Fish and Ianto spent the rest of the day with the clean up aspects of the operation. Michael Howard's death by mugging was firmly established as was Andrew Boyle's and he'd decided it was enough for the day. He'd already shut down his workstation and collected his things. Now, he was just standing in front of his workstation, holding his mobile in his hand, staring at it. It'd just gone seven and with Jack and Ianto volunteering for his night duty, it was still early enough for him to see Henry. So, Fish dialed Henry's number and then immediately disconnected the call… once… twice and then three times. For God's sake! You're a grown man… stop it… he told himself firmly but he couldn't bring himself to dial again.
Ianto had just come up the east stairs and saw Fish standing at his workstation staring at his phone. He came up behind his friend and laid a hand on his shoulder.
"You okay?" Ianto asked.
"Yeah… I told Henry I'd call, after I got off work…" Fish said.
"You've called and hung up haven't you?" Ianto asked, not bothering to hide his amusement.
"It's not funny, Ianto," Fish said, exasperated, not taking his eyes off his mobile. "It's ridiculous that I can't seem to work up the courage."
"Well, easy fix for that," the Welshman said with a devilish smile and then he snatched the phone out of Fish's hands.
"Oi!" Fish cried as he reached for his mobile but Ianto was taller than Fish and was holding the phone high up out of his reach. He watched in horror as Ianto's slim fingers tapped at the phone's touch screen, bringing up the recent calls list.
"Ianto, mate! Don't!" he begged. To Fish's annoyance, the Welshman was grinning from ear to ear. Christ, this must be what having a younger brother is like…
"Oi! Oi! No! Ianto! Please!" Fish cried. He jumped, trying to snatch the phone back but Ianto had turned, his back up against Fish's workstation. He'd switched the phone to his other hand and with Ianto's body and his desk in the way, the phone was firmly out of Fish's reach. Fuck all!
Fish's horror deepened as he saw Ianto's finger tap Henry's number on the recent calls list and the phone started to dial. Ianto put the call on speaker.
"I'll do your Weevil duties for a year!" Fish begged. He jumped again, knocking some things off his desk but Ianto switched hands again and bent his arm back. The phone was still completely out of Fish's grasp. Ianto shook his head, his grin broadened as the call rang once and then twice and then…
"Hello? Joe?" Henry's polished voice asked.
Ianto's grin had changed into a broad smile. He tossed the phone at Fish and said, "You'll thank me one day, mate."
"Joe? Are you there?" Henry asked again.
Fish muttered curses at Ianto's retreating back against Ianto, the Welsh, and anyone else he could think of. With his stomach doing flips and a lump in his throat, he took the call off speaker, raised the phone to his ear and said, "Henry, hi… sorry about that."
"I didn't know if you'd call," Henry admitted softly.
Fish could hear the relief in Henry's voice. Fuck… Ianto was right. He was thanking him already. "Listen, I'm about to knock off. I was wondering, if we could talk? Maybe meet somewhere for a drink?"
"I don't think we should talk in the open, Joe," Henry said. "At the risk of sounding forward…"
"Your hotel room is fine, Henry," Fish said, smiling a bit at Henry's stammering.
"I'm on the fifth floor, suite five twenty six," Henry said. "Have you eaten? I could get us some room service?"
"I haven't yet, no, and that-" Fish broke off at the sound of Jack's office door opening so fast that it slammed against the wall. "Hang on a second Henry… Jack? What's wrong?"
"There's another body in Riverside," Jack said. "Gwen is on her way. I want Will to meet her there. I need you on the CCTV footage. Where's Ianto? I want him to coordinate with you."
Fish watched as Jack moved across the room towards a light switch on the far wall. Jack flicked the switch on and off a few times. The switch was connected to the lights in Miranda's rooms and would tell her that she was needed upstairs. He was barely registering what Jack was saying. How could there be another body? The parasite infested girl was in their cells!
"I don't know where Ianto is," Fish said. Bloody Torchwood… "He was just here. Give me a minute Jack."
