As they walked back through the door of Tanya and Jack's house, Goren and Eames noticed that there were several pairs of shoes by the door, including a pair of low heels that looked far too small to belong to Tanya. As if summoned by their thoughts, the woman herself appeared from the kitchen corner of the ground floor, cellphone in one hand, half-eaten muesli bar in the other, wearing a T-shirt that read: "Pain is good. It proves you are not dead yet".

"Hiya. Drew tells me it's all done, we've caught the bad guys, saved the day, etc. Come to get your stuff?"

"Uh-huh."

"Cool. You know, you guys should come over for a meal, if you have time before you go back. Jack's a good cook; he won't mind catering for an extra couple of heads. How long you here until?"

"Depends… We're supposed to be here until either we solve the case or the department decides it needs us back."

"So you're going back soon?"

"We have a couple of loose ends to tie up first."

Tanya nodded. "Okay. Just let me know. By the way, you coming to the match on Saturday?"

"We don't have tickets."

She shrugged. "Up to you. I'll bet Drew can get them for you if you're interested."

Goren checked his watch. It was nearly time… "I need to go ring my mom."

Tanya showed no surprise at this. He reminded himself with a slight inward wince that she might know quite a lot about him, if she and Sienna had ever shared any late-night drunken Ex-Boyfriends-I-Have-Known-and-Hated conversations. He headed upstairs to the spare room he'd stayed in the night before, hearing Eames and Tanya swapping phone numbers below.

As he rounded the top of the stairs, he saw with interest that the door to the room was slightly ajar. Suddenly cautious, he dropped his hand towards the butt of his gun, and listened. There were light footsteps, someone small moving around within… He had an idea. Standing to the side of the door, he called out: "Hello, is someone in there?"

The voice he'd expected replied: "Just me, Bobby". He walked in to see Sienna standing by the bedside table he'd left some of his things out on the night before. They were still lined up neatly, an Army habit he'd found impossible to break.

She looked up at him and smiled with no trace of guilt. "You left your razor in the bathroom – I thought I'd return it for you." None of his possessions had been moved; she hadn't been snooping. She continued: "Also, if I'm being honest, I wanted a chance to talk to you."

Excellent idea; lousy timing. "I'd… I'd like that too, but we shouldn't have to rush this. Right now I have to make a phone call in ten minutes, and Eames and I have to call Deakins. There's a couple of things we have to do to wrap up the case. Maybe tonight? We could go someplace and talk, if that's what you'd like."

Sienna smiled rather sadly. "Yeah. I should have remembered, you'd have to call your mom to remind her you won't be visiting tomorrow. How is she?"

Straight to the difficult part of the conversation. "She's… better than she was. New medications, new therapy. She seems happier…" His voice trailed off. Sienna was staring down and off to the left, a pose he'd come to know as being familiar whenever he returned from visiting his mother. She'd always found it difficult to talk about these things. "Sorry." He turned to leave. He could make the call from the roof.

"I'm sorry?" Sienna sounded puzzled. He looked up. She clarified. "Why are you saying sorry to me, Bobby?"

He chose his words carefully. "I should have remembered you don't find this an easy topic of conversation."

To his surprise, Sienna laughed, a hard, sharp laugh with little humour. "I find it difficult to talk about? That's not how I remember things. The way I remember it, I was the one who wanted to talk and you were the one who preferred not to." Her expression was hard, and he was struck again by how much she seemed to have aged. "Guess I wasn't a good enough listener."

This was the worst possible time for this conversation, but he felt compelled to defend himself. "It wasn't that. It's just… it always seemed to me that you were uncomfortable around the whole issue." And if that was the case, what was the chance you could ever really accept me for who I am? All of me, not just the good bits.

"I'll accept there's some truth in that. Like many people, I don't have any experience of what it's like to love someone with mental health problems. But Bobby, I could have learned. I wanted to learn. I wanted to meet your mom and be part of your life, but you never seemed to want that." Her eyes were glistening, and he had to remind himself, painfully, that it was no longer his right to rush over there and hug her tight against his shoulder until the tears subsided.

She was forcing the words out now, but he noticed that they sounded rehearsed, something she'd said over and over again, probably to herself. "You'd come home… and you'd never talk, just sit there, or go out… About the only comfort you'd ever accept from me… was physical." Her voice was high and tight, quavering slightly. "I told myself maybe that was good… that at least that was more than you would have if I wasn't there… but it went on and on, week after week, and I could never get through to you, and I started to wonder…" She cut herself off, took a deep breath, and visibly forced the tears back down inside her.

