Skypoint

SEVEN

Goldman and Grace had offices that looked out on the Castle. Jack Harkness stood before the estate agent’s massive window that was filled with colour photographs of the city’s prime housing market – much of it located high up in the sky – and his eyes roved across the interior shots of stylish twenty-first-century accommodation to the looming presence of the Castle reflected in the glass from behind him. This was where ancient Cardiff met the modern city, in an estate agent’s window. It was kind of fitting, he thought. And then his eyes roved some more, and found his own reflection.

Not bad.

Not bad at all, considering all that he had been through over the years.

And there had been a lot of years for Jack Harkness. He had decided to quit counting them a long time ago. Time hadn’t held the relevance for Jack that it had for most people in a very long… well, time.

It was one of the first things you revised your opinion on when you were a Time Agent, and your work took you across galaxies and aeons, and it was a tough job to work out which was the cooler.

Eventually, however, he had wound up in London in 1941. The Blitz. He and the Time Agency had had a parting of the ways by then, and Jack was more of a lone operator doing what he had always done best – taking care of himself. And that had been when he had met the man that was going to change his life. And, pretty soon after, the concept of time and the point of counting it in years, even centuries was going to come pretty low among Jack’s priorities.

Jack had decided that when you couldn’t die, it was best not to keep count of the years. For one thing, there was no need: the counting of time was, after all, just a measurement of mortality. For another thing, it was the best way of keeping sane.

So Jack didn’t worry about the passing years, he just tried to get on with enjoying immortality.

‘If you’ve finished admiring yourself, shall we go in now?’

The voice lanced through Jack’s thoughts. And he saw himself smile in the window, the pictures of modern Cardiff before him, the ancient Castle behind him, and Gwen Cooper – no, Williams – beside him. He reminded himself that he was going to have to get used to that new second name. Marriage, he thought, was good for her. She was lovelier than ever.

‘You know,’ he told her, ‘Rhys is a lucky man, Mrs Williams.’

Gwen froze and stared at him. She blinked, then took out her mobile phone, her gaze never leaving his.

‘Rhys? Hi… No, everything’s… Yeah, later… Yeah, lovely… No, it’s… Look, Rhys, will you stop a minute? Thanks. It’s just…’ She paused, took a breath. ‘It’s just I’ve been thinking, love, and I’ve decided I’ll be keeping my own name. You know, for work and that. It’s not that I… What?’

She listened for a moment, then broke out in a huge grin.

‘I love you, Rhys Williams.’ She switched off her phone.

‘What’d he say?’ Jack asked.

‘He said, “Yeah, I know that, love.”’ Gwen beamed back at Jack.

And maybe that was what Jack needed. Confirmation that she was happy, that she knew she had done the right thing a little over two weeks ago.

Jack smiled. ‘Let’s go see what they’ve got to say about your disappearing estate agent, PC Cooper,’ he said, and he opened the glass door for her to go into the showroom ahead of him.

Gwen swept into the front office of Goldman and Grace, Jack close behind her, and together they took the place in. Nothing extraordinary. Jack had lived in the Hub for a long time, and they didn’t have estate agents where he came from in the fifty-first century, so he didn’t have a whole lot of experience on which to judge, but he guessed this was par for the course. Good photographs, well presented; relevant details, clearly arranged. The same went for the staff: well presented and clearly arranged. And it didn’t take long for one of them to settle on the new arrivals – not like a bird of prey, more like a blackbird delicately probing for nourishment.

‘Can I help you?’ the blackbird enquired.

It was a tall woman in her late forties, dressed elegantly. She was smiling, and it was almost convincing. But not quite.

Jack let Gwen open the business. She was the cop, after all.

Gwen gave the blackbird her own smile. ‘Hi. What’s your name?’

The blackbird’s smile faltered a little. People usually told her they were looking for two or three bedrooms, or somewhere with a garden, they didn’t ask her name.

‘Jan,’ the woman said.

‘Well, Jan, we’re making enquiries about a colleague of yours. Brian Shaw.’

Gwen saw the defences go up around Jan like the USS Enterprise on red alert.

‘What sort of enquiries. Who are you?’

Jack saw one of the SkyPoint brochures and started flicking through it. He made it look like idle curiosity. At the same time he said, ‘Is he about?’

‘It’s his day off,’ she said.

‘You sure about that?’ he asked.

