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[oom] 2x05 Operation Rose
She'd fallen asleep on the couch again, watching the BBC logo spin endlessly, waiting for word from Molly. Something, anything, just to keep her connected to her real life, to her daughter. Something to keep her from forgetting why she was fighting so hard to get home. To remind her why, now, in what felt like their darkest hour, she couldn't let herself weaken, not even for a single night.
The white static of the television breaks into a programme and she starts awake.
A children's programme, with a ventriloquist talking to Orville, the large green duckling perched on his knee.
The childlike voice makes her heart clench, but at least the news is good.
She's made it to the hospital. The prognosis is grim, but she's still alive. She's safe away from that madman and the constant cold drip of water.
There's still hope.
~~~
"Burglary at number two Stanley Road, Guv. Are you still near there?"
The call comes in over the radio and her heart stops.
"Stanley Road."
"Give it to plod, Viv."
"That's Bryan. Well come on let's go!"
"Who's Bryan?"
"It's Pete's dad. Just start the car!"
"Who's Pete?"
"He's Molly's father. We've got to get to the Drakes."
"The Drakes. Oh don' tell me they 'ave the misfortune to be related to you."
Alex isn't even listening. "Oh this is gonna be seriously weird."
Gene looks at her, and then back at the lads. "That'll make a nice change."
~~~
Bryan and Marjorie Drake had been the best in-laws a girl could ever want. They'd always been fond of Alex and she of them. Even when their son left her and their granddaughter, they were always supportive. She'd never had a grown relationship with her own parents, so it was simultaneously strange and wonderful to have them in her life. And they were the most devoted grandparents a mother could ever hope for.
She'd never forgive herself for forgetting the timing of Bryan's injury. He'd lost his hearing for the rest of his life, and she'd been too caught up wallowing in her own misery to try and stop it.
(It's just a dream? Isn't it? She finds it more and more difficult to believe that every day.)
She saw the paramedics loading Bryan into the ambulance and she couldn't do anything but throw her arms around Marjorie, apologising profusely.
Needless to say they had no idea who she was.
~~~
Alex met Peter Drake when she was at Cambridge, getting her Master's degree. He was literate, clever, and gifted with dark good looks, even if he was a bit on the awkward side. They were introduced by mutual friends, and ended up dating off and on through Michaelmas term. She found him easy to be around, a laugh and a good mate to while away hours at the pub with, when she could tear herself away from revising.
They'd had a rough patch where he insisted they see other people, but he couldn't seem to remember that he was the one who'd asked for space whenever she dared to go out with another man. She thought that jealous streak was romantic at the time, that it meant he fancied her far more than he liked to admit. So when he asked to move in together, she took him up on it and for awhile, it was good. (Even when they unexpectedly ran into his parents one day on campus, and he utterly failed to introduce her as his girlfriend. But whatever. Hindsight is always twenty twenty.)
She went on to Hendon and he kept on at University, changing his degree a few times and using that affable charm of his to keep in his professors' good graces. They both lived on her salary and the trust her parents had left her, one that had been managed with superb skill by her godfather. It never occurred to her that Peter never intended to work a day in his life.
Evan gave her away at their wedding in the spring of 1993, and they honeymooned in the south of France, taking a two week long tour by car. (She'd never quite understood how it was her fault they ended up lost, broken down on the side of the road in the pouring rain for hours on end. It wasn't as if he ever listened to her directions anyway.)
Looking back on it later, she realised that any romance they might have had ended on that muddy track in the wilds of Provence, and it never seemed to recover after that. He seemed determined to stay ensconced behind the white walls of academia, without ever seeming to procure a degree, while she supported them both on her police salary and her trust. They didn't precisely fight like cats and dogs. But she did feel like she spent an inordinate amount of time apologising for things over which she had no control. He was an artist, and the workaday world was not for the likes of him. He had a novel in him, and she needed to understand. On days when she did raise her voice to him, he met her at the door with a bouquet of flowers and a takeaway dinner already laid out on the good china, as if he'd made it himself.
It was a small effort, but she took it.
