The House That Jack Built

ONE

'What do you think? Green or pink?'

Rhys realised Gwen was talking and, more than that, she had asked an important question that he had no idea how to answer. 'The first one,' he gambled, 'it's much more…' And there he ran out of steam. '… Nice,' he tried.

'Fat lot of use you are.'

Gwen smiled. H amp;M was like Kryptonite to Rhys; he'd slip into a coma if forced to stand outside its changing rooms for more than five minutes. 'Why don't you go and look at DVDs next door?' she suggested. 'If you hang around here any longer you'll probably die of boredom.'

'I don't mind,' Rhys replied, trying not to stare at the posters of the underwear models.

Gwen pushed him gently towards the exit.

'I'll survive on my own. Go on.'

'Aye, right.' He gave her a peck on the cheek and headed towards the exit, throwing the occasional worried glance at clothing as he passed, as if concerned it might bite him. He passed a pregnant woman laden down with clothes and found himself imagining Gwen with a similar bulge. He smiled. Most of his mates had predictable fantasies about their partners in kinky underwear or lesbian trysts; he pictured Gwen the size of a house and cursing his name as she went in to labour. He was a soppy sod sometimes.

Gwen walked back into the changing room, tugging the green top to get it to sit right. Spotting the pregnant lady's reflection shuffle its way into one of the changing cubicles behind her, her response was a world away from Rhys's, remembering the arguments she'd had with him on the subject. Torchwood and breeding just weren't the best of bedfellows. Not that she would be so opposed to it otherwise — she could easily see herself bringing up a child with Rhys, he'd make an excellent father. Still, balancing a life of babies and alien invasions? No… no thanks.

The pregnant woman grunted and an elbow ballooned the cubicle curtain as she struggled to move in the confined space. A blouse fell to the floor by the woman's feet. Nice, Gwen thought, very fitted… Sexy.

Fitted.

The woman bent over, grabbed the blouse and stood back up. There was the sound of more struggling before she suddenly yanked back the curtain and stormed out, looking for all the world as if she'd lost her temper and given up on the idea of clothes shopping. Gwen didn't believe it for a moment. She was still wondering why a pregnant woman would take a blouse into the changing room that she could never possibly wear.

She ran out of the changing room and onto the shop floor, chasing after the woman's retreating head and shoulders. She was making straight for the exit.

'Oi!' One of the girls behind the till shouted as Gwen left the shop and ran into the arcade. The woman she was chasing turned around on hearing the shout, and the look on her face was more than enough to convince Gwen that her instinct had been right. She launched herself at her, the pair of them hitting the floor with shoppers panicking around them.

'Bloody hell!' she heard someone shout. 'Get the mad bitch off her!'

Oh yeah, jumping on pregnant women… not a crowd pleaser that. She made a grab for the woman's bloated belly as hands gripped her by the shoulders. There was the tearing of fabric, and a bundle of carefully wrapped clothes spilled onto the floor. The woman's pregnant belly was a tightly stuffed pouch of stolen clothes.

'Now if I'd done that the papers would have been giving my knackers away as a Sunday supplement.' Gwen smiled when she saw who had grabbed her: her old police partner Andy Davidson.

'Fancy seeing you here,' said Gwen.

'Someone reported a mad cow on the rampage in Boots, spraying people with baby oil. Not you by any chance?'

'I have an alibi.'

'Oh yes, where is Rhys? Scoffing a few pasties?'

'Don't be mean.'

'Just my way. You know I love him really.'

He lifted his handcuffs off his belt and put them on the shoplifter's wrists.

'I was going to give you a bell, actually,' he continued, his attention back on Gwen. 'Just had a call through about something spooky in Penylan. Sounded right up your street.'

'Oh yeah?' Gwen wasn't sure she liked the sound of that.

'Aye, some kid found embedded in a pavement, you know, like literally embedded …'

'Come on, Andy.' Gwen gave a pointed look at the shoplifter. 'Time and a place, eh?'

'Oh… yeah… well, y'know… if you're not interested?'

Gwen sighed and reached for her mobile.

'But do I really need the poker chips and playing cards?' Rhys wondered aloud. 'I mean, special features are good, yeah, but games compendiums? Seems a waste of money. They'll be putting Cluedo in with Poirot next.'

