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2x07,i: The Bullet's Out
Mum? Mummy. Mummy! The doctor got the bullet out. You're going to be okay. He said if you get plenty of rest, and if there are no complications, you're going to wake up. You're going to be fine! Mum? Mummy?
Her head was killing her, and her tongue felt thick in her mouth. But she was in hospital, she knew. The bullet was out and she'd be waking up from this nightmare any moment now. She didn't know which was worse, the throbbing in her skull or the ache of anticipation in her chest. She'd said her goodbyes, on paper anyway. She'd steeled herself with the reality that yes, as much as she cared for them all, she was going home.
That's why she was dozing in the back of the van, a miracle really, considering the whole team was on stakeout, waiting for the huge drug deal they'd been tipped off to. So she let him boss her around, make her stay in the back of the van sipping that tepid watery brew that Shaz called tea, listening to them raising a ruckus on the radio. Really, Daddy Bear, Big Bear and Baby Bear? Honestly?
It was the urgency in Chris's voice that made her sit up and take notice.
"Ray! Ray!"
She was out of the van and moving before the conscious thought could register. The construction sight was a nightmare, and she could hear them brawling in the harsh shadows of the sodium lights. One of them had the Guv around the neck and was holding a knife to his throat.
"If one of you so much as blinks, I'll cut his throat so wide, he'll be using his tongue for a tie."
The bastard tries to drag him off around a corner, and he's yammering the whole way, telling her exactly where he is. She picks up a two by four and hits for the six, catching the man right at the base of the skull. The Guv finishes him off with a punch to the gut and she grins as he goes down hard.
"Say hello to Mummy Bear!"
~~~
Said knife-wielding bastard landed on the fresh poured foundation of one of the dockside high rises, and sticking up out of the cement was a hand. She thought that was odd, two for the price of one. A drug bust and a body. Too much of a coincidence.
Chris and Ray rochambeau'd for the chance to use the jack hammer to excavate the body, until the Guv called them off. He wanted a body, not a plate of dog food at the end.
She had a bad feeling about the whole mess and even though she really was expecting to wake up at any moment (Her name is Molly.), she knew it could never be that simple. Operation Rose still haunted her, and something in her gut told her she hadn't heard the last of Summers. He was too invested in turning her to his side, though to what end, she still had no clue.
Turns out she was right.
~~~
She'd expected for the birthday celebration for Viv to be the last night she spent with them. She'd even embarrassed herself by wearing a skin tight gold lamé dress and making a speech, telling them all that she loved them, and wishing them all Bon Voyage!.
Did Gene know what she was really trying to say? They'd shared a long look, and a certain smile, and for a moment there, she thought he might have. Or he could have just been a bottle ahead of them all.
In the end, it didn't matter, as she woke up on her couch again, staring at the same old television screen in the same old flat.
Nothing could be simple here.
~~~
Going in to work didn't prove to be as mortifying as she'd feared, least of all when the Guv told her she was right. Too much of a coincidence and he had a source to back up her hunch.
One bright-eyed, baby-faced PC by the name of Martin Summers.
Her stomach leapt into her throat, and her mouth went dry. He had information on the job site's manager, Michael Lafferty, claiming he was bent and treated his workers like slaves. She could barely listen to his accusations and his hollow proclamations that 'he was the kind of villain I joined up to put away.' Honestly, did he think she was that thick?
She followed him out of Gene's office and cornered him in the gent's, slamming him up against the stalls, and telling him in no uncertain language that his appearance just before she was supposed to go home was far too convenient to be a coincidence. He tried to play dumb, but she wasn't having any of it. (Gene would have been astonished to see her pull a page from his play book.) Nothing was going to stand between her and getting home to Molly, and he was lucky he escaped with only his uniform ruffled.
(Later, she would think back on his expression, wondering if he must have thought her mad. She thought she must be, to behave like that. To do the things she did.)
~~~
The Guv was convinced that the young man was on the straight and narrow, that the sun shone out of his arse, and off they went back to the work site to question Lafferty. Despite PC Summers request to keep his name out of it, she wasn't surprised to hear that Lafferty knew the name. She also wasn't surprised to hear that he'd threatened Lafferty with holding up the construction job if he wasn't paid a hundred quid a week.
(Though it didn't ring true, she thought.)
Still, she tried to tell Gene that the young man was calculating and manipulative, and that he very well could have staged the murder to just that end. Gene wasn't hearing it, but he didn't object to her pulling him in again to be questioned about the accusations.
