Happy New Year all! I'm ever so sorry and have pretty much no reason for being away so long, save that work has been hell. However, I have a story to finish and I hope you still want to read it! Jessie xx

Good-bye

Sandra leant back in the chair of Gerry's desk. She ran a hand over her tired eyes and sighed heavily. It was approaching half past eight in the morning, she could hear the sounds of the station rising for the day as the UCOS underground wound up for the duration. Up until twenty minutes before, they had been non-stop, assessing, arresting, interrogating, rectifying. Now, the final duties of the police case were done with and the sinking reality was threatening to close over once more. She closed her eyes and slowly ran over the events of the previous few hours.

They'd arrived back at the station to the gratitude of the desk sergeant and the irk of the uniformed sergeant who were locked in horns over what to do with the remains of the case which had essentially been put in the holding cells with the pawns who hadn't managed to evade the arrest. Gerry had quickly pulled Sandra's rank for her and settled the argument quite firmly over who was in charge. Steve had meanwhile ushered Sandra and Fisher through to UCOS without anyone noticing; whereupon Fisher had ensconced himself at Nick's desk and Sandra had sat on the red sofa waiting for some sense to form based on what she could see in front of her in terms of Steve's notes and the evidence board. She'd overseen interview after argument after interview as Steve and Gerry took turns with the uniformed sergeant in the room opposite the few gang members they had. Fisher forced himself to drink instant coffee. Steve had rushed out with a uniform team in one direction with Gerry heading another in the opposite to accost the targets whose charge sheets had considerably lengthened over the course of the evening. Sandra had signed off all the necessary paperwork, fought with her emotions as she'd actually come face to face with the bastards responsible for her being woken up in the middle of the night. And now it was all over. For them at least. Now both sides of the story would carry on their own lives, dealing with the blows dealt by the other. Sandra couldn't help but feel her side had come off worse.

"Do you know what it is?"

The smarmy, slightly tired, voice of Stephen bastard Fisher permeated her bitter musings which were the only things keeping her from breaking into unknown realms of … hate? Panic? Fear? Sure, they had halted the criminal proceedings of a nasty group of people; but they had halted her life, her husband's… no, she couldn't even think… mind a halt was only a temporary word – apparently her unconscious governing of the lexical choices of her thoughts was on her side at least. Hopefully it knew something more than her. All those theories of life being like a record that just keeps playing on into eternity… maybe this could lock with the line she'd heard in a film, that we only use ten percent of our brain: the memories of how it all plays out already stored in some locked schema. If only she knew what she was thinking, desperately thinking to avoid reality. The reality where Stephen bastard Fisher had just asked her a question.

"Sorry, what?"

He cleared his throat with an element of exasperation that she hadn't been giving him the full attention he deserved. As if he deserved any of her attention, she thought angrily as she forced herself to listen as he repeated his question.

"Do you know what it is?"

'It'? What the hell was 'it'? Had some peculiar foreign bird flown into the office and was he questioning her avian knowledge? He'd be hard pushed for an answer there then. Her father had tried to interest her in bird-watching; she'd managed to stretch to learning that female blackbirds were brown. With a tired mind she tried to take in her surroundings to wok out what he was asking about; having established quickly that there had indeed been no invasion of tropical flying beasts, she realised that his gaze was resting on her hand which was settled on what she and Rob had happily termed 'pie' for the meantime. "Oh," she replied with dawning comprehension. "No, no we decided not to know."

It sounded so simple. Her words were quiet and hardly touched the subdued velvet of the room. It felt odd to be having a normal conversation. In the context of the night, their situation and even who they were, it was even odder. But, as she glanced at her companion, still with his feet up on the corner of Nick's desk, she saw no malice in him.

"Yes," he agreed. "So much in life is certain. It's nice that there can still be … I always thought I would have preferred not to know."

Somewhere in the surreal treacle that they were suspended in, her curiosity stirred. She realised as she looked more closely at the man that she knew next to nothing about him. Why should she? Their paths hardly crossed and when they did it was only in some troublesome manner. This was a man who'd known Robert when he was young though, he was a part of her husband's past which surely mounted him some status in her concern. She didn't push him, just waited for him to make eye-contact to suggest that he could carry on talking.

For his part he sighed as he locked eyes with the blue-eyed beauty that Robert Strickland had chosen to take a second chance at life with. He had no motive or reason behind his words. He'd asked only to break the stifling silence. "Susan Ellis," he drew a sharp breath after her name.

"The journalist?" Sandra recalled suddenly as he hesitated. "She was killed in Afghanistan. I never knew…"

"No one did," he smiled as he remembered fondly. "She sent me a text message when they landed. She hadn't told them at work and so when the call came, she went. It would have been a little boy."

Sandra couldn't help but feel his sadness with him as his voice stumbled and his eyes closed briefly.

"I would have had a son," he re-gathered his resources as he stared at the toe of his brightly polished shoes. "But… some things aren't meant to be. You can't fall in love in the security services, far too likely that one of you will get killed. She wasn't really a journalist, you understand, but the whole affair was rather public."

Sandra nodded. It wasn't the policy of the British government to admit that the secret services were exactly where they were meant to be at times. Like gas explosions in Central London that were actually designed to kill members of the service.

"I suppose I always envied Robert that," Fisher continued. "The opportunity to have a life, a family."

He met her eye squarely and she knew that it was as close as he would come to admitting that Robert was the better man and that he didn't deserve to be lying in a hospital bed while the man who'd manoeuvred the sting on the organised crime ring selling information and weapons to terrorist groups sat ruminating on the past. She was saved from formulating a reply by Gerry returning from the final errands of the job.

"Right, strewth," the Cockney announced his arrival. In one glance he felt bilious contempt at the 'man from intelligence' with his feet up on his old desk and the surge of protective compassion that he'd grown used to over the years for the woman sitting at his actual desk. "Everything's sorted. There's two of your boys at the desk, so I suggest you leave through the back door."

Fisher nodded curtly, his usual superior sneer of amusement returned to his expression as he stood up. "Well, it would appear you don't need me anymore."

"Did we ever?" Gerry spat bitterly. The day that man had turned up in the UCOS office with an ancient case of Abigail Padua had spelled unnecessary. Now though, the whole business was surely settled: though why it had to have ended the way it did was beyond understanding. It hadn't taken them long to batter out of Fisher that he was after Carl Dillon, Rob's attempts having failed previously. Well now he had him. Which at least meant that some good would come out of tonight. The most cynical part of Gerry's mind suspected that the additional charges of assault on police officers had also been part of Fisher's plan and was insanely angry at the idea.

Fisher stood and lifted his coat up, folding it carefully over his arm. He felt compelled to have the last word, as usual, but looking at the fury on Standing's face over the levels of collateral damage he deemed suitable he simply nodded at the older man and sought to meet Pullman's gaze one last time.

"Thank you Stephen," she spoke before he could. He wouldn't apologise for any of the events. He wouldn't wish Rob well. Whether he genuinely cared for her husband or not, he'd already made his play and it was up to her if she wanted to convince Gerry of the smarmy git's humanity. "Goodbye."

"Come on," Gerry said softly. "I'll drive you back to the hospital."

Sandra smiled sadly, they'd tied up the case, caught the criminals, handed them over to the appropriate authorities, said goodbye to Stephen Fisher; now there was only one place she needed to be.