The shop assistant was new and still had some enthusiasm for the job and an urge to make sales. 'The poker stuff's just a bonus,' he said. 'It's the first twenty-one Bond movies in two-disc, digitally remastered editions…'

'"Digitally remastered", is it?' Rhys scoffed. 'It's a wonder we ever managed to watch the crappy old things really.' His mobile rang and, seeing Gwen's name on the screen, he looked around as if he'd been caught in a drug transaction. 'All right, love, won't be long, will I? I'll have a cappu-oh… You what? … Bloody hell, Gwen! I only turn my back for five minutes and there's a national emergency is there? … No… No… I know you can't… No… Right.'

He ended the call, shoving the phone back in his jeans with a sigh.

'Twenty-one films, is it?' he said to the shop assistant. 'That's a lot of hours filled. I'll take it.'

There's nothing quite like the luxury of a cup of coffee prepared by someone else. The sort of coffee that you watch someone labour over. You watch them grind the beans, fill the scoop, steam the milk, pump the espresso. Then, if you're Ianto Jones, you watch them pick you out a juicy Pain au Raisin and drop that fruity bad boy into a takeaway bag. Nice.

Having found a barista whose coffee-making skill he actually trusted, Ianto was becoming quite the fan of having someone else do all the work. The fact that this Queen of the Beans, this Empress of the Roast, was a grumpy little Chinese girl whose service was lousy and attitude abominable didn't take the edge off it in the least. She could spit in his eye if she so wished. As long as she didn't do it in his coffee, he would pay her with a smile.

He didn't sip at his cappuccino as he walked along the jetty to the Tourist Information entrance, preferring to wait and drink it with his pastry, his own perfect little moment. Having had the first good run of sleep in about a week — the fact that it had taken place during the day being neither here nor there; when part of Torchwood, you grabbed it when you found it — he was determined to continue his good fortune over a nice relaxing breakfast. Or afternoon tea, he thought, checking his watch with a sigh.

He unlocked the Tourist Information door, stepped inside and locked it again behind him. The grockles were not well served on the Marina of late. He'd opened for maybe two days over the last fortnight, things having been just too busy for maintaining the cover. Reaching over the counter, he tapped in the four-digit code sequence that opened the concealed door in the wall. Saluting a rather tatty poster of Max Boyce with his coffee cup, Ianto stepped into the tunnels beyond, cutting through their damp gloominess with a whistle. Even the distant scuttle of rats couldn't intrude on his good mood.

At the main gate, the entry code was long enough to feel like a piano piece as he beat it out on the lock-pad. The heavy door rolled out of the way and finally he was in.

'Hello?' he shouted. No reply. Perfect. He was on his own.

He settled at his desk and booted up the RSS reader. Popping the white cap off his coffee, he grabbed the pastry bag and settled back in his chair with a sigh. The rest of the day could not go wrong, not from such sturdy foundations, it was unthinkable.

While scrolling through BBC News with one hand, he brought up the sensor reports for the hours he'd been away. Torchwood had Cardiff wired up like a politician in a hooker's boudoir: there wasn't a mouse fart that was not catalogued and calibrated by one sensor or another. You had to be attentive when you had a space-time event outside your window, it moved things around while you slept.

He took a bite of his pastry, a stray raisin tumbling over his bottom lip and skydiving into his lap. He tutted and flicked it away. Reaching for the serviette that came in the bag, he tucked it above his perfectly knotted tie — full Windsor, naturally — like a bib. He didn't altogether care what the pastry did to his waistline, but it could keep its damned paws off his suit.

His attention was drawn by a chronon spike in the Penylan area. It didn't have the temporal decay signature of the Rift, but he couldn't think what else it might be. He entered Penylan as a search filter for police radio traffic. The two seconds it took to offer the fate of Danny Wilkinson to his screen was more than enough time for a mouthful of pastry, but after reading the transcript he didn't fancy another.

***

The oak tree sagged pitifully in the centre of the recreational lawn. When it shuffled its leaves in the wind it was with the bored resignation of an underpaid conjuror, struggling his way through a card trick at a particularly awful children's party. The attitude was contagious: nobody carried themselves with enthusiasm at the Mercy Hill Care Home. The residents could be excused — enthusiasm, like a solid bowel movement, was ancient history to most of them — but even the staff sighed their way through the day, gazing listlessly into the middle distance as if waiting for death. It was not a cheerful place, and that reason alone was sufficient cause for Alexander — a congenitally miserable bastard — to make it his home.