It always felt like a struggle, but they seemed to muddle through, like you do. And she was happy, of a sorts, doing well on her career track, making a difference in the world, even if he wasn't. And she was content with her life. Having a family never seemed like a high priority, but when it happened she was thrilled at the prospect of being a mother.
Peter? Wasn't happy at all. A fact that he made known in no uncertain terms. That wasn't the life he signed on for. She never felt like it was the fatherhood that scared him. It was the idea of getting off his arse and getting a paying job that made him baulk. It seemed that becoming a member of the "establishment" was beneath him. He had a higher calling.
The day she came home and found that he'd left Molly with the nanny and buggered off to God knows where, she was angry, yes. She was absolutely livid at him for abandoning his responsibilities. She'd grown up without a father, and that was a fate she would never have wished on her daughter. She knew how hard it had been. She knew how hard it would be without her...
In the dark of the night, holding her daughter to her breast as she sang a soft lullaby, she had to admit, she was also relieved he was gone. Life was difficult enough without having to struggle every hour to take care of a grown man as well as an infant. It would be hard, raising a child on her own, but it wasn't impossible.
And Molly became her world. Which is as it should be.
Having to face Peter again was beyond her limits. What do you do when you meet your ex-husband when he's fourteen years old? Well, if you're Alex Drake and you're trapped in a world that you believe is a construct of your dreaming mind, you give him a piece of your mind. Or three.
It was probably the fact that his mother had asked him to put Molly out. Molly? Was the tiny black kitten he was holding. She didn't know what enraged her more, that he'd been entrusted with the care and keeping of a life again, and he seemed to be better suited to it than she'd ever seen -- or that he'd named their daughter after a fucking cat.
~~~
As if having to work Bryan's case wasn't hard enough with the brass leaning on them about Mac's legacy, her 'suitor' returned, the man with the rose fetish and the serious boundary issues.
He left a card with the name Boris Johnson, telling her to meet him at Luigi's for dinner. And of course, the Guv caught wind of it. Had to have a go at her about seeing an older man, which, none of his business, really. (Did it matter to him? Did she care that it mattered to him?)
And once he'd made well and sure he'd disrupted her night out with the Guv, he didn't even have the decency to phone and cancel. No, just left another card, saying sorry he'd missed her.
She did not have time for this petty gamesmanship, not with everything else that was going on. She went back to the office to try and work on the case. There was something blissful about working after hours, having the whole place to herself. She could just let go and focus on the case at hand. She found all the news clippings Shaz had left for her, Staines' entire illustrious career as documented in the press. She was in the process of jotting her thoughts down on the white board when she heard the flare of a match and the hiss of a cigarette being lit. For a brief moment, she thought the Guv had come to check on her.
No. This was the man who'd left the card. The man who'd kidnapped, drugged and tortured her. She scrambled for her service weapon in the top drawer of her desk, levelling it at him. Her mind raced. Who the hell did he think he was, just waltzing right into CID in the middle of the night?
"Hello, Alex."
"Who are you?"
"Martin Summers."
"Stay where you are."
"Go ahead. Shoot. Though I have to warn you, you may be getting rid of the one person who can help you here. So. Don't be scared."
"You make intimidating phone calls, you send me roses like some sort of crazed stalker, you try and poison me. And I shouldn't be scared?"
"Well, I had to make sure you were the person I was looking for. And you are. There aren't a lot of people here from the world. Apparently you and I are the only two."
He closed the distance between them, taking a puff of his cigarette, trying to act casual. Alex wasn't having any of it. She racked the automatic and thumbed the safety, making damn sure he knew she meant business.
"You trying to spook me out with this?"
"If I were to say to you, you've been shot in the head, you've just arrived at the hospital, and Molly is on her way to see you, would that help convince you?"
Alex felt the world shift and twist beneath her feet. Her eyes sheened with tears, instantly. He knew.
"Is that why you're here? To help me get home?"
"You and I are the only two people who actually know what that means." He laughed and walked away from her. "Still. It is a relief to talk about it, yes? As for helping you, well, that depends."
He pointed at her work on the white board, and she levelled the weapon at him again. Her arms were beginning to ache, but she didn't trust him, not for one heartbeat.
"Much easier. Cross-referencing DNA, I find, though, don't you?"
