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discoveredinalj2011-08-31 04:39 pm
hutchynstarsk.livejournal.com) wrote in discoveredinalj2011-08-31 04:39 pm
In A Reporter's Notebook
With many thanks for the amazingly quick and helpful Brit beta to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
anna060957. :)
~7500 words
In A Reporter’s Notebook
by Allie
Sean Leonard peered around and then headed purposefully up the steps to the CI5, a notebook tucked under his arm.
“Can I speak with George Cowley, please?” he asked, leaning earnestly across the desk to speak with the security guard.
The guard regarded him, taking in Sean’s appearance carefully. “May I ask what about?”
Sean adjusted his glasses. “I have something of utmost importance to tell him about one of his agents!”
“And you… know the name of this agent?” The guard was still watching him dubiously. Sean knew his meagre appearance and his inability to look stylish, and his hair’s inability to stay how he combed it, all combined to make him look a bit of a mooncalf sometimes. This look, that made some people not take him seriously and allowed him to do a good job as a reporter (even if he was still quite young and upcoming), could make things harder at times, as well. Such as when he needed to be taken seriously.
He took a second to calm his automatic protesting reaction. “Raymond Doyle,” he said carefully. “I can spell it for you if you like.”
#
Cowley adjusted his glasses and peered at the youthful-looking reporter who faced him looking serious and concerned.
“I found it in an old reporter’s notebook. We were friends. He was my mentor. His wife gave me his things when he died, the things he’d kept. She said some of his notebooks contained secrets—things that couldn’t be published. I didn’t like to think there was anything like that, not for old John Grey. But when I went through some of his things, I found this.”
He held out a battered notebook, and Cowley took it.
“The pages that have yellow bookmarks,” Sean Leonard suggested.
Cowley flipped through the battered and aged pages. He adjusted his glasses, and blinked. He turned some of the pages faster, others more slowly. There were only a half dozen in all.
At last he looked up, his expression grave. “I’ll have to confiscate this, you know.”
Leonard nodded. “I thought as much. But you need to know what kind of agent you hired.”
“Yes,” said Cowley.
#
“Sir, I don’t understand.” Doyle stood at attention. The perplexity on his face looked entirely sincere.
“Did you or did you not get into a knife fight when you were fourteen?” Cowley wasn’t sitting down for this interview. And Bodie wasn’t present.
Doyle’s face flushed. “Yes sir.”
“And you were never prosecuted.”
“No sir.”
“Do you care to tell me why?”
“Because—I was never caught. I’d never have been allowed to join the police force later, if anyone had known. I got in a lot of trouble when I was a lad, sir. It’s in my file...”
“Not this. Did you start the fight?”
“No sir.”
“But you won it, is that right?”
“Yes.” Doyle’s face was flushing with anger, now, and he ground out the word, abandoning the ‘sir’ in protest to this grilling. “You knew my record, sir. I thought you knew about that...”
“What I didn’t know is that you had it covered up.” Cowley stopped walking around Doyle and threw the reporter’s notebook on his desk. “Take a look through there. Your... friends... didn’t do nearly as thorough a job as you might have wished.”
Doyle, looking confused and exasperated, moved forward and paged through the marked spots. “But—but I don’t understand,” he said after a moment, looking up. The anger had left his face, and most of the blood. “I never—”
“What? Knew you’d injured him permanently? Knew that the police report had been filed by his mother—and then mysteriously disappeared? Just what is it that you didn’t know, Doyle? Answer me!”
Doyle gulped convulsively, and forced out the words. “None of it, sir.”
“You just thought it disappeared on its own.”
“Yeah. I mean, yes sir, I did.” He looked at Cowley, and his eyes looked as shocked as if he really was learning this for the first time. “I mean—I ran home. I washed up, threw away my bloody clothes and told my mum I’d lost them. I didn’t—hear anything about it. I kept thinking the coppers would come for me. But they didn’t. Ian Brown didn’t come to school the next day, and I heard he’d been in an accident, nothing too bad but he couldn’t come to school. Soon afterwards his family moved away. I thought—I’d got lucky. I started straightening up after that, didn’t think I’d be so lucky next time—that I’d be the one knifed, or I’d be in big trouble. I guess it scared me into better behaviour.”
“Indeed,” said Cowley. “A laudable outcome—for you. But not for the lad you injured. He is apparently still disabled. He worked for several years in his early twenties, but another injury—according to the doctors, exacerbated by his earlier injury—put him into a wheelchair for the rest of his life.”
Cowley glared at Doyle. “And you had no notion of it.” He put a bit of scorn into his voice, seeking to make Doyle betray himself.
Doyle shook his head, his curls bouncing, adamant. “I didn’t.” He looked sick. “I don’t know who could have...”
Cowley stared at his agent for a long time, weighing up the enigma of Raymond Doyle. The man was a good actor undercover, but Cowley didn’t think he was good enough to fake this. Nor, indeed, that a fourteen year old boy could’ve orchestrated a cover-up so thoroughly, disposing of a police report and frightening a family into keeping quiet and moving away.
But someone had. Someone who didn’t want Doyle to get in trouble. And that ‘someone’ might still be involved in his life, either waiting to use this information as blackmail—or perhaps already having done so, to find out sensitive information.
Doyle had risen up the ranks as a police officer quickly and easily. For a long time, he’d seemed able to do no wrong and everyone had a good word for him. But this discovery jeopardised all of that—called it all into question. Who knew what other strings had been pulled in his background, in the past? Or even in the present.
“That is what we’re going to find out,” said Cowley. “You’re suspended until we get to the bottom of this, Doyle.” He saw the disappointment in his agent’s eyes, and in the sag of his shoulders. But this had to be played aboveboard, and having Doyle in the mix at this point would not be helpful. “Leave your gun and ID, and go home. Send Bodie in on your way out.”
He waited impassively. Doyle complied, radiating tension and indignant anger, and the confusion that had been his constant companion since he’d seen the file. Cowley felt much the same way, but it was important to keep things under control, especially emotions.
Now he prepared himself to face Bodie’s reactions.
#
“He what, sir? I don’t believe that.” He put the notebook down after only glancing at the marked pages. “This is Doyle we’re talking about, sir. The reporter must have faked it.”
“If he had, it’s your job to find out. And find out why.” He stabbed a finger in Bodie’s direction. “Take Murphy with you. Everything—and I mean everything—aboveboard, do you hear me? This is Doyle’s whole career we’re talking about, and I’ll not have you gum up the investigative works by playing fast and loose.”
Bodie’s lips compressed angrily. “Yes sir.” As if I would, his shoulders seemed to say. As if I would when it’s Doyle’s reputation at stake!
#
“We’ll look close to home first.”
“Or else close to Brown’s home.” Murphy watched Bodie.
Bodie looked so very grim. His face was tight and there hadn’t been a joke from him since he’d left Cowley’s office, walking with a chip on his shoulders and an obvious sense of purpose in his steps.
Cowley had shown Murphy the notebook as well, and he’d read through the pages in question with a growing sense of unreality. Murphy couldn’t believe Doyle had been so rough and rowdy as a child. That part, however, apparently wasn’t in question!
So, Doyle the star policeman had a rough past. Well, he wouldn’t be the first, surely. Murphy was accustoming himself to the idea that, dangerous as Doyle sometimes looked and acted, he’d been even more dangerous as a kid.
But a cover-up? That wasn’t Doyle’s style. That wasn’t Doyle, period. Murphy had had no difficulty whatsoever in agreeing adamantly with Bodie that Doyle was innocent.
That had seemed to mollify Bodie a bit. He and Murphy were even brainstorming together now, ready to investigate and, hopefully, disprove these accusations against Doyle.
“That’s not what I meant,” said Bodie, compressing his lips. He looked so weary already, though the investigation had barely begun. “I meant we have to talk to Doyle first.”
#
Bodie’s face was tight as he leaned over the table. “Names. I need names, Doyle.”
He was interrogating Doyle.
Bodie. Interrogating. Doyle.
Everything felt wrong. The fact he was sitting here facing Bodie in the regular interrogation table, on opposite sides, was hard enough. But now Bodie was pressing harder, acting grimmer and less like Doyle’s partner.
“I gave you all I remember!” snapped Doyle.
He and Bodie glared at one another for several long, tense moments.
Murphy, leaned against the doorway, shifted uneasily. Doyle saw him from the corner of his eye. Doyle jumped up suddenly, so quickly his chair fell over. That they should have to behave like this, and then have Murphy watch, as well....
Maybe Murphy would be Bodie’s partner, after Doyle was thrown out of CI5.
Bloody hell! How was he supposed to know who’d covered up? He’d thought Ian recovered fully. Think he didn’t feel awful enough knowing he’d damaged someone for life and all?
He glared down at Bodie. “Why don’t you do some proper investigative work instead of going after me on a witch hunt, Bodie? Or did your new partner insist?”
He glared at Bodie, his lip curling in disgust and fury
Bodie rose slowly, his powerful shoulders—his whole body—looking extremely tense. His large eyes were very, very dark, and his face held no emotion at all.
“I said we had to interrogate you first—get the lay of the land, so we’d know who to talk to. And I’ve never stopped trusting you.” His gaze pierced Doyle’s soul.
Doyle swallowed hard. He felt like he was choking. Bloody hell, now he was pushing away Bodie... He braced his muscles against the desire for flight, for action—for fighting.
