"He's gonna run, I guarantee it," said Matthews, softly.
He had taken up station beside the apartment door, drawn his pistol and raised it to shoulder height. He was now watching Hoffman across the few feet of space between them, his mouth twisted into a tight, humourless little smirk. Hoffman raised one eyebrow in return and tried to wither his partner with as much silent contempt as possible.
"Bullshit," he whispered, easing his own weapon out of its holster as quietly as he could and bracing his shoulder against the wall. "He's smarter than that. Ten bucks says we walk him out of here."
"Not only are you a lousy judge of character, my friend," said Matthews, as that embryonic grin picked up a notch, "but you're also extremely fucking cheap. Fifty."
After the briefest of pauses, Hoffman nodded curtly, then reached out and knocked on the door with the barrel of his gun.
"Oscar Juarez?" he called out.
"Who the fuck is it?" said a muffled voice.
"Police," said Matthews, loudly. "Open the door."
There was a small and otherwise quite insignificant sound from inside the apartment, but it was one that Hoffman had long since learned to recognise: it was the snap of a pump action shotgun. He had just enough time to glance back at Matthews's face and see his eyes widen, and then the door exploded between them in a titanic spray of splinters.
"Yeah, well," said Matthews, clearing his throat, "that was an outside chance, of course..."
Hoffman, who had been standing a little closer to the blast, blinked twice to clear the ringing in his ears, shook the dust from his hair and then drew back and kicked the door in near the lock, advancing into the darkened apartment with his pistol held high. There was no sign of Juarez, but the window on the far side of the cluttered room was open, and the blind was rattling and flapping in the breeze. He cursed violently, crossed to the window and stuck his head out to see their quarry leaping down the fire escape. As if sensing Hoffman's gaze falling on the back of his neck, Juarez glanced up – and then, incredibly, stopped long enough to raise one middle finger in the detective's direction.
Hoffman's eyes slitted with fury. Nobody flipped him the bird. Nobody. He turned back to Matthews and jerked his head at the door.
"Get back down and head him off," he snapped, and then ducked out of the window without waiting for the slightest acknowledgement, climbing down after Juarez, the blood thundering through his veins and his anger building with every step. Once he stopped, raised his pistol and drew a bead, but the visibility was too poor and he simply snarled and kept moving. At the bottom of the fire escape, the ladder shrieked and rattled as Juarez swung down and dropped into the alley, but by this time, Hoffman was right behind him with the scent of blood in his nostrils. Ignoring the ladder, he vaulted the railing on the last landing, propelled by a venom that was now so powerful he could feel it swelling painfully in his chest.
"Motherfucker…" he growled, landing badly but recovering his balance and taking off after his prey, who had almost reached the end of the alley. Juarez was pretty light on his feet, however, and by the time Hoffman reached the street he was darting out into the road.
Even for a man in an almost perpetually evil mood, the detective was now no less than incandescent with rage, which peaked as Juarez turned on the far side of the street and grinned at him. Hoffman snorted like a fighting bull and picked up his pace.
He heard something, so far behind him it might have been light years away – Matthews yelled his name, just once, his voice speckled with panic. It was only this last realisation that caused Hoffman's stride to falter, and he half turned to see what his partner was shouting about, and it was then that everything else in the world was drowned out by the shriek of brakes and soaked in a vicious yellow glare.
He didn't have time to react in any way, let alone brace himself, but with a strange disconnection he noticed that the driver was attempting to swerve. The headlights peeled away and danced across the buildings at the far side of the road, but it wasn't enough. The car powered into him broadside, the impact picking him off his feet and slamming him first into a street light and then onto the road.
Silence descended, but only for one blessed second before returning with reinforcements; and now, the world was full of noise. Hoffman heard his partner screaming something, but couldn't make any sense of it through the jagged shriek of white noise in his ears. He tried to lift his head without success, but then Matthews was at his side, dropping to his knees and patting Hoffman's cheek frantically.
