Fic: Changeling
He foggily experienced a bizarre set of moments as he drifted in and out of consciousness. One of them involved Phyllis’s face inches from his, so close he yelled. It asked him what happened? Could he hear her? Should she call an ambulance? And he found he couldn’t do much more than groan about how loud it spoke and close his eyes again. Following that was the sensation of moving, not on his own accord, but with hands on him and settling him on something comfortable. At some point, he’d gotten cold and started trembling, and the hands pulled a blanket over him.
Then he had a gap of incoherency which ended in cigarette smoke and nausea. His eyes cracked just enough to see the ceiling of the locker room, and his back whined about the springs from the couch. The lights weren’t all on, but even the low light made his eyes burn and his head throb. It matched his heartbeat and the distant humming of machines, and made him feel even less stable than he usually did. Shakily, he dropped his hand onto his face and listened to the slight rustle of paper coming from nearby.
“Going to be sick again?” Gene asked and he tilted his head so he could see the man. He sat in a chair, magazine in his lap, looking quite bored. “If ya are, I’m calling Cartwright. I ain’t a nursemaid.”
“No,” he mumbled with a thick tongue. He could taste it now and winced. “I-” As though to prove him wrong, his throat tightened and his stomach gurgled. “No.”
“Good to hear,” Gene did not sound happy. “Now, while I have your attention and before someone decides to drag your half-conscious ass to the hospital, I’d like to know what happened.”
He vividly recalled the voice, the kicks, the pain; suddenly, he knew he had to make his way back to the crime scene, lest the evidence disappear. There had to be evidence. Why else would anyone attack him over something so simple, so innocent, so unworthy of note? Unless, of course, this was all much bigger than any of them expected.
“You fall back asleep?” He noted, with surprise, that Gene kept his voice lower than normal.
He shook his head, regretted it as bolts of lightning muddled his already questionable vision, and grunted, “Help me sit up.”
“Not a good idea,” Gene told him, but he put a hand on Sam’s arm. Together, they had him upright, hugging a pillow and doing his best not to lose a fight with dizziness. “So, who’s got it in for you now, Tyler? See a face?”
He blinked. “No, I tried. He…” The voice had been familiar, but only just, like an echo of someone else’s voice. “He wanted me to stop looking into the Brett Case.”
Gene rolled his eyes. “Well, that shouldn’t be hard, considering there isn’t a case in the first place.”
“Said that there was something missing,” he mulled over it, closing his eyes and curling around the pillow. “Then he hit me.”
“And stole your wallet, Sammy,” Gene told him. “And your shoes. Kind enough to leave your jacket, though.”
For the first time, he noticed he only had his socks on and he couldn’t feel the familiar pressure of his wallet in his pocket. Frowning, he hazarded reaching for his jacket, which lay over the side of the couch, but ended up overbalancing instead. Lying on his side was more comfortable anyway, he thought as he slouched back onto the lumpy couch.
“Why would he take my wallet?” he asked, finally, when his head stopped spinning long enough.
“Because you got mugged, ya div,” Gene said, as though they hadn’t just had a conversation about it relating to the case. “And because your one track mind can’t multi-task, you didn’t get anything useful to bring the perp in.”
He wanted to argue, really did, but he didn’t have the energy. Gene took his lack of response as agreement, and stood, closing the magazine as he did and folding it under his arm. “Take another hour or so. If ya ain’t better, Cartwright’s gonna have you to a doctor. If you are better, then you’re going home, got it?”
“Yeah,” he managed, his side now aching along with his head. He hadn’t noticed it before.
“Yeah, what?”
“Yeah, Guv, okay.”
“Oh, and Tyler,” back to the loud voice which made his ears ring, “when you decide to function again, you owe Phyllis a drink. Ruined her uniform with your upchucking.”
He didn’t see the point of getting up.
When Annie woke him up the next time, his whole body ached abominably. He cringed as she made him sit and groaned as she checked his eyes and the side of his head. Her hands moved to lift up his shirt so she could see his ribs but he stopped her midway. She raised her eyebrows at him.
“Bashful, are we?” she asked, and they both knew the implication. He still vividly recalled her and the Guv bursting in to find him handcuffed to his bed.
“I’m all right,” he replied, tentatively touching the lump left by the boot. “Really, Annie.”
“Guv wants me to get you home,” she replied. “He says not to come in tomorrow.”
He had no interest in returning to his flat. The idea of spending the next day at home with nothing but the television and his own mind to keep him company appealed to him on the same level. Besides, his heart sped up a bit, the man who hit him, who went out of his way to make it look like a mugging, would have plenty of time to rearrange the facts and escape. What he needed to do was get back to the mansion and question and scour; now, if only he could stand up.
“Sam?” Annie put a hand under his chin. “I think you’ve got a concussion. You really ought to see a doctor.”
“Annie, he said something was missing and that Gene was right,” Sam said, slowly, carefully. “Now, I think that he meant that Gene was right about me staying out of it but the missing bit; what am I missing?”
“Other than your reason?” She sat back in the chair. “Sam, you took a blow to the head. You probably aren’t thinking right…”
“No, no,” he held a hand up. “No, I remember it. That’s what he said right before he hit me. I said that something was missing and he agreed. Why would he say that if he just wanted my wallet?”
“I dunno,” she replied, tone changing. “To startle you so he could get you? How would he know what you were thinking about?”
The door to the locker room slammed open and he yelped. “Oi, Flash Knickers, is he up?”
“Guv!” she admonished, her hands resting on Sam’s back as he folded up. “Well, he was.”
Everything about Gene hurt from his voice to the sound of his footsteps in the room. “Dorothy, once you’ve stopped your moping, I figured you’d want to come with me on this.”
