Nightingale: Agent of Torchwood

Ghost Machine [2]

"This is the feed from the station camera." Toshiko explained back at the Hub, "Nightingale grabs the kid. She's got his jacket, and he slips out,"

Jack looked back at Nightingale. "You okay with this?"

"And then?" Nightingale asked Tosh.

"Jack and Owen arrive. And then nothing. Sorry,"

"No. It was as real as this is. More real than any of the visions I've had. I didn't just see that little boy. I could hear what he was thinking. I could feel it. Like I was lost,"

"Intense emotion can be part of a neurological event. Hallucinations, dementia," Owen listed.

Nightingale sent a dark glare towards the medic. "I wasn't hallucinating, Owen. And I'm not bloody senile,"

"You pushed this button, and that caused this apparition moment?" Jack wondered.

"Yeah,"

"Jack, don't," Tosh warned.

Nightingale put a hand over the device and looked up at Jack. "Jack, please don't,"

"As if," Jack smirked.

Nightingale shook her head. "But that's how it felt. Like an apparition. A ghost,"

"Toshiko, where do we start?"

"The guy you were chasing, I've got lots of CCTV, so tracking him down will be easy. The little boy? You said there was a name on the card around his neck?" Toshiko asked.

Nightingale nodded. "Flanagan. Tom Erasmus Flanagan,"

"Unusual name," Jack noted. "That'll help. Run a full check. Births, marriages, deaths, criminal record, passports. However long it takes, we'll find him wherever he is," he assured Nightingale.

"Found him." Owen said, "Flanagan, Thomas Erasmus. 74 Brynaeron Terrace, Butetown. He's in the phone book,"

***

A young woman answered the door.

Nightingale stood on the doorstep beside Owen. Nightingale flashed her psychic paper. "Hi, I'm DI Smith. This is PC Harper. Could you spare a few minutes, please?"

"Yeah, okay," The woman leads them into a cozy living room.

An elderly but healthy-looking man sat in an armchair at the far side of the room.

"Dad visitors, from the police,"

"Oh, caught up with me at last, have ya?" The man teased with a smile.

Nightingale responded in kind, keeping the tone light. "I'm Gale, this is Owen. It's just routine. We're looking for eyewitnesses to an incident at the railway station last night,"

"We were here, weren't we, Dad?" The Woman claimed "Strictly Come Dancing finals...the newsreader,"

"Ohh, she's got legs up to 'er armpits, ain't she?" Owen teased.

"Would you like a cup of tea?" The man asked.

"I'd love one, thanks," Nightingale smiled. "Owen will give you a hand,"

"She'll talk him to death out there," The man said once Owen and the woman left.

"He'll give as good as he gets," Nightingale chuckled.

"She was right, though. We were in all last night. We wouldn't have seen anything,"

"Just for the record. You are Tom Erasmus Flanagan,"

"My father was an Erasmus. His father before him,"

"Now, that's not a Welsh accent, is it?"

"No. Lived here 66 years and still sound like a barrowboy. I was evacuated during the war. 1941. The Germans bombing the hell out of the East End,"

"Cardiff was being bombed as well as London, wasn't it?"

"We were taken out to the countryside from here. My mother packed me a suitcase. My big sister wrote my name on a card. They put me on a train at Paddington. She kept saying I had to go to be a good boy and telling me not to cry. And there was the pair of them, crying their eyes out. That was the last I saw of them, though I didn't know that then, of course, waving goodbye,"

"How old were you?"

"Eight,"

"You must have been very, very frightened,"

"I didn't know a soul here. There was a mix-up. I'd kept my head down so much they forgot all about me. So they left me all on my own. It felt like the end of the world. I wandered down this tunnel. Totally Lost. Forgotten. I was looking for someone, anyone who would look after me. Why don't they come for me? I kept thinking. No one knows me. I'm lost. They worked it out in the end. They came back for me, and I got taken in by a lovely couple. No kids of their own. And, well, at the war's end, I'd no one left in London, so I stayed here. I'm still here now,"