Retirement, proper retirement suited Brian more than anyone thought. although his brain still needed to be churning he was happy to spend most of his days walking Scampi and doing the garden.. Oh and of course cycling around the city parks. Esther had quickly got use to Brian being at home and was grateful for him to actually interact with her about normal thing and not just some sort of horrible crime. It has been 6 months since Brian left UCOS, for a while he thought he would become a private detective but he couldn't find anyone who would hire him, apart from one of Esther's friends who turned out to be a criminal herself.

"Brian!" Esther called from the kitchen up to her husband who was doing something upstairs. After no answer she went up and seeing the ladder extending into the attic sighed and climbed it.
"Brian what are you doing?" Ester asked him tiredly, bracing herself for the answer.
"Oh hello love" Brian replied with his nose still in a box "I just thought we should get some of Mark's old things down, now he's a dad his old toys can be passed on!" He looked pleased with himself.
Esther rolled her eyes, "Anything to get this junk out the house I suppose can only be a good thing" she muttered under her breath, "anyway dinner is on the table and is getting cold!"
The pair of them made their way towards the ladder to eat Esters homemade Sheppard's pie when Brian's eye caught sight of a worn cardboard box stuffed at the back of the attic.
"Oh my god!" he exclaimed.
"What have you found now?" Ester asked
"That box! I forgot about it! Ester love, help me take it down stairs."
They went down to eat their dinner with the old box on the counter. Brian ate very quickly, Esther made several comments about indigestion but all Brian was interested in was opening that treasure that lay a few meters away.

Once he was finished he put the box on the table and emptied its contents. Ester gave several concerned looks from the sink where she was washing up but after all these years she had learnt that leaving Brian to get on with things was much healthier for them both than interfering. The table was covered in old bits of paper that had a festering smell and were tinged slightly yellow with age. Brian was ruffling though them at great speed and putting them into piles, needless to say the developing piles were very neat.
"What are you doing?" Esther asked cautiously in a soft voice although this went unnoticed by her husband.
"These Esther, are cases, unsolved cases. When I was in the job years ago I took them. When I was retired, the first time I thought I'd look into them - this was before UCOS even existed. I had totally forgotten about this!"
"Is.. Is this legal?" Esther asked worriedly "taking things home like that?"
"Well no one missed them" Brian stated "I am going to solve them! With you love, as my sidekick!"
"YOU'RE WHAT?!" Esther exclaimed bewildered.
"Me and you! We are going to solve these! Well mainly me, but you will be the assistant - very important job!" He grinned, not even acknowledging Esther's scowling face. "You were great on the Annabel Skinner case, but then that was all your fault she came in the first place - but you were great! What do you say?" He looked up at her.
"Well, I don't know if it is a good idea" Esther started
"Excellent!" Brian interrupted "Let's start with this one" he lifted up a bundle of papers from one of the piles "Jane Shaw, she was killed in 1990 by the canal. Her body floated down until a taxi driver found it at 1.00am in the morning. She was single, lived alone and both her parents had died. She was a loner so there weren't many leads." He skimmed the papers "She was 36 and the cause of death was drowning although she had been hit hard on the head with a blunt object shortly before hand that could have made her unconscious."
"And you think we are going to solve this?" Esther asked
"Of course! THE LANE'S ARE ON THE CASE!" Brian chanted.
Esther saw that she wasn't going to have a choice in this, she just hopped that this obsession would wear off after a few days like they had before.