Title: Open and shut case
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 4,030 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Written for Challenge 494 - Brilliant
Summary: Ianto thought he could tackle a simple cold case on his own.


Ianto pulled his car up in the gravel driveway and peered out the side window. ‘Pretty grim looking place,’ he muttered. ‘It could certainly do with a bit more than a lick of paint.’

The house was situated at the end of a long winding Road on the outskirts of town in a part of Cardiff that Ianto would have described as “not the best neighbourhood.” And he thought Splott was bad. This was next level. Maybe it didn't have all of vigilante twenty-somethings and the rat bag teenagers selling fags and trying to knock off cars, but it had a sort of abandoned veneer of neglect that was somehow all together worse. Places like this didn't get visitors, even the undesirable kind.

He sat in the car for a few minutes, just taking in the sight of the falling down ramshackle house from the safety of his car. He was looking for any signs of life or movement on the property. There were no lights coming from any of the windows and no twitching of curtains indicating someone was watching him from inside. Nobody was rummaging through bins that lay abandoned along the side of the house.

‘TripAdvisor gives this place one star,’ Ianto told himself. It was the kind of sarcastic comment that he used to make himself feel a little bit more confident about what he was going to do. Finally, he plucked up the courage to leave the safety of his car, pushing open the door and shutting it quietly behind him before crunching along the gravel up to the front door.

He gave the door handle a little jiggle, finding it locked and that he shouldn't really feel surprised at that fact. Ianto reached into his suit jacket pocket, extracting a small kit of lock picks and going to work on the lock. He was getting better at picking locks, getting in a lot of practice in his current line of work. At least something good had come of the less than respectable skills his Dad had taught him. Not that he thought his Dad would be proud of that fact now, he thought. It had been incredibly hard to please his old man, which was saying something given the way he lost his job and descended into a drunken stupor on a permanent basis.

‘I'm sure this is a complete waste of time,’ Ianto said as the lock finally gave way and he slipped the picks back into the small leather pouch and into his jacket pocket. Just another one of those silly cold case files he'd managed to find down in the archives that piqued his attention. He couldn't help himself though, coming here to investigate things even if he thought it was a long shot. At least it wouldn’t take him very long, he decided. Ten minutes of poking about this silly old house and then he could finally write off the case as closed, file it away and forget about it forever.

There was clearly a reason why the house at the end of the street was abandoned. Even the squatters didn't want to occupy. There were too many stories of strange goings on within the walls of the house. Not that he believed in ghosts or any silly nonsense like that. Calling it ghosts was like calling something you didn't understand magic. It was just a convenient excuse to explain away the unexplainable. and Ianto wanted an explanation for everything. It simply wasn't in his nature to let things go without a proper investigation. He’d probably caught that particular habit from Gwen. She was like a dog with a bone when it came to things like this, yet he hadn't bothered to invite her along. She saw little enough of her house and her husband as it was. He didn't want to take whatever small hours she might have at home away from her. This was all going to be totally pointless anyway, he decided. She’d have only laughed at him and said he was mad wanting to come out here in the middle of the night to investigate a falling down house.

And it was falling down, Ianto thought as he heard the floorboards creak underneath his shoes, threatening to give way through age, neglect and probably more than a few termites. If he didn't break an ankle putting his foot through the floorboards, he’d consider it a good night.

There had been numerous reports of strange things in the case files on the house. Though they were over thirty years old now, the house continued to retain those same qualities in odd police reports that had been filed over the years by disgruntled neighbours in the street, and those that dared to walk their dogs all the way to the end of the street, where it met with the local forest beyond. There were rumours that the place shifted and things moved about inside it, flying furniture and the like. Some people said that they heard voices in their head when they stepped over the threshold, like there was some sort of neural interface that kicked in the moment you walked in. That was the technical alien device explanation for it, anyway. Most people just said it was plain old haunted. There are any one of a number of explanations for it, Ianto thought, pulling a flashlight from his pocket and switching it on as it tried to pierce through the gathering dust in the air, setting a beam of white light reflecting off abandoned furniture, rotting carpet and disintegrating curtains.

No wonder the squatters don’t even want to occupy this place, he thought. It was even beneath their standards. Urgh, Ianto groaned as he copped a face full of cobweb, trying to move down the hallway towards the kitchen. Well at least there was something that wasn't afraid to occupy the place, he decided. Spiders galore. Jack would have absolutely loved this, not. For a man who had no qualms about being stabbed through the chest by an alien sword arm, it seemed almost laughable that the thing that could undo mighty brave Captain Jack Harkness was a small eight-legged black insect. Yep, he thought, it had definitely been a good idea to not invite Jack along to check out the place. The last thing Ianto needed was Jack's histrionics as he complained about creepy crawlies and spiderwebs.