“I really don’t think he should go anywhere, Guv,” Annie began.
“Go where?” Sam gasped through the headache. His vision flickered and he thought he heard a nurse calling for the doctor.
“Back to the Brett place,” Gene said. “Seems they need the police.”
“More robberies?” he asked, curiosity allowing him to straighten slightly.
Gene snorted. “Already told you those were a hoax. No, this is a real case. That bird who came in yesterday-Sally-what’s-her-face-turned up dead this afternoon.”
Despite Annie’s protests and the uneasy feeling that the world had started spinning faster, he retrieved spare shoes from his locker and followed Gene out to the Cortina. Buckling himself in took more work than he was used to-the buckle kept shifting under his hands and reappearing inches away from where he aimed-and Gene, grumbling, finally slid it home for him. He closed his eyes, preparing for the normal terrorizing trip, and found that Gene took corners a bit slower than he expected him to. By no means was it a gentle drive, but it didn’t make him want to curl up and die any more than sitting up did.
They jerked to a stop midway down the drive and he noted Ray’s car already waiting there. He started fumbling with the belt again only to have Gene stop him, regarding him with an unreadable expression.
“You tell anyone about what she said yesterday?” he asked.
He blinked, dazed. “No, Guv. Not a soul. Why?”
“Gotta know,” Gene said, allowing him to remove the seatbelt. “How sure are you that something weird’s going on here?”
He was honest. “Now, more than ever.”
“And this ain’t one of your funny moments where you’re trying to be smart?”
“Guv, I’m never-”
“Just answer the damn question.”
“No, Guv. I’m just following the clues.”
Gene snorted. “I was thinking you’d say something like that. Follow your gut, Sammy, it’s safer.” And he left the car, slamming the door behind him.
She looked pretty in death, lying at the bottom of the stairs, her eyes closed, her hair sprawled down her back. Her legs folded neatly to the side while her torso lay flat, arms splayed like she was about to hug someone. If her neck hadn’t been broken, twisted, and her eyes hadn’t been half-opened and glassy, he could’ve said she’d fallen asleep. He studied her face, the peace there, the silence, and felt a roiling in his innards that had nothing to do with the migraine he endured. This woman trusted him and he let her down, even just by sending her back to the wolves.
Carefully, he lifted one of her hands, peering at the strange white substance under her nails and the blackish hue of the tips.
“It’s all connected,” he muttered under his breath. “All of it.”
“Care to enlighten me?” Gene said, squatting next to him. “Damn shame, she was a pretty thing.”
He shifted back onto his heels, pinching his nose. “It feels hinky, Guv. Robberies of nothing, two staff members dying in falls, conflicting opinions, a crazy man; feels like a cover-up for something.”
“Feels like a bad Yankee movie,” Gene replied, fumbling for a fag.
“A prestige,” Sam murmured, and at Gene’s expression, continued, “It’s the part of a magic trick that distracts the viewers from what the magician’s doing. And don’t light that, it’ll ruin the integrity of the scene.”
Gene didn’t listen. “It never felt wrong until you showed up, of course.” He stood and took a long drag. “But you’re right. Okay, you lot,” he called to the room, “let’s get this cleaned up, get evidence bagged and people interviewed. No one’s to leave until they personally check with me. Ray, Chris, start searching the rooms for whatever went missing from the study. I’m going to go chat with Mr. Brett.”
“Then I’ll go talk to Blakely,” Sam offered, standing up slowly to have the smallest of head rushes. He still swayed and had to rebalance.
“You’ll go sit on that sofa there,” Gene said. “My cat drags in things healthier than you.”
He didn’t get a chance to argue and found that sitting actually helped him quite a bit. While his urge to know what happened needed sating, his topsy-turvy roller coaster ride stopped, leaving his vision clearer and his head less painful. He even found himself nodding between snapped orders at the officers retrieving evidence. The cushions underneath him far outranked the sofa in the lockers and he was so tired, so very, very tired.
“She was a good girl,” someone sat down next to him. “She did not deserve what she got.”
He opened an eye to see Brett seated there, dressed in a suit, devastated from his expressive eyes (blue, he noted) to his downturned lips. “She seemed afraid something would happen to her, Mister Brett. Would you mind filling in why?”
“I can hardly imagine,” Brett answered. “This place, despite the robberies, has always been a safe environment for the employees. My family prided itself in taking care of our own and I continue that tradition. They are paid well, housed well and treated well.”
“She mentioned that you had a temper sometimes,” he stated bluntly. “One bad enough that she feared you.”
Brett seemed wounded but unsurprised. “I never spoke a harsh word to Sally, ever, in my life. In fact, I would go as far as to say I was especially sweet with her.”
“Perhaps your definition of sweet differed from hers,” Sam suggested.
“Perhaps you should realize that I fancied her,” Brett replied. “Quite a bit even.”
His hair looked just a bit different, his features just a bit more pinched, his eyes just a little more tired but the entirety of the appearance radiated loss. Sam felt the seriousness, the honesty, of it, and though he did not run with his gut as Gene did, he had the urge to trust this man. “I am sorry for your loss then, Mr. Brett. Two good women in such a short period. It must be difficult.”
“I suppose you refer to Mrs. Crankston,” Brett ran a hand through his hair, tangling his fingers in the ends. “Yes, she cared for me as much as a mother would have. I miss her greatly.”
“She died the same way, didn’t she?”
Brett tugged on one of his curls, his lips thinning. “Yes, a heart attack while attending to something in the hallway. Why? Is one death not enough to investigate?”
“No, just trying to fit together the pieces, Mr. Brett,” Sam lied, watching the growing agitation. “Two women die the same way in a house plagued by robberies, and one of them, before death, fearing for her life, for saying too much. You’ll have to excuse my theories.”
