Owen raised a sardonic eyebrow.
'OK,' said Toshiko. 'You'll have to be my stepladder.'
'What?'
'I'll climb onto your back.
'How much do you weigh?'
Toshiko scowled at him. 'What sort of a question is that?'
'Well, if you're going to climb on me…'
'I'm not that heavy.'
'I'll get a ladder…'
'I'm not
'Hey… I'm not that heavy.' Sighing and shaking his head, Owen stood before the wall full of containers, and braced himself ready for her to climb onto him.
Toshiko looked around the room, as if expecting somebody to be watching them, and jumped up onto his back.
'Whoa, easy,' gasped Owen. 'What do you think this is, a bloody rodeo?'
Toshiko stretched out with the key. 'I can't reach it,' she said.
'I'll go find a ladder,' said Owen, turning already, as if about to walk out with Toshiko still on his back.
'Rubbish,' said Toshiko. 'I'll get up on your shoulders.'
'What?'
'Just turn back around and I'll get up on your shoulders.'
Sighing, Owen did as she said, and with both hands pushing down on his head Toshiko climbed up onto his shoulders. He wobbled from side to side to get his balance but eventually stood firm.
Toshiko leaned forward again, and this time found that she could reach the container, sliding the key into the lock and turning it. The door opened. Toshiko felt a wave of warm air, and she could smell something, a static charge perhaps, like the aftermath of a thunderstorm.
She reached into the locker. Inside there was a wooden box, on which the label 'ITEM 4797 24/11/53' had been stamped. She held the box with both hands and slid it back towards the open locker door, pushing out a cascading shower of dust in its wake.
'You'd better hope I don't sneeze,' said Owen.
'It's really heavy,' she said.
'How heavy?'
'Really, really heavy.'
The box rested on the edge of the locker. Just one simple lift, thought Toshiko, just like picking up a television, put the weight against your chest…
As she pulled the box free of the locker, it quickly became apparent that it was even heavier than she'd thought. The sudden addition of the extra weight sent Owen stumbling back. The box fell to the ground with a loud crash, and both Owen and Toshiko fell flat on the floor.
'Ow!' said Toshiko. 'I landed right on my coccyx.'
Owen giggled.
'You said co-'
'It's not funny,' said Toshiko. 'I'm in quite a lot of pain, actually.'
They both looked at where the box had fallen. The box itself was now smashed beyond repair, its splinters scattered around the room. The artefact lay exactly where it had fallen, on top of a floor tile that was now cracked in half.
'How
'I told you. Very.'
'Not as heavy as you, I bet…'
'Hey!'
It was a metal sphere, about the same size as a football. At first it appeared quite smooth, but as they both crawled closer towards it they saw that it was covered with finely detailed engravings. One side of the metal ball was cracked open, but neither of them could see what was inside.
'Did we just do that?' asked Owen
'No,' said Toshiko. 'Look around the edges of the crack. It's melted, like something burnt its way out from inside.'
Owen climbed the stairs into the Hub, holding the metal ball to his chest. He liked to think he had a certain youthful athleticism, but even so he was exhausted. The ball must have weighed forty kilos, at least, and it was a long walk from Basement D-4 to the Hub.
Gwen and Ianto were at their workstations, their eyes fixed upon the screens. On a third screen, between the two stations, there was a CCTV image of Michael sleeping in the Boardroom.
'What's Michael sleeping on?' Owen gasped, still struggling with the weight of the ball.
'Inflatable mattress,' said Ianto, turning in his chair. 'Left over from our camping trip. One of the few things that didn't get trashed. I couldn't find the pump, so Gwen blew it up. She's got a set of lungs on her, that girl.' He pointed at the metal ball. 'Is that a present for me?' he asked.
'Not quite, no.' Owen wheezed. He got as far as the nearest table and put the ball down. It landed on the surface with a heavy thud. 'So while I've been slogging my guts out carrying that thing up the bloody stairs, what have you two been doing?'
'Michael said there were two men,' said Gwen. 'Cromwell and Valentine. They visited him in the hospital. Asked him some weird questions. We've been trying to find out who they were.'
'Any joy?' asked Toshiko.
Gwen nodded. 'There was nothing on our database for Valentine, so I did a cross-check of all data from 1953. Much more joy.'
She span back so that she was facing the screen.
'Kenneth James Valentine. Born 1921 in Newport. Worked as a carpenter from the age of fifteen until 1941, when he joined the Royal Dragoon Guards. Was present during Operation Overlord, otherwise known as D-Day, when as part of the Twenty Seventh Armoured Brigade he took part in the landings on Sword Beach. Was injured in combat and shipped back to Britain where he spent the remainder of the Second World War convalescing. Joined the Cardiff Borough Police in 1947, and then… Well, that's it.'
'That's it?' said Owen. 'What happened? Did he die?'
Gwen shook her head. 'There's no record of him being paid by Cardiff police after 1950, but there's no death certificate. Nothing. He just vanishes.'
'And what about Cromwell?'
Gwen turned to Ianto. Ianto looked from Gwen to Toshiko and Owen. He seemed cagey.
'I kind of already knew,' he said quietly.
'What do you mean?' asked Gwen. 'What did you already know?'
Ianto pointed at his screen, and the others gathered around him. On it there was an image of a man in his mid thirties; sharp beady eyes focused on the camera. It was a standard black and white portrait, taken in the 1950s, like a passport photograph. Next to the image there was a microfiche of his typed resume:
NAME:
BORN: 06/03/1915
DIED:
'Oh my God,' said Owen. 'He was one of us.'
