[oom] 1x03 Nothing Changes

[lady_bols]

Everything is significant.

She stares at the television for over an hour, waiting for a sign. Something. Anything. It isn't until she gives up and switches off the set that she gets it. Molly's reflection in the curving glass of the telly.

"I know that if I turn around, you'll disappear. I know that."

But she can't help it, and that same cold fist closes around her heart as she turns. Sure enough, she's gone.

"I'm coming back to you, Molly."

Every bone in her body fills with resolve, every cell.

~

Gnomes.

She'd never look at them quite the same way again.

She sauntered away from Gene's crime scene, disgusted with the whole sordid mess. Towards the water. Away from his particular brand of insanity. Madness, she thought, watching the colourful little figurines floating away down the canal, each loaded with hundreds of pounds worth of cocaine.


And then she saw the black girl. Sitting on the dock, shaking with tears.

~~~

Her day only got worse from there. The girl, Nina, refused to talk to her, even with DCI Hunt sitting out the interview. And then they received a rape complaint from white, middle aged escort, whom he refused to give any credence to whatsoever, simply because she was a sex worker. Hunt's demeanour frankly sickened Alex. The woman revealed the knife wound she'd received. A cut to her left breast.

She joined him in the hall outside the interview room, and that detail threw a shadow across his expression. He told her about a murder the previous week. A young black woman named Delphine. She was member of her church choir. Raped. Strangled. Slashed across the left breast. She was just a few years older than Molly. The simple fact hit her hard. Rattled her nerves.

DCI Hunt called the team together for a briefing on the case. DI Carling didn't take kindly to her wanting to run down his interviews again. She wasn't having any of his shit today. She just wanted the truth. And Hunt, for once, seemed to be backing her play.

They went to re-interview the victim's mother. Hunt took the lead, and Alex let him. She sat alone in the back of the sanctuary, listening to the choir practice, trying to sense of impending dread washing over her. She kept seeing her mother's face, and that white clown, watching her from the shadows. The victim's description of the rapist's threats came back to her. She picked up a Bible and thumbed through. She knew her scripture.

"Trixie said the man who raped her told her that she was beautiful on the outside, but 'impure. You're all impure.' Now, I may have lapsed, but I knew that I recognised that phrase. 'You're like white washed tombs, beautiful on the outside, but filled on the inside with dead men's bones and all sorts of impurities.' Matthew 23:27-28."

This was comfortable ground. This was something she was good at. Something she could build a profile on. Hunt seemed sceptical, but this was finally something she could work, and even through his snide remarks about her getting 'brain ache', she thought he could respect that.

Well, until he started attacking the sex worker's story again. And the team followed his lead, they always did.

Again, she made a stand. She called them on their ridiculous Neanderthal beliefs, asked them when would they start to believe that prostitutes deserved their protection just as much as anyone else. She demanded whether they wanted another Yorkshire Ripper in Fenchurch. And then she stormed out of the squad room.

~~~

She needed some sort of reassurance that she was on the right track and her feet carried her to the office of one Caroline Price. Her mother. It was on the pavement outside that she ran straight into Evan White, her godfather. Molly's godfather. The man who had raised her after her parent's died. She stammered at the sight of him, golden and young. Of course, he didn't recognise her, but that didn't stop her from introducing herself.

Caroline was in with a client it seemed, but Evan offered to give her a message. Suddenly her errand seemed unimportant. Evan, despite being a little dismayed at her forward behaviour, told her to trust her instincts.

The sentiment was more than welcome.

She set off on her mission: warn the working girls Fenchurch East. That's where DCI Hunt found her later that same afternoon.

~~~

He had no idea why she was so worried about them. He wanted a reason. She gave it to him.

"All right then. The skeleton in the closet. A private education. Years at Oxbridge. All counted for nothing really. Because I, Alex Drake, was once -- a prostitute." She said the words with a completely straight face. And he bought it, hook, line and sinker. (So did Ray and Chris, but then, they never were the sharpest knives in the drawer.) "There. I've said it."

Gene shuffled his feet, looking around, laughing nervously. He looked her up and down and muttered, "Christ on a bike."

She went on. "It wasn't as bad as I thought it might be."

"You telling me you lied to get into the Force." He looked her dead in the eye.

"No, actually."

"Eh?"

Out came the razors. "What I just told you was a lie. I said it to show how your preconceptions can inform your judgements about other people, especially prostitutes. Sorry."

He glared at her. "Sometimes, I hate you, Drake."

She scoffed. "So I'm not how you'd expect a prostitute to be? If I said that I'd been raped, you'd believe me, but not someone like Trixie? Not a woman like that?"

"No, not 'hate'. Despise," he corrected himself.

She couldn't believe what she was hearing. "All right. So I'm not a hooker. But if I was, d'you know something, Gene? You could never, ever afford me." She got right up in his face, almost whispering against his cheek.

"You might talk with a plum in your gob, love, but I would rather go with one of those whores than waste my money on some bitter, twisted, messed-up, clenched-arsed, toffee-nosed bitch like you."

He wanted to get a rise out of her. And he got it. She slapped him across the face. Hard.

He took it, and came back for more. "You feel better now?"

"No."

Sometimes you just had to speak a man's language to get him to understand you. This time she threw from the hip, and he never saw her left hook coming. It caught him square on the chin and rocked him back on his heels.

"Better now!" She said, smiling as he cupped his jaw. She sauntered back over to the Quattro, cracking her knuckles. To Chris and Ray. "What are you waiting for, ladies? Come on. Let's get pissed."

