The Undertakers Gift (10 page)

Ray looked at him, aghast. How could he find this funny? She looked back the way they had come, but there was no sign of any pursuit. She heaved a sigh and rubbed at her sternum; her chest was really burning. ‘What’s so funny?’

Wynnie was still chuckling. ‘I haven’t run like that since I was a kid.’

‘I’ve never. . . run like that,’ said Ray. ‘Ever.’ And then she started to smile too.

In less than a moment they were both laughing, guiltily choking back the noise because they knew that there was no way they should find this funny.

‘It’s nervous tension,’ Wynnie giggled.

They clung to each other for a few minutes, slowly getting their breath back. There was no sign of pursuit. In fact, there was no one else at all nearby.

‘Those were definitely the guys I saw last night,’ Ray said at last. ‘They creeped me out then and they did it just now, in broad daylight. They’re just so. . . horrible. They make me feel dirty just seeing them.’

‘Yeah, well, they’re all done up like something from Halloween,’ Wynnie observed. ‘I bet they’re having a right laugh at us now.’

‘You think?’ Ray sounded doubtful and Wynnie shrugged. Ray felt sure that the strange, dark figures were utterly bereft of any sense of humour. ‘Do you think we should go back and look again? See if they’re still there?’

‘No way,’ Wynnie said quickly.

‘Wait a sec,’ Ray said, reaching for her mobile. She opened it and speed-dialled Gillian. It rang a couple of times and then switched to her familiar voicemail response:

‘Hi you’re through to Gillian. I can’t take your call right now, but if you’re interesting enough I’ll get back to you soon. Cheers.’

Ray flipped the phone shut. ‘No answer.’

‘Busy?’

‘Gillian screens her calls – she’d pick up if she knew it was me calling. And besides, she’s supposed to be waiting for us at the Black House.’

‘If she saw those guys hanging around then she probably took off double quick, like we did.’

Ray frowned at the silent mobile in her hand. ‘Then why hasn’t she called to tell me that?’

EIGHTEEN

They convened in the Boardroom. Jack tried to keep the meeting informal by perching on the edge of the table. ‘So, what we got?’

‘OK,’ said Gwen, sitting up. ‘Here it is.’ She used the remote control to bring up the internet blog entry on the main screen. Several words were highlighted: funeral, cortège, Torchwood.

Ianto peered at the screen. ‘It’s by a student at Cardiff University.’

‘It seems the world and his wife and even their
kids
have heard of us now.’ Jack had never liked Torchwood getting any kind of publicity.’

‘A special force called Torchwood,’ Ianto read out appreciatively. Then his lips curled down in distaste. ‘“Like the X-Files but in Cardiff”. Huh. Dream on, Mulder.’

‘I always thought he was quite a fox,’ said Jack.

‘Please,’ Ianto said. ‘Any more and my sides will split.’ He nodded at the screen. ‘Who are these people, really? The person writing the blog, I mean?’

Gwen called up an ID document on the screen – it was a Student Union card complete with photo of a pale, rather plain-looking girl with dark hair and heavy black eyeliner. ‘The blog is written by one Rachel Banks, undergraduate. Born 16 April 1990, Leicester. Nothing special, nothing outrageous, nothing abnormal. Parents split up when she was thirteen, dad went out to work in Dubai, she lived with her mam in Bristol. Came to Cardiff to study Ecology, but according to her course tutor is likely to switch to Zoology at the end of the year. Staying in digs in Colum Road.’

‘And Wynnie?’ prompted Jack.

‘Meredydd-Wyn Morgan-Kelso,’ said Gwen, flicking the remote. A different Student Union ID pass came up on the screen. This one showed a picture of a tall, thin lad with unkempt blond hair, facial studs and rather soft brown eyes. ‘Born 24 November 1985, Hengoed. Nothing special, nothing outrageous, nothing abnormal – unless you count an abiding interest in Heavy Metal, comics and a post-grad research position at Cardiff School of Chemistry – he’s currently completing an MSc in Catalysis. And, of course, there’s his name. Bit of a mouthful, hence “Wynnie”. I think it’s rather nice.’

