Author's Note: Well, that took longer than expected! Apologies for the delay - I'd mentioned having a few things to keep me busy for a little bit, but I hadn't been prepared for a nice little dose of flu to go with them ... Thanks for sticking with this and, as always, I'd love to hear your thoughts! :)

Ten

"We've been running in circles round this bloody hospital …"

"And there was me thinking you were all about the physical activity, Mai," DC Grayson drawled, taking a final drag of his cigarette before pitching the butt to the ground and stubbing it out with the toe of his boot.

"Just because I think it wouldn't kill you – unlike those things," his colleague scowled, pulling her coat tighter around her as they stood outside with the other smokers. "Why the hell haven't we heard anything yet? They should have picked him up by now."

"Now, now, patience. We want this all by the book, you know that. Two of the NHS's finest practically at death's door? Not going to do our rep any good if we can't put someone away for it."

"Are you forgetting the someone we're trying to put away is also a doctor?"

"And probably with very litigious, middle-class parents. Nope, hadn't forgotten. That's just all the more reason to get this right," DC Grayson shrugged. "Listen, we've gotten as much out of the mother as we're going to, at this stage anyway. Might as well head back upstairs again - that consultant said we could talk to the paramedic when his obs were done and- Shit, phone. This could be it … Hello?"

DC Chen watched expectantly, catching only one side of the conversation and therefore drawing her own conclusion from the terse one-word answers and the frown deepening on her partner's brow.

"For fuck's sake …" he muttered darkly, as the call came to an abrupt end and he huffed out a sigh.

"Problem?"

"Big problem," he confirmed. "McAllister's gone."

Huddled in the back of a taxi, Eddie tried again to call his mother only to get the same answerphone message as all the other times, making him grit his teeth in frustration.

He couldn't understand why the hell she had taken off and where to, not when he needed her to listen and to understand what was happening to him. Everything was at stake, his job, his life. He couldn't bear the very thought of prison. He wouldn't survive, he knew he wouldn't.

Spotting the taxi driver glancing back at him in the rear-view mirror, he tried to force himself to stay calm, impossible though that felt. The police had hammered on his parents' door looking for him, actually hammered, shouting his name and ordering him out onto the street like he was some kind of criminal. He'd almost done as he was told too, out of some kind of deeply instilled tendency towards obedience.

Then he'd frozen, wondering if they knew for certain he was inside. If they could hear his heartbeat that seemed so loud in his chest he thought surely it could be heard right down the street.

Creeping not to the backdoor, but to a door that led straight into the garage, he practically held his breath as he slipped out a window right next to an overgrown hedge and into the shadows. It seemed too good to be true that the officers hadn't thought to cover more than the house itself and he was waiting for a heavy hand to descend on his shoulder even as he shuffled in a crouch through the trees and shrubs at the bottom of the neighbours' garden.

It was only once safely in the cab he had managed to hail that his body had slumped in relief. Not that it lasted long, convinced as he was that the driver was full of suspicions about his no doubt nervous-looking passenger.

Sign of a guilty conscience, Eddie thought. Before hastily correcting himself. He had nothing to feel guilty about. Not unless you counted running from the police. And that may have been a mistake, maybe he should have stayed, tried to explain. But they wouldn't understand, he knew that. How could they when his own mother seemed unsure?

He was sure though and that was all that mattered. Sure that Alicia was lying, that Iain had been the one attacking him with his harsh words and angry face.

No … No, stop …

Had she said that? Alicia? His mind seemed to remember her voice, those words … It hadn't been like that though, it couldn't have been … She's been playing with him, like people did. No when really it meant yes …

No … Please, don't …

That was her fault, getting in his head. Making him doubt himself.

You raped her …

Iain's voice seemed to echo in his head, even as the memory of that steel blade slicing into flesh flooded his mind and made his stomach lurch. He hadn't meant to lunge forward like that, to feel the impact in his hand and wrist as the knife plunged into the solid chest of the stunned paramedic. His stomach lurched again.

"Pull over!" Eddie gasped at the taxi driver. "I think I'm going to be sick!"

"We won't keep you too long, Mr Dean. You've already been very helpful, but we'd just like to ask a few more questions," DC Grayson said, a vaguely distracted look on his face, as if under pressure. "Are you happy for your wife to be present, or …?"

"Wife?" Iain echoed, shooting Sam a little grin as she scooted back onto the chair beside his bed and he tried not to laugh.

"Partner," she corrected, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear in a slightly self-conscious gesture.

"Sorry," the detective said, the apology thrown out off-hand and his attention already turned to his efforts to dig his notebook and pen out of an inner pocket of his jacket. "Shouldn't have assumed. Lot of couples prefer not to bother with marriage and all that these days. I envy 'em really – must save a fortune …"

"Partner as in also a paramedic," Sam clarified, rolling her eyes at said partner's obvious amusement at the inadvertent mix-up.

"Work wife, if ya like," Iain offered with a shrug, before trying to look innocent in response to Sam's warning glare. "What? You do boss me about a lot … Seriously though, Sam's been great. I'd like her to stay, if that's okay – oh, unless you need to go, Sam? You've got work tomorrow and you do not want to be dealing with Rocker on a lack of sleep, believe me."

