You guess is as good as mine….
So, the new season, albeit the last (sob!) of 'Ashes' has kicked off. And blimey, its a confusing start, not least for the audience. I started writing this fic before the start of the Episode 1, after reading the plot outlines and Press Pack stuff on the BBC website a couple of weeks ago.
Thank goodness that Gene told us where he'd been, otherwise I would probably marooned him in France (his least favourite country!) for the three month duration he's been missing, and Alex has been lying in her coma somewhere between 1982/3 and 2000 and whatever!
So, this is my interpretation of where Genes been and what he's been up to. I've probably stretched the bounds of possibility a tad, but I think the time frame is suitable enough. Til he decides to tell us exactly what he was up to - unlikely I think you'll agree - here's what I think.
All reviews through the usual channels please. Its been a while since I posted here, I may have lost my touch...
Oooh - disclaimer: I do not own 'Ashes To Ashes', any of the characters, music used or anything associated. I have not written this for personal gain of any kind. This is just for fun Mr/Mrs/Ms Lawyer - okay?
Right, legal bit over - once more, and thank God!, it's time to Fire Up The Quattro!!
Cue 'Ashes To Ashes' theme
He's walked the streets for hours now.
The bag, weighing heavy on his shoulder, has been packed with what he considered the bare essentials, but somewhere along the line he'd jettisoned the full litre bottles of scotch.
For some time he'd only been buying pint bottles.
Oh, and a couple of shirts had gone too.
A familiar sound echoed just on the edge of his hearing making him start and then walk deeper into the shadows cast by the ineffectual streetlights.
A police car siren.
A sound that until recently had been familiar and comforting to him, but now?
Well now, a sound to make him want to blend into the night, like the criminals he'd once hunted.
And would hunt again.
A worrying thought raced through his now racing mind – where the hell was he going to sleep tonight?
He couldn't go home. Not the flat he'd got when he moved here.
It had probably been raided several times, and he could guarantee it was under surveillance.
A sound behind him, a scurrying of what he knew were only rats, made him turn round, hand on the revolver he kept beneath his jacket.
He cursed this nervousness, this weakness he knew he couldn't afford to show, the stress he was under making him vulnerable to those who would show no weakness, no mercy.
A sign of weakness in this neighbourhood would be fatal.
At best, a mugging. This he knew he could still fight his way out of, armed as he was with his fists and his gun.
But an assailant with gun or knife who sprung from seemingly nowhere and who had an axe to grind with him personally? That was a different matter.
He knew he was at a disadvantage. He'd separated from the herd that had infuriated him, but had also kept him safe to a certain degree.
He snorted his derision at these wanderings of a mind under undue stress.
Squaring his shoulders again, once more feeling the ache of exhaustion between his shoulder blades and down his back, he stepped back out into the slightly better lit pavement.
He had to find somewhere to spend the night and his options had now fast dwindled to bedding down with the homeless, or spending the night under the roof of an anonymous hostel, listening to the almost tubercular coughs of these in adjoining rooms. Men barely surviving well below the poverty line, like backdrop extras from a Charles Dickens' novel.
Grimacing at the mere idea, he walked on, justifying his urge to stay out of the spotlight.
Would they find him in a place like that?
Would they even think of looking for him there?
His only official previous experience was on a raid, looking for a bad man who had committed bad deeds.
Trouble was, he thought with irony, he was now cast as the bad man of bad deeds.
A bad deed.
He knew where the nearest hostels where to be found, but he also knew a few that they didn't. It never hurt to have a place to hide, or to know where those who needed one might be lurking.
The world of doss houses, hostels, halfway house, bail houses was not an unknown one to him.
God knows, he'd spent enough time visiting them in those years searching for his younger, weaker brother, lost in a haze of illicit and illegal substances.
And by the time he was found, he already lost to the world that had taken him there.
The screams of an enthusiastic cat fight dragged him back from the past to his present dilemma.
'No point blaming yourself,' he muttered once more to himself, repeating a phrase that wasn't true and gave no comfort.
No comfort lying to yourself.
No comfort in cigarettes.
No comfort or place to hide in alcohol.
Besides which, alcohol dulled the senses, and took the edge off his wits.
And he was all to aware that right now he need to be on the ball the whole time.
24/7, as she used to say.
And would say again.
