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greengerbil’s delectable treats yesterday, it's time to unwrap the shapeless jumper that comes down to your knees knitted for you by a well-meaning great-aunt .
My fic for Advent:
Saturday night
"Get your coat, we're leaving."
"Eh? Was just going to get another round in."
"Now."
Bodie was in earnest, Doyle could see it was no joke. Without drawing attention to themselves, they left the pub, turned onto the cold, dark street, and kept walking.
When he was finally sure no one was on their tail, Doyle pulled up, swinging Bodie around to face him. "What was all that about, then?"
"You saw that black bloke in the pub?"
Doyle didn't need his police training to have clocked the young man when he went to the bar – sitting on his own in the corner of the public bar, nursing a lemonade. Even smothered by a shapeless grey overcoat he was striking to look at – tall and lean, with close-cropped hair, fine features, lustrous brown eyes, and dark mahogany skin.
The clientele of the Royal Oak was pretty cosmopolitan. That was why Doyle felt at home there. Punks, Irish, loud women from the factory next door – Ken didn't mind as long as there was no trouble. Even a couple of burly blokes who liked to sit together with shoulders and heads close, wrapped up in their own world, didn’t seem to bother him, especially given the rate they knocked back their drinks. There weren't usually any coloured people in, but Doyle felt sure Ken would have been just the same with them as with his other customers – rude and sarcastic.
"Bodie, there isn't a law against black people drinking in pubs."
"Didn't say there was, did I? But he knew me, by name."
That brought Doyle up short. Tensing, he looked Bodie in the eye. "How d'you know?"
Bodie’s gaze slid away. "When I went for a slash just then? He came up to me. He wanted me to stop, was trying to say something."
Christ, could be anything from a harmless nutter to a homicidal terrorist with a vendetta against CI5. The disturbing thing was that he'd tracked down and identified Bodie.
"Least, he doesn't seem to have followed us. He might not know where you live, just tracked us to the pub. You'd better come back to my place, just in case."
Normally Bodie would have accepted the proposition with lascivious glee, but tonight it was clear he was too upset about being accosted by the young stranger to see Doyle's flat as anything but a safe haven, for now.
Late Saturday night
Doyle poured the whisky and handed Bodie a glass. Neither spoke – Doyle was busy doing mental arithmetic over and over again, because it didn’t seem to add up. An extremely good looking young man had just accosted Bodie, and Bodie was thoroughly rattled. It couldn't be…? On Doyle's estimate of the young man's age – no more than 20 – he was only about 10 years younger than Bodie. Anyway, while the fruit of Bodie's loins would undoubtedly be tall, dark and beautiful, it didn’t seem possible he could be quite that dark.
What did that leave? The son of someone Bodie had crossed, or killed, bent on revenge? A lover? Maybe tonight wasn’t the first time Bodie had encountered the young man. Not that Doyle had seen much, but his imagination supplied the details. Bodie was easy to envision, images of that smooth, muscled body, sure hands and handsome features came to him unbidden all too often. But Bodie’s ivory form entangled with lithe brown limbs, exchanging kisses with full, dark lips, an elegant dark head bending to him, a younger man at the peak of physical prowess… It made Doyle’s guts churn, and drove him to break the silence.
"You know him, don't you?"
"Dunno. If he is who I think he is, then yeah. Could be someone I knew years ago. He was a boy then. But I dunno, people change. It could be a set-up."
"Does this have something to do with your time in Africa?"
Doyle took Bodie’s silence for affirmation. At least it made that torrid scenario he’d just imagined seem less likely. And if Bodie was trying to cover up an affair, why come back to his place now? Doyle relaxed a little.
“Are you gonna tell me about it?”
“Nope.”
Doyle sighed with frustration. He waited a few more minutes, then an idea struck him. A warm, cheering idea.
“Come to bed, then?” he asked, hopefully.
“Think I’ll kip on the sofa, if it’s the same to you.”
“Well thank you very much, Bodie. When did we last have a long weekend off duty? And now you have to go off the deep end just because some stranger spoke to you in the pub. Well, if you wanna be like that – good night!”
Doyle stalked to the bedroom and slammed the door behind him for good measure, fuming.
Bodie had the knack of being bloody impossible at times! The man was too self-contained for his own good – and now Doyle had a cold bed to show for it.
By the time he had been to the bathroom and was ready for bed Doyle had softened enough to try again. He returned to the living room in his pyjama bottoms to find Bodie still sitting in the armchair, dangling his whisky glass and evidently lost in his thoughts.
Doyle knelt in front of him and put his hands on Bodie’s thighs, making himself impossible to ignore.
“Come to bed, mate. Least you’ll get a better night’s sleep.”
Bodie eventually sighed his agreement. Rubbing his hands over his eyes as though dazed, he got to his feet and headed for the bathroom.
Very late Saturday night
If there was some satisfaction at least in getting Bodie to share his bed, it wasn’t exactly restful. Bodie didn’t say a word. Lying awake beside him, Doyle could tell Bodie had gone miles away, to a time and place before CI5, before they’d ever met.
Trouble was, sharing a bed with Bodie was all too arousing. There had been a time when they could innocently doss down together; on exercises, on obbo duties, in hotel rooms… Well maybe not so innocently, but at least without anything untoward happening. But the genie had been let out of the bottle last summer, and would never go back in.
Up until tonight at least, whenever sex was on the agenda, Bodie was the one raring to go, with a passion more than matching his own. Tonight it was different. Bodie was stressed and anxious, not unreasonably. His mind was on other things, but Doyle was as keen as ever – as a persistent erection kept reminding him. And sex would do Bodie good too. It might get him off to sleep. So what was the best way to turn him on? Sexual arousal, Doyle reflected, is 90 per cent imagination, or so they say. Put him and Bodie together and it was more like 90 per cent perspiration and nothing left to the imagination, but anyway…
He started with gentle caresses of fingers and tongue, concentrating on all the sensitive places except the main player – get him going, but make him wait for that. With Bodie responding nicely to phase 1, Doyle moved on to phase 2 of the operation.
“Remember the first time we ended up here together?” He continued the caresses, not waiting for an answer. “Coming back from Dover that night, with Lucas driving? We were mucking around so much in the back seat, pawing each other and giggling, that McCabe turned around and said, ‘Honestly, you two, why don’t you just get a room?’ And you said, all casual, ‘Nah, Doyle’s too tight for that – just drop us both at his place, that’ll do.’ We all cracked up, but the way you were looking at me, I could tell it wasn’t a joke. So there I was on the landing, trying to unlock my own front door, and you were heavy breathin’ down the back of me neck and rubbing yourself against me bum, and I was praying none of the neighbours came out and saw us.”
“Mmm, felt bloody good, though.”
“Got inside, no thanks to you, and then, somehow, we didn’t have our shirts on, and you were biting my neck… and then you undid my jeans and put your hand down the front. Thought I’d come on the spot, but I wasn’t gonna be that easy. I grabbed your hand away and shoved you back onto the bed.”
Re-enacting the scene, Doyle straddled his partner, noting with satisfaction how the desired effect had manifested itself. Bodie licked his lips, heavy lidded eyes fixed on him, entranced.
“Then?” Bodie growled impatiently, his hands smoothing up Doyle’s thighs then urgently tracing circles on his hips.
“I unzipped you, and…” Doyle rested his hand on Bodie’s open mouth, relished the warm wet tongue licking his palm.
“…did this.” He took the weight of Bodie’s cock balanced in his moist palm, then slowly closed his fist around it and began long, firm strokes that had Bodie moaning with pleasure and bucking his hips. Moving himself in rhythm, Doyle stretched his fingers around his own shaft, bringing them together, together where they should be. A few glorious seconds… and he was shuddering as the wave of sensation thrust him forwards against the body beneath him and warm wetness flowed over his fist. Bodie’s arms were around him, holding him tight, fingertips stroking his neck and hair. Head pressed to Bodie’s hammering chest, Doyle felt as much as heard small sounds of rapture and comfort and panting breath in his ear, and dozed off to sleep with the satisfaction of a job well done.
Sunday morning
Doyle woke to the sound of quiet scufflings in the flat. It was still dark, but at this time of year that didn’t mean much. It could be as late as 7. As he came round Bodie sat down on the bed next to him.
“Ray, can I borrow your bike?”
“Uh?”
“I’m going to one of our places for a while.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Doyle forced himself awake. “Where?”
“Playing trains.”
“Uh?”
“You know, that marshalling yard, the old guards van we kitted out.”
“Oh, yeah, okay. Make sure you’ve got your R/T and bloody well keep it turned on.”
“Thanks, mate.”
His plans for a lazy Sunday with Bodie scuppered, Doyle indulged himself with a lie-in and a chance to mull over the Mystery of the Visitor from the Dark Continent. Bodie might have gone to ground, but he couldn’t stay there indefinitely – they were due in at work on Tuesday. It was for to him to resolve the situation, to find out if his partner was in danger and if so to protect him. Doyle didn’t mind, that was what partners were for.
He needed to talk to that young man, and the starting point was the Royal Oak. The lad hadn’t achieved what he’d wanted, so probably he would persist until he did or until circumstances changed. It was a good place for a pint anyway.
In the meantime, Doyle had some routine checks to make. He went in to HQ first, thankful that on a Sunday he was unlikely to bump into Cowley, who might mistake him for an agent on duty and find him some work to do. Discreet enquiries revealed that there had been no unexplained or suspicious messages concerning Bodie, nor had there been any attempts to contact him. Doyle logged last night’s incident in the pub, and that Bodie was out of harm’s way – just for the record. Where Bodie’s safety was concerned, you couldn’t be too careful. The old man would go spare if anything should happen to his blue-eyed boy without him knowing anything was amiss.
Next Doyle went to check Bodie’s flat. Again everything seemed normal. There was no sign of any surveillance, no one loitering suspiciously nearby, no notes or letters inside. The only message on the answering machine was some bird Bodie had dated, wondering if he wanted back a book that he’d lent her – a likely story. Forget you ever laid eyes on ‘im, darling. He’s mine. He stabbed the ‘rewind’ button pointedly and erased the tape.
Sunday evening
He arrived at the Royal Oak about the same time he and Bodie had been in the previous evening. Sure enough, the young man was sitting at the same small corner table.
Doyle made eye contact, expression neutral. There was no hostility in the brown eyes, so Doyle sat down facing him.
“What do you want with Bodie?”
The young man’s eyes widened and he spread his hands involuntarily as if to defend himself. He spoke, softly and with a surprising calm.
“Hey… please, I don’t mean any harm. I just wanted to talk to him.”
“Why?” Doyle was not convinced this person was worth a lot of his time or energy, but he was beginning to wonder. The hurt expression looked so genuine.
“He’s… Bodie… he’s like an old friend of my family. I want to talk to him, that’s all.”
“You’ll have to talk to me first.”
“I just wanted to thank him, to say thank you to him.”
“To say thank you?” Doyle found himself echoing the words in disbelief, and then he laughed out loud. No one ever expressed gratitude to people like him and Bodie. You risked your own life, you took the lives of others, each someone’s son or lover, to protect them and their loved ones from the evil out there, and all you ever got in return was a formal complaint about bloodstains on the carpet.
The young man was now looking at Doyle as though he was certifiable. Wiping his eyes, Doyle apologised. He couldn’t help smiling weakly. The young man stretched out his right hand and flashed a brief but dazzling smile.
“Jacob. And you are Bodie’s… friend?”
“Doyle, Ray Doyle, and yeah, Bodie’s my friend.” The lad didn’t need to know any more than that. “So, how do you know him? And don’t tell me, it’s a long story?” Jacob grinned, nodding.
“I’d better get in some drinks, hadn’t I?” Doyle sighed. “What’s yours?”
Doyle was beginning to feel that listening to Jacob’s story was not going to be such a hardship at all. In fact, the prospect of finding out what he had to thank Bodie for was irresistible.
At the bar, Doyle caught the landlord’s eye and beckoned him over.
“Ken, how long’s he been coming in?”
“Couldn’t really say, mate.”
“Oh come on, he stands out like a sore prick at a wedding.”