"I can stay," she conceded, settling back in her chair and looking expectantly at the detectives stood at the end of the high hospital bed. "This won't take too long anyway, will it? He is supposed to be resting."

"You sure you're not the wife?" DC Grayson asked dryly. "Sorry, just a little joke. Actually, since you work here as well, you may be able to help provide some of the background we need …"

"Sam - Sam Nicholls," she supplied, when he trailed off clearly fishing for a name.

"Okay, now as paramedics, you must both be in and out of the emergency department where Eddie McAllister and Alicia Munroe work fairly frequently, yes?"

Iain nodded. "Yeah, all the time. Flying visits, I guess you'd say."

"But you'd develop working relationships with ED staff, I suppose? Friendships even? How much contact would you have with them typically?"

"Oh, you know - drop a patient off, complete a handover and sometimes you're gone again and back on the road straight away," Iain said. "Other times, you might try to hang around a little, see how things go with a patient, if you can. Or you might have established a rapport with a patient and be needed to keep them calm, get them to cooperate, that sort of thing. Guess we're all part of the same team. Sorry, but I don't see where you're going with this …"

"Oh, I just want to establish that we're not wasting our time following this line of enquiry with paramedics not primarily based in the department," the detective clarified. "Obviously you're a crucial witness though, Iain, in terms of what happened at Doctor Munroe's home. But we just want to understand your experience of the ED and its staff, on both a professional and personal level. Would you say, for example, that you were friends with Alicia Munroe?"

"Yeah, we're mates, yeah," Iain said, but the already thinly veiled suspicion on his face was getting harder to hide as he tried to second-guess the questions being put to him. "Is this about you lot assuming we're just taking sides? Because that's bang out of order. Alicia might be a mate, but she's also a doctor and she'll have had to treat women in her position before – she'd never lie about something like-"

"Mr Dean … Mr Dean, I can assure you no one is making any assumptions about this case," DC Chen cut in, trying to placate him.

"We're just trying to establish how well you know those involved," DC Grayson added. "You're friends with Alicia – how about Eddie McAllister?"

Iain tensed, thinking carefully about his answer and then wondering how that looked so trying to explain. "It's hard to think about him now, knowing what he did. But before what happened, before I knew what he did to Alicia, we weren't exactly mates, but we'd have been friendly enough, I suppose. We might have had a drink and a laugh in the pub, part of the crowd, you know. I just didn't know him as long as some of the others. Besides," he added, as if it said it all. "He wasn't into football. Think he was more of a rugby man."

"And you, Ms Nicholls?"

"About the same, I'd say," Sam said. "Alicia's a friend and I didn't have any issues with Eddie, I just didn't know him as well as some. He is a fair bit younger than us too, I guess, so you know …"

"Speak for yourself," Iain chipped in.

"But there is a social side to what you all do?" DC Grayson pressed on. "Doctors, paramedics, nurses, you all go out socially? Enjoy a few drinks?"

"Course," Iain said, like it shouldn't even be a question. "It might be a hospital, but it's still just a workplace."

"And it helps to de-stress with people who understand the job," Sam added. "And share the same anti-social hours. It's not all about drinking – it could be breakfast after a night shift, coffee in the middle of a double shift, whatever's needed."

"And relationships … Anything more than friendship? That allowed?"

Iain and Sam exchanged a bemused look.

"You really think any workplace can stop that?" Iain asked. "Look, everyone's professional. Lives are on the line, you have to be. There's no room for error. But we're all human too. So yeah, it can probably get a bit …"

"… complicated," he and Sam finished together.

"My point," DC Grayson said slowly, thoughtfully. "Is whether anyone knew of any kind of personal relationship between Doctor Munroe and Doctor McAllister?"

"I wouldn't call rape a personal relationship," Sam said, her tone turning decidedly cooler.

"And I'm not suggesting that," the detective said. "Now, it's not for me to go discussing Doctor Munroe's private life at will. Suffice to say though, as it is very pertinent to our investigation, that it's our understanding she does not contest there having been … contact, shall we say … between them that was entirely consensual, prior to the alleged rape."

Iain and Sam shared another glance, both surprised by the reluctant revelation and still neither entirely sure where it was leading.

"Eddie McAllister appears to be suggesting that Doctor Munroe has concocted the rape allegation out of some sense of shame or regret over consensual events between them," DC Grayson said, eyeing them both. "But my feeling is that his argument is weakened if no one knew about their relationship, short-lived as it may have been. And weakened all the more if the general consensus is that no one would have batted an eyelid if they had known."

"Of course," DC Chen added. "He could claim simple paranoia on Doctor Munroe's part – a fear that the relationship would come to light. She was, I understand, his superior?"

"He's a first year doctor, she's second," Sam said, still mulling over what they had been told. "But you're right. No one would have thought anything of it. That's not really enough to go on though, is it?"

"No, not by a long way," DC Grayson admitted. "But it's all about building a picture. And we want to make sure we get this right – because, right now, I'm not sure we could make all the charges we're pursuing stick ..."

"You still haven't charged him with anything?" Sam frowned. "At the very least you have three witnesses to the fact he held one paramedic at knifepoint and then stabbed another."

"I know," the detective sighed. "But to charge him with anything … Well, we'd have to find him first."

"Jesus Christ," Iain muttered, tilting his head back against his pillows.