“I’ve told you all I know,” he repeated.
Bodie’s gaze locked with his own, and then he gave a nod, and picked up the papers from the table. “Good enough for me. C’mon, Murphy.” The two men strode from the room, Bodie still holding himself tightly and tensely, though he walked with a rolling, easy gait.
When they left the room, Murphy glanced back, but Bodie didn’t.
Doyle stared after them with a sinking feeling. He’d alienated the one person who he’d thought would always be on his side. And he very much wanted to sink his fist through a wall—or into someone.
But that violent streak was what had got him into trouble in the first place, wasn’t it? He’d always been a bad egg. Even in an outlet like CI5, a place where the rules were flexible, and his partner was an ex-merc and what-have-you, he, Raymond Bloody Doyle, was the bad egg. Still. Always...
#
Murphy shifted uncomfortably in the car.
He and Bodie had decided that first of all, they had to talk to the victim and his mother. They might know who had intimidated them, if they could be convinced to tell. Surely enough time had passed by now? They had moved since the accident, but Murphy and Bodie tracked them down, and began the long drive out to see Ian Brown’s mother.
Murphy said he didn’t mind driving, but Bodie just looked at him. Bodie drove. Fast, and obviously preoccupied.
He didn’t talk much, and Murphy soon let silence reign in the car. Bodie wasn’t normally one to brood, but Murphy could tell the conflict with his partner wasn’t sitting well with the ex-SAS man.
It seemed like a longer trip than it was, with Bodie like that.
#
Doyle finished packing his bag and regarded his flat morosely. Then he switched off the lights and left. He slung his bag over his shoulder and wondered again what the outcome of the investigation would be. He hoped he’d be reinstated and that Cowley would say none of it was his fault.
Even though of course, part of it was his fault. If he hadn’t got into that fight—
The thing was, no one had even known about it. He’d kept it so quiet, hurrying home, discarding his bloody clothes and staying close to the house till he was sure he wasn’t going to be jumped by some friends of the injured lad....
He knew one thing. He couldn’t bear to sit in his flat and try to read, brooding about what Bodie was discovering, and throwing books against the wall in frustration. He hadn’t been home in a while, and he felt the need to see his parents. That, or curl into a hole in the ground and pull the dirt in over him.
He most of all wanted to be out there with Bodie discovering the truth. But if he couldn’t, then he’d go home, pay the visit he’d been due to make months ago, if his leave hadn’t kept being cancelled. And he told himself that’s all this was: leave.
The drive down was long and lonely without an annoying partner in the car to tease him, get teased by him, and bicker and banter with. No one to argue about what to play on the radio, or where and when to eat. No one to trade off driving with, and jolt him out of his sour, brooding mood with random remarks and dirty jokes.
He would miss Bodie most of all, if...
No ‘if.’ Ray was coming back to CI5. In no time, he’d be complaining about the pay, the hours, the erratic days off, and his boss and his partner yet again. That would be the good life.
#
Ian Brown’s mother, Ann Brown, was nearing her 70s, but she looked older, having lost her teeth years earlier. Her hair was thinning, and it was obvious life had not been kind to her.
Bodie, who had been the one to check her file, knew several things about her that she might have considered less than flattering, and intended to use none of them in their interview. Mrs Brown was a bit like a much lower-grade and less successful Marge Harper—without the class. Marge had fenced stolen goods and been involved in a network of illegal information. She’d even said that one of her many husbands wanted her to become a prostitute, but she hadn’t.
Though Mrs Brown looked conventional enough now (if a bit heavy on the makeup), Bodie wouldn’t have bet against her having been a lot less successful in her illegal endeavours earlier in life, and having done a few stints as a prostitute. But the only time she’d been charged there hadn’t been enough evidence for conviction so she’d got off, and after that had been more circumspect or else quit. Her record wasn’t long, and mostly consisted of petty thefts.
Bodie and Murphy tried to go about it carefully, bringing up the subject of her son and the investigation. Her eyes went hard and angry, and she mentioned “That tearaway, Raymond Doyle,” with enough wrath that Bodie would not have liked to leave her alone with his partner, little old lady or not.
“He’ll come to no good,” she said as if having said it many times in the past. “Probably serving a life sentence by now. He hurt my Ian badly. He was in hospital for a month!”
As she recounted this, Bodie realised she didn’t know his partner had become a copper. Apparently she hadn’t kept track of Doyle at all. Well, he had moved around a lot. At any rate, unless she was a far better actress than Bodie gave her credit for, she couldn’t be the one behind the reporter’s notebook. If it was a setup, she wasn’t behind any of the details of it.
They listened for a while more but learned nothing of value. Even though her son had been a rogue from his youth, drinking and getting into fights before he was twelve and never listening to her, she seemed more proud of him than ashamed. Everything was Doyle’s fault: even the work-related injury received in his early twenties was Doyle’s fault. He’d fallen while loading boxes and hurt his back. If it hadn’t been for him being weakened by Raymond’s vicious attack, he’d never have been hurt.
“Did you ever talk to any reporters about this, Mrs Brown? Trying to get justice for your son?”
Her pale eyes glittered. “Did I!? But nothing came of it, same as the police report. And then the threats started...” She lowered her voice, still angry and indignant but also obviously enjoying the attention.
“Threats, Mrs Brown?” asked Bodie with his best wide-eyed Boy Scout look, prompt and ready to help.
“Threats, Mr Bodie.” She gave him an arch look. “A window broken by a brick through it. If I didn’t leave off, there would be worse. The note hinted darkly that someone knew more about my past than I would like, and would tell the police certain... details.” Her face twisted in remembered rage. “Lies, all lies!”
Bodie ignored that, and didn’t mention the fact that it wouldn’t have worked if there hadn’t been something in it. “Do you have any idea who made these threats?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I do! Raymond Doyle! The vicious little monster.”
“Did you save the note? Did it match his handwriting?”
“I’m not sure if he could write, the dirty little ape. And yes, I saved the paper. I never gave it to any of the reporters who I talked to, either. I suppose it can’t hurt, after all this time, and because you’re CI5...”
She rose with effort, and went to sort through cupboards. The two men exchanged looks. Murphy looked... worried. As if he thought they could actually get a match against Doyle’s handwriting!
#
Sitting in the car, Bodie read the note yet again, holding it carefully. The paper was old, fragile. It would be easy to lose or destroy it... quite by accident.
The handwriting looked large and clumsy, as an angry schoolboy might write it. The Q in ‘quit’ had a distinctive turn to its tail. A turn that Bodie had previously teased Doyle about in his own handwriting.
He was very silent in the car, and let Murphy drive this time.
“Get some samples of his writing at that age,” was all Cowley had said, when they reported in to him. But he’d spoken in a very grim voice.
Suddenly, Bodie leaned forward and shoved the paper into the glove compartment, before he could lose his nerve and let the paper flutter away out the open window. Because that paper was the only thing that could prove Doyle innocent. If he lost it, there would always be a doubt.
And Doyle WAS innocent.
#
Doyle wondered at the recalcitrant turn of his car. He’d meant to drive to his parents’ place, he knew he had. And yet somehow, he was driving instead to the home of one Ian Brown.
He’d got a good look at the paper Cowley had. He didn’t know if Cowley had let him see it on purpose—or rather, why he would have done such a thing. The old man always had a plan, and it was not for mere mortals to outguess him. He could double, triple, and quadruple out-think anyone.
Perhaps Cowley wanted him to come here and investigate on his own. Doyle allowed himself to be convinced and drove on.
#
Bodie knocked at the door feeling like a schoolboy come to confess something he’d done instead of a grown man who worked for CI5 and George Cowley.
The door cracked open and a bent, older woman peered out at him from behind thick glasses. Bodie was struck by the similarities in her features to Doyle’s pugnacious-angel face. She was a woman, and far older, and yet he saw something of Doyle in her, in the shape of cheekbones, the expressive quality of her face. It made him give her a big smile.
He’d never met Doyle’s mum before. He thought he would like her. Whether she would like him was another matter altogether.
“Yes? Who is it?” She squinted up at him. Smile lost on her, then. He let it fade, overtaken again by the grim dread of his purpose.
He held up his badge. “CI5, Mrs Doyle. We have a few questions for you.”
#
Doyle sat in his parked car and watched. So far a number of people had stopped by and left the little newspaper stand that Ian Brown ran. One of them had not been Doyle. He couldn’t even get up his nerve to leave the car.
He remembered Ian as a spotty-faced rascal, terrifying and infuriating to a young Ray Doyle. Ian had insisted on mocking him, and one day, had tried to gut him with a stiletto.
And Doyle, who had practiced with his own knife many times, trying to contain the fear and conquer his nerves, had fought back and won. He remembered leaving Ian, a much bigger boy, lying in an alley bleeding. Doyle had run as fast as his terrified young legs could carry him. Probably never run faster in his life.
Once round a corner, he’d called from a phone box for an ambulance. He remembered his hands shaking and the sick feeling in his stomach. Adrenaline had still coursed through him, telling him he had to fight or run.
He’d tried to deepen his voice, so no one could say later that a kid had made the call. But his voice cracked a little. He gave the barest details—location, boy wounded in a knife fight—and then hung up the phone. He’d wiped it quickly with his sleeve, in case of fingerprints or blood. And then he’d run.
He ran all the way home, and he hadn’t seen Ian Brown’s face since.
