Collaboration from Fabullus and Veranius - any reviews would be appreciated :)
The mood at Fenchurch East was not cheerful. Rain was trickling down the grimy window panes, the coffee supplies were severely depleted, and Gene Hunt's expression had reached new levels of grim. Alex, eyeing him warily, recognised with trepidation all the signs which she had come to associate with an imminent explosion. The five of them had been cramped up together in this room all day, and the cracks were starting to appear in everyone's good humour. If Alex had hoped that the rest of the team were going to look motivated and enthusiastic enough to stave off the storm that she knew was bound to break soon, she was disappointed. Ray was motionless and enveloped in an impenetrable cloud of cigarette smoke; Chris was displaying all the animation and intellectual promise of a soggy teabag, and Shaz looked as if she hadn't slept for at least a week.
"Right, so this is what we've got." Alex wearily turned her attention back to Gene as he began to speak. "Sick bastard kidnaps girl. Keeps her hidden away for roughly forty-eight hours. Rapes her and dumps her on a street-corner." He folded his arms and surveyed his team, an expression of intense distaste crossing his features as he caught Alex's eye. "Problem, DI Drake?"
"Er, no..." Alex sighed and regarded him over the steeple of her fingers. "Just blown away by your sensitivity, guv. As always. Never mind," she added hastily, sensing that she wasn't helping the situation. "Carry on."
"Thank you, I will." A muscle twitching in his jaw, he glared at her for a second, before swivelling abruptly to face Ray and Chris. "Questions?"
"Um, yeah..." Chris removed his feet from his desk and straightened up. "Why does he keep them for two days then, before he...y'know, rapes them?" He frowned, absentmindedly twisting and untwisting his pen, oblivious to the ink staining his fingers. "I mean, it'd be a lot easier just to..." he trailed off uncomfortably and shrugged. "Don't make sense, really."
"Perhaps not to someone of your elevated mental capacity, Christopher," replied Gene, his tone not betraying so much as a flicker of humour, "but we're talking about a madman. A bastard nutcase psycho. He doesn't do things because they make sense." He turned and looked expectantly at Alex. "Well, go on then. Hit me with your psychiatry bollocks. Am I right?"
"I would guess so." She shrugged, weighing it up in her mind. "Maybe it does make sense to him, for some reason, keeping his victims hidden for forty-eight hours. Or maybe he did it once and it's become an instinctive trend which he now follows rigidly." Alex could feel the others watching her with bemusement as they always did when she tried to get inside the minds of criminals, and decided to wrap it up quickly. "Either way, it's a pattern, and patterns are useful."
"Scary though, innit?" Shaz dropped her gaze to her desk, her voice hushed. "Some poor girl goes missing and you know you've only got forty-eight hours to get to her before he..." She swallowed, unwilling to finish the sentence. "And how must she feel, just waiting..."
"Don't think about it, Shaz," said Alex, trying to keep her tone matter-of-fact. "Dwelling on it won't help us find him, and it'll only make it harder to deal with." She winced at the clinical nicety of her own words. Shaz didn't look convinced. Alex wasn't sure she'd convinced herself, either.
Apparently untroubled by the same concerns, Ray yawned widely and stubbed out his cigarette. "So how many birds have you talked to about this bloke then?"
"Four." Gene grimaced and stabbed his finger at a set of photos tacked to the board. They were awkward witness shots, four girls looking self-consciously into the camera with huge, scared eyes. Four girls whose lives would never be the same again. Not for the first time, Alex cursed the futility of her job. They caught the rapists and the murderers, of course they did, but they always had to be too late for someone. Gene seemed to be thinking along the same lines. "Scum. That's what we're dealing with. I'm willing to bet there's at least double that number, they're just too scared to come forward. Bastard's probably threatened them."
A knock on the door broke the silence that followed Gene's words, and after a moment Viv appeared. "Guv, you're going to want to talk to this girl. Says she's been raped." Muttering an oath under his breath, Gene got to his feet. Viv glanced apologetically at Alex. "She's in a bit of a state, ma'am."
"Right. Okay, thanks, Viv." Alex sighed heavily and closed her eyes for a moment, pinching the bridge of her nose. The poor girl. "What's the betting she'll describe the same bloke as the others? How many more are there going to be before we catch up with him?"
"No more." Spitting out the words from between clenched teeth, Gene strode past Viv and swung round in the doorway, waiting for Alex to follow him. His expression was thunderous. "This ends now. Whoever the bastard is, we'll have him. Got that? No more."
