Marion looked out at him, and beyond him to Wendy and Alison and Ewan, who had by now turned pale with the pain of his injury.
‘I was going to a fancy-dress party,’ said Marion.
It was now around one o’clock in the morning. Even if it had been true, it didn’t improve the situation.
‘Ewan’s hurt, and we have to get out of here,’ said Owen, as he pushed the door open and helped Alison’s father into the apartment. ‘Didn’t you hear the alarm?’
‘It stopped so quickly, I just thought it was an accident,’ she said. Then gave the Lloyds a brazen smile. ‘What an unexpected pleasure.’
Owen got Ewan onto Marion’s couch and started to look for something he could use as a splint. His eye settled on the coiled whip that she had forgotten she still held. Owen grabbed it from her. The leather-bound handle was perfect.
‘Have you got another one of these?’
She looked at him with horror. ‘What? Why would I have another-’
Owen didn’t have time to tango towards the truth with Marion. That was no fancy-dress costume she was wearing. And the whip was no fun-shop toy. Either Marion Blake was seriously into S amp;M or she had been waiting for a paying client – and either way, Owen was pretty sure she’d have another whip close at hand.
‘Just get it,’ he said.
As he expected, she went through into the bedroom.
Alison bent her head to the pixie doll and seemed to listen to it for a moment, then turned and looked at her mother. ‘Mr Pickle says, does Miss Blake work in the circus?’
Wendy couldn’t help bursting into laughter, and Owen joined her, enjoying the release. Ewan didn’t laugh, he was pale and sweating.
‘I need to go to the bathroom,’ he said. ‘I’m going to be sick.’
‘It’s all right, hold on. I’ll find you a bucket or something,’ said Owen.
But Ewan swung his legs off the couch, grimacing and defiant. ‘No,’ he said. ‘
Owen gave an
Ewan put his arm around Owen’s shoulders and together they shuffled towards the bathroom. Owen left him to it in there, wondering if Alison’s dad really did feel sick or if he was just too embarrassed to admit that he was crapping himself.
Another advantage of being dead, Owen noted. No matter how bad things got these days, the fear of crapping himself (which could be considered a professional hazard working for Torchwood) no longer applied.
As Owen returned to the lounge, Marion emerged from the bedroom. She had wrapped a dressing gown over her latex and fishnets. It was silk, not the towelling number he would have expected the woman he had met earlier to wear. The more he saw of Marion Blake, the more certain he was that her position as PA to some captain of Cardiff industry was no more substantial than the stockings she wore right now. And she had brought him the other whip.
Owen told her to leave it with the other one and asked her about the kind of household cleaners she kept.
‘Oh, God. I hope Ewan’s not making a mess in there,’ she gasped.
Owen had already made his way into the kitchen area and was going through her cupboards. ‘Even if he is, Marion, I’m not cleaning up after him.’
He found a bottle of liquid drain-cleaner and brandished it triumphantly. ‘Good start.’
Wendy had put her hands protectively on her daughter’s shoulders. ‘Do you want to tell us what you’re doing?’
Owen found another couple of bottles and started to scan the chemicals listed on their labels. ‘The only way out of here right now is down the stairs, and Count Dickula on the top floor has locked the doors. But that doesn’t mean we can’t get out.’
Wendy was incredulous. ‘You mean you’re going to blow the doors open?’
Owen nodded. ‘The average kitchen has everything you need.’
He saw her draw Alison a little closer, a little further away from him. ‘Just what sort of a doctor are you?’
‘The sort you can trust,’ he said, and fixed her with his eyes. He saw her think about it hard, and saw the slightest movement of her head.
Yes, she thought she could trust him. Owen only hoped she was right and yanked open one of Marion’s kitchen drawers, found a spoon and started to measure out the cleaning chemicals.
Two floors above, Jack was looking at the SkyPoint plans on Gwen’s hand-held module. There was nothing in them to suggest the defences that Lucca had alluded to, but whatever they were he didn’t suppose they were the kind of thing that got registered with the City Council. All they seemed to confirm was bad news: that there was no way up to Lucca’s apartment other than by the elevator.
‘So Lucca is in control of the power and the elevators,’ he said.
‘And, it’s reasonable to assume, everything else,’ Gwen confirmed.
‘But he’s taken control. Those things have to be run from somewhere else under normal circumstances.’
The small computer unit in Gwen’s hand cast a bluish light over her face as she scrolled through the pages. She found what she was looking for – there was a control room down in the basement.
Jack grinned. ‘Then maybe we can just take control back again. Override his override.’
Gwen nodded without enthusiasm. ‘Maybe we could. If we had Tosh. I know you’re a man of hidden talents, Jack, but I never see you getting hands-on with the computers in the Hub.’
Truth was, where he came from computer science was a little more advanced than they even had in the Hub, and who needed to know how a light switch worked so long as you could see where you were going when you pressed it? Jack was more of a physical player than a tech. Like Gwen.
Which meant that if they were going to rescue Toshiko they were going to have to do it with muscle, not technology.
‘What about the exterior?’ he said.
‘So you’re Spider-Man now, are you?’
‘I’m thinking laterally.’
She shook her head. ‘Jack, Lucca’s apartment is over sixty metres up.’
‘And it has a roof garden. Show me the plans.’
She did as she was told. Jack took the module and zoomed in and around the 3-D plans of the highest part of the building.
And he saw what he was looking for.
‘Jack, you’re crazy,’ Gwen said.
‘It’s the only way.’
She bit her lip, knowing he was right. If there was any flaw in Lucca’s fortress defences, the chances were that Jack had just found it. There were just two problems.
One: It was probably impossible.
Two: They’d have to get to the twenty-fourth floor first.
‘So what are we waiting for?’ asked Jack.
He walked across to the locked doors to the stairwell, and turned to Gwen. ‘You do have the key, don’t you?’
He stepped back as Gwen raised her weapon, nesting her gun grip in the palm of her left hand, and took aim.
The sidearm was a specially developed variant on the Glock 20, modified to carry a double-clip of thirty 10mm rounds with a machine-pistol mechanism that could fire the full load in under ten seconds. Gwen fired the whole double clip into the door in less time than it took the average man to die from a single bullet. The sound was deafening and the air smelled of cordite. The door panel was perforated by a circle of bullet holes.
As Gwen ejected the spent clips and replaced them, Jack stepped forward and kicked at the weakened body of the door. A few seconds later there was a hole big enough for the two of them to step through and they started
