Where All This Started by HambelandJemima and Slantedlight - Part Two
Where All This Started
by HambelandJemima and Slantedlight
Part Two ( Part One here)
The river was dark and still. No police cars with flashing lights, no divers rippling the surface in a search for life, no floodlights to show the way.
“Cowley must’ve thought you were driving, mate,” Murphy said thoughtfully.
“I’ll have to tell him about Jenna,” Bodie said, and he was glad it was Murph here, because his voice wasn’t as steady as he would have liked. “Someone should be looking for her.”
“If she’s in there, another few hours isn’t gonna make any difference. It’s too dark to see anything.” Murphy reached for his elbow, to pull him back, and Bodie shook him off with a snarl. Undeterred, Murphy grabbed his bicep and forced Bodie to look at him. “If she’s in the river, we can’t do anything for her,” he said, quietly and firmly. “If she’s not in the river, we’re wasting time here when we could be looking for her. And we still need to find Doyle because Cowley wants you two back at HQ.”
“Cowley can go-” Bodie didn’t elaborate on where he thought Cowley could go. He gave a curt nod. “Got a torch?”
“In the glove box.”
Bodie opened the glove box and rummaged through gum wrappers, parking tickets and Doyle’s scarf before he found the torch. He curled his hand around it, pulling it out and flicking the switch to make sure it worked. The fingers of his left hand lay on the scarf. Where the hell was Doyle? Was he warming the bed of a willing playmate or was he out in the cold somewhere, wondering where his partner had got to? On impulse, Bodie pulled the scarf out too, stuffing it into his jacket pocket as he strode back to Murphy.
They searched the river bank and found nothing but ruts where the car had gone in and then been dragged unceremoniously out by the recovery truck.
“How did they get here so fast?” Bodie asked.
“Garage down the road. Bloke was coming back from another job and saw the car in the river. He called it in to his boss, who told the plod and they told him to pull it out. Your reg. flagged it up as CI5 and the old man got involved.” He looked across at Bodie. “Found anything?”
“Can’t see a fucking thing, even with this torch. Come on, we’re wasting time. Let’s see if anyone’s in at the garage.”
“Hold on.” Murphy picked up the RT. “6.1 to Base.”
“Go ahead, 6.1.”
“3.7 and I are at the scene of his car crash. We’re going to question some of the locals. It doesn’t smell right.”
“Have you found 4.5 yet?”
“Not yet. We’re working on it.”
The dispatcher sounded disapproving. “Alpha wanted you back twenty minutes ago,” she said.
“We won’t be long,” Murphy promised, with more tact than Bodie would have managed. “6.1 out.”
They drove to the garage but it was in darkness, locked up with steel shutters and the gates padlocked shut. A warehouse was on the plot adjacent to it, with a security hut by the door entrance. Some tinsel wrapped around the door knob appeared to be the only concession to the season. Murphy got out to have a word with the security guard while Bodie looked around him. He didn’t know this place. Why had Jenna come to the river? Was she meeting someone again? That bloke? But she’d said she was going straight - that letter looked genuine…
“Shit!”
Murphy paused in the act of sliding back into the driver’s seat. “What?”
“I need to tell Ian. Her brother. He should know.”
“Steady on. We don’t have anything to tell him yet. She may or may not have driven into the river. I’m thinking ‘not’ at this moment in time.”
“Eh?”
“The night watchman - “ Murphy nodded to the security hut “ - says he didn’t hear a thing until the bloke from the garage backed his truck up on the river bank. He did his rounds in the warehouse as usual, then came out and made a cup of tea. Next thing he knew, your car was being winched onto the tow-truck.”
“That doesn’t-”
“If she’d skidded,” Murphy went on as if Bodie hadn’t spoken, “He’d have heard in the warehouse. She drives pretty fast, your cousin?” - Bodie nodded - “so if she’d lost control there would be skid marks and he’d have heard something in the warehouse. Sound travels at night and there’s no machinery on.”
“And there were no skid marks,” Bodie said. He felt light-headed, hopeful. He still had to find her but there was every chance she’d be pestering him again and getting into some scheme or another.
“There’s lights over there, looks like a house, just off the road. Let’s see if anyone’s at home.”
Murphy drove into the darkness of the wasteground, and then turned onto an unadopted road. It was rutted and potholed; Murphy kept the speed down in deference to his suspension.
Bodie could see a light on in the house, on the ground floor. A figure moved about in front of the window, but it was too dark to determine whether it was male or female.
A flash of light to the left, and a crash that sounded like a steel band had fallen into a greenhouse made Murphy bring the car quickly to a stop. Bodie opened his door, hitting the ground running and heard Murphy calling it in, “6.1 to base. We need backup-” but he was running hard, head ducked low, tucked into himself as much as he could to minimise target area.
It was dark, too bloody dark to be running over ground like this, but using the torch he was still clutching would take away any surprise he might still have. Bugger! He was too far from the house still, and there were figures further away yet, running into the night. The door to the house had slammed open, and two more people appeared and disappeared ahead of him. Like Benny-bloody-Hill, he thought, and put on another burst of speed.
o0o
Doyle could hear shouting behind them as he ran, two paces after Jenna who was quick on her feet, and he was pretty sure one of them was Ashton. He didn’t recognise the other voice, but neither of them were happy. He wasn’t entirely happy himself - they were in some kind of industrial waste, one of those old bombed-out areas that had never been put back to rights, just the shells of buildings left, dotted around with mounds of rubble, abandoned cars, and household rubbish that had just been dumped. He could just about see to run, the thousands of lights of London reflecting off the clouds just enough to allow a kind of night vision. There were brighter, more civilised lights too, but they were far enough away that they’d be lucky to make it over this kind of ground without breaking their legs. Somewhere to their left was the river, he could feel it in the air, could smell the tide, but everything else was unfamiliar, not docks, not city streets, not land that he knew or had ever known. Not his beat, this.
In front of him Jenna stumbled and almost went down, catching herself on her hands and propelling herself forward again beside him. It brought a triumphant cry from behind, and Doyle looked frantically for something that would… there. He grabbed Jenna’s arm and pulled her to the left, into a patch of bush-straggled ground that took them diagonally across to the remains of a building, some kind of factory, he thought. The rooms nearest them were entirely exposed, missing front and most of the side walls, roof long gone, but there was a blackness behind that suggested better cover. If the whole lot didn’t come down on them, if they weren’t going to get trapped there, it might buy them some time, or at least provide some kind of a weapon and a decent place for an ambush.
They had to slow down as they got nearer, the ground even more uneven and littered with detritus, but they slid into the shelter of the walls easily enough. There was no sign of whatever the factory had once made, the floors a plain stretch of cracked concrete, any machinery either long gone or unrecognisable. Doyle let go of Jenna to pick up what looked like an iron rod that might do some useful damage, but it fell apart in his hands, rusted to nothing by the years, and he set the bits down again in frustration, too aware of the slight clang it made in the night.
Jenna had dashed forward to what had once been a door in the back of the room, was now a gaping hole, and was peering through. “We can get through the back, it’s open!” she called in a low voice, as he hesitated. “Hurry up!”
It might be open, but where did it go? He wished she’d slow down for a minute, let him suss things out before running ahead into god knew what. She might look like Bodie, and she might have unexpected talents that he’d be asking Bodie about later, but he didn’t know her like he knew his Bodie, couldn’t be sure how far to trust her. And then she was gone, still half a dozen steps ahead of him, disappeared into the maw of darkness.
