Happy Autumn, ficsters! Sorry to have been away so long, looks like I have a LOT of catching up to do around here! Not to mention flipping finishing this! Jessie xx
Flying Solo
"Nervous?"
Carrie Grant paused in brushing her long brown hair and turned around from the sink in the en-suite bathroom of the master bedroom to throw a towel at her husband. He laughed as it hit him squarely in the face and folded it on his knee.
"I'll take that as a yes," he teased.
"Why would I be nervous?" she asked with a hint of crossness entering her northern tones as she pulled her locks into a low ponytail and secured it with a scarlet band.
"Flying Solo," he mocked happily.
"Shut up," she replied simply, returning to the bathroom mirror as she picked up her mascara. It might have been her first day running UCOS unaided by the formidable mentor that she had in Sandra Pullman, but she was competent in both her job and controlling the renegade department that she had inherited. In the words of Jeremy Clarkson, how hard could it be?
"Mum, do I have football tonight?"
She turned again and ruffled her son's mousy hair, "No, love, it's cricket tonight. Then you and Ryan are going to Gerry's for tea and Dad will pick you up. Have you packed your bag for school?"
"Not yet," the lad scowled as he tried to flatten his hair back down.
"Well get to it," she grinned and planted a kiss on his forehead. "Breakfast in five."
She continued to smile as she finished applying her make-up. More than one good thing had come out of her new job and that had to be the sudden friendship that had formed between her sons and the grandson of one of her department. Apparently they had been in the same class for years but never really spoken, but since playing together at her boss's wedding they were now practically inseparable. She would never know it, but George, Ryan and Gerry Junior would remain friends for the rest of their lives. It was nice for her to see; George in particular had never really been very good at making new friends.
"Right," David stood up. "I'll go check on Ryan and get some coffee on then."
Carrie walked back into the bedroom and met his waiting lips. "Now that sounds like the most sensible thing you've said all morning."
"You mean to say that suggesting we run away to the Maldives and starting a jazz bar wasn't sensible?" he pretended to look hurt.
"Maybe just a little fantastical," she corrected him gently. Perhaps it would be nice one day, she brushed her cheeks with a light blusher. Maybe when the kids were grown up or at university, her and Dave would make that break, she lifted the loose ponytail and clipped it against her head. Or - little bit of lippy - it would end simply another dream in a jar.
"Morning boys," she greeted her already present department after depositing her sons at school. "Has forensics got back to us yet?"
"Not yet, later this morning apparently," Steve responded with an air of suspended belief and sarcasm which she had come to find pleasingly sincere. "Fancy a coffee?"
She nodded and made her way across the room to the private office at the back. She shrugged off her grey denim jacket and held it in her hand, hesitating slightly before hanging it on the same book she had so far always hung it on. It was the hook on the side nearest the door. Like she was always on her way out. Like it wasn't really her office, like she wasn't a permanent fixture. In perfect place however for;-
"Guv, front desk just called down, our chief suspect's just been done in down the docks!"
"Great," she pulled her jacket back on. "Coffee out then? Gerry, Nick, you're with me. Steve, make a call to your friend, see if she has anything new to say. Something smells bloody rotten about this and not just the twenty year old corpse."
Gerry blew out his cheeks in amusement as he lifted his car keys from the desk, he quite liked their new Guv, she had a way of putting things.
Robert Strickland sighed as he signed off yet another report and placed it on the happily growing stack of files in the white basket on the right hand corner of his desk. Reaching with a hopeful glance to his left he sighed again; he couldn't even see the red wires of the in-tray. Coffee. Pulling one file in to the middle of the desk, he stood up and walked over to the cupboard under the air vent. Some time ago he had taken to having his little corner of paradise which consisted of a small kettle, two mugs, one teaspoon, a jar of instant coffee and a periodically topped up supply of his favourite biscuits. Most senior officers kept a filter coffee machine. One of those fancy ones that middle-class wives buy their husbands for Christmas because they can't think of what to get them, six months later they'd regret it because the husband never cleans it himself.
"So who cleans the ones in the offices?" Rob mused aloud to himself as the kettle boiled. He sniffed the milk that he'd bought that morning, more out of habit than a lack of faith in the corner shop. He was almost jealous of the proper kitchens that existed in department areas like UCOS. But he enjoyed the almost naughty existence of his cupboard far too much, like a guilty secret; not even Sandra knew.
"Well that's that then," Gerry sulkily hung his coat back up and sank into the chair behind his desk. He picked his mobile out of his pocket and absent-mindedly checked the weather forecast and headlines. Flaming technology, he could look out the window and say it was raining and as for the headlines they never changed that much, he didn't need it all at the touch of his slightly stiffening fingers.
Carrie looked between her two dejected rogues with a sense of frustration that she couldn't quite place: yes, it was bloody irritating that their best suspect and lead was currently on his way to the mortuary rather than the dock; but there had to be some significance in that. She looked at the boards, arranged like those information points in museums around an exhibit, the exhibit in this instance being a table covered in coffee stains and a mass of next-to-useless previous case notes. Something had to be there, something obvious that they were missing…
"How's the sea air?" Steve arrived back in the office with his usual exuberance. She did enjoy his never ending supply of energy; it merged perfectly with Nick's steadily paced output and Gerry's helter-skelter moods. She herself probably most matched Gerry, her enthusiasm coming and going with each revelation on the road.
"Shit," Gerry responded succinctly, betraying his current position at the bottom of the slide. "How did you get on?"
"Er, little better to be honest, pal," Steve admitted. "It's possible I've over played it, clammed up like an oyster. There's something there I reckon but she's not prepared to tell me."
"Who would she be prepared to tell?" Carrie asked thoughtfully, she prowled around the case boards like a half-interested tourist.
"Eh?" Steve glanced back perplexed as he hung his coat on the back of the desk chair, taking the music player out of his pocket first.
"I wonder if… hang on a minute," Nick entered and exited the conversation briefly before burying his head in his computer. "What?"
The other three looked at each other as he reappeared into vision like a meerkat and burst out into a fresh round of laughter. Steve managed to recover first, "Shall I put the kettle on while we wait for WhizKid?"
Nick responded by sticking his tongue out at the Scot and returning to his search engine with a grin on his face which matched the mirth of the rest of the department. It was a good place to work.
"Do you know what I reckon?" Gerry raised himself out of his melancholy whilst fingering a cigarette out of the packet. "I think we've been bloody stupid. I think we've been looking at the killer the whole bloody time. And, I reckon it's her."
The others looked to where he pointed at the board. A moment of stillness followed his revelation: Steve followed his own logic, turned around three times and found himself pointing in the same direction of agreement; Nick looked up briefly, nodded, returned to the screen in front of him; Carrie stared into the static eyes of the woman Gerry accused.
"Shit," she whispered. "Aye, I think you're right. We have been bloody stupid. Steve, daft question, how did her office look?"
Steve, who had remembered he was making the coffee and was currently pouring hot water, suddenly put the kettle down on the side with a bump. "I didna meet her in her office," his voice began to pick up speed as he abandoned the coffee and reached for his coat and keys. "She was carrying a box in the corridor, we stopped in reception, sat on the chairs there. Shit, she was on her way out wasn't she?"
"Nick?" Carrie looked to the back of the computer monitor for conformation.
"She resigned last week, pulled a months notice out on holiday days, she's got a ticket booked to Malaga this afternoon. House is sold, she'll be on her way to the airport."
Carrie cursed again. She'd learnt not to ask however how Nick could make himself privy to such information. Pulling her mobile out of the back pocket of her jeans, she scrolled for Strickland's number and was filling him in and securing back-up before they left the office.