A hammering at the door and a cheerful salutation awoke Laura in the morning, and she stumbled sleepily to her feet to let in Murphy. It confused her when she opened the door to discover him out in the corridor, instead of outside the front door, and she frowned at him for several moments before it clicked that he had spent the night in the bedroom. He grinned at her, annoyingly wide awake.
"Don't tell me, let me guess. You spent all last night sitting up, talking about old times?"
"Not exactly." She stifled a yawn. "I don't think we were all that late. We did talk, though. About the jewels. It's quite nice playing jewel thief, gloating over the spoils."
"Just as long as you don't get a taste for it." He looked about. "So where is the Prince Of Annoying?"
"Steele?" She looked instinctively to the rug before the fire. The fire was still there, glowing softly; but the pillow now rested neatly on the arm of a chair. There was no sprawled figure enjoying the last of the heat. Nobody smiling cheerfully back at her. Steele had gone. Laura felt a pang of regret. So he had left, then; slipped out in the night whilst she slept. She wasn't sure whether to be angry, upset, or glad that he had saved her the pain of an awkward farewell.
"Run off?" Murphy headed for the safe. "I guess it makes sense, since we're on our way to see the police. You put the jewels in here?"
"Don't look like that. He hasn't taken them. He promised he wouldn't."
"Did I say anything?" He opened the safe and hauled out the box, opening it up to look over the contents. Seven green emeralds blinked back at him, nestled in their cushioning tray. Five pearls, two blue diamonds, one giant black opal. And in the bottom of the box, in a small, cushioned box of their own, the famous Honeymoon Diamonds lay in their quiet, muted brown splendour. Laura tried not to let her sigh of relief be too audible.
"See," she said, hoping to mask the sigh. Murphy nodded.
"Yeah, okay. It just made me suspicious, that's all. When a guy like that disappears into the night..."
"It doesn't hurt to have a little trust, you know."
"It does when You Know Who is the one you're trusting." He smiled. "Okay, I was wrong. I can admit it."
"And very graciously, too." She shut the safe, then snatched up assorted pillows and blankets from the sofa and headed towards the bathroom. "I'm going to get freshened up. I'll be as quick as I can. Do you want breakfast?"
"No. Better not. I'd rather just get that woman in police custody and get all of this over with."
"Fair enough." She disappeared, and he settled down on the settee to wait for her, watching the flickering fire. It was hard not to think about Steele spending the night in this room with Laura, and he wondered if the old jealousy was resurfacing again. After his marriage he had ceased to think of Laura that way, even after the divorce - or he thought that he had. Maybe he had been wrong.
"Penny for them?" Reappearing with remarkable alacrity from the direction of the bathroom, Laura flashed him one of her brightest smiles. Murphy almost jumped, as though he suspected that his private thoughts had been broadcasting themselves at high volume.
"What? Oh, nothing. I was just, um..."
"Just in dream land. Yes, I noticed." She drew back the curtains, flooding the room with light, then turned off the fire and flashed him a smile. "Still sleepy?"
"I suppose I must be." He jumped to his feet and picked up the jewellery case. "We should get moving. You okay with dear Miss Brock, or would you rather I took her?"
"I'll do it. You just keep a good hold of that case." She disappeared off to the bedroom, where Eleanor Brock was still handcuffed, glowering, to the bed, and chained her own wrist to one of her prisoner's. Brock's remarkably icy stare followed her every move, and it was something of a relief to get back into the perpetually warm company of Murphy. He waited for her to join him before he opened the front door, and then led the way down the long flight of steps into the street.
"So did you get some kind of contact address for What's His Name?" he asked as they descended. Laura shook her head.
"No." For a moment she looked wistful, and he felt his insides churning. Damn. Yes, definitely jealousy then. "You know what he's like though."
"All too well, Laura. All too well." They reached his car and he unlocked it. "You ready for this?"
"Yes, I'm ready. Everything's fine, right? I mean, even with You Know Who involved, there's not a lot that can realistically go wrong. Leaving our potential utter ruin aside, anyway."
"That's the spirit." He smiled, sliding behind the wheel, waiting for her and Brock to take up residence on the back seat. "It's all downhill from here." It sounded hopeful, anyway, even if he didn't believe a word. When Steele was involved it was plain good sense to expect trouble.
Jacques Trovian was a tall, rapier-thin man, with a thin black moustache, a well-gelled head of thin black hair, and thin but ferocious eyebrows. Dark, sharp eyes glared out at the world from a thin, sallow face, and a thin-lipped mouth marked a straight line that showed no warmth to anyone. Laura and Murphy smiled their greetings to him, but his interest, clearly, was directed at nothing but the case of jewels.
"This is Monsieur Trovian." Lieutenant Rose, a dour but oddly charismatic detective with whom Laura and Murphy were well acquainted, performed a rudimentary introduction. Trovian showed no desire for conversation, or even to shake hands.
