BILL-POSTERS WILL BE PROSECUTED, written in black on a temporary card wall, came into sharp focus as a rugged, broad-shouldered Northern man flicked a lighter next to it and lit a cigarette, blowing out a steam of smoke as he walked along down the street, secluded and sticking to the darkness at the side of the street, his black Crombie coat and dark suit coupled with a crimson shirt and grey-striped tie making him look slightly sinister, but in reality, this man was as far from sinister as you could get. The cigarette, finished, was dropped to the floor and crunched between the pavement and the black sole of a snakeskin boot already marked by snuffing countless cigarette butts before.
Gene Hunt paused for a second to stow his packet of cigarettes in his pocket along with the silver-cased lighter used to illuminate the wall and incinerate the tobacco, his eyes darting around the street and down to his pocket as it proved tricky for his slightly numb fingers to open. The December chill deadened his nerves as he tried to slip the equipment in, causing him to fumble and linger further on the street corner, half in darkness and half in the light from a street lamp.
From the shadows, a figure moved.
Gene blew out the last remainder of the cigarette smoke, his bottom lip forming its characteristic pout, his boots clattering against the concrete as he started walking again, rubbing his leather-gloved hands together in a futile attempt to bring some feeling and warmth back into them. His house was only a little way away now, and the feeling of being in a warm building was the only thing on his mind right now; he hurried towards it, rueing leaving the Quattro parked outside the station.
A flash of movement. A yelp of surprise and pain. A clatter of metal on the ground.
And the eerie silence of the now deserted street, only a small pool of blood marking where Gene Hunt had stood.
All is quiet… still… and the last thing I knew was the welcome warmth of slumber…
Molly is sitting on a fallen tree a little way away from me as I approach her, wearing the suit I was shot in, my head twanging with pain but my body determined. She looks up at me as I approach, and I smile, reaching out to clasp her hand in both of mine as she swings her arm round my neck and gazes deep into my eyes.
"I thought you'd gone, Mummy."
Sadness wells inside me, and my eyes prickle with it as Molly snuggles against me and I feel her cold flesh against mine.
"Molls, you're freezing!" I gasp, rubbing my own hands on her skin; no warmth makes its way into her flesh, and I begin to panic, thinking Molly's got hypothermia, she's catching a chill-
"Mummy," Molly says softly, and then she's gone, vanished in the blink of an eye. I scream her name and hear a reply from behind me, where Molly's standing, her clever eyes sparkling and her arms held out to wrap around my body as I scramble up to her. With relief I note that she is warm again, and her blazer brushes against my midriff as I pull her to me hard, squashing our bodies together and my brain blazing with the delight of holding my little girl once more.
A shrill ringing interrupts, and Molly disappears once again, leaving only my love for her and for me to swim out of my sleep and answer the bloody phone.
"I'm COMING already!" I mutter, nursing the hangover from Hades and grabbing the handset, holding it up to my ear.
"Hello?"
"Ma'am?"
"Shaz. Why're you ringing this early?"
"Ma'am… the Guv's been abducted."
My blood runs cold as she stammers the word down the line; for a second it's like being back with Molly in my dream when she vanished from my grasp, except this time it's Gene's face who floods my thoughts, the sullen Northern face and the pout he wears that draws me in like a magnet, not that I would tell him that.
"G-Gene? Are you sure?"
"We got a phone call, sayin' that someone 'ad 'im an' they were goin' to let 'im go if we gave 'em fifteen thousand pounds for 'im. I quote: what price do you wish to put on his life? That's the price I give. They didn't say where they're 'oldin' 'im, no 'ints at all, but they finished the call by sayin' R.T. I dunno if that means anythin' to you?"
"R.T.? Nothing, Shaz. I'll get down there now, OK?"
Shaz says bye hurriedly and puts the phone down as the sound of the double doors opening comes through on the line. I guess it's Chris and Ray, but I can't be certain, as the phone is down before their voices ring out.
I dress, grab my coat, run a brush through my hair and rush out of the door, my brain already whirring and my thoughts focused completely on the stubborn, bullish, and yet admirable DCI who appears to be in, by his own phrasing, "about six feet of very brown stuff".
"Time of disappearance is approximately one-thirty a.m.; the door of Gene's house is still intact, so he didn't disappear from his house, it was all locked up and all the windows were closed and intact. So far nothing of Gene's has been found, and the only clue we have is the phone call Shaz took from someone who called themselves R.T. I suggest that people start making a directory of all the people in the city who have the initials R.T., and checking if any of them might have a motive for this. Get to work, your DCI's life hangs in the balance!"