~~~

She thought for sure she'd catch hell for it. That once they'd got to Luigi's, he'd stop speaking to her entirely. The punch seemed to have entirely the opposite effect.

He poured her glass after glass of wine and even still smouldering from their little exchange, seemed to see her in a new light. He was almost hanging on her every word.

It was intoxicating. He was intoxicating. Her head was on her hand and she leaned her elbow on the bar, the wine and his proximity making her head spin in the most wonderful way.

"Tell me, do you ever get lonely, Gene?"

"The Gene Genie, lonely?" He shook his head. "Too busy clearing the streets of Cockney filth and scum to get lonely."

She smirked at him, blinking at him, languid and content.

He sniffed, not meeting her gaze. "Sometimes." He leaned closer, so close she could smell his aftershave. "But if you ever repeat that, I'll have to stamp on your pretty little head."

She could get lost in those blue grey eyes, she thinks. And why not? He's right here. He's eating out of her hand.

"Why can't I just enjoy the last few seconds of life, I mean it doesn't all have to be about pain, does it?"

"No. What doesn't?"

"What would you do, Gene? Last few seconds on Earth. Anything you wanted. Right now." She knew her answer already, she just wanted to hear him say it.

"Wha', anything?" he murmured, eyes on her lips.

"Anything," she said, leaning closer still and revelling as he did the same, completely unconscious.

"Right now?"

"Right now."

His gaze moved from her eyes to her mouth and back again.

"Say it," she urged, stealing a glance at his mouth, wanting nothing more than to lean in and kiss that pout away. She knew what his answer was and in that moment, she would to give it to him, if only he'd ask.

His eyebrows went up a bit. He explained to her, very carefully. "I'm drunk. And you're very drunk." He finished the last swallow in her glass and she couldn't believe what she was seeing. He was backing down.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm doing the right thing. And you." He put a wad of pound notes on the bar to pay for their drinks. "Should go to bed, Bolly."

Right. He was leaving. He was walking away from her. She rolled her eyes. Of all the --

A bottle of bubbly landed on the bar beside her. "Champagne should never be drunk alone."

It was a mistake, she knew that later. But in that moment, she didn't care. Her blood was up and this Thatcherite in his glorious red braces would be the full beneficiary of the wave of lust Gene Hunt had dredged up. And if he had a problem with it? That was his own bloody fault.

"Well, I couldn't agree more."

He wasn't Gene. But he would do for the moment.

~~~

She woke up to the sound of the telephone buzzing, a screaming hangover ringing in her ears.

She felt like shit and there was nothing for it but to drag her arse into CID, and play it off like one of the boys. So worth it. Amazing. Blahdy blah blah.

Yeah, fine and good until Hunt tried to pull her into his office and give her a lecture on her morality affect his ability to lead. She gave him hell all over again, and anyway it was his fault for running off and leaving her to hook up with some wanker.

And that's how they ended up shouting at one another all over again.

Wasting time when they should be working the case. Shaz informed her there was a fancy dress party on the Sunborn, the party ship where Trixie said she'd been raped. And Alex agreed. Costumes for the whole team.

And who cared what any of them thought. She was going as a playboy bunny. Sod the lot of them.

~~~

Nina still didn't want to leave the station, so she told the WPC to let her wait in the records room, at least until she was ready to go home.

Nina gave her a look of thanks, her dark eyes haunted with some unknown horror.