‘Look, what is this? If you’re the police I’d like to see some ID.’

But Jack hadn’t finished. ‘You see, the way we hear it, he’s disappeared.’

‘I really don’t know what you think you’re playing at, but if you don’t leave I’m going to call the police.’ And Jan picked up the closest phone to prove she meant business.

The phone was on the desk of a guy of about twenty. He had ginger hair, and a razor nick on his neck. There was a corresponding tiny smear of blood on his collar, which Gwen judged was a size too big for him. The office junior, she guessed. And she caught his eye for a moment. She read the anxiety there.

‘Call the police if you like, Jan,’ Jack told her. ‘When you do, be sure to mention the word Torchwood. They’ll appreciate it. It’ll save them a wasted journey.’

Jan was out of her depth. Luckily, she had a lifeguard. He came in a pinstriped suit and had silver whiskers and his name was Grace.

‘I’ll handle this, Jan.’

Jack and Gwen turned to see the pinstriped man in the doorway of a back office. As they did so, he went into smiling mode. With him, it went with an offered manicured hand.

‘Arwen Grace,’ he said. ‘This is my business. How can I help you, Mister…?’

Jack took the man’s hand and shook it. ‘Harkness. Jack. Captain.’

‘A services man,’ Grace noted with pleasure. ‘I did twenty years in the navy. I take it that you were a flyer.’

‘Of sorts.’

Gwen felt excluded from the club.

‘Gwen Cooper,’ she said, projecting her hand.

Grace shook it and smiled. He said he was charmed. And Gwen recognised the tone. He may have been charmed, but Gwen knew when she was being disregarded.

Grace indicated for them to follow him and led them into a comfortable if old-fashioned office. As he closed the door behind them, Gwen caught the ginger-haired guy she’d taken for the office junior watching them. And she recognised the look. She had seen it plenty of times before when she’d done the Cardiff beat. It was a look you learned quickly as a cop – of someone who knows something, but is too scared to talk.

‘The fact of the matter,’ Grace was telling them, ‘is that Brian Shaw has a few problems.’

Yeah, like vanishing into thin air.

But Gwen kept her mouth shut.

Jack had eased himself into the heavily padded leather chair that stood opposite the big antique desk the estate agent now moved behind. Gwen stood by the door with her arms folded. She wanted Grace to know that she wasn’t getting sucked in by his show of hospitality.

‘Personal problems,’ Grace clarified.

‘So you know where he is, then?’ Jack asked.

Grace took his seat behind the desk and leaned forward, sliding his fingers into a latticed bunch before him on his blotter. ‘I’m afraid Brian likes a drink a little more than is good for him. This line of work is extremely high-pressured. Not everyone can take it. Even those who are good at it go through their lean periods.’

‘I thought the property market had been going through the roof,’ Gwen said, and she knew it sounded a little like an accusation.

The estate agent cast her a benevolent smile. ‘Cardiff is a boom town, there’s no doubt about that. Developers are pouring money into building projects like there’s no tomorrow. The problem is that there are so many apartments going up, and the banks are falling over themselves to lend money, buyers are being spoiled for choice. I’m afraid the sharks are turning on one another amid a feeding frenzy of minnows.’

‘You’re saying Brian Shaw is under pressure.’

‘That’s right, Captain Harkness. And when under pressure, he normally ends up under a table somewhere. I’ve seen it before. We all have.’

‘When was the last time you spoke to Brian Shaw?’ asked Gwen.

Grace didn’t even have to think about it. ‘Yesterday evening. Seven o’clock. When we closed the office.’

Gwen glanced at Jack. He knew it, too: Grace was lying.

‘He had already been drinking,’ Grace continued. ‘I could smell it on his breath. I know how it goes with Brian. I like him, otherwise I would have sacked him a long time ago. But he’ll be on a bender for a couple of days, he’ll get it all out of his system, and then he’ll start selling like the devil’s on his tail.’

Jack got out of the chair and moved across the office to a picture on the wall – it was SkyPoint. ‘That’s kind of interesting, Mr Grace. You see we’ve got a report that Brian Shaw disappeared in the middle of showing a couple around an apartment here.’

Jack cocked a thumb at the picture of SkyPoint.

‘And when I say disappeared, I mean the way a magician does it. Now you see him, now you don’t.’

Gwen noticed Grace shift in his seat.

‘I don’t follow you,’ he said.

