Pack Animals by Peter Anghelides Page A

please!’ he said mildly. ‘There are children about.’
    ‘Sorry, sir,’ said Ianto, trying not to laugh more. Jack wasn’t helping by stroking the hairs on the back on Ianto’s hand with his fingers.
    The beige anorak studied them. ‘You’re a bit old to be holding hands.’
    Jack smiled pleasantly. ‘You have no idea.’
    The elderly woman took her hand from her coat and tugged at her husband’s sleeve. ‘You’re never too old to hold hands, Walter,’ she chided him gently. ‘You just carry on, boys.’
    Walter’s face relaxed into a smile, and he and his wife walked on down the path, their translucent fingers now intertwined in an affectionate knot.
    ‘It’s not a pack of leopards,’ began Ianto.
    Jack groaned. ‘Are we still on that?’
    ‘Or tigers…’
    ‘Hey, we’re near the tigers. Let’s ask.’ Jack had spotted a big guy in a grey boiler suit. Had to be one of the zoo staff. ‘Hello!’ Jack called to him. ‘Do you know what you call a whole loada tigers? Like a crowd, or a pride, or…?’
    The boiler suit barely registered them. He was a huge, tall guy. Maybe two metres from his solid mud-caked combat boots to the tip of his spiky red hair. A ginger wardrobe of a man, whose huge hands dwarfed the PDA he was manipulating.
    ‘D’you mind?’ Jack was insisting.
    Ianto had walked over to join him. ‘Not one of the zoo staff,’ he said. He’d spotted that the crossed-keys logo on the man’s grey uniform read ‘Achenbrite’. The zoo uniforms, now he came to think of it, were blue-and-yellow.
    The huge ginger guy snapped his PDA shut with a twitch of his sausage fingers. He hared away off the tarmac path, giant strides eating up the expanse of grass between the animal displays. A flock of flamingos startled and strutted away across their pen in a pink cloud of anxiety.
    ‘Achenbrite?’ mused Jack.
    ‘I noticed,’ agreed Ianto. ‘Did you spot the earpiece?’
    A shrill scream cut across the still air. It came from the opposite direction, and it wasn’t the exhilarated squeal of a kid spotting a giraffe. This was full-throated terror. Ianto considered the directional signs, orienting himself with location information before running. There was the scream again. The signs indicated it came from over by the big cats.
    Jack chased after him up the incline towards the Bengal compound. ‘Did you see that sign?’ he grumbled. ‘They spelled “tiger” wrong.’
    Ianto tutted. ‘It’s supposed to be tiegr. God, how long have you been in Cardiff, Jack?’
    ‘Long enough.’
    ‘Long enough to have learned a bit of Welsh, that’s for sure,’ puffed Ianto.
    Jack pouted. ‘I promise to be fluent by the time you introduce me to your family.’
    ‘Then you have plenty of time to learn,’ muttered Ianto. They skidded to a halt in front of the tiger enclosure. Two blue-uniformed zoo staff were directing a nosy crowd of visitors reluctantly away from the area. The squat burly man with a moustache made of broom bristles was having more success than his lanky counterpart. Jack and Ianto got past him during this distraction.
    Ianto shoved at the access gate. ‘Shouldn’t this one be shut when the other is open?’
    ‘Gives you some idea about what’s in here,’ Jack said.
    ‘What’s that, then?’
    ‘Nothing. The animals have escaped.’ Jack was checking his wristband again, with no attempt to disguise it from Ianto.
    Another young guy was in there ahead of them. He had his hair tied back in a lank brown pony tail, for all the world like a zoo animal himself. He was struggling to comfort a shrieking woman, also in staff uniform. ‘It’s gonna be all right, Bethan,’ he was saying, repeatedly, like a mantra.
    ‘No it’s not gonna be all right, Jordy!’ she yelled at him. Snot and saliva hung down from her puce face. ‘The tiger’s already killed Malcolm.’ She gestured wildly to a bloodied heap by the tree at the centre of the compound. Pony-tailed Jordy wasn’t able to