A/N: I'm sorry to make you wait for this. Life is pretty crazy at the moment.

51

Harry had already gone to bed when the doorbell rang. He turned over and looked blearily at his bedside clock. It was past two. He checked his phone, but there were no missed calls. After a moment, Harry forced himself out of bed, rubbing a hand through his hair.

He pulled on a T-shirt on his way to the door. The bell went again before he reached it.

"I'm coming," he called, as he went to pull it open. "Hold on-"

Nikki stood on the step, huddled against the cold. It was clear she'd been crying.

"They've found his car," she said, before Harry could react. "Someone had burned it. There's nothing left."

He reached for her, pulling her across the threshold and into the warmth of his flat.

"I don't want to be alone," she told him. "But Harry… I can't... I can't-"

Harry pulled her against him. "It's OK," he told her. "I'm here. I'm always here, you know that."

She nodded against his shoulder, and he could feel her trembling, from cold, but from shock, too.

"There's nothing else?" he asked. "Just the car?"

Nikki bunched her hands into his T-shirt. "There's a DNA match to Odeyele, from the container in the yard. But he's gone. Crossfair's started talking – he gave the police an address, but it was clean. They can't find him anywhere. Salter thinks he's probably on his way back to Nigeria. He's going to get away."

Harry rubbed his hands up and down Nikki's arms. There wasn't anything useful he could say. With Crossfair and his wife in custody and the other main suspect missing, all they could do was wait. And the longer they waited for news, the worse it would likely be for Ash. But that was something Harry wouldn't voice, not now, not to Nikki.

"Come on," he said, gently, pulling away. "It's late. You're exhausted. Come and get warm."

Nikki made a move toward his sofa, bit Harry caught her hand and led her in the direction of his bedroom. Nikki hesitated.

"Harry..."

"Hey," he said. "I saw you at work today. You didn't stop. You're exhausted, and frankly, so am I. I can be trusted. Come to bed."

On the threshold, she hesitated again. Harry let go of her hand and went to his clothes cupboard, pulling out a T-shirt and a pair of his boxers. He held them out, indicating the bathroom. Nikki took them and disappeared for a few moments. He heard water running as he got back into bed, leaning against the headboard. Nikki reappeared. His top swamped her, and with her pale face scrubbed clean of make-up, she looked incredibly young. She slipped under the duvet and lay on her back, looking up at him.

"Why is the world such a terrible place, Harry?" she asked. "Why do these things happen? All this pain, all this waste... And for what?"

He touched a hand to her forehead, brushing away the hair that had strayed there. "It's not all bad. Is it? And I like to think we help make it a little better."

Nikki blinked. "I used to think we did. But now... I'm not so sure. Saul and Reuben - they really are trying to make the world a better place. But me? I can't even identify that first child's torso. And now I probably never will."

She turned away from him, curling her legs up beneath the cover. There wasn't anything Harry could say to that, either, not least because she was probably right. Instead, he moved closer and slipped an arm around her waist, pulling her back against him. Her skin smelled of his soap.

"You do make the world a better place," he said softly into her ear, as she closed her eyes. "All you have to do is be in it."

He reached over her to switch off the light and then lay back in the dark, listening for her breathing to level out. It stayed uneven for a long time, and Harry knew her well enough to be able to read her troubled thoughts through the unsettled pulse beneath his forearm. He thought about her words as he'd pulled her inside. She needed him, now, as she had so often in the past - as a friend, not a lover, as a support to lean against as times worsened. And he could live with that. He already had done, for a long time, without really ever realising he wanted more. He wondered why would happen now, if Ash were found alive and well. What gratitude would do to them, if…

Harry stopped himself. Not if. When. It had to be when. Because if not, then despite what he had told Nikki and what he couldn't help but want from her, then the world was a far harsher place than even he wanted to believe.

The night wore on into the morning, but Harry didn't really sleep. Nikki was fitful, too, but she was asleep when the phone call came, which was why he heard it first. A low, tinkling sound that Harry recognised as Nikki's mobile. It was just after 5am. He freed his arm, careful not to wake her, and got out of bed again. The phone rang on as he searched for her bag, finding it beside the front door.

He pulled it out and looked at the screen. It was an unknown number. Harry glanced back toward the bed, but Nikki hadn't stirred, and for some reason he knew it shouldn't be her that answered. He pressed the call button and held it to his ear.

"Doctor Alexander's phone."

There was a moment of silence, punctuated by uneven breathing, and then Reuben's Salter's voice came on the line. "Is Nikki there?"