"Shit," he whimpered, "Jesus, talk to me, man."
"I'm okay," said Hoffman, or at least he thought he did. He could feel thick blood welling up in the back of his throat, and from Matthews's expression he could tell that this was far from his only problem. Matthews grabbed for his radio and brought it to his mouth, his knuckles whitening.
"Officer down, I repeat, officer down," he said, and his voice was quivering badly. "Third and Market. Get an ambulance here now!" He lowered the radio and looked back down. "Don't you die on me, you stupid son of a bitch," he said. "I...Hoffman? Oh fuck –"
For Mark Hoffman, the world blurred and faded, first to red and then to black.
Plink.
Hoffman opened his eyes, but this made no difference whatsoever; he remained mired in velvet darkness. He found he could move freely enough and without discomfort of any kind, which was strange, since he had a very recent memory of both immense pain and all-encompassing paralysis. The accident was clear enough in his mind, but he found he was somehow dissociated from it, as if it had happened to someone else entirely.
Plink.
He tried to move toward this sound, but found that he was disoriented by the lack of cues; in any case, he soon found that direction was meaningless and it appeared to come from everywhere at once.
Plink.
It wasn't just the absolute darkness. He was devoid of all other sensory input – touch, smell, taste – everything but that small, repetitive noise, which sounded like dripping water and was starting to bother him just a little. He eventually spoke up just to hear the sound of his own voice.
"What the fuck is this?" he rasped, and then the world returned. It did not come back the way it had faded out; it snapped back like a rubber band, sight and sound and sensation all smacking into him at once and causing him to jump a little. Hoffman jerked his head up like a startled deer and caught his own gaze, and this caused him to reel further still before the context finally dropped into focus, leaving his heart galloping in his chest for a few moments.
It was a mirror. Hoffman scowled at it briefly, seeing how pale he looked, and then stepped back and looked around, studying his surroundings, blinking in the bright light. He was standing in a small bathroom, bright and clean if a little tarnished here and there. The only sound in his immediate world was – he looked down once more – yes, a dripping faucet, gently filling up the basin beneath it. Without quite knowing why, he reached out and wrenched at it, and the small sound tailed off.
The door creaked back just then, and Hoffman swung around, reaching instinctively for his gun...which wasn't there. He was still recovering from the shock of this when the door opened all the way and a lean young man edged through and looked him up and down with concern and more than a little trepidation.
"There you are," he said, and then cleared his throat and looked a little closer. "You all right, mate?" he asked, his brow creasing.
The world, which was already wrong, suddenly felt a great deal wronger. Hoffman couldn't place the man's accent – which was so thick that he'd struggled to understand it – but he knew at once that it was some British regional flavour. Once this oddity had sunk in, he was in a position to take in more detail, all of which added to his growing confusion. The young man's clothing was strangely dated in both cut and colour; not retro, but honest to goodness flea market stuff. That, however, he felt could wait.
"Where is this?" he snapped, taking a step forward. He had perhaps five inches and fifty pounds on the young man and, given that this fact was very clear to them both, Hoffman was unsurprised to see him back up against the door, his eyes bulging slightly.
"Er..." he said, and then sagged a little, frowning again. "It's the bogs. Sir," he added, in response to a sudden attack of respect born of sheer terror; his face was now the colour of sour cream, and – against every instinct he possessed – Hoffman felt it was time to back off a little.
"The...bogs?" he asked, taking his patience between his teeth in an effort to avoid raising his voice, given that this might well result in the other man either making a run for it or passing out, neither of which would be particularly helpful at that point.
"Yeah, you know, the toilets," said the young man, cracking a very lopsided and very nervous grin and hooking a finger into his collar. "Er, DC Chris Skelton," he went on, sticking out a faintly trembling hand, although he didn't seem inclined to move any closer to Hoffman – who, realising that he was going to have to do a lot more groundwork on the conversation yet – stepped over and shook hands, grateful that at least the man now looked a little less petrified and a shade pinker.