Hissing an expletive, Doyle followed, and found himself in a mass of old machinery and girders, the remains of some kind of giant tank lying on its side in one corner, rows of windows set two storeys up, chains hanging from bars and pulleys that criss-crossed the space. Christ only knew what it had once been, but there was plenty of cover, and maybe even something he could use to slow down their pursuit. Even as he thought it though, had set off towards the shadow of the nearest hulking metalwork, there was a shout in front of him rather than behind, and a figure appeared silhouetted against the dark gap at the far side of the building. Either Ashton or his mate had gone around to cut them off.
If it had been just him he could have stood his ground and trusted in his ability to fight his way out of it, but there were two of them, and no guarantee that he could keep them both away from Jenna, so he slid further into the darkness, and hoped Jenna would have the sense to stay quiet, where ever she’d got to.
“Got ‘em!” There was a triumphant shout from the front of the building now, where he’d just come in. Ashton himself, Doyle thought.
Something rattled sharply from the other end of the building, and he looked quickly in that direction, then back to the two men as they began moving towards each other to meet in the middle. They’d be closer to him there, and he began his own careful slide further back into thicker darkness, one hand stretched out to feel that his way was clear. Had the noise been Jenna, or had it been Jenna trying for misdirection? Either way, Ashton and his mate were being canny enough about it - no confident rush in that direction, still close enough to the exits that they’d see anyone who tried it.
He seemed to have taken shelter beside two rather than one otherwise solid pieces of machinery, and there was a gap between them that was just wide enough for him to try and slide through. The world was reduced even further to shades of darkness, pitch black around him now, paler above where he could see the machinery ended and spread again into the more ordinary night of the building. After a few steps his hand met resistance, cold metal, flaking rust - and the unmistakeable rungs of a ladder. Carefully, testing each rung, and resting his feet as close to the edges as possible, where the metal connecting to whatever wall it was might be stronger, he began to climb.
The two men had come together, and were talking in a low rumble to each other, not clearly enough for Doyle to make out words. On the bright side they’d obviously not thought to pick up torches on their rush outside - on the other hand, they didn’t look like they planned to go anywhere until they’d found their prey. Doyle concentrated on climbing higher, silently.
He emerged onto a narrow metal walkway that looked like it crossed from one side of the machinery below him to the other, and alongside a series of vats that stretched further back into the building. They’d give him a kind of cover to move against, because crossing it would otherwise leave him entirely exposed if Ashton looked up. Maybe there’d be some way between the vats. Where the hell was Jenna? He began a cautious sidle along, ducking around the various chains that hung around him, one hand held lightly above the guard rail at the back, just in case. The structure held though, not even sagging under his weight, and he made it to the other end, where steps descended and rose into more darkness again. He paused. Down, or up?
Hsssss…
Doyle’s head whipped around, the slight sound - the all too human sound - coming from further back into the building, and slightly above him.
“‘s me!” Jenna’s voice, barely a whisper from where he stood, but too loud just the same. “There’s a gangway over here, goes all the way around. Get up here and we can dodge them!”
He frowned, wished she could see him. Every sense he had told him it would be safer to be where Jenna wasn’t, but he could hardly leave her. He moved towards her voice, up the steps, checking each one, until he came across the top of a longer rounded tank, and could just make out on the other side, five or six feet away, the slightly swaying human shape that was Jenna. He could see the gangway she was talking about now, fenced along and stretching into the distance. She must have been around it and back already to know how far it went.
“You can get across that okay,” she hissed. “I did it.”
Doyle eyed the tank assessingly, its width and the way it curved downwards at either side, glanced back in the direction of Ashton and his mate, and decided on speed rather than caution. God only knew what Jenna would do next if he wasn’t right beside her.
He crossed the tank at a brisk heart-pounding pace, one foot straight in front of the other, arms held slightly out for balance, and then climbed over the wire fencing. Jenna was there, and she grabbed at his arm, hung on with a strength that surprised him. Was she afraid for herself, or for him? Either way, he drew her towards him and then leaned in closely. “Alright?” he breathed, to where her ear should roughly have been, and felt her nod in reply. He didn’t let go after that, and she didn’t force the issue, so that they stood listening for a moment, bodies warm together.
It didn’t last - Doyle hadn’t been the only person moving, and there were shuffling footsteps coming closer on the ground, maybe ten feet below now.
“You’d better settle in for the night!” Ashton shouted suddenly, so that it reverberated around them. “We’re not going anywhere until you do!”
He had to be bluffing - dawn was surely still hours away, they wouldn’t just wait around for Doyle and Jenna to be lit by the sunrise. It was December cold, and they had to be feeling it too now that they were doing no more than wandering slowly around.
“Come on…” Jenna whispered, and pulled away from him, tugging at his sleeve. She moved faster than he would have done himself, faster than he wanted her to, with the confidence of youth perhaps, the confidence he boldly reclaimed whenever he could, knowing inside it was an illusion.
It was an illusion today too, and they’d gone no more than a dozen paces when a section of metal flooring on the walkway, a section that Jenna had crossed only an outstretched arm away, gave way under Doyle’s greater weight. He felt Jenna’s hand letting go of his sleeve, felt the sickening rush of the fall for barely a moment, and then there was a sharp pain across his shoulder, the ground far too hard against his head, and nothing else.
o0o
Bodie had slowed as he approached the derelict building. He’d seen the first two figures disappear into it, seen the second pair split up, and was strangely certain that none of them knew he’d been after them too, despite his headlong tilt. They’d been entirely focused on their own escape and pursuit, hadn’t spared the time to look behind. He took comfort in the fact that there’d been no gunshots either. If they weren’t using shooters it would make it easier for him. And Murph had called for back-up, and surely Doyle would want to know what his partner was up to when he heard that over the RT.
He tucked the torch into his pocket, night-vision as good as it was going to get now, drew his own gun, and set off across the front room of the place, peering cautiously through the gap at the back into the old machinery hall. There were two blokes standing talking in the clear area at the front of the place, and even as he watched they split up again, one taking each side and starting to make their way further into the darkness. Did they know where their prey was, or were they guessing?
“You’d better settle in for the night! We’re not going anywhere until you do!”
That was easily enough sorted, Bodie reckoned. Neither of them were expecting attack - though maybe they should be, knowing Jenna - so if he...
There was a sudden loud snapping from above, and the squeal of old metal giving way, and then a surprised shout - a man’s shout - and he could see someone falling.
And he knew that voice, knew that voice better than he knew his own voice, but how could Doyle be here - and how could Doyle be falling, and then hitting the ground with that thump, that dull-body thump…
“Over here!” It was one of the men this time, leaving their own cover to dash across the floor towards the - towards Doyle, and Bodie had taken aim and fired a shot before he’d thought about it. He missed - it was too dark, his target moving - but the man came to an abrupt halt, then began retreating to the other side of the building. Bodie shot again, and again, but he vanished back outside, followed by a second dark shadow, and Bodie let them go.
He had more important things to do.
There were clattering footsteps on metal from above, and he lifted his gun again, but then Jenna was in front of him, her mouth moving and saying words he couldn’t hear over the roaring in his ears. He wanted to hug her in relief at finding her alive and apparently unharmed, but there was Doyle, lying on the ground with his eyes closed and not moving.
He put her to one side, crossed to Doyle’s side, and dropped to one knee.
“Ray? Ray!” He checked for a pulse; steady, but rapid. His hands moved quickly over Doyle’s body, searching for injuries, and stopped when Doyle let out a groan.
“Can you hear me, Ray? Is that where it hurts? Your shoulder?”
