Scotland Yard was an organized mess. The new building was all but finished, but there were still the piled stacks upon stacks of files, papers, reports, and informants' accounts. In this world a secretary who remembered everything could wield true power.

Somehow, word had gotten out. Constables who should have been in bed were huddled around the front of the main office, passing around endless cups of tea bought from the street-vendor on the corner as they murmured in low voices. No one could keep their eyes off the silent street that rested at the bottom of the steps.

Sergeant-detective Hopkins felt as though someone had injected hot sand underneath his eyelids. The harsh lights of the building made it even worse. Tired to the point of physical illness, he put his head down and shut his eyes. When had he last eaten? It seemed as though he should have...at the normal supper-time but for the life of him he couldn't remember what his meal had been.

His wounded leg throbbed. Soft burning strands of glowing colours twisted slowly behind his eyelids, pulling him into a state of half-hypnosis.

He must have fallen asleep; it wasn't something he had sought. PC Harry Murcher was standing there, shaking him awake, his street-battered face open and sympathetic. 'Sir," he cleared his throat, "sir…they're here."

"Thank you, Constable." Hopkins stood on his own flimsy power, and made his way to the front of the building where the ambulance was pulling to a stop.

Inspector Bradstreet jumped down from the back doors and wobbled on the cobblestones. Two orderlies carefully stepped out, bearing a shrouded body on a gurney between them. Behind Hopkins, Gregson was just coming out. His big hand pushed Hopkins aside impatiently.

"Roger?" Athelney Jones was in the process of straightening his collar; it was so late at night everyone was slacking, even he.

"I can't tell." Bradstreet choked. His face was a dangerous colour. Abruptly he swayed on his feet. "I can't…tell…" Hopkins leaped down the whitewashed steps and grabbed him. The big man whirled to the gutter and vomited.

"That bad?" Hopkins asked. His face was so pale his lips were blue.

"We can't let his wife see." Bradstreet was clinging on to Hopkins with everything he had. Cold sweat ran ribbons down his face. "Oh, Good God." He stammered. "Oh, God."

Hopkins remembered belatedly that Bradstreet and Lestrade had served together as bluecoats over twenty years ago. There were a few years between them, but their history had been friendly. He didn't know what to do in the face of such a loss.

Gregson's lips thinned. "Get him downstairs." He snapped to the silent orderlies. "Now. Get Roanoke." He snapped. "And I mean, Right Now." He swept the air with his arm. "He's not dead unless we get the proof!" His cold eyes sank into Bradstreet. "Athelney Jones! See to Bradstreet! Where's Roanoke?!"

-

Roanoke was a naturally pale man, his complexion hastened by his long hours in subterranean morgue rooms kept in chill temperatures. By then the word had spread throughout the Yard. "You wanted to see me, Inspector?" He asked roughly.

"I want proof that's Inspector Lestrade." Gregson pointed at the sheeted body underneath his hand. "Either confirm or deny it, but I want proof."

"The identification on his body…"

"Could have come from anywhere." Gregson snarled. "Anyone can claim to be his grandfather. I want proof, doctor."

"In order to do that, I'd have to have his medical records." Roanoke winced but kept his voice calm and professional. "The condition of the deceased…"

"I've got his records." Gregson cut him off. He stamped to his folded overcoat and pulled a file out from underneath. "Start examining. I'm not telling his wife and children a god-damn thing until I know the facts to be facts."

-

Four Days ago:

Two shots shattered the darkness; Lestrade heard them impact behind him; Forbes grunted, a bull-like sound and he crashed to the floor. Lestrade and Cooper both flung themselves down with him. A man with his face hidden in a mummy-like wrap of scarf emerged from the shadows. Lestrade's gun-arm was pinned under Cooper's body; he saw a small glass bottle gleam for a moment, and then it burst on the planks before them. He was unconscious before he knew it.

-

The raid had not gone as planned.

Patterson's habit of keeping details close and private was never so bitterly regretted among his cohorts. The ship had too many people on it; the crew consisted of too many hard-bitten smugglers north of Essex ready for a fight or paranoid of failure.

Gregson stared, pale with sickening dread as Sergeant Hopkins moaned in pain, clutching a leg that dripped blood through the weave of his trousers. He rolled on the dirty planks of the decaying short-pier, trying not to faint and scream at the same time.

"Easy, sergeant…" Bradstreet was already bending over the younger man, his avuncular instincts soothing the poor man faster than any opiate. Gregson wiped the sweat off that face--had any of them looked that young? listening to the cloth rip. Below the Athene and blocking the ship by an embargo of floating police, the Thames Division had lined up a dangerous barricade.

The smugglers had not been completely surprised.

After the initial startled skirmish the gangplank had been drawn up and the ship tugged away from the dock. She floated now, too far away from a land-boarding, and her gun-men sat invisible in the night, ready to pick off any copper who floated too close.

Stalemate.

"Well, at least we can see where they are," Gregson tried not to sound too insubordinate while Patterson was standing at the lip of the water in his inscrutable prig expression...

