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We've now reached half time and the plot thickens...

Chapter 30

His expectations for the following Monday were low. John didn't know what exactly to expect, but even after Kate had had her way and interviewed Clara, he doubted that it had improved her mood. No, it was highly likely that Kate Stewart was still mad at him and still determined to treat Clara as a suspect. What he really hadn't expected, however, was to find her waiting in front of his office when he walked into the building.

"Got an arrest warrant for Clara yet?" he hissed, his voice dripping with malice as he walked past Kate without even giving her a glance. Despite the fact that he tried very hard not to pay attention to her, her dark looks didn't escape his notice.

With a sigh, she followed him into the office, but didn't say a word.

Once the door closed behind her, John turned around, examining her silently. His boss was mad enough, but there was something else he spotted, a file she carried under her arm that told him she had probably done some research during the weekend. Whatever the contents of that were, Kate didn't seem eager to share it with him straight away, so John decided to go ahead with what he intended to say.

"You shouldn't have asked Clara about Danny Pink," John told her, his voice sharp and his words as blunt as possible. In response, she merely cocked an eyebrow at him. It was so typical. Right now, Kate was a detective first and foremost and even though John thought he was bad when it came to forgetting about basic human decency during an interview, Kate was worse. "Clara lost her boyfriend, that was bound to be a sore spot. Frankly, I don't blame her for walking out."

"She told you about Danny then?" his boss wanted to know.

"Of course she told me," John said, his voice defensive. "We're friends, I told you that. What I don't get is why you felt the need to ask about her loss in the middle of her interview when it clearly has nothing to do with the case."

Kate's eyebrows shot up as if she still didn't believe it, as if she was still clinging to her insane theory that Clara knew what happened to her sister. Yet she didn't say a word as she stepped forward and thrust the file against his chest. John caught it at the last moment before the pages could drop to the floor. "I guess she didn't tell you everything," Kate spat. "And if you still insist that her boyfriend's death has nothing to do with Bonnie after reading this, think again. Or reconsider your professional choices."

John didn't understand. Frowning first at Kate, then at the file, he opened the first page and realised that it had been sent up from London and that it was everything about Danny Pink's accident. To read it properly, John sat down on the nearest chair and started to skim through the pages Kate had given him. There it was, the story of Danny's accident in black and white. Just like Clara had told him, he had crossed one of the less busy roads in London when a car had appeared out of nowhere. Witness accounts differed, but most of them agreed that the car wouldn't have hit him at all. Instead, it had aimed at a young woman also crossing the road at the same time and Danny had tried to push her out of the car's path. Later on, she had vanished and descriptions only mentioned a woman in her thirties with long, brown hair. John scoffed. It was quite typical for people to forget or not pay attention to details after witnessing a man's death. Danny had died at the scene. He had died saving a stranger's life.

After finishing the report, John looked up at Kate. "That's exactly what Clara told me. Why are you showing me this?" he wanted to know.

"Read on," she told him. "Look at the list of people they questioned about the accident. I think you'll find a familiar name on there."

John turned the pages until he found what he was looking for and his eyes skimmed over the list. He wasn't particularly good with names, so none of them jumped out at him until-

"Ciaran O'Neill," he breathed and raised his head again. Kate looked as if she had figured it out days ago, as if she knew even more. "Ciaran O'Neill was there. Why?"

"It gets better," Kate said even though it was clear from the tone of her voice that 'better' was probably not the right word for it. In fact, he was fairly certain the word Kate had been meaning to use was 'worse'.

With his patience at an end, John rose from his seat to be at eye level with his boss. He exhaled sharply. "Okay, tell me what you know," he demanded. "Who is this Ciaran O'Neill and what does he have to do with Clara?"

Before she spoke, Kate took a deep breath. "From what I can tell from the files, nothing," she said. "But the police in London suspect that he might be a member of the IRA."

"What?!" John barked in disbelief. "That doesn't make sense!"

It didn't. No matter how John aligned the pieces of this particular puzzle in his head, it just wouldn't become a recognizable picture. The IRA was known for their killings, but this didn't fit. "Why would the IRA target a maths teacher from London? And why not take the credit for it after?"

"Did you even read the file?!" Kate asked, the anger audible in her voice. "Danny Pink wasn't the target, he was just collateral damage. They were aiming for the woman, the one who disappeared! A woman in her thirties with brown hair."

John scoffed. "Alright, I know what you're thinking and it's ridiculous. It couldn't have been Clara. She's as much a likely target for the IRA as her boyfriend is."

"I don't know what I'm thinking!" Kate shouted at him and John twitched at the sudden increase in volume. "This case doesn't make any kind of sense! What I do know is that we had a likely member of the IRA in our interview room and we had to let him go because you withheld evidence!"

"What does the note have to do with any of this?!" John barked at her. Yes, he had screwed up in holding back the note, but Kate couldn't blame him for this, especially not because he had insisted that something about Ciaran O'Neill was wrong.

"The note was what made me look into Clara's past in the first place," his boss argued, her anger flaring up even more. "If you had shown it to me sooner, I would have known about Danny Pink and I would've made sure to ask O'Neill a couple more questions about his little hobby."

"The files say there was no evidence!" he argued after taking another glance. "He was only a suspect! And once again, why would the IRA not take the credit for a kill? It doesn't make sense!"

"Nothing about this case makes sense to me yet!" Kate shouted back at him. "But we know that Danny wasn't their target. Maybe, if – and that's a big if – Ciaran O'Neill really is responsible, they had something else on their agenda, something that went wrong when Danny Pink got in the way."

John wasn't convinced. The theory sounded too far-fetched for his liking. Usually, the cases he worked were straightforward, easy, with a clear motive. This was something else.

He heard Kate inhale sharply. "Okay, let's assume Ciaran O'Neill is a member of the IRA-"

"Which we can't prove."

His boss ignored his interruption. "Let's assume his mission was to kill the woman Danny Pink saved and to kill her quietly, not because they wanted to provoke anything but because of some other reason. Clara Oswald knows the name Ciaran O'Neill and she lied to us about it."

John scoffed. "You can't be serious."

She shrugged. "Fact is, Ciaran O'Neill is now here, someone broke into Clara's house, he approached her and you-"

"He also likely killed her sister!" John argued loudly.

"You argued that the IRA never took the credit for Danny's death. Maybe it was because they had nothing to do with it, but maybe they wanted to keep it quiet because their target was still at large. Now, a man who was questioned about the death is here and a second death has happened – both have one thing in common and that's a connection to Clara. What if she's the target?"

"What if Bonnie was?!" he spat back at her. "She's from Belfast! She's more likely to have ties to the IRA than a teacher from Blackpool!"

"Again, they never took the credit."

John uttered a heavy sigh. As much as he liked the fact that Clara Oswald didn't seem to be at the top of Kate's list of suspects any longer, he liked this second theory even less because it meant that Clara's life was in danger. And a part of him still didn't think that they were anywhere close to solving this mess.

"I need a cup of coffee," Kate announced as she blew the air out between her teeth. "And then we should talk about this theory with the rest of the team."

Because he knew that he didn't have another choice, John merely nodded and slowly followed Kate into the direction of the kitchen. There was something about this case that was different from anything he had ever worked on before and maybe Kate's insane theory had a bit of truth to it, but he just couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe a scenario that put Clara in the middle of this.