Pack Animals

by Anghelides, Peter

The upper level had a row of toyshops. Where better, mused Rhys, to buy a joke gift for Banana, the big kid? If he couldn’t find something here, there were always the market stalls outside the mall’s main entrance.

  The first two stores were for pre-school and infants, brightly lit and devoid of customers. In the far corner, though, was a smaller toyshop. This one had a hand-painted sign fixed precariously above the uPVC frame of its standard mall store front: Leonard’s Toys and Games. And, unlike the other stores, it seemed to be full of chattering kids. The front window was decked out in shades of orange and black, crammed with Halloween pumpkins, witches’ cloaks and hats, vampire teeth and wolf-man masks, liberally sprayed with stringy lines of cobweb.

  Inside, old-fashioned wall shelving was stacked with board games and fantasy novels. Rhys saw no electronic games. Rotating wire racks were hung with blister packs of carved models, mythical characters that included gorgons, winged serpents, a Cyclops. The thin-faced shopkeeper smiled at Rhys as he meandered through the closely stacked displays.

  There was a whoop from the rear of the shop. A group of young adults had crowded around a hand-crafted landscape. They positioned characters, painted versions from the blister packs, in competing formations. Each participant held a hand of brightly coloured, oversized playing cards. A rangy lad with spiked hair rattled dice from a cup. Whatever he scored, it caused another deep-throated cheer of encouragement from the crowd. Rhys could feel their energy coursing through the cluttered shop. ‘Geek power,’ he murmured.

  He blenched as he almost walked into a figure by the tills. It was an old shop dummy, a reclaimed version of the sort you’d find in big department stores like Wendleby & Son. Its incongruously elegant hands poked out from the neatly pressed boiler suit, and a scowling full-face mask obscured most of its sculpted head. Rhys had jumped involuntarily because he recognised the tufted hair, deeply furrowed brow, and angular foam teeth. It was so like that creature he’d seen in the Torchwood dungeon. What had Gwen called it? ‘A Weevil,’ he said.

  ‘It’s a Toothsome, actually,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘From MonstaQuest?’ Rhys looked blankly at him. ‘I’m forever “translating” for parents. It’s the new trading-card game. Models and masks too, you know.’ Rhys obviously looked like he didn’t. ‘Bit of a craze with the older teens and upwards. Doing really well.’ The shopkeeper’s smile looked like a mouthful of baby teeth. He was younger than Rhys. Unshaven, with dark uncombed hair. Eager. ‘Are you buying for your kids?’

  Rhys laughed. ‘No kids. Not yet,’ he said, and wondered why he’d added that.

  He remembered what Banana had said before he left: ‘I’m a monster.’ Yes, these would do. And the joke was even better for him and Gwen, because they knew real monsters when they saw them.

  ‘MonstaQuest, eh?’ Rhys pulled a scrunched-up tenner from his pocket. ‘I’ll take a pack of those, then.’

  The shopkeeper had just handed Rhys the oversized cards when the mall’s fire alarm went off.

  TWO

  ‘Come on, Ianto, get a move on,’ said Jack Harkness. He wriggled in the driver’s seat of the SUV. ‘My ass is going to sleep here.’

  ‘I know,’ muttered Ianto Jones. ‘I heard it snoring.’ He tapped some more at the compact keyboard and the heads-up display flickered its response. ‘Believe me, I’m as keen to get out of this vehicle as you are. Some date, huh?’

  ‘There’s still time, we’ll be there,’ soothed Jack. ‘Place won’t be open yet.’ He peered through the grimy windscreen at the grey office buildings. A handsome guy in ugly brown clothes was approaching down the narrow pavement. ‘He’d look better out of that suit,’ noted Jack.

  Handsome Guy had to squeeze past the side of the SUV. He gave them a grim stare. Jack grinned right back. ‘What’s his problem? I put the parking indicators on, didn’t I?’

  ‘They’re supposed to be hazard warning lights,’ admonished Ianto. The regular noise of the indicators continued their tut of disapproval. ‘No, the Rift signature has dropped off. Big surge, died right back, not a trace now. Whatever it was has gone.’

  Jack was only half-listening. He had adjusted the electronic wing mirror to follow Handsome Guy’s progress down the pavement. He watched the man lose his temper with a Maestro parked so far onto the pavement that its wing mirror prevented anyone passing. The pedestrian stalked back around the front of the car and hammered on the bonnet with his fist. This made the occupant lean forward to wave him away. That’s when Jack recognised the driver.

