Torchwood: Fanfic: One word answer

[m_findlow]

Title: One word answer

Fandom: Torchwood

Characters: Ianto, Gwen, Jack

Author: m_findlow

Rating: PG

Length: 2,262 words

Content notes: none

Author notes: Written for Challenge 293 - Circle

Summary: Jack has given Gwen a strange lead on a cold case.

Gwen noticed the tiny smirk play across Ianto's face as he approached her. 'That is not the look of someone who is having a good day,' he remarked as he passed by Gwen's desk, his tablet in one hand and the matching stylus pen in the other.

Gwen groaned out her frustration, happy to be able to finally verbalise some of it, exorcising it from her system. 'I have been working on this cold case file for the last four hours and I'm no nearer to figuring out where to go with it.'

'That's kind of the nature of a cold case, is it? If they were easy to solve, we'd have solved them already.'

'Yeah, but...'

His eyebrow curved up in curiosity at the statement. 'But?'

She turned around in her chair to face him, pressing her hands together between her thighs. 'Okay, so it's weird. I left the file with Jack last night, just in case he wanted to take another look at it and add anything from his recollection.' Gwen knew what Jack was like. Always a story about something, usually told at a totally inappropriate time, but occasionally - just occasionally - he managed to make mention of something about an old case that turned out to be useful, even if he thought it was just a throwaway comment.

'Assuming he was around at the time,' Ianto countered. 'Has hasn't always been quite as diligent and hands on at Torchwood back then as he is now. I believe the term "consistently inconsistent" was used in several employment files.'

'And I get that.' Jack's history with Torchwood was somewhat chequered and definitely inconsistent the further back you went.

'So... The weird bit?'

She twirled back around and grabbed the file, flipping it open on her lap and then turning it upside down so Ianto could see it more clearly. 'When I came in this morning the file was back on my desk. When I checked it, look at this top page from the incident witness statement.'

Ianto set his tablet down on the desk and bent over to peer more closely at the small word processor typeface. 'Diptych?' he said, focusing on the one word on the page that had been circled in blue pen. 'I thought this case was one of those strange lights and spooky noises things?'

'It is. And I mean, yes, the person who reported the case back in nineteen ninety was a local priest at the church where it happened, so perhaps it was just a strange choice of words to describe what he was researching at the time, but then, why flag it? What does it have to do with the case? I can't imagine looking up something in a dusty old book causes people to see and hear things.'

'Just extraneous detail,' Ianto said. 'And there was nothing else? No other notes?'

Gwen just shook her head. 'Nothing. I came back and the file was just here. When I flipped open to the first page it was right there, circled. I've checked the rest of the file but there's no other bits highlighted. I tracked back to his office, but there's no post it notes dropped off. This is literally all he's left me.'

Ianto scrutinised the file again, looking for anything else. Cold cases however were Gwen's domain for the most part, only bringing the others in once she had a solid lead. 'It's not much to go on,' he finally said.

'One word? That's not much, Ianto. That's nothing.'

She could tell from his expression that he was restraining himself from saying something smart in response. 'And he didn't say anything?'

'I don't even know where he is. Do you?'

'Nope.'

'I tried calling him but, you know, it's Jack. Only answer when it suits him. All part of maintaining that air of the enigmatic. Which is all bollocks, by the way.'

Ianto smirked. 'Preaching to the converted.' He scratched the back of his head, clearly pondering over the conundrum. 'Well, Jack isn't exactly famous for his clear instructions. Sometimes it takes seven degrees of Kevin Bacon to reason out his thought process.'

'Seventeen more like,' Gwen agreed. She ran a hand through her own hair. 'I dunno.'

'Well, it's a start I guess. Vague and broad reaching, but I'm sure if we broke it down into a couple of different types of searches we might get a lead. There weren't any relics stored in that church, were there?'

She shook her head. 'No. It's a basic congregational hall, but no historical artifacts of any kind stored there. Just a bunch of books.'

'I don't suppose the books are still there?'

Gwen gave him a tired look. 'You're asking me to go down there and check aren't you?'

'Well, it is a cold case and it is a lead. I would have thought you'd be chomping at the bit to get out and go poke around.'

Knocking on doors and asking questions was one thing, poring over dusty old tomes was really more Ianto's thing, which gave her an idea. She sighed. 'Fine, but if I'm going down there you're coming with me.'

He sighed back. 'I knew there'd be a catch.'



It wasn't exactly simple to go down there and explain that they wanted to see the church's collection of books. Churches were funny about having the general public touch their precious literary works. They didn't look particularly religious, nor did they look like theologians or philosophers doing research. Gwen ended up coming clean for their reason in being there though she twisted it around, convincing the local pastor that they were journalists for a prominent magazine, wanting to disprove claims that what the priest had witnessed wasn't an act of God, and that they were also particularly interested in the religious significance of diptychs. Reluctantly the pastor narrowed his eyes at them but agreed, on the proviso that they were extremely careful in reviewing the books which were now historically significant items of the church and quite fragile. And also not before reminding them that proving God existed was a fallacy in itself because true faith didn't require proof.

They both took their lecture as humbly as possible, before being lead to a small office space at the back of the church where the collective on was kept in a room along with more modern conveniences - a desk, computer and fax macchine - for the church's running and administration. The pastor made a fuss of clearing the desk and setting out a selection of books for them, adding pairs of cloth gloves and strict instructions on how to turn the pages and use the woven book snakes to hold pages open. Finally satisfied that they were suitably instructed, he left them to it.

