m_findlow | Fffc Bingo Card - Under observation

Title: Under observation
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Kathy Swanson, Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,000 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Bingo Card Prompt 21 - Observing at fffc
Summary: Kathy finally has Jack right where she wants him.

Christmas, Kathy Swanson thought. It's like Christmas come early. She leaned back against the door of her car as she watched the tall man in his long coat being ushered over to the marked police car, his hands cuffed between the two uniformed officers. The first opened the back door, whilst the second one helped him in, pushing on his head to avoid the top of the door.

‘Be gentle,’ she called out. ‘The Captain is our honored guest this evening. As much as she might have delighted in having her officers giving him the rough treatment, it was actually far more satisfying to have everything run smoothly and without incident, adding humiliation into the mix.’

She warned Jack the last time their paths had crossed that if he interfered with one more of her crime scenes she'd have him arrested for obstruction of justice. It was one thing for his entire team to roll up and take over, using her officers as nothing more than personal crowd control and pissing off the SOCO team who would complain loudly at her for letting them contaminate the scene. Tonight however he'd been on his own. It was almost as if he were tempting her to do it. Without anyone else there, and that big black car nowhere in sight, he was just a man breaking police lines and failing to comply with police instructions. Being arrested in possession of a firearm hadn't done him any favours, either, even if he was licensed to carry it. His arrogance had cost him tonightand Kathy made no hesitation in ordering his immediate arrest.

She followed the book to the letter, letting the intake officers print him and photograph him. His coat and all his other possessions were confiscated and he was put into an isolation cell.

Her shift had ended two hours earlier, but she stuck around in the surveillance centre, watching the CCTV images as they streamed from inside his cell. She wanted to get the measure of the man who had been disrupting police operations for as long as she'd worked here.

Harkness leaned a palm against the door, leaning down towards the flap and speaking through it to the officer posted outside his cell. He was giving his verbal authorisation code - the one that could spring him immediately from custody. Kathy however was alert to that, instructing her officers to ignore it and state clearly that they had no knowledge of any such codes. She knew it was a risk giving that instruction, and that it could come back to bite her, but she didn't think Jack Harkness was the vindictive type. He'd already had plenty of opportunity to use it and protest against his incarceration and hadn't.

When his plan didn't pan out he didn't rail against it. He merely went and sat on the metal bed on the opposite side of the cell, before lying down on it, one leg bent at the knee and his arm underneath his head. He might look cool and collected now, but she hoped that with a few hours of nothing but waiting, he'd start to crack.

It was only two am. Those on remand would be entitled to a meal, but that wasn't until at least nine am. She fixed herself a coffee from the room next door and returned to her seat.

Who was this enigmatic man anyway? He was reasonably handsome, if you could call it that, but otherwise ordinary. His choice of clothing was a bit odd, that army surplus coat and braces on his trousers like the kind her grandfather might wear. Perhaps he liked standing out, which was ridiculous since he was meant to work for a somewhat secret organisation.

She leaned closer to the monitor, trying to pick out his facial expression. Were his eyes shut? Was he actually napping in there? It would seem so because he didn't move for the next hour or so. Tired as she was and in need of a nap herself, she simply made another coffee.

He woke up and stood, stretching out his cramped muscles, moving from one side of the cell to the other and back again. She expected him to start sweating now, still locked up with no one coming for him. She wanted to see that caged lion prowling around its cell, slowly losing it, but he just sat back down and leaned against the wall. He spent a while cleaning his fingernails, then removed his boots and re-laced them before putting them back on, and then went back to sitting placidly. He had to crack soon.

He sat, got up, stretched, sat back down. There was a rhythm to it, but no urgency or anxiety. It vexed Kathy that he could be so calm and unworried. Where was the anger, where were the demands? Not so much as a single baleful glance towards the camera. It was like he was on holiday.

There was a subtle knock on the wall that distracted her for just a moment, waking her from her weary vigil. The morning desk sergeant was standing there with a clipboard in hand and locking a little agitated.

‘What is it?’

‘The arrestee's representation is here.’

‘Jones?’

‘He's quite pissed off, ma'am. Says we had no right to detain him.’

She rolled her eyes at the CCTV screen. No surprises there, she thought. They knew the procedural rulebook almost as well as she did. Still, Harkness had tried using his Torchwood authorisation code to force an early release only the once. If he'd really wanted out he could have made a ruckus all night and she'd have had to let him go.

‘Tell him all the charges have been dropped and that Harkness is free to go.’

The desk sergeant took a step forward. ‘And if he asks why, ma'am?’

She let a little smirk play across her lips. ‘They think we're totally incompetent so tell him we simply made a mistake.’