Finally, he forced himself to open the door and swung his legs out. Legs that still worked, because he wasn’t wheelchair bound.
Though it could’ve happened any time; he’d been in enough close scrapes to have lost more than the ability to walk. He was thankful for his luck, his speed, and Bodie by his side, which had so far kept him alive and whole. At least, whole on the outside; he sometimes wondered what it did to a man on the inside, to work for CI5 for too long.
But today was not a day for thoughts like that. Today was the day to face the man he’d nearly killed when he was a lad.
#
“Don’t you work with my son?” Mrs Doyle had a nice smile. She seemed interested in Bodie and Murphy. She included both of them in her warm smile, while offering them cream cake.
Bodie almost couldn’t choke any down, good as it tasted. (Would be a wonder if Doyle wasn’t fat as a house when he was a lad, with a mother who cooked like this.)
Bodie’s mouth was full; all he could do was mumble, trying not to spray crumbs, and feeling far less than competent in this role—interrogating Ray’s mother.
“That’s correct,” said Murph, who had somehow managed to keep his mouth clear of food, but still taken and eaten some politely. He proceeded to ask her about any papers from Doyle’s school years.
“I’ll get them,” she said, immediately, rising. “Though why CI5 needs such things...”
“It’s a routine matter,” lied Murphy easily. “We like to have as many records as possible. I’m sure Ray has told you about how thorough Mr Cowley is.”
Bodie cast Murphy a glance, halfway grateful for his quick cover and halfway concerned that he could lie so effectively. Had he lied often to Bodie? You’d never know, would you?
“It still sounds foolish to me,” said the elderly woman. “But finish the cake. It will take some time, you know. I have to move some boxes....”
Bodie jumped up, swallowing down the last of his mouthful quickly. “I’ll help you.”
“Lovely.” She moved into another room with firm purpose.
Bodie followed. He glanced around at the room that seemed to exude charm and age. The decor was at least two decades old, and seemed peaceful. It was difficult to imagine Doyle here on a sleepy afternoon, talking to his mum and eating cream cakes. Would he be restless here? Or lean against the walls? Or refuse to eat sweets? He could be such a prickly sod. But surely he wouldn’t be to his own mum.
They hadn’t seen Mr Doyle yet and hadn’t asked. He was glad enough Mrs Doyle was going along with things so easily, though that pricked Bodie with guilt. He moved boxes for her from the spare room, and helped her sort through.
She pulled out a photo album, with a nostalgic smile. “Here, you’ll see him in a school play, if you go to about the middle.” She tapped the cover with arthritically curled hands.
And so Bodie sat on the flowered couch, knees up, book balanced on them, while she sorted through one of the boxes. He paged through, feeling nostalgic and sad all at once. Doyle had been such an interesting child: alternately defiant, glowing with happiness, and full of stubborn anger. Just like now, only younger and with an angel’s face, unscarred and full of the promise of youth.
Bodie turned more pages. As Ray grew a little older, you could see the shadows in his eyes. A toughness, a haggard look. As if life were beating him down. As if he couldn’t quite relax, even for a family photo. He’d taken to crossing his arms over his chest and leaning against things in tough, casual poses. Taken to slicking his hair back like a young hoodlum.
Ah, school days. ‘Whoever got nostalgic for being a child obviously hadn’t been one.’ That was a quote from somewhere, wasn’t it? Bodie remembered all too well those days, thrown in with a bunch of other youngsters who didn’t want to be there, and had no more moral sense than a pack of gangsters. Dear little angel-faced Doyle may have gotten tough to keep from being picked on. Or perhaps he had been one of the bullies...
Doyle? No, not Doyle. Bodie wouldn’t believe that.
But then, he didn’t want to believe that Doyle could’ve threatened and intimidated anyone, either.
“Ah, here it is.” Ray’s mother drew out a faded folder and opened it, brushing away a bit of errant dust. “I never could bring myself to throw it away. He had such a way with words, you know, for a child.” She handed it over proudly, smiling, obviously waiting for Bodie to be impressed. He found himself looking down at yellowed lined paper: school essays.
Doyle’s handwriting was rounded and larger, juvenile, but otherwise much like his own today. Bodie read, feeling the cobwebs of time drift around him:
What I want for Christmas
What I would like for Christmas is for everyone in the world to get along and stop hurting each other. Since that is not likely to happen, I would like a paint set and a toy train. That is out of the question as my parents can’t afford a train, so I will settle for a paint set and I will watch the trains go by downtown with my mates.
Ray Doyle
It was marked with a grade “C” and the notes “Too short!” at the bottom in red letters. Stubborn old Ray. He was probably glad to take the lower grade. He wouldn’t pad the essay, if he didn’t have more to say...
Bodie closed the cover quickly, before he could read any more. He rose. “Thank you, ma’am. And George Cowley thanks you, too.”
Her face creased in a wide smile as she rose. He held out a hand automatically to help her, and her light, bird-like hand rested on his arm while she pulled herself to her feet.
“I’m glad to be of help, Mr Bodie. I feel as though I know you already, you know. And perhaps Cowley will give my Ray some time off soon, so he can visit?”
Bodie stood there, a lump in his throat. He meant to say, ‘Yes, it’s quite likely he’ll have time off—and a great deal of it, too.’ Or some polite lie...tell her something. But his larynx seemed stuck, and he stood there like a lump.
Then Murph was there. “We’ll tell him. Come along, Bodie. Don’t want to keep the old man waiting.”
“Would you like some cream cake to take with you?” she inquired.
“No thank you. It was lovely, though. Thank you.”
The small talk continued, but Bodie barely heard it above the buzzing in his ears.
Doyle’s odd ‘q’ had been even more pronounced when he was a child, apparently...
#
The man in the wheelchair had gone to seed. He’d always been big. He was two years older than Doyle, and had been large for his age as a teenager. Now he looked like a footballer gone to seed, heavy and with receding hair. He sat slumped in his wheelchair. To be honest, he still looked mean.
Doyle picked up a paper. “One London Times, please.” Ian wouldn’t recognise his voice, surely. It hadn’t finished changing, back then.
Ian Brown looked up. He stared at Doyle’s face, and seemed to be paying special attention to his ruined cheekbone. Suddenly his thick face spread in a broad grin. “Doyle.”
Doyle’s mouth fell open and he stared out at the man in his wheelchair—his one-time nemesis. Ian wore a malevolent grin.
“You figured it out, finally?”
“Figured...” Doyle’s mouth felt dry. He closed it with effort. “Figured what out?” he demanded.
A pudgy finger rose and pointed at Doyle’s cheek. Ian nodded, his grin growing wider, revealing a cracked tooth. Doyle recognised that cracked tooth. Ian had had it since he was a lad.
That smile brought everything back, more than Doyle wanted to remember. The mocking, teasing, and bullying. And, finally, the culmination when Ian had pulled a knife on him.
What was Doyle feeling bad for? He’d defended himself! Ian was the one who started it—the one who’d have left Doyle a lot worse off than Doyle had left him, if he could.
Doyle had never meant for any of it to happen. But Ian had attacked, and he’d attacked right back. The surge of terror had mixed with white-hot fury, and he only knew he wasn’t going to take it anymore. And maybe, if things had gone a little differently, one of them would have killed the other. They were lucky to both be alive.
“What did I figure out?” snapped Doyle. His thoughts ranged back to CI5. “The—the notebook?”
“What notebook? Your face!” A triumphant gesture to Doyle’s scarred face.
And then he knew. “You were behind...that attack?”
Ian nodded, looking pleased with himself. “I know you shut up my mum and me at the time, but times change. I came into some cash—and some friends—who didn’t mind a bit knifing a copper.” His mouth twisted viciously. “But try and prove it.”
Doyle became aware his hands were balled into fists at his sides. A red mist seemed to be in front of his eyes. It all came flooding back. The attack out of nowhere. Totally random, for all they ever discovered. They never discovered by whom or why.
The doctors had stitched his broken body back together, and he’d recovered and gone back to his job, his muscles tightening involuntarily every time he passed a dark alley for the next six months.
He swallowed convulsively. He would not, he would not take this man’s head off. Enemy or no. Doyle worked for CI5, and this man was in a wheelchair.
Ian’s face was smug. He jerked his chin at Doyle. “Go on, try it. I guarantee you’ll be the sorry one this time, boyo. Lots of witnesses. Great big copper like you, hitting a crippled man? Go on, I dare ya.” His voice was a husky mockery, his face a twisted look of anger, pain, and—weariness.
Doyle’s anger retreated enough that he could deal with it. He swallowed hard several times. He wanted to say something—to show that he wasn’t afraid of this man who’d done so much to ruin his life. But he had nothing. When he most needed it, he had nothing.
He turned and walked away.
He walked blindly back to his car, got in, and drove off. He drove in circles till he got himself together, and then headed for his parents’ home. Still ought to see them....
On the way, he realised: Ian still thought he was a policeman. He couldn’t have been involved in a scheme to discredit Doyle as a CI5 man.
And those pages in the reporter’s notebook certainly hadn’t been faked, or Ian wouldn’t have still believed that Doyle had scared off him and his mum...
When he finally got there, he still wasn’t ready to face his parents. He parked half a mile away from home, and walked the rest of the way. He needed time to clear his head.