Another moan that could have been agreement or not, but he was at least half conscious. Bodie pulled out his torch, turned it on, and passed it to Jenna, moving her into the position he needed to see Doyle’s shoulder while he gently peeled away the jacket. Blood… there was so much of it and he bit back the unexpected rise of panic.
Pull yourself together, man. He could almost hear George Cowley’s voice in his head. “Yes, sir,” he muttered. “Have you got anything I can use to stop this bleeding?” he began, then remembered Doyle’s scarf in his pocket and pulled it out. It wouldn’t be enough.
Jenna was looking agitated, alternately watching what he was doing and glancing towards where the men had vanished. “Will, I can’t be here if the coppers arrive, and you know someone will have heard those gunshots!”
“I thought you said-”
“I did! I’m not! I can’t help it, Willie. I’ve never been caught by the police and I’m not about to start now, when I’ve retired. Not even for you and lover boy.”
Bodie glared at her, but Jenna stared back, defiant. “Listen Will, I’ve got a mate who lives near here. Five minues away! He’ll have wheels and we can get Ray to the hospital. Come on, we’re wasting time!”
“I’ve got a car over that way,” Bodie nodded in the direction he’d come from. “We’ll use that. Save your mate the trouble.”
“But Larry and the other guy went that way. They could be hiding anywhere, waiting for us!”
“Larry?” Bodie knew that name.
“Yeah, Larry Ashton. He’s the bloke that tried to make me… Will, we’re wasting time!” she repeated, exasperated, and tried to help Doyle sit up. Doyle moaned again, then caught his breath, and shifted, putting his good hand to the ground.
It came to Bodie then. “Lawrence Ashton,” he breathed. Convicted of arms dealing and guilty of so much more that they just couldn’t get the evidence for, it had been worth the three days in court to see the bastard put away. Why the hell was he out early? Did Cowley know?
Didn’t matter - right now they had to get out of there. Bodie could defend himself and an injured Doyle against a couple of IRA arms dealers with one arm tied behind his back, but he needed to get Jenna somewhere safe too. She wouldn’t thank him for saying it, but she was way out of her league now.
First, he needed to make sure Ray wouldn’t bleed to death. He stripped off his jacket and jumper, then took off his t-shirt, wadded it up and pushed it under Doyle’s jacket to press against his wound. He tied the lot together with the scarf as best he could.
“That’ll have to do you for now, sunshine, we have to get out of here,” Bodie said as he quickly re-dressed, aware that Doyle was watching every move now. “Can you stand?”
“Course… can.” But he made no attempt to move and then he closed his eyes.
“Keep your eyes open, Ray. We’re getting you on your feet. First, roll over onto your knees.”
A ghost of a smile crossed Doyle’s lips and his eyes opened again as he followed Bodie’s instructions, breathing heavily. Together, Bodie and Jenna managed to manoeuvre him upright and held him while he caught his breath. They each had an arm around Doyle’s waist to help him along and keep him from stumbling. Doyle’s good arm was slung around Bodie’s shoulders and every so often his fingers would dig in, but he didn’t make a sound. They kept to the sides of the hall, and the shadows, and when they reached the front of the building, Bodie gently peeled away Ray’s arm. He pointed to the himself then to either side of the building, and both Doyle and Jenna nodded.
Leaving Jenna to support Doyle, Bodie slid carefully away from the shell of the building, and took a look around. The night was nothing after the dark of the factory, all seemed still nearby, and he could hear the faint sounds of the city in the distance. In the other direction the lights of the house were still on, that was no doubt Murphy’s car silhouetted against it, and even as he watched the headlights of three other vehicles swung into view, headed in that direction. He returned to Jenna and Doyle and took up position again, Doyle’s warm body nestled against him.
“Right, this way,” he began when they were all three outside, trying to turn them back towards the road and the house.
“No Will! Jenna said again. “You go then, and…”
“Oh no…” He wasn’t leaving her to her own devices again tonight. Fuck! “Five minutes away?”
“I swear!”
If they walked into an active op it would take twice as long before he could call an ambulance, even once they’d got there. “Fine,” he said. “Which way?”
“The other side of this place, that street there, look. The terraces.”
Bodie looked. He could make out buildings at the edge of the wasteland around them, a street of terraced houses, barely a light on between a dozen of them.
“What if they’re not in?”
“Alf’s wife’s in a wheelchair, she’s always in. An’ he’ll be there. It’s the middle of the night, where else would they be?”
Bodie shook his head at her, but turned them all towards the houses, and they set off.
o0o
Doyle knew two things as he was half-dragged through the night to god knew where - his shoulder blazed with pain like nobody’s business when Jenna jostled against it to help him walk, and Bodie was right there, close beside him again where he should be, a comfort that dulled everything down to bearable. Both things helped keep him awake, though he felt heavy with the need to sleep, to simply lie down and sleep. One foot in front of the other, that’s what he had to do, one foot at a time.
The soft wet ground of the wasteland gave way, at last, to the more familiar, solid feel of a pavement, dipping down to the road and then back up again, and then they stopped, so that he could slump more heavily against Bodie, and just breathe and wait. He could trust Bodie to know what to do.
He managed to open his eyes when Jenna knocked on the door in front of them, saw the pale glow of a hallway light through stained glass, and then a blurry shape getting bigger and bigger, blocking the light, until…
The door opened.
There was something familiar about the man who stood there, a heavy-set man with greying hair and a huge grey moustache, but Jenna was rushing to explain what they needed - no, what he needed, and when she paused for breath he heard another door opening, more footsteps, and then there was a gust of expensive perfume.
“Who on earth is it at this time of… Ray, baby!”
It couldn’t be… he was delirious from the fall, hallucinating, it was concussion…
“What are you keeping him out there for?” Marge asked, pushing Alf to one side and elbowing Jenna away entirely. She had the sense to leave Bodie where he was, holding tightly to Doyle, leading them all into the house, and leaving Alf to close the door, ushering them along a hallway, past stairs, to a surprisingly big kitchen at the back. She cleared something off the table into a sack, and then Doyle felt himself gently pushed down into a chair, Bodie’s strength with him all the way, and his legs kept their own strength because of it.
“Ray, baby,” Marge said again. “What’s this big lump done to you?” She crouched down in front of him, clutching at his hands. “You’re cold!” She started rubbing his hands between hers. “How’d he get you so cold?”
He could feel Bodie bristling beside him, but all he said was “He needs an ambulance. You got a phone?”
Marge looked at him. “An ambulance?” She drew back slightly, and he could feel her eyes everywhere at once, until they settled at last on his shoulder, bulked out by Bodie’s t-shirt, tied tightly by his own scarf. So that was where it’d gone. “We can do better than that, my boy.” She stood up briskly and gestured to Alf. “Nip next door, fetch Dmitri.”
“Call him an ambulance!” Bodie said, voice low and dark, so that Doyle wanted to put a hand out to him. It’d be alright.
“He needs a doctor,” Jenna said at the same time.
Marge stood up and flapped her hand at both of them. “Alf’s got a doctor right next door. And no questions asked,” she added, apparently forgetting that Doyle was on the side of the angels.
Doyle sat back and listened for a moment to Bodie’s mounting anger on his behalf, and Jenna’s increasingly high-pitched explanations, and then he leaned forward and touched Marge’s leg - the only part of her that he could reach, when standing up didn’t seem to be a good idea.
