Logged in today and truly grateful for the lovely reviews. Thank you. Harry Mack, here's Chas. I'd already started this but you inspired me to post. Hope your laptop is better!

I wasn't sure if I had enough differences in the voices and this one is the hardest to write as Chas is often around, but we really don't get to learn much about him or have any long dialogues from him. I don't know that I do dour Scots men very well!

Chas drives Harry through the streets to the museum. For reasons which he can't fathom, Dempsey has her car and he's still on the dockside. He rarely asks. He sees the way Dempsey gazes at Harry across the office and how, without her, he's lost. He thinks he might have to say something.

"Was Dempsey…. I mean, is he alright, do you think?" Harry is chewing on her lip and looks nervously at him.

He's surprised that Harry beat him to it. Usually, it'll be in the vacuum left after Dempsey has disappeared and she'd be quietly thinking - he is sure he can hear her sometimes - and she'll offer up an obscure thought that is all too often about her partner. He's become adept at careful answers.

He once thought he might be in with a chance with her. He realised that she was married, but never spoke of her husband. Her sad, disappointed eyes said it all so they'd settled into being friends, both the same age and similarly outsiders; his heritage and her gender in the small office. When a third outsider landed, Chas understood that he could pull the sun from the sky and she'd never notice because Dempsey filled every corner. Later he'd met Moira and fallen in love as his two friends continued to dance around each other, trading insults and setting the office alight.

"He was screwed without you," Chas says after a brief deliberation on honest he ought to be. "In degrees of screwed up, he was bad. Spent a few nights over with Dan trying to find the answers in booze."

"That screwed?" Harry murmurs. "You don't think…. no. Impossible."

"That he's in love with you?" Chas finishes the sentence for her. Someone has to say the words. They won't. There's a silence in the car and when he looks over, she's fiddling with a silver coin, a dollar he thinks. "Probably. Evidence points to it."

"You met Moira in the force didn't you?" Harry says, digressing as she often does. Dempsey is adept at bringing her back on track which irks her sometimes. Her partner is able to read her better than he can these days. As if Dempsey has studied a manual on her which wouldn't be a surprise.

"You know we did." Chas isn't letting her escape this one, he's feeling determined. It's rare to have her company without her partner around.

"If you were me, what would you do?" She starts to ask and shakes her head, and begins to faff with the RT. Chas thinks she's hoping it'll come to life but he reaches down and switches it off. She sighs in defeat.

He pulls the car up in a parking bay so he can focus. He's aware that until her letter is destroyed and she's got her badge back, she could still leave. He's sure Dempsey will track her down but he's not keen on saying to Spikings that he's lost one half of his best team. His next words may just do that. Luckily the Granada passenger door is sticky and he's got long legs.

"What really made you resign?" Chas asks gently and she mumbles that she didn't want anyone to know she had. "Spikings only told me and, Dempsey, of course. He was devastated, I've never seen him that broken before."

He's surprised to see her face crumple and he looks around the car for tissues. She already has some in her bag, of course, she would. He notes a photo of her and Dempsey in her purse taken, he thinks very recently. He feels an unexpected rush of emotion for both of his friends.

"I didn't want to let him down, I thought for one God awful moment I had," She seems to pull herself together, "I can't let me see me like this."

"You're wrong. He would." Of this he's certain. If he was to raise Dempsey on the radio now and explain this scene, he's under no doubt that his friend would arrive with blue lights flashing before he'd finished the sentence.

"You know his views on women in the force."

"Cos nothing changes in three years?" Chas asks thinking of how they've both calmed down. "Don't be daft, Harry, he didn't let you down after Swaeby. He hasn't thought like that for years because of you."

"Yes..." She hiccups in a breath, she fiddles with the edge of the photo and he debates whether to call Dempsey anyway.

"When Moira didn't arrive at the church, I had a choice of walking away and giving up on her, or trying to persuade her that we'd get through it. I couldn't be without her."

She looks mournfully out of the window, briefly lost in thought, "What did you tell Moira?"

"She's more important than the job." Chas regards Harry. "I'd resign if necessary."

"That's what Dempsey said." Harry twists a tissue in her hands. Her next words are a low whisper. He thinks they are directed at her absent partner. "How could we be so stupid?"

He doesn't know the answers and he doesn't think she's expecting him too.

"You're good at what you do, Spikings would be lost without you, we all would, Chas." Harry looks alarmed at the thought of him leaving as his words must sink in. He's grateful for that, living as he often does in the shadow of her partner.

"So are you, so is Dempsey." He sees them as a choreographed dance. "You're gold-standard. Both of you could get any job you liked in the Met if the risk got too high."

"What would you do? If you weren't protecting us all from Spikings."

He smiles at this, he's used to being the fall guy for the boss."They're looking for trainers at the Academy. Dempsey would be good on shooting…"

"He'd also be good at chatting up the skirt," Harry comments drily.

"Yeah, and that's an excuse you've been hiding behind for too long," Chas says and he lays on the irritation to make sure she knows how crazy it is.

Her lips twitch with the start of smile. He catches her eye and they both laugh. He's relieved because he's probably pushed his luck as far he should.

"You said the evidence points to it. What did you mean?" Harry seems to have relaxed, she's sat back in the seat. Whilst her eyes are red, she's looking more like his friend.

Chas pulls the car back into the traffic, "Plain old detective work. He hasn't chatted up any women since you arrived with that hangover. Then there's the A40 murder, you were both out at Ronnie Scott's My mate Dave works behind the bar and said he saw you both looking like film stars."

"There was a band from New York playing that Dempsey said he liked, I got him tickets…" Harry makes an attempt at her defence and fails.

"I won't tell, I didn't then and I've no reason to now." Chas reflects quietly wondering if all they needed was validation."It was almost as if you wanted to be found out."

"Oh!" Harry blushes. "Hardly concrete evidence though?"

"If I ran a stakeout, searched your houses or questioned you both, no evidence would be found?" He's certain there would be enough, stretching back to the moment they met.

"Is that what this is?" She laughs, but remains as enigmatic as always.

"Sergeant Makepeace, are you sure you want to be going to the museum?" Chas idles the car at the traffic lights.

She shakes her head, "Can you take a left here?"