fic: the greater good, part one.
For those who came to Spooks late and/or don't remember, Maisie Simm was the daughter of Tom's girlfriend in series 1-2, and Wes Carter was Adam and Fiona's son in series 3-7. During series 10 I realised they would be quite grown up, and then fic happened. (It may help to know that the actress who played Maisie honest-to-goodness grew up to look exactly like Jo. If you want to know what Wes looks like grown up, apparently you'll have to use your imagination.)
Opens immediately after 10.04 (the one where [spoilers]Erin's daughter was kidnapped), after which things get slightly AU. Old faces and new. Spoilers to pretty much everything ever. 22,000 words in four parts (...what is this I don't even).
With plenteous thanks to afiakate for picking plotholes, delgaserasca for picking wordholes, and lost_spook for encouraging my pathological desire to rescue everybody. Also thanks to my flist, especially lost_spook, for the years (I wish I was exaggerating) of patient cheerleading.
Edit: also @AO3.
- - -
PART ONE
"Where are we going?" Rosie asked the nice lady.
"To the playground. You like the playground, don't you? You can play on the swings."
It was hard to hear over the din of the crowd around them, the distant clang and honk of the band, the sizzling of fried things. Rosie did like the playground, but she'd already been on one unexpected walk with strange grown-ups this week and the last time had made her mummy upset.
"Will my mummy be there?" she asked.
"Oh you poor dear, she must be looking all over for you. It'll be much easier for her to find us there, away from all these people."
Rosie liked the sound of that. The crowds of the street fair, which a minute ago had been so exciting, were now making her stomach queasy. She looked around and saw nothing but hips and bottoms and swinging bags. She held more tightly to the nice lady's hand.
"What's your name?"
"Rosie," said Rosie.
"That's a pretty name," the nice lady said. She was on her phone, Rosie realised, holding it to her ear with her fingers expertly hooking back her hair at the same time, so she could keep hold of Rosie's hand. She had beautiful long blond hair, like a princess in a fairy tale. Rosie fingered her own hair uncertainly. The nice lady wasn't talking into the phone, just listening.
"I'm not supposed to talk to strange grown-ups," Rosie said.
"I don't count," the nice lady assured her. "Have a look around, Rosie. Do you see your mummy anywhere?"
Rosie looked, but the crowds at the playground were nearly thick as at the carnival, and she couldn't see far. She saw a tall boy in the line of children waiting for the swings - a big boy too old to play on swings - standing behind his little brother with his hands on his shoulders, just like the nice lady was standing behind Rosie. Rosie looked up at her face again. It was true - the nice lady wasn't a real grown-up. Just like Louise, Rosie's babysitter, who went to the next-door part of her school. Rosie felt safe with Louise.
Looking back the way they had come, the street was sticky with people. Rosie felt sticky too. Scanning the strange faces, none of whom were her mummy, made her feel sick again. She looked down at her shoes instead. There was a paper streamer from the carnival caught in the buckle of her sandal, and she set about trying to free it without tearing it.
"No, it's not," the fairy princess said. Rosie looked up to see that she was talking into her phone again. She looked nervous, biting her lip and scanning the crowds. Then she crouched to speak to Rosie.
"Do you remember your mummy's phone number, sweetie?"
Rosie did not. She'd been proud once to have committed it to memory, but it had changed just last week, after the game with the strange men. Then she remembered, oh glory of glories, that she had a phone of her own now, which her mummy had shown her how to use. She took it out of her special zip pocket and showed it to the fairy princess.
"Oh, very good, Rosie! You can phone your mum and tell her where you are."
Buoyed by the praise, Rosie pressed three, her favourite number, and the green button. "Hello Mummy! I'm at the playground."
The crowds were loud at both ends of the line, but Rosie thought she could hear her mummy crying, and wondered if she'd be in trouble after all. She should've remembered about the phone sooner.
"Rosie, oh lord, I thought I'd lost you. Don't move, I'm coming."
"I'm not lost, Mummy," Rosie said patiently. "I'm at the playground. It's you who got lost."
"Is someone there with you? Are you by yourself?"
"I'm with the fairy princess," Rosie said, but when she turned around the fairy princess was gone.
- -
Maisie's heart had been pounding in her throat for a good ten minutes already, but it graciously rose to new heights for the fifty seconds she waited for Erin. Erin was easy, as Maisie had known she would be, so soon after her daughter had been kidnapped for much higher stakes. She'd heard both sides of the conversation thanks to the speakerphone in Wes's pocket. Erin's sobs were still echoing in her ears.
It was this part they hadn't thought to plan. She knew Wes was ahead of Erin and watching Rosie from the other side of the food stalls, but what if Erin didn't come? What if she went to another playground, which - Jesus - their dangerously thin reconnaissance had failed to pick up? What if Rosie, instead of waiting patiently, decided to brave the crowds and try to find her mother on her own?
But here was Erin, hair flying, falling to her knees in the dirt and hauling Rosie into a tearful embrace. Maisie had already turned away, but she could tell Rosie was complaining, struggling to escape from her mother's arms. Maisie knew that confusion all too well.
She headed into a side street where she pulled on a grey hoodie over her pink top, and twisted her hair messily into a bun, going from fairy princess to teenage delinquent in less than a minute. She went back a block and waited in the queue at the ATM, picking her nails and flipping idly through her phone, before meeting up with Wes on the edge of the common ten minutes later, by which time she'd forgotten her recent terror and earlier doubts and wanted nothing more than to crow with manic delight.
"Jesus fucking fuck, Carter, I can't believe that worked."
Wes only scowled, weaving through the crowds without waiting for her. "What's with you?" She hurried to catch up. "Stop sulking. It worked, didn't it?"
"Yeah, no thanks to that idiot!" Wes exploded. "Who lets their five-year-old get out of sight while answering a bloody phone? And who falls for the she-went-that-way trick, outside of shitty movies?"
Maisie was startled. It was what they'd counted on Erin doing, for the plan to work. "Normal people," she said carefully.
"Yeah? Well, she isn't one."
"She is now."
Wes glanced at her sharply. "Will it be enough?"
Maisie tried not to think of Erin's sobs as she held her writhing daughter. "Trust me, she's writing up her resignation letter right now. Or digging through the bin for the one she already wrote last week."
Wes thrust his hands in his pockets and kicked at the ground. They'd left the crush of the carnival behind; this was just ordinary weekend crowds. They turned into a lane, too narrow for cars, and wandered along the line of shops, not too fast, not too slow; it was automatic to Maisie by now. "Maybe," he said darkly. "Did you have any trouble with the kid?"
"She was fine. Took a bit of prompting to remember about the phone."
