Title: Avenging Angel
Author: hexicode aka illman
Fandom/pairing (if appropriate): The Bill, no pairing
Summary: When Will comes under suspicion for murder and corruption, Emma decides to take things into her own hands.
Rating: technically all ages, but maybe a bit too violent for the kiddies ;-)
Warnings some violence, but nothing too graphic
Disclaimers: The characters and settings aren't mine. No profit is being made, this is for entertainment only.
A/N: My first foray into this fandom. To avid fans of Tatort, the plot of this story may seem suspiciously familiar, that's because it was rather heavily inspired by an episode of that show. This being said, it's hardly a novel idea, but I liked the concept too much not to give it a whirl. Many thanks to the lovely DianeM for beta-reading.
oOo
Will was having the worst hangover of his life.
From the moment he had pried open his eyes and come face to face with too much light and a pillow that didn't seem familiar, he had known that he had had way too much to drink. Painfully blinded by the morning sunlight, he immediately slammed his eyes shut again, but curiosity, worry and thirst got the better of him when, despite considerable effort on his part, he failed to remember getting drunk in the first place. Never having quite managed that before, he opened his eyes again.
The light still seemed far too bright and was only aggravating his headache, but he was now certain that he had never seen the room before, at least not sober. He pushed himself up and, leaning against the headboard, he took a more thorough inventory. The double bed he had woken up in had clearly been shared by two people, but it didn't look as if he had done much sharing with anyone as he was still mostly dressed, wearing most of his uniform. Despite the headache, he realized that he was going to be in a world of trouble and that he ought to do something about it, no matter how tempting the idea of simply going back to sleep seemed.
He dragged his legs over the edge of the bed and used the headboard to pull himself up to stand. He took a step forwards, but his legs gave way under him immediately. Face-first, he slammed into unfamiliar, brown-gold patterned carpeting. The dust and smell of cold cigarette smoke up-close made his stomach churn and brought him back to his feet, stumbling towards a door behind which he hoped the bathroom was because he really didn't want to be sick all over someone else's carpet, no matter how ugly it was. To part of him, out of the corner of his eyes, it looked like the bathroom door had been bashed in, but as he was violently sick a second later, that detail seemed negligible, at least for the moment.
Only when he'd brought up the contents of a meal he couldn't remember and the dry heaves that followed stopped, he became aware of the state of his surroundings. The small, generic bathroom had clearly been the scene of a fight. The mirror on the opposite wall was smashed, shards and blood smears all over the white tiles. The blood was deep red, still wet, but it took him a moment to realize that it was his own blood. He had cut himself when he'd stumbled inside. The cut on the bottom of his right foot was bleeding profusely and now it was starting to hurt, although the pain was minor in contrast to the headache, which only seemed to be getting worse by the second. Will pushed himself up from the floor and flushed the toilet, trying to gather his thoughts. It seemed impossible to follow even a single track of thought; he felt like his brain was going to leak out of his ears any moment. Supporting himself on the sink, he turned on the faucet and splashed water in his face, hoping to clear up the fog that clouded his mind. The water was icy against his face, but the cold served to wake him up more fully. He splashed another handful of water against the back of his neck and had another look around the trashed bathroom. Just what had happened last night?
Will's gaze fell down to his knuckles. His vision kept blurring and doubling, but they were neither cut nor bruised. He hadn't been in a fight. He ran a hand over the back of his head, belatedly realizing that he was displaying all the symptoms of a severe head injury, but he couldn't even feel a goose egg. He hadn't been attacked, and he hadn't been in a fight – what was left? Will tried to recall what had happened. Nothing coherent would come to him. The last thing he recalled clearly was starting his shift almost a day earlier. He had been partnered up with Sally - that much he could recall. Things were pretty clear up until the late afternoon, when his memory became increasingly fuzzy. He couldn't recall finishing his shift. It was like his memory had been erased.
Sitting down on the rim of the bathtub, he tried to figure out what to do next. It was then that he noticed the blood splattered from the inside against the pale green shower curtain. Will pulled back the curtain. The moment he saw the body, he remembered. Rebecca. He'd met her last weekend, at the pub. They had hit it off immediately. They had exchanged numbers, but Will didn't recall having heard from her again. Something had to have happened the previous afternoon that had for some inexplicable and horrible reason ended with Rebecca dead.