"Right," said Hoffman, his voice a smooth, honeyed purr that would have had anyone who'd actually heard it before climbing out of the nearest window, "Chris, was it?" he asked politely, tilting his head to one side a fraction. "I'm gonna ask you one more time," he said, then reached out, grabbed a double handful of Chris's jacket and lifted him onto his toes. "Who the hell are you, where the hell is this, and..." he stuttered into silence as he looked down at himself for the first time, and then drew a deep, titanic breath. "...and why am I dressed like a fucking pimp?" he finished, in a throaty snarl.
Hoffman's hands uncurled now, and he released the detective constable quite unheeded as he looked down and further down, taking in the full, ghastly scope of his own clothing. He was wearing a brown twill jacket with lapels wider than the wings of the Space Shuttle, a checked shirt so loud it should have been illegal in a built-up area, and – here he groaned in genuine horror – flared corduroy pants.
"I'll take it from 'ere, Detective Constable, if you don't mind," drawled a new voice. Hoffman jerked his head up and Chris spun around on his axis, and both stared at the newcomer, who was propped in the doorway with a smouldering cigarette lodged in the corner of his mouth, watching this performance with a mirthless smirk painted across his features.
"No problem, guv," stammered Chris, and cast one frightened glance back at Hoffman before dodging past the man and skidding out of the bathroom as effectively as if his heels had been greased, leaving the detective to study the interloper with a little more care. He was a big blond man, heavy set and almost Hoffman's build, and his sharp blue eyes were narrowing dangerously as he stepped into the bathroom and kicked the door shut behind him. He removed the cigarette from his lips and loosed a careless smoke ring in Hoffman's direction.
"I never thought I'd live to see the day," he said, dragging his gaze up and down with bare-faced contempt, "that I'd have a bloody Yank in my division, but," he sighed harshly, and pitched the butt into the sink, where it hissed out, "you're 'ere now and I suppose I've got to put up with you." He paused again, and moved closer, squaring up to Hoffman with a nasty gleam in his eye. "However," he added, "let's get one thing straight. If anyone's going to kick the shit out of my officers, it's going to be me. Do you comprenday me, sunshine?"
Hoffman had had just about enough. His head ached, or at least bore all the hallmarks of a headache, he was lost and confused and angry and he was reaching for the only response he knew, which was to hit someone. He made one final attempt at restraining this instinctive reaction, though, and sneered at the other man.
"You got a problem with Americans, pal?" he asked, challenging. This raised, at first, no response other than another scathing up-and-down glance, and then the man almost smiled. Almost.
"Nope," he said, gruffly. "I just don't relish the idea of having some steaming great nancy-boy poofter let loose on my patch, that's all - and you, my friend, seem to be fitting the bill quite nicely so far."
The man's accent was confounding and his words were unfamiliar but, somehow, the meaning was perfectly clear, and now Hoffman had had enough. He growled and took a reflexive swing at the man, but somehow, missed his mark, and found that he was suddenly flat on his back in a different world altogether; a very small, very private world all of his own, composed of nothing but blurred vision and the most appalling pain across the bridge of his nose. He snorted through a rivulet of fresh blood and tried to focus on the wavering shape standing over him.
"And that," the man was saying, "is what's technically known as a 'Glasgow kiss'. One of the quicker ways of resolving a difference of opinion, I've always found."
"Who the fuck are you?" grunted Hoffman, as his vision cleared a little and he tried to get to his feet, but his balance was still impaired and he settled for struggling up onto his knees and cuffing the blood from his upper lip.
"I'm Gene Hunt, and I am – for my bloody sins – your new DCI," said the man. "Now," Hunt went on, "when you've quite finished fannying about in here and bleeding all over the shop like a big girl's blouse, I'll see you in my office. Do try not to make the place look untidy, won't you?" And with this, he turned on his heel and stalked out of the bathroom, the door swinging in his wake.