Wes snorted. "Maybe some people are too stupid to be saved."
There was a hint of the theatrical in his voice now, more familiar to Maisie than the genuine anger. She rolled her eyes. "Come off it. It's not the kid's fault. She's five. As if either of us were brainy enough not to fall for that trick when we were five."
"Yeah? Maybe that's why no one saved us."
Maisie felt cold. "Don't say that."
Wes, bizarrely, thought he'd hit upon a great topic of conversation, and was offering it now as some sort of apology for his outburst. "I mean," he continued, warming to the theme, "I don't know about you, but wow, I was pretty monumentally stupid when I was a kid. One time, get this, I decided I'd run away and - "
"Not your fault," Maisie said savagely. "Never your fault. None of it. Hear me?"
Wes held up his hands. "Hey, if I want a bollocking I'll ask for one. I'm just saying - "
She was used to this now, how he'd drag her from a serious conversation to a light-hearted one just as easily as the reverse, often without her noticing and often for no discernible purpose. She almost played along, like she usually did, then she was overwhelmed again by how infuriating he could be. She shook him by the arm. "I mean it. I know. God, Carter, you want to trade stupid stories? Do you know what I did once? I put chocolate icing in the security system and we all got locked in the house with a bomb."
Wes narrowed his eyes and made one of those unnerving logical leaps that always seemed to come just when Maisie had written him off as a complete idiot. "Your father brought home a bomb?"
"Tom's not my father," Maisie retorted, distracted into annoyance.
"But he - "
"Yes. Exactly. Not my fault, though it took me eight years or so to realise it. Just like it wasn't your fault your dad was doing whatever he was doing when you ran away."
There was a pause. Wes shook her hand off his arm and they started walking again. "What did your mum say?"
"That's when we left him," Maisie said, but it came out sounding prim and she waved her hand to dismiss it. "She thinks I don't remember it, or, you know, that I fell for the 'it was all a game' line."
"Ah. That old one."
Maisie's elation was pushing through again. Two days ago this was barely a wild idea, and now they'd carried it all the way through, flawlessly. They were practically James Bond material. She tried a wry smile. "Never fell for that one, did we."
Wes grinned and punched her in the arm like the little brother neither of them had had. "Nope. Fell for lots of things, but never that one."
- -
five months ago
If there was one thing Maisie's childhood had made her good at, it was moving house. Since they'd left London the last time, there'd been Manchester and Bristol, a few tiny seaside towns, and once a stint on an island when Ellie was with a petrochemical engineer who'd turned out to care more for her cooking than her conversation.
This time there was an ambitious restaurant in an unambitious economy, and thus no men, which was the way Maisie preferred things. She was good at new houses, and new schools, and good at making friends. But it had been half-term when they moved back to London, and she wouldn't start at the new school until after her GCSEs. Studying alone had been impossible when the weather was so lovely and the city so big and interesting.
"I found our old place today," she'd said one evening, when Ellie had a night off. "Tom's place, in Finchley."
Ellie looked startled. Neither of them had mentioned Tom for years, and Maisie half-expected Ellie to invoke some kind of law against it.
"I wouldn't've thought you'd remember it," she said instead.
"I didn't really. Only recognised the shop on the corner with the fairies painted in the window, remember that place? It hasn't changed at all. I thought the whole shop had moved, at first, but it's just they've built out that old car park with an enormous block of flats." She shrugged. "Then I counted doors til I found the house."
"What's it like?"
Maisie shrugged. "Dunno. Same really. Did you ever speak to Tom again, after we left? Call him or anything?"
"No." Ellie smiled, half a grimace. "Wouldn't know how to call him, even if I wanted to. The man liked his secrets." She paused. "What else do you remember? From then?"
Maisie remembered a lot. Shouting and crying and oppressive affection, and bars on the windows and games and rules that made no sense to her, and that look on her mother's face when she realised they were all going to die - not so much frightened as offended, how can this happen to me.
"Nothing much," she said, and watched the line of Ellie's shoulders relax.
Having made the decision to find Tom Quinn, she'd expected the search to take months, but like a lot of dark and complicated things it had turned out childishly simple. Once she'd found the village all she had to do was sit in the tearooms on a Friday afternoon and drink milkshakes until she saw him go into the pub across the road.
Then things had moved too quickly for her to have time for nerves. She'd cornered him at the bar with the demand that he tell her what really happened or she'd tell the internet what she remembered, which wasn't necessarily the same thing. The next thing she knew Tom had grabbed her by the arm and was hustling her down the street - not how did you find me? but, stupidly, "how did you get in the bar?"
"The same way you did when you were fifteen," Maisie said indignantly. "Let go of me or I'll scream."
Once he'd calmed down, he took her back to the tearooms. He looked older than she remembered (stupid, of course he did), but later she was unable to recall if he'd seemed happier. Hard to judge, she supposed, when she'd just ruined Friday drinks, probably his most treasured normal-person tradition. Tom had liked rituals, she remembered. He'd liked normal.
Maisie turned down another milkshake and sat stirring her coffee in numb silence while he told her about how he'd met Ellie, and about the bomb in the laptop, and the reasons they'd had to move house. He spoke in plain facts, no weight in his voice, as if they were discussing a film they'd seen.
"Anything you want to ask?" he said when he'd finished.
Maisie forced herself to meet his eyes, then looked down at her coffee again. She'd stirred all the air from the froth."Did you ever come home hurt?" she asked.
"Yes," Tom said evenly. "A couple of times, I expect."
"I have - had - this dream of you, with blood all over your face."
Tom shook his head. "Just a dream."
"Was there ever someone in the house?"
"No, never."
She felt stupid asking the questions, but it would be worse not to go through with it now she was here. She forced herself to ask about each of her dozen or so nightmares. He never laughed, never said don't be ridiculous, as Ellie would've.
"Were you married, when you were with Mum?"
Tom looked surprised at that. "No. Of course not." She saw him tighten his left hand around the coffee cup, and then he nodded, remembering. "I was married a few times for cover. I expect you saw me with the ring, yes?"
Maisie nodded.
"Cover," he said again.
"And that one?"
He turned the ring around his finger. "This one's real."
At first she'd been grateful for his steady calm, but it had begun to get to her. "Did you ever kill anyone?"
Tom, damn him, knew straight away what she was doing. He sat back in his chair and fucking smiled at her. "I think we're done, yes?"
Maisie smiled back, bright and hard. "Right," she said. "Good. Thanks." Then to her surprise and shame she started to cry, because the shadowy monsters that had existed in her head for the past eight years were finally gone.
Tom let her finish crying in silence, for which she was again grateful, and again annoyed at him for making her feel gratitude.
"Did you come on the train from London?"
