The agents had been looking for Grieves for over a week now - they'd all been looking for him. Cowley had an itch and it was making him tetchy. Grieves had slipped through the fingers of the Met's finest and, to Cowley's intense annoyance, he'd also slipped through CI5's fingers too - not once, but twice. Cowley was not in a good mood.

Doyle and Bodie were cold, wet and very irritable. After a fruitless day of looking for Grieves while also working on another case entirely, they split up for the evening. Bodie said that he had a couple of contacts he'd try who may know of Grieves' whereabouts, or the size of his shoes, or his bloody anything. Doyle heard the anger and frustration in his partner's voice and he totally understood it. Doyle said he'd a few contacts in the East End he hadn't yet tried. Bodie dropped him off there before driving away. Doyle's contact had pointed him to a small, anonymous café where the owner may know something. It was just the kind of hidey-hole a fugitive may use to get out of the rain without drawing attention to himself. Doyle bought a cup of tea and ordered a slice of toast. The dried up remains of the day's menu on display behind the glass counter didn't appeal to him despite his hunger.

"I'm looking for a guy named Ted Grieves. I believe you may have something for us."

Doyle didn't need to declare himself a copper. The proprietor had that look of a man who could smell the buttons at twenty paces.

"Me? Why would I know anything?" The guy wasn't going to set himself up as a copper's nark. He already had the heavies breathing down his neck for protection money as it was.

"You here alone?"

The man looked very nervous. Doyle wondered why. His antenna was on high alert. Some people just broke out in hives at the mere mention of a policeman, without actually having anything to hide; it was just a reaction. Could be something, could be nothing. Doyle's experience had taught him that much.

"Well?" Doyle demanded more loudly. There was only one other customer in the café, and it certainly wasn't Grieves. That would have been too easy.

"Course I'm alone." The man looked instinctively towards the kitchens.

What's he hiding in there? Doyle thought. He decided to find out. He pushed passed the owner and forced his way into the little kitchen. A thin girl in, perhaps, her late teens, was elbow-deep in suds at the sink. She started as Doyle made his sudden entrance. She looked round for the owner in panic. He emerged at Doyle's shoulder.

"Hey, what's this?" the owner protested, trying to come between Doyle and the skivvy.

"More like 'who's this?'" Doyle corrected.

"She works here."

The girl said nothing. The look of alarm hadn't left her.

"What's your name?"

"Ruth," the man answered for her.

"Don't say much, do you?" Doyle said, ignoring the man and continuing to look at the girl, who'd backed herself into a corner, her wet arms dripping puddles on the floor.

"She's mute," the owner explained.

Doyle was experienced enough to know a run-away when he saw one. "Live on the street do you?"

"She's a good worker. I tell her that she can stay here."

"How long's she been here?" Doyle was still appraising the girl, and her eyes hadn't left Doyle's. He felt that if he took one more step towards her, she'd try to claw through the brickwork.

"A week, two," the man replied vaguely.

A girl on the street - an ear on the street - could come in handy. Doyle took a wild shot in the dark.

"Know a guy called Grieves?"

To Doyle's astonishment, the girl nodded. It was the briefest of nods. If Doyle hadn't been staring at her, he could have missed it. He felt his heart racing. Of all the crazy hunches …

"Ok," he said, trying to sound calm, "just sit down out there (there wasn't a chair in the small kitchen) and tell me where you know him from."

She looked desperately at her employer. He nodded in a reluctant acceptance. The men withdrew to allow her space to enter the café. She hadn't even had time, or thought, to dry herself. The single customer had now left. The owner took his dirty apron off and handed it to her as they all sat down.

"Now," Doyle said gently, "tell me what you know."

Rubbing her red arms distractedly with the apron, she looked confused as though she didn't know where to start. Doyle would need to help her.

"When did you first see him?" he probed gently.

She gave hand signals. The proprietor interpreted. Doyle eventually recognised the signals as finger spelling. He'd studied it once many years ago when he'd first joined the force but had now forgotten the system. Fortunately the owner seemed quite well versed in it.

"She says that time has no meaning. I suppose it doesn't …"

Doyle sighed and interrupted. "How do you know him? How do you know who he is?" It was like dragging blood from a stone.

"I heard his name," the owner translated.

"Where?" Doyle had already given up on the 'when'.

"At the old factory near here. Others there."

The owner told Doyle that the girl used to squat there before she got the job at his café. Doyle knew that Grieves ran in a pack sometimes if he had a specific job on. He'd read all there was on the man. This snippet of news from the teen was encouraging. He just needed to be sure that they were talking about the same guy and to narrow down the geography.

"Can you describe him for me?"

As the girl began to spell out her next words, the door crashed in. A guy with an automatic planted himself in the doorway and sprayed death across the small café for precisely ten seconds before rushing out and throwing himself back in the car that had its engine running. He was off and away before anyone knew what had just happened.

Three bodies lay on the floor in the sudden silence. Glass from the display case shattered across the lino. The only sound was from the drip of tomato sauce from a broken bottle on the table and the jagged breathing of the terrified and wounded. After nearly a minute Ruth began to move. She crawled slowly towards her employer, gasping with shock. He it was who had given her food, shelter and a little money in her pocket. He it was who was uppermost in her mind. He couldn't be dead. A good man like this; he just couldn't be. She crawled passed Doyle, sobbing. He was beginning to stir. He reached out, grabbing her ankle to hold her back once he realised where she was going.

"Let me just check first, love," he gasped. He'd seen death before. He didn't want her to be a witness to it, too.

Doyle dragged himself painfully across the floor, leaving a bloody trail behind him. He had been right to hold the girl back. A bullet had made a nasty hole where the man's right eye should have been. Another bullet had struck his neck and the third was buried in his chest somewhere. It didn't take a doctor to work out the man's condition. Doyle curled his body towards Ruth.

"I'm sorry, love. He's dead."

She looked at him for a while, trying not to believe it. Her eyes tore away from Doyle towards the man. She nodded - that very brief nod again - and shuffled a little away from both men. Her silence weighed heavily. She curled herself into a ball and began to cry. Her sobbing seemed to echo around the small café. There was nothing Doyle could do to help her, so he reached for his radio and was relieved that it hadn't been broken in the mêlée.

"4.5," he gasped, "A2 emergency."

Doyle then gave the rough address of the little café and hoped it was enough. He felt reassured by Alex's calm response. All they could do now was wait. He felt the darkness closing in on him as he tried to hold on.