Chris yawned and surreptitiously checked his watch. The Guv and DI Drake had been gone for nearly half an hour, Ray wasn't in a particularly communicative mood and even Shaz was being unusually waspish and unresponsive. Suppressing another yawn, Chris reached for a piece of chewing gum and flipped it up in the air. Catching it in his mouth, he mentally congratulated himself and glanced over at the others. No-one noticed. Typical. Chris sighed and looked around for something to divert his attention. His gaze fell on Shaz, sitting at her desk, scribbling repeated crosshatch patterns on the back of an old envelope and looking thoroughly bored.
Chris watched her for a moment, her dark head bent over her desk, her chin resting on her hand. Even now, when he'd known her for such a long time, he was surprised every time he looked at her. It wasn't that she was beautiful – though she was of course, he'd thought so the first time he laid eyes on her – or that she was the best friend he'd ever had – although, next to Ray, it was probably true. It was that she had chosen him, out of all the more intellectual, more handsome, more streetwise people on the planet to spend the rest of her life with. Sometimes he didn't believe it was true; more often than not he woke up in the morning convinced that he'd dreamed her up. But every day she was there, and every day he thanked his lucky stars that she was real, because if she ever went away he thought he might stop breathing.
Nevertheless, he had to admit that right now Shaz didn't look the exact definition of a radiant bride-to-be. She had dark circles under her eyes and looked thoroughly fed up. He hoped she wasn't having second thoughts. Not that he'd blame her if she was. He'd noticed that she hadn't been quite herself recently. Little things that she'd have laughed off a few weeks ago seemed to push her over the edge these days. Hormones, Ray had told him. It's always hormones. That or she's pregnant. And that's still hormones, an' all.
"Chris," snapped Shaz, effectively jerking him out of his reverie. She flicked her hair irritably out of her eyes and glared at him. "You keep staring at me like I'm gonna drop dead or something. Give it a rest, will you? What d'you –"
"Nothing, it's nothing." Dropping his gaze, Chris hurriedly opened the file that was sitting unheeded on the desk in front of him and flipped to the first page. After a moment, he looked up again and cleared his throat hesitantly. "You just look a bit tired, that's all. Are you sure you're –"
"Look, Chris, just stop fussing, will you?" she hissed, pushing herself violently back from her desk and sending a pile of papers flying. Chris flinched and looked to Ray for help, not sure what he'd done or how he was supposed to rectify it. The smirk that Ray shot him was not encouraging. Catching his eye again, Shaz buried her face in her hands, her shoulders drooping. "I'm just...it's the wedding and everything, it's getting to me a bit, you know?"
"The wedding?" Chris supposed that made sense. Not that he was particularly worried about it. Say your vows, a quick I do, kiss the bride. How hard could it be? Although on second thoughts, telling her that right now probably wasn't the best idea. Abandoning his pretence of hard work, he approached her and laid a hand tentatively on her shoulder. "Shazzer, it's going to be fine. It's going to be more than fine. I mean, it's getting to me, an' all, but on the actual day –"
"Chris." He winced at the exasperation in her voice. At least she'd taken her head out of her hands and was actually looking at him now. Her glare wasn't encouraging, but eye contact was something. "You haven't actually done anything."
"Yes, I have!" he protested. Was this why she'd been so short-tempered recently? Because she thought he wasn't helping enough with the wedding? He felt slightly guilty. But what was he supposed to have done? She'd never mentioned it. He thought she'd been enjoying it. "I helped you with the invitations, we did that together, remember? And I phoned that woman – didn't I, Ray, you were there – you know, when you were panicking about the canopies –"
"Canapés, Chris." Shaz laughed despite herself. "And I answered the phone when she rang back to ask what you'd been talking about. Probably because you called them canopies, actually..."
"Twonk." Ray rolled his eyes and reached for a cigarette. Chris shot him a look. Who needed canapés at a wedding anyway? He would have been quite happy with a quick trip to the registry office, a couple of photos to stick in the album and an evening at Luigi's, but Shaz had insisted on the whole shebang. A white wedding, she'd called it. A church service complete with hymns and, horror of horrors, confetti. He'd have to make sure it wasn't pink. Ray would never let him forget that.
"Well, I mean..." Chris scratched his head and looked down at her helplessly. "I did help with some of it, right? And, look, I can help now." Dragging a chair out from under Ray's feet, he sat down opposite Shaz and pulled a piece of paper and a pencil stub towards him. "I'll make a list and everything. What do you want me to do?"