"I…" He moved across and very gently took one of her hands in his. She didn't pull away.

Leaning on the kitchen counter, Alex Eames glanced around the giant room, idly munching a home-made muesli bar. She pointed to the sword on the wall. "That's in view of the window – you might want to move it if you don't want people to see it and get ideas."

Tanya glanced up at her and grinned ferally. "No, I want people to think that if they break into my house they might end up on the wrong end of three feet of sharp steel. You should see the burglary figures round here."

"Isn't it illegal to use swords in Britain?"

"It's not illegal to make people think you might use them."

Ales grinned back, and wondered idly about extending their stay until Sunday and accepting Tanya's dinner invitation. Well, why not? Now that Major Case had two new detectives to share the load, she'd been taking advantage of the slight lessening in their work hours (they only put in around five hours unpaid overtime a week now – well, on good weeks) to get out more, see her friends, rebuild her social life. She and Bobby deserved a little down time.

Part of that, she thought amusedly, was thanks to Mike Logan. She'd wondered at first how he and Bobby would ever fit in the same room, being so different, but they seemed to have reached some sort of weird unspoken male understanding. It was good to have another senior female around, too, lessen the testosterone in the atmosphere, although with Logan around that really just meant keeping it "high" rather than "King Kong". She chuckled. A little of Logan's hey, life's-here-to-enjoy attitude seemed to be spreading round the department. Just as well, she thought, with Bobby in the depressed mood he'd been in recently.

Tanya broke into her thoughts. "He's a while up there. You think they're having The Talk?"

"I'm sorry?"

"You clocked SiSi's shoes in the hallway, right? Every time she gets drunk, one subject comes up in great detail. I thought when he walked through the door, it's only going to be a matter of time… Is he the same?"

She nodded and murmured "Yeah, kinda".

Tanya sighed. "I'd do the whole mess-with-my-friend-and-I'll-kill-you routine with him, but I find with cops it's best not to say that kind of stuff. It gets taken the wrong way. Besides, I helped train SiSi myself. She can take care of herself."

"How do you mean, "train"?"

"Ah, when she came over here, Drew insisted I give her my "Self Defence for Women" course, plus she and he go practise on the firing range together – they started that when she came over, she gets down there twice a week, sometimes more often. Guess it makes sense in her line of work. Me, I don't bother so much with guns, don't encounter them very often. But SiSi… I don't know what it is about small women and guns, but she got totally hooked, especially after what happened just after she got here... For a while you just couldn't keep her away. Every spare minute, she'd be there."

Oh, now was that a dig at me? Tanya must know quite a bit about her, too, if Sienna had talked a lot about her time in New York with her friends. She sneaked a sideways glance. There was a tiny smile playing around Tanya's mouth. Alex Eames had seen Bobby Goren use the same method – the "I'm big and strong, so I don't use my brain much" routine – to fool suspects into acting dumb too often to fall for it herself. It was noticeable, she thought, that Tanya never tried to play down her height, never tried to shrink herself. If anything, she seemed to be trying to take up even more space than her six-foot-two height and heavy build already occupied. Well, if she'd been a woman holding rank in the Army, that maybe wasn't so surprising. She'd have needed every advantage she could get.

Alex shrugged and played innocent. "Who knows? I guess we all find our own ways of compensating for… things we lack. It's not like we can intimidate people with our height." She glanced sideways and up.

Tanya snickered, not taking offence. "Ain't that the truth? Mind you, in my line of work, a body design where your reproductive organs are on the inside is actually a real advantage…"

They both laughed. "What business was that? Bobby told me… she said she was posing as someone's girlfriend to try and get information?"

Tanya screwed up her mouth, frowning in disagreement. "That's not quite right…"

Eames decided to try for female solidarity, sensing that Tanya was torn between whether to explain the situation, or whether to respect the fact that Sienna hadn't seen fit to reveal all the facts about the situation to Bobby. "If you tell me, I don't have to tell Bobby… I won't, if you don't want me to… but it might be useful to know. He's my friend as well as my partner; I was worried when the two of them broke up." She found herself sighing with genuine concern; it was actually a relief to be able to talk about this to someone who knew both the people involved.

Tanya thought for a few seconds. "Okay, but don't tell him this unless you think it's really essential… it's a really sore subject for SiSi, she doesn't often mention it. First off, she wasn't pretending to be Durham's girlfriend, she actually was his girlfriend. He was a real high-flyer, got promoted faster than almost anyone else, lived the lifestyle – flash suits, cars that cost a fortune, holidays, you know how it is."

