Strong was frowning now. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘It’s true. You’re the picture of health, according to your blood tests, mate.’
‘Feels like I’m gonna die,’ said Strong. There had been, for a moment, a fleeting expression of relief on his face, but it was quickly displaced by a look of bewilderment and fear. ‘So what the hell’s wrong with me?’
Owen picked up his wrist and checked the pulse. He counted the beats off against the second hand on his watch. The heart rate was fast but steady. ‘You’re not going to die yet,’ Owen told him. He prised open one of the puffy eyelids and looked at the eye beneath, producing a slim pencil torch from his jacket pocket to help.
The eyes looked sore but the pupils contracted when he shone the penlight at them.
‘Open wide, Bob,’ Owen said, turning the man’s face towards him. ‘I need to have a look at your throat, mate.’
The mouth duly opened, and, using a pencil as a makeshift tongue suppressor, Owen shone the torch into the man’s throat.
It looked red and inflamed, which was what he expected. But there was something else there. Across the wet skin at the back of the mouth were a number of white sores, almost like mouth ulcers, some of them speckled with blood. There was a layer of foul-smelling mucus there too. So far so bad throat infection.
Then something moved at the back of Strong’s throat.
Owen blinked, hardly believing it. He kept very still and shone the torch steadily at the soft flesh.
There it was again: a tiny movement, beneath the skin. The pink flesh rippled slightly as something squirmed under the surface.
Owen clicked off the torch. ‘OK, close up. Nothing happening here.’
Strong swallowed with difficulty. ‘What is it?’
‘Too early to tell.’
‘That’s what you said last time.’ Bob suddenly started coughing again, and Owen jerked back, not knowing what to expect but nevertheless wary.
‘You been near any ponds recently? Canals? Stagnant water of any kind?’
‘Don’t think so. No. Why?’
‘Do you know Saskia Harden?’
‘Sorry?’ Now Strong sat up, coughing abruptly, a querulous look replacing the worried frown. ‘Saskia Harden? What’s she got to do with anything? How do you know her?’
‘I don’t,’ Owen said. ‘But you obviously do.’
Strong swallowed painfully again. ‘Is she connected with this? Is she carrying something? A virus?’
‘It’s possible. We really need to talk to her.’
‘You’d have to check the records at the medical centre.’
‘We already have. The address on her file doesn’t exist.’ Owen saw Bob frowning and carried on, pressing home the questions. ‘Do you have any idea where she might be? How we could find her?’
‘Wait a minute. I … I saw her yesterday. In surgery. She came to see me. She’s not been well — mental problems, that kind of thing. Some attempts at suicide. I don’t know her all that well, but she …’ Once again the words disappeared under a series of coughs. Strong grabbed a handkerchief, but not before he’d had to bring up an odious lump of green and red matter. ‘Oh, God, I don’t know how long I can take this,’ he gasped. ‘What’s wrong with me? I should be in hospital, surely …’
Owen shook his head. ‘No. Definitely no hospitals. Not yet. I don’t want you taking this into a hospital, not until we know exactly what it is.’
‘But they’ll have facilities,’ Strong argued. ‘Quarantine.’
‘This may not be something they would know how to deal with,’ Owen warned.
‘They have facilities for this sort of thing-’
‘It’s unlikely. No hospitals, not yet.’ Owen stood up, signalling that the subject was closed. ‘Is there anyone else at the medical centre who might know how to find Saskia Harden?’
Strong shook his head. ‘No one. All we know is what’s on the records.’
‘OK. Sit tight.’ Owen stood up, speed-dialling his mobile phone. ‘Ianto? I can’t trace Saskia from here. You’re gonna have to find her yourself. Go back to the police records. See if there are any clues there. If you don’t find anything, go back and check again. And get Gwen to help you — she’s got a cop’s instincts.’
‘Gwen’s gone out with Jack,’ said Ianto.
‘What for?’
‘There’s been a sighting — a water hag, we think. In Garron Park.’
‘I’m on my way,’ Owen snapped the phone shut and turned back to Strong. ‘If you think of anything, anything at all, that might help us find Saskia Harden, ring me on this number.’ He jotted something down on a piece of notepaper and handed it over.
‘OK.’ Bob glanced at the number and then folded it and slipped it into his shirt pocket.
Owen paused, raising a hand to rub at his neck. He swallowed, wincing a little.
‘What’s up?’
Owen shrugged and headed for the door. ‘Nothing. Just getting a bit of a sore throat, I think.’
FIFTEEN
Jack and Gwen were in the SUV, hurtling through the streets of Cardiff. Jack was at the wheel, Gwen sat in the passenger seat, loading a fresh magazine into her automatic. Jack’s eyes never left the road but he was still talking.
‘I don’t like this,’ he said, biting the words off. ‘I don’t like running after something when I don’t even know what it is.’
‘The sighting was yesterday,’ Gwen said. ‘We have to follow it up.’
‘The sighting was unconfirmed. It’s internet chatter. An old woman lurking near the lake in Garron Park? Give me a break.’
‘Then why are we speeding there like our lives depend on it?’ asked Gwen.
‘May be I’m just tired of waiting around.’
Jack swung the SUV into a tight bend, the street lamps painting stripes of orange across his face as the car roared along the avenue. ‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘Tosh says there’s a pattern of Rift activity centring on the park. Rift sparks. Best place in the city to find the kind of water these creatures like.’
The SUV skidded to a halt by the park gates, and they scrambled out. Jack flipped open his leather wrist- strap and checked the readings. A green light flickered on the display and it beeped metronomically. ‘Chronon discharge — this way,’ he said, starting towards the park gates.
The main paths through the park were lit, but it was deserted and some areas were in total darkness. Gwen had made a quick study of the geography of the park in the SUV on the way here, but she had taken the precaution of downloading a map of the area, combined with an aerial photo, onto her mobile.
Five minutes later, they were at the lake, and the light from Gwen’s torch floated across the shimmering blackness of the lake. It looked as cold and still as slate.
With a hiss of impatience, Jack snapped shut the cover on his wrist-strap.
‘Anything?’
‘Nothing,’ he said. He took a small single-lens night-sight out of a pocket and scanned the lake. ‘What exactly am I looking for here?’
‘Don’t ask me. Ianto said some school kids reported seeing an old woman floating in the lake yesterday afternoon …’
‘School kids?’
‘It was all over the internet chatrooms, apparently,’ Gwen continued.
‘Ianto has too much time on his hands.’
‘He was searching for specific references — woman, water, local canals, rivers, parks … key words that came up with this.’
‘That was yesterday, this is now,’ said Jack. ‘If she was here then we’re too late. This is getting to be a