"Well..." Shaz tapped the paper and put her head on one side, considering. "Do you fancy going along to last-minute bridesmaid fitting sessions? Or ordering flowers for the reception...or you could pick out the napkin patterns if you want?" Ray snorted with laughter and Shaz smiled reluctantly, reaching across to squeeze Chris's hand over the desk. "You just turn up at the church on Sunday. On time. And do something about your hair. That's good enough for me."
"My hair?" Chris ran a hand through it, not sure whether to be surprised or hurt. "What's wrong with my hair?"
"Ray, you're a bloke." Shaz rolled her eyes. "Tell him."
"What? You can't just –" Ray stared at Shaz, appalled. Using the back of a slightly bent spoon as a mirror, Chris pulled at his hair, frowning in bemusement. It looked exactly the same as usual, and there was nothing wrong with it as far as he could see. Shaz perched on the edge of her desk and inspected her nails. Ray looked from one to the other in apprehension and coughed awkwardly. "Well, it's...no, I mean, it's fine, mate. It's just a bit...y'know..." He gestured vaguely above his head. "It sort of..."
"Defies gravity," Shaz put in. Chris turned to look at her, surprised. He had no desire at all to have his hair cut. In fact, he had a strong desire not to. And he had a nasty feeling that Shaz would make him go along to the fancy salon she'd picked out for the bridesmaids, and quite frankly he'd rather have all his toenails extracted one by one. Shaz caught sight of his expression and laughed, relenting. "Leave it, Chris. I like it. It doesn't make a difference really, does it? I'll marry you anyway."
"God give me strength," muttered Ray. "One day you'll have to tell me what you see in this div, Shaz. Don't take this the wrong way, mate, but you've got less –" To his intense relief, Chris was spared the end of this sentence by the reappearance of the Guv and DI Drake. To say that neither of them looked happy was an understatement.
"Right." The Guv turned to face them all, his expression one of grim determination. Chris sighed inwardly. Just what he needed. He was getting married in two bloody days. He hoped the Guv and DI Drake realised there was no way they were postponing the wedding to trawl the streets of London searching for the usual bunch of useless witnesses. "Same description, same story, same bloke," the Guv continued. "Grabbed on her way home after she'd been out with friends. Locked up somewhere, doesn't know where. Raped and left on the corner of the road down by the canal."
"It's horrible." Shaz shuddered and pulled her coffee mug towards her, looking faintly sick.
"It's not nice, is it?" Gene glared round at them all, disgust and steely determination adding weight to every syllable. "So, I suggest we find this bastard before he strikes again. Next time we might have a murder on our hands. And believe me, the paperwork on that one would not be enjoyable. So I propose we get cracking, what do you reckon?"
"Guv," DI Drake protested. "This is potentially the life of some vulnerable young woman we're talking about. The amount of paperwork you might have to deal with is perhaps not the most important –"
"Motivational words, Drake. If we're going to nail this piece of scum and do it quickly, we need all the motivation we can get." He glanced at his watch and clapped his hands together. "And right now, that means Luigi's. We'll get started on this in the morning. Agreed?"
Chris grimaced. Typical. Things had been quiet for weeks, and now they'd been landed with a serial rapist two days before he was supposed to be getting married. Well, screw that. Nothing, not even the combined forces of Gene Hunt and the criminal underworld, was going to stop him getting to that church on Sunday. Nothing.
Luigi's was crowded, and Gene and Alex had to settle for a table in the corner, next to a couple who couldn't keep their hands off each other. The rest of CID were clustered around the bar and had somehow persuaded Chris that it was his round, much to the amusement of Ray, who was gleefully making up officers in order to secure more drinks for himself.
Chris, to his credit, took it in his stride. Shaz was tucked under one arm and Alex didn't think he'd stopped smiling all night, his whole face lighting up every time she laughed or touched or even looked at him. It was clear and honest and totally unashamed, and it made Alex feel a little like crying.
"Bloody nancy," Gene muttered from beside her, following her gaze. She glanced at him.
"Not a romantic, Guv?"
He gave her a look. "Too old to be a romantic, Bolls. I don't know what you call romance when you get to your twilight years. My gran had a bingo partner after my granddad died. Does that count?"
There was a beat and then she raised her eyebrows, feigning innocence. "Depends on whether she only got lucky inside the bingo hall."