Brett stood, his face shadowed but his eyes still the same color. “Yes, I shall. If you’ll excuse me, sir, I think it’s time I attend to things.”
“Of course,” for he couldn’t force the man to stay. “Before you go though, could I ask what books stayed missing last time you were robbed?”
Brett paused and looked over his shoulder. “Children’s books from my youth, most notably a book of Faerie Tales and The Prince and the Pauper. Why do you ask?”
“Just curious,” Sam said. He watched the obvious limp and the pale skin, knowing it to be physical more than mental. The staff said that Mr. Brett was crazy and Mr. Blakely overworked and underappreciated, and yet, the more Sam thought about it, the more he pegged it the other way around. Rubbing his eyes, he attempted to find Blakely in the crowd of people in the rooms, only to discover there wasn’t a sign of the man. Unusual; he’d been given the impression that Blakely rarely left Brett’s side.
“How’s the head, Gladys?”
“Fine,” he said, keeping his voice even. “Find anything interesting?”
Gene shook his head. “No more than ever. Just got back from talking to Brett ‘bout the death and the missing pieces; in a right rage about things. Almost had to knock some sense into him just to get sense out of him.”
“He calmed down quickly,” Sam noted. “Or he seemed to. I was just talking to him.”
“Maybe you should have someone check your head, after all,” Gene said. “I told you, I interviewed him not two seconds ago. Talking to figments, are we?”
He looked up, brow knitted. “No, he was here. Right here. Talking to me. Said he fancied Sally and told me two of the missing items from the last heist were two books.”
“Tyler, you ain’t making sense,” and Gene nearly appeared genuine in his concern, “I just left Brett in that dining room there, breaking one of his fancy chairs. I’m here ‘cause I wanted one crazy to deal with another one. Thought you could talk to him but clearly, someone’s knocked the last of your cogs loose.”
He stood, too fast, catching himself on Gene’s arm. Before he could get another smart response, he strode to the indicated doors, his mind whirling, twisting, stopping; it slowly built the puzzle bits around the nucleus of information he’d acquired, spreading as life formed. The obscured explanation to this mystery expanded beyond the mists of uncertainty. Two versions of Brett, a nervous Mr. Blakely, two dead women, items going missing but not going missing, the white and black on Sally’s hands; it started to unveil in his mind, even as his fingers closed on the door handle and pulled.
“-it’s enough, Blakely, enough,” Brett shouted. “I am done with it and it is time that you were done, too.”
“But…” Blakely whimpered the word, fretful, eyes roaming wildly. “But, Cale, I… I mean…”
The two of them stood at the center of the room, Brett closer to the doors while Blakely faced them, his eyes wide and innocent. The wig he’d been putting on, graying blond and straight, lay sideways on his head, revealing thick curls that matched his dark brown eyes. The lines of care and concern had smeared on his face, making him look as though he’d played in the dirt, and his clothing, a dressing gown and pajamas, matched perfectly with Brett’s clothes the day before. Brett turned as he entered and Sam found himself staring at two identical faces with identical bodies. Except, of course, Blakely held a gun in his hand, his finger on the trigger while Brett clutched a book like a lifeline.
“The secret’s out,” Brett whispered. “Congratulations, DI Tyler, I think you’ve found your missing thread.”
“Sam, what the-” Gene stood behind him. “Bloody hell.”
Blakely whimpered, fiddling with the weapon. “Cale, Cale… It’s too late. It’s too late.”
“Now, there, Mr. Blakely,” Gene started. “Just put the gun down.”
“But it’s too late,” Blakely told Gene. “Too late.”
“Blakely,” Brett said. “It’s not too late. It’s just over. You know the difference. Listen to DCI Hunt.”
“That’s right, Blakely,” Sam encouraged, watching the gun apprehensively. “This game’s over but I’m sure Cale will find another one to play with you. Wouldn’t that be nice? A new game, a fresh adventure, wouldn’t you like that?”
“No, no, no,” Blakely said, fiercely. “No, no… it’s too late. It’s too late. It’s not like the book at all. It’s supposed to play out like the book but it’s not.” His eyes filled with tears as he said it and he looked at them all, Gene advancing, Brett stalk still, Sam to the side, hands up in supplication. “He’s going to leave me.”
Brett’s face saddened. “Not forever, Blake, just for a while. I have to. We’re not children anymore and someone needs to work. Don’t you understand, Blake? This is real, not a game.”
A click as the safety came off and Sam felt his heart kick into gear. “You wanted it things to always be the same, right, Blakely?” If he distracted the man long enough, Gene might be able to slip around without him noticing. “Just games and fun forever?”
“And books,” Blakely informed him. “And mine and Pappa’s paintings.”
Sam nodded. “I understand, Blakely. Life’s so much easier when you have a routine. When it’s predictable. Isn’t it?”
“He’s going to go off,” Blakely whispered. “And leave me with that woman but then I got rid of her and continued the pilfer game. Do you know the pilfer game?”
“I’ve played it before,” Gene had nearly made it parallel with Blakely, though at least twenty feet to the side, closer to the wall. “It’s when you take things and hide them, isn’t it?”
Blakely nodded, a childish solemnity in his countenance. “Yes, and I am quite good.”
“I believe it,” Sam said. “And then you call the police, right? To see if the police are as smart as you?”
“They aren’t,” Blakely smiled a little, his gun hand lowering. “Never find the stuff. But… Cale does. Cale always does. Don’t you, Cale?”
Brett nodded. “Yes, Blake, always.”
“B-but,” Blakely’s mood morphed instantly to despair. “He was going to leave even without the lady; going to get married and leave me alone, forever. He was going to leave and then what would I do?”
