Gwen looked down at the glazed, resigned expression on the dead woman's face and wondered what she'd make of this outcome. She hoped she'd be happy for her child. She sighed. Not that it mattered. When you were dead, you were dead. This woman's worries were over.
Turning away, Gwen left the room and its horrific contents behind. It seemed there had been so much death lately. Suddenly she felt the urge to run back to the flat and curl up with Rhys and eat a Chinese takeaway on the sofa and pretend that everything in the world was all right. And, just for a few hours, it would be. Rhys had that effect on her. He might not be the most exciting man on the planet — which Gwen knew for a fact, since she worked for the man that must surely claim that title — but Rhys was the most dependable and he loved her, and at the end of the day what more could she want than that?
Jack squeezed her arm. 'You OK?'
'Yeah.' Clearing the dark cloud from her face, she smiled. 'Yeah. Just glad it's over.'
Leaving Havannah Court Autism Centre behind, for the first time in days Gwen was happy to feel the heavy drops of rain running through her hair.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Jack took a long swallow of his bottled water as the man scraped the bar stool next to his out and sat down.
'I thought you'd stood me up.'
Cutler grinned. He was still in his suit this time; the hour earlier and the mood lighter. 'Are you crazy? Wherever I go, there are phones ringing for me.'
Jack laughed. 'But this time I'm thinking they're all being a little nicer when you answer.'
'Maybe.' Cutler nodded at the barman. 'JD and coke and whatever that piss-water is he's drinking.'
Pushing a ten pound note across the bar, Jack forced Cutler's own cash out of the way. 'I'm getting these.' He looked over at the detective. 'Let's call it a farewell drink.' He paused. 'I take it you are leaving Cardiff? And not to go to the Orkney Islands?'
'You guess right.' Stuffing his money back in his pocket, Cutler leaned forward on the bar. 'I've been called back to London. Seems the stink around me is fading.'
'Congratulations.'
They clinked bottle to glass and the note rang clear around the half-empty bar. 'Thanks. Although congratulations aren't necessary, are they? None of this has anything to do with me.'
Jack watched him thoughtfully. 'But you solved the case and brought an end to the terror of the Cardiff Slasher.'
Cutler laughed. 'Oh yeah. Of course I did.'
'It's in the papers. It must be true. Maria Bruno's husband cracked under the pressure of their debts and her constant put-downs and threats of divorce and murdered his wife, cutting out the organs that were most important to her. But not before he'd practised on a few others first, scouring the streets of Cardiff dressed in a thick black cape, seeking out his victims and monstrously killing them. But his taste for blood had grown too great and, even after the ruthless execution of his own wife, Martin Meloy just couldn't stop.'
Jack widened his eyes, exaggerating the impact of his words; his voice full of Victorian carnival melodrama. 'And then, feeling Detective Inspector Cutler's carefully slung net closing in around him, and with his final murder attempt foiled, he took the coward's route and ended his own life, leaving only the pitiful note, 'I'm sorry. It was all my fault.''
He raised an eyebrow and then his bottled water, saluting the policeman.
'If that's what the papers say, then it must be true.' Cutler rolled his glass around in his hands. 'I'm glad you find it funny.'
Jack sighed. 'Sometimes you have to look at the lighter side. If you don't, the darkness will drive you mad. Take that on board from one who knows.'
'Poor bastard Meloy.'
'No.' Jack shook his head. 'He's dead. This doesn't hurt him.'
Cutler didn't look so convinced. 'You know what
'Go on.'
Jack watched the crinkles and lines of the other man's face. There were plenty running their way across his forehead and down his cheeks that had no place there for a few years yet. None of them looked like laughter lines.
'Well, think about it. I stuck the knife in my career by pretending I'd planted evidence, and now I've resurrected my career by actually planting evidence to set up a dead man. There's trace DNA of Meloy's been found at every crime scene or on each body just in case anyone tries to prove him innocent.' He shook his head. 'And Torchwood forced my hand in both cases.' Running his fingers through the mess of sandy hair that topped his head, he met Jack's gaze. 'So you can congratulate me as much as you like, but we both know it's all bollocks. There's no real truth or justice here. It's all a mockery. Just like last time.'
Jack shook his head. 'You're wrong. You don't think what happened with Ryan Scott and the alien was justice? And do you really think the world is ready for the truth about the Rift and everything else that's out there?' Cutler didn't answer. 'Of course you don't. If you did, you wouldn't have stayed quiet all these years. It's just not as easy as black and white and right and wrong, although sometimes my job would be a lot easier to live with if it were. Truth is all perception. The truth can change.'
'The real truth of things is always there, Jack. Underneath. You know it. You just make choices and hope they're the best ones.' Cutler smiled. 'And I respect you for that. But I'm not sure it's a code I can live by.'
They drank in silence, each lost in their own thoughts. It was Jack that cracked the moment.
'I can make it true, though.'
He looked sideways at the policeman.
'I can make it as if none of the truth happened and what the papers say is real.' He paused.
'We have something. It kind of soothes the memory. Wipes the crap away. And trust me, it's normally for the best.'
'So is that how you deal with inconvenient people like me down here?' Cutler shook his head. 'That won't make it any truer. It will just make it true to me. And that's a completely different thing. I'll keep my brain untampered with, if you don't mind. Bitter and twisted is the way I like to be.'
'I thought that's what you'd say, but it would be rude not to offer.'
'And I thank you for your offer.' Cutler pushed back the stool. 'Just need to take a trip to the little boys' room and then I'm going to buy you a goodbye drink. A proper one. With alcohol in it and everything.' He paused. 'You'd have been a good man to have on the force, Harkness.'
Jack grinned. 'I'll get them in, sir.'
'You do that.'
Twenty minutes later, Gwen stood in the doorway of the bar, her slim figured haloed by light and with her hands on her hips. It was only when she walked in that Jack saw the slight frown pulling two lines down between her eyebrows. He wondered if he'd still know her when those lines settled there. Everything was uncertain. Everything could change. How long did Gwen have? Would her breath of life be any longer than Tosh's or Owen's or all the others he'd seen die in the name of Torchwood? The inside of his mouth stung bitterly.
Gwen looked at the policeman slumped over the bar, his blond head resting in his hands. A snuffled snore squeezed out from between his face and the smooth surface.
'I take it that's not been brought on by drink?'
Jack shook his head. 'No.'
'Didn't think so.'
Ianto joined them, his own neat suit the antonym of Cutler's, whose shirt hung out at the back. 'Retcon?'
'Yep.' Jack stood up. 'I slipped it in his drink when he went to the bathroom.'
'How come?' Gwen's disappointment was clear, but Jack didn't want to hear it. He knew she'd liked Cutler.
