get it, boss.’
Jack didn’t even get as far as the walkway over the pool. He lurched against the rail, gasping and grimacing with pain.
Gwen propped the crutch against the base of the stainless steel tower for him to collect in his own time. She activated the exit lift, which began its ascent to Roald Dahl Plass. As it rose, she balanced by holding on to Ianto’s hairy, invisible forearm like some odd mime act. She could hear Ianto chuckling. Jack’s outraged expression grew smaller.
‘We know that Achenbrite can block our comms,’ Jack shouted up at them. ‘But we don’t know whether they can intercept them. If we’re adopting radio silence for this mission, I don’t want to be stuck here with Tosh.’
‘Thanks, Jack,’ Toshiko called from her workstation.
‘No offence, Tosh. I’ll just be kicking my heels.’
Toshiko pouted at him as she waved farewell to Gwen. ‘Well, your heel, anyway.’
A faint sheen of fine, clinging rain wafted off the Bay and across the Plass as Gwen and Ianto made their way to where Owen was to deliver the SUV. The rain meant there were fewer pedestrians to avoid, but it was still odd to hear the slapping sound of Ianto’s bare feet on the wooden boards.
Under the cover of the bus shelter, Gwen could make out the faint outline of Ianto’s head, shoulders and back from the fine covering of rainwater. A tell-tale patina of his whereabouts. She got him to stand still for a moment and, for want of anything else, slipped off her jacket and wiped his back with the lining. The cold November air chilled her to goose bumps. Gwen could feel Ianto shivering.
‘You poor thing,’ she said. When Owen drew up in the SUV, she banged on the driver’s window and urged him to crank the heating up. ‘We’ll try to park as close as possible to the Achenbrite place without drawing attention to ourselves,’ she told Ianto. ‘No point getting you any more frozen than absolutely necessary.’
The rear door of the SUV opened and closed by itself.
Gwen slipped into the passenger seat and buckled up.
‘Knowing that Owen is driving,’ said Ianto’s voice from behind her, ‘that’s a very wise precaution.’
Gwen laughed softly as she remembered what Rhys had said that same morning. ‘The difference between knowledge and wisdom. That’s one of Jack’s, isn’t it?’
‘Something to do with tomatoes?’ Ianto asked. ‘Yes, that’ll be one of Jack’s. Sounds more profound than it is, so he uses it when he’s trying to con you.’ He buckled himself incongruously into the seatbelt. ‘Ask me in an hour whether walking into the enemy camp naked was a wise decision.’
On the fourth attempt, Jack managed to get across the Hub without his crutch. He traversed the route from his office, across behind the water tower, and then over the walkway. The throbbing in his damaged leg was intense, but the satisfaction of completing the route was even greater. He approached Toshiko’s workstation, and thought he heard her say to herself: ‘I hope I did good.’ Or maybe it was ‘You did good.’
Well, yeah, he had done good, and he deserved a reward for his efforts. So he helped himself to the jar of candy on Toshiko’s desk. Toshiko started, and even gave a little squeal of shock. But she recovered her composure quickly enough to minimise the window of the application she’d been working on.
‘What was that?’ asked Jack.
She blanched. ‘Research,’ she said after a beat. She tugged the jar from his hand. ‘Hey, Gwen bought those bon-bons for me!’
Jack held one between his finger and thumb, and waggled it provocatively.
‘The jar spilled,’ Toshiko warned him. ‘I had to retrieve three or four of them from the filthy dirty floor.’
Jack looked at the bon-bon, and considered the size of the jar. ‘I like those odds,’ he decided, and popped the candy in his mouth. He pointed to the stuffed plush toy on her desk. ‘What’s that for?’
Toshiko smiled her secret smile. ‘It’s for when Owen comes to ask me a question for the fifth time each day about how to fix his computer. The sort of thing he should be able to work out for himself. So I insist that he asks this stuffed tiger before he interrupts me.’
He raised his eyebrows at her. ‘Does it work?’
Toshiko scratched the tiger affectionately between its velour ears. ‘It has an eighty per cent success rate.’
Jack chuckled, and drew a chair up next to her. ‘Not as good as you,’ he said. ‘This computer of ours, Tosh. Organic, living, intuitive technology light years ahead of anything on Earth. But you got it as soon as you used it. No one understands it like you do, Tosh. What would we do without you?’
‘I thought about that today,’ she said quietly. Her fingers tapped nervously on her mouse, and the pointer on her display screen jiggled in response.
‘The sauropod that got in here?’ Jack asked. ‘Yeah, that must have been a close thing. But you know what? You did good.’
She gave him a sharp look.
‘I mean it,’ he smiled. ‘I take all the credit, of course,’ he added grandly, ‘I only pick the best. So, watcha doin’?’
Toshiko didn’t look at him. Instead of answering his question, she pointed to the stuffed tiger. Jack laughed good-naturedly, and Toshiko joined in.
‘I’m connecting the dots,’ she told him eventually. ‘I’m doing some conventional data mining. It’s the online version of Ianto snooping naked around Achenbrite, but it’s less likely to arouse suspicion.’
Jack smiled. ‘Ianto snooping while naked. That’s arousing, right there.’
Toshiko opened a load of web browser windows, and manipulated them so they displayed across all the available flat-screen display space above her desk. News reports, NHS records, Police SOC reports, birth certificates. They were all linked by dynamically moving lines. And at the centre was a photograph of a young man with sharp cheekbones. Startling green eyes stared out from beneath greasy centre-parted hair.
‘Gareth Portland,’ said Jack. ‘Those lines make him look like the spider at the centre of a web.’
‘He’s the connection that binds all these facts and events,’ agreed Toshiko. ‘Freak meteorological events, MonstaQuest franchises, family addresses, that sort of thing. There’s a psych report for when he was treated for anger management as a teenager. But it’s the sudden deaths that interest me.’
‘Never say that in a public place,’ Jack joked. Toshiko peered over her spectacles at him. ‘Sorry, go on, Tosh.’
‘The priest you found this morning? Gareth was one of his altar boys at Holy Innocents. This young woman here? She was the school pupil who he fought with in Year 10 and got a two-month suspension. This couple here are his former neighbours. The zookeeper who got killed? He supervised Gareth’s work placement. Gareth had a MonstaQuest franchise at Pendefig Mall – and that burned down this morning. Gareth’s girlfriend died in a house fire at his home. And there’s more.’
Jack clucked his tongue. ‘That’s either one
‘… he is the spider at the heart of the web.’ Toshiko lifted her plush tiger, and Jack now saw that it had been sat on the alien ‘zoo catalogue’ device. ‘He’s got one of these,’ Toshiko continued. ‘A device that takes advantage of Gareth’s fragile emotions by getting him worked up about all sorts of things. He thinks that he’s exploiting it, Jack. But I think it’s using him.’
Jack turned the catalogue device over in his hand. ‘Better find him, Tosh.’
‘Is he in the Achenbrite facility?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Jack. ‘But remember you said you found that place when you worked out what it
‘Sure.’
‘Look for catastrophes or deaths that
Toshiko moved her hands to her keyboard. ‘And what about Ianto?’ she asked.
‘No way to contact him now. He’s on his own.’ He saw that Toshiko had stopped typing, and was looking at him worriedly. ‘Don’t worry,’ he told her. ‘I picked the best, remember?’
But he hoped his voice didn’t betray his true fears.