‘What do you call a double double-barrelled name?’ wondered Ianto.

‘Quadruple-barrelled?’ Jack suggested.

‘Whatever,’ said Gwen. ‘I’m guessing he’s a mate, boyfriend, it doesn’t matter. But he’s the one who mentions Torchwood.’

‘And what does he know about us?’

‘I doubt he knows anything. He’s heard the name, that’s all. He’s a member of the university astronomy club, writes for the Union website and once subscribed to
Fortean Times
.’

‘Uh-oh,’ said Ianto.

‘So where is all this leading us?’ Jack asked.

Gwen smiled. ‘I tracked Rachel Banks’s online activity. Knowing she was a blogger it seemed likely that she uses the web for most things, including shopping. She bought a mobile phone last August and so I traced the number and the most recent calls. She’s in regular contact with Meredydd-Wyn Morgan-Kelso, but this morning she took a call from another student. . .’ Gwen tapped the remote control a couple of times and a female voice with a strong Valleys accent filled the boardroom:

‘No, no, don’t be daft. I was at the party, remember. You’d been drinking but you definitely weren’t pissed. Not that much anyway. But it was the blog you see, I couldn’t believe it when I read it. Is it true? Did you see it as well?’

Rachel’s voice:
‘What do you mean, “as well”?’

‘Well, I saw it too! I saw the funeral!’

Jack’s eyes narrowed and Ianto looked up sharply. Gwen used the remote to fast-forward through some more of the conversation. ‘Hang on, there’s some romance stuff next. I’ll cut to the chase.’

Rachel Banks’s voice crackled back:
‘Look, where are you, Gillian? Can’t we talk properly? I’ll meet you somewhere.’

‘Right! Sure. You can tell me all about it then. Say, meet me at the Black House.’

‘The Black House?’

Jack frowned and mouthed, ‘The Black House?’

The Valleys girl was still chattering.
‘Yeah. That’s where I saw the funeral thing. I’m on my way there now. Meet you there, right?’

‘And there you have it.’ Gwen killed the recording with the remote control. ‘Rachel Banks and this Gillian person, both claiming to have seen the mystery funeral cortège in the early hours of this morning, and a location.’

‘The Black House is an abandoned church near Cyncoed,’ Ianto said. ‘It was scheduled to be knocked down in 1966, ready for a redevelopment that never happened. There’s nothing there now – just the shell of the church and waste ground. The developers pulled out unexpectedly and no one has ever taken it up.’

‘I’ve already checked it for signs of Rift activity,’ Gwen said. ‘There are quite a few level-five temporal energy spikes in the area stretching over a two-week period, peaking last night. It looks like a definite winner.’

Jack didn’t look convinced. ‘These kids. . . they’re just students. We’ve run into this kind of thing before. They invent stuff without even realising it. I once spent an entire summer running around trying to trace a suspected Golgothron gambling ring in the Old Brewery Quarter. Turned out to be the University First XV playing strip poker.’ His eyes glimmered for a second at the recollection. ‘I mean, don’t get me wrong, that was an interesting case in its way. . . but not Torchwood business.’

‘We can’t ignore this, Jack,’ insisted Gwen. ‘It’s the only possible lead we have.’

‘It’s really not much of one at all.’

Ianto held up a hand. ‘And yet. . . there may be something in it.’

‘What?’ Jack demanded.

‘I checked through some of the archive material.’

‘And?’

‘Nothing much in relation to the Undertaker’s Gift or space-time fusion bombs,’ Ianto said, ‘but there was one case that caught my eye.’ He opened the manila folder on the desk and took out some sheets of yellowed, typewritten foolscap paper. ‘This is a report written in 1919 by Torchwood operative Harkness, J.’ He glanced up at Jack. ‘Looking good for your age.’

‘It’s all down to clean living,’ Jack said.

‘What’s the report about?’ Gwen asked.

‘It’s a missing person report – but there was a Rift angle and so it fell into Torchwood’s jurisdiction. The country was still in a state of turmoil following the end of the First World War, and quite a number of soldiers, many horrifically injured, were trying to make a life in post-war Britain. There was little in the way of rehabilitation programmes. Some of the men were so badly wounded that they would never be allowed a place in normal society again – men with half their faces blown off, or no hands, or completely limbless. They were sent to stay in special hospitals, kept apart from the rest of the world because they were deemed to be too badly mutilated to be seen.’

