Kent felt almost peaceful, working on the paperwork Miles had brought. He noticed that it included what looked like all of Miles' recent expense reports, but then Miles was notorious for handing the receipts to somebody else and telling them to deal with it, so he wasn't even surprised.

Once that was done, there were tasks from the cold cases they worked on when not assigned to current cases. The technology people were experimenting with a system that went through old crime reports and checked them against more recent ones, to see if there were enough similarities to suggest a link.

Some of the suggested links were proof that computers still lacked common sense. One suggested a link a murder committed during a jewelry shop theft and a woman named Gemma Pearlman, based solely on her name. Another tried to pin a series of increasingly violent purse snatchings on a pensioner who used a walker and seemed unable to stop himself from stealing the left shoe from a particular store's displays. The link was that a few of the purses and shoes were by the same maker. Kent had actually been the arresting officer back in his uniform days and when giving testimony, had deliberately emphasized that the man didn't resist arrest or try to deny anything. He barely even tried to hide the shoes as he left the store.

Still, the task wasn't pointless. There were a few suggestions based on tiny amounts of data that wouldn't necessarily have stood out to a human investigator, but might be connected. One found a slightly unusual brand of beer bottle near three different rape scenes a year apart each. The beer was too common to convince a jury by itself, but the rapes all falling on the same day, the victims all brunettes, and the same bottle nearby each scene suggested more than the individual factors. The system also found that four recent cases of arson, the most recent of which killed two people, might be linked by all the property owners having degrees from the London School of Economics. He dug a bit more in the database and found that all the owners had graduated the same year. Again, could be pure coincidence, but maybe not.

It was the same ugly stuff of greed, entitlement, hatred, and pointless malice as always, whether he was reading it here or seeing it at a crime scene, but now Kent felt like a different man. Perhaps that wasn't quite the right way to put it, but a man warmed by springtime rather than shivering through winter. Every time he raised his eyes to look at Joe, his Joe now, he felt loved instead of held at a distance. It hurt, badly, to see frustration or just plain unhappiness on Joe's face as he struggled to do something that had been easy and unthinking. But it also felt indescribably good to see a smile, even a hint of one, when Joe spoke to him. Joe even laughed at the Gemma Pearlman link.

He was relieved that they made the transition from boss and subordinate fairly easily. Of course, it didn't hurt that in his mind, he'd had countless talks with Joe in which he didn't call him "sir." Joe still called him Kent but he didn't mind that, since half his mates called him that. It felt real when Joe made him a cup of tea and carefully brought it to where Kent was sitting. He knew that for Joe it was also practice in the kitchen and in carrying something that could spill, but it was also a gesture of caring.

Buchan leafed through another file of crimes that had resulted in blinding. One of them referenced an attack in Iran in which one man blinded another. The victim, allowed to use the "eye for an eye" form of justice, demanded that his attacker be blinded. It reminded Buchan of Gandhi's saying that an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. He shook his head sadly and then went back to the idea. Joe had never blinded anybody, deliberately or by accident, of course, but could any of his actions be perceived as blind?

While it wasn't Joe who left her unprotected, could any of Morgan's relations or closest friends blame him for not seeing the risk and decided that blinding him was an equivalent punishment? Or had the survivors of other victims had the same thought?

Miles had come into the archives while he was caught up in this possibility. "You owe me five quid."

"For what? I don't remember-"

Miles cut him off. "Kent and the boss. As of last night. Since I took the October 15 and under, you owe me a fiver."

"Are you certain?" He had been certain that Joe wasn't very interested in pursuing romantic relationships. He tended to look at attractive people with appreciation, but the same kind of appreciation he gave to a pleasing piece of art or well-tailored suit.

"Saw it with my own eyes and heard it right from their mouths."

"Well, in that case, I must honor the debt." He reached for his wallet and hesitated. "I know we all bet on the odds, but do you think it's a good thing? For them?" He hoped Miles wouldn't laugh off his concerns.

"I hope so." Fortunately, Miles seemed to understand him. "At first I thought the boss had plenty of friends and probably a glamorous girlfriend, then I saw it was nothing but connections. Took me a while to see how isolated he is and how reluctant he is to let anybody in." He half-laughed. "It'd take somebody as stubborn and idiotic as Kent to keep waiting until he opened up."

"That's not as reassuring as I'd hoped for." Especially because Buchan agreed.

"They could damage one another a hell of a lot, but the boss is one of the most ethical blokes I know, and Kent'd happily die for him. So they've got a chance, maybe better than most."

