Chapter Text
Laura Hobson was enjoying a long lie in on a Sunday morning, curled up under her duvet, even though outside the day was growing hotter by the second. Enjoying may have been quite the wrong word as her work phone awaked her from her deathly slumber. She groaned and reached out an arm for the phone, moaning as she accidentally knocked back the quilt and the bright August morning light poured directly into her probably still drunken brain via her gummed up eye-sockets. Ouch, she thought as she wailed a choice swear word. Too many tequila slammers.
“Hobson,” she snapped. She sat up abruptly. “Give me half an hour.”
Laura stumbled out of bed and let out a cry of disgust at her own reflection. Black satin top twisted up to show her bra, make-up smudged over her face, no trousers or knickers... Really! She was far, far, too old for this sort of thing. Did she think she was still a student? She was most certainly too old for this kind of late night partying and drinking. Especially the drinking. And especially, especially, when she was on call. She turned back to her bed and looked at it worriedly just in case. Fortunately, no strange person lay sleeping there, nor was there any sign there had been at any stage that night, or rather that morning, as she hadn’t got to bed since... what was it? Four o’clock, something near to that.
Although thinking about it she did remember meeting a rather cute nurse at Rosa and Jane’s barbeque. A redhead. So perhaps she shouldn’t be so relieved?
No, she was most certainly far too old for such shenanigans.
Ten minutes later, after a brief and very cold shower, she was out of her house, dressed in a green sundress and very dark sunglasses, on her way to Wood Farm.
Another ten minutes on that, white suit over her dress, she stood at the bottom of a the stairwell of a nineteen seventies block of council flats having a stern conversation with an older, grey haired, uniformed police constable.
“Why is it only me here, Bob? Where is CID?”
“It’s my patch, doctor. I knew him. Got ASBOs as long as your arm. Been in trouble since he was a kid.”
“What is he now then?” demanded Hobson, although the answer was obvious: dead. But he had been still just a child, yet to turn sixteen years of age. He lay at an awkward angle under the stairs, dressed in dirty grey tracksuit bottoms and an even dirtier tee shirt that might have had The Avengers movie logo on it once, but it was so stained and faded with washing it was hard to tell. Beside him lay tin foil, used matches and white powder scattered around, looking as innocent as spilled flour but far from such a cosy image. She doubted this boy ever baked cakes with mummy. All around them, in the air, lay the heavy, unmistakable smell of burnt heroin and unwashed human flesh, coupled with the dreadful smell of sudden, unattended, death, as the child had evacuated both bowel and bladder at the point of death. Laura forced herself to squat down again by his side, fighting the bile rising in her throat. She was not squeamish. She was never squeamish, not even hung over on an empty stomach after slightly more than four hours sleep. No, she told herself, she was disgusted.
“He’s the nineteenth victim I’ve seen like this,” she said angrily, touching the yellow foamed crusting that had formed about the boy’s mouth with her gloved finger.
The officer shrugged. “Smackhead. Overdose. Dealer cut it with crap to increase the profit, init? It happens, don’t it? Sad, but why bother CID on a Sunday. Drug squad will get a report e-mailed in the morning, I suppose.”
“Did you even try to get them out Bob?” Hobson demanded, standing up.
Bob shrugged. “Quoting, in’t I? Is it the smack, then, is it?”
“I’ll know more after the PM, but yes, it was something he took but I doubt it was the heroin that did this. It’s something he didn’t know about. I would hazard a guess his heart just stopped, following his vomiting up this yellow gunk. See his eyeballs, they’re yellow too. I’ve seen this before Bob, and I just don’t know what causes it. Not flour or baking powder or icing sugar, nor any cleaning product, not even Anthrax. I just don’t know what the heroin is cut with, but it’s killing people. It’s murder, Bob, and you can try telling that to CID for me. And as he’s the nineteenth I’ve seen you can also try telling Drugs to get a warning out through the health agencies, they won’t listen to me, I don’t have the right authority. God knows, I’ve been putting in my reports over the past two weeks!”
“Same as that girl, then? Over by the shops, ten days ago? Thought she were just an overdose.”
“I’d not seen the pattern then, not joined the dots. But yes. She was the same. And seventeen others. Okay, I’m done here. He can keep, poor sausage. PM tomorrow morning. See you Bob.” She grabbed her bags and stamped out of the dingy, cool, smelly, lobby into the bright, hot, sunshine. Breakfast, she thought.
