The Twilight Streets

FOURTEEN

Ianto Jones was screaming inside. And there was nothing he could do; he couldn’t move, couldn’t seem to blink.

He was aware Bilis was close to Gwen, but couldn’t turn to see what he was doing.

Then he saw Toshiko, half her face painted white. And red.

Bilis entered his field of vision.

‘What have you done to Gwen?’ Ianto shouted internally, but his mouth, his vocal cords, possibly even his lungs, weren’t moving.

What had Bilis done? How had he done it?

Ianto’s gun just vanished. One second it was there, the next he could feel it was gone.

Feel. So he could still feel, which meant that his nerves worked, which meant that muscles worked on some basic level which meant-

‘Oh, do stop fretting,’ Bilis smiled. ‘So much noise in your head. And so many histories tell us that, in your brief Torchwood career, they always thought you were the quiet one. The one who wouldn’t say “boo” to a goose. I wonder if they ever knew you, Ianto. I wonder if Jack Harkness ever knew you.’

Ianto felt Bilis take his hands.

‘I don’t want to do this, you have to believe that. But there is a good reason. A very good reason. Good for me, anyway. You see, one man’s light is another man’s dark.’ He squeezed Ianto’s hands. ‘But for what it’s worth, I’m awfully sorry.’

As Bilis leaned in, Ianto got a glimpse of Toshiko. The white make-up seemed somehow alive, stretching right across her face. The last he saw of her, her whole face had become white: white skin, white lips; the only colour was the livid red and gold tearing from above and below her closed eyes. Her hair was moving, bunching, and, on either side of her head, hanging from the front of her hair, two cloth rollers. At the back were two long pins, forming the top of an X at the back of her head.

Then Bilis’s head blotted out Ianto’s view, and all he could see was the old man’s face obscured by a fierce light that raged across his face, leaping from his eyes.

And Ianto was screaming again.

Jack stood inside the great Victorian morgue that dominated the basement area many levels beneath the Autopsy Room. He was facing that special row of trays that contained past Torchwood members.

According to Ianto’s notes, Tray 18 was designated for Gregory Phillip Bishop, who was reported dead in late 1941. Of course there was no body in the tray, but Ianto wouldn’t have known that.

At least Jack hoped Ianto didn’t know that. If he did, it would suggest a somewhat unhealthy obsession with frozen bodies, and that was an area even Jack didn’t venture into.

‘Gotta have some standards,’ he thought wryly.

With a deep breath, Jack looked at Tray 78 (most of the Trays were deliberately non-sequential to prevent someone grave-robbing an entire Torchwood team’s past in one fell swoop).

‘Hello, Dr Brennan,’ he said quietly to the tray marked up as Matilda B Brennan. ‘It’s been a while. I wish I could speak with you, find out why you made a deal with the devil. Wonder if you knew who or what Bilis Manger was back then. And if you did, I sure as hell wish you could tell me now.’

He wrenched the tray out, knowing what he’d find in the black body bag. After all, he’d helped Rhydian clear up after the event, so he’d actually placed Tilda’s corpse in there.

The alien cryo-tech that Torchwood used to freeze the dead was something Jack had never truly understood. He doubted anyone had, least of all Charlie Gaskill’s team that had first discovered and utilised it in 1906. Nevertheless, Jack knew it was an important part of their arsenal – one day, a way might be found to bring back an operative who could help a current case. It was something, like an early death, all Torchwood staff were prepared for.

Tilda Brennan wouldn’t be brought back – being minus the top half of your head kind of ruled that out – but it wasn’t her body he wanted. It was the scorched remains of the diary he’d secreted there with her, knowing that one day the ‘Revenge for the Future’ schtick would come back and haunt him.

And here it was. In the form of the enigmatic Bilis Manger, time-hopping killer and bon vivant, charm and danger all contained in the apparently frail body of an old man.

They’d first met in 1941, and again when Bilis had released Abaddon, but Jack still had no idea who the man actually was. He seemed human enough, so he got his abilities (Jack refused to think of them as powers, that sounded like something out of a comic book) from somewhere else. Bilis worshipped Abaddon, and Jack had destroyed ‘the Great Devourer’, but there had to be more to it than that. This was no two-bit villain with one ambition in life – he was simply too good for that.