"My collection, lieutenant?" he asked. His voice was clipped and precise, the accent only very slightly French. Rose shot the two civilian detectives a brief smile.
"Miss Holt and Mr Michaels have gone to a lot of trouble to retrieve your jewels, Monsieur Trovian." He rather mangled the pronunciation of the title, but Trovian didn't seem to notice. "They were able to capture the thief, and from her we're hoping to find the location of the rest of her gang."
"Yes, yes." Trovian didn't give a damn. "My collection, lieutenant. If you would be so kind."
"Yes sir. Of course." Rose pushed the case across the top of his desk. "I can't let you take it away with you just yet, but of course you're perfectly entitled to look through it. I was just about to call up a jeweller who advises the department from time to--"
"There'll be no need of that now, lieutenant." Trovian stepped forward, his body language anxious even though his facial expression hadn't changed. He pulled a jeweller's eyepiece from a little bag extracted from somewhere about his person, then opened the case with hands that almost trembled. Laura was stung by a sudden desire to laugh.
"Well I want to thank you, anyway." Leaving Trovian to his anxious study, Rose turned back to the two detectives. "You're okay? That woman looked a right cold fish."
"She is." Murphy sat down on the corner of Rose's desk. "Thanks for meeting us downstairs."
"Hey, when you turn up with stolen jewels and the person who stole them, you're entitled to the VIP treatment." Rose's smiles were rare, but he flashed them a warm one now. "I think we've got the report finished, but I'd prefer it if you both stuck around here for a little bit longer. There might be some creases to iron out."
"We're not in any hurry." Laura had no desire to go back to the office just now, and certainly not to her empty house, with its memories of the previous night spent there with Steele. He had come back into her life so suddenly, and had left so suddenly, and yet again she had to pick up the pieces and get on with things, and try not to wonder if he would ever return. A busy police station, with questions to answer and details to analyse, had to be better than that.
"I'll have plenty of coffee laid on." Rose looked over at Trovian, who was in the midst of an examination of the emeralds. "Now, you said that this phoney Steele helped you to get the jewels back? That it turned out he wasn't involved with the robbery at all?"
"His story was pretty convincing." Murphy was thinking a number of not entirely complimentary things about Steele, but he kept his face neutral, and his voice businesslike. "He was very useful in the end."
"I'll consider withdrawing the APB." Rose nodded. "And the jeweller? Charlie Haymes? I have somebody on their way to pick him up. He'll say what exactly?"
"I have no idea, beyond trying to save his own skin." Laura remembered what Steele had said about a slimy little man, who would sell a friend for the right price. "Offer him a deal and he'll probably co-operate."
"Yeah. From what I hear about Charlie Haymes, he gives criminals a bad name. Probably sell out anybody for the right deal." Rose shrugged. "Still, I suppose I shouldn't grumble if it helps me out." He threw down his pen. "Anyway, I promised coffee, and I could do with some myself."
"The coffee will have to wait, lieutenant." The clipped, precise voice of Jacques Trovian gave nothing away, and neither did his largely impassive face, but his already fiercely intense eyes spoke volumes. They were unnaturally bright in his sallow face; hot with definite anger. Rose raised a quizzical brow.
"Monsieur Trovian?" He spoke politely, although it was clear that he had little time for the man. Trovian held up a small black box that Laura knew only too well.
"The Honeymoon Diamonds," he said, his accent suddenly stronger as he spat out those three all important words. "These are fakes, lieutenant. They're not even especially good ones. Paste replicas."
"Sir, are you completely certain?" Taking the box, Rose looked at the gently shining stones. As far as he could tell they were real. They certainly looked like diamonds - or as diamond-like as something could look when it was brown. As far as he was concerned, they were supposed to be approximately white. Trovian glared at him.
"Sure? I've dealt with jewellery and precious stones for nearly thirty years, lieutenant. Of course I'm sure. Anybody with even a passing knowledge of jewels would be able to tell you that those are fakes. And they shouldn't even need an eye glass to do it." He turned his glare upon Laura and Murphy. "Those stones were real when the collection was stolen."
"Well don't look at us!" Indignant to the point of explosiveness, Murphy had to reign in his temper as best he could. "Why would we take them? We recovered the jewels and the thief."
"Miss Holt and Mr Michaels are highly respected investigators, Monsieur Trovian." Rose was also trying to be polite, but that didn't stop a certain chill showing in his voice. "I can assure you that they're not thieves."
"It makes little sense to me, lieutenant, that the thief would make such a switch. What reason could she have? And how would she have got hold of a pair of replicas so quickly? She would have had to have possession of them already."
"Maybe she did. Maybe she was hoping to get away with selling them twice?" Murphy, still simmering, nonetheless was managing to bring his temper back under control. "That's possible, right? And anyway, where would we have got hold of replicas so quickly?"
"Perhaps from your friend." Trovian took back the jewellery box, shut it with a snap, and all but threw it at Murphy. "I know that you were assisted in your recovery of the jewels by a man claiming to be Mr Remington Steele. A man you yourself had already unmasked as an impostor who was after the jewels."