‘Hello?’ Ianto called out through the empty house, not that he thought there was anyone here, but it never hurt just to give it the old double check just to be sure. Naturally he didn't get any response to his calling out. There wasn't a sound in the house except for the creak of the floorboards underneath him trying to bear his weight.

‘Nothing in the kitchen,’ he said, pulling open a drawer and finding rusting cutlery inside along with an egg whisk, a few wooden spoons and something that looked like it might once have piped icing. There were still mugs and plates in some of the cupboards, the gas stove that didn't look like it had cooked a meal in thirty years, and a refrigerator which was unplugged at the wall and which he dared not open in case he found the mouldering remains of food in there, enough to turn his stomach inside out.

He moved further around the house, checking out bedrooms, peering into wardrobes, inspecting the bathroom and the toilet that had no water left in it. How had no one decided just to bulldoze this place and sell it off, or at least put a new house on it, he wondered. He couldn't find any property ownership records for the place. like nobody wanted to admit that it was their problem and they didn't know what to do with it.

He walked down a cobweb riddled hallway towards the back of the house, finding the door that let out the backyard and the forest beyond. Next to it however was a second door. Curiously he pulled it open and found a set of concrete steps. Ah, he said. So you have a basement cellar? Bet there's nothing creepy down there, he said, amusing himself with these own little jokes. There’d been nothing in the rest of the house, certainly no creepy noises or flying furniture. He didn't have any voices in his head saying “don't go down to the basement…” This really had been a waste of time he decided, but he was the thorough type so he went down the stairs and decided he would take one very quick look around.

The basement was everything he’d expected and less, nothing more than a place to stash all the things people didn't want to see scattered through the rest of their house. Tatty boxes with rotting clothes in them, a toolbox with a hammer and some nails that were so rusted that they all clung to one another in a giant metallic oxidized heap, and one broken kitchen chair that only had three good legs and wasn't about to offer anybody a nice sit down. ‘Really glad I didn't invite Gwen to come along,’ he said, knowing how she probably would have laughed and teased him for at least a week, mocking him about the spooky, not at all haunted, house that he’d insisted they check out.

‘And to think I could have been tucked up at home watching Poirot,’ he said. The reason no one had ever found anything here to substantiate all of the silly reports was very clear to him now. There just wasn't anything. Surely somebody could have written that much in their case notes and left the case closed rather than leaving it hanging around gathering dust in the archives for him to find and waste the entire evening on. He would even bother mentioning this to Jack and Gwen.

‘Complete waste of time,’ he muttered. He heaved a sigh and turned on his heel and made his way back up the concrete steps. The door, which he left open at the top of the stairs, had somehow fallen shut. Then again, it was just an old house and maybe the door was heavy and had a tendency to swing back on itself, doing what gravity did best. He grabbed for the handle and went to push it open except the door didn't budge. ‘What?’ He jiggled the handle much more firmly this time, causing it to rattle in the door frame but it didn’t budge an inch. It definitely hadn't clicked all the way shut on his way down, he knew that much. He forced the door much more, leaning the whole weight of his shoulder into it trying to nudge it back open but the thing just wouldn't budge.

‘Damn!’ he swore. ‘Damn, damn, damn!’ He shoulder-charged the door again, even harder than before, but it held firm despite the ricketiness of the rest of the house as it shook around it. ‘Why won't you open?’ he demanded, yelling his frustration at it. He thumped his fist on it and yelled through it. ‘Hello? Is there someone there? Open this door!’ He was becoming less and less confident that the door had just accidentally shut itself and that someone had been waiting for this perfect moment, locking him in. Maybe some of those rumours about this house really were true.

‘Oi!’ He yelled through the door, now convinced there must have been someone on the other side. ‘Open this bloody door!’ When there was no response, and no sound except all the ruckus he was making himself, he felt silent on the other side straining for the sound of anything at all – a voice, heavy breathing, footsteps, perhaps the cackling evil laugh of someone who thought they'd set the perfect trap for him.

‘Well this was a brilliant idea, wasn't it? Come investigate a house and get locked in the basement. If that isn't par for the course, I don't know what is.’ He gave the door handle another forceful jiggle, another shoulder charge, but it was stuck hard he wasn't going anywhere. Great. Now he was going to have to admit to Jack and Gwen that he’d managed to get himself locked into a supposedly not haunted house.

