I don't own Scott & Bailey. Too bad, eh?

"Wanting a Quiet Retirement"

The cemetery where Julie Dodson was buried was quite a distance out from the station, but Rachel didn't really care about that - true, it might take her a while to return to the station, but she had faith in Jessica to hold the fort while she was gone. Rachel felt better than she had done in a long while, she was still under a little pressure by the higher ups and her supervisors to solve cases before she left, but she didn't feel as depressed as she had been since Stephanie had moved out.

Thinking about her daughter made Rachel sigh sadly. She had been hoping for her daughter to reply to her messages, but Stephanie hadn't and Rachel was beginning to suspect her daughter wanted nothing to do with her, but she knew it was her own fault. Rachel knew that she would have to confront the girl, and she was not looking forward to that.

As she found a quiet parking space as close to Julie's plot as she could, Rachel wondered how her old mentor after Gill and Janet would have felt if she had learnt about the irresistible urge to retire, but Julie had become bored by the police and she had become increasingly tired of the changing procedural rules as Rachel had become recently.

Leaving her car and grabbing the flowers she'd bought from the florists on her way to the cemetery, Rachel paused to pull her coat collar higher - why was it every time you visited one of these places, it was always so cold? - and she walked towards the grave. When she arrived she sighed sadly at the grave, wishing Julie was still around. Rachel did a bit of tidying up around the grave, but she didn't have the time or the tools to properly clear the place up.

When she was finished she stood over the grave. "Hi, Julie," she said quietly. "I know I'm not the best at coming here to visit, but I'm here now, that's what's important, right?"

Rachel chuckled to herself for a second. "Anyway, if you see Gill, tell her I said thanks for coming and telling me I should retire when I thought it through."

"Well, you were bloody miserable, I'm surprised it didn't occur to you sooner, Sherlock," a familiar voice said.

Rachel stiffened and she turned. "Are you guys going to appear whenever I talk to you?" she asked.

Standing behind her was Julie Dodson, not the old and almost decrepit woman that Rachel remembered seeing her as before she died, but the Julie Dodson that Rachel had known best as a DS and then later a DI. She looked younger, and she wore those ridiculous heels she had been renowned for.

Julie shrugged. "I dunno, what do you think?" she asked with her usual sarcastic snark.

Rachel rolled her eyes. "I'm beginning to think you are going to just appear," she replied.

Julie snorted. "Definitely. How are you, Rachel?"

"I'm okay," Rachel said, adding, "I'm retiring from the job I've spent the best part of my life working on, and I'm apparently seeing ghosts of my friends. So yeah, I'm doing okay.'

Julie smirked.

"How about you?"

"Ah, I'm doing great, thanks."

Rachel looked at her strangely for a second. "You're not really here. You're just a figment of my imagination, but why are you here speaking to me?"

Julie sighed. "I thought you might want a talk. I'm proud of you, Rachel. You've given the police your all for such a long time. It was a good time for you to leave. I felt the same way, so did Janet and Gill."

Rachel smiled at her but it fell off her face, and she headed over to a nearby bench. Julie followed her over and sat down next to her. Rachel eyed her for a second, seeing the solemn look in the older (dead) woman's eyes and followed her gaze over to the gravestone bearing her name. Rachel wondered how it must feel to look on your own tombstone and realise you were dead.

"What's it like, being dead?" Rachel asked before she mentally kicked herself for asking such an insensitive question.

Julie spared her one of her irritated glares that told you she was wondering whether you were worth spending time breathing the same air as her but she answered the question regardless. "It's liberating," Julie replied (Rachel wondered if she was indeed seeing the ghost of one of her old bosses, or if it was her own mind playing a game with her because she had always considered death to be a release from the mundanity and irritation of life), "just like retirement is."

Rachel nodded while she considered her reply. "Sorry, that came out wrong."

"Don't worry about it," Julie waved her hand. "How do you feel about retirement? When I was alive, retirement was the last thing you wanted to do.'

"I got older," Rachel replied shortly before she looked away. "I also had to deal with the idiot politicians who run the police force who have been tearing it to pieces since you retired."

"Don't remind me," Julie rolled her eyes as she remembered the signs that she'd noticed long ago.

"I think you and Gill saw the signs better than I did," Rachel said.

