Into The Silence Read online

  'Ain't that the truth.'

  They sat in silence for a moment, Cutler staring into the black liquid glowing slightly in the reflected light. 'We had a lucky escape today. If that poor bastard had died...'

  'Yeah, I know.'

  And Jack did know. It was easy for the brass above Cutler to start screaming at the DI about results, but it wasn't them out chasing the unknown and everything else that the Rift spat out in their faces. The world was angry and needed people to blame, and it was human nature always to look to others rather than themselves. Where would Earth be without Torchwood and the people that risked – and lost – their lives to keep the planet safe? He hated himself for the moment of bitterness, but sometimes it was just too damned hard. If only they understood just how much was really going on.

  'It's the twenty-first century,' he muttered. 'And that's when everything changes.'

  'What was that?' Cutler looked sideways.

  'Nothing. Nothing relevant.' Jack sighed and stretched out his back. 'Nothing that can't wait. At least for a while.' He turned away from his reflection and looked into the tired face of the DI. 'I'm sorry we haven't gotten this taken care of quicker. It can't be easy for you.'

  Cutler shrugged. 'I've seen that creature at work. Your team's doing its best. So no apology needed.' He drained his glass and signalled for a refill before catching the flash of concern that must have showed on Jack's face.

  'Don't worry.' He grinned, but the expression was carved into his face, lacking the spontaneous warmth of someone undamaged. 'I'll take it slowly with this one. But at least allow the condemned man to see in the death of his career with a decent hangover.'

  'Is it that bad?'

  'It's not good. And neither is my track record if you believe what you read on paper, which of course my bosses don't, but it's the paper record that the rest of the world have access to. Hence the big worry back at HQ is what the press will make of it when they eventually start digging around on me.' His laugh was bitter. 'Better to ship me off to somewhere even more in the sticks than Wales.' He looked over at Jack. 'No offence.'

  'None taken.'

  'Although I'm not entirely sure what's left. The bloody Orkney Islands? Don't really see it for me.'

  'You think they're going to fire you?' Jack watched him thoughtfully.

  'Maybe. Hang me out to dry, definitely. They can't afford to take the flack.' He raised an eyebrow. 'This is a high-profile serial killer case. And I'm a DI with a big black mark on his record where killers are concerned.'

  'I read your file.'

  'So, you've read those papers then.' In the haze of blue neon light, Cutler's face had the smooth sheen of marble. Jack presumed his own looked the same. Perhaps it was apt for both of them. Men made of stone. He was unable to die, and Cutler had hardened himself against the world to the point where he seemed untouchable. Maybe that was the only way he'd kept his head.

  'No.' Jack leaned in. 'I read your Torchwood file.' He paused. 'You did a very noble thing.'

  'Oh yeah. And look how it paid off. My wife left me and my career's all but dead.' Cutler stared into his drink. 'Looking back, noble might not have been the best move.'

  Turning on his chair, Jack studied the other man. 'So why did you do it?'

  'What exactly does the file say I did?' Cutler's eyes were cool mirrors of defensiveness. 'I'm not a great believer in what can be read on paper.'

  'It's pretty frank. It says you told the court that you falsified evidence which stopped Mark Palmer going to prison for the sexual abuse and rape of three young boys.' He let a mouthful of water fizz against his tongue before swallowing. 'I checked out the newspapers too. Seems like he was definitely going down until you admitted that. He was looking at life with no chance of parole. Not that he would have lasted too long without a knife in the back in the rec yard.'

  'That was my problem.'

  'How do you mean?' Jack had read the file. He could figure out pretty much what had been going on in the policeman's head, but he wanted to hear it from him. He wanted to hear it from the Cutler that existed now, the man that had survived the aftermath of that decision. Making a choice was easy. It was the consequences that changed you.

  'I couldn't let an innocent man go to prison.'

  'Torchwood One was going to.' Jack felt no pride in that statement. 'And from what I read from the trial reports, Mark Palmer wouldn't have fought it too hard.'

  'Palmer's head was too messed up to know what was going on.' The small muscle in the side of Cutler's head twitched at his temple, the only indication that under the calm voice, his emotions were raging. 'By the time he got to court he was half-convinced he 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.'

  Pausing, Cutler ran one hand through his hair and looked at Jack. 'He never acted on his impulses. And I don't think he ever would have if that thing hadn't got inside him. He was too strong and he knew it was wrong. Imagine living like that. Hating yourself and your desires. No wonder he was a loner. The worst he ever allowed himself to do was sit and watch little boys playing in the park. He never talked to them. He never touched them.' He paused. 'Jesus. And then this thing comes along, gets inside him and wants to do it all. All those years of restraint, over. And all we can do is put him in prison for it?'