It was raining by now, but he didn’t care. Raining somehow fit with everything—the whole horrible mood of this nightmare. Getting suspended, finding out about Ian, finding out about getting knifed (all for revenge wasn’t it?), and still no closer to finding out who had really threatened and covered up for Doyle.
He walked in the rain, thinking hard, trying to clear his head. It started pouring down as he approached, really pouring, and he sprinted up to the house.
He stood on the doorstep and knocked, wiping rain from his face, feeling bedraggled and wretched. Inside, he could hear voices. He knocked again, more insistently.
Dad’s voice. “Can’t believe you gave them—”
“But I didn’t know! How was I to know?” Mum’s voice.
He knocked harder. “Mum! Dad! Let me in! It’s Ray!”
The shouting stopped. The door was opened, and he went in, to the warm and reassuringly familiar home, escaping the rain.
#
Cowley accepted the note from Bodie, and frowned at it, reading it carefully. He looked perplexed, as though he was trying to remember something. Then he handed it back to Bodie. “See the boffins get it, and the samples of Doyle’s schoolwork, right away. I have to check something...”
He retreated to his office, frowning thoughtfully.
#
Doyle sat with his feet up on the bottom rung of a kitchen chair, hands wrapped around a mug of tea. His mum’s tea. He drank it, the warmth restoring his shattered nerves as much as his mum’s pleasant chatter and scolding about getting wet.
Dad, after looking at his face and greeting him gruffly, had retreated into the next room and left Mum to fuss over him. She fetched him some cake, and more tea, and a towel for his hair, and took his jacket to hang up to dry.
Finally, she sat down beside him, and patted his thigh. “Ray, dear, your friend came by.”
“My what?” He raised his head, blinking, and stopping pinching cake crumbs off his plate.
“Your friend, Bodie. And someone else—Marlow? I forget his name. They seemed like nice young men. But they wanted something. They wanted some of your old schoolwork.”
Old schoolwork? Why would they want that? Unless they’d found an old note threatening the Browns...
“And your mother gave it to them.” Dad stood in the kitchen doorway, frowning at Doyle darkly. “She gave it to them.”
He turned and walked into the other room.
Doyle watched him go—the set of his shoulders, the anger there—and Doyle realised something. A quiet accumulation of facts, impressions, a policeman’s instinct gathering steam with this one final tilt of his father’s sturdy shoulders.
He rose slowly from his chair, tea and cake forgotten. “Dad. You didn’t—”
“Didn’t what?” His father whirled on him, scowling. “Try to cover up a childish mistake you made, so it wouldn’t ruin your stupid young life?”
Doyle swallowed hard. “I was. Stupid, and young. But you shouldn’t have threatened... How did you make the police reports disappear?” He stared at his father’s face, the aged lines there, the stress and anger and frustration.
Dad gave a snort of disgust. “Gerry, of course.”
“Uncle Gerry.” He thought back to the man who used to lift him up in the air when he was a little lad, the man who’d worked for the police force before ending up as private security when Doyle was in his teens. Kind, bluff Gerry had been one of the reasons Doyle wanted to be a policeman. “He was still with the force then?”
Dad gave a short nod of his head. “He helped me get rid of the evidence. We couldn’t have you— We couldn’t let that gangster ruin your life.”
“You never said anything. You knew all along?”
“Of course I did. Saw the bloody clothes, didn’t I?”
“Bloody clothes?” asked Mum, sounding bewildered and frightened.
Doyle put a hand to his head, and sighed. He’d never told her, of course he hadn’t.
He turned to her slowly, and tried to pin a smile on his face. “Looks like we both have something to tell you, Mum.”
#
Cowley walked around his desk and faced Bodie and Murphy. “The handwriting is indeed similar, Bodie. But it’s not Doyle’s hand. It does, however, match another handwriting sample I happened to have in Doyle’s file. His father’s. The man wrote a letter to his boss once. It was in his file. I thought I recognised the handwriting when I saw the note you brought in, and the experts confirmed it: the note is old, and it was written by Doyle’s father.”
Bodie realised he was gaping, and shut his mouth. “What will happen to him, sir?”
“I suppose it depends on the justice system. Will they want to prosecute something so old?”
“Suppose we have to tell them, sir? About Doyle, too?” asked Bodie without much hope.
“I suppose we do, Bodie.” Cowley looked almost as discouraged and grim as Bodie felt. “Do you think Doyle would have it any other way?”
“For his father, sir...”
Cowley looked at him.
Bodie felt himself sagging. “They can’t—they can’t prosecute after all this time. He was a kid. And even his dad. One brick through a window...” His voice trailed off.
CI5’s enemies would make a meal of this, one way or another—even if Doyle and his father got no more than a slap on the wrist, or a suspended sentence. And stupid Ian Brown would get away with nothing!
“I’ll be the one to tell him, Bodie. You can go home if you wish.”
Bodie’s shoulders sank as he turned away. He might as well get some rest while he could. Soon enough, he’d be run ragged... breaking in a new partner.
Bloody hell, but he didn’t want a new partner! He wanted the competitive, funny, tough, shirty, contrary, athletic, aggressive Ray Doyle back!
He almost ran into said competitive, funny, etc. Ray Doyle, who walked into the room at the same time Bodie started to exit it. Bodie blinked and drew back.
Ray barely seemed to notice him. His face was all thunder and he seemed preoccupied, as though thinking hard.
“Sir—” began Doyle.
“Ray,” said Bodie, sympathetic and warning all at once. Laying it on the line with Cowley wouldn’t help, not now. Ray needed to calm down. Cowley wouldn’t abandon him, even if worse came to worse. Bodie was certain of it.
“Not now, Bodie! I have to tell you something.” He walked forward and faced Cowley, scowling. Bodie tried to take his arm, to dissuade him from confrontation. Doyle shook him off irritably. “It was my dad! He did it. He and a friend. They covered up, and threatened the Browns if they didn’t drop it and move away.” His voice cracked a little at the end. He took a deep breath. “And Ian—he was the one responsible for—for my broken cheek. He got some friends—he—it was revenge, not a random attack, sir.”
Bodie moved so he could see Doyle’s face, and gaped at him. “He did that to you? From a wheelchair?”
“He wasn’t in one then, and he got some blokes to do it. Knew I was a cop, and...”
Bodie grinned from ear to ear. “Bloody hell, but that was rotten of him, mate! Still, and all, he won’t want to press any charges now, will he? Knife fight when you’re both lads is hardly worse than waylaying a copper in the street!”
Doyle looked confused and frustrated. “But you don’t understand. My dad—”
“Bodie’s right,” Cowley interrupted. (Bodie grinned.) “For once,” added Cowley, giving him a quelling look. “Doyle, we already knew about your father. It does seem likely, however, that the Browns won’t wish to press charges, if they have skeletons in their own closet...” He was smiling a little, Bodie was certain of it.
Doyle looked bewildered and lost. “You don’t understand. I can’t prove it, any of it, about him and—and this.” He pointed self-consciously to his broken cheekbone. “He only confessed it to me now. The investigation never got anywhere.”
“It will now, though, won’t it? We know where to start looking,” said Cowley. “And this is CI5, not a few overworked detectives.”
Doyle frowned at him. “It was ages ago. You’ll never—”
“Then the note will disappear,” said Bodie.
Cowley cast him a look—that was not completely disapproving. Bodie caught Doyle’s arm in a tight grip and smiled into his face. “It’ll be all right, Ray!”
“It’s all a cockup. The whole thing,” growled Doyle, shifting away from him.
“Yes, indeed,” said Cowley. “But it just might be water under the bridge. I’ll have a few words, as necessary. Oh, and Doyle, you’re back on duty for now...”
“Thank you sir,” said Doyle soberly. “I’ll try not to disappoint.” He accepted his gun and ID back, sombre and serious, and put them away like they were precious things.
He and Bodie left Cowley’s office together. Cowley was already reaching for the phone.
Bodie nudged Doyle with his shoulder. “Buy you a drink, mate,” he said smiling affectionately at his partner.
Doyle hesitated. “Yeah, all right. Drink sounds good.”
Sitting hunched over it a few minutes later, broodily staring at the table, Doyle shook his head again. “I still can’t figure it. Dad never said anything to me. If he knew all that time, why wouldn’t he say something?”
“You and your dad talked a lot, did you?”
“No, I—we barely exchanged three words a week, when I was that age. He tried to keep me in line, but—I was a handful, I admit.” He ran a hand back through his curls.
“You still are, sunshine.” Bodie smiled cheekily.
Doyle cast him a faintly amused look, his mouth tilting up just slightly at the edges.
“You were still his son, weren’t you? He probably knew you were being bullied, couldn’t stop it, and wasn’t going to see you wreck your life when you finally fought back...”
“That’s rather what he said,” mumbled Doyle. “But my own dad, a criminal...” He shook his head. “I can hardly believe it.”
Bodie shrugged. “Hardly the next big gangster, is he? Just trying to protect his son.” He shrugged and raised his pint to drink.
“It’s hardly a ‘just,’ Bodie.”
“Wouldn’t have minded if my dad had stuck up for me like that. Might not have had to run away when I was fourteen.”
“Oh?” That got Doyle’s attention quickly enough. He set his glass down. “And just what did you do, at fourteen?”
Bodie reached over, and scrubbed his partner’s curls. “Never you mind, sunshine.”