PC Summers certainly knew the right tune to play. Corruption and more corruption. Lafferty had friends in high places. Summers had filed report after report about the way he'd treated his workers, and each one seemed to disappear into a black hole. It smelt of Mac and his cronies, but she still couldn't bring herself to believe that.
And she couldn't convince Gene either. He was livid in his defence of the young copper. And while she knew he was desperate to believe that there was still hope for the Met, still hope for the Force he loved so dearly, she couldn't believe what she was hearing coming out of his mouth. She couldn't believe he wasn't listening to her. It was like she was speaking a different language.
So she had an idea...
~~~
They brought the workers in to question them. And discovered one of the workers didn't turn up for work that morning. Chris and Ray brought him in, in the usual Fenchurch manner, all ready tenderised. At least Tomasz seemed to know the drill, and he also implicated Lafferty in David's death. He claimed that the piece of paper they found on David's body was just a poem.
Something about his body language made her sceptical on that point. But she would have to return to that later.
Her idea paid off, and even if she did owe Shaz a week's worth of bar tab for the trouble, Summers had called and arranged a meeting for later that night, at the construction site.
~~~
In hindsight, she should have known there was something terribly wrong the moment she saw PC Summers' face. She should have realised. But it was impossible, in her mind, that history could be changed. It was impossible. This was the place you came to deal with your past, the place to face your memories and see them for what they truly were. That's why she couldn't save her parents. This was all some sort of passion play made up by her subconscious, perhaps even her soul. It was a mirror, fixed and cold and reflective. It wasn't the smooth surface of a deep dark pool.
And yet, when she watched the elder Summers' hand rise and she watched him point the service weapon at his younger self, she felt those dark waters swallow her up and threaten to drown her.
He pressed the gun into her bare hands, and she couldn't do anything but stand there, frozen.
"You must to sort this mess out, Alex. You can't go home until you do."
And like a ghost, he was gone again. Leaving her with alone with Summers the younger. Gene's shining example of a good copper, lying in a pool of blood at her feet. The gun clattered to the ground from her numb fingers.
She couldn't breathe. She knew, she knew that this would be the end of any hope she had to get home, to get back to Molly. She knew it would destroy the tenuous relationship she had with Gene. If she thought she was trapped in some layer of Hell, this act of sheer insanity was all the proof she needed.
And the insanity spread, echoing through her chest, leaving her breathless. She could only do one thing, and she'd just seen a primer the day before on how not to dispose of a body in a freshly poured concrete foundation. She moved on automatic, muttering like a mad woman.
"I'm so sorry. So sorry." My daughter needs me. "So sorry, so very sorry." She needs me and I have to get home to her.
Slowly she dragged the body through the mud, her breath fogging in the chill of the night. The same heavy chain was coiled by the pit, and she went to her knees in the mud, fingers fumbling with the icy cast iron links, coiling them around the young man's long legs. (It was almost as if the scene had been prepared for her.)
She wept as she worked, the dark mud clinging to her hands, caking her thighs as she wiped her palms, intent on not making the same mistakes Lafferty had made. She connected the long hooks into the links, tight, and still muttering frantic apologies, she rolled him over until he splashed and sank into the darkness, dragging him down with her.
~~~
She could have saved them. She could have saved her mother. She could have saved her father-in-law. She could even have saved her father, and seen him put away for his rage and jealousy fuelled plot. But he would be alive.
She could have tried harder, she could have done something. But she hadn't.
She can't help but think she failed PC Summers, too. She had just stood there, mindless, paralysed, like an unthinking zombie, waiting for the truth to be revealed to her.
Well, there was no truth here. No truth but what you made of it.
And now, she had to face the truth that perhaps she'd blown her one and only chance to get home. Perhaps she was trapped her, for all eternity, struggling back towards Molly, being tortured with brief glimpses of her face. Perhaps she never loved her enough, perhaps that's why she didn't try hard enough. Perhaps that's why she can never go home. And the hope that she might be able to, well, that's what kept her from the other guiding truth.
Gene.
She stood in the shower, until the hot water ran out, trying to think of what to tell him. Of what to say. Nothing ever came.
She sat on the toilet, scrubbing the white leather jacket with an old toothbrush, rinsing away every speck of that incriminating black mud. She scrubbed her nails until they were raw. And then she scrubbed the floors until exhaustion threatened to claim her, muttering soft prayers for PC Summers, for Mac, for Gene, for Molly. She even prayed for herself, the first time she'd done so since she'd shown up in this godforsaken place.
Later, she would know this for what it truly was: the beginning of the end.
