Alex could see Gene staring at the young woman in the coffee shop from the car, which was rapidly filling with second hand cigarette smoke despite her best efforts to ventilate it. The woman sat at the mahogany table was tall and lanky; her hair long, dark blonde and curly, and her face oddly familiar, though Alex couldn't put her finger on exactly why that was. He stared for what felt like hours, and the woman didn't move, but for drinking from her coffee cup, staining the white china with her scarlet lipstick with every sip - it was like they were on a futile surveillance mission that she hadn't been told the point of.
"Who is she, Guv?" she asked, glancing across at him and then back to the coffee shop, catching a glimpse of Ray and Chris looking uncharacteristically gobsmacked as they looked at the woman, and then at each other for a brief moment.
"None of your business, Bolls." Gene muttered, the tyres of the Quattro screaming against the tarmac as he pulled off, giving the woman one final glance before they careered around the corner of the Westminster street they'd been sat on, "None of your bloody business." He was driving even more ridiculously than usual, which Alex hadn't even known was possible - something had him rattled; presumably the woman in the coffee shop, and she had no idea why.
"Well for God's sake, at least give me a clue about why we've spent the last twenty minutes sitting aimlessly outside a coffee shop staring at her." she replied, clinging to the edge of her seat as they skidded round another corner, "And can you stop driving like a sodding lunatic?!"
Without warning, the car screeched to a halt on a side street and Gene looked at her; more anger in his steely eyes than she'd ever seen directed at her, and that set her on edge - if he was this angry, something really was up.
"I told you it was none of your bloody business, Drake. If you are going to keep trying to make it your business, then I suggest you get out of the car and bloody walk back to CID. Got it?" His voice wasn't loud; more quiet and threatening, the true extent of his thoughts bottled up. She gulped, nodding, and they sped off again, Chris and Ray giving each other a knowing look in the back seat.
Well, if that was Hunt's idea of making her drop it, she thought to herself, then he must have been so naive. All his outrage had done was made her more and more interested in who the woman was and why they were so interested in her. And, being Alex Drake, she was bloody well determined that she was going to find out.
—
"Chris, who was that woman in the coffee shop? Is she something to do with the Guv?" Alex asked as surreptitiously as she could, pretending to check some files as she spoke, leaning over Chris' overcrowded desk.
"Can't tell you, boss… er, Ma'am." he babbled, pretending to be doing a piece of paperwork and failing to realise that it was upside down as he scribbled random letters in his messy handwriting, smudging the ink of his black Biro everywhere, "Classified."
"He won't even bring in Special Branch for a possible bloody letter bomb, Chris, I know that's bullshit. Is she an informant? Suspect?" she questioned, almost instantly losing any element of calm she might have had about her beforehand.
"Not exactly… look, I can't tell you. It's up to the Guv." he replied, practically pleading with her not to ask him anything else. She sighed, turning on her heel and marching back to her desk, leaving Chris to pretend to do his paperwork and blush as she sat down and took out her notepad, scribbling down her thoughts about who the girl could possibly be, and ending screwing her page up into a ball and chucking it in the bin. It was hopeless; she'd just have to find out on her own, she decided, and went back to actually filling in her paperwork, unlike Chris, who'd realised his slight error and managed to knock every single piece of paper on his desk onto the floor in his attempt to actually fill in his paperwork.
—
She raided Gene's desk when the rest of the team had gone to Luigi's for something - anything - that would get her to the truth. Numerous empty whiskey bottles, packets of cigarettes and three rainforests worth of paperwork later, she came to find a pile of old polaroids at the very bottom of the messiest drawer, underneath piles and piles of unfinished paperwork. She picked them up - they were ageing; as if they'd been looked at every day since they were printed; the photographs themselves wrinkled and cracked, the Polaroid yellowing as time passed - her hands shaking with anticipation. Was this it? Was this what she was so desperately seeking?
The first was Sam and Annie; the second, a photo of Manchester CID in The Railway Arms - the next few photos followed the same theme, and she was just about to throw them back into the drawer, when she stumbled upon a photo that stopped her in her tracks. It was Gene, though not the man that she knew; this Gene was unaware of the camera, caught in the moment - hell, almost smiling - with a girl no more than ten years old sat on the wall next to him - her white blonde, wildly curly hair pulled into plaited pigtails, wearing a red dress and sandals, grinning at whoever was taking the photo as Gene smoked a cigarette.
Alex turned the picture over; her fingers shaking as she looked at the writing on the back. Clara & Gene, 1973, Manchester. Clara. That was the girl in the photo; that was the woman in the coffee shop today - but what was she to do with Gene? She was fairly sure that was Annie's handwriting on the photo - something to do with Sam and Annie? Maybe the woman knew where they were; perhaps that was the key to this impossible riddle involving Gene, Sam and this godforsaken place. Maybe, just maybe, if she could get to Clara, she could get back to Molly.