“Find a new game?” Sam suggested.
“There are no new games,” Blakely shrilled. “Only the same one.”
And Gene was on top of him.
It happened so fast, like so many times before. The images blurred before him as Brett shouted and Blakely yelled and Gene charged in, as always, without a plan, without a thought, without anything but the masculine instinct to bring the kill. The first shot echoed and then the second, and he had figured every bit of it out, but couldn’t speak. His legs melted out beneath him, like butter on warm bread, and the carpet became lushly comfortable.
***
It’s rapid fire, two bangs, one right after the other, intermixed with Gene shouting his name. It’s adrenaline coursing in his veins, blood pouring out of them, ideas flickering through it all, falling like beads onto a chain. He can see it all so clearly now, even as his body whimpers against the previous night’s bruising and the newly acquired pain. Overlay the screeching of machines from other place and time, and he’s surprised he’s not as frightened and confused as Blakely, poor, deranged Blakely. Instead, he’s annoyed at himself, at the slowness of his realization and how easily his thoughts are escaping his mind.
“Sam!” Gene’s over him, face splattered with blood. “Oh God.” Whatever happened must be bad for Gene to wear his emotions so openly and for it to hurt and for there to be blood everywhere, so much blood.
But he knows the answer to it all, even as he starts to cough, and wishes he could get the words out around the blood gathering in his throat.
“Chris! Ray!” He can’t remember either of them entering the room but Gene doesn’t yell at nothings like he does sometimes. “Ambulance, now! Quick!”
Everything’s distracting, from the way the chandelier shines above his head to the tissue dripping down Gene’s face; it looks like a piece of brain. He has to say it now, has to tell the Guv what he’s figured out before one more thing slips through the net of his consciousness and back into the murky realm of conclusions.
His lips part but Gene stops him, “Don’t talk.” And it’s hitched, frightened, not like Gene at all. It’s tentative, a request, not a demand; it’s a side of Gene he didn’t think existed and he grunts as a hand presses against his chest. Everything changes positions as Gene slips an arm around him and presses harder. It’s explosive, this pain, enough to press the air out of his lungs.
It’s imperative that he gets the story out now before the beeping in his brain kills his voice. “I-I can’t, Guv…” Gene’s response is to lean harder, shoving the pieces off his finally acquired string and over the tiny knot at the end. “It w-wasn’t sup-posed…” to work out like this. Not for them or for the brothers; it was supposed to be another part of the charade where the great reveal happened happily or the people discovered the truth about the changeling and the real child returned unharmed.
“Sam,” Gene distracts him again. He looks like someone just told him the Cortina had catastrophic engine failure. “You’ll be fine. Now, stop talking.”
He chokes on iron, tastes it on his tongue, feels it on his lips and, more than anything, he wants to listen to Gene. A part of him, buried beneath irritation and stress, trusts Gene Hunt more than anything else in the world because, in this place, Gene Hunt’s almost always right. But he has a feeling that Gene’s lying to him right now about the all right bit; there’s something in his overly concerned gaze that screams lies, the way his arm trembles underneath Sam’s shoulders.
With that, his head becomes strangely clear and pain-free, more so than it’s been since he woke up. Instead of seeing triple, he sees one Gene, and beyond him, pale white walls of a hospital. The beeping echoes in his ears, not along with his heart’s frantic pounding but at a steady, soothing pace. Home; he can see home from here, the same old game he’s wanted coming back to him. He just has to explain things to Gene first, and then he can come back to mp3s and laptops and mobiles.
“Gene,” he grasps his DCI’s arm, fingers touching blood and tissue and little whisps of brown hair. “Listen to me,” there’s liquid trying to block out his voice but it escapes out his mouth instead, “I-I just want you to… s-stay,” because Gene’s moving, somewhere, and it all has to wrap up, somehow. And then the pain surges back over him; he gasps. The white room fades and he sees the red walls and the chandelier instead of florescent lighting. Gene hasn’t really moved at all, he notes, hissing out uneven breaths; he’s still there, still clinging to Sam’s life, making hushing sounds as he groans.
And, from somewhere else, he hears, “I’m sorry.”
Gene’s holding on so hard, too hard, driving the air out of him. His vision flickers between this room, and his other room, and Gene’s face and no face at all. There’s beeping and footsteps and silence and buzzing and so much in his head and out of his head, that he’s not sure what’s real anymore, not even with the solid fingers splayed across his chest and the warmth of the arm under his back. Everything else is so faint, so cold, so useless, rather like him at the moment.
“Stay with me, Sammy,” Gene’s voice in his ear. “Stay with me.” Someone’s wheezing, panting, struggling; all he’s aware of is the climb of fluid up his throat. “Don’t you dare bloody die on me.” He doesn’t want to because there’s still something important he has to say. “Come on! Hang in there, Sammy-boy!”
And it suddenly all disappears for him. He studies the back of his eyelids, feels the pain vanish, doesn’t need the air he can’t get. It all escapes him in a tiny sigh of relief, barely audible in the chaos about him, and leaves him peaceful. Even the cold, so biting, dragging on him as the warmth behind him tries to anchor him, doesn’t frighten him. Let it take him wherever it needs to, he thinks. Everything will work out, it will; why else would he be so calm about it? He’s not like Maya, who simply believes the best about everything without cause or reason.
“Sam? Sam?” Gene’s an echo of wind in his ever deepening cave. “No, no, nononono,” abruptly, his body changes positions again, and his whole right side presses against warmth, laps it up like a dehydrated dog. He just barely sees Gene’s collar through half-open eyes, sweat stained and crumpled, as his forehead settles in the crook of his neck. “Sam, come on! Come on.” A slight shake, his head lolling about against a broad comfortable shoulder; it doesn’t hurt at all, not even as his temple grazes across bone. “Come on.” He can hear a staccato thudthud, thudthud, thudthud as his ear presses against Gene’s neck.