He stopped dead in his tracks, forgetting where he was, who he was and the perilous situation he was in.
Perilous both professionally and personally.
That brief moment of inattention, a finger spasm and the short, sharp retort of his revolver in his hand.
The slowing down of time.
And, just for a second, so infinitesimal it was impossible to describe, silence.
And then the sight of her, clasping her left side, looking in disbelief at the blood seeping through her fingers.
She'd looked at him then, a questioning look on her face, so perfectly made up as usual.
And then she'd collapsed on the cold unforgiving flagstones.
He remembered standing, like a statue in shock, with the gun hanging forgotten at his side, all bluff and thunder stripped from him.
Becalmed by his own actions.
Her eyes had closed and then….
He shook himself.
He'd been stupid, but the flight or fight instinct had taken over fairly soon after leaving her hospital bed.
The fight had left him, so what else could he do?
The train to Portsmouth, the ticket on the ferry.
He had always disliked the sea. It made him feel small and at its mercy, and both these emotions made him uncomfortable and uneasy.
He'd spent the short crossing on the fantail, nervously chain-smoking and taking nips from his hip flask.
Upon docking, and anticipating a less than warm welcome from the authorities, he'd made sure to tag along with a large group of tourists, all dragging bags and gabbling away in broken English and French.
The bloody French, of all people!!
He'd fought back the initial, strong urge to have the whole group surrounding him thrown back in the Solent, this time sans ferry.
The thought of what she would have said to him, had she been there, checked this gut reaction, and made him concentrate on blending in, and keeping quiet.
Both things he was unused to doing since he was a small child.
For the next couple of weeks he kept his head down, moving between two anonymous down at heel bed and breakfasts, and hiding in back street pubs and cinemas.
He felt watched, though he couldn't see anyone doing that.
He felt hunted, and it was a scary feeling.
But above all, the dreams made the night a place to dread.
It was always the same dream.
Her.
He just couldn't escape her.
And where not so long ago, the dreams of her were common place and swung from innocent things like drinking together and chaste kisses, the thought of which made him colour for his adolescent longings, to more physical activities with full surround sound and Technicolor, these dreams were not welcome.
Blood on her hands, blood on her face. Her voice crying out 'why?' and 'I was only trying to help you!' haunting him. Smeared make up and dead eyes laying on the floor in front of him and he couldn't reach her, couldn't help her.
In his waking hours, he sometimes swore he'd seen her.
In his desperation, he would have sworn on what was left of his career.
The same colour hair.
A quick, high laugh.
The tap-tap-tap of high heels.
Flashing green eyes.
But it wasn't her. It was never her.
She was in a coma, in a hospital bed, in London.
He watched the papers carefully, and listened to the small transistor radio he bought at a busy touristy shop near the docks carefully.
The radio became his best friend in those long nights of the soul.
No mention was made of the botched raid, of the corrupt Met officers, of the arrests.
In a way he wasn't surprised. For all of Scarman's published ravings about open and honest ways of working in the Police, it was obvious to an insider, like himself, that this situation wasn't one Lord Scarman et al would be willing to have shouted about the press.
He was just starting to relax, about thinking of going back to the City, when an item, buried on the inside of a national newspaper made him reconsider.
'Woman Met Officer Shot'.
And there it was. A hazy, just enough details to make you think you'd got it all account of a 'gallant' female Met officer in 'a serious condition' in hospital in London. The paper announced she'd been injured whilst confronting an armed assailant during an unnamed Met operation in Central London.
No name was given, just 'next of kin have been informed'.
This, he knew, was a lie. She had no next of kin. Unless, he checked himself, they'd been able to track that mysterious daughter down to wherever she was hidden away.
The odds were, he considered, that he, himself, was the nearest thing she had to 'next of kin'.
But the time had come to move on.
He had to get away. And the next day, the feeling of being watched was confirmed when he clocked the heavy handed tail of a uniformed officer when he walked to one of the pubs he knew.
That same day, he packed his bags, left money for his bill and snuck out of the B&B to catch the last ferry back to the mainland.
After that, it was easy enough to cadge a lift with a lorry driver onto the ferry to St. Malo. He bought a return foot passenger ticket, not intending to use the second journey in the near future, and went on-board, thanking his foresight to take his unused passport on the journey he'd set out on.
