Alex was checking car registration numbers against a handwritten database and wishing that someone would hurry up and invent Excel, when she met him.
Gradually she became aware of a presence in the room other than herself and looked up to find a man standing in front of her desk. He had longish blonde hair and was wearing a roll-neck jumper that she found quite ridiculous. He smiled nastily at her.
"Can I help you?" she asked, brisk and professional.
The man laughed and sat on the corner of her desk, which irked Alex no end, even if he did have a rather nice bottom.
"Can you help me?" he mused, rubbing his chin. "That's an interesting question."
"You should go to reception if you have any enquiries, sir."
"What year is it, Alex?"
The use of her name from someone she had never met before shocked Alex into answering. "1981," she said, slightly disturbed to find that she had to check the date on the papers in her hands for confirmation before replying and even then, the date didn't sound quite right in her mouth. It was if she felt it should have been a later one, but that was an implausible notion.
He laughed again, as if she had just told a joke. "You don't belong here."
"No," she agreed quietly, looking at the tedious list of meaningless figures in front of her. "I have a degree in Psychology." She was startled by the man suddenly snatching the paper from her hand and beginning to tear it up into little pieces. For the first time, fear of her uidentified visitor began to creep around the edges of her mind, numbing her.
"You can't do that!" She cried angrily, getting to her feet.
"Oh Alex, Alex… I can do whatever I want. Don't you see? I'm dead." Something in his bearing changed then, became more aggressive, desperate. Allowing the torn pieces of paper to flutter to the floor around his feet, he reached forwards and grabbed Alex by the lapels of her jacket, pulling her closer. "I could kill you right here and nobody would do a thing."
He looked into her eyes, searching them. Something he saw there must have amused him, for he threw back his head and let loose a shrill, high-pitched giggle that sprayed Alex with spittle. She shivered.
"But what would be the point of that, eh Alex? Because you're already dead, aren't you?" He pushed her roughly back into her chair and regarded her levelly. "You shouldn't have come back here." With that, he turned and left.
Alex was up and after him in an instant, but when she reached the corridor there was no sign of him. She searched the surrounding rooms for a while, but was eventually forced to admit defeat and return to her desk. The only sign that the man had ever existed was the shredded paper littering the floor.
"What have you done with him?" Gene demanded, slamming both hands down on the desk.
Startled from her work for the second time that day, Alex glared up at the Guv. "What have I done with whom?"
"My DI, woman!" Gene was hardly able to repress his snarl.
Alex thought back, trying to work out what on Earth the man might be on about. She remembered the raving man with blonde hair. "That was your DI?"
"Don't play innocent with me! You show up on my patch and officers start dying, then my DI vanishes off the face of the bloody planet and the last person he's seen talking to is you."
"Your DI was here threatening to kill me."
At this, Gene looked just about ready to pull a gun on her himself. With an effort, he was able to control himself enough to say "It's game over for you, Drake. I couldn't find your transfer files, all your paperwork has been lost – it's like you don't exist."
The aspersions being cast on her reality were beginning to rile Alex. "Are you threatening me now, as well?"
"No. This is threatening you – give me one reason why I shouldn't have you arrested for murder."
Alex took a deep breath. "I didn't want to reveal this so early on, but I'm here from Special Branch. We've suspected that a killer might have insinuated himself into this station for a while and I've been sent to confirm that suspicion."
If anything, this news seemed to anger Gene just as much as if she had just admitted to the murder. "Bastards! You go back and tell Special bastard Branch that they can shove their suspicions up their-"
"Guv!"
Interrupted just as he was about to embark upon an explicit gesture to accompany his words, Gene turned angrily towards the door. The skip stood there, a piece of paper held in his hand like a white flag of surrender.
"What?"
"It's your DI; he was seen entering his flat about ten minutes ago."
"I'm coming with you!" Alex called, hurrying to get up and around her desk as the Guv strode towards the door. He glanced back at her and for a moment it seemed as if he would refuse, but then he nodded grimly.
