TWO

Frankie's big top-floor flat hasn't changed very much, Boyd realises the moment they step through the front door and she switches the lights on. Same clean, minimalist décor, same matching pair of big black leather sofas set at right-angles to each other. Same sense that the flat's owner isn't home a lot and doesn't make much mess when she is. The massive free-standing bookcase loaded with books and files and papers that divides the kitchen and dining area away from the rest of the open-plan space still lists faintly to one side, offending his sensibilities. He remembers vowing to himself to fix it. Didn't happen. Mel died, and everything went to shit. He never came here again, not after that terrible day. The big black and white rug positioned under the glass-topped coffee table is new. He scowls at it, not able to easily accept the change.

"Coffee," Frankie inquires, dropping her jacket and bag onto the nearest of the sofas, "or something stronger?"

Once Boyd would have asked her if he was staying the night before giving her an answer. Now, he only says, "Coffee."

"'Please'," she prompts, heavy on the sarcasm. "Your manners haven't improved, have they?"

"I don't remember you being interested in me for my manners." It's a dangerous, stupid thing to say, and he knows it. What's the point, though, of attempting to completely deny the past? Of trying to pretend none of it ever happened?

The quick look she gives him in exchange is reflective. "True."

He can remember exactly how the body-warmed leather of the sofa nearest the almost floor-to-ceiling windows felt against his bare back, how vulnerable and almost ethereal she looked naked and illuminated just by the elegant modern standard lamp beside the bookcase. It hurts far more than it should. Striding towards the windows, he says, "Black – "

" – no sugar," Frankie finishes. "Yeah, I remember."

The view from the flat, such as it is, hasn't changed either. No reason why it should have done. In some places the London skyline is ever-changing, but not in quiet residential areas like this one. Not really. The rain is hammering down hard now, fulfilling the dire prophesies of the weather-forecasters. Ordinarily it would take him forty-five minutes or so to drive home from here. Tonight, in the bad weather, Boyd thinks it might take him an hour or more.

From the kitchen area beyond the bookcase, Frankie's voice calls, "So, what was it like?"

Frowning, he turns his back on the window, on the rain, on the looming edge of depression. He has no clue what she's talking about. "Eh?"

"GHB," she elucidates. "What did it feel like?"

"Oh." Boyd shakes his head, still unable to piece enough of the fuzzy fragments of memory together to form a clear picture. "Dunno, really. I can tell you what it felt like afterwards – like I had the mother of all hangovers. I still don't remember too much about that night. Just jumbled bits and pieces."

"That's what makes it so effective as a date rape drug. Did she attempt to have her evil way with you?"

"No, she bloody didn't," he retorts, walking round the bookcase and propping himself against the wall to watch Frankie as she finishes making coffee for them both. Her hair is a little longer than it was, but otherwise she hasn't changed very much. Outwardly, at least. Outrage subsiding, he amends, "Pretty sure she didn't, anyway. She had another agenda entirely."

Another quick glance. "How's the motorcyclist you hit?"

Instantly defensive, he growls, "I didn't hit her, Sheryl did."

Frankie rolls her eyes. "I was using 'you' in its plural sense. Well? How is she?"

Mollified, Boyd shrugs. "Recovering, thank God. I mean, she'll be in hospital for a while yet, but the doctors say she should be fine."

Not looking at him, she says, "Spence feels guilty, you know. For not believing in you the way Grace did."

"So he bloody should," Boyd grumbles, the subject still a sore point. "I may not be the most popular unit commander in the Met, but I thought the people who actually work for me knew me better."

"We do," Frankie tells him, picking up both coffee mugs from the granite-topped counter. "Did. Whatever. You know Spence, he's got such a big chip on his shoulder that it's easy for him to see the worst in people, and I say that as someone who actually likes the man."

"Mm." Not wanting to talk about any of it anymore, Boyd pushes himself away from the wall and ambles towards her to take the steaming mug she is now holding out to him. "So, you know Felix, eh?"

Frankie smirks, amusement clear in her eyes. "Felicity, you mean? No, I know of her, like I said before. She specialised in forensic limnology for a while. Diatoms, that sort of thing."

"Water stuff."