"Yeah..." Murphy glanced across at Laura, amazed by her continuing silence. "We know the real Remington Steele, so we've come to sort of know the phoney one. We've run into him once or twice. He's a con-man, sure, but he's not really a bad guy. He's hardly in Eleanor Brock's league, anyway."
"Nevertheless. An impostor." Trovian practically trembled in his righteous rage. "I bow to the authority of your policeman friend on this matter. I will give you the benefit of the doubt, if I must. But I refuse to trust a man who claims to be a famous investigator for the suspected reason of attempting to steal my jewels from the Brown Museum. Be sure that I heard the full story from the head curator there."
"We're getting ahead of ourselves. Why suspect that anybody other than Eleanor Brock is responsible for this?" Rose picked up the small box. "I'll take you to one of my colleagues, Monsieur Trovian. You can give him a proper statement, and I'll go and talk to the officers who are interviewing the thief." He gave Laura and Murphy an apologetic smile. "Don't go anywhere."
"We're not planning to." Murphy sat down on his nearest unoccupied chair, watching as the two other men walked away. Laura didn't sit, and it struck Murphy then that she hadn't moved or spoken since the discovery of the fake diamonds. He called out to her, and she turned to look at him with saddened eyes. He realised then what she was thinking, and a look of disgust passed across his face.
"It was Steele, wasn't it. You think he switched those jewels."
"It had to be him." Slowly she joined him, sitting down on an adjacent chair. "Last night we were looking through the jewels, and he didn't notice that they were fakes then. You heard Trovian. Anybody who knows jewels should have been able to see that they were fakes; and Steele knows jewels. There's no way he could have missed that." She lowered her voice, even though she was already speaking so quietly that he could only just hear her. "And he already had the fakes, Murph. He told me about them. Apparently Trovian tricked Arthur Webb with a set."
"Oh, great. So we're insisting on our innocence, and trying to keep our heads above water, and it's all because of him." Murphy looked away in disgust. "You've got to tell Rose the truth, Laura - or a bit of it at any rate. We're not going down because of Steele. Hell, didn't Steele say as much himself?"
"Yes." He knew right away that she wasn't planning on doing anything to incriminate the man, and he rolled his eyes.
"Laura, Brock saw us with him. Making out that he decided to come clean and help us was a good story, but it all dies in a ball of fire if he's stolen those diamonds. We can't look like we knew anything about it. If we'd brought Brock in when we grabbed her, instead of taking her home for the night, we'd be in a lot better position right now."
"You know why we waited until morning."
"Yeah. Right. To make sure that Steele's accomplice got away." Murphy's eyes widened. "That's it, isn't it. She had the diamonds then. We were covering for her so that she could get away with the real diamonds!"
"I don't know. It's just as likely that he took the jewels out of the safe last night, and ran off with them then." She rubbed her eyes. "I know I should talk to Rose, and part of me wants to. But I don't really want to turn him in."
"You're too damn nice, Laura." Murphy glanced up, aware that Rose was walking back towards them. "Looks like trouble. I'm sorry Laura. I won't let you throw everything away just to avoid causing trouble for Steele. He's caused trouble enough for us."
"Because of me! I was the one who wanted to bring in Brock and the jewels. If I hadn't been thinking about the agency's reputation, it wouldn't be at risk now. It's not Steele's fault."
"What's not? That he stole those diamonds? Looks like his fault to me." Murphy fell silent as Rose reached them, but he could hear all of the things that he still wanted to say buzzing around inside his head. Rose pulled over a chair and sat down beside them.
"We've got trouble," he said, though he said it like a friend. He didn't sound like an investigating officer. Murphy glowered.
"There's a surprise." He didn't speak further. He was no telltale, and he wouldn't say anything to implicate Steele unless he had to - whatever his earlier words to Laura. "What is it?"
"It's Brock." Rose let out a sigh, long and thoughtful. "Look, she's a real piece of work, and I'm not saying that I believe her - but it's a good story, and from what I hear she's telling it well. She's claiming she's all but innocent, and we've got no real contradictory evidence bar your phoney Steele saying that she's guilty."
"There's the jewels," pointed out Laura. "She had them on her."
"Oh, she admits to possession of the jewels. Problem is, she said that your impostor gave them to her. She's back there now swearing that it was this fake Steele who did the robbery, and that all she's guilty of is handling stolen goods. As it happens, I don't believe her. She's doing what she can to discredit him, since it was his tip off that led you to her. But she swears that Charlie Haymes will back her up, and if he does... well it's a better story than we can get from some impostor who's already a suspect himself. Without him to make any proper statements, we don't really even have his testimony anyway."
"If he came in to give a statement, you'd arrest him, wouldn't you." Laura didn't need to hear the answer to know what it would be. "He'd never agree to that. I believe him though, Gary. He's a con-man, I know, but he's never been a really bad guy."