“Well…” Doyle produced a crisply folded five-pound note. “Oh, right you are. Yesterday, and the two nights before that, that’s all. ‘e left soon after you two did last night.”
“Thanks, Ken. That’ll be two pints of best, and keep the change.”
“Thank you very much I’m sure. Now if you’ll take some advice from me, Ray, and this is on the ‘ouse: You be careful. If you must go messing around behind ‘is back, for gawd’s sake, do it somewhere else. That fella of yours, he looks to me like the jealous type, possessive, ‘bout you, anyway. ‘e’s a big ‘un, and I wouldn’t want any nasty scenes in my pub, might scare off the punters.”
Doyle laughed out loud, taken aback at the sudden delight he felt at this acknowledgement of him and Bodie. They’d thought they were being so discreet – should’ve known better. Ken had been watching people, the flotsam and jetsam of London town that washed in and out of his pub, for so long that his was a very practised eye.
“Don’t worry, mate, this is just a bit of business,” Doyle replied brightly. “There’s no one for me but blue-eyes, and he knows it.” As he turned away with the two full pint glasses, he gave the landlord a theatrical wink and a wiggle of the bum – just to sow general confusion.
“Now Jacob,” Doyle began, setting the glasses down on the table, “Tell me how you come to know Bodie. But first tell me how you knew to find him here.”
“Find him? You’re making it sound as though I was looking for him.”
“You weren’t? What were you doing here last night then?”
“It was pure chance, Mr Doyle, or perhaps fate. I arrived in London from Nigeria just a few weeks ago, and I have a job near here. On Wednesday evening I was waiting for the number 24 at the bus stop across the road. I looked up and saw you two walking along and you came in here. The man with you, he immediately struck me as so much like Bodie – the way he looked and the way he moved and walked. I have a good memory for that sort of thing. At that moment my bus arrived, so I got on. But as the bus pulled away I became more and more certain that it was Bodie, that maybe it was my fortune to meet him again. It seemed too good a chance to miss. That was why I came back, each evening after that, hoping Bodie would come in again.”
“You didn’t come here, to London, to find him?”
“No, like I’ve just told you. I have always hoped to meet him again, but I really never thought it was possible. Until Wednesday I did not even know if he was still alive.”
“So why did you come to London?”
“Because I want to be a policeman, Mr Doyle. The British police are the best in the world, and I want to join the Metropolitan Police.”
Doyle nearly choked on his beer. Was he dreaming this bizarre conversation? This certainly wasn’t the time to point out that his own once promising career in the Met had stalled due to his failure to see eye-to-eye with his superiors.
“When I was younger, I used to want to be a soldier,” Jacob continued. “Just like Bodie. But then I learnt what soldiers really do, with their guns and landmines and helicopters – just killing. Both sides say they are fighting for the right cause, but still so many end up dead or maimed. That is why I want to be a policeman instead. When I have finished training, and worked here in London, I want to go back to my own country and help to run the police department. Law and order, that is what brings peace and happiness, not guns.”
“Just like Bodie, eh? So you knew Bodie when he was a soldier?”
“Yes. You say ‘was’ a soldier. Isn't he now?”
“Of sorts.” If Jacob didn’t know Bodie was a CI5 agent, it was a good sign, and better to keep it that way. Doyle diverted Jacob back to his story. “Bodie was a merc then, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, but he wasn’t like the others. They came to our village a few times to buy supplies, get their vehicles repaired… They ignored us, or else they pestered the women, but Bodie was different. When he had finished whatever his business was, he would come and play football with us, then we’d sit in the shade and he taught us poems.”
With a broad smile, Jacob took a deep breath and started to recite in a sing-song chant,
“O young Lochinvar is come out of the west,
Through all the wide Border his steed was the best,
And save his good broadsword he weapons had none,
He rode all unarm'd…”
until Doyle, laughing and waving his arms about, managed to shut him up, nearly knocking over his pint in the process.
Still grinning, Jacob continued, “Bodie was like a big brother to all of us. One day we took him to see our school, a little way outside the village. The next time he came, he brought a box with paper and books and pencils – he said they were stores from his camp that they didn’t need. Miss went tear-y eyed and hugged him and Bodie went all red in the face.”
It was a strange picture, Doyle reflected. Bodie was maybe 19 then, not so long out of playing football in the street himself. He imagined the young Bodie in combat fatigues, tall and lanky, maybe still a bit awkward around adults in authority. But he must have grown up very fast too, in that world. Part of him must already have learned how to build a wall around his feelings and keep them safely to himself.
“So that was how we knew Bodie,” Jacob explained. “To us, he was just our friend. The fighting moved very quickly at the start of the war. We were in our classroom one day when Bodie and two other men came. One was an old man with a red face and a white moustache, the other one was older too, he was called Oz. They said we had to leave straight away. They had a truck and we all had to get on it. They said the village had been evacuated because there was going to be a strike by the government forces, but nobody had thought to warn us. The three of them weren’t even supposed to be there.”
Doyle drank his beer and didn’t interrupt. He just wished he’d met more witnesses who remembered what happened ten days ago as clearly as Jacob could recount the events of ten years ago.
“We started off heading towards the town, where our families had gone, but it was too open on the road. We went off road, but the truck didn’t get very far, so we had to abandon it and hide in the bush. We were surrounded, we couldn’t go back, but we couldn’t get to the town. It was hot and we had nothing to eat or drink. Oz got angry and tired of it, of us whining kids. He wanted to go off, but the other two, Bodie and the old man, wouldn’t leave us. They all argued and Oz walked away. Later we heard gunfire. When it was safe, we went to have a look, Bodie and some of us boys. We found Oz. He’d been shot, but he wasn’t too bad. Bodie wanted to help him. He patched him up a bit, then he made us go back to the others. From what Bodie told us later, I think he helped Oz get to the road. That way he had a chance of being picked up and getting help.”
“And did he get help?” Doyle asked, fascinated. Bodie’s activities as a merc were so obscure – unlike his later service in the regular army, there were no official records to look up, and he never talked about it except in anecdotes which were almost certainly invented. To listen to someone who knew Bodie in those days was a rare treat.
“Yeah. Somehow he got to the town, where there was a hospital, and he was okay.”
“And Bodie came back, to help you?”
“Yeah. After we spent the night in the bush, the fighting moved away. Some of the people from the village came to look for us and they helped us get into the town, where our families were waiting, and worrying.
“When I said goodbye to Bodie I asked if I could go with him.” Jacob grinned ruefully. “I know it sounds foolish, but I was just 10 years old, and Bodie was my hero. Of course he said no, but he smiled down at me, and said I should look him up when I was older. So now I have come to England and I have looked him up, and he doesn’t want to know me. And all I want to do is thank him for saving my life.”
Later Sunday evening
Doyle left the Royal Oak for the docklands and a rendezvous with Bodie buoyed up by an enormous sense of relief. Jacob seemed a good lad – bright, enterprising. Doyle had enjoyed his company. Now he looked forward to telling Bodie the good news and seeing him pleased that the small boy he’d befriended had survived, against all the odds, and had turned out so well. Jacob might be misguided in his ambition to join the Met but Doyle was more than willing to help him as far as he could.
Standing on the derelict dock, with the Thames licking black and oily below and Doyle’s Capri and his bike parked nearby, Bodie didn’t see it the same way at all.
“Calls himself Jacob, does he?”
“Yes, like I just told you.”
“And you believe his fairy tale?”
“Yeah, it added up, and he seems like an honest type.”
“Well frankly, I’m surprised.” Bodie was bitter. “Thought you were a bit more professional than to be taken in by a dazzling smile and a pair of big brown eyes. But I should’ve remembered, you went for Jax, too, didn’t you?”
“What?! That was ages ago.” Doyle was taken aback by Bodie’s hostility, but rallied immediately to defend himself. “Yeah, actually, since you mention it, I liked Jax a lot. Good agent. Good looking bloke too.”
“Don’t I know it. Who do you think it was who told Jax about the advert in The Times for the deputy commissioner of police in Barbados, and made sure Cowley put his name in for it?”
“You never did?!”
Bodie looked wolfish. “Always spike the competition when you get the chance. After Jax had packed his tropical kit and left for the Caribbean, you started paying a bit more attention to what you had closer to home. Go on, admit it.”
“Yeah, alright. But why won’t you believe me about Jacob?”
“Because I don’t believe it’s the same person. Could be just someone who heard that story from Jacob or someone else, and now he’s turned up here thinking he can get something out of it. Out of me. Africans, they’re always on the take. And don’t start your one-man United Nations save-the-third-world campaign. You haven’t been there and seen it, I have. Then I come back ‘home’, and one of the bastards stabs me in the back.”
“Don’t forget the ‘African’ doctor who saved your life, Bodie. You seemed pretty grateful to him. And it didn’t stop you taking up with your black nurse, either.”
“That was different. She was born in Brixton, and she had a proper job with the National Health. She wasn’t looking for any hand outs. And she had just saved my life, if you recall.”
“Yeah, Jax was a lot more use to me than you were on that op, getting yourself stabbed when you went in somewhere you shouldn’t’ve gone without back-up.”
“Sorry, but I did get rather attached to her while she was holding my hand and mopping my fevered brow.”
“And while you were waltzing around with her, you didn’t leave me a lot of choice but to spend time with Jax!” Doyle protested.
“You and him were at it before I got stabbed. That’s why you wanted him on that case. So don’t try to make out I forced you into his waiting arms.”
Doyle tried to return to the subject at hand, angry but determined to keep calm.
“Look, Bodie, this kid, he isn’t trying to sting you for anything. Don’t you listen? He didn’t come here to find you, he’s not asking for anything but the opportunity to… I dunno… meet you again, have a chat about old times…”
“Yeah, well, maybe I don’t want to be reminded of ‘old times’. Not those times. So just give it a rest, Doyle.”
That stung. Bodie only called him by his surname when he was in a nasty mood.
“Look I came out here to tell you some good news. At least you can come out of hiding now.”
Bodie stuck his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, looked out across the river and pouted.
Doyle tried conciliatory again, “Come on, mate. It’s freezing out here. Come and sit in the car.”
Bodie glumly got into the passenger seat and stared at the dark windscreen for a while before speaking.
“What the spade told you, it’s only half the story, less,” Bodie began. "Yeah, I was in Nigeria, briefly, in ’67, and kept very quiet about it – neither side wanted to be seen paying the likes of us at that stage, not like the Biafrans later. And, yeah, there was the school and the kids, and two other blokes, like he says. It wasn’t even my idea! I was just following the older bloke – the Colonel, he liked to be called. But it was a fucking disaster. In the bush, the other guy, Oz, split first, but he didn’t get far. He almost walked straight into a firefight.”
Bodie grimaced at the memory. Doyle didn’t interrupt, and Bodie went on,
“The Colonel, it turned out, had a woman in the town. He wanted to settle down and stay on there. That’s why he’d been so keen to head that way all along, and to help the kids – all just to keep in with her family. So then it was just me. I’d missed the transport out, but as a merc I was persona non grata in Lagos. Had to tell the High Commission I was there with VSO before they’d help me. And I never got paid for the job. Yeah, I did it, what this kid says, but the life of one of my men, for a few Nigerians? It wasn’t worth it, mate, just wasn’t worth it.”
Doyle took all this in, finding it hard as ever to come to terms with Bodie’s racial prejudice. Then he started to form a plan. Well, more of a wild gamble than a plan.
“That’s what really gets to you, isn’t it? That you lost one of your comrades.”
When you put it like that, Doyle could see the point. Leaving Bodie out of it, because he was a different matter, whose death would he grieve more – a fellow CI5 agent he'd trained with, got drunk with, laughed with, or a member of the public he’d never even met before?
“Well, that and all the other shit – the heat, the flies, the hunger and thirst, not getting paid…” Bodie was trying to sound non-committal, but failing dismally. “I didn’t even like him, he was a prick of the first water. Got himself shot when he changed his mind and headed off on his own like an idiot, leaving us with the kids. But it was me who left him for dead, out there in the bush. I still hate to think of him out there – in an unmarked grave, if he was that lucky.”