"Yes," Frankie agrees, pushing past him to return to the main living area, "'water stuff'."

He follows, trailing behind her and half-watching the unconscious sway of her slim hips. Wretched woman always did look far too damned good in the scruffy jeans she invariably wore to work against every rule about acceptable dress code he cared to make. "Well, why didn't you just bloody say so? Why does every single specialist I know take great delight in using ridiculously long words?"

"'Limnology' is not a ridiculously long word, Boyd. Three syllables." She settles on the sofa, kicks off her flat-soled shoes and pulls her feet up. For a moment she looks so ridiculously young that he's cast back half a decade or more in time. Over the rim of her coffee mug she adds, "I've heard she's a bit of a cold fish."

Electing to settle well out of harm's way on the other sofa, Boyd shrugs again, partly disinterested and partly aware he's not really qualified to make an accurate judgement. "She gets the job done."

Frankie's searching gaze is amused again. "I'd say that was unusually diplomatic of you, only I know it probably means you just haven't paid any attention at all to the way she's settled into the team."

He takes the gibe, knows it's not intended to wound or offend. Just Frankie being Frankie. Sometimes sharp, often hilariously blunt. Sparky. Funny. Idiosyncratic in her own way. Not afraid to say exactly what she thinks. To anyone. Looking straight at her, he dares to finally admit, "I've missed you, Frankie."

"Careful, Boyd," she warns, batting the words away, "that's heading dangerously close to sentimentality."

It's as difficult for her to hear as it is for him to say, he realises. He sips his coffee, then says, "Yeah, well. Maybe I'm going soft in my old age."

She laughs at that, her dark eyes sparkling. "You? Yeah, right."

Beautiful eyes. He noticed that very early on. Brown, like his, but richer. More chestnut, less green. He can remember – vividly – the first time he saw her. A half-drowned little waif almost up to her knees in mud at one of the coldest, bleakest, wettest crime scenes it had ever been his misfortune to attend, before or since. She'd looked almost too young to be there, the startling dark eyes looking huge in the pinched, chilled face. It had taken him roughly thirty-eight seconds to discover that despite her youth and relative inexperience Doctor Frances Wharton had a sharp tongue, a will of iron, and a very good grasp of basic Anglo-Saxon. Less than eighteen months later he'd offered her a job with what was to become the CCU.

"Hello?" she says from the other sofa. "Earth to Boyd?"

"Sorry," he murmurs. He offers a slight, pained smile. "I was thinking."

"Don't strain yourself," she advises. "What about?"

"You."

He sees the barriers rise. "Me?"

"You," he confirms, "and that headless corpse at Carlton – "

" – Wharf." Frankie relaxes again. "Yeah, now that was a rough job. There was mud everywhere, it never stopped raining, and he stank to high heaven."

"He did," Boyd agrees, and has another mouthful of coffee. It's safer than continuing to talk. By far.

"You gave me a lift back to the nick, and your bloody dog drooled down the back of my neck all the way there."

"Mary's dog," he corrects. "Heston."

Frankie nods. "That's right. Huge great hairy thing. Probably more than half Irish Wolfhound."

A sharp stab of memory causes him to offer a slight, melancholic smile in reply. "We originally got him for Luke, thought having a puppy might be good for him, but he decided he was Mary's dog. I can't even remember why he was with me that day – we'd been separated for over a year by then."

"What happened to him?" she asks, apparently genuinely curious.

"Old age," Boyd says, thinking of the big, shaggy grey creature in question. They'd had a love-hate relationship from the start, but he'd shed a private tear or two digging the massive hole the elderly dog's interment had required. "He's buried in my back garden. Mary wanted him at the house in case… well, you know."

"Luke ever found his way home," Frankie guesses.

"Yeah." The old, hollow pain flares, and he blocks it with a ruthless expertise honed over far too many long years. He leans forward, places his half-empty mug on the glass coffee table, changes the subject with, "How's your mother?"

Frankie grimaces. "As irritating and querulous as ever. Didn't want me to go to Scotland, then told me I was making a huge mistake when I came back again. Same old, same old. 'When are you going to find someone nice and settle down? When are you going to make me a grandmother? Clock's ticking, you know…'. No wonder my wretched brother and his wife buggered off to Portugal."