Then a soft, “Sam?”
And nothing.
Then he had a gap of incoherency which ended in cigarette smoke and nausea. His eyes cracked just enough to see the ceiling of the locker room, and his back whined about the springs from the couch. The lights weren’t all on, but even the low light made his eyes burn and his head throb. It matched his heartbeat and the distant humming of machines, and made him feel even less stable than he usually did. Shakily, he dropped his hand onto his face and listened to the slight rustle of paper coming from nearby.
“Going to be sick again?” Gene asked and he tilted his head so he could see the man. He sat in a chair, magazine in his lap, looking quite bored. “If ya are, I’m calling Cartwright. I ain’t a nursemaid.”
“No,” he mumbled with a thick tongue. He could taste it now and winced. “I-” As though to prove him wrong, his throat tightened and his stomach gurgled. “No.”
“Good to hear,” Gene did not sound happy. “Now, while I have your attention and before someone decides to drag your half-conscious ass to the hospital, I’d like to know what happened.”
He vividly recalled the voice, the kicks, the pain; suddenly, he knew he had to make his way back to the crime scene, lest the evidence disappear. There had to be evidence. Why else would anyone attack him over something so simple, so innocent, so unworthy of note? Unless, of course, this was all much bigger than any of them expected.
“You fall back asleep?” He noted, with surprise, that Gene kept his voice lower than normal.
He shook his head, regretted it as bolts of lightning muddled his already questionable vision, and grunted, “Help me sit up.”
“Not a good idea,” Gene told him, but he put a hand on Sam’s arm. Together, they had him upright, hugging a pillow and doing his best not to lose a fight with dizziness. “So, who’s got it in for you now, Tyler? See a face?”
He blinked. “No, I tried. He…” The voice had been familiar, but only just, like an echo of someone else’s voice. “He wanted me to stop looking into the Brett Case.”
Gene rolled his eyes. “Well, that shouldn’t be hard, considering there isn’t a case in the first place.”
“Said that there was something missing,” he mulled over it, closing his eyes and curling around the pillow. “Then he hit me.”
“And stole your wallet, Sammy,” Gene told him. “And your shoes. Kind enough to leave your jacket, though.”
For the first time, he noticed he only had his socks on and he couldn’t feel the familiar pressure of his wallet in his pocket. Frowning, he hazarded reaching for his jacket, which lay over the side of the couch, but ended up overbalancing instead. Lying on his side was more comfortable anyway, he thought as he slouched back onto the lumpy couch.
“Why would he take my wallet?” he asked, finally, when his head stopped spinning long enough.
“Because you got mugged, ya div,” Gene said, as though they hadn’t just had a conversation about it relating to the case. “And because your one track mind can’t multi-task, you didn’t get anything useful to bring the perp in.”
He wanted to argue, really did, but he didn’t have the energy. Gene took his lack of response as agreement, and stood, closing the magazine as he did and folding it under his arm. “Take another hour or so. If ya ain’t better, Cartwright’s gonna have you to a doctor. If you are better, then you’re going home, got it?”
“Yeah,” he managed, his side now aching along with his head. He hadn’t noticed it before.
“Yeah, what?”
“Yeah, Guv, okay.”
“Oh, and Tyler,” back to the loud voice which made his ears ring, “when you decide to function again, you owe Phyllis a drink. Ruined her uniform with your upchucking.”
He didn’t see the point of getting up.
When Annie woke him up the next time, his whole body ached abominably. He cringed as she made him sit and groaned as she checked his eyes and the side of his head. Her hands moved to lift up his shirt so she could see his ribs but he stopped her midway. She raised her eyebrows at him.
“Bashful, are we?” she asked, and they both knew the implication. He still vividly recalled her and the Guv bursting in to find him handcuffed to his bed.
“I’m all right,” he replied, tentatively touching the lump left by the boot. “Really, Annie.”
“Guv wants me to get you home,” she replied. “He says not to come in tomorrow.”
He had no interest in returning to his flat. The idea of spending the next day at home with nothing but the television and his own mind to keep him company appealed to him on the same level. Besides, his heart sped up a bit, the man who hit him, who went out of his way to make it look like a mugging, would have plenty of time to rearrange the facts and escape. What he needed to do was get back to the mansion and question and scour; now, if only he could stand up.
“Sam?” Annie put a hand under his chin. “I think you’ve got a concussion. You really ought to see a doctor.”
“Annie, he said something was missing and that Gene was right,” Sam said, slowly, carefully. “Now, I think that he meant that Gene was right about me staying out of it but the missing bit; what am I missing?”
“Other than your reason?” She sat back in the chair. “Sam, you took a blow to the head. You probably aren’t thinking right…”
“No, no,” he held a hand up. “No, I remember it. That’s what he said right before he hit me. I said that something was missing and he agreed. Why would he say that if he just wanted my wallet?”
“I dunno,” she replied, tone changing. “To startle you so he could get you? How would he know what you were thinking about?”
The door to the locker room slammed open and he yelped. “Oi, Flash Knickers, is he up?”
“Guv!” she admonished, her hands resting on Sam’s back as he folded up. “Well, he was.”
Everything about Gene hurt from his voice to the sound of his footsteps in the room. “Dorothy, once you’ve stopped your moping, I figured you’d want to come with me on this.”
“I really don’t think he should go anywhere, Guv,” Annie began.
“Go where?” Sam gasped through the headache. His vision flickered and he thought he heard a nurse calling for the doctor.
“Back to the Brett place,” Gene said. “Seems they need the police.”
“More robberies?” he asked, curiosity allowing him to straighten slightly.
Gene snorted. “Already told you those were a hoax. No, this is a real case. That bird who came in yesterday-Sally-what’s-her-face-turned up dead this afternoon.”
Despite Annie’s protests and the uneasy feeling that the world had started spinning faster, he retrieved spare shoes from his locker and followed Gene out to the Cortina. Buckling himself in took more work than he was used to-the buckle kept shifting under his hands and reappearing inches away from where he aimed-and Gene, grumbling, finally slid it home for him. He closed his eyes, preparing for the normal terrorizing trip, and found that Gene took corners a bit slower than he expected him to. By no means was it a gentle drive, but it didn’t make him want to curl up and die any more than sitting up did.
They jerked to a stop midway down the drive and he noted Ray’s car already waiting there. He started fumbling with the belt again only to have Gene stop him, regarding him with an unreadable expression.
“You tell anyone about what she said yesterday?” he asked.
He blinked, dazed. “No, Guv. Not a soul. Why?”
“Gotta know,” Gene said, allowing him to remove the seatbelt. “How sure are you that something weird’s going on here?”
He was honest. “Now, more than ever.”
“And this ain’t one of your funny moments where you’re trying to be smart?”
“Guv, I’m never-”
“Just answer the damn question.”
“No, Guv. I’m just following the clues.”
Gene snorted. “I was thinking you’d say something like that. Follow your gut, Sammy, it’s safer.” And he left the car, slamming the door behind him.
She looked pretty in death, lying at the bottom of the stairs, her eyes closed, her hair sprawled down her back. Her legs folded neatly to the side while her torso lay flat, arms splayed like she was about to hug someone. If her neck hadn’t been broken, twisted, and her eyes hadn’t been half-opened and glassy, he could’ve said she’d fallen asleep. He studied her face, the peace there, the silence, and felt a roiling in his innards that had nothing to do with the migraine he endured. This woman trusted him and he let her down, even just by sending her back to the wolves.
Carefully, he lifted one of her hands, peering at the strange white substance under her nails and the blackish hue of the tips.
“It’s all connected,” he muttered under his breath. “All of it.”
“Care to enlighten me?” Gene said, squatting next to him. “Damn shame, she was a pretty thing.”
He shifted back onto his heels, pinching his nose. “It feels hinky, Guv. Robberies of nothing, two staff members dying in falls, conflicting opinions, a crazy man; feels like a cover-up for something.”
“Feels like a bad Yankee movie,” Gene replied, fumbling for a fag.
“A prestige,” Sam murmured, and at Gene’s expression, continued, “It’s the part of a magic trick that distracts the viewers from what the magician’s doing. And don’t light that, it’ll ruin the integrity of the scene.”
Gene didn’t listen. “It never felt wrong until you showed up, of course.” He stood and took a long drag. “But you’re right. Okay, you lot,” he called to the room, “let’s get this cleaned up, get evidence bagged and people interviewed. No one’s to leave until they personally check with me. Ray, Chris, start searching the rooms for whatever went missing from the study. I’m going to go chat with Mr. Brett.”
“Then I’ll go talk to Blakely,” Sam offered, standing up slowly to have the smallest of head rushes. He still swayed and had to rebalance.
“You’ll go sit on that sofa there,” Gene said. “My cat drags in things healthier than you.”
He didn’t get a chance to argue and found that sitting actually helped him quite a bit. While his urge to know what happened needed sating, his topsy-turvy roller coaster ride stopped, leaving his vision clearer and his head less painful. He even found himself nodding between snapped orders at the officers retrieving evidence. The cushions underneath him far outranked the sofa in the lockers and he was so tired, so very, very tired.
“She was a good girl,” someone sat down next to him. “She did not deserve what she got.”
He opened an eye to see Brett seated there, dressed in a suit, devastated from his expressive eyes (blue, he noted) to his downturned lips. “She seemed afraid something would happen to her, Mister Brett. Would you mind filling in why?”
“I can hardly imagine,” Brett answered. “This place, despite the robberies, has always been a safe environment for the employees. My family prided itself in taking care of our own and I continue that tradition. They are paid well, housed well and treated well.”
“She mentioned that you had a temper sometimes,” he stated bluntly. “One bad enough that she feared you.”
Brett seemed wounded but unsurprised. “I never spoke a harsh word to Sally, ever, in my life. In fact, I would go as far as to say I was especially sweet with her.”
“Perhaps your definition of sweet differed from hers,” Sam suggested.
“Perhaps you should realize that I fancied her,” Brett replied. “Quite a bit even.”
His hair looked just a bit different, his features just a bit more pinched, his eyes just a little more tired but the entirety of the appearance radiated loss. Sam felt the seriousness, the honesty, of it, and though he did not run with his gut as Gene did, he had the urge to trust this man. “I am sorry for your loss then, Mr. Brett. Two good women in such a short period. It must be difficult.”
“I suppose you refer to Mrs. Crankston,” Brett ran a hand through his hair, tangling his fingers in the ends. “Yes, she cared for me as much as a mother would have. I miss her greatly.”
“She died the same way, didn’t she?”
Brett tugged on one of his curls, his lips thinning. “Yes, a heart attack while attending to something in the hallway. Why? Is one death not enough to investigate?”
“No, just trying to fit together the pieces, Mr. Brett,” Sam lied, watching the growing agitation. “Two women die the same way in a house plagued by robberies, and one of them, before death, fearing for her life, for saying too much. You’ll have to excuse my theories.”
Brett stood, his face shadowed but his eyes still the same color. “Yes, I shall. If you’ll excuse me, sir, I think it’s time I attend to things.”