Although Jacob had mentioned that Oz had ended up in hospital in the town, Doyle hadn’t included it in telling Jacob’s story to Bodie simply because it hadn’t seemed relevant. Now he realised how important that piece of information was. Bodie was cutting himself up over something that had never happened, and not giving himself credit for having done as much for his comrade as he reasonably could have in the circumstances. Bloody typical.
“What if I could prove to you that Oz got out with his life? That what you did for him meant he got help? That you didn’t leave him to die?”
“Well I never heard anything of him again. But I can’t stop you ferreting around. Once you get started, like a bleeding terrier, you are. Do what you like.”
“What did you say his name was?”
“Oz, Oz Braithwaite. But he wasn’t a northerner, sounded more like he was from the south-east. He was nearly 50 – it was going to be his last job. Happy?”
“Yep. You going home now?”
“I don’t fancy spending another night in that guards van if I don’t have to,” Bodie sounded weary. “I’ll head back to my flat later on. Could do with catching up on some sleep in my own bed.” It didn’t sound hostile, more like common sense. Bodie had a lot to think about, and maybe he needed time on his own.
“You do that, sunshine.” Doyle realised he sounded quite husky. He reached over and rubbed the back of his hand against Bodie’s stubbled cheek, and felt Bodie lean into his touch. Eyes closed, Bodie rested there for a moment, then pulled himself upright and got out of the car.
Doyle watched from the driver’s seat as Bodie put on his helmet, started up the bike, and rode away into the night.
Bodie’s version of events corroborated what Jacob had said, except of course about the fate of Oz. Now it just remained to join up the dots and see what could be found out.
Monday morning
Doyle snuck into the CI5 computer room, hoping he wouldn’t have to be there long since, luckily, the name he was hunting for was not a common one. It didn’t take him long to find an Oswald Braithwaite, born in 1923, who was last recorded as the proprietor of a newsagents in Sevenoaks in 1969 when he had a new passport issued. But that was a few years ago. After running some further enquiries Doyle found that the owner of the newsagents now was an Arthur Braithwaite, born in 1926.
As he left the computer room clutching a print-out, Doyle sensed the presence of the Controller before he even heard him. He hadn’t got far down the corridor when he received the summons.
“4.5, is that you? Come and see me in my office… now”
Reluctantly, Doyle turned and obeyed. He slumped in a chair across the desk from his hawk-eyed boss.
“Would you care to tell me exactly what has been going on, Doyle? First I am informed that Bodie has gone into hiding in response to some unnamed threat, and now I find you at HQ on your day off. None of this is what I would call normal behaviour. Would you?”
“No, sir.”
There was no point now trying to keep Cowley in the dark, he’d find out by his own uncanny means anyway. Doyle even felt a pang of sympathy at how worried the man must be feeling.
You love Bodie too, you poor bastard, love him like a favourite son. Well, don’t worry, Father, you might not think I’m good enough for him, but I do my best.
He gave Cowley a potted version of events since Bodie’s encounter with Jacob on Saturday evening. When he finished, Cowley asked, coolly, “And do you think Bodie is in any danger?”
“At first I thought so, yes, when I logged it yesterday. But now I’ve had a chance to speak to the lad, Jacob, I think the opposite. I think it would do Bodie good to meet him if he can be persuaded. There’s more, sir. What’s turned up is that Bodie behaved in a way that would have earned him a commendation if he’d been serving in the regular army.”
“Or disciplinary action for disobeying orders,” Cowley interrupted gruffly. “But do go on.”
“In any case, it was a humanitarian act that deserves to be included in Bodie’s record. But worse than it being overlooked, Bodie has spent the past ten years feeling regret and shame about an incident that should have been to his credit. When I’ve put together what I believe I can find on Oz Braithwaite, I’m going to prepare a report on this, and I would like it to be placed on Bodie’s file, sir.”
“That will be my decision – after I have read your report, 4.5.”
Cowley, his anxiety allayed, turned his attention to some papers on his desk.
“Is that all, sir?” Assuming it was, Doyle stood and made for the door.
“Oh, 4.5,” Cowley added, with a knowing grin, “Don’t forget to take your CI5 id with you when pursuing your inquiries.”
Monday midday
Doyle drew up near the Royal Oak where Jacob was waiting. Propping up the drab brick wall of the pub in a denim jacket, jeans and trainers, Jacob looked a lot more together than the lonely figure in the shapeless overcoat Doyle had first met. In fact he looked so bloody good that Doyle wondered how he was making his living in London – he could make a killing with those looks. Doyle batted down that unworthy thought, the lad seemed to be straight as a die. He couldn’t help looking like sex on legs, very long legs, or the way he leaned against that wall… Not for the first time since the start of this affair, Doyle felt perversely relief that Bodie was showing so much reluctance about getting together with Jacob.
Jacob sauntered along to the car, lowered himself into the passenger seat and stretched out comfortably. Doyle had to disappoint him with the news that Bodie still wouldn’t meet him, but instead he proposed lunch, followed by a little joint detective work. Jacob looked thrilled at the prospect.
“Right, we’re going to Sevenoaks. On the way, I want you to tell me more about this merc Oz who was with Bodie when you left the school – the one who ended up in the hospital.”
Jacob had told him what little he knew up to when Oz arrived in the town. Now he told him the rest. Once they found Oz was in the town’s small hospital, Jacob’s grateful family had helped to look after the merc there. He had been impatient with everyone, though, nothing ever seemed to be good enough for him. Then, when he was almost recovered, he took off in the night with the money that was due to pay the staff, supplies from the stores, and the doctor’s Landrover.
Doyle exclaimed, “After that, I’m surprised you wanted anything to do with us whites!”
Jacob was philosophical. “You can’t judge everybody, like all whites, by the actions of one person. There are always good people and bad people.”
“I wish Bodie would see it that way…”
After a lull, Jacob resumed the conversation.
“Mr Doyle…”
“Call me Ray.”
“Ray, can I ask you a question? What does Bodie do for a living now?”
Doyle had the stock answer ready.
“We’re both civil servants with the Home Office. We shuffle paper and drink tea.” He fixed Jacob briefly with a look that told him not to enquire further. Jacob’s answering gaze showed he was not fooled for a second.
“But I used to be a police officer with the Met,” Doyle continued, well aware of the unlikelihood of a copper turned penpusher, “If I can help you with your application at all, I’ll do what I can.”
Jacob beamed for a while before asking, “Is that why you like to do a bit of detective work on your days off?”
Doyle laughed in agreement.
Jacob continued, “You are doing this for Bodie, aren’t you?”
Doyle didn’t disagree, so Jacob pressed on.
“In Nigeria, at least where I come from, people are very old-fashioned. They think girls should be pretty and lady-like, and men should do men’s work. It is very difficult for someone to be different. One thing I would like to do when I go back is try to encourage more broad-minded thinking. You see, I do not have a problem with people who are… different.” He was now looking pointedly at Doyle.
“I did have plenty of time to watch you and Bodie in the pub,” Jacob continued softly.
“So?” Doyle’s hackles were rising.
“So I don’t have a problem, that’s all.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not like that, alright? Not if anyone asks, anyway.”
Doyle momentarily had the urge to stop the car and thump Jacob from here back to Heathrow. How dare he as good as call him and Bodie queer? But just as quickly, machismo was replaced by that warm feeling again, the joy of being acknowledged as Bodie’s lover.
Gunning it down the dual carriageway in pale December sunshine, with the brilliance of Jacob’s smile beside him, Doyle broke out in a wide grin too and settled for a blokish cuff around the lad’s ears.
Monday afternoon
With Jacob map-reading and spotting signs, they had no problem finding their way to Sevenoaks high street and Braithwaite’s newsagents.
Doyle purposely hung back as they entered the small shop, pretending to peruse the newspaper stand. A middle-aged man in a cardigan was chatting with a blue-rinsed lady as she picked up her Woman's Own. When she left, he turned his attention to some bundles of newspapers and magazines behind the counter, studiously ignoring Jacob. After watching for a while, with growing exasperation, Doyle made his way to the counter. The newsagent quickly gave him the once-over, his expression transparently saying: Scruffy, long hair and jeans, but better than a darkie.
In response to the man's grunt Doyle gestured at Jacob and said, "I think this gentleman was here before me." The newsagent grimaced, forced to acknowledge Jacob.
"That's alright," Jacob beamed down at him, with his most winning smile. "I'm with him."
"And I'm Ray Doyle. Arthur Braithwaite? We'd like a word, please, in private."
Anticipating reluctance, Doyle discreetly flashed his CI5 id. Guilt at fiddling the VAT showed on the man's face. Almost certainly, he didn’t know exactly what CI5 was – it could just as well be the enforcement arm of the Inland Revenue to him.
Mr Braithwaite showed them into a back room that doubled as rest room and store. There was a sink and kitchen cabinets, and cartons of stock vied for floor space with a formica table and kitchen chairs.
"A cup of tea would be nice, thank you," Doyle pronounced, sitting at the table. "White with two sugars. Jacob?"
"Oh yes, please, Mr Braithwaite. Just milk for me, please."
Wrong footed, the newsagent unthinkingly put the kettle on and put the makings of tea together. Doyle pressed the initiative.
"Do you have an older brother, named Oswald?"
The man nodded.
"It's him we'd like to speak to you about."
Mr Braithwaite relaxed conspicuously.
"Well, whatever it is, you're too late. Oz died, out in Africa."
Doyle and Jacob exchanged puzzled looks.
"But, according to our intelligence," Doyle continued, "Oswald Braithwaite was living here in Sevenoaks in 1969, running this shop."
"Yes, that's right, he was."
"But wasn't he in Africa in the mid 60s?"
"He came home in ‘67, that’s when he bought the newsagents.”
“Then would you care to explain how he also came to be in Africa?” Doyle asked. Braithwaite brought the mugs of tea over and joined them at the table.
“He went back. Oz said he hated Africa, how he couldn't wait to get home, he only went out there the money. But when he did come back, he never settled. After a while, he went back – just gave me the shop.”
“What happened to your brother then?” Jacob asked.
“He went to drive aid convoys in the Biafran war. Funny, after all his tours of duty, he ended up dying in a road accident - his lorry hit a bus. We were going to have his body flown home, seeing as how he'd always said he never wanted to end up out there. Then we read the will, and there was a letter with it. He wrote it just before he went out that last time, saying that if he died in Africa, that's where he wanted to stay, buried in African soil. And in his will, he gave what he still had to Oxfam."
Doyle absorbed this surprising story, then asked, "Did your brother ever tell you about his last job as a merc?"
"Not much. He nearly died that time, I know that. After that he swore he wouldn't go again."
"Do you know how he survived and got home?"
Braithwaite shrugged his shoulders, so Doyle filled him in on the role of Jacob’s family. Braithwaite had the grace to look at his hands.
"You say that your brother bought this business outright?” Doyle continued. “He must have come back with some money, after that last trip."
"Yeah. He had a stash. That was when Oz bought the newsagents. I worked for him back then."
"Mr Braithwaite, when your brother discharged himself from that hospital, he took with him a vehicle, expensive medicines and a large sum of money."
"Ah." Braithwaite sat down heavily.
"Not that this is any of your responsibility, of course, just thought you might be interested to know. Now, Mr Braithwaite, can I have a statement from you along the lines of what you’ve just told me?” Doyle asked, sweetly and reasonably. “There’s no shortage of paper and pens around here. I’ll take it down while we drink our tea, then you can sign it.”
Leaving the newsagents an hour later, Doyle felt a great sense of contentment and all being well with the world. This would clinch it. Bodie could have no further scruples about Jacob and that episode from his past. He had not abandoned Oz to a lonely death under African skies – quite the opposite. No wonder Oz had never contacted Bodie afterwards, the bastard. But at least he was a repentant bastard.
Back in town, Doyle dropped Jacob off and told him to be at the Royal Oak at 8 o’clock, where this time he was sure he would finally deliver Bodie.
Returning to HQ, he phoned Bodie to set up the meeting. After that, Doyle had one more piece of business for the day. He typed up a report, paper-clipped it to Arthur Braithwaite’s signed statement and another he had taken from Jacob, and put the lot in Betty’s in-tray marked for Cowley’s attention.
