Torchwood - 04 - Something in the Water by Trevor Baxendale

Author:Trevor Baxendale [Baxendale, Trevor]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General, Mystery & Detective, Science Fiction, Mystery Fiction, Radio and Television Novels, Cardiff (Wales), Human-Alien Encounters - Wales - Cardiff, Intelligence Officers - Wales - Cardiff, Harkness; Jack (Fictitious Character)
ISBN: 9781846074370
Publisher: BBC Books
Published: 2008-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

FOURTEEN

Owen drove straight to Bob Strong’s house. He felt vaguely guilty for not having taken Ianto’s original request seriously enough, but Strong’s illness had seemed more important at the time and Owen had forgotten all about Saskia Harden.

He was reminded of just how bad Bob Strong was as soon as the door opened. His skin was grey-green and his eyes, beneath the heavy, swollen lids, were veined with blood.

Strong stood in the doorway for a moment, focusing. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said gruffly. He coughed and then stood back. ‘You’d better come in. Hope you’ve got some good news.’

As he spoke, he started coughing again and his knees buckled. Instinctively, Owen caught him, took his weight and helped him back inside the house.

‘It’s OK, it’s OK,’ Strong assured him, leaning on the furniture for support but making sure he took the shortest route back to the sofa. The room was a mess, full of half-drunk cups of coffee, medicine bottles, crumpled tissues and a terrible smell.

Owen sniffed cautiously. He knew what the smell was – sickness, illness. And something else. It took him a moment to work it out: rotten cabbages. Maybe something in the kitchen was going off.

Strong’s cough sounded ragged and guttural, and Owen heard him moan as the pain ripped through his chest.

‘Sit down,’ Owen said. ‘I’ll get you something.’

‘Feel … like … hell …’ groaned Strong, lowering himself into the cushions of the settee.

‘What have you taken?’

Strong’s eyes were closing, as if he was too weak to reply.

‘What have you taken?’ Owen repeated, quickly sorting through the bottles of painkillers and decongestants spread across the floor. There was nothing too serious here.

‘Found anything?’ Strong asked.

‘What?’

‘The blood tests. What did they show?’

‘Nothing,’ Owen said truthfully. ‘All clear.’

Strong was frowning now. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘It’s true. You’re the picture of health, according to your blood tests, mate.’

‘Feels like I’m gonna die,’ said Strong. There had been, for a moment, a fleeting expression of relief on his face, but it was quickly displaced by a look of bewilderment and fear. ‘So what the hell’s wrong with me?’

Owen picked up his wrist and checked the pulse. He counted the beats off against the second hand on his watch. The heart rate was fast but steady. ‘You’re not going to die yet,’ Owen told him. He prised open one of the puffy eyelids and looked at the eye beneath, producing a slim pencil torch from his jacket pocket to help.

The eyes looked sore but the pupils contracted when he shone the penlight at them.

‘Open wide, Bob,’ Owen said, turning the man’s face towards him. ‘I need to have a look at your throat, mate.’

The mouth duly opened, and, using a pencil as a makeshift tongue suppressor, Owen shone the torch into the man’s throat.

It looked red and inflamed, which was what he expected. But there was something else there. Across the wet skin at the back of the mouth were a number of white sores, almost like mouth ulcers, some of them speckled with blood.

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