Sarah Pinborough - Into the Silence

had

killed those boys. Even if he didn't remember any of the murders.'

Jack teased at the damp paper label on his water, peeling it slowly away, ignoring its reluctance to come free. 'You know, some people would argue that he wasn't really that innocent. That entity that invaded him simply acted out his desires. The things that were already longings in his head.'

Cutler shifted on the stool. 'God, I hate this smoking ban. How are you supposed to drink and relax without a bloody cigarette?'

Picking at the edge of the silver square, Jack pulled free a strip of the shiny surface declaring the water's brand, leaving a trace of white undercoat behind on the bottle.

'But what do you make of that theory?' He wasn't letting go. He needed to understand this man that Torchwood One had seen fit to leave without dealing with him in some way, relatively pleasant or otherwise. He needed to peel away the surface and see if he was indeed the same man that had existed then. Because the same decision was coming his way when all this was eventually over. And he wanted to make the right one if he was going to live with the consequences.

Cutler sighed. 'I think it's a pile of shit.' He sipped his drink. 'If you'll excuse the technical police term.'

'I speak Police.' Jack smiled. 'How come, though?'

'How come you're so interested?'

Jack didn't shift his gaze from the policeman's own but flashed him a brief dazzling grin. 'I'd just like to know a little bit about a man I'm heading to the scaffold with. And the records made me curious. You'd be the same.'

Where Jack's smile was all boyish excitement, Cutler grinned like a hungry wolf. 'Don't think I haven't done a little research on you.'

'What did you find?'

'A lot of password-protected, access-denied files in the system and some crazy stories on the net. Enough to let me know I don't really want to know what's going on with you.'

'Fair enough.' Jack pulled the final strand of the label free and tossed it on the bar to be swept away by the bartender. It was a quiet night, and Jack thought the young man looked bored out of his mind. It would be great if he could just have the occasional moment like that. He lived in a world within the world, just like Gwen and Ianto. Cutler, however, was in purgatory, stuck somewhere in between.

A lot of ordinary people got glimpses of the strangeness that the Rift created, but very few were forced to evaluate their own morality because of it. Jack had respected Cutler before he'd read the file. He was intrigued by the man now. It was a refreshing feeling.

'So, tell me about Mark Palmer.'

'I hounded him, you know.' Cutler stared thoughtfully at his own reflection in the mirror, and Jack wondered if he was looking for that ghost of the self he had lost a long time ago. 'After the first death, when the trail was leading back to him. Loner. Used to hang around the play area. Ideal suspect.' He frowned.

'I could smell it on him; his guilt. Those three boys died within four days and he couldn't remember where he was for any of the times the boys went missing. Before the bodies were found, I camped outside his house. I rang him day and night to stop him sleeping.' He paused and swallowed. 'I was a complete bastard. I watched him pacing up and down in his living room, his hands in his hair, and I'd call and call and call, and if he answered I'd tell him what I was going to do to him when we had him. All from a pay-as-you-go mobile in a dummied-up name, of course. No trace. No police harassment blame. Poor sod was already going half mad and I was sending him the rest of the way. And then, after a few days, it was me that thought I was losing my marbles.'

'What happened?'

'It was about midnight. Palmer came out of his house and was on his front lawn. He was really agitated. Talking to himself, twitching. I thought he was cracking. I thought I had him. And then suddenly he stood totally still. His back straightened and all that anxiety went out of him. I could see it from the car. He changed. And when he turned round and strode to his car I honest to God thought someone had slipped me something or maybe the case had got to me and my brain was frying. His eyes were wide open and it was like looking into headlights on full beam. Bright white light poured out of him. And from his mouth too, when he opened it. It was insanity, but I was seeing it.' Cutler sipped again at his drink.

'I followed his car, and he drove out to the woods where he parked up, hidden out of sight from the lane. He got out and took a shovel out of the boot before striding in this… over-controlled way into the darkness. I stayed pretty far behind, but those eyes lit up the way through the trees anyway, so I wasn't in any danger of getting lost. He was going to the bodies of course.

'He dug like a machine, which I guess he was, looking back. His body was being used by whatever was inside him and those boys weren't buried in a shallow grave. By the time he was done, he was sweating and panting but he kept going until that light poured out of him. Then he collapsed. I watched him crying over the bodies while that light leapt and whirled and ran in and out of the dead boys, touching them all over again. I couldn't move. It was beautiful, but at the same time there was such…' Cutler struggled for the right word. 'There was such malevolence in it. Human evil is so much more mundane than whatever that thing was. Once it was done with the fun it was having with the corpses, it went back into Palmer. He reburied the bodies and drove home like an automaton.'

'What did you do?'

'Didn't sleep. Didn't call it in. I knew where the bodies were, I'd marked the three trees around them once Palmer and the thing inside him had gone. I sat on the sofa, smoked a lot, and drank a lot. I thought about the truth. The truth is out there , kept going round in my head. Mulder and bloody Scully.' He laughed, a dry, dark sound, like disturbed mud.

'And then I went into work early and dug around in the system looking for whatever department had to deal with paranormal reports or out-of-the-ordinary crimes, and time after time "Torchwood: Classified" came up. I'd never heard of any section called that, so I kept digging and searching under that name. By 9.32, Torchwood staff and my DCI were standing at my desk wanting to know what my sudden interest was. And after a while, when my DCI had buggered off, I told them.

'And the rest, as they say, is history. The bodies were found, Torchwood caught the entity or whatever that shite was inside Palmer, and a line was drawn under the whole thing.'

'Except,' Jack cut in, 'all the evidence still pointed to Palmer. And the press had got hold of that.'

'Yeah, some bastard constable leaked it. Thought we weren't moving fast enough on the arrest.'

'Which you were busy trying to find a way to avoid.'

'Yeah.' The barman replaced their drinks, though Jack couldn't remember seeing Cutler signalling for fresh ones. Maybe their expressions said enough for the man to know they'd settled in for the night. 'But then it was all over. People were screaming for his arrest, and as all the DNA evidence clearly stated that he was guilty our hands were tied. We arrested him. Poor bastard was a mess. And I understood why. When I'd first been watching him, so bloody convinced I had my man, I knew he was wrong on the inside. But what I had been too busy to notice was that Palmer knew it too. He'd known it all his adult life, I imagine. Yes, he wanted to hurt those boys and do things to them that you and I just can't comprehend, and yes, he wanted to squeeze their lives away with his bare hands. He'd wanted to do things like that for as long as he could remember. In his head he was a sick bastard. But it was only in his head.'