Monday evening
Doyle left Bodie and Jacob to get on with it by themselves, and spent a restful evening stretched out comfortably on his sofa with a book and a bottle of best malt.
Bodie wasn’t late coming in. Doyle didn’t get up, but calmly put down his book as Bodie took off his coat and shoes in the hall.
“How’d it go?” he asked, as Bodie appeared in the living room.
“Fine.”
“That all?”
“Yeah, look, can we talk?” Bodie perched on the edge of the sofa next to him.
Doyle couldn’t help feeling apprehensive, this wasn’t like Bodie at all.
Looking at the carpet, Bodie began, “Don’t know what I’d do without you, mate.”
Doyle shrugged, “It’s what partners are for. I look after your back, you look after mine.”
“Not this time, sunshine. I reckon that was well beyond the call of duty, teaming up with Jacob, tracking down Oz’s brother and that.”
Doyle was not sure where this was leading but it felt rather uncomfortable. “So?”
“So, I reckon you did it because you love me.”
Doyle made a rapid examination of his motives, and concluded that Bodie might just be right.
“Maybe,” and then, a bit breathless with the realisation, he repeated, “Maybe I do.”
Bodie hadn’t been able to meet his eyes, but now it seemed he couldn’t resist sneaking a sideways look. For Doyle, the look on his partner’s face was a revelation, like a little boy who’s just discovered the present he’d really wished for under the Christmas tree – a picture of suppressed glee and excitement. All the same, he couldn’t ignore his own instinct for self-preservation.
“So what would that make me?” Doyle continued softly. “The latest in a long line to succumb to your charms? And that’s your cue to run off to the other side of the world?”
“Bloody hell, why would you think that?” Bodie groaned.
“Well, what is this leading up to, then?”
Looking at his hands again, Bodie answered, “I just wanted to make sure that I’m not about to make a fool of myself.”
Any more than usual… but Doyle held his tongue. This was not the time for banter. Bodie was Serious. He took Bodie’s hand and stroked it with his thumb, “Go on.”
Bodie turned to face him. He very deliberately removed the book from where it lay open on Doyle’s chest and placed it on the carpet, assuring himself of Doyle’s full attention. Doyle held his breath.
“I just thought,” Bodie began, unusually hesitant for him, “we should, y’know, we could be a bit more serious. Exclusive.”
Taken by surprise, Doyle let out his breath so suddenly he accidentally snorted. “Ha, that's a good one! You may not have noticed, but I haven’t shagged anyone else for months. If that’s not exclusive, what is?”
“So that’s a yes?” Bodie was beaming again.
“Yes. Alright?” Doyle was getting impatient. It wasn’t like them to talk about their feelings or their relationship, whatever that was. Bodie was in an altogether strange mood this evening. Not a bad mood, not bitter as he had been since Saturday, just odd. And where was this foreign language about “love” and “exclusive” coming from?
Almost without thinking, Doyle put a hand to Bodie's forehead.
"Sure you're feeling okay? Did you get a chill sleeping rough the other night?"
Bodie smiled dopily.
"No, Mum," and he moved Doyle's fingers to his lips, sucking the tips, one after another. The lazy, warm feeling of looking forward to taking Bodie to bed, while also enjoying lying on the couch and not feeling much like moving, instantly notched up a gear. Doyle laced his fingers into Bodie's and brought them down onto his jeans to trace the length of his erection.
“Randy bugger,” Bodie smirked, feasting his eyes, the pink tip of his tongue flicking around his lips, “Is that just for me?”
Doyle answered by pulling Bodie down on top of him, seeking out that alluring tongue with his own.
Bodie’s mouth was velvet soft in counterpoint to the scrape of stubble. The fine knit of his poloneck smoothed easily over his taut body, silken hair slid through caressing fingers. The pub smell of beer and cigarette smoke clung to his clothes, but close up all Doyle could smell and taste was salt and spice and Bodie. He wondered why he was savouring these things, instead of just taking them for granted and tearing Bodie’s clothes off in his usual way.
“Not here, sunshine,” Bodie purred, as he pulled away and clambered off the couch, Bodie held out a hand to him. “Let’s try making it to the bedroom tonight, shall we?”
Doyle might have been seeking reassurance in the familiar or he might just have been randy as hell after a few days of abstinence, but even in the bedroom things seemed somehow different. He hopped about pulling off his socks and then went to take off his shirt and throw it on the chair, as usual, but Bodie took him by the shoulders.
“Always the impatient one,” Bodie tutted indulgently. “Let me give you a hand.”
Bodie stroked Doyle’s shirt down off his shoulders and followed through with his warm mouth while Doyle’s arms still were trapped in the sleeves. Freeing himself, Doyle returned his attentions to Bodie’s waist and the pure merino wool between their bare chests. Finally, superbly naked, Bodie held him close, kissing and nuzzling and stroking him all over, as though he were the most precious thing in the world. All the time Bodie’s gaze was attentive, full of care and pride. Never, Doyle thought, had his partner, his lover, been so… well… loving.
Unexpectedly, there came to mind a boozy night in the pub a while back, a wetting- the-baby’s-head session. Doyle remembered the proud new father telling him how, when him and the missus had decided to start a family and gone off the pill, the sex was amazing. After doing everything to avoid it for so long, now they both wanted this, together. Free and natural, sharing, loving, it was the best sex they’d ever had.
Freedom to be entirely yourself, to share, to love… And that was it - what was different. As they tumbled into bed, Doyle decided it was time to stop worrying. He reached for Bodie and gave himself up to the moment.
A trail of warm kisses led down his chest to his navel, and then Bodie’s lips closed around his cock, rigid and straining, and Doyle cried out with desire. Electrified by Bodie’s touch, he arched up for more, and Bodie knew how close he was – held him there with finger and thumb clamped hard around the base of his swollen cock while he took him higher still. Then the dark head lifted, and he felt Bodie’s tongue hot and rasping on his tingling body, his throat, his mouth. They drew into a close embrace, entwining with each other until Doyle was leaning over Bodie, fingers tracing patterns in his lover’s flesh. Bodie’s harsh grip on him mercifully relaxed into a generous massage with a sure right hand, but it was the blatant adoration that overwhelmed him. Doyle thrust helplessly against his lover’s belly, ecstatic, with a deep cry at the joy of release.
Bodie smirked fondly at Doyle’s short fuse and then he was coming too, Doyle clamped firmly on top of him.
Some time later, Doyle was stirred from a dreamless sleep by quiet musings, vibrations from Bodie’s chest tickling his ear.
“Y’know Jacob?” Bodie began.
Yes, Doyle thought, funnily enough, I do… and I can just tell I’m going to be hearing more about him for a while yet.
“Wants to join the police he says,” Bodie continued, as though this was surprising news.
“Yeah. He told me.”
Bodie ploughed on happily. “So I was thinking – you could help him, couldn’t you? You know the ropes at the Met, you’ve got credentials…”
Doyle sighed. He didn’t reply, but calmly untangled himself from Bodie and the duvet, and padded to the living room. The table lamp was still on and Doyle found what he wanted on top of the writing desk. He returned to the bedroom flourishing the blue carbonised form-in-triplicate, some of the many sections already inked-in in his own handwriting.
“Wassat?” Bodie blinked, sitting up in bed.
“Oh, it’s just the reference form,” Doyle declared casually. “I’ve done half of it already. It’s a good thing I’ve asked Jacob to come over tomorrow night so he can tell me the rest of the information I need to fill it out.”
“You devious little bugger!”
“You call that devious, after what Jacob and I’ve been up to the past couple of days?”
“You’re right. You unspeakably devious little bugger.”
“You love me when I’m devious,” Doyle flirted.
“Just as well, innit?”
“So you, um, fancy joining us for dinner here tomorrow? Lasagne alright?”
Laughing, Bodie grabbed the paperwork from Doyle’s hand and flicked it onto the bedside cabinet, before taking him by the wrists and pulling him back into bed.
Some time later, Bodie was serious again.
“Ray?”
Doyle yawned and rubbed his eyes. “Yeah?”
“Y’know Jacob?”
“Yes,” slowly and patiently.
“He'll go far, that lad.” Despite the hour and their recent exertions, Bodie was still disgustingly wide awake. “Well, he will now, with you and me to give him a guiding hand in life. You know, a word or two in the right ear, a few pointers here and there… He can come to us for meals… holidays. It’s not long ‘til Christmas.”
“Us? Christmas? Bodie, what are you talking about?”
“It’s just, well, I think we should make it more… permanent. Us, I mean. Exclusive, like I said. And we should move in together. It’d be more stable that way.”
“You might just as well be living here now, you’re ‘round here enough.”
“That’s not true. I have my own place. I’d just like it to be ‘our’ place in future.”
Bodie’s proposal was music to his ears. In the morning he’d wake up singing, and even lend Bodie a clean shirt so they could get into work on time, but Doyle was buggered if he was going to get romantic at this time of night. It was all rather sudden, too. Doyle wearily raised himself up on his elbow.
“Just tell me what’s brought on this unheard-of desire to commit, from you of all people. What’s all this about being stable?”
He was treated to the sight of Bodie bubbling over with contentment.
“Isn’t it obvious? Now the lad’s come along, Jacob, we’ve got someone to take care of.” Bodie pulled him even closer. “Both of us, sunshine. Someone to look out for. We’ve got a responsibility.”
---------------------------------------------------------
Title: Responsibility
Author: jaycat
Slash
Words: 9450
Archive at ProsLib
Disclaimer: Bodie and Doyle and CI5 characters are not mine, I just like to borrow them and then give them back in the same condition.
But I am very proud to be able to thankjj_minerva and greengerbil for beta-ing. Lame title, errors, infelicities and the bits I tinkered with after beta-ing are entirely my responsibility.
greengerbil’s delectable treats yesterday, it's time to unwrap the shapeless jumper that comes down to your knees knitted for you by a well-meaning great-aunt .My fic for Advent:
Saturday night
"Get your coat, we're leaving."
"Eh? Was just going to get another round in."
"Now."
Bodie was in earnest, Doyle could see it was no joke. Without drawing attention to themselves, they left the pub, turned onto the cold, dark street, and kept walking.
When he was finally sure no one was on their tail, Doyle pulled up, swinging Bodie around to face him. "What was all that about, then?"
"You saw that black bloke in the pub?"
Doyle didn't need his police training to have clocked the young man when he went to the bar – sitting on his own in the corner of the public bar, nursing a lemonade. Even smothered by a shapeless grey overcoat he was striking to look at – tall and lean, with close-cropped hair, fine features, lustrous brown eyes, and dark mahogany skin.
The clientele of the Royal Oak was pretty cosmopolitan. That was why Doyle felt at home there. Punks, Irish, loud women from the factory next door – Ken didn't mind as long as there was no trouble. Even a couple of burly blokes who liked to sit together with shoulders and heads close, wrapped up in their own world, didn’t seem to bother him, especially given the rate they knocked back their drinks. There weren't usually any coloured people in, but Doyle felt sure Ken would have been just the same with them as with his other customers – rude and sarcastic.
"Bodie, there isn't a law against black people drinking in pubs."
"Didn't say there was, did I? But he knew me, by name."
That brought Doyle up short. Tensing, he looked Bodie in the eye. "How d'you know?"
Bodie’s gaze slid away. "When I went for a slash just then? He came up to me. He wanted me to stop, was trying to say something."
Christ, could be anything from a harmless nutter to a homicidal terrorist with a vendetta against CI5. The disturbing thing was that he'd tracked down and identified Bodie.
"Least, he doesn't seem to have followed us. He might not know where you live, just tracked us to the pub. You'd better come back to my place, just in case."
Normally Bodie would have accepted the proposition with lascivious glee, but tonight it was clear he was too upset about being accosted by the young stranger to see Doyle's flat as anything but a safe haven, for now.
Late Saturday night
Doyle poured the whisky and handed Bodie a glass. Neither spoke – Doyle was busy doing mental arithmetic over and over again, because it didn’t seem to add up. An extremely good looking young man had just accosted Bodie, and Bodie was thoroughly rattled. It couldn't be…? On Doyle's estimate of the young man's age – no more than 20 – he was only about 10 years younger than Bodie. Anyway, while the fruit of Bodie's loins would undoubtedly be tall, dark and beautiful, it didn’t seem possible he could be quite that dark.
