Prose : Do you feel lucky?
It was a rainy morning afternoon when I got the call, just another day in this whacked out job. I’d say it was normal, but we were about as normal as pancakes on a Wednesday. We’d got a case down the docks, a rough area fit for the likes of no one save scum.
Our game? To defeat the likes of those no good kinda crooks.
The name’s Jones. Ianto Jones. My boss over there? Well he’s called Harkness. A mysterious kinda guy, he was the one who got me into this run down joint. Before this it was all official. I wanted to go into the police force, heck maybe head over into C.I.D, but things didn’t go the way I planned.
Torchwood; that’s the name of this place. We don’t take answers from no one.
Now Harkness. He was all over guys like me, like monkeys at a banana stand in Tescos. We hit it off real smooth, like. I’d say the whole thing was a scandal but I’d had enough of dames and wanted a bit of a change.
I’m the tea boy, or that’s what they call me at least. I get the joe while they plan the attack. Harkness knows that I’m more than that, see? He needs me. I clean up after him. I keep things from gettin’ messy.
But it ain’t just us. No sir. Harkness’s partner, Cooper; now she’s a real looker. She works information. She came on through from the C.P.D; the Cardiff Police Department to me and you. She scored a bit of interest with the doc, Harper. Owen Harper, to be precise, a regular smart alec. He latched onto Gwen Cooper as soon as he saw her, but unfortunately for her he dumps girls like garbage men dump black bags on a Monday morning.
Then there’s Sato; Toshiko to her friends. She’s one intelligent dame. Gets us the stats when we need them, and can fix a computer as well as a fireman can use his hose on a burning building.
There was Costello too, a great dame with a brain to match, but no one likes a girl with a mind on her, especially if she’s intent on reeking havoc with it. We dealt with her quick. Can’t let any secrets get out now, can we?
So that’s the team, and right then, they were dealing with an unfortunate incident. Weevils; now they’re the gang against us. Not nice fella’s; think they can have their cake and eat it too, if you catch my drift. This call from down the docks? About them, of course. Seemed that two of them had been stirring up a bit of trouble with the locals. Thought we’d check it out...”
------
“Oi, Ianto!”
Ianto quickly hides his comic out of sight as Owen comes through the door. Owen raises an eyebrow at the comic book jutting out of Ianto’s desk before allowing a superior smirk to grace his features.
“Slow day, is it?” he remarks and Ianto bites down his annoyance.
“Anything I can get you, Owen?”
“Comic books at for adolescents, Jones.”
“Anything at all. Coffee, reports... perhaps a cyanide pill?” Ianto adds under his breath.
“Jack wanted me to drop these off to you--” A waft of air scatters Ianto’s papers as Owen drops some paperwork on the desk. As Ianto sets about picking up the runaway documents, Owen bends over the counter and snatches Ianto’s comic from the top shelf of his desk. Ianto tries to grab it back but it’s too late.
“Dick Tracy? Never knew you were the kind for detective stories.”
“Goes with the job,” Ianto replies, frowning at Owen. “Look, coffee? Because coffee’s just all about I’m good for right now so if you wouldn’t mind,” Ianto snatches the comic back off Owen, “I’d like you to leave me in peace.”
“Over-active imagination, Ianto. That’s what they’ll give you. You better watch that, or at least put it to good use.”
“I’d rather not put it to the uses which you apply your mind to, Owen.”
Owen waves over his shoulder as he disappears from the room once more. Ianto rolls his eyes before flicking to the page he was on and continuing to read.
------
So we’re down the docks, see? I’m the driver. Harkness lets me do that much, at least. We got Sato in the back. Harper and Cooper are on the far end opposite us, parked up in Cooper's car.
Harper; now, he wasn’t one with a sense of humour, but I didn’t work with anyone for laughs. He was a top medic or something, until he ran into our crazy lot. Snatched up in an instant. There was more there than met the eye, but I wasn’t askin’ nothin’ to no one. Anyway, he got out of the car, real smooth like, a natural at his job. He walks over to a guy, asks him a few questions. Meanwhile Harkness is sitting beside me and he’s eyeing Harper up; doesn’t trust him as much as we all thought.
Cooper joins in, asks the guy if he’s seen these two mugs. We see him shake his head, he’s not committing to anything, and Harkness looks at me ‘cause he knows, see? He knows what I’m thinking. They’re never gonna get the guy to squeal.
‘Perhaps we should get involved,” Harkness says slyly, all Tweety, not Sylvester. Sato joins in. Suggests we take matters into our own hands. Me? I’m not so sure. Cooper’s got our asses covered, and Harper? Well, he’s certainly interested in Gwen’s, but Harkness is having none of it.
So, we get involved.
---
“-Then we can go over to Penarth and see what’s going on with that sewage pipe. Ianto! Just the man I wanted to see.”