The sight of her lying dead, her clothes soaked with drying blood made him feel sick, but he couldn't look away, the part of his mind that was still clear was analyzing every detail. Her throat had been slashed across the front, a shard of the mirrored glass still sticking from the jagged wound. Her lower arms and hands were littered with cuts, some shallow, some deeper – defensive wounds. She had fought back hard. But she probably hadn't stood a chance once she'd struck the wall with the back of her head, leaving a stain of blood on the tiles.
Will couldn't help but see the scene play out in front of his inner eye and felt sick again. He was trying to tell himself that it was just a nightmare, but it was real. The piercing ring of his cell phone sent a new wave of pain through his head as he was torn from the grizzly image. He stumbled back outside, not caring that he cut his feet on the broken glass. The room was immaculate, only the bed was disturbed. His cell phone was on the bedside table, next to glasses and a bottle of champagne in a cooler. Hesitating for a moment, Will sat down on the bed before reaching for the phone. He noted the caller ID was Emma. Will swallowed. What time was it anyways? It was well light outside. He probably should be at work.
"Will, is that you?" A woman's voice came over the line, sounding annoyed. For a moment he wondered who she was, until he recalled checking the caller ID just moments earlier. Something was seriously wrong with his head and the problem seemed to be getting worse.
"Will?"
"Uhm, yeah. Emma?" Will managed, his own voice sounding slurred to him.
"Everything all right? The sergeant is looking for you! You missed the briefing this morning!"
Will tried to say something, anything that would adequately describe the situation, but his mind drew a blank.
"Will, can you hear me? Are you okay?"
"No, I think not," he finally said, not knowing where to even start. It was starting to get harder to stay upright, so Will allowed his head to sink back into the pillow. He could talk with his eyes closed just as well. "There is a….Rebecca is dead. I think she's been murdered." There, Emma needed to know that. For some reason, it seemed really important, even though he couldn't remember why.
"Rebecca?! Oh, never mind, where are you?" The voice sounded panicked now.
"I dunno," Will whispered. With what little strength he had left, he pulled himself up again and looked around. He'd seen it before when reaching for his phone, the receipt from room service. Will ignored Emma for the moment, all his attention focussed on making out the fine print on the white slip of paper. Gardena Hotel – at least that was what it looked like to him. Emma was still shouting at him through the phone, but he couldn't make out the words properly.
"Gardena Hotel, I'm there" he replied simply to her earlier question. There was welcome silence at the other end. Will sank back into the pillows. Despite the predicament he vaguely recalled being in, he was starting to feel almost calm. Everything was drifting away. Emma was saying something, but he couldn't make out the words, and suddenly didn't care anymore. The phone felt like a brick in his hand, so he simply shut it and let it drop into the pillows around him.
oOo
"Will, what's happened? Will, answer me!" Emma almost yelled into the phone but got no response. She called out his name a few more times, but to no avail. Then the line went dead. Emma stared at the phone in her hand for a few moments. She had no idea what had just happened, but whatever it was, it was bad and Will was almost certainly in trouble.
"So, did you finally manage to reach PC Fletcher?" The sergeant, wearing a grim expression, came walking up to where she was standing in the yard of the station.
"Yes, I did, Sarge."
"Well, I hope he has a good excuse for missing the briefing. It's the second time this week."
"I really think there is something wrong. He didn't even make sense when I talked to him. He said something about someone being dead and he couldn't remember where he was."
"I hope for his sake that he isn't simply drunk out of his mind," Stone grumbled. "Did he manage to tell you where he was?"
Emma nodded. "The Gardena Hotel."
"Come on." Stone walked towards the area car, where Sally was already waiting, leaning against the vehicle. "Sally and I have the area car today. It's not that we don't have enough to do with this upsurge of street muggings all around Sun Hill, but if there really is something wrong, we need to check on Will first."
Sally shot Emma a questioning look. "I'll explain in the car," Emma whispered to her colleague.
"Thanks, Sarge," Emma said aloud as she, Sally and Stone got into the car and peeled out of the station's car park.
oOo
"I didn't think that was Will's style," Sally commented as the Gardena Hotel came into view down the street. "I really thought he'd better taste then this."
"And better sense," Stone added as they were cruising for a free parking spot. "A few weeks back the drug squad raided this place. I think they used to have this place under surveillance, but I haven't heard anything in a while now. Seems to have quieted down."