“Marge, love,” he said. “Would you…”
The back door flew open, and a small man in a dressing gown, carrying a doctor’s bag, marched in and somehow managed to clear a way through to Doyle by dint of sheer personality. “Alright, where’s this one then?” He looked Doyle up and down. “This?”
“His shoulder-” Bodie began.
“Yes, I can see that. What’s he doing sitting at a kitchen table when he should be lying down?”
“I’m fine where…” Doyle began, but the doctor seemed to have decided that already, and had pulled up another chair and was already feeling his forehead and prising his eyelids further apart than Doyle wanted them to go.
“You - open that bag and find the bandages,” the doctor said to Bodie, and Doyle was amused to see Bodie comply immediately, even if his lips were pursed together fairly tightly. “Margery - if you could undress him please.”
Bodie, for some reason, clenched his fists at this, but seemed to let it go. Doyle caught his eye and winked at him, could see Bodie relax a little. He was just about to try making a joke - or at least trying to think of one - when his shoulder stabbed burning fire at him, and the world was suddenly too bright, then too brown, and then gone again.
o0o
Bodie spent most of the time that Doyle was unconscious pacing. There wasn’t a lot of room in the kitchen, especially when Alf’s wife appeared from another room in her wheelchair, but if he didn’t do something then Alf was going to find himself with a hole in his nicely wallpapered plasterboard, and the doctor with another patient. At least Dmitri seemed competent - and Marge had gone so far as to draw him to one side and explain that the man had had twenty years of experience in hospitals in his own country, before leaving with a broken heart and becoming so entangled with all sorts in Lebanon that registration in England was a thing of dreams only.
The doctor had injected Ray with painkillers before thoroughly cleaning and stitching up the slice across his shoulder, explaining in vivid detail to anyone who would listen how lucky Doyle had been. Jenna had blanched and gone to brew everyone some tea, and even Alf had busied himself making sure his wife Deloris was happy with what was going on.
“Tetanus,” Dmitri said now, drawing a fearsome looking syringe from his bag, and fitting the needle, and Bodie winced. Good job Doyle was still unconscious.
Even Marge blinked this time, and half turned away, so that Bodie caught her eye.
“What are you doing here, anyway?” he asked. “Bit late for a social call, isn’t it?”
“I don’t see what business of yours…” she began, and he frowned impatiently.
“This is Alf’s place, is it?”
“Well, you can see it is,” she said, glancing quickly in Doyle’s direction, and then away again. “And I don’t want you giving him any trouble…”
Bodie shook his head gently, and she subsided. “It’s not ideal, but it’s what Deloris likes. She grew up around here, knows what ways she needs where. And it suits Alf.”
“Knows the locals, does he?”
Marge raised an eyebrow at him. “Any particular locals you’ve got in mind?”
“That house past the old factory…”
“Oh, him.” Marge sniffed dismissively. “Empty for years, that was, and then three months ago there’s suddenly people in and out at all hours. Well, I had Alf check them out of course - I can’t be too careful in my line of work, you know.”
Bodie raised his own eyebrow, and she tilted her chin at him. “And don’t you come all uppity with me - it’s not easy being a single woman. Three…”
“Who is it then, Marge?”
“I’m not sure I want to tell you. How do I know you won’t blab?”
Bodie took a breath. “Because they’re the ones that did this to Ray.” Well, close enough.
Marge looked far more forbidding than Bodie had seen her before, all of a sudden, drawing herself up somehow, rather, he thought, like some mother out to protect her young ones. “Well, now you’ve said it that doesn’t surprise me,” she said. “You track him down for me, then. Tommy Cruiggan, he’s called, flitted around all those awful terrorist groups, and taught them how to make their bombs, so they say. Nasty things, I don’t hold with ‘em…” She broke off, perhaps seeing the look on Bodie’s face in turn. “You know him, do you?”
Bodie nodded curtly.
“Well, it’s him and some other young lout there most of the time, but there’s all sorts of comings and goings. This other one, he’s too pale - I wouldn’t mind betting he’s been inside for something unpleasant. Oh, and another lad - Betty’s youngest, got mixed up in all sorts before he’d even left school. One of your lot.” She sniffed disparagingly at Bodie. “From up your way. Class will out, you see, and when there’s none there… Now the Beatles, they were different…”
Bodie caught her eye.
“Anyway, he’s a nasty piece of work. Helps Cruiggan with that pub he owns too. The foreign one. Renting rooms to all types. Well I won’t go there, even if it is just around the corner… Lawrie Ashton, that’s his name.”
Jenna, who had been approaching with a cup and saucer in either hand, flinched.
“One of your mates, is he?” Bodie asked over Marge’s shoulder, so that Marge turned around and frowned at Jenna.
“Now, you say Alf knows you, but…” She frowned suddenly, looked back at Bodie, and then at Jenna again.
“No, he’s not my mate!” Jenna said. “Not even close to a mate!”
“So how’d he get hold of my car then?” Marge was looking on interestedly now, but Bodie had stopped caring. “You told me you had an interview!”
“I did have an interview! You know I did! And they offered me the job then and there! Not that you care.”
“Jenna…”
“You leave her be!” Marge said unexpectedly. “She looks like she’s had a hard day of it, and you’ve got no call to bully her, even if she is your sister.”
“Cousin,” Bodie replied automatically, but he frowned at Jenna. She was looking somewhat frayed at the edges alright. “Alright, go on then - what happened?”
“I told you - he wanted me to do a job for him, but I told him no. He used to come visit his mum sometimes back ‘ome, an’ I did the odd thing for him then. But then I moved down ‘ere, and then ‘e found out, and I told him no Will, I did. An’ I’d got the job, and I’d stopped at the lights near your place to bring the car back, and these two yobs kidnapped me, and brought me here, and I don’t know where your car is any more, an’…. They wanted me to drive a car for them, and I told ‘em I don’t do that anymore, but they wouldn’t listen. They tried t’make me, and they said Larry’d do over Ian and Sheila…”
“Alright…” Then Bodie was letting her fall into his arms, and she was sobbing against his chest, and he thought that some of it might even be real this time. Marge looked on approvingly for a while, sipping her tea, and then she went to sit beside Doyle, who was propped up against the table, eyes still closed.
“And what about you, love?” she asked, one hand reaching down to stroke Doyle’s leg, and Bodie was surprised to see it twitch. Maybe not as unconscious as he’d thought.
“’m alright, Marge,” Doyle said, opening his eyes and looking around fuzzily. “Where’s…?” He caught Bodie watching him, and smiled suddenly, as if there was no one else in the room. “Dutch pub,” he said. “Make the Cowley happy, that will. Make Cow happy…” He stopped, looking puzzled. “George’ll like it, anyway,” he said at last, and then he smiled again, the smile, Bodie thought, of someone who’s been given a fairly hefty dose of the best pain medication that money could buy. “You c’n tell ‘im if you like. Then we can go home.”
If only Bodie thought. That’s where all this had started.
“I’ll call George for you,” Marge was saying, “He can sort those lads out right now.” She eyed Doyle consideringly. “Ray needs to be taken home to bed. I’d take him to mine, but I suppose he’ll be more comfortable in his own.”
“Home with Bodie,” Doyle said, nodding, and his smile softened somehow. He looked up then, and looked Bodie straight in the eye. “Comfortable. Comfort,” he added. “Let’s go home.”
Title: Where All This Started
Author: HambelandJemima and Slantedlight
Slash or Gen: Slash
Archive at ProsLib/Circuit: Certainly (but let us check for polishing purposes first!)
