Cinderella (continued)
Church bells. Boyd can hear church bells. Not close enough to be irritating, but quite clear. It's almost Easter. Another week. He is not a particularly religious man – he only knows it's almost Easter because he knows there are two forthcoming public holidays when his staff won't be at their desks. He's far too cynical.
Reluctantly, he opens his eyes. The familiar hairline crack in the ceiling's plaster is still there, sweeping mockingly towards the window. For the last five and a half years he has been intending to do something about that crack, superficial though it is. But the crack, like the dripping outside tap and the broken fence panel that draws complaints from the neighbours, never gets fixed.
Boyd doesn't move, just stays where he is, looking up at his bedroom ceiling. He feels old, tired and nihilistic. Desolate.
Christ, you're such a fucking idiot, Peter…
-oOo-
He's ignored the razor on the shelf over the sink, he's stood under the stinging jets of the shower, and he's padded round the house dressed only in a towel, and now he's staring out of the bedroom window trying to decide whether he is feeling virtuous enough to join the hearty brigade of Sunday-morning gardeners. He's not. The grass can just carry on growing. Forever, as far as Boyd is concerned. Though eventually the neighbours will complain about the length of the grass as well as the broken fence. And then he will bad-temperedly mow the damned lawn and wonder when his life outside work became so utterly banal.
His immaculate dinner jacket is hanging from the picture rail, quietly goading him. Boyd ignores it, pulls on a pair of button-fly jeans that he suspects may actually pre-date the formation of the Cold Case Unit. Faded old 501s, as battered and washed out as he is. Today he is neither Armani business suit nor dapper black tie. Today he is just the bloke next door who doesn't mow his lawn often enough and never gets round to mending the fence, the one who wears old jeans and doesn't shave on a Sunday. The guy who's something in the Met. The one who comes and goes at all hours of the day and night and once had a wife and a son living with him.
Someone's assaulting his front door. Loud, impatient knocking that speaks of an irritability that rivals his own.
Boyd goes down the stairs rapidly, hand on the bannister rail. The locks on the front door slow him down, but he's still able to throw it open in fairly short order. He glares out and a stocky, broad-faced man of about his own age glares in. The man says, "For God's sake, Peter, you're blocking my drive again. That's the third time this week. Why do you have to – "
The angry words roll off him. They are meaningless. Pointless. He watches a blackbird hopping along the top of the high front garden wall as the diatribe continues. Eventually, sudden silence prompts him to say, "It's only obstruction if you can't leave your property. In the eyes of the law, being unable to get onto your property is merely regrettable, Richard."
"God, you're an arse, Peter. Just move your bloody car, will you?"
"Five minutes," Boyd says, and shuts the door firmly in his neighbour's face.
-oOo-
And so now he finds himself in the car. Richard Gregson is glowering at him, arms folded across his meaty chest. The temptation to get out and punch the man is almost irresistible. And maybe that's why instead of simply reversing back and swinging onto his own drive, Boyd pulls out from the kerb and drives away, leaving his empty house and his angry neighbour behind him. He has no destination in mind, he is simply driving, and somehow he's very quickly at the Blackwall Tunnel and then he's driving north under the Thames, a lonely middle-aged man in an expensive executive car that doesn't belong to him. Everything's twisting inside him – rage, sorrow, frustration, love, lust, grief and pain – and if he wasn't quite so stoical, if he wasn't quite so stubborn, he would likely give in and start crying.
Boyd turns the radio on, flicks through station after station and turns the volume up and up until there's nothing but the Sunday streets and the numbing wall of sound. The sound of his younger days, hitting him like a hammer, punching him over and over. The early soundtrack to a life that once seemed so promising; a life well and truly lost.
He's not really aware of it, but Peter Boyd is following a familiar route through the metropolis. Something inside him is flirting darkly with the idea of self-destruction, and in a desperate effort to ignore it he turns the music up even more until the volume is so loud and the bass is so strong that there is virtually nothing else in his world.