A mercenary? A man from the future, living in the past? A really, really well-disguised alien?

The solution that nagged at Jack’s conscious mind more than any other was the most disturbing. What if Bilis was a Torchwood officer, not from Cardiff (Ianto had checked, double-checked and checked forty times more) but from Glasgow? From the Institute in London? Or, God help them, from Torchwood Four. That wasn’t a pretty thought.

He’d demonstrated the ability to plant false images of the future into people’s heads. Poor Gwen had fallen for it when Bilis told her Rhys was going to die – and then killed him, knowing that Gwen would open the Rift to bring him back (which it had – but bringing Abaddon along for the ride). He knew from conversations with the others that they’d seen the people that they most missed from their pasts come back too, solid projections that Bilis had controlled and manipulated, suggesting a deep-rooted knowledge of his team. And also the ability to spy on them as, in Owen’s case, the image he’d seen had been of someone he’d lost so very recently.

So, he knew what Bilis could do, just not why and how.

‘Great investigator, Jack,’ he muttered. ‘I thought “Revenge for the Future” referred to Abaddon. But what if it’s more?’

He tapped his ear, activating the almost invisible communications device everyone in Torchwood wore. ‘Owen?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Watcha doing?’

‘Testing your blood for those chronon particles you asked about. Whatever they are. I mean, I know what they are, theoretically, but forgive me for being a doctor – and a bloody good one at that – but I like to work with realities rather than fantasy.’

‘You wound me, Owen,’ laughed Jack. ‘What am I if not your fantasy?’

‘A right pain in the arse, Jack, that’s what you are. And I don’t mean that in a way you’d find charming, before you ask. What do you want?’

‘I’m heading out. I’ve read everything Ianto found for me and have a few ideas zooming about my head, but I need more. I need to find me an expert on old books. And I know just the guy.’

‘See yas,’ said Owen and broke comms.

Jack took one of the back routes out of the base, bypassing the Hub and walking up a long, long (really quite long) flight of stairs that brought him out behind Ianto’s tourist information office. He went through the little room and out into the night air.

People were milling around by the big pub above the doorway, whilst others were flocking to the Turkish restaurant that stood over the water. There was the faux French restaurant (good chain, Jack quite liked the flans and quiches they did), a couple of Italians on the upper level, and a number of bars, coffee houses and, down Bute Street, a series of shops, galleries and even a comedy club.

Fifty years ago, he’d walked an alien disguised as an evacuee child along here, all mud flats and dampness. The warehouse that the Hub was accessed by in 1941 had long since been demolished, and roughly where it stood there was now a pizza parlour. Whenever Jack went in there, it always seemed to be full of very tall Welshmen with booming voices, entertaining their diminutive Welsh mothers, with their soft sing-song voices. Jack loved Wales, the Welsh, the whole spirit and pizzazz of the place. If he had to spend 150 years somewhere on Earth, there were worse places he could’ve gone.

Imagine if there’d been a space-time rift in Swindon. Of course Swindon was quite nice, and certainly had an interesting roundabout system that could fool any passing aliens, but Torchwood Swindon didn’t have the right ring to it.

Or the nice bay.

Jack passed the bars and hotels of Bute Street, stopped off at Jubilee Pizza (not as nice as the restaurant in the Bay, obviously, but faster for takeaway) and towards one of the recent housing developments, Century Wharf, a strange riverside collection of apartments that could never quite make up its mind if it was in Butetown or Grangetown – not that it really mattered greatly.

He wandered into the gated community, his wrist-strap controls overriding the electronic ‘Residents Only’ security system, and headed towards the block he wanted.

He buzzed the number, knowing that it had a video entryphone and he’d get short shrift once the occupant saw who he was.

Charm offensive, Jack. Gets ’em every time.

‘Hey, it’s me,’ he said when the buzzer was answered.

There was a beat, followed by a command to go away that could’ve been termed more politely.

‘I brought dinner,’ Jack added, and waved the pizza at the camera. ‘Hawaiian, with extra mushroom.’

The door clicked and Jack was in. He took the stairs, and was soon on the fourth floor.

The door to the apartment was open, and Jack went in, noting the smell of freshly showered human male. A couple of uplighter lamps illuminated a large living room with three glass doors overlooking the River Taff and the city beyond, lit up like it was Christmas.

