Torchwood: Slow Decay (22 page)

The first thing that struck her was the smell. Dirty washing, dirty plates, and something else. Sour metal. That very particular smell of blood.

She eased the Glock 17 from her waistband and held it high, pointed at the ceiling, safety clicked to
off
. Ready for anything.

Gwen entered the front room first, easing herself around the half-open door, alert for movement. There was nothing. The room was empty; bare floorboards, a sofa that had seen better days, DVD cases and discs scattered around the floor, and a surprisingly large HDTV set with full audio-visual set-up. Including speakers by the TV itself and on either side of the sofa. Her police training told her that it had probably been nicked; her knowledge of Lucy told her that the girl probably bought expensive toys for her boyfriend with her wages, which he eventually got around to selling to fund his drug habit. Cruel, but she’d seen it so often before.

After checking behind the door, she moved back into the hall. The kitchen was straight ahead, and she could see its length from where she stood. Piles of plates, crockery, cutlery, pans, all waiting to be washed. Several tinfoil takeaway containers with sauces of various kinds dried into them. No people.

The cupboard doors stood open, and there were packets of rice and biscuits on their sides, sticking out into the kitchen. Someone had been ransacking the place, looking for something. Looking for food, perhaps.

The door to the back room was closed, and she pushed it open with her gun.

The smell of blood – dryness, rust and sourness – intensified.

The body of Lucy’s boyfriend was slumped across the bed in the back room. He was naked. His throat had been ripped out: blood had fountained across the ceiling, the bedspread and the wall behind the head of the bed. Chunks of flesh had been torn from his shoulders, his chest and his arms. His head was turned away but, judging by the blood that stained his cheeks, his eyes had been pulled out of his head.

Or sucked out.

Sucked out and eaten.

Gwen moved into the room, still alert for any movement but aware that she was probably too late. It looked as if Lucy had already had her snack.

The duvet had twisted about his lower half, probably as he fought to get away from his attacker, but there was a pool of glutinous blood congealing in its folds. Gwen had no desire to check, but she was pretty sure that his genitalia had been ripped away and swallowed whole. She only hoped he’d been dead when it happened. Junkie or not, nobody deserved that kind of death. Especially at the hands of their girlfriends.

Bile rose in Gwen’s throat, bitter and acid, at the thought that this might have been Rhys. She might have returned from Torchwood to find him like this. On their bed. Twisted up in their duvet. Half-eaten.

‘He tasted strange.’

The voice came from behind her. Gwen cursed, even as she turned and brought the gun up.

Lucy was standing behind the door. She stepped forward, the door starting to close as her body pushed past it. It was difficult to tell where the blood stopped and her clothes began. Her mouth and chin was smeared with it. Under other circumstances, Gwen might have thought she was vomiting the stuff, but she knew different. The blood wasn’t Lucy’s.

‘It must have been the drugs,’ Lucy went on. ‘The heroin. It made him taste strange. Bitter, and a bit tingly.’ She paused, and seemed to take in Gwen, and the gun, for the first time. ‘How’s Rhys?’ she asked brightly. ‘I hope he’s OK.’

THIRTEEN

Gwen stared at Lucy.

The girl’s eyes were wide, pupils surrounded by whites on all sides. She was licking her lips convulsively.

‘I was looking for you,’ Gwen said cautiously.

‘That’s good,’ Lucy said. ‘I was hoping someone would come. I thought it might be Rhys, but I was hoping it was you.’ She smiled. ‘I’ve already tasted Rhys. He’s kind of spicy. Must be the amount of Indian food he eats. But I haven’t tried you yet. I wonder what you taste of.’

Gwen brought her gun up in both hands, arms bent at the elbow, knees slightly bent as well, ready to absorb the recoil if she had to fire the gun. Classic shooter’s pose, as taught to her not by the Cardiff police force, who had never armed her in eight years of duty, but by Jack, who had within three days.

‘Cordite,’ she said. ‘I taste of cordite. Want to try some?’

‘I’ll skip the starter,’ Lucy said, ‘and go straight for the throat.’

She moved forward, and before Gwen could even think about pulling the trigger Lucy’s left hand was knocking the gun away while her right hand gripped Gwen’s jaw and wrenched it viciously to one side. Gwen’s fingers tightened convulsively; the gun fired into the ceiling with a deafening blast. Plaster and fragments of wood fell around them. Lucy’s forefinger and thumb were pressing deep into her flesh, bruising the bone, while the rest of her fingers were embedded deep in Gwen’s windpipe. Somewhere in there, the carotid artery was faltering and spluttering, and Gwen’s vision grew darker, as if something had parked in front of the window, cutting out the light from the street.

