Fandom: Torchwood

Characters: Torchwood team, Kathy Swanson

Author: m_findlow

Rating: PG

Length: 14,906 words

Content notes: none

Author notes: Written for Challenge 214 - Murder

Summary: The team have a murder mystery on their hands.

Owen grumbled as he was forced to sit around the boardroom table with the rest of them. Adding to his misery was the fact that there was no coffee in sight. He looked across at the man, trying to gauge the reason for abandoning protocol, but his expression was as inscrutable as ever.

'I’ve been on shift all bloody night,' Owen complained. 'Can’t whatever this is wait until later?'

Jack slowly took his seat at the head of the table, clasping his hands in front of him. 'A weevil was found dead in its cell this morning,' he reported. 'Blood work confirms it was poisoned during the night.'

There was a round of shocked expressions at the news.

'Which one?' Ianto asked.

'Alexi.'

'Teaboy, you feed the weevils. Must’ve been you,' Owen said.

'I don’t understand it,' he said. 'I prepared the food the same way I always do. It’s practically hotel quality. What about the other weevils?'

'All fine. The stomach contents were laced with chemicals that would cause massive internal haemorrhaging. Once that happened, there’d be no way of stopping it. It died a slow painful death.'

'Careful, he’ll start poisoning the rest of us next,' Owen quipped. 'No wonder there’s no bloody coffee.'

'That’s not funny Owen,' Tosh said.

'What did our CCTV records show?' Gwen asked.

'Nothing,' Jack replied. 'All our CCTV was out of operation, heat sensors, GPS trackers for our phones and comms units, everything. Someone intentionally brought down all our systems to hide what happened.'

Gwen frowned in concern. 'So, what are you saying?'

'I’m saying someone in this room killed that weevil, whether they know it or not.'

They all scoffed loudly and protested their innocence.

'Enough,' Jack said. 'We were all here last night, so it could be any of us.'

'Or someone under the influence of alien technology,' Tosh added. That seemed far more plausible than one of them intentionally killing a weevil.

'Exactly. That’s why were all going to be subjected to questioning.'

'Hang on,' Owen said. 'It could just as easily have been you. You can’t question us.'

'I know,' he replied. 'That’s why I’ve called in Detective Kathy Swanson. She’ll be the one asking the questions. Until we get to the bottom of this, nobody goes home.'

There was another series of groans and then a beeping from Jack’s vortex manipulator. 'That’ll be her. Okay, so who wants to go first?'



Tosh:

Tosh say nervously opposite the detective in their interrogation room. She couldn’t explain why she felt nervous, only that being in this room always made her feel that way, even when she was the one sitting on the other side of the table.

'So, let’s start with some easy questions,' Kathy said. 'Where were you last night?'

'I was down in one of the server rooms, running maintenance and diagnostic checks.'

'And you were there all night?'

'Practically. I would have gone back there this morning to finish off what I’d started, except we all got called in here.'

'Where is the server room located?'

'It’s five floors down, so as not to interfere with any of our other equipment up in the main hub.'

'And who knew you’d be down there?'

'Everyone, I suppose. No one ever really goes anywhere around here without letting everyone else know. We have our comms all the time so that we can get in touch if need be.'

'Can anyone verify that you were down there all night?'

Tosh looked furtive. 'Well, without the CCTV, it’s pretty hard. I could show you the logs for servers, but a lot of that stuff just runs without requiring further input.'

'Fifth floor down, you say,' Kathy said, checking over the copies of the hub’s floor plans that Jack had given her.' That’s not all that far from the cells.'

'The hub is a big place,' she said. 'Five floors down isn’t really very far from anywhere,' she added, never denying it outright.

'But it’s safe to say you could’ve easily moved from the server room to the cells and poisoned the food without anyone seeing you.'

'Technically, yes.'



Ianto:

Ianto tugged on the cuff of his jacket before sitting down. 'Good morning, Detective.'

'Is it?' she asked. 'I’m here investigating a murder.'

'Yes, well I suppose when you look at it like that. Still, at least we’ve got coffee,' he said, nodding at the two mugs he’d just set down.'

'You’re responsible for feeding the weevils, Jones?'

'Among other things, but can I just say something first?'

'Sure.'

'Okay, well it wasn’t me.'

Kathy quirked an eye at him. 'The murderer always says that.'

'Oh. Well, I mean, I didn’t, though. I wouldn’t. I can’t even understand how this happened. I’m always very careful. I....'

'Alright, slow down, Jones,' she said, stopping him from babbling. 'Let’s just begin this all from the beginning. Tell me everything you did from six pm onwards.'

Ianto took in a deep breath. 'Okay. So, it was one of those nights where the whole team was here, so I left to pick up pizzas for dinner and brought them back by say, six thirty. We ate until about seven, I cleaned up the dishes, made a round of coffee, and then I went about my usual rounds.'

'And what do you do on these rounds?'

'Oh, all sorts. Depends on the day. But every night starts with feeding the residents.'

'They’re all kept in the cells?'

'No. Only the ones that have to be.'

'How many?' Kathy said, making a note of it.

'Thirteen at present. Four weevils, er, three now I guess, a hoix, six grimbles, a spider mouse, and Myfanwy, our pterodactyl. Only the weevils and the hoix are kept in the cells. Plus there’s all the lowmain specimens.'

'Lowmain?'

'Low maintenance,' he explained. 'Odd creatures that don’t really need feeding. Most are kept in tanks, some in complete darkness. Most just seem to photosynthesise whatever they need, but I make a point to keep a regular eye on them just in case.'

'Right, and where does the food come from?'

'There’s a kitchen downstairs, not far from the cells, where we keep all the food, mainly in large freezers, fresh fish and meats for the weevils and Myfanwy, some fruit, dry foods for the grimbles, mainly kitty kibble, and whatever is left gets fed to the hoix. They’re really not all that fussy.'

'Tell me more about how the food gets prepared. I’m curious as to why none of the other weevils got sick.'

'That makes two of us. I cut up all the meat pieces together and then put a bit in each tray. They’re all the same. Then I do a container for the grimbles which like to eat communally, and a bucket of scraps for the hoix. After they’re all fed I go back and get Myf’s bucket of fish and fruit.'

'Why is she singled out?'

'Because sometimes she likes to play with her food. I throw it off the balcony and she flies up to catch it. It’s a game we play. It’s a nice way to unwind at the end of the day.'

'So, someone targets a particular tray of food, knowing that it’s going to a weevil. Are the trays ever left unsupervised?'

'No, I put them on a trolley take them all out together.'

'So, from the time it was prepared to the time it went into the weevil cell, no one else touched it?'

'Yes. No, wait.'

'What?'

'Jack called me over my comms, needing me to quickly grab him a file which I’d left on my desk down in the archives. I did that before I came back to the kitchen to take the food down to the cells.'

'So, someone could have come in and poisoned it then?'

'Now that you put it like that, yes.'



Owen:

'This is a waste of time,' Owen huffed, slumping into the chair across from the detective.

'We need to find out what happened. I don’t think that’s a waste of time. Jack’s asked me down here as a courtesy.'

'And what do you plan on doing that’s so much better than what we could do?'

'Ask questions. Interview you all one by one.'

'Then what?'

'Then if I’m not satisfied, I’ll ask some more questions, and we’ll keep going around and around, asking questions, until one of you tells me something useful. So, sit there and let me do my job.'

'Maybe if you left me do a proper autopsy on it, I could tell you more,' Owen seethed. 'Nobody just poisons a weevil.'

'I’m taking Jack’s word for it for now.'

'And that’s your whole problem. You trust Jack.'

She narrowed her eyes at him. 'You think I shouldn’t?'

'Course not.' Owen spared a shifty gaze up at the CCTV camera in the corner of the room.

'It’s not on if that’s what you’re wondering,' Kathy said. 'For all the good it’ll do. Apparently your systems aren’t working.'

'You don’t know Jack. He’ll be up there, watching us.' He stuck a finger in the air, hoping Jack was watching.

Kathy ignored the gesture. 'Tell me about last night, Owen.'

'Had dinner, worked the night shift, Jack came in and told us one of the weevils had been killed.'

'That’s it? You don’t want to elaborate on that?'

Owen shrugged at her. 'I don’t love night shift, but it was a quiet night so I actually got some work done, not that Jack ever believes me when I say that.' He cast another glance upwards. 'I was up here in the hub all night. I never went anywhere near the cells, or the kitchen, and I don’t have any crazy gaps in my memory where some parasitic alien took over my brain and turned me into a weevil killing zombie.'



Tosh:

'Did you notice strange behaviour from any of the others that night?'

Tosh frowned. 'Gwen and Owen argued about something. It started up just after dinner, before I went downstairs. I didn’t hear what it was, but Gwen looked mightily upset by whatever Owen said. But that’s just Owen,' she quickly added. 'He can be like that sometimes.'

'Like what?'

'You know, a bit insensitive.'

'Oh, so not just me, then,' she said, forcing a smile out of Toshiko, before turning serious again. 'I understand Owen has been researching these weevils.'

'Yes, he’s been making some good progress on weevil communication and clan behaviours. Actually, now that you mention it, Gwen and Owen have had a few fights lately. They used to sleep together, but I think that’s well in the past now.' Her expression turned dark. 'Maybe Gwen thought poisoning the weevil would be payback for whatever they were arguing about.'

