Torchwood Long Time Dead (15 page)

She'd quite like to bring him back just so she could
put him through it again. If only briefly.

Bored of the silent company, she left the bed
behind and swayed slightly to the music playing
in the background, the CD now a few years out
of date but still soulful. The bedroom curtains
were open and, as night fell outside, her reflection
moved with her on the sliding glass doors, the
edges undefined and the blood that now streaked
on her legs and arms intercut with streams of
watery light from headlights and street lamps and
boats out on the sea, all reaching upwards.

She looked like a ghost in the glass and that
made her smile. Absorbed in her own image, she
moved forward until she was pressed up against
the cool surface. At some point after she'd come
home, she'd stripped to her underwear and started
putting on make-up, smearing red lipstick on and
around her mouth until between that and the
black rings of kohl she'd rubbed under her eyes,
she looked like a strange demented clown. She
stretched her face this way and that and tilted her
head, studying the stranger that looked back.

She was a mad woman, that's what anyone

would think were they to see her. Maybe they
were right. After all, she had no recollection of
painting her face so wildly, and the past few hours
had been something of a haze, but she wasn't
afraid. What was madness anyway, if not simply
a matter of perception? She could shake the
relaxing trance off when she needed to - to feed
the vast existence within her, or to satisfy her own
needs - and she wouldn't question it. She wasn't
entirely human any more, that much she'd come
to realise. Not only was she become
Death
, as the
corpse on the bed could surely testify, but she was
also a living gateway - a portal - to something
else. A place more terrifying than the nothing
she had inhabited. A place that had an insatiable
curiosity about pain and was inhabited by demons
and delights that no human could ever imagine.

Sometimes she was sure she heard the echoes of
screams of those she had sent there. They made
her feel more powerful.

In the distance, the sea was a blanket of night.

Perhaps that's what she was - a ferryman. A
deliverer of the living to Hell.

Hell

She shivered slightly as the haze fell away and
something inside her resonated with the word.

The dimension recognised her thought. It had
heard that word before and it recognised it as its
name. The concept raged in the consciousnesses
she had delivered to it, and the more she sent, the
more clearly sentient it became. The dimension

liked
the name and all the word represented.

Her eyes blackened slightly, and she turned
away from the glass. A small wave of panic
trembled in her stomach but she drew herself up
tall and shook the fear away as she strode towards
the shower. She had become
Death
and now
she held the gateway to an eternity of suffering
within her. She would be the one to decide who
got one fate and who another. How ironic that her
relationship with death had started by trying to
bring people back from it. Now that dream was
gone. This power was so much
more
than that.

Under the glare of the bright lights in the
bathroom, she wiped away the childishly applied
lipstick and eyeliner and refocused on the night
to come. Her hands paused in their work as she
thought about the Detective Inspector. There was
something about him... something that attracted
her. It wasn't that he was overly handsome - he
had that rugged thing going on but he wasn't
exactly Brad Pitt - but she was drawn to him. She
heated up when she looked at him, and it was only
that afternoon when she'd been flirting with him
that she'd realised just how cold she'd been since
this new life began.

She turned the shower on and peeled off her
underwear. She'd have to kill him, of course. She
knew that. He was too dangerous. The Department
might have taken over the case, but Cutler was a
relentless man. He wouldn't stop until he knew who
was killing these people, and she couldn't afford to
have him chasing after her once she left Cardiff.

She couldn't stay here for ever, that had never
been her plan, and soon even the Commander -

stupid old-school gentleman that he was - would
find links back to his new assistant.

Tomorrow her overseas accounts would be

reactivated and she could leave both Sue Costa
and Suzie Costello behind and head to her new
life. She didn't think it was going to turn out
exactly as she'd planned it when she'd put all her
back-ups in place all that time ago - given her
new propensity for killing, she may have to travel
a lot - but she'd always wanted to see more of the
world. She sighed as she stepped under the hot
water. She'd start in Africa somewhere maybe,
somewhere where the sun could beat heat into her.

That would be perfect. Bad policing and beautiful
weather. What more could she want?

She opened her eyes to reach for the shower gel,
and it was only then that she noticed the change.

Her hand froze in mid air for a moment. The red
light beneath her skin had gone. Had it stopped
working? Her heart raced. Would that plunge her
back into the nothing? She took a deep breath. No.

The viewing device was working. She could feel
the vast black pit on the other side of her eyes.

Where had the light gone then? As her breathing
regulated, she grabbed the gel and squirted some
into her hands. There was only one obvious answer.

The device was no longer just on the other side
of her skin. What she'd idly thought the previous
night was right. The device had broken free and
moved further inside her body. She was slightly
surprised at how calm she felt. She had planned to
have the device removed as soon as possible once
she was away, but that might be trickier now,
depending on where it attached itself next. Her
heart? Her liver?

She tipped her head back in the water again.

She could worry about that later. As it was, she was
slightly comforted by knowing that the dimension
needed her as much as she perhaps needed it.

Taking the device out would mean risking going
straight back to nothing if it was purely the alien
technology that was keeping her alive.

