Sam could hardly bare to enter the station the next day. He thought about it over and over again, go or not… go or not… go or…. In the end, he decided to pluck up the courage and go, mostly with supportive words from his quack, Annie.

"Come on Sam, it's not as if you haven't punched Ray before," she had said. He'd forgotten to mention the small detail of declaring his love for Gene to Ray, probably loud enough so that Gene himself heard it. Sam partially wanted to return to work, tell Ray to shove it and continue with the murder investigation that lay on his desk begging for him to solve it.

"Morning boss," Chris greeted him as he entered the room. Sam wasn't listening; he scanned the room but no sight of…

"Where's Ray?" he asked abruptly. "Why isn't he here?" Chris shook his head, trying to forget about the fact that Sam didn't reply to his hello but instead wanted to know where Ray was (!)

"He went with the Guv to the murder scene. Why?" But Sam wasn't listening. He was already out of the door and down the stairs before Chris could utter another word.

"Hi Chris… how are you? Fine thanks boss how are you…"

-

"Right Raymondo, have a look around, see if you can find anybody who saw the shootin' yesterday. Anyone, kids, women, men, even the bloody lamppost for all I care, just get me some results." Ray turned to leave but suddenly spun back.

"Guv… I've gotta tell you something." Gene held up a hand.

"Find me something, then maybe I'll talk to you." Ray sighed and slouched off, smashing against Sam's shoulder as he hurried towards him. "Ah, Mr Tyler, finally decided to join us have you?" Hunt called over the commotion from the plods and plonks discussing the unusual weather and food prices with so called 'witnesses'.

"Look, Guv has…"

"Right, I want you to come with me; I've got the murder weapon in my car. It was found about five mintues from here in an abandoned warehouse, and-" But he was suddenly cut off. Shouting and hollering came from behind the building and as a large woman with two shopping bags, one brown, one white, bustled up to him, somewhat being dragged away by two skinny plonks.

"You bastard, why did you arrested my Jamie? What did he ever do to you?!" She tried to pull away from the two women holding him, and as she shook her jacket, the material slipped from one of the girl's grips and she fell backwards into the mud. "He didn't kill no one. He was at school, he wasn't no where near here."

"Look," Gene began. He and Sam were both used to loud bitches ordering their son's release, but they knew that the police didn't work like that. "You son was here, he was seen, we've got about a thousand witnesses saying that they saw someone matching his description right here around the time of the murder. All we need is forensics to tell us that his prints are all over that gun and we can slam him up for good."

"You bastard, you bloody bastard… when I get my hands on you…"

"What you gonna do?" Gene asked quickly. "Kill me? Following in your son's footsteps are we now?"