--

The drive back to the police station was a short one, and as they walked into the large open office, Tony asked, "So, what's our next step?"

Alex stopped at the foot of the stairs that led to the offices of the higher ranking detectives. "Well, I don't know about you," she said, "but I'm going to go through the missing persons reports over the last couple of months. Your muti theory is interesting, but until the pathologist's findings come back, we don't have much to support it." She saw his expression and chastised him. "Don't give me that look, Tony. I can only go on evidence, and right now we don't have any, which is why I'll be going over the missing persons reports. But you can feel free to entertain yourself if you like. Five days of waiting should make you a FreeCell champion."

Tony grunted a response. "I suppose I have university work I could do."

Alex smiled and began to ascend the stairs. A thought occurred to her and she stopped and turned. "You could come over tonight for dinner if you're free. Or bored. It's Ben's weekly attempt at cooking and he's been on me to invite you over."

"Oh, really?" Tony asked.

"Don't be so surprised. He thinks you're 'cool'." When she saw the corners of his mouth turn up, she shook her head. "I'm not sure I'd be as chuffed considering it's coming from a seven year old boy, but there you have it. You've been lumped in with Blue Peter and David Beckham."

"And what's Ben making for dinner? Is it fitting for a man of my stature?"

She laughed at his feigned act of self-importance. "Macaroni and cheese. Shall I tell him to set another plate?"

"I'll bring the wine."

"Perhaps milk would be more suitable given the circumstances. And dinner's at six."

"Right," he replied and watched as she made her way up the stairs again.

--

"You're early," Alex said as she held the door open to let him in.

"I got bored with FreeCell," he confessed and followed her inside.

"Take off your coat. The chef's not quite finished his culinary masterpiece yet," she told him. "But you'd better come into the kitchen and announce yourself."

Entering the kitchen, they walked in on the young boy standing on a chair, as he looked over a boiling pot on the stove.

"Don't lean over too close," Alex warned her son. "The steam is hot."

"I know, Mum," Ben groaned, then seeing her companion, the boy's face lit up. "Hi, Tony."

Tony raised a hand in greeting. "Hi, Ben. Whatever you're making smells wonderful."

Ben beamed. "Macaroni and cheese. My specialty."

"Indeed." He raised his other hand and held up a bag. "I brought dessert- ice cream." He felt Alex's eyes on him. "What?" he asked innocently. "It's frozen milk." He gave the offering to Alex and as she put it in the freezer, he turned his attention back to the boy. "I'll leave you to it. My stomach's growling already."

"Go sit in the living room, Mum," Ben ordered. "I can do this by myself."

Alex narrowed her eyes. "Hmmm. All right. But if you need any help, you call me." When the boy didn't answer, she walked up to him and kissed him on the top of his head. "I mean it."

"Okay, Mum."

Tony and Alex walked into the living room, but he noted she made sure to sit with the kitchen well within view.

"He seems to be growing up faster and faster every day," she said as she kept one eye on the other room. "It's getting harder and harder to know how much independence I should give him. And how much he needs."

"The cooking is a good idea," Tony admired. "It's serious responsibility that you can monitor."

"That and it gives me a night off cooking."

"Yes, there's always that."

"Oh," she said, noticing the absence of drinks. "Wine might be out of the question, but I could make us a coffee."

As she got up, Tony playfully accused, "You just can't bear to let go of him just yet."

She threw him a look, but was given a similar response by Ben when she stepped into the kitchen.

"Mum!" he said in exasperation.

"What?" she asked, hands in the air. "I'm just here to make a coffee for your guest."

Tony smiled from the other room. He stood up and casually looked around. It wasn't the first time he had been in her home. In fact, he suspected he was in Ben's good books because of a surprisingly successful night of babysitting the young boy a few months ago. Yet even then, he hadn't taken the opportunity to look around, an oversight he chalked up to stark terror at the thought of being in charge of a child. But now, with both Alex and Ben out of the frame, he perused the shelf of DVDs and books. He felt after over a year, he had a fair handle on who Alex was, but it was always an interesting exercise to see how viewing and reading material matched up to personality profiles. He often found there were always one or two startling surprises. In this case, there was no exception. He made a note to ask her about the particularly ultra-violent Asian horror flick amidst the expected collection of crime dramas and British comedies. There were several photographs lining the shelves, too, and he leaned in for a closer look.

The majority were of Ben at various ages, from newborn infant to the recent school photo Tony identified as the one Ben had given him only a month ago. The one dissident among the lot was a photo of Tony. He jerked his head back in surprise. It took him a moment to realize it was taken at the Christmas party held by the Bradfield police. He peered closer, as if not recognizing the face. In it, he was smiling- a full, open smile.

"I couldn't resist," a voice behind him confessed.

He jumped and spun around. "Jesus, Alex!"

She smirked and handed him a steaming cup. Nodding towards the photo, she explained, "I had never seen you smile like that." Teasingly, she added, "I didn't even know you had teeth until that smile."