Title: In A Reporter's Notebook
Author: Allie
Slash or Gen: Gen
Archive at ProsLib/Circuit: No
Disclaimer: Pros is not mine! :)
anna060957. :)~7500 words
In A Reporter’s Notebook
by Allie
Sean Leonard peered around and then headed purposefully up the steps to the CI5, a notebook tucked under his arm.
“Can I speak with George Cowley, please?” he asked, leaning earnestly across the desk to speak with the security guard.
The guard regarded him, taking in Sean’s appearance carefully. “May I ask what about?”
Sean adjusted his glasses. “I have something of utmost importance to tell him about one of his agents!”
“And you… know the name of this agent?” The guard was still watching him dubiously. Sean knew his meagre appearance and his inability to look stylish, and his hair’s inability to stay how he combed it, all combined to make him look a bit of a mooncalf sometimes. This look, that made some people not take him seriously and allowed him to do a good job as a reporter (even if he was still quite young and upcoming), could make things harder at times, as well. Such as when he needed to be taken seriously.
He took a second to calm his automatic protesting reaction. “Raymond Doyle,” he said carefully. “I can spell it for you if you like.”
#
Cowley adjusted his glasses and peered at the youthful-looking reporter who faced him looking serious and concerned.
“I found it in an old reporter’s notebook. We were friends. He was my mentor. His wife gave me his things when he died, the things he’d kept. She said some of his notebooks contained secrets—things that couldn’t be published. I didn’t like to think there was anything like that, not for old John Grey. But when I went through some of his things, I found this.”
He held out a battered notebook, and Cowley took it.
“The pages that have yellow bookmarks,” Sean Leonard suggested.
Cowley flipped through the battered and aged pages. He adjusted his glasses, and blinked. He turned some of the pages faster, others more slowly. There were only a half dozen in all.
At last he looked up, his expression grave. “I’ll have to confiscate this, you know.”
Leonard nodded. “I thought as much. But you need to know what kind of agent you hired.”
“Yes,” said Cowley.
#
“Sir, I don’t understand.” Doyle stood at attention. The perplexity on his face looked entirely sincere.
“Did you or did you not get into a knife fight when you were fourteen?” Cowley wasn’t sitting down for this interview. And Bodie wasn’t present.
Doyle’s face flushed. “Yes sir.”
“And you were never prosecuted.”
“No sir.”
“Do you care to tell me why?”
“Because—I was never caught. I’d never have been allowed to join the police force later, if anyone had known. I got in a lot of trouble when I was a lad, sir. It’s in my file...”
“Not this. Did you start the fight?”
“No sir.”
“But you won it, is that right?”
“Yes.” Doyle’s face was flushing with anger, now, and he ground out the word, abandoning the ‘sir’ in protest to this grilling. “You knew my record, sir. I thought you knew about that...”
“What I didn’t know is that you had it covered up.” Cowley stopped walking around Doyle and threw the reporter’s notebook on his desk. “Take a look through there. Your... friends... didn’t do nearly as thorough a job as you might have wished.”
Doyle, looking confused and exasperated, moved forward and paged through the marked spots. “But—but I don’t understand,” he said after a moment, looking up. The anger had left his face, and most of the blood. “I never—”
“What? Knew you’d injured him permanently? Knew that the police report had been filed by his mother—and then mysteriously disappeared? Just what is it that you didn’t know, Doyle? Answer me!”
Doyle gulped convulsively, and forced out the words. “None of it, sir.”
“You just thought it disappeared on its own.”
“Yeah. I mean, yes sir, I did.” He looked at Cowley, and his eyes looked as shocked as if he really was learning this for the first time. “I mean—I ran home. I washed up, threw away my bloody clothes and told my mum I’d lost them. I didn’t—hear anything about it. I kept thinking the coppers would come for me. But they didn’t. Ian Brown didn’t come to school the next day, and I heard he’d been in an accident, nothing too bad but he couldn’t come to school. Soon afterwards his family moved away. I thought—I’d got lucky. I started straightening up after that, didn’t think I’d be so lucky next time—that I’d be the one knifed, or I’d be in big trouble. I guess it scared me into better behaviour.”
“Indeed,” said Cowley. “A laudable outcome—for you. But not for the lad you injured. He is apparently still disabled. He worked for several years in his early twenties, but another injury—according to the doctors, exacerbated by his earlier injury—put him into a wheelchair for the rest of his life.”
Cowley glared at Doyle. “And you had no notion of it.” He put a bit of scorn into his voice, seeking to make Doyle betray himself.
Doyle shook his head, his curls bouncing, adamant. “I didn’t.” He looked sick. “I don’t know who could have...”
Cowley stared at his agent for a long time, weighing up the enigma of Raymond Doyle. The man was a good actor undercover, but Cowley didn’t think he was good enough to fake this. Nor, indeed, that a fourteen year old boy could’ve orchestrated a cover-up so thoroughly, disposing of a police report and frightening a family into keeping quiet and moving away.
But someone had. Someone who didn’t want Doyle to get in trouble. And that ‘someone’ might still be involved in his life, either waiting to use this information as blackmail—or perhaps already having done so, to find out sensitive information.
Doyle had risen up the ranks as a police officer quickly and easily. For a long time, he’d seemed able to do no wrong and everyone had a good word for him. But this discovery jeopardised all of that—called it all into question. Who knew what other strings had been pulled in his background, in the past? Or even in the present.
“That is what we’re going to find out,” said Cowley. “You’re suspended until we get to the bottom of this, Doyle.” He saw the disappointment in his agent’s eyes, and in the sag of his shoulders. But this had to be played aboveboard, and having Doyle in the mix at this point would not be helpful. “Leave your gun and ID, and go home. Send Bodie in on your way out.”
He waited impassively. Doyle complied, radiating tension and indignant anger, and the confusion that had been his constant companion since he’d seen the file. Cowley felt much the same way, but it was important to keep things under control, especially emotions.
Now he prepared himself to face Bodie’s reactions.
#
“He what, sir? I don’t believe that.” He put the notebook down after only glancing at the marked pages. “This is Doyle we’re talking about, sir. The reporter must have faked it.”
“If he had, it’s your job to find out. And find out why.” He stabbed a finger in Bodie’s direction. “Take Murphy with you. Everything—and I mean everything—aboveboard, do you hear me? This is Doyle’s whole career we’re talking about, and I’ll not have you gum up the investigative works by playing fast and loose.”
Bodie’s lips compressed angrily. “Yes sir.” As if I would, his shoulders seemed to say. As if I would when it’s Doyle’s reputation at stake!
#
“We’ll look close to home first.”
“Or else close to Brown’s home.” Murphy watched Bodie.
Bodie looked so very grim. His face was tight and there hadn’t been a joke from him since he’d left Cowley’s office, walking with a chip on his shoulders and an obvious sense of purpose in his steps.
Cowley had shown Murphy the notebook as well, and he’d read through the pages in question with a growing sense of unreality. Murphy couldn’t believe Doyle had been so rough and rowdy as a child. That part, however, apparently wasn’t in question!
So, Doyle the star policeman had a rough past. Well, he wouldn’t be the first, surely. Murphy was accustoming himself to the idea that, dangerous as Doyle sometimes looked and acted, he’d been even more dangerous as a kid.
But a cover-up? That wasn’t Doyle’s style. That wasn’t Doyle, period. Murphy had had no difficulty whatsoever in agreeing adamantly with Bodie that Doyle was innocent.
That had seemed to mollify Bodie a bit. He and Murphy were even brainstorming together now, ready to investigate and, hopefully, disprove these accusations against Doyle.
“That’s not what I meant,” said Bodie, compressing his lips. He looked so weary already, though the investigation had barely begun. “I meant we have to talk to Doyle first.”
#
Bodie’s face was tight as he leaned over the table. “Names. I need names, Doyle.”
He was interrogating Doyle.
Bodie. Interrogating. Doyle.
Everything felt wrong. The fact he was sitting here facing Bodie in the regular interrogation table, on opposite sides, was hard enough. But now Bodie was pressing harder, acting grimmer and less like Doyle’s partner.
“I gave you all I remember!” snapped Doyle.
He and Bodie glared at one another for several long, tense moments.
Murphy, leaned against the doorway, shifted uneasily. Doyle saw him from the corner of his eye. Doyle jumped up suddenly, so quickly his chair fell over. That they should have to behave like this, and then have Murphy watch, as well....
Maybe Murphy would be Bodie’s partner, after Doyle was thrown out of CI5.
Bloody hell! How was he supposed to know who’d covered up? He’d thought Ian recovered fully. Think he didn’t feel awful enough knowing he’d damaged someone for life and all?
He glared down at Bodie. “Why don’t you do some proper investigative work instead of going after me on a witch hunt, Bodie? Or did your new partner insist?”
He glared at Bodie, his lip curling in disgust and fury
Bodie rose slowly, his powerful shoulders—his whole body—looking extremely tense. His large eyes were very, very dark, and his face held no emotion at all.
“I said we had to interrogate you first—get the lay of the land, so we’d know who to talk to. And I’ve never stopped trusting you.” His gaze pierced Doyle’s soul.
Doyle swallowed hard. He felt like he was choking. Bloody hell, now he was pushing away Bodie... He braced his muscles against the desire for flight, for action—for fighting.
“I’ve told you all I know,” he repeated.
Bodie’s gaze locked with his own, and then he gave a nod, and picked up the papers from the table. “Good enough for me. C’mon, Murphy.” The two men strode from the room, Bodie still holding himself tightly and tensely, though he walked with a rolling, easy gait.