'Is that something she’d do? Poison an innocent creature just to get back at someone?'

'Gwen’s erratic. She often does things that don’t make sense, or defies Jack’s instructions. She barely even listens to what the rest of us have to say most of the time. Sometimes I think she thinks she’s the only one around here who’s doing anything useful.'

'Interesting.'

'She likes being the centre of attention, Jack’s favourite. This would actually be just the sort of thing she might do,' Tosh said, feeling more and more certain about it. 'If it’s true, and she’s trying to make a point, then you have to warn Jack. She might not stop at just one weevil.'



Gwen:

Gwen sat down and gave Kathy a firm look. There was no smile, no hello, no apology for being dragged down here to sort out their mess.

'I don’t trust Ianto. I think he killed that weevil.'

That took Kathy by surprise. The last thing she expected from an ex copper was an outright accusation. 'Why?'

'Why not? He was the one preparing the food, and it was the food that was poisoned, wasn’t it? Seems logical.'

'He also said that he had to leave the food unattended whilst he grabbed a file for Jack.'

Gwen shook her head, smiling. 'Well, that’s just like Ianto, isn’t it? Jack’s always the perfect little alibi. Maybe Jack was in on it as well.'

'You seem very sure, Gwen.'

'I used to be in the police. You develop a nose for it. Things around here have been feeling off for weeks. I just haven’t managed to get to the bottom of it yet.'

'Okay, so let’s take a step back and talk about what you were doing last night. From what I hear you and Owen had something of an argument, and not the first.'

Gwen scoffed. 'That? That’s your smoking gun? Did Ianto tell you that?'

'What did you argue about?'

She brushed a stray hair away from her face. 'Nothing. It was nothing.'

'If it was nothing, then you won’t mind telling me so that I can clear you from my list of suspects.'

'I don’t even know why we’re discussing this. I’m telling you it’s Ianto.'



Jack:

Jack slipped into the seat and folded his arms as he leant back, still an air of confident swagger about him. 'Detective,' he said. 'A shame we have to meet in such unusual circumstances.'

'Appreciate you calling me in, for want of a better term.'

'Any luck so far?'

'I’ve heard plenty to make me wonder how it is you lot haven’t killed one another yet. Everyone suspects everyone.'

His face turned grim. 'They’re not the only ones.'

'Not you, too?'

'I have my reasons, just hear me out.'

'How about I ask the questions first. Is that okay?'

Jack gave her a concessionary grin. 'You’re the boss.'

'Okay, so you apparently had the night off last night, but you stayed here. Why?'

'It’s not unusual. Ianto and I often crash here. The rift rarely behaves itself long enough for us to indulge in home cooked dinners and nights curled up on the sofa. Owen and Tosh were rostered on for night duty and Gwen was around working on other projects.'

'So, what were you doing whilst Ianto was finishing up his rounds? He says he was occupied with feeding the residents between about eight and nine pm.'

'I had work to finish as well. Ask anyone you like. I was in my office practically the whole time.'

'Practically,' Kathy clarified.

'I am allowed to use the bathroom, aren’t I?'

'So, what about the others? You say they were up here with you?'

'Owen and Gwen had a barney, nothing unusual there. They got over it. Sulked maybe, but they were here working from what I remember. Tosh was downstairs running maintenance on our computer systems.'

'Do you know what Gwen and Owen were arguing about?'

'I’m their boss. Of course I know. It’s not a big deal.'

'And Ianto?'

'Doing Ianto’ish things.'

'Can you think of any reason he might want to poison a weevil?'

Jack’s face grew dark. 'No. Ianto would never hurt a fly.'

'Not even if he was being possessed by something alien?'

'Everyone was scanned earlier and cleared of direct alien influence. We didn’t find anything that raised alarm bells.'

'Well, you must have had some reason why you brought me in here.'

Jack sighed, coming to the sticking point. 'Our memories could have been tampered with. I need someone who wasn’t here when it happened. Ask the hard questions, look for inconsistencies. I don’t want to believe that any of my team would willingly and knowingly harm a weevil, but right now I can’t even trust myself.'



Ianto:

'What about Tosh? ' Kathy asked. ' She claims she wasn’t all that far away in the server room. Could she have slipped something in the food whilst you were retrieving files for Jack?'

'She’d have to have known the exact moment I stepped out.' He shook his head. 'No way. Tosh would never.' He paused. 'Owen on the other hand... No, that’s just silly.'

'Owen?'

'He might have overheard Jack asking me to go fetch the files. He was upstairs with Jack, after all.'

'And why would he do that?'

A little frown crossed his face. 'Doesn’t it strike you as odd that the weevil which was killed was the most troublesome one?'

'Everything in this place strikes me as odd,' Kathy replied. 'Troublesome how?'

'Violent, uncooperative, didn’t even get along with the other weevils. It drove Owen mad, messing up his research on the others. Alexi’s been known to attack the other weevils when Owen tried to put them together to see how they’d interact. Janet was nearly killed.'

'Janet?'

'She’s our weevil in residence. Others come and go, but Janet lives here permanently.'

'So, how do you go about feeding a violent, dangerous weevil?'

'Very carefully.'



Gwen:

Kathy cleared her throat loudly and check over her notes again. 'Jack tells me you weren’t rostered on last night?'

'No.' It was the first time she sounded reticent to say more.

'Wouldn’t your husband prefer you home if you didn’t have to be here? From the sounds of things, leisure time is something of a luxury around here.'

She tensed visibly. 'We have an understanding. Besides I had things here I needed to do.'

'What kind of things?'

'Well, since you ask... It’s Jack.'

'Now Jack’s the murderer?'

'No. It’s just... he’s been acting off. He took three days off last week, claiming he was sick. Only Jack doesn’t get sick. And he never takes days off. Ever. Ianto vouched for him, of course, but Owen refused to examine him when he came back to the hub. That’s what we were fighting about. Owen told me to mind my own business. Maybe he’s hiding some condition and Owen does know. Perhaps this whole situation is just a distraction from what’s really going on.'

She leaned conspiratorially across the table. 'Look, you and I are both investigators. There’s a lot more going on around here than just a dead weevil. I need your help to figure out what it is so that we can put a stop to it.'

'I’m impartial around here. What goes on around here apart from this particular event is not my business.'

'I know,' Gwen said, leaning back. 'But once you’re done with your questions, come find me.'



Jack:

'Gwen seems to think you’re hiding something. Some medical condition. Something that Owen knows about. Enough to fight over.'

Jack looked annoyed by the change of direction the questions were taking. 'We’ve discussed this already. It’s not connected.'

'So, Owen knows? Who else? Does Ianto know?'

'Of course Ianto knows. We live together. There’s not much he doesn’t know.'

'But Gwen can’t know?'

Jack huffed. 'It’s not that important.' Kathy gave him a questioning look. 'Alright, so there’s this housing estate, but every time I try to walk into it, I get sick.'

'Splott has that effect on some people.'

He laughed. 'No, this is different. It’s just one street. I can’t even make it past the first house before I have to turn back. It leaves me feeling knocked around for a couple of days every time I go there. Ianto was with me the last time it happened, making sure I’d be okay.'

'Only you weren’t.'

'Got it in one, Detective. Ianto dragged me back out and took me straight home before calling Owen to check me over. If Gwen’s annoyed that she’s not in on the big secret, then that’s just tough. I didn’t even want to involve Owen, but Ianto insisted.'

'So, why keep going back to a place that makes you sick?'

'Because I need to know what’s hiding in there.'



Ianto:

'You have an alibi for Jack? He claims you were together last night.'

'Of course. We spent most of the night together once we’d finished our duties. Technically it was our night off whilst Tosh and Owen were on duty, but we just slept here. I was too tired for anything more exotic.'

'Exotic?'

'In bed.'

'Oh.'

'We go home if we think we might be too loud, or too adventurous. It’s only fair on the others not to have to listen. Plus, I mean, you’re allowed a bit of privacy, aren’t you? It’s not always easy, trying to keep personal lives and working lives apart.'

'Sounds fair to me.' She didn’t really want any more details about their sex life.

'Not last night, though,' he said. 'We just crawled into bed and stayed there.'

'All night?'

'For the most part. Jack’s not much of a sleeper. He tends to wake around three or four and get up.'

'What does he do when he gets up?'

'Normally he just goes up to his office and works. Sometimes he comes back, other times he works through until morning.'

'What about you?'

'I’ve learned to sleep through it. Unless a rift alarm goes off, you learn to get what sleep you can.'

'Do you recall if he woke early last night? Maybe he went for a walk?'

'I wouldn’t know. I was asleep. If he got up extra early, he didn’t wake me.'

'He wasn’t there when you woke up this morning?'

'No.'



Gwen:

'What’s your proof that it was Ianto?' Kathy was just itching to know. Of all the team she’d dealt with out in the field, he seemed the least likely. At least he was polite and patient. Most of the time.

'He’s done this sort of thing before, working against the team, hiding things. You don’t want to know what he did three years ago. Even the way the weevil was killed. I mean, look at it. It’s obviously been done to make Ianto look like he’s the one being set up for the murder. But that’s just the sort of clever thing he’d do, putting himself in the spotlight so that we all think it’s been staged for him to take the fall.'

