Guy Adams - The House That Jack Built - The House That Jack Built

To my wonderful Debra,

who always reassures me I can write

when I'm quite convinced I can't.

Nothing seemed more important to Danny Wilkinson that afternoon than the spikiness of his fringe. He wanted it to loom . Doused in Hugo Boss aftershave (stolen from his older brother), he hoped the two bent — but smokable — fags in his back pocket would be the clincher, the carrot at the end of a stick that might lure Amy Woodyatt's lips onto his. Play his cards right and he might even get the top of her jeans loose enough for a little investigation.

Penylan didn't look as if it shared his enthusiasm, cold and austere, the architectural embodiment of 'don't do this' and 'don't do that'. The Edwardian terraces looked disapprovingly down their gables at him as he crossed towards Roath Park. Perhaps they knew who he was meeting; certainly his parents didn't or they would never have let him out of the house. Josh Biggs was on every Penylan parent's 'forbidden list' after being caught selling weed in the playground of St Teilo's a couple of weeks back.

A chill breeze pulled its way through the remaining leaves on the trees. Danny kicked a pebble along the surface of the road, scuffing his soles in the grit and dancing with the pretend football. He flicked it up and belted it hard, dreaming of roaring stadium terraces. The pebble flew, clipping a few stray privet leaves from a garden hedge before knocking its way through the streaked glass of the window behind it.

'Bollocks…' Danny whispered, about to run until he realised the house was empty. Nobody had lived at Jackson Leaves for months. He and Josh had watched an ambulance crew carry an old woman out of its front door ages ago. They had noted every detail: the blue-veined milk of her loose skin, the faint condensation on the inside of the oxygen mask. Death about to happen. He doubted she was in a position to care about her window any more.

This street held only big, detached houses, all set back from the road with the sort of private parking area rich mothers left luxurious four-by-fours on. Jackson Leaves was letting the side down though, being long past its presentable best. The hedge was overgrown, the gravel forecourt peppered with weeds, jagged dandelion leaves and creeping thistles. Cobwebs fluttered like curtains from the wooden eaves. The windows were dirty, as blind as the old woman had seemed when lifted into the back of the ambulance.

Danny stared at it from across the street, taking a small amount of pride in the black bullet hole the pebble had left in the front, downstairs window. Not a bad shot… not a bad shot at all. Somewhere a radio was playing loud, jolly rhythms, trying to convince the streets towards cheerfulness and failing.

Heading towards the park, he fell as his foot was suddenly yanked out from underneath him. He got his hands up in time to stop his chin colliding with the tarmac but gave a shout of pain as he felt loose grit cut into his palms.

Carefully pushing himself up, he gave another cry as his right hand burst through the surface of the pavement, vanishing up to the elbow.

The ground beneath him bubbled, the surface of the pavement gripping the toes of his trainers as if the tarmac were freshly poured. He pulled at his trapped hand, but the pavement clung to him like syrup. Stuck on all fours, he began to sink.

His mum had told him the story of Br'er Rabbit and the Tar-Baby when he was little. He had been terrified, picturing the glistening man made of tar that Br'er Rabbit had fought, the animal becoming more and more glued to his opponent with every blow. It had given him nightmares for weeks, dreams of a hot, black embrace and steaming mouths lowering down onto his…

He shouted for help, tipping his head back and bellowing even as the tarmac gave up all pretence of solidity and sucked him straight down. The shout was cut off in his throat as the ground suddenly hardened again, his teeth slamming onto solid pavement in splinters of enamel. He couldn't cry out at the pain, the earth and rubble in his throat choked all hope of that. Nothing could get past it, most certainly not air.

It took him longer than he might have liked to die.

'What do you think? Green or pink?'

Rhys realised Gwen was talking and, more than that, she had asked an important question that he had no idea how to answer. 'The first one,' he gambled, 'it's much more…' And there he ran out of steam. '… Nice ,' he tried.

'Fat lot of use you are.'

Gwen smiled. H amp;M was like Kryptonite to Rhys; he'd slip into a coma if forced to stand outside its changing rooms for more than five minutes. 'Why don't you go and look at DVDs next door?' she suggested. 'If you hang around here any longer you'll probably die of boredom.'

'I don't mind,' Rhys replied, trying not to stare at the posters of the underwear models.

Gwen pushed him gently towards the exit.

'I'll survive on my own. Go on.'

'Aye, right.' He gave her a peck on the cheek and headed towards the exit, throwing the occasional worried glance at clothing as he passed, as if concerned it might bite him. He passed a pregnant woman laden down with clothes and found himself imagining Gwen with a similar bulge. He smiled. Most of his mates had predictable fantasies about their partners in kinky underwear or lesbian trysts; he pictured Gwen the size of a house and cursing his name as she went in to labour. He was a soppy sod sometimes.

Gwen walked back into the changing room, tugging the green top to get it to sit right. Spotting the pregnant lady's reflection shuffle its way into one of the changing cubicles behind her, her response was a world away from Rhys's, remembering the arguments she'd had with him on the subject. Torchwood and breeding just weren't the best of bedfellows. Not that she would be so opposed to it otherwise — she could easily see herself bringing up a child with Rhys, he'd make an excellent father. Still, balancing a life of babies and alien invasions? No… no thanks.

The pregnant woman grunted and an elbow ballooned the cubicle curtain as she struggled to move in the confined space. A blouse fell to the floor by the woman's feet. Nice, Gwen thought, very fitted… Sexy.

Fitted .

The woman bent over, grabbed the blouse and stood back up. There was the sound of more struggling before she suddenly yanked back the curtain and stormed out, looking for all the world as if she'd lost her temper and given up on the idea of clothes shopping. Gwen didn't believe it for a moment. She was still wondering why a pregnant woman would take a blouse into the changing room that she could never possibly wear.

She ran out of the changing room and onto the shop floor, chasing after the woman's retreating head and shoulders. She was making straight for the exit.

'Oi!' One of the girls behind the till shouted as Gwen left the shop and ran into the arcade. The woman she was chasing turned around on hearing the shout, and the look on her face was more than enough to convince Gwen that her instinct had been right. She launched herself at her, the pair of them hitting the floor with shoppers panicking around them.

'Bloody hell!' she heard someone shout. 'Get the mad bitch off her!'

Oh yeah, jumping on pregnant women… not a crowd pleaser that. She made a grab for the woman's bloated belly as hands gripped her by the shoulders. There was the tearing of fabric, and a bundle of carefully wrapped clothes spilled onto the floor. The woman's pregnant belly was a tightly stuffed pouch of stolen clothes.

'Now if I'd done that the papers would have been giving my knackers away as a Sunday supplement.' Gwen smiled when she saw who had grabbed her: her old police partner Andy Davidson.