  ‘Oh, not today, please!’

  Jack clicked off the hazards, twisted the ignition, and drove smoothly into traffic. The Maestro reversed back from the alarmed pedestrian, and swerved around him into the roadway.

  Ianto bounced uncomfortably in the passenger seat. ‘What is it?’

  ‘That radio journalist again,’ Jack replied, flicking a look at the rear-view mirror. ‘David Brigstocke.’ The Maestro was half a street back, so he took a sharp right. ‘I’m not good on small talk.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ replied Ianto.

  ‘So let’s see if I can shake him and track that last big surge in the Rift signature.’

  Ianto was already pattering away on his keyboard. The heads-up display altered to show a road schematic and a recommended route. Ianto winced as Jack scraped the wheels against the kerb. A puddle sluiced across the nearest office wall.

  Jack took a racing right-hand turn across traffic. ‘These brakes feel a little spongy,’ he noted, ‘Did you get them serviced?’

  ‘Didn’t have the parts,’ replied Ianto, ‘so I made the horn louder instead. Take this left.’

  A cyclist swerved, crashed, and cursed.

  Jack glared at Ianto. ‘One-way street?’

  Ianto smiled. ‘Seems to work in both directions.’

  A minute later the SUV slewed to a halt, parked across double yellows in a side street.

  Jack and Ianto stepped out into the main carriageway. It was flanked by office buildings. The sour stink of drains told Jack there were sewer repairs further down the street long before he saw the candy-stripe tarpaulin of the covered work area. A young man with an equally sour expression ran past them and away, his orange football shirt the brightest spot in the grey street. He was presumably escaping the stench as quickly as possible.

  Ianto covered his nose with a dark red handkerchief. It matched his dark red shirt, of course, Jack noted. ‘There’s a church.’ Ianto held his PDA out to Jack.

  Incongruously slotted between two office buildings was the narrow sandstone façade of an eighteenth-century place of worship. ‘Holy Innocents,’ explained Ianto. ‘Sometimes called the Concealed Church of Cardiff.’

  ‘I’ve seen better-concealed churches,’ said Jack, and started up the short flight of steps to the main entrance. ‘This was the high spot for the Rift activity?’

  A shrill scream from inside the building curtailed Ianto’s reply. He pocketed the PDA, and followed Jack up the steps at a run.

  They were both caught by surprise as the church’s double oak doors sprang open. Jack stumbled into the handrail by the steps, and Ianto sprawled onto the pavement.

  The Weevil that had burst through the doors blinked hard in surprise. It fended off the sudden brightness with desperate swipes of its taloned hands. It sniffed the air.

  Jack fumbled for his disabling spray, but the creature was off down the street before his hand was out of his coat. ‘Check out the church,’ he snapped at Ianto, and hared off after the Weevil.

  The chase proved futile. The Weevil’s lolloping gait swiftly took it to the smelly repair works. Once it had dived into the brightly coloured canvas tent, Jack knew it was already lost to the sewer system.

  And besides, David Brigstocke had just stepped forward from a nearby side street. Jack recognised the same old check jacket, this time over battered pale blue jeans. Maybe they didn’t pay radio journalists enough for decent clothes. Maybe clothes weren’t important on the radio.

&n
bsp; Jack put his hands on his hips and huffed, a combination of catching his breath and snorting with exasperation. ‘Put that thing away,’ he told Brigstocke. ‘I’m in no mood to talk.’

  Brigstocke smiled his thin smile, and pocketed the digital recorder. ‘Would it matter, Captain Harkness? When I played back our last conversation, it had mysteriously changed into a recording of Radio Five Live.’

  ‘Tuning problem,’ said Jack.

  ‘Torchwood problem,’ responded Brigstocke smoothly. He was using his ‘on-air’ voice, the slightly clipped Swansea intonation familiar to Cardiff Tonight’s thousands of listeners. ‘Talk to me, Jack.’

  ‘Busy day,’ said Jack, and walked back to the church. ‘And I’m working.’

  ‘So am I, Captain Harkness.’ Brigstocke scuttled along behind him, trying to look in control and so resisting the urge to run. ‘You know what happened to my mate Rhodri. And it’s not like there aren’t plenty of other people who’ve seen what Torchwood get up to. Police, Ambulance, Army. You’re first on the scene, first to leave. You were there that day with Rhodri… I have corroborating evidence.’

  He hissed his insistence as they entered the church. The calm interior seemed to demand it. And it also meant that a soft keening became audible at the far end of the church.