Disclaimer: Bodie, Doyle, and the CI5 universe are someone else's, and we're just enjoying the glory of playing with them.
by HambelandJemima and Slantedlight
Part Two ( Part One here)
The river was dark and still. No police cars with flashing lights, no divers rippling the surface in a search for life, no floodlights to show the way.
“Cowley must’ve thought you were driving, mate,” Murphy said thoughtfully.
“I’ll have to tell him about Jenna,” Bodie said, and he was glad it was Murph here, because his voice wasn’t as steady as he would have liked. “Someone should be looking for her.”
“If she’s in there, another few hours isn’t gonna make any difference. It’s too dark to see anything.” Murphy reached for his elbow, to pull him back, and Bodie shook him off with a snarl. Undeterred, Murphy grabbed his bicep and forced Bodie to look at him. “If she’s in the river, we can’t do anything for her,” he said, quietly and firmly. “If she’s not in the river, we’re wasting time here when we could be looking for her. And we still need to find Doyle because Cowley wants you two back at HQ.”
“Cowley can go-” Bodie didn’t elaborate on where he thought Cowley could go. He gave a curt nod. “Got a torch?”
“In the glove box.”
Bodie opened the glove box and rummaged through gum wrappers, parking tickets and Doyle’s scarf before he found the torch. He curled his hand around it, pulling it out and flicking the switch to make sure it worked. The fingers of his left hand lay on the scarf. Where the hell was Doyle? Was he warming the bed of a willing playmate or was he out in the cold somewhere, wondering where his partner had got to? On impulse, Bodie pulled the scarf out too, stuffing it into his jacket pocket as he strode back to Murphy.
They searched the river bank and found nothing but ruts where the car had gone in and then been dragged unceremoniously out by the recovery truck.
“How did they get here so fast?” Bodie asked.
“Garage down the road. Bloke was coming back from another job and saw the car in the river. He called it in to his boss, who told the plod and they told him to pull it out. Your reg. flagged it up as CI5 and the old man got involved.” He looked across at Bodie. “Found anything?”
“Can’t see a fucking thing, even with this torch. Come on, we’re wasting time. Let’s see if anyone’s in at the garage.”
“Hold on.” Murphy picked up the RT. “6.1 to Base.”
“Go ahead, 6.1.”
“3.7 and I are at the scene of his car crash. We’re going to question some of the locals. It doesn’t smell right.”
“Have you found 4.5 yet?”
“Not yet. We’re working on it.”
The dispatcher sounded disapproving. “Alpha wanted you back twenty minutes ago,” she said.
“We won’t be long,” Murphy promised, with more tact than Bodie would have managed. “6.1 out.”
They drove to the garage but it was in darkness, locked up with steel shutters and the gates padlocked shut. A warehouse was on the plot adjacent to it, with a security hut by the door entrance. Some tinsel wrapped around the door knob appeared to be the only concession to the season. Murphy got out to have a word with the security guard while Bodie looked around him. He didn’t know this place. Why had Jenna come to the river? Was she meeting someone again? That bloke? But she’d said she was going straight - that letter looked genuine…
“Shit!”
Murphy paused in the act of sliding back into the driver’s seat. “What?”
“I need to tell Ian. Her brother. He should know.”
“Steady on. We don’t have anything to tell him yet. She may or may not have driven into the river. I’m thinking ‘not’ at this moment in time.”
“Eh?”
“The night watchman - “ Murphy nodded to the security hut “ - says he didn’t hear a thing until the bloke from the garage backed his truck up on the river bank. He did his rounds in the warehouse as usual, then came out and made a cup of tea. Next thing he knew, your car was being winched onto the tow-truck.”
“That doesn’t-”
“If she’d skidded,” Murphy went on as if Bodie hadn’t spoken, “He’d have heard in the warehouse. She drives pretty fast, your cousin?” - Bodie nodded - “so if she’d lost control there would be skid marks and he’d have heard something in the warehouse. Sound travels at night and there’s no machinery on.”
“And there were no skid marks,” Bodie said. He felt light-headed, hopeful. He still had to find her but there was every chance she’d be pestering him again and getting into some scheme or another.
“There’s lights over there, looks like a house, just off the road. Let’s see if anyone’s at home.”
Murphy drove into the darkness of the wasteground, and then turned onto an unadopted road. It was rutted and potholed; Murphy kept the speed down in deference to his suspension.
Bodie could see a light on in the house, on the ground floor. A figure moved about in front of the window, but it was too dark to determine whether it was male or female.
A flash of light to the left, and a crash that sounded like a steel band had fallen into a greenhouse made Murphy bring the car quickly to a stop. Bodie opened his door, hitting the ground running and heard Murphy calling it in, “6.1 to base. We need backup-” but he was running hard, head ducked low, tucked into himself as much as he could to minimise target area.
It was dark, too bloody dark to be running over ground like this, but using the torch he was still clutching would take away any surprise he might still have. Bugger! He was too far from the house still, and there were figures further away yet, running into the night. The door to the house had slammed open, and two more people appeared and disappeared ahead of him. Like Benny-bloody-Hill, he thought, and put on another burst of speed.
o0o
Doyle could hear shouting behind them as he ran, two paces after Jenna who was quick on her feet, and he was pretty sure one of them was Ashton. He didn’t recognise the other voice, but neither of them were happy. He wasn’t entirely happy himself - they were in some kind of industrial waste, one of those old bombed-out areas that had never been put back to rights, just the shells of buildings left, dotted around with mounds of rubble, abandoned cars, and household rubbish that had just been dumped. He could just about see to run, the thousands of lights of London reflecting off the clouds just enough to allow a kind of night vision. There were brighter, more civilised lights too, but they were far enough away that they’d be lucky to make it over this kind of ground without breaking their legs. Somewhere to their left was the river, he could feel it in the air, could smell the tide, but everything else was unfamiliar, not docks, not city streets, not land that he knew or had ever known. Not his beat, this.
In front of him Jenna stumbled and almost went down, catching herself on her hands and propelling herself forward again beside him. It brought a triumphant cry from behind, and Doyle looked frantically for something that would… there. He grabbed Jenna’s arm and pulled her to the left, into a patch of bush-straggled ground that took them diagonally across to the remains of a building, some kind of factory, he thought. The rooms nearest them were entirely exposed, missing front and most of the side walls, roof long gone, but there was a blackness behind that suggested better cover. If the whole lot didn’t come down on them, if they weren’t going to get trapped there, it might buy them some time, or at least provide some kind of a weapon and a decent place for an ambush.
They had to slow down as they got nearer, the ground even more uneven and littered with detritus, but they slid into the shelter of the walls easily enough. There was no sign of whatever the factory had once made, the floors a plain stretch of cracked concrete, any machinery either long gone or unrecognisable. Doyle let go of Jenna to pick up what looked like an iron rod that might do some useful damage, but it fell apart in his hands, rusted to nothing by the years, and he set the bits down again in frustration, too aware of the slight clang it made in the night.
Jenna had dashed forward to what had once been a door in the back of the room, was now a gaping hole, and was peering through. “We can get through the back, it’s open!” she called in a low voice, as he hesitated. “Hurry up!”
It might be open, but where did it go? He wished she’d slow down for a minute, let him suss things out before running ahead into god knew what. She might look like Bodie, and she might have unexpected talents that he’d be asking Bodie about later, but he didn’t know her like he knew his Bodie, couldn’t be sure how far to trust her. And then she was gone, still half a dozen steps ahead of him, disappeared into the maw of darkness.
