Harry's house – London, UK – Tuesday evening:

He leaned his head back against the end of the bath and allowed his aching body to sink beneath the surface of the hot, soapy water. Everything ached, but it was his chest which hurt like buggery, and the everyday business of breathing was still painful. He allowed his mind to wander back to the events of the day, in particular to the siege in Gabriel Plaza …... a bomb in a deserted taxi, strategically placed to be close to where people were eating and drinking at an outdoor café, and all with Davie King in position with a high-powered rifle, ready to pick off innocent civilians, one by one. Harry was not entirely sure why it was he stepped out into the open, in front of the taxi, and offered himself as a target. At the time he'd thought that seeing the core issue – the history – was between he and King only, and so in offering his own sorry life for King to pick off at will, one way or another he would bring the stand-off to an appropriate conclusion, and then provided Adam and Malcolm had managed to defuse the bomb, everyone could go home.

He still wondered why Davie King hadn't shot him in the head.

He still wondered why he assumed it would be enough that he wore a bullet-proof vest on the off chance that King would play nice, and shoot him in the chest.

He still wondered – in that moment of self-sacrifice – if he wanted to die, wanted to end it all. His head says he didn't, but his heart …...? He doesn't know what his heart wants, it still being in a thousand pieces, scattered between London and wherever-she-is.

Harry is used to compartmentalising his life and his emotions. Without this considerable skill, he would have been carted off to Tring years ago, a mumbling, trembling mess. There are so many emotions he keeps under wraps – anger (not always successfully), fear, panic, regret, the pain of loss – and as he has aged, he finds it harder each day to put these aside and simply get on with it. He closed his eyes and allowed himself to relax in the water, shutting down his conscious mind. He needed to rest, to let the regrets and inner questioning leave him, if only temporarily. Except that in moments such as these, when he pushes away the events of the day in order to allow himself the luxury of again feeling human, another regret slips in covertly to take the place of those he has managed to silence.

Ruth.

Sixteen months had passed since he last saw her, and in that time he has heard from her only once. One evening he'd opened his front door and found the usual pile of mail on the floor inside the door. He'd dumped it on the hall table while he'd deactivated the alarm. It hadn't been until he was pouring his second glass of single malt that he'd remembered the mail. He'd gathered it from the hall table, and then sat on the sofa with his drink, sifting through the catalogues, the advertising, the bills, and then there it was, the single postcard, an image of the Duomo at night – Florence, Italy. Who did he know from there? Who did he know who was holidaying there? And then, as he turned the card over to see the familiar writing, he knew. Her message was brief and poignant. It's been a year since we parted. Not a day goes by that I don't think of you. I pray that you are happy. Rx That was all. No indication of where she was living, or how she was filling her time. He believed that her closing statement: I pray that you are happy, had a subtext. Either she was unhappy, or she had at last found happiness, perhaps with someone else. He hoped it was the latter, because he couldn't bear to think of her being unhappy because of something he'd failed to do for her.

The investigation into Ruth's part in Maudsley's death had ground to a standstill. There had been other more important, more serious fish to fry, and so the attempts to clear Ruth's name had been shoved to the bottom of the in-tray. The image from the CCTV was obviously a fake, as was the mysterious Fox from Section D. The spotlight would have to be off his section if they were ever to clear Ruth's name, and that looked like happening no time between now and eternity. Once again lost inside his regrets about Ruth, Harry made a decision to have someone look into the debacle that was the aftermath of the Cotterdam incident. Harry couldn't expect Connie to expend any energy over trying to clear Ruth, so all he had was Malcolm, and hopefully his friend and technical guru would be willing to work on the events following Mik Maudsley's suicide in his spare time.

It was another hour before Harry surfaced downstairs, cleansed – physically, at least – and more relaxed than he'd been two hours earlier. Dressed in only his trunks and a bathrobe, he sat in front of the television with a glass of whiskey and a bowl of scrambled eggs. He was only half watching the BBC News channel when on the TV screen he saw himself lying on the pavement, apparently dead. Then he watched, mouth open and about to take another spoonful of egg, as Adam appeared, and pulled him away, behind the taxi. Christ, who was it filmed that footage? He grabbed the TV remote control from behind a cushion, and pressed the mute button, so that the sound of the reporter's voice burst into the room.

"...say that the sniper was apprehended. The condition of the man who was shot remains unknown. Peace talks are still under way in -" Harry again pressed the mute button, put down his bowl of scrambled eggs, half eaten, and sat back against the cushions. It was likely that one of the patrons at the coffee shop had either been a journalist, or had sold video footage to the press. It's possible that images of his face – or more to the point, his apparently dead body – would be in tomorrow's papers.

Harry dug around behind another cushion and retrieved his mobile phone. Firstly he rang his daughter, and then he rang his son. He spoke to Catherine briefly, as she was just about to go to bed, and he left a voicemail message on Graham's phone. The gist of the message had been: Despite what you may have seen on TV, or will read in tomorrow's paper, I am alive and well. No-one else need know. No-one else would care.