~~~
She arrived at CID the next morning to discover the Guv on a tear. Someone had stolen the 'poem' from evidence. Someone who had signed PC Summers' name to the evidence log, and of course, she knew from the time, it couldn't be him.
They had a traitor inside CID.
~~~
She was standing in her kitchen, pouring a generous measure of vodka into a glass, when Summers dared to come to her.
"I need your help."
She couldn't believe the unmitigated nerve of this man. "No. No, I'm going back and you can't stop me. I was almost there. What have you done?"
"Surely, you don't believe you were going to wake up just because they managed to get the bullet out?"
"What are you -- how could you possibly know about..." She was shaking with rage now. "This is my world. This is my life. Who are you?"
"The only man who really understands, Alex."
It was strange, but for a moment, he almost looked sympathetic to her plight. The puppetmaster, sorrowful over the broken strings of his toy. It took her a few heartbeats to realise the truth, such as it was.
"You're there," she exhaled. "Aren't you? You're in hospital."
"I'm here. And I'm there."
"You're like me, you're just like me." The words tumbled out in a breathless rush.
"The only man you can really trust."
"Then why won't you let me go home?"
Again he gave her a slight smile, and disappeared. She still felt the tremors in her marionette strings, felt like she was twisting in a cold breeze.
~~~
Her mother came to her in her dreams.
"You'll find a way."
"Will I?"
"Because you have to. Because you're a mother, too."
~~~
The phone woke her. The Guv telling her to meet him at the hospital. Tomasz had almost been killed in a hit and run. And no one had seen or heard from PC Summers. Both of them had put Lafferty in the frame.
The Guv looked knackered. Haunted. Someone in CID had put Lafferty onto Tomasz. Someone on their team. And he was thinking back to Mac, back to every dodgy case they'd had in the last six months.
She took some small comfort in the fact that he obviously knew it wasn't her. But it was very small comfort indeed.
~~~
It felt like one of the longest days she'd spent here, and Gene's stalking around the squad room, present but not really, put everyone on edge. The Lion of Fenchurch East was restless and they all felt it. He called her into his office, eventually, and let her know that something was up. That he had a plan, but he couldn't share the details with her, not yet.
After the announcement, tensions ratcheted up even higher. It was terrible, watching them tear themselves apart, wondering who among them could be the one in the Guv's sights.
And the Guv. She couldn't bear to watch his heart breaking.
Lafferty knew exactly which safe deposit box to go to.
~~~
Oh Chris...
Her head was killing her, and her tongue felt thick in her mouth. But she was in hospital, she knew. The bullet was out and she'd be waking up from this nightmare any moment now. She didn't know which was worse, the throbbing in her skull or the ache of anticipation in her chest. She'd said her goodbyes, on paper anyway. She'd steeled herself with the reality that yes, as much as she cared for them all, she was going home.
That's why she was dozing in the back of the van, a miracle really, considering the whole team was on stakeout, waiting for the huge drug deal they'd been tipped off to. So she let him boss her around, make her stay in the back of the van sipping that tepid watery brew that Shaz called tea, listening to them raising a ruckus on the radio. Really, Daddy Bear, Big Bear and Baby Bear? Honestly?
It was the urgency in Chris's voice that made her sit up and take notice.
"Ray! Ray!"
She was out of the van and moving before the conscious thought could register. The construction sight was a nightmare, and she could hear them brawling in the harsh shadows of the sodium lights. One of them had the Guv around the neck and was holding a knife to his throat.
"If one of you so much as blinks, I'll cut his throat so wide, he'll be using his tongue for a tie."
The bastard tries to drag him off around a corner, and he's yammering the whole way, telling her exactly where he is. She picks up a two by four and hits for the six, catching the man right at the base of the skull. The Guv finishes him off with a punch to the gut and she grins as he goes down hard.
"Say hello to Mummy Bear!"
~~~
Said knife-wielding bastard landed on the fresh poured foundation of one of the dockside high rises, and sticking up out of the cement was a hand. She thought that was odd, two for the price of one. A drug bust and a body. Too much of a coincidence.
Chris and Ray rochambeau'd for the chance to use the jack hammer to excavate the body, until the Guv called them off. He wanted a body, not a plate of dog food at the end.
She had a bad feeling about the whole mess and even though she really was expecting to wake up at any moment (Her name is Molly.), she knew it could never be that simple. Operation Rose still haunted her, and something in her gut told her she hadn't heard the last of Summers. He was too invested in turning her to his side, though to what end, she still had no clue.
Turns out she was right.