Hissing an expletive, Doyle followed, and found himself in a mass of old machinery and girders, the remains of some kind of giant tank lying on its side in one corner, rows of windows set two storeys up, chains hanging from bars and pulleys that criss-crossed the space. Christ only knew what it had once been, but there was plenty of cover, and maybe even something he could use to slow down their pursuit. Even as he thought it though, had set off towards the shadow of the nearest hulking metalwork, there was a shout in front of him rather than behind, and a figure appeared silhouetted against the dark gap at the far side of the building. Either Ashton or his mate had gone around to cut them off.
If it had been just him he could have stood his ground and trusted in his ability to fight his way out of it, but there were two of them, and no guarantee that he could keep them both away from Jenna, so he slid further into the darkness, and hoped Jenna would have the sense to stay quiet, where ever she’d got to.
“Got ‘em!” There was a triumphant shout from the front of the building now, where he’d just come in. Ashton himself, Doyle thought.
Something rattled sharply from the other end of the building, and he looked quickly in that direction, then back to the two men as they began moving towards each other to meet in the middle. They’d be closer to him there, and he began his own careful slide further back into thicker darkness, one hand stretched out to feel that his way was clear. Had the noise been Jenna, or had it been Jenna trying for misdirection? Either way, Ashton and his mate were being canny enough about it - no confident rush in that direction, still close enough to the exits that they’d see anyone who tried it.
He seemed to have taken shelter beside two rather than one otherwise solid pieces of machinery, and there was a gap between them that was just wide enough for him to try and slide through. The world was reduced even further to shades of darkness, pitch black around him now, paler above where he could see the machinery ended and spread again into the more ordinary night of the building. After a few steps his hand met resistance, cold metal, flaking rust - and the unmistakeable rungs of a ladder. Carefully, testing each rung, and resting his feet as close to the edges as possible, where the metal connecting to whatever wall it was might be stronger, he began to climb.
The two men had come together, and were talking in a low rumble to each other, not clearly enough for Doyle to make out words. On the bright side they’d obviously not thought to pick up torches on their rush outside - on the other hand, they didn’t look like they planned to go anywhere until they’d found their prey. Doyle concentrated on climbing higher, silently.
He emerged onto a narrow metal walkway that looked like it crossed from one side of the machinery below him to the other, and alongside a series of vats that stretched further back into the building. They’d give him a kind of cover to move against, because crossing it would otherwise leave him entirely exposed if Ashton looked up. Maybe there’d be some way between the vats. Where the hell was Jenna? He began a cautious sidle along, ducking around the various chains that hung around him, one hand held lightly above the guard rail at the back, just in case. The structure held though, not even sagging under his weight, and he made it to the other end, where steps descended and rose into more darkness again. He paused. Down, or up?
Hsssss…
Doyle’s head whipped around, the slight sound - the all too human sound - coming from further back into the building, and slightly above him.
“‘s me!” Jenna’s voice, barely a whisper from where he stood, but too loud just the same. “There’s a gangway over here, goes all the way around. Get up here and we can dodge them!”
He frowned, wished she could see him. Every sense he had told him it would be safer to be where Jenna wasn’t, but he could hardly leave her. He moved towards her voice, up the steps, checking each one, until he came across the top of a longer rounded tank, and could just make out on the other side, five or six feet away, the slightly swaying human shape that was Jenna. He could see the gangway she was talking about now, fenced along and stretching into the distance. She must have been around it and back already to know how far it went.
“You can get across that okay,” she hissed. “I did it.”
Doyle eyed the tank assessingly, its width and the way it curved downwards at either side, glanced back in the direction of Ashton and his mate, and decided on speed rather than caution. God only knew what Jenna would do next if he wasn’t right beside her.
He crossed the tank at a brisk heart-pounding pace, one foot straight in front of the other, arms held slightly out for balance, and then climbed over the wire fencing. Jenna was there, and she grabbed at his arm, hung on with a strength that surprised him. Was she afraid for herself, or for him? Either way, he drew her towards him and then leaned in closely. “Alright?” he breathed, to where her ear should roughly have been, and felt her nod in reply. He didn’t let go after that, and she didn’t force the issue, so that they stood listening for a moment, bodies warm together.
It didn’t last - Doyle hadn’t been the only person moving, and there were shuffling footsteps coming closer on the ground, maybe ten feet below now.
“You’d better settle in for the night!” Ashton shouted suddenly, so that it reverberated around them. “We’re not going anywhere until you do!”
He had to be bluffing - dawn was surely still hours away, they wouldn’t just wait around for Doyle and Jenna to be lit by the sunrise. It was December cold, and they had to be feeling it too now that they were doing no more than wandering slowly around.
“Come on…” Jenna whispered, and pulled away from him, tugging at his sleeve. She moved faster than he would have done himself, faster than he wanted her to, with the confidence of youth perhaps, the confidence he boldly reclaimed whenever he could, knowing inside it was an illusion.
It was an illusion today too, and they’d gone no more than a dozen paces when a section of metal flooring on the walkway, a section that Jenna had crossed only an outstretched arm away, gave way under Doyle’s greater weight. He felt Jenna’s hand letting go of his sleeve, felt the sickening rush of the fall for barely a moment, and then there was a sharp pain across his shoulder, the ground far too hard against his head, and nothing else.
o0o
Bodie had slowed as he approached the derelict building. He’d seen the first two figures disappear into it, seen the second pair split up, and was strangely certain that none of them knew he’d been after them too, despite his headlong tilt. They’d been entirely focused on their own escape and pursuit, hadn’t spared the time to look behind. He took comfort in the fact that there’d been no gunshots either. If they weren’t using shooters it would make it easier for him. And Murph had called for back-up, and surely Doyle would want to know what his partner was up to when he heard that over the RT.
He tucked the torch into his pocket, night-vision as good as it was going to get now, drew his own gun, and set off across the front room of the place, peering cautiously through the gap at the back into the old machinery hall. There were two blokes standing talking in the clear area at the front of the place, and even as he watched they split up again, one taking each side and starting to make their way further into the darkness. Did they know where their prey was, or were they guessing?
“You’d better settle in for the night! We’re not going anywhere until you do!”
That was easily enough sorted, Bodie reckoned. Neither of them were expecting attack - though maybe they should be, knowing Jenna - so if he...
There was a sudden loud snapping from above, and the squeal of old metal giving way, and then a surprised shout - a man’s shout - and he could see someone falling.
And he knew that voice, knew that voice better than he knew his own voice, but how could Doyle be here - and how could Doyle be falling, and then hitting the ground with that thump, that dull-body thump…
“Over here!” It was one of the men this time, leaving their own cover to dash across the floor towards the - towards Doyle, and Bodie had taken aim and fired a shot before he’d thought about it. He missed - it was too dark, his target moving - but the man came to an abrupt halt, then began retreating to the other side of the building. Bodie shot again, and again, but he vanished back outside, followed by a second dark shadow, and Bodie let them go.
He had more important things to do.
There were clattering footsteps on metal from above, and he lifted his gun again, but then Jenna was in front of him, her mouth moving and saying words he couldn’t hear over the roaring in his ears. He wanted to hug her in relief at finding her alive and apparently unharmed, but there was Doyle, lying on the ground with his eyes closed and not moving.
He put her to one side, crossed to Doyle’s side, and dropped to one knee.
“Ray? Ray!” He checked for a pulse; steady, but rapid. His hands moved quickly over Doyle’s body, searching for injuries, and stopped when Doyle let out a groan.
“Can you hear me, Ray? Is that where it hurts? Your shoulder?”