Smirking might not be the most tactful response, but Boyd does it anyway. They only met the once, but he remembers Caroline Wharton and her cold, disapproving stare. Perfectly. "Well, at least she's stopped lecturing you about the iniquities of shagging older men."

The answering look couldn't be more derisive. "You think, do you? I still get periodic admonishments about 'that dreadful man you met at work'."

"Sorry about that."

"Yeah, I bet you bloody are." Frankie shakes her head. "Never mind that dad was twelve years older than her."

"'Do as I say, not do as I do', Frankie," he tells her.

"Ain't that the truth." She looks at him for a few thoughtful moments, then says, "This feels a bit like old times, doesn't it?"

"No," Boyd says, before he can stop himself. At the quizzical look she gives him, he sighs. Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, as the old saying goes. "You're over there, I'm over here."

She holds his gaze without any sign of fear. "I didn't say you couldn't sit next to me."

"You didn't say I could, either."

"Oh, God, you're in one of those moods."

He frowns. "What moods?"

"Pedantic," is her prompt response. "Difficult. Just plain cussed, if you like. You're looking good, by the way."

"Thanks."

"No," she says, suddenly all mock-patience, "that's where you're supposed to say, 'so are you'."

He groans. Can't help it. "Frankie…"

"Oh, come on," she says with a snort, as if she knows exactly what he wants to say but can't. "We were never much good at the elegant seduction thing, were we? Either of us. You're here, I'm here. Pretty sure you still fancy me, and it turns out that for some inexplicable reason I still fancy you. So… we can spend the whole night talking about nothing if you want, or we can cut the crap and – "

"Frankie," Boyd says again, and stops. He has no idea what to say, how to react to the unexpected turn the conversation has abruptly taken.

"Still here."

He clears his throat, wrestles with the awkwardness of the moment, then mentally steels himself to say, "Tempting though the idea is, I'm not jumping into bed with you just for old times' sake."

"Doesn't have to be the bed," she tells him, "as I recall, the sofa worked quite well."

"Fra – "

"I'm teasing you," she interrupts with another eyeroll, "and I'm not talking about a quick roll in the hay for old times' sake, idiot. I'm talking about the hypothetical possibility of you and me maybe giving it another go. Seeing what happens if we don't have all the pressure of having to work together making things bloody difficult."

He stares at her, trying to make sense of the words. "Wait, did you just proposition me?"

"Well, only sort of. I didn't exactly tell you to get your kit off, lie down and think of England." She shrugs. "Of course, if you're not interested…"

"I'm interested," Boyd says, the words out before he has any chance to think about them. "Oh, I'm interested, but…"

"But…?" Frankie says, her chin lifting a tiny, defiant fraction. Again, she looks frighteningly young even though he knows she's now the wrong side of her mid-thirties. Young, and improbably vulnerable.

With unusual care, he says, "It didn't exactly work out well before, did it?"

"No," she admits, the flippant, bantering note gone from her voice. "No, it didn't. But we both know the reason for that."

They can't ignore the damned great elephant in the room forever, he supposes. Might as well be him who says the heart-breaking name aloud. "Mel."

"Yes." Frankie sighs, stares down at her coffee mug. "Maybe if we'd been a… well, a proper couple… maybe then we could have actually helped each other through it instead of running off in opposite directions to try to deal with our pain on our own. Maybe if we'd had the balls to sit down and actually talk to each other… I don't know."

"I was so proud of her, Frankie," he says, the quiet words coming slow and hard from some deep, secret place inside him. "So fucking proud of her. She was a whisker away from being shoved back into uniform when I took her on. Insubordination, failure to obey orders… you name it, she had a black mark against it on her personnel file. There was a time no-one thought she'd manage to stay a copper, much less make sergeant."

Frankie nods, the raw pain clear in her expression. "I know. She used to drive you nuts, didn't she? Answering back, going off to do her own thing… Christ, there were times we all thought you were either going to have a bloody heart attack or sling her out of the unit on her arse."

"Came close to both on more than one occasion," Boyd admits. He's silent for a few seconds before he continues, "She would've eventually outstripped Spence, you know. Easily outstripped him. A few more years and… Well, it doesn't matter now."