She nodded.
"I'll walk you to the station."
The main street was deserted, post office and bank having shut at five, and the few shops and cafes following soon after. There was a woman outside the pub, perched on top of a wooden table, smoking and watching Tom like a bird of prey. Maisie recognised her from her peripheral vision in the pub, a blur of blond hair and cigarette smoke. Tom ignored her.
"Is that your wife," Maisie asked facetiously.
"No."
"Your mistress then?"
Tom didn't grace that with a reply.
They walked in silence. She couldn't get the measure of him. She almost wished he'd be angry again, just so that she'd know how to react.
"Aren't you going to ask me how I found you?"
Tom smiled, so quickly she wondered if he had at all. "How did you find me?"
"Remember that time we went to Brighton? And met your uncle in the lolly shop? I don't know if he was really your uncle, but I knew that he really knew you. You went all silent and weird."
"Nigel retired years ago."
"I know. He runs an online store now. I googled it."
Tom nodded appreciatively, but Maisie didn't feel half as clever as she had before. She hadn't expected a reply to her email, had been tongue-tied with nerves when the old man actually phoned her back.
"He called you, didn't he?" she realised.
Tom shrugged.
"Of course he did. And the only reason he told me where you lived was because you told him to tell me. Jesus, you're a piece of work."
She was hot with shame and anger again, but it passed quickly. They'd reached the station. The platform marked the edge of the village, houses on one side, fields on the other. The train wasn't for twenty minutes.
"You don't have to wait," she said.
Tom said nothing. Maisie sat on the bench, a foot folded under her against the cold metal. She swung her other foot against the railing, just to make a noise. There were soft rolling hills in the distance, the faint smell of cows. It was bizarre.
"So you live here now?" she challenged him. "In some tiny boring village? What do you do, spy on farmers?"
"Not much call for that."
"What then?"
"Private work."
"Not government?"
"No."
"But still secret."
"Yes."
"Do you really live here?"
"Yes, I do. Most of the time. Is that so hard to believe?"
"What do you mean most of the time? Where else do you live?"
"America, sometimes."
She hadn't expected that. "Really?" He shrugged. "Where, New York City? Are you a corporate lawyer in your other life?" She tried a gangster accent; failed. "Or do you spy on farmers there too, for the CIA? Nowhere-on-Stoke to Nowheresville, Kentucky?"
"Maisie, please," he said, finally a note of exasperation in his voice. It felt somehow like a victory. He hadn't asked a single question about her, or about Ellie, but she couldn't bring herself to invoke Ellie's name now, just like she'd held Tom's name at bay all those years. Besides, he probably already knew everything about them.
"It's not fair," she said. "You've always known where I am."
"I haven't known."
"Don't lie. I still have all the postcards."
Tom gave her another half-smile. "I never sent you postcards."
"Yeah, whatever."
"What did they say?"
"All sorts of things," Maisie said, suddenly defensive. But Tom seemed genuinely interested, and once again she had the feeling that he wouldn't laugh at her. "Quotes, mostly," she said. "Poetry and things. Never made a lot of sense to me."
Then Tom did laugh. "They weren't signed Tom, though, were they?"
"Of course not. You've used other names before."
"Malcolm?"
"So it was you."
"No," said Tom kindly, "it was Malcolm."
"Seriously?" She stopped swinging her leg. "Who?"
"You don't remember him?"
"No."
She had the odd feeling he was a little disappointed. "You probably only met him once. That time you came on the grid."
"Well how could I be expected to remember?"
"You couldn't." He was pleased again. "Malcolm's been sending you postcards? Since when?"
"Since I don't know. Since ages."
"And you still get them?"
"Got one when we moved back to London." The postcards had never bothered her before, but now she was uneasy. "How did he know we'd moved? And all the moves before that?"
"That's just Malcolm. Don't worry, he's the most harmless man on earth." He glanced at her. "Would you like me to ask him to stop?"
She hesitated, then shrugged, which meant no.
"I'll talk to him anyway," Tom said. "He was always better at this than me."
Better at what, Maisie thought, but she was done asking questions now.
The woman outside the pub had moved down the road, and was sitting on the bonnet of a parked car flicking through her phone. Maisie wondered if she knew how to sit on an actual seat. Eventually Tom sighed and went to meet her. Maisie saw no reason to wait for the still-distant train on her own.
"You missed the link-up," the woman said, blowing smoke out the side of her mouth.
Tom looked aggrieved. Hard to tell if it was from the woman's news or from Maisie following him. "I'll call back."
"Middle of the night there now. He might not be too happy." She hopped off the car bonnet, brushing dust from her trousers. "Anyway, not my problem. I'd better head back to town if I'm going to get those things dug up by tomorrow." She eyed Maisie.
"We used to know each other," Tom said, which was about the lamest explanation Maisie had ever heard, as well as being not strictly true.
"Did you," said the woman. She flicked ash from her cigarette. "Want a lift? Trains are rubbish this end of the day."
"Yes please," Maisie said, before Tom could protest. He clearly wanted to get rid of her, why not make it in a way that pissed him off? And that's us about even, she thought, thank you and goodbye.
"Do you work for Tom?"
The blond woman changed gears as if imagining herself in a much more powerful vehicle. "I don't work for anybody. I work for me." Then after a pause, "I'm freelancing for him at the moment, yes. Big project. Big money, for a change."
"The CIA pays well, huh."
That got her a sly sideways glance. "Nice try. I'm not telling you shit."
"Why? It's not like I'm going to tell anybody." She was thinking of Ellie, who probably wouldn't believe her anyway.
"Because fuck you, that's why," the woman said smoothly. "Do you want chips?"
"I'm not a child. You can't just buy me off with food."
"Then stop acting like a child. You know very well why I can't tell you. And I was serious about the chips. Bastard kept me waiting at that hole of a pub for hours and I'm starving."
Maisie gave up. She turned Tom's stories in her head, closing boxes, shutting doors. This happened. This didn't. She hadn't expected it to feel as much like loss as it did relief.
That night, she went through the postcards. They'd been a part of her life for longer than she could remember. She had a hazy recollection of coming home from school to the new house in Harwich, she must've been seven or eight, and finding one on the doormat, but now that she looked through them all there was one addressed to the house in Bristol. That must've been the first, though she had no memory of it.
The Harwich one, she remembered. Puzzling over her name in neat capitals, taking it through to the kitchen - but Ellie was in a mood, so she'd pocketed it quietly, for later. The idea of keeping it a secret had appealed to her, and it must have been that decision, rather than anything in the postcards themselves, that had tied them to Tom.
Looking through them that night, before Ellie got home from the restaurant, she tried to remember meeting Malcolm. Stupid, that she'd made up so many nightmares which had never happened, and forgotten so many little important things which had.