Another moan that could have been agreement or not, but he was at least half conscious. Bodie pulled out his torch, turned it on, and passed it to Jenna, moving her into the position he needed to see Doyle’s shoulder while he gently peeled away the jacket. Blood… there was so much of it and he bit back the unexpected rise of panic.
Pull yourself together, man. He could almost hear George Cowley’s voice in his head. “Yes, sir,” he muttered. “Have you got anything I can use to stop this bleeding?” he began, then remembered Doyle’s scarf in his pocket and pulled it out. It wouldn’t be enough.
Jenna was looking agitated, alternately watching what he was doing and glancing towards where the men had vanished. “Will, I can’t be here if the coppers arrive, and you know someone will have heard those gunshots!”
“I thought you said-”
“I did! I’m not! I can’t help it, Willie. I’ve never been caught by the police and I’m not about to start now, when I’ve retired. Not even for you and lover boy.”
Bodie glared at her, but Jenna stared back, defiant. “Listen Will, I’ve got a mate who lives near here. Five minues away! He’ll have wheels and we can get Ray to the hospital. Come on, we’re wasting time!”
“I’ve got a car over that way,” Bodie nodded in the direction he’d come from. “We’ll use that. Save your mate the trouble.”
“But Larry and the other guy went that way. They could be hiding anywhere, waiting for us!”
“Larry?” Bodie knew that name.
“Yeah, Larry Ashton. He’s the bloke that tried to make me… Will, we’re wasting time!” she repeated, exasperated, and tried to help Doyle sit up. Doyle moaned again, then caught his breath, and shifted, putting his good hand to the ground.
It came to Bodie then. “Lawrence Ashton,” he breathed. Convicted of arms dealing and guilty of so much more that they just couldn’t get the evidence for, it had been worth the three days in court to see the bastard put away. Why the hell was he out early? Did Cowley know?
Didn’t matter - right now they had to get out of there. Bodie could defend himself and an injured Doyle against a couple of IRA arms dealers with one arm tied behind his back, but he needed to get Jenna somewhere safe too. She wouldn’t thank him for saying it, but she was way out of her league now.
First, he needed to make sure Ray wouldn’t bleed to death. He stripped off his jacket and jumper, then took off his t-shirt, wadded it up and pushed it under Doyle’s jacket to press against his wound. He tied the lot together with the scarf as best he could.
“That’ll have to do you for now, sunshine, we have to get out of here,” Bodie said as he quickly re-dressed, aware that Doyle was watching every move now. “Can you stand?”
“Course… can.” But he made no attempt to move and then he closed his eyes.
“Keep your eyes open, Ray. We’re getting you on your feet. First, roll over onto your knees.”
A ghost of a smile crossed Doyle’s lips and his eyes opened again as he followed Bodie’s instructions, breathing heavily. Together, Bodie and Jenna managed to manoeuvre him upright and held him while he caught his breath. They each had an arm around Doyle’s waist to help him along and keep him from stumbling. Doyle’s good arm was slung around Bodie’s shoulders and every so often his fingers would dig in, but he didn’t make a sound. They kept to the sides of the hall, and the shadows, and when they reached the front of the building, Bodie gently peeled away Ray’s arm. He pointed to the himself then to either side of the building, and both Doyle and Jenna nodded.
Leaving Jenna to support Doyle, Bodie slid carefully away from the shell of the building, and took a look around. The night was nothing after the dark of the factory, all seemed still nearby, and he could hear the faint sounds of the city in the distance. In the other direction the lights of the house were still on, that was no doubt Murphy’s car silhouetted against it, and even as he watched the headlights of three other vehicles swung into view, headed in that direction. He returned to Jenna and Doyle and took up position again, Doyle’s warm body nestled against him.
“Right, this way,” he began when they were all three outside, trying to turn them back towards the road and the house.
“No Will! Jenna said again. “You go then, and…”
“Oh no…” He wasn’t leaving her to her own devices again tonight. Fuck! “Five minutes away?”
“I swear!”
If they walked into an active op it would take twice as long before he could call an ambulance, even once they’d got there. “Fine,” he said. “Which way?”
“The other side of this place, that street there, look. The terraces.”
Bodie looked. He could make out buildings at the edge of the wasteland around them, a street of terraced houses, barely a light on between a dozen of them.
“What if they’re not in?”
“Alf’s wife’s in a wheelchair, she’s always in. An’ he’ll be there. It’s the middle of the night, where else would they be?”
Bodie shook his head at her, but turned them all towards the houses, and they set off.
o0o
Doyle knew two things as he was half-dragged through the night to god knew where - his shoulder blazed with pain like nobody’s business when Jenna jostled against it to help him walk, and Bodie was right there, close beside him again where he should be, a comfort that dulled everything down to bearable. Both things helped keep him awake, though he felt heavy with the need to sleep, to simply lie down and sleep. One foot in front of the other, that’s what he had to do, one foot at a time.
The soft wet ground of the wasteland gave way, at last, to the more familiar, solid feel of a pavement, dipping down to the road and then back up again, and then they stopped, so that he could slump more heavily against Bodie, and just breathe and wait. He could trust Bodie to know what to do.
He managed to open his eyes when Jenna knocked on the door in front of them, saw the pale glow of a hallway light through stained glass, and then a blurry shape getting bigger and bigger, blocking the light, until…
The door opened.
There was something familiar about the man who stood there, a heavy-set man with greying hair and a huge grey moustache, but Jenna was rushing to explain what they needed - no, what he needed, and when she paused for breath he heard another door opening, more footsteps, and then there was a gust of expensive perfume.
“Who on earth is it at this time of… Ray, baby!”
It couldn’t be… he was delirious from the fall, hallucinating, it was concussion…
“What are you keeping him out there for?” Marge asked, pushing Alf to one side and elbowing Jenna away entirely. She had the sense to leave Bodie where he was, holding tightly to Doyle, leading them all into the house, and leaving Alf to close the door, ushering them along a hallway, past stairs, to a surprisingly big kitchen at the back. She cleared something off the table into a sack, and then Doyle felt himself gently pushed down into a chair, Bodie’s strength with him all the way, and his legs kept their own strength because of it.
“Ray, baby,” Marge said again. “What’s this big lump done to you?” She crouched down in front of him, clutching at his hands. “You’re cold!” She started rubbing his hands between hers. “How’d he get you so cold?”
He could feel Bodie bristling beside him, but all he said was “He needs an ambulance. You got a phone?”
Marge looked at him. “An ambulance?” She drew back slightly, and he could feel her eyes everywhere at once, until they settled at last on his shoulder, bulked out by Bodie’s t-shirt, tied tightly by his own scarf. So that was where it’d gone. “We can do better than that, my boy.” She stood up briskly and gestured to Alf. “Nip next door, fetch Dmitri.”
“Call him an ambulance!” Bodie said, voice low and dark, so that Doyle wanted to put a hand out to him. It’d be alright.
“He needs a doctor,” Jenna said at the same time.
Marge stood up and flapped her hand at both of them. “Alf’s got a doctor right next door. And no questions asked,” she added, apparently forgetting that Doyle was on the side of the angels.
Doyle sat back and listened for a moment to Bodie’s mounting anger on his behalf, and Jenna’s increasingly high-pitched explanations, and then he leaned forward and touched Marge’s leg - the only part of her that he could reach, when standing up didn’t seem to be a good idea.
“Marge, love,” he said. “Would you…”
The back door flew open, and a small man in a dressing gown, carrying a doctor’s bag, marched in and somehow managed to clear a way through to Doyle by dint of sheer personality. “Alright, where’s this one then?” He looked Doyle up and down. “This?”
