OOM: It's all about timing, this life.

[the_gene_genie]

 

He does love days that start with a few practice throws at the dartboard. It’s rare for things to be so quiet but he’s not complaining. Far from it. Most of the lads are just relaxing, some are sleeping. Chris is reading a magazine. It’s good.  A nice restful day. He has half a mind to take a long lunch, starting in about an hour and stretch it through the afternoon, if things carry on like this.

Drake turns up at ten. Five minutes later, he notices she’s talking to Chris and Ray and writing on the whiteboard. The boys are looking confused so there must be something up.

‘Wha’s all this then, Bols?’

She’s written the word ‘bomb’ on the board, with a big cloud around it. Sounds interesting. And then Viv walks in and suddenly everything’s more interesting because joy of joys, it seems they’re about to be graced with a visit from His Twatship himself, Lord Scarman.

~ ~ ~

Half an hour later, everyone is assembled because he has to get it through their heads that Lord Soddin’ Scarman could close them down if he wanted to. Him and his bloody investigations into the force. It’s vital that everyone knows that they have to behave so he makes a nice little speech and everyone seems to be on board. Except Drake, who seems more than a little distracted. But he hasn’t got time to wonder about, or care, why.

‘We will be polite. We will be tidy. We will be very. Impressive.

Wha’s ‘appening on the streets today, Viv?’

‘Uh, nuffin’ much, Guv. Gay Pride demo. They’re pretty quiet.’

‘Well, you pass it down the line tha’ we’re gonna be nice as pie to our pillow-bitin’ chums today, got it?’

They get to it. Again, except Drake. Who apparently has to go and see her informant and it’s a matter of life or death.

He has no idea what she’s on about but leaves her to it. If he doesn’t keep on top of this, there might not be a station for her to be a screw loose in.

When she gets back, she’s her usual self. He’s standing in the very centre of the room, surveying the clean-up operation, and she’s...well. Being her usual self.

‘You do know Lord Scarman’s coming to see if you’re a racist, corrupt institution and not to see whether you’ve polished your paperclips, don’t you?’

‘He won’t find anythin’ to stick in his poxy report in this station.’

Chris rushes by and drops a list of W-Reg Ford Escorts on her desk.  He asks what it’s for but she’s ignoring him and being triumphant about a name on the list, one that Ray knows apparently. He doesn’t stop to ponder why Ray knows a poof that’s a big name in the Gay Rights movement and his attention is diverted elsewhere, until he turns back and she’s still talking shite.

‘Is it just me, or are you talkin’ in another dimension?’

Isn’t she always?

‘This is good; this is very, very good – and there is one other thing.’

‘What other thing, there is no other thing, this is our survival we’re  talkin’ about ‘ere...wha’s meant t’be in ‘ere?’

He was about to try and drill into her head just how important this visit is but sees a big empty shelf in a cabinet.

‘Trophy cabinet, Guv.’

‘It’s empty.’

‘We ’aven’t won any trophies.’

Can’t be having that.

‘Oi, Poirot. Get yerself down to the pawn shop on Christmas Street, buy some sports trophies. If ‘e haggles abou’ the price, tell ‘im his wife gets the video.’

Drake is still waiting to finish, apparently.

‘Guv. The other thing. I want Ray.’

He stares over at his DS who looks just as surprised as he does.

‘...well, I could grow a moustache but I draw the line at a perm.’

Luckily – for everyone except Ray, probably – she doesn’t mean like that. She just wants to borrow him and seeing as there’s a lack of actual crime happening at the moment, he can live with it. As long as she gets one simple thing.

‘I don’t wan’ anything spoiling Scarman’s visit, is that understood?’

‘Understood. ‘

If any of these tossers can be trusted with something of this significance, it’s her. He’s sure of it.

~ ~ ~

Inspection time. It’ll have to do. He tidies them up, Poirot returns with a big box of sports trophies. He himself has even fastened his top button and done his tie up properly. Just a few last minute details.

‘Viv, who’s in the cells?’

‘A pickpocket. A drunk. A guy who thinks he’s Sheena Easton, same old, same old.’

‘Righ’, let ‘em go.’

He doesn’t want the cells littered up with scum while Scarman’s here. Chris points out that the man probably won’t be impressed with empty cells and after a second’s contemplation, he decides he’s right. So he has Viv lock Chris in them.

Well, it’s not like he was going to be doing anything useful today anyway.

~ ~ ~

Drake has come back from wherever she went.

Drake has come back, with Ray.

Ray has a broken nose.

‘The one time I ask ya t’look presentable. You look like a baboon’s arse with a moustache stuck on it!’

‘It’s not my fault.’

A surly look is cast in Drake’s direction but there’s no time to get into it now. She probably clocked him one and he probably deserved it. Whatever it was, she seems unconcerned and is still working on something on her own.