CID instantly becomes a hive of activity, all the people working in there mucking in instantly, Chris and Ray at the forefront as they trawl through files religiously and flick papers into piles, sorting and reading, Ray's face noticeably pale at the prospect of Gene's death and Chris's hands shaking, betrayed by the occasional drop of a file or fumble of a sheaf of papers. It's a sign of how strung-out CID is that when the phone on Shaz's desk rings, almost everyone jumps. I smile at them reassuringly, a twitch of the lips as they look up at me from their frenzied work, but my own insides are in turmoil; Gene is my rock in this world, my island in the storm, and without him I would be swept away, thrown like a toy from wave to wave, unable to keep my head above water in the torrent.
Shaz stands up and walks over to my desk, her shoes thudding on the floor as she approaches almost cautiously.
"Ma'am? I jus' got a call, someone's found some blood on a street near the Guv's 'ouse. D'you wanna check it out?"
I snap my head up, my eyes widening.
"OK. Chris, Ray, with me. You too, Shaz," I add, nodding in Shaz's direction, and the young WPC flushes but follows me through the double doors, slipping her hand into Chris's subtly as they made their way out. I only notice because, right now, I seem to be noticing everything; even the sound of my high heels on the tarmac echoes in my brain and the squidge of Ray's chewing-gum makes me shudder.
Using the Quattro would feel like sacrilege, when we all know how much the Guv treasures it and how much he hates anyone else driving it, and although I have the spare set of keys Gene keeps in his office we take an old plod car to the scene, where an anxious middle-aged woman is waiting by the side of the road, her young daughter next to her and looking faintly nauseated, clutching the headset of her Walkman as though crushing it would block out the whole world.
I bend down and check the puddle, confirming that it is blood with a sick feeling settling stonily in my stomach, wondering if Gene was in a lot of pain when it happened, if he's still in pain, whether he's still bleeding or not, whether he's even still alive…
"Ma'am!" Chris calls from next to the wall, crouching just underneath the writing of BILL-POSTERS WILL BE PROSECUTED. I look up just in time to see him hold up a silver cigarette lighter, stone cold, not used recently, but definitely belonging to our Guv. How could I not recognise that lighter? I see it pretty much every day.
"So this definitely is Gene's blood, unless he managed to injure the person who took him, which I doubt," I murmur, putting a finger to the blood and shuddering as it comes off on my glove. I don't want evidence of Gene's injury on my clothing.
Wiping it off, I stand up and tell Shaz to get a cordon round the area, stepping back to allow her to put it up. My heel catches in a rut on the pavement and I trip backwards, swearing as I fall onto my arse on the freezing concrete- as Gene would say, cold enough to freeze the bollocks off anyone. I wish he'd been there to catch me as I scramble up, only to stop abruptly as something catches my eye, hidden behind the fence, tucked just out of sight and covered with a light layer of frost- this has been here at least since Gene was taken this morning.
I take it out and open it up, noting the neat folds and the flawless paper, proper artist's paper with a fine weave and quality papyrus used to make it. The writing on it is neat, a black fountain pen making elegant curves which make my heart stop when I read them.
The fifteen thousand, or your DCI will never see the light of day again. I can do much worse than kill him; I can make him rue the day he was born. The choice is yours.
I tuck the note safely into my pocket, telling the others I'll show them back at the station, and walk away, leaving forensics to take a look at the scene and hoping against hope- and the seeming certainty of his injuries- that Gene's OK.
"Ow…"
Gene's eyes slowly opened, taking in nothing but the thickly-lashed lids sliding back to show slivers of bright blue iris and the midnight black of his pupils, widening in the gloom to try and distinguish something in the area. His head hurt like nothing ever before; worse than just a hangover, it throbbed mercilessly, bombarding him with pain as he became aware of a damp area at the back of his neck, the blood clotting his hairs together, the normally baby-soft hairs at the nape of his neck becoming harsh crimson spikes. He tried to bring his hand up to soothe his forehead, but his wrists were tied behind his back. Kicking one ankle, it proved to be the same.
"Woken, have we, DCI Bullshit?"
Gene tried to look up at the person looming above him, but a sharp kick to the back of the head sent him back into oblivion in a blast of red-hot pain.
A/N: OK, so how did this go? Please review and tell me! Do people want more? Thanks to my wonderful beta happyeverafter72, and thanks to you guys for reading! Your thoughts would make my day... hint hint... ;) Jazzola :)