This fanfic was written for the Lewis Fanworks Create-a-thon and is based on tommyboybbi's prompt, a drabble table.
Law and order
1. Guilty 2. Arresting 3. Handcuffs 4. Theory 5. Criminal 6. Undercover 7. Intent 8. Possession 9. Memory 10. Illicit 11. Question 12. Innocence 13. Uniform 14. Obstruction 15. Sentence 16. Judgement 17. Tamper 18. Imprison 19. Proof 20. Writer's choice
I admit that I took some liberties with the drabble table and might have used one or two of the words in a more metaphorical sense.
Disclaimer: None of the main characters are mine. They belong to either Colin Dexter or ITV.
Many thanks go to my beta, Lygtemanden, for catching my mistakes and offering advice.
Summary: This time Lewis can't rely on his sergeant's support.
Until Proven Innocent
Obstruction
"What is it with that woman? How can she even think something like that?" Detective Inspector Robbie Lewis sat down heavily on his chair while Laura Hobson closed the door to his office.
"What did Innocent say?"
"She babbled something about obstruction of justice. Can you imagine? I mean it's Hathaway we're talking about here."
He cast a glance at Hobson who looked as stumped as he felt.
"What now?" she asked, leaning against his desk.
"I don't know." Lewis shook his head, trying to wrap his mind around what had happened. "She's suspended Hathaway. He's already on his way home."
Guilty
"Lewis? A word, please?"
That's how it had all begun this morning when Chief Superintendent Innocent had asked Lewis to come to her office.
"We have a problem. I've just got a call from Vice, and it looks as if Hathaway tipped off Henshaw."
"What?" Lewis almost shouted. "Sorry, Ma'am, but that's impossible."
"Henshaw's vanished after Hathaway spoke to him yesterday morning."
"I thought Vice tailed him?"
"They lost him and say that someone must have helped him get away."
"But not Hathaway!"
"I hope you're right, Lewis."
But only five hours later she had decided that he was wrong.
Criminal
"Surely it's a misunderstanding, and Hathaway will be cleared first thing tomorrow morning," Hobson said.
Lewis rubbed his temples. "I doubt it. Something doesn't smell right. Someone has it in for Hathaway, or Henshaw is cleverer than we thought."
"Henshaw?"
"He's the pimp of those two murdered prostitutes. He's extremely violent, but so far he hasn't been known to be very sharp."
Hobson grimaced. "They were downright slaughtered."
"I suspect Henshaw killed them. To think that Hathaway would help him, that's ridiculous!" His voice grew louder. "If only Innocent ..."
She placed her hand on his arm. "You'll figure it out."
Innocence
The next morning Lewis's spirits were low when he entered his office. He'd tried to call Hathaway and even driven by his flat the night before. The lights had been on, but his sergeant hadn't answered.
Lewis slumped into his chair, staring at the empty desk opposite his own. It was a rare sight. He couldn't think of many occasions when Hathaway hadn't been there.
Illness or holiday.
Now the empty desk seemed to accuse Lewis because it was neither.
"Right", he said aloud when he switched on his computer. It was time to prove that Hathaway hadn't warned Henshaw.
Tamper
Lewis sighed and tossed Hathaway's typed report about questioning Henshaw on his desk. He'd spent most of the morning going through it with a fine comb, but even on his third reading he hadn't detected anything amiss. It read as detailed and straight-forward as any of Hathaway's reports did.
"Of course it does. That's because there's nothing wrong with it," he said under his breath.
He grabbed the file about the two prostitutes instead. They had been found on a landfill site, their throats cut. All people questioned were convinced that Henshaw killed them but Lewis couldn't prove it yet.
Possession
Lewis had talked to the vice squad, but the colleagues' insisting that Hathaway was to blame for Henshaw's disappearing act had made him so cross that he needed some fresh air and now found himself on Henshaw's stomping ground.
Lola, ex-prostitute turned madam, owed him a favour from some years back when he had saved her from a manic punter, but she shooed him away the moment he approached her.
"I know why you're here, but I won't say anything," she said, her eyes wide. "I intend to live for a few more years."
He returned to his office empty-handed.
Imprison
This evening Hathaway did open his door, and Lewis entered his flat even before Hathaway asked him in.
"How are you holding up?"
When Hathaway shrugged, Lewis patted him on his shoulder. "This is a mess, but we will find out who's been trying to pin this on you. You will be reinstated. You just need to be a bit more patient."
Lewis scrutinised Hathaway but his sergeant's face was disconcertingly blank.
"You can be patient, James, can't you? You have to be. Don't try anything yourself, okay?" Lewis gave Hathaway another pat. "Lie low, stay home."
"I will, Sir."
Handcuffs
"Ma'am, I'm asking you to reinstate Hathaway. I read his report, and I spoke with him last night. There's no evidence at all that Hathaway has any connections to Henshaw. Vice must be barmy."
Innocent raised her eyebrows before she shook her head. "You know that my hands are tied, Lewis. There's nothing I can do before Hathaway is cleared. The Assistant Chief Constable would have my head if there should be any irregularities. It's ..."
"... procedure. Yeah, I know, but sometimes procedure isn't what it's cracked up to be."
"Lewis!"
"Sorry, Ma'am, but this is just all kinds of wrong."
Judgement
"What has Innocent done now?" Hobson asked when Lewis entered his office, barely restraining himself from banging the door.
"She says that my judgement is clouded, that I'm not objective." Lewis rolled his eyes. "Of course, I'm not objective. I've worked with Hathaway for four years. I know him."
"She might have a point."
"Not you as well."
Hobson shook her head. "I'm not saying that he's guilty. I just meant that it might help if you broadened your view. You're fixated on clearing Hathaway's name, but maybe it would be better to find out who killed the prostitutes instead."
