The three of them stared at the incident board yet again. They'd already been over and over it during the course of the morning, willing the brightly coloured words and their connecting lines to speak to them and yet they could still not make the final connections. The evidence simply wasn't there. Innocent started to summarise again where they all agreed they were. Kevin Maloney had been kicked in the back, probably by Peter Moore and had consequently died. Why this had happened was unclear but it certainly appeared to be linked to Lana Browne who ran a gym whose accounts were managed by the firm Kevin worked for.

"Right, get this Lana in for questioning," Innocent commanded, "And let's get a warrant for Mr Moore's boots and put some more pressure on him, James, will you? He'll crack eventually, surely." As they moved to act on her words, she added, "James, a word," nodding in the direction of her office.

Closing the door behind him, he waited for her to speak. Her usually very tidy office, albeit for a familiar stack of paperwork, seemed off balance this morning but he couldn't immediately put his finger on why. Noting his glances around the room, him but casing the joint, she came to his rescue, "It's the books," gesturing as the shelves that ran practically the length of the wall. "They all had to come down yesterday so they could do something to the electrics behind. Don't ask me what, but now they are all no longer in alphabetical order. Honestly, who does that?!"

James confessed he couldn't imagine anything so tiresome. She cut him off mid-flow, "Sergeant, why am I telling you and Jones what to do next on this case? Where's Lewis?"

James frowned, whatever difference he and Robbie were experiencing of late he didn't want to drop him in it. "I believe he's gone to see Dr. Hobson, Ma'am."

"I see. About the case? She gave me the impression yesterday that she wasn't playing an active role." James cleared his throat, not sure whether to share the incident between Moore and Robbie, but he needn't have worried. "Unless…" she started, "Unless our little plan has worked?" she asked conspiratorially.

"I don't know anything, Ma'am, not officially." He paused and took a step closer. "But my spies in the lab tell me that Dr. Hobson is now busy this evening and the good money is on it being with the Inspector."

He gave a small smirk at this success. It had been easier than he'd imagined and, given the frustration of the case, one of the few he could admit to having achieved so far this week. However it may have come at a cost, he knew that now. He and Robbie still hadn't had a chance to clear the air and it was weighing on him, more than he'd imagined it might have, and he feared it could yet be made worse.

"But Ma'am, perhaps we just let them be? Don't want to give ourselves away."

She regarded the well-meaning but awkward man in front of her. His suit so perfect, the tie straight with a neat knot at the neck. She knew a little of his past life and wondered how he was as steady and as balanced as he was. It was obvious the rapport between him and Lewis was more than the usual boss and bagman but, like everything involving these two, it was far from clear cut.

"You're right, James, of course," she conceded, adding, "But I'll put a G&T down on at least one of them bottling it."


Standing outside the pathology building Robbie wondered quite what he was doing there.

For the second night in a row he'd gotten very little sleep, tossing and turning as his worries about James' steadfast refusal to engage with him added to which his own fears for Laura's safety whirled incoherently in his thoughts. At 5am he'd given up and simply got up, showered, dressed and began tackling a pile of personal admin for want of something to do. By 7am the paperwork was in good shape, methodically sorted, hole punched and filed, but nothing had changed in the intervening hours, his thoughts remained stubbornly disordered.

His phone beeped from where it was nestled in his jacket pocket, pulling it out and reading the message, he smiled grimly at it before tapping out a reply and making his way inside.


Her head jerked round at the sound of the door, she'd been absorbed in the analysis of some data from a recent PM that was proving particularly tricky to draw a definite conclusion from.

The lab she'd chosen to work from was one of her favourites. People had favourite restaurants and picnic spots, not labs, her brother had teased her when she'd shown him round on his last visit to Oxford, to which she mercilessly reminded him that he had a preferred hob ring on the cooker. "Nothing wrong with the front left," he'd sniffed, forcing her to concede hers was the back left. They'd laughed over that before she'd confessed this was her favourite spot to work because it was bright, the only lab with a window that rang the length of one wall, the bench tucked up against it, the dreaming spires visible in the middle distance.

"That was fast," she commented, spinning on her stool to greet him. "I messaged you what? Three minutes ago?"

"You call and I'm here," Robbie responded with mock gallantry, adding a bow and a hand flourish for effect, but clarifying as she raised an eyebrow at him, "I was already just outside the building," grinning as her face relaxed and crinkled into a smile. "You have something for me, Dr. Hobson?" he added with just the right degree of cheek to make her eyes twinkle very slightly before starting to explain about the body she'd been called out to the previous afternoon.