Julie chuckled. "Rachel, you were a DI at the time, you had just been promoted and you hadn't yet experienced much of what the higher-ups go through, the decisions which are made and all the meetings that go on. You couldn't have known, but if you had what would you have done? Personally, I couldn't see you shrugging your shoulders and just turning your back. You'd spent a long time working hard, you were hardly the type to throw that all away because you saw that police work is more politics than action."

Rachel rolled her eyes. "There were times," she admitted to Julie, thankful that the woman was dead and probably nothing more than a figment of her imagination, "where I have wondered if I should have signed up for the Army, or something along those lines. At least I wouldn't have had much fucking shit shoved down my throat."

"If you'd done that the police would have lost a damn good copper and detective," Julie pointed out. "You might've been rough around the edges, and that mess with your first case as an Acting DI nearly brought you down, but you have definitely become a good copper."

Rachel didn't like the reminder of that first case where she had been in a position of actual authority. She had spent a long time going over where she had gone wrong and why she had had problems. One of the biggest problems had been her inexperience. But she had been furious with Mitch after he'd failed to let her know he'd mislaid the casebook.

It had taken Rachel a long time to realise that she had been promoted to command the same team she had been a part of under Gill Murray's leadership for a few years. That had been the biggest mistake, but when she had realised it she had requested a transfer to a different team so then she could make her mark with a new band of people. Janet had been upset by that, but she had agreed with her after Rachel had given her her reasons.

"Thanks, Julie," she whispered.

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Three months later.

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Rachel was shaking with anger as she held her mobile against her ear. "Repeat that again please Jessica," she growled into the phone.

On the other end of the line, Jessica repeated dutifully but Rachel could hear the way her DS was trying hard to maintain her composure. "Sandra Wong pulled a knife on us," Jessica said, "but she didn't listen to us when we told her we only wanted to speak to her. She ran off, but the woman slipped and stabbed herself with the knife."

Rachel closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair as she struggled to hold back the urge to scream and shout. "What did the Risk Assessment say? Didn't you take into account Sandra Wong was mentally ill and could go off like a firecracker?" Rachel asked.

The silence on the other end made Rachel sigh. "You did make a Risk Assessment, didn't you?"

"Boss, we've been asking people questions all day, trying to track down the witnesses to the murder of Sally Jenkins but when we got close to Sandra Wong everyone told us she was gentle-," Jessica tried to say but Rachel interrupted her harshly. "So you decided, in your infinite wisdom, that you weren't going to bother, even though you had the intelligence? You were told of her mental woes, Jess, but instead of planning for every contingency you fucked it up."

Rachel growled into the phone, hoping the sound kept Jessica from interrupting her. "Where is Sandra now, and you had better tell me you are with her?"

"I am," Jessica said quickly, sounding pleased she had something good to report. "I've left other members of my team outside her flat. I was hoping to get it checked out."

Rachel closed her eyes. "I'll see about getting a search warrant, though I'm not sure how I'm going to report this disaster. Sandra Wong was an important player in this case, and you knew it. You knew it was potentially dangerous and yet you still made no plan to counter it. I'm disappointed with you. Stay with Sandra for now."

With that, Rachel put the phone down and let out a stifled scream of frustration. Why couldn't this have happened three months ago? It would have made her life feel better and easier if she had had a problem months ago instead of now. Rachel closed her eyes and forced herself to calm down, it wouldn't do any good to lose her control now.

This case was complicated and Rachel's syndicate had been working for two days to piece the puzzle together, and they had made progress. Three days ago a woman called Sally Jenkins had been murdered while out with friends, who didn't see or hear anything though Rachel didn't believe them so she had had them questioned time and time again. But while Sally's friends hadn't seen or heard anything, they had been in a place surrounded by CCTV cameras. The team had had a lot to go on, especially when they had identified Sandra Wong as one of the attackers. An ill woman with a history of paranoid schizophrenia, Rachel had told her officers to be careful with her.

Risk Assessments. Why did this have to happen, and why did it have to remind her of those final days where Gill's secret drinking came out with Evie Pritchard's following complaint? Rachel had been in the police long enough to recognise karma, or something like it existed in any case.

She had seen too many cases where mistakes came back around and bit you on the arse, and the mistake with the Risk Assessment when she had been an inexperienced DS had been a long time coming back to hit her full on.

Rachel too fired up to stay in her office, leapt out of her chair, shaking with annoyance, and stalked out of the office to head for her car. She needed to drive around a bit so then she could work off some of her anger. There were times, like this, where she wished she had something like a gym or a kickboxing ring to work through her frustrations, and she had dozens of them from time to time.