‘Top button.’

‘What?’

‘Undo your top button.’

‘I will not!’

‘You look like a librarian; give the old man somethin’ to look at!’ She complains but does it; another thought has occurred to him. ‘Unless he’s a poof. Anybody know? Lord Scarman, does he take it up the ol’ sh...’

‘DCI Gene Hunt...’

Viv. With Lord Scarman. Who couldn’t have helped but hear that last little observation.

He gets the feeling this is not going to go well.

~ ~ ~

‘Impressive.’

The trophy cabinet does look impressive, now.  And impressive is good. Impressive is very good.

‘Yes! We like our sport an’ we like to win!’

‘...Ayrshire 1923, girls under-fourteen netball.’

Poirot, you tosser.

‘...yeah, we pulled tha’ one around in the last minute.’

If looks could kill. At least the man has the grace to look embarrassed. Or terrified. Possibly both.

‘This looks interesting...’

The old bastard finds Drake’s whiteboard, now complete with a picture of a car to go with the big BOMB and various pieces of information. He has no clue what it’s about but she’s all too happy to fill them both in. On the double murder. Which...hasn’t happened yet.

Lord Scarman is understandably confused. So is he, for that matter. And he doesn’t think her cheerful explanation of ‘crime prevention!’ is really helping matters; if anything, it makes her sound like even more of a mental case.

The old man is sent off to look around with Viv, which he does amicably enough.

‘DI Drake...my office.’

His tone of voice may be polite (...maybe ‘reserved’ would be a better word, as ‘polite’ is only the lace frill stuck on the steaming pile of ‘angry’ underneath) but only because they have a guest. As soon as he’s closed the door though;

‘I told you people are tryin’ t’close this place down and you’re runnin’ around town tryin’ to find a murderer for a crime tha’ hasn’ even happened.’

‘It has, actually. I was there.’

This sort of thing may not be unusual being heard coming from her mouth but today, he is in no mood to indulge it. No mood to listen to it. And no mood to put up with that defiant bloody tone in her voice.

‘Listen, whatever crackpot game you’re playin’, you drop it.’

‘No, I won’t!’

‘What?’

‘My need is greater than yours.’

Defiant doesn’t come close. Blatant insubordination, more like.

‘One more word outta you, Mrs. Fruitcake, an’ I’m gonna hang you out the window by your knicker elastic! This is the real deal; now that man can close my kingdom down with one flourish of ‘is poncy pen. I need everybody on side here, is that understood?!’

She sighs like a twelve year old and looks away.

‘...whatever.’

‘Whatever what?!’

‘Yes. It’s under-stood.’

It’s a scene that could be played out in any home that has a teenage girl in it; her blatant cheek and his impotent anger. But he has to trust that she gets it because he has to go and catch up with Scarman and Viv.

She must know how important this is, surely? Of all people, she must. This is his world and it’s under threat, a very real threat. But he can’t shake the feeling that she’s humouring him; he knows her well enough to suspect that this isn’t the end of it. When has she ever followed orders without question anyway?

No time to think about it. More important matters at hand. Like explaining to His Lordship how Chris felt the need to wave his penis around on the upper deck of the 159.

Highlight of his day, actually, that bit.

~ ~ ~

‘Are you busy?’

She wants a chaperone to the Scrubs to see Layton and he is not keen. But she’s edgy, nervous.

‘What, an’ you want a hunk o’the Gene Genie in the room with you in case the nasty man scares you?’

She obviously can’t say yes but that’s OK, he knows what she means. So he gives in (because he isn’t  about to let her steal his car again) and stands guard while she interviews that scumbag, even offering to get in there and knock the man about a bit. It’s been a frustrating day, his fists are up for the exercise and if anyone deserves it, it’s Layton. Especially when the twat keeps winding her up and she lets him.

He has to get back to the station. He has to protect it. He...also has to wait for her, seeing as she wants a few more minutes with the prisoner. So he leans on the Quattro, smokes, sees Evan White disappear into the prison. Not unusual, him being a lawyer. But still a bit of a coincidence, seeing as Bolly’s so sure that this car bomb has something to do with the Price’s.

She looks pale when she emerges.

‘You ‘appy now?’

‘Not really. But that bastard can’t stop me leaving.’

He always tries to pretend that it doesn’t knock the stuffing out of his sails when she says that. On this occasion, he can’t hide the way his voice quietens when he replies, like he doesn’t want to hear the answer (again), but she’s too distracted too notice. He thinks.

‘Why, you goin’ somewhere?’

They look at each other. She seems to be calculating something, like risk or profit or margins. He’s just wondering what she’s on about, which is pretty standard fare. It happens at least four times a day.