"I didn't know anything about that," Sally confessed. Neither did Emma. Callum shrugged. "I got a mate who's with the drug squad." He turned the car into an adjacent street, where they finally found a free spot at the curb.
"Thanks." Emma pushed open the door and got out.
"Hurry up. The sooner we get this cleared up the better," Stone told her "If a call comes in, we can't just ignore it." He was obviously trying to sound calm, but Emma could tell that he was worried too. "But if something dodgy is going on in there, you let us know immediately." Emma nodded and started walking towards the hotel, anxious and worried about what she might find. She'd almost preferred it if the sergeant or at least Sally were coming with her, but they hadn't offered and the sergeant was already doing her a favour by driving her across Sun Hill to check on Will instead of just reporting him to the inspector and getting on with his shift. As soon as she was out of sight of the area car, she broke into a run. She just knew that there was something very, very wrong here.
oOo
The hotel was as low rent as you could get and looked more like a hostel than a proper hotel. What passed for an entrance hall was a dimly lit room with a reception desk next to the stairs and some worn furniture in the far corner. People didn't come here to enjoy a vacation. There was no one about, save for the receptionist, who was busy filling in a cross-word puzzle. She looked up, but the presence of a uniformed police officer seemed to have little effect as she regarded Emma with a blank expression on her face.
"What can I do for you?"
"I'm looking for…Did someone book into a room under the name Fletcher?"
The receptionist only glanced at the sign in sheet. "No. But if you are looking for a colleague of yours, he's in room 204. Up the stairs, second room on the right."
"Uhm, how did you know he was a colleague?
"He was in uniform. If he hadn't been so drunk, he'd have scared the rest of the guests to death. Police isn't good for business, if you know what I mean. Not that it isn't dead already after you lot stormed the place in the middle of the night. And you know what they found?" She let out a bitter laugh.
"Nothing, no drugs, nothing. All night…"
Emma ignored her. Letting herself be wound up by the woman's general frustration with the police wasn't going to help Will.
"Was he with someone?"
The receptionist paused in her tirade. "As far as I recall, he was with a woman."
"Thank you." Emma turned and hurried up the stairs, not caring what the receptionist was talking about as she called after her.
oOo
The door to room 204 was ajar and one glance at the lock told Emma that it had been forced open. "Will! Are you in there?" she called out and knocked forcefully against the wooden door.
The response was little more than a groan, but enough to spur her into action. Emma pushed the door open, not knowing what she might find. But her nightmarish visions of a room covered in blood with Will lying in the middle, were not confirmed. It was one of the ugliest hotel rooms she had ever seen, right down to the off-white wallpaper with yellow flowers and the golden-brown carpet, but it looked undisturbed at first glance. Emma suddenly felt silly for having wanted to call in back-up. Stone was probably right and Will had just had too much to drink. She crossed the room to where Will was slumped on the bed.
"Will!" She gently shook him by the arm. He groaned once again and his eyes drifted open. He stared at her with an empty gaze, the true colour of his eyes almost hidden by gigantic black pupils. He slowly sat up. "What are you doing here?" He looked around as if he was seeing the room for the first time. Emma's gaze fell on the mobile phone on the bed and the two glasses on the table. There was only a single bottle of champagne, by far not enough for Will to be in such a state, especially not if he had been sharing the drink.
"You called me, don't you remember?! Can you tell me what happened? Are you hurt?" Emma asked, still reeling with the shock of seeing her colleague obviously high on more than alcohol. Will shook his head. "Rebecca...the bathroom." he told her in a slurred voice, before slumping back down onto the bed, his eyes already drifting closed again. Having no choice but to leave him there for the moment, Emma crossed the room, worried about what she might find.
This door too had been forced open, but unlike the front door, the lock hadn't been simply picked, the door had been kicked out of the frame with brute force. The trail of destruction continued inside. The air smelled of blood and vomit. She crossed the room in two steps and instantly saw what Will had meant. A woman, presumably Rebecca, was lying in the bathtub. She was still dressed in a fine nightgown, but it was drenched with blood down the front. There was still a shard of mirrored glass sticking out from one of the bloody tears in her throat, but it had long stopped bleeding. Emma didn't need to check to know the woman was dead.
"She's really dead, isn't she?" Emma turned around and found Will half-standing, half-leaning against the doorframe. He looked ready to collapse again at any moment.