'He claims he was asleep the rest of the night.'

'And who can prove it? He slinks around the hub and we barely notice him. He could easily have slipped out later. That, and Jack would defend him no matter what.'

'I’m curious, then. What’s his motive for killing a weevil?'

'Maybe he didn’t like it, or maybe he’s sick of having to take care of them. Wouldn’t you be, putting yourself at risk every day just to feed them and keep them alive? Owen thinks they’re fascinating, but I don’t see him down there risking life and limb to feed them and clean out their cells.'

'Sounds like you sympathise with Ianto.'

'Not exactly, but I think we should be worried. Someone who snaps enough to kill once might kill again. I won’t drink the coffee in case he thinks he can poison us next. Truth be told, I’m worried he suspects I know.'

Kathy pulled a face. 'I just drank the coffee.'



Tosh:

'Do you really think one of us did it?' Tosh asked. Kathy gave her a testing look. 'Right, of course. What other possible explanation could there be?'

'You and Ianto are quite close, yes?'

She sat up straighter in the chair. 'He’s my best friend.'

'So, would it seem odd to you that he’d want to poison a weevil?'

'Definitely. Ianto is the sweetest, kindest person I know. He looks after all of the aliens that get brought back to the hub, and he does it without complaint.'

'Sounds like some are easier to care for than others, though.'

'Ianto doesn’t discriminate. He’d be rightly upset if anything happened to any of the creatures under his care.'

'But he’s not an expert on them, is he? I mean, would he know what it would take to kill a weevil with poison? Would he have access to those sorts of chemicals?'

'I don’t know. Owen handles the medical side of things.'



Owen:

'What about the weevil? Are you upset about that?'

'Course I am. I’m not completely heartless.'

Kathy raised an eyebrow at him.

'Don’t believe me? Take a look at our files. I’ve got thousands of pages of research on weevils. It’s been my most significant project for the past five years. I’ve invested more time and effort into trying to understand weevils than anyone else around here.'

'I hear he was quite a handful.'

'One in every bunch,' Owen replied. 'Jack can’t understand that it’s as important to analyse the aggressive behaviours as much as the rest of their social structure. Sure, I’ve taken a few nasty swipes, but that’s the job.' He sat forward in the chair and rested his arms on the table. 'You don’t reckon Jack did it, do you?' His tone sounded incredulous.

'I haven’t finished interviewing him yet, but no one else has cast any doubts over his actions on the night.'

'He never liked that weevil. Wanted to kill it rather than capture it. Said it was too dangerous, even to keep at the hub. Teaboy’s forever complaining about feeding him. I reckon maybe Jack did him in. Maybe Ianto convinced him to do it.'

'Seems a little bit obvious to kill it in plain sight. Surely there’s more subtle ways of getting rid of it?'

'Jack’s not a subtle guy.'

'You don’t trust Jack, but Gwen thinks you’re treating him for some medical condition that the others aren’t allowed to know about. That seems contradictory to trusting him in my book.'

'Gwen needs to butt out of things that don’t concern her. He can’t die so I don’t know what the big fuss is about. If he wanted her to know, he’d tell her.'



Jack:

'Tell me about your controls around chemicals and drugs.'

'That’s Owen’s domain. He determines what he needs, and Ianto orders them.'

'Are they locked away?'

'Of course. Owen has control over dangerous chemicals and drugs. Standard issue medical kit supplies however are freely available for anyone to access. In a crisis, we can’t afford to have lifesaving provisions locked away.'

'Is Owen responsible for packing away new deliveries for those things that are classified as dangerous?'

Jack laughed. 'Owen? Putting things away? Fat chance. Ianto takes care of all of that, making sure kits are restocked.'

'So, he borrows the keys to the locked cabinets?'

'Only to pack things away and update Owen’s inventory. Everything is carefully logged, in case you’re wondering.'

'But if you say, ordered nine boxes of something, and someone only writes down eight as being put in the cabinet, who checks the invoice matches up?'

Jack’s expression turned dark at the implication. 'If you wanted to kill a weevil, you don’t need fancy drugs to do it. Want us to do an inventory on our kitchen sink supplies? There’s enough in there to kill a dozen weevils and still have enough left for washing the dishes.'

Kathy sighed, looking at the huge swathe of notes in her book. 'Okay, can I take a break before we come back?'

'Sure. I’ll get Ianto to fix another round of coffee.'

'Think I’ll pass on the coffee.'

'Your loss,' he replied.

'Got some biscuits, though?' She was about to say she could murder a custard cream and thought better of it.



Gwen:

Kathy leant back against the kitchen cabinet, chewing on a biscuit. Ianto had outdone himself on the biscuit front. Next to her was a glass of water, straight from the tap. He tried not to take offense at that before leaving. She looked up as Gwen came over.

'I was down there that night,' she said without preamble.

'Why didn’t you say something earlier?'

'I just... Well, maybe I was wrong about it being Ianto.'



'This is a load of crap,' Owen huffed as he paced back and forth in front the sofa.

'She’s just doing her job, Owen,' Tosh said, sat down on the sofa next to Ianto.

'Well, none of us did it,' he replied.

'So we like to believe,' Ianto said.

Owen turned to face him, hands on hips. 'Oh, what, don’t tell me you think it was me?'

Ianto calmly clasped the coffee mug between his hands. 'I didn’t accuse anyone. All I’m saying is that strange stuff happens around here. Maybe something did mess with our minds. We should probably be grateful it was only the weevil that was killed.'

Owen glared at Jack’s outline as it left the kitchen, leaving Kathy and Gwen still there, chatting.

'You don’t reckon they’ve already decided it’s one of us, do you?' Tosh asked.

'We’ll know in about three seconds, if Jack comes back with his gun and some handcuffs,' Owen replied.

'And not in the kinky way,' Ianto added.

Detective Swanson exited the kitchen and glared back in Owen’s direction, nodding her head towards the interrogation room.

He sighed loudly. 'Back for another round with DI Hard Arse.' He gave both of his teammates a baleful glare. 'Just remember. I didn’t do it.'



Owen:

'And you were up here in the hub the whole night? You never went anywhere else?'

Owen huffed in annoyance. 'Yeah alright, so I wasn’t here all night.'

'Talk to me, Owen.'

'It was Gwen. I saw here leave and go downstairs. I followed her. She went down to Ianto’s office in the archives and started snooping around.'

'She didn’t see you?'

'Course not. I know Ianto thinks I’m stupid, but there’s a dozen ways to get into the archives without having to bypass his desk. If I had to go through all that stupid protocol for signing out stuff, we’d never get anything done around here.'

'So, you went in another way, and then what?'

'I kept an eye on her.'

'Did she find what she was after? Do you even know what she was looking for?'

'She thinks she did. Whether that’s true or not, I couldn’t say. Teaboy’s diary,' he added, when she gave him that eyebrow of hers.

'Why didn’t you stop her?'

Owen barked out a laugh. 'Do you know how much shit she’ll be in when Ianto finds out she stole his diary? And that’ll be nothing compared to the bollocking she gets from Jack. Even if she does find out about what’s going on, it won’t make any difference.'

'So, after she found the diary, what did she do?'

'She left. Took it back upstairs. She kept it hidden under a file most of the night but I could tell she was reading it. I hope Teaboy filled it full of dirty descriptions of sex with Jack. Mind you, she might actually enjoy that.'

'And you didn’t see anyone else down near the cells on your way back?'

'I didn’t go back that way. As if. Gwen would’ve known I’d been following her, so I went the long way, came out the other side of the bay walked across the Plass, through the Millennium Centre carpark and back inside. I fetched an alien corpse on my way back to make it look convincing. Had to slice it up anyway so thought I’d make an early start.'



Gwen:

'Go on,' Kathy coaxed. Gwen had come to her, now it was time to spill the beans.

'Okay, I admit I was downstairs for a while. But I never went near the cells or the kitchen.'

'What were you doing down there?' Now that she’d heard Owen’s side, she was curious to know if Gwen’s version of events would match up.

'I was in the archives. I figured if something was going on with Jack, then Ianto would know. I was down there trying to hack into his files to see what he knew.'

'And did he know anything?'

'The computer was a waste of time. I couldn’t find anything. But then I remembered that Jack told me Ianto likes to write in a diary. I figured if it was something personal, he might have put it in there instead. I searched that place for ages until I finally found it, hidden inside a false book.'

'Was there something in the diary that changed your mind?'

'No, I just remember, when I was coming back upstairs, I heard footsteps heading away from the cells. They were heavy, like boots. They weren’t Ianto’s footsteps. He’s much quieter, his shoes tend to click on the concrete. Besides, he should have been finished by then. It wasn’t until now that I think maybe it wasn’t him after all.'

'So, whose footsteps do you think you heard, then?'

'Jack’s.'



Jack:

'I went down there looking for Ianto. We usually share the last coffee of the day together, but last night he dumped it on my desk and walked away.'

'You didn’t find that odd?'

'It’s Ianto. Figured he’d just forgotten something he had to do. Better leave him to it. He’ll only toss and turn all night otherwise, worrying about whatever it is. When he didn’t come back after half an hour, that’s when I started to wonder where he was. He gets fixated on things, loses track of time. On a night where he didn’t have to be working until all hours I was going to make sure he put down whatever it was and came to bed. He works too hard as it is.'