Harry glanced toward the bed again. "She's asleep. It's Detective Salter, isn't it?"

There was another pause. "Yes," Salter said, then, his voice oddly muffled, somehow. "Is that – is that Doctor Cunningham?"

"Yes, it is."

"I called at her flat but couldn't get an answer. I was worried, the lab – the lab, they said she'd left hours ago. Where is she?"

Harry rubbed one shoulder, suddenly uncomfortable. "She's fine. Well, not fine, but… She's with me. At my place."

Salter didn't answer for a moment. "Oh. Right."

"It's not…" Harry squeezed his eyes shut. "It's not exactly what you might think…"

There was a sound on the line, like a strangled intake of breath intended as a laugh. "Right. It's fine, anyway. It's better. That she's not – that's she's not on her own. I didn't want to tell her on the phone, but I couldn't find – I couldn't find… her…"

With a jolt, Harry realised that what Salter's voice was muffled by was tears. "What-"

"We found a torso," Salter said, forging on. "Not far – not far from the airfield."

Harry took a breath, but for a moment, he couldn't speak. "Are you sure?" he asked, eventually. "Are you sure that it's…that's it's Ash? Maybe it's not him. Maybe-"

"He, uh… he had a scar," Salter interrupted. "An appendectomy scar, from when he was a kid. I knew about it. He helped me build our garden wall last year, and it was a hot day, and…" Harry heard the detective swallow, hard. "And one of the kids… one of the kids said they were saved by a man calling himself a gendarme. A big black man, is what the boy said. 'A big black man, with a good face.' And then they heard… Anyway. I'm sure. I'm sure. It's Saul."

Harry stared silently out of his window into the blackness beyond. The unstarred sky had taken on a heavy quality above the perpetual hue of the city's polluted glow. It was that darkest point, that last hour before the dawn, when it always seems as if the night will last forever.

"I'm sorry," Harry said, softly, though he wasn't sure who he was apologising to – Salter, or to Ash himself. "I'm so sorry."

"Did he know?" Salter asked, after a moment. "I mean, about – about you and Doctor Alexander?"

Harry pinched his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose. "It's not… No. We didn't – we didn't even know. We still don't."

He could imagine Salter nodding, but perhaps that was just wishful thinking.

"The last time I spoke to him, Saul was laughing," Salter told him, then. "I hadn't heard him laugh in a long time. And she was the reason. So I choose to believe that he died happy. Because of her. And that – that makes her all right in my book. OK? Tell her that, will you?"

Harry nodded at his reflection in the glass. "I will."

"I've got to go. We've charged Crossfair, and there's a warrant out for Tanner. I want to make sure the jury will nail the bastards to the wall."

Salter hung up. Harry stayed at the window, trying to trace the shape of the oak tree that stood outside with his eyes, but the night had swallowed it whole. Then he put down the phone, and went back to the bedroom.

Nikki was awake. She'd turned the bedside light on, but still lay curled on her side, and she was crying, silently. Harry crouched beside her, his bare feet cold on the polished boards.

"It's him, isn't it?" she asked.

"Yes. I'm sorry. That was Salter. I'm sorry, Nikki. I'm just… sorry." Harry brushed his fingers over her cheeks, trying to stem her tears.

She reached up and caught his hands, looking him in the eye for the first time. "This isn't going to go away," she said, voice breaking. "This is going to stay with me. Maybe forever, and I…"

Harry moved, shifting her backwards on the bed so that he could lie beside her.

"Maybe," he said. "Maybe it will stay forever. Maybe it should. But then… so will I, Nikki. I said I didn't know. But I do. I do."

Nikki began to cry in earnest then, and Harry pulled her against him, their legs twining together.

They stayed like that for a long, long time.

[END]

A/N: This is actually the penultimate chapter, but since the next one will be an Epilogue, this is the end, in practical terms. I hope it's not too disappointing. Thank you to everyone for reading, I really, REALLY appreciate it, and the reviews have been wonderful encouragement. I've just bought a load of books on Criminology, Forensics and Pathology, so maybe I'll write another when I know more about the subject. I know this plot had many holes in it, but I hope that you can maybe imagine it as an episode of the show, which is the style I hoped to emulate. There are always loose ends. There aren't always happy endings. I would also hope that, if you took out the expository stuff and just had the dialogue, that they would be characters you recognise.

I hope that you liked Ash and Salter. I really love them as characters, and I'm thinking I might resurrect them both and give them their own story, somehow, perhaps by stripping out the Silent Witness stuff, doubling the length of the story, and filling in the plot/tech holes. What do you think?

Thanks again, massively.