The shopkeeper began to sob. ‘No one will believe me,’ he wailed. ‘They’ll have me for arson.’
‘Nah,’ said Rhys. ‘Spark from the till, wasn’t it?’ He nudged Gwen’s elbow. ‘We only just got you out in time, didn’t we Gwen?’
‘That’s right.’ Gwen helped Dillon to stand and indicated their escape route down the stairs. ‘We’re your witnesses.’
The shopkeeper had an incredulous, eager look in his eyes.
‘Well, we could be,’ added Rhys as they ushered Dillon through the fire doors. ‘So long as we get this Gareth’s home address.’
TEN
Ianto Jones looked at the snake, and the snake looked back at Ianto. Its jaw opened lazily, only twenty centimetres from his nose as he squatted. He could feel the tension in his haunches. He was going to have to stand up. Would that alarm the snake?
‘Oxyuranus microlepidotus,’ Jack told him.
Ianto didn’t look away from the reptile poised in front of his face. He said calmly: ‘You’re making that up.’
‘That’s an inland taipan,’ continued Jack, his voice low and dangerous. ‘One bite contains enough venom to kill a hundred men.’ He considered this for a moment. ‘l dated a girl like that.’
‘Well, some date you’ve turned out to be.’ Ianto tutted and stood up with a groan. He pushed against the glass that separated them from the snake. ‘All you want to do is talk about your former conquests, Jack.’
In the darkness of the reptile house’s observation deck, Jack sought out Ianto’s hand and squeezed it affectionately. ‘You’re a bit of a charmer yourself, Mr Jones.’
Ianto watched the taipan. It had already lost interest, and slithered its olive-green body to the other side of the glass exhibit space. ‘I didn’t charm him. Or maybe her.’
‘What d’ya expect?’ Jack grinned. ‘Staring out from a glass box for years on end. Who’d want that?’ He nodded at the exit. ‘C’mon, you can buy me an ice cream.’
They stepped out from the gloomy reptile house and into the cold, crisp, bright November air of Torlannau Zoo. The attraction had not long opened for the day, but already it was getting busy. Kids were chattering and screaming with delight at the antics of monkeys or horror at the smells of the hippos. Parents were already being pestered for ice creams. Zoo staff chaperoned and pointed, easily marked out in the growing crowds by their brightly coloured uniforms.
Ianto said, ‘We keep Janet in a glass box. Down in the cells.’
‘Never had you picked out as an animal liberationist.’ Jack was pretending to look shocked. He checked the wristband above his free hand. He never seemed to take that damned thing off – not even in bed, though that did sometimes have imaginative compensations. Ianto suspected that Jack had only agreed with today’s suggestion for a date at the zoo because Toshiko had mentioned some earlier Rift activity. And that ill-disguised glance was at least the tenth time Jack had scrutinised his wrist readout. He probably thought he was being surreptitious.
‘You’re off duty, Captain Harkness.’ Ianto tugged Jack’s hand, as though he could drag him away from work. ‘Hey, what’s the collective noun for…’ He looked around for a nearby display area. ‘Yeah… meerkats?’
‘Is this a date or a pop quiz?’
‘I’ll take that to mean that you don’t know,’ persisted Ianto, pulling Jack into the walkway and the conversation at the same time.
‘Or don’t care.’
‘Anyway, the answer is “a mob”. How about… lions?’
‘Easy! A pride. Like lions and cheetahs and all those pack animals.’
‘Pack animals carry things,’ Ianto objected. ‘Y’know, beasts of burden.’
‘Or they live in packs,’ noted Jack. ‘Y’know, like the word suggests.’ He grinned at Ianto, and swung his hand forward. ‘No, no, it’s my turn. How about… Weevils?’
Ianto considered this briefly, before concluding: ‘It’s a shitload, obviously.’
They both laughed vigorously at this. An old couple were walking past them on the tarmac path. The pair had their collars turned up against the cold, hands shoved well into the pockets of their matching beige anoraks. The little old guy narrowed his eyes at Ianto. ‘Language, please!’ he said mildly. ‘There are children about.’
‘Sorry, sir,’ said Ianto, trying not to laugh more. Jack wasn’t helping by stroking the hairs on the back on Ianto’s hand with his fingers.
The beige anorak studied them. ‘You’re a bit old to be holding hands.’
Jack smiled pleasantly. ‘You have no idea.’
The elderly woman took her hand from her coat and tugged at her husband’s sleeve. ‘You’re never too old to hold hands, Walter,’ she chided him gently. ‘You just carry on, boys.’
Walter’s face relaxed into a smile, and he and his wife walked on down the path, their translucent fingers now intertwined in an affectionate knot.
‘It’s not a pack of leopards,’ began Ianto.
Jack groaned. ‘Are we still on that?’
‘Or tigers…’
‘Hey, we’re near the tigers. Let’s ask.’ Jack had spotted a big guy in a grey boiler suit. Had to be one of the zoo staff. ‘Hello!’ Jack called to him. ‘Do you know what you call a whole loada tigers? Like a crowd, or a pride, or…?’
The boiler suit barely registered them. He was a huge, tall guy. Maybe two metres from his solid mud-caked combat boots to the tip of his spiky red hair. A ginger wardrobe of a man, whose huge hands dwarfed the PDA he was manipulating.
‘D’you mind?’ Jack was insisting.
Ianto had walked over to join him. ‘Not one of the zoo staff,’ he said. He’d spotted that the crossed-keys logo on the man’s grey uniform read ‘Achenbrite’. The zoo uniforms, now he came to think of it, were blue-and-yellow.
The huge ginger guy snapped his PDA shut with a twitch of his sausage fingers. He hared away off the tarmac path, giant strides eating up the expanse of grass between the animal displays. A flock of flamingos startled and strutted away across their pen in a pink cloud of anxiety.
‘Achenbrite?’ mused Jack.
‘I noticed,’ agreed Ianto. ‘Did you spot the earpiece?’
A shrill scream cut across the still air. It came from the opposite direction, and it wasn’t the exhilarated squeal of a kid spotting a giraffe. This was full-throated terror. Ianto considered the directional signs, orienting himself with location information before running. There was the scream again. The signs indicated it came from over by the big cats.
Jack chased after him up the incline towards the Bengal compound. ‘Did you see that sign?’ he grumbled. ‘They spelled “tiger” wrong.’
Ianto tutted. ‘It’s supposed to be tiegr. God, how long have you been in Cardiff, Jack?’
‘Long enough.’
‘Long enough to have learned a bit of Welsh, that’s for sure,’ puffed Ianto.
Jack pouted. ‘I promise to be fluent by the time you introduce me to your family.’
‘Then you have plenty of time to learn,’ muttered Ianto. They skidded to a halt in front of the tiger enclosure. Two blue-uniformed zoo staff were directing a nosy crowd of visitors reluctantly away from the area. The squat burly man with a moustache made of broom bristles was having more success than his lanky counterpart. Jack and Ianto got past him during this distraction.
Ianto shoved at the access gate. ‘Shouldn’t this one be shut when the other is open?’
‘Gives you some idea about what’s in here,’ Jack said.
‘What’s that, then?’
‘Nothing. The animals have escaped.’ Jack was checking his wristband again, with no attempt to disguise it from Ianto.
Another young guy was in there ahead of them. He had his hair tied back in a lank brown pony tail, for all the world like a zoo animal himself. He was struggling to comfort a shrieking woman, also in staff uniform. ‘It’s gonna be all right, Bethan,’ he was saying, repeatedly, like a mantra.