'What time was this?'

Jack puffed out a breath. 'Nine thirty. Bit later perhaps. I didn’t find him in any of the obvious places, so I let it go.'

'And what time did he come back?'

Jack struggled for a moment. 'Ten, ten thirty, maybe? Then we went to bed.'

'You didn’t ask where he’d been?'

'Do you ask your boyfriend where he is every second of the day?'



Ianto:

'Where was I? I went outside.'

'Why?'

'Because I had a headache. I went out for some fresh air to clear my head. When you’ve been stuck inside all day long it doesn’t hurt to remember that there’s a whole world that exists outside of the hub. After that I went back inside and went to bed. The council will have external CCTV to prove it if you need it.'

Kathy made a note to check that out later. 'So, between approximately nine o’clock and half ten everyone thought you were in the hub when you actually weren’t.'

'Suppose so.'



Owen:

'When you left the hub, did you happen to see Ianto outside?'

'Yeah, I saw Teaboy when I was walking across the Plass. He didn’t see me, though. He was at the far end, leaning over the railing and staring mindlessly out across the bay. I was gonna use the main entrance to get back into the hub, but he’d have seen me for sure, so that’s why I went via the car park.'

'You didn’t think to go over and tell him what Gwen was up to?'

'We’re not that close. I planned on telling Jack in the morning. Then all of this happened and I wasn’t about to put my hand up and tell Jack I was snooping around the scene of the crime.'

'So, in your mind Ianto is innocent?'

'I didn’t say that. But I know it wasn’t me, and it wasn’t Gwen. I dunno what Teaboy was doing out there, but he looked like he had a lot on his plate. Could be guilt or could be something else.'



Gwen:

'Did you see Jack leave the hub at any time during the night after he supposedly went to bed?'

'Actually, yes, now that you mention it.'

'And this was after you came back upstairs, when you heard the boots?'

'Yeah, pretty early in the morning actually. He walked right past me and said he was just going for a walk.'

'And you didn’t think that was strange? He could’ve been down there poisoning that weevil.'

'I know he wasn’t.' She sounded so sure. 'He had that look on his face.'

'What look?'

'The one where he’s going off to punish himself for something. You can tell. Sometimes he just goes and stands on some rooftop, staring out at the city. Other times, he just walks around that hub for hours at a time. It’s so big you could probably walk for days and never cross the same ground twice.'

'And you think that’s all this was? Just some innocent stroll around the hub?'

'He offered to come back with breakfast; asked me what I felt like. He never does that unless he’s feeling guilty about something. He ends every wallowing session the same way, trying to do something nice, as if that can make up for whatever it is he thinks he’s done wrong.'

'So you think Jack’s innocent?'

'I don’t know anymore. What did he have last night to punish himself over?'



Owen:

'You didn’t mention that Jack got up early this morning.'

'He was up. Thought it was obvious since he was the one who claims to have found the weevil. I don’t know what he was doing. Could’ve been going downstairs to kill that weevil. Like I said, earlier, I don’t think that we should rule Jack out.'

'Gwen said he told her he was going for a walk, and that he’d fetch breakfast afterwards.'

'Well, of course she’d say that, Owen griped. She’d crawl over broken glass for Jack. She’d give him a alibi even if he didn’t have one. Bet she put Ianto right in the line of fire as well, didn’t she? Did she imply that maybe Teaboy snuck out as soon as Jack was gone? Off onsome happy little weevil killing rampage?'

Kathy didn’t have to say anything. Her expression was enough to make Owen snort. 'Thought as much.'

'Are you saying she’s got an axe to grind?'

'I’m saying she’d like to take that axe and put it right into Teaboy’s back.'

'Why?'

'Cause she’s obsessed with Jack. Always has been. It annoys the hell out of her that Jack fancies Teaboy instead of her. She’d do anything to eliminate the competition.'

'She’s married.'

'So was Bill Clinton.'



Jack:

'Okay, so let’s set aside this business with the street that makes you sick. After you went to bed, did you stay there all night?'

'No.'

'You got up early. Jones told me you sometimes do that.'

'Yes.'

'Why?'

'Couldn’t sleep. I don’t need as much as normal people.'

'But you didn’t stay?'

'I stay lots of times. I lie there and just watch Ianto sleeping. Sometimes I even fall back asleep. I tried last night, but I just couldn’t. Ianto gets annoyed when I fidget in bed, waking him up, so instead I just get up and let him rest.'

'What did you do when you got up?'

'I went for a walk.'

'Where did you walk?'

Jack sighed. 'The morgue, if you must know.'

'Grim. Why there?'

'My brother is down there.'

Her pen paused it movements across the page. 'Sorry. I didn’t know.'

'It’s fine. Sometimes I just like to sit down there and talk to him.'

'You talk to the dead?'

'He’s not dead. Just frozen in time.'

'Why? Sorry, if that’s insensitive, but it seems odd that you’d have your brother down in your morgue, alive but frozen.'

'He’s damaged. A long time ago aliens did terrible things to him. Sometimes I think maybe if I talk to him enough, and explain everything that’s happened, maybe he’ll begin to understand. With enough time, maybe I can heal what’s wrong with him. Maybe he’ll find it in him to forgive me.'



Ianto:

'Does Jack have a brother?'

Ianto’s brow furrowed in confusion. 'What does that have to do with anything?'

Just answer the question. 'Does he have a brother or not?'

'Had. Or has. I’m not really sure what the correct term is.'

'He’s in the morgue?'

'Yes.'

'Does he ever go down there?'

'Probably.'

'Probably?'

'I don’t know. We don’t talk about it.' He looked plainly uncomfortable even thinking about it.

'But he’s alive down there. That’s what Jack said. You could bring him back if you wanted?'

'I won’t go near that drawer. Jack wouldn’t open it. I know he wouldn’t.'

'Why not?'

'Because Gray’s a murderer.'



Jack:

'Your answers to my questions so far have been very brief and to the point,' she observed.

'I’m a direct kinda guy.'

'Or you’re avoiding giving out too much detail in case you trip yourself up.'

'I knew there was a reason I liked you.'

'And yet you still have your own ideas as to who’s responsible I presume?'

'I do. Though I don’t generally like to presume anything.'

'Come on, then. Don’t be shy. No one else has been.'

'I’m worried about Tosh.'

'Tosh?'

'Our entire CCTV network was taken down last night. The whole network. Every last monitoring system we had. My people are good with computers, but they’re not that good, except for Toshiko. And last night, she was down in the server room all night. She should have been alerted to an intrusion in our systems, but she claims there was no warning, no way to stop whoever it was. That all seems terribly convenient. I don’t want to think for a second it was her, even if she was under the influence of something else, but the evidence just keeps stacking up.'

'Why would she want to kill a weevil, though? There’s been a lot of accusations thrown about but not a lot of motive.'

'Tosh is an animal lover,' he simply replied.

'She loves weevils?' If that was the case, maybe she really was psychotic enough to have been the killer.

'She feels sorry for them. Yes, they can be vicious and deadly, but so are tigers, and people are lining up to see them at the zoo.'

She couldn’t picture any zoo where people would line up to see weevils. 'What’s your point, Jack?'

'Tosh doesn’t like the idea of keeping them captive here, running tests and experiments to understand them better.' When he said it out loud, it made it sound like they were no better than Torchwood One.

'Owen says he was too dangerous to let back out.'

'He was.'

'What about the others? The ones locked down there with it.'

'Captured straying into areas where people live. We kept them so Owen could continue his research. The plan is always to eventually re-release them.'

'And you think Tosh had an issue with that?'

'Maybe.'

'If she loves them so much, why kill one?'

'Maybe she was trying to make a point. Maybe she thought we’d think it died of natural causes, or died because it was in captivity. Alexi was never going to be released, so he’d be a good target. The rest still had a chance, then. A martyr for all of weevilkind.'



Owen:

'Weevils are misunderstood. Yeah, they’re vicious buggers, and yeah, I’ve killed a few. Doesn’t mean I like it.'

'I hear Tosh has some qualms about killing them, and about keeping them locked up.'

'I like Tosh, don’t get me wrong, but she’s got it backwards. I’ve seen her take down her fair share of weevils. When comes down to keeping your spleen from being torn out or putting three bullets in it, there’s no debate.'

'Does anyone else share Tosh’s views?'

'Don’t think so. You get injured in the line of duty often enough, you don’t tend to sympathise much.'



Ianto:

'How do you feel about weevils, in general? '

'You mean, do I hate them enough to want to kill one?'

'If you like.'

'No. I’ll admit, feeding them isn’t always a walk in the park.'

'But?'

'You don’t know what it’s like out there, when you have to go out in the middle of the night to capture them. I’ve seen Jack killed more times than I care to remember, and usually it’s to prevent one of us from facing the same fate.'

'But he can’t die.'

'And that makes it okay? Kathy could tell she’d hit a nerve. How would you like it if someone you loved was brutally murdered? Wouldn’t you want to kill the person who’d done it?'

'We have a justice system for a reason.'

'Which doesn’t apply to weevils.'

'This weevil, Alexi, had it killed Jack before?'

'It nearly killed me.' Ah, Kathy thought. Motive. 'What happened?'