The overnight sailing took its allotted time to arrive in France, and once landed, he cadged a ride to Spain. From Barcelona, he tacked his way across the country, using public transport and hitching.
On the outskirts of another small unmemorable town, he traded his luggage for a rucksack, stuffing his clothes and other possessions into it outside on the street.
Eventually he made it to the coast. Not the Costa Del Sol, too many 'old friends' there to make his life uncomfortable and much shorter.
No, the Costa Brava would do. He'd been able to draw money from his British bank before he left, but with his journey and money for living, his funds where fast dwindling.
So, he got a job. A cash in hand job, doing favours for a bartender in a backstreet neighbourhood bar, more front room have-your-mates-round-for-a-drink than Pub, but it suited him.
His skin turned pink from the unexpected exposure to the sun, his hair bleached a shade lighter as he lay on the beaches, hiding behind sunglasses.
And no one bothered him.
He kept a very close eye out for being watched, something he had done unconsciously since he was a teenager, watching for signs of aggression and violence from his father.
Nothing.
And the weeks rolled past.
But still the dreams came.
Again and again, she pleaded with him, 'Why?'.
And he still couldn't give her an answer.
He hadn't meant to shoot her. It was an accident.
God alone knew his threat made in front of the CID team had been one of anger and frustration.
She'd lied and lied to his face and he'd believed her.
Believed her tales of an estranged daughter, of an ex-husband who was useless and best dumped, of wanting know everything, of being lonely, of being friends, more than friends, of the No Man's Land that was the inexplicable chemistry between certain men and women but can't be defined.
He'd trusted her.
Opened up to her.
Protected her, not least from herself at times.
He'd done something he'd never done before, not even when he was married – he gave something of himself to her.
And she'd thrown it all back in his face with mad stories of being from the future, of lying in a hospital bed sometime in another year.
And in his anger and confusion, he'd thrown her out of his department, his station, his life.
But she was stubborn. Like him.
And she was determined. Like him.
And she wouldn't be told she was wrong. Like him.
And in the aftermath of Operation Rose, he'd saved her life.
And then almost taken it in a carelessly aimed shot.
The guilt he felt was unbearable, and eventually he decided he had to go back.
If only to explain things to her, to tell her he hadn't meant to shoot her, that shooting her, though tempting at times, in reality was the furthest thing from his mind.
Which he appeared to have gone out of.
So he packed his bags and slipped away from the beaches, the bar, and his lodgings and hitchhiked, cadged and paid for a way back to Britain.
His luck held, and he managed to cadge a ride back from Dover to London with a lorry full of imported tat bound for the high street.
He managed to get back into his building and his flat, to get suited and booted before heading to the hospital where she lay, still in a coma he assumed.
His original idea had been to scout round the ward, check out for eagle eyed nurses or a police guard, but he dismissed this as too dangerous.
If they arrested him before he got to her, it would all be over.
Riding the Underground towards her, the carriages were crowded.
All the better to hide you in, my dear.
The young woman standing not far in front of him strap dangled with one hand and used the reflection in the curved doors of the carriage to restyle her hair and touch up her make up.
Watching her idly, he realised that if he arrived at the hospital and she had no clothes how the hell were they to leave unnoticed.
Clothed, she was noticeable.
Naked, she was probably traffic stopping.
'Idiot' he muttered to himself, and got off at the next stop, pushing his way through the crowds and taking a deep breath to steady himself he plunged into a department store.
Scant minutes later, he burst out of the doors, red faced and almost exhausted.
He really hated clothes shopping.
'Bloody woman, cost me a forture…' he told himself as he tucked the bag under his arm and went back to the Tube.
Three stops later, he was faced with a situation he could either run from or face like the man he was.
Really, he told himself, how could he face her if he turned away now?
He'd stepped out into the street, then stumbled back as a duel siren went off practically in his face.
A patrol car screamed to a halt directly in front of the hospital shortly followed by an ambulance.
He knew then, this would have to wait.
But only until the next day.
Until then, he had the whole of London to hide in, and the whole night to kill.
Shouldering his rucksack and switching the bag of clothes for Alex under his other arm, Gene Hunt, DCI, CID, Fenchurch (East), turned away without a second look and walked away from the hospital.
Inside the building, Alex dreamed and muttered in her sedated state.
'Gene?'