"Fandabydosy." Gene Hunt filled the narrow doorway to the flat, hands on hips, staring inside with a disdainful, yet slightly pensive, glare.
"Gov?" Chris questioned tentatively as he peered over Gene's shoulder into the crime scene. He gulped, and averted his eyes.
"Just what we need." Ray shrugged, more exasperated than disturbed, "Well, he can't tell us what happened."
Gene stepped forward reluctantly, "No witnesses, or none willing to tell us anything. No evidence aside from a pool of blood. Need I continue?"
A body lay on the floor in front of them, eerily pale, eyes glassed over. He was stripped of decency, with only a sheet wrapped around his middle, and bound tightly with ropes. A knife stuck straight out of his chest, blood splattered across the entire room's creamy carpet, splashed up the pearly walls.
"Very dignified." Ray smirked.
"Enough, Raymondo." Gene snapped frustratedly. Ray's face fell to a sheepish frown; he busied himself examining the bookshelves running down one side of the room.
"Gov, here!" Chris was crouched down alongside the body, clutching a blood soaked scrap of paper. Gene strode over and snatched it by the corner, laying it on the table with the utmost detest.
"She...she'll...go..."
"She'll go the same day." Gene finished smoothly, his face expressionless.
"Who will?"
"Alex." he wiped his hands against the curtain and stormed out without another word.
Chris turned after him disbelievingly, "Gov?"
"Isn't that jumping to conclusions slightly?" Ray re-crossed the room to examine the note himself, "We don't even know who the guy is. 'She' could be his...his wife, or his daughter? Some bird he's got a thing for? No? Fine."
"I thought..." Chris trailed off as Ray too brushed his hands and disappeared. He stood for a moment, gazing at the body. "Please, ma'am, come back."
XxXxX
"Gov, I got that list you...gov?" Shaz looked taken aback as he blanked her and stomped up the middle of the room, slamming the door behind him. Sometimes, if she was honest, Gene did take out his anger on her, but that didn't mean it was deliberate. He rarely ignored her. It wasn't really his style. "Ray? What..."
Ray dropped the evidence bag in front of her wordlessly. There was silence as she struggled to read it through the dried blood.
"She'll...go...the...she'll go the same...way? What way?"
"Way?" Chris repeated, shuffling onto the desk beside her and wrapping an arm around her, "It does say way. The gov said day, didn't he?"
"Yeah." Ray nodded authoritively, frowning at Shaz, "Some poor bloke was half naked, tied up and stabbed in the heart in the middle of his flat. No ID, no evidence, no witnesses."
"And gov thinks..." Shaz trailed off painfully.
"Yeah."
"God." Shaz laid her head on Chris's shoulder weakly.
"I've got enough with him..." Ray muttered, but snatched a handful of files and occupied himself with their reading.
"Once, it was...it was weird having Alex here. She cried a lot. She knew stuff about the future..."
"She was dressed as a prozzie, with all that fancy psychiatric stuff." Ray glanced up, grinning distantly.
"Yeah." Chris nodded, with a guilty squeeze of Shaz's hand, "But now..."
"Now we really miss her. And so does gov." Shaz sighed miserably, "Ray, I know he's decided that note was about ma'am and everything, but...but what do you think?"
"I don't know." He considered the question at a leisurely pace, chewing thoughtfully on the end of his pen. Neither Chris nor Shaz seemed to find this an unreasonable answer alone, but he continued, "If she was kidnapped, she needs our help. If she wasn't, she's...she's a cold-hearted bitch. And he'll be heartbroken."
All three turned towards Gene's office. He was sat at his desk, boots on the table; with a bottle of whisky in one hand and a picture in the other. None of them could make it out through the blinds, but they could guess.
XxXxX
"You talk in your sleep."
"Yes. Molly never let me forget it." Alex didn't bother to struggle. Her entire body ached immensely, her ears scarcely functioning.
"It wasn't Molly you talked about. She didn't come in to it."
"What do you want from me?"
"Gene." his voice was overflowing with detest; hatred. He sat down on the bed she was tied to; a flat wooden structure covered in splinters, and leant back against her legs, deliberately forceful. "Gene Hunt. Over and over again. Chris, and Ray. And...and Chaz or something."
"Shaz."
"And then you tell me you still care about your daughter, still want to get back to her." he almost chuckled, "Molly cries all night, you know, when the rest of the girls are tucked up in their quilted beds dreaming of ponies. She cuddles up on her scratchy mattress and sucks her thumb. And in the morning she's screamed at by her form mistress, told she's letting down the school with tears streaked down her face, told she'll get a slap if it happens one more night."
"No. Molly's a strong girl. She'll be okay. She just has to hold out until I get back to her." Alex blinked back her own tears, determined not to succumb to the lies.
"She'll be waiting a long time."
"I was getting married yesterday. I was happy for the first time in so long. And then you ruined everything." she coughed hoarsely as he took a cigarette and a lighter and exhaled a hefty wisp of smoke directly at her face.
"When I took you, Alex, you were crying in an alleyway, clutching your stomach. You didn't look happy. Which makes me wonder if maybe you still have a drop of decency left inside you, despite what this man has done to you?"
"Why don't you just tell me why I'm here? Or get on and kill me?" her voice shook, with both despair and sudden anger. What had she ever done to him? Why was he so desperate to ruin her life even more?
"Do you really love him, Alex? Or are you just trying to find a way to deal with your grief?"
"I thought about suicide at first. I can't describe how bad those first few weeks were. I realised I had to live, though, I had to find a way to get back to Molly, and I focussed all my efforts on that. It felt more and more real over time, and I found myself slipping away into the new world, simply because it was so much easier to pretend everything was fine." Alex was crying hard now, choking on her tears, "Gene protected me through everything, despite his demeanour he made me, and everyone else, feel safe, and yes, I really love him. But I've never forgotten Molly. Never. I'd do anything to see her again, to hold her in my arms and...and to tell her how much I love her. Sometimes...sometimes she's the only thing that keeps me going."
"You're not safe with him, Alex. The longer you spend in his world, the more you'll forget about reality. One day you won't remember Molly at all. You'll just feel empty and worthless when you wonder what you once held close to your heart." his tone was softer now, more understanding, "I'm only protecting you from that."
"I didn't choose to come here. I was shot. I promised Molly I'd be there for her birthday party, and I still can be. But spending my life chasing hallucinations and sobbing in my bed wasn't going to help at all. I have a job to do, there's a reason I'm here. And if I can complete the quest, I can get home."
"In 2008, Alex, you're lying in a hospital bed, in a coma. Moments away from death. If you continue to pretend you have a purpose here, you'll die. And you'll never see Molly again. If you listen to me, you've got a chance to save yourself." the bed shook as he stood up and took a step towards the door, silhouetted against the dim light from the doorway, "You're a bright girl, Alex. Don't think you were chosen at random."
"I...you chose me?"
"Yes. I chose you." he sighed heavily, his cloak spinning a tornado around him as he turned back to face her. Images whizzed through her brain, suffocating her blood supply as she struggled to escape the pain. She strained to see him properly, and the images reversed, slower this time.
Molly, crouching by a mattress in a tall, dark tower. A nurse bending over a bed, drawing the covers up to the chin of the patient's shadowed face. And under that boat, with that overriding odour of damp, and those mirrored sunglasses. The fear those last few seconds before the bullet hit her.
And then she understood. Arthur Layton.
Thanks for reading :) I hope you enjoyed it; please review...I'm hoping to write more. I don't own any of the characters ;) Oh and I forgot to say this story is for Bethany xxx