It was the least she could do for her, at least until she felt she could tell them her story.

~~~

Hunt showed up as Clint Eastwood in The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, sporting a flat-brimmed hat and the classic poncho, puffing on a huge cigar. Chris came as Superman with his hair slicked back and thick rimmed glasses, Raymondo showed up as Bond, James Bond, only people kept mistaking him for a waiter. He kept popping off at the party goers as they tried to take his champagne from him. So much for blending in.

They were looking for a curly-haired gentleman with a sovereign ring. And she took it upon herself to act as bait. Even as she stalked across the deck to proposition their first suspect, she could feel Hunt's eyes on her backside. Bastard.

It wasn't their man. No, it was Ray who spotted him. A waiter, a man with no chin.

"Christ you may actually be onto something, Bolly. Over there. He was in Delphine's choir. We interviewed him."

"Let's go."

"Just remember. Softly softly, Drake." He indicated Mr. Sykes, the man that owned the boat was a member of the funny handshake brigade, and as such, friend of the Commissioner's. If they angered him, they were all in the shit.

"I've got an idea. Maybe we can provoke a reaction. Tell him you think women like me are dirty. Tell him you think I'm like a prostitute. You've got no respect for women like that." She couldn't resist getting another jibe in. "In fact, Gene, just be yourself."

She gave him a cheeky grin, and grabbed Ray, dragging him out onto the dance floor. She turned her back to him and proceeded to wiggle to the music, rubbing herself all over him like a cat. And then out of nowhere, she whirled and told him to get off her.

It got exactly the reaction they were hoping for. She made the collar, and the ruckus? Well, Ray took care of that, much to Gene's chagrin.

~~~

What she didn't expect was to see Evan White again, this time as representation for the suspect. It didn't matter. The man had used the exact same quote from the bible, even if he claimed never to have seen the woman before.

Her case came apart before her eyes as he swore on the Bible that he did not rape and assault Trixie Walsh. He'd never even seen her, God as his witness.

So now they had sweet FA and Sykes accusing them of harassing his staff.

Fantastic. They had to let him go.

~~~

She spoke briefly with Evan again, and of course, Gene took it as her consorting with the enemy. She told him she wasn't even sure they were on the same side anymore.

He wanted to put that to the test, and requestion Trixie Walsh. She was to follow his lead.

She was lying. He made that much clear. Even she couldn't deny it any longer.

~~~

It was Ray who finally got Nina to talk. She'd been the one who'd been raped. She was the one who'd been slashed. She was the one Trixie was trying to protect. Gene confirmed the story with Trixie.

That certainly made the crime fit the profile better. And it meant they'd let a serial rapist and possible murderer free.

It was her contacts with the working girls that put them onto him again. They'd seen him pick up one of the girl's and they gave a description of his car. They drove around frantically searching until they spotted it tucked up in some dilapidated warehouse garage down by the docks.

Alex's heart was in her mouth as they searched the building. He was there, hiding in the shadows, holding a woman at knifepoint. And it was Ray who disarmed him.

They took him back to CID, but the victim, Sonja, pulled a runner, and their only hope to make a collar came down to Nina. And Gene told her straight out, the jury wouldn't believe her word against his.

Again, she felt that cold lump in the pit of her stomach. They would have to let him go again.

There was nothing, absolutely nothing for it.

~~~

"Go on then. Get it over with." He glared at her, but there was no real sting in it.

"What?"

"The lecture."

She gave him a wistful smile. "No lecture. You did the right thing."

He actually slapped his ears. "Sorry, is there something wrong with my hearing, I could have swore you just said, 'Did The Right Thing'." He towered over her, glowering.

She couldn't meet his eyes. "Well, with only five percent of rape cases ending in conviction, what chance would she have had?" She again gave him a weak smile, turning to go back to her office.

He sounded a touch defeated by this truth. "Yeah, well. Maybe that'll change some day."

"Don't hold your breath."

~~~

The next evening at Luigi's, the golden haired city boy was there, and she fobbed him off, saying she was there with a friend, pointing at Gene. She'd never seen DCI Hunt look so intimidating with just a jerk of his head. The boy couldn't disappear fast enough.

Gene poured her a glass of champagne, pointing at the news report on the telly. There was their rapist, being dragged away by the plonk, for having a boot full of cocaine stashed in a dozen little garden gnomes. It was a horrible, and beautiful sight, all in the same breath.

And it wasn't Gene's doing. Ray had taken a little initiative it seemed.

She clinked her glass against the bottle Gene was holding and met his gaze as he took a drink. All in all, she had to count it as a win.

[ Gene's take. ]

[*all dialogue taken from 1x03 of Ashes To Ashes]