"Yeah, well there's something else. She swears that he's got the genuine Honeymooners. I was going to ask her about that, and she said he switched them. I didn't even mention a switch. Guilty of the original robbery or not, we've got to go after him for that. So unless he's willing to come in here and talk to me, he's taking the heat for those diamonds at least." Rose let out another long sigh. "Look, Brock isn't trying to implicate you two. That's good news. Just between us, I think she's too smart to take the story that far. She's obviously got something against your impostor, though. I'm guessing they have some kind of history."
"Probably." Laura didn't elaborate. Rose just nodded.
"You know where we can get hold of him?"
"He didn't exactly leave a forwarding address." Murphy realised that he had snapped the words rather, and dredged up a weak smile. "Sorry. Look, he's a criminal. A con-man, a thief, whatever. Nothing that we can prove, but we've always known he was up to something. When we heard he was in town we were going to go looking for him, but then he came to us. He said that Brock had stolen the jewels, and that he was worried that the police were after him, because the curator of the Brown Museum had asked too many questions. Getting back the jewels seemed like a great coup for us, so we went along with him."
"I still believe him," added Laura. Rose nodded.
"Well I've never met the guy, but I'd believe anybody over that ice queen back there. I have to investigate though, now that she's saying all this stuff. I'm going to have to try to bring this guy in."
"He's probably gone by now. We haven't seen him since last night." Laura wanted to go home. She wanted to lie in bed and shut out the world. Rose nodded, the sympathy in his eyes suggesting that he knew exactly what she was thinking.
"He'll have tried to get away I guess, but he was already a suspect, so he won't be finding it easy. We may not have any pictures, but the description we got from that guy Oban was good." He flashed a muted smile. "I'm going to get us some coffee. I'll try to speed things up, and get you out of here as soon as I can, but we could be in for a long day anyhow. There are questions that I have to ask. Whatever your links to this fake Steele creep, though, I don't consider either of you to be a suspect in this. I don't think there's going to be any fall out for you."
"Thanks. That's the only thing that feels good right now." Murphy waited until Rose had moved away, then offered Laura a gentle smile. She returned it, though hers was a trifle strained.
"You doing okay?" he asked her. She nodded.
"My ego and his light fingers. What a pair we are."
"Don't blame yourself." He took her hand. "Looks like we're in the clear, anyway, thanks to Rose. Lucky break."
"Not for Steele. If I hadn't wanted to bring in Brock myself, he probably wouldn't be in this mess. It was us interfering that caused all of this, Murphy."
"And we were supposed to stay out of it? Ten years he's gone, then he turns up and we're not supposed to ask questions?"
"We're not supposed to get him stuck on the Ten Most Wanted list! You heard what Rose said! The whole police force is going to be out there looking for him, and who knows if he's had a chance to get clear. The only consolation is that they don't have any pictures of him. Yet. He could end up in prison. And what happens if somebody gets the bright idea of wanting to interview the 'real' Mr Steele about his 'impostor'?" She looked away. "For the last ten years I've hated him, and now, when it would be so much easier to hate him still... I can't. I love him, Murphy. And to hope he stays free, I've got to hope that I'll never see him again."
"It'll be okay." He gave her hand a squeeze, and tried not to acknowledge the jealousy that he couldn't help feeling squirm within him. "He'll be out of the country by now. Probably flying back to Europe as we speak, laughing about the jewels he stole from right under our noses." He whistled. "He's got a nerve, anyway. No way is a guy like Trovian going to let this rest."
"Or Brock, if she manages to get away with this story of hers. Without the rest of her gang - and who says they won't back her up anyway if they get brought in - she can't be tied to the robbery. So as well as killing Arthur Webb, she gets away with killing four security guards. And then she's free to go after Steele."
"She won't get him."
"She won't necessarily have to. He could wind up with the police in half the countries of the world out looking for him."
"So? So suddenly he's Danny, or Harry, or Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, probably with the genuine documentation to prove it. He can disappear anywhere. Nobody has seen his face except Oban, Brock and that crooked jeweller. There are no pictures to send to Interpol. He'll be fine."
"Charlie Haymes knows him from before. If he thinks about it, he could unmask him as the real Mr Steele, and that blows our whole story out of the water. Us with it."
"From what I hear about Charlie Haymes, he won't do that. No money in it." Murphy let got of her hand. "Come on, Laura, enough with the guilt. It's not like he doesn't know the risks. And don't forget that it looks very much like he really did take those diamonds."
"I know. International jewel thief long before we met. Enemies and arrest warrants in every city. I just can't help the way I feel."
"None of us can help the way we feel." He heard Rose approaching, and felt a burst of something like relief. "It'll be okay, Laura. All of it."
"Sure it will." Rose handed them each a mug of coffee. "You're not being accused of anything here. Just that lowlife con-man. Everything will be fine, and the sooner we get him in custody, the sooner everything will get worked out. Right?"