"You're a cop."
"Yes. Retired. And disgraced."
Her hand shook and she couldn't help the wave of emotion threatening to overwhelm her. "You know about Operation Rose. That's why you sent me the roses, isn't it?"
"Operation Rose could be your exit route."
"It's about police corruption. Mac. You warned us about it."
"It won't be pretty, but how much do you want to see your daughter again."
The vague threat wrapped in a promise makes her livid. "If you're so sure you can get me home, why are you still here?"
"You're not the only one who's dying here, Alex. Mine is a very slow and painful death. But here, I can live the life I want. I could go back, but I don't want to. You on the other hand have a decision to make as to what you're willing to do -- to have that chance."
"You want me to be corrupt."
He turned and walked away from her, oblivious to the weapon aimed at the back of his head. "Think about it, Alex. In six months time, when Molly's face has faded from your memory, you'll be begging me to help you. I haven't got much time to wait for an answer. And sadly, neither do you."
He left CID and her knees went weak.
~~~
Later, she'd think, she should have seen it coming a mile away. Gaynor Mason was George Staines. Mid transition in a gender reassignment surgery.
She was too wrapped up in the idea that Peter was the one who had robbed his parents. He wasn't; he'd figured it out when he saw Gaynor wearing his mother's necklace. When Gaynor had given chase, he'd lobbed a brick at her head. Which was how they discovered her real identity.
She was too wrapped up in the possibility that Operation Rose held the key to her getting home.
~~~
Summers showed up that evening in Luigi's, bold as brass. Even knowing her team was at her back, she felt a cold chill run down her spine.
"Well? Alex? Do you have an answer for me?"
"I know you could be my only chance of getting back. And you know how much I miss my daughter; I would do anything to get to see her again. But what you want me to do, what you want me to be, is corrupt and dishonest." Gene was watching them, she knew. She could feel it. "I'm sorry, but I simply can't. And so the answer, is thanks, but no thanks. I don't know how, but I'll find my own way back."
"I had a feeling you were going to say something like that," Summers smirked, looking disappointed. "Oh well. I can't change your mind, maybe Operation Rose will."
The rose he left on her table was black and shrivelled.
She didn't care. She'd picked her side in the coming war.
All dialogue from Ashes To Ashes 2x05
The white static of the television breaks into a programme and she starts awake.
A children's programme, with a ventriloquist talking to Orville, the large green duckling perched on his knee.
The childlike voice makes her heart clench, but at least the news is good.
She's made it to the hospital. The prognosis is grim, but she's still alive. She's safe away from that madman and the constant cold drip of water.
There's still hope.
~~~
"Burglary at number two Stanley Road, Guv. Are you still near there?"
The call comes in over the radio and her heart stops.
"Stanley Road."
"Give it to plod, Viv."
"That's Bryan. Well come on let's go!"
"Who's Bryan?"
"It's Pete's dad. Just start the car!"
"Who's Pete?"
"He's Molly's father. We've got to get to the Drakes."
"The Drakes. Oh don' tell me they 'ave the misfortune to be related to you."
Alex isn't even listening. "Oh this is gonna be seriously weird."
Gene looks at her, and then back at the lads. "That'll make a nice change."
~~~
Bryan and Marjorie Drake had been the best in-laws a girl could ever want. They'd always been fond of Alex and she of them. Even when their son left her and their granddaughter, they were always supportive. She'd never had a grown relationship with her own parents, so it was simultaneously strange and wonderful to have them in her life. And they were the most devoted grandparents a mother could ever hope for.
She'd never forgive herself for forgetting the timing of Bryan's injury. He'd lost his hearing for the rest of his life, and she'd been too caught up wallowing in her own misery to try and stop it.
(It's just a dream? Isn't it? She finds it more and more difficult to believe that every day.)
She saw the paramedics loading Bryan into the ambulance and she couldn't do anything but throw her arms around Marjorie, apologising profusely.
Needless to say they had no idea who she was.
~~~
Alex met Peter Drake when she was at Cambridge, getting her Master's degree. He was literate, clever, and gifted with dark good looks, even if he was a bit on the awkward side. They were introduced by mutual friends, and ended up dating off and on through Michaelmas term. She found him easy to be around, a laugh and a good mate to while away hours at the pub with, when she could tear herself away from revising.