A one-bedroom apartment in Livorno, Italy – early Wednesday morning :

Her job at the book shop didn't begin until 8:30, but her body still woke at 6 am every day. The morning was typical of an Italian summer – warm, clear skies, a slight breeze off the sea which lifted the curtain over her dining table, almost tipping the spoon from her sugar bowl. She had the TV on for company, and the sound was turned down, so as not to wake her neighbours, all of whom slept late. She flicked through the channels until she came to the BBC News channel. She didn't watch it every day, and sometimes not every week. She missed home enough without images of London being beamed into her living room.

She almost missed seeing it. She'd been about to take her empty cereal bowl and her mug to the sink, when the handsome face of Adam Carter filled the screen. She dropped her mug and plate and almost ran to the TV, sitting close to it, her fingers only inches from the screen. She'd been about to place her fingers on Adam's image when she noticed that he was not alone. What she glimpsed before the story changed sent chills through her. Adam was dragging a body out of sight, behind a black cab. It was the identity of the body that had her nerve endings on high alert.

Ruth was sure the body belonged to Harry Pearce. The question she was asking herself was: Was he dead, or just injured, and how will I find out?

Harry's house – Wednesday morning – 10.51 am:

After having an early morning meeting at Whitehall, Harry was not due on the Grid until lunchtime. Normally he would go in anyway, ignoring his body's requirement for rest, but this morning, something had drawn him back to his own home. He'd removed his coat and tie, and had opened all the buttons of his shirt, deciding it was time he examined the damage left by the bullet which had lodged in the bullet-proof vest he'd worn when they'd gathered in Gabriel Plaza the previous day. He stood before the mirror above the mantelpiece in his sitting room, gazing at the reflection in the mirror of the widening bruise on his chest, now black in the centre, fading to a dark purple around the edges. It still hurt to breathe, but only if he breathed heavily, such as when he became angry or upset. On awaking that morning, and remembering what he had planned for the day, he'd coughed, which had resulted in the pain in his chest worsening temporarily. If only he could feel nothing. If only he could go about his day with little invested in outcomes. If only he could live with no regrets. If only he could wind back the clock and do so many things differently. In his hand he held a cup of coffee, untouched because he'd rather it were something stronger, something capable of dulling the sharp edges of his feelings, his frustration that he doesn't do a better job, his propensity for caring. He took a gulp of the coffee and swilled it around in his mouth, all the time watching himself in the mirror. The half-finished bowl of scrambled eggs from the night before still sat on the coffee table. He grimaced slightly, not liking the small signs that he was giving up on himself, on his habits of a lifetime, habits which had worked well for him, especially since his divorce twenty years earlier. He disliked the feeling he had of having let go of some of the disciplines which had always punctuated his adult life, and held him together throughout the worst of times. He wondered briefly whether it was too early in the day for a small whiskey, just to chase away the taste of failure. The deal Whitehall had made with Bakhshi had almost cost the lives of all MI5 officers present at Gabriel Plaza the day before. What made him think he could protect those who worked under him? He had barely managed to protect those he loved …... which led him to again ponder another of his massive failures, his failure to protect Ruth sixteen months earlier. That was one failure which had left an enduring bitter taste in his mouth, one that no amount of single malt could wash away.

The day before, in his eyes, had not been a consummate disaster, but only because of a series of flukes and fortunes. Fortune had smiled upon them yesterday, but for how long? Harry just wanted to be able to go to bed and sleep for a very long time, to wake up renewed and energised, eager as the thirty-five year old man he'd once been. He shuffled back to the sofa, on the way putting his coffee cup on the small table. He sat down amongst the cushions, enjoying the softness and warmth which now surrounded his tired body. He leaned his head back against the back of the sofa, and closed his eyes – just for a minute.

When his mobile phone rang, he sat up suddenly, noticing the clock on the mantelpiece read 11.43 am. He'd managed to sleep for almost an hour, and in that sleep he'd not been plagued with dreams of losing members of his team. He'd slept dream free. He grabbed his phone from the breast pocket of his jacket which he'd flung over the back of the sofa when he'd earlier arrived home from his meeting in Whitehall. He answered the phone with one word, "Pearce."

"Harry," he heard Malcolm say, nervously, "where are you?"

"I'm at home. I had an early meeting at Whitehall, and I've been catching up on sleep."

"Sorry. Sorry to have woken you. It's …. there's something of a delicate nature …... you …."

Which is when Harry heard someone knocking on his front door. He had learned that there were several different kinds of knocking. Some people knocked hesitantly, almost politely, as if to say: I'm really sorry to bother you, but -. Others knocked assertively, letting him know they expected the door to be opened to them: I'm at your door, and I'd appreciate it being opened. Yet others knocked with impatience, almost as if they were saying: Open this bloody door – NOW! The knocking on his door was of the third variety.

"Wait, Malcolm. There's someone at my door. I'd better get it before they take the door off its hinges. Hold on a minute."

"But, Harry -"

Harry heard no more, as he put the phone down on the table and went to answer his front door.

A/N: I have no idea if it's possible to see BBC News in Italy. I suspect not, but in this fic, it is possible.