~~~
She'd expected for the birthday celebration for Viv to be the last night she spent with them. She'd even embarrassed herself by wearing a skin tight gold lamé dress and making a speech, telling them all that she loved them, and wishing them all Bon Voyage!.
Did Gene know what she was really trying to say? They'd shared a long look, and a certain smile, and for a moment there, she thought he might have. Or he could have just been a bottle ahead of them all.
In the end, it didn't matter, as she woke up on her couch again, staring at the same old television screen in the same old flat.
Nothing could be simple here.
~~~
Going in to work didn't prove to be as mortifying as she'd feared, least of all when the Guv told her she was right. Too much of a coincidence and he had a source to back up her hunch.
One bright-eyed, baby-faced PC by the name of Martin Summers.
Her stomach leapt into her throat, and her mouth went dry. He had information on the job site's manager, Michael Lafferty, claiming he was bent and treated his workers like slaves. She could barely listen to his accusations and his hollow proclamations that 'he was the kind of villain I joined up to put away.' Honestly, did he think she was that thick?
She followed him out of Gene's office and cornered him in the gent's, slamming him up against the stalls, and telling him in no uncertain language that his appearance just before she was supposed to go home was far too convenient to be a coincidence. He tried to play dumb, but she wasn't having any of it. (Gene would have been astonished to see her pull a page from his play book.) Nothing was going to stand between her and getting home to Molly, and he was lucky he escaped with only his uniform ruffled.
(Later, she would think back on his expression, wondering if he must have thought her mad. She thought she must be, to behave like that. To do the things she did.)
~~~
The Guv was convinced that the young man was on the straight and narrow, that the sun shone out of his arse, and off they went back to the work site to question Lafferty. Despite PC Summers request to keep his name out of it, she wasn't surprised to hear that Lafferty knew the name. She also wasn't surprised to hear that he'd threatened Lafferty with holding up the construction job if he wasn't paid a hundred quid a week.
(Though it didn't ring true, she thought.)
Still, she tried to tell Gene that the young man was calculating and manipulative, and that he very well could have staged the murder to just that end. Gene wasn't hearing it, but he didn't object to her pulling him in again to be questioned about the accusations.
PC Summers certainly knew the right tune to play. Corruption and more corruption. Lafferty had friends in high places. Summers had filed report after report about the way he'd treated his workers, and each one seemed to disappear into a black hole. It smelt of Mac and his cronies, but she still couldn't bring herself to believe that.
And she couldn't convince Gene either. He was livid in his defence of the young copper. And while she knew he was desperate to believe that there was still hope for the Met, still hope for the Force he loved so dearly, she couldn't believe what she was hearing coming out of his mouth. She couldn't believe he wasn't listening to her. It was like she was speaking a different language.
So she had an idea...
~~~
They brought the workers in to question them. And discovered one of the workers didn't turn up for work that morning. Chris and Ray brought him in, in the usual Fenchurch manner, all ready tenderised. At least Tomasz seemed to know the drill, and he also implicated Lafferty in David's death. He claimed that the piece of paper they found on David's body was just a poem.
Something about his body language made her sceptical on that point. But she would have to return to that later.
Her idea paid off, and even if she did owe Shaz a week's worth of bar tab for the trouble, Summers had called and arranged a meeting for later that night, at the construction site.
~~~
In hindsight, she should have known there was something terribly wrong the moment she saw PC Summers' face. She should have realised. But it was impossible, in her mind, that history could be changed. It was impossible. This was the place you came to deal with your past, the place to face your memories and see them for what they truly were. That's why she couldn't save her parents. This was all some sort of passion play made up by her subconscious, perhaps even her soul. It was a mirror, fixed and cold and reflective. It wasn't the smooth surface of a deep dark pool.
And yet, when she watched the elder Summers' hand rise and she watched him point the service weapon at his younger self, she felt those dark waters swallow her up and threaten to drown her.
He pressed the gun into her bare hands, and she couldn't do anything but stand there, frozen.
"You must to sort this mess out, Alex. You can't go home until you do."
And like a ghost, he was gone again. Leaving her with alone with Summers the younger. Gene's shining example of a good copper, lying in a pool of blood at her feet. The gun clattered to the ground from her numb fingers.
She couldn't breathe. She knew, she knew that this would be the end of any hope she had to get home, to get back to Molly. She knew it would destroy the tenuous relationship she had with Gene. If she thought she was trapped in some layer of Hell, this act of sheer insanity was all the proof she needed.
And the insanity spread, echoing through her chest, leaving her breathless. She could only do one thing, and she'd just seen a primer the day before on how not to dispose of a body in a freshly poured concrete foundation. She moved on automatic, muttering like a mad woman.
