Thank you for reviewing! So, poor Shaz, eh?

Alex's Idea

Chris lay on his bed, his arms wrapped around his middle. The tears had stopped coming now, instead he was lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling.

The doctor had examined him and said he wasn't very hurt physically, just a few bruises and superficial cuts. DI Drake had examined him and ordered him to take a few weeks leave, claiming that he was psychologically scarred, not just from the trauma of being kidnapped, but from the knowledge of what Shaz had done to both him and Ray. Chris had expected DCI Hunt to protest but he hadn't. The Guv had accepted Chris' sick leave.

Ray was back at CID part time and spent the rest of his time with Chris. Ray was thinner and looked like he had been in a few fights in prison. His temper was shorter to the point where he would talk back to the Guv before he remembered himself. Drake was counselling him, trying to help him see Shaz's point of view, her dilemma.

Chris thought Ray would be banging around his house like he always had been, declaring that Chris was a poof, especially when he was crying. Instead, Ray lounged in an armchair by the foot of Chris' bed, deep in thought.

XXX

The newly-reinstated DI Alex Drake was sitting at her desk, her head resting on her left hand as she stared at Shaz's desk, still messy from a few days ago when she worked there. In her peripheral, Alex saw Gene open his office door.

"Bolly, do I pay you to-"

"They're done, Guv," Alex sighed, tapping the pile of paperwork she had recently finished.

Gene paused in the doorway, as though he was about to say something else. They hadn't yet discussed Alex's revelation, how she had said his name when she was 'with' Bryson.

Just as Gene decided he was too cowardly to broach the subject and turned to go back into his office, Alex said, "Guv."

Gene held the door open for her as she rose and entered his office. He stood next to her.

"I know- I think I know- how to get Shaz out of this… situation."

"Why do we want to?"

He saw Alex flinch, but she held her ground. "She saved my life. She saved Ray's, though it didn't look like it. She helped us find Chris."

Gene studied her carefully. There was an expression in her eyes, not fear exactly, more apprehension. "Why do I get the feeling I'm not going to like this idea?"

"We need Ray and Chris' co-operation on this. At Shaz's trial, we give evidence suggesting that Ray and Chris knew about the letters and knew what Shaz was going to do. We'll forge documents and memos that say having Ray locked up was part of a plan, a new, high-risk operation to make the culprits think they were safe and make mistakes so we could catch them. Chris getting kidnapped would also be part of the plan so that he would be able to lead us straight to the killers. We should emphasise that the plan worked. And you arresting her, that was all part of the façade too."

Gene said sharply, "Do you know what you've just suggested, Drake?"

Alex looked away from him, and at her feet in shame. She whispered a dirty, ugly word.

"Corruption."

Alex expected Gene to shout at her or worse, speak in that quiet voice he only used when he was disappointed in her. She expected him to order him from his sight, to surrender her warrant card and never see him again. She kept staring at the floor.

Finally, she couldn't take it anymore and looked up. Gene was standing with his back to her, looking through the blinds out of the window at the car park. Cautiously, she approached and stood next to him.

"I thought I knew it all, Bolls," he said, broodingly, still staring out of the window, "This is my kingdom, my world. I know the ins and outs of this station better than a prozzie in a brothel. I know that if I told Ray to whack a nonce, we end up with an internal inquiry. If I want someone to cock up an interview, Wonder Chris is there. If I tell Shaz to make me a cuppa, she'll moan about it for weeks on end, conspire with you about some feminist crap, and still have a brew with eleven sugars too few on my desk."

There was a pause. "And as for you, Bolly-"

"Do you trust me to disagree with you?" asked Alex rhetorically, leaning against the window, "to annoy the hell out of you with my psychology bollocks?"

Gene turned his head and caught her eyes with his. There was a small smile on his face.

"I trust you to see the best in everyone here. That Ray is capable of making decisions and taking responsibility if only I let him. That Chris is the hardest-working police officer in the country and we'd take twice as long without him. I look at Shaz and see just a plonk. You look at her and you see the future of the Met, a smart girl with her whole career before her."

Alex didn't dare look away. Her heart was hammering in her chest and she could feel her palms sweating.

"If you can get the others onside," Gene began slowly, the smile gone from his face now, "Then this will be the last lie told at Fenchurch East, the final secret."

They both knew this wasn't quite true. There was still one more secret, an elephant that neither Gene nor Alex could acknowledge- not yet.

"No more hidden blackmail, no more secret corruptions. We do this, save our own, then pretend it never 'appened."

Alex nodded. "Yes Guv."

But one day, they would acknowledge it.