the big pond never changed but the detail of the ripples, the direction and mass, all that could be altered by the splash of a hand. Or the addition of a fish.
So, if his inability to access Tretarri was deliberate, and something was growing more powerful as time went by, there would have to be a point when the trap was sprung.
For that to happen, Jack would have to be given access to the streets.
He stared around him. The pavement-embedded uplighters were on, even though it was the middle of the day. The street lamps were on, too. Someone’s carbon footprint wasn’t making an indentation on their conscience. The lights in every house were on. But still no one was going in or out, the focus of the party atmosphere was external.
A clown was looking at him. Staring blankly, as if not quite seeing him. That was odd.
There was something about the way it was standing, head at a slight angle, the mouth beneath the big red painted lips.
God, no.
‘Owen?’
Jack was walking across the road towards Tretarri, ignoring the nausea rising in his gut, fighting it down.
The clown he thought was Owen was caught up in a throng of children and, with a honk on a horn, it vanished, swept away by a sea of screaming, laughing kids.
Jack took a deep breath. Step by step.
One foot forward.
Owen. He had to get to Owen.
Another foot forward.
Jeez, he felt rank, could taste the bile.
If Owen was here, then maybe Toshiko, Gwen and Ianto were, too.
Another step.
Ianto!
The young man was standing outside 6 Coburg Street. Jack could see him. Staring away, Jack could only see one side of him. Could he catch his eye?
‘Ianto,’ he yelled.
A group of people turned and looked at Jack and then over at the man he was clearly yelling at, who gave no response. A little girl broke away from her family and ran to Ianto, pulling at his sleeve. Just enough to ease Ianto round to face Jack.
The right-hand side of his face was half clown make-up.
Why only half, Jack wondered. Owen was a complete clown (in so many ways, he thought wryly). Ianto was still in his suit. Why.
And Ianto in trouble, in possible pain, was enough for Jack. Enough to overcome the nausea, the sickness, the bile. For the first time in his life, he was capable of marching into Tretarri, past the crowds, the street performers, everyone. Until he reached Ianto.
He put a hand to his unpainted cheek.
‘Ianto?’
‘Jack?’
Jack turned. It was Bilis. At the doorway to number 6 Coburg Street.
‘We should talk, I believe. And in here, we can.’
Jack frowned. ‘Walk into my parlour?’
Bilis shrugged. ‘Revenge for the Future?’
And Jack followed him in.
At the other end of the street party, wholly unaware of Jack, Ianto, Owen and Bilis, was Idris Hopper.
Why had he come? What had Jack stirred up in him that he felt the need to call in sick at work and head down here, to see if Tretarri really was worth the fuss Jack was making.
No sign of Jack though. ‘Bloody Torchwood,’ he muttered. ‘I should know better.’
A man with a white face and stripy shirt approached him. A mime. He offered Idris a flower, but the Welshman shook his head and pushed past him with a weak smile.
A man in a suit was standing in front of a group of teenaged girls, who were giggling. He held up a pack of cards. A girl tapped one. The suited man shuffled the cards, then pocketed them, clapped his hands and pointed to a window in a house.
The girls whooped to see the card posted there.
The man, who never spoke, held a finger up, produced the pack again and offered them to a different girl. She selected a different card. The four of hearts. He showed everyone.
He got out a black marker and she wrote her name on it. Nikki, Idris noted.
He then reshuffled and this time gave her the pack, pointing at her handbag. She put the pack in the bag, and he gently took the bag from her and gave it a comical shake.
He then pretended to watch something invisible rise from her bag and everyone followed his eyeline, until it settled on the bag of the first girl to have picked a card.
He pointed at her bag, which she opened and, sure enough, found a card in there. The four of hearts. With ‘Nikki’ scrawled across it in black marker.
The applause and screams went up, and he bowed.
Idris carried on, past a stilt-walker and a female clown holding a bucket, which a few people dropped coins into. She never moved, never blinked.
He dropped a fifty pence piece in and walked on, not seeing the clown woman turn her head to watch him. Nor did he see her lower the bucket to the floor, and put a hand to the back of her trousers, as if expecting to find something tucked into the top.
Walking on down Wharf Street, Idris noticed that there was a statue in the middle of one of the connecting streets. He didn’t remember that from the plans. Bronze, showing a Kabuki dancer, kimono, one leg tucked up, palms erect, a fan in each, the head at a slight angle, looking upwards. Only the slightest tremble made Idris realise this was in fact a painted human. He always found human statues a bit creepy. Not just because the lack of movement dehumanised them, but because it took a very special kind of person who could get satisfaction from standing stock still for so long.
He stared at the Kabuki for a moment. It didn’t move again. He shrugged and turned away.
And therefore didn’t see tiny spikes pop up at the top of each crease in the fans. Or the tucked leg return to the ground. Or the unsmiling head turn and watch him through jet black eyes, as it drew back one of the lethal fans, ready to throw it like a shuriken.
As Idris turned a corner and moved out of the Kabuki’s view, she resumed her passive pose, the spikes retracting from the fans.
And the hurdy-gurdy music continued to sound, mixed with the laughter of happy families.
NINETEEN
When did it go wrong?
It was the question that had haunted Ianto Jones for about eighteen months. Now he believed he knew the answer – it was the day he’d spotted Gwen was expecting.
They had all been in the Hub Boardroom, and Jack was being an arse – well, a particularly arsey arse. And Owen had walked out.
Later that night, Owen had talked to Ianto about Jack. About the Hub. About Torchwood. And about the Rift. Dreams, ideas, plans.To use the Rift to help mankind.
All of which had seemed a good idea in principle, but not in practice.
‘Look what happened last time we opened the Rift,’ he’d said to Owen. But Owen had had an answer to that. Something about Jack, something about Jack’s immortality being used to power the Rift ad infinitum.
