on Toshiko and Besnik Lucca. The Latvian had managed to draw her away from the beachball couple and was talking to her quietly in a corner. She was looking up at him, smiling.
What was going on here? She knew who Lucca was, she had been there when Gwen ran them through his police profile – maybe she was just playing up to him. This was an undercover job, after all, wasn’t it? But that wasn’t the problem. It had been the body language when Lucca touched her on the shoulder – and that he had
That meant they had met before.
‘So, you’re a doctor, Owen,’ Alun was saying, he had a glass in each hand now, one for himself and one for Julie Jugs who was dancing by herself over by the window, and making sure everybody saw her – in the apartment, and across Cardiff. ‘What do you think?’ he asked. ‘Reckon she could go up another couple of sizes?’
‘Not now, mate,’ Owen said and headed across the floor towards Toshiko and Besnik Lucca.
‘Tosh?’ he said.
She turned to look at him and Owen was sure that he caught something that looked like guilt in her eye. Then it was gone.
‘Owen,’ she said. ‘This is Besnik. He lives in the penthouse. It has a roof garden.’
Lucca turned to meet Owen’s gaze. He had dark eyes, almost black. Owen wondered if Alison Lloyd had met Lucca and if, when she looked into his eyes, she was reminded of the same thing that he was.
‘I’m pleased to meet you, Owen,’ Lucca said to him, offering that same manicured hand that had stroked Toshiko’s back. ‘You have a very beautiful wife.’
Owen saw Toshiko looking at him over the top of her glass as she sipped. He took Lucca’s hand and shook it.
‘Thank you.’
‘And welcome to SkyPoint. I hope you find what you’re looking for.’
‘I’m sorry?’ said Toshiko. ‘What do you mean?’
Lucca smiled. His teeth were perfect, Owen noticed. Crime paid for good dental care.
‘Everyone who comes to SkyPoint is looking for more than just a home,’ Lucca said. His voice was warm and exotic, and his black eyes moved around the room as he spoke, touching each of the SkyPoint residents and moving on as he spoke. ‘Some are looking for a view, some status, some want a fresh start, some need a place to escape, and some to hide.’
‘What about you?’ Owen asked.
‘I give them what they’re looking for. I own SkyPoint. At least, I have a substantial investment.’
‘Impressive,’ said Toshiko, and Owen tried to make up his mind if she actually meant it. He could tell when she looked at Besnik Lucca that she wasn’t thinking about the things Gwen had told them in the Hub.
‘So, you’re into property?’ Owen asked, wondering how many buildings around the city were built on the bones of people that had crossed him. Maybe that was why the cops had never been able to make anything stick: they couldn’t afford to tear down half of the new city.
‘I have many interests,’ Lucca said, his eyes resting on Toshiko, not Owen.
Owen really wanted to grab Besnik Lucca by the hair and smash his face into Wendy and Ewan Lloyd’s steel and plate-glass dining table until something broke. Head or glass, he didn’t care which.
Instead, he slid an arm around Toshiko’s waist and drew her closer to him then kissed her on the cheek.
‘Well, my wife is the only interest I need,’ Owen said.
‘I’ll see you in the lift some time,’ Owen told him, and meant it to sound a little like a threat. He wanted Lucca to get the message. Whether or not he did, Owen couldn’t tell. He didn’t wait, just guided Toshiko across the room and whispered to her, ‘What in the name of god are you playing at?’
FIFTEEN
Things didn’t go well for Owen and Toshiko after he escorted her away from Besnik Lucca. She hadn’t reacted well to his half-whispered, half-snarled question and as the two of them adopted the positions that couples did when they started arguing at parties – with the minimum of animation and volume, like a couple of wooden figures on a German clock – Owen could still see they were drawing attention from their new neighbours. It crossed his mind that they probably made a pretty convincing married couple – but if they were newlyweds, they probably wouldn’t last long.
In the end they made their excuses and took the argument out into the passageway.
‘So tell me, what was all that about?’ he demanded.
‘What?’
‘You and Lucca.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Don’t lie to me, Tosh.’
And she looked at him, her eyes wide with surprise – and delight. ‘You’re jealous.’
He ignored her. ‘The man is dangerous.’ He was jealous, and she liked it.
‘Maybe I’m attracted to dangerous men,’ she said. After all, Owen had always been kind of dangerous. Maybe not the same way as Besnik Lucca, but he had never been a saint. It shocked her a little to think that may have been what got her on to him in the first place.
‘Why didn’t you tell me that you’d met him before?’
She’d had something like a smile on her face. Owen’s obvious jealousy had delighted her. Now his question wiped it off her face as surely as if he’d slapped her. She considered struggling out of his suspicions, faking complete bemusement, telling him he was imagining things. The trouble was, she was a little scared by the fact she had said nothing to him.
‘He found me in the basement earlier.’
‘Jesus Christ, Tosh!’
‘It’s all right. I told him I was looking for somewhere to smoke. I lied. He seemed to believe me.’
‘And you didn’t think it was worth telling me.’
‘We’re here to find an alien that can move through walls, not an Eastern European crime lord. He’s irrelevant.’
‘We don’t know that. For all we know, he could be what we’re looking for.’
Toshiko shook her head. ‘No. According to the police profile, Lucca has been living in the UK since 1998. If he was really something that had come through the Rift there’s no way he would have stayed off the Torchwood radar this long.’
Owen conceded that she had a point: if he had come through the Rift, Lucca wouldn’t be the first with a murderous track record, but he would be the first to set about building a crime empire, never mind a multi-million- pound property portfolio.
All the same, Owen couldn’t help worrying about her and, perhaps, for himself. He felt awkward, but he couldn’t stop the question slipping out. ‘You don’t fancy him, do you, Tosh?’
Toshiko glanced aside. She didn’t want to look at him when she lied, but the truth was there was something magnetic about Lucca. Something that was unquestionably dark but undeniably sexually exciting. She didn’t want to lie, and she found that she didn’t need to – she saw the door to their apartment was standing slightly open, and that took over in the priority stakes.
‘Owen, look.’
He turned towards the door and she was glad to see that he had brought his gun with him. He pulled it from the small of his back and motioned her to stand back as he pressed himself against the wall of the passageway and edged closer to the open door of their apartment.
There were no sounds from beyond the door, and the only light was the faint orange glow of the Bay lights below.
Owen readied his nerves and bunched his muscles, and sprang through the door, swinging the gun from left