They'd had a rough patch where he insisted they see other people, but he couldn't seem to remember that he was the one who'd asked for space whenever she dared to go out with another man. She thought that jealous streak was romantic at the time, that it meant he fancied her far more than he liked to admit. So when he asked to move in together, she took him up on it and for awhile, it was good. (Even when they unexpectedly ran into his parents one day on campus, and he utterly failed to introduce her as his girlfriend. But whatever. Hindsight is always twenty twenty.)
She went on to Hendon and he kept on at University, changing his degree a few times and using that affable charm of his to keep in his professors' good graces. They both lived on her salary and the trust her parents had left her, one that had been managed with superb skill by her godfather. It never occurred to her that Peter never intended to work a day in his life.
Evan gave her away at their wedding in the spring of 1993, and they honeymooned in the south of France, taking a two week long tour by car. (She'd never quite understood how it was her fault they ended up lost, broken down on the side of the road in the pouring rain for hours on end. It wasn't as if he ever listened to her directions anyway.)
Looking back on it later, she realised that any romance they might have had ended on that muddy track in the wilds of Provence, and it never seemed to recover after that. He seemed determined to stay ensconced behind the white walls of academia, without ever seeming to procure a degree, while she supported them both on her police salary and her trust. They didn't precisely fight like cats and dogs. But she did feel like she spent an inordinate amount of time apologising for things over which she had no control. He was an artist, and the workaday world was not for the likes of him. He had a novel in him, and she needed to understand. On days when she did raise her voice to him, he met her at the door with a bouquet of flowers and a takeaway dinner already laid out on the good china, as if he'd made it himself.
It was a small effort, but she took it.
It always felt like a struggle, but they seemed to muddle through, like you do. And she was happy, of a sorts, doing well on her career track, making a difference in the world, even if he wasn't. And she was content with her life. Having a family never seemed like a high priority, but when it happened she was thrilled at the prospect of being a mother.
Peter? Wasn't happy at all. A fact that he made known in no uncertain terms. That wasn't the life he signed on for. She never felt like it was the fatherhood that scared him. It was the idea of getting off his arse and getting a paying job that made him baulk. It seemed that becoming a member of the "establishment" was beneath him. He had a higher calling.
The day she came home and found that he'd left Molly with the nanny and buggered off to God knows where, she was angry, yes. She was absolutely livid at him for abandoning his responsibilities. She'd grown up without a father, and that was a fate she would never have wished on her daughter. She knew how hard it had been. She knew how hard it would be without her...
In the dark of the night, holding her daughter to her breast as she sang a soft lullaby, she had to admit, she was also relieved he was gone. Life was difficult enough without having to struggle every hour to take care of a grown man as well as an infant. It would be hard, raising a child on her own, but it wasn't impossible.
And Molly became her world. Which is as it should be.
Having to face Peter again was beyond her limits. What do you do when you meet your ex-husband when he's fourteen years old? Well, if you're Alex Drake and you're trapped in a world that you believe is a construct of your dreaming mind, you give him a piece of your mind. Or three.
It was probably the fact that his mother had asked him to put Molly out. Molly? Was the tiny black kitten he was holding. She didn't know what enraged her more, that he'd been entrusted with the care and keeping of a life again, and he seemed to be better suited to it than she'd ever seen -- or that he'd named their daughter after a fucking cat.
~~~
As if having to work Bryan's case wasn't hard enough with the brass leaning on them about Mac's legacy, her 'suitor' returned, the man with the rose fetish and the serious boundary issues.
He left a card with the name Boris Johnson, telling her to meet him at Luigi's for dinner. And of course, the Guv caught wind of it. Had to have a go at her about seeing an older man, which, none of his business, really. (Did it matter to him? Did she care that it mattered to him?)
And once he'd made well and sure he'd disrupted her night out with the Guv, he didn't even have the decency to phone and cancel. No, just left another card, saying sorry he'd missed her.
