Doctor Who: Torchwood [005] - Trace Memory by David Llewellyn

Author:David Llewellyn
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction, General, Suspense, Mystery & Detective, Fiction
ISBN: 9781846074387
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2008-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

The opening chords of T-Rex's '20th Century Boy' blasted into his ears as Jack Harkness walked down Carnaby Street on a late summer's morning in 1967. Never mind that the song would not be recorded for another six years, or that the device on which he was listening to it, the C-Fish X20, would not be invented for another six decades. Anachronisms weren't important to Jack, and the earphones were practically invisible so it wasn't as if anyone might notice. What mattered was that the song seemed right.

The C-Fish, a portable music player, had, along with the contents of his bag, been deposited in a locker at King's Cross by Jack himself a long time and many lives ago, back in the days when time was no barrier. He'd thought that both might come in handy one day, and he was right.

Looking around at the assorted mods and hippies – girls in fluorescent miniskirts, Union Flag-patterned waistcoats and baker-boy caps; men in flared jeans and paisley shirts made of cheesecloth – it struck Jack that immortality, rather than rendering life predictable, often made it even more surprising. A life stretched out for more than a century made changes that had happened quite gradually to the casual observer, seem sudden and revolutionary.

Only a few years ago, on his last visit, he had walked down this street to find it populated by austere tailors and nattily dressed jazz musicians looking for just the right threads. Now it was an explosion of garish, psychedelic colour, with music blaring from the open doors of almost every shop.

He wasn't simply there as a tourist or even an observer, however. Jack had a purpose that morning. There were questions to be answered. Somebody in London had been asking questions about Jack Harkness, and Jack was going to find out who.

He'd been in the city little more than three hours, but already he could sense that people were on to him. A car had tailed him across much of the city, a black Rover P6, driven by a man in a grey cap. Amateurs, Jack had thought. Whoever they were, travelling incognito was clearly not their forte. Still, for now he was in the clear. The streets of Soho were a good place to lose anyone who might be following you; a labyrinthine network of interconnecting thoroughfares and alleyways boxed in by the busy, traffic congested arteries of Shaftsbury Avenue, Oxford Street and Charing Cross Road. Here was a village within the city; a chaotic heart, beating to a syncopated rhythm, in the very centre of the metropolis.

His destination was a restaurant on Golden Square called Houghton's. In the vibrant, noisy kaleidoscope of Soho, it was an oasis of gentlemanly calm, a throwback to a bygone era. It was also the place where he would meet Hugo.

Hugo Faulkner was the third son of Baron Faulkner of Darrington, and was every bit the third son of a peer of the realm. While his older brothers had enjoyed illustrious

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