“Of course,” for he couldn’t force the man to stay. “Before you go though, could I ask what books stayed missing last time you were robbed?”
Brett paused and looked over his shoulder. “Children’s books from my youth, most notably a book of Faerie Tales and The Prince and the Pauper. Why do you ask?”
“Just curious,” Sam said. He watched the obvious limp and the pale skin, knowing it to be physical more than mental. The staff said that Mr. Brett was crazy and Mr. Blakely overworked and underappreciated, and yet, the more Sam thought about it, the more he pegged it the other way around. Rubbing his eyes, he attempted to find Blakely in the crowd of people in the rooms, only to discover there wasn’t a sign of the man. Unusual; he’d been given the impression that Blakely rarely left Brett’s side.
“How’s the head, Gladys?”
“Fine,” he said, keeping his voice even. “Find anything interesting?”
Gene shook his head. “No more than ever. Just got back from talking to Brett ‘bout the death and the missing pieces; in a right rage about things. Almost had to knock some sense into him just to get sense out of him.”
“He calmed down quickly,” Sam noted. “Or he seemed to. I was just talking to him.”
“Maybe you should have someone check your head, after all,” Gene said. “I told you, I interviewed him not two seconds ago. Talking to figments, are we?”
He looked up, brow knitted. “No, he was here. Right here. Talking to me. Said he fancied Sally and told me two of the missing items from the last heist were two books.”
“Tyler, you ain’t making sense,” and Gene nearly appeared genuine in his concern, “I just left Brett in that dining room there, breaking one of his fancy chairs. I’m here ‘cause I wanted one crazy to deal with another one. Thought you could talk to him but clearly, someone’s knocked the last of your cogs loose.”
He stood, too fast, catching himself on Gene’s arm. Before he could get another smart response, he strode to the indicated doors, his mind whirling, twisting, stopping; it slowly built the puzzle bits around the nucleus of information he’d acquired, spreading as life formed. The obscured explanation to this mystery expanded beyond the mists of uncertainty. Two versions of Brett, a nervous Mr. Blakely, two dead women, items going missing but not going missing, the white and black on Sally’s hands; it started to unveil in his mind, even as his fingers closed on the door handle and pulled.
“-it’s enough, Blakely, enough,” Brett shouted. “I am done with it and it is time that you were done, too.”
“But…” Blakely whimpered the word, fretful, eyes roaming wildly. “But, Cale, I… I mean…”
The two of them stood at the center of the room, Brett closer to the doors while Blakely faced them, his eyes wide and innocent. The wig he’d been putting on, graying blond and straight, lay sideways on his head, revealing thick curls that matched his dark brown eyes. The lines of care and concern had smeared on his face, making him look as though he’d played in the dirt, and his clothing, a dressing gown and pajamas, matched perfectly with Brett’s clothes the day before. Brett turned as he entered and Sam found himself staring at two identical faces with identical bodies. Except, of course, Blakely held a gun in his hand, his finger on the trigger while Brett clutched a book like a lifeline.
“The secret’s out,” Brett whispered. “Congratulations, DI Tyler, I think you’ve found your missing thread.”
“Sam, what the-” Gene stood behind him. “Bloody hell.”
Blakely whimpered, fiddling with the weapon. “Cale, Cale… It’s too late. It’s too late.”
“Now, there, Mr. Blakely,” Gene started. “Just put the gun down.”
“But it’s too late,” Blakely told Gene. “Too late.”
“Blakely,” Brett said. “It’s not too late. It’s just over. You know the difference. Listen to DCI Hunt.”
“That’s right, Blakely,” Sam encouraged, watching the gun apprehensively. “This game’s over but I’m sure Cale will find another one to play with you. Wouldn’t that be nice? A new game, a fresh adventure, wouldn’t you like that?”
“No, no, no,” Blakely said, fiercely. “No, no… it’s too late. It’s too late. It’s not like the book at all. It’s supposed to play out like the book but it’s not.” His eyes filled with tears as he said it and he looked at them all, Gene advancing, Brett stalk still, Sam to the side, hands up in supplication. “He’s going to leave me.”
Brett’s face saddened. “Not forever, Blake, just for a while. I have to. We’re not children anymore and someone needs to work. Don’t you understand, Blake? This is real, not a game.”
A click as the safety came off and Sam felt his heart kick into gear. “You wanted it things to always be the same, right, Blakely?” If he distracted the man long enough, Gene might be able to slip around without him noticing. “Just games and fun forever?”
“And books,” Blakely informed him. “And mine and Pappa’s paintings.”
Sam nodded. “I understand, Blakely. Life’s so much easier when you have a routine. When it’s predictable. Isn’t it?”
“He’s going to go off,” Blakely whispered. “And leave me with that woman but then I got rid of her and continued the pilfer game. Do you know the pilfer game?”
“I’ve played it before,” Gene had nearly made it parallel with Blakely, though at least twenty feet to the side, closer to the wall. “It’s when you take things and hide them, isn’t it?”
Blakely nodded, a childish solemnity in his countenance. “Yes, and I am quite good.”
“I believe it,” Sam said. “And then you call the police, right? To see if the police are as smart as you?”
“They aren’t,” Blakely smiled a little, his gun hand lowering. “Never find the stuff. But… Cale does. Cale always does. Don’t you, Cale?”
Brett nodded. “Yes, Blake, always.”
“B-but,” Blakely’s mood morphed instantly to despair. “He was going to leave even without the lady; going to get married and leave me alone, forever. He was going to leave and then what would I do?”
“Find a new game?” Sam suggested.
“There are no new games,” Blakely shrilled. “Only the same one.”
And Gene was on top of him.