"I thought it was you," Frankie says a moment later, looking down at her mug again. There's a long pause before she continues, "When Spence came into the lab to tell me, I saw the look on his face and I honestly thought it was you who'd been hurt. When he said it was Mel… it was like the whole world stopped, you know? Just for a moment. It wasn't real. Then… it was."

Boyd gets to his feet, not sure what he intends. Instinct drives him to the other sofa. He settles gracelessly, setting a small, deliberate distance between them. "I've been a copper for almost thirty years, and I've seen a lot of people die. Stabbings, car accidents, suicides… all kinds of terrible things, but I've never seen anything quite as horrific as… as that. Jesus, when she hit the car, I…" He can't finish the sentence. Thinks Frankie's probably glad. "It broke us, didn't it? All of us. In different ways."

Frankie's gaze flicks briefly to him, then slides away again. "She knew, you know. About us."

He frowns. "What?"

She nods, meets his eye. "Yep. Oh, don't look at me like that, I didn't bloody tell her."

"How…?"

"Dunno." Silence, then, "I think maybe she saw us, one night outside in the car park. It's the only thing I can think of. She knew, though. No question."

"Christ…" Boyd mutters, pondering all the possible ramifications had things been different.

"She wouldn't have said anything to anyone," Frankie says, as if reading his thoughts, "besides, she was enjoying the secret far too much to share."

"You're sure she knew?"

"Yeah. Quite sure, trust me."

He can't help scowling. "Well, fuck."

"Quite." Frankie treats him to an impish if weary grin. "Pretty sure she didn't think we were going home in the same car together to enjoy a sedate game of Scrabble, or something."

Those eyes… Oh, Jesus, those eyes… Just when he thought everything was okay, that he could keep a tight rein on the past and move into the future with his calm resolve not to get re-entangled intact… Boyd swallows hard, looks away without risking a single word. One small hand lands on his knee, and though the pressure is light he knows she feels him jump. Her voice is uncharacteristically soft as she says, "All I'm trying to say is, Pete… well, I suppose that we were robbed. Robbed of any chance of find out if we could… you know."

"Could ever be that 'proper couple'?" he suggests, echoing her earlier words. "Well, maybe we were, but even if things had been different and we'd had the chance, it wouldn't have worked, would it? Not in that way, not then. Couldn't have worked, not while we were still both part of the same operational unit."

"And now?" she inquires. "Now that we're just two people who happen to like each other?"

"Now… I don't know." It's not a good answer, Boyd knows, but it is an honest one.

The response is calm. "Okay."

No histrionics. Not her way. Not at all. Just like him, Frankie has a temper, but there's something almost… masculine… about its character. The fast eruption, the blazing fury, the lack of resentment afterwards – Boyd recognises and understands them all. When she's upset Frankie does not sulk, she storms, just like he does. It shouldn't surprise him that she's watching him with almost analytical coolness. No acrimony, no anger. Just… acceptance. It unsettles him, makes him clear his throat and look away. When she doesn't offer any further words he says, "If it's just revisiting the past…"

The small hand on his knee withdraws. "It's not worth doing?"

He scratches at his beard, mostly unaware of doing so. "Twenty years ago, that wouldn't have crossed my mind."

"Ah ha," Frankie says, her tone knowing but not unkind, "I get it. You're struggling with the idea that it could ever be about more than just sex. You and me."

"It's not that," he protests, but he has a dawning suspicion that she's right, that she understands his sudden confusing reluctance better than he does. Suppressing the urge to groan, he adds, "Well, okay. Maybe."

"Why?"

"Well I don't bloody know, do I?" he growls irritably. "You tell me. You're the expert, all of a sudden."

"Go home," she says suddenly and without any hostility. "Sleep on it. Give me a call in a couple of days. If you want to."

"Frankie…"

She shakes her head. "No, I mean it. I'm not interested in trying to persuade you, Boyd. Either you want to try again, or you don't. If you do… well, you know where I am. Just don't leave it too long, hm? It's not an open-ended offer."

-oOo-

"Well?" Grace demands, some fifteen hours later. "Are you going to tell me what's on your mind, or shall I just resign myself to staring out of the window in silence for the next hour?"