"Right." Murphy didn't look at him or at Laura, but he felt his heart sink. Damn it, now even he felt bad for Steele, even if just for Laura's sake; and beside him he knew that she would only be feeling worse. So much for the optimism they had both been feeling at the start of the day. Rose sat back down beside them.
"Ready for more questions?" he asked. They both nodded more through automatic reaction than in any form of agreement. "Good. With luck this won't take too long. Let's see if we can't get this creep nailed once and for all." He didn't know how those words made the spirits of both his guests sink. And as he began his questioning, he had no idea just how much they were hoping that he and his colleagues would fail.
It was the afternoon before Laura returned home, taking a taxi to allow Murphy to go straight home himself. He had offered to give her a lift; almost insisting, since he had been the one responsible for putting her car off the road. She had laughed, and told him that she didn't blame him at all; and if she hadn't been so tired, she might have seen the relief in his eyes; the joy that she bore him no ill will. The sense of general happiness. Bidding him farewell, she had left him alone on the steps of the police station, and got into the first taxi she had seen. She hardly noticed when they arrived.
The living room was dark, which surprised her, until she decided that she must not have drawn back the curtains that morning. She laughed at her own oversight, but couldn't be bothered to correct it. Instead she threw herself down on the settee, and rubbed at her neck with one hand. She was tired, and she was stiff, and she had spent too many hours, tense and uncomfortable, answering questions at the police station. Too long listening to reports of Eleanor Brock's many statements; her accusations against a man called David Fairbanks. That had become the name of the faux Steele, in the eyes of the police, and Laura had had to listen to their theories spin and grow and spread. Fairbanks had taken the Honeymoon Diamonds; Fairbanks had possibly stolen the jewels in the first place. He had killed the four men guarding them, and he had attempted to assault Brock - his inadvertent associate - in a crowded café. A member of the public had tried to help her, and Fairbanks had attacked him too, until finally Brock had drawn a gun to defend herself. She had not fired the gun until Fairbanks had attacked her again, when the gun had gone off and nearly injured several members of the public. Everybody in the café had given such confused accounts that her version might as well have been the truth. Laura hadn't really been able to say anything, save insist that Brock was the real thief, and that she believed the word of the impostor who had given her the story in the first place. She couldn't very well explain why. Murphy had tried to tell the story of what had really happened in the café, but with such a jumble of conflicting statements already, and Murphy himself having arrived on the scene late, even that didn't seem to have helped. Exhausted, Laura closed her eyes and tried to quieten her mind. Echoes of the earlier conversations kept coming back to her; things that she had said, and should have said. Things that the others had said to her. Opening her eyes again, she stared into the fire and tried to focus on its gentle glow. It had always helped her to relax in the past. So tense was she; so heavily focused upon the elusive goal of relaxation; that it was several moments before she realised that she hadn't lit the fire. That she had turned it off before leaving to go to the police station - just after she had drawn back the curtains. Somebody else must have drawn them. Somebody who had also lit the fire. Suddenly alarmed, she began to rise to her feet.
"Just relax." Hands on her shoulders pulled her back down; strong, capable hands that began working straight away on her taut, knotted neck.
"You shouldn't be here." She tried to sound cross - he had scared the life out of her - but the truth was that she was delighted he was here. And oh but he had lost none of his old talents. He could have been a masseur, and quite likely had been at some point in his life. If so, she envied his regular clients.
"I know." He rubbed a little harder, and she almost purred. Damn him. Couldn't he tell that she was still hoping to play hard to get?
"I thought you'd gone. I thought you were safely away from here by now. On your way to London, or Moscow, or Reykjavik. Wherever it is one goes to escape the law."
"I had gone. Or I nearly had."
"What happened?"
She heard his laugh. "I came back."
"Yes... I noticed that. What I want to know is why."
"Oh." He stopped rubbing her neck, and she grumbled a quiet protest. He started again. "Sorry. I came back... I came back because I hadn't said a proper goodbye. And I wanted to. I ran off the last time, and it didn't seem right doing it again. This time, I just wanted to do it properly."
"Really?" She thought back to that night; the way he had run off after the phonecall; the way she had waited up all night, expecting him to come back. How he hadn't; not that night, not the next day, nor any day after that. No proper farewells. Everything left open, like some gaping hole in her life. He was right; there were far, far better ways to say goodbye. She put one hand up to his. "Thankyou."
"It's as much for me as it is for you. How's the neck now? Still tense?"
"Not so much." She groaned. "I'm still tired, though. I could sleep for a month." He laughed quietly
"Sorry. I didn't mean to cause you so much trouble. I thought you'd never even know I'd been in the country."
"I'd have wondered. Even if I'd still been in Denver, if you'd managed to steal the Trovian Miscellany, I'd have heard about it on the news. And I'd have wondered. I always wonder, when I hear about jewel robberies.
"I guess I make a good suspect." He stopped his work on her neck. "Was it very bad with the police?"
