Thank you so much for the lovely, kind, amazing reviews you left on the last chapter (and the others, too, of course). They really made my day :) Which is why I don't want to let you wait any longer.

Chapter 28

It didn't matter that Kate was yelling at him to stay, John could only think of one thing and nothing else mattered. It was the rage and the grief in her eyes that made him follow Clara through the police station corridors, but even as he shouted at her to wait for him, she didn't so much turn around or look back before heading outside. But John wasn't entirely helpless. After spending almost his entire life chasing after criminals, he had had a lot of time to practise running and by now, he was fairly good at it. Outside the building, he finally caught up with Clara and managed to reach for her arm.

"Clara, wait!" he exclaimed and when she turned around and shot him a dark look, John finally had a moment to catch his breath. Oddly enough, Clara seemed fine after the sprint, as if her anger had somehow fuelled her.

"I'm done with this… this… interrogation!" she barked at him. "I won't sit there and let her question everything I've done in the last thirty-three years of my life, especially not when it's none of her business!"

"That's okay, I understand that," John reassured her and he noticed that Clara was trying to loosen his grip on her arm, trying to wriggle free. He let her go. "You don't have to go back in. Kate's questions were out of line."

And yet Clara had lied to them. She had lied about Ciaran O'Neill. No matter how much John would like to ignore that part, he just couldn't. He cared about Clara, but he was still a detective. And then there was her reaction to another name, one he hadn't heard before. How on earth had Kate dug it up?

"Who is Danny Pink?" he wanted to know, curious more than anything else. John had thought he and Clara were beginning to get to know each other, he had even told her the story about his wife, so how come he hadn't heard that name before when it had provoked such a strong reaction from her?

Clara blinked and for a moment, John thought she was going to tell him. Yet as the sadness in her eyes turned back to anger, he realised that it wasn't going to happen. "I have to go," she said and when she took off this time, John made no attempt to follow her.

The walk back to his office felt infinitely longer than the way out had seemed to him as he had rushed after Clara and it gave him time to think about everything that had happened. Kate was angry at him, he understood that and he understood why, but that was no reason to treat Clara like a criminal and when he reached for the door handle of Kate's office, his rage had had enough time to build up and he would tell her exactly what he thought of her behaviour.

"You were completely out of line in there!" John shouted before he had even properly entered the room.

"Shut the door, will you?!" Kate Stewart barked at him. "I have a lot of things to say and I'm sure you won't want the whole station to hear them!"

"Oh, you have things to say?!" John scoffed, laughing as he did. "Well, one of those better be an apology to Clara or-"

"DI John Smith!" Kate's merciless voice cut through the air, interrupting him before he could finish this threat. "We are not friends! Right now, in this room, I am your boss. Do I make myself clear?!"

John paused for a second and looked at the furious woman in front of him and he realised to his dismay that she was right. Even though he had known Kate for decades, ever known her since his childhood, right now, she wasn't his friend. Kate was his superior whether he liked it or not. Then again, he had never really cared about how he spoke to his bosses. Why start now?

Nevertheless, John lowered his voice before he spoke. "The way you interrogated Clara was unnecessarily harsh," he stated plainly. "She's as much a victim in this as Bonnie Moore and she doesn't need to be put through any more questioning. She came to look at the body, she agreed to a DNA sample. Why would you put her through even more? Why bring up the bootprints and Ciaran O'Neill and this Danny guy – whoever the hell he is?"

"Because Clara Oswald is lying," Kate replied, her voice as sharp as a knife. When John looked at her, it was all the confirmation he needed to know that she had sensed it, too. "She lied about Ciaran O'Neill and if she lied about him, what else is she keeping from us? Did she know about Bonnie after all? And if she did, why hide it if she didn't have anything to do with her death?"

"Clara had nothing to do with her death!" John protested. He hadn't been sure of that at first, but the better he came to know Clara Oswald, the more convinced he became that she was innocent. There was nothing Kate could do to convince him otherwise because he knew it was true.

In response, Kate started to laugh. "Oh, and how would you know?" she wanted to know. "Because you've known her for such a long time? You don't know her, John. No one really knows her. She's been living like a hermit ever since she moved here!"

"See, that's why!" John spat. "I've come to know her better in a couple of weeks than you have in six months because I know that Clara Oswald is close friends with Amy and Rory Williams."

A part of him still couldn't believe why Kate was so insistent on blaming Clara for something she had no part in just because she didn't know her. Was it because she was new to this island? Was it still because John had kept the note from her? Why was she so adamant about Clara's involvement?

But instead of shouting back at him, Kate merely sighed. "John, this is a serious matter and you know I value you for your work as a detective-"

"This sounds like there's a massive but coming," he growled.

"But if you keep hindering the investigation and defending your girlfriend, I'm going to have to take you off the case."

"Right," John snorted, "this is ridiculous. Clara is not my girlfriend!"

"You were seen at the pub and coming out of the cinema together," Kate argued sharply. "Even if she's not your girlfriend, you two are closer than you should be given that she's currently at the centre of a police investigation."

John squinted his eyes at her, hardly able to believe what she was saying. "Have you been keeping me under surveillance?" he asked in disbelief.

"Oh, don't be silly, John, this is Kirkwall!" his boss spat. "There's no need for surveillance when everyone knows you! You can't even sneeze on this island without someone knowing about it!"

He let his shoulders sink when he realised that probably a dozen people had recognised him at the cinema and that Kate was absolutely right when she told him there was no need for surveillance, but what was he going to do about it? Meet Clara in secret? That would make it look even more suspicious. Stop seeing her altogether? That was out of the question because by now, it was fairly obvious even to him. Clara might not be his girlfriend, but a tiny part of him, silenced and locked away in a small corner of his heart, would absolutely not mind if she was.

"What about the bootprints?" John asked, raising his eyebrows at Kate. "You know more than you're telling me. Why? Do you want revenge for the note?"

There was a small flicker of anger in her eyes, but since John was making an effort at a civilised conversation, he assumed that Kate was doing the same thing even though they both knew they wanted to shout at each other. "The note was so much worse and you know it," she replied. "The bootprints are just bootprints. They could belong to anyone. The note was a good hint and I absolutely agree with your theory that Bonnie probably came looking for Clara. But the question is this: did she find Clara before she died?"

John didn't believe it, but he knew that he wasn't going to convince Kate with words. He needed evidence for that. He uttered a sigh before he spoke. "Clara and I are… something like friends. She trusts me. I won't investigate her behind her back, but maybe in time, she will tell me why she lied about Ciaran O'Neill," John concluded.

To his surprise, his boss started to laugh and she crossed her arms in front of her chest, now definitely looking smug. "You think she trusts you, huh?" Kate said and from the tone of her voice, John knew that she was teasing him. "Then how come you didn't know about Danny Pink?"

"Why?" he spat. "Who is Danny Pink?"

"Why don't you ask her? After all, she trusts you." Kate suggested as she made her way past him towards the door. "And just so you know, I will investigate behind her back."

When Kate left the room, John knew very well that Clara had now become her prime suspect and she would do everything in her power to prove her guilt. Even though John was certain that she wasn't going to find any proof, it spurred his determination and his own ego. He would find out what happened to Bonnie before Kate could and he knew exactly where to look next. But first, there was another question weighing on his mind and that was the identity of Danny Pink.