A few days later she got an email: malcolm told me to write to you
She was in the middle of studying for her history final and anything was a welcome distraction. She wondered later if she would've replied otherwise.
Why? she shot back.
apparently there's a club for us now
That the mysterious Malcolm had known where she lived most of her life hadn't bothered her, but the idea that he was omniscient on the internet as well was a bit disturbing.
How did you get my email address? she demanded.
found you on facebook, moron
She was vaguely disappointed that he was a boy, and two years younger than her at that, but she wrote back anyway. She had expected they'd swap war-stories and maybe complain about their parents, but for one reason or another they never did. Their conversations were a mix of the adult and the utterly childish, which the boy seemed to swing between with a skill he couldn't bring to the task of being a normal teenager.
The first people they followed were random. Maisie was nearly certain later; she'd picked a few herself after all. He taught her how to tail someone from behind, then from in front, then back and forth across crowded places and empty without being seen.
"Not like that, Maisie, you moron. He'll see you soon as he turns around. Didn't your father teach you anything?"
"Tom's not my father," she retorted. And no, he bloody didn't.
Wes played intently, as if his life depended on it, but then he did everything intently.
"He's getting the Epping line, I saw him check the times. So you get off before him, okay?"
But the Epping train was eight minutes away, and instead of catching Wes's eye across the crowded platform, she went up to the target. Later she couldn't even remember what she'd asked him - something stupid like where are you going or what station are you getting off so's we can be prepared.
Next thing she knew, Wes had dragged her up the stairs and into the street with surprising strength. "What are you doing?"
She shrugged him off. "I got bored of spy games. Ow, Jesus, you're leaving bruises."
"Fuck, Maisie, are you completely useless? If you were bored, why didn't you just give up? Go home, go hang with your idiot girlfriends or whatever. Why did you have to ruin everything? Now he knows who we are."
"So what? He's just a guy."
Wes opened his mouth, then changed his mind abruptly and swung around. Ignore him, she told herself. Leave him to his stupid sulk and go home.
Wes didn't turn around, and she had to hurry to keep up. He muttered something about how he'd seen their faces.
She laughed, sounding forced even to her own ears. "What, did you know him? Who was he, your history teacher or some shit?"
It was a good ten minutes before he calmed down. They sat on the wall by the river. "He's a spy," Wes said resignedly.
"Seriously?"
He shot her a dirty look.
"Do you know him? Does your father know him?"
Wes shook his head.
"Well, why are we following him? Does he have a bomb or something?"
"He has kids."
"Kids?" Maisie was bewildered.
"Two. Seven and four, I think. Boys."
"How the hell do you know that?"
"I have sources." Then there it was, that grin, like this was all a game. "At least now we know," he said.
"Know what?"
"That he doesn't deserve them. Tailed him for nearly an hour, didn't we, and he didn't notice a bloody thing. Here's my bus. Look, it doesn't matter. Sorry I yelled."
You are a crazy person, Maisie thought, watching the bus pull away. You are a legitimately fucked-up crazy person.
- -
today
"You must be very fucking desperate," Calum said, putting down his beer. "The last person I planned to have a drink with ended up dead."
Dimitri had only recently learned to coast over his initial reaction to anything Calum said, which was to punch him in the face. "I'll take the risk," he said.
"Brave man." Calum glanced around, as if their conversation might be overheard, but it was still early and the nearest rowdy group were a few tables away. "So? What did she tell you?"
"Who?" Dimitri asked.
"Erin, you idiot. What's the story? That's why you wanted to talk, right?"
"I haven't spoken to her," Dimitri said, surprised. "She won't return my calls. I wanted to talk to you because I thought she - well - might've returned yours."
"Why?" Calum sounded genuinely puzzled.
"You're her friend, aren't you?"
"And you're her lover."
"What?" Dimitri put down his beer too fast and spilt a little. "Where'd you get that from?"
Calum shrugged. "Not true then?"
"No, it's not." Not yet, he wanted to say, but he supposed that was as good as no anyway, with the way things were.
"Oh." Calum shrugged again. "We're both in the dark then, aren't we? I guess it was to do with that thing that happened with her daughter."
"She was pretty shaken up about that, yeah. But I thought Harry had convinced her to stay."
"He had."
Dimitri turned, feeling like the hapless hero in a pantomime. "Harry. What are you - ?"
He stopped himself when he realised the only place that question led was what are you doing in a public bar with an average age you haven't seen since before the Beatles.
Harry grimaced, hearing it regardless. "We're celebrating," he said. Ruth, behind him, gave Dimitri an encouraging smile.
"Celebrating?" Dimitri echoed.
"Are you glad Erin resigned?" Calum asked, having less tact and a higher tolerance for withering looks.
Harry, to Dimitri's horror, pulled a chair from a nearby table and sat between them. "Not at all, Calum. I'm bloody furious. Christ knows where I'll find someone now." He sniffed dubiously at his glass of whiskey. "No, it's just been quite a while since I lost a Section Chief to something as mundane as a resignation. Rather novel actually." He raised his glass. "To Erin."
"I thought you were absolutely verboten to speak to me," Beth said, four hours and three pubs later. Harry, mercifully, had long departed, making it safe for Beth to emerge from the shadows.
Dimitri shrugged. "They care less about that sort of thing now."
"They do? Or you do?"
"Does it matter?"
Beth put down her glass. "All right, cheerful. What's up?"
"Erin resigned," Dimitri said unhappily.
"Really? Good for her. Maybe being an insufferable little bitch finally got boring."
"Hey, speak for yourself," Calum put in.
"Oh shut up, what are you, her labrador?"
"Not a crime to be loyal. After all, she got me a fine job in your fine - sorry, your former - fine upstanding department."
"No, she didn't," Beth said smoothly, "that was Tariq. He found out she was planning on disbanding Section D and blackmailed her into giving him an extra techy."
"Oh." Calum considered this for a long moment, then stormed off, weaving a little. Beth rolled her eyes. She leaned forward to speak to Dimitri. "Why?"
"Did she resign? I don't know. Nobody knows. She won't say."
"Did something happen?"
"When does something not?" He paused. "Yes, something happened, but she - well, she was okay with it. She'd made up her mind to stay. She isn't the kind of person to change it again."
"How do you know?"
He paused. "We got close. After you left."
"After she fired me, you mean. Jesus."
There was only so much bitterness a man could take. Dimitri threw up his hands. "You're as bad as Calum. And Harry, now I think of it. Can no one can think of Erin past the influence she has on their careers?"
"Well, she had rather a big influence on mine." Beth shrugged. "So ask her. If you really want to know. Be pushy. Have you turned up at her house yet?"
