The Wrong Trousers by fawsley, silly white cortina with Chris, Ray, Sam and Gene
Title: The Wrong Trousers
Author: fawsley
Characters: Chris, Ray, Sam, Gene
Warnings: Ultra crack!fic. The silliest thing I have ever written in my entire life. Well, in this fandom anyway...
Rating: Very silly white Cortina
Word Count: 1700
Disclaimer: not my characters, all the property of Kudos and the BBC
Notes: Inadvertently inspired by dock_leaf. It is All Her Fault. AND because it is now FebruRAY!
The Wrong Trousers
Small stuff at first, pubs on the whole, but always the same mystery. Nobody saw anyone suspicious or heard anything unusual, but somehow the thief got clean away with his haul every time. Always after dark, always with no forced entry, and if a window had been left ajar the gap was far too small for any human being to gain entrance.
A few clubs were targeted too. The attack on The Warren was the worst, the owner’s office ripped to shreds on top of the theft itself, almost as if some frenzied animal had clawed the place to bits. Seemed almost personal. And again the same strange haul as in the other cases.
The Guv and the Boss didn’t seem particularly interested, but it baffled Ray and confused Chris, enough to make them take it on as a personal project. DI Tyler snorted in derision at their keenness.
‘It’s peanuts,’ he scoffed. ‘Why yer pissing about with this one when there’re lots of big meaty cases for you to get yer teeth into?’
‘But why aren’t they going for cash?’ Ray persisted, ‘Or the booze?’
‘Or even the fag machine,’ added Chris. ‘Doesn’t add up, Ray. He doesn’t even take the KP bird with him when he’s finished. Doesn’t make any sense.’
‘Leave it alone and get on with proper grown-up detecting’ growled the Guv.
Maybe they would have given up and forgotten it all, but Chris tried out a bit of protocol and procedure that involved writing down the dates of events in a diary and noticed something about timings that was just too intriguing to ignore. Still their senior officers showed no interest, and the attacks themselves stopped just after Chris’s discovery was announced to them, but still he and Ray would wrangle over it of an evening in a quiet corner of the Arms.
Strangely, the Arms itself was never a victim of the crime wave.
After a few months of lying low, the thief struck again only this time he had moved on to a different target. Pet shops, their stocks totally depleted, but of the one item only and again nothing else touched, any money totally ignored. Odd - and odder still that the Boss was reluctant to investigate.
Of course DI Tyler had always been a bit of a nutter to say the least, and that was indeed the least nasty thing Ray ever said about him. Chris had on the whole managed to take the rough with the smooth, could see the Boss’s good points as well as the downright weird, though even he had to agree that the new trousers were not just worrying but seriously scary. Nobody wore trousers like that. Well, except for a few dodgy ferret-fanciers in some of the city’s seedier establishments.
For a while the puzzle of the trousers and the suitably sarcastic remarks that ensued took their minds off the mysterious case, but then came the day that Chris dragged Ray into the locker room, pale and shaking and stammering.
‘Ray… Ray… It’s… It’s….’
‘What is it you div?’
‘The crimes, the thefts…’
‘What about ‘em? Spit it out Chris.’
‘They always happen when DI Tyler wears those trousers!’
Chris didn’t like spying on his own boss, and despite his dislike of the man Ray was pretty uncomfortable about it all too. But by now they were in too deep, no way they could let this one lie. There was a connection between Tyler and the burglaries, and that connection was those awful trousers. And the dates of course, Chris had all those worked out well in advance, so now it was just a case of watching and waiting.
The day of the next crime arrived. They knew it would happen, but where? And exactly when? And for crying out loud, how? Chris’s heart leapt into his mouth when DI Tyler arrived that morning without his usual trademark tight jeans, wearing those trousers instead. He glanced over at Ray, saw his own fear mirrored in his colleague’s wide eyes. Somehow they had to keep track of Tyler at all times, shadow his every move without him ever realising.
Chris became inordinately keen on applying some of Tyler’s whacky scientific theories to an apparently dead case, needed plenty of help and advice, a good excuse to suddenly appear at Sam’s side at regular intervals throughout the day. Ray did his best to stay calm, keeping a watchful eye on the rest of the team, just in case, because you never knew, if Tyler really was the culprit then he might just have an accomplice…
Strangely, of all people, it was the Guv who seemed most jumpy all day. Kept on checking his watch, peering out of the thin slits that served for windows, staring at the sky and muttering to himself. Again and again he ran his fingers through his hair, hair which, Ray noticed, was much sleeker than it used to be, even had a slightly golden-reddish tinge to it. Surely the Guv wasn’t using dye? Tyler was enough of a nancy poofter for A Division, they certainly didn’t need two on the team. The Guv was slowly weaving his arse from side to side as well. How bloody worrying was that?