*
Meanwhile, two graduate students were meeting for breakfast at the Magic Cafe on Magdalen Road, off the Cowley and Iffley Roads, deep in East Oxford student territory. He was very white, despite the summer sun, even though his unbrushed, sticking-up, greasy, hair was very dark. Despite of the heat he wore a holey, hand-knitted V-necked jumper with the sleeves pulled over his hands. He had poked holes in the cuffs for his thumbs to stick through. Under this he wore very grubby black jeans and even grubbier white trainers.
His companion, however, was a complete contrast to his grungy, unkempt look. She skipped into the cafe and went to hug and air kiss him, but stopped, holding herself back at the last minute, as if remembering he didn’t like to be touched. She had long, ironed smooth, white-blonde hair, falling down her back to her waist, hanging over her green and pink flowered maxi sundress, over which she wore a thick, beige cardigan, accompanied by a crocheted wool beige crinkle scarf wrapped loosely around her neck, despite the heat. On her feet, cheap, plastic purple flip-flops. Her smudged, thickly applied, black eyeliner and mascara, probably, like Hobson’s, left from the night before, completed the look. She was equally pale.
*
Not very far away at all from the Magic Cafe, on the Iffley Road, Lewis had just parked his car. He was dressed in his old, faded green polo shirt and a pair of jeans. He grabbed a small, purple plastic bag with an expensive logo stamped on it, along with a huge bunch of white lilies, from the passenger seat and locked the car, before checking his hair and teeth in his reflection in the wing mirror. He bounced along the few hundred yards from where he had parked the car to a house, practically skipping up the steps to the front door. As he pressed the bell for the basement flat he heard the bells of the Friary a little way down the road, and then the church a little way opposite began its tuneful call to prayer.
Lewis suddenly doubted himself. Perhaps he should have phoned after all to say he was back and coming over; James might be at Mass. Lewis pressed the buzzer to James’ flat.
The surprise was worth it, as when the door opened Lewis was rewarded both by the delicious sight of his sergeant in only pale blue check cotton pyjama trousers and nothing else. The lad’s hair was on end and he had sleep-crusted, squinting eyes that peered, confused for a moment, before he opened the door, rewarding Lewis with the widest of genuine happy smiles.
“Sir!”
“It’s Robbie,” said Robbie emphatically, shoving the huge bunch of lilies into James’ arms.
“Oh!” James cradled the flowers and sniffed them. He acted as if no one had ever given him flowers. Perhaps they hadn’t? A faint blush was creeping across his cheeks as he said, “Um. Thank you Sir.”
“Robbie.”
“Then, thank you Robbie. When did you get back?” James asked, leading the way into his flat. The remains of breakfast – coffee, orange juice, pain au chocolat, all littered the coffee table and music was playing in the background; something restful and classical that Lewis couldn’t identify. Naturally, a book lay open on the sofa. James himself moved it to the coffee table so Lewis could sit down.
“Last night, late,” answered Lewis. “I thought I’d surprise you.”
“You have. I’ll... I’ll just put these in water. Coffee Sir? I mean Robbie. It’s fresh. I’ll get you a mug.”
“Please,” Lewis answered, sitting down in the place the book had been. He bounced a couple of little bounces as he did so, almost like someone much younger and happier. “Did you miss me then?” he teased, reaching out and grabbing James by the wrist, pulling him on to the sofa. James wriggled quickly out of his grasp and made himself busy with the flowers at his breakfast bar.
Robbie got up and followed him, coming up behind him to encircle his waist from behind and press up to the tall, skinny, tense form. He momentarily enjoyed the feel of bare flesh under his arms; he knew it couldn’t last. He even kissed the back of James neck before,
“Sir!”
“I missed you,” Lewis said, pulling James’ hands away from the flowers, now safely in water, and gently turning him in his arms before looking up to kiss him, moving one hand to James’ neck, the other to the small of his back. James remained tense for a few seconds before he yielded to the kiss, suddenly kissing back with equal, ferocious, passion, running fingers through Robbie’s hair. Robbie took a chance and slid fingers through the loose waistband of the pyjamas and gently caressed James’ backside. James shuddered, but surprisingly, did not object immediately. It was almost two minutes before he did. He broke the kiss to whisper,
“Please. Not yet.”
“Okay pet. I’ll have that coffee then.” He sat back down on the sofa and poured himself a coffee, using the mug James had been using, and turned the conversation to other topics. He talked of Lyn, her relationship break-up, of how he really didn’t like the sound of this slick, charming financial advisor, how he had liked Tim. He did not mention the pregnancy, which would take careful handling. He knew James was very insecure and at times appeared jealous of his easy relationship he had with his daughter. Who knew how threatened he might feel by a future grandchild? Plus, Robbie felt a little insecure himself. Bad enough being in love with a lad old enough to be your son, but to be a grandfather with a toy-boy...? Didn’t look too good, did it?