And then she reminds him that they’d planned to have dinner. Asks him out, really. It’s probably a good thing as he wasn’t going to do it again, not after she went and got him suspended just a few days ago. If anything proved that she didn’t feel the same way he did, it would have to be that wouldn’t it? But no, she’s asking him out to dinner, even if it is because she thinks she’s leaving tomorrow.

He should say no. But...well, he’s wanted this. And if she is leaving the next day

                                                                                                                                                                                                                 (not a chance)

then he’d regret not spending a few extra hours with her. So he says yes.

And it turns out it’s going to be a long dinner, because when he gets back to the station it’s to the news that Scarman’s been looking everywhere for him.

‘You’re eatin’ cheese for this.’

‘What?’

‘I’m not ‘avin’ dinner with a bird who says she’s full after half a pickled egg. Starter, mains, puddin’, cheese.’

He counts them off on his fingers and gets back to trying to save his empire, thinking the madness is over; half an hour later he’s hearing magic magic words.

‘I think I’ve seen enough DCI Hunt, you seem to run a tight enough ship.’

Fantastic. Kingdom saved, dinner with Bolly later and if he’s lucky, a bit of upstairs outside after a few glasses of wine.

Until he walks out with Scarman and there she is, having arrested Tim and Caroline Price after planting drugs on them and joy of joys! They just happen to be on first-name terms with Lord Twatship himself. Who then decides he wants to experience the thrills of an overnight stay in the cells which, by now, are full to bursting with hordes of singing, colourful, screaming poofs because some twat went mental with a pink tank and ran over one of their cars.

He knew it’d been going too well. Chaos just seems to follow that woman around like flies on a corpse. Preferably her corpse at this moment in time, especially as she keeps insisting on speaking French to him.

‘If this station goes belly-up Bolly, it’ll be down to you, not me.’

She doesn’t seem to care.

~ ~ ~

‘When I first came here, the idea of spending time with you filled me with horror. You’re insensitive, you’re boorish, you’re terrified of women...’

‘Bollocks! Completely baffled maybe but not terrified.’

‘...and even after forty years of feminism, there is still a sizable rump of intelligent women...’

‘Rump. Rrrump. Hmm. S’a good word, rump.’

‘...intelligent women who would give their eye-teeth to be sitting here with you.’

‘So what about you, Bolly? Does it make your rrrrump quiver?’

She laughs. A good laugh.

‘No.’

‘Good. Because I’ve seen your rump and I’ve seen more padding strapped to Ian Botham’s legs.’

A better laugh. And she tells him she’s going to rather miss him. She says it with enough emotion in her voice to drag from him the admission that actually, yeah, she’s not bad. For a posh bird. And then, for the briefest second, she looks like she might say yes when he suggests they go up to hers and watch a video.

And then she says no which is, if he’s honest, far more what he was expecting. After all, she is only here because she thinks she’s leaving tomorrow and she’s gone on about it all night, even to Luigi.

He’s not sure where she thinks she’s going. Home, she says. He doesn’t know where that is; she’s never said and he doesn’t want to know. Or why. And why would she ask to transfer here only to leave after three months? If she hated it, he could understand. But she’s just told him she’ll miss him and she gets on well with the team most of the time.

It doesn’t make sense.

~ ~ ~

‘So, Lord Scarman. Seen enough?’

The man who exposed himself on the bus...’

Ah.

‘...is over there, typing.’

‘We call that ‘care in the community’, sir.’

Nice try Bols, but it’s probably too little too late.

‘I’ve spent the night with a mentally ill man who thinks he’s a police officer, who you now seem to be entrusting with actually doing police work. I’ve seen two of our most brilliant barristers treated with appalling disdain.’

‘Uh, I’m sure we could arrange a car to take Lord Scarman home.’

 ‘I’ve talked to several young homosexual men and heard their despair. Their dreadful tales of police harassment...’

‘Put it all in your report, your Lordship, yeah?’

‘...the police harassment of sexual and racial minorities is an endemic, ineradicable disease threatening the very survival of our society.’

‘Catchy title, it’ll have ‘bestseller’ written all over it, now if you’ll excuse me...’

He walks to his office, out of patience now. Or, almost. It doesn’t go completely until;

‘I’ll be keeping a beady eye on you, DCI Hunt.’

And it’s the last straw. He doesn’t need to be lectured by a poncy, old, rich, posh, twat who’s never done an honest days work in his life, who wouldn’t know how to get his hands dirty if you took his shovel away and buried him in shit.

‘Is that right? Well, you can take this home in your Harrod’s pipe and smoke it. In twenty years time, when the streets are awash with filth and you’re too frightened to leave your big, posh Belsize Park house after dark, don’t come runnin’ to me, mate. Because I’ll be in Alicante, oiled up, skin sizzlin’ in the midday sun like a burnt sausage!’

‘...if you’re quite finished.’