Pulling his phone out of his pocket he activated the screen which was so bright in the darkness that it nearly blinded him, and saw with no small amount of irony that he had zero reception. ‘Things just keep getting better and better,’ he said. He marched back down the stairs, flicking his torch in every which direction, searching for some other way out, until he finally spotted the tiny window that sat just above ground level. It was at least six feet up and so small that there was never any way that he was going to be able to crawl out through it. He shone his torch light up through the window, noticing on the other side a nice thicket of blackberries there making sure that the window couldn't be seen and intruders couldn't invade. ‘Well, at least you won't starve down here, Jones,’ he told himself. ‘If you can reach up to that window and smash through it you'll at least be able to eat some blackberries to keep you going. Is it blackberry season?’ Ianto didn't actually know. What chance that it just happened to be the right time of year for blackberries?

He hummed in frustration. ‘Funny!’ he called out, assuming somebody was listening to him and perhaps watching him from some hidden camera in the basement. ‘Nice joke. Can you let me out now please? Only see, I'm not your average Joe,’ he explained. I'm a secret agent and I usually carry a gun. I'm not the sort of person you want to prank ‘

This was why they never went to investigate anything on their own, he told himself. It wasn't a good idea to go anywhere without backup if you didn't know what you were walking into. How many times had he told Jack that very same thing? But then again, Jack was always going off on his own and getting into trouble. The difference was Jack couldn't die. Nothing could really trouble him, so to speak. Of course, if he was stuck down here like this it wouldn’t matter whether or not starvation would end up killing him. He’d just come back again but he’d still be stuck in here all the same.

What a stupid idea this had been. He should have swallowed his pride and dragged Gwen along with him. Then again, would it have made any difference if the two of them were stuck down here, except for the fact that they would have had company, and there was a chance that Gwen might have fit through the tiny window as well, or at least she would have given a decent go.

Ianto picked up the broken chair and inspected the dodgy leg on it again, wondering if there was any way to sit on it before giving it up as a bad idea. That broken leg was definitely dodgy and the moment he tried to sit on it he'd be on his ass in the dust on the floor. He satisfied himself instead by crouching on a box that looked so full of bits and bobs that it would probably take his weight. ‘Well, this is another fine mess you've got yourself into,’ he told himself, wondering if he should turn off his torch light to spare the battery. He might need it later. or at any point over the next few days and weeks. Did he really think he was going to be here for days and weeks? Jack and Gwen would know he was gone the next day. And he knew them. They would stop tearing the city apart until they found him. The only problem was he hadn't told anyone where it was going or what he was doing. But they’d find him. Eventually. Hopefully before he died of starvation or a lack of water.

He sat on the box, straining his ears for any noise at all. He almost imagined he was seconds away from the voices invading his head, inanimate objects beginning to dance around his head as they took flight. Would it scare him, or would he just try and explain it away with his rational mind? Something had locked him down here and he was kicking himself for his own stupidity. Who went and investigated a haunted house on their own? This was the very kind of thing that Torchwood had taught him to tag team on.

It would be fine, he told himself. He could wait it out until morning when it was light enough to have a better sense of what was going on, able to see everything in the room. Of course, that was assuming someone let him survive until morning – not that he'd heard of anyone being murdered in the house by all reports, but there was a first time for everything. If someone thought they were going to frighten him, they were doing a very bad job of it. Ianto didn't like being threatened. He liked being locked in dirty disgusting basements even less

‘I fight Weevils for a living,’ he called, out assuming anyone was listening. ‘You have no idea how bad arse I can be.’ Of course he didn't feel very bad arse right now, sitting here sulking on a manky box in a dark basement. Not one of his finest moments.

Ianto checked his phone again, still no reception, and the battery was slowly draining down. Another two hours maybe and then it would be dead. Any chance he had of contacting Jack or Gwen would go out the window. He switched it off to preserve the battery just in case there might be a chance to get reception later but it was no good if the phone was dead by that time.

Ianto leaned back against the exposed brick wall, still berating his own stupidity at having gone here on his own thinking there was absolutely no reason to be concerned. At least the creepy ghost noises hadn't started up. ‘There's no such thing as ghosts,’ he told himself loudly. ‘Just silly people who believe in silly things.’ Ianto believed in lots of things, but that was because he'd seen them with his own eyes and not because he'd merely imagined that they were possible.

