Skypoint

TWENTY-SEVEN

The party was on the nineteenth floor. Owen and Wendy heard it as they went up the steps, echoing down the empty green-lit corridor.

Loud enough to wake the dead.

Chance would be a fine thing!

‘We should take a look,’ said Wendy.

Owen wasn’t convinced. He had a pretty good idea of what was ahead of him now, and he wanted to get it done.

‘If we’ve heard it, then maybe Alison has heard it. She might be there. That’s got to be Alun and Julie. Alison likes them.’

Alun and Julie were the photographer and his girlfriend. He wasn’t sure that Wendy was encouraging the right choice of friends for her daughter, but their options were limited at SkyPoint.

He thought of Alison reading Rapunzel to Mr Pickle.

Owen didn’t want to use the last of their cleaning-product charges to get through the door – he was worried about his chances of survival in one piece a second time around, especially if he was blown down a couple of floors of concrete steps. Instead, he took the cover off the door locking mechanism with the point of Marion’s carving knife and set about fusing the system. He wasn’t Toshiko when it came to electronics, but you picked things up around Torchwood and there was still current running from some auxiliary source through the door locks, so it didn’t take him long to get it open.

They followed the music, it was Evanescence. Not exactly party music, but each to his own.

Wendy was right. It took them to Alun and Julie’s door. They had to hammer hard for a long time before they got an answer.

Alun came to the door in just his underpants.

‘Don’t tell me – you’re complaining about the noise,’ he said.

‘Didn’t you hear the alarm?’ Owen asked.

‘Alarm? What alarm? You’re joking, right?’

His pupils were dilated like black holes. Alun was high. It didn’t take much force to get past him, and Owen pushed his way into the flat.

Wendy followed. ‘We’re looking for Alison. You haven’t seen her, have you?’

The apartment was lit by so many candles it made Owen think of a church. Or a black mass. Amy Lee was pouring out of a battery-powered boombox, singing about her Immortal. Julie with the Melons was lying semi-naked on the couch with a tourniquet around her arm and the hypodermic she had just injected still clutched in her hand.

‘Oh, hi,’ she said, trying to find the right muscles to make a smile with. ‘Are we going to party?’

Owen turned off the music and looked at Wendy. ‘You’d better hope Alison isn’t here.’

Wendy looked horrified. Alun and Julie couldn’t find any expressions at all.

‘Stay there,’ he said to her and tore the used hypodermic from Julie’s hand. He wasn’t sure if she even noticed.

‘What are you doing?’ Wendy shouted after him as Owen headed for the bathroom.

‘I told you, stay there!’

Owen slammed the door shut after him.

Wendy felt scared and unsure. What was he doing in there? Why had he taken the hypodermic? Oh, God, she had put her daughter’s safety in the hands of a junkie like Julie and Alun!

She hammered on the bathroom door for him to come out – she wanted to know what he was doing!

But Owen never got to tell her, because that was when the apartment door flew open and the knuckle-draggers finally showed up.