He also didn’t tell James that he had told Lyn all about their relationship, and James’ past. He debated with himself whether he should, but decided it might frighten the lad. He thought he was probably sounding as boring as Morse found him, as instead, to cover James’ awkward silence, he rambled on about meeting up with his younger brother Pete, who also lived in Manchester, but hardly had anything to do with Lyn, and his ex sister-in-law Janine and his nieces and nephews, and all he and Lyn had got up to – lots of shopping, but as that it had been for things for the baby, he held back on that. He hated secrets, so to make up he confessed to going first to Northumbria for the weekend and about his strange niece Willow by Pete’s first relationship, and the hippie-dippy, airy-fairy, retreat she ran up there in the countryside,
“But she makes a tidy profit, she and her partner are right canny when it comes to it, for all their weird beliefs.” That he took part in some airy-fairy counselling and healing, again, he did not mention.
All the while he kept up his near monologue he polished off the rest of the pain au chocolat and then ate huge quantities of toast and jam that James produced. James sat at the edge of the sofa, folding up and hugging his long legs, putting far more personal space between them that he ever did before they were together, commenting and answering in occasional monosyllabic answers, only coming alive to defend New Age retreats and faith generally, comparing such place to Walsingham or Lindesfarn. Other than that, he was silent and almost trying to disappear into the sofa, pressing his back in and hugging himself tightly. Robbie thought that he looked tired, vulnerable, and maybe a bit peaky. He felt a stab of guilt about leaving him for so long, but then his Lyn needed him too! He felt torn, and worried, and thought of asking James how he had been, how he was coping. But, then, they didn’t do that, and he’d best not startle the lad.
“Right then pet,” he said decisively, unwittingly sounding far more like a boss than a date, “I’m here to take you out for the day. It’s gorgeous out there. I’d thought I’d take you punting. No doubt it’s something you and your mates did over in Cambridge, but I’ve never done it and always fancied it. It’s something Val and me always planned to do but then the kids – and work – and Morse! – somehow got in the way. We could pick up a picnic from somewhere. Couldn’t we?” he sounded less like James’ boss now, almost pleading as he looked at that blank, unreadable mask that was James at times. “How does that sound?”
James stared blankly a few seconds and then smiled. It was like the sun coming out for Robbie. “It’s sounds good,” he said. “Although I suspect I’ll be the one with the punt,” he added mildly. Robbie pulled a face at him. James hurriedly asked, “I thought you were on leave until tomorrow?”
“I am, you soft lad. I came back early to spend a day with you. Are you gonna get dressed or what?”
“Er. Yeah.”
“Oh no! Wait! First, presents. I got you presents!”
“From Manchester? Or Newcastle? The mind boggles.”
“Now now, none of your southern snobbery, it’ll not work, not that I know that you’re nowt but an inbred yokel boy.”
James eyebrows rose in surprise and offence, “I am not...!” he began softly.
“We all have our prejudices, eh?” Lewis interrupted him with a smile. “Manchester’s a great city. You’ll see. Next time, love, you’ll come with me.”
“But why?”
Robbie rolled his eyes. “Because we are together. A couple.”
“But we’ve not...”
“Doesn’t matter love. It doesn’t matter.” He picked up James’ hand and squeezed. “It’s this, this feeling, that matters. When you’re ready, already said. Here.” He let go of James’ hand and presented the purple bag. “Found this in a flea market and thought of you.”
It was an antique gold crucifix, over a hundred years old, that James gingerly unwrapped from the purple tissue paper than he had pulled from the bag. He looked at it, puzzled, but appreciative. Lewis mocked his faith, didn’t understand it. Besides, flowers were one thing, but jewellery, it symbolised too much of what he had longed for, dreamed of... it was terrifying. But he smiled a tight smile at Lewis and said softly,
“Thank you Sir.”
Robbie smiled, and didn’t even bother to correct him. He just got up, and taking the chain from James’ hands, came to stand behind him and fastened the chain around James’ neck, caressing it with his fingers as he did so.
“Go get dressed,” he instructed.