When they left the room, Murphy glanced back, but Bodie didn’t.
Doyle stared after them with a sinking feeling. He’d alienated the one person who he’d thought would always be on his side. And he very much wanted to sink his fist through a wall—or into someone.
But that violent streak was what had got him into trouble in the first place, wasn’t it? He’d always been a bad egg. Even in an outlet like CI5, a place where the rules were flexible, and his partner was an ex-merc and what-have-you, he, Raymond Bloody Doyle, was the bad egg. Still. Always...
#
Murphy shifted uncomfortably in the car.
He and Bodie had decided that first of all, they had to talk to the victim and his mother. They might know who had intimidated them, if they could be convinced to tell. Surely enough time had passed by now? They had moved since the accident, but Murphy and Bodie tracked them down, and began the long drive out to see Ian Brown’s mother.
Murphy said he didn’t mind driving, but Bodie just looked at him. Bodie drove. Fast, and obviously preoccupied.
He didn’t talk much, and Murphy soon let silence reign in the car. Bodie wasn’t normally one to brood, but Murphy could tell the conflict with his partner wasn’t sitting well with the ex-SAS man.
It seemed like a longer trip than it was, with Bodie like that.
#
Doyle finished packing his bag and regarded his flat morosely. Then he switched off the lights and left. He slung his bag over his shoulder and wondered again what the outcome of the investigation would be. He hoped he’d be reinstated and that Cowley would say none of it was his fault.
Even though of course, part of it was his fault. If he hadn’t got into that fight—
The thing was, no one had even known about it. He’d kept it so quiet, hurrying home, discarding his bloody clothes and staying close to the house till he was sure he wasn’t going to be jumped by some friends of the injured lad....
He knew one thing. He couldn’t bear to sit in his flat and try to read, brooding about what Bodie was discovering, and throwing books against the wall in frustration. He hadn’t been home in a while, and he felt the need to see his parents. That, or curl into a hole in the ground and pull the dirt in over him.
He most of all wanted to be out there with Bodie discovering the truth. But if he couldn’t, then he’d go home, pay the visit he’d been due to make months ago, if his leave hadn’t kept being cancelled. And he told himself that’s all this was: leave.
The drive down was long and lonely without an annoying partner in the car to tease him, get teased by him, and bicker and banter with. No one to argue about what to play on the radio, or where and when to eat. No one to trade off driving with, and jolt him out of his sour, brooding mood with random remarks and dirty jokes.
He would miss Bodie most of all, if...
No ‘if.’ Ray was coming back to CI5. In no time, he’d be complaining about the pay, the hours, the erratic days off, and his boss and his partner yet again. That would be the good life.
#
Ian Brown’s mother, Ann Brown, was nearing her 70s, but she looked older, having lost her teeth years earlier. Her hair was thinning, and it was obvious life had not been kind to her.
Bodie, who had been the one to check her file, knew several things about her that she might have considered less than flattering, and intended to use none of them in their interview. Mrs Brown was a bit like a much lower-grade and less successful Marge Harper—without the class. Marge had fenced stolen goods and been involved in a network of illegal information. She’d even said that one of her many husbands wanted her to become a prostitute, but she hadn’t.
Though Mrs Brown looked conventional enough now (if a bit heavy on the makeup), Bodie wouldn’t have bet against her having been a lot less successful in her illegal endeavours earlier in life, and having done a few stints as a prostitute. But the only time she’d been charged there hadn’t been enough evidence for conviction so she’d got off, and after that had been more circumspect or else quit. Her record wasn’t long, and mostly consisted of petty thefts.
Bodie and Murphy tried to go about it carefully, bringing up the subject of her son and the investigation. Her eyes went hard and angry, and she mentioned “That tearaway, Raymond Doyle,” with enough wrath that Bodie would not have liked to leave her alone with his partner, little old lady or not.
“He’ll come to no good,” she said as if having said it many times in the past. “Probably serving a life sentence by now. He hurt my Ian badly. He was in hospital for a month!”
As she recounted this, Bodie realised she didn’t know his partner had become a copper. Apparently she hadn’t kept track of Doyle at all. Well, he had moved around a lot. At any rate, unless she was a far better actress than Bodie gave her credit for, she couldn’t be the one behind the reporter’s notebook. If it was a setup, she wasn’t behind any of the details of it.
They listened for a while more but learned nothing of value. Even though her son had been a rogue from his youth, drinking and getting into fights before he was twelve and never listening to her, she seemed more proud of him than ashamed. Everything was Doyle’s fault: even the work-related injury received in his early twenties was Doyle’s fault. He’d fallen while loading boxes and hurt his back. If it hadn’t been for him being weakened by Raymond’s vicious attack, he’d never have been hurt.
“Did you ever talk to any reporters about this, Mrs Brown? Trying to get justice for your son?”
Her pale eyes glittered. “Did I!? But nothing came of it, same as the police report. And then the threats started...” She lowered her voice, still angry and indignant but also obviously enjoying the attention.
“Threats, Mrs Brown?” asked Bodie with his best wide-eyed Boy Scout look, prompt and ready to help.
“Threats, Mr Bodie.” She gave him an arch look. “A window broken by a brick through it. If I didn’t leave off, there would be worse. The note hinted darkly that someone knew more about my past than I would like, and would tell the police certain... details.” Her face twisted in remembered rage. “Lies, all lies!”
Bodie ignored that, and didn’t mention the fact that it wouldn’t have worked if there hadn’t been something in it. “Do you have any idea who made these threats?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I do! Raymond Doyle! The vicious little monster.”
“Did you save the note? Did it match his handwriting?”
“I’m not sure if he could write, the dirty little ape. And yes, I saved the paper. I never gave it to any of the reporters who I talked to, either. I suppose it can’t hurt, after all this time, and because you’re CI5...”
She rose with effort, and went to sort through cupboards. The two men exchanged looks. Murphy looked... worried. As if he thought they could actually get a match against Doyle’s handwriting!
#
Sitting in the car, Bodie read the note yet again, holding it carefully. The paper was old, fragile. It would be easy to lose or destroy it... quite by accident.
The handwriting looked large and clumsy, as an angry schoolboy might write it. The Q in ‘quit’ had a distinctive turn to its tail. A turn that Bodie had previously teased Doyle about in his own handwriting.
He was very silent in the car, and let Murphy drive this time.
“Get some samples of his writing at that age,” was all Cowley had said, when they reported in to him. But he’d spoken in a very grim voice.
Suddenly, Bodie leaned forward and shoved the paper into the glove compartment, before he could lose his nerve and let the paper flutter away out the open window. Because that paper was the only thing that could prove Doyle innocent. If he lost it, there would always be a doubt.
And Doyle WAS innocent.
#
Doyle wondered at the recalcitrant turn of his car. He’d meant to drive to his parents’ place, he knew he had. And yet somehow, he was driving instead to the home of one Ian Brown.
He’d got a good look at the paper Cowley had. He didn’t know if Cowley had let him see it on purpose—or rather, why he would have done such a thing. The old man always had a plan, and it was not for mere mortals to outguess him. He could double, triple, and quadruple out-think anyone.
Perhaps Cowley wanted him to come here and investigate on his own. Doyle allowed himself to be convinced and drove on.
#
Bodie knocked at the door feeling like a schoolboy come to confess something he’d done instead of a grown man who worked for CI5 and George Cowley.
The door cracked open and a bent, older woman peered out at him from behind thick glasses. Bodie was struck by the similarities in her features to Doyle’s pugnacious-angel face. She was a woman, and far older, and yet he saw something of Doyle in her, in the shape of cheekbones, the expressive quality of her face. It made him give her a big smile.
He’d never met Doyle’s mum before. He thought he would like her. Whether she would like him was another matter altogether.
“Yes? Who is it?” She squinted up at him. Smile lost on her, then. He let it fade, overtaken again by the grim dread of his purpose.
He held up his badge. “CI5, Mrs Doyle. We have a few questions for you.”
#
Doyle sat in his parked car and watched. So far a number of people had stopped by and left the little newspaper stand that Ian Brown ran. One of them had not been Doyle. He couldn’t even get up his nerve to leave the car.
He remembered Ian as a spotty-faced rascal, terrifying and infuriating to a young Ray Doyle. Ian had insisted on mocking him, and one day, had tried to gut him with a stiletto.
And Doyle, who had practiced with his own knife many times, trying to contain the fear and conquer his nerves, had fought back and won. He remembered leaving Ian, a much bigger boy, lying in an alley bleeding. Doyle had run as fast as his terrified young legs could carry him. Probably never run faster in his life.
Once round a corner, he’d called from a phone box for an ambulance. He remembered his hands shaking and the sick feeling in his stomach. Adrenaline had still coursed through him, telling him he had to fight or run.
He’d tried to deepen his voice, so no one could say later that a kid had made the call. But his voice cracked a little. He gave the barest details—location, boy wounded in a knife fight—and then hung up the phone. He’d wiped it quickly with his sleeve, in case of fingerprints or blood. And then he’d run.
He ran all the way home, and he hadn’t seen Ian Brown’s face since.
Finally, he forced himself to open the door and swung his legs out. Legs that still worked, because he wasn’t wheelchair bound.