"Skip, fire up the – oh bugger."
"An Austin Allegro?" Alex was unable to keep the amusement out of her voice. It was difficult to reconcile the great Gene Hunt with a car of such embarrassing reputation.
"Shut up, get in and don't touch anything," Gene rumbled. He slammed the driver's door shut so violently behind him that the poor car trembled on its suspension. Alex was hardly settled in the passenger's seat before Gene accelerated, bullying the car into speeds it almost certainly wasn't built to go.
Thanks to some reckless driving, it was only a matter of minutes before the car was screaming to a halt outside a block of flats. Although to Alex, sitting white-knuckled in the front seat, even that short ride had felt too long for comfort. Shakily, she extricated herself from the vehicle, thankful to be back on solid pavement in one piece.
A couple of teenage boys were hanging out of one of the upper storey windows, whistling and catcalling. "Pigs!" one of them called whilst the other leant forwards and sent a gobbet of saliva hurtling down towards the gravel.
Alex glanced over the top of the Allegro to see Gene thrusting two fingers up at the hecklers. "Get back inside or I'll come up there and garrotte you with your own Walkman headphones," the DCI bellowed. The two youths ducked back inside, still jeering, and the window slid shut.
"That was unnecessary," Alex said, as Gene strode forwards and kicked in the entrance doors.
They were standing at the foot of the first flight of stairs when the music started.
"Keep smiling through, just like you always do…"
"Do you hear that too?" Gene's voice was an urgent whisper and his hand had dropped to his gun. Alex nodded. Together, they quietly ascended the stairs. The music grew louder with every step they took.
"…And I know we'll meet again some sunny day…"
On the third landing, Gene nodded towards one of the doors. They approached it warily, each taking up a position either side of the door. Gene drew his gun, flexing his fingers around it as he readied it in his hands.
"Daydaydaydayday"
The music, which had sounded like it was being played on an old and scratchy record to begin with, had become stuck. It skipped mindlessly on the single word until it lost all meaning and coherence. With each maddening repetition, Alex felt the unease in the pit of her stomach increase.
"Police!" Gene shouted over the noise. Then, he counted off three fingers before shouldering his way through the door into the flat. Alex followed a split second later. The muzzles of their guns swept the room only to find it deserted. A record player sat on a table near the window. Gene kicked it to the floor and a blissful silence filled the flat.
By silent consent, they split up and searched the rest of the rooms. In the bedroom, Alex opened the door of a built-in wardrobe. Something swung at her out of the darkness, making her scream.
Gene was there just in time to catch Alex as she collapsed into his arms. Instinctively, she clung to him, trembling, her face pressed against his chest. It took no longer than a second for him to work out what it was that had shocked her so – hanging by the neck in the wardrobe was a body. With the sun filtering in through the thin curtains it was possible to tell that it was another dummy, but Gene knew only too well how real the dummies could look when discovered unexpectedly. Especially considering that this one had a photograph of Bammo stuck on its face.
He hesitated for a moment, and then patted Alex's hair in what he hoped was a reassuring manner. "Come on Lady Bollinger-knickers," he chided gently, "it's not a real body. Look, it's just one of them dummies people chuck on the bonfire." He was rewarded by Alex laughing snottily against his chest.
After a moment that lingered on slightly too long for the comfort of both of them, Alex drew away and wiped her eyes. Carefully, she avoided looking at the body dangling behind her back. "Like the one you found before."
"Yes." Alex noticed for the first time that Gene also seemed to have been badly shaken up by something. "Now that you're all bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked," he continued, "there's something I think you should see."
"My God…" Alex breathed.
