Something in the Water

FOURTEEN

Owen drove straight to Bob Strong’s house. He felt vaguely guilty for not having taken Ianto’s original request seriously enough, but Strong’s illness had seemed more important at the time and Owen had forgotten all about Saskia Harden.

He was reminded of just how bad Bob Strong was as soon as the door opened. His skin was grey-green and his eyes, beneath the heavy, swollen lids, were veined with blood.

Strong stood in the doorway for a moment, focusing. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said gruffly. He coughed and then stood back. ‘You’d better come in. Hope you’ve got some good news.’

As he spoke, he started coughing again and his knees buckled. Instinctively, Owen caught him, took his weight and helped him back inside the house.

‘It’s OK, it’s OK,’ Strong assured him, leaning on the furniture for support but making sure he took the shortest route back to the sofa. The room was a mess, full of half-drunk cups of coffee, medicine bottles, crumpled tissues and a terrible smell.

Owen sniffed cautiously. He knew what the smell was — sickness, illness. And something else. It took him a moment to work it out: rotten cabbages. Maybe something in the kitchen was going off.

Strong’s cough sounded ragged and guttural, and Owen heard him moan as the pain ripped through his chest.

‘Sit down,’ Owen said. ‘I’ll get you something.’

‘Feel … like … hell …’ groaned Strong, lowering himself into the cushions of the settee.

‘What have you taken?’

Strong’s eyes were closing, as if he was too weak to reply.

‘What have you taken?’ Owen repeated, quickly sorting through the bottles of painkillers and decongestants spread across the floor. There was nothing too serious here.

‘Found anything?’ Strong asked.

‘What?’

‘The blood tests. What did they show?’

‘Nothing,’ Owen said truthfully. ‘All clear.’

Strong was frowning now. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘It’s true. You’re the picture of health, according to your blood tests, mate.’

‘Feels like I’m gonna die,’ said Strong. There had been, for a moment, a fleeting expression of relief on his face, but it was quickly displaced by a look of bewilderment and fear. ‘So what the hell’s wrong with me?’

Owen picked up his wrist and checked the pulse. He counted the beats off against the second hand on his watch. The heart rate was fast but steady. ‘You’re not going to die yet,’ Owen told him. He prised open one of the puffy eyelids and looked at the eye beneath, producing a slim pencil torch from his jacket pocket to help.

The eyes looked sore but the pupils contracted when he shone the penlight at them.

‘Open wide, Bob,’ Owen said, turning the man’s face towards him. ‘I need to have a look at your throat, mate.’

The mouth duly opened, and, using a pencil as a makeshift tongue suppressor, Owen shone the torch into the man’s throat.

It looked red and inflamed, which was what he expected. But there was something else there. Across the wet skin at the back of the mouth were a number of white sores, almost like mouth ulcers, some of them speckled with blood. There was a layer of foul-smelling mucus there too. So far so bad throat infection.

Then something moved at the back of Strong’s throat.

Owen blinked, hardly believing it. He kept very still and shone the torch steadily at the soft flesh.

There it was again: a tiny movement, beneath the skin. The pink flesh rippled slightly as something squirmed under the surface.

Owen clicked off the torch. ‘OK, close up. Nothing happening here.’

Strong swallowed with difficulty. ‘What is it?’

‘Too early to tell.’

‘That’s what you said last time.’ Bob suddenly started coughing again, and Owen jerked back, not knowing what to expect but nevertheless wary.

‘You been near any ponds recently? Canals? Stagnant water of any kind?’

‘Don’t think so. No. Why?’

‘Do you know Saskia Harden?’

‘Sorry?’ Now Strong sat up, coughing abruptly, a querulous look replacing the worried frown. ‘Saskia Harden? What’s she got to do with anything? How do you know her?’

‘I don’t,’ Owen said. ‘But you obviously do.’

Strong swallowed painfully again. ‘Is she connected with this? Is she carrying something? A virus?’

‘It’s possible. We really need to talk to her.’

‘You’d have to check the records at the medical centre.’

‘We already have. The address on her file doesn’t exist.’ Owen saw Bob frowning and carried on, pressing home the questions. ‘Do you have any idea where she might be? How we could find her?’

‘Wait a minute. I … I saw her yesterday. In surgery. She came to see me. She’s not been well — mental problems, that kind of thing. Some attempts at suicide. I don’t know her all that well, but she …’ Once again the words disappeared under a series of coughs. Strong grabbed a handkerchief, but not before he’d had to bring up an odious lump of green and red matter. ‘Oh, God, I don’t know how long I can take this,’ he gasped. ‘What’s wrong with me? I should be in hospital, surely …’

Owen shook his head. ‘No. Definitely no hospitals. Not yet. I don’t want you taking this into a hospital, not until we know exactly what it is.’

‘But they’ll have facilities,’ Strong argued. ‘Quarantine.’

‘This may not be something they would know how to deal with,’ Owen warned.

‘They have facilities for this sort of thing-’

‘It’s unlikely. No hospitals, not yet.’ Owen stood up, signalling that the subject was closed. ‘Is there anyone else at the medical centre who might know how to find Saskia Harden?’

Strong shook his head. ‘No one. All we know is what’s on the records.’

‘OK. Sit tight.’ Owen stood up, speed-dialling his mobile phone. ‘Ianto? I can’t trace Saskia from here. You’re gonna have to find her yourself. Go back to the police records. See if there are any clues there. If you don’t find anything, go back and check again. And get Gwen to help you — she’s got a cop’s instincts.’

‘Gwen’s gone out with Jack,’ said Ianto.

‘What for?’

‘There’s been a sighting — a water hag, we think. In Garron Park.’

‘I’m on my way,’ Owen snapped the phone shut and turned back to Strong. ‘If you think of anything, anything at all, that might help us find Saskia Harden, ring me on this number.’ He jotted something down on a piece of notepaper and handed it over.

‘OK.’ Bob glanced at the number and then folded it and slipped it into his shirt pocket.

Owen paused, raising a hand to rub at his neck. He swallowed, wincing a little.

‘What’s up?’

Owen shrugged and headed for the door. ‘Nothing. Just getting a bit of a sore throat, I think.’