-oOo-
Boyd knows he will inevitably end up here, sooner or later. The welcome isn't always terribly warm, but then the hour is sometimes very late. Not today. Today it's early in the afternoon. For a while, he sits in the car staring straight ahead, not caring whether he has been noticed from the house or not. He waits for the moment when he acts on instinct, and eventually it comes, his hand reaching out automatically for the door handle. Boyd gets out of the car with a quiet sort of resignation, no longer really caring what happens.
The front door is open long before he reaches it, and Grace is watching his approach with a serene composure that he momentarily envies. Her greeting is unconventional but placid. "Ah. The return of the prodigal."
Boyd paces towards her, not stopping until he's right on the threshold. "Prodigal son?"
Grace snorts. "Hardly. Prodigal colleague? Prodigal friend? Prodigal doesn't-know-what-the-hell-he-wants-to-be?"
Just the sound of her voice has an intensely soothing effect on him. "Bit of a mouthful, that one."
"But accurate."
"Not necessarily," Boyd says as she steps back to allow him into the house. He stops, watches as she closes the front door, and when she turns to look at him he doesn't move, just continues to watch her.
Her expression shifts slightly, becomes a little puzzled. "Are you all right?"
Boyd has no idea how to answer the question. He feels as if he's free-falling into oblivion, as if he's reached a point where he simply doesn't know what to say, what to do. He feels compelled, bewitched. Haunted and hunted. There's nothing he can say, nothing he can bring himself to say.
Puzzlement segues into concern. "Boyd…?"
She is so close, and so tiny, and next to her he feels so big and so awkward and so very clumsy. He is not the man for her, and he knows it. He isn't patient enough, calm enough or intellectual enough. But after so many years she may very well be the only woman for him, and he knows that, too. He wonders about compromise and counterpoint, wonders if he could ever make himself worthy of her.
"I shouldn't be here," he says abruptly. "I'm sorry, Grace. This was a mistake."
Boyd starts to move, but suddenly she's directly in his way, standing between him and the front door, and what surprises him more than anything else is the sudden anger clear in her blue eyes. It is intense, that anger, and it burns like a cold flame. Her voice is a stinging whiplash, hard and staccato. "Don't you dare. Don't you bloody dare, Boyd."
Involuntarily, he takes a step backwards. Boyd knows that tone, knows how much anger has to be boiling inside her for her to use it. It's not the impatient, irritated tone that he hears on a fairly regular basis, it's something far rarer, far more dangerous, and it means something. It is significant. Cautiously, he holds his hands up, palms towards her. "Grace…"
"No," she says, and the anger in her voice is hardening, becoming completely inflexible. "You don't do this. You don't come and go on a whim. You don't walk in and walk straight out again. You don't take it for granted that I'll let you do it, and you don't behave as if your presence here is somehow a great honour!"
Perversely, as he weathers the storm, Boyd is struck less by her sudden implacable rage than by the way the clear blue eyes blaze so fiercely at him. It's tempting, but regrettably he feels that seizing hold of her and kissing her into silence would simply be far too predictable. He thinks she would probably – quite rightly – laugh at the sheer triteness of such an unoriginal tactic. But the idea certainly stirs his blood.
"You are such an irritating, overbearing, arrogant – "
He thinks he's going to laugh. Probably won't go down well. "Charismatic? Dynamic?"
" – smug, contrary, confusing confused idiot of a man."
Boyd grins. He really can't help himself. "You forgot immature, stubborn, obtuse and high-handed."
Grace glares at him. "Those, too."
"Loyal? Handsome?"
"Don't push your luck," she warns him, but although it's clear that she's still incredibly angry, the worst seems to be over. Grace sighs – very heavily indeed. "Why are you here, Boyd? What do you want?"
It would be too easy to give the glib, bantering reply that immediately forms itself. Except, he's actually very tired and there's nothing and no-one to go home to. What the hell. Boyd shrugs. "You. I want you."
There's at least a moment of satisfaction to be had in the astonished, bewildered look she gives him. But then she's shouting at him again, and since he really doesn't fancy physically manhandling her away from the door, all he can really do is stand his ground and endure the storm. And it is one hell of a storm.