With her last shreds of strength, she brought the gun down on Lucy’s head once, twice, and felt the girl’s grip falter. She brought both arms down to her waist, thrust them up between Lucy’s hands and then used what leverage she had to push Lucy’s arms outwards. The girl’s fingers reluctantly released their grip and Gwen sucked air noisily into her lungs as she backed away.

‘Don’t fight,’ Lucy whispered, crouching. Blood was trickling down her face from the wound on her scalp. ‘Fighting makes the muscles go all tense and bloody, but they taste better when they’re relaxed.’ Her gaze flickered sideways, to the remains of her boyfriend on the bed. ‘He was so blissed out, he didn’t even realise I was eating him. His muscles were like nothing I’ve ever tasted before. And his eyes… so, so sweet.’

‘Lucy, look at me.
Look
at me. Why are you doing this?’

‘Hungry,’ Lucy wheedled. ‘So hungry, all the time. Stomach feels like there’s something twisting around and around in there, and it’s never satisfied. Never ever satisfied. I have to eat all the time now, just to keep going.’

‘But not me.’

‘You’re the only fresh meat here,’ Lucy said, and launched herself at Gwen. She crashed into Gwen’s chest, carrying her backwards. Gwen’s feet caught in a piece of loose carpet and she toppled, Lucy’s weight carrying her down. The room twisted around her as she fell, then it fragmented into shards of light as the back of her head hit the floor beside the bed. Lucy’s weight fell directly on her stomach, driving the hard-won air from her lungs again. The girl’s knees slid to either side of Gwen’s chest, pinioning her. Hands held her wrists to the floor. The gun skittered away from nerveless fingers.

Pain scoured every nerve in her body, burning as it went. Gwen’s breath hissed in her swollen throat. She wriggled, but Lucy’s legs and hands were holding her body firm. She couldn’t move.

Lucy leaned forward. Her breath smelled rank. Shreds of bloody skin were caught between her teeth. ‘How romantic,’ she hissed. ‘Your flesh and Rhys’s, reunited inside me. The ultimate threesome.’

‘Why Rhys?’ Gwen panted. ‘I thought you fancied him?’

‘I do. But you don’t understand the hunger. Nothing is important compared to the hunger. It has to be satisfied.’

‘Even when it means your boyfriend has to die? Even when it means that
Rhys
has to die?’

Lucy winced, eyes blinking closed and then looking away. ‘It’s like breathing,’ she whispered. ‘Even if I try to stop, I can’t. I find myself just throwing food into my mouth to keep from screaming. Rice and bread don’t do it. I need fresh meat.’

‘But not mine,’ Gwen shouted, twisting her legs so that one of her feet caught beneath the edge of the bed. She bucked, almost knocking Lucy off her chest. Lucy let go of one of Gwen’s hands, grasping at the bedspread to keep herself from falling back. Gwen flailed around with her hand, looking for her gun but finding only something smooth and covered with fabric. Desperately she brought it up and hit out at Lucy’s face with it, realising only as it passed in front of her eyes that it was a woman’s shoe, black, probably a Manolo Blahnik knock-off, with four-inch heels.

The heel struck Lucy on her left temple, leaving a bloody gash behind it. She shot backwards, screaming, arms windmilling wildly. The back of her head thudded against the edge of the door, which had been left half-open when Lucy had pushed it earlier. It sounded resonant but liquid. Lucy bounced forward again, eyes wider than before but pupils rolled up so far they were staring at the insides of her sockets. Her head left a smear of blood and hair behind on the door. She fell towards Gwen, but Gwen rolled out of the way. Lucy’s face impacted on the carpeted floor, and she didn’t move.

‘You’re shit at this predator lark,’ Gwen said, lying back on the carpet as she tried to get her breath back. ‘You haven’t watched nearly enough David Attenborough.’

Marianne was changing into the clothes that Owen had gone out and bought for her. He’d retreated down to the far end of the cell area near the imprisoned Weevil while Marianne undressed and dressed again, the two of them like men waiting for their wives outside a boutique changing room. He even found himself glancing sideways at the Weevil and raising his eyebrows without realising what he was doing. The Weevil just stared at him from its deep-set, piggish eyes. He couldn’t tell whether it was sympathising with him or planning to rip his arms out of their sockets.

