SIX
With a sigh, a really quite loud, one might almost say melodramatic sigh, Ianto closed the last file on the screen, and picked up the buff folder containing pre-electronic age sheets of paper. It had two Torchwood logos on it, the modern hexagonal one and a sketchier version, which, experience told him, meant this particular file was started around the 1920s.
‘Problem?’
Owen was coming up the small stairway from the Autopsy Room. Ianto thought that Owen was spending too long down there in the cold, sterile atmosphere. Since giving up his desk on the upper level to Gwen, he’d buried himself down with the tables and cold storage trays. It couldn’t be healthy.
That said, Owen smiled more these days. Perhaps being away from the watchful eye of Jack made him more cheerful. Or perhaps he was even weirder than Ianto had previously thought.
Ianto held up the folder of real paper items. ‘Everything is incomplete, out of order and a mess. The online files aren’t much better.’
Owen didn’t take his eye off his PDA and whatever readings he was inputting, but he did pause before carrying on. ‘Well, you know what, I blame whoever is in charge of keeping everything up to date and efficiently ordered. Now. Who would that be?’ And he then looked up and grinned that slightly lopsided grin he had. ‘Oh, wait. That’s you, isn’t it?’
He was heading towards the back of the Weapons Room, to the steps that took him up to the walkway level and the Hothouse. After clattering up the steps, he paused before pulling open the Hothouse door and entering the world of bizarre alien botanics inside.
‘You need to stop worrying, mate. If Jack’s not fussed about Trewotsit, why are you?’
Ianto opened his mouth to reply, and realised he didn’t have an answer. Was it because it was about Jack? Was it because he didn’t like mysteries? Perhaps it was simply that, having started the research and found it a bit of a mess, his dedication to perfection – or anal retentiveness, depending on who you asked (oh, he was aware of what the others said about him) – was drawing him into the strangeness that was Tretarri.
By the time he was ready to admit that he didn’t actually know, Owen was shut away with the plants, spraying a couple of them with a small nozzled water-gun, and occasionally reading off from his PDA.
With a shrug to himself, Ianto returned to the files. And was immediately disturbed by the huge cog-shaped doorway rolling aside to reveal a giggling Gwen and Toshiko as they scuttled in, carrying a couple of pizza boxes each.
‘Hiya,’ Gwen called sweetly. ‘What’s your poison tonight?’
Ianto looked at the pizzas and shook his head. ‘Oh. No, thank you. No. No pizza. For me. You carry on. Enjoy.’
Gwen looked strangely at him. ‘You OK?’
Ianto nodded. ‘Sorry, just distracted. And not hungry.’
She and Toshiko were out of his eyeline now, obscured by the base of the water tower sculpture that housed the Rift Manipulator.
He’d worked with Gwen for a year or more now, but something about her still made him slightly flustered, like he felt he was being judged and so was always trying to impress her. Which was daft, but he couldn’t stop it. Jack had noticed it; he’d made some joke about Ianto’s schooldays and asked whether he’d had a crush on a teacher.
Stupidly, Ianto had started to tell him about Miss Thomas – and Jack hadn’t let him forget it.
He needed to say something normal to Gwen.
‘So, how’s the wedding? Rhys all right? Found a hotel yet for the reception?’
Gwen’s frowning face popped back into view. ‘Fine. Great and, umm, no not yet. Oh, know any good DJs?’
‘My mate Paul,’ Ianto said. ‘But you probably wouldn’t want his kind of music. A bit… cheesy…’
Now it was Toshiko’s turn to pop her head round. ‘Cheese pop? It’s very in apparently.’
‘No,’ Gwen said. ‘I think Rhys’s best man knows someone. So long as he doesn’t play “Agadoo”, I’ll be happy.’ There was a pause, then Gwen suddenly spoke seriously. ‘Ianto, have you spoken to Jack? What’s with these days off? He’s not crashed out here, as far as I can tell.’
Ianto instinctively looked towards Jack’s office, where Jack spent his nights down in a small bunker. Where, frankly, there wasn’t room for two, whatever Jack said.
‘Hasn’t he? Oh. Well, I imagine he’s found a hotel or something.’
‘We wondered,’ Toshiko threw in, ‘if he was at your place?’
‘No,’ said Ianto, a fraction too quickly. ‘No, why would he be at mine? What’s at mine that Jack would want? I mean he could be anywhere, why my place?’
‘Blimey,’ said Owen from behind and above. ‘Someone’s a bit jumpy about jolly Jack Aitch tonight.’
Ianto looked up and saw Owen, a plant in one hand, water-gun in the other. And hoped he hadn’t gone red. ‘Anyway,’ he continued, trying to cover his overreaction, ‘we need to look into all this stuff. There’s something about Tretarri that is… off.’
‘“Off”?’ queried Owen.
‘As in “not good”?’ Gwen asked, as Toshiko fired up her screens.
Ianto joined them at their workstations, as they both started looking stuff up, Toshiko obviously a bit faster at creating a database to filter the words ‘Tretarri’, ‘Gideon Tarry’ and ‘Gideon ap Tarri’.
Twenty minutes later, Ianto had told them all he knew. The four of them were down in the Boardroom, staring at the big screen, and Toshiko was giving one of her lectures.
‘As Ianto realised, Tretarri has been the focus of a lot of weird and wonderful happenings. Mysterious fires. People trying to live there but unable to stay for reasons they couldn’t explain. Even animals go a bit doo-lally if they enter the area.’
‘“Doo-lally”?’ asked Owen munching on chilling pizza. ‘Not another new technical term?’
‘I quite like “Doo-lally”,’ said Ianto, which got a smile from Toshiko.
‘Oh well, if suit-boy likes it, we’ll adopt it as Torchwood’s new motto. “Everything’s a bit Doo-lally”.’
‘People,’ admonished Gwen. ‘Back on the subject at hand, yeah?’
Owen smiled at Toshiko. ‘Sorry, Tosh. I gather we’re back in the sixth form.’
Toshiko then outlined the current plans the Council had to refurbish Tretarri. ‘This will result in two things, at a guess. I stress “guess” – we don’t actually know.’
‘We don’t actually know why we’re doing this in the first place,’ Owen said. ‘I mean, it’s not as if we even know this is Rift-related.’
‘It’s Jack-related,’ Ianto said quietly.
There was a pause, then Owen looked at Toshiko. ‘Guess Number One, nothing happens and a crappy bit of Cardiff gets a facelift. Guess Number Two, all hell breaks loose as contractors etc go doo-lally as they try and work there. Right?’
‘Spot on.’ Toshiko smiled.
Gwen looked at the guys. ‘Ianto, can you research a bit more, find out about this Gideon Tarry person, see if there’s anything in his past we need to be aware of.’
‘Like he’s a Rift Alien in disguise?’
‘That kind of thing. Owen? I want you to plough through the medical records of people connected with Tretarri with me, find out if there’s anything we can extrapolate today that they couldn’t ten, twenty or fifty years ago, yeah?’
‘Yes ma’am.’ Owen gave a mock salute. ‘I’m also keen to work out what it is that knocks Jack for six, but no one else.’
‘Good. Tosh? Can you take your portable Rift Detector Thingy-’
‘More technobabble,’ laughed Owen. ‘Love it.’
Gwen silenced him with a look. ‘As I was saying before something annoying buzzed in my ear, can you see if