Jack sweeps through the down that connects the information centre to the hub, Gwen in tow. Ianto quickly slips his comic book under a pile of research on flesh-eating butterflies. Giving Jack a most pleasant smile, he tries to not notice Gwen’s curious glances at the papers in front of him.
“Can you get a lead on that Penarth call we had earlier this morning? See if you can find someone who can tell you a little more about the case. And I don’t mean someone like that guy yesterday. I don’t care how much he says he saw an alien, those sounds he was making were still not needed. I’ve never heard an alien sound like that, whether that’s what he said it was, or not.”
Jack’s already disappeared by the time that Ianto opens his mouth to reply. Gwen looks apologetically at him and dashes off after Jack. Torn between the case and what lays hidden under his stack of papers, Ianto sighs resignedly and grabs his coat and keys, before heading for the door.
---
These guys, well they’re smart, see? Know what we’re looking for. Me, the captain, and the broad, head for the other two who by now are looking edgy about the whole thing. It’s going down like a piano off a tall building. We get over there, talk to them, ask them a few questions. Seems like they’re telling the truth, but you can never be too careful. So we invite ourselves in, look around the place, see what’s happening.
Not too smart these weevils.
They leave tracks everywhere, and I mean everywhere. Harkness soon has a dozen reasons to make him stay and look around the joint, which we do. It’s going well.
That’s when they appear.
---
“And you’ve seen nothing out of the ordinary, you say? Nothing at all?”
“Not one thing, love. Though you might want to check those prices down on the front. Now they’re criminal.”
The woman tuts and wanders off, leaving Ianto alone once more. He leans back on the wall of the hall at the top of the promenade and lets out a slow breath. It’s a warm evening, unusual for the time of year. It makes him feel uncomfortable, as though a harbinger of something is sweeping across the horizon. He’s dwelling on this as another figure comes up to him and nudges him with his shoulder, causing him to look up into the beaming face of Jack.
“Anything?” he asks hopefully, that smile falling when Ianto shakes his head.
“You’d think people are blind to the ways of the extra-terrestrial. Either that or the man yesterday was bonkers.”
“Bonkers?”
“Hmph,” Ianto replies, not noticing Jack’s obvious amusement at the uncharacteristically frivolous word.
“Fancy a walk?”
Ianto nods without looking at Jack and brushes passed him, wandering down the pier with little thought to the old slatted boards beneath his feet, through which he can see the ocean gently lapping at the feet of the promenade. A seagull cries overhead, a familiar sound in their location at the bay. Jack’s voice fades into nothingness as Ianto’s thoughts slip away from him.
---
They had us surrounded, or as surrounded as two weevils can have five humans. One was creeping up on Cooper; Harkness got that one in a shot. A quick squirt of the weevil spray and it was down in a flash. The other? A little harder to catch. Harper caught that one as it made its way to the door.
It brought Owen down. For a moment we we sure the brute had got 'im, but he suprised us all with a hidden pair of 'cuffs, which Harkness referred to in conversation for the next week, usually when taking a jibe at Owen. We’d all got a couple of bruises and scratches to show our hard work, by the end, but they were caught.
‘Good job, team,’ Harkness said.
And that, as they say, was another case closed.
---
“Our life is rather like a comic, don’t you think?” asks Jack, leaning against the bench behind him and staring at the pier ahead of them, and Ianto glances at him in shock. Jack gives him a lop-sided smile and looks ahead, across the sea.
“You honestly thought I didn’t know about those comics?”
“Graphic novels.” The correction sounds small and stupid, even to Ianto’s own ears. He feels his cheeks warm and glances down at the floor again, this time noticing the ominous, moving darkness that hovers sixty feet below.
“Dick Tracy?”
“How did you guess?”
Jack leans back in the bench and crosses his arms. “I would’ve been a good detective. I guess Torchwood is the next best thing.”
“Just as good as, really.”
“Hmm,” Jack murmurs in agreement. They’re silent again, and Ianto just has time enough to reflect that they haven’t spoken a lot at all since the death of Lisa just a few weeks before, before Jack’s speaking again.
“Do you--” he starts, all seriousness employed for the words to follow, “--want an ice-cream? I rather fancy a vanilla cone.” He looks at Ianto and there it is, Ianto thinks, that shred of hopefulness, that little glimmer in his eyes that tells Ianto what words don’t; Jack’s sorry.
Ianto nods, just a short, insignificant thing, but Jack looks delighted all the same, and Ianto has, just for a second, that small spark of something within him, that unexplainable feeling that one has just before something is about to become understandable. He looks at Jack and feels a small twist in his stomach, but it’s not hate anymore. He doesn’t have a word for it, but it’s there, bringing change, all the same.
Smiling, Jack gets up and head for an old ice-cream display that looks as though the owner would very much like to leave and pack up.
“Do they still do those chocolate flakes?” Jack asks, and when the man replies yes, he demands two for each cone.
Something has changed, Ianto thinks, and the case is nearly closed on what it is.
© Touchstone Pictures