What did that leave? The son of someone Bodie had crossed, or killed, bent on revenge? A lover? Maybe tonight wasn’t the first time Bodie had encountered the young man. Not that Doyle had seen much, but his imagination supplied the details. Bodie was easy to envision, images of that smooth, muscled body, sure hands and handsome features came to him unbidden all too often. But Bodie’s ivory form entangled with lithe brown limbs, exchanging kisses with full, dark lips, an elegant dark head bending to him, a younger man at the peak of physical prowess… It made Doyle’s guts churn, and drove him to break the silence.
"You know him, don't you?"
"Dunno. If he is who I think he is, then yeah. Could be someone I knew years ago. He was a boy then. But I dunno, people change. It could be a set-up."
"Does this have something to do with your time in Africa?"
Doyle took Bodie’s silence for affirmation. At least it made that torrid scenario he’d just imagined seem less likely. And if Bodie was trying to cover up an affair, why come back to his place now? Doyle relaxed a little.
“Are you gonna tell me about it?”
“Nope.”
Doyle sighed with frustration. He waited a few more minutes, then an idea struck him. A warm, cheering idea.
“Come to bed, then?” he asked, hopefully.
“Think I’ll kip on the sofa, if it’s the same to you.”
“Well thank you very much, Bodie. When did we last have a long weekend off duty? And now you have to go off the deep end just because some stranger spoke to you in the pub. Well, if you wanna be like that – good night!”
Doyle stalked to the bedroom and slammed the door behind him for good measure, fuming.
Bodie had the knack of being bloody impossible at times! The man was too self-contained for his own good – and now Doyle had a cold bed to show for it.
By the time he had been to the bathroom and was ready for bed Doyle had softened enough to try again. He returned to the living room in his pyjama bottoms to find Bodie still sitting in the armchair, dangling his whisky glass and evidently lost in his thoughts.
Doyle knelt in front of him and put his hands on Bodie’s thighs, making himself impossible to ignore.
“Come to bed, mate. Least you’ll get a better night’s sleep.”
Bodie eventually sighed his agreement. Rubbing his hands over his eyes as though dazed, he got to his feet and headed for the bathroom.
Very late Saturday night
If there was some satisfaction at least in getting Bodie to share his bed, it wasn’t exactly restful. Bodie didn’t say a word. Lying awake beside him, Doyle could tell Bodie had gone miles away, to a time and place before CI5, before they’d ever met.
Trouble was, sharing a bed with Bodie was all too arousing. There had been a time when they could innocently doss down together; on exercises, on obbo duties, in hotel rooms… Well maybe not so innocently, but at least without anything untoward happening. But the genie had been let out of the bottle last summer, and would never go back in.
Up until tonight at least, whenever sex was on the agenda, Bodie was the one raring to go, with a passion more than matching his own. Tonight it was different. Bodie was stressed and anxious, not unreasonably. His mind was on other things, but Doyle was as keen as ever – as a persistent erection kept reminding him. And sex would do Bodie good too. It might get him off to sleep. So what was the best way to turn him on? Sexual arousal, Doyle reflected, is 90 per cent imagination, or so they say. Put him and Bodie together and it was more like 90 per cent perspiration and nothing left to the imagination, but anyway…
He started with gentle caresses of fingers and tongue, concentrating on all the sensitive places except the main player – get him going, but make him wait for that. With Bodie responding nicely to phase 1, Doyle moved on to phase 2 of the operation.
“Remember the first time we ended up here together?” He continued the caresses, not waiting for an answer. “Coming back from Dover that night, with Lucas driving? We were mucking around so much in the back seat, pawing each other and giggling, that McCabe turned around and said, ‘Honestly, you two, why don’t you just get a room?’ And you said, all casual, ‘Nah, Doyle’s too tight for that – just drop us both at his place, that’ll do.’ We all cracked up, but the way you were looking at me, I could tell it wasn’t a joke. So there I was on the landing, trying to unlock my own front door, and you were heavy breathin’ down the back of me neck and rubbing yourself against me bum, and I was praying none of the neighbours came out and saw us.”
“Mmm, felt bloody good, though.”
“Got inside, no thanks to you, and then, somehow, we didn’t have our shirts on, and you were biting my neck… and then you undid my jeans and put your hand down the front. Thought I’d come on the spot, but I wasn’t gonna be that easy. I grabbed your hand away and shoved you back onto the bed.”
Re-enacting the scene, Doyle straddled his partner, noting with satisfaction how the desired effect had manifested itself. Bodie licked his lips, heavy lidded eyes fixed on him, entranced.
“Then?” Bodie growled impatiently, his hands smoothing up Doyle’s thighs then urgently tracing circles on his hips.
“I unzipped you, and…” Doyle rested his hand on Bodie’s open mouth, relished the warm wet tongue licking his palm.
“…did this.” He took the weight of Bodie’s cock balanced in his moist palm, then slowly closed his fist around it and began long, firm strokes that had Bodie moaning with pleasure and bucking his hips. Moving himself in rhythm, Doyle stretched his fingers around his own shaft, bringing them together, together where they should be. A few glorious seconds… and he was shuddering as the wave of sensation thrust him forwards against the body beneath him and warm wetness flowed over his fist. Bodie’s arms were around him, holding him tight, fingertips stroking his neck and hair. Head pressed to Bodie’s hammering chest, Doyle felt as much as heard small sounds of rapture and comfort and panting breath in his ear, and dozed off to sleep with the satisfaction of a job well done.
Sunday morning
Doyle woke to the sound of quiet scufflings in the flat. It was still dark, but at this time of year that didn’t mean much. It could be as late as 7. As he came round Bodie sat down on the bed next to him.
“Ray, can I borrow your bike?”
“Uh?”
“I’m going to one of our places for a while.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Doyle forced himself awake. “Where?”
“Playing trains.”
“Uh?”
“You know, that marshalling yard, the old guards van we kitted out.”
“Oh, yeah, okay. Make sure you’ve got your R/T and bloody well keep it turned on.”
“Thanks, mate.”
His plans for a lazy Sunday with Bodie scuppered, Doyle indulged himself with a lie-in and a chance to mull over the Mystery of the Visitor from the Dark Continent. Bodie might have gone to ground, but he couldn’t stay there indefinitely – they were due in at work on Tuesday. It was for to him to resolve the situation, to find out if his partner was in danger and if so to protect him. Doyle didn’t mind, that was what partners were for.
He needed to talk to that young man, and the starting point was the Royal Oak. The lad hadn’t achieved what he’d wanted, so probably he would persist until he did or until circumstances changed. It was a good place for a pint anyway.
In the meantime, Doyle had some routine checks to make. He went in to HQ first, thankful that on a Sunday he was unlikely to bump into Cowley, who might mistake him for an agent on duty and find him some work to do. Discreet enquiries revealed that there had been no unexplained or suspicious messages concerning Bodie, nor had there been any attempts to contact him. Doyle logged last night’s incident in the pub, and that Bodie was out of harm’s way – just for the record. Where Bodie’s safety was concerned, you couldn’t be too careful. The old man would go spare if anything should happen to his blue-eyed boy without him knowing anything was amiss.
Next Doyle went to check Bodie’s flat. Again everything seemed normal. There was no sign of any surveillance, no one loitering suspiciously nearby, no notes or letters inside. The only message on the answering machine was some bird Bodie had dated, wondering if he wanted back a book that he’d lent her – a likely story. Forget you ever laid eyes on ‘im, darling. He’s mine. He stabbed the ‘rewind’ button pointedly and erased the tape.
Sunday evening
He arrived at the Royal Oak about the same time he and Bodie had been in the previous evening. Sure enough, the young man was sitting at the same small corner table.
Doyle made eye contact, expression neutral. There was no hostility in the brown eyes, so Doyle sat down facing him.
“What do you want with Bodie?”
The young man’s eyes widened and he spread his hands involuntarily as if to defend himself. He spoke, softly and with a surprising calm.
“Hey… please, I don’t mean any harm. I just wanted to talk to him.”
“Why?” Doyle was not convinced this person was worth a lot of his time or energy, but he was beginning to wonder. The hurt expression looked so genuine.
“He’s… Bodie… he’s like an old friend of my family. I want to talk to him, that’s all.”
“You’ll have to talk to me first.”
“I just wanted to thank him, to say thank you to him.”
“To say thank you?” Doyle found himself echoing the words in disbelief, and then he laughed out loud. No one ever expressed gratitude to people like him and Bodie. You risked your own life, you took the lives of others, each someone’s son or lover, to protect them and their loved ones from the evil out there, and all you ever got in return was a formal complaint about bloodstains on the carpet.
The young man was now looking at Doyle as though he was certifiable. Wiping his eyes, Doyle apologised. He couldn’t help smiling weakly. The young man stretched out his right hand and flashed a brief but dazzling smile.
“Jacob. And you are Bodie’s… friend?”
“Doyle, Ray Doyle, and yeah, Bodie’s my friend.” The lad didn’t need to know any more than that. “So, how do you know him? And don’t tell me, it’s a long story?” Jacob grinned, nodding.
“I’d better get in some drinks, hadn’t I?” Doyle sighed. “What’s yours?”
Doyle was beginning to feel that listening to Jacob’s story was not going to be such a hardship at all. In fact, the prospect of finding out what he had to thank Bodie for was irresistible.
At the bar, Doyle caught the landlord’s eye and beckoned him over.
“Ken, how long’s he been coming in?”
“Couldn’t really say, mate.”
“Oh come on, he stands out like a sore prick at a wedding.”
“Well…” Doyle produced a crisply folded five-pound note. “Oh, right you are. Yesterday, and the two nights before that, that’s all. ‘e left soon after you two did last night.”
“Thanks, Ken. That’ll be two pints of best, and keep the change.”
“Thank you very much I’m sure. Now if you’ll take some advice from me, Ray, and this is on the ‘ouse: You be careful. If you must go messing around behind ‘is back, for gawd’s sake, do it somewhere else. That fella of yours, he looks to me like the jealous type, possessive, ‘bout you, anyway. ‘e’s a big ‘un, and I wouldn’t want any nasty scenes in my pub, might scare off the punters.”
Doyle laughed out loud, taken aback at the sudden delight he felt at this acknowledgement of him and Bodie. They’d thought they were being so discreet – should’ve known better. Ken had been watching people, the flotsam and jetsam of London town that washed in and out of his pub, for so long that his was a very practised eye.
“Don’t worry, mate, this is just a bit of business,” Doyle replied brightly. “There’s no one for me but blue-eyes, and he knows it.” As he turned away with the two full pint glasses, he gave the landlord a theatrical wink and a wiggle of the bum – just to sow general confusion.
“Now Jacob,” Doyle began, setting the glasses down on the table, “Tell me how you come to know Bodie. But first tell me how you knew to find him here.”
“Find him? You’re making it sound as though I was looking for him.”
“You weren’t? What were you doing here last night then?”
“It was pure chance, Mr Doyle, or perhaps fate. I arrived in London from Nigeria just a few weeks ago, and I have a job near here. On Wednesday evening I was waiting for the number 24 at the bus stop across the road. I looked up and saw you two walking along and you came in here. The man with you, he immediately struck me as so much like Bodie – the way he looked and the way he moved and walked. I have a good memory for that sort of thing. At that moment my bus arrived, so I got on. But as the bus pulled away I became more and more certain that it was Bodie, that maybe it was my fortune to meet him again. It seemed too good a chance to miss. That was why I came back, each evening after that, hoping Bodie would come in again.”
“You didn’t come here, to London, to find him?”
“No, like I’ve just told you. I have always hoped to meet him again, but I really never thought it was possible. Until Wednesday I did not even know if he was still alive.”
“So why did you come to London?”
“Because I want to be a policeman, Mr Doyle. The British police are the best in the world, and I want to join the Metropolitan Police.”
Doyle nearly choked on his beer. Was he dreaming this bizarre conversation? This certainly wasn’t the time to point out that his own once promising career in the Met had stalled due to his failure to see eye-to-eye with his superiors.