  Jack found Ianto sitting in the front pew and comforting an old woman. She must have been in her eighties, unless the experience had aged her. The torn remains of a man, wrapped in the shredded remnants of priest’s clothing, were scattered by the vestry door.

  ‘Miss Bullivant is the sacristan. She found the body.’ With the old lady clutching him, Ianto affected to be unable to pocket his PDA, so he passed it up to Jack. ‘I’ve already called the police.’ Jack saw that Ianto’s real motive was to show him the Rift analysis on the display, relayed from Toshiko back at the Hub.

  Brigstocke slumped into the next pew back, trying not to look at the corpse. He was saying ‘Oh God’ repeatedly. When he caught Jack’s eye, he stopped fumbling with his handheld recorder, and put it away again. ‘It’s enough to shake your faith in God,’ he mumbled. He watched as Ianto carefully disentangled himself from the old woman. ‘He’s gone to a better place,’ Brigstocke added feebly.

  Jack leaned in. ‘That the best you can offer?’ he breathed.

  Brigstocke flushed angrily. ‘This was one of those creatures wasn’t it?’ he whispered urgently. ‘Don’t deny it, I have—’

  ‘Corroborating evidence,’ said Jack. ‘Yeah, I’m sure.’

  ‘And that dreadful smell. It’s like the sewer.’

  Jack grinned cruelly. ‘Did your corroborating evidence show these creatures are copraphagic?’

  ‘They’re what?’

  Ianto accepted his PDA back from Jack. ‘They eat faeces.’

  Jack enjoyed the disgust on Brigstocke’s face. ‘What, you’re a journalist and you didn’t know that?’

  ‘We have dictionaries.’

  ‘You know that’s not what I meant.’

  Miss Bullivant had risen and gone to the altar rail. She was looking at a Bible, one trembling hand pressed against her mouth. The book was spattered with the dead man’s blood. Jack could just make out the words she was reading: ‘I saw that one of its heads seemed to have had a fatal wound but that this deadly injury had healed.’ The old woman was sobbing now.

  The parquet floor by the body was dark and slick with blood. Jack trod carefully over to the body. Nothing much to pursue here, the ugly but familiar aftermath of a Weevil attack. The scratched trail from the body to the crooked remnants of the confessional box gave the narrative for the priest’s final moments. One arm was bitten almost clean off.

  And clutched in the left hand was a large, colourful playing card. Jack checked that Brigstocke was occupied by the sacristan. When he plucked the card out of the priest’s grasp, he had to tug it from clawed fingers. Cadaveric spasm, wasn’t that how Owen described it? Torchwood saw more of it than any scene-of-crime officers, that rare pre-rigor stiffening from intense emotion during violent death.

  The card was about A5-size. Stiff, though not as stiff as the priest. The back of it had a bright logo that read: MonstaQuest. The front showed a stylised cartoon monster, with attributes rating it on different scales: Age, Height, Weight, Savagery, Intelligence.

  Brigstocke glared at Jack. ‘First on the scene…’ said Brigstocke.

  ‘First to leave,’ concluded Jack. ‘Come on, Ianto.’

  ‘Who’s he,’ grumbled Brigstocke, ‘your boyfriend?’

  ‘Yeah,’ grinned Jack. ‘And we’re late for our date. Never mind, David, you found your story for this evening. Brutal murder of local priest. You got an eyewitness. Make sure you take good care of her.’

  The sacristan clutched Brigstocke’s forearm. He was clearly in a dilemma about leaving her there. ‘You’re never going to be a witness, are you, Jack?’ The journalist raised his voice for the first time. The echo followed Jack and Ianto out of the church.

  In the SUV, Jack passed the MonstaQuest card to Ianto.

  ‘Good likeness,’ said Ianto, turning the card over in his hand. ‘But what’s a Toothsome?’

  THREE

  The wedding dress wasn’t ready. Gwen Cooper sat calmly in the food court while bridesmaid Megan got angry on the bench beside her. ‘It’s an outrage, is what it is,’ Megan snapped. ‘How do you know it’ll even be ready in time for the wedding? Worst thing that could happen.’

  ‘The way you’re going on, you’d think this was your wedding dress!’ Gwen sipped her cappuccino and smiled. She could think of lots of worse things, including yesterday evening’s encounter with Ianto, a slime creature, and a mop and bucket. But none that she could tell Megan about. ‘C’mon, let’s make the most of it. We can look for my going-away outfit. There’s a sale on in Happy, I saw signs in the window.’ She checked her watch: nearly half ten. ‘We might still beat the rush.’