"Thought she'd slam the door in my face."
Beth smirked. "Not that close, then, are you."
Dimitri drained the rest of his beer, and said nothing.
- - -
part two
Opens immediately after 10.04 (the one where [spoilers]Erin's daughter was kidnapped), after which things get slightly AU. Old faces and new. Spoilers to pretty much everything ever. 22,000 words in four parts (...what is this I don't even).
With plenteous thanks to afiakate for picking plotholes, delgaserasca for picking wordholes, and lost_spook for encouraging my pathological desire to rescue everybody. Also thanks to my flist, especially lost_spook, for the years (I wish I was exaggerating) of patient cheerleading.
Edit: also @AO3.
- - -
PART ONE
"Where are we going?" Rosie asked the nice lady.
"To the playground. You like the playground, don't you? You can play on the swings."
It was hard to hear over the din of the crowd around them, the distant clang and honk of the band, the sizzling of fried things. Rosie did like the playground, but she'd already been on one unexpected walk with strange grown-ups this week and the last time had made her mummy upset.
"Will my mummy be there?" she asked.
"Oh you poor dear, she must be looking all over for you. It'll be much easier for her to find us there, away from all these people."
Rosie liked the sound of that. The crowds of the street fair, which a minute ago had been so exciting, were now making her stomach queasy. She looked around and saw nothing but hips and bottoms and swinging bags. She held more tightly to the nice lady's hand.
"What's your name?"
"Rosie," said Rosie.
"That's a pretty name," the nice lady said. She was on her phone, Rosie realised, holding it to her ear with her fingers expertly hooking back her hair at the same time, so she could keep hold of Rosie's hand. She had beautiful long blond hair, like a princess in a fairy tale. Rosie fingered her own hair uncertainly. The nice lady wasn't talking into the phone, just listening.
"I'm not supposed to talk to strange grown-ups," Rosie said.
"I don't count," the nice lady assured her. "Have a look around, Rosie. Do you see your mummy anywhere?"
Rosie looked, but the crowds at the playground were nearly thick as at the carnival, and she couldn't see far. She saw a tall boy in the line of children waiting for the swings - a big boy too old to play on swings - standing behind his little brother with his hands on his shoulders, just like the nice lady was standing behind Rosie. Rosie looked up at her face again. It was true - the nice lady wasn't a real grown-up. Just like Louise, Rosie's babysitter, who went to the next-door part of her school. Rosie felt safe with Louise.
Looking back the way they had come, the street was sticky with people. Rosie felt sticky too. Scanning the strange faces, none of whom were her mummy, made her feel sick again. She looked down at her shoes instead. There was a paper streamer from the carnival caught in the buckle of her sandal, and she set about trying to free it without tearing it.
"No, it's not," the fairy princess said. Rosie looked up to see that she was talking into her phone again. She looked nervous, biting her lip and scanning the crowds. Then she crouched to speak to Rosie.
"Do you remember your mummy's phone number, sweetie?"
Rosie did not. She'd been proud once to have committed it to memory, but it had changed just last week, after the game with the strange men. Then she remembered, oh glory of glories, that she had a phone of her own now, which her mummy had shown her how to use. She took it out of her special zip pocket and showed it to the fairy princess.
"Oh, very good, Rosie! You can phone your mum and tell her where you are."
Buoyed by the praise, Rosie pressed three, her favourite number, and the green button. "Hello Mummy! I'm at the playground."
The crowds were loud at both ends of the line, but Rosie thought she could hear her mummy crying, and wondered if she'd be in trouble after all. She should've remembered about the phone sooner.
"Rosie, oh lord, I thought I'd lost you. Don't move, I'm coming."
"I'm not lost, Mummy," Rosie said patiently. "I'm at the playground. It's you who got lost."
"Is someone there with you? Are you by yourself?"
"I'm with the fairy princess," Rosie said, but when she turned around the fairy princess was gone.
- -
Maisie's heart had been pounding in her throat for a good ten minutes already, but it graciously rose to new heights for the fifty seconds she waited for Erin. Erin was easy, as Maisie had known she would be, so soon after her daughter had been kidnapped for much higher stakes. She'd heard both sides of the conversation thanks to the speakerphone in Wes's pocket. Erin's sobs were still echoing in her ears.
It was this part they hadn't thought to plan. She knew Wes was ahead of Erin and watching Rosie from the other side of the food stalls, but what if Erin didn't come? What if she went to another playground, which - Jesus - their dangerously thin reconnaissance had failed to pick up? What if Rosie, instead of waiting patiently, decided to brave the crowds and try to find her mother on her own?
But here was Erin, hair flying, falling to her knees in the dirt and hauling Rosie into a tearful embrace. Maisie had already turned away, but she could tell Rosie was complaining, struggling to escape from her mother's arms. Maisie knew that confusion all too well.
She headed into a side street where she pulled on a grey hoodie over her pink top, and twisted her hair messily into a bun, going from fairy princess to teenage delinquent in less than a minute. She went back a block and waited in the queue at the ATM, picking her nails and flipping idly through her phone, before meeting up with Wes on the edge of the common ten minutes later, by which time she'd forgotten her recent terror and earlier doubts and wanted nothing more than to crow with manic delight.
"Jesus fucking fuck, Carter, I can't believe that worked."
Wes only scowled, weaving through the crowds without waiting for her. "What's with you?" She hurried to catch up. "Stop sulking. It worked, didn't it?"
"Yeah, no thanks to that idiot!" Wes exploded. "Who lets their five-year-old get out of sight while answering a bloody phone? And who falls for the she-went-that-way trick, outside of shitty movies?"
Maisie was startled. It was what they'd counted on Erin doing, for the plan to work. "Normal people," she said carefully.
"Yeah? Well, she isn't one."
"She is now."
Wes glanced at her sharply. "Will it be enough?"
Maisie tried not to think of Erin's sobs as she held her writhing daughter. "Trust me, she's writing up her resignation letter right now. Or digging through the bin for the one she already wrote last week."
Wes thrust his hands in his pockets and kicked at the ground. They'd left the crush of the carnival behind; this was just ordinary weekend crowds. They turned into a lane, too narrow for cars, and wandered along the line of shops, not too fast, not too slow; it was automatic to Maisie by now. "Maybe," he said darkly. "Did you have any trouble with the kid?"
"She was fine. Took a bit of prompting to remember about the phone."
Wes snorted. "Maybe some people are too stupid to be saved."
There was a hint of the theatrical in his voice now, more familiar to Maisie than the genuine anger. She rolled her eyes. "Come off it. It's not the kid's fault. She's five. As if either of us were brainy enough not to fall for that trick when we were five."