*
Hobson was in a foul mood. A second body, rudely interrupting her breakfast at Cowley Tescos, the nearest place she could find open on a Sunday morning near to Wood Farm that wasn’t McDonald’s, that day, her second apparent accidental heroin overdose of the day. It wasn’t far from where she was at all, fortunately. Blackbird Leys. At least, she mused, they would not know she was around the corner and she could justify finishing her egg and mushroom bap and coffee before she attended.
When she got there she found herself parking in a cul de sac of fifties semi detached council houses. This one was a small, two up two down arrangement. The body had been a nineteen-year-old girl who lived with her Mum and little brother and her own four year old son. The mum, seemingly from the state of play, slept in the lounge. She also, the poor woman, had found the body of her daughter that morning and was obviously in shock.
“She was supposed to be clean,” the mother, younger than Hobson but worn down by poverty, stress, and smoking so looked so much older, kept repeating. The two younger children were in the kitchen with a very young Community Police Support Officer. Really, some of these CPSOs looked twelve!
The body had an ex-boyfriend who was also a user, and equally young, had been round last night to visit his son and had stayed on past the boy’s bedtime, the young uniformed officer told her. He didn’t look that much older than the CPSO.
This was her twentieth victim in two weeks with this same, unidentifiable, unknown, substance. But presumably the girl, this time an injector, had shared the drug with her ex. If so, why was he not dead too? Unless he was, of course, somewhere unfound? And if it had affected him, was it at a different rate, or he could have run out on a death in a panic, he wouldn’t be the first in these twenty cases. Or did he leave and then she died, and he did too? Or survived? If he did, he wouldn’t be a first, there were already several times that Hobson had had a body and a survivor from those using the same dose and batch of heroin, which didn’t fit a profile of anything else that the drug had been cut with out of an attempt to drive up profit or from malicious intent. Normally, if a drug was lethal, it was lethal. Hobson still couldn’t identify what it was being cut with, let alone how exactly it was killing some and not others. As for intent, she had no idea whether greed, cruelty, revenge, or some thing other was driving those who cut the heroin. Motive shouldn’t really be her area, but she was so sick of being fobbed off by the Drug Squad and CID, that she wanted to know, even if she had to investigate for herself. This was why she had begun to interrogate the officers and the body’s family for any clues, any connections. So far, nothing. She was as in the dark as she was regarding the toxicology of this substance that was killing with yellow bile.
Yellow bile! Listen to her thoughts! She sounded as primitive as a doctor 3000 years ago!
She felt so powerless, as yet again CID left uniform to mop up the tragic ‘accidental death’ of a dispossessed, lower class user, someone on the margins and outskirts of city and society. Like the old fifties Cutteslowe Wall, the ring road cut these people out of the city in the topical imagination of the powers that be!
Shaking with rage once she had done all that was necessary and logged the body for her second PM tomorrow, Hobson returned to her car. She noticed it was now almost midday – time for a small drink perhaps?
*
By the time James returned to his living room, dressed, Lewis had tidied up the breakfast things, washed up, made fresh coffee, and was sitting, drinking it, watching the cricket.
“You’ll boil,” he said to James as he appeared. James had put on very tight jeans, a long sleeved top pulled over his knuckles and a second tee shirt over the top with some band on it that Lewis had never heard off.
“Boil or fry,” James replied. “I know from experience that going out in sun like this on the river I’ll burn even covered in factor fifty.”
James was so pale and blond this was possibly true, Robbie conceded to himself, casting his mind back to earlier, when the man had been half naked. He also dimly remembered previous summers, when the lad was just his sergeant and he shouldn’t have been noticing so much, that James had frequently ended up with a burnt nose or red cheeks when they had been outside or in the car a lot in strong, hot sun.
Robbie, though, had a mind of a detective, and he also remembered other things from a few months ago and James had not wanted to be left for ten days, and he began to cast his mind back to that gorgeous semi-naked body, scanning his memory for any evidence of self-harm on his wrists or elsewhere. He wished he could remember, but unfortunately at the time he was too busy being distracted by that slim torso and abs. The long sleeves could be covering up something else, after all. And most men so young would surely favour shorts in such heat, especially on the river. Why did James cover up so much? Was it connected to his past, or the recent attack, or was in a hang over from the Seminary? Or just plain lack of confidence? He wished he knew: he wished he could help James relax a little more, feel a little safer with him. Although, the skintight jeans were new – usually he wore ill-fitting jeans too big or very baggy cargos when in civvies. Was that a good sign he was coming out of – whatever? – or was James dressing to please him, which he didn’t want at all. He wanted James comfortable and confident with himself, with who he was.