"Bolly!" He pretended disgust, but she didn't miss the way he took a slug of beer to hide his smile. It was rare, seeing him smile. It made her feel a little bit special, a little bit wanted, because they were becoming more frequent, these tiny fleeting moments when she would find a chink in his armour where the real Gene Hunt shone through.
There was a comfortable silence for a few minutes and Alex moved onto her second glass of wine. There was something about weddings that filled her with the stupid, irrepressible urge to get utterly plastered, and from the look on Gene's face, darker now, she saw he felt much the same.
"Young love, eh?" she said finally, waving her glass towards where Shaz and Chris were now even more closely entwined, laughing up at each other with the blitheness born of untainted optimism. Gene gave her a sideways look, as though expecting a flood of emotion, and she made a face. "Sickening, isn't it?"
He raised his eyebrows. "Thought you'd be into all that hearts and flowers bollocks."
"No. Like you said, too old now for all that stuff." She paused and then smiled. "Look at us, acting like we're pensioners already. You must have...what...at least three years to go before your state pension kicks in?"
"Careful, Bolls." There was that quirk of a smile again, quickly smothered. "You might not be a spring chicken but you're not too old to go over my knee."
She laughed. "Promises, promises."
He leaned towards her so that she could hear him over the din, and she had to suppress a shiver as his breath tickled the shell of her ear. The effect he had on her simultaneously infuriated and intrigued her, and she couldn't help the way she curved her body a little way towards him, subconsciously seeking his warmth.
"For a posh bird, you have a very dirty mind."
She cocked her eyebrow. "Careful, Guv, that's sexual harassment."
"You're the one with the filthy mind, Bollykecks, not me. Squeaky clean, I am. Pure as a cloistered nun."
She turned to give him a look but, in a flash of foresight born of years in the police, reached out and grabbed his thigh instead, pulling him towards her just in time to avoid a glancing blow in the back. Completely unaware, he stared at her in baffled amusement.
"Steady on, Bolls, I know I'm irresistible but lunging for my crown jewels in a restaurant is a bit extreme."
She laughed at that, patting his thigh lightly before moving her hand back to the safety of her wine glass. "Don't flatter yourself. I just saved you from being assaulted with a lethal weapon." She nodded over his shoulder to the amorous couple beside them, now writhing athletically and rather inappropriately in their seat, and Gene smiled sardonically.
"Wouldn't be the first time I've been attacked with a stiletto." All the same, he inched a little further away from the pair, pressing Alex into the corner, oblivious to the way she was now trapped against his body. Her breath caught in her throat and she looked up at him, found his mouth just inches from hers and his eyes fixed on her face. There was half a second where she wondered if he was about to kiss her, what his lips would feel like, what she'd do, but then he blinked, and the moment was gone. "Whoops." He coughed and moved away again. "Sorry, Bollyknickers. Didn't mean to squash you."
She smiled quickly back. "Nearly squeezed the air out of me, Guv."
He was avoiding her gaze, and she could tell from the way his eyes flickered restlessly over the crowd that he was embarrassed. She sighed quietly and followed his example, leaning forward to hear as she realised the crowd gathered around the bar was chanting.
"What are they...?" She trailed off. Speech! Speech! Speech! "Oh bloody hell."
"Oh Christ." Gene took a generous swig of his beer. "Skelton's about as good with words as I am with a pair of my gran's knitting needles. Can't see this ending well. Bloody poof. Knew I shouldn't have brought him down to London."
Alex said nothing. She knew she should stick up for Chris, for the honesty of his feelings and this unabashed declaration, but to be perfectly frank she couldn't bear the idea of a bumbling, slushy, drunken speech any more than Gene. She was all for romance, but only so long as it wasn't being forced unashamedly down her throat.
"Er, right, well..." Chris trailed off and cleared his throat, and Alex thought she heard Gene mutter poofter under his breath. "I bet you're all thinking I'm a right lucky bastard, marrying our Shazzer." He paused here to squeeze her. "And I am. Honest, some nights I wonder what I did to deserve her."
"God give me strength." Gene drained his glass, giving Chris a dark look from under his eyebrows. "Who does he think he is, bloody Stevie Wonder?"
"Anyway, me and Shazzer...we're solid. And I love her more than...than..."
"Ciggies?" Ray supplied drunkenly, and Chris nodded.
