SkyPoint

by Phil Ford

  Wendy shook her head, genuinely didn’t get it. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Look, Wendy, I just moved in over the hall today. I don’t want to walk in and start telling you how to live your life, or how to run your family.’

  ‘Then don’t.’

  Trouble was, that was exactly what he was going to do.

  ‘Why don’t you talk about Alison’s accident?’

  Wendy closed her eyes for a couple of seconds, and he wasn’t sure if she was reliving the horror of what had happened that day or counting numbers as she tried to control her rage.

  When she opened her eyes again she spoke quietly and quickly, like the faster she said it and the less noise she made with the words, the less chance there was of damaging the new life they were trying to make for themselves up here.

  ‘We don’t talk about it because two years ago some bastard got into his car after knocking back six pints of lager and ploughed into the side of my car as I picked my daughter up from playschool. I got scratched, but I watched my daughter, covered in blood, die in my arms.’

  ‘But the medics brought her back, Wendy. They saved her life. You’ve still got her.’

  ‘And I thanked God for that. I got down on my knees in the road, in the middle of the carnage, the twisted metal and the blood, and I cried out to God, and thanked him. I’d been a Christian all my life, Owen. That was how my parents brought me up and I Believed. With a Capital B. But I never prayed to God the way I did that day – while the paramedics worked on my little girl to bring her back; then to thank Him for sparing her.’

  Owen looked at her. He didn’t speak, he didn’t need to ask anything, now he knew what had happened. He just waited for her to tell him.

  ‘But, do you know what, Owen? My life had been a lie. My parents’ lives were a lie. They died last year – my mum had cancer, my dad died exactly two weeks later of a broken heart – they died still believing the lie. But I don’t know where they went because there is no heaven, and there is no God. Do you know how I know that?’

  Wendy tipped the opened wine bottle up into a glass and drank down a couple of gulps.

  ‘Because my daughter told me,’ she said.

  Owen didn’t need to ask what Alison had told her mother. He knew what lay on the other side of death – real death, the kind that reduced your body to dust. And there was nothing but darkness. There were no long tunnels lit by distant lights, there were no endlessly sunlit gardens where birds sang and loved ones from the past waited, there wasn’t even a cloud.

  There was just cold darkness. And fear.

  Alison had told her mother and she had no option but to believe her. And the lie that kept the human race sane had been exposed.

  She didn’t refuse to talk about Alison’s accident because she was traumatised by the past. She was terrified of the future.

  ‘So now you know,’ she said. She flashed him a harsh, humourless smile.

  Hope was what kept the world going. Hope that one day you would find somebody you could love and trust, hope that you would never lose them; hope that your team won the cup this year; hope that you found that dream job; hope that you would find the money to pay the mortgage. But most of all, hope that one day – whatever you have told yourself over the years – you will find that life really does go on beyond the deathbed.

  ‘There is no salvation,’ she told him. ‘This is all there is. I don’t mind that so much. You know, I’ve actually learned to value life more. Every day counts, you don’t get it again.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with seeing life like that,’ Owen told her. ‘The trouble with God is people think they get a second chance. They don’t.’

  Wendy drank from her glass. ‘If this is all there is, we should make the most of it? Absolutely. Where’s your glass?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve put it down somewhere.’

  ‘Have another. While you can,’ and she started to pour wine into another glass.

  Owen hoped that she wouldn’t want to toast living life for today, or something.

  She didn’t. As she poured the wine her eyes misted over again.

  ‘What pisses me off is that my daughter has seen what’s waiting for her.’

  ‘She seems to handle it all right. She’s happy.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Wendy said it as if that itself scared her a little bit.

  ‘But it’s not going to get her again,’ she told him with quiet defiance. ‘Not for a long, long time.’

  She put the wineglass into Owen’s hand and moved off across the room. He looked at the drink in his hand and felt the urge to knock it back. Wendy Lloyd was right, her daughter had seen what was waiting for her, and was waiting for all of them in that room – even him, perhaps, one day.