-oOo-
In the days ahead, neither of them will ever know where he found the patience. But find it he does, and he takes it, all of it. Every accusation, every expletive, every vehement word of every vehement indictment. Boyd stands and he lets Grace tear into him with the savagery of years of frustration and irritation, and he isn't at all surprised when the shouting finally gives way to tears. They are not happy tears, and it isn't a happy woman he finally dares to take hold of and ease against his chest. In fact, he's slightly astonished that she doesn't pound him angrily with her fists as she sobs and rages against him. What doesn't surprise him is the force with which she eventually pushes herself away from him, or the closed, tight expression on her face that tells him just how angry and mortified her unexpected loss of control has left her feeling.
Carefully, so very carefully, he tries out the words he has been patiently forming in his head. "I know that you deserve far better than me, Grace. I know I'm not what you need in your life. I'm not going to lie to you, and I'm not going to try to defend myself. What would be the point? You know who I am; what I am. But I'll tell you one thing I believe with my whole heart – I don't think there's another man on this earth who could love you more than I do. Whatever that's worth."
It's not the kind of speech Peter Boyd has ever made to anyone. Not the kind of speech he's ever even considered making to anyone. He barely believes he's capable of saying such things. But he's said them; said them into the quiet Sunday silence of her hallway. He shrugs. Waits. Watches.
He half-expects her to cry again. Possibly in the elegant manner of some 'fifties movie star.
She doesn't. She lifts her head and stares straight at him, her gaze cool and concentrated. The rage has gone, but the intensity hasn't. Grace says, "Mess me around, Boyd, and I'll never forgive you. Never."
"I believe you," Boyd says simply.
There is a short strained silence which she breaks with, "Traditionally, you're supposed to kiss me now."
He shakes his head. "Far too clichéd, Grace."
Her flickering smile is weary. "Fair enough. In that case, I need a drink."
-oOo-
In fact, the right moment comes just a little while later. There's a slight but tangible awkwardness between them that isn't improved by the self-conscious proximity they far too deliberately achieve on the sofa. Their conversation is stilted, the banter that they are so good at feeling strained and artificial. But suddenly she laughs at some idle comment he's made and he knows – just knows – that this is the moment. The right moment, the best moment. He doesn't procrastinate, doesn't think about it. He simply leans in and kisses her, and he does so gently, quietly and without any drama. It's unquestionably the right approach. Her lips are warm and soft and they part easily, spontaneously, not just acquiescing, but searching, promising and asking. It's the right moment, and it's the determining moment, the moment when the whole wonderful, glorious, ridiculous thing becomes real.
Grace pulls back, regards him with a deep, affectionate solemnity that snatches at his heart. "Now you stay or you go. If you stay, this is where you belong. If you go, you don't come back."
Sensing how important it is to her, he keeps his tone soft. "You really don't need to give me an ultimatum. It's a done deal, Grace."
She takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly. "Boyd…"
Quietly, he asks, "You don't trust me?"
"It's not that. It's just… is this really the right thing for us?"
"I think it is, yes."
"Because…?" Grace prompts him.
The words come to him from nowhere. "Because I think we need each other; because I think we bring out the best in each other. Because even though we fight like cat and dog, we love each other. Don't we?"
On balance, Boyd decides, as she leans forwards again and finds his lips with hers, he probably couldn't have given her a better answer.
-oOo-
Things don't go the way Boyd might have predicted, and he's more than a little startled to find that he doesn't care. The time passes gently, intimately, and they never leave the comfortable security of the sofa. There's no passionate scramble, no reckless, lascivious fumbling; no urgency to rush headlong into that final, carnal act of commitment. They talk a lot, they laugh softly and fondly, and they learn to relax into each other a little. It's not what he's used to, and from the way Grace looks at him, it's not what she expected from him, but it is good, it is natural, and it works. The shadows lengthen and Boyd stays where he is, lounging indolently along the length of the sofa with his head in her lap. She strokes her fingers through his hair gently, rhythmically, and yes, it's mildly erotic, but it's deeply soothing, too. He likes it, likes the tenderness of it; likes the quiet, confident possessiveness he can feel in her touch.
It's getting dark, the spring night drawing slowly in. He wants to stay, but he thinks he should leave. Instinct tells him that it's time to go, and he broaches it gently, watching her expression for signs of fear, of insecurity. It gratifies him to see none. Not yet ready to move, he gazes up at her, well aware of the swell of her breast, but actually more focused on the delicate lines of her jaw. Quietly, he says, "Let me take you out to dinner tomorrow."