“When I was younger, I used to want to be a soldier,” Jacob continued. “Just like Bodie. But then I learnt what soldiers really do, with their guns and landmines and helicopters – just killing. Both sides say they are fighting for the right cause, but still so many end up dead or maimed. That is why I want to be a policeman instead. When I have finished training, and worked here in London, I want to go back to my own country and help to run the police department. Law and order, that is what brings peace and happiness, not guns.”
“Just like Bodie, eh? So you knew Bodie when he was a soldier?”
“Yes. You say ‘was’ a soldier. Isn't he now?”
“Of sorts.” If Jacob didn’t know Bodie was a CI5 agent, it was a good sign, and better to keep it that way. Doyle diverted Jacob back to his story. “Bodie was a merc then, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, but he wasn’t like the others. They came to our village a few times to buy supplies, get their vehicles repaired… They ignored us, or else they pestered the women, but Bodie was different. When he had finished whatever his business was, he would come and play football with us, then we’d sit in the shade and he taught us poems.”
With a broad smile, Jacob took a deep breath and started to recite in a sing-song chant,
“O young Lochinvar is come out of the west,
Through all the wide Border his steed was the best,
And save his good broadsword he weapons had none,
He rode all unarm'd…”
until Doyle, laughing and waving his arms about, managed to shut him up, nearly knocking over his pint in the process.
Still grinning, Jacob continued, “Bodie was like a big brother to all of us. One day we took him to see our school, a little way outside the village. The next time he came, he brought a box with paper and books and pencils – he said they were stores from his camp that they didn’t need. Miss went tear-y eyed and hugged him and Bodie went all red in the face.”
It was a strange picture, Doyle reflected. Bodie was maybe 19 then, not so long out of playing football in the street himself. He imagined the young Bodie in combat fatigues, tall and lanky, maybe still a bit awkward around adults in authority. But he must have grown up very fast too, in that world. Part of him must already have learned how to build a wall around his feelings and keep them safely to himself.
“So that was how we knew Bodie,” Jacob explained. “To us, he was just our friend. The fighting moved very quickly at the start of the war. We were in our classroom one day when Bodie and two other men came. One was an old man with a red face and a white moustache, the other one was older too, he was called Oz. They said we had to leave straight away. They had a truck and we all had to get on it. They said the village had been evacuated because there was going to be a strike by the government forces, but nobody had thought to warn us. The three of them weren’t even supposed to be there.”
Doyle drank his beer and didn’t interrupt. He just wished he’d met more witnesses who remembered what happened ten days ago as clearly as Jacob could recount the events of ten years ago.
“We started off heading towards the town, where our families had gone, but it was too open on the road. We went off road, but the truck didn’t get very far, so we had to abandon it and hide in the bush. We were surrounded, we couldn’t go back, but we couldn’t get to the town. It was hot and we had nothing to eat or drink. Oz got angry and tired of it, of us whining kids. He wanted to go off, but the other two, Bodie and the old man, wouldn’t leave us. They all argued and Oz walked away. Later we heard gunfire. When it was safe, we went to have a look, Bodie and some of us boys. We found Oz. He’d been shot, but he wasn’t too bad. Bodie wanted to help him. He patched him up a bit, then he made us go back to the others. From what Bodie told us later, I think he helped Oz get to the road. That way he had a chance of being picked up and getting help.”
“And did he get help?” Doyle asked, fascinated. Bodie’s activities as a merc were so obscure – unlike his later service in the regular army, there were no official records to look up, and he never talked about it except in anecdotes which were almost certainly invented. To listen to someone who knew Bodie in those days was a rare treat.
“Yeah. Somehow he got to the town, where there was a hospital, and he was okay.”
“And Bodie came back, to help you?”
“Yeah. After we spent the night in the bush, the fighting moved away. Some of the people from the village came to look for us and they helped us get into the town, where our families were waiting, and worrying.
“When I said goodbye to Bodie I asked if I could go with him.” Jacob grinned ruefully. “I know it sounds foolish, but I was just 10 years old, and Bodie was my hero. Of course he said no, but he smiled down at me, and said I should look him up when I was older. So now I have come to England and I have looked him up, and he doesn’t want to know me. And all I want to do is thank him for saving my life.”
Later Sunday evening
Doyle left the Royal Oak for the docklands and a rendezvous with Bodie buoyed up by an enormous sense of relief. Jacob seemed a good lad – bright, enterprising. Doyle had enjoyed his company. Now he looked forward to telling Bodie the good news and seeing him pleased that the small boy he’d befriended had survived, against all the odds, and had turned out so well. Jacob might be misguided in his ambition to join the Met but Doyle was more than willing to help him as far as he could.
Standing on the derelict dock, with the Thames licking black and oily below and Doyle’s Capri and his bike parked nearby, Bodie didn’t see it the same way at all.
“Calls himself Jacob, does he?”
“Yes, like I just told you.”
“And you believe his fairy tale?”
“Yeah, it added up, and he seems like an honest type.”
“Well frankly, I’m surprised.” Bodie was bitter. “Thought you were a bit more professional than to be taken in by a dazzling smile and a pair of big brown eyes. But I should’ve remembered, you went for Jax, too, didn’t you?”
“What?! That was ages ago.” Doyle was taken aback by Bodie’s hostility, but rallied immediately to defend himself. “Yeah, actually, since you mention it, I liked Jax a lot. Good agent. Good looking bloke too.”
“Don’t I know it. Who do you think it was who told Jax about the advert in The Times for the deputy commissioner of police in Barbados, and made sure Cowley put his name in for it?”
“You never did?!”
Bodie looked wolfish. “Always spike the competition when you get the chance. After Jax had packed his tropical kit and left for the Caribbean, you started paying a bit more attention to what you had closer to home. Go on, admit it.”
“Yeah, alright. But why won’t you believe me about Jacob?”
“Because I don’t believe it’s the same person. Could be just someone who heard that story from Jacob or someone else, and now he’s turned up here thinking he can get something out of it. Out of me. Africans, they’re always on the take. And don’t start your one-man United Nations save-the-third-world campaign. You haven’t been there and seen it, I have. Then I come back ‘home’, and one of the bastards stabs me in the back.”
“Don’t forget the ‘African’ doctor who saved your life, Bodie. You seemed pretty grateful to him. And it didn’t stop you taking up with your black nurse, either.”
“That was different. She was born in Brixton, and she had a proper job with the National Health. She wasn’t looking for any hand outs. And she had just saved my life, if you recall.”
“Yeah, Jax was a lot more use to me than you were on that op, getting yourself stabbed when you went in somewhere you shouldn’t’ve gone without back-up.”
“Sorry, but I did get rather attached to her while she was holding my hand and mopping my fevered brow.”
“And while you were waltzing around with her, you didn’t leave me a lot of choice but to spend time with Jax!” Doyle protested.
“You and him were at it before I got stabbed. That’s why you wanted him on that case. So don’t try to make out I forced you into his waiting arms.”
Doyle tried to return to the subject at hand, angry but determined to keep calm.
“Look, Bodie, this kid, he isn’t trying to sting you for anything. Don’t you listen? He didn’t come here to find you, he’s not asking for anything but the opportunity to… I dunno… meet you again, have a chat about old times…”
“Yeah, well, maybe I don’t want to be reminded of ‘old times’. Not those times. So just give it a rest, Doyle.”
That stung. Bodie only called him by his surname when he was in a nasty mood.
“Look I came out here to tell you some good news. At least you can come out of hiding now.”
Bodie stuck his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, looked out across the river and pouted.
Doyle tried conciliatory again, “Come on, mate. It’s freezing out here. Come and sit in the car.”
Bodie glumly got into the passenger seat and stared at the dark windscreen for a while before speaking.
“What the spade told you, it’s only half the story, less,” Bodie began. "Yeah, I was in Nigeria, briefly, in ’67, and kept very quiet about it – neither side wanted to be seen paying the likes of us at that stage, not like the Biafrans later. And, yeah, there was the school and the kids, and two other blokes, like he says. It wasn’t even my idea! I was just following the older bloke – the Colonel, he liked to be called. But it was a fucking disaster. In the bush, the other guy, Oz, split first, but he didn’t get far. He almost walked straight into a firefight.”
Bodie grimaced at the memory. Doyle didn’t interrupt, and Bodie went on,
“The Colonel, it turned out, had a woman in the town. He wanted to settle down and stay on there. That’s why he’d been so keen to head that way all along, and to help the kids – all just to keep in with her family. So then it was just me. I’d missed the transport out, but as a merc I was persona non grata in Lagos. Had to tell the High Commission I was there with VSO before they’d help me. And I never got paid for the job. Yeah, I did it, what this kid says, but the life of one of my men, for a few Nigerians? It wasn’t worth it, mate, just wasn’t worth it.”
Doyle took all this in, finding it hard as ever to come to terms with Bodie’s racial prejudice. Then he started to form a plan. Well, more of a wild gamble than a plan.
“That’s what really gets to you, isn’t it? That you lost one of your comrades.”
When you put it like that, Doyle could see the point. Leaving Bodie out of it, because he was a different matter, whose death would he grieve more – a fellow CI5 agent he'd trained with, got drunk with, laughed with, or a member of the public he’d never even met before?
“Well, that and all the other shit – the heat, the flies, the hunger and thirst, not getting paid…” Bodie was trying to sound non-committal, but failing dismally. “I didn’t even like him, he was a prick of the first water. Got himself shot when he changed his mind and headed off on his own like an idiot, leaving us with the kids. But it was me who left him for dead, out there in the bush. I still hate to think of him out there – in an unmarked grave, if he was that lucky.”
Although Jacob had mentioned that Oz had ended up in hospital in the town, Doyle hadn’t included it in telling Jacob’s story to Bodie simply because it hadn’t seemed relevant. Now he realised how important that piece of information was. Bodie was cutting himself up over something that had never happened, and not giving himself credit for having done as much for his comrade as he reasonably could have in the circumstances. Bloody typical.
“What if I could prove to you that Oz got out with his life? That what you did for him meant he got help? That you didn’t leave him to die?”
“Well I never heard anything of him again. But I can’t stop you ferreting around. Once you get started, like a bleeding terrier, you are. Do what you like.”
“What did you say his name was?”
“Oz, Oz Braithwaite. But he wasn’t a northerner, sounded more like he was from the south-east. He was nearly 50 – it was going to be his last job. Happy?”
“Yep. You going home now?”
“I don’t fancy spending another night in that guards van if I don’t have to,” Bodie sounded weary. “I’ll head back to my flat later on. Could do with catching up on some sleep in my own bed.” It didn’t sound hostile, more like common sense. Bodie had a lot to think about, and maybe he needed time on his own.
“You do that, sunshine.” Doyle realised he sounded quite husky. He reached over and rubbed the back of his hand against Bodie’s stubbled cheek, and felt Bodie lean into his touch. Eyes closed, Bodie rested there for a moment, then pulled himself upright and got out of the car.
Doyle watched from the driver’s seat as Bodie put on his helmet, started up the bike, and rode away into the night.
Bodie’s version of events corroborated what Jacob had said, except of course about the fate of Oz. Now it just remained to join up the dots and see what could be found out.
Monday morning
Doyle snuck into the CI5 computer room, hoping he wouldn’t have to be there long since, luckily, the name he was hunting for was not a common one. It didn’t take him long to find an Oswald Braithwaite, born in 1923, who was last recorded as the proprietor of a newsagents in Sevenoaks in 1969 when he had a new passport issued. But that was a few years ago. After running some further enquiries Doyle found that the owner of the newsagents now was an Arthur Braithwaite, born in 1926.
As he left the computer room clutching a print-out, Doyle sensed the presence of the Controller before he even heard him. He hadn’t got far down the corridor when he received the summons.
“4.5, is that you? Come and see me in my office… now”
Reluctantly, Doyle turned and obeyed. He slumped in a chair across the desk from his hawk-eyed boss.
“Would you care to tell me exactly what has been going on, Doyle? First I am informed that Bodie has gone into hiding in response to some unnamed threat, and now I find you at HQ on your day off. None of this is what I would call normal behaviour. Would you?”
“No, sir.”
There was no point now trying to keep Cowley in the dark, he’d find out by his own uncanny means anyway. Doyle even felt a pang of sympathy at how worried the man must be feeling.