"One can certainly hope so." Miles turned to go and Buchan remembered his earlier train of thought. "I had another idea. About the blinding, I mean. What if it was meant as some kind of punishment for his being perceived as acting blindly? For a decision somebody thought was blindly reckless or for his having been blind to some kind of clue? Or something that's in the spirit if not the letter of an eye for an eye?"

"Like what?"

"That's rather the problem. In our position, we know that it's his perception that's solved so many horrendous crimes and saved lives. While Morgan Lamb's death was horrible, we know that it was the uniforms who left her alone and vulnerable. But are there any cases where an outsider would see him as the one who missed something or put a loved one at risk?"

"Can't hurt to give it a try." Miles sounded grudging but then he often did, especially about Buchan's ideas. On the other hand, he had seriously listened to Buchan's opinions about the possibility of some evil force in Whitechapel, even if he discounted them. "C'mon up, then, time for lunch and an unofficial chat. I'll call Kent, put him on speaker. The boss is still struggling a little with the idea that we're not leaving it to the Yard."

There were even a few things that got under Mansell's skin, stayed with him once the case was closed. The poor bitches the Ripper copycat sliced up. The way the fake Krays pushed Fitzgerald into a corner so the only way out was a noose in the shed. The shed meant it wasn't even a decent drop and a quick broken neck. And now, Chandler was blinded. He never minded seeing His High and Mightiness taken down a peg or two, but picking out a laser, to make it neat and tidy, and blinding somebody, that gave him the creeps.

Then there was the fact that Erica got to him. He'd thought she was going to be just another shag, but it went way beyond that. What made him forgive Kent for lying was knowing that yeah, there was some spite in there, but he was mostly doing it for Erica. Kent figured from his history that it was inevitable and he didn't want Erica hurt. Erica was as tough as nails and proud of it, but she still had a heart and hearts can get broken. So he couldn't hold a grudge, at least not after he'd bloodied Kent's face.

Sure, Mansell liked playing one-upmanship games for a lot of reasons, not least of which he was damn good at them. Reminding the Sarge that he was heading right toward old and toothless, making Buchan make a fool of himself with Riley, and yeah, at first, strutting right past Kent to shag his sister. But it wasn't like he wanted them to be unhappy, he just wanted a laugh or two. But that Erica's happiness mattered to him, Kent's happiness was along for the ride. With her twin so unhappy, Erica couldn't be entirely happy.

When he was over at Chandler's place, putting up grab bars in the shower, changing the oven knobs so they'd click at the different levels, lowering the microwave to make it easier to reach into without being able to see, he'd seriously considered telling Chandler to get the stick and his head out of his arse, waiting for Kent to get back, then pressing some rubbers into their grateful hands and making his exit. Maybe they wouldn't even need the rubbers, since they both gave blood every single drive. But still, it was tidier so probably Chandler was all for rubbers. Unless underneath it all he was one kinky devil. You never know with the repressed types. And that was where he was stopping this train of thought, thank you very much.

Back to the case. "So how would we figure that out, who might think that the boss was blind about something? I suppose we can get the family files for victims, search their social media, see if anybody mentions police or people in general being blind." It didn't sound that likely, but then crazier things had happened.

"We did go through all the threats," Riley said, slowly. "But we were just looking for threats about him specifically or threats to blind somebody. We can go through again and look for references to seeing in general. Things like 'you couldn't see what was in front of you.'"

"Perhaps religious threats, too," Buchan added. "Since the origin of the phrase is Biblical-"

"Won't do us much good if we don't have copies of the threats. We can't quite go and ask for another look at them," Miles interrupted.

Buchan preened. "Fortunately, we're not in that predicament. I created copies of all of the threats, to add to the archives. Perhaps it was premature to do so before they were officially entered, but since there's some uncertainty about the future of the archives, I thought it best."

Riley patted him on the arm when he said that about the future of the archives, but Mansell wasn't one for speeches, or at least ones by Buchan. "You got them?"

"Yes, I can make copies for the team. Quite covertly, of course." He seemed to cheer up a bit at that and Mansell wondered if he fancied himself James Bond, too. Not that Mansell would refuse if somebody promised him all the gear and cars and cool suits that were never too stuffed shirt. Erica would look really good in some of the things the women wore, too.

"Let's take a closer look at the victims' families. Maybe not the first victims, but the ones after them." Riley was getting into this.

Kent's voice wasn't audible through the speaker, so Miles grabbed the phone and held it to his ear, then said, "Kent said let's look at the killers' families, too. Maybe some of them got a hold of the rumor that Chandler was executing them. Or that he should have been able to catch them alive." He looked around the table. "Right, then. Mansell, you and Riley take the threats. Check for hidden messages and anything about seeing things. Buchan, you look for religious references. Me and Kent'll take the killers' families."