Jack took a long swallow of his bottled water as the man scraped the bar stool next to his out and sat down.
'I thought you'd stood me up.'
Cutler grinned. He was still in his suit this time; the hour earlier and the mood lighter. 'Are you crazy? Wherever I go, there are phones ringing for me.'
Jack laughed. 'But this time I'm thinking they're all being a little nicer when you answer.'
'Maybe.' Cutler nodded at the barman. 'JD and coke and whatever that piss-water is he's drinking.'
Pushing a ten pound note across the bar, Jack forced Cutler's own cash out of the way. 'I'm getting these.' He looked over at the detective. 'Let's call it a farewell drink.' He paused. 'I take it you are leaving Cardiff? And not to go to the Orkney Islands?'
'You guess right.' Stuffing his money back in his pocket, Cutler leaned forward on the bar. 'I've been called back to London. Seems the stink around me is fading.'
'Congratulations.'
They clinked bottle to glass and the note rang clear around the half-empty bar. 'Thanks. Although congratulations aren't necessary, are they? None of this has anything to do with me.'
Jack watched him thoughtfully. 'But you solved the case and brought an end to the terror of the Cardiff Slasher.'
Cutler laughed. 'Oh yeah. Of course I did.'
'It's in the papers. It must be true. Maria Bruno's husband cracked under the pressure of their debts and her constant put-downs and threats of divorce and murdered his wife, cutting out the organs that were most important to her. But not before he'd practised on a few others first, scouring the streets of Cardiff dressed in a thick black cape, seeking out his victims and monstrously killing them. But his taste for blood had grown too great and, even after the ruthless execution of his own wife, Martin Meloy just couldn't stop.'
Jack widened his eyes, exaggerating the impact of his words; his voice full of Victorian carnival melodrama. 'And then, feeling Detective Inspector Cutler's carefully slung net closing in around him, and with his final murder attempt foiled, he took the coward's route and ended his own life, leaving only the pitiful note, "I'm sorry. It was all my fault."'
He raised an eyebrow and then his bottled water, saluting the policeman.
'If that's what the papers say, then it must be true.' Cutler rolled his glass around in his hands. 'I'm glad you find it funny.'
Jack sighed. 'Sometimes you have to look at the lighter side. If you don't, the darkness will drive you mad. Take that on board from one who knows.'
'Poor bastard Meloy.'
'No.' Jack shook his head. 'He's dead. This doesn't hurt him.'
Cutler didn't look so convinced. 'You know what is funny?' he said, eventually.
'Go on.'
Jack watched the crinkles and lines of the other man's face. There were plenty running their way across his forehead and down his cheeks that had no place there for a few years yet. None of them looked like laughter lines.
'Well, think about it. I stuck the knife in my career by pretending I'd planted evidence, and now I've resurrected my career by actually planting evidence to set up a dead man. There's trace DNA of Meloy's been found at every crime scene or on each body just in case anyone tries to prove him innocent.' He shook his head. 'And Torchwood forced my hand in both cases.' Running his fingers through the mess of sandy hair that topped his head, he met Jack's gaze. 'So you can congratulate me as much as you like, but we both know it's all bollocks. There's no real truth or justice here. It's all a mockery. Just like last time.'
Jack shook his head. 'You're wrong. You don't think what happened with Ryan Scott and the alien was justice? And do you really think the world is ready for the truth about the Rift and everything else that's out there?' Cutler didn't answer. 'Of course you don't. If you did, you wouldn't have stayed quiet all these years. It's just not as easy as black and white and right and wrong, although sometimes my job would be a lot easier to live with if it were. Truth is all perception. The truth can change.'
'The real truth of things is always there, Jack. Underneath. You know it. You just make choices and hope they're the best ones.' Cutler smiled. 'And I respect you for that. But I'm not sure it's a code I can live by.'
They drank in silence, each lost in their own thoughts. It was Jack that cracked the moment.
'I can make it true, though.'
He looked sideways at the policeman.
'I can make it as if none of the truth happened and what the papers say is real.' He paused.
'We have something. It kind of soothes the memory. Wipes the crap away. And trust me, it's normally for the best.'
'So is that how you deal with inconvenient people like me down here?' Cutler shook his head. 'That won't make it any truer. It will just make it true to me. And that's a completely different thing. I'll keep my brain untampered with, if you don't mind. Bitter and twisted is the way I like to be.'
'I thought that's what you'd say, but it would be rude not to offer.'
'And I thank you for your offer.' Cutler pushed back the stool. 'Just need to take a trip to the little boys' room and then I'm going to buy you a goodbye drink. A proper one. With alcohol in it and everything.' He paused. 'You'd have been a good man to have on the force, Harkness.'
Jack grinned. 'I'll get them in, sir.'
'You do that.'
Twenty minutes later, Gwen stood in the doorway of the bar, her slim figured haloed by light and with her hands on her hips. It was only when she walked in that Jack saw the slight frown pulling two lines down between her eyebrows. He wondered if he'd still know her when those lines settled there. Everything was uncertain. Everything could change. How long did Gwen have? Would her breath of life be any longer than Tosh's or Owen's or all the others he'd seen die in the name of Torchwood? The inside of his mouth stung bitterly.
Gwen looked at the policeman slumped over the bar, his blond head resting in his hands. A snuffled snore squeezed out from between his face and the smooth surface.