Concentrating on choosing the right lane to escape the coastal town behind them in more-or-less the right direction, Boyd merely grunts. He's bone-tired from a bad combination of days of stress, a long, emotionally-draining evening, and an appallingly bad night's sleep, and after a pointless journey to interview a witness who remembers nothing about a former neighbour from fifteen years ago, he's more bad-tempered than she deserves. He's thinking about too many things to form a neutral, unconfrontational answer, so he stays silent.

"I'm assuming," she continues after several further moments, "that your reticence has something to do with last night's unexpected visitor? Spence told me."

Bloody Spencer. Glowering, Boyd slows the car for the roundabout ahead and mutters, "Let's just stick to talking about the Cunningham case, shall we?"

"Oh, it went that well, did it? Poor Frankie."

"Never mind poor-bloody-Frankie," he growls, glaring at the oncoming traffic to his right, "talk to me about Sheila."

"What do you want me to say?" Grace inquires, with a serenity that grates on his nerves. "Do I think she's lying about not remembering Davis? No. Do I think there's any point in following up on what she said about the neighbours on the other side? Yes. The rest is up to you. You're the detective, not me."

"Oh, you do recognise that occasionally, do you?" he says, choosing a gap in the traffic and accelerating hard towards it. It's not quite bad driving, but it comes close.

"You really are in a bad mood today, aren't you?" Conversational, slightly sardonic. More impatient, she continues, "Come on, Boyd, out with it. What exactly happened last night?"

"Nothing I want to talk about," he tells her, taking the exit signposted for London, "and just for once it would be really helpful if you took that on board."

She lapses into offended silence leaving him with his muddled thoughts. Every time he tries to put Frankie out of his mind and concentrate fully on work, something from the previous night's conversation comes back to him, crowding in on all the things he should be giving his full attention to. It's the reason he didn't sleep well, the reason he was back at his desk at just a little after six that morning.

Next to him, Grace finally asks, "How long have we know each other?"

He doesn't need to think about it. "Eleven or twelve years, give or take."

"And for most of that time, we've been friends." A deliberate pause. "Haven't we?"

Boyd sighs. He knows her far too well to believe she's going to give up, no matter how much he growls at her. They can have the discussion she wants to have, or they can have a blazing row, it seems. He doesn't think he's got the strength and endurance for the latter, not today. Not bothering to hide his irritation, he says, "Go on, then. Get to the bloody point."

"Frankie," Grace responds immediately. "Specifically, you and Frankie. And don't bother trying to pull the wool over my eyes, I know damn well something was going on between you before she left."

Was there anyone on the team, he wonders, who didn't somehow know, or at least strongly suspect? So much for trying to be discreet. He grunts, hunches a shoulder in a dismissive half-shrug. "Why ask me, then?"

"I'm not asking you," Grace says, and out of the corner of his eye he can see her gazing at him. "I wasn't born yesterday, Boyd, I can fill in the gaps for myself."

"Good for you," he mutters. It's going to be a long drive back to headquarters, no doubt about that.

"What I am asking you," she continues, dogged to the last, "is what happened last night?"

"And if," he retorts, "we assume for a moment that you are right in your assumptions, that rather begs the question, what the bloody hell has it got to do with you?"

"Nothing," is her placid reply. "Nothing at all, except that you're my friend and quite plainly something's got under your skin today."

They've always been able to talk about things beyond work, Boyd reflects. Within certain boundaries, of course. They know all about each other's failed marriages, about at least some of their individual regrets and mistakes. It's not in his nature to open up easily about his private life but whenever he has, she's been supportive and non-judgemental. And trustworthy. Overtaking a small blue family car labouring in the inside lane, he says, "She asked me if I was interested in trying again."

Grace doesn't sound surprised or flustered. "I see."

He shoots her a quick, suspicious glance. "'I see'? That's the best you can do?"

"No, I can do much better. But do you want me to?"

This time he simply glowers at the road ahead. "You're an exasperating bloody woman, Grace, have I ever told you that?"

"Once or twice over the years," she says, amusement clear in her voice.

"Go on, then," he says with fatalistic reluctance, "give me both barrels."