Looking at James now he realised he had noticed something else that was a little odd and strange about James. It seemed to fly in the face of the boy’s lack of confidence and desire to stay in the closet: make-up.
“What about your face?” he demanded, far more aggressively than he had intended.
“Factor fifty plus foundation with factor twenty and then powder. I bloody hope no UVs can get through,” James replied tartly.
“Ah, I thought you were having one of your Maybelline moments.”
“One day Sir, you are going to have to explain that to me.”
“Before your time James, before your time. God, are you really so young?”
“I am,” James replied, smirking.
“Yeah, and that must make me your sugar daddy.”
“What?!” James’ eyebrows and voice rose with shock or disgust, Robbie couldn’t tell.
“Oh, something our Lyn said,” he replied.
“You told her!”
Damn, he had meant to pick his moment, but the relaxed, teasing batter felt so safe and normal he had dropped his guard. He grew defensive, which on reflection, had not been his best approach.
“Of course I did. You’re a part of me now, and she’s my daughter. I had too.”
“Oh.” James had gone all neutral, blank, and inscrutable again. You really don’t know how this is done, do he James? He thought sadly. There was nothing to do but move on, James obviously did not wish to talk.
“Come on. Don’t forget your phone.”
*
The scruffy, gangly, young man had returned from the Magic Cafe to his rooms at Balliol College. An American young man had been waiting for him by the staircase door and had followed him up the stairs. He was now outside his door, and had been for sometime, banging on it and yelling,
“Come on man! I know you have some gear. Let me have some man Seb! Please, I need it. Go on. Sebastian!”
“Go away,” called Sebastian.
“Go on. Please man. I know you have some. I can pay.”
Sebastian opened his door. “I don’t have anything here. I’m a chemist. Not a user. All my chemicals I need for my thesis I keep in the lab under lock and key.”
“I’ll pay.” Blond, Californian and as skinny as a rake, the longhaired boy dressed in surf shorts and a bright green tight tee had desperate, pleading, grey eyes. “A hundred dollars,” he offered wildly.
“Make it sterling,” Sebastian said. “And give me an hour.” He did not smile. Sebastian never smiled.
“Thanks man, you’re a life saver,” the young American grabbed Sebastian by the forearm in a salute of thanks. Sebastian stood stiffly, face neutral, cold, and blank, as it frequently was, while he stared at the hand on his arm until it was removed.
“This way,” he said coldly, when it was lifted from his person.
*
Meanwhile, Sebastian’s companion of the breakfast meet-up at the cafe was parking her car, a metallic green Nissan Micra, outside a nineteen sixties build council terrace in unforgiving grey concrete and slate grey roofing, the glaring sun making it look all the more like a condemned prison sentence rather than a community of homes. She was in Barton, another estate outside the boundary of the ring road, as Hobson would see it. The young woman got out of her car, almost tripping on her maxi sundress and awkwardly fetched a box of groceries from the back seat before carefully ensuring the car doors were locked.
*
Lewis and Hathaway did go onto the river. For a while James was in charge of the punt and then he had to show his boss how to punt at Lewis’ insistence. After a few ridiculous attempts accompanied by a lot of laugher, Lewis got the hang of it and James then let him take over, lying back and trailing fingers in the water, gazing a the cloudless sky. Summer had been a long time coming, nothing but grey, overcast skies, drizzle and days of torrential downpours and flooding, since the beginning of June. But now, at last, in the last week of August, it was as if God had turned up the thermostat by at least ten more degrees, for it was thirty degrees Celsius in the shade and muggy with it.
However, it was cooler on the river, and the willows and other trees on the bank created a dappled shade. James switched his gaze to his boss, dressed in short green sleeves, admiring the hard toned muscle on the tanned skin that was still there, despite the fact he was nearing sixty. Lewis always found it hard to believe he could fancy him, but he was gorgeous. James wished he could...
He splashed the water in anger. Robbie looked down at him, startled.
“Nothing,” he lied. But it wasn’t nothing. Every time he tried to fantasise, as he had before, before his boss knew how he felt about him, before he knew his feelings were returned, before the Roschenkovs, he started to panic. Dreams and desires, lusts and needs, were suddenly suffocated by the cold, terrifying flashbacks to being in the back of that truck, to being held down, his mouth forced to...
His work phone rang.
“Hathaway,” he answered.
Robbie watched as James listened for a while, nodding pointlessly, murmuring few words of consent or agreement, and then James said abruptly,
“But he is back from Manchester. He’s with me now Ma’am. Do you want to talk to him?”