Collaborating with the Enemy

Had he known when he'd left the station to rendezvous with Lewis what he intended or had the thought 'forget this' just came to him as he walked beside the inspector? He wasn't sure. He'd stopped on the way to buy Lewis a coffee, and looking back he suspected that had been his last ditch attempt to square his loyalty to Lewis with his silence. A kind of 'here, Sir, I'm betraying you, but I feel real bad about it and hope you won't take it personally' sort of gesture that he hadn't quite been able to carry off.

Lewis had accepted the coffee with a 'thanks' and not a hint of suspicion or disappointment, but if Hathaway had meant it to appease his own conscience it hadn't worked. In the end, he couldn't please both Innocent and Lewis. He liked his job and siding with either one of them put it in jeopardy. Raise Innocent's ire, and he just might not have a job at all. Alienate Lewis, and the job might not be worth having.

"I just received a rather bracing lecture from our chief superintendent," he told Lewis, wondering just how far he was prepared to go with his disclosure. He couldn't please them both, but he did have to live with himself. Not warning Lewis about Innocent's unequivocal pronouncement was not something with which he could live, but that didn't mean he was prepared to follow the inspector all the way to the Jobs Centre.

"Sure you're a better person for it," Lewis told him.

"I'm not to discuss it with you."

If Lewis understood the seriousness of the situation, he downplayed it. "Quite right. What'd she say?"

"In short, you've been told you're not to commit overburdened resources—that's me—to the investigation of this case. And that it's not a case; it's a statistic. I'm sorry, but she made me bloody mad, and I didn't stick up for you, and I just feel ashamed," he admitted.

Oddly, Lewis seemed to take her side. "She's got a point," he said without heat.

"No. She doesn't," Hathaway asserted.

"Yeah."

"She doesn't. We've received information from a legitimate source." And no wonder he hadn't known how to convince Innocent of the reasons the case needed investigated when Lewis himself argued against the legitimacy of his own source. It was Hathaway who had to assure Lewis Le Plassiter would come through. "I found Stoker," he told Lewis. Gone for the moment was his earlier belief that the professor's deal was just a scam and Le Plassiter would give them nothing even if they found Stoker.

"Look," Lewis said, "we've both been warned off this case. Now I'm old and bloody-minded enough to not do as I'm told, but you're clever—you should know better."

Hathaway had been told he was clever or smart or too intelligent for his own good for as long as he could remember. Somewhere along the line, he'd taken a hard look at those around him and realized it was true. It should have been a source of pride or pleasure but it proved too often to be a hindrance. There was the whole 'pride goeth before a fall' thing which was a misquote but not altogether untrue.* And it was hardly something for which he could take credit…just the way he'd come out. And, sadly, intelligence was one thing; wisdom, what the Bible called 'the principal thing,' was something else altogether.** He might have the brains, but he found out all too often he didn't always have the wisdom to know how to use them.

Still, in this case, he realized he did know what he needed to do whether it was brains or bloody-mindedness that led to it. "I do," he said, "and I've decided the best course of action is to continue investigating the case with you, unofficially, against the rules."

It hadn't been easy for him to come that decision, and he expected Lewis to acknowledge what it had cost him with a 'thanks' or 'I appreciate that' or something. Instead, he got an empty coffee cup to dispose of somewhere and a "Well, if that's the case…" followed by instructions of what to do next as his part of their little insurrection.

"Fix me up a whole rogue's gallery of all the faces in the case, but put it somewhere where Innocent's not going to see it if she pokes her head in to have a moan," Lewis told him. He raised a warning hand and added, "And I didn't say that, so you can't quote me." And then he'd gone to 'see the granny.' Hathaway was left standing there with the inspector's empty cup wondering what it was that had just made him put his career in danger for the man.

Lewis was ready to give Le Plassiter more than enough rope to hang them both on Morse's say-so.

Was Hathaway just as ready to hand his own head to Innocent on a platter on that same say-so? For reasons he couldn't begin to explain, that answer seemed to be a resounding 'yes.' He went back to the station (slinking carefully around Innocent's office—wasn't it late enough she should be off to Mr. Innocent by now?) and pulled the photographs.

He was staring at them for inspiration when Lewis opened the office door and made Hathaway jump guiltily. He threw a startled glance at the door, causing the inspector to do the same. But the hallway was empty of lurking chief superintendents.

Lewis closed the door behind him and came over to examine Hathaway's handiwork. He reached out and switched the photos of the two women. Lewis wasn't the kind of inspector who was always correcting and redoing his sergeant's work, but, even if he had been, Hathaway knew he had not paired the couples up incorrectly. He blinked at the reconfiguration in disbelief.

"I've seen the wedding photos," Lewis assured him and then went on to explain about the 'redistribution of marriage partners' between the two couples. "They were happy with it," he ended.

Hathaway found that incredibly unlikely. "So happy Rachel killed herself," he said.

"She didn't kill herself! I would stake the crumbling remains of my career on it. That girl was murdered," Lewis said with none of his previous certainty shaken by the coroner's report or Innocent's opinions. Hathaway could only hope that staking the not yet crumbling but possibly shaky beginnings of his own career on it was a wise move.

*Proverbs 16:18 Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.

**Proverbs 4:7 Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.