Memory
Trying to solve the murders was what had brought this mess upon them, wasn't it?
Lewis rubbed his eyes, recalling what little he knew.
From the start everything had pointed at Henshaw.
Someone heard him threatening the women; someone wanted to have witnessed him dispose of something into the Cherwell; and a third someone claimed to have seen his car near the landfill.
Then Henshaw had disappeared, which made him look even guiltier.
It all sounded very neat. Too neat.
If only Lola would have cooperated. Lewis was convinced that she knew something.
His phone rung and he listened intently.
Intent
"That's Henshaw." Lewis stared down at the body, the head of which lay in a large puddle of congealed blood.
Then he looked at the low footbridge that crossed Isis Lock.
"There's nowhere high enough for him to have fallen and cracked his skull, is there?"
Hobson, crouching over the body, shook her head. "No, there isn't."
A constable appeared, carefully holding a cricket bat in his gloved hand. "Sir, we found this among the bushes."
Hobson examined the bat before she looked at Lewis. "Yes, someone bashed in his head with this bat. This was a premeditated murder, Robbie."
Uniform
"Anything? Anything at all?"
"Not much," said Hobson in her laboratory the next morning. "All I can tell you is that he was beaten to death sometime between six and eight yesterday morning. It happened where he was found. The killer is right-handed and about 5'5'' tall. He emptied Henshaw's pockets and didn't leave any traces himself."
"Damn," said Lewis. "Uniform have crawled all over the place and talked to the people on the mooring boats and in the buildings nearby, but so far we've got absolutely nothing. Someone was very careful not to leave any kind of trace behind."
Proof
"Sir?", said the constable, sticking his head into Lewis' office. "We've finally received the itemised phone bills of those two prostitutes."
"Thank you, Gardiner", said Lewis, taking the print-outs from him and leafing through them.
The names on the lists meant nothing to Lewis, but then four letters leapt off the page at him.
Lola.
Lola had phoned Suzy, the first of the two killed prostitutes twice; the second time just hours before her death.
Lewis studied the second print-out.
Lola also had rung Anya, the second prostitute. The call had been made about four hours before Anya was killed.
Question
Lola grumbled when the officer led her into the interview room. "I know I owe you one, Lewis, but bringing me here isn't a nice thing to do."
"Did you know Suzy and Anya, the two dead prostitutes?" Lewis asked.
"Of course. I know most of the girls, even if they work for someone else."
"Did you ever ring them?"
"Yes. To warn them. Henshaw was really pissed off by them but they didn't take him seriously." She gave a shrug. "I was right, wasn't I?"
"Do you know who killed Henshaw?"
Her eyes clouded over before she answered, "No."
Theory
Was it fear that had made Lola close up when he asked about Henshaw?, Lewis wondered, back in his office. He had his doubts about that.
She definitely knew more than she had let on. He didn't doubt that at all.
His gut feeling told him that somehow she was involved in the crimes but his brain refused to accept the most obvious conclusion. The Lola he knew from a few years back wouldn't have dreamt of harming a fellow prostitute, but the present Lola seemed much more hardened.
But even if he was right, he needed to prove it.
Undercover
"I need you to tell me about you questioning Henshaw. What you didn't put in your report because it didn't seem connected to the case," Lewis told Hathaway when he visited his sergeant that night.
Hathaway frowned. "There's not much to say. Of course I wasn't undercover, but I ensured that not many people saw us and therefore I didn't have much opportunity to spot anything myself."
"Think, Sergeant."
Hathaway rubbed his forehead. "I remember an older woman with dark-red hair. She saw me leaving Henshaw."
"Was it her?" Lewis pushed a photo of Lola across the table.
Hathaway nodded.
Writer's choice
"Tell me something about Lola."
The colleagues from Vice eyed Lewis curiously but didn't answer when he came to their office the next day.
"She refuses to say anything about Henshaw, but I know that she observed Hathaway when he talked to him."
The inspectors remained silent.
"Come on," Lewis growled. "Something's going on, and you know it. What has Lola been up to lately?"
The two inspectors looked at each other before one answered, "Rumour has it that nowadays some prostitutes are more afraid of Lola than they ever were of Henshaw."
"Ask for Martine," the other inspector added.
Sentence
Martine, a young, blue-eyed prostitute, hesitated at first but then she opened up to Lewis.
"Lola, the guardian angel. That's how she likes to be seen." Martine snorted. "Lola, the devil is more like it. She makes the girls believe that she cares for them, but if she has them in her clutches, she never lets them go again. Any girl that tries to leave will be punished."
"What about Anya? Suzy? Or Henshaw?"
"Henshaw had this poncy lighter. Always carried it around with him." She saw straight into Lewis's eyes. "I'm sure that I saw Lola with it yesterday."
Arresting
When Lewis confronted Lola with the evidence, she confessed to all three murders at once.
"For years I sold myself and got nothing. When I looked after the girls instead, I still earned nothing. But Henshaw, he made a lot of money, and I wanted what he had."
"You killed the prostitutes and meant to pin it on Henshaw to get rid off him."
"Yes. But when your sergeant questioned Henshaw, I started to think that it would be best if Henshaw was gone. He was a bastard." Lola looked at Lewis. "I'd have treated the girls decently, you know?"
Illicit
It was only five days since Hathaway had last sat at his desk, but Lewis felt extremely pleased to have him back and see him fiddle with his computer as usual.
Innocent had already welcomed back Hathaway, and now Hobson popped in.
"Hey, boys," she said before she turned to Hathaway, offering him a bottle of red. "Like to celebrate your return with us tonight?"
Hathaway grinned at her. "Sure. Seven at my place?
"You're coming as well?" he added in Lewis's direction.
Lewis nodded. "You bet. If only to stop you from getting into trouble with the law again."