"I'm not going to ask you if you loved her," Grace says after a suitable pause, "but based on the evidence of my own eyes I'm going to assume you felt something for her. I'm also going to go out on a limb and assume that when she left and went to Edinburgh it hurt a lot more than you expected it to."

"Get to the damned point, will you?" he grumbles, pulling back into the inside lane behind a foreign-registered Mercedes with a dented rear wing. Despite her strenuous denials, he's not at all sure that she's not bloody clairvoyant. She certainly seems to read his thoughts easily enough. Sometimes.

"I don't really need to, do I? It seems like a fairly straightforward situation to me – you were together and then you weren't, and – "

"We weren't 'together'," he interrupts, not sure why it matters so much to him that she knows the truth, "not in the way you mean. Those last few weeks before Mel… before Mel died… yeah, we crossed a few lines, slept together a few times, but it wasn't more serious than that."

"But would it have been?" Grace presses. "If things had been different, I mean?"

"I don't know," he replies, trying to both answer and avoid the question.

She's not fooled. "Oh, come on…"

"I'm serious," Boyd tells her, realising that he is. "Yeah, we liked each other – no bloody secret there, it seems. We got along. The se… the physical side of it, was good. But…"

Thank God she does not call him on his hasty substitution of words. "But…?"

Irritable, he casts her another sharp look. "But I was her bloody boss, for God's sake. Sooner or later, if we'd got deeper in, there would have been a serious conflict of interests."

"Why are you worrying about hypothetical things that didn't happen?" Grace inquires, her tone mild.

Irritation claws at him. "I'm not. You asked the fucking question."

"You're not her boss now," she points out, as if it might somehow have escaped his notice. "It seems to me that you're over-complicating things, Boyd. Do you want to try again, or don't you?"

"Christ," he mutters, losing patience with the Mercedes and pulling out into the middle lane again to overtake it. "I'm not pursuing this conversation any further with you, Grace."

He expects her to continue anyway, but instead she goes back to looking out of the passenger window. The sudden silence starts to pluck at his nerves, and he's on the verge of breaking when she says, "In some ways you're very alike, you know. You and Frankie."

It's not news to Boyd. "Mm."

"Pretty girl."

He nearly winces. "She's hardly a girl, Grace. She's thirty-six, for fuck's sake."

"When you get to my age," she replies serenely, "everyone under forty is a girl."

He pounces on the statement with malicious enjoyment. "Everyone?"

Grace sighs with unnecessary volume. "You know what I mean. Don't be deliberately awkward. Every female."

"Is that a post-menopausal thing, or…?"

The look she gives him is magnificently icy. Even out of just the corner of his eye Boyd can see that. "Remind me, were you fifty-four or fifty-five back in July?"

Boyd scowls and doesn't deign to answer. Every time he looks in the damned mirror he's surprised. Wasn't it only yesterday he was a keen, determined young detective constable with limitless drive, energy, and ambition?

"Oh, I see," Grace says, the words sudden and obscure. "Of course. Now it all makes perfect sense. This isn't about Frankie at all, is it? It's about you, and your ongoing midlife crisis."

Stung, he snaps, "I've told you before, I am not having a midlife crisis."

"How's your model aeroplane?" she inquires.

"Shut up, Grace."

She doesn't. "It's the age thing, isn't it? When it was just a bit of illicit fun that you could pretend to yourself meant absolutely nothing, it didn't matter, but now she's offered you the chance to try and build something real you – "

"It's not 'the age thing', as you so delicately put it," Boyd interrupts with just a touch too much force. Ignoring the look she gives him in return, he says, "And even if it was – "

"Ha."

" – don't you think completely ignoring any concerns I might have in that direction would be a mistake?"

"No," she says, surprising him. "For heaven's sake, Boyd, this is Frankie we're talking about. When did she ever care about convention, about what other people thought? She likes you – heaven only knows why – isn't that enough? Or are you really going to sit there and tell me that the feeling isn't mutual?"

"No," Boyd mutters, "of course bloody not."

Grace nods. "Good, because I always know when you're lying. You get that shifty, guilty schoolboy look."

"Oh, I do not," he objects.

"Yes," she tells him, "yes, you do. Oh, look, just make your mind up, will you? You want her, or you don't. It really is that simple."

-oOo-

Cont…