"Just like you said, Brock tells a good story. The police are after you, even more than they were before. She's told them that you were behind the robbery, and she's made it sound good."
"You're in the clear though?" He sounded concerned about that, without commenting at all on Brock and her lies, or what they might mean for him. She nodded.
"Looks like it. You were right; she's trouble. It would have been better if I'd just left things alone, and let you go after her in your own way."
"Laura Holt, stand back and let a robbery occur?" He laughed again, though gently, and walked around to the front of the sofa. "You did what you had to do. You got the thief and the jewels, and it's not your fault if the police can't make the charges stick. They'll keep her for a while, anyway. That's better than nothing."
"And what about you? How long will they keep you here?" She folded her arms, staring up at him with the cold glint returned to her eyes. It was a good shield for her - a way of trying to make him keep his distance. He frowned, but she could see that his puzzlement was only skin deep.
"They won't get me, Laura."
"Won't they? I told you that if you took those jewels, you'd go to prison. And you promised that you wouldn't take them."
"No. I promised that I wouldn't take them while they were in your custody. I didn't."
"I know." For reasons that went deep, she believed in that promise. "You took them when you caught up with Brock, didn't you. Problem is, she saw you."
"She can't have. Murphy was manhandling her into a pair of handcuffs at them time. Has she said something?"
"Only that you stole them."
"Oh." He sat down on the arm of the nearest chair. "She must have realised I was up to something in her car. Still, what's one more charge? It'll be okay, as long as I can get clear of California."
"Nobody official has seen you. There aren't any photographs."
"No, but there's Brock, Charlie and Oban to give descriptions. The people in that café. Besides, I'm a Steele impersonator, remember? 'Looks just like Remington Steele' is a pretty damning description when you actually are Remington Steele. It's not safe."
"So tell them that you really are Remington Steele!"
"And when good old respectable Mr Oban pulls me out of a line up and says that I'm definitely his impostor? Laura, we can pretend that there's a fake Steele in town, but we can't pretend that he and the real thing are identical twins, or exact doubles. That sort of thing just doesn't happen. I can't get picked up."
"So why come back here? Why not just follow Lucy? I'd have thought that you'd want to keep on her tail. She's got the Honeymoon Diamonds, because you slipped them to her at the airport."
"No. Outside the café, actually, before we ever went to the airport." He shrugged. "She needed a little encouragement, remember, before she'd agree to leave."
"I remember. You held her hands and she changed her mind."
"Exactly. You know, Miss Holt, you should consider a career in investigation." She rolled her eyes.
"Fifteen years on, and he still thinks that's funny."
"A little humour, to ease the atmosphere." He looked at her straight in the eye, with unnerving directness. "So are you going to turn me in?"
"No. If they get you they won't just charge you for that switch with the Honeymooners. They'll book you for all of it, the murders included. Murphy quite likes that idea, I think, but I won't risk an innocent man. Or... whatever you are, anyway."
"Thankyou." He looked quietly delighted. She sighed.
"It's the least I can do. It's my fault. All of this has spiralled out of control, because I insisted on going after Brock. You went along with it because I wanted to, didn't you. You knew what a mess it could create, especially for you, but you went along with it because it was what I wanted to do."
He shrugged, looking awkward. "I wanted to do something for you, Laura. What else could I do? Say sorry until there's no breath left to say it with? I could bring you expensive presents, but you'd only turn them down."
"They'd be stolen," she pointed out. He looked momentarily cagey.
"Well, yes. Probably. Or bought with ill-gotten gains. But the thought's what counts. At any rate, it wouldn't have meant anything to you, and I wanted to do something. I know I've hurt you, and I know that I've caused you a whole lot of tension headaches. Even before I disappeared."
"It wasn't the headaches that mattered." She got up, going over to sit down beside him. "You can take aspirin for headaches. There's nothing you can take when it's certain other things that are hurting." He looked away, and she smiled faintly. "I haven't been very nice to you since you came back, have I."
"Nicer than I deserved." He flashed her a very wan smile. "I should never have married you."
"I knew what I was marrying."
"No. You didn't." He reached for her hand, but hesitated as though thinking the better of it. Finally he took hold of it anyway. "You have no idea who I am, Laura. No idea. I've told you bits and pieces over the years, but it was only little things. Nothing very real. You can't even begin to imagine who and what I really am."
"Yes I can." She could feel a strange warm feeling inside that she knew was the past ten years loosening their hold upon her. All those cold and unpleasant thoughts and impressions appeared to be drifting away. She smiled gently. "You're Remington Steele."
He laughed. "You're not angry with me then?"
"For stealing those blasted diamonds? I should be. Mind you, I've met Jacques Trovian myself now, and I can't say that I'm sorry he's lost them. What will you do with them?"
"Me? Nothing. Lucille will put them with the others, and then who knows? We never discussed that. She just wanted to finish Arthur's work."
"I think I'd have liked to have met him."