Tony rolled his eyes. "I was drunk."

"You had had a few," she admitted. "But it only made you relax, which was… refreshing. It's not as if you got up on the chairs and made a fool of yourself by singing, 'I'm bringing sexy back'."

"Wes Campbell," Tony said, the memory coming back to him.

Alex laughed and looked to the bookshelf. "So, what kind of profile have you made of me from all this?"

"Nothing I hadn't already sussed out about you."

"Ah, so you do walk into a room and classify people by its contents."

Tony shrugged. "I suppose it's second nature. No doubt in the same way you categorize people like a police photofit when you first meet them."

"Touché," she granted.

He gave his photo one last look then sat down on a nearby couch. "Did you find anything in the missing persons reports today?"

Alex followed his lead and sat down, but groaned at his question. "Do we have to talk about work?"

He looked at her blankly, as if the idea of talking about anything else was unfathomable. He was saved the prospect of venturing into unknown territory by Ben's call from the kitchen.

"Tony, can you help me pour the water out?" came the request.

As he put down his mug and stood up, Alex said, "Dodged a bullet there!"

--

After they had sat down and listened to Ben recite a customary 'Grace', plates were handed to Alex who doled out an equal portion of the culinary delight to Tony and Ben before filling her own.

"Milk?" she asked her son.

"Yes, please," he replied around a mouthful of macaroni, having already started into his meal.

She shook her head good-naturedly and stood up. "Tony?"

"Yes, please," he echoed. Bringing a spoon up to his mouth, he waited for his taste buds to send a message to his brain. When it arrived, he nodded appreciatively. "This is very good, Ben."

The young boy, with his chin nearly resting on the edge of his plate as he shovelled the food into his mouth said, "Thanks."

Alex brought the drinks to the table and touched Ben lightly on the shoulder. "Slow down, you'll make yourself sick." She slid back into her seat and watched to make sure he had heard her. Satisfied that he was paying heed to her direction, she turned to her meal.

Tony looked around the table and paused. Not for the first time he wondered if this was something he was missing- a family unit that would somehow integrate him with society, a society from which he felt increasing alienated. Was he using Alex and Ben as a proxy to pretend he was fulfilling a societal requirement? Was that what it was with Carol? No, he immediately countered. However awkward his reaction, his feelings were earnest; he genuinely cared about the people in his life. That seemed to be where the problems began, he thought to himself. He blinked once and shook his head sharply as if shaking the idea from his head.

"So how's school?" he asked Ben.

"Good," the boy replied and continued eating.

"Just good?" Alex gently prodded.

When he shrugged, Tony decided to try a different route. "How are you doing in Maths?"

This got a livelier response, though not the one Tony expected. With a dramatic sigh and groan, Ben declared, "I hate it." Remembering his mother's rules on using such a harsh word, he quickly corrected himself. "I dislike it a lot."

"I thought we had made some progress when we worked on it together," Tony said, referring to the night of babysitting when they had pored over the young student's books at this very table.

"That was ages ago," Ben replied, referencing time in a way only the young can. "We've learned loads since and it's hard."

Tony hummed his sympathy. "Well, if it means anything, I was never very good in Maths, either."

Curious, Ben looked at Tony and tilted his head. "Really?"

"Really. I was able to do just well enough to go to university."

"Did you always want to be a teacher?" the boy asked.

Tony looked off to the side and gave the question serious thought. "Not particularly," he admitted. Over Alex's laughter, he continued, "I wanted to help people heal, but didn't want to be a medical doctor. And when I got out of university, psychology wasn't as established as it is now, so I needed to do something that involved psychology, but paid also the bills. So I decided to teach."

Ben listened intently. "Do you like it?"

"Oh, yes," Tony replied. "It wasn't something I had considered for myself, but sometimes you don't really know how you feel about things until you try it."

"That's what Mum says too, isn't it, Mum?"

Alex bowed her head sagely. "I do."

"Your mum's a very wise woman," Tony said.

"She can't do Maths, though," Ben tossed out nonchalantly.

"Hey!" Alex objected. "I'll tell you what I can do- I can take away dessert."

Tony looked across the table and noted, "You didn't deny it."

Sternly, she glared and threatened, "I can take yours away, too."

Both Tony and Ben had the good grace- or good sense- to cover their smiles.

--

"Thanks for coming tonight," Alex said as Tony put his coat on. "I know he misses a male influence in his life, so I appreciate you spending time with him."

Unsuccessfully attempting to fix his collar, he shrugged away the thanks. "I'm sorry I'm the best you can do."

"Don't be daft. Whether you want to recognize it or not, he's grown attached to you. So thank you."

"At his age, I think it's more likely he identifies with the difficulty of reacting to social cues and sees me as a kindred spirit."