Gregson decided to hell with it. He was wet, exhausted, sweating like a pig in his pea-jacket and sore from too many blows from too many frightened criminals. Hopkins was lucky not to be shot through the leg-bone; that would have meant a slow, agonizing death through bone infection if he hadn't chosen an aputation. As it was, the bullet-graze was sending him through all kinds of hell. "Isn't this what the Pinkerton Yanks call, "Ketchable but not Fetchable?"

Patterson shot him an icy look, his face hot. In that moment, Gregson made an enemy.

"Oh, my God." Bradstreet staggered up, wringing Hopkins' blood from his handkin, his face chalk-white. "Where's Geoff?"

Youghal blanched. "He was with Cooper and Forbes!"

"Cooper and Forbes are missing too!" Bradstreet barked. "Patterson, you sent them aboard that d-- ship!"

Patterson didn't hesitate. He whirled and barked orders—or began to.

"Halloa!"

A dark lantern gleamed, tracking a slender line on the oily water as it chopped against ship and dock alike.

Gregson stared in disbelief as a white handkerchief—how could anything be white on that ship?—flapped in the air tied to a stick. "Halloa the shore!"

"Halloa the ship!" Patterson snarled back. "What say you, Captain? Do you surrender?"

"Excuse me, sirs," The Captain held up his hands in a signal of truce. Slowly, the Policemen paused in their attack. "Excuse me, officers…thank you." The captain's accent was strange; tints of Norway mixed with round vowels. "Which of you is in charge of this operation?"

Patterson stepped forward, his eyes narrowed. No one would ever criticize his courage. "I'll have you know that if you're asking merely to find a target, there are plenty of my rank present to take my place."

"That wasn't the reason why I was asking, officer," the captain answered back reproachfully. "We simply wish to…open negotiations with you for a moment…"

"Your ship is loaded with contraband!" Patterson shot back. "We have proof that you're a supplier for Moriarty's gang, Wiltson!—a long-term supplier"

The captain blinked in the lamplight; no doubt he had thought his true name sacrosanct. "Very good," he bowed slightly. "But nevertheless, we wish free passage out of the estuary."

"I don't see how we could possibly go against our morals and give it to you." Patterson shot back with heat; behind him the other policemen, with their deeper experience of working in teams and groups were beginning to grow uneasy with a dawning suspicion.

"It seems we've taken on a few unexpected passengers, Inspector." Captain Wiltson spoke coolly, but his eyes burned with a mad delight in thrusting his power onto Patterson. "Now that they're aboard, I really do hate to go through the trouble of going back to shore..."

Patterson went white as a ghost in the starlight. "I don't believe you!" He barked back.

Bradstreet lifted a big hand and clamped it down on the other man's shoulder. "Hold on, now," he grunted. "Captain!" He roared. "Prove your statements, sir!"

Wiltson grinned like a skull. "You heard him, boys." In the black shadows where no one could aim a bullet, two seamen scuffled up with a blood-stained Constable Cooper between them. The big man was missing his helmet and leather collar; a bruise was gaining on his left cheek like a cancer. He looked completely disgraced and ready to die of humiliation.

"Inspector," Cooper gritted his teeth. He looked past Patterson to Bradstreet. "Inspector Bradstreet sir."

"How is it, Constable?" Bradstreet asked gently.

"Sir. They were ready for us in the hold. Forbes' been shot, but it's not a bad'un. He should pull through." Cooper sounded like he was trying to convince himself.

"Is that it, Constable?" Bradstreet held his breath.

"The Inspector, sir." Cooper said heavily. "He…he's not too well, sir." The young man swallowed hard. "Got a head-wound." He swallowed again.

Bradstreet's face slowly turned the colour of Burgundy. "Captain Wiltson," he said sharply, "State your terms."

"You can't be serious!" Patterson shouted. "I am in charge!"

Bradstreet didn't even look at the man; he simply moved his fist backwards and it collided with Patterson's face. The other man went down like a bag of sand. Even the smugglers were impressed. Wiltson's eyebrows went up in a sudden show of respect.

"I said, state your terms, captain. I didn't say, name your terms." Bradstreet's face was hot; his voice cold.

Wiltson ducked his head in a sudden grin. "Fair enough. You want your men back, and be assured, if I do not fulfill my business transaction, I'll have no more reason for using up any more of God's marvelous oxygen." A thread of seriousness wove through his voice. "You'll have your men back to you in one week, sir. I promise you no harm will—that is, no further harm--will come to them," He put his hands on his hips and sniffed expectantly "provided they don't get themselves into any more mischief. There is rank among you; the Inspector will be the first to face the consequences of his men's actions."

Bradstreet was breathing through his beard in long, shallow gasps. "I'll need more information than that, sir."

Wiltson tapped his fingers on the rail. "We'll contact you with the location wherest you can pick up your men." He stated. "I have no intention of dancing the hemp, Inspector, and I am quite aware that killing a policeman in the lines of his duty is a straight ticket to the event."