"How did they meet?"

"He worked in the same field, "serious and organised crime" they call it – basically drug and people trafficking, I think." She shrugged. "You'd have to ask Drew if you want more details, that kind of thing is his field of interest. Anyway, SiSi's new team and Durham's taskforce shared the same building. She meets him in the cafeteria, new girl on the block decides it would be a good idea to do some networking, they have lunch, progresses to dinner, progresses to… well, you get the idea. Rebound, I guess, but she seemed pretty keen. I met him once, he was a real charmer, bit too smooth for me, bit full of himself, but that's what she likes."

"And he was on the take? Ouch."

"Yup. As soon as SiSi found out, she offered to keep on seeing him, and do some snooping. Well, once she got over wanting to kick his balls in, which would actually have been better for her. I mean, they practially fell on her neck and begged her to do it, they'd been trying to prove he was a corrupt bastard for ages, but he was too smart for them to get it to stick."

"How do you mean, better for her?"

Tanya sighed. "Okay, really don't tell your partner this. I don't know exactly what happened, but basically Durham came back to his flat early, caught her snooping through his stuff. He had one of the crooks he was making deals with with him, who tried to kill her. If you look, you'll see she never wears anything shorter than knee-high, always keeps her left leg covered up? Durham shoved her out of the way – they made a lot of that at the trial – but the bullet ricocheted, hit her in the leg. Landed her with much kudos at work, several months rehab and a permanent attitude adjustment."

"Didn't she have back-up?"

"First law of back-up; if it's near enough to get there in time, it'll be so near it'll get seen. No use." Tanya scowled. "Anyway, there you go. I guess after two bad picks in a row, she kind of gave up on men…"

Suddenly, Eames' cellphone went off. "Hello?"

"Hi, Eames, it's Logan. Listen, Deakins is gonna be a while. He asked me to pass this on. You guys were assigned to the case because… well, long story, short version is: the head honcho at the firm the dead guy worked for knows people who know people, yadda yadda. Went to the same school as the British ambassador at the New York embassy. Anyway, he's the guy who got you assigned to the case, but Deakins says to pass on that it was a real tricky job finding that out – he wanted it kept really quiet. In other words, if you want to go question him, go ahead, but try to avoid having Goren screw with his head unless you want big trouble when you get back."

"Deakins said that?"

"Well, maybe not in those exact words, but that was the general idea. The guy's name is Alex Upton, and he's the CEO, based at Towells Construction Head Office in London – you need the address?"

"We have it already – in fact, we've met him." And he acted strangely when we did, which is interesting. "Thanks, Mike."

"See you soon." She ended the call.

Eames checked her watch, and frowned. It was coming up to four o'clock on a Thursday afternoon, and they had no guarantee that Upton worked late, or, if they were really unlucky, that he didn't have tomorrow off as leave. Trying to catch him at his office today would be their best chance, and if they wanted to do that, they needed to leave in the next few minutes. Trying to get the Special Branch team to lend them a car and driver when they were undoubtedly frantically running round checking they hadn't missed anything before the match kicked off in less than forty-eight hours might eat into that time. Time to be creative. "Tanya, can you help us? We need to get a cab, do you know any really good firms round here?"

"I'll run you over there myself – I'm not working today, took the day off in case Drew needed me for anything else. I'd planned on taking Friday off anyway and making it a long weekend, it's my birthday on Sunday and I've got the Monday off too."

"Is Davenport paying you for this?"

"Not exactly, but… Jack's a journalist. Drew knows all sorts of interesting secrets. Occasionally, we do favours for him. Occasionally, he mentions interesting little things for Jack to look into. Occasionally, Jack gets paid nice big sums of money for getting the inside scoop. Which reminds me, Drew had better pony up something good this time. That nursery is not going to furnish itself."

"You've known him a while?"

"You mean, how the hell do I know him when he's the gay equivalent of James Bond and I used to kill people for a living?" Tanya grinned a just-kidding kind of grin. "He went to uni in the town I grew up in. I was eighteen, working as a bouncer on one of the bars – I had my black belt, couldn't figure out what I wanted to do. Threw him out for throwing up over one of the bar staff. We've been friends ever since…"

Tanya broke off as the sound of raised voices came from above. Their eyes met in mutual concern. Without saying a word, Eames headed up the stairs, her heart sinking. This was not how she'd hoped Bobby and Sienna's reunion might go.