‘No, not quite. You can despise us, you can disown us, you can even try an’ close us down but you will never break us. Because we are police officers. We are brothers. We are un-bloody-breakable!’

The cheers and applause from the team are long and rousing, easily long enough to see Lord Scarman out the door and down the corridor. And it feels good. Even Bolly joins in. He feels like today is going to be a good day.

Twenty seconds later, she’s calling him a stupid, stupid man. He never did find out why she was trying to fit the Price’s up and in the end, it didn’t matter. They’re barristers, they have a lot of barrister friends. The sort of power that can easily get them out of jail when they haven’t done anything wrong and in the end, he had no choice but to let them go.

It’s only when Drake takes a call and its Layton, that he realises there might be something to all her madness this time ‘round. Because he wasn’t calling from prison. The Price’s legal team have, somehow, managed to get him released. When they try to find out why, Evan White tells them that the Price’s are collecting their daughter from school. And that’s when Alex loses it properly. It’s ten to ten and she’s stressing but she also seems to know something, so he drives and goes along with it.

They’re almost there and she seems calmer. Just around here, she says. The lorry in front stops and tries to turn in the road which OK, is annoying but what does anyone expect from lorry drivers? Probably French anyway. But it’s the advert on the side of the thing that kicks it off – Alex sees it and jumps out of the car.

‘It’s happening, it’s happening now!’

She can’t get past it. He doesn’t know what’s supposed to be happening but he’s yelling at her to get back in the bloody car, beeping his horn at the truck and she’s not listening, not listening at all.

Bloody women.

And then...

...it’s like the sudden realisation when you’ve tripped and you’re falling and you have time to see the inevitable landing but your mind won’t let your body move fast enough to stop it happening. You just get to watch as the impact gets closer and closer, no matter how much you flap your arms.

He sees Evan running. There’s a ridge to the right, a slope of grass. And Evan White is sprinting along the top, calling Tim’s name. The lorry stops, Drake runs past it and he’s up and out of the car, hairs rising on the back of his neck. He can’t see anything, can’t hear anything but Alex yelling something and the muted tones of Caroline Price, calling her daughter back into their car, just like he was with Drake ten seconds ago.

‘Alex!’

The explosion, when it comes, splinters the world. He can’t see it, the truck’s in the way. But the shockwave rips through the ground, he can feel it all the way up his body and through his bones, out the ends of his hair.

Alex.

There’s a little girl up there on the slope. Just standing there, holding a red balloon. Alex Price, their daughter, the little girl who’s just seen her parents get blown to pieces in front of her eyes. He doesn’t think, he just runs to her, a girl who is only just beginning to cry, so small she barely comes up to his chest.

Alex.

                               (...too late)

The balloon floats up into the sky as he takes her hand, floats away; he holds her close as he tries to process how this happened, why, how Drake knew it was coming – but it can wait. There’s a child here who doesn’t need to see any more, has already seen enough to last a lifetime. So he sweeps her into his arms and carries her away, away from the heat of the flames and the haze in the air, the smell of burning rubber and metal and flesh.

Drake, he leaves in the road. He’s needed here and Gene is always where he’s needed most.

~ ~ ~

It was Tim Price. Tim Price paid Layton to wire the car because he found out Caroline had an affair with Evan. Other blokes would just get a divorce but oh no, this lefty dickhead had to kill himself and try and take his wife and daughter with him. Bastard.

He can’t work out if it would have been kinder for the little girl to have been in that car.

No. Of course not. But now she has to live the rest of her life without her parents and will never know why. Because Evan asks him to destroy the tape where Tim confesses, and he does. No child needs to know her dad tried to kill her. Better to know nothing. And Evan turns out to be not quite as big a twat as he thought he was, immediately asking to take little Alex home with him, wanting to bring her up.

‘Bye, little lady.’

He watches her leave, holding her godfather’s hand, a much-needed Scotch in his own.

‘Any problems, you just call the Gene Genie.’

Drake looks a mess, like she needs the drink he hands her even more than he needs his own. She never makes sense, usually. But this time, when she says things that shouldn’t make sense...they sort of do.

‘How come you were there? Taking the little girl’s hand. That couldn’t have happened, you weren’t there. You’re not real.’

He just looks at her, hands her her drink. He has no answers for her, nothing he can say. But he tells the truth anyway, words that seem familiar though he doesn’t remember saying them before.

‘I’m everywhere, Bolly. I was needed and I was there.’

Much like this Scotch is here for him right now. Enough with the questions. It won’t do any of them any good.

~ ~ ~

‘It’s all about timing, this life. Still got things t’learn, adventures to have. Unbreakable, Bolly. ‘

She won’t understand.

‘Unbreakable.’

But she toasts him back anyway, a silent lift of her glass. And for now, it’s what it is. He understands enough for both of them, for today at least.

They can sort out the rest tomorrow.