"Yeah? Maybe that's why no one saved us."
Maisie felt cold. "Don't say that."
Wes, bizarrely, thought he'd hit upon a great topic of conversation, and was offering it now as some sort of apology for his outburst. "I mean," he continued, warming to the theme, "I don't know about you, but wow, I was pretty monumentally stupid when I was a kid. One time, get this, I decided I'd run away and - "
"Not your fault," Maisie said savagely. "Never your fault. None of it. Hear me?"
Wes held up his hands. "Hey, if I want a bollocking I'll ask for one. I'm just saying - "
She was used to this now, how he'd drag her from a serious conversation to a light-hearted one just as easily as the reverse, often without her noticing and often for no discernible purpose. She almost played along, like she usually did, then she was overwhelmed again by how infuriating he could be. She shook him by the arm. "I mean it. I know. God, Carter, you want to trade stupid stories? Do you know what I did once? I put chocolate icing in the security system and we all got locked in the house with a bomb."
Wes narrowed his eyes and made one of those unnerving logical leaps that always seemed to come just when Maisie had written him off as a complete idiot. "Your father brought home a bomb?"
"Tom's not my father," Maisie retorted, distracted into annoyance.
"But he - "
"Yes. Exactly. Not my fault, though it took me eight years or so to realise it. Just like it wasn't your fault your dad was doing whatever he was doing when you ran away."
There was a pause. Wes shook her hand off his arm and they started walking again. "What did your mum say?"
"That's when we left him," Maisie said, but it came out sounding prim and she waved her hand to dismiss it. "She thinks I don't remember it, or, you know, that I fell for the 'it was all a game' line."
"Ah. That old one."
Maisie's elation was pushing through again. Two days ago this was barely a wild idea, and now they'd carried it all the way through, flawlessly. They were practically James Bond material. She tried a wry smile. "Never fell for that one, did we."
Wes grinned and punched her in the arm like the little brother neither of them had had. "Nope. Fell for lots of things, but never that one."
- -
five months ago
If there was one thing Maisie's childhood had made her good at, it was moving house. Since they'd left London the last time, there'd been Manchester and Bristol, a few tiny seaside towns, and once a stint on an island when Ellie was with a petrochemical engineer who'd turned out to care more for her cooking than her conversation.
This time there was an ambitious restaurant in an unambitious economy, and thus no men, which was the way Maisie preferred things. She was good at new houses, and new schools, and good at making friends. But it had been half-term when they moved back to London, and she wouldn't start at the new school until after her GCSEs. Studying alone had been impossible when the weather was so lovely and the city so big and interesting.
"I found our old place today," she'd said one evening, when Ellie had a night off. "Tom's place, in Finchley."
Ellie looked startled. Neither of them had mentioned Tom for years, and Maisie half-expected Ellie to invoke some kind of law against it.
"I wouldn't've thought you'd remember it," she said instead.
"I didn't really. Only recognised the shop on the corner with the fairies painted in the window, remember that place? It hasn't changed at all. I thought the whole shop had moved, at first, but it's just they've built out that old car park with an enormous block of flats." She shrugged. "Then I counted doors til I found the house."
"What's it like?"
Maisie shrugged. "Dunno. Same really. Did you ever speak to Tom again, after we left? Call him or anything?"
"No." Ellie smiled, half a grimace. "Wouldn't know how to call him, even if I wanted to. The man liked his secrets." She paused. "What else do you remember? From then?"
Maisie remembered a lot. Shouting and crying and oppressive affection, and bars on the windows and games and rules that made no sense to her, and that look on her mother's face when she realised they were all going to die - not so much frightened as offended, how can this happen to me.
"Nothing much," she said, and watched the line of Ellie's shoulders relax.
Having made the decision to find Tom Quinn, she'd expected the search to take months, but like a lot of dark and complicated things it had turned out childishly simple. Once she'd found the village all she had to do was sit in the tearooms on a Friday afternoon and drink milkshakes until she saw him go into the pub across the road.
Then things had moved too quickly for her to have time for nerves. She'd cornered him at the bar with the demand that he tell her what really happened or she'd tell the internet what she remembered, which wasn't necessarily the same thing. The next thing she knew Tom had grabbed her by the arm and was hustling her down the street - not how did you find me? but, stupidly, "how did you get in the bar?"
"The same way you did when you were fifteen," Maisie said indignantly. "Let go of me or I'll scream."
Once he'd calmed down, he took her back to the tearooms. He looked older than she remembered (stupid, of course he did), but later she was unable to recall if he'd seemed happier. Hard to judge, she supposed, when she'd just ruined Friday drinks, probably his most treasured normal-person tradition. Tom had liked rituals, she remembered. He'd liked normal.
Maisie turned down another milkshake and sat stirring her coffee in numb silence while he told her about how he'd met Ellie, and about the bomb in the laptop, and the reasons they'd had to move house. He spoke in plain facts, no weight in his voice, as if they were discussing a film they'd seen.
"Anything you want to ask?" he said when he'd finished.
Maisie forced herself to meet his eyes, then looked down at her coffee again. She'd stirred all the air from the froth."Did you ever come home hurt?" she asked.
"Yes," Tom said evenly. "A couple of times, I expect."
"I have - had - this dream of you, with blood all over your face."
Tom shook his head. "Just a dream."
"Was there ever someone in the house?"
"No, never."
She felt stupid asking the questions, but it would be worse not to go through with it now she was here. She forced herself to ask about each of her dozen or so nightmares. He never laughed, never said don't be ridiculous, as Ellie would've.
"Were you married, when you were with Mum?"
Tom looked surprised at that. "No. Of course not." She saw him tighten his left hand around the coffee cup, and then he nodded, remembering. "I was married a few times for cover. I expect you saw me with the ring, yes?"
Maisie nodded.
"Cover," he said again.
"And that one?"
He turned the ring around his finger. "This one's real."
At first she'd been grateful for his steady calm, but it had begun to get to her. "Did you ever kill anyone?"
Tom, damn him, knew straight away what she was doing. He sat back in his chair and fucking smiled at her. "I think we're done, yes?"
Maisie smiled back, bright and hard. "Right," she said. "Good. Thanks." Then to her surprise and shame she started to cry, because the shadowy monsters that had existed in her head for the past eight years were finally gone.
Tom let her finish crying in silence, for which she was again grateful, and again annoyed at him for making her feel gratitude.
"Did you come on the train from London?"
She nodded.
"I'll walk you to the station."
The main street was deserted, post office and bank having shut at five, and the few shops and cafes following soon after. There was a woman outside the pub, perched on top of a wooden table, smoking and watching Tom like a bird of prey. Maisie recognised her from her peripheral vision in the pub, a blur of blond hair and cigarette smoke. Tom ignored her.