How could Jessica be so stupid? She thought to herself when she parked the car in a fairly uncrowded street. She'd been driving around and around for the last ten minutes to work through her anger, and she felt she'd succeeded.

Rachel shut off the engine and leaned back in her seat, closing her eyes wearily. "God, this brings back memories," she whispered to herself.

"Good, they should," a familiar voice said next to her. Rachel sighed and turned to face the ghost of Gill.

But instead of her familiar "I told you so face" she was wearing a more sympathetic expression.

"I know, Gill, I know," Rachel groused.

"Everyone makes mistakes, Rachel, but its good to learn from them. You should know that, you know like I do a mistake or an accident arises during an investigation."

"You weren't like this when I made that mistake," Rachel pointed out, remembering Gill's last case; she had been doing that a great deal recently, thinking about the last cases Janet, Gill, and Julie had worked on before their individual retirements.

"Er, for good reason," Gill's ghost pointed out sternly with a slight hint of sarcasm at the beginning that just fizzled out as she got going, "My DS, who was inexperienced in that role but should have known better than she did went and made a big mistake that not only put the case into jeopardy, but it resulted in the death of a potential suspect in murder investigation."

Rachel closed her eyes. It had taken her a very long time to move beyond the point where she had been incredibly stupid. She had learnt from her mistakes from the Evie Pritchard slavery case and had used that experience to become better…. and then when she had been promoted to Acting DI she needed to learn new lessons, particularly when the case nearly fell apart and she had nearly been killed with Stephanie still in her womb because of some sick fuckers playing a truly disgusting game online and giving into their fantasies.

To make matters worse, she was responsible for Mitch being killed in the line of duty. Rachel had never forgiven herself for the death of someone whom she had known for a long time. Mitch and she had been buddies, they had solved cases together, spoken to suspects together. He had sat next to her during interviews, and he had always been prepared for a fight whenever one of the suspects being interviewed became unstable. His wife had been angry with her, and she had let her be angry, feeling that she deserved it after what she'd inadvertently done.

"You made up for that, Rachel," Gill's ghost went on, more softly now, "you solved that case. At least you are nothing like me; you're not one of those legions of stressed-out coppers who struggled to cope and turned to a bottle to see them through."

Rachel winced. In her younger days she had been famous for her poor judgement when it came to alcohol consumption, and more than once it had landed her in the shit, usually right up to her neck. But she had known her limits, known never to drink on duty. Nah, she would arrive stinking of BO and Christ knew what else.

But she knew what Gill was getting at. She had seen that bottle on Gill's desk that night, so long ago Rachel could barely remember what the case at the time was all about, but she remembered keeping a close watch over her afterwards and informing Janet, who in turn told Julie. The avalanche really started when Gill sneaked a quick swig at the magistrates' court 'cos the bastard there let everyone off regardless of what they did.

It wouldn't have been a problem if not for Evie Pritchard attacking Rachel as she was about to leave the court. There were many times since then that Rachel wished she had been more alert even if she had been on her phone at the time, speaking to Janet and letting her know of the magistrate's decision, but she hadn't.

Gill had leapt to her defence - that was one of the many things she loved about the woman, really - even if you pissed her off, she would always be there for you. Unfortunately, because of the swig, her breath reeked of gin and Evie had detected it instantly and she had capitalised on it.

Evie posted a video on the net telling her of her 'woes,' saying to everyone the Manchester Met police had basically treated her like shit, that they were corrupt but worse - she had let it out Gill was drinking, and she made a complaint.

The case had nearly fallen through, but if it hadn't been for some quick developments, the case would never have been solved and Evie would've been let off to carry on with her illegal slavery operation.

Rachel had sworn to never let something similar happen to her, and she was always very careful. "I almost was, remember?" she muttered. "Don't you remember that time Julie had to arrest me after Nick was attacked?"

"Okay, you did get drunk, but you were not stupid enough to take swigs while on duty like I was," Gill retorted. "Now, stop feeling sorry for yourself and get round to the hospital."

Rachel sighed. "Great," she whispered, "she's dead and she is still giving orders."

"What was that, Sherlock?" Gill barked, but Rachel snickered when she heard the mocking grin in her voice. She knew Rachel was only joking around with her.

By the time Rachel was on the road again, Gill Murray was gone.

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