'I was cleaning out his cell. We always sedate the weevils first. It’s easier than trying to move them. I released the agent, waited for the residual to clear, and went in. Only Owen hadn’t factored in that Alexi was a big guy. The usual dose didn’t last long enough. By the time I’d realised he was waking up, he was already on top of me. If Jack hadn’t just happened to be there at the time, coming to nag about coffee...'

'What happened next?'

'Jack pulled him off, yelled at me to go and release another round of agent. By the time I got back... I’ve never seen a weevil do that much damage before.' He pictured the scene in his mind. There was blood everywhere. It looked like a massacre. He really had wanted to kill it. You couldn’t train a weevil or rehabilitate it. Some things were just better off dead.



Tosh:

'I hear you’re a bit of a weevil advocate.'

'That’s putting words in my mouth. I just don’t like the idea of us locking them up down here. They have families too.'

'Even for research?'

'Owen says it’s behavioural study. I’m not sure that’s quite accurate. A weevil locked in a cell isn’t going to behave the same way it would if it were free. That’s not my issue, though.'

'What is?'

'The experiments. The testing of new sedatives. Poking them with needles to run blood tests. I know the sedatives are meant to be for our safety and to make it less stressful on the weevils we have to move around the city, but it just feels wrong. If they don’t like humans, maybe there’s a good reason why.'



Jack:

'I hear what Tosh is saying, but I’ve got a whole city full of people to worry about. If a few weevils have to get drugged, then I’m okay with that. It’s us out in the field that have to deal with them. We rely on those drugs to bring them down, humanely, I might add, so that we can take them back where they belong.'

'I’m not sure I like the idea that they wander free,' Kathy said. She’d only had one or two run-ins with them, and neither of them had been pleasant.

'They’re a part of this city, whether you like it or not. They come through the rift from somewhere we know nothing about, and we can’t send them back. Most will stay underground and not cause any trouble. In fact, we encourage them to keep to specific areas where they can nest without interfering with the locals. Those that go wandering can be a problem, but sometimes they’re the ones who come off second best. I’ve seen weevils attacked and left for dead by gangs of drunken idiots, or thugs just looking for someone to beat up on. We take them in, patch them up, and return them to the safety of the sewers. They deserve our protection just as much as the next species.'



Gwen:

'Gwen, would you kill a weevil if you thought it was a threat?'

'Every weevil is a threat.'

'Even if they’re living in the sewers, minding their own business?'

'You don’t think I killed that weevil, do you?'

'I’m just getting everyone’s views on the matter.'



Jack:

'One thing I haven’t asked yet. Ianto says he’s responsible for feeding the weevils, yet you were the one who found it dead in the cells. What were you doing down there?'

'I was coming back from the morgue. I heard them. I was three corridors away, but when weevils start making noise like that, I went and checked them straight away. They mourn, you know. They’re not just wild animals. They have a sense of family. They know when one of them is injured or hurt. They’re more intelligent than we think. That’s why we keep trying to learn as much as we can from them.'

'Except when they turn violent?'

'We kill only as a last resort.'

'Is that what this was, a last resort?'

Jack frowned. 'I don’t know what you mean.'

'Owen and Ianto both admitted that this weevil was dangerous and that you’d voiced your displeasure at having it here.'

'The safety of my team comes first. He was problematic. Having said that though, we couldn’t let him loose back into the sewers. The only option was to keep him here.'

'Or kill him.'

'Or kill him,' Jack agreed. 'But that’s not what I did.'



Owen:

'Are you done with all these bloody questions, yet?'

Kathy scowled at him. 'I don’t have a solid case against anyone yet, if that’s what you mean.'

'You sodding coppers are all useless, aren’t you?'

'You’re not helping your own case here.'

'Sorry. I keep forgetting that murderers are incredibly polite towards the police. Have you even been down there and had a look?'

'It’s on my list, but it’s not like you’ll let me bring in a SOCO team to analyse anything.'

'No, you’ve just got a medical expert, a computer genius, an ex copper and a librarian, plus a whole hub full of advanced technology. Sorry that we’re so poorly resourced.'

'Any of you whom could falsify results to hide their guilt.'

'Yeah, but at least three quarters of it will be right. Round these parts, that’d be considered pretty good odds.'



Kathy followed Gwen downstairs with an air of reluctance. She was fixated though, and Kathy wanted a good look at the original scene herself. Perhaps Owen was right to let them do whatever investigations they wanted. Perhaps the clues would start stacking up, or at least give hints about which data might be manipulated.

'Shouldn’t we be checking the kitchen?' she asked, as Gwen lead her down the narrow stairs that emptied them into the long corridor full of cells.

'We’ll get to that. Jack wouldn’t let anyone down here before, but now that you’re here...' Gwen stopped and quirked her head at something.

'What’s that?' Kathy said, watching as Gwen knelt down and picked up something from the corner of the cell.

She held up the small object so Kathy could see it. It was a badge, like those ones she’d seen tacked on the backpacks of university students and emos.

'Owen’s,' Gwen said. 'From his lab coat.'

Bloody hell, Kathy though. First she’d accused Ianto, then Jack, now Owen? 'That could’ve been here for weeks.'

'Ianto would’ve picked it up if it was. He leaves these cells spotless. This is recent.'



Kathy let the badge burn a hole in her pocket as she came back upstairs. Did she risk telling Jack what they’d found, potentially implicating Owen? Was it enough. Barely. They’d continued by searching the kitchen, but though they poured through the cupboards, there was no sign of anything that could be used to poison a weevil, unless as Jack had said, you counted the bottle of detergent used to clean the implements after they’d been used. The whole room was, as expected, impeccably clean and tidy. If she’d had that as her only physical evidence her DCI would have laughed her right out of her job. She’d need more to start pointing fingers, and right now, everyone was pointing fingers at everyone else.

Perhaps she should ask Jack to let Owen autopsy the weevil. There had to be more their actual victim could tell them. A precise time of death wouldn’t hurt. Resolved, she headed towards Jack’s office, ignoring Tosh sat at her own desk, seemingly trying to get on with things.

She knocked.

'Detective, come in. How are the investigations going?'

'Do your people always mistrust each other this much?'

Jack sighed. 'This is what I was worried about. We’ve got no computer data we can analyse, barely any physical evidence... I want to trust my people, Kathy, but something is going on here that I just can’t see. I hoped that a fresh pair of eyes and an impartial viewpoint might help.'

Ianto came running up the stairs, face pale and out of breath. 'Jack? Oh God, Jack?'

Jack immediately stood up from his desk. 'Ianto, what is it?'

'It’s Gwen. Oh God, Jack. She’s dead.'

'What?' The news genuinely shocked him to the core. He immediately grabbed for his gun. 'Show me,' he said, looking back at Kathy. 'You come, too.'

His legs felt like jelly as he followed in Ianto’s wake, down the corridor that lead them back to the cells. 'What the hell happened?'

'I don’t know,' Ianto said, voice still shaky. 'I came down to the cells to check on the weevils and she was just lying there.'

Jack could barely look at Gwen’s body, lying so helplessly there in the ground, right next to the cell containing the dead weevil, still evidence itself. There were no physical signs of what may have killed her, only the sickening reality that she was dead.

'Why the hell was she down here?'

'She kept going on about how she was going to prove who did it,' Ianto said. 'She must’ve come down here to search for physical evidence or something.'

Jack stood back up and grabbed him by the shoulder. 'Wait, why were you down here?'

Kathy watched him carefully. Gwen had her suspicions about Ianto’s innocence, and now he was conveniently down here standing over her dead body.

'Like I said, I was checking the other weevils. Owen keeps saying that they have a low level telepathic connection. I was worried that keeping the dead weevil here might be upsetting them.'

'Where is Owen?'

'Sleeping.'

'You’re sure?'

'No one fake snores that bad.'

Jack tapped his comms. 'Toshiko, have we got that CCTV back up and running yet?'

'Sorry, Jack,' she apologised.

That too, was convenient, Kathy thought. She looked across at Jack. He looked upset about Gwen, but not overly so. He ran a hand over his face.

'Okay, wake Owen and tell him I need a cause of death asap.' Ianto disappeared quietly, his footsteps light and fading down the corridor.

'I need to make this official now, Jack,' Kathy said, wanting to give him a minute to process, but also knowing time was of the essence.

He brushed a hand over Gwen’s face, closing the eyes that stared blankly up at him. 'Not yet. We still don’t know what we’re dealing with.'

'She muttered something about coming down there to take another look,' Kathy admitted. 'She dragged me down here with her before.'

'Did you find anything?'

Kathy pulled the badge from her pocket, giving it to Jack. He frowned unhappily it.

'I didn’t think she’d go back down here again,' Kathy said. 'I didn’t think it was unsafe.'

'That makes two of us.'



'That could’ve been there for ages,' Owen said, as Jack held up the badge, giving him a questioning look.

'I would’ve seen it last night,' Ianto said, hating himself for saying it, but knowing it was true.

'Oh, so now you’re ganging up on me?'

'No one’s ganging up on anybody, Owen,' Jack said, sitting behind his desk, looking concerned.

'Why would anyone kill Gwen?' Tosh asked.