Though it could’ve happened any time; he’d been in enough close scrapes to have lost more than the ability to walk. He was thankful for his luck, his speed, and Bodie by his side, which had so far kept him alive and whole. At least, whole on the outside; he sometimes wondered what it did to a man on the inside, to work for CI5 for too long.
But today was not a day for thoughts like that. Today was the day to face the man he’d nearly killed when he was a lad.
#
“Don’t you work with my son?” Mrs Doyle had a nice smile. She seemed interested in Bodie and Murphy. She included both of them in her warm smile, while offering them cream cake.
Bodie almost couldn’t choke any down, good as it tasted. (Would be a wonder if Doyle wasn’t fat as a house when he was a lad, with a mother who cooked like this.)
Bodie’s mouth was full; all he could do was mumble, trying not to spray crumbs, and feeling far less than competent in this role—interrogating Ray’s mother.
“That’s correct,” said Murph, who had somehow managed to keep his mouth clear of food, but still taken and eaten some politely. He proceeded to ask her about any papers from Doyle’s school years.
“I’ll get them,” she said, immediately, rising. “Though why CI5 needs such things...”
“It’s a routine matter,” lied Murphy easily. “We like to have as many records as possible. I’m sure Ray has told you about how thorough Mr Cowley is.”
Bodie cast Murphy a glance, halfway grateful for his quick cover and halfway concerned that he could lie so effectively. Had he lied often to Bodie? You’d never know, would you?
“It still sounds foolish to me,” said the elderly woman. “But finish the cake. It will take some time, you know. I have to move some boxes....”
Bodie jumped up, swallowing down the last of his mouthful quickly. “I’ll help you.”
“Lovely.” She moved into another room with firm purpose.
Bodie followed. He glanced around at the room that seemed to exude charm and age. The decor was at least two decades old, and seemed peaceful. It was difficult to imagine Doyle here on a sleepy afternoon, talking to his mum and eating cream cakes. Would he be restless here? Or lean against the walls? Or refuse to eat sweets? He could be such a prickly sod. But surely he wouldn’t be to his own mum.
They hadn’t seen Mr Doyle yet and hadn’t asked. He was glad enough Mrs Doyle was going along with things so easily, though that pricked Bodie with guilt. He moved boxes for her from the spare room, and helped her sort through.
She pulled out a photo album, with a nostalgic smile. “Here, you’ll see him in a school play, if you go to about the middle.” She tapped the cover with arthritically curled hands.
And so Bodie sat on the flowered couch, knees up, book balanced on them, while she sorted through one of the boxes. He paged through, feeling nostalgic and sad all at once. Doyle had been such an interesting child: alternately defiant, glowing with happiness, and full of stubborn anger. Just like now, only younger and with an angel’s face, unscarred and full of the promise of youth.
Bodie turned more pages. As Ray grew a little older, you could see the shadows in his eyes. A toughness, a haggard look. As if life were beating him down. As if he couldn’t quite relax, even for a family photo. He’d taken to crossing his arms over his chest and leaning against things in tough, casual poses. Taken to slicking his hair back like a young hoodlum.
Ah, school days. ‘Whoever got nostalgic for being a child obviously hadn’t been one.’ That was a quote from somewhere, wasn’t it? Bodie remembered all too well those days, thrown in with a bunch of other youngsters who didn’t want to be there, and had no more moral sense than a pack of gangsters. Dear little angel-faced Doyle may have gotten tough to keep from being picked on. Or perhaps he had been one of the bullies...
Doyle? No, not Doyle. Bodie wouldn’t believe that.
But then, he didn’t want to believe that Doyle could’ve threatened and intimidated anyone, either.
“Ah, here it is.” Ray’s mother drew out a faded folder and opened it, brushing away a bit of errant dust. “I never could bring myself to throw it away. He had such a way with words, you know, for a child.” She handed it over proudly, smiling, obviously waiting for Bodie to be impressed. He found himself looking down at yellowed lined paper: school essays.
Doyle’s handwriting was rounded and larger, juvenile, but otherwise much like his own today. Bodie read, feeling the cobwebs of time drift around him:
What I want for Christmas
What I would like for Christmas is for everyone in the world to get along and stop hurting each other. Since that is not likely to happen, I would like a paint set and a toy train. That is out of the question as my parents can’t afford a train, so I will settle for a paint set and I will watch the trains go by downtown with my mates.
Ray Doyle
It was marked with a grade “C” and the notes “Too short!” at the bottom in red letters. Stubborn old Ray. He was probably glad to take the lower grade. He wouldn’t pad the essay, if he didn’t have more to say...
Bodie closed the cover quickly, before he could read any more. He rose. “Thank you, ma’am. And George Cowley thanks you, too.”
Her face creased in a wide smile as she rose. He held out a hand automatically to help her, and her light, bird-like hand rested on his arm while she pulled herself to her feet.
“I’m glad to be of help, Mr Bodie. I feel as though I know you already, you know. And perhaps Cowley will give my Ray some time off soon, so he can visit?”
Bodie stood there, a lump in his throat. He meant to say, ‘Yes, it’s quite likely he’ll have time off—and a great deal of it, too.’ Or some polite lie...tell her something. But his larynx seemed stuck, and he stood there like a lump.
Then Murph was there. “We’ll tell him. Come along, Bodie. Don’t want to keep the old man waiting.”
“Would you like some cream cake to take with you?” she inquired.
“No thank you. It was lovely, though. Thank you.”
The small talk continued, but Bodie barely heard it above the buzzing in his ears.
Doyle’s odd ‘q’ had been even more pronounced when he was a child, apparently...
#
The man in the wheelchair had gone to seed. He’d always been big. He was two years older than Doyle, and had been large for his age as a teenager. Now he looked like a footballer gone to seed, heavy and with receding hair. He sat slumped in his wheelchair. To be honest, he still looked mean.
Doyle picked up a paper. “One London Times, please.” Ian wouldn’t recognise his voice, surely. It hadn’t finished changing, back then.
Ian Brown looked up. He stared at Doyle’s face, and seemed to be paying special attention to his ruined cheekbone. Suddenly his thick face spread in a broad grin. “Doyle.”
Doyle’s mouth fell open and he stared out at the man in his wheelchair—his one-time nemesis. Ian wore a malevolent grin.
“You figured it out, finally?”
“Figured...” Doyle’s mouth felt dry. He closed it with effort. “Figured what out?” he demanded.
A pudgy finger rose and pointed at Doyle’s cheek. Ian nodded, his grin growing wider, revealing a cracked tooth. Doyle recognised that cracked tooth. Ian had had it since he was a lad.
That smile brought everything back, more than Doyle wanted to remember. The mocking, teasing, and bullying. And, finally, the culmination when Ian had pulled a knife on him.
What was Doyle feeling bad for? He’d defended himself! Ian was the one who started it—the one who’d have left Doyle a lot worse off than Doyle had left him, if he could.
Doyle had never meant for any of it to happen. But Ian had attacked, and he’d attacked right back. The surge of terror had mixed with white-hot fury, and he only knew he wasn’t going to take it anymore. And maybe, if things had gone a little differently, one of them would have killed the other. They were lucky to both be alive.
“What did I figure out?” snapped Doyle. His thoughts ranged back to CI5. “The—the notebook?”
“What notebook? Your face!” A triumphant gesture to Doyle’s scarred face.
And then he knew. “You were behind...that attack?”
Ian nodded, looking pleased with himself. “I know you shut up my mum and me at the time, but times change. I came into some cash—and some friends—who didn’t mind a bit knifing a copper.” His mouth twisted viciously. “But try and prove it.”
Doyle became aware his hands were balled into fists at his sides. A red mist seemed to be in front of his eyes. It all came flooding back. The attack out of nowhere. Totally random, for all they ever discovered. They never discovered by whom or why.
The doctors had stitched his broken body back together, and he’d recovered and gone back to his job, his muscles tightening involuntarily every time he passed a dark alley for the next six months.
He swallowed convulsively. He would not, he would not take this man’s head off. Enemy or no. Doyle worked for CI5, and this man was in a wheelchair.
Ian’s face was smug. He jerked his chin at Doyle. “Go on, try it. I guarantee you’ll be the sorry one this time, boyo. Lots of witnesses. Great big copper like you, hitting a crippled man? Go on, I dare ya.” His voice was a husky mockery, his face a twisted look of anger, pain, and—weariness.
Doyle’s anger retreated enough that he could deal with it. He swallowed hard several times. He wanted to say something—to show that he wasn’t afraid of this man who’d done so much to ruin his life. But he had nothing. When he most needed it, he had nothing.
He turned and walked away.
He walked blindly back to his car, got in, and drove off. He drove in circles till he got himself together, and then headed for his parents’ home. Still ought to see them....
On the way, he realised: Ian still thought he was a policeman. He couldn’t have been involved in a scheme to discredit Doyle as a CI5 man.
And those pages in the reporter’s notebook certainly hadn’t been faked, or Ian wouldn’t have still believed that Doyle had scared off him and his mum...
When he finally got there, he still wasn’t ready to face his parents. He parked half a mile away from home, and walked the rest of the way. He needed time to clear his head.
It was raining by now, but he didn’t care. Raining somehow fit with everything—the whole horrible mood of this nightmare. Getting suspended, finding out about Ian, finding out about getting knifed (all for revenge wasn’t it?), and still no closer to finding out who had really threatened and covered up for Doyle.