"I'm so sorry. So sorry." My daughter needs me. "So sorry, so very sorry." She needs me and I have to get home to her.
Slowly she dragged the body through the mud, her breath fogging in the chill of the night. The same heavy chain was coiled by the pit, and she went to her knees in the mud, fingers fumbling with the icy cast iron links, coiling them around the young man's long legs. (It was almost as if the scene had been prepared for her.)
She wept as she worked, the dark mud clinging to her hands, caking her thighs as she wiped her palms, intent on not making the same mistakes Lafferty had made. She connected the long hooks into the links, tight, and still muttering frantic apologies, she rolled him over until he splashed and sank into the darkness, dragging him down with her.
~~~
She could have saved them. She could have saved her mother. She could have saved her father-in-law. She could even have saved her father, and seen him put away for his rage and jealousy fuelled plot. But he would be alive.
She could have tried harder, she could have done something. But she hadn't.
She can't help but think she failed PC Summers, too. She had just stood there, mindless, paralysed, like an unthinking zombie, waiting for the truth to be revealed to her.
Well, there was no truth here. No truth but what you made of it.
And now, she had to face the truth that perhaps she'd blown her one and only chance to get home. Perhaps she was trapped her, for all eternity, struggling back towards Molly, being tortured with brief glimpses of her face. Perhaps she never loved her enough, perhaps that's why she didn't try hard enough. Perhaps that's why she can never go home. And the hope that she might be able to, well, that's what kept her from the other guiding truth.
Gene.
She stood in the shower, until the hot water ran out, trying to think of what to tell him. Of what to say. Nothing ever came.
She sat on the toilet, scrubbing the white leather jacket with an old toothbrush, rinsing away every speck of that incriminating black mud. She scrubbed her nails until they were raw. And then she scrubbed the floors until exhaustion threatened to claim her, muttering soft prayers for PC Summers, for Mac, for Gene, for Molly. She even prayed for herself, the first time she'd done so since she'd shown up in this godforsaken place.
Later, she would know this for what it truly was: the beginning of the end.
~~~
She arrived at CID the next morning to discover the Guv on a tear. Someone had stolen the 'poem' from evidence. Someone who had signed PC Summers' name to the evidence log, and of course, she knew from the time, it couldn't be him.
They had a traitor inside CID.
~~~
She was standing in her kitchen, pouring a generous measure of vodka into a glass, when Summers dared to come to her.
"I need your help."
She couldn't believe the unmitigated nerve of this man. "No. No, I'm going back and you can't stop me. I was almost there. What have you done?"
"Surely, you don't believe you were going to wake up just because they managed to get the bullet out?"
"What are you -- how could you possibly know about..." She was shaking with rage now. "This is my world. This is my life. Who are you?"
"The only man who really understands, Alex."
It was strange, but for a moment, he almost looked sympathetic to her plight. The puppetmaster, sorrowful over the broken strings of his toy. It took her a few heartbeats to realise the truth, such as it was.
"You're there," she exhaled. "Aren't you? You're in hospital."
"I'm here. And I'm there."
"You're like me, you're just like me." The words tumbled out in a breathless rush.
"The only man you can really trust."
"Then why won't you let me go home?"
Again he gave her a slight smile, and disappeared. She still felt the tremors in her marionette strings, felt like she was twisting in a cold breeze.
~~~
Her mother came to her in her dreams.
"You'll find a way."
"Will I?"
"Because you have to. Because you're a mother, too."
~~~
The phone woke her. The Guv telling her to meet him at the hospital. Tomasz had almost been killed in a hit and run. And no one had seen or heard from PC Summers. Both of them had put Lafferty in the frame.
The Guv looked knackered. Haunted. Someone in CID had put Lafferty onto Tomasz. Someone on their team. And he was thinking back to Mac, back to every dodgy case they'd had in the last six months.
She took some small comfort in the fact that he obviously knew it wasn't her. But it was very small comfort indeed.
~~~
It felt like one of the longest days she'd spent here, and Gene's stalking around the squad room, present but not really, put everyone on edge. The Lion of Fenchurch East was restless and they all felt it. He called her into his office, eventually, and let her know that something was up. That he had a plan, but he couldn't share the details with her, not yet.
After the announcement, tensions ratcheted up even higher. It was terrible, watching them tear themselves apart, wondering who among them could be the one in the Guv's sights.
And the Guv. She couldn't bear to watch his heart breaking.
Lafferty knew exactly which safe deposit box to go to.
~~~
Oh Chris...