He put a hand to his unpainted cheek.
‘Ianto?’
‘Jack?’
Jack turned. It was Bilis. At the doorway to number 6 Coburg Street.
‘We should talk, I believe. And in here, we can.’
Jack frowned. ‘Walk into my parlour?’
Bilis shrugged. ‘Revenge for the Future?’
And Jack followed him in.
At the other end of the street party, wholly unaware of Jack, Ianto, Owen and Bilis, was Idris Hopper.
Why had he come? What had Jack stirred up in him that he felt the need to call in sick at work and head down here, to see if Tretarri really was worth the fuss Jack was making.
No sign of Jack though. ‘Bloody Torchwood,’ he muttered. ‘I should know better.’
A man with a white face and stripy shirt approached him. A mime. He offered Idris a flower, but the Welshman shook his head and pushed past him with a weak smile.
A man in a suit was standing in front of a group of teenaged girls, who were giggling. He held up a pack of cards. A girl tapped one. The suited man shuffled the cards, then pocketed them, clapped his hands and pointed to a window in a house.
The girls whooped to see the card posted there.
The man, who never spoke, held a finger up, produced the pack again and offered them to a different girl. She selected a different card. The four of hearts. He showed everyone.
He got out a black marker and she wrote her name on it. Nikki, Idris noted.
He then reshuffled and this time gave her the pack, pointing at her handbag. She put the pack in the bag, and he gently took the bag from her and gave it a comical shake.
He then pretended to watch something invisible rise from her bag and everyone followed his eyeline, until it settled on the bag of the first girl to have picked a card.
He pointed at her bag, which she opened and, sure enough, found a card in there. The four of hearts. With ‘Nikki’ scrawled across it in black marker.
The applause and screams went up, and he bowed.
Idris carried on, past a stilt-walker and a female clown holding a bucket, which a few people dropped coins into. She never moved, never blinked.
He dropped a fifty pence piece in and walked on, not seeing the clown woman turn her head to watch him. Nor did he see her lower the bucket to the floor, and put a hand to the back of her trousers, as if expecting to find something tucked into the top.
Walking on down Wharf Street, Idris noticed that there was a statue in the middle of one of the connecting streets. He didn’t remember that from the plans. Bronze, showing a Kabuki dancer, kimono, one leg tucked up, palms erect, a fan in each, the head at a slight angle, looking upwards. Only the slightest tremble made Idris realise this was in fact a painted human. He always found human statues a bit creepy. Not just because the lack of movement dehumanised them, but because it took a very special kind of person who could get satisfaction from standing stock still for so long.
He stared at the Kabuki for a moment. It didn’t move again. He shrugged and turned away.
And therefore didn’t see tiny spikes pop up at the top of each crease in the fans. Or the tucked leg return to the ground. Or the unsmiling head turn and watch him through jet black eyes, as it drew back one of the lethal fans, ready to throw it like a shuriken.
As Idris turned a corner and moved out of the Kabuki’s view, she resumed her passive pose, the spikes retracting from the fans.
And the hurdy-gurdy music continued to sound, mixed with the laughter of happy families.
NINETEEN
When did it go wrong?
It was the question that had haunted Ianto Jones for about eighteen months. Now he believed he knew the answer – it was the day he’d spotted Gwen was expecting.
They had all been in the Hub Boardroom, and Jack was being an arse – well, a particularly arsey arse. And Owen had walked out.
Later that night, Owen had talked to Ianto about Jack. About the Hub. About Torchwood. And about the Rift. Dreams, ideas, plans.To use the Rift to help mankind.
All of which had seemed a good idea in principle, but not in practice.
‘Look what happened last time we opened the Rift,’ he’d said to Owen. But Owen had had an answer to that. Something about Jack, something about Jack’s immortality being used to power the Rift ad infinitum.
‘And this afternoon, just for a second, I did it. I accessed the Rift, I looked into it and realised its potential.’
‘You did what?’
‘Oh I closed it. God, it was barely a second, even Tosh’s equipment barely registered it. You lot in the Boardroom certainly didn’t.’
Ianto had been astonished. At first, he’d thought Owen was having a laugh, being the joker. But, as the evening had worn on, he’d realised Owen was serious.
Perhaps it was the accident, that moment when Owen’s life had changed. Perhaps on that day, as Torchwood had pulled together to help him, perhaps there’d been some split moment in time. Owen had turned left with them. But what if, in Owen’s head, he’d turned right. And that was what had led him to this. Telling Ianto that he was going to play God with Jack’s help.
Except Ianto had known there was no way Jack would ever say yes.
He’d tried to persuade Owen, pleaded with him. To see sense.To talk to Jack.To let himself be talked out of this.
But Owen would have none of it and, during their increasingly heated argument, Ianto had realised what was causing it.
‘It’s OK for you.You’ve got Jack. Gwen has Rhys – God help us all – but what do I have? A knackered hand and no Tosh.’
Ianto had laughed. ‘Tosh? You could have Tosh whenever you want. She’s crazy about you.’
‘Was.’
‘Is!’
‘Was. But now she’s looking for more. And I’m not it.’
And Toshiko had chosen that moment to walk in.
Or, at least, to make her presence felt. In fact, Ianto had realised, she must have heard the whole thing.
She’d walked across the Hub from the water tower and straight up to Owen, pulling him to her and kissing him, hard. ‘Is that proof enough, Owen?’ she’d said as she eased away from him. ‘I’ve always said that it’s you, your heart, your soul I want.’
Ianto had coughed. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I have some washing up to do. I’ll try not to clatter the cups too much.’
And he’d put Owen’s master plan out of his mind and, instead, was happy that Tosh and Owen had finally found common ground with one another.
So how come he hadn’t seen the changes over the next few months? Was it because he’d trusted his co-workers? His friends? Trusted them too much? Like Jack had. Was it because he’d never have believed Gwen could be corrupted? Owen, Toshiko even, they’d always had that potential, borrowing things from the safes and cabinets for their own ends, things that came through the Rift that could be used for their own hedonistic or selfish ends. But those were things that didn’t really hurt anyone.
But then… then they’d taken it to a new level, and Gwen had been sucked into it. Alien tech that could revolutionise maternity practices. A quick call to the Prime Minister, Tosh using tech to disguise Owen’s voice so it sounded like Jack’s. How far could they go without seeing the moral implications?
Throughout time, mankind had created empires built around one or two people who believed what they were doing was right for the people, or fooled themselves into thinking that was so. Locking away their morality, their conscience, in a box. Driven by the rush of being able to do it rather than examining what ‘it’ was.
Owen and Tosh went down that slope so rapidly it was scary.
Everyone had that chance to turn left rather than right. Owen and Tosh had gone round the roundabout and traced a whole new route of personal morality that Ianto had never believed them capable of.