Stevie looked sadly across the room at Stuart's empty desk. Stuart Turner, a drug dealer? Not a chance. She knew him. He'd nearly died in her arms after being shot in the neck with a syringe full of heroin. His sudden and total collapse told her everything that she needed to know about Stu's relationship to drugs. He didn't have one. They'd had a brief and passionate affair for ten weeks, during which he was alleged to have been active as a drug dealer. Crap. She snorted. Stuart Turner had been fitted up, and she intended to make it her mission to find out who and why.

God alone knows what this is doing to Jo. She glanced across at her friend and fellow officer. Jo seemed subdued. Stevie was just about to go across to her when Kezia entered the CID. She was carrying it in her hand.

"Jo. Your secret admirer."

Jo's eyes welled up with tears and she took the single rose from her friend. Tenderly stroked the pink ribbon. Read the card. Stevie knew that the card would be from the mysterious D. Well she hoped that D cared for Jo a lot, because she was going to need the support of her friends. Stu and Jo were very, very close, and this was really hurting her.

The roses had started arriving every Friday about four weeks ago. A single white rose. To J, from D. Some simple and deeply caring sentiment and PS I love you. Cute. Romantic.

Despite her sense of anger and loss over Stuart's plight, there was always the question of D. And Stevie was curious. She would help Stu, but she also really, really, really wanted to find out the identity of D. She drifted in a casual sort of way over to Jo's desk.

"Are you okay."

She had never seen Jo so down, and it was quite painful to see.

"I'll be alright." Jo looked at her friend and saw the sincerity. Stevie's fond of Stu too. Whatever she knew about the reality, the things that had been said by Phil Hunter and Max really hurt. Max had some excuse, because he hardly knew Stu, but Phil was motivated by pure jealousy, because he saw Sam as his personal property and Stu had had the temerity to date her. But the bit that hurt the worst, as Jo saw it, was that Sam was not as quick as the rest of the team to refute what was being said about Stu.

Stevie, Terry, Mickey, Grace, Kezia even Banksy had all come out on the side of Stuart's innocence of all charges. And Jo took heart that her colleagues were so quick to leap to Stu's defense.

Stu himself was feeling more than a little angry. He'd been dropped into this because top brass thought it was a good idea. So he'd really had little option but to go along with it. He didn't like the risks, he thought the plan a remarkably stupid one, and it put pressure on Jo. Pretty much the entire idea made him angry. The pressure on Jo made him furious and aggrieved. She didn't need this.

He turned the shower on full blast and stepped under it. Rinsing the soap out of his hair, he leaned into the spray. A sound registered. There were three of them. And they weren't there to welcome him. So this is how it's going to be. He smiled grimly. No more Mr Nice Guy, no warrant card in here. He moved away from the wall. If he was going to get a beating, he was going to take at least one of them with him. Twenty eight years of conditioning into an Englishman went out the window, the genetic blueprint of a Marseilles street urchin rose to the surface and Stu let fly. He punched the first one hard in the face, slipping under his guard quite easily, and dropped to sweep the legs out from under the second, but the third got in a punch to his kidneys that nearly dropped him. There was a clatter outside the shower room which sounded like guards arriving. So Stu gave it everything he had and then some. By the time the guards arrived to break up the fight, he'd taken quite a pasting, but he'd dealt out quite a lot himself. Bruised, a bit bloodied but utterly unbowed, he smiled grimly to himself when the guards started to question them about what happened.

"Slippery floor. Accidents will happen." His smile was feral and he knew it. The look in his eyes made one of his would be attackers flinch. Good... perhaps they'll get the message. He took a certain perverse pleasure in his own behaviour, Stuart Turner, DS and one of Sun Hill's finest wouldn't have dreamed of getting his hands dirty. But Stu Turner, son of Frank Turner, Merchant Seaman and Marie Turner, a Marseilles street urchin herself, well that was a somewhat different matter. For the first six years of his life, they'd lived in Marseilles. Frank had plenty of work, and it was Marie's home, and Stu had run wild, like so many other youngsters. But Frank had plans for his son, and returning to England was in those plans. He'd wanted his son to grow up knowing more than he had, having a decent, settled life, and a good education, both things that he wouldn't have had in Marseilles. So they'd left. And Marie had struggled. And six years later she'd left her husband and her son and never looked back. So had begun the real transformation that had turned Stuart from a street urchin into the confident, assured Detective Sergeant that he had become.

He dried himself off and walked out of the shower. Giving the three of them a hard look on the way. He knew he was probably going to draw a bit of fire for that when this was all over, but he didn't care. This was his survival. And since Heaton's big idea gave him very little to go on, and almost no room for maneuver, he was going to do what he could with what he'd got.

It was a somber little group that gathered round a table in the pub. Stevie, Terry, Mickey, Grace, Banksy sat down and looked at each other in what could be termed despair. Stuart Turner was one of them, they'd all worked with him, yes he was a devious so and so, he would let people cut corners, he wasn't above pulling the rug out from under someone and he could also be an inveterate risk taker, but he wasn't a drug dealer. And every single one of them would stake their pensions on that. Smithy picked up his pint and wandered over.

"Is this a private wake, or can anyone join?"

Stevie moved up a little so that he could slide onto the bench next to her. "We were discussing what we can do to help Stuart."

Smithy sipped his pint. "Drugs." he looked a bit wary.

Stevie snorted "Stuart a drug dealer? Yeah right, and the moon is made of green cheese." She looked at Smithy, "you didn't see the Danny Peters thing, you weren't there when he collapsed. He nearly died, Smithy. He'd stopped breathing by the time the paramedics got there. It was touch and go whether they could save him for a while there. And trust me, drugs are not Stu's style. He wouldn't touch them."

"I'd go along with that." Callum's voice from over his shoulder. Everyone budged up again so that he could find a stool and join them.

"The question is," said Terry, "What are we going to do about it?"

Gina Gold picked up her drink and drifted casually down the bar towards Neil Manson. "It rather looks as though the Superintendent's little plan is going to go up in smoke."

"Stuart's a big part of the team." Neil looked at his team, "just because he's a bit of a loner outside of work, Heaton assumed that there was no connection inside work." For a second his mind went back to the extraordinary revelation from the night before. "Stuart's got friends, and getting them to back off won't be easy."