Ray sighed and tried to make connections, was sure he was missing something blindingly obvious, but every time he felt he was almost within grasping distance, whatever it was wriggled away like a rat up a drainpipe.
By the end of the day they were no further forward, only more confused. Chris had found Tyler doing nothing more suspicious than quietly moving some equipment from the supplies store into another room. Ray tried to work out if there was anything significant about the equipment itself or the room it had gone to, but it was only the box of road safety stuff they used when visiting schools, and the room was just a room like all the others, simply on the other side of the building and with a slightly larger window than anywhere else.
Nothing made any sense at all.
Trying not to give anything away, Chris and Ray said their goodbyes at the end of their shift and promptly secreted themselves behind the not-quite-closed door of the cleaner’s cupboard in the corner of the now otherwise deserted CID, from where they could keep an eye on DI Tyler’s movements. For far too long nothing seemed to happen at all, apart from a noticeable interest in the passing time.
‘The Guv kept on lookin’ at his watch all day too’ Ray whispered.
Chris said nothing. He was too busy being scared out his wits by the strange noise now emanating from the Guv’s office.
It was a scrabbling noise, a scratching noise, and then on top of that came the chattering, the mad incessant chattering.
They watched as Tyler shook his head sadly and rose from his desk to head into the office. The chattering grew louder, closer, a terrible thing to hear. And even worse to see, for just at that moment Tyler reappeared, accompanied by something that had once been DCI Gene Hunt but which was now a fidgeting, squeaking parody of the man, arms in tight to his chest, fingers curled like claws.
Chris and Ray drew back into the cupboard’s depths as the horror passed their hiding place. Silently they stared at each other, too terrified to speak, wide-eyed with shock, both knowing that the only thing they could now do was follow.
It was of course to the other room, the room where Tyler had moved the equipment, that Chris and Ray were led. Following at a discreet distance, keeping to the shadows where they wouldn’t be spotted, they trailed their quarry with care. The Boss seemed to be trying to calm the Guv, soothing and shushing him, but the terrible chattering never ceased.
‘It’s all right, Gene. Nearly there now. Time’s nearly right. You’ll be ok. Soon be all over. For now…’
Into the room they disappeared. Ears pressed firmly against the door now locked between them, Chris and Ray could only grimace helplessly at each other as, above the thumping of their own wildly pounding hearts, they made out the sounds of struggle, of objects being thrown around, of the Boss and the Guv… What? What were they doing? What was the terrible secret that Chris and Ray had uncovered and how on earth did it relate to the mysterious crime wave?
Then the Guv started to squeal, a terrible, terrifying, unearthly squeal, like nothing they had heard before. Suddenly the squealing was muffled, and with that it lessened, became calmer, and finally stopped. Tyler’s sigh of relief was audible through the thickness of the door.
‘Now! Now!’ they heard him order, ‘Over by the window! Quickly!’
The sound of footsteps on the concrete floor, then the squeal began again. Louder, harsher, piercing, penetrating, ringing in their ears, eating their brains, louder and louder, deafening them to all else. Hands clamped to ears they staggered under the unendurable pain of the noise, Chris by now screaming himself, convinced that his skull was bleeding, Ray whimpering as he cowered on the floor.
It stopped, but by then both men were unconscious upon the ground. The door opened and DI Tyler stepped out, surveyed the sight that met his eyes.
‘They’ll remember nothing when they come round,’ he remarked. ‘Memories wiped by sonic interference.’
Tyler stood for a moment then seemed disturbed by an agitated wriggling in his trousers. Those trousers.
‘All right, all right! Keep yer fluffy tail on. So what d’yer fancy tonight then? See if we can find a sweet shop with a window left open? Marathons and Topic bars? Peanut Brittle and Chocolate Brazils for a change? That keep yer happy for another month?’
The trousers wriggled happily in response.
‘Oy! Keep it quiet down there!’
Tyler waited for his trousers to calm themselves, then disappeared down the corridor towards the station exit, an enigmatic look upon his face.
Behind him he left an empty road safety squirrel suit, abandoned on the floor in a pool of light, full moon beaming brightly through the large window.