"Tomorrow is a school night, Boyd," Grace tells him.
"Meaning…?"
"Meaning that it'll get to eight o'clock and you'll be halfway through something when you remember you've booked a table somewhere; you'll feel obligated to leave the office, but you won't want to, so you'll go, but you'll sulk and then we'll get into a huge fight. It's as inevitable as the sun rising in the east."
"God, you're such a pessimist on the quiet, aren't you?"
"It's the company I keep."
"Just give me enough rope, Grace, and I'll decide whether or not to hang myself with it later."
"All right. Just don't expect me not to say 'I told you so' when we end up fighting all evening because you're in such a bad mood."
He grins up at her. "I'm deeply touched by your faith in me. And on that note, I'm definitely going home."
-oOo-
Boyd walks back into his house in an infinitely better mood than he left it. He forages in his fridge for food and beer, locates his laptop and settles on his own sofa in front of his own television. He is a man more-or-less at peace, at least temporarily. He works studiously, ignoring whatever banality it is that's unfolding on the television screen. It's just the sound he needs, the drip-feed of inconsequential sound that keeps the deafening silence at bay. The day will dawn when he finally makes the decision to sell the unnecessarily large house and its haunting silence; he has come to terms with that, at least. But it won't be any day in the near future. One day.
The sound of someone knocking on his front door startles him. He doesn't have many visitors, not anymore, and he doubts that even Richard Gregson would wait until so late on a Sunday evening to embark on yet another round of the escalating feud that is remorselessly developing between them. Besides, Boyd has very deliberately parked on his own drive. The knocking pauses then resumes and he grudgingly puts his laptop on the coffee table and gets to his feet. It does vaguely occur to him that his visitor could be a particularly attractive forensic psychologist of his acquaintance, but he seriously doubts she would drive across London and cross the river this late on a Sunday evening.
He is wrong. Boyd opens the front door quite prepared to go another round with Gregson, and there she is. There's something quietly defiant about her expression. Several easy witticisms spring immediately to mind, but for once he has enough sense to be guided by the wary, slightly challenging look in her eyes; that look warns him that he will pay very dearly for the wrong words, the wrong tone of voice. He settles for a very neutral, "Grace."
"Am I disturbing you?" Grace asks.
"God, no. Come in," he says, and as she walks past him into the house a fundamental thought registers. It is not a thought he likes. Closing the door quietly, Boyd gestures towards the living room door. "Make yourself comfortable. You want a drink?"
"I don't suppose you've got any brandy, have you?"
"Brandy I can do," he assures her, wondering why his mouth suddenly seems to be dry.
Behind him, she says, "You're working? It's Sunday night, Boyd."
"I know," he says, pouring drinks. "Believe me, I know."
When he turns back, drinks in hand, her coat and bag have been discarded and Grace is perched on the edge of the sofa. She looks about as relaxed as he feels, and he is far too aware of the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. She takes the brandy from him in silence and sips it nervously as he settles himself. Boyd doesn't know what to say, doesn't know how to address the creeping fear that seems to be relentlessly turning his blood to ice. For want of anything better to do he picks up the remote control and switches off the television.
"Sunday night drama," Grace says absently.
For a moment he simply looks at his laptop, still open on the coffee table. Peter Boyd is many things, but he is not a coward. Mentally bracing himself, he says, "So. Is this the moment you tell me you've had time to think and you've come to your senses?"
He waits for the axe to fall, but Grace merely looks startled. She frowns. "Is that why you think I'm here?"
"Well, isn't it?"
"You really are clueless when it comes to women, aren't you, Boyd?"
"Not entirely," he says, but at the look she gives him, he shrugs. "Okay; maybe."
"Do you want to know why I'm here?"
Not quite sure whether he's irritated or not, Boyd says, "It might help."
Her gaze is very steady, and her voice is very quiet. "Why don't we just go upstairs and I'll show you…?"
Which really isn't the sort of invitation he's about to refuse. Not at all.