‘I never asked before,’ Owen called, ‘but what do you do?’

‘Eat and sleep and talk to you.’

‘I meant when you’re out in the real world. What kind of job did you do?’

‘I install computer networks for financial companies. It’s all right – I’m dressed now. You can come back.’

Owen walked the few metres down to the brick arch in which the armoured glass of Marianne’s cell was set. She was standing close to the glass, arms folded shyly in front of her. She was wearing a pair of tight brown slacks in a moleskin material, and a T-shirt top. ‘Looks good,’ he said.

‘You have interesting taste. I would never have thought to pair this shirt with these trousers.’

‘They look fine to me.’

Marianne laughed. Holding her arms out, she twirled for him. ‘Actually, it kind of works. Thanks for making the effort. I feel so much better in fresh clothes.’

‘And you look great,’ Owen said, appreciatively.

‘I feel OK as well. Look, I’m not even showing any symptoms!’ Marianne held her arms out for Owen’s inspection. The contrast between the brown, freckled skin on the outside of her forearm and the soft whiteness of the inside made him shiver with its unexpected sexuality. ‘See,’ she continued, ‘no rashes, no spots, no scabs or peeling, and no blisters. And I’m feeling OK. Really, I am.’

‘Problem is,’ he said, gazing at her through the armoured glass of her cell, ‘that we just don’t know how long the symptoms of Tapanuli fever take to emerge. And you may not be symptomatic, but you might be a carrier. We have to wait and find out.’

‘How long?’

He shrugged. ‘A week. I dunno.’

‘A week!’ She was on the verge of despair. ‘I don’t know if I can survive another week in this place. I mean, the company’s great, but…’

Owen wished he could tell her the truth. He thought she
deserved
the truth. Trouble was, he didn’t know what the truth
was
. Toshiko was still processing the ultrasound scans of Marianne’s body and, given that the blood tests had shown nothing particularly out of the ordinary, there was no way at the moment of knowing what was wrong with her. As a doctor, he was stumped. Why had she attacked people, tried to eat them, and then tracked the Weevils through the city centre with a view to turning them into a mobile fast-food franchise?

‘You’ll survive,’ he said. ‘I’ll make sure of it.’

She glanced up at him from beneath long eyelashes. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Your colleagues don’t like me much, I know. You’re the only one who treats me like a person, rather than a lab rat.’

‘I’m sure they’d like you if they got to know you,’ Owen said defensively.

‘The Japanese girl doesn’t want to look at me. She just comes in every now and then, points some gadget at me, makes it go “bleep”, then goes away again. The American guy just stares at me for a while, wearing that big coat of his, then he goes away as well. He seems to spend more time with whoever it is in the cell down the end than he does with me. I can hear them talking – well, I can hear
him
talking, but I can’t hear what he says. There was another woman who I saw on the night I was brought here, but I haven’t seen her again. And there’s a young bloke. I think he wears a suit. Sometimes, when I’m trying to sleep, and I turn over and open my eyes suddenly, he’s standing there, watching me, but he always moves away quickly, before I can focus on his face.’

‘It’s their job to be dispassionate,’ Owen said, as reassuringly as he could. ‘They’re all working on this Tapanuli fever outbreak. They can’t afford to get emotionally involved with their patients.’

‘And you?’ She looked down at the ground. ‘Is it
your
job to get emotionally involved?’

‘It’s not my job,’ he said. ‘It’s just an optional extra.’

‘You’re really kind. I wish – I wish I’d met you before all this.’

Owen grimaced. ‘If you’d met me before all this,’ he said, the words spilling out before he had time to think about what he was saying, ‘then you wouldn’t have liked me.’

‘But I do like you.’

‘There’s a barrier between us.’ He slapped his hand against the glass, making a sound that echoed through the brick arches. Somewhere down the end, the Weevil grunted, surprised. ‘I can’t get to you and you can’t get to me. All we can do is talk.’

‘Don’t remind me,’ she said, with feeling.

‘You don’t understand.’ He closed his eyes, rested his forehead against the glass. ‘Look, if we were in a bar then I’d be all over you like a rash.’

‘Don’t mention rashes.’

‘You know what I mean. You’ve seen guys like me before. Whatever we say, whatever we do, it’s designed to get you into bed. That’s the way it works with me. The only reason I’m talking to you now is because I can’t get to you.’