Idris was in a dressing gown, hair damp. He wasn’t smiling.

‘What do you want?’

Jack offered the pizza box, which Idris took and opened, yanking off a sliver and eating it.

‘Yeah. Good food,’ Idris said. ‘So, what do you want?’

‘A slice of pizza?’

‘Get your own.’ Idris ate another bit.

Jack pulled the book out of his coat pocket.

‘I have people in trouble. I need answers about this book.’

‘It’s a diary,’ Idris said without touching it. ‘Broken lock, so personal. I imagine it’s not yours.’

‘It is now.’

Idris rinsed his hands in the sink, dried them thoroughly and sat down at the kitchen table, switching the overhead lights on.

He flicked quickly through the burnt diary, not bothering to comment on the damage.

‘Well?’

Idris shrugged. ‘Well what? You want first impressions? I’d have thought you had the technology at Torchwood to tell you everything you needed to know.’

‘Those people in trouble? One of them’s Toshiko Sato. She’d be the one to tell me what I’m having to ask you.’

Idris frowned. ‘Japanese girl, parents used to be something in the military. She used to be at some low-rated MoD place, yeah?’

‘You know my staff?’

‘I know my job,’ Idris snapped. ‘Keeping a step ahead of you is impossible, but knowing who your people are, that’s a work in progress.’ He tapped the diary. ‘Overlooking its charred state, it’s a diary. Probably Edwardian, the cover’s faux leather, the locking mechanism, a bit later, 1920s perhaps, replacing the original.’

‘The paper?’

‘That’s why you need an expert. It feels normal enough, but I doubt you’d have brought it to me if it was.’

Jack shrugged. ‘I honestly don’t know. And I thought you might be enough of an expert to tell me.’

Idris shut the book. ‘I collect books, Jack. Sometimes I sell them on eBay, or buy others. I’m not a bloody humanoid Google. Yeah, it’s paper, it’s thick enough to be early 1900s, and it’s not treated like modern paper, hence the discolouration and brittleness. The edges are gilt – not real gilt, so it’s probably not the most expensive diary. The sort a maiden aunt might have given to a young boy or girl in an upper-middle-class family. You want a value? In good nick, £100 thereabouts. Damaged like this, it’s recycling only.’

Jack shrugged. ‘Shame it got burned. With all those blank pages, you could write in it. Keep a diary of all your conquests, Idris. Then I could read it.’

Idris sighed at the implicit entendre. He threw the book back to Jack, and fished out another slice of pizza, so Jack knew he wasn’t planning to touch the diary again.

‘It’s not blank,’ the Welshman said after a few seconds’ munching. ‘Why’d you think that? I’m surprised at you.’

Jack flicked the crumbling pages. ‘Looks empty to me.’

Idris finally cracked a smile. ‘You might be good at aliens and stuff, Jack, but you’re a shite boy scout.’

He went back to the kitchen and got a plastic lemon juice dispenser from the fridge. He squirted some onto kitchen roll and gently tapped a page in the diary.

Faintly, some scrawled words appeared. ‘Old trick, old book. Lemon juice isn’t great, but it should do the trick. But I suggest you copy down what it says quickly cos, as it dries, the words will go again, and it’ll make the pages even more brittle. One good gust of wind, and they’ll shatter.’

Jack smiled at him and put the diary down again. Next to it he placed the USB memory stick he’d been given in the park.

‘How long?’

Idris snorted and repeated his earlier suggestion that Jack should go away, but Jack was insistent. ‘Idris, Tosh’s life is in danger. I’ve heard nothing from Ianto or Gwen. You’re my only hope.’

Idris looked Jack straight in the eyes, and then sighed. ‘If this was a movie, Harkness, I’d be sixty, bald and looking over my shoulder in case the Nazis burst in.’

‘You’ll never go bald.’

‘Donald Pleasance. Or Laurence Naismith.’

Jack headed out the door. ‘How long?’

‘Three hours for a rough estimate.’

Jack looked back and smiled. ‘Even those guys were beautiful when they were your age. Probably. And Idris?’

‘What?’

‘Thank you.’

Jack pulled the door shut and headed back out into the night air. He crossed down towards the river, deciding to take the scenic route back to the Hub. It was a busy night and, for the sake of ten more minutes, strolling through Hamadryad Park would clear his mind, let him focus.