"Even them posh ones we tried at that club. Shazzer, you're like...I dunno...a star or something. All shiny and beautiful and, you know, special, like."
"Right, Bollykecks, I'm going out for a fag." Gene got abruptly to his feet and slipped out without a backwards look, the doors banging shut behind him. Alex hesitated for just a second before swallowing the last of her wine - was this her third glass? Fourth? She was certainly feeling a little tipsy - and following him outside.
He was standing at the top of the steps beneath the cover of the roof, foot resting against the low wall, blowing a stream of smoke into the night air. He looked aloof, she thought, powerful, secure. God, she wanted to kiss him.
"What're you doing out here? If you've come to rib me about my fags, don't bother. I've told you, I don't care about emperseena." His voice was gruffer than normal from the fags and the booze and it sent a tiny thrill of anticipation through her. For a moment, she hesitated. Was she drunk? Lonely? Or just finally fed up of trying to fight her feelings?
"Emphysema," she corrected automatically, then moved to stand beside him, her mind made up. "That's not why I came out. Just got a bit...overwhelming in there."
Silence reigned for a few moments, broken only by the insistent patter of the rain on the pavement. It had eased off temporarily but it worsened again now, drumming hard against the concrete and bouncing off the road, and Alex shivered, closing her eyes as a gust of wind blew icy rainwater against her face.
"Come here, you daft bint. You're freezing." Gene lifted his arm and she slipped underneath it, gave a shudder of relief as her bare arm met the solid warmth of his side. "What are we like, eh Bolls?"
"What d'you mean? Hiding out here while the rest of the team indulge in the novelty of young romance?"
He snorted. "I was thinking more along the lines of standing in the freezing bloody cold, but that too." He paused, sighed. It quivered in the night. "It was a lot different when I got married, Bolls. More of a business deal than a romance. Suited her, suited me, suited her dad. Police officer was a catch, in those days."
She hesitated a moment, sensing that he was opening up to her but loath to force the issue and prompt him to clam up all over again. She settled on speaking quietly, resting her head against his shoulder so he wouldn't have to look her in the eye. "You must have loved her. You were married to her for twenty years, weren't you?"
"Near enough. I loved her…not sure I was in love with her though. Apparently there's a difference."
"Oh Gene, there is a difference." She paused and then laughed bitterly, thinking of her own marriage, her own failures. "Of course, that doesn't mean it's going to be any more enduring. It burns bright and fast, in my experience." She turned so that her body was pressed along his side, wondered if he could feel the hammering of her heart. Being this close to him, it was intoxicating. "Doesn't mean you can't enjoy it. The excitement." She paused, let out a tiny breath that trembled in her throat. "The passion."
He was watching her, blue eyes gleaming silver in the moonlight. "Bolly, you're pissed."
"I'm not," she insisted, sliding her hand slowly up from his stomach to his chest. His muscles jumped beneath her touch. "Just…don't want to be alone. Not tonight."
The door of the restaurant banged a little in the breeze, and a snatch of conversation escaped, entwined with a strain of music, a burst of laughter. Alex moved around to stand in front of him, moving her hands beneath his jacket so that she could feel him, warm and strong and real, through the material of his shirt. His heart was pounding as hard as hers.
"Bolls…" He swallowed. "You're drunk and depressed. I'm just trying to be chivalrous here."
"Screw chivalry." She pressed her nose to his neck, inhaled his scent, the musky smells of whiskey, cigarette smoke and something else that was uniquely Gene. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Screw me instead."
And then, finally, he kissed her. His lips were hard against hers, and when he opened his mouth she could taste the beer, sharp and bitter, on his tongue. It was fierce and desperate and it made her shiver, because it was so very much like their relationship, like the emotions she'd come to expect from him. She didn't want tenderness, not here, not now, not anymore.
He flipped them so that she was backed against the wall and she clung to him, any doubts chased out of her mind by his hands as they slipped under her blouse to smooth over the skin of her stomach. A tiny, nagging corner of her mind insisted that he was right, that she was drunk and lonely and she'd regret this in the morning, but at that moment, she too consumed by him to care.
The door banged again and he dropped his head to her shoulder.
"Jesus Christ, Bolly." He took a few deep breaths. "Not here. Your flat."
She met his gaze. His eyes were darker, focused solely on her. She kissed him again, just because she could, just because she wanted to, and he groaned, fingers digging into her hips as he matched her kiss for kiss. She tore her mouth away, breathing hard.
"Follow me."