-oOo-
The crack in the plaster of bedroom ceiling is still there. But even though Boyd is sprawled out on his back beneath it he's feeling far too content and far too self-satisfied to notice, let alone care. Grace is tracing lazy, complicated patterns on his bare stomach and although his body is responding to her touch with Pavolvian enthusiasm, he simply lies still and quiet, watching her. In the soft light of the bedside lamp her eyes are striking, a very clear and vivid blue, and yet in their calm intensity they remind him strongly of a cat's eyes. There is something quite feline about her, he realises; something intangible, but definitely cat-like.
"You're very beautiful," she says solemnly, apparently from nowhere.
He chuckles wryly. "I think that's supposed to be my line to you, Grace."
She smiles in a way that is clearly self-deprecatory. "I'd know you were lying."
Boyd studies her for a long moment before asking, "You don't think you're beautiful?"
"Too much of a realist," Grace says dismissively, and it's quite clear the conversation is making her uncomfortable.
"Beauty is subjective," Boyd tells her, and immediately wonders if it is the right thing to have said. "What I mean is that it's not easily quantifiable, not really. Well, on a superficial level, perhaps, but..."
The blue eyes glint at him. "Keep digging, Boyd."
He holds his hands up in surrender. "Just shoot me now."
To his relief, Grace simply laughs. "Beautiful, but utterly clueless."
"Never actually thought of myself in those terms, but now you come to mention it…"
"And wonderfully egotistical."
He grins up at her, and it seems to have the desired effect because Grace leans forward and kisses him, gently at first but with increasing fervour. It's more than enough encouragement, and Boyd shifts position, rolling her under him, keeping most of his weight firmly on his elbows. Something lights in her eyes, something that wants, that needs. It takes hold of him and it won't let go, and that delights him. He kisses her throat, her chest, her breast, applies himself fully to the thoroughly wonderful and hedonistic task of making her moan and whimper and clutch sharply at his shoulders.
This is love and this is lust, tightly wound together in a wholly symbiotic relationship, and he glories in them both, just as he glories in her. There is no part of Boyd that wants to be anywhere else but with her, and the realisation is an oddly calm one, bringing an unusual sort of serenity to him. When he slowly eases into her again, he feels far more than the intense physical sensation of the intimate contact, feels more than the love, more than the lust. He feels peace.
And when Grace holds him gently in the sleepy, sated aftermath, when she runs her fingers through his hair and softly whispers his name, he knows – categorically – that however difficult the days ahead might prove to be, they will be worth whatever they might end up costing.
-oOo-
For the first time in far too long, Boyd sleeps straight through the night. When he does finally stir, cold grey morning light is attempting to creep into the room and he can hear the distant sound of traffic. London is waking and he is curled on his side, his chest firmly against the soft warmth of Grace's back. He also seems to have a possessive sort of grip on her waist, but that's okay. He can live with that. She's warm, she has interesting curves and she smells nice, and the very last thing Boyd wants to do is pry himself away from her. For a while he doesn't move at all, just lies still and silent listening to the soft sound of her breathing. Inevitably, however, duty and responsibility start to gnaw at the edges of his consciousness. He raises his head to look over her at the clock. It's later than he would like, but not irredeemably so.
He sighs, cautiously starts to untangle himself, but a surprisingly forceful hand closes around his wrist, keeping his arm securely around her waist. In truth, Boyd could break that grip without a thought, but he simply subsides, uncharacteristically acquiescent. Her voice is sleepy. "Five more minutes."
It doesn't seem like a good idea to argue. He kisses the nape of her neck gently. "Five minutes… but then I'm not the only one who needs to get a move on. Team meeting nine-thirty sharp… and some of us need to get halfway across London and back first."
Her reply is complacent. "No. Some of us just need to persuade someone to go out to the car and retrieve the bag that's in the boot."
Boyd can't help laughing. "I see. Not that you were anticipating staying the night, or anything."
Grace arches back against him gently, and her reply is wonderfully blasé. "Contingency planning, Boyd."
Five minutes somehow becomes far closer to thirty-five minutes, but by forfeiting coffee and a glance at the daily newspaper, and by sheer bloody-minded determination, Peter Boyd still manages to be driving through the Blackwall Tunnel before the eight-thirty morning news bulletin starts on the car radio. Just.