“His shoulder-” Bodie began.
“Yes, I can see that. What’s he doing sitting at a kitchen table when he should be lying down?”
“I’m fine where…” Doyle began, but the doctor seemed to have decided that already, and had pulled up another chair and was already feeling his forehead and prising his eyelids further apart than Doyle wanted them to go.
“You - open that bag and find the bandages,” the doctor said to Bodie, and Doyle was amused to see Bodie comply immediately, even if his lips were pursed together fairly tightly. “Margery - if you could undress him please.”
Bodie, for some reason, clenched his fists at this, but seemed to let it go. Doyle caught his eye and winked at him, could see Bodie relax a little. He was just about to try making a joke - or at least trying to think of one - when his shoulder stabbed burning fire at him, and the world was suddenly too bright, then too brown, and then gone again.
o0o
Bodie spent most of the time that Doyle was unconscious pacing. There wasn’t a lot of room in the kitchen, especially when Alf’s wife appeared from another room in her wheelchair, but if he didn’t do something then Alf was going to find himself with a hole in his nicely wallpapered plasterboard, and the doctor with another patient. At least Dmitri seemed competent - and Marge had gone so far as to draw him to one side and explain that the man had had twenty years of experience in hospitals in his own country, before leaving with a broken heart and becoming so entangled with all sorts in Lebanon that registration in England was a thing of dreams only.
The doctor had injected Ray with painkillers before thoroughly cleaning and stitching up the slice across his shoulder, explaining in vivid detail to anyone who would listen how lucky Doyle had been. Jenna had blanched and gone to brew everyone some tea, and even Alf had busied himself making sure his wife Deloris was happy with what was going on.
“Tetanus,” Dmitri said now, drawing a fearsome looking syringe from his bag, and fitting the needle, and Bodie winced. Good job Doyle was still unconscious.
Even Marge blinked this time, and half turned away, so that Bodie caught her eye.
“What are you doing here, anyway?” he asked. “Bit late for a social call, isn’t it?”
“I don’t see what business of yours…” she began, and he frowned impatiently.
“This is Alf’s place, is it?”
“Well, you can see it is,” she said, glancing quickly in Doyle’s direction, and then away again. “And I don’t want you giving him any trouble…”
Bodie shook his head gently, and she subsided. “It’s not ideal, but it’s what Deloris likes. She grew up around here, knows what ways she needs where. And it suits Alf.”
“Knows the locals, does he?”
Marge raised an eyebrow at him. “Any particular locals you’ve got in mind?”
“That house past the old factory…”
“Oh, him.” Marge sniffed dismissively. “Empty for years, that was, and then three months ago there’s suddenly people in and out at all hours. Well, I had Alf check them out of course - I can’t be too careful in my line of work, you know.”
Bodie raised his own eyebrow, and she tilted her chin at him. “And don’t you come all uppity with me - it’s not easy being a single woman. Three…”
“Who is it then, Marge?”
“I’m not sure I want to tell you. How do I know you won’t blab?”
Bodie took a breath. “Because they’re the ones that did this to Ray.” Well, close enough.
Marge looked far more forbidding than Bodie had seen her before, all of a sudden, drawing herself up somehow, rather, he thought, like some mother out to protect her young ones. “Well, now you’ve said it that doesn’t surprise me,” she said. “You track him down for me, then. Tommy Cruiggan, he’s called, flitted around all those awful terrorist groups, and taught them how to make their bombs, so they say. Nasty things, I don’t hold with ‘em…” She broke off, perhaps seeing the look on Bodie’s face in turn. “You know him, do you?”
Bodie nodded curtly.
“Well, it’s him and some other young lout there most of the time, but there’s all sorts of comings and goings. This other one, he’s too pale - I wouldn’t mind betting he’s been inside for something unpleasant. Oh, and another lad - Betty’s youngest, got mixed up in all sorts before he’d even left school. One of your lot.” She sniffed disparagingly at Bodie. “From up your way. Class will out, you see, and when there’s none there… Now the Beatles, they were different…”
Bodie caught her eye.
“Anyway, he’s a nasty piece of work. Helps Cruiggan with that pub he owns too. The foreign one. Renting rooms to all types. Well I won’t go there, even if it is just around the corner… Lawrie Ashton, that’s his name.”
Jenna, who had been approaching with a cup and saucer in either hand, flinched.
“One of your mates, is he?” Bodie asked over Marge’s shoulder, so that Marge turned around and frowned at Jenna.
“Now, you say Alf knows you, but…” She frowned suddenly, looked back at Bodie, and then at Jenna again.
“No, he’s not my mate!” Jenna said. “Not even close to a mate!”
“So how’d he get hold of my car then?” Marge was looking on interestedly now, but Bodie had stopped caring. “You told me you had an interview!”
“I did have an interview! You know I did! And they offered me the job then and there! Not that you care.”
“Jenna…”
“You leave her be!” Marge said unexpectedly. “She looks like she’s had a hard day of it, and you’ve got no call to bully her, even if she is your sister.”
“Cousin,” Bodie replied automatically, but he frowned at Jenna. She was looking somewhat frayed at the edges alright. “Alright, go on then - what happened?”
“I told you - he wanted me to do a job for him, but I told him no. He used to come visit his mum sometimes back ‘ome, an’ I did the odd thing for him then. But then I moved down ‘ere, and then ‘e found out, and I told him no Will, I did. An’ I’d got the job, and I’d stopped at the lights near your place to bring the car back, and these two yobs kidnapped me, and brought me here, and I don’t know where your car is any more, an’…. They wanted me to drive a car for them, and I told ‘em I don’t do that anymore, but they wouldn’t listen. They tried t’make me, and they said Larry’d do over Ian and Sheila…”
“Alright…” Then Bodie was letting her fall into his arms, and she was sobbing against his chest, and he thought that some of it might even be real this time. Marge looked on approvingly for a while, sipping her tea, and then she went to sit beside Doyle, who was propped up against the table, eyes still closed.
“And what about you, love?” she asked, one hand reaching down to stroke Doyle’s leg, and Bodie was surprised to see it twitch. Maybe not as unconscious as he’d thought.
“’m alright, Marge,” Doyle said, opening his eyes and looking around fuzzily. “Where’s…?” He caught Bodie watching him, and smiled suddenly, as if there was no one else in the room. “Dutch pub,” he said. “Make the Cowley happy, that will. Make Cow happy…” He stopped, looking puzzled. “George’ll like it, anyway,” he said at last, and then he smiled again, the smile, Bodie thought, of someone who’s been given a fairly hefty dose of the best pain medication that money could buy. “You c’n tell ‘im if you like. Then we can go home.”
If only Bodie thought. That’s where all this had started.
“I’ll call George for you,” Marge was saying, “He can sort those lads out right now.” She eyed Doyle consideringly. “Ray needs to be taken home to bed. I’d take him to mine, but I suppose he’ll be more comfortable in his own.”
“Home with Bodie,” Doyle said, nodding, and his smile softened somehow. He looked up then, and looked Bodie straight in the eye. “Comfortable. Comfort,” he added. “Let’s go home.”
Title: Where All This Started
Author: HambelandJemima and Slantedlight
Slash or Gen: Slash
Archive at ProsLib/Circuit: Certainly (but let us check for polishing purposes first!)
Disclaimer: Bodie, Doyle, and the CI5 universe are someone else's, and we're just enjoying the glory of playing with them.