‘That’s awful,’ said Gwen.

‘That’s war,’ said Jack knowingly.

‘A disused church was converted into a hospice for some of these men,’ Ianto continued, ‘including 23-year-old Corporal Francis Morgan of the Welsh Fusiliers. He was injured at Ypres and sent home to recover. He went missing en route from France.’

‘I remember that case now,’ Jack said. ‘Harriet Derbyshire had been looking into it. Torchwood took an interest because one of the guys Morgan was travelling back with made a statement to the police when he disappeared. He claimed this Francis Morgan had been abducted.’

‘By aliens?’ Gwen ventured.

‘No such thing in those days,’ Jack smiled. ‘At least, not in the conscious mind of ordinary folk. No, but Morgan’s pal said he’d seen the men who took him away.’

Ianto held up the foolscap report and read part of it out: ‘“It were unbelievable. But I saw it with my own eyes. I think they must have been gypsies – Romanies who fought with the French against the Hun. They were walking wounded themselves, I reckon. They wore ragged old clothes and their faces were all bandaged up, burned in all probability.”’ Ianto looked up at Gwen and Jack. ‘Sound familiar?’

‘It’s the men Rachel Banks described,’ Gwen realised, excited.

‘It carries on,’ Ianto said, tapping the report. ‘“They came in one night and took Frank away. He couldn’t do much to resist, being in the condition he was, and I couldn’t help him either. But I picked up my crutches and followed them out anyway. It was a bright, moonlit night and I could see it all quite clearly – even with one eye. They never said a word, those gypsies, but there were quite a few of them. They formed a procession, like a funeral cortège. It was very sinister, and it was cold, and I couldn’t see what they’d done with Frank. I called out to them but they just ignored me, and then set off, slow-like, as if they were pallbearers at a burial. And then the weirdest thing happened. They just disappeared. Literally vanished into thin air. I wasn’t seeing things. I might have lost a leg and I may be blind in one eye, but there’s nothing wrong with my brains and I know what I saw.”’

As Ianto closed the file, Jack said, ‘No one ever saw Francis Morgan again.’

‘But those men – the gypsy men, the pallbearers, whoever they were. They’re exactly what Rachel Banks describes in her blog.’

‘You’re right,’ Jack admitted. He thought for a second and then clapped his hands to signal the fact that he had come to a decision. ‘OK. Gwen, Ianto, good work. Follow it up. Get yourself down to this Black House place and take a look.’

Gwen gathered her things together. ‘On my way.’

‘I’ll stay in the Hub,’ Jack said. ‘I still want to work on our friend Zero, and then there’s Kerko too. Plenty to do without sticking my head above the parapet for the Hokrala hitman.’

‘I was going to carry on translating the writ,’ Ianto said. ‘There’s something about it that bothers me.’

‘No,’ Jack said. ‘You can go with Gwen.’

Gwen said, ‘Honestly, Jack. I can manage on my own.’

‘No, I want both of you to go.’

Gwen’s stare hardened. ‘We don’t need to go everywhere in twos. I’ll be fine.’

She turned to go, ending the discussion, but Jack wasn’t finished. ‘I said I want both of you to go.’

She stopped at the door. ‘I can manage,’ she said firmly.

‘It’s not up for discussion.’

She frowned now, with a spark of fire in her big, dark eyes. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I said I want you both to go. What harm is there in that?’

‘I don’t need my hand holding,’ Gwen insisted. ‘And neither does Ianto. At least, not by me.’

‘It’s not that. . .’

‘Then what is it, Jack? Actually? Or do you just want us both out of the way? Is that it? Are you expecting an assassin to materialise any minute and you want us both safely out of harm’s way?’

‘I’m not arguing about it, Gwen.’

‘Well I am!’ And with that she turned on her heel and strode away.

Ianto looked questioningly at Jack.

‘Go with her,’ said Jack. ‘That’s an order.’