Gwen remembered where she’d seen this kid before. He’d been selling magazines by the covered market. He was one of the badged vendors who cheerfully cajoled shoppers to part with their money, and who didn’t scowl even when the passers-by gave him the finger instead of cash. And now here he lay, dead in a grubby back alley in Splott. Someone or something had extinguished that lively look in his eyes by crushing the back of his skull. Crushing it so completely, Gwen already knew, that when they turned him over they would be able to see the cracked remains of his top vertebrae.
‘Youngster.’ Jack nodded, satisfied. ‘Won’t be so hard for Tosh to cover up,’ cause he won’t be missed.’
‘He will be missed.’ Gwen was surprised how angry she felt about it. ‘He’ll be missed by me. I’ve seen him selling the Big Issue in town.’
‘So, what’s his name?’
‘I don’t know what his-’ She bit off the rest of her sentence. ‘That’s not what I meant, and you know it.’
Jack smiled at her. Now she’d been working with him for a while, Gwen knew that he was trying to encourage her, not mock her. That still didn’t stop her feeling like he was patronising her. ‘It’s all relative,’ Jack said. ‘Which of us will be missed? And when? Next year? Ten years? A century? When they’re building the next Millennium Stadium, in Cardiff or whatever Cardiff has become by then, who will miss any of us?’
Gwen stood up again. ‘Don’t give me that “the universe is an atom in a giant’s fingernail” bollocks. If you exaggerate the context, of course nothing’s significant. What we do is important. What Mitch does is important.’ She saw Jack puzzling over this. ‘Him, that poor policeman down there, staring at his own spew, he’s significant.’ As if to prove it, she began walking back to Mitch’s beaten figure.
‘Name any famous cop from two hundred years ago,’ Jack called after her.
‘Robert Peel,’ she snapped back without having to think.
‘Wrong. He was the Home Secretary. Go on, name anyone from his police force.’
She faltered in her step, reconsidered, and kept walking.
‘Joseph Grantham,’ Jack told her. ‘Who remembers him? He was the first officer killed on duty. People have moved on, many times over. They don’t care. They’re all living their own lives. Existing, breathing, screwing, remember? But see, that’s why I like you, Gwen Cooper. You do care. It’s at the heart of you. It motivates you. And it makes people see they can be better themselves.’
‘Sometimes I don’t think you care about anyone,’ she muttered. She was standing by Mitch again, helped him to his feet. She mimed ‘moustache’ to him by waggling her finger under her own nose, and offered him a tissue to wipe away the vomit.
‘C’mon, Gwen.’ Jack was calling her back.
‘Have you radioed in?’ she asked Mitch. He nodded mutely. ‘OK, I’ve got to go now. Sorry.’
Jack was angling his mobile phone at the dead youngster. He had the mobile on speaker, so that he could talk to Toshiko at the same time as transmitting a crime-scene image back to her at the Torchwood Hub.
‘… second one within a one-kilometre radius of his apartment. Starting to look like we’ve got our man, Tosh. So, where is he?’
‘Working on it, Jack,’ Toshiko’s voice told him from the radio.
‘Are these pictures any good? I mean for analysis, I wasn’t gonna get them printed up and framed for my desk back at the office. People hated that last time.’
‘They’re ideal,’ enthused Toshiko. ‘I can cross-reference the upload with structured information in pictures and captions from the Police National Database. Smart stuff they’ve got — a multimedia setup that integrates the text, image, video and audio data at the level of the bit-stream so that they can be stored, accessed and processed by the same system.’
Jack rolled his eyes. ‘I was interested right up to the point where you said “upload”.’
Gwen tutted. ‘All the SOCOs I know would love that kind of system. Something that could identify patterns that link directly to individuals. Like persistent offenders whose patterns of offence haven’t been obvious to investigators.’
Jack grinned at her. ‘Oh, you and Tosh were just made for each other.’
A breeze was starting to lift litter down the narrow alley, and swirl it around their feet and onto the corpse. Sweet wrappers stuck in the blood and vomit.
Gwen studied the sky. Dark grey clouds were obscuring most of the blue now. ‘Weather’s deteriorating.’
‘Yeah,’ said Toshiko’s voice. ‘There’s a strange cold front over the city. Not what we’d expected from the forecast. Plenty of rain on its way, and the temperature’s unusual for this time of year. Low 60s. Like Owen’s IQ.’
Jack pulled his collar up as the breeze stiffened. ‘OK, Tosh, your smart system has had plenty of time now. So where’s our killer?’
‘Already left his office. Office mates said they thought he was going into the city centre, not back home. Then we lost his trail behind a lorry on the M4, and missed his exit junction.’
‘Options?’
‘I’m trying to get to his secretary,’ said Toshiko. ‘And we’re still scanning for his car.’
Jack considered the corpse at his feet. ‘All right, Gwen and I are going into the centre. Tosh and Owen, we need clean-up here for the corpse. Location…’
‘Got it from your GPS signal,’ Toshiko said. ‘Post code CF24 9XZ. You’re in Gwion Lane, Splott.’
Jack broke the connection, and started back towards the SUV. Mitch had got to his feet now, and stood to an awkward kind of attention as Jack and Gwen approached. This meant he stood between them and the Torchwood car.
‘I radioed for back-up, and they’re on the way. Until then, anything I can do to help, sir?’
‘Radio them again and cancel,’ Jack told him, ‘Torchwood will handle this now.’ Gwen saw Mitch’s face flush with embarrassment. ‘Go ahead,’ Jack urged him. Mitch fumbled for his radio and did what he was told.
‘You know,’ Jack said to Gwen, ‘I was kind of worried that we’d never find a big-boned policeman to vomit copiously on our victim and then cower on the pavement. But I was wrong. Here was Constable Mitchell, ready to fill that vacancy.’
Gwen prodded Jack in his side with an angry finger.
‘All right,’ grumbled Jack. ‘Constable, keep any arriving bystanders away from the body until the Torchwood clean-up team arrive. And here…’ From one of the flapped pockets in his greatcoat he pulled an evidence bag, transparent plastic with a coloured seal. He thrust it at the baffled policeman.
‘Try not to throw up on anyone else.’
All Gwen could do was smile an apology to Mitch as she climbed into the SUV. Jack swiftly dropped the car into reverse and the SUV’s tyres squealed their way back up through the trash-strewn alley. In the reflection of the side-mirror, Gwen watched Jimmy Mitchell sink slowly back to the pavement, still clutching the plastic bag.
THREE
They sat in the Casa Celi café and watched the street outside. Jack had previously brought the whole team here for what they’d all thought was an evening jolly, recognition for the hard work they’d put in during the Cyclops business, or maybe a bonding exercise. Fat chance, Gwen had realised afterwards — it was just that Casa Celi afforded a clear view of The Hays shopping area, and it had been ideal for spotting a vagrant Weevil that Jack was hunting that evening. They should probably have guessed when they saw Jack was carrying the defensive spray and the hand-clamps, because they obviously weren’t designed for a fun night on the town. In the end, Gwen hadn’t even got to finish her antipasto.
Now they both took the same pavement table as that earlier night. A couple of city types — striped shirts, pint glasses, clouded intellects — sprawled at an adjacent table and leered at Gwen. Jack propped himself in a metal chair, still wearing his greatcoat but draping it so that the chair back was between his body and the coat.