They were standing in another room of the flat. It might once have been intended as a dining room, but the current occupant had turned it into a scene out of a matinee thriller. Every square inch of the walls was covered by pictures and maps with routes marked out in red felt tip. The pictures were photographs of everyone who worked in Fenchurch East police station. Some of the pictures had obviously been taken whilst the subjects were unaware, as they showed the officers at home, taking their leisure. Alex put her hand over her mouth in shock.
Half of one wall appeared to be dedicated almost solely to Gene. The pictures of him, however, differed from the rest in that someone had taken a sharp object to them and scratched out the face, leaving him unrecognisable except for the hair.
"Why would someone do this?"
"You're the one with all the special inside information, Miss bloody Marple, you tell me."
Alex struggled for a moment to understand what the DCI meant, then remembered she had told him she was undercover from Special Branch. "This definitely confirms our suspicions. What's more, the meticulous attention to detail of the person who created… this, suggests an obsessive mind, as well as intelligent and compulsive.
"The defacing of your pictures alone leads me to believe that he carries some kind of personal vendetta against you, expressed in his feelings as impotent rage. He feels powerless against you, which makes him all the more dangerous, as he will be lashing blindly out in a wild attempt to hurt you."
There was a pause and then "I need a drink."
Alex lingered on a while after Gene had left, admiring the tireless attention to detail displayed on the walls, despite their sinister intentions. That mind, when turned to police work, must have been magnificent. But it wasn't just a begrudging admiration that kept her in the small room. Although she had met him for only a few moments and everything she knew about him pointed to the fact that he was certifiable, she felt a strange kinship to the DI. For reasons that she was unable to explain, she felt that there was an understanding between them and she could sympathise with whatever had sent him down the path of madness.
Frightened and confused by her own thoughts, Alex found herself reaching out to run her fingertips across the mutilated photographs of Gene. In doing so, she disturbed a pile of papers waiting to be put up on the already overcrowded walls. A dark cardboard folder caught her eye and she bent down to retrieve it. It was filled with articles torn from newspapers, some yellow with age whilst others looked newer. The topmost article showed a younger Gene shaking hands with another man whom Alex thought she recognised, but couldn't quite remember why. The headline told of Gene's promotion to DCI. The date had been ringed several times in pen, so violently that it had almost torn the paper in one place.
Curious, Alex hid the folder inside her jacket. Remembering how she had witnessed Gene removing evidence in the same manner just yesterday and had condemned him for it, she blushed guiltily. But she was convinced that she would find the answers she needed about why she had come back, in the folder.
Going out into the main living area once again, she found that Gene had raided the drinks cabinet and taken a bottle of their absent host's best malt liquor into custody. Unashamedly, he locked eyes with Alex and then took a long drink.
"Are you alright?" she asked quietly.
"Am I alright?" Gene's upper lip lifted in a silent snarl. "Of course I'm not all-bloody-right. My DI is missing, then you come here and tell me that I've made him impotent. No one wants to hear that they've done that to another man; especially not one that they work with, that they're responsible for."
Despite the slightly confused, macho bluster that DCI had expressed his concerns in, Alex felt that she understood perfectly what it was that had sent him into an even blacker mood. "Guv…"
He scowled and lifted the bottle to his lips again. Determined to make him listen to her, Alex went to him and took his head between her hands. The bottle halted in its ascent and he glared up at her with irritation.
"There's nothing you or anyone could have done to save him. His mind was already made up."
He was silent for a while, carefully studying her face. For a moment she dared to hope that she had gotten through to him, but then he twisted his head free of her hands and drank deeply from the bottle. When he turned back to her, he put one hand on her waist and drew her closer, his head tilting up towards hers.
It took a few confused seconds for Alex to realise that the Guv was intending to kiss her. Surprised, she jumped back with a cry of "What do you think you're doing?"
"Come off it, Bolly, you've been giving me the misty-eyed look ever since you first came blundering into my department. You're desperate for a piece of the Gene Genie."
Alex didn't know whether to laugh or slap him. In the end she settled for telling him "I think you've had too much to drink," before turning and leaving.