You love Bodie too, you poor bastard, love him like a favourite son. Well, don’t worry, Father, you might not think I’m good enough for him, but I do my best.
He gave Cowley a potted version of events since Bodie’s encounter with Jacob on Saturday evening. When he finished, Cowley asked, coolly, “And do you think Bodie is in any danger?”
“At first I thought so, yes, when I logged it yesterday. But now I’ve had a chance to speak to the lad, Jacob, I think the opposite. I think it would do Bodie good to meet him if he can be persuaded. There’s more, sir. What’s turned up is that Bodie behaved in a way that would have earned him a commendation if he’d been serving in the regular army.”
“Or disciplinary action for disobeying orders,” Cowley interrupted gruffly. “But do go on.”
“In any case, it was a humanitarian act that deserves to be included in Bodie’s record. But worse than it being overlooked, Bodie has spent the past ten years feeling regret and shame about an incident that should have been to his credit. When I’ve put together what I believe I can find on Oz Braithwaite, I’m going to prepare a report on this, and I would like it to be placed on Bodie’s file, sir.”
“That will be my decision – after I have read your report, 4.5.”
Cowley, his anxiety allayed, turned his attention to some papers on his desk.
“Is that all, sir?” Assuming it was, Doyle stood and made for the door.
“Oh, 4.5,” Cowley added, with a knowing grin, “Don’t forget to take your CI5 id with you when pursuing your inquiries.”
Monday midday
Doyle drew up near the Royal Oak where Jacob was waiting. Propping up the drab brick wall of the pub in a denim jacket, jeans and trainers, Jacob looked a lot more together than the lonely figure in the shapeless overcoat Doyle had first met. In fact he looked so bloody good that Doyle wondered how he was making his living in London – he could make a killing with those looks. Doyle batted down that unworthy thought, the lad seemed to be straight as a die. He couldn’t help looking like sex on legs, very long legs, or the way he leaned against that wall… Not for the first time since the start of this affair, Doyle felt perversely relief that Bodie was showing so much reluctance about getting together with Jacob.
Jacob sauntered along to the car, lowered himself into the passenger seat and stretched out comfortably. Doyle had to disappoint him with the news that Bodie still wouldn’t meet him, but instead he proposed lunch, followed by a little joint detective work. Jacob looked thrilled at the prospect.
“Right, we’re going to Sevenoaks. On the way, I want you to tell me more about this merc Oz who was with Bodie when you left the school – the one who ended up in the hospital.”
Jacob had told him what little he knew up to when Oz arrived in the town. Now he told him the rest. Once they found Oz was in the town’s small hospital, Jacob’s grateful family had helped to look after the merc there. He had been impatient with everyone, though, nothing ever seemed to be good enough for him. Then, when he was almost recovered, he took off in the night with the money that was due to pay the staff, supplies from the stores, and the doctor’s Landrover.
Doyle exclaimed, “After that, I’m surprised you wanted anything to do with us whites!”
Jacob was philosophical. “You can’t judge everybody, like all whites, by the actions of one person. There are always good people and bad people.”
“I wish Bodie would see it that way…”
After a lull, Jacob resumed the conversation.
“Mr Doyle…”
“Call me Ray.”
“Ray, can I ask you a question? What does Bodie do for a living now?”
Doyle had the stock answer ready.
“We’re both civil servants with the Home Office. We shuffle paper and drink tea.” He fixed Jacob briefly with a look that told him not to enquire further. Jacob’s answering gaze showed he was not fooled for a second.
“But I used to be a police officer with the Met,” Doyle continued, well aware of the unlikelihood of a copper turned penpusher, “If I can help you with your application at all, I’ll do what I can.”
Jacob beamed for a while before asking, “Is that why you like to do a bit of detective work on your days off?”
Doyle laughed in agreement.
Jacob continued, “You are doing this for Bodie, aren’t you?”
Doyle didn’t disagree, so Jacob pressed on.
“In Nigeria, at least where I come from, people are very old-fashioned. They think girls should be pretty and lady-like, and men should do men’s work. It is very difficult for someone to be different. One thing I would like to do when I go back is try to encourage more broad-minded thinking. You see, I do not have a problem with people who are… different.” He was now looking pointedly at Doyle.
“I did have plenty of time to watch you and Bodie in the pub,” Jacob continued softly.
“So?” Doyle’s hackles were rising.
“So I don’t have a problem, that’s all.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not like that, alright? Not if anyone asks, anyway.”
Doyle momentarily had the urge to stop the car and thump Jacob from here back to Heathrow. How dare he as good as call him and Bodie queer? But just as quickly, machismo was replaced by that warm feeling again, the joy of being acknowledged as Bodie’s lover.
Gunning it down the dual carriageway in pale December sunshine, with the brilliance of Jacob’s smile beside him, Doyle broke out in a wide grin too and settled for a blokish cuff around the lad’s ears.
Monday afternoon
With Jacob map-reading and spotting signs, they had no problem finding their way to Sevenoaks high street and Braithwaite’s newsagents.
Doyle purposely hung back as they entered the small shop, pretending to peruse the newspaper stand. A middle-aged man in a cardigan was chatting with a blue-rinsed lady as she picked up her Woman's Own. When she left, he turned his attention to some bundles of newspapers and magazines behind the counter, studiously ignoring Jacob. After watching for a while, with growing exasperation, Doyle made his way to the counter. The newsagent quickly gave him the once-over, his expression transparently saying: Scruffy, long hair and jeans, but better than a darkie.
In response to the man's grunt Doyle gestured at Jacob and said, "I think this gentleman was here before me." The newsagent grimaced, forced to acknowledge Jacob.
"That's alright," Jacob beamed down at him, with his most winning smile. "I'm with him."
"And I'm Ray Doyle. Arthur Braithwaite? We'd like a word, please, in private."
Anticipating reluctance, Doyle discreetly flashed his CI5 id. Guilt at fiddling the VAT showed on the man's face. Almost certainly, he didn’t know exactly what CI5 was – it could just as well be the enforcement arm of the Inland Revenue to him.
Mr Braithwaite showed them into a back room that doubled as rest room and store. There was a sink and kitchen cabinets, and cartons of stock vied for floor space with a formica table and kitchen chairs.
"A cup of tea would be nice, thank you," Doyle pronounced, sitting at the table. "White with two sugars. Jacob?"
"Oh yes, please, Mr Braithwaite. Just milk for me, please."
Wrong footed, the newsagent unthinkingly put the kettle on and put the makings of tea together. Doyle pressed the initiative.
"Do you have an older brother, named Oswald?"
The man nodded.
"It's him we'd like to speak to you about."
Mr Braithwaite relaxed conspicuously.
"Well, whatever it is, you're too late. Oz died, out in Africa."
Doyle and Jacob exchanged puzzled looks.
"But, according to our intelligence," Doyle continued, "Oswald Braithwaite was living here in Sevenoaks in 1969, running this shop."
"Yes, that's right, he was."
"But wasn't he in Africa in the mid 60s?"
"He came home in ‘67, that’s when he bought the newsagents.”
“Then would you care to explain how he also came to be in Africa?” Doyle asked. Braithwaite brought the mugs of tea over and joined them at the table.
“He went back. Oz said he hated Africa, how he couldn't wait to get home, he only went out there the money. But when he did come back, he never settled. After a while, he went back – just gave me the shop.”
“What happened to your brother then?” Jacob asked.
“He went to drive aid convoys in the Biafran war. Funny, after all his tours of duty, he ended up dying in a road accident - his lorry hit a bus. We were going to have his body flown home, seeing as how he'd always said he never wanted to end up out there. Then we read the will, and there was a letter with it. He wrote it just before he went out that last time, saying that if he died in Africa, that's where he wanted to stay, buried in African soil. And in his will, he gave what he still had to Oxfam."
Doyle absorbed this surprising story, then asked, "Did your brother ever tell you about his last job as a merc?"
"Not much. He nearly died that time, I know that. After that he swore he wouldn't go again."
"Do you know how he survived and got home?"
Braithwaite shrugged his shoulders, so Doyle filled him in on the role of Jacob’s family. Braithwaite had the grace to look at his hands.
"You say that your brother bought this business outright?” Doyle continued. “He must have come back with some money, after that last trip."
"Yeah. He had a stash. That was when Oz bought the newsagents. I worked for him back then."
"Mr Braithwaite, when your brother discharged himself from that hospital, he took with him a vehicle, expensive medicines and a large sum of money."
"Ah." Braithwaite sat down heavily.
"Not that this is any of your responsibility, of course, just thought you might be interested to know. Now, Mr Braithwaite, can I have a statement from you along the lines of what you’ve just told me?” Doyle asked, sweetly and reasonably. “There’s no shortage of paper and pens around here. I’ll take it down while we drink our tea, then you can sign it.”
Leaving the newsagents an hour later, Doyle felt a great sense of contentment and all being well with the world. This would clinch it. Bodie could have no further scruples about Jacob and that episode from his past. He had not abandoned Oz to a lonely death under African skies – quite the opposite. No wonder Oz had never contacted Bodie afterwards, the bastard. But at least he was a repentant bastard.
Back in town, Doyle dropped Jacob off and told him to be at the Royal Oak at 8 o’clock, where this time he was sure he would finally deliver Bodie.
Returning to HQ, he phoned Bodie to set up the meeting. After that, Doyle had one more piece of business for the day. He typed up a report, paper-clipped it to Arthur Braithwaite’s signed statement and another he had taken from Jacob, and put the lot in Betty’s in-tray marked for Cowley’s attention.
Monday evening
Doyle left Bodie and Jacob to get on with it by themselves, and spent a restful evening stretched out comfortably on his sofa with a book and a bottle of best malt.
Bodie wasn’t late coming in. Doyle didn’t get up, but calmly put down his book as Bodie took off his coat and shoes in the hall.
“How’d it go?” he asked, as Bodie appeared in the living room.
“Fine.”
“That all?”
“Yeah, look, can we talk?” Bodie perched on the edge of the sofa next to him.
Doyle couldn’t help feeling apprehensive, this wasn’t like Bodie at all.
Looking at the carpet, Bodie began, “Don’t know what I’d do without you, mate.”
Doyle shrugged, “It’s what partners are for. I look after your back, you look after mine.”
“Not this time, sunshine. I reckon that was well beyond the call of duty, teaming up with Jacob, tracking down Oz’s brother and that.”
Doyle was not sure where this was leading but it felt rather uncomfortable. “So?”
“So, I reckon you did it because you love me.”
Doyle made a rapid examination of his motives, and concluded that Bodie might just be right.
“Maybe,” and then, a bit breathless with the realisation, he repeated, “Maybe I do.”
Bodie hadn’t been able to meet his eyes, but now it seemed he couldn’t resist sneaking a sideways look. For Doyle, the look on his partner’s face was a revelation, like a little boy who’s just discovered the present he’d really wished for under the Christmas tree – a picture of suppressed glee and excitement. All the same, he couldn’t ignore his own instinct for self-preservation.
“So what would that make me?” Doyle continued softly. “The latest in a long line to succumb to your charms? And that’s your cue to run off to the other side of the world?”
“Bloody hell, why would you think that?” Bodie groaned.
“Well, what is this leading up to, then?”
Looking at his hands again, Bodie answered, “I just wanted to make sure that I’m not about to make a fool of myself.”
Any more than usual… but Doyle held his tongue. This was not the time for banter. Bodie was Serious. He took Bodie’s hand and stroked it with his thumb, “Go on.”
Bodie turned to face him. He very deliberately removed the book from where it lay open on Doyle’s chest and placed it on the carpet, assuring himself of Doyle’s full attention. Doyle held his breath.
“I just thought,” Bodie began, unusually hesitant for him, “we should, y’know, we could be a bit more serious. Exclusive.”
Taken by surprise, Doyle let out his breath so suddenly he accidentally snorted. “Ha, that's a good one! You may not have noticed, but I haven’t shagged anyone else for months. If that’s not exclusive, what is?”
“So that’s a yes?” Bodie was beaming again.
