Title: The Naked Truth (1 of 4)

Author: Emmylou/EmmyAngua

Disclaimer: Ashes to Ashes, Life on Mars, and the characters therein belong to the BBC and Kudos.

Rating: PG-15 (swearing, nudity)

Summary: A Mexican standoff about a case leads to Alex and Gene playing a game involving truth and stripping. The last one clothed gets the case resolution they want, but to get it they've got to answer some very personal questions...

Author's Notes: OK...this started as a little fantasy in my head and while such things would normally disappear by morning, it was still there the next day, and the next night, so I thought 'bugger this for a game of soldiers, let's get this thing on paper'.

---

There were many reasons why Alex didn't think that the young man in front of her was a drug dealer – chief of which was the fact he looked like a teenage Boris Johnson. The resemblance was striking - a pudgy pink face, fluffy blond hair, and pale blue eyes.

They were in the interview room and Gene was stomping around trying to put the fear of god into the kid. It was working – the boy's head was bowed so low that all Alex could see as she sat opposite was his hair, and he was so intimidated that he barely opened his mouth when speaking. The mumble, she thought, didn't exactly detract from the Boris Johnson image.

She cut of Gene mid-shout. "Where's your dad, Bobby?"

Bobby Hadleigh, seventeen, looked up in puzzlement. "W't?"

"Your dad," she repeated gently.

"Dead," he muttered.

"When you were young?" she pressed.

"Y'h," he replied. He bowed his head again.

"Right," she said brightly. "That tells me everything I need to know."

Gene had recovered from the sudden interruption and was now looking furious. "Oh does it?" he snapped at her.

Alex pushed back her seat and moved to the door. "Yes it does. Outside, please."

Gene, looking very much as though he wasn't sure which one of them he'd prefer to slap upside the head, stormed after her and slammed the door behind him. She settled against the wall as she always did at moments like these, he towered over her.

"What the hell was that about?" he snarled.

Alex smiled sweetly up at him and crossed her arms. "I was saving us time. All you're doing is scaring him – that approach isn't going to get us anywhere with him."

She held up a hand before he could go into meltdown. "He's grown up without any male influence. He's not exactly Brad Pitt...uh...Jason Donovan and I doubt whether he was popular at school. Acting like the Uber-Bully-"

"Stop speaking German," he snapped.

She huffed impatiently. "Let me go in alone. He'll open up to a gentle female presence."

Gene's face twisted in a way that said all too clearly how well he rated her gentle female presence, but she slipped past him and was already at the door before he replied.

"Five minutes Bolls," he called, "then I'm coming in there and kicking the shit out of him!"

---

Alex couldn't help but feel a thrill at how well it worked. All she'd had to do was smile at him and speak softly and he looked at her like she was the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.

"I thought she was French 'cause you don't get girls like that over here. She did this amazing thing where...."

"So you met her on holiday in France?" Alex interrupted before the conversation dipped into the sexual fantasies of a seventeen year old.

"Yeah," he said. "She was from London too. Said she wanted to meet up after the holiday...I thought she was having me on."

Poor kid, though Alex. Low self esteem, wanted to be cool, a pretty girl flatters him...

"And the drugs?"

Bobby swallowed. "Well I thought she was having me on...so she said she'd give me her bag to take back to London. Then we'd have to meet up for her to get it back...I couldn't believe anyone was so desperate to be around me..."

"You're doing great," Alex soothed. "A lot of great men have fallen for traps like that...don't be ashamed." Thank god Gene wasn't here, she thought, he would have fallen on his arse laughing at this story.

"Anyway...I promised I wouldn't look in the bag. But when we got home I was curious. I opened it up and it was just full of drugs." He swallowed. "I panicked. When she phoned me to arrange to meet up, I said I wouldn't go. Then this other man came on the phone – yelling at me – he said that he knew where I lived and that if I didn't turn up with the bag he'd stab my mum while she slept and then me..." His voice became higher with fear.

"And?" pressed Alex.

"So I went...and suddenly there's coppers everywhere and I get arrested. Everyone else got away."

Alex, a mixture of sympathy and exasperation for the boy, leaned forward. "It's very important that I find out that girl's name, Bobby."

"I can't!" Bobbie almost wailed. "He said that if anyone found out that I'd brought drugs into the country I'd go to jail. He said he'd get his mates inside to skin me; and his mates outside to get my mum!"

He dissolved into tears, and Alex was in the bizarre situation of patting a Boris Johnson look-a-like on the arm. "Bobby...please..."

He looked up desperately. "I need protection," he said. "Please – please help me."

Alex, not sure how on earth she was going to persuade Gene Hunt to let this kid off drug smuggling charges and stump up protection, couldn't help but nod.

---

Alex hadn't expected Gene to be jumping for joy with the news, and it was (she thought bitterly) a credit to her profiling skills how well she had pegged his reaction to it.

"So let me get this straight," he ranted. "You got him to confess all. You even got a name from him. But you aren't going to tell anyone because you promised?!"

She followed him into the CID room and the team, recognising the argument as par for the course, barely looked at them. Ray didn't even wake up.

Alex tried to explain. "A lot better men than him have fallen into honey-traps," she said reasonably. "He didn't know about the drugs – he was just a victim. And he's agreed to give you names in exchange for protection."

He threw his office door open, waited for her to come inside, and then slammed it behind him.

"I'm sorry – the last time I looked you were a copper, not a social worker! This whole station has been slaving over this case– people want to see an arrest!"

"Then isn't it better they see the right person arrested?" she said hotly.

"No!" he snapped. "They want to see everyone arrested. If we let him off this then all we get for our work is a bunch of bullshit names this kid has made up." He yanked his jacket off the back of his chair and shrugged it on. "Now I'm going down there to beat the information out of him –"

"Oh no you're not!" she shouted. "Because I have it right here!" She held out a folded piece of paper. "You get it when you agree to the terms."

Gene lunged for it but she jumped backwards, just out of reach. "I don't think-" she began, but Gene didn't give her time to finish. He opened the door and barked at Ray.

"In here! Now!"

Ray jerked awake and came inside, still bleary eyed. "Yes, Guv?"

He jerked his head at Alex, who fixed her most superior look on him. "Nick this one for withholding information – a couple of hours in the cells will give her chance to get her priorities straight and give me time to get rid of the massive headache known as Bolly-itus."

Ray - clearly unsure how serious the Guv was - inched towards her. "Get off," she snapped, slapping Ray's hand away. "It's not withholding information – it's preventing you coming down like a tonne of bricks on an innocent kid."

"Who smuggled a couple of thousand pounds worth of Coke across the channel!" Gene raged.

Alex could see that this Mexican standoff was going to go on for some time. The mature and reasonable thing to do would be to work on tracking down the person on the list she'd be given. A fresh collar might persuade Gene to go easy on the stupid but largely innocent boy.

Instead maturity went out of the window and she marched out of Gene's office and back into CID. "Come on people. It's six o' clock," she called. "Let's knock back some drinks!"

There was a general cheer and clatter to get coats, keys, and (in Alex and Shaz's case) handbags.

As the mass exodus continued she looked back at Gene, who stood in his door with a twisted expression, and called. "We'll continue this tomorrow."

A/N: In the end I've separated it into two parts so it's not too long. I'm normally confident writing characters but I just have a bad feeling about this fic for some reason – so if you think they are in character please let me know.

And if you don't know who Boris Johnson is (though I'm sure 99.99% do) um...google him. It'll be...an education.