Chapter #15: Epilogue
This is the last official chapter for BBC Ashes to Ashes fanfic "Social Media Backdoors to Crime Networks" set 37 years after the original events of Series 3, episode 2. It includes the 2000 flashback of when Sam Tyler found out Gene's brother Stu Hunt was in prison for his speed addiction and when he first met then PC Annie Cartwright as she couldn't have more than 19 or 20 years old. They also secure a good care package for DCI Gene Hunt's distant mother in law Elaine Downing after her court trial and a conclusion to the case. It could be the 1973 crowd naturally aged to get there to see Gene Hunt as an adult; it is quoted when he and Annie talk about what his old Guv was like before he retired from the police force.
"My stomach's threatening a prison break out through my back as it is." Gene said, but there was a gentleness in his blue eyes. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, telling her stomach to settle. "Gene. What are you trying to get us to say?" DC Annie Cartwright replied to her boss as she knew since a boy even though she was eight years younger.
DCI Gene Hunt shrugged his shoulders as if it meant nothing, or as if the pain of having to deal with the latest investigation on his distant mother in law Elaine Downing was so tiring it wasn't worth admitting to. Gene held up one hand, his broad but ladylike and slender fingers spread wide. "The damn ring doesn't suit me, sweetheart. So you have it, DC Cartwright."
Annie nodded. It'd be easier to work without seeming as if they were going to the same place if everyone else had gone. "I've a few other files and crime reports that could use some work anyway, sir." replied Detective Constable Cartwright.
"Vital evidence!" Gene raised his voice to the rest of the office.
Annie kept her eyes on her computer where she was working on an abduction case, as she gave Sam a quick kiss on the cheek.
They liked it that way, and Sam enjoyed cooking while Annie studied. She was reading up for the tests she would have to take to become a sergeant, and while she was a bit fatalistic about it, Sam insisted that she was a role model now and needed to be good and ready to get promoted so she could set an example for the women of London Metropolitan Police with the idea of being another woman DCI.
Flashback to 2000
"DC Sam Tyler isn't like the other ones, Neil." Annie smoothed out her dress and her hand lingered against her heart and she smiled a smile that was so familiar it fucking gutted him. "I want to make sure he's okay." Entirely his own fault, as well. Maybe if Neil'd paid more attention in the Tufty Club as a kid…
She had quivered with rage. "You think you know everything." And she'd turned and ran.
And in December, 2000, she had grabbed his hands across the pub table and said, "He wasn't crazy, Neil. Sam was right." She stared at Neil and never once saw him that night. He was someone who had known Sam in a way that no one else ever had and that was why he still mattered to her. But then again it had been seven years since they'd dated and Annie still wore the red dress when she came to see him. That had to mean something.
Some ill-advised kid, hooked on speed, had been stumbling home from a rave last night and managed to overdose in the middle of the pavement behind some houses. That was the first bad thing to happen, some boy barely having hit puberty losing his life here amongst the undergrowth and dog shit, alone and high and uncared for.
The second bad thing to happen was that a twelve-year-old girl, playing tag with her sister before school, had tripped over and fallen flat onto his body at eight o'clock this morning. Her screams had brought half the neighbourhood out, and her mother had hustled her back inside as a neighbour rang the police, but it was too late; that little girl had seen far too much already, the staring eyes and the pool of sick around his wide-open mouth, enough that she could barely talk to recount her tale to Annie as they sat together in her mum's kitchen.
"Once he's finished having his temper tantrum, we've got parents to inform?"
"Oh, give him five," Annie scolded him, grabbing his arm to pull him away. "Better the Guv takes it out on a wheelie bin than a suspect, isn't it? Wasn't it his drug addict brother or something, didn't you say-"
"Stuart." He'd pulled the files and computer records on Stuart Hunt a while ago; it had been less than pleasant reading. Runaway at the age of fifteen, drug addict, missing, presumed dead or in prison. "Alright, where abouts do the parents live? Maybe we could walk. Might clear our heads a bit."
"It's not too far this way, I suppose… maybe ten minutes. Give the Guv twenty to cool down and radio him to pick us up. He'll be glad we did it, anyway, you know what he's like with crying women."
The thought made him smile, as he watched Gene in the driver's seat of the Ford Scorpio, downing a Sherbert Fountain out of the open window, a contemplative look on his face.
They wouldn't notice the Scorpio artfully parked as she was, right where the latest abandoned motors went and half-covered with a sheet; no chance of it being scrapped, they'd be long gone by sunrise, but as disguises went, it was pretty near perfect.
The divorce proceedings for Gene's mum weren't going well, in spite of Mrs Hunt trying her best for her boy's old man over the years.
Gene jogged up, long hair dishevelled and tie askew, and hauled the suspect up, cuffing his arms behind his back with the almost effortless skill of a lifelong copper.
And with that, Gene slapped his hand down on the suspect's shoulder, reading him the police caution, steering him back towards the police van as Sam flopped back into his seat with his seatbelt on, a grin a mile wide on his face. It was his little brother Stu who was dealing speed to the dead teenage boy who had been found dead by paramedics.
Gene swallowed, guilt making his throat tight. "I sounded just like my dad. My whole life, I swore to myself I'd be nothing like him."
"You're not like your dad, Gene." said DC Sam Tyler "You had a suspect being mouthy when you were trying to get him into the police van, even the best officers have their limits." he reassured his childhood best friend in Gene's Ford Scorpio Ultima. "Your little brother Stu was drug dealing."
"Someone like you would run a police station. You could be DCI. You could be chief forensic scientist. You're bright, Annie, I hope you know that..." She was looking at Gene with her eyes smiling, pleased. Gene carried on, his voice trailing a little, but a smile slowly appearing on his face, he was proud of his colleagues especially the female ones "Someone like my old Guv, he would stand accused in a court. Or he would probably have been killed. Police officers of this time don't really like men like him." His gaze crossed Annie's and they suddenly started laughing.
"Hello, Sam."
Leaning with his elbows against the laptop on the desk, Sam looks sideways at her and smiles. "Hello Annie."
"Guv, how was the court case on your mother in law, Elaine?" asked DI Sam Tyler walking into the main CID hub towards DCI Gene Hunt's office to get started on today's cases.
"The judge said she wasn't fit for cross examination due to her mental health issues, history of alcoholism and chain smoking." said DCI Gene Hunt feeling angry at why the original CID officers in 1983 never picked up on those and it took years until Gene was a grown up DCI. "and her age is against it too at 67-73 years old; but she'll be in a specialist woman's mental health house trained in these things."
"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that Guv." said Sam.
"My little sister Emma Joanne Hunt has part time custody of Charlotte with me; but my younger niece will forever be like a 6 year old developmentally due to all of this, the safeguarding stuff and being given social media so young like her elder sister Millie." Gene was letting his tears drip down his face in private stood at the window of his office "The girls will never meet their much older brother Lee because he doesn't want anything to do with his mum."
"Well at least Elaine Downing is finally getting the help she should had years and years ago." said DI Alex Drake "And you and her much younger husband Philip will be able to invite her to family occasions knowing it's in place."
"Exactly, Alex Drakey." Gene Hunt quipped at the case finally being closed and securing his distant mother in law decent good quality mental health help.
Ahhh, all that ends well for the Gene Genie with a nice ending for his distant mother in law Elaine Downing.