DCI Hunt was nowhere to be seen.
Author: fawsley
Characters: Chris, Ray, Sam, Gene
Warnings: Ultra crack!fic. The silliest thing I have ever written in my entire life. Well, in this fandom anyway...
Rating: Very silly white Cortina
Word Count: 1700
Disclaimer: not my characters, all the property of Kudos and the BBC
Notes: Inadvertently inspired by dock_leaf. It is All Her Fault. AND because it is now FebruRAY!
The Wrong Trousers
Small stuff at first, pubs on the whole, but always the same mystery. Nobody saw anyone suspicious or heard anything unusual, but somehow the thief got clean away with his haul every time. Always after dark, always with no forced entry, and if a window had been left ajar the gap was far too small for any human being to gain entrance.
A few clubs were targeted too. The attack on The Warren was the worst, the owner’s office ripped to shreds on top of the theft itself, almost as if some frenzied animal had clawed the place to bits. Seemed almost personal. And again the same strange haul as in the other cases.
The Guv and the Boss didn’t seem particularly interested, but it baffled Ray and confused Chris, enough to make them take it on as a personal project. DI Tyler snorted in derision at their keenness.
‘It’s peanuts,’ he scoffed. ‘Why yer pissing about with this one when there’re lots of big meaty cases for you to get yer teeth into?’
‘But why aren’t they going for cash?’ Ray persisted, ‘Or the booze?’
‘Or even the fag machine,’ added Chris. ‘Doesn’t add up, Ray. He doesn’t even take the KP bird with him when he’s finished. Doesn’t make any sense.’
‘Leave it alone and get on with proper grown-up detecting’ growled the Guv.
Maybe they would have given up and forgotten it all, but Chris tried out a bit of protocol and procedure that involved writing down the dates of events in a diary and noticed something about timings that was just too intriguing to ignore. Still their senior officers showed no interest, and the attacks themselves stopped just after Chris’s discovery was announced to them, but still he and Ray would wrangle over it of an evening in a quiet corner of the Arms.
Strangely, the Arms itself was never a victim of the crime wave.
After a few months of lying low, the thief struck again only this time he had moved on to a different target. Pet shops, their stocks totally depleted, but of the one item only and again nothing else touched, any money totally ignored. Odd - and odder still that the Boss was reluctant to investigate.
Of course DI Tyler had always been a bit of a nutter to say the least, and that was indeed the least nasty thing Ray ever said about him. Chris had on the whole managed to take the rough with the smooth, could see the Boss’s good points as well as the downright weird, though even he had to agree that the new trousers were not just worrying but seriously scary. Nobody wore trousers like that. Well, except for a few dodgy ferret-fanciers in some of the city’s seedier establishments.
For a while the puzzle of the trousers and the suitably sarcastic remarks that ensued took their minds off the mysterious case, but then came the day that Chris dragged Ray into the locker room, pale and shaking and stammering.
‘Ray… Ray… It’s… It’s….’
‘What is it you div?’
‘The crimes, the thefts…’
‘What about ‘em? Spit it out Chris.’
‘They always happen when DI Tyler wears those trousers!’
Chris didn’t like spying on his own boss, and despite his dislike of the man Ray was pretty uncomfortable about it all too. But by now they were in too deep, no way they could let this one lie. There was a connection between Tyler and the burglaries, and that connection was those awful trousers. And the dates of course, Chris had all those worked out well in advance, so now it was just a case of watching and waiting.
The day of the next crime arrived. They knew it would happen, but where? And exactly when? And for crying out loud, how? Chris’s heart leapt into his mouth when DI Tyler arrived that morning without his usual trademark tight jeans, wearing those trousers instead. He glanced over at Ray, saw his own fear mirrored in his colleague’s wide eyes. Somehow they had to keep track of Tyler at all times, shadow his every move without him ever realising.
Chris became inordinately keen on applying some of Tyler’s whacky scientific theories to an apparently dead case, needed plenty of help and advice, a good excuse to suddenly appear at Sam’s side at regular intervals throughout the day. Ray did his best to stay calm, keeping a watchful eye on the rest of the team, just in case, because you never knew, if Tyler really was the culprit then he might just have an accomplice…
Strangely, of all people, it was the Guv who seemed most jumpy all day. Kept on checking his watch, peering out of the thin slits that served for windows, staring at the sky and muttering to himself. Again and again he ran his fingers through his hair, hair which, Ray noticed, was much sleeker than it used to be, even had a slightly golden-reddish tinge to it. Surely the Guv wasn’t using dye? Tyler was enough of a nancy poofter for A Division, they certainly didn’t need two on the team. The Guv was slowly weaving his arse from side to side as well. How bloody worrying was that?
