unwittingly because they are unconscious. I’m assuming that conducting a scan of this young woman is like X-raying a conscious tiger: you couldn’t expect her to stay still, and you might lose your life if you tried. Ideally I would prefer her to be heavily sedated, but we saw last night how much sedative it took to even render her sleepy, let alone put her to sleep for any length of time. And I understand from Ianto that she recovered very quickly once she was left alone. So I’m still working on options for remote scanning. I may have to disassemble one of the scanners we have and reassemble it on either side of the cell. That counts as heavy engineering, and it won’t happen quickly.’
‘Any way of speeding it up?’
Toshiko shrugged. ‘I could try something that doesn’t require transmission techniques – single-sided X-ray, perhaps. The quality of the image would be reduced, but it might be quicker.’
‘Go for whatever has the best chance of a quick win. Thanks Tosh. Ianto – what kind of mood is our guest in?’
Ianto stepped forward from the shadows at the back of the Hub. Gwen hadn’t even known he was standing there. As usual, his bland face was set in a slight smile. ‘Hungry. She has put away several pizzas so far, and still wants more. The more she eats, the less edgy she gets. Apart from that she is chatty, but confused. She doesn’t know where she is or what’s happening. I’ve given her the impression that she is being held in custody after an incident last night. I’ve also given her the impression that a drink she had may have been drugged with Rohypnol, which is why she can’t remember anything and why she may have hallucinated some strange things.’
‘Good work. That should hold it for a while. Gwen?’
‘Marianne Till was reported missing this morning. Her mother said she’d gone out for a meal last night with some friends; the friends said she wandered off from the group early in the evening. She said she was feeling ill, and wanted to go home.’
‘Not much chance of that at the moment,’ Owen said. ‘Mummy and Daddy would be on the menu within half an hour, followed by Granny, the dog and the next-door neighbours.’
‘The police won’t investigate,’ Gwen continued. ‘I’ve been in this situation too often before. Over two hundred thousand people are reported missing in the UK each year. Most of them return safe and sound within seventy-two hours, but there’s still a couple of thousand who don’t. Trouble is, the police won’t actively look for these people unless they’re exceptionally vulnerable or obviously the victims of a crime.’
‘Looks like she’s going to be staying for a while,’ Jack said. ‘Hotel Torchwood.’
‘But her family are worried about her,’ Gwen pressed on. She could hear the plea in her voice, but she couldn’t help herself. ‘Her mother will be crying her heart out, and she won’t be able to stop. Her father will be punching the walls and the kitchen counter in sheer frustration. I’ve been there. I’ve seen it happen. They’ll be printing off flyers with her photo on, and organising searches of the places she was last seen, more to keep busy than with any real hope that it will help. We can stop all that. We can ease their pain. All we have to do is—’
‘Is what?’ Jack asked. ‘Tell them we have her, but we can’t give her back? That’ll sound like a ransom demand. Anything we do will attract attention to us. And, by the way, this is still meant to be a secret organisation.’
Gwen refused to be cowed by the patronising tone in Jack’s voice. ‘We could send them an anonymous message,’ she said, voice dangerously quiet. ‘Toshiko can fake anything. We can send them a message from her saying she’s, I don’t know, met an Italian waiter and gone off to get married in St Lucia.’
Jack stared at Gwen for a moment. She met his gaze without blinking. There was some kind of struggle going on between them in that long, level stare, a fight between compassion and action, perhaps. Gwen wasn’t sure, and she didn’t want Jack to think that she was challenging his authority over Torchwood, merely the way he sacrificed short-term battles in order to win the long-term war. But this time she intended to win.
‘Tosh,’ Jack said. ‘Send an email message to Marianne’s parents. Make it look like it’s come from