  Watching him shake his head, his brow knotted tightly together, Jack wondered if Cutler realised how animated he'd become. Behind all those defences, Cutler's anger still raged and Jack was glad about that.

  'You couldn't,' he said softly.

  'You're right. I couldn't. But the evidence was too great against him. So I waited until the court was in full session and then started a rumour in the press about tampered evidence. Planting of DNA. All that shit. It started to circulate. And when I got called to the stand and the defence questioned me on it, I did a big pretence of breaking down and then confessed. Said the pressure to get a conviction had been too much. They had no choice but to throw it out of court. Civil action found him guilty but he didn't really have a lot to lose by then. We gave him a new identity and sent him north for a new life. Not that it worked. Last I heard, he was a drunk, and after three suicide attempts he was sectioned off into some mental hospital. Probably the safest place for him.'

  'Would you do the same thing again?'

  Cutler stared angrily into the mirror. 'Yeah. I think I'm that dumb that I probably would.'

  'I'm surprised Torchwood One let you go so easily.'

  Cutler shrugged. 'They thought I'd handled the situation well. No running to the press or even my boss with tales of bright lights in the night. They figured I'd be useful on the force. If I heard stories of anything strange.' He smiled. 'But believe me, I don't think it was an easy decision for them. Looking back, I sometimes wonder what they might have done if they had thought I was a liability. Being young and stupid at the time I didn't give it any thought. But now...'

  'I think I can see why they left you the happy individual that you are.' Jack raised his bottle. 'Cheers.'

  Cutler clinked his JD against the mineral water. 'Your curiosity satisfied?'

  'A story's always better told than read. If it means anything at all, I think what you did was the right thing. And most people wouldn't have done it.'

  'Thanks.'

  'You were never tempted to tell your wife the truth?'

  Behind them, the jukebox burst into life, pumping out Britney Spears's 'Toxic'.

  'You learn about people in those situations. She believed the lie too easily. Made me see her more clearly. She wasn't worth the truth.' He turned on his stool and stared at the source of the over-loud music. 'Jesus. Can't a man even have a drink in peace and quiet? Why do we have to fill every thinking moment up with noise? All I bloody want is a couple of minutes of silence to let my brain get things in order.'

  Jack began to smile, and then froze. A couple of minutes of silence. He pushed the stool back and punched the bar, the thud full of vigour.

  'You gotta love that Britney!' His eyes sparkled and, with his grin bubbling energy, he leaned forward, grabbed Cutler's cheeks in his hands and planted a loud kiss on his lips. 'Two minutes of silence! You're a genius! Why didn't I think of that?' He grabbed his long coat from the seat on the other side and then stared at Cutler. 'What are you waiting for? Come on. Let's go catch the bad guy.'

  The detective stared at him for a long second before standing up. 'I've got no idea what you're on about, but I'm coming.' He drained his glass. 'And if you ever kiss me again I will have to terminate this working relationship with a knee in your bollocks.'

  Jack's laugh danced behind him as he ran up the stairs from the basement bar and
up to the pavement. 'Say what you like, I'm a great kisser. You loved it. I can tell.'

  'Bloody Torchwood,' Cutler grumbled, but Jack could hear the humour in the gruff voice. 'Can't do anything like bloody normal people.'

  TWENTY-ONE

  Jack paced slightly in front of the Boardroom table in a narrow area that wasn't designed to incorporate a huge amount of pacing. Energy and excitement had been sparking off him since he'd bounded back into the Hub with Cutler in tow and, although it was almost midnight, Gwen's own foot tapped under her seat. Jack obviously had news – there was no way he would have brought Cutler if it hadn't been something important – but so did she and Ianto.

  'OK, so here's the new plan.' Jack finally stopped moving, letting Gwen's eyes focus. 'At 11 a.m. tomorrow, we're going to hold a city-wide, two-minute silence as a mark of respect for the deaths of Maria Bruno and the other victims.' He nodded towards Cutler, who was leaning against the corner of the wall. 'The police have been in touch with all the major news stations, and it's going to be hitting all the channels from now until daybreak.'

  'You think the whole of Cardiff will take part?' Ianto was back in his suit, complete with jacket, and looking contained and smart despite the bandage across his head. He flashed Cutler a suspicious glance, and Gwen knew why. Jack had to think the man was pretty special if he had brought the outsider into the Hub. And she could recognise a jealous look when she saw one.

  'They don't need to. Only the singers. Only the good singers.' Jack folded his arms across his chest. 'And they're the ones we need to do it.'

  Gwen knew she was tired, but she wondered if she was missing something. 'So, if all the singers have shut up, how's that going to help us catch the alien?'

  We can't afford to risk another civilian, but we have our own voice of an angel among us...' As Jack let the sentence trail off, Gwen turned to Ianto and waited for him to catch up. He did.