Sarah Pinborough - Into the Silence

Ianto clicked her off and followed the crisp scent of fresh coffee to the bubbling machine. Coffees in hand, he took the steps down into the Autopsy Room. He froze as he saw the body.

'Jesus.'

Jack looked up. 'Not even close. This is Richard Greenwood, 45, from Newport.'

'What happened to him?' Ianto had completely forgotten about the coffees, but dimly noticed Gwen taking them from him. 'Don't tell me a Weevil.'

'Then I won't.' Jack moved round to the other side of the exposed corpse and carefully lifted one flap of peeled-back skin. 'And it wasn't. Whatever did this was something else.' He frowned. 'He was opened up in one movement from his throat all the way down, but look, this is fascinating…'

'I think I can see well enough from here.' Staying where he was and watching his two colleagues peering intently at the mutilated man, Ianto wasn't sure whether he should be envious or slightly nervous of Jack and Gwen's ability to cope with gore on this level. He knew his own limitations.

'I see it!' Gwen exclaimed. 'The skin and his clothes.' She looked up. 'It's like they've been melted together.'

Jack nodded. 'More like fused. Weird, huh?'

Gwen came round to the other side of the examining table and lifted the man's skin, his blue, bloodstained shirt rising with it. 'See?'

Ianto gritted his teeth and nodded. 'That's… great.'

Jack raised an eyebrow. 'Brings a whole new meaning to a fitted shirt.'

Leaning back against the wall, Ianto reached for his drink. The coffee didn't seem as appealing as it had ten minutes ago, but the scalding taste of it was just what his system needed to fight the vague sense of nausea that drifted through his gut. The doughnuts were a definite pass though.

'Any reason for the attack?' Deliberately ignoring the body, Ianto looked across at Jack.

'Not as far as we know. We'll need to run some deeper checks on the victim, but he worked in a bank, paid his mortgage on time, a wife, but no kids. Pretty much an ordinary Joe.'

'Except that now he's dead.'

'Yes, and whatever killed him took his vocal cords and larynx as a souvenir.'

His nausea overwhelmed by his curiosity, Ianto looked into the exposed neck of the victim. 'Why on Earth would someone do that?' He paused. 'And how?'

Jack shrugged. 'I guess that's what we need to find out.' He reached for his own coffee. 'So tell me about the Rift.'

'Well, there seems to have been an increase in activity since that electrical storm four nights ago, but mainly low-level stuff. I've been running some more analysis on that data and from what I can tell…' Ianto looked from Jack's expectant gaze to Gwen's and back again. 'Well, remembering that I'm not an expert, I think maybe that storm wasn't an entirely natural phenomenon.'

'What do you mean?'

'I think there was a storm over Cardiff, but I think the electrical part of it came in from the Rift, and the two mixed as they met. Maybe that storm was also the arrival of something alien.'

Jack frowned over at Gwen. 'Didn't we check the storm's readings at the time?'

'Don't look at me.' Gwen shook her dark hair. 'I was at home tucked up in bed with Rhys and we were whipping up our own electrical storm, thank you.'

Jack turned his attention to him, and Ianto felt his face burn as he stumbled over his words. 'We were here, but we were… busy.'

Jack suddenly grinned. 'Oh yeah, so we were.'

From the corner of his eye, Ianto could see Gwen looking from one man to the other, and he concentrated on sipping his coffee. It wasn't as if she didn't know about him and Jack, but it still felt strange whenever there was any open reference to it.

Gwen giggled, breaking the awkward moment. 'It seems like we all had our eyes off the ball, then.'

Jack flashed his best boyish smile. 'Or on it, depending on your perspective.'

'So, what next?' Listening to the banter, Ianto gave up feeling embarrassed.

'Let's get the body on ice for the night, and then see if you can find any connections between the Rift activity from the storm and the spike from tonight. At least then we'll know we're dealing with a recent arrival.' Jack looked over to Gwen. 'You might as well go home. We can go to the hospital and talk to the witnesses in the morning.'

'Are you sure?'

'Sure I'm sure.' He winked. 'Now get out of here.'

Ianto picked up his coffee. 'Right, I'll get on with that analysis.'

'Not so fast, big boy.' Jack nodded towards the body. 'You can take the feet end. We need to get him on a trolley.'

Groaning, Ianto reached for the shoes, and hoped he wasn't grimacing. There were some things he was never going to get used to about working at Torchwood.

The windscreen wipers on the old Ford Escort squealed gently as they battered the rain from side to side with the regular beat of a metronome. Peering out into the night, Dyllis Llewelyn clutched the handbag on her knee a little tighter. There weren't even lights on this section of the road, and there hadn't been for the past few miles. She let a small sigh out into the slowly building tense atmosphere. It felt like they'd been on this journey for an eternity.

If they'd left the farm at three like she'd suggested, they'd have been in Cardiff by now but, as it was, Barry had to make sure everyone had their instructions four times over before picking up the car keys, and it had been gone seven when they'd finally driven out of the gates. As if their boys didn't know the farm like the backs of their hands. They'd been working it since they could walk; both she and Barry had insisted on that. Theirs was a family farm, and it was going to stay that way.

Her brow furrowed, trying in vain to make out any shapes in the darkness, but all she could see were drops of rain smearing down her passenger window. She glanced at the dials on the dashboard. The clock glowed 11.15, and she stifled a yawn. Barry would no doubt blame her for their late arrival at the B amp; B, but she'd had to stop for dinner, even if the Happy Cook was 'an overpriced rip-off'. Since her illness she had too many pills to take, and if she took them without food they would make her sick. Still, it wasn't Barry's fault that she probably hadn't explained that to him. They didn't have the kind of marriage where you talked about things. You just got on with it and made do.

Next to her, his eyes firmly on the white line in the road whose dashes added silent harmony to the windscreen wipers, Barry hummed through his octaves, up and down, over and over. Even just doing something as simple as those exercises, anyone could hear that he had a beautiful voice. It was a true Welshman's voice, full of the natural power of the solid land and valleys that had bred it, hundreds of years of history and courage carried in every tune. There was nothing namby-pamby about the way Barry Llewelyn sang, not like those pancaked West End performers from London. When her Barry sang, people noticed.

Still, as she watched the slightly smug tilt to her husband's chin, for the first time his singing voice seemed a little sour to her. She couldn't help but think he was happy they weren't singing as a couple this time around, and that made her sad. It was singing in the church that had brought them together all those years ago; she the best soprano and he the best tenor, and neither of them had been a bad looker along with it.

She thought of how her own hair was greying and, looking at the creases and crags that covered her husband's face, she wondered what had happened to those two young people who loved to make music together. In fact, they'd loved doing a lot of things together back then, but twenty-odd years of marriage and hard farm life could knock that out of the best of couples.

Ahead, the lights of Cardiff appeared glowing in a distant pool of light that only served to make the darkness around the car even more suffocating. Or maybe it was the atmosphere inside the car that was strangling her. Looking at the knots and veins that had appeared on the backs of her hands over the past few months, she wondered if Barry ever thought of her affectionately any more. She'd always believed that even though they never really talked or laughed together in the way she saw people do on the telly, they'd had a quiet foundation of love underneath it all.