Torchwood Long Time Dead (12 page)

He took another long drag on his cigarette, and
leaned in closer, his eyes searching up towards
the second floor of the building, and then down
to the pavement. Whatever it was, it was coming
from neither end. The patch had simply formed in
the middle. What was on the other side? Could it
be some sort of oil or mould coming through from
an internal problem? Rational as that sounded,
he knew it wasn't true. This was something
completely different.

'Jason?' Sean called from the door. 'I've done
last orders. You having a fag?'

'Yeah,' Jason muttered. 'I'm over here. Look at
this.'

More light had spilled out from the open

doorway and it served to make the complete
blackness of the patch stranger.

'What?' Sean sounded impatient. 'Let's get
cleaned up first. I want to get home. I've
still
got a
hangover from last night. I need sleep.'

'This patch,' Jason said. 'It's odd.' Something
growled and cracked in the darkness, a soft
almost-heard sound, but it still made Jason jump
slightly.

'Jason, come on! Stop dicking around.' Sean
snapped, his figure blocking the light as he stepped
outside.

'OK, OK.' Jason had had enough of looking at
the patch anyway. Something about it disturbed
him. It reminded him somehow of that clown from
that Stephen King book, the one with the sharp
teeth and angry eyes that dragged kids down into
the drains. Just looking at the patch of black made
all his childhood fears seem real. He swallowed,
and his mouth was dry. 'Sod it,' he muttered,
and went to stub his cigarette out on the hidden
bricks.

But there were no bricks. His arm slipped into
the black.

'Sean?' he said.
It was so cold and so terrible

and there were things in there, things that weren't

things but they wanted to play with him anyway,

all the things that he'd ever suspected had lived in

the night, just out of sight, and there were screams

and sobs of eternal torment and he could feel them

running up his skin and soon his skin would be

gone...

'Sean?' he said again. His voice was soft and
childlike and full of dread. Something tugged at
one of his fingers and he let out a short yelp. There
would be no essay. There would be no party. 'Sean,
help me. Help me.' Something yanked him from
the other side and half his body disappeared. He
started to cry. He had a feeling he was going to be
crying for a long, long time.

'What the...' Sean was standing in front of him,
his eyes wide, and Jason stretched out his arm.

'Please! Please! It's got me! I don't want to go
there! I don't want...'

And then the blackness sucked him in whether
he wanted it or not.

'Jason?' Sean whispered into the quiet night.

'Jason?'

Neither the breeze, nor the blackness, gave
him any reply.

'I knew a man that couldn't die once,' Suzie said
quietly. 'I shot him right through the head. Just
before I killed myself, actually.' She smiled. 'I
suppose from your position that would sound like
neither of us was too skilled at dying, but for me
it was different. I was dead. Properly dead. Until
they brought me back.'

The man tied to the bed whimpered and she saw
his breath blow his cheeks out as he gasped and
panicked behind the masking tape. His grey eyes
weren't so flirtatious now. She let her own gaze
drift away to a blank spot on the wall beyond.

'It wasn't so bad the first time. It was bad, don't
get me wrong, but I'd only been gone three months.

I'd only cracked the surface of nothingness. If I'd
known then what I know now, I'd have left Dad till
later and just got that silly cow somewhere quiet
until the whole business was finished.' She gently
stroked the man's sweating hairline, and ignored
his flinch away from her. 'Hindsight, eh?'

'The second time was different. It was years.

Years in the nothing, of being nothing. You know,
when I woke up down in the vault, I didn't know
who I was. That's how long I'd been gone. I didn't
know who I was, what life was, anything. Can you
imagine? To have been that long dead that you
forget the brilliance of all this? Didn't remember
a thing. Until I killed that man and stole his suit.

Then it all came back to me.'

The man on the bed froze for a second, and then
his struggles became more vigorous. Suzie didn't
pay any attention. He wasn't going anywhere. She
wrapped her dressing gown around her. The sex
had been good. She'd enjoyed it, even if Owen's
face had risen unbidden behind her eyes every
time she closed them. The ghosts would fade.

Once she'd got into the Commander's computer
and found out exactly what had happened to them
all, then she could perhaps start to sleep easily.

Or in fact, sleep at all.

'The problem with remembering life,' she spoke
quietly, leaning forward and resting her chin on
his chest, 'is that it makes you unable to forget
death. I won't be nothing again. I can't be. To be
nothing is terrible.' She let out a long, deep sigh. 'I
don't know why I'm telling you all this. You'll find
out for yourself soon enough. It's just nice having
someone to talk to. Haven't had that for a while.'

She laughed slightly. 'And it's not as if you'll be
gossiping about me.'

She picked up the kitchen knife from the table
beside the bed, and tears rolled down the cheeks
of the panicking man. 'It's not the same as the one
I used to use, of course,' she said, holding it up and
turning it this way and that so the soft lighting
made the steel glint. 'That one was very special.