His mind had done a complete one eighty from dreading this evening with Henry to looking forward to it. Reluctantly, he moved towards the east stairs for a bit of privacy as he put his phone back against his ear.
"Henry-"
"I heard, Joe," Henry said, sounding disappointed and slightly amused. "It seems you have to work."
"I'm sorry," Fish said, relieved that Henry was understanding. "I can't explain. Has Evie told you anything about what we do?"
"Only that you investigate the strange and usual and that the nature of your work is clandestine, nothing more. I'm sure that whatever work your organisation does is important otherwise Mao-Lin wouldn't be involved," Henry said.
For a moment, Fish wondered at the name Henry was using for his friend. He spared a passing thought to what the woman's real name was as it seemed no one referred to her in the same way.
"Thank you for understanding, Henry," Fish said. "I don't know when I'll be free next. I know that you have other obligations…"
"Obligations that I have already postponed," Henry said. "I'll be in Cardiff until Thursday, Joe."
"This isn't fair, you waiting around for me," Fish said, feeling badly.
"I have nothing but time," Henry said matter-of-factly. It was something Fish had heard Miranda say more than once.
"I'm sorry, I have to go," Fish said as he heard Jack calling for him from the main Hub.
"Be careful, please," Henry said softly. "Good night, Joe."
"I will. Night, Henry," Fish said.
Reluctantly, he disconnected the call and then ran his hand through his hair. He took a second, pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and then squared his shoulders. Head in the game, Fischer…
He bounded up the east stairs and sat down at his workstation, trying to clear the sound of Henry's voice from his head. Jack and Miranda were already gone and Ianto was sitting at Gwen's workstation.
"There you are," Ianto called out over his shoulder. "Jack said it's in Riverside by the train tracks near Clare Street."
Fish started bringing up the relevant cameras as he dropped his mobile onto his desk. "Sorry, I was on the phone with Henry."
"I'm sure he'll understand, Fish," Ianto said.
"He does. And Ianto? Thanks," Fish said and Ianto's only reply was a small smile. He shook his head, trying to focus. "This doesn't make any sense. That girl's downstairs."
"I have the live feed up here, I'll transfer it over," Ianto said, the long slim fingers dancing on the keyboard.
The window with the video feed popped up on Fish's screen. "I have it, let me back it up," Fish said as he clicked and activated the proper programs.
Since the case wasn't as closed as they all thought, Fish opened up the facial recognition programs designed by his predecessor, Toshiko Sato. He fed the parasite infested girl's image into the program. Acting on a hunch, he set the parameters to run through the missing person's database and left it to run in the background. He switched windows and started backing up the CCTV footage. The attack had been blocked by a passing train. One moment the victim was walking along the train tracks. The train passed and then the man was dead. There was no one in sight before or after the attack.
"Fuck all! The train's in the way and there aren't any other angles to work with," Fish shouted over to Ianto. His stomach rumbled a bit and he sighed as he thought about Henry, eating room service alone in his hotel room. Five twenty six…
"Follow him backwards, maybe he was stalked for a bit?" Ianto asked. He'd gotten up out of Gwen's chair and was leaning over Fish's shoulder.
Fish started sifting through the relevant footage, switching cameras and angles, trying to trace the victim's path. It was then he realised his comm unit wasn't in his ear. Goddamit! He took his ear piece out of his bag and popped it into his ear and activated it. He was distracted. He gave himself a stern mental shake, trying to clear Henry from his mind.
"Jack, I don't have any footage of the attack. The train went by just as it happened. The whole sodding thing is blocked," Fish said. "Ianto and I are trying to backtrack a little now."
"Keep us posted, Fish, we're nearly there," Jack said and then tapped his comm unit. He turned to Miranda in the passenger seat. "This doesn't make any sense, Will."
"I know, Jack," she said. "We'll figure it out."
By the time the two immortals had arrived on the scene, Gwen was already there, talking to a few of the local police. Jack got out of the SUV and caught her eye. He jerked his head and Gwen walked towards them.
"The body was found about half an hour ago, a couple of kids mucking about the tracks found it," Gwen said.