"Is that your wife," Maisie asked facetiously.
"No."
"Your mistress then?"
Tom didn't grace that with a reply.
They walked in silence. She couldn't get the measure of him. She almost wished he'd be angry again, just so that she'd know how to react.
"Aren't you going to ask me how I found you?"
Tom smiled, so quickly she wondered if he had at all. "How did you find me?"
"Remember that time we went to Brighton? And met your uncle in the lolly shop? I don't know if he was really your uncle, but I knew that he really knew you. You went all silent and weird."
"Nigel retired years ago."
"I know. He runs an online store now. I googled it."
Tom nodded appreciatively, but Maisie didn't feel half as clever as she had before. She hadn't expected a reply to her email, had been tongue-tied with nerves when the old man actually phoned her back.
"He called you, didn't he?" she realised.
Tom shrugged.
"Of course he did. And the only reason he told me where you lived was because you told him to tell me. Jesus, you're a piece of work."
She was hot with shame and anger again, but it passed quickly. They'd reached the station. The platform marked the edge of the village, houses on one side, fields on the other. The train wasn't for twenty minutes.
"You don't have to wait," she said.
Tom said nothing. Maisie sat on the bench, a foot folded under her against the cold metal. She swung her other foot against the railing, just to make a noise. There were soft rolling hills in the distance, the faint smell of cows. It was bizarre.
"So you live here now?" she challenged him. "In some tiny boring village? What do you do, spy on farmers?"
"Not much call for that."
"What then?"
"Private work."
"Not government?"
"No."
"But still secret."
"Yes."
"Do you really live here?"
"Yes, I do. Most of the time. Is that so hard to believe?"
"What do you mean most of the time? Where else do you live?"
"America, sometimes."
She hadn't expected that. "Really?" He shrugged. "Where, New York City? Are you a corporate lawyer in your other life?" She tried a gangster accent; failed. "Or do you spy on farmers there too, for the CIA? Nowhere-on-Stoke to Nowheresville, Kentucky?"
"Maisie, please," he said, finally a note of exasperation in his voice. It felt somehow like a victory. He hadn't asked a single question about her, or about Ellie, but she couldn't bring herself to invoke Ellie's name now, just like she'd held Tom's name at bay all those years. Besides, he probably already knew everything about them.
"It's not fair," she said. "You've always known where I am."
"I haven't known."
"Don't lie. I still have all the postcards."
Tom gave her another half-smile. "I never sent you postcards."
"Yeah, whatever."
"What did they say?"
"All sorts of things," Maisie said, suddenly defensive. But Tom seemed genuinely interested, and once again she had the feeling that he wouldn't laugh at her. "Quotes, mostly," she said. "Poetry and things. Never made a lot of sense to me."
Then Tom did laugh. "They weren't signed Tom, though, were they?"
"Of course not. You've used other names before."
"Malcolm?"
"So it was you."
"No," said Tom kindly, "it was Malcolm."
"Seriously?" She stopped swinging her leg. "Who?"
"You don't remember him?"
"No."
She had the odd feeling he was a little disappointed. "You probably only met him once. That time you came on the grid."
"Well how could I be expected to remember?"
"You couldn't." He was pleased again. "Malcolm's been sending you postcards? Since when?"
"Since I don't know. Since ages."
"And you still get them?"
"Got one when we moved back to London." The postcards had never bothered her before, but now she was uneasy. "How did he know we'd moved? And all the moves before that?"
"That's just Malcolm. Don't worry, he's the most harmless man on earth." He glanced at her. "Would you like me to ask him to stop?"
She hesitated, then shrugged, which meant no.
"I'll talk to him anyway," Tom said. "He was always better at this than me."
Better at what, Maisie thought, but she was done asking questions now.
The woman outside the pub had moved down the road, and was sitting on the bonnet of a parked car flicking through her phone. Maisie wondered if she knew how to sit on an actual seat. Eventually Tom sighed and went to meet her. Maisie saw no reason to wait for the still-distant train on her own.
"You missed the link-up," the woman said, blowing smoke out the side of her mouth.
Tom looked aggrieved. Hard to tell if it was from the woman's news or from Maisie following him. "I'll call back."
"Middle of the night there now. He might not be too happy." She hopped off the car bonnet, brushing dust from her trousers. "Anyway, not my problem. I'd better head back to town if I'm going to get those things dug up by tomorrow." She eyed Maisie.
"We used to know each other," Tom said, which was about the lamest explanation Maisie had ever heard, as well as being not strictly true.
"Did you," said the woman. She flicked ash from her cigarette. "Want a lift? Trains are rubbish this end of the day."
"Yes please," Maisie said, before Tom could protest. He clearly wanted to get rid of her, why not make it in a way that pissed him off? And that's us about even, she thought, thank you and goodbye.
"Do you work for Tom?"
The blond woman changed gears as if imagining herself in a much more powerful vehicle. "I don't work for anybody. I work for me." Then after a pause, "I'm freelancing for him at the moment, yes. Big project. Big money, for a change."
"The CIA pays well, huh."
That got her a sly sideways glance. "Nice try. I'm not telling you shit."
"Why? It's not like I'm going to tell anybody." She was thinking of Ellie, who probably wouldn't believe her anyway.
"Because fuck you, that's why," the woman said smoothly. "Do you want chips?"
"I'm not a child. You can't just buy me off with food."
"Then stop acting like a child. You know very well why I can't tell you. And I was serious about the chips. Bastard kept me waiting at that hole of a pub for hours and I'm starving."
Maisie gave up. She turned Tom's stories in her head, closing boxes, shutting doors. This happened. This didn't. She hadn't expected it to feel as much like loss as it did relief.
That night, she went through the postcards. They'd been a part of her life for longer than she could remember. She had a hazy recollection of coming home from school to the new house in Harwich, she must've been seven or eight, and finding one on the doormat, but now that she looked through them all there was one addressed to the house in Bristol. That must've been the first, though she had no memory of it.
The Harwich one, she remembered. Puzzling over her name in neat capitals, taking it through to the kitchen - but Ellie was in a mood, so she'd pocketed it quietly, for later. The idea of keeping it a secret had appealed to her, and it must have been that decision, rather than anything in the postcards themselves, that had tied them to Tom.
Looking through them that night, before Ellie got home from the restaurant, she tried to remember meeting Malcolm. Stupid, that she'd made up so many nightmares which had never happened, and forgotten so many little important things which had.
A few days later she got an email: malcolm told me to write to you
She was in the middle of studying for her history final and anything was a welcome distraction. She wondered later if she would've replied otherwise.