He smiled, his eyes looking back through the years. "Everybody liked Arthur. Mind you, I think they were afraid not to. He had to have been eight feet tall at least. I never did work out how he managed to be so good at sneaking into buildings."
It was her turn to laugh. "I'd forgotten how much I used to enjoy your little anecdotes. Actually there's quite a lot I used to enjoy that I forgot about. I've hated you for a long time."
"I hated myself quite a bit, too."
"Stay." She didn't know quite where the plea came from, but she couldn't help it suddenly escaping her lips. "This will all die down, and you can come back as Remington Steele."
"It's not safe. Not for you, not for me. It wouldn't work."
"Because of me. If I hadn't--"
"I don't mean because of the police, and all that rubbish that Eleanor has told them. I mean Jacques Trovian. He may be a respectable businessman, loaning out jewels to little museums, but there's a side of him that I don't want you to see. He'll have recognised the fake Honeymooners, and that's a good clue to start on; plus Eleanor will be after me too. I doubt her case will go far in front of a judge. It'll all be dismissed soon enough. They'll both be after me, and unlike the police, they do know exactly what they're looking for. I won't expose you to that."
"You'd be safer here."
"Safer how? The whole world to hide in, or one city? For the time being at least, things are going to be pretty dicey. I won't stick around anywhere for long."
"But I've just got you back."
"Really?" He smiled. "It's not very long since you were telling me that you hated me, and playing the ice queen better than Eleanor Brock."
"I know. I was angry. And hurt, and confused. It's not easy, suddenly having you turn up. You've been away for longer than you were here, and it's hard to know how to feel when you're faced with that."
"Tell me about it. When I saw you again, I thought my head was going to burst." He winced. "Although that might have been because Murphy had just bounced it off the tarmac."
"He's been waiting years to punch you."
"I noticed." He leaned back, feeling more contented, and more relaxed, then he seemed to have done in a long time. "I don't think he'd like it if I stayed."
"He'd adjust. Murphy's one of the best."
"Murphy probably is the best. You should listen to his instincts. Stick with hating me."
"No. Not anymore." She had turned a corner, and she knew it. She just didn't know why. At some point it was as though the hate had suddenly run out. After ten years the tank had to go dry sometime, she supposed. All the bad feelings had run out with it.
"Really?" He grinned rather roguishly. "I'll remember that."
"Do." A siren sounded outside the window, and she jumped, then laughed at her reaction. "Being around you always did do weird things to me. You've got me jumping at police cars now."
"It pays to stay alert." She could feel the difference in him. From the hand in hers to the set of his shoulders, the sound of the siren had wrought changes. He stood up and went over to one of the windows overlooking the road. She followed him automatically.
"It's nothing. Police cars go past here all the time. It's a respectable area, and we have a good police presence to keep it that way."
"The local community always watching out for each other, and reporting suspicious things, you mean?" He pulled aside the curtain a little way, and peered out into the street. A police car was parked opposite, and a middle-aged couple were talking earnestly to the officers inside. They pointed up at Laura's house as they did so, and Steele pulled back from the window straight away.
"Damn."
"What is it?" She went as though to look through the window herself, but he pulled her back before she could.
"Bloody Neighbourhood Watch, that's what. Your neighbours are down there now telling a pair of policemen that they saw somebody breaking into your house earlier. Why did you have to choose to live in the one part of Los Angeles that still has real community spirit!"
"I'll tell them it was me. I've forgotten my keys and climbed through a window in the past."
"Not the one I went through, you haven't. Right now they're giving an estimate on build and hair colour, and those two policemen are getting their brains in gear." Another siren sounded; another car drew to a halt outside. "Told you. Somebody is hoping to win their detective's shield."
"It doesn't matter." Another siren sounded in the distance, and Steele laughed hollowly.
"Doesn't it? They'll be coming up any minute. Tell them I had you prisoner, Laura, or they'll have you too."
"No! Damn it Steele, don't talk like that. Just turn yourself in. We'll get it all sorted out. Even if they arrest you... well it could be for the better, couldn't it. You'd be clean then."
"And the murder charge? Those four guards?"
"We'll sort it out. We'll get good lawyers. Tell the truth for once. Why not?"
"Because." He smiled at her so gently that she felt she might melt. "I'm not going to prison, Laura. Better to be dead, remember?"
"You don't mean that."
"Yes." He looked and sounded truly honest, which if it wasn't a world first might as well have been. "I do. I'm not going back to prison. I don't care how 'clean' I'll be when I get out. If I get out. That's one of the differences between us, isn't it. You still have all that faith in the system."
"And you don't."
"I come from the other side of it." He cocked his head on one side. "Listen."
"I don't hear anything."
"No? It's footsteps outside. Coming up to the door." A second later fists hammered on the front door, and he smiled slightly. "Told you."
"How can you be so calm! Damn it, we can beat this! We can tell them who you really are. Tell them that you're Remington Steele."