Emma nodded. "Yes, she's dead." She walked over to Will and carefully took him by the arm and tried steering him back to the bed. "I need to call this in. And then I think I should call for an ambulance, too." She got him to sit down on the bed again and now noticed the bloody footprints she'd missed earlier. Obviously Will had cut his feet on the broken mirror when he walked in barefoot. This was going to be a nightmare, Emma swallowed. But first things first. She was about to radio Stone when Will suddenly went limp in her grasp. Unable to support him in this position, Emma pulled him down to the floor as gently as possible. Only when she'd settled him as comfortably as she could, she realized that he wasn't breathing anymore.
Swearing to herself, Emma prepared for rescue breathing when Will took a shuddering breath. She watched him for tense seconds, but he continued breathing in ragged gasps. She rocked back on her heels and reached for her radio, her hand shaking. She could do this, she told herself, she had done this so many times on the job and this was no different. But before she had a chance to contact Sally and the sergeant, Will launched into a fit, his body jerking violently.
Desperately, she tried to recall her first-aid training, but she couldn't remember anything. She pulled a pillow from the bed and shoved it under Will's head, hoping that would keep him from hurting himself even worse, but there was nothing else she could do. It seemed like an eternity passed, but it was probably only seconds until the seizure was over and Will's body went still again. Too still, not even his chest was moving now.
oOo
"Can you tell me what happened?" the female paramedic, who had pulled her away from Will so that her colleagues could get to work, asked her softly.
Emma struggled to gather her thoughts. She should be better at this. A chiding voice in her head told her that she was a copper and should be able to handle herself in a crisis situation.
"Are you all right?" the paramedic asked her, interrupting her thoughts. "Maybe you should sit down?"
"No, I'm fine." she lied, but when the woman simply guided her over to a chair next to the table, she didn't resist.
"He…his name is Will Fletcher, PC Will Fletcher, he's a colleague of mine at Sun Hill Station," Emma began. "I came here to pick him up; he was late for work. At first I thought he was drunk…but he didn't recall that we'd talked on the phone just twenty minutes earlier. He seemed very disorientated. I tried to talk to him, but he suddenly collapsed. He had a seizure, at least that was what it looked like. I…I didn't know what to do. And then he stopped breathing and I couldn't find a pulse. I tried CPR, but I don't think…"
"You did very well. If it weren't for you, he wouldn't be alive now." The woman patted her shoulder gently.
"So, he is going to be all right?" Emma asked anxiously. She didn't even want to contemplate the alternative.
"It's too early to tell. We are taking him to St. Hugh's now." She turned back to the other two paramedics, who had by now loaded Will onto a stretcher and were just carrying him through the door. They were barely out the door when Stone and Sally came storming in.
"Emma, are you all right?" Sally rushed towards her and pulled her into a hug. "I'm fine. It's Will."
"We saw," Stone simply said. "I think you should ride along in the ambulance. Keep me updated."
Emma got up, ready to follow the paramedics, when she remembered the dead woman lying in the bathtub soaked in her own blood. "You need to inform CID, there is a body in the bathroom." Sally stared at her in shock, while Stone simply raised an eyebrow. If he was shocked or surprised he didn't let on. "I'll do that. Now hurry up." He almost pushed her out the door, but there was concern in his voice. "Have them check you out as well."
oOo
There was nothing they had been able to do for the woman. Stone had checked on her before calling it in as a suspicious death, but she had already been dead for several hours. With her violent death they had a murder on their patch and for the moment, Will was either a victim or a suspect, or both. Sally was waiting for him in the corridor. She tried hard to look composed, but Stone could tell that she was shaken by the events.
"Sarge, I've spoken to the receptionist. Will and the woman checked in under the name of William and Rebecca Smith. Fake name, obviously. They booked in around eleven thirty, both apparently pretty drunk already. They ordered room service around midnight, one bottle of champagne, two glasses."
"I'm surprised this place even has room service," Stone remarked, his mind really elsewhere at the moment. "Do they have CCTV?"
"No, not inside the hotel."
"Knew this was a dive."
"There is something." Sally held out a key ring with several keys attached. "Rebecca, or whatever her real name is, left her keys with the receptionist- something about making sure that she wouldn't drive - as I said, they both seemed pretty drunk, maybe more."