It happened so fast, like so many times before. The images blurred before him as Brett shouted and Blakely yelled and Gene charged in, as always, without a plan, without a thought, without anything but the masculine instinct to bring the kill. The first shot echoed and then the second, and he had figured every bit of it out, but couldn’t speak. His legs melted out beneath him, like butter on warm bread, and the carpet became lushly comfortable.
***
It’s rapid fire, two bangs, one right after the other, intermixed with Gene shouting his name. It’s adrenaline coursing in his veins, blood pouring out of them, ideas flickering through it all, falling like beads onto a chain. He can see it all so clearly now, even as his body whimpers against the previous night’s bruising and the newly acquired pain. Overlay the screeching of machines from other place and time, and he’s surprised he’s not as frightened and confused as Blakely, poor, deranged Blakely. Instead, he’s annoyed at himself, at the slowness of his realization and how easily his thoughts are escaping his mind.
“Sam!” Gene’s over him, face splattered with blood. “Oh God.” Whatever happened must be bad for Gene to wear his emotions so openly and for it to hurt and for there to be blood everywhere, so much blood.
But he knows the answer to it all, even as he starts to cough, and wishes he could get the words out around the blood gathering in his throat.
“Chris! Ray!” He can’t remember either of them entering the room but Gene doesn’t yell at nothings like he does sometimes. “Ambulance, now! Quick!”
Everything’s distracting, from the way the chandelier shines above his head to the tissue dripping down Gene’s face; it looks like a piece of brain. He has to say it now, has to tell the Guv what he’s figured out before one more thing slips through the net of his consciousness and back into the murky realm of conclusions.
His lips part but Gene stops him, “Don’t talk.” And it’s hitched, frightened, not like Gene at all. It’s tentative, a request, not a demand; it’s a side of Gene he didn’t think existed and he grunts as a hand presses against his chest. Everything changes positions as Gene slips an arm around him and presses harder. It’s explosive, this pain, enough to press the air out of his lungs.
It’s imperative that he gets the story out now before the beeping in his brain kills his voice. “I-I can’t, Guv…” Gene’s response is to lean harder, shoving the pieces off his finally acquired string and over the tiny knot at the end. “It w-wasn’t sup-posed…” to work out like this. Not for them or for the brothers; it was supposed to be another part of the charade where the great reveal happened happily or the people discovered the truth about the changeling and the real child returned unharmed.
“Sam,” Gene distracts him again. He looks like someone just told him the Cortina had catastrophic engine failure. “You’ll be fine. Now, stop talking.”
He chokes on iron, tastes it on his tongue, feels it on his lips and, more than anything, he wants to listen to Gene. A part of him, buried beneath irritation and stress, trusts Gene Hunt more than anything else in the world because, in this place, Gene Hunt’s almost always right. But he has a feeling that Gene’s lying to him right now about the all right bit; there’s something in his overly concerned gaze that screams lies, the way his arm trembles underneath Sam’s shoulders.
With that, his head becomes strangely clear and pain-free, more so than it’s been since he woke up. Instead of seeing triple, he sees one Gene, and beyond him, pale white walls of a hospital. The beeping echoes in his ears, not along with his heart’s frantic pounding but at a steady, soothing pace. Home; he can see home from here, the same old game he’s wanted coming back to him. He just has to explain things to Gene first, and then he can come back to mp3s and laptops and mobiles.
“Gene,” he grasps his DCI’s arm, fingers touching blood and tissue and little whisps of brown hair. “Listen to me,” there’s liquid trying to block out his voice but it escapes out his mouth instead, “I-I just want you to… s-stay,” because Gene’s moving, somewhere, and it all has to wrap up, somehow. And then the pain surges back over him; he gasps. The white room fades and he sees the red walls and the chandelier instead of florescent lighting. Gene hasn’t really moved at all, he notes, hissing out uneven breaths; he’s still there, still clinging to Sam’s life, making hushing sounds as he groans.
And, from somewhere else, he hears, “I’m sorry.”
Gene’s holding on so hard, too hard, driving the air out of him. His vision flickers between this room, and his other room, and Gene’s face and no face at all. There’s beeping and footsteps and silence and buzzing and so much in his head and out of his head, that he’s not sure what’s real anymore, not even with the solid fingers splayed across his chest and the warmth of the arm under his back. Everything else is so faint, so cold, so useless, rather like him at the moment.
“Stay with me, Sammy,” Gene’s voice in his ear. “Stay with me.” Someone’s wheezing, panting, struggling; all he’s aware of is the climb of fluid up his throat. “Don’t you dare bloody die on me.” He doesn’t want to because there’s still something important he has to say. “Come on! Hang in there, Sammy-boy!”
And it suddenly all disappears for him. He studies the back of his eyelids, feels the pain vanish, doesn’t need the air he can’t get. It all escapes him in a tiny sigh of relief, barely audible in the chaos about him, and leaves him peaceful. Even the cold, so biting, dragging on him as the warmth behind him tries to anchor him, doesn’t frighten him. Let it take him wherever it needs to, he thinks. Everything will work out, it will; why else would he be so calm about it? He’s not like Maya, who simply believes the best about everything without cause or reason.
“Sam? Sam?” Gene’s an echo of wind in his ever deepening cave. “No, no, nononono,” abruptly, his body changes positions again, and his whole right side presses against warmth, laps it up like a dehydrated dog. He just barely sees Gene’s collar through half-open eyes, sweat stained and crumpled, as his forehead settles in the crook of his neck. “Sam, come on! Come on.” A slight shake, his head lolling about against a broad comfortable shoulder; it doesn’t hurt at all, not even as his temple grazes across bone. “Come on.” He can hear a staccato thudthud, thudthud, thudthud as his ear presses against Gene’s neck.
Then a soft, “Sam?”
And nothing.