The Twilight Streets

EIGHTEEN

It was a lovely morning. Simply delightful. No one in the world could have complained. The sun was out, the sky was blue with white fluffy clouds, and there was a tiny breeze in the air, but not enough to stop the general dress being T-shirts or halter tops.

Mums with kids in pushchairs and buggies, dads with older kids on their shoulders, teenagers and groups of pensioners all jostled on the roads of Tretarri, excited by this bizarre relaunch of a series of streets. Many arrived carrying the flyers that had been handed out around the city over the past twenty-four hours, detailing the clowns, magicians and street entertainers that would be present. Each flyer had a coupon that entitled the bearer to a can of drink each for their family (no more than four) at a discount rate. Light Lite it was called, guaranteed good for the kids.

The grand opening of the area had been at midday that morning. Jack had been there since 10 o’clock. Waiting. Watching. Wondering who, or what, would make a move.

The Wurlitzer had been the first thing to start up, sending out that irritating hurdy-gurdy music. Then the street performers had arrived, although Jack hadn’t noticed where they’d come from. The houses? No doors were open.

Light Lite. He had picked up a discarded can earlier. The lights in the Rift last night. Greg talking about the Light and Dark. It all had to be connected somehow, he was sure of that, and all roads led to Tretarri.

The other thing that had occurred to him atop Stadium House the night before was that Tretarri might not be the casual annoyance he’d thought. Jack had been around for… well, centuries was not really an exaggeration. At around 150 years old, he’d seen a lot, remembered a lot (hell, he’d probably done a lot and what he hadn’t done wasn’t worth doing), and he was cross with himself for not recognising a trap when he saw one.

This was an elaborate ruse – had been ever since he’d first seen Tretarri back in 1902. Each time he’d come, the nausea had got stronger, a fact that hadn’t really seemed important until now, but it was all leading somewhere, leading here. To now. Because Jack was an expert and could recognise a good party when he saw one. And this was the granddaddy of them all. All it needed was a host.

Where was Bilis Manger?

And where were his team? His friends?

Revenge for the Future.

What the hell was going to happen in the future?

Mind you, futures were fluid things. Time always was – what you knew the future to be one day could be completely revoked when you next visited it. Like a river, ebbing back and forth, tiny ripples. The general shape of the big pond never changed but the detail of the ripples, the direction and mass, all that could be altered by the splash of a hand. Or the addition of a fish.

So, if his inability to access Tretarri was deliberate, and something was growing more powerful as time went by, there would have to be a point when the trap was sprung.

For that to happen, Jack would have to be given access to the streets.

He stared around him. The pavement-embedded uplighters were on, even though it was the middle of the day. The street lamps were on, too. Someone’s carbon footprint wasn’t making an indentation on their conscience. The lights in every house were on. But still no one was going in or out, the focus of the party atmosphere was external.

A clown was looking at him. Staring blankly, as if not quite seeing him. That was odd.

There was something about the way it was standing, head at a slight angle, the mouth beneath the big red painted lips.

God, no.

‘Owen?’

Jack was walking across the road towards Tretarri, ignoring the nausea rising in his gut, fighting it down.

The clown he thought was Owen was caught up in a throng of children and, with a honk on a horn, it vanished, swept away by a sea of screaming, laughing kids.

Jack took a deep breath. Step by step.

One foot forward.

Owen. He had to get to Owen.

Another foot forward.

Jeez, he felt rank, could taste the bile.

If Owen was here, then maybe Toshiko, Gwen and Ianto were, too.

Another step.

Ianto!

The young man was standing outside 6 Coburg Street. Jack could see him. Staring away, Jack could only see one side of him. Could he catch his eye?

‘Ianto,’ he yelled.

A group of people turned and looked at Jack and then over at the man he was clearly yelling at, who gave no response. A little girl broke away from her family and ran to Ianto, pulling at his sleeve. Just enough to ease Ianto round to face Jack.

The right-hand side of his face was half clown make-up.

Why only half, Jack wondered. Owen was a complete clown (in so many ways, he thought wryly). Ianto was still in his suit. Why.

And Ianto in trouble, in possible pain, was enough for Jack. Enough to overcome the nausea, the sickness, the bile. For the first time in his life, he was capable of marching into Tretarri, past the crowds, the street performers, everyone. Until he reached Ianto.

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.