  Owen shivered. He hadn’t felt cold, or warm, in weeks. Temperature, like pain, meant nothing to him now. He had almost forgotten how it felt. The last time he could remember feeling cold was in the darkness of death, just before Jack had wrenched him out of it with the resurrection glove. That had been a terrible cold, and he felt it again now. Just for a moment.

  And Owen remembered that there were worse things than being undead.

  His eyes found Toshiko across the room. She was talking to another couple that Owen hadn’t been introduced to. They were both in their thirties, he guessed, and short and fat and dressed as if their invite had read Hawaiian Theme; they looked like beachballs on legs. Toshiko was laughing with them. And he wondered if he had ever heard her laugh like that before. He didn’t think so. It wasn’t that people didn’t laugh down in the Hub – Jack was often good for a giggle and Ianto had that dry wit of his, and Gwen knew more dirty jokes than the Blues’ locker room had ever heard – but Toshiko usually only smiled and got on with her work. Something was different about her now. Maybe her spritzers were a little heavier on the wine than she normally took them. Maybe she was just more relaxed.

  Owen took in the rest of the room. More people had arrived while he’d been talking to Wendy, there were more than twenty people in the apartment now. None of them looked like good candidates for the shapeshifting wall-walker. Maybe relaxing was OK. He certainly liked what it did to Toshiko.

  He stayed by the kitchen counter, nursing the wineglass and watched her as a tall black-haired man in a suit approached her. Owen could only see him from the back, but the suit’s cut looked expensive and he caught the glitter of a diamond on the man’s white shirt cuff as he extended a manicured hand and gently touched her shoulder blade.

  Owen felt something stir inside. He knew instantly that it was nothing biological, unless jealousy was a chemical reaction.

  Hey, how was that for a headline? Dead Man Gets Jealous!

  Toshiko turned to look at the man beside her, and Owen saw three things at once: that she was surprised to see him (because she had expected it be Owen?), that she knew the man – and that the man was Besnik Lucca.

  He said something to her and Owen saw Toshiko smile.

  ‘Hey, mate. What’s happened there?’

  Owen saw Alun, the photographer with the girlfriend who had melons that she liked to squeeze, standing beside him. He was looking down at Owen’s hand.

  The glass had cracked in his grip; red wine was seeping over his hand and down his trousers.

  ‘Shit,’ said Owen.

  Jealous Dead Man Breaks Glass and Doesn’t Notice!

  Owen put the glass in the sink.

  ‘Cheap bloody glasses,’ said Alun, and he checked the label on the bottle that Wendy had opened. ‘Goes with the wine. Still, here, have another one mate.’

  Owen had grabbed some kitchen towel and was mopping at the wine stain on his trousers, but his eyes were on Toshiko and Besnik Lucca. The Latvian had managed to draw her away from the beachball couple and was talking to her quietly in a corner. She was looking up at him, smiling.

  What was going on here? She knew who Lucca was, she had been there when Gwen ran them through his police profile – maybe she was
just playing up to him. This was an undercover job, after all, wasn’t it? But that wasn’t the problem. It had been the body language when Lucca touched her on the shoulder – and that he had touched her.

  That meant they had met before.

  ‘So, you’re a doctor, Owen,’ Alun was saying, he had a glass in each hand now, one for himself and one for Julie Jugs who was dancing by herself over by the window, and making sure everybody saw her – in the apartment, and across Cardiff. ‘What do you think?’ he asked. ‘Reckon she could go up another couple of sizes?’

  ‘Not now, mate,’ Owen said and headed across the floor towards Toshiko and Besnik Lucca.

  ‘Tosh?’ he said.

  She turned to look at him and Owen was sure that he caught something that looked like guilt in her eye. Then it was gone.

  ‘Owen,’ she said. ‘This is Besnik. He lives in the penthouse. It has a roof garden.’

  Lucca turned to meet Owen’s gaze. He had dark eyes, almost black. Owen wondered if Alison Lloyd had met Lucca and if, when she looked into his eyes, she was reminded of the same thing that he was.

