Something in the Water by Trevor Baxendale

and Gwen, tell them to get their arses back here and do some proper work.’
    ‘I have done some preliminary research myself,’ Ianto said. ‘Tried to pick up on some basic patterns in the Rift energy and cross-reference them to police reports on the paranormal.’
    ‘Police reports? Do they have time to make reports on the paranormal?’
    ‘You’d be surprised.’
    ‘I thought they were too busy polishing their whistles and telling people the time.’
    Ianto smiled. ‘There are probably too many paranormal incidents to make a report on everything. They only report major strangeness, not minor strangeness. So they do keep records – the police are very good at that. I hacked into their database and ran a few sifting programmes to see if any minor strangenesses came up.’
    ‘So what have you found, Sherlock?’
    Ianto pushed a slim manila envelope across the desk. ‘The Strange Case of Saskia Harden.’

SIX
    Owen drove his Honda 2000S to Trynsel. The sat-nav prompted him quietly from the dashboard, and he was connected to the Hub hands-free via his ear comm.
    ‘I was hoping for a day off,’ he muttered ruefully as the first spots of rain appeared on the windscreen. The two-hour nap he’d taken on the sofa by his workstation already seemed like a distant memory – or a brief, unsatisfying taste of what real sleep was like.
    ‘There are no days off at Torchwood,’ said Jack cheerfully. ‘What’s going on?’
    ‘Ianto’s got me chasing some pretty young blonde—’
    ‘He knows you so well.’
    ‘—with a suicide habit.’
    ‘Like I said. Hold it – suicide habit?’
    ‘She keeps throwing herself in the canal,’ Owen said.
    ‘She sure sounds fun.’
    Ianto’s voice came through: ‘Saskia Harden. Serial attempts to take her own life, according to the police reports.’
    ‘And Torchwood is interested in her because …?’
    ‘Filed under paranormal,’ Ianto explained. ‘She’s been found face down in garden ponds, canals, even a lake, on no fewer than seven separate occasions in the last five months.’
    ‘That’s weird, but it’s not paranormal.’
    ‘Except that she was found dead on each occasion,’ Owen added. ‘You’ve got to admit, that’s one step further than weird.’
    ‘OK,’ Jack’s voice said, but there was still reservation. ‘And I take it that the police didn’t see this one-step-further-than-weirdness as an emergency.’
    ‘That’s correct,’ said Ianto.
    ‘So – why’s Owen on his way to find her?’ Jack’s voice took on a warning tone. ‘We’re busy, Ianto. I’ve got Gwen and Tosh looking for ghosts in the middle of nowhere and a Weevil-killer on the loose. Then there’s the young mother in Splott who’s got a spider the size of a dinner plate in her bath and we’re due another writ from the Hokrala Corporation any day now. We’ve got lots to do.’
    ‘This Saskia girl could be a lead,’ Owen said quietly.
    ‘A lead?’
    ‘Ianto cross-checked his non-emergency paranormal police reports with missing persons and, er, water.’ Owen swallowed, realising how lame this was going to sound.
    ‘I thought it might provide some kind of lead on your missing alien,’ Ianto added. ‘It went missing in the fish farm, after all. That’s a water connection.’
    ‘Kinda tenuous,’ Jack said.
    ‘Except that I back-tracked Tosh’s Rift scan and found that the same kind of temporal spark that we registered at the fish farm also occurred at each of the locations where Saskia Harden was found dead in the water.’
    ‘You’ve got to admit it’s probably more than coincidence,’ Owen added. ‘Anyway, I think she’s worth checking out.’
    Jack laughed knowingly. ‘Yeah, after all, she’s young, blonde, needs a shoulder to cry on …’
    ‘It’s a dirty job but someone’s got to do it.’
    ‘So where does she live, this mysterious and beautiful serial suicide?’
    ‘We don’t know,’ Ianto admitted.
    ‘What is she? A vagrant?’
    ‘The address