In a rare moment of genuine anger towards him, she snapped, "Do you have to analyze everything?" Taking a breath, she softened her words by turning his collar properly and patting it flat. "He likes you. Does there need to be more to it?" When Tony didn't reply, she said, "Besides, there's nothing wrong with not falling into line and being like the rest of us sheep. If he takes that from you, I don't think that's such a bad thing." The silence settled between them for a moment, then she changed direction. "By the way, to answer your earlier question, nothing came up in the missing persons reports, so it looks like we'll have to wait until the pathologist's report comes in." She reached around him and opened the door. "In the meantime, find something to do for at least four days."

He blinked as if she had told him to go jump out of a plane.

--

As it turned out, he didn't need to wait four days. Whether it was Vernon's desire to avoid the daily phone calls from Alex, or simply because it was a quiet week at the lab, it was two days later that the results of the autopsy hummed through the fax machine that otherwise rested quietly on Alex's desk. In the time it took her to make a fresh pot of coffee, Tony had made the trip from his flat to the police office.

"That was awfully quick," Alex noted when she saw him enter the room. "Waiting by the phone, were you?"

"Not at all," Tony blustered. "I was doing research for my next session. The phone just happened to be within arm's reach of my book."

"Of course," she acquiesced with an expression and a nod that belied her tone.

He chose to ignore something he could not convincingly deny and instead asked, "What did the pathologist report have to say?"

She took a sip of her hot coffee. "I haven't had time to enter the information into the computer, so you'll have to read the hard copy."

Not waiting for his reaction to her second dig at his eagerness, she walked towards her office and didn't bother looking back, knowing he had fallen in step and followed. When they arrived at her door, she entered and slid into a chair behind her desk. Tony carefully closed the door behind him and took the file from her outstretched hand before sitting in a chair of his own. She tilted her seat back and gauged his reactions over the brim of her hot cup. He was not a speed-reader; his eyes didn't skim, but instead moved slowly from left to right and absorbed each word before his brain put them all together. The room was quiet until he was satisfied the process had been thoroughly completed.

"That explains why your missing persons reports came up short," Tony said. "The victim's not missing from here, he's missing from South Africa."

Alex nodded in agreement. "If we only had the stomach contents to go on, I might not be so convinced. Rooibos is a plant I've seen in local tea shops. It's the pollen in the lungs that convinces me."

Tony, too, nodded. "Protea Cynaroides. King Protea, the flower of South Africa. That puts him outside of England."

"It also gives us a timeline," Alex added. "They can't establish an exact lifespan of the pollen, but whatever experts Vernon called gives it anywhere between three and seven days. He ventured closer to three, considering the lungs were healthy; no mucus to contain the spores."

"I wouldn't discount the stomach contents entirely." Tony looked down at the file in his hands. "Apricots, raisins, hamburger, rice, rooibos and corn," he read from the sheet. "The first three items are ingredients in a South African dish called 'bobotie'." When there was no response, he looked up to see a bemused Alex, and felt compelled to explain his culinary knowledge. "I've gone to lunch once or twice with Enoc. Which is why you shouldn't discount this information." He held up the file and reached over to put it on her desk. "If the victim came into the country three or four days ago, most likely he knew someone. But he might have eaten this food in a restaurant. Bradfield's not as cosmopolitan as it would like to think. This is a very specific kind of menu. I can't imagine there would be more than half a dozen places to find it." She acknowledged his point but said nothing. "What is it?" he asked.

Shaking her head, she answered, "I don't know. We're missing something here." He waited from her to continue. "The killer wouldn't fly to England with the victim, so our suspect was already here in Bradfield. But we've established the victim was from South Africa. The victim came to the killer. I'm a six year old boy- how do I get to Bradfield from South Africa?"

Tony pondered the question. "Someone would purchase the ticket for you."

"Would I fly alone?"

"At that distance? Not likely."

"So I'm travelling with at least one adult. An adult who must have some idea of what's going on. I wouldn't be bringing a six year old into the country and just look away when they disappeared if I didn't know what would happen ahead of time."

Tony knew what was coming next. "Poor Kevin."

Alex sat upright in her chair and took a final drink from her mug before she stood. "That's one reason I'm the boss."

--

"You want me to get a copy of every passenger list from every plane that came from South Africa to Bradfield in the last week?" Kevin exclaimed in disbelief. "I don't even know what cities to check."

"Well brush up on your geography and go with the first five major airports. Then start with the flights that flew directly to Bradfield," Alex instructed, ignoring her second-in-command's incredulous reaction. "Hopefully we'll get lucky before we have to check connecting flights through London."

"In this case, 'we' meaning 'me'," Kevin said, not fooled for a second. Seeing his boss's shrug, he rolled his eyes. "Right. And what will you be doing in the meantime?"

She turned her watch on her wrist and looked at Tony. "Late lunch?"

"Early tea?" Tony offered

"Oh, that's nice," Kevin retorted as the pair walked away.

--