'I don’t know,' he replied, though his gaze never left Owen. 'It may have been targeted, or she may have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Go do what you have to, Owen. I want to know what killed her. Ianto, go keep an eye on him.'

'Great, I’ve got a murderer watching me work,' Owen grumbled.

'It wasn’t me, Owen,' Ianto seethed.

'Nah, you were just conveniently down there to find the body, that’s all.'

Ianto rolled his eyes and followed Owen out to the autopsy bay.

'Tosh. Get those damn IT systems back online. I want this whole place scanned from top to bottom.'



As they filtered out of Jack’s office, Tosh gently grabbed Detective Swanson by the arm.

'I have a confession to make,' Tosh said.

'Yes?'

Tosh’s gaze shifted behind them, where Jack was still hunched over his desk, looking unable to fathom what was going on.

'Better come with me, then.'

Tosh lead her upstairs and into the boardroom, before closing the door behind her. 'I wasn’t in the server room all night.'

Kathy folded her arms. 'Where were you then?'

'I set up some of the regular diagnostic programs to run on the servers, and then I went down to sub-basement ten.'

'What time was this?'

'Around nine pm.'

'Why were you down there?'

'I was testing some new equipment. Don’t tell Jack. I’m not supposed to be tampering with it, but...'

'What kind of equipment?'

'Something that I’m hoping could be capable of creating a time lock.'

'What’s a time lock?'

'It’s like a bubble. Inside it, time can go slower or faster, depending on how you set it.'

'What’s the point of that?'

'Well, imagine someone was sick and there was no immediate cure. You could put them inside the time lock and slow time down until you had a cure.'

'Or put someone inside to speed up research on the cure?'

'Exactly. Only it doesn’t work yet. Jack warned me not to tinker with things that warp time, but I thought I knew what I was doing.'

'Something happened last night?'

'The first couple of tests went okay, but the last one sent a surge throughout our systems. I was trying to slow down time inside a small box, but somehow the time energy bounced from the lock program and into our main systems. It wiped all our data from the last five hours. I tried to get everything back online, but each time I rebooted, it went back and wiped out whatever new data had been collected.'

'So, that’s why there’s no CCTV?'

'I will fix it,' she promised, 'just as soon as I can. I just don’t think it’s going to be possible to recover the data from last night and today. If the time lock worked the way it was supposed to, then that data would cease to exist.'

'So, we’re literally running blind.'

'Until I can fix it, yes.'

'Why are you telling me this and not Jack?'

'So, you know it wasn’t me who intentionally took down our systems to cover things up. So, you know you can trust me.'



'Good old fashioned strangulation,' Owen said, standing in the middle of the autopsy bay, Jack hovering next to him, the other three gathered around the railings at the top. At least he’d had the decency to cover up her body, Kathy thought, hidden under that white sheet.

'Bruises didn’t start appearing until post mortem, but there’s plenty of other physical evidence that supports it, ' he said, lifting it up just enough for Jack to see the now purpling marks around her neck. 'Possibly snapped a vertebrae as well, but I haven’t run x-rays. Could’ve been intentional or might have just happened in the struggle.'

'Anything else?' Jack asked.

'Marks aren’t overly large or pronounced. Whatever did this wasn’t much bigger than Gwen.'

'Okay, I’ve seen enough,' he said, having seen more than enough, as Owen lowered the sheet again.

Ianto was setting down another round of coffee on Jack’s desk for Jack and the detective when Tosh poked her head in, quietly knocking.



'Has anyone seen Owen?' Toshiko asked. She had a monster of a headache, staring at the computer screen for hours now, and hours more last night, trying to resurrect their systems. She just needed something to clear the stabbing pain from the back of her eyes.

'He was taking Gwen’s body down to the morgue,' Ianto said, sounding like he had to force the words out, still in shock.

'I thought he’d done that by now,' Jack said, sounding irate. 'He’s got work to do giving that weevil a proper autopsy.'

'He’s probably having a moment,' Kathy said. 'Given the man some sympathy for pity’s sake, or does a weevil matter to you more than your own team?'

Jack pushed the chair back violently. 'Of course they matter!' He looked at what was left of them, Ianto remaining stoic, Tosh looking like she could burst into tears at any moment.

'We’ll go down there,' Jack said. 'Say a few words and mourn the loss of our friend, but then we have to get back to work. The time for mourning properly will have to wait.'

Begrudgingly they followed him.



As they followed Jack into the vast empty space, they could see the trolley with Gwen’s body still lying on it, but no Owen.

'Owen?' Jack called out. If he was hiding somewhere, crying his heart out, there was no sound of it.

Ianto picked up the clipboard from the end of the trolley, noting the door number which would become Gwen’s final resting place. Jesus, but they hadn’t even told Rhys yet. Unable to stand looking at it any longer, he set out to finish what Owen had started. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d had to lock away a former colleague. He hoped however, that it would be the last.

He slipped a set of keys out of his pocket, twisting one into the padlock and then twirling it, releasing it from the metal clasp on the door. He pulled it open and gently pulled out the cryo-chamber cell that Gwen’s body would lie in.

As he hit the small switch on the end of the panel, the top hissed open. Toshiko screamed. Inside was Owen’s body.

Jack went pale. 'I thought I told you to keep an eye on Owen?' he said, glaring at Ianto.

'I did. But he told me to sod off when he went down to the morgue. You know what’s he’s like.' What exactly did he think Owen was going to do with a dead body?

'I had more questions for him, too,' Kathy said. 'I agreed it was probably best Jones not be there.'

'Alright, nobody goes anywhere from here on in,' Jack said. 'There’s clearly something inside the hub looking to pick us off one by one. If we stay together, it can’t get us.'

'You think it’s alien? 'Kathy asked.

'Everyone seems to have an alibi. I could understand someone maybe taking down a weevil, but no one here would want to kill their own teammates.'

'Unless there was an alien inside them, making them do it,' Ianto said. He hated playing devil’s advocate.

'We’ll scan everyone again. Tosh, I want those systems back up and running asap. Grab a laptop and everyone meets back in my office.'



'You look exhausted, Tosh,' Ianto said, resting a hand on her shoulder as she battled with her computer.

'I’m almost there,' she said, still trying to fight off the worst of her headache. It was the only thing keeping her going, knowing that she had to fix this for the sake of her friends. 'Once our systems are back online we can start scanning the whole hub for any incursions.'

'Any luck with the data from last night?' Jack asked. He felt tired even if he didn’t look it.

'Sorry,' she apologised. Kathy gave her a sidewards glance. 'There,' she said, 'got it. All systems are back online and recording. I’ve also put the hub into lock down so whatever it is can’t escape.'

'Good work, Tosh. You should get some sleep.'

'I though you said we shouldn’t be split up?' Kathy said.

'You can rest down in my quarters, Tosh,' Jack said.

'Are you sure that’s wise?'

'There’s no way in or out apart from there,' he said, pointing to the quasi manhole that served as an entrance. 'The rest of us will be right here.'

'Are you sure?' Tosh asked.

'You’ve earned it, Tosh. You were on shift all night. Now that we've got systems back up and running, we can take it from here.'

'Okay, well just wake me if you find out anything,' she said, looking too tired to be overwrought by the death of two of her closest friends.

'This is mental,' Kathy said as she slumped against Jack’s desk, resting an elbow on it.

Jack parked himself on the sofa opposite her, occupying the spot that Tosh had been sitting moments ago. Next to him was Ianto and he wrapped an arm across his lover’s shoulder, squeezing it.

'You don’t think it’s still one of us, do you?' Ianto asked.

'I’m not sure I know what to believe anymore,' she said. 'But it’s looking less and less likely.'

'I..., I accused Owen of being the killer,' Ianto said. 'I accused him and now he’s dead.'

'It’s okay,' Jack said. 'We all made accusations.' He pulled the laptop across so that they could both see it.

'Anything?' Kathy asked.

'Nothing,' Jack frowned. 'No life signs other than us.'

'Well, we can’t hole up here forever. I’ve got a real job to go back to, you know.'

'There's got to be some kind of energy signature or something!' Jack said, shaking the laptop.

'This whole place is weird, but nothing any of you lot have said seems to indicate something strange going on.'

'So, how did the weevil get poisoned, then?' Ianto asked. 'Who strangled Gwen to death? Locked Owen in the morgue?'

'Relax, we'll figure this out.'

'You don’t have a ladies down there, do you?' Kathy asked, pointing at Jack’s bunker. 'All that coffee, and I don’t fancy venturing out there with some killer on the loose.'

'Yeah,' Jack said, waving his approval. 'Doorway on the left. Watch your step on the waydown.'

They watched her navigate the narrow ladder before Ianto turned to Jack, looking pale. 'Jack, what if it’s not alive, this thing? Something that wouldn’t show up on a life signs scan.'

'What do you mean?'

He swallowed hard. 'What if it’s Suzie?'

Jack barked out something between and a laugh and a scoff. 'Ianto, Suzie’s dead. She’s not coming back.'

'We said that the first time. She almost managed to come all the way back, then. Think about it; she hated Gwen, and she didn’t have a lot of love for Owen, either. She probably hates us all for what we did to her. What if this is revenge?'

Jack thought about this for a long while. It sounded insane, but what if Ianto was right?

'Why kill the weevil first? Why not go straight for the jugular?'

