So just exactly what did Gerry do when he was hypnotized in "Magic Majestic"? I can't be the only one who has wondered. This, children, is my utterly deranged attempt to answer the question.

Rafferty Returns

Part I

"In this particular instance, sir," Detective Superintendent Sandra Pullman said in an admirably cool, unruffled tone, "odd though it may seem, it's my belief that circumstances truly beyond Gerry's control, ah, intervened. Tonight's – events – were not his fault."

"That's right," Gerry Standing piped up hastily. "I had no free will at all. I was not acting under my own volition." He risked a glance at his superior. "Obviously."

In response Sandra glared daggers at him, reminding the former D.S. that although she was standing up in his defence, she was still abundantly hacked off at him. "Shut it and let me do the talking," she hissed. "And I hope you don't have that money you didn't win in the fifth at Epsom because you weren't gambling earmarked for anything, because you'll be using it to replace my dress."

"Me? But he's the one who ripped it," Gerry protested, jerking his thumb at D.A.C. Srickland.

"Gerald. Shut. Up."

Ah, yes, Sandra Pullman was a credit to the Met, and indeed to women everywhere. Only she could manage to maintain such an impenetrable outer shell of dignity whilst smeared with cream-cheese frosting, decorated with confetti, and wearing one high heel and the tattered remains of a gunmetal-grey cocktail dress that was ripped precariously from one shoulder.

Gerry's eyes automatically dipped down, way down. Sandra's newly and unceremoniously altered dress certainly was offering an interesting view – one that the D.A.C. seemed to be enjoying as well.

"Here," Gerry muttered, shrugging out of his suit jacket and holding it out to Sandra. She stared at the garment with as much disdain as if he were offering her a smallpox-infested blanket. "Oh, put it on, do," he groused, and she did, deigning to yank the lapel over her right breast, which was perilously near total exposure.

Strickland looked down at his own dress shirt, which also bore tell-tale smears of frosting and red velvet cake. He'd have a bitch of a dry-cleaning bill, at the least, Gerry reflected, but it was the man's own fault. If Strickland had a more efficient right jab, he never would've ended up on his back on the top tier of the Excellence in Policing Gala Night dessert buffet in the first place. No one could blame that on Gerry, and not even Strickers could be so foolhardy as to apportion the blame to the detective superintendent.

The D.A.C. turned a mournful countenance on the shapely blonde police officer, now safely shrouded in Gerry's grey jacket. "We'll discuss this in the morning," he said stiffly. "I'm rather – sticky – at the moment."

At least Gerry waited until the door of the ladies' lounge closed behind his boss's boss before he let loose a shout of laughter.

"Oh, you think that's funny, do you?" Sandra snapped, her aquamarine eyes flashing.

"Of course it's funny!" Sandra didn't even bat an eyelash as Brian tumbled out of the large disabled-access stall at the end of the row of tasteful blond wood cubicles. He was cake- and confetti-free, and yet in his rumpled suit he still managed to look more disheveled than either Strickland or Gerry. All of Jack's cajoling and Gerry's insults hadn't been enough to pry his trusty trainers off his feet, so Brian looked odd enough to begin with, like a sort of less fashionable Stephen Frears, which was saying something.

Sandra addressed Gerry. "Well, have you had a look in a mirror? You look a right pillock," she informed him with some satisfaction. "Larry, Moe – where the hell is Curly, using the bidet?"

"Em, no." Brian pushed his glasses up his considerable amount of nose. "I believe he's looking for your other shoe."

That distracted her momentarily. "Bugger it, these were new," she grumbled, hiking her left foot up onto the arm of a conveniently placed settee and leaning down to unfasten the buckle. Gerry said nothing for fear that if he spoke up he'd get stuck paying for the shoes too, and they looked expensive. He contented himself with surreptitiously admiring the curve of Sandra's thigh as it was revealed by her current posture.

At least he thought he was being surreptitious. "Enjoying the show, Gerald?" Sandra asked acidly, but she was only half-smothering a grin. "I'll tell you one thing, though: this is absolutely the final fucking straw."

"The shoe?" Brian asked blandly, and Sandra looked down a said shoe as if she were contemplating lobbing it at his head.