Why? she shot back.
apparently there's a club for us now
That the mysterious Malcolm had known where she lived most of her life hadn't bothered her, but the idea that he was omniscient on the internet as well was a bit disturbing.
How did you get my email address? she demanded.
found you on facebook, moron
She was vaguely disappointed that he was a boy, and two years younger than her at that, but she wrote back anyway. She had expected they'd swap war-stories and maybe complain about their parents, but for one reason or another they never did. Their conversations were a mix of the adult and the utterly childish, which the boy seemed to swing between with a skill he couldn't bring to the task of being a normal teenager.
The first people they followed were random. Maisie was nearly certain later; she'd picked a few herself after all. He taught her how to tail someone from behind, then from in front, then back and forth across crowded places and empty without being seen.
"Not like that, Maisie, you moron. He'll see you soon as he turns around. Didn't your father teach you anything?"
"Tom's not my father," she retorted. And no, he bloody didn't.
Wes played intently, as if his life depended on it, but then he did everything intently.
"He's getting the Epping line, I saw him check the times. So you get off before him, okay?"
But the Epping train was eight minutes away, and instead of catching Wes's eye across the crowded platform, she went up to the target. Later she couldn't even remember what she'd asked him - something stupid like where are you going or what station are you getting off so's we can be prepared.
Next thing she knew, Wes had dragged her up the stairs and into the street with surprising strength. "What are you doing?"
She shrugged him off. "I got bored of spy games. Ow, Jesus, you're leaving bruises."
"Fuck, Maisie, are you completely useless? If you were bored, why didn't you just give up? Go home, go hang with your idiot girlfriends or whatever. Why did you have to ruin everything? Now he knows who we are."
"So what? He's just a guy."
Wes opened his mouth, then changed his mind abruptly and swung around. Ignore him, she told herself. Leave him to his stupid sulk and go home.
Wes didn't turn around, and she had to hurry to keep up. He muttered something about how he'd seen their faces.
She laughed, sounding forced even to her own ears. "What, did you know him? Who was he, your history teacher or some shit?"
It was a good ten minutes before he calmed down. They sat on the wall by the river. "He's a spy," Wes said resignedly.
"Seriously?"
He shot her a dirty look.
"Do you know him? Does your father know him?"
Wes shook his head.
"Well, why are we following him? Does he have a bomb or something?"
"He has kids."
"Kids?" Maisie was bewildered.
"Two. Seven and four, I think. Boys."
"How the hell do you know that?"
"I have sources." Then there it was, that grin, like this was all a game. "At least now we know," he said.
"Know what?"
"That he doesn't deserve them. Tailed him for nearly an hour, didn't we, and he didn't notice a bloody thing. Here's my bus. Look, it doesn't matter. Sorry I yelled."
You are a crazy person, Maisie thought, watching the bus pull away. You are a legitimately fucked-up crazy person.
- -
today
"You must be very fucking desperate," Calum said, putting down his beer. "The last person I planned to have a drink with ended up dead."
Dimitri had only recently learned to coast over his initial reaction to anything Calum said, which was to punch him in the face. "I'll take the risk," he said.
"Brave man." Calum glanced around, as if their conversation might be overheard, but it was still early and the nearest rowdy group were a few tables away. "So? What did she tell you?"
"Who?" Dimitri asked.
"Erin, you idiot. What's the story? That's why you wanted to talk, right?"
"I haven't spoken to her," Dimitri said, surprised. "She won't return my calls. I wanted to talk to you because I thought she - well - might've returned yours."
"Why?" Calum sounded genuinely puzzled.
"You're her friend, aren't you?"
"And you're her lover."
"What?" Dimitri put down his beer too fast and spilt a little. "Where'd you get that from?"
Calum shrugged. "Not true then?"
"No, it's not." Not yet, he wanted to say, but he supposed that was as good as no anyway, with the way things were.
"Oh." Calum shrugged again. "We're both in the dark then, aren't we? I guess it was to do with that thing that happened with her daughter."
"She was pretty shaken up about that, yeah. But I thought Harry had convinced her to stay."
"He had."
Dimitri turned, feeling like the hapless hero in a pantomime. "Harry. What are you - ?"
He stopped himself when he realised the only place that question led was what are you doing in a public bar with an average age you haven't seen since before the Beatles.
Harry grimaced, hearing it regardless. "We're celebrating," he said. Ruth, behind him, gave Dimitri an encouraging smile.
"Celebrating?" Dimitri echoed.
"Are you glad Erin resigned?" Calum asked, having less tact and a higher tolerance for withering looks.
Harry, to Dimitri's horror, pulled a chair from a nearby table and sat between them. "Not at all, Calum. I'm bloody furious. Christ knows where I'll find someone now." He sniffed dubiously at his glass of whiskey. "No, it's just been quite a while since I lost a Section Chief to something as mundane as a resignation. Rather novel actually." He raised his glass. "To Erin."
"I thought you were absolutely verboten to speak to me," Beth said, four hours and three pubs later. Harry, mercifully, had long departed, making it safe for Beth to emerge from the shadows.
Dimitri shrugged. "They care less about that sort of thing now."
"They do? Or you do?"
"Does it matter?"
Beth put down her glass. "All right, cheerful. What's up?"
"Erin resigned," Dimitri said unhappily.
"Really? Good for her. Maybe being an insufferable little bitch finally got boring."
"Hey, speak for yourself," Calum put in.
"Oh shut up, what are you, her labrador?"
"Not a crime to be loyal. After all, she got me a fine job in your fine - sorry, your former - fine upstanding department."
"No, she didn't," Beth said smoothly, "that was Tariq. He found out she was planning on disbanding Section D and blackmailed her into giving him an extra techy."
"Oh." Calum considered this for a long moment, then stormed off, weaving a little. Beth rolled her eyes. She leaned forward to speak to Dimitri. "Why?"
"Did she resign? I don't know. Nobody knows. She won't say."
"Did something happen?"
"When does something not?" He paused. "Yes, something happened, but she - well, she was okay with it. She'd made up her mind to stay. She isn't the kind of person to change it again."
"How do you know?"
He paused. "We got close. After you left."
"After she fired me, you mean. Jesus."
There was only so much bitterness a man could take. Dimitri threw up his hands. "You're as bad as Calum. And Harry, now I think of it. Can no one can think of Erin past the influence she has on their careers?"
"Well, she had rather a big influence on mine." Beth shrugged. "So ask her. If you really want to know. Be pushy. Have you turned up at her house yet?"
"Thought she'd slam the door in my face."
Beth smirked. "Not that close, then, are you."
Dimitri drained the rest of his beer, and said nothing.
- - -
part two