'Maybe she wanted us all here. She could have been hoping we’d put the hub into lock down, trapping us all inside with her. We should check,' Ianto said. 'I know it sounds mad but...'

'Okay,' Jack agreed. They’d already lost two teammates. Jack didn’t want to lose another. 'But we all go.'

'All go where?' Kathy said, scrambling back out of the manhole, Jack stood up and walked over, reaching down and offered her a hand up.

'Thanks.'

'Ianto made a good point about something we ought to check, but it’s down in the morgue.'

'What’s down in the morgue?'

'Someone we hope is dead.' He pulled his gun from his desk drawer and snapped it onto his belt. Kathy glanced at him. 'Our scanners might say there’s nothing down there but I’m not taking chances.'

'Mine’s still down in the bunker,' Ianto said.

'Go get it,' Jack ordered.

'Got a spare?' Kathy asked.

'There’ll be one in the side table drawer,' Ianto said, knowing they always kept at least one spare down in Jack’s bunker for emergencies.

'What about Tosh? I thought you said we stick together?' Kathy said.

'She’s exhausted,' Ianto replied. 'We could lock the hatch. She’d be safe down there. We’re the only ones with keys.'

'Good idea, Ianto. Shouldn’t take us more than half an hour to go down there and check things out.'

'I’ll leave her a note, just in case she wakes up. Don’t want her panicking, thinking something else has locked her in there.'

He quickly returned with the two guns, passing one to Kathy and keeping his own firmly in his grip, safety off. Jack eased the hatch door down and locked it in place, assured that Tosh would be safe until they came back.

'Okay, let’s go.'



The trolley that had held Gwen’s body was still down there, though Gwen herself wasn’t. Ianto had found a second spare drawer into which she could be put to rest, since Owen now occupied the drawer she’d been destined for. It still felt wrong knowing they were both down here and never coming back.

Jack came to stand by the drawer designated for Suzie. He fingered the padlock, noting how it looked untouched by anyone, thin film of dust clinging to its surface. He slipped his gun back in his holster, fishing out a large bundle of keys from his pocket. Whilst he did, he noticed Ianto grip his gun a bit tighter, watching all around them. Kathy mirrored his movements. It was a fair response. Anything could be lurking down here, just waiting for them.

'Who are we checking out?' Kathy asked, still sweeping the room with her eyes.

'Suzie Costello. Ex Torchwood employee.'

'Why her?'

'She died, then we brought her back, temporarily. She tried to make it a permanent by kidnapping Gwen and draining the life out of her. So we killed her.'

'She’s not real good at staying dead,' Ianto added.

The padlock clicked with a resounding noise that reverberated around the large space, before Jack opened the door and hefted out the long tray. He took his gun back out and held it one handed as he used his left hand to press the release button, letting the chamber hiss open. The white body bag came into view and he slowly reached in and pulled the zipper loose.

There was Suzie, pale and frozen in time. For arguments sake he reached in and felt for a pulse, but there was nothing but cold dry skin. He waited for the horror film moment where her arm flew out and grabbed him, but it never came. He let out a breath of relief.

'She’s definitely dead,' Jack declared. 'Otherwise she’s the best Harry Houdini I’ve ever met.'

'There goes that theory,' Ianto said, feeling more on edge because of it.

'It was worth checking out.'

'Can you check one other drawer?' Kathy asked.

Jack frowned at her. 'Which one?'

'Your brother’s.'

Ianto cringed at the look on Jack’s face, caught between fear and fury. He hadn’t even though of that. Gray would’ve wanted to kill them all as well. And unlike Suzie, he wasn’t dead.

There was a short battle of stares between Jack and the detective before he relented, stepping across the room to unlock the second drawer. He pulled open the door as Ianto stepped over to see for himself. Jack pulled it out just enough so that he could brush the fog from the top of the clear panel. Gray’s sleeping face looked back up at them.

Jack let out a shuddering breath as Ianto felt his own relief wash over him. 'He’s still there,' Jack said.

'Can I ask something else, then?' Kathy said. 'Tosh mentioned she wasn’t in the server room all night, and that she was experimenting with something called a time lock.'

Jack twirled around. 'What?'

'Is that relevant? She seemed very reluctant for you to know, but given everything that’s happened...'

Jack shook his head. 'I warned her not to. We don’t know enough about it yet.'

'She said that’s what caused the surge in your computer systems, wiping out chunks of the CCTV.'

Ianto saw the look of concern on Jack’s face. 'Is it bad?' he asked.

'She could’ve created tiny tears in time and space.'

'What does that mean?'

'It means maybe our murderer is using them to slip back and forth from here to wherever. We need to go back up and find out exactly what she was doing.'



'You mean it could be anybody?' Kathy said, feeling out of breath as Jack maintained a brutal pace back up the eight levels to the main hub.

'We could’ve created a tear directly into some maximum security prison, letting a serial killer slip to and fro as they please, for all we know. Tosh needs to show me this time lock device so we can figure out if that’s what’s happened.'

'Then what?'

'Then we try and figure out a way to reverse the effects. I’ll go grab Tosh. Ianto, you get a couple of those personal shield generators. We might need them if there’s a tear, to try and isolate anything from coming back through it.'

'You said don’t split up!' Kathy said.

'Stay with Ianto. I can’t die. I’ll be fine. It’s only a few minutes. Meet me there as soon as you’ve got the gear.'



He jogged across the hub, up the short series of stairs and toward his office. There wasn’t time to be mad at Tosh right now. They had to fix this first.

He twisted the key and then turned the heavy handle that released the door, hefting it up and climbing down into the semi dark.

'Tosh?'

He stepped through to the small bedroom, and laid a hand on her shoulder, shaking gently. 'Tosh?' The body beneath him felt too soft. He pulled back the covers, only to find a pillow and some clothes, roughly formed in the shape of a small body. Where was Tosh?

'Tosh?' He called out again, feeling a sudden sense of urgency.

He flipped on a small light, the room empty, then he caught the tiny sound of trickling water. On the other side of the room, the door that lead to the bathroom was shut. As he stepped closer, there was water seeping under the door and across the bare floorboards. He pulled it open, dreading what he’d find.

There was Tosh, lying in the bath, water spilling slowly over its edge from the gently running tap. He grabbed her tiny frame out of the water, drenching himself and the floor, but knowing it was already too late. She was cold and pale, not breathing, her eyes shut.

He laid her gently down on the floor, turning off the water, before turning back to notice the other addition to their bathroom.

"And then there were two," the message on the mirror read, penned in long loops of shaving cream, beginning to run down its length in a morbid impersonation of blood.

'Jack, are you still down there?' he heard Ianto’s voice call out from above.

When Jack didn’t respond, Ianto climbed down, and Kathy followed him, spotting first the bedroom light and then the door to the bathroom hanging open.

'Oh my God,' Ianto said as he saw Jack standing there over Tosh’s pale soaked body on the floor. 'Please tell me she’s not...' he begged.

Jack nodded imperceptibly. Not his beautiful Toshiko. Why?

'And then there were two,' Kathy read. 'But... there’s three of us.'

The realisation suddenly hit Jack like a tonne of bricks. They’d been watched this whole time. The killer knew exactly how many of them there were. There was no alien, no dead ex colleague, no tears in time and space. The killer had been right there with them all along.

He grabbed Ianto by the lapels and slammed him hard against at the wall.

'You did this!'

'I didn’t! I swear!'

'You were the last one down here. She was meant to be safe!'

'She was! I would never hurt Tosh, you know that! She was asleep in bed when I left.' He frowned. 'Wait, you were down here five minutes before the rest of us. What’s to say it wasn’t you?'

'Me?' Jack laughed at insinuation. 'Why would I kill her?'

'Shut up, both of you!' Kathy said, having pulled out her gun, and training it on the two men. 'Back against the wall, hands in the air where I can see them.'

'Put it down detective,' Jack warned.

'No way. I’m not hanging around for one of you to come after me next. I’m locking you both up. Guns on the floor, now!'

Jack flashed an angry look at her but finally released his grip on Ianto, holding his hands up in mock surrender. He cast a glance at his lover, anger still burning in his eyes. 'Do as she says.' He pulled his own and dropped it to the ground, watching as she kicked it away. Ianto repeated the gesture.

'Now, up that ladder and towards the cells.'



She marched them all the way down, demanding they keep their silence.

'Phones,' she said, pointing to the ground with her gun. They complied.

'Jack’s wrist strap can override the controls for the doors,' Ianto said. Jack gave him a death glare as he was forced to remove that as well.

'In,' she said, releasing the lock on the first door and pointing at Ianto with her gun.

Ianto stepped into the cell as she locked it behind him. She pointed for Jack to join him in the cell immediately opposite, so that they could see each other through the perspex doors, across the narrow corridor.

'Stay right there,' Kathy ordered. 'I’ll be back in a minute to finish dealing with you two.'



Jack pressed up against the clear door. 'Just you and me now, Ianto,' Jack said, glaring at his lover across the room, 'and I know it wasn’t me.'

Ianto returned his untrustworthy stare. 'You really think I murdered all those people? They were my friends!'

Jack let out a mirthful chuckle. 'Oh, yes, it all seems perfectly plausible until I add all the clues together. The weevil poisoning got the ball rolling. Easy enough to slip something into the dish at the last second and then feign ignorance. You slept through the night whilst everyone else was awake, diverting any possible blame.