"Ye'd best be thinking of this, then, while you're conductin' your unlawful business, captain." Bradstreet's voice was rarely so used. It was a black glacial cave. "All three of the men you have, they have wives and children at home. If we have to answer to them on their fate, no place in the sea will keep you from answering to us."

Wiltson pursed his lips, giving him a briefly spinsterish look. "A fair enough warning, Inspector; but you keep to your side and leave us to do our business." For one last time, he grinned. "This sort of thing happens quite a bit among our little business wars, sir. You'll forgive us for treating you as if you're a rival organisation for the night…"

-

PC Forbes tried to take a deep breath; it was stuffy and humid in the confines of the ship's hold. The only light shining through was due to the placement of a few glass pyramids set in the wood and a dark lantern suspended far above their heads. The men had been leg-shackled to the wall by heavy iron rings and Forbes tried very hard not to think of those implications.

"Looks like we're not the first hostages to ride first-class, eh, Forbes?" Cooper tried to smile, but he was still in a great deal of pain. Every breath dragged the scrape of his coat against his bruised ribs. "Now what?" Cooper asked.

"Hsht." Forbes answered just as softly. Even talking hurt the bullet-hole in his arm. His eyes strained to make out Lestrade. The small man was lying in the same position the smugglers had left him in. Blood on his face made a black gleam in the murky lantern-light. "Inspector," Forbes asked softly. "Are you all right, sir?"

It took a long time, but the Inspector finally responded. His eyes opened by degrees and blinked against the curtain of drying blood.

"Inspector," Forbes tried again, pitching his voice as softly as possible. "Sir…we're riding with them as a guarantee the police won't follow. The captain promised to drop us off somewhere where we can be picked up in a week. I don't know where that might be."

Lestrade gave the barest nod in response; his eyes slipped shut again.

"Damn." Forbes licked his lips. "He's none too good." As if he could claim any different.

"They'll check on us in bit," Cooper pointed out. "As rough as these boys play, they got ter have a fake Crow on board with 'em." It wasn't much, but it was something to hope for.

-

Bradstreet's first thoughts of what he would say to Clea—not to mention the Mrs. Forbes and Cooper—were halted by the sight of Chief Inspector Miller rampaging around a stack of files and document-crammed boxes. "Bradstreet! What's this about you laying hands on another Inspector in violence?"

"He wouldn't shut up during the hostage negotiations," Bradstreet spoke with the same cold voice he had on the waterfront. "He was willing to put their lives at risk, sir."

Miller vibrated with fury. "That was our last link to Moriarty's partners." He hissed. "The very last. You let our proof go sailing to God Knows where, and you have no idea if they'll keep their word on our men or not!"

"I had no choice." Bradstreet said heavily. "Patterson was about to instigate a firefight, and that would have been a guarantee of killing Cooper on the spot! We wouldn't have found Forbes or Lestrade in time!"

"You went above the authority of the man I placed in charge of the case." Miller's shaking hands locked at his sides and he stood, taut as rawhide. "You are suspended from all duties, without pay, until further notice."

Bradstreet felt himself turn into a statue at the words. He simply stared at his superior over the Atlantic roar in his ears.

"Take your personal effects out of your office now." Miller finished. "You will be notified when you may return—if you may return."

-

"You might be in need of this." Gregson proffered one of his terrible smokes.

Bradstreet wearily agreed. In the cold light of dawn, the alley was a terrible place for contemplation. Bradstreet realized he had been using it for self-pity.

"I feel like I've just dipped myself in filth." He choked. "How am I supposed to tell Clea her husband's off the map, in the hands of smugglers?"

"As I recall, he's the one what had to tell Hazel you didn't stand a good chance of pulling through that bullet in the chest back in...'79?" Gregson said evenly. "And that was a bullet meant for him when you stupidly got in the way...Now what's this about you being suspended?"

"Didn't you hear every blasted word floating through the air?" Bradstreet's hands shook as he lit a match. The match went out. He cursed. Gregson wordlessly pulled out his own box, and his hands were the usual extension of his cold and calm self as he lit the tobacco for Bradstreet. "I should think the little men on the moon would have heard."

"All I heard was Miller's side of things." Gregson said icily. "And that was from the perspective of Patterson—who, I'll allow, is a brilliant man but he doesn't play well with us, man. That's the whole reason why he's allowed to work solo for the CID. He'll sacrifice three of us to get one of the enemy, because he seems to think we lost our rights to be protected as soon as we agreed to take the crowned badge." He blew out a stinking cloud that was like tobacco mixed with sawdust and a trace of mud.

"You can't know that," Bradstreet protested, shocked.

Gregson only nodded. "I keep my eyes out on people like that," he said succinctly. "Any time you run into a man who can't work with a partner, there's a problem."

Bradstreet felt his nausea deepen.

"I may be the smartest of this lot, but I can't make bricks without clay, Bradstreet. Give me something to work with."

Bradstreet swallowed something even more bitter than Gregson's smoke.

"I need your help," Bradstreet said bluntly.

"I know you do." Gregson answered. "And you'll get it."

"I'm not about to see you get suspended too."

Gregson smirked. "Give me some credit, man. Give me some credit."