The loud noise of footsteps caught him by surprise, not realizing that he’d finally dozed off against the wall in all the hours since he’d first become trapped down here, still in the pitch black of night. This was it, he thought. This was when all the creepy stuff started up and the ghosts made themselves known to him. They were ready to talk to him now, messing with his head until he begged for mercy. He grabbed his flashlight and gripped it hard in his fist, readying it like a weapon in case he needed to defend himself.

The footsteps were getting louder and closer and then the door at the top of the stairs began to rattle. It banged as it flung open on its hinges thudding against the wall. Heavy footsteps march down the stairs towards him.

‘Get back!’ Ianto yelled, lofting the torch above his head ready to strike. ‘Get back, you monsters!’ he cried, mentally preparing himself for anything that might come out of the darkness towards him. A brilliant flash of light nearly blinded him as torchlight hit him in the face forcing him to raise his own hand against his face to shy away. ‘Jesus,’ he cried, intense light burning his retina.

‘There you are,’ Jack said, lowering the torch.

‘Jack?’ Ianto said, coming to his senses and recognising the deep American twang of his boss's voice.

‘The one and only.’

‘But how did you… What are you doing here?’ Ianto asked, feeling slightly confused wondering if this was all part of the game that the ghosts were playing with him, conjuring up a fake version of Jack to torture him with. ‘Are you real?’

Jack frowned. ‘Of course I'm real. What were you expecting? ’
Ianto reached out a hand, grabbing Jack's coat sleeve and giving it a squeeze. It certainly felt real, if nothing else. Or maybe that was part of the mind games as well. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked again.

‘I came looking for you. You know, if you'd wanted to go out on a date you only had to say so. The real question should be what are you doing here?’

Ianto tried to act rationally and treated the Jack he was speaking to as if he really were the real thing. ‘Was that door locked?’ Ianto asked, pointing up at the stairs that let out of the cellar.

‘No,’ Jack replied. ‘Why would it be locked?’

‘Oh, I don't know,’ Ianto said. ‘Maybe just the fact that I was locked down here for the last umpteen hours?’

‘Seriously?’ Jack asked.

Ianto thumped his arm. ‘Yes, seriously! Do you think I come out here and lock myself in a basement just for fun?’ He was really going to have to start reassessing some of his life choices. ‘I was starting to think I was never going to get out.’

‘Lucky then that I came here to rescue you, then, isn’t it?’

‘How did you find me?’

Jack shrugged as if it were obvious. ‘I went through your IT logs.’

‘And in going through my IT logs you somehow found a reference to a place that I looked up three weeks ago and decided that that was absolutely the number one place to start looking?’ Even he didn’t believe that was plausible logic.

‘Well, there was that, and then there was also the trackers in your phone and your car that kind of gave it away.

Ianto blinked. ‘The tracker in my… You put a tracker in my phone?’

‘Only about a year ago,’ Jack replied. ‘I don't know why you're getting so upset about it now.’

Bloody Jack, Ianto thought. Of course he put a tracker in all their phones. He knew about the one in his car but this was next level surveillance. It was surprising Jack hadn’t insisted on microchipping him.
He supposed he should be grateful for that. Otherwise god knew when anyone might have ever found him down here. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘Anytime,’ Jack said, giving Ianto one of his trademark grins. ‘But let’s be clear. There’s a reason why we have a rule about going off and checking things out on your own and why that’s not a brilliant idea. As much as I love to be the dashing hero rescuing those in distress…’

‘I wasn't distressed!’ Ianto replied. Moderately annoyed with himself, yes, but he hadn't gone into full panic mode. Not just yet. ‘And you say you’re certain that there's no one else in this house?’

‘No one that I saw,’ Jack replied. ‘And I did search the house pretty thoroughly,’ he added. ‘I was looking for someone after all.’

‘You're sure?’

There is definitely no one around here, I promise you.’

‘Well, the door didn't lock itself,’ Ianto replied. At least he was pretty sure it hadn't. It would have been pretty embarrassing if he'd managed to lock himself in a cellar. There was only so much indignity a Torchwood agent could take.

‘Should we keep looking around?’ Jack asked. ‘Since we've come out all this way? Just so you can be doubly sure and we can put to bed all the rumours of the place being haunted? No doubt you didn't come all this way without packing all the necessary equipment? We could have the whole place rigged up in an hour.’

‘I think my curiosity is well and truly spent for the night,’ Ianto replied. Curiosity is what got him into trouble in the first place. He didn’t need one of Jack’s brilliant ideas getting them into any more trouble.