-oOo-
Monday morning, the latest of many, many Monday mornings in the Met's Cold Case Unit. Everything is at it normally is. Boyd is at his desk, deliberately not noticing that what appears to be his colleagues gathering and preparing for the traditional start-of-the-week meeting is actually his colleagues gathering to share the weekend's gossip, and those colleagues are, in turn, affecting not to notice that he is fully well aware that nothing constructive is being done. It's all part of the unspoken give-and-take arrangement that contributes to the phenomenally high success rate the unit achieves. Boyd knows he has a reputation, knows he is considered to be one of the most difficult Superintendents in the Met to work for, but the loyalty of his staff speaks for itself. When he finally gets to his feet and wanders out into the squad room, the fact that he isn't met by a sudden, guilty silence speaks volumes. No-one fails to respect the boundaries of rank, but neither do they exclude him.
It is Eve who says, "Boyd. Care to comment on the difference between a foxtrot and a waltz? Only rumour has it that you actually know your way round the dancefloor remarkably well."
Grace is quick to cut in with, "Don't wind him up, Eve, please. Not this early in the week."
Spencer is looking steadfastly at his keyboard and Kat has her head well down over a stack of reports. Boyd ignores them both in return and looks from Eve to Grace and back. He says, "I am a man of many hidden talents."
Looking as if she is going to dissolve into fits of laughter at any second, Eve says, "Apparently so."
"Stop it," Grace says. To the room in general, she announces, "Honestly, you're worse than teenagers, all of you. Are you really that hard up for gossip?"
It's a struggle, but Boyd manages to keep his expression utterly deadpan. He folds his arms and looks around slowly and deliberately, playing the patriarch to Grace's matriarch. There is silence, punctuated by a little shuffling and a few nervous glances. Doctor Grace Foley has spoken. Not for the first time in recent years, Boyd wonders who's really in charge of the CCU. She looks at him, as deadpan as he is. Only the slight glint of mirth in her eyes gives anything away.
Taking his cue, Boyd says, "Can we get on with some work now? Good. Spence, the Francombe case…"
-oOo-
"Ballistics report," Eve says, marching into his office a few hours later. "Francombe's gun wasn't the murder weapon."
Not good news. Boyd sighs and holds out his hand for the report. "Today just keeps getting better and better."
"I knew you'd be delighted," Eve says languidly. "We've got a cadaver coming in from Bethnal Green later. CID are trying to push it over onto us because there's some tenuous link to an archived case. Oh, and David Tomlinson at the CPS isn't happy with the forensics on the Butler robbery."
"Wonderful."
"You look tired, Boyd," she says, and there's no mistaking the edge of amusement in her tone.
He doesn't rise to it, just drops the ballistics report onto his desk and asks, "Anything else?"
"Nope," Eve says heading back towards the door. She hesitates momentarily, then looks back at him. "Thank you. For taking Cinderella to the ball. She needed it."
"I know."
"I'll just go back to the lab now, shall I?"
"I should," Boyd agrees mildly.
Finally in the doorway, Eve looks back one last time. She is grinning. "By the way… you do know that Prince Charming marries Cinderella in the end, right?"
Strangely, Boyd's hackles don't rise. He simply puts his glasses on in preparation for reading the ballistics report and says, "Get out of here, Eve."
She goes with the grin still firmly in place, and Boyd leans back in his chair. For a moment he is still. He listens to the everyday noise of the Unit, to the distant sound of voices, the shrill of a telephone ringing. He listens to the background hum of the forced ventilation and to the sudden hubbub of protest that suggests someone is trying to pass off something unwelcome onto someone else. Superficially, everything is very ordinary, very normal.
Except… Peter Boyd is deeply serene on that apparently ordinary Monday – and that isn't normal at all.
It isn't entirely his fault that he forgets to ring the restaurant to book a table; Eve's ballistics report is, after all, relatively interesting. But when he remembers, when he finally remembers, Boyd will go to considerable lengths to redeem himself – and that's almost certainly one of the reasons why Grace won't actually shut the front door in his face.
- the end -