It had been weeks now since the car bomb. Weeks of mundanity, each day merging into the next. After the initial livid grief, Alex had been numb for days. She had been so sure of what her task was. The enormity of living through that event again, as helpless as she had been the first time through, seemed like a cruel joke her psyche had played on her in these dying seconds. Seconds that had now stretched beyond days and weeks into months, and gradually this place was becoming her reality, despite the gnawing desperation to see Molly again.
What was reality anyway? Ever since she witnessed Gene as her childhood knight in shining armour, she had begun to realign her assumptions about what was real here. She hadn't seen the clown since that awful, gut-punching moment when she'd realized the truth – when she had known she had never had any chance of stopping her parent's death, because she'd been looking in the wrong direction. No clown, no surreal to disturb the real.
The pain was still real, as real as the biro in her hand, the stack of forms on her desk and the smell of stale cigarettes here in the office. She swallowed down tears and looked over to the Guv's office, and was startled to meet his eyes. He was motionless, leaning back in his chair, and he had clearly been watching her for some time. She blinked in embarrassment, but he held her eyes for a few seconds longer before looking away.
She focused back on her paperwork and was disturbed again a few moments later by the sense of him standing in front of her desk. She looked up at him; one hand in his pocket, the other tossing the Quattro keys up.
"C'mon." He said, nodding his head to the door.
"Where?" She asked flatly.
"Somewhere you might look happier than a vegetarian in a sausage factory."
She felt a smile come to the corners of her mouth, but she squashed it and narrowed her eyes, getting up and pulling her jacket from the back of the chair.
"I'm in the middle of something, you know." She told him, her tone officious and detached.
"Oh, yes Bols, and you can get back to your papercut world-record attempt later." He told her, holding one of the double doors open for her as she walked through. "You lot, stay out of trouble." He called back over his shoulder as he followed her.
"What is it Viv?" Ray asked, chewing. "Guv's not here."
"It's this girl, don't seem to speak a lot of English, but she's talking about kidnap. Seems like the kind of thing DI Drake'd be interested in, sir" Viv said in a lower voice.
"They won't be long, I don't think they were goin' anywhere much." Chris called from behind his desk, preoccupied by fiddling with his walkman's headphone wires, hopelessly tangled and knotted up like liquorice.
"Right then, shall I tell her to wait then, sir?" Viv asked. Ray paused.
"Nah, s'alright, I'll have a chat with her." Ray said firmly. Viv looked a little askance.
"Ri-ight. If you're sure, sir."
Alex was beginning to actually fear for her life in the Quattro these days. Before now, when this had all been some concocted fantasy world, she was confident that she couldn't die, so the idea of flying through the windscreen of the car hadn't perturbed her that much. Now things were less clear, she still wasn't allowed to pull a seatbelt round herself and Hunt still worked the car like a stunt-driver. She almost envied him that deft touch on the handbrake turn.
It didn't stop her winding him up a little, which was always more fun when he was driving and pouring most of his attention into the car. She enjoyed the way she could catch him a little more off-guard when she was in the passenger seat and he was unable to turn the full beam of his intense eyes on her.
"I have absolutely no idea why, perhaps I thought you might enjoy a change from sucking lemons, love!" He shouted.
"Oh really? Well excuse me if I don't fawn all over you in grateful thanks for such a back-handed bloody compliment!" She blazed back. The little bistro change of scenery approach that Gene had obviously chosen was going reasonably well until he'd point blank refused to let her pay and told her the only Dutch he was prepared to go with her was watching her pole-dance Amsterdam style.
"You really are your own worst enemy, Drake!" He threw back, slamming on the Quattro brakes and coming to a halt outside the station entrance.
"Yeah? Well I'm pretty damn close to being yours, too, Hunt!" She spat, flinging the door open and stamping into the building. Viv called her over as she strode in.
"Thought you might be interested, ma'am, there's a girl in the interview room. Come in talking about being kidnapped, but she doesn't speak much English from what I could tell."
"Well, who's she in the interview room with?" Alex asked, brow furrowed.
"DS Carling, ma'am." Viv said, his eyebrows raised involuntarily. Her eyes widened in response, and she hurried away to the interview room just as DCI Hunt entered the building behind her, looking like thunder. She threw open the door to the interview room expecting… well, she didn't really know, but her initial instinct was panic. Ray was sitting with a young oriental woman, who looked absolutely exhausted, and his hand was placed consolingly on her shoulder.
"Ray? Is everything alright?" Alex asked. Some thing in her tone cast a grumpy cloud over DS Carling's face.
"Won't be a minute, love, you stay here." He told the girl, coming out of the interview room.
"What's going on?" Alex asked him when he'd closed the door.
"I was talking to that young lady about the fact that she's escaped from some kidnapper, and I were doing alright until you burst in like I was roughing her up or something!" Ray was angry, his blue eyes flashing sparks. Alex's mouth dropped open, stunned and somewhat apologetic. She still thought of Ray as the muscle, and too often forgot that he wasn't a complete idiot. She still had so much work to do with her own assumptions about these people, so much more than the one-note stereotypes she'd once believed them to be.
"Oh. Right, sorry. What has she told you?" Alex deliberately moderated her tone. She could see Gene coming over to them.
"What's all this then?" He asked as he reached them, peering in through the interview room windows to where the girl sat staring into the middle distance.
"It's this girl, Guv, says she's been kidnapped. I think she might be a prozzie, but she's no one we've brought in before now. I'm not sure, but I don't think it were a punter. I can't really tell much more, she's not very clear to understand, like." Ray explained, looking over at Alex, who was giving her very best slightly sheepish look.
"Right, well, let's see if Bolly-kecks can use a woman's touch, shall we?" Hunt nodded, and he and Alex went back in the interview room, leaving Ray to huff quietly back to his desk.