#pub?

WHAT YOU GOT?

You might be enjoying a bucolic country walk across the Essex countryside near Danebury, in that beautiful golden sun of an early evening in late Spring. The world looks touched by magic, painted with light, and you breathe in the cooling air as you feel the warmth on your skin and smell the rich freshly-turned soil of the field next to the path. You are truly happy, for once, and do not think of your work or your relationships or the money you do not have. In the far corner of the field, near a sprawling oak, you see two men, one tall and lanky, the other much shorter. They are walking slowly, swaying from side to side. It puzzles you for a moment, and then you realise that they are waving metal detectors back and forth. You watch them for a moment, then smile and walk on.

You haven’t gone more than three steps when you see it, two furrows away. You tell yourself that in this light of this most English country evening, everything is painted gold. But when you step out into the field and pick it up, you realise that it really is gold, a battered round coin now sat in the palm of your hand.

Stunned, you think to wave the men with their detectors over.

Wait. Do not.

This is not so you can keep the treasure for yourself, for there is no treasure. The gold coin is real enough, and you can sell it and have the holiday you so need. But if you call the men over, they will dig with their special spades, and then all three of you will find out that the coin was pushed to the surface as bait, and if you dig deep enough you will all find out what pushed it, and then that will be that.

Count yourself lucky, flip the coin in the air and see it spin bright in that beautiful evening light, then drop it in your pocket, and walk back to the pub.

“Mm.” Lamb doesn’t say anything for a minute, then– “You get to meet our ex-CIA psychopath? Frank Harkness.” He says the last part with thinly-veiled distaste.

Must be the gunman. “Not really,” she says. “By the time I got to them the Dogs already had him.” She thinks about it for a moment, then adds, “He’s River’s father,” just to try saying it out loud.