After two hours of painstakingly turning pages and squinting at anarchic script flowing across each page, Gwen thought her eyes might explode out of her head. It wasn't until Ianto stood up to retrieve another volume off the shelf that she realised she'd been staring right through the page and half daydreaming for quite some time. She reached up to massage her aching neck. 'I'm not having any luck, Ianto. You?'

He set the new book down on the desk, the fingers of his gloves no longer pristine white, but rather grey from the accumulated dust. 'I used to get bored doing religious instruction at school. And now my head is stuffed full of medieval language to the point where some of what they've written actually makes sense the first time I read it instead of the third time. Thank God at least, pardon the pun, it isn't all written in Welsh.'

She had to admit the language was wordy and intricate. She was sure half of it was going straight over her head and she was still only trying to skim the contents of the books for any references to diptychs. The pastor had been of only mild help, narrowing the collection down to about two dozen thick manuscripts, before going on to say he hadn't read half of them so couldn't be sure which other volumes might be of use. Diptychs were not an area of study for most clerics.

'You don't suppose they were hiding one here, do you?' Gwen asked, beginning to wonder if what had caused the strange events two decades ago had been tucked away all along, either unknowingly or intentionally.

Ianto gave her a skeptical look. 'I don't think we're dealing with the da Vinci code here. Highly religious they might be, but at the end of the day they were still Welsh. I doubt they'd bother with the complication.'

Gwen tended to agree with him. It did sound a little bit too cloak and dagger. 'Maybe we're barking up the wrong tree. If Jack thought there was something here, wouldn't he have just said so? Or more likely, he would have just gotten in the SUV and come down here himself, pulling apart the walls and floors to find it.'

'It's a fair point. So, where does that leave us?'

Gwen shut the book in front of her with some reluctance. 'Back at the hub, I suppose. Check the archives, look for anything that might be conceivably related to a diptych or other engraved panel.'

'It's not like the archives were in that good a shape twenty years ago. They might have easily missed something.'

The thought encouraged Gwen. 'Anything off the top of your head?'

Ianto frowned at her. 'Do you know how many artifacts I've classified and catalogued over the ears? There's only so much a photographic memory can store.'

'So, that's a no.'

'That's a "let's go back to the hub and run some proper search criteria".'



They stopped briefly for coffee and a sandwich, realising that it was not only well past lunch but dinner as well, before making a list of possible search terms. They started with the most obvious and branching out from there, trying to come up with as many related search criteria as possible that they could throw into their archive database, hoping for some results. Ianto was right. The archives were huge. There were literally thousands of investigation reports and tens of thousands of artifacts m though despite their thorough sweep of search terms, they produced very little in tangible results - just enough to fill two boxes - and nothing that made them any wiser as to what had caused a local priest from Adamstown to witness what he called a divine visitation.

'I know now why this ended up in our cold case files,' Ianto remarked, setting yet another dead end mission report in a box is similar documents. It was a short case file from 1952 on a strange wooden plaque that had exploded before anyone could make heads or tails of it. There wasn't even so much as a photo of it, let alone any speculation on what it had been or what its purpose was. All the file contained was one throwaway comment that it resembled in appearance the sort of religious artifacts that had been coveted by the church, and might therefore other diptychs be of similar aliem origin. The report was largely inconclusive on the matter.

'It feels like we're going around in circles,' Gwen replied. 'Maybe it has nothing to do with the case at all. For all we know, the priest might have been helping himself to a little of the sacrificial wine and imagined it all.'

Ianto tapped distractedly on the keyboard, leant back in his chair as he pondered the mystery. 'And no one else has ever reported anything similar happening at that church?'

'Or any other in the area,' Gwen said, having run down that particular rabbit hole earlier that morning.

'Maybe he really was visited by God.'

Gwen scoffed. 'You don't seriously believe that, do you?'

He shrugged at her. 'I didn't used to believe in aliens, so what do I know?'

Gwen flopped back in the own chair, staring halfway through the large pile of archival material they'd dredged up from a century and a half of Torchwood operations. 'I think maybe this cold case is going to have to stay that way, at least for now.'

The sound of the cogwheel door alarms blared out, making them both jump slightly at the suddenness of the sound in the otherwise quiet hub. A familiar figure swept through the door, long greatcoat bellowing out behind him. 'Hey guys! Long time no see!'

'Oh, there's timing,' Gwen quipped, folding her arms across her chest. 'Turn up once all the work is done as usual.'

Jack frowned at them, taking in the mess on Ianto's desk. 'What's all this?'

Gwen held up her original filefile, raising an eyebrow at him. 'Your little tip on my cold case?'

The furrows on Jack's brow grew deeper. 'What tip?'

'You circled the word diptych. It might have been nice if you'd been a little more specific as to how that was meant to help us solve this cold case file. We've spent all day trying to dredge up anything we can.'

Jack's expression turned from confusion to surprise. 'You thought that was supposed to mean something?'

'Wasn't it? Why the hell else would you circle the word unless it was of some significance?'

'It was the answer to the last word on my cryptic crossword puzzle. I've been trying to nut out the answer for days. I thought was was going to die not knowing.'

Comments

[badly_knitted]

*headdesk* Thanks for that Jack! You may well find yourself sleeping alone tonight. I doubt either of your colleagues are going to be too happy you've had them running in circles all day for no reason!

[m_findlow]

I don't think he realised how innocent a thing it was and how diligent his team would be in exhausting that lead to its final conclusion. Oops.