Free Something in the Water by Trevor Baxendale

a clean towel for Toshiko. She thanked him icily as she took the towel and shivered. Ianto then busied himself spreading the paper out on the concrete, soaking up the water and clumps of congealed mud and grass. ‘There is a doormat upstairs, you know. Several, in fact.’
    ‘What the hell happened?’ Jack asked, grinning.
    ‘Slight accident in the marshland,’ Gwen said. ‘We wandered off the path at Greendown Moss. Big mistake.’
    ‘That’s a relief,’ Owen said with a sardonic smile. ‘For a moment I thought you’d been mud-wrestling together and I’d missed it.’
    ‘In your dreams.’
    ‘Only when I’m bored, girls. Only when I’m bored.’
    Without another word, Toshiko went to get herself cleaned up. Gwen reported to Jack in his office.
    ‘Your friend Professor Len was … interesting. Not your type, I’d have thought.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘Sort of … grungy.’
    ‘So he’s let himself go. But he was a great guy. We had a thing together in the early seventies.’ Jack smiled warmly at the memory.
    ‘Yes,’ Gwen said thoughtfully, ‘he sent his fondest. But we didn’t find any ghosts.’
    ‘Ianto said you found a corpse, which is a start.’
    ‘That was later. First we searched Greendown Moss. There was definitely something there – Tosh picked up another Rift spark, but we couldn’t get a fix on it, didn’t see anything.’
    ‘Sounds familiar,’ muttered Owen.
    ‘Ignore him,’ Jack told Gwen. ‘He’s just sore because he lost an alien in a fish farm.’
    Owen pointed at himself and mouthed I’m sore … ? incredulously.
    Gwen said, ‘How’d you get on with Big Guy, then?’
    ‘He’s in the Morgue. Some unidentified extraterrestrial opened him up like a—’
    ‘So far we’ve had a packet of crisps and a tin of tuna,’ commented Jack.
    ‘—baked potato,’ Owen finished triumphantly. He looked from one to the other. ‘No?’
    ‘Almost a meal,’ said Gwen. ‘Which reminds me – I’m hungry. Anyone for pizza?’
    ‘Already ordered,’ announced Ianto smoothly as he handed her a mug of hot chocolate.
    ‘Thanks, Ianto. You are a treasure, you know that?’
    He smiled. ‘As a matter of fact, I do.’
    ‘Tosh stepped off the path and got stuck in the mud.’ Gwen sipped the chocolate carefully. ‘At least I thought it was mud, but it turned out to be a bog or something and before we knew it she was sinking.’
    Owen sniggered, shaking his head. ‘Oh, I’d have paid money to have seen that.’
    Gwen glared at him. ‘She’s lucky to be alive. If it hadn’t been for Professor Len, she’d be dead.’
    ‘Wouldn’t we all?’ said Jack. He stood up and clapped his hands. ‘So – where’s the body?’

EIGHT
    Len Morgan trudged across Greendown Moss, hands deep in the pockets of his parka. It was bitingly cold out here, even at this time of year, and the wind was making his nose run continuously. Every time he put a boot down in the mud, he could feel icy fingers grabbing at his feet. For most people, a walk across the Moss would be a risky undertaking in good weather. In these conditions it was positively dangerous. Many people had met their deaths out here, and it was apparently nothing to do with Sally Blackteeth. They just sank in the mud, slipped beneath the Moss and drowned.
    But not Professor Len. He knew the bog too well, and he knew Sally Blackteeth.
    There was a thick mist hanging around the trees of Grey Copse. He could see the branches of the silver birch stretching up towards the white sky, but that was all. The mist closed around him as he stepped into the trees, welcoming him to another, colder, more mysterious world.
    ‘That was a bloody stupid thing to do,’ he said.
    A dark figure emerged from the mist close by. ‘You can talk.’
    Len shivered. He knew better than to look at the figure directly. It was enough that he could hear the moist sucking noise it made as it moved slowly behind him. He never heard a footstep, only the faint, wet sound of