You’re on the inside rail with Tosh. I bet you encouraged her to test that device, knowing she’d be busy down there whilst you switched off all out CCTV and surveillance. A lucky break that she just happened to wipe out a whole chunk of it by mistake.

Then that wasn’t enough. You knew Gwen would be like a dog with a bone, never resting until she’d cracked the case. You knew she’d go down to the cells to poke around. Did you plant that badge as well? Stea it off Owen’s coat when he wasn’t looking? Were you there, waiting for her? Come up from behind and strangle her?'

'Seems like you’ve been thinking about this a lot,' he replied, his expression dark.

'Owen was the easy one. You claim he sent you away, but he didn’t really, did he? As soon as Kathy was finished with her questions, you went down there with him to the morgue and finished him off.'

'And Tosh?'

'Drugged and drowned whilst you were down there getting those guns. You suggested going back down to the morgue. That was just to buy time until she drowned wasn’t it? The shaving cream message was a nice touch, but you gave yourself away. Ianto Jones. Makes great coffee but his math isn’t very good.'

'Do you realise how crazy you sound, Jack? It’s me. Ianto. Your best friend. Why would I kill them?'

'I don’t know. Maybe you got tired of everyone treating you like a servant.'

'Jack, I wouldn’t ever do that. I love them. I love you!'

'Lies!'

Suddenly the cell Ianto was occupying began to fill with a thick white smoke and Ianto slammed the front panelling.

'It’s you!' He coughed, realisation suddenly hitting him. Jack was the murderer. He’d somehow manufactured it so that he was now locked in here, whilst poisonous fumes filled the enclosed space. 'Let me out, please!' Before Jack could respond, Ianto slumped forward against the door and slid to the floor.

With a sickening horror Jack realised he’d gotten it all wrong. Ianto wasn’t the killer; never had been. Someone else was pulling the strings.

Jack banged on his own cell door. 'Kathy, let us out! The killer is in here!'

'Yes, they are,' she replied.



Jack spun at the sound of detective Swanson’s voice. 'It was you? You killed my team?'

'It was so easy, interviewing you all, sowing the seeds of mistrust, letting you drown in your own deceptions.'

'But... how?'

'Oh, you mean the weevil? Well, that was the tricky part. You know how you see all those sad news stories about kids that become drug mules and overdose from swallowing the drugs inside condoms? Turns out there’s fancy new ways of getting drugs from point A to point B now. You just swallow the little capsule and it latches on to your stomach lining until you’re ready to pass it through. Of course, if you’re worried about them being uncovered, there’s this nice little remote activated trigger that causes it to self destruct. You lose the drugs, obviously, and the mule who got caught, but hey.'

'You fed the device to the weevil?'

'Oh, not just one. A whole bunch of them. I knew you’d catch one eventually. Then I just waited a little while, and kaboom, dead weevil.'

'You couldn’t have known I’d call you in to help.'

'Couldn’t I? Didn’t you find it strange that I just happened to call so soon after it happened? Wasn’t I the one that suggested an independent party might help? Once I was on the inside, all I had to do was pick my moments.'

'You strangled Gwen?'

'She was hell bent on proving one of you was the killer. If anyone was going to start poking around too much, it was her. She had it coming the minute she dragged me down there to investigate. She should have stayed a copper.'

'And Owen?'

'Owen was easy. As soon as Jones got told to take a running jump, he was all alone down in the autopsy room. As he was loading Gwen into the lift that would take her down to the morgue, I clubbed him over the back of the head and shoved his body inside as well.'

'You told me you had more questions for him.'

'I did. I went down there with him and asked myself, how long would it take to freeze to death inside one of those cryo-chambers if you don’t set it up properly? Not very long, it turns out. I couldn’t having him doing a proper autopsy on that weevil, uncovering the remnants of the device.'

Jack cast a glance across at the cell where Ianto was now crumpled on the ground. He didn’t have to be any closer than he already was to know in his heart that Ianto was dead. They were all dead because was too stupid to piece it all together in time.

'Ianto swears he saw Tosh still in bed when he left and we locked it down.'

'He saw something in the bed. God it’s so dark down there he couldn’t tell. That little bathroom break was too good an opportunity to pass up.'

'The running water. He would have heard it.'

'Not if it was on low. Just enough that she’d drown before the chloroform wore off.'

'But... why?' That was the burning question. Why had she done all this?

'You lot treat this city like you own it. We’re all sick of it. Everyone keeps saying that someone needs to do something about it. Well, I did. Torchwood is dead.'

'It’s not dead,' Jack growled. 'I’m still here, and you can’t kill me. Not ever.'

'True,' she admitted, 'but I can leave you locked up here, and with no one else left who knows you’re here, or who has access to your hub... How long a time is forever, Jack?'

Jack pressed harder against the door, but knowing it was built strong enough to hold a weevil. 'Don’t do this, Kathy. You’re making a huge mistake. Please.'

'It’s going to be so nice going into work tomorrow and knowing that you won’t ever interfere with another crime scene ever again.'

'You can’t get out,' Jack said. 'The hub is still locked down.'

She waggled his wrist strap in her hand. 'I have this, now. Bet it overrides other things, too. Bye, Jack.'

'No, don’t leave. No!'



In front of his eyes, flashed the words "Game Over."

'Dammit!' he cried, hearing the door unlock, Detective Swanson standing there in front of him.

'That’s it?' she asked, seeing the same words on her own visual display. 'I think you just lost.'

He looked at her for a minute and then dashed across to release the door opposite, kneeling down beside Ianto who had failed to get up. Behind him, Owen, Gwen and Tosh appeared in the doorway.

'What the hell did you do to him?' Jack asked.

'Relax, Harkness,' Owen said. 'It’s just a sedative. Lowest possible dose. Wear off in no time.'

'Ianto?' Jack called out, stroking his face as he slowly came to.

His eyes fluttered and he looked up at Jack. 'You were the murderer.'

Jack grinned. 'Nope, not me,' he said, looking up at Detective Swanson.

'Oh.' Then he turned to face Owen. 'I can’t believe you used real gas!'

'It was a low dose, Teaboy. Quit your whinging.'

He struggled up with Jack’s help, still a little wobbly. 'I was perfectly capable of acting out my own demise.'

'Sure you were, but the instructions said "fill cell with theatre smoke". I was just trying it make it more realistic.'

'I should put you on decaf. Now I’ve missed all the exciting whodunit reveal. That’s the best part.'

'I’ll fill you in later, once you’ve made us some coffee,' Jack promised. He reached into his eyes and slipped out the tiny contact lenses, as the others did the same.

'That was a lot scarier than any murder mystery party I’ve ever been to,' Kathy said.

'That’s the idea,' Jack replied. 'These babies delve into your memory banks and combine the collective data from everyone playing to construct the most realistic scenario possible. I have to admit though, I wasn’t expecting the multiple murders.'

'I still don’t know why I had to be the first to die,' Gwen said.

'It’s like she said,' Owen replied, 'You were the one that went down there to try and solve the mystery. You had to be taken out first to cast suspicion on everyone else.'

'You could’ve been more upset,' she said, scolding Jack.

'Hey,' he said, putting his hands up in his own defence. 'It told me not to act overly upset. You know I would have put on the waterworks if it said so.'

Most of their reactions were natural, but every now and then, for the sake of the game, they’d been prompted to act one way or another, and to use the scripting provided by the neural interface, blending their own words and actions seamlessly.

'Still annoyed that I didn’t put up more of a fight,' Owen said. 'Clapped out by a copper. I was worried when it said Gwen had to lock me in the cryo-chamber. I thought she might freeze me accidentally. Must’ve been lying in there for at least an hour before you lot decided to come look for me. Could’ve had a nap if I’d known.'

'If I did freeze you, it wouldn’t be accidental, Owen,' Gwen replied.

Tosh pinched Owen hard on the arm. 'Ow! What was that for?'

'You could’ve warned me. That scream was genuine. And at least you weren’t lying in a bathtub full of water. It wasn’t even all that warm. Sorry about the water all over the floor, but the way. I mopped up as much as I could after you left.'

'Thanks, Tosh,' Jack said, knowing Ianto would fuss over it later.

'I felt like I was stuck in an Agatha Christie novel,' Ianto added. 'The message on the mirror freaked me out a bit.'

'The device probably took some of those memories and wove them into the mystery,' Jack said. He’d read a few of them himself. That one was particularly creepy. 'Always wanted to meet her.'

Ianto dusted himself off. 'You know, right up until the end there I was really starting to think I was the murderer.'

'I was getting scared you were the murderer,' Jack said, wrapping an arm around him. 'Should’ve known you were innocent.'

'As the driven snow.'

'So glad you could make it, Kathy,' Jack said. 'It really wouldn’t have been the same without you. You certainly added your own unique ending to the game. Maybe next time we play, Torchwood will solve the murder before we all end up dead.'

'I had fun,' she admitted, handing him back his vortex manipulator, which he happily strapped back in place. 'Just so long as I never have to come here and do this for real.'

Jack grinned. 'No promises, but we’ll do our best. Just so long as you promise not to kill us off again.'

'Stay out of my crime scenes and we shouldn’t have a problem.'