Ray sighed and tried to make connections, was sure he was missing something blindingly obvious, but every time he felt he was almost within grasping distance, whatever it was wriggled away like a rat up a drainpipe.
By the end of the day they were no further forward, only more confused. Chris had found Tyler doing nothing more suspicious than quietly moving some equipment from the supplies store into another room. Ray tried to work out if there was anything significant about the equipment itself or the room it had gone to, but it was only the box of road safety stuff they used when visiting schools, and the room was just a room like all the others, simply on the other side of the building and with a slightly larger window than anywhere else.
Nothing made any sense at all.
Trying not to give anything away, Chris and Ray said their goodbyes at the end of their shift and promptly secreted themselves behind the not-quite-closed door of the cleaner’s cupboard in the corner of the now otherwise deserted CID, from where they could keep an eye on DI Tyler’s movements. For far too long nothing seemed to happen at all, apart from a noticeable interest in the passing time.
‘The Guv kept on lookin’ at his watch all day too’ Ray whispered.
Chris said nothing. He was too busy being scared out his wits by the strange noise now emanating from the Guv’s office.
It was a scrabbling noise, a scratching noise, and then on top of that came the chattering, the mad incessant chattering.
They watched as Tyler shook his head sadly and rose from his desk to head into the office. The chattering grew louder, closer, a terrible thing to hear. And even worse to see, for just at that moment Tyler reappeared, accompanied by something that had once been DCI Gene Hunt but which was now a fidgeting, squeaking parody of the man, arms in tight to his chest, fingers curled like claws.
Chris and Ray drew back into the cupboard’s depths as the horror passed their hiding place. Silently they stared at each other, too terrified to speak, wide-eyed with shock, both knowing that the only thing they could now do was follow.
It was of course to the other room, the room where Tyler had moved the equipment, that Chris and Ray were led. Following at a discreet distance, keeping to the shadows where they wouldn’t be spotted, they trailed their quarry with care. The Boss seemed to be trying to calm the Guv, soothing and shushing him, but the terrible chattering never ceased.
‘It’s all right, Gene. Nearly there now. Time’s nearly right. You’ll be ok. Soon be all over. For now…’
Into the room they disappeared. Ears pressed firmly against the door now locked between them, Chris and Ray could only grimace helplessly at each other as, above the thumping of their own wildly pounding hearts, they made out the sounds of struggle, of objects being thrown around, of the Boss and the Guv… What? What were they doing? What was the terrible secret that Chris and Ray had uncovered and how on earth did it relate to the mysterious crime wave?
Then the Guv started to squeal, a terrible, terrifying, unearthly squeal, like nothing they had heard before. Suddenly the squealing was muffled, and with that it lessened, became calmer, and finally stopped. Tyler’s sigh of relief was audible through the thickness of the door.
‘Now! Now!’ they heard him order, ‘Over by the window! Quickly!’
The sound of footsteps on the concrete floor, then the squeal began again. Louder, harsher, piercing, penetrating, ringing in their ears, eating their brains, louder and louder, deafening them to all else. Hands clamped to ears they staggered under the unendurable pain of the noise, Chris by now screaming himself, convinced that his skull was bleeding, Ray whimpering as he cowered on the floor.
It stopped, but by then both men were unconscious upon the ground. The door opened and DI Tyler stepped out, surveyed the sight that met his eyes.
‘They’ll remember nothing when they come round,’ he remarked. ‘Memories wiped by sonic interference.’
Tyler stood for a moment then seemed disturbed by an agitated wriggling in his trousers. Those trousers.
‘All right, all right! Keep yer fluffy tail on. So what d’yer fancy tonight then? See if we can find a sweet shop with a window left open? Marathons and Topic bars? Peanut Brittle and Chocolate Brazils for a change? That keep yer happy for another month?’
The trousers wriggled happily in response.
‘Oy! Keep it quiet down there!’
Tyler waited for his trousers to calm themselves, then disappeared down the corridor towards the station exit, an enigmatic look upon his face.
Behind him he left an empty road safety squirrel suit, abandoned on the floor in a pool of light, full moon beaming brightly through the large window.
DCI Hunt was nowhere to be seen.