Chapter Text
Henry’s steps echo as he strides down the long, spartan hallway toward the sergeant’s office. The summons had come only minutes ago—the phone ringing on the desk he shares with several other PCs, his sergeant’s plummy tones over the line, an invitation that wasn’t an invitation at all—“Why don’t you come down to my office? There’s something we need to talk about.”
Henry hasn’t had time to contemplate what it could be about, but that doesn’t stop his mind from racing. He’s up to date on all his trainings. His recent arrests have all been moving smoothly through the system. He’s received no official complaints that he’s aware of. He’s been performing to Met standards—well above average, in fact—despite his ongoing recovery from being injured in the line of duty. So why he’s been summoned to the sergeant’s office is a mystery, and Henry doesn’t like mysteries.
No, that’s not right. Henry doesn’t like mysteries that he can’t solve.
He raps lightly on the sergeant’s door and receives a beckon to come in. Sergeant Rupert Bartholomew—not much older than Henry, with dirt brown hair that shines under too much pomade—sits behind a broad desk nearly empty of personal effects. Probably because he’s nearly empty of personality, Henry thinks, before a voice inside his head that’s not his own chides him for it. Sergeant Bartholomew is a fine officer, and it’s not proper to make jokes at his expense.
“Ah, Henry, hello,” Bartholomew says, smiling his broadest, phoniest smile as he gestures for Henry to take the chair opposite him. Bartholomew had come up the ranks fast, a legacy in the service like Henry but, unlike Henry, only too eager to make use of those connections. He’s got a smile for politics and a talent for middle management, which is to say, no talent at all.
Henry sits, not letting his posture relax for a second. “Hello, Sergeant.”
“How’s the shoulder?”
An unexpected inquiry. Perhaps this is no more than a wellness check? Does he have some reason to think Henry’s lying about the state of his injury?
“Still a bit stiff,” Henry answers guardedly. The scar tissue—a starburst below his collarbone marking where he’d been shot by a man dressed as Father Christmas—twinges as if it knows it’s being talked about.
“It can get awfully hairy out there,” Bartholomew says with a moue of sympathy. “I’m surprised you weren’t snapped up sooner for a nice desk job. That’s what I did.”
Henry can’t think of anything that he wants less than a nice desk job, but he certainly can’t say that to Bartholomew. He clears his throat. “I prefer to think my office is out on the street, sir.”
“Indeed, you do,” Bartholomew chuckles, shuffling some papers. “Your arrest record is 400% higher than any other officer.” He says the number like even he, reading it off a report, didn’t believe it, then smiled that fake politics smile again. “Which is why it’s high time that such skills were put to better use. We’re making you Sergeant.”
“I see,” Henry manages, feeling slightly dazed by the news. Sergeant. He hadn’t expected it for another year at least. Hadn’t even applied yet. Yes, he’s done good work, but they didn’t just hand these things out. He wonders what neighbourhood he’ll be assigned, if it’ll make his commute a nightmare, and—
“In Sandford, Gloucestershire,” Bartholomew mumbles.
Henry blinks. “Sorry, in where?”
Bartholomew clears his throat and repeats, more clearly, “In Sandford, Gloucestershire.”
“That’s in the country,” Henry says dumbly.
“Yes, lovely,” Bartholomew says, like that’s a selling point.
For a moment, Henry is struck speechless. There must be some mistake, he wants to say, except it wouldn’t do to suggest the Sergeant made a mistake, as the voice in his head that’s not his helpfully reminds him. Especially when it’s obvious from Bartholomew’s expression that he most definitely did not.
“Isn’t there a Sergeant’s position here in London?” Henry asks.
“No,” Bartholomew answers bluntly.
“Can I remain here as a PC?”
“No.”
“Do I have any choice in this?” Henry can hear the desperation in his own voice, but he can’t quell it.
“No,” Bartholomew repeats, this time a little too smugly. Henry grits his teeth.
“Sergeant, I like living in London.”
“Well, you’ve always wanted to transfer to the country.”
“In 20 years or so, yes,” Henry huffs, then catches himself. “Wait, I don’t remember telling you that.”
“Yes, you did,” Bartholomew says. He lifts the corner of a paper on his desk and looks down at it. “You said, ‘I'd love to settle down in the country sometime, Bea.’”
Henry’s nostrils flare as he holds himself back from snapping. Christ, you have one personal conversation in the station. He says, more calmly than he feels, “I’d like to speak to the Inspector.”
“You can do that, but I can promise you he will tell you exactly the same thing as I have.”
“Be that as it may,” Henry says.
He expects Bartholomew to make a call. To have a moment to pull himself together before facing—
The door to Bartholomew’s office opens and the Inspector walks in. Bartholomew nods. Henry holds back a grimace.
“Hello, Henry.”
“Philip,” Henry says tightly.
“How’s the shoulder?” his brother asks, even though he never once even called Henry after the incident.
“It’s still a bit stiff.” Henry doesn’t know why he entertained the thought that somehow this would be better than Bartholomew. Perhaps he imagined that Philip at least might be honest with him. “Look, what is this about, really?”
“Henry, we’re offering you a wonderful position with a delightful cottage, in a lovely little place that I think has won Village of the Year… I don’t know how many times. It’ll be good for you,” Philip tells him in his most patronising tone of voice.
So much for honesty. Henry takes a deep breath. “I don’t really know what to say.”
“Yes?” Philip suggests.
“Yes, thank you,” Bartholomew puts in.
“No, I’m sorry,” Henry says firmly. “I'm gonna have to—”
“You want to take this higher?” Philip asks, his eyebrows shooting upward. For good reason.
“Yes, yes, I do,” Henry insists.
“You want me to bother the Chief Inspector with this?”
“Yes.”
“You want me to get the Chief Inspector to come all the way down here?” Philip asks again.
“Yes, I do.”
“Okay,” Philip says, tipping his head like it’s Henry’s funeral. Then he turns slightly and calls out, “Gran!”
The door opens again, and everyone stands as the Chief Inspector walks in.
“Hello, Henry,” the voice inside his head says. Except, it’s not the voice inside his head this time, it’s his grandmother, the Chief Inspector. Mary smