The secretary would look at her in that waspish way he always did and repeat slowly ‘the dancing dog…’
And he’d be right. This was going to be a disaster.
‘What we really need – no disrespect to your friend, Tom – is one company that can supply the lot,’ she said. ‘Street Parties R Us.’
God, Susi thought, maybe she should set that up herself. It’d get her out of this dead-end job. She’d make a fortune, all those posh families in Roath in the summer…
She was distracted suddenly when a motorcycle courier walked in, helmet on.
Before she had a chance to ask him to remove it (why hadn’t reception done that? Indeed, why was the courier up here anyway?), he held out an envelope.
‘Susan Sharma?’ he said, muffled by the helmet.
‘That’s me,’ Susi took the envelope and started to open it. She looked up to say thanks, but the courier was gone.
‘Wonder what he looked like under that leather,’ Jan giggled to one of the other girls. ‘Looked good with it on! How tight were those leather trousers?’
The other girl nodded. ‘You couldn’t just see he was a big boy, you could guess his religion!!’
They burst into cackles of laughter.
Tom, sensing he was no longer the centre of Jan’s world, coughed and wandered out, managing to crash one of the empty water containers into the door, making his exit as undignified as possible.
Susi shook her head and looked at the contents of the envelope.
Having a party, but don’t know who to hire? Come to us, the UK’s leading supplier every kind of entertainer to keep children, adults and those in-between happy for hours.
There was a phone number at the bottom, a Cardiff number. Susan smiled. Her pleas had been answered. Call or email? Oh, let Jan decide.
She passed the flyer over. ‘Jan, look at this. I think our Tretarri problem has just been solved! How cool is that?’
FOUR
Ianto Jones breathed hard on the glass and used a handkerchief – burgundy, same as his shirt – to clean the SUV’s wing mirror.
Today, he’d chosen to park it in the space marked PRIVATE, on the lowest level of the underground car park, beneath the Wales Millennium Centre in the Bay, right next to the Hub.
Not that anyone in the WMC knew that, any more than they knew that the door marked private with absolutely no handles, locks, etc led into the winding corridors threaded through the Torchwood base.
Ianto looked up as a man in a suit walked through the car park, heading towards a nice BMW parked in Bay 18.
Colin Rees: 38; wife Joan; two children. Moved to Cardiff in June 2007 from Llanfoist, because he’d taken up a job in the new Welsh Assembly building in the Bay. He earned ?59,000 plus bonuses, liked Joan Armatrading, Macy Gray and Mary J Blige, and had recently bought his youngest, a girl called Tarryn, a pony, and his son Sean an X-Box 360. They’d be enjoying birthdays in September and October respectively.
Ianto prided himself on knowing things like that. It was his job. He knew everything about everyone who regularly came into contact with the SUV in whichever of the regular parking places he used.
‘Morning Mr Jones,’ Rees called out. ‘How’re the tourists?’
Ianto was known to everyone in the Bay as the man who ran the Cardiff Bay tourist information shop in Mermaid Quay, just by the jetties.
It was a good cover story.
‘Great, thank you. How’s Joan?’
‘Oh, so-so. Summer cold, hay fever, the works. Moaning, as always. Women, eh?’
‘Oh yes, absolutely,’ Ianto called back cheerfully.
Rees got into his car and seconds later was heading out to the streets above.
Ianto blew air out of his cheeks and walked over to the CCTV camera that pointed into the car park, by the handleless door.
He stared straight into it and, a second later, the optical recognition software activated the time-delay lock. With a dull click, the door opened.
Ianto had eight seconds to get in before it locked again. A deadbolt seal inside would freeze the CCTV camera systems, and it would be six hours before the door could be unfrozen.
Once past the door, he pushed it gently shut, listening to make sure it locked. He started up the short stairway into the corridors, walked down a couple until the glow of light ahead told him he was nearing the Weapons Room.
He activated another optical system, and the door slid soundlessly open, he walked past the impressive array of weapons (how many fingers did you need to operate that one?) and into the Hub.
It was empty – the rest of the team were downstairs in the Boardroom, nestled amongst the endless winding corridors that had been carved out of the rock beneath Cardiff Bay a long, long time ago.
Ianto was proud of the new Boardroom – he and Toshiko had renovated it (from a plan of Jack’s, of course) when the old Boardroom in the Hub had simply got too small. And he’d been fed up with always wiping handprints off the old glass walls.
This new room was wood-lined, with steel struts to support it.
Once upon a time it had had another use, he was sure, but he had no idea what. It didn’t feature on any Hub blueprints. It just… was.
Moments later, he was outside the room. He straightened his already perfectly straight tie and strode purposefully through the door.
Jack was giving a briefing. Standing there, blue shirt, braces, flannelled slacks, hair immaculate (how did he do that?). But his face – a scowl. Not a Happy Jack today then.
‘And another thing,’ he growled as Ianto wandered in, ‘where’s the coffee? Is it too much to ask for coffee at the start of a briefing?’
Ianto never even broke his stride, just turned left, pulled open a side door, revealing a small area replete with jugs, mugs and a mini coffee-maker, a sort of dwarf version of the ensemble upstairs in the Hub.