"No, you moron. This whole debacle. By morning UCOS will be the laughingstock of the entire Met – again." Her words dripped with disgust as she returned her foot to the floor, now shoeless, and flexed her toes. "What is it about you three that renders you incapable of attending a formal function without turning it into a bloody three-ring circus?"

"I hate circuses," commented a dour Jack, arriving just in time to hand Sandra the forlorn mate to the heel now lying abandoned on the floor. This one was encased in a sealed plastic bag, causing Sandra to direct an inquiring look at Jack. "It's a bet ripe," he explained. "Landed in the remains of the boiled prawns."

Sandra let the bag tumble to the floor and flopped down on the settee. She shot Gerry a baleful glare. "This is all your fault," she declared. "You have some sort of obsessive-compulsive need to be the centre of attention at all times, no matter what the means or the cost. Humiliate me? Enrage Strickland and the commissioner? Ruin the shining moment in the sun of three very courageous and deserving police officers in a shit storm of blood-coloured cake and confetti?" She threw her arms into the air, exasperated. "Why not?"

Gerry only grinned. "Well," he drawled slowly, delighted with himself, "beats shootin' dogs, dunnit, gov?"

It had started out innocuously enough.

According to Strickland, the commissioner himself had asked that Sandra reprise her role as one of the speakers at this year's policing awards. Sandra figured that meant the commissioner was desperate to trot out someone with two X chromosomes whom he could stick up on the stage, and she'd begun to suspect that she was the only woman the D.A.C. actually knew. The only one who had anything o do with the police, at any rate.

Sandra had no choice, but, not about to let herself in for an entire evening with only her boss for company, she'd politely asked Jack if he'd do her a solid and accompany her to the fete at a stuffy Mayfair hotel.

Once Gerry got wind of Jack's involvement, he was worse than a dog with a bone or a toddler with a new toy. He refused to let the matter drop.

"You always take Jack to these sorts of things," he'd whined.

"Oh, right, the hundreds of times my job has required me to attend formal dinner receptions, I've always taken Jack," Sandra had retorted, rolling her eyes.

"No, I mean it. I understand why you wouldn't want him goin' along –" Gerry had flung an arm in the general direction of Brian, who was noisily hoovering up the pasta salad Esther had packed him for lunch, and had acquired a great gob of mayonnaise on the tip of his nose in the process – "but why's it always gotta be Jack? What's wrong with me?"

"I can think of a thing or two," Jack had put in with a sly grin, and Sandra had chuckled into her coffee.

"Oi, I'm presentable!" Gerry had defended himself.

"Gerry, the last time you got within a hundred yards of the Excellence in Policing Awards, you started a full-scale brawl with a high-ranking senior officer," Sandra had reminded drily.

"Who turned out to be a villain and tried to break your ribs a coupla days later, so we would've all been better off if you'd let me incapacitate the twat," Gerry had volleyed back. "And anyway, that was years ago. The point is you're playin' favourites." For some reason that comment had struck both Jack and Brian as hilarious, while Sandra looked perplexed and annoyed. "It's not fair," Gerry wheedled, and Jack and Brian laughed harder.

Sandra's nasty glare encompassed all three of them. "Life isn't fair," she'd responded brightly, adjourning to her own office with her beverage and a stack of files in varying degrees of decomposition.

But whatever the reason, Gerry had taken the perceived slight to heart, and sulky Gerry was unbearable.

"Sod it," Sandra had decreed after several days of reiterated references to the gala and to Gerry's status as the general dogsbody and whipping-boy of UCOS. "We'll all go."

That had been back at the first of the year, when the March date of the formal event had been reassuringly distant on the horizon. As it had approached, Sandra had begun to grow apprehensive (with good reason, as events went on to prove).

As soon as Frank Patterson's name had come up, Sandra's unfocused sense of foreboding had transformed itself into the assurance of certain doom. Like a post-modern Nathanael, she knew that no good could come out of Bermondsey, or points to the south and east.

She'd known about the feud, too, but she'd extracted a solemn promise from Gerry that he wouldn't try anything.

Too bad she hadn't made Frank swear the same, on the point of death. Or castration, which he'd think was much worse.

Thanks for reading, and as ever, I will write for reviews. Encourage my particular brand of insanity if you enjoy it, and stay tuned for part two.