Gwen decided to show him the way. ‘He walked into a bathroom, and then he wasn’t there any more. There was no way he could have got out without being seen.’

‘Maybe we should go and talk to Brian ourselves,’ Jack said from over by the SkyPoint picture. ‘Maybe that’s the easiest way of clearing this up. You’ve got an address for him, haven’t you, Mr Grace?’

Gwen was nodding. ‘That’s a good idea. We can ask him how he managed to be here at seven last night when that was just about the time I saw him walk into the bathroom in apartment thirty-two and disappear.’

Grace shot her a look. ‘You were there?’

‘Want to change your story, Mr Grace?’ she asked.

His eyes snapped from Gwen to Jack, and back. He shook his head. His skin had turned to something like the colour of his whiskers. Gwen had seen this look before, as well. It was the look of a frightened man.

‘You’re mistaken,’ Grace said, his voice now little more than a whisper.

Jack strode across the room. ‘Thank you, Mr Grace. You’ve told us everything we needed to know.’

And Jack yanked the office door open and left. As Gwen followed him, she saw Grace’s eyes moving towards the telephone on his desk. He was going to have to ring someone, she thought, someone he didn’t want to talk to. She was going to have a job for Toshiko when she got back to the Hub.

As she followed Jack across the front office towards the street, she noticed that the ginger-haired guy was missing from his seat.

‘Everything we needed to know?’ she demanded as she caught up with Jack outside.

‘Well, we found out that he wasn’t going to talk. That tells us something. Whatever happened to Brian Shaw, this is about more than just a disappearing estate agent.’

They rounded a corner and found the black SUV where Jack had left it, parked outside the Hilton. Jack gave the young doorman a familiar smile. ‘Everything OK, Simon?’

The doorman smiled back. ‘I know you, Jack Harkness, you only want me for my parking facility.’

Jack grinned. ‘Well, you’re handy when I’m carrying a heavy load. I know you’ll take care of it for me.’

Gwen tuned out of Jack’s flirting, and spotted the ginger-headed office junior watching them. He was still looking anxious. More than ever. Gwen started to move towards him, treading carefully like he was a small animal ready to run for cover.

‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Do you want to talk?’

The office junior had one last second thought – she could actually see it pass through his mind, as his eyes flashed past her, charting an escape route – then he asked her, ‘What did the old man tell you about Brian?’

‘Well, I don’t think he told us the truth.’

‘He isn’t off on a bender. I’d know if he was. The old man, he doesn’t know, but me and Brian we’re… friends. I’d know if he was feeling the strain, he’d have told me. The old man is covering up.’

‘Covering what up?’ Gwen asked. Behind her, Jack had seen her with the office junior and was joining them.

The office junior hesitated.

‘It’s OK, you can trust us,’ Jack told him. ‘Whatever it is, just spit it out.’

‘It’s that place. SkyPoint.’

‘What about it?’ asked Gwen.

‘They’re trying to keep it quiet. The place cost millions and it’s still more than three-quarters empty. If word got out about the people disappearing there-’

‘People?’ Jack snapped. ‘Brian Shaw isn’t the first? This has happened before?’

The office junior flashed an uneasy look around him, scanned the street for faces that he knew, anyone from work. ‘Christ, if anyone finds out I talked to you…’

‘I understand you’re worried about your job,’ Gwen told him, ‘but you have to tell us what you know.’

The junior shook his head. ‘My job? There’s plenty of jobs. It’s my neck I’m worried about. You don’t know the kind of people that have got money in SkyPoint.’

Gwen remembered the man that lived in the penthouse. ‘Besnik Lucca?’

‘Yeah, well then, you know what I’m talking about. Men like that want to see a return on their investment. It doesn’t matter to them that there’s something wrong with the place.’

‘So how many people are we talking about?’ Jack wanted to know. ‘How many have disappeared?’

‘Four that I know of. Not counting Brian. At first we thought it was just people running out on their payments, but not one of them was caught by the security cameras leaving. And those cameras spot everyone going into SkyPoint and coming out. The only way you can get out of that place without being picked up on video is jumping off the roof.’

‘Well, if they’d done that, you’d know about it,’ said Jack, dry as sand.

The office junior looked from Jack to Gwen, confused and scared. ‘Where do they go? Where’s Brian gone?’

Gwen touched his shoulder gently. ‘We’re going to find out. I promise you.’