Detective Sergeant Ben Jones enters the Causton police station through the rear entrance, having left his bicycle in a stand there. On his way to the locker room, to change into his suit in time for the start of his shift, he meets a PC and gives him a friendly nod. It is met with a hostile glare.
'Must have gotten up on the wrong side of bed,' Ben muses and enters the locker room. Two other PCs are inside, buttoning up their uniform shirts and laughing about something. It's nothing out of the ordinary, put two or more coppers together in a locker room and someone's bound to start cracking jokes.
"Morning," Ben greets them and one nods at him in return, the other greets him with "morning, Sarge." But then look at each other and burst out laughing.
Ben looks himself down. Anything wrong? Fly open? Wait, his sports trousers don't even have a zipper. And he can see nothing else that might be wrong. He shakes his head as he drops his backpack onto the bench and turns to open his locker. Leave them to their fun, he's running late as it is.
The two PCs leave while he's still changing, but one of them turns back around in the door and makes a kissy face at Ben.
Caught with his trousers around his ankles, Ben doesn't stand a chance to reach him before he's out of the door, though. 'God, some colleagues are truly childish!' He thinks, annoyed.
Finally he has changed, and leaves the locker room, straightening his tie as he walks into the reception area of the station to get to the CID offices on the other side.
The reception area is surprisingly crowded with colleagues this morning, yet as he walks in, a hush falls over the room. Ben stops and looks at some of his colleagues, but no one is willing to meet his eye today.
"So, what's going on here?" He demands to know.
Unexpectedly it's George Bullard, the coroner, who walks up to him with a grave face. "Et tu, Brute?" He asks, making Ben stare at him uncomprehendingly. "I had no idea, Benjamin. Of course I've known about Tom for a long time, I had my suspicions about Troy, but you?"
"What on earth are you talking about?"
"No use trying to deny it, we've got the evidence right here," someone calls from the direction of the bulletin board. Ben cranes his neck to see who it was, but too many uniformed policemen are standing around the board to identify the speaker.
He throws Bullard another questioning glance but the coroner doesn't seem to have anything else to say. So Ben's only option is to walk over to the board and see for himself what 'evidence' there is. And most of all – of what.
"Shouldn't most of you be elsewhere by now?" He demands with as much authority in his voice as he can muster up as he jostles through the throng around the board. But what he sees pinned up there leaves him speechless: A photo of his superior, Detective Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby and himself kissing.
He realises immediately that it's the same photo of Barnaby that's been used in that manipulation in their last case, when it showed Barnaby kissing a woman he didn't know. And now he's looking at his own face pasted in. Where did that photo of himself even come from? Who could have a picture of him kissing someone?
As he reaches out to rip it off, someone starts making kissing noises behind his back and immediately others join in until the sound seems to fill the whole room.
Ben rips the photo off the board and scrunches it up into a ball as he whirls back around. "If I find out who did this..." he hollers, his voice rising in pitch due to anger and embarrassment.
Then a hand is on his shoulder and the room falls silent again. Ben slowly looks over his shoulder – at Tom Barnaby who is standing right behind him.
"Sir!" Ben exclaims in surprise.
"It's alright, Jones. You just can't keep that kind of secret in a police station." And then Barnaby leans in and kisses him.
Ben sits up in bed, his heart is racing, he's hot and sweaty. But ah, he's at home. In his bed. Alone. Other days the thought saddens him, right now he's exalted by it. Only a dream, but what a nightmare! He rubs his eyes in the hope of rubbing away the images his subconscious conjured up in his sleep.
He hasn't thought about that stupid rumour of Tom Barnaby and Gavin Troy being lovers in a long time. Why now? The photo of Barnaby he can make sense of, it caused a lot of problems in their last case, so much that Ben had to go against orders to help his boss. It was emotionally stressful. But why did his subconscious put himself in the picture?
He gets up to get some water from the kitchen, pondering his dream. Is his subconscious trying to tell him something? With a glass of tap water in his hand, he sits down at the table.
Ben is certain he is not gay, not even bisexual. Yes, he is fiercely loyal to Barnaby, but that's not because of any sexual interest; it's out of respect - and admiration. He never fully got over his hero worship.
Are there rumours about Barnaby and him? He isn't aware of anything. Can he have overheard something without it really registering at the moment?
No matter which way he tries to tackle the dream, he can't make sense of it. But he's wide awake now, even though it's only twenty past four in the morning. He doesn't think he can go back to sleep tonight.
Having driven to work, he is too tired to be bothered to cycle, Ben is already dressed suitably and walks into the police station in Causton through the front entrance. A very conscious choice as he is parked out back. But the dream is still haunting him and he can't help but look at the bulletin board as he passes through the entrance. Nothing but the usual stuff up there. Warning posters, an announcement for the next police ball... nothing new since he last checked.
The desk sergeant on duty this morning is an old acquaintance of Ben's. "Morning Ben, this came for you," he greets Ben with a smile and pushes an envelope over the counter.
"Hello John," Ben returns the greeting and reaches for the envelope. "Thanks."
As he walks on to the CID office, he breathes out a sigh of relief. Everything seems so normal. Well, Tom Barnaby already being seated at his desk is a little unusual, most days Ben arrives before him. But as his superior seems engrossed in his reading, it looks like a report from Ben's position, he simply says, "Morning, Sir," and sits down.
"Morning, Jones," his boss gives back without looking up.
Ben opens the envelope John gave him, wondering what is in it. He pulls out a few photos and he remembers they're from a friend's stag night he's been to not long ago. Another one getting married, it must be easier for people with other professions to find a partner for life. When was the last time he made it past a second date?
He flips through the shots and winces. Oh dear, it had been a wild night indeed. He mostly remembered the hangover he had the next morning, but the pictures trigger some more memories.
As his gaze falls on the last picture, he drops the whole stack. There's him, kissing one of the pole-dancers at the club they'd been to. But in his mind, the image from his dream comes rushing back, him kissing Barnaby.
Then a hand is on his shoulder and he nearly flinches away from the touch. Ben slowly looks over his shoulder – at Tom Barnaby who is standing right behind him. Just like in his dream. He resists the urge to pinch himself.
Ben hasn't heard his boss walking up to him, placing a hand on his shoulder as he leans in to look at the dropped photographs. Now the DCI picks up the picture that startled Ben.
"Very attractive," Barnaby comments and straightens again. "Of course I'm a happily married man," he ads when he notices Ben's startled face and drops the photo again before walking away.