both out of the ambulance and onto the tarmac of the zoo’s main thoroughfare, in the face of Owen’s objections.
The paramedics protested, too. The dumpy one, Brenda, had waved her credentials at Owen. Barry, the quietly spoken guy with the face like a disappointed horse, hovered morosely in the background, clearly reluctant to intervene beyond a token objection. Owen mentioned the word ‘Torchwood’, but Jack thought it was probably the sight of his holstered SIG P228 semi-automatic that persuaded them to stop hassling him. Owen casually exploited their discomfort by commandeering their ambulance. He strongly implied that the dead body constituted a biohazard, but that he and Jack were at liberty to leave – Jack lost track of the clinical jargon that Owen tossed at the cowed paramedics. As a triumphant conclusion, he told them to confirm it with Control back at Cardiff General.
Bumptious Brenda and by-the-book Barry seized on this like drowning swimmers grasping a lifebelt. Which in turn gave Owen the opportunity to reroute their radio call to the Hub. Toshiko swiftly substantiated everything that Owen had said. Verbatim, in fact, because he stood behind them and fed it directly to her from his PDA.
‘What are we gonna do about getting back to the General?’ Brenda bleated at Owen, once her call had finished.
Owen waved airily, a gesture that encompassed not only the other injured zoo visitors being treated at the scene, but also a couple of other ambulances that had parked nearby. ‘Plenty of other people to assess here. After that, get a lift from another crew.’
Barry shrugged. Brenda was opening her mouth for a fresh remonstration when a shout from a paramedic took her over to another victim. There were two stretchers. On one, a grey-faced, white-haired woman was receiving oxygen. The second stretcher’s occupant was overlaid with a stitched red blanket, but the corpse’s arm had slipped from beneath it. The arm dangled free for a moment, uncovered. From the gnarled finger joints, Jack could see that Walter and his wife had finally been parted.
Owen got the collapsible chair down from the rear of the ambulance, and wheeled Jack away from prying eyes. They ended up in a secluded area to the side of the reptile house, far from the milling crowd of rubberneckers and emergency staff, and Jack was able to call back to the Hub.
‘Tosh, what have we got on Achenbrite? If you can hack into the zoo’s CCTV, you might get some visuals on them.’
‘On the whole, I’d rather not,’ said Toshiko’s voice in his ear. ‘And you know that “CC” means “closed circuit”. They’re not on an accessible network. You might as well ask me to hack the contents of one of their filing cabinets.’
Jack pondered this. ‘Those Achenbrite guys had a logo on their overalls. Crossed keys. Like the Papacy, but without the crown.’
‘I’ve set off a search now.’
Jack grinned. ‘Brilliant, as always. And Tosh – great job convincing the ambulance crew on that call they made.’
He could hear in her voice that she was smiling too. ‘Think of me as the fourth emergency service.’
‘I rely on you in a crisis, you know that.’ Jack could hear something else in her voice too. ‘Are you OK? Sounds like you’re gasping for breath.’
‘It’s been a busy morning for me.’
‘Unless,’ Jack suggested, ‘this is one of those dirty phone calls?’
‘That’s not the kind of emergency service I had in mind,’ tutted Toshiko, and Jack could picture her disapproving frown. ‘I thought I’d move some of the furniture around. You won’t recognise the place… Here you go.’
There was a computer bleep as her search results arrived. Jack shaded the display monitor on his wrist monitor with a cupped hand, and squinted at the miniature image.
In comparison with their surroundings, even on this reduced scale, the familiar grey-suited figures were brutally large. The video surveillance images showed that they were corralling a barking pack of dogs around a block of low, flat buildings. ‘You’re showing me a rerun of
‘Seemed like nothing important at the time. They recaptured nearly a hundred animals after a mass breakout from a breeding kennels in Lisvane. The Torchwood systems flagged it as insignificant because it was just domestic animals, not aliens.’ Toshiko caught her breath again. ‘We only tagged it at all because there was contemporaneous Rift activity.’
‘Probably the alien tech they used. But no signs of them capturing extraterrestrials?’
‘Not unless they were disguised as border collies.’
‘You’d be surprised. All right. Thanks, Tosh. And don’t put your back out.’
There was the briefest of pauses before Toshiko said, ‘Pardon?’
‘Moving furniture,’ Jack explained as he signed off. ‘Leave the heavy lifting to Ianto. He’s a bit of an expert.’ He looked around, levering himself up a little on the arms of the wheelchair. ‘Owen, where
‘Dunno, mate,’ Owen said, and holstered his weapon. No point in drawing unnecessary attention. ‘I thought you were in a rush to get out of that ambulance ’cause you knew where Ianto was. I told you, I just followed the blues and twos.’ Here he indicated a couple of police officers who were directing members of the public to leave the zoo and discouraging stragglers who had not yet evacuated.
Owen was saying something else, but Jack didn’t hear it properly. He was distracted by the sight of someone else. ‘Gimme a break,’ he muttered, and shrank into the wheelchair.
David Brigstocke was picking his way across the grass verge towards them. He showed his Press pass to one of the police officers. The PC was more occupied with a weeping woman, and nodded Brigstocke on. The journalist had one hand in the pocket of his cheap check jacket. No doubt clicking on his digital recorder as he prepared to accost Jack once more.
‘Who’s your friend?’ Owen asked Jack.
‘David Brigstocke, BBC Radio Wales.’ The journalist offered a handshake that Owen did not accept. ‘And yet, I know
‘Yeah yeah,’ interrupted Owen. ‘Tell me something I don’t know.’ He grabbed the handles of the wheelchair, but was unable to manoeuvre Jack away because the newcomer had placed his feet directly by the front wheels.
