Author's Notes: Evening, all! Another chapter for your perusal. I'm more aware that anybody that this story crawls at a slower pace than the average three-legged tortoise, but please stick with me if you have the patience. The reviews and hits are marvellous forms of encouragement. On with the show...
Chapter Seven
After several endless days of waking in the same place and following the same routine, Ianto understood how the office ran. Or at least, as much as the world around him was allowing him to understand. On realising swiftly that the entire team bar Gwen was apparently planning to ignore his presence, he chose not to go out of his way to hide the fact that he was writing notes about them, watching from the sidelines and scribbling down anything that could be remotely relevant.
The profiles of his colleagues developed quickly. Once Gwen introduced the rest of the team to him in a more thorough sense than Sergeant Harper had – a task which would normally be undertaken by any half-decent leader, but apparently Jack wasn't up to the challenge – Ianto discovered that their first names were Owen, Toshiko, and Suzie. Whether it was paranoia brought on by the general strain of being so hopelessly lost or not, he couldn't tell, but it seemed as if the three of them avoided him deliberately. The way that Gwen sometimes looked towards them with charitable appeal in her eyes solidified the idea that the three had made some sort of pact to leave him alone, and it seemed only Gwen felt able to break away.
When Ianto shared a conversation, it was with Gwen. Jack watched him; as a watcher himself, he knew the signs, and he felt those bright blue eyes following even when he couldn't tell exactly where Jack was. However, he rarely spoke. He spent much of his time in that little shed, and Ianto regularly wished he knew what the man could be doing. The DCI's own profile remained full of spaces and question marks.
Gwen had given him a tour on his first full day. He mapped the building out in his head as they walked, and by his reckoning, she couldn't have shown him more than two thirds of the space. Her final exclamation of "and that's all there is to see!" was a little too cheerily forced, but Ianto had nodded and thanked her, and immediately written down everything she'd said.
She answered any spoken questions he had with a subtle combination of honesty and deflection. Ianto knew when he was being lied to, and Gwen's expressive eyes did her no favours. Originally wanting to write it off as anxious delusion, Ianto was certain after three days in the office that his colleagues were hiding something from him. Something which could potentially be linked the reason for his arrival in this place.
Aside from everything else he had experienced, the working activity there made no sense whatsoever. To call them 'police' was vastly charitable. Ianto quickly established that the process began with a telephone call – one which was directed to Jack's office and only Jack's office – before either nothing at all occurred, or he burst from the small hut, barked out the name of one or several of his officers, and took them out with him. Sometimes the case would take half an hour, sometimes three; either way he and the person he had taken with him would return to the station, go to Jack's office to deliberate, and then continue as if nothing had happened. Nothing was discussed aloud, and nothing was written up. At least not openly.
At first, Ianto had assumed that he wasn't being taken out on any cases by the DCI because Jack thought he was bonkers – an belief about which he hadn't been subtle.. However, Ianto was soon of the opinion that certain gaping elements of his new job were being kept from him. Jack had implied that his team was elite – a crack force – yet the volume of what Ianto would call policing was non-existent. The trips out to chase up those mysterious telephone calls were frequent, but there was no liaison, no meetings, no case notes. Nothing. Aside from the occasional burst of energy with Jack sweeping through the office, his coat and a spare officer or two trailing behind him, nothing happened. And when Jack was out, at least one if not all of the remaining officers would also disappear to, presumably, another part of the building. Even Gwen made no attempt to involve Ianto with actual cases, leading him to wonder yet again why the hell he could possibly be there.
The closest Ianto found to actual records were a few sparse sheets in a small filing cabinet which was almost completely obscured by a dying potted tree. He'd shoved the plant aside and read the reports in detail, looking for a sign. What kind of sign, he had no idea... but there had to be something.
To his initial dismay, each file detailed only minor misdemeanours, the most basic and bog-standard of petty crimes imaginable. Just then, some of Jack's previous words had returned to him - "the uniformed lot do the grunt work; they deal with the civilian junk". Why would a group who supposedly only dealt with 'interesting cases' – Special Ops, it'd be colloquially called in 2011 – have case notes for such minor crimes? Recent notes at that, and so perfectly described that they were practically textbook.
It had been seven days since Ianto awoke at Bute docks. Every morning he woke up and, after a moment of blissful bafflement, he would be hit by an almost tangible wave of despair, anxiety, and vexation. On swallowing hard against the inevitable rise of bile, he would bathe and dress, force down some stale toasted bread, and leave for the station as quickly as possible. The office was marginally more bearable than the cramped cube he was supposed to call a home; he felt less suffocated by it than by the flat despite the fact that everything around him left him reeling with questions.
Ianto hadn't dreamed of The Tarot Girl again. His mind remained clear in sleep, but for the consistent, aching reminder that he was alone in every sense. In the morning, before wakefulness took hold, he sometimes imagined Lisa's arm was thrown across his stomach, that the mattress below him was high-quality memory foam, that he could look forward to a power shower, Columbian coffee and croissants, and his normal, respectable life.
The hope still flared, every time, but when he opened his eyes he remained trapped. Every time, he had to exercise all his might to halt the panic attack before it could take hold. He would walk into work calm, composed, and stoic, and he would absolutely not let his colleagues know just how much he was struggling.
