After the bottle (yes, bottle, she'd be ashamed to admit) of wine she'd had the night before, Hobson awoke feeling quite groggy. She rolled over and tried to grab her phone off the nightstand, but it tumbled to the floor. Two messages awaited her attention. The most recent was from Arnold Raeburn's secretary, who had informed the musical ensemble that rehearsal and the show itself would go on as scheduled, despite Ella Ransome's death on their campus. Hobson nodded to herself as she liked to keep to as normal a schedule as possible while dealing with such circumstances. Then, she inhaled deeply as she heard the second message, from the night before. She sat back down on the bed and closed her eyes to imagine Robbie Lewis speaking to her.

Hullo, Laura. I guess you've already got your mobile off for the night. Sorry, I meant to ring earlier- hope you're all right. Do you want to get coffee or drinks sometime tomorrow with me- and James of course- there's a few things I want to run by you. Give us a call when you're up to it.

She rang him back and arranged to meet Lewis and Hathaway for drinks that afternoon. She had the rehearsal in the morning, and a mountain of work to catch up on in the mortuary afterwards.


At that morning's rehearsal, Hobson watched as Finniston casually tossed his mobile on a credenza the way he had done the day before. Curiously enough, Gwen and Arnold Raeburn were not present. Something must have transpired between the threesome… Hobson had to find out what that SMS had been about. She knew that it was a fine line between doing her job and tampering with evidence. She sucked on her reed nervously, weighing the options. She realized that even if it was a little devil on her shoulder telling her to snaffle Finniston's mobile for Lewis, the angel on her other shoulder also bore the visage of Lewis… of Robbie. She didn't have a choice really, compelled like a golden retriever to fetch what she could bring back to him.

Her own mobile phone was of a similar model. She fiddled with the charm that she had attached to make it unique. The light on the conductor's podium went out again and Finniston halted in frustration; Hobson saw this as her window of opportunity, so she gave the charm a forceful jerk and snapped it off.

"But I just changed the bulb yesterday for Sir Arnold," exclaimed the bassoon player seated near Hobson.

"Oh Sir Arnold, sabotaging my career one light bulb at a time…" Finniston grumbled.

"What?" the bassoon player asked. Now, Hobson knew for certain that the two men had fallen out.

"Nothing. Must be a loose connection in the wiring then," Finniston balked.

"Damn, I seem to have split my reed," Hobson said to the bassoon player and whoever else might be listening. She got up to go to her clarinet case and swapped her mobile for Finniston's as she went. She looked around the room and pretended to switch reeds behind the cover of her case. As maestro Finniston fiddled with the light- first disassembling then reassembling the lamp to tighten the connection- several bored musicians had taken out their mobiles. It would look perfectly natural if she were to do the same. She opened Finniston's mobile to the received messages function and scrolled down to the previous day's date and time. The message would be easy enough to remember: Revenge is sweet. But the number she would need to jot down on a piece of sheet music stuffed in the back of her clarinet case. She did so hurriedly and closed the case. Finniston had the lamp on the conductor's podium working again and was calling everyone back to attention. Behind her back, she switched the mobiles back, and no one was any the wiser.


"Genius," remarked James Hathaway as Hobson explained her daring feat of espionage later on over drinks.

"Seconded," agreed Robbie.

Is that all you can say, Robbie? She'd rather hoped he'd be more effusive in his thanks, but how could she be upset with this steady man who was content to sip his orange juice while his sergeant downed a more potent potable?


Author Note: I had to create an additional rehearsal because the timeline for Laura seeing Gwen and Malcolm colluding over the text, snatching the phone, and then reporting the information to Lewis didn't make sense otherwise. Anyway, the next chapter contains a plot twist that differs from the episode entirely, so today's installment is the least of the purist's worries!