She did not have time for this petty gamesmanship, not with everything else that was going on. She went back to the office to try and work on the case. There was something blissful about working after hours, having the whole place to herself. She could just let go and focus on the case at hand. She found all the news clippings Shaz had left for her, Staines' entire illustrious career as documented in the press. She was in the process of jotting her thoughts down on the white board when she heard the flare of a match and the hiss of a cigarette being lit. For a brief moment, she thought the Guv had come to check on her.
No. This was the man who'd left the card. The man who'd kidnapped, drugged and tortured her. She scrambled for her service weapon in the top drawer of her desk, levelling it at him. Her mind raced. Who the hell did he think he was, just waltzing right into CID in the middle of the night?
"Hello, Alex."
"Who are you?"
"Martin Summers."
"Stay where you are."
"Go ahead. Shoot. Though I have to warn you, you may be getting rid of the one person who can help you here. So. Don't be scared."
"You make intimidating phone calls, you send me roses like some sort of crazed stalker, you try and poison me. And I shouldn't be scared?"
"Well, I had to make sure you were the person I was looking for. And you are. There aren't a lot of people here from the world. Apparently you and I are the only two."
He closed the distance between them, taking a puff of his cigarette, trying to act casual. Alex wasn't having any of it. She racked the automatic and thumbed the safety, making damn sure he knew she meant business.
"You trying to spook me out with this?"
"If I were to say to you, you've been shot in the head, you've just arrived at the hospital, and Molly is on her way to see you, would that help convince you?"
Alex felt the world shift and twist beneath her feet. Her eyes sheened with tears, instantly. He knew.
"Is that why you're here? To help me get home?"
"You and I are the only two people who actually know what that means." He laughed and walked away from her. "Still. It is a relief to talk about it, yes? As for helping you, well, that depends."
He pointed at her work on the white board, and she levelled the weapon at him again. Her arms were beginning to ache, but she didn't trust him, not for one heartbeat.
"Much easier. Cross-referencing DNA, I find, though, don't you?"
"You're a cop."
"Yes. Retired. And disgraced."
Her hand shook and she couldn't help the wave of emotion threatening to overwhelm her. "You know about Operation Rose. That's why you sent me the roses, isn't it?"
"Operation Rose could be your exit route."
"It's about police corruption. Mac. You warned us about it."
"It won't be pretty, but how much do you want to see your daughter again."
The vague threat wrapped in a promise makes her livid. "If you're so sure you can get me home, why are you still here?"
"You're not the only one who's dying here, Alex. Mine is a very slow and painful death. But here, I can live the life I want. I could go back, but I don't want to. You on the other hand have a decision to make as to what you're willing to do -- to have that chance."
"You want me to be corrupt."
He turned and walked away from her, oblivious to the weapon aimed at the back of his head. "Think about it, Alex. In six months time, when Molly's face has faded from your memory, you'll be begging me to help you. I haven't got much time to wait for an answer. And sadly, neither do you."
He left CID and her knees went weak.
~~~
Later, she'd think, she should have seen it coming a mile away. Gaynor Mason was George Staines. Mid transition in a gender reassignment surgery.
She was too wrapped up in the idea that Peter was the one who had robbed his parents. He wasn't; he'd figured it out when he saw Gaynor wearing his mother's necklace. When Gaynor had given chase, he'd lobbed a brick at her head. Which was how they discovered her real identity.
She was too wrapped up in the possibility that Operation Rose held the key to her getting home.
~~~
Summers showed up that evening in Luigi's, bold as brass. Even knowing her team was at her back, she felt a cold chill run down her spine.
"Well? Alex? Do you have an answer for me?"
"I know you could be my only chance of getting back. And you know how much I miss my daughter; I would do anything to get to see her again. But what you want me to do, what you want me to be, is corrupt and dishonest." Gene was watching them, she knew. She could feel it. "I'm sorry, but I simply can't. And so the answer, is thanks, but no thanks. I don't know how, but I'll find my own way back."
"I had a feeling you were going to say something like that," Summers smirked, looking disappointed. "Oh well. I can't change your mind, maybe Operation Rose will."
The rose he left on her table was black and shrivelled.
She didn't care. She'd picked her side in the coming war.
All dialogue from Ashes To Ashes 2x05