As much as most of her now believed that she
had a higher purpose and that she would be fine
without it inside her, there was a very tiny part of
her - that had to be what was left of the old, weak
Suzie Costello who sought everyone's approval
and thought she was worthless - that was still
convinced that Death would claim her if she got
too cocky and thought that perhaps she'd hugely
underestimated the power of the dimension inside
her. It was the same small voice that didn't want
to kill the Detective Inspector. She would, though

- she had no real choice. But, and she smiled and
thought of the body still tied to her bed, there was
no reason for her not to enjoy him first. To get
the attraction out of her system. She rubbed the
shower gel onto her naked body, and as she closed
her eyes again, it was DI Tom Cutler's hands she
was feeling.

It wasn't the sort of party Cutler normally went
to and, although he had too much quiet personal
confidence to feel uncomfortable in the midst of all
of Cardiff's social elite, he did find himself loitering
in the corners of the vast, opulent room and just
grabbing a fresh glass of champagne and a canape
as the trays passed by.

Despite having devoured at least a tray of
various nibbles, his stomach still rumbled. There
had been no time to grab any food after getting back
to the station and then hearing about the fresh
victim, and having to pass all that information
onto the Commander as if he were some kind of
obedient pet bringing a newspaper to his master.

He'd even had to dress up for this occasion, so any
chance he might have had for a quick burger had
been taken up with a shower and digging out a
half-decent suit from the back of the wardrobe. He
also wanted a cigarette.

The police commissioner was in the gathering
somewhere, but Cutler had simply given him a
nod as they passed. He might be the only person
the DI really knew at the party, but he'd rather
skulk around on his own than spend the night
talking to his boss and having to laugh at his
jokes. He scanned the little clusters of men and
women laughing and chattering over their drinks.

He told himself he was just idly people-watching,
but that wasn't the truth. Every time he saw a
flash of brown curls his heart jumped a little.

There was only one person he was interested in
talking to tonight, and that was Sue Costa. He
almost laughed at himself. He was acting like a
teenager with a crush. Or if not a crush, then a
very definite hard-on.

The party at the Town Hall was to celebrate
the financial green light to the redevelopment that
would restore Cardiff Bay to its former glory once
Jackson and his team were done, and as Cutler
strolled around the layout and shining model laid
out on a table in a side room, he felt the strange
lure of the site again. His heart thumped loudly in
his ears. What was it about that place? What was
it trying to tell him? Every time he was there or
saw something related to it, he felt an annoyance
at himself - as if he was being particularly stupid
and not seeing something clearly before him.

'It will be good to have the Bay back to normal,
won't it, Detective?'

Commander Jackson had appeared out of

nowhere, or at least that's how it seemed to Cutler
who'd been staring down at the model, lost in his
own thoughts. He nodded slightly and then frowned
and tilted his head. The water tower is back. They
can get in and out without being seen.'

'What did you say?'

Cutler looked up, surprised. 'I didn't say
anything.'

The Commander stared at him for a moment.

'Yes, you did,' he said, carefully. 'You said
something about the water tower.'

'Did I?' Cutler's brain itched with information
out of his reach, but nothing came to him. 'I liked
the water tower. I just thought they might be
replacing it with something new.'

Jackson continued to stare at him, but just as
he looked as if he might say something more, they
were interrupted.

'Hello, boys.'

She looked stunning, that was Cutler's first
thought. The black dress was fitted to her like a
second skin and he was pretty sure there was no
room for underwear beneath it. It stopped just
above her knee and her coffee-creme legs were
bare down to her shiny high-heeled shoes.

'Looking good,' he said.

'Not so bad yourself, Detective,' Sue Costa
smiled, her dark eyes twinkling playfully. 'I wasn't
sure you owned a decent suit.'

'Oh, there's probably quite a lot you don't know
about me,' he countered. They smiled at each other
as if Elwood Jackson, in his full uniform, wasn't
standing, slightly perplexed, between them.

'Well,' the Commander finally said, 'I'll leave
you two to it. There are members of the press
here, and I don't want them seeing us together for
too long.'

Cutler nodded and so did Sue Costa, but neither
of them looked his way.

'One thing though,' he continued, 'before I go.

I've been trying to get some information on who
that DNA sample belongs to.' That did make
Cutler look up for a second. 'And?'

'Nothing so far. It's very strange. It would
appear that the files relating to whoever it is have
been deleted. I should know some time tomorrow by
whom, but until then, I can't tell you anything.'

Cutler watched him carefully for a second. He
had a good eye for a liar, and although he was
sure the Department could lie with the best of
them, Commander Jackson was an Army man at
heart, not a Department player. If Jackson hadn't
wanted to give him an ID, he'd just have told him
it was classified and he'd deal with it. 'Let's see
what tomorrow brings, then.'

The Commander headed away into the nearest
small group of people, and Cutler wondered if he
felt as out of place amongst the smugly successful
business types and their tennis-playing, socialising
wives and husbands as he did. More so, he
imagined, but the Commander was smiling and
listening intently to a silver-haired, pearl-laden,
pink-lipsticked old dame as if he were born to it.