But then I'm not killing people to bring them back
this time. And I suppose once a knife girl, always a
knife girl.' She stroked his head again. 'This could
be worse, you know. I could be letting the thing
inside me have you. I have a feeling that going
there would be like having this,' she carved a soft
shallow line down his naked chest and watched
the crimson ink spill out as his back arched and
he screamed behind his gag, 'going on for ever
and ever.' She paused in her work and looked into
his eyes. 'As it is, this is just for me. I want to
see someone else panicking as they have to say
goodbye to all this and become nothing. It makes
me feel better. Who says killers don't know their
own motivations?'

She raised the knife again. 'Yes, I did know a
man that couldn't die. Sadly for you, although you
do look a little like him, you're not that man. This
is your death. I am your death.'

She went to work.

Cutler had woken up just before dawn, and
although he felt as if he'd slept fine, it took a couple
of minutes before he figured out that maybe he'd
had at least a short burst of sleepwalking activity
in the night. It was more subtle than the taping
up of his drawers and cupboards had been, but it
appeared that at some point in the night he'd got
up and closed every door in the flat; the bathroom,
kitchen, lounge and his bedroom door. All shut.

He never shut them, not even the bathroom door

- who did that who lived alone? What the hell was
he trying to tell himself?

The air was crisp outside, and once he'd

showered and dressed - fighting the urge to close
all the doors again before he left - he headed for
the Bay, enjoying the clear streets as he drove in
the almost light of the breaking day. He parked
and stopped for a takeaway coffee before leaning
against a wall and watching the excavation site.

He didn't get as close as normal - his face was a
known quantity there now, and the last thing he
needed was Commander Jackson asking questions
about why he was stalking the site - but he was
close enough to see that there were more soldiers
guarding the barriers than previously, and they
all looked alert. No one in there was taking any
chances.

Lighting a cigarette and inhaling hard, he
wondered about the building the Department and
Army backup were so carefully going through the
wreckage of. Nothing was that hush-hush and
smiley without there being something dangerous
at the heart of it. And the site was connected to the
murders. No one was denying that. The question
was, did something at the site cause someone to
go mad and go out killing? And how did you get
someone's brain to turn to mush from the inside
anyway?

He let his thoughts drift away from case

practicalities as he smoked and drank his coffee.

Slowly, light claimed the sky in orange and red
streaks that faded to blue. His hands were cold
and he found that, once the cigarette was gone,
he'd been taking the lid from the coffee cup and
then replacing it, over and over. He checked his
watch, and with a sinking feeling realised it was
time to get to work. It felt like he'd been standing
there for five minutes, but nearer to an hour had
passed. The water tower flashed behind his eyes
again. The water tower and the greatcoat and a
terrible sense of sadness and self-loathing. He
stood up tall and shook it away. What the hell was
wrong with him?

He smoked another cigarette in the car on the
way to the station. For a non-smoker, two cigarettes
before 8 a.m. was pretty good going, he had to
admit that, even if he refused to acknowledge that
the old habit was back. He wasn't even aware of
making any kind of decision to smoke again. It
had just seemed to happen.

He strode into the station as if a purposeful
step could make the weirdness that had taken
hold of both him and the city vanish, taking the
steps two at a time.

'You don't understand...' A young man was
talking loudly to the desk sergeant. 'He just bloody
disappeared. Into the wall. His name is Jason.

Jason Wentworth. You need to come and—'

'Sir?' The sergeant held his hand up to pause
the young man in his flow and grab Cutler's
attention.

'Yep?'

'Can you call the lab? Forensics just rang
through for you.'

'You need to come and look at the wall! He just
disappeared into it! Aren't you listening to me?'

Cutler looked at the evidently distressed young
student and then at the sergeant. Great. More
craziness in the streets of Cardiff. 'Is there a
problem here?'

'Yes, I—'

'No,' the desk sergeant cut the man off, 'no,
there isn't.' He leaned on the counter, looking very
much like a kindly uncle or grandfather. 'Look
here, son. You go home and sleep off whatever it
is you've taken last night, and if your friend is still
missing tomorrow, then come back here and we'll
try again. Are you sure he didn't just go off with a
nice young girl?'

'No, I told you...'

Cutler gave the sergeant a conciliatory smile
and then left them to it. He had his own strange
fish to fry.

Andy Davidson was right behind him and, as the
sergeant got the coffee on and checked his emails
to see if they'd got anything on the CCTV checks
for Devlin and Murray's surrounding areas, Cutler
took a call from the lab. He wondered if now that
the Department were involved they'd worked
through the night. Maybe some good could come
from having a case steamrollered after all.

'What have you got for me?' he asked.

'As you can imagine, there's a lot of trace to go
through.' It was Abbie Trent on the line and that
filled him with some confidence. In her mid-fifties,
a hardened drinker - but never a drunk - and a
survivor of three failed marriages, Dr Trent had
moved down to Wales from Liverpool a couple of
years before. She was good - probably one of the best

- at her job, but her lifestyle and clear disregard
for authority had never let that be acknowledged.

If she was running tests on the crime scene
evidence, then Cutler doubted anything would be
missed. Trent might be belligerent, but she was
thorough.

'Spanton has sent over what they got from the
bodies, so we've been going through that first,
along with the clothes. I wish at least one of these
people had invested in a clothes brush. They're all
covered in fluff and fur and all kinds of stuff.'