  ‘I’m pleased to meet you, Owen,’ Lucca said to him, offering that same manicured hand that had stroked Toshiko’s back. ‘You have a very beautiful wife.’

  Owen saw Toshiko looking at him over the top of her glass as she sipped. He took Lucca’s hand and shook it.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And welcome to SkyPoint. I hope you find what you’re looking for.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ said Toshiko. ‘What do you mean?’

  Lucca smiled. His teeth were perfect, Owen noticed. Crime paid for good dental care.

  ‘Everyone who comes to SkyPoint is looking for more than just a home,’ Lucca said. His voice was warm and exotic, and his black eyes moved around the room as he spoke, touching each of the SkyPoint residents and moving on as he spoke. ‘Some are looking for a view, some status, some want a fresh start, some need a place to escape, and some to hide.’

  ‘What about you?’ Owen asked.

  ‘I give them what they’re looking for. I own SkyPoint. At least, I have a substantial investment.’

  ‘Impressive,’ said Toshiko, and Owen tried to make up his mind if she actually meant it. He could tell when she looked at Besnik Lucca that she wasn’t thinking about the things Gwen had told them in the Hub.

  ‘So, you’re into property?’ Owen asked, wondering how many buildings around the city were built on the bones of people that had crossed him. Maybe that was why the cops had never been able to make anything stick: they couldn’t afford to tear down half of the new city.

  ‘I have many interests,’ Lucca said, his eyes resting on Toshiko, not Owen.

  Yeah, extortion, prostitution, robbery, protection, murder…

  Owen really wanted to grab Besnik Lucca by the hair and smash his face into Wendy and Ewan Lloyd’s steel and plate-glass dining table until something broke. Head or glass, he didn’t care which.

  Instead, he slid an arm around Toshiko’s waist and drew her closer to him then kissed her on the cheek.

  ‘Well, my wife is the only interest I need,’ Owen said.

  So hands off!

  ‘I’ll see you in the lift some time,’ Owen told him, and meant it to sound a little like a threat. He wanted Lucca to get the message. Whether or not he did, Owen couldn’t tell. He didn’t wait, just guided Toshiko across the room and whispered to her, ‘What in the name of god are you playing at?’

  FIFTEEN

  Things didn’t go well for Owen and Toshiko after he escorted her away from Besnik Lucca. She hadn’t reacted well to his half-whispered, half-snarled question and as the two of them adopted the positions that couples did when they started arguing at parties – with the minimum of animation and volume, like a couple of wooden figures on a German clock – Owen could still see they were drawing attention from their new neighbours. It crossed his mind that they probably made a pretty convincing married couple – but if they were newlyweds, they probably wouldn’t last long.

  In the end they made their excuses and took the argument out into the passageway.

  ‘So tell me, what was all that about?’ he demanded.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You and Lucca.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Don’t lie to me, Tosh.’

  And she looked at him, her eyes wide with surprise – and delight. ‘You’re jealous.’

  He ignored her. ‘The man is dangerous.’ He was jealous, and she liked it.

  ‘Maybe I’m attracted to dangerous men,’ she said. After all, Owen had always been kind of dangerous. Maybe not the same way as Besnik Lucca, but he had never been a saint. It shocked her a little to think that may have been what got her on to him in the first place.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me that you’d met him before?’

  She’d had something like a smile on her face. Owen’s obvious jealousy had delighted her. Now his question wiped it off her face as surely as if he’d slapped her. She considered struggling out of his suspicions, faking complete bemusement, telling him he was imagining things. The trouble was, she was a little scared by the fact she had said nothing to him.

  ‘He found me in the basement earlier.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Tosh!’

  ‘It’s all right. I told him I was looking for somewhere to smoke. I lied. He seemed to believe me.’

  ‘And you didn’t think it was worth telling me.’

  ‘We’re here to find an alien that can move through walls, not an Eastern European crime lord. He’s irrelevant.’

  ‘We don’t know that. For all we know, he could be what we’re looking for.’