"More as in they were on drugs?" It was a rhetorical question. With the state Will had been in, there had to be drugs involved.
"Probably," Sally replied sadly. "Still, I can't believe Will would take drugs."
"Let's not jump to conclusions. But no, I don't think he would take drugs either," he said when Sally looked at him doubtfully. "There is nothing more we can do here. CID will take it from here. But I want to have a look at her car," Stone explained as they walked back downstairs.
"Can you ask around to see if any of the shops in the street have outside CCTV?" he asked Sally, but it really was more of an order.
"Shouldn't we stay here, make sure the scene isn't disturbed?"
"It's already been disturbed as far as it gets, with Emma, the paramedics and us all traipsing through that hotel room. The DPS won't wait to stick their oar in. The sooner we find something that puts Will in the clear, the better."
oOo
"Are you sure that caffeine is a good idea right now?" Emma looked up from her cup and saw Sally and Stone standing next to where she was sitting in one of the waiting rooms at St. Hugh's Hospital. She felt like she had been waiting for hours, but every time she looked up at the large clock on the wall, the hands had barely moved. By the time Sally and Stone had arrived, only an hour had passed since Will had been brought in.
"Probably not." Emma looked up at her colleagues, plastering a smile on her face. Sally wasn't fooled for a minute. "You look like you could use some chocolate and maybe a cup of tea. I'll go and see what they have available," Sally offered and before Emma could reply, she had already disappeared down the corridor, leaving Emma alone with the sergeant.
"Any news about Will?"
"Not much. He's still critical. They think he must have taken an overdose, but they are not sure of what, so all they can do is treat the symptoms."
"I might be able to shed some light on that." Stone pulled out a small plastic bag containing a single tablet. "I found this in the hotel parking lot, next to the victim's car. I've no idea what it is, but I don't think it's aspirin. Look at the imprint." He handed it to Emma. She turned the bag around, regarding the tablet closely. There was the impression of a wave stamped into the grey tablet. "I've never seen one of those before."
"Here you go." Sally was back from the vending machine and handed Emma a cup and a chocolate bar.
"Thanks." Emma took the cup and chocolate bar from Sally, accidentally dropping the plastic bag in the process. Emma bent to pick it up, but Sally had already snatched it. "Where'd that come from?" she asked, frowning.
"Found it in the parking lot while you were getting the CCTV tapes," Stone explained. "Why? Do you know what it is?"
"I think I do. Last week, Will and I arrested this guy at the Oak Leaf Club, and he had a bunch of these on him. Apparently it's some new designer drug from Russia."
"I haven't heard anything about that. If there is a new drug on the streets, CID should have kept us in the loop. Didn't you inform CID?" Stone asked sternly.
"We did that, Sarge, and they said that they'd take care of it. I figure they treated this as an isolated incident. The guy, a Dutch citizen only carried five tablets and was in the UK on business. They probably figured he got them from a dealer back home."
"Looks like they are wrong after all. Someone here in Sun Hill got their hands on more of this stuff."
"They could have bought them off the Dutch guy. He denied selling any, said it was just for personal use, but that's what they all say." Sally shrugged. "Still, I think we should talk to him again, if he is still in the country."
"Which he probably isn't," Emma spoke out loud what they'd all been thinking.
"I'll try and find a doctor to let them know what they might be dealing with. I'm teaming you two up for the rest of the day, so get back out there. There is nothing that you can do here at the moment anyways," Stone ordered and vanished down the corridor without waiting for an answer. Emma looked after him. She still couldn't believe Will would take drugs voluntarily, but either way, she felt a little more hopeful now that they had found out what drug he had taken. The information had to be of some help to the doctors treating Will, even if the drug was relatively new on the streets, Emma told herself.
"Are you sure you are all right to go back to work?" Sally asked, interrupting her thoughts. Emma realized that she was waiting for her to get up and get moving.
"No, no, I'm fine. I just can't get it out of my head. I know it's silly, I have been in this sort of situation before and it's never affected me like this," Emma said with a sigh and got to her feet.
"Don't beat yourself up. Will's a friend; it's not wrong for you to be worried about him. I am too, you know," Sally told her.
"I know. I just hope he is going to be all right." Emma chucked the wrapper and empty plastic cup into the nearest waste bin. "Okay, let's get back to work." She tried to sound upbeat and cheerful, but she doubted that Sally was fooled.
TBC