"So, the man overdosed on steroids? What does that have to do with me?" he asked, "Unless..." he offered, "Unless he also had a lot of insulin in his system?"

Laura nodded in confirmation, "And this in his pocket," handing him a sealed evidence bag containing a plastic credit card-sized item.

He smiled, "A membership card for the Kempton gym. Doctor, you are a wonder, have I told you that?"

Her head tilted to one side, she regarded him carefully, quietly delighting in just how pleased he was at what she'd brought him, but wondering whether how far to probe. Sod it, she thought to herself, imagining what Ellen would tell her to do if she was here.

"Not of late, no," she said lightly, biting her bottom lip nervously as he looked up and caught her eye, both quiet and still, caught up in one another, and both wondering what to do next. Suddenly a loud clattering made them jump, Anne-Marie pushing open the door with a metal trolley laden down with recently sterilised equipment.

"Oh, sorry!" she stuttered, realising all too late the atmosphere between her boss and the Inspector and concluding that she'd interrupted something.

"No, not at all," Robbie offered politely, hiding his dismay that yet again a moment had slipped past. "I should be on my way. Thanks Laura," he smiled appreciatively before making his way out.

Anne-Marie turned to her boss, "Sorry," she repeated. Although Laura had never spoken of it, she knew just how much she liked the Inspector.

Laura sighed, "No, it's fine. You didn't interrupt anything," giving her assistant a look of reassurance and then returned back to the task she'd been focused on.

But she'd lost the thread of it and instead let her mind wander. Would there ever be something between her and Robbie to walk in on she thought, as she caught sight of him crossing the car park now, just visible from her vantage point. Hands in his pockets as usual, his step light, oh she knew it too well.

"Doubtful," she muttered under her breath, "Highly doubtful."


Whatever picture Robbie had had in his mind of what Lana Browne would be like, it was far from the reality. Dressed casually in joggers and a hoodie, sporting a cropped haircut, she looked more like a customer of the gym than the director of a holding company and that's perhaps where he'd come unstuck. But it was evident that whilst the visual stereotype shouted 'gym bunny', her intellect was clearly more closely aligned with that of your typical business owner. She came across as easy going and willing to cooperate, confirming her name, occupation, and explaining how her father had started the gym and how she'd taken it over when he'd died, combining it with several other businesses that various family members owned. Over several hours Robbie and James questioned her on her clientele and their use of steroids, her appointment of the accountancy firm to look after her finances, her personal relationship with Kevin Maloney, how she'd come to be in the swimming pool on the morning in question, and whether she knew Peter Moore. Inch by inch, they broke down her confident demeanour, using fairly circumstantial evidence at best, to push her closer and closer to the truth, until, at long last, she caved.

"I outright deny supplying any illegal drugs or steroids to anyone," she stressed emphatically, "But no, I can't say that I didn't know some of those using the gym used them. It's inevitable in my business to have to turn a blind eye to that sort of thing,"

"Insulin is not an illegal drug. Do you deny supplying that?" Robbie pressing on with the questions.

"I didn't supply insulin," she replied.

"Ok, then," he countered, "If not supplied, how about sourced?" Her eyes flickered at this. "I think that Kevin was a convenient mule, that he would meet you on a Saturday morning at the pool and pass you syringes of insulin that you then passed on to clients at your gym." He paused, she wasn't arguing, in fact her shoulders had dropped as she listened and, encouraged, he continued. "I think that he was an increasingly reluctant participant in all of this and that it was you that argued with him on Saturday morning, and it was you who grabbed him and threatened him. And I'll lay good money that if we compare your hand to the bruises we found on him that we'll get a match."

He sat back and waited. Waited and watched as she tossed up her options. The sound of silence lay heavily around them and still her mind flipped between which was the lesser of the two evils and after a time settled on one. "I didn't kill him," she said simply, staring Robbie in the eye.

He smiled thinly, "No, I don't believe you did," thinking before adding, "But you were complicit and your actions did cause at least one other death, and for that we'll be charging you with manslaughter. James?"

He stood as his Sergeant started, "Lana Browne, I am arresting you..." and listened to the words resceed into the background as he made his way to deal with Kevin's killer.