As he took her hand, Bobby had to resist the urge to reach forward and gently tip Sienna's head towards him, look into those beautiful green eyes and try to read them. "Sienna… what? What did I make you feel?" No reply. "I can't apologise unless you tell me what I did wrong. I thought you wanted to leave. I thought you wanted me to support you."

Sienna's shoulders slumped. "I never wanted to leave, Bobby. I love… I loved you. But when I said I was going…" Her voice broke again. "You looked so relieved… so happy I was getting out of your life…"

The unfairness of that made him gasp, but Sienna's obvious distress forced him to try to stay calm. "No. That wasn't it. That wasn't it at all."

"Then what was it?" She looked up, angry now. "If you wanted me, why would you never talk to me? Why didn't you ever say any of this at the time?"

"I don't…" He broke off, then started again. "I don't find these things easy to talk about. I know that sounds strange coming from me… but personal stuff is different to work."

"I know you've had to be strong for most of your life, Bobby… I know that you must have had to hide your feelings and just get on with it a lot of the time." Sienna's voice was soft, even gentle. "But, you know, you can get counselling… you can learn how to talk to people about personal stuff. We could've learned together."

"I know." Suddenly, he felt a great wave of depression sweep through him. The bitter taste was familiar. It was the same feeling he'd had every time he considered trying to do something about the situation, whether that was seeing a counsellor or taking Sienna to meet some of the doctors at Carmel Ridge to try and prepare her for what schizophrenia could do to a person. He could never give her children; they'd have had to break up at some point anyway. Before he knew it, he'd said his thoughts out loud. "But what would have been the use?"

Sienna's head snapped up abruptly, eyes flashing. He mentally replayed how that must have sounded, and winced. That REALLY didn't come out right. Bobby, you idiot!

She pulled away from him, her shoulders tight, expression angry. "Yes. You're right. What would have been the use?" She met his gaze and he nearly recoiled from the anger in her eyes. In their previous rows, she had always seemed so emotional, and he'd sensed then that on one level, she feared provoking him into a rage, feeling safer being the "immature" one who was angry, whilst he was the one who stayed calm.

Now… now, the Sienna Tovitz he was looking at had lost that fear, and he sensed that for her, dealing with an angry man much bigger and stronger than herself was not a situation she would back away from now. Indeed, she seemed to assume, almost reflexively, that she would emerge the victor in any confrontation. It was almost… Eames-like, but whereas for Eames, that attitude was a professional tool, for Sienna it seemed to have become a way of operating, a permanent approach to life. What the hell happened to her? he thought again. Something had happened that had scoured out a lot of the softness and gentleness in her nature, and replaced it with this hard self-reliance. Was his loving sweet Sienna even still there anymore? Did she still exist?

"Do you know how I felt, Bobby, when you came to me after you'd been to see your mom on a bad day? Do you know how I felt when that happened after a bad case, one of your bad times?" She was snarling the words at him now, much louder than before. "At first, I told myself that it was your way of communicating with me. But then, when we never moved on, when you never, once, opened up to me the way I did with you…" She paused, then delivered the final blow with deliberate precision. "I realised the truth. I was never more to you than someone to keep you company in your spare time, butter up your ego, and provide you with a nice reassuring fuck as and when needed." She laughed, even more bitterly than before. "Like you said. What would have been the use of trying to build something out of that?"

Oh God. Half of him wanted to scream back at her "You think that? Then you knew nothing about me. I loved you, and when you left you hurt me more than anyone else has in years. I never deserved that. You should never have done that to me." The other half wanted to drop to his knees in front of her and try desperately to make her see how badly she'd misunderstood him, how badly they'd misunderstood each other.

Neither half got the chance to speak, as Alex Eames came through the door, deliberately shoving it open to attract their attention. "Guys, I'm really sorry to interrupt. Bobby, I've had a call from Logan; we need to leave now, I'm afraid – there's someone we need to speak to about the Elahi murder and now's really our only chance." She stood and waited.

Sienna took a deep breath, but he overrode whatever she was going to say. "Sienna… we still need to talk. Really. There's a lot you don't understand."

She obviously bit back a sarcastic reply, and instead said tightly: "Okay. I'll be here later. Find me."

He followed Eames down the stairs, hoping that she was on top form at the moment, because he was torn between trying to work out what to say to his mother, who he'd now have to call from the car on the way, and what to say to Sienna. Is it even worth me saying anything at all? But still… they both deserved to have the truth out in the open, and then they would both understand why there was no future for the two of them. And she could move on.