to kip for the night, and the first time it looked like anyone was showing him any attention was when Wildman approached him, and that was the last thing he ever knew.’
‘I’m just saying,’ insisted Owen, ‘it’s not like Tosh is gonna struggle to conceal the death of some chewed up pikey when he turns up in a gutter somewhere in Grangetown.’
Gwen slapped both hands on the table, an alarming sound that echoed off the glass walls of the Boardroom. ‘How can we know what made him come to Cardiff, this poor bastard we’ve not even seen yet? How can we say that his family aren’t somewhere out there, somewhere else in Wales, or further out? Wondering if he’s all right. Not knowing if he’s alive, but praying that he is. Not knowing that he died today.’ She blinked hard, and looked up at the strip lights in the ceiling to stop the tears. She wouldn’t give Owen that satisfaction. ‘Unfound? Unnoticed? Yeah. But unmissed? I don’t think so.’
Owen leaned across the table to her, uncowed. ‘When you’ve been here a while longer, you’ll see it differently. I mean it. I’ll ask you again in a couple of months’ time, you’ll have changed your tune. I mean, I honestly hope I’m wrong about that…’
‘No you don’t,’ Toshiko said quietly.
‘No,’ admitted Owen after barely a pause. ‘I don’t.’
Jack stood up. It was a casual gesture, and he made it look as though he was pulling together their cups and putting them back on the tray. But by doing so, he leaned over the table towards each of them. It was an elegant gesture of control, reasserting his authority. Calming the room.
He smiled across the table at Owen. ‘Good job on the initial scan.’
Toshiko’s PDA interrupted him with a beeping alarm. ‘Search result,’ she said, and put it up on the main screen. ‘Police report that matches our interest profile.’
‘Result indeed,’ Jack observed. ‘They’ve found Wildman’s car. Now where did I put my coat?’ Gwen pointed through the glass door to where she could see it on the railing outside. ‘OK, good, thanks. Tosh, here’s another search I’d like you to run.’ He slipped a folded piece of paper across the table to her. She looked at it briefly, nodded, and put the paper in a pocket alongside her PDA. ‘Owen, let us know what else you find after you’ve opened Wildman up.’
And with this, Jack was off through the Boardroom door, beckoning for Gwen to join him.
She caught up with him at the foot of the spiral staircase. ‘What’s the rush?’
‘The car wasn’t empty,’ he told her as they approached a solitary paving stone that lay incongruously in the floor of the Hub. ‘It pains me to tell you this, Gwen, but I don’t trust your former colleagues to handle this well.’
‘You can feel pain then,’ she said to him.
He stood on the slab, and held out his hand to her. ‘Not according to my exes.’
Owen retrieved his coffee from the table. It was just warm enough. He took it over to the glass window of the Boardroom, where he could stare down and watch Jack cross the floor of the Hub. Gwen was skipping down the stairs after him, like an eager puppy.
She’ll learn, thought Owen. The magic wears off eventually. It’s a great job — the best he could imagine. But it was never quite the same after the first six months.
Toshiko was still busy at the table, tapping away on her PDA with that pen device. She was eager too, keen to complete Jack’s latest request.
Owen thought about Wildman’s corpse, ready for him over in the pathology room. He sipped at his lukewarm coffee, and decided that the stiff could wait.
He pushed open the far door of the Boardroom and strolled out onto the balcony. The noticeboard on the back wall had a cluttered collection of yellowing newspaper clippings pinned to it, along with cartoons, photos and leaflets. One polaroid showed him and Toshiko, grinning at the lens held at arm’s length. It was from outside the Castle. He’d got bored of having the photo stuck to the front of his dishwasher by a magnet, so he’d brought it in and half-hidden it on the board behind some money-off coupons for Jubilee Pizza. Toshiko hadn’t noticed yet.
By sitting in one of the metal chairs on the balcony, Owen could see Jack making his way to the exit platform. With a grinding sound far above them, a corresponding flagstone slid out of its place to create a square opening.. A handful of lights in the Plass twinkled on the steel tower, visible through the distant gap.
With a thrum of power, the hydraulics began to power the platform upwards. He could see Jack holding Gwen’s waist to balance her on the square stone podium. She was staring up into his eyes, engrossed in whatever he was telling her, favouring him with that gap-toothed smile of hers. The two of them were so preoccupied that they were both oblivious to Owen observing them, even when the lift drew level with him at the height of the balcony. It was like he was invisible.
Owen watched them draw further away from him, disappearing, leaving him behind. He saw them duck briefly, and laugh together. For a moment, he wondered why.
Then the first fat blobs of rain dropped from the open portal, blew over the balcony, and splashed into Owen’s upturned face. It felt like he’d been spat on. He shook the drops off.
Toshiko joined him on the balcony. ‘Design fault,’ she tutted. ‘I mean, have you seen the leaves that get blown through there? Not so many birds flying in these days. Not since Jack uncaged the pterodactyl.’ She was laughing, pointing to where the raindrops had spattered on Owen’s shirt. ‘Nasty weather tonight. There’s a storm brewing.’
Owen narrowed his eyes at her. ‘Yeah, and I’m starving. Not going out in that lot, so I think we get something delivered.’
He towelled his hair with his hand, tousling it, and studied Toshiko for a reaction.
‘I fancy a pizza,’ he told her. ‘How about you? We’ve got some money-off coupons somewhere, haven’t we?’
SIX
It was a miserable alley on a miserable night. They’d started off walking through the initial spots of rain in the optimistic brightness of Mermaid Quay, laughing even as the weather started to deteriorate. By the time they’d reached this grimy backstreet further over in Butetown, a steady drizzle had killed their high spirits stone dead.
Stone dead conveniently described the occupant of Wildman’s car. Gwen knew before she reached it that the scene wasn’t going to be pretty. She could deduce that from the dazed expression on the face of the police constable, a young woman who stood, trembling, twenty metres from the vehicle. Gwen touched her on the shoulder, a gesture of reassurance or solidarity, and then trailed in Jack’s wake as he cut through the police cordon to where Wildman’s car had been abandoned.
Jack waived the polite introductions, but didn’t immediately wave away the scene of crime officer in his usual manner. Gwen knew this was because there had been no information radioed in yet, otherwise Toshiko would have overheard it and passed it on to them. She gestured wordlessly to the other police officers at the scene to stay back.
‘Passer-by thought the woman had fallen asleep in the driver’s seat,’ the SOCO started. No preamble. Efficient, to-the-point. English accent, with a downward intonation that suggested Birmingham. A Brummie that Gwen didn’t recognise, so he must be fairly new. Only a few months out of the force, and already she was losing track of the team on her patch. Well, on her old patch.
‘Then the witness noticed the mess down the window, and called it in,’ the Brummie explained. ‘We forced the rear door to obtain access, in the unlikely event that the victim was still alive and needed urgent medical attention. Didn’t want to move the body, obviously. Photographers aren’t here yet.’
Jack scanned the area quickly, left to right. The car was a four-door Vectra estate, parked midway under the only streetlamp in the alley that wasn’t working. Jack played his torch through the windows into the car’s interior. A middle-aged woman was sitting upright in the front seat, though her head had drooped against the driver’s window. Her eyes were closed, and where her dyed blonde hair fell over her shoulder it was matted with blood.
‘OK, thanks. You can clear the area now,’ Jack told him.