He sat beneath the dejected oak and watched as various residents pottered their way around the garden. He tutted at Trudy Topham, standing in the middle of a rhododendron bush, spilling fragile memories into the breeze from her slack mouth. Someone would fetch her back inside just as soon as they could be bothered. In the distance, Leon Harris could be seen making one of his twice-weekly bids for freedom. Staff usually caught up with him before he made it past the fence, but every once in a while he managed a little further. He had once been found crawling along the central reservation of the M4, but that was a few years ago now and his legs were no longer as strong as they were. Alexander stretched back in his wheelchair, yawning and playing on the bony xylophone of his ribs with his fingers.

'Careful now, Mr Martin,' Nurse Sellers said in his ear. 'We don't want you falling out, do we?'

Alexander was half-tempted to try, if only so he could cop a feel of her weighty breasts on his chin while she manhandled him back into his chair. Reduced to pratfalls in order to arouse oneself… there were times when he absolutely despaired. He sank back into his chair with a sigh.

'No, nurse, we don't. Any sign of this doctor of yours yet?'

'He's no doctor of ours, Mr Martin,' Nurse Sellers stressed, as if to a particularly slow child. 'I did explain that. He's sent by the Council to judge our standards.'

'Worried?'

'Don't be silly… I'll thank you not to suggest you've received anything but the very best of care here at Mercy Hill.'

'Wouldn't dream of it.' He gave a brief smile. 'Cross my heart and hope for a cardiac team on standby. So who do you think ratted you out?'

'It is not a question of being "ratted out", as you put it, Mr Martin. All care homes receive independent visits from time to time. You're just lucky that it was your name he picked out of his hat.'

'Aren't I just? The thrill is almost sexual.'

'No need for that sort of talk, Mr Martin.'

'No,' said Alexander, trying to see the line of her underwear through her uniform. 'Quite right.'

'Here he comes now.'

'Good morning, Alexander!' said the man walking across the lawn towards them. Alexander felt a momentary panic as he recognised the face (if not the white coat and casually dangled stethoscope). It took a second for a name to drop alongside that horribly perfect smile. Harkness… yes, that was it. Captain Jack Harkness. 'Morning to you too, of course, nurse,' Jack added, offering a small bow towards her. 'A beauty powerful enough to cure any ill.'

Nurse Sellers chuckled like a schoolgirl. Alexander rolled his eyes.

'You're too kind, doctor,' she replied. 'If only you were a regular visitor to our humble home.'

Jack stepped in close and smiled. 'Maybe you'll get to see a bit more of me down the line,' he winked.

Alexander sighed. 'If you don't mind?' he said. 'I believe he's here to see me.'

Nurse Sellers gave him a scathing look, not taking kindly to having her fun spoiled. 'Well, his time's precious, I'm sure,' she said. 'I know I wouldn't want to waste any of it.'

The inference that he was wasn't lost on Alexander, but Jack rescued the situation before it could descend into further argument. 'You're quite right, I have got a lot on today. Better give the old goat his onceover, eh?'

She smiled and strode towards the main house, her hips swinging so much it was a wonder she didn't snap her pelvis.

'Old goat?' Alexander sighed. 'Cheeky bugger.'

'You're just jealous,' Jack said, leaning against the tree. 'You'd love to whisk her away on your wheelchair and do unforgivable things to her in the bushes.'

Alexander refused to rise to this, not least because there was a degree of truth in it. Safest plan by far was just to change the subject. 'I thought I'd end up bumping into you sooner or later. When was it we last…?'

'Crossed paths?' Jack replied. 'Relative time's a nightmare. It was years ago for me… The Spice Bazaar on Velecerol. You were pretending to be some sort of health inspector, or was it customs official?'

'The customs official was on Balthazar. I impounded your ship, if you remember.'

Jack chuckled. 'That's right. You always did tend to bite off more than you could chew.'