"But I'm not. I never was."
"Yes you are. More than anybody I could have made up. It's your name. You won it. You earned it. You're a better man that any other Steele could ever have been."
"I appreciate that more than you'll ever know, Laura." He took her hand again, and smiled down at it. "Much more. I thought I'd blown everything with you. That you'd never look at me the same way again. It was worth coming back here again to hear you say that. Whatever happens now."
She was filled with a sudden fear. "I'll tell them the truth. I'll tell them everything. About the lies, and about how Steele was just somebody I made up. I'll explain about the 'impostor', and everything else. I can live without my career. A reputation isn't everything. I'll tell them that you're the real Remington Steele."
"Oh Laura. Laura, Laura, Laura." He kissed her hand briefly. "But if I let you do that, then I wouldn't be, would I."
"Steele--"
"No." He flashed her the sort of smile that she had forgotten he possessed - the one that had played havoc with her mind even in the early days, when she was trying to resist him at every turn. "If I'm to be Steele, then let me play the part properly. Whatever else he may be, Remington Steele is a gentleman. You should know that. You created him."
"What are you going to do?" Her insides were doing very strange things. He headed back to the window and glanced out. There were policemen positioned in the street, and others still hammering on the door. They would break in soon, and there was no telling what Laura might try to say to them then. He had to make sure that their attention was diverted; so he shrugged, and pulled a gun from inside his shirt. Laura's eyes widened.
"Are you crazy!"
"Probably. It's only a cigarette lighter, so it won't be much use. Like I said - tell them I forced you. I won't take you down with me."
"Talk to them. Please talk to them."
"Better dead than in prison, remember." For a second he stared at her, apparently trying to imprint her face upon his memory; then he gave her a sudden, spontaneous hug, and kissed her hard. "Goodbye, Laura."
"But what are you going to do!" There was the sound of splintering wood from the door, and her breath caught in her throat. "Put the gun down. If they see it they'll shoot you. And don't tell me that that's better than prison!" But all that he did was flash her a devil may care smile, and push aside the curtain. The window gaped wide beyond. "Steele!"
"I'm glad I came back. It's been fun. It was always fun."
"Steele..." Her heart was in her throat; she wanted to grab hold of him, and stop him from going out of the window; but she didn't. She couldn't make him stay. She couldn't make him into somebody he wasn't; she knew that now. And as the front door at last caved in, Steele went out through the window, hauling himself upwards and out of sight. Laura almost felt like going after him.
"Drop the gun!" The shout came from somewhere out in the street. Laura heard herself shouting that it was just a fake, but there was so much noise now. The room filling with policemen; orders being barked; voices asking her if she was alright; if she had been hurt; more sirens and tyres screaming in the street outside. She heard the gunshots as they rang out, and she heard her heart pounding in her chest; but that was all that she heard with any clarity. The world was in chaos; and somewhere in the middle of it was Steele, running for his life with a bright, bright smile, and all the odds stacked against him. Laura listened in fear for the end, but there was nothing to hear. Nothing save gunshots, that rattled on long after there was any more reason to fire.
Laura waited in vain to hear whether Steele had escaped. The police never found a body, but the letter she had hoped for to end her fears never came. She didn't think that she would ever see him again. He wouldn't come back, even if by some mad stroke of luck he was still alive. Why would he? At least for the next year or so, it seemed to her that the heat was far too great; that it would be madness to return. She said as much to Bernice, when they spoke on the phone a few days after his insane dash for freedom. Bernice laughed; a curiously joyous sound on the other end of the phone line.
"I don't think he cares about the danger, Laura. If he had, he'd never have gone back to see you."
"I wish he hadn't. For all I know he's dead now. Lying in some alley, with nobody knowing he's there."
"Well aren't you the optimistic one." She laughed again, lightly and with obvious glee. "Remember the first time we met him? I said then that we'd never see him again. What reason did he have to come back? But he came."
"He wasn't dead then."
"True. But for all you know, he isn't now. You know what a slippery character he is. He'll be back, Laura. You wait and see." And that seemed to be Bernice's last word on the subject. He would be back - because Bernice was a die hard romantic, and always believed in such things. Because Bernice had always loved the idea of a blue-eyed romantic adventurer, and refused to accept that that fifteen year old story was over. Laura wasn't so sure, for Laura had never been a romantic. That was Bernice's job; Bernice's - and Steele's. Laura had always been the logical one of the team.
And so she went back to her job, and to the familiar things in life, though with a lighter heart than before. There was still the Gerald Paul case to see to its end, and there were a lot more phone calls following the media coverage of the return of the jewels. There was always work; the work that would always make her happy. There would always be Murphy, and Bernice, and all the other things that she loved about her life. Steele, though, was gone; and whatever her friends thought, she didn't believe that she would ever see him again. The world was his playground; Los Angeles a potential prison. Even if he was still alive, he wouldn't be coming back there again.
But she kept the smugglers' lamp in her window. Just in case.