  Toshiko shook her head. ‘No. According to the police profile, Lucca has been living in the UK since 1998. If he was really something that had come through the Rift there’s no way he would have stayed off the Torchwood radar this long.’

  Owen conceded that she had a point: if he had come through the Rift, Lucca wouldn’t be the first with a murderous track record, but he would be the first to set about building a crime empire, never mind a multi-million-pound property portfolio.

  All the same, Owen couldn’t help worrying about her and, perhaps, for himself. He felt awkward, but he couldn’t stop the question slipping out. ‘You don’t fancy him, do you, Tosh?’

  Toshiko glanced aside. She didn’t want to look at him when she lied, but the truth was there was something magnetic about Lucca. Something that was unquestionably dark but undeniably sexually exciting. She didn’t want to lie, and she found that she didn’t need to – she saw the door to their apartment was standing slightly open, and that took over in the priority stakes.

  ‘Owen, look.’

  He turned towards the door and she was glad to see that he had brought his gun with him. He pulled it from the small of his back and motioned her to stand back as he pressed himself against the wall of the passageway and edged closer to the open door of their apartment.

  There were no sounds from beyond the door, and the only light was the faint orange glow of the Bay lights below.

  Owen readied his nerves and bunched his muscles, and sprang through the door, swinging the gun from left to right across the dimly lit apartment. There was no movement, only the wreckage of an inexpert and destructive search.

  Toshiko came in behind him, and turned on the lights. The apartment was a mess, someone had gone through it like a tornado that had up-ended furniture, torn out drawers and spread their contents across the floor and, in the bedroom, slashed the mattress.

  ‘So much for SkyPoint security,’ breathed Toshiko.

  But she knew this was no burglary. This was a warning.

  ‘I’d say someone was on to us,’ Owen observed casually as he put straight an up-lighter. ‘

  I’ll give you three guesses.’ Toshiko went into the dressing room. She had hidden her gun and the hand-held computer module on top of one of the wardrobe units. But whoever had turned
over the flat had been as thorough as they had disorderly.

  ‘My gun has gone,’ she told him. ‘And my monitor.’

  Owen tossed her the phone from beside the bed. ‘Did he give you his number? Maybe you could ask for them back.’ Toshiko threw the phone onto the bed, angry.

  ‘This doesn’t make any sense,’ she said. ‘We’re not the police, we’re not interested in Besnik Lucca.’

  ‘But he doesn’t know that. All he knows is that we’re after something.’

  ‘I hope you find what you’re looking for.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘The bastard.’

  ‘Now we’re making progress.’

  Owen had put his gun down on the bed. Toshiko grabbed it, checked it, and shoved it in the waistband of her skirt. She didn’t care if it ruined the line of her blouse now.

  Owen got to his feet. ‘And where do you think you’re going?’

  ‘He’s got my equipment. I want it back.’

  ‘No, Tosh. Give me the gun.’

  Toshiko glared at him. ‘I’ve held my own against all kinds of aliens, what makes you think I can’t handle Besnik Lucca?’

  Owen regarded her carefully. ‘He’s a man.’

  Toshiko felt anger course like electricity through her, setting every nerve in her body alight. ‘Screw you, Owen.’

  She turned and left the bedroom, headed for the front door.

  Owen cursed himself, and went after her. ‘Tosh! I’m sorry — wait!’

  But she was already going through the door. She slammed it shut without even looking back.

  Owen shook his head, frustrated and angry with himself. The second time today he had acted like a prick. Nothing new there, he’d done it pretty much all of his life. Difference was, this time it was sending Toshiko into big trouble.

  Still, he’d catch her before she got to the lift.

  He reached for the door handle. It wouldn’t turn.

  What?

  It wasn’t that it was locked. If it had been locked, the handle would have turned, but the bolt wouldn’t move. But the handle was jammed solid.

  He yelled her name, and tugged on the door – but if she heard him she didn’t reply and the door didn’t move. Like the door handle, it was jammed unnaturally solid.