'Nonsense.' Alexander reclined in his wheelchair and gazed up at the wafting leaves of the tree. 'I simply decided to let you have it back. It didn't suit my purposes…'

'Lucky me.'

'How did you know I was here? I was fairly certain I'd covered my tracks.'

'Pure luck…' Jack removed a small device from the pocket of his white coat, like a TV remote control but flatter. 'Spotted you at the hospital the other day.'

'Oh yes…' Alexander sighed. 'I can see how rampaging hordes of the living dead might have drawn Torchwood's attention rather.' He glanced towards Jack. 'Despite that lovely coat, you are working for Torchwood now, I believe?'

'Working for? Not quite… I'm running things here in Cardiff.'

'You always were an ambitious boy.' He pointed at the device in Jack's hand. 'What's that?'

Jack aimed the device at him, pressed a button and swept the sensor over Alexander's body. The machine beeped a couple of times as it processed the gathered information and he handed it over. 'I've got a job offer for you,' he said. 'This is the medical.'

Alexander scanned through the data Jack had captured. 'Core temperature twenty-four degrees, heart rate forty-six beats per minute… I'd say that was fine.'

'For a Kanatian. I hate to think what that nurse would make of these readings.'

'I have medication for that.' Alexander patted his pocket and there was the rattle of pills. 'If you'd swept that thing over me a minute or two later, my vital signs would have been within human norm. I took two before she wheeled me out here. I wasn't given much notice, otherwise I'd have taken them earlier. How do you think I've not been picked up by your lot sooner? Not all doctors are as untrained as you — excepting of course your no doubt encyclopaedic knowledge of genitalia.'

Jack smiled, unbundled the stethoscope from his pocket and huffed on the end of it. 'I have an excellent bedside manner at least.'

'You're mistaking patient interaction for pillow talk. What's the job offer?'

'I'm short a medical officer, wondered if you'd be willing to step in, as a temporary fix.'

'Let me guess, more post-mortems than I can shove a thermometer up?'

'Pretty much.'

'Sounds charming, but I'm far too busy here watching these crumbling idiots skip towards the grave.'

Jack looked at Trudy, still muttering in the undergrowth. 'I can see the appeal.'

Alexander followed his gaze. 'Careful. She's lived in Cardiff all her life, she's probably an ex-girlfriend.'

'Not my type.'

'Mad as a hatter and likely to whip her nightie off at the least provocation, I would have thought she was your only type.'

'Bitch.'

' Bastard, if you don't mind. How am I supposed to keep getting out of this place to see to these dead bodies of yours?'

'You're a creative man, you'll manage. Either that or let me set you up an apartment in town. It's not like you need to be here.'

'I'm not good on my own.'

'Funny, I can never imagine you any other way. Are you going to take the job?'

'What's the pay?'

'Like you need money.'

'Everyone needs money. You can pay the bill on this place for a year, regardless of how long I'm on the books.'

'Done… Considering the service, I can't believe it's that expensive.'

'You'd be surprised. They wipe your arse every day whether you need it or not. That sort of residential care comes at a cost.'

'I'm sure the budget can handle it.'

'Good, in that case it can pay me a bonus: one good bottle of Single Malt per patient.'

'And have you drunk at the operating table?'

'Alcohol doesn't affect my species. I just like the taste.'

'Now I understand why you're always so miserable. Is there nothing Kanatians do for fun?'

'War was popular.'

A bleeping noise went off in Jack's pocket.

'Ah… the world needs saving.' Alexander smiled. 'Square jaw and hair gel, go get 'em, kid.'

'You might be right,' Jack said, noting Gwen's mobile on the pager.

'I usually am.' Alexander offered Jack a rare, genuine smile. 'You'll shout if you need me?'

Jack reached into his other pocket and handed Alexander a pager identical to his own. 'On this.'

Alexander took it. 'Can't wait. Off you go then, fight the good fight.'

Jack gave Alexander a gentle squeeze on the shoulder. 'Want me to drop you off somewhere?' he asked, tapping the wheelchair handles.

'I'm perfectly capable, thank you.'

'More than anyone here would ever guess, I'm sure.'

'Quite. Now go away and leave me to the company of my peers.'

As Alexander spoke, Leon Harris was being dragged back from the neighbouring field, his language proving that crudity was not the sole province of the young.