"Gwen, scan the crowd. The girl was with the bystanders. Look for someone tall, long arms and legs," Jack said. "Fish said a passing train blocked the cameras so we have no idea what we're looking for, we've only got the physical changes to go on."
Gwen nodded and then moved off. Under the guise of walking the grid of the scene, she scanned the crowd.
Jack walked over to Miranda who was crouched down, examining the body. He smiled a bit at the look of concentration on her face, her brow furrowed, her bottom lip caught in her teeth.
"Do you have a quid coin, Jack?" Miranda asked.
Jack dug into his pockets and fished out a few coins. He sorted through them in the palm of his hand. "No…"
Miranda pulled out her phone and started to tap at it. After a few moments, she turned to Jack and said, "Which coins do you have?"
"Two twenties, a five, a ten and a few pennies," he said.
"Hand me a twenty pence," she said.
He dropped the coin into her hands and crouched down next to her. "What are you doing?"
"I don't have my ruler with me and since it's a Torchwood case none of the crime scene processors are here," she said as she took the coin, turned it on edge and dipped it into the hole in the back of the corpse's skull. The coin slid easily into the wound with some space on either side. "The hole in the first skull was twenty three millimetres. The hole in the second body was nineteen. According to the Royal Mint, the twenty pence coin has a diameter of twenty one point four."
Jack saw the reasoning. "So since this coin fit, this wound is bigger than the one we saw on the body that turned up two days early. You're still assuming the size is significant."
"I know it's a reach but at this point, it's a reach I'm willing to make," she said, handing the coin back to him.
"Keep it," he said, wrinkling his nose a bit. He stood up looking around for Gwen. When he caught her eye, she shook her head slightly. "Let's get this body back to the Hub."
Miranda saw his shoulders slump in disappointment. Jack tapped his comm unit and spoke. "Fish? We're heading back. Can you get Ianto to set up the autopsy bay for Will?"
"Sure Jack," Fish said from his workstation back at the Hub. He turned away from his screen towards Ianto who was coming out of the Hub kitchen with coffee.
Fish relayed the message and Ianto wandered down into the autopsy bay after handing Fish his mug. Fish continued with his own work, trying to see if he could locate the victim anywhere else on the cameras around the area of the attack. It seems the man had been wandering along the tracks, not along the streets and he wasn't able to find anything. He was still working on the footage when Gwen, Jack and Miranda returned. The three other team members turned to their own tasks. Miranda went down to begin the autopsy. Gwen had started sifting through the CCTV footage of the girl they had downstairs, trying to trace her movements and Fish was still trying to retrace their latest victim's steps. Jack and Ianto were downstairs, trying to communicate with the alien in their custody. He kept working until his eyes started to burn. Fish rubbed them, trying to get them to stop stinging. It was nearly half ten now and neither he nor Gwen seemed to have found anything.
The two men came back up into the main Hub looking frustrated. Ianto wandered off towards the Hub's kitchen to put on more coffee for everyone while Jack came up behind Fish.
"I've nothing yet, Jack. Anything out of her?" Fish asked, jerking his head towards the east stairs.
"Nothing. Ianto said he's been trying to talk to her since she got here and nothing's working. I thought maybe she couldn't understand us but this isn't helping," Jack said, tapping his vortex manipulator. "The parasite might not be capable of communicating with us. Let me know if you or Gwen find anything. I'll be in my office. I'm going to take a look at the footage of her in the cell."
"Got it, Jack," Fish said, turning his attention back to his work.
The team continued to work into the night and finally, well past midnight, Jack emerged from his office and glared at Gwen and Fish. The two of them had continued to work, grabbing at smaller and smaller straws as the evening had worn on fueled by Ianto's coffee as they grew more and more weary.
"Go home you two," he bellowed. "We pick this up tomorrow. I don't want to see either of you before lunch."
Fish blinked down at his mobile. It was far too late to even consider seeing Henry, let alone call him. Bleary eyed and bone weary, he gathered his things and drove home in the pouring rain.
