Disclaimer: All Silent Witness characters belong to the BBC, except a guest reference to Bruce Willis who belongs to himself. The story has nothing whatever to do with Dan Brown's Angels and Demons, just seemed the best title.

This may be a little early for a New Year story, but I did start it in August. Good news for you is that it's finished (mostly) so the uploads shouldn't be too sporadic. Hope you enjoy the ride. Thanks in advance to all you lovely people who will take the time to review.

Angels and Demons

Harry was lounging against a wall in the hotel lobby waiting. He felt ridiculous. He hadn't worn a dinner jacket in years and this one, he tried not to think about it. He hated these kind of events, the dressing up, the small talk and the £80 plate charge. He was supposed to be one of the guests. He shook is head and realised that his hair was already heading towards disaster levels. It was 7:35pm where were they? He felt like he'd been waiting for hours already.

Four women hurried through to the ballroom, but not before they caught Harry's eye. They had obviously had a drink on the way over and on seeing him all broke out into peals of laughter and his already bad mood began to deteriorate. Even they thought he looked ridiculous.

"Where have they been hiding him?" he heard one of them say.

"He doesn't work in my building, I'll tell you that because if he did, I'm sure I would know. Not unless he scrubs up really well."

They all laughed again.

"Well, maybe this university fund raiser won't be so bad after all."

"Did you see those trousers?" and with that they stumbled through into the ballroom to find their table.

See! other people thought he looked ridiculous too. The shop assistant who served him when he went to get the suit couldn't stop telling him how 'gorgeous' he looked in it. But then he did seem to have been channelling Gok Wan the whole time.

All he had wanted was to have been left alone to find one that fitted. But no. He was admired, and the suit was poked and stroked. He shivered, he didn't really go for stroking, not by sales assistants anyway. The sales 'Gok' kept insisting that he try different pairs of trousers until his butt was shown off to his best advantage. Harry tried to explain that all he wanted to do was to be able to sit down comfortably and not show off 6 inches of sock. But Gok seemed to have more important style features in mind. And a pressing desire to ogle his bum as he was made to walk up and down.

He reminisced glumly about the dinner jacket he had at university, it had been brilliant. His mate Dave had found it in a charity shop for a tenner and as they were at different colleges, they didn't often have social occasions warranting a dinner jacket on the same night, so they just passed it backwards and forwards between them. It was a tiny bit short on him he would admit, but it was cheap and did the job. It was a shame Dave used it last and kept in by default. The most recent one never recovered from the pina colada that Nikki had spilled on it at that Institute Dinner. It had been cleaned but it only made the stain fainter and then it looked even more embarrassing. This current get up although unstained, was anything but cheap and he was only hiring it.

Why wasn't Nikki here yet? The only thing that could possibly make this evening tolerable was that his best friend was going to be there. The university in their wisdom had decided to lay on this charity New Year dinner, open to all the faculty and students. They were raising money for some of the extra counselling services that were provided after the shootings earlier in the year and some building development work they were planning. He and Nikki were even supposed to be being recognised for bravery or some such later in the evening. There had even been rumours that Boris* was supposed to be turning up at some point. No doubt he would make some bumbling speech about the British stiff upper lip. It wasn't him that watched his class mates slaughtered thought Harry bitterly.

Plenty more people were arriving, but none of them Nikki. He wished he'd gone to pick her up himself but as her flat was on route from Leo's it made sense that she should share a taxi with him and Janet. Harry watched the people milling about in the lobby. The tables were all arranged in faculty groups and he had no trouble spotting the psychology department when they arrived. They were an odd looking bunch of people. He was just mentally reprimanding himself about social stereotyping when eight men all looking more awkward and out of place than he did wandered through...'Computer scientists' thought Harry.

He checked his watch again and wondered why he was so nervous.

* Boris Johnson Mayor of London