'I take it that's not been brought on by drink?'
Jack shook his head. 'No.'
'Didn't think so.'
Ianto joined them, his own neat suit the antonym of Cutler's, whose shirt hung out at the back. 'Retcon?'
'Yep.' Jack stood up. 'I slipped it in his drink when he went to the bathroom.'
'How come?' Gwen's disappointment was clear, but Jack didn't want to hear it. He knew she'd liked Cutler. He also knew that seeing Cutler out cold on the bar was a little like having a premonition of her own future. If Torchwood didn't kill her one way, then there was always the possibility it would take her another. There were no guarantees for anyone. And Retcon was a kind of death.
'He's been in the Hub. Worked with us closely.' The muscle in Jack's jaw twitched painfully. Sometimes he hated the things he had to do in his job. 'If he was staying in Cardiff then maybe he'd have been useful, but they were transferring him back to London. He'd be too far away to monitor. He could cause problems.'
He'd chosen his words carefully, and fully expected Gwen to fly into a rage at him over describing Cutler in terms of 'usefulness'. She didn't, though. Instead, he looked up to find her watching him thoughtfully with her dark, beautiful eyes. In the smooth neon light, she looked very young, and Jack once again wondered at these people that would follow him into situations that might bring about their own deaths but never his. What did he do to deserve their loyalty?
'Probably the right thing,' she said at last.
'Where shall we take him?' Ianto peeled the body into a seated position, trying to secure one arm over his neck.
Jack pulled a set of keys from the sleeping detective's inside pocket. 'Back to his place.' He stuffed a small piece of paper into Ianto's free hand. 'The address is there. It's one of those new apartments down in the Bay.'
Ianto nodded. For a moment, he didn't move and Jack felt his impassive gaze scrutinising him. 'This was the right thing to do, Jack,' he said eventually. 'It was the only thing to do.'
Jack nodded. He knew it. But it didn't stop him feeling like he'd just killed a man, and a man he'd liked and respected at that. Cutler would be different after this, and maybe he'd be happier and maybe not, but Jack had taken that choice away from him.
Gwen folded her arms. 'Sucks being the boss, I bet.'
'You got that right.'
Leaning in, she gave him a sudden, impulsive hug, squeezing warmth into his soul. 'We'll be ten minutes. You'd better bloody be here when we get back. You're not the only one that needs a drink. Right, Ianto?'
The tall young man nodded, his face straining under the weight of the solid, sleeping body. 'I will do once I've got him back home.' He shifted, trying to balance. 'He's heavier than he looks.'
'And anyway,' Gwen added with a grin. 'It's a week till pay day. So you're buying.'
Following Ianto, she was halfway to the door when she paused. 'You are OK, aren't you, Jack?'
He smiled. 'Yeah. Sure I am. Now get out of here, otherwise I'll have your beers drunk before you get back.'
***
Jack waited until Gwen had left before letting the smile slide off his face and into his water. His own loneliness ate a little deeper inside and he wondered if maybe he had a growing void inside him just like the one he'd glimpsed within the alien's screaming mouth. He wouldn't be surprised. Some kind of blackness was hardening at his core and he knew there was nothing he could do about it. It was the inescapable effect of his unusual life. Of the choices he had to make in his long, and seemingly endless existence.
Sighing, he drained what was left of the warm dregs of water that clung hopelessly to the inside of the bottle and felt them fizz into his chest. In a few hours, Detective Inspector Tom Cutler would wake up with a mild headache and all knowledge of Jack Harkness, Torchwood and Torchwood One would be wiped from his memory. The moment that defined his career and revealed so much about the strength of his character would be stripped from him and replaced with burning shame. But on the plus side, he'd also think he'd just solved Cardiff's most brutal serial killer case, and maybe that would go some way to allowing some self-absolution for long ago planting evidence on a guilty man in order to secure a conviction.
Tom Cutler's truth had changed. And maybe the new version might be easier to live with. The one thing Jack knew was that knowledge wasn't always good for the soul.
Watching the barman clean away Cutler's glass, happily destroying any evidence of Retcon, Jack sighed. On the back bar, the front page of the Western Mail was filled with the image of Martin Meloy's weak face, his eyes staring balefully out, as if accusing Jack from beyond the grave. Martin Meloy's truth had changed too. Those who knew him would regale dinner parties for years to come with stories of how they always suspected 'there was something strange about him'. He'd never seemed 'quite right'. And then they'd tell tall tales of his macabre ways, invented so long ago that they'd believe them true themselves. The truth was like that: fluid and mercurial. There was maybe only one other person in the universe that understood that better than Jack, and he was a long way away, having adventures of his own.
Jack could use some time with him right now. He was a man who understood hard decisions and had a core of loneliness that probably beat Jack's own. Signalling the bartender, he thought of the alien and the singing boy, blended as one, probably far across the universe by now. He allowed himself a half-smile.
Some good had come out of this, even if the world would never know.
'A beer and a vodka diet coke, please.' He paused. 'And a brandy for me. Neat.'
Gwen and Ianto would be back soon and they'd raise his spirits with their own undaunted positivity. He was lucky to have them, lucky to have found them and he needed to keep hold of these good times, even if they threatened to be fleeting. One day, he'd need their memory and he couldn't waste the joy of the present when it could be found.
Because this was the twenty-first century. When everything would change. And Captain Jack Harkness intended to be ready.