Ianto went into the office every day, despite Jack's assurances that nobody was expected to work around the clock. Ianto had replied with some universal superhero cliché of crime never taking a break, and Jack had laughed, predictably. Still, the DCI threw him out every evening as early as possible, the record being 4PM. As time went on, Ianto questioned it, and was either brushed off in response, or told that it was a quiet week and The New Kid didn't have anything to do just yet, which was a serious understatement. One evening, Ianto decided to wait outside of the station once he had left. Hours passed before anybody else followed – first Owen Harper, then Gwen with Toshiko, and eventually Suzie Costello. Come midnight, Ianto had given up on seeing whether Jack would also emerge.
Everything was logged in his notebook, and each evening, he would try to make sense of what he had recorded. Twice, he had fallen asleep with his head across the pages. The second time was on the sixth night, and on the seventh morning, he decided he would have to be proactive.
His opportunity came early in the afternoon, as the unseen telephone rang and Jack swaggered from his office, calling Toshiko and Gwen to join him. Clearly thinking they were being subtle, Suzie soon sidled away to somewhere else in the station, and Owen followed. What they were doing, Ianto didn't want to know, provided he was left with a little time to himself.
He waited, just in case, choosing stealth over haste. Half an hour of solitude passed before he silently rose to his feet and walked to Jack's shed, slowly attempting to give the door knob a turn. As he suspected, it was immovable. He'd noticed the consistent loud click once the door was closed after every time Jack flew through it, and had long ascertained that it locked itself from the inside. Fortunately, Ianto had learnt to pick locks as a teen, after dropping his keys in a fast-flowing stream during an eventful hike with a friend. Attempting to break into his own house later that day, soaked to the bone and with his friend threatening to put a plant pot through the window if Ianto didn't hurry up, he'd discovered a natural aptitude for it. It became somewhat of a party piece for him, and had aided him many times during his adult life and policing career. Finding his way into Jack's office was one such time, and the irony of the fact that in 2011, he wouldn't have had anywhere near such ease breaking into a boss' office, was not lost on him.
After a short struggle with an unbent paper-clip he had fashioned into a picking tool, the door swung open, and Ianto felt rather pleased with himself for the first time in this hell hole. As per the last time he had been inside the wooden shack, it was in disarray, with papers and knick knacks strewn across the desk. But what truly interested him was what lay within the filing cabinet he had slumped over a week previously. The cabinet, too, was locked, and put up more of a fight than the door had, but eventually acquiesced and the top drawer popped open invitingly.
Heart pounding, Ianto tugged it wide and discovered countless neatly-arranged brown paper files stuffed within, with dates scribbled on the tabs in tiny, precise handwriting. Allowing himself some small sense of victory for finally having made a move which might aid his plight, he picked up the first file and flipped it open, only to find his self-satisfaction was all in vain.
The papers were decorated with thousands of tiny symbols in straight lines, like text, but no text Ianto had ever seen. Such designs could certainly not be printed on a typewriter. The second file was the same, and the third – every single one, in fact, through to the next drawer, and the next.
After almost forty-five minutes, Ianto slumped once more over the stout cabinet after slamming it closed, and ran his fingers through his short hair. He had learnt absolutely nothing new from his venture into breaking and entering, besides the fact that if Jack could decipher that code, he was at least marginally more intelligent than Ianto had assumed.
The ring of Jack's telephone almost forced Ianto out of his own skin. He took a surreptitious glance around, wondering whether he was about to hear thunderous footsteps as a prologue to being caught raiding Jack's office, but the ring simply echoed ominously in an otherwise silent space. Ianto stared at the offending device before snatching up the receiver on the sixth ring, making his second rash decision of the day.
"Yes?"
"Harkness?" a suspicious male voice with a thick local accent asked after a pause.
"No, it's DI Jones; DCI Harkness is otherwise engaged" Ianto replied, tentatively lowering himself into Jack's seat.
"Oh" the voice said, sounding unsure. "I thought he was the only one who answers the phone..."
"As I said, he's unavailable" Ianto repeated. "Can I help?"
"Err... yeah, it's Davidson here. I think we've got one of your cases. I was calling Harkness to see if he'd come down and take a look."
"I'll come" Ianto said quickly – too quickly, he thought with a wince.
"Would that be alright with Harkness?" Davidson asked, sounding as if he was acutely frightened of Jack and any potential wrath he might incur. Interesting.
"Are you questioning my authority as an officer of the law, Mr. Davidson?" Ianto asked in his sternest voice, and with a vague childish glee, he could hear the man panic.
"Of course not, Detective Inspector..."
"Jones."
"Jones. No, I-I just have to be sure. I know your lot deals with all this sensitive material, so we can't be too careful."
Ianto felt one corner of his mouth twitch involuntarily. A lead.
"Give me the address, and I'll come down now" he ordered, ready with a pen when it was delivered. Thankfully he knew, as he recalled the slightly rusted knowledge of his home city, that it wasn't far. He hadn't been issued a car, yet – he didn't know if they were even planning to do so – and his own hadn't been recovered by whoever was allegedly searching for it. It was a fruitless endeavour anyway, he was sure of it.
"Thank you, Mr. Davidson. You can expect me within half an hour" Ianto said, already plotting the route.
"I'll have a cup of tea waiting" Davidson replied in a distinctly sycophantic manner, and for once, Ianto chose to exploit it.
"Coffee" he bluntly replied, and dropped the receiver back in its cradle. A familiar thrill tickled at the edges of his despair-numbed mind, and he leaned back in Jack's seat with a short huff of laughter.
Finally.