  Megan looked liked she’d prefer to go back into Best Day Bridal and tear another strip off the unfortunate manageress.

  Gwen rubbed Megan’s arm. ‘Mum insisted I get something special. “Don’t want that snooty cow Brenda sniping as your car leaves for the airport” is how she put it.’ She knew Megan could be jollied out of her mood by a good grumble about Rhys’s formidable mum. Soon to be Gwen’s formidable mother-in-law.

  ‘Don’t like this place,’ announced Megan as they negotiated a path through the mid-morning rush of Pendefig Mall shoppers. ‘Flowers are all fake. Never a bin when you need one. The toilets are miles away on the top floor. And the place is heaving with bloody English students this time of year.’

  ‘What about Southampton Simon you went out with? He was a post-grad, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Megan with a finality that brooked no further argument. She popped her head up above the crowd, like a meerkat. ‘There, what about Valley Girl? They had some fantastic Vivienne Westwood jackets.’

  Shoppers were looking to the opposite side of the mall. Shouting and a ripple of people down the escalator indicated someone shoving his way down. Gwen fought the temptation to go over – she was emphatically off-duty, and now was not the time for a spot of community policing. She followed Megan. When she tucked her handbag firmly under her arm, she could feel the butt of her Torchwood handgun. Off-duty, maybe, but never off-guard.

  ‘I am loving your boots, by the way.’ Megan appraised Gwen’s black, calf-length footwear. ‘Converse?’

  ‘Belstaff,’ admitted Gwen.

  ‘God!’ shrieked Megan. ‘They pay you well enough in Special Ops, then. How much?’

  Gwen didn’t like to admit how much she’d spent on them. She hadn’t told Rhys yet. ‘They’re a bit of a bugger after a couple of hours,’ she admitted. ‘Wearing them because I want to make sure the jacket will go-with, you see.’

  ‘How about this? It’s waisted, apparently.’ Megan picked out a tailored anthracite jacket. ‘Just the thing for the hen night, eh?’ she brayed. ‘We’ll all
be wasted.’

  Gwen held the jacket against herself. It was the sort of thing she’d have bought without a second thought before she joined Torchwood. Now she found herself considering the practicalities of washing alien grime out of designer gear. Nothing with ‘Dry-Clean Only’ these days, if she could help it.

  ‘It says “Anglomania” on the label.’ Megan sucked her cheeks in. ‘Lovely thing, though. So I won’t tell Rhys if you won’t.’

  Gwen slipped on the jacket and examined her reflection in a tall mirror. She politely declined Megan’s offer to hold her bag, instead putting her foot on the strap. ‘Does this make my arse stick out? And if you can’t be kind, Megan, at least have the decency to be vague.’

  Megan cackled. ‘I used to say that to Banana Boat. Not that he took the hint.’ She affected to remove a piece of lint from the arm of Gwen’s jacket. ‘Is he back in the country?’

  ‘Missing him?’

  ‘Like a hole in the head.’ Megan wrinkled her nose. ‘That was a bigger mistake than Dr Simon.’

  ‘Or Geraint Honess.’

  Megan groaned theatrically. ‘Still, if I had those three in front of me and a shotgun with two barrels, know who I’d kill and who I’d spare?’ She cocked her head to one side, but didn’t wait for Gwen’s answer. ‘I’d shoot that idiot Banana twice, to be completely sure.’

  ‘And then smash his head with the stock!’ laughed Gwen.

  ‘Stock? Listen to you,’ noted Megan.

  Gwen looked away. ‘Firearms training,’ she muttered.

  Megan’s mood seemed to have brightened, though. ‘Anyway, this isn’t a shotgun wedding is it. Is it?’ she asked again teasingly.

  Gwen didn’t respond. Through the open frame of the shop doorway, something outside had caught her eye. An all-too familiar hunched shape in a leather jacket was shoving through the crowd, spitting and snarling.

  ‘Stay here,’ Gwen said. She picked up her bag and ran through the exit and towards the Weevil.

  ‘You clumsy bastard!’ snapped Jenny Bolton. ‘I’ll have you.’ The yob had barged into her, and spun her into an old woman tugging a wheeled shopping basket. Jenny had been in the middle of phoning her mum, to find out where she had got to. The phone was a birthday present from her mum. So where was she? Supposed to be outside Boots a quarter of an hour ago. Jenny wasn’t going to wait all day, was she?