He walked in the rain, thinking hard, trying to clear his head. It started pouring down as he approached, really pouring, and he sprinted up to the house.
He stood on the doorstep and knocked, wiping rain from his face, feeling bedraggled and wretched. Inside, he could hear voices. He knocked again, more insistently.
Dad’s voice. “Can’t believe you gave them—”
“But I didn’t know! How was I to know?” Mum’s voice.
He knocked harder. “Mum! Dad! Let me in! It’s Ray!”
The shouting stopped. The door was opened, and he went in, to the warm and reassuringly familiar home, escaping the rain.
#
Cowley accepted the note from Bodie, and frowned at it, reading it carefully. He looked perplexed, as though he was trying to remember something. Then he handed it back to Bodie. “See the boffins get it, and the samples of Doyle’s schoolwork, right away. I have to check something...”
He retreated to his office, frowning thoughtfully.
#
Doyle sat with his feet up on the bottom rung of a kitchen chair, hands wrapped around a mug of tea. His mum’s tea. He drank it, the warmth restoring his shattered nerves as much as his mum’s pleasant chatter and scolding about getting wet.
Dad, after looking at his face and greeting him gruffly, had retreated into the next room and left Mum to fuss over him. She fetched him some cake, and more tea, and a towel for his hair, and took his jacket to hang up to dry.
Finally, she sat down beside him, and patted his thigh. “Ray, dear, your friend came by.”
“My what?” He raised his head, blinking, and stopping pinching cake crumbs off his plate.
“Your friend, Bodie. And someone else—Marlow? I forget his name. They seemed like nice young men. But they wanted something. They wanted some of your old schoolwork.”
Old schoolwork? Why would they want that? Unless they’d found an old note threatening the Browns...
“And your mother gave it to them.” Dad stood in the kitchen doorway, frowning at Doyle darkly. “She gave it to them.”
He turned and walked into the other room.
Doyle watched him go—the set of his shoulders, the anger there—and Doyle realised something. A quiet accumulation of facts, impressions, a policeman’s instinct gathering steam with this one final tilt of his father’s sturdy shoulders.
He rose slowly from his chair, tea and cake forgotten. “Dad. You didn’t—”
“Didn’t what?” His father whirled on him, scowling. “Try to cover up a childish mistake you made, so it wouldn’t ruin your stupid young life?”
Doyle swallowed hard. “I was. Stupid, and young. But you shouldn’t have threatened... How did you make the police reports disappear?” He stared at his father’s face, the aged lines there, the stress and anger and frustration.
Dad gave a snort of disgust. “Gerry, of course.”
“Uncle Gerry.” He thought back to the man who used to lift him up in the air when he was a little lad, the man who’d worked for the police force before ending up as private security when Doyle was in his teens. Kind, bluff Gerry had been one of the reasons Doyle wanted to be a policeman. “He was still with the force then?”
Dad gave a short nod of his head. “He helped me get rid of the evidence. We couldn’t have you— We couldn’t let that gangster ruin your life.”
“You never said anything. You knew all along?”
“Of course I did. Saw the bloody clothes, didn’t I?”
“Bloody clothes?” asked Mum, sounding bewildered and frightened.
Doyle put a hand to his head, and sighed. He’d never told her, of course he hadn’t.
He turned to her slowly, and tried to pin a smile on his face. “Looks like we both have something to tell you, Mum.”
#
Cowley walked around his desk and faced Bodie and Murphy. “The handwriting is indeed similar, Bodie. But it’s not Doyle’s hand. It does, however, match another handwriting sample I happened to have in Doyle’s file. His father’s. The man wrote a letter to his boss once. It was in his file. I thought I recognised the handwriting when I saw the note you brought in, and the experts confirmed it: the note is old, and it was written by Doyle’s father.”
Bodie realised he was gaping, and shut his mouth. “What will happen to him, sir?”
“I suppose it depends on the justice system. Will they want to prosecute something so old?”
“Suppose we have to tell them, sir? About Doyle, too?” asked Bodie without much hope.
“I suppose we do, Bodie.” Cowley looked almost as discouraged and grim as Bodie felt. “Do you think Doyle would have it any other way?”
“For his father, sir...”
Cowley looked at him.
Bodie felt himself sagging. “They can’t—they can’t prosecute after all this time. He was a kid. And even his dad. One brick through a window...” His voice trailed off.
CI5’s enemies would make a meal of this, one way or another—even if Doyle and his father got no more than a slap on the wrist, or a suspended sentence. And stupid Ian Brown would get away with nothing!
“I’ll be the one to tell him, Bodie. You can go home if you wish.”
Bodie’s shoulders sank as he turned away. He might as well get some rest while he could. Soon enough, he’d be run ragged... breaking in a new partner.
Bloody hell, but he didn’t want a new partner! He wanted the competitive, funny, tough, shirty, contrary, athletic, aggressive Ray Doyle back!
He almost ran into said competitive, funny, etc. Ray Doyle, who walked into the room at the same time Bodie started to exit it. Bodie blinked and drew back.
Ray barely seemed to notice him. His face was all thunder and he seemed preoccupied, as though thinking hard.
“Sir—” began Doyle.
“Ray,” said Bodie, sympathetic and warning all at once. Laying it on the line with Cowley wouldn’t help, not now. Ray needed to calm down. Cowley wouldn’t abandon him, even if worse came to worse. Bodie was certain of it.
“Not now, Bodie! I have to tell you something.” He walked forward and faced Cowley, scowling. Bodie tried to take his arm, to dissuade him from confrontation. Doyle shook him off irritably. “It was my dad! He did it. He and a friend. They covered up, and threatened the Browns if they didn’t drop it and move away.” His voice cracked a little at the end. He took a deep breath. “And Ian—he was the one responsible for—for my broken cheek. He got some friends—he—it was revenge, not a random attack, sir.”
Bodie moved so he could see Doyle’s face, and gaped at him. “He did that to you? From a wheelchair?”
“He wasn’t in one then, and he got some blokes to do it. Knew I was a cop, and...”
Bodie grinned from ear to ear. “Bloody hell, but that was rotten of him, mate! Still, and all, he won’t want to press any charges now, will he? Knife fight when you’re both lads is hardly worse than waylaying a copper in the street!”
Doyle looked confused and frustrated. “But you don’t understand. My dad—”
“Bodie’s right,” Cowley interrupted. (Bodie grinned.) “For once,” added Cowley, giving him a quelling look. “Doyle, we already knew about your father. It does seem likely, however, that the Browns won’t wish to press charges, if they have skeletons in their own closet...” He was smiling a little, Bodie was certain of it.
Doyle looked bewildered and lost. “You don’t understand. I can’t prove it, any of it, about him and—and this.” He pointed self-consciously to his broken cheekbone. “He only confessed it to me now. The investigation never got anywhere.”
“It will now, though, won’t it? We know where to start looking,” said Cowley. “And this is CI5, not a few overworked detectives.”
Doyle frowned at him. “It was ages ago. You’ll never—”
“Then the note will disappear,” said Bodie.
Cowley cast him a look—that was not completely disapproving. Bodie caught Doyle’s arm in a tight grip and smiled into his face. “It’ll be all right, Ray!”
“It’s all a cockup. The whole thing,” growled Doyle, shifting away from him.
“Yes, indeed,” said Cowley. “But it just might be water under the bridge. I’ll have a few words, as necessary. Oh, and Doyle, you’re back on duty for now...”
“Thank you sir,” said Doyle soberly. “I’ll try not to disappoint.” He accepted his gun and ID back, sombre and serious, and put them away like they were precious things.
He and Bodie left Cowley’s office together. Cowley was already reaching for the phone.
Bodie nudged Doyle with his shoulder. “Buy you a drink, mate,” he said smiling affectionately at his partner.
Doyle hesitated. “Yeah, all right. Drink sounds good.”
Sitting hunched over it a few minutes later, broodily staring at the table, Doyle shook his head again. “I still can’t figure it. Dad never said anything to me. If he knew all that time, why wouldn’t he say something?”
“You and your dad talked a lot, did you?”
“No, I—we barely exchanged three words a week, when I was that age. He tried to keep me in line, but—I was a handful, I admit.” He ran a hand back through his curls.
“You still are, sunshine.” Bodie smiled cheekily.
Doyle cast him a faintly amused look, his mouth tilting up just slightly at the edges.
“You were still his son, weren’t you? He probably knew you were being bullied, couldn’t stop it, and wasn’t going to see you wreck your life when you finally fought back...”
“That’s rather what he said,” mumbled Doyle. “But my own dad, a criminal...” He shook his head. “I can hardly believe it.”
Bodie shrugged. “Hardly the next big gangster, is he? Just trying to protect his son.” He shrugged and raised his pint to drink.
“It’s hardly a ‘just,’ Bodie.”
“Wouldn’t have minded if my dad had stuck up for me like that. Might not have had to run away when I was fourteen.”
“Oh?” That got Doyle’s attention quickly enough. He set his glass down. “And just what did you do, at fourteen?”
Bodie reached over, and scrubbed his partner’s curls. “Never you mind, sunshine.”
Title: In A Reporter's Notebook
Author: Allie
Slash or Gen: Gen
Archive at ProsLib/Circuit: No
Disclaimer: Pros is not mine! :)
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I loved Bodie being all serious and grim throughout the investigation. It's all fun, until it's about someone who means so much to him.
Brilliantly done!
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