a lab bench, testing samples scraped from the device for traces of DNA, or any of the myriad other complex biochemical substances with which alien life forms transferred their genetic information. Owen’s skills were literal versions of Toshiko’s metaphorical ones; he filleted alien bodies and picked the bones out of them – when he could. And he patched the team up when things went wrong – which they did. Often.
Owen worried Jack too, but for different reasons. Where Toshiko was locked down, Owen was wide open. Things affected him too much, and he let everyone know about it. Jack had no idea what Toshiko got up to in her spare time – if she got up to anything – but Owen was an open book. The first fifteen minutes of any day consisted of him reciting everything he’d got up to the night before: every drink, every sexual encounter, even – until Jack had put his foot down – every bowel motion.
And then there was—
Hang on. Jack quickly scanned the Hub. No sign of Gwen. She should have been applying her analytical police brain to the fight in the nightclub, trying to work out what evidence they had, and where they could go next to work out where the device had come from. He knew she was annoyed about being pulled out of her dinner with the boyfriend, but he hoped she hadn’t left to go back…
‘Missing someone?’
Jack abruptly stopped looking down into the Hub and refocused his eyes on the reflections in the glass in front of him. And there she was, Gwen, standing in the darkness at the back of the room.
‘Been there long?’
‘Don’t you know?’
‘I know I seem omniscient – actually, I try hard to cultivate the image – but I don’t know everything. How’s the investigation going?’
She moved further into the room. ‘I’m going to have to make some enquiries tomorrow – friends, relatives, workmates. Someone might have seen one of those lads with a new toy, something high-tech that they didn’t recognise. I can’t do it from here, that’s the problem. As my old tutor at Hendon used to say: “There’s no substitute for bodies on the ground.”’ She winced. ‘Sorry, that wasn’t the most tasteful thing to say, given the circumstances.’
He smiled. ‘You’re forgiven. Just don’t do it again. Any other discoveries down there?’
‘Tosh believes that the device is part of a whole batch that arrived on Earth some time back in the 1950s. We’ve got twelve or thirteen items already in storage, confiscated from various places around South Wales. One even made it as far away as London. Apparently, the Torchwood team there had it in their archives, until…’ Her voice trailed away. She hadn’t been in the team when Torchwood London had been laid waste, but Jack knew that she was sensitive to the fact that the others didn’t like to talk about it. ‘Anyway, it was destroyed. Tosh is trying to find out if there are any design elements that the items have in common, something that might shed light on what this thing does.’
‘What do the other items do?’
Gwen shrugged. ‘That’s apparently the problem. They’ve been archived without anyone doing any serious analysis on what they are or what they do. Owen thinks that they’re the interstellar equivalent of Apostle Spoons– all part of a set: a collection of stuff. Decorative, rather than practical.’
‘He may have a point.’
Gwen looked around the Boardroom. ‘You know, you could do with some stuff to brighten this place up. You should start a collection of your own.’
Jack indicated the Hub, behind and below him. ‘I have you lot,’ he said. ‘That’s enough to be getting on with.’
‘Look, it’s quiet now, and there’s nothing I can do until tomorrow. Can I get back to my meal, please? Even if it’s just for the mints?’
‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ Jack said and, as Gwen left the Boardroom, he turned and gazed out of the window again, back down into the depths of the Hub.
The meal was long finished and, by the time Rhys had drunk two cups of coffee, he had worked out that he wouldn’t be seeing Gwen again that night.
Which, he thought, as he gazed across the table at Lucy’s bright, open face, wasn’t necessarily the worst thing in the world.
The restaurant had filled up to overflowing and then gradually emptied again whilst he and Lucy ate. And while they talked. In fact, it seemed like they’d never stopped talking, even though Rhys seemed to