“Yes. Alright?” Doyle was getting impatient. It wasn’t like them to talk about their feelings or their relationship, whatever that was. Bodie was in an altogether strange mood this evening. Not a bad mood, not bitter as he had been since Saturday, just odd. And where was this foreign language about “love” and “exclusive” coming from?
Almost without thinking, Doyle put a hand to Bodie's forehead.
"Sure you're feeling okay? Did you get a chill sleeping rough the other night?"
Bodie smiled dopily.
"No, Mum," and he moved Doyle's fingers to his lips, sucking the tips, one after another. The lazy, warm feeling of looking forward to taking Bodie to bed, while also enjoying lying on the couch and not feeling much like moving, instantly notched up a gear. Doyle laced his fingers into Bodie's and brought them down onto his jeans to trace the length of his erection.
“Randy bugger,” Bodie smirked, feasting his eyes, the pink tip of his tongue flicking around his lips, “Is that just for me?”
Doyle answered by pulling Bodie down on top of him, seeking out that alluring tongue with his own.
Bodie’s mouth was velvet soft in counterpoint to the scrape of stubble. The fine knit of his poloneck smoothed easily over his taut body, silken hair slid through caressing fingers. The pub smell of beer and cigarette smoke clung to his clothes, but close up all Doyle could smell and taste was salt and spice and Bodie. He wondered why he was savouring these things, instead of just taking them for granted and tearing Bodie’s clothes off in his usual way.
“Not here, sunshine,” Bodie purred, as he pulled away and clambered off the couch, Bodie held out a hand to him. “Let’s try making it to the bedroom tonight, shall we?”
Doyle might have been seeking reassurance in the familiar or he might just have been randy as hell after a few days of abstinence, but even in the bedroom things seemed somehow different. He hopped about pulling off his socks and then went to take off his shirt and throw it on the chair, as usual, but Bodie took him by the shoulders.
“Always the impatient one,” Bodie tutted indulgently. “Let me give you a hand.”
Bodie stroked Doyle’s shirt down off his shoulders and followed through with his warm mouth while Doyle’s arms still were trapped in the sleeves. Freeing himself, Doyle returned his attentions to Bodie’s waist and the pure merino wool between their bare chests. Finally, superbly naked, Bodie held him close, kissing and nuzzling and stroking him all over, as though he were the most precious thing in the world. All the time Bodie’s gaze was attentive, full of care and pride. Never, Doyle thought, had his partner, his lover, been so… well… loving.
Unexpectedly, there came to mind a boozy night in the pub a while back, a wetting- the-baby’s-head session. Doyle remembered the proud new father telling him how, when him and the missus had decided to start a family and gone off the pill, the sex was amazing. After doing everything to avoid it for so long, now they both wanted this, together. Free and natural, sharing, loving, it was the best sex they’d ever had.
Freedom to be entirely yourself, to share, to love… And that was it - what was different. As they tumbled into bed, Doyle decided it was time to stop worrying. He reached for Bodie and gave himself up to the moment.
A trail of warm kisses led down his chest to his navel, and then Bodie’s lips closed around his cock, rigid and straining, and Doyle cried out with desire. Electrified by Bodie’s touch, he arched up for more, and Bodie knew how close he was – held him there with finger and thumb clamped hard around the base of his swollen cock while he took him higher still. Then the dark head lifted, and he felt Bodie’s tongue hot and rasping on his tingling body, his throat, his mouth. They drew into a close embrace, entwining with each other until Doyle was leaning over Bodie, fingers tracing patterns in his lover’s flesh. Bodie’s harsh grip on him mercifully relaxed into a generous massage with a sure right hand, but it was the blatant adoration that overwhelmed him. Doyle thrust helplessly against his lover’s belly, ecstatic, with a deep cry at the joy of release.
Bodie smirked fondly at Doyle’s short fuse and then he was coming too, Doyle clamped firmly on top of him.
Some time later, Doyle was stirred from a dreamless sleep by quiet musings, vibrations from Bodie’s chest tickling his ear.
“Y’know Jacob?” Bodie began.
Yes, Doyle thought, funnily enough, I do… and I can just tell I’m going to be hearing more about him for a while yet.
“Wants to join the police he says,” Bodie continued, as though this was surprising news.
“Yeah. He told me.”
Bodie ploughed on happily. “So I was thinking – you could help him, couldn’t you? You know the ropes at the Met, you’ve got credentials…”
Doyle sighed. He didn’t reply, but calmly untangled himself from Bodie and the duvet, and padded to the living room. The table lamp was still on and Doyle found what he wanted on top of the writing desk. He returned to the bedroom flourishing the blue carbonised form-in-triplicate, some of the many sections already inked-in in his own handwriting.
“Wassat?” Bodie blinked, sitting up in bed.
“Oh, it’s just the reference form,” Doyle declared casually. “I’ve done half of it already. It’s a good thing I’ve asked Jacob to come over tomorrow night so he can tell me the rest of the information I need to fill it out.”
“You devious little bugger!”
“You call that devious, after what Jacob and I’ve been up to the past couple of days?”
“You’re right. You unspeakably devious little bugger.”
“You love me when I’m devious,” Doyle flirted.
“Just as well, innit?”
“So you, um, fancy joining us for dinner here tomorrow? Lasagne alright?”
Laughing, Bodie grabbed the paperwork from Doyle’s hand and flicked it onto the bedside cabinet, before taking him by the wrists and pulling him back into bed.
Some time later, Bodie was serious again.
“Ray?”
Doyle yawned and rubbed his eyes. “Yeah?”
“Y’know Jacob?”
“Yes,” slowly and patiently.
“He'll go far, that lad.” Despite the hour and their recent exertions, Bodie was still disgustingly wide awake. “Well, he will now, with you and me to give him a guiding hand in life. You know, a word or two in the right ear, a few pointers here and there… He can come to us for meals… holidays. It’s not long ‘til Christmas.”
“Us? Christmas? Bodie, what are you talking about?”
“It’s just, well, I think we should make it more… permanent. Us, I mean. Exclusive, like I said. And we should move in together. It’d be more stable that way.”
“You might just as well be living here now, you’re ‘round here enough.”
“That’s not true. I have my own place. I’d just like it to be ‘our’ place in future.”
Bodie’s proposal was music to his ears. In the morning he’d wake up singing, and even lend Bodie a clean shirt so they could get into work on time, but Doyle was buggered if he was going to get romantic at this time of night. It was all rather sudden, too. Doyle wearily raised himself up on his elbow.
“Just tell me what’s brought on this unheard-of desire to commit, from you of all people. What’s all this about being stable?”
He was treated to the sight of Bodie bubbling over with contentment.
“Isn’t it obvious? Now the lad’s come along, Jacob, we’ve got someone to take care of.” Bodie pulled him even closer. “Both of us, sunshine. Someone to look out for. We’ve got a responsibility.”
---------------------------------------------------------
Title: Responsibility
Author: jaycat
Slash
Words: 9450
Archive at ProsLib
Disclaimer: Bodie and Doyle and CI5 characters are not mine, I just like to borrow them and then give them back in the same condition.
But I am very proud to be able to thank
jj_minerva and greengerbil for beta-ing. Lame title, errors, infelicities and the bits I tinkered with after beta-ing are entirely my responsibility.
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no subject
Date: 2009-12-02 11:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-02 02:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-02 11:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-02 02:13 pm (UTC)responsibilities
Date: 2009-12-02 01:21 pm (UTC)Thank you for the advent treat!
Re: responsibilities
Date: 2009-12-02 02:03 pm (UTC)Thanks for reading and for your helpful comments.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-02 01:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-02 02:17 pm (UTC)How many days is it now...? *g*
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Date: 2009-12-02 03:16 pm (UTC)The British police are the best in the world
Awww, my heart swelled with pride when I read that...... and it’s true I tell you (I know cos my mum told me).
and Bodie was my hero
I know exactly how Jacob feels. I *love* the Bodie you’ve created here: tall, dark, handome, young and a mercenary who loves kids and recites poetry to them. That’s my Bodie. And always the soldier who values his comrades above all else, I love that aspect of him, too.
And I liked the way you inserted some political snippets via the mouths of the characters - the pros and cons.
Really enjoyed this, thank you!
no subject
Date: 2009-12-02 08:44 pm (UTC)"a proper tale with a beginning, middle and satisfying end" At the risk of boring people, that's what I set out to do, as an antidote to the vignettes and ficlets it is so tempting to write.
I didn't start out intending to be political, race issues just became unavoidable. If I've said the wrong thing, at least I've tried to be balanced.
And I have a lot of faith in the British police, but that line to me is completely ironic from the way it's delivered at the opening to Tom Robinsons' "Glad to be Gay".
no subject
Date: 2009-12-02 03:56 pm (UTC)Thanks for this D
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Date: 2009-12-02 08:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-02 04:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-02 05:35 pm (UTC)Wonderful, thank you :-).
no subject
Date: 2009-12-02 08:47 pm (UTC)What's this with football icons? *g*
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Date: 2009-12-02 06:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-02 08:54 pm (UTC)The poem is 'Young Lochinvar' by Sir Walter Scott. I chose it randomly as the sort of poem children used to learn by heart at school and therefore Bodie might have learned to recite. It goes on and on, that's why Doyle had to cut him off!
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2009-12-02 09:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-02 11:07 pm (UTC)Contrary to what people must now think, I'm not particularly fascinated by Bodie's time in Africa, I just needed some background for Bodie and someone from his past - my interest was in his and Doyle's reactions.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 12:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 01:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 12:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 01:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 09:43 am (UTC)I agree, it was a "proper" story, and you didn't shy away from issues - far better to take a (properly considered) punt at them IMO than pretend they don't exist. The Nigerian conflict is totally plausible. Although from what I saw of Jacob he won't be needing their their 'patronage' for much longer.
I enjoyed it.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 01:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 12:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 01:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 08:41 pm (UTC)This was a nice take on a younger Bodie and an interesting slice of his past uncovered by his partner. And one of my very favourite things is a jealous/possessive Doyle, so I particularly enjoyed those glimpses, like:
Forget you ever laid eyes on ‘im, darling. He’s mine. He stabbed the ‘rewind’ button pointedly and erased the tape.
Hehe!
Thank you!
no subject
Date: 2009-12-04 12:02 am (UTC)Thanks!
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Date: 2009-12-04 09:52 am (UTC)You created some of my special pros moments:
"He reached over and rubbed the back of his hand against Bodie’s stubbled cheek, and felt Bodie lean into his touch. Eyes closed, Bodie rested there for a moment, then pulled himself upright and got out of the car."
"You love Bodie too, you poor bastard, love him like a favourite son. Well, don’t worry, Father, you might not think I’m good enough for him, but I do my best."
All included in a nice piece of storytelling. Thank you!
no subject
Date: 2009-12-04 07:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2009-12-04 01:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-04 07:14 pm (UTC)Thank you for saying nice things!
no subject
Date: 2009-12-04 07:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-07 11:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-05 11:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-07 11:49 pm (UTC)A lovely warm feeling was exactly what I intended, I'm glad it worked for you.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-06 06:33 pm (UTC)Thank you!!
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Date: 2009-12-07 11:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-07 10:35 pm (UTC)That was such a nice read, thank you. Warm and comfortable, but without being mushy, and I love the way your Doyle just keeps nagging away, both at Bodie and the problem. Lovely, thank you.
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Date: 2009-12-07 11:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-11 07:08 pm (UTC)Bodie's past ist always a challenge for Doyle - and for us. And I love fics about the 'how it could have been', about 'how Bodie might have been in younger days'. And I love the imagination that Bodie was better than the majority of the mercs - even if he isn't aware of it.
And it's so typical Bodie, typical Doyle - typical men... Everything could have been fixed with a conversation right at the beginning. But then we wouldn't have that very good story!
Oh yes, - it's so refreshing to read an established relationship story! And it's just 'sweet' how happy Doyle is when people recognize their love and take it for granted!
Thank you!
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Date: 2009-12-27 05:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-30 11:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-28 10:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-30 11:56 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2010-12-11 12:14 am (UTC)I do love this jumper a whole lot. It´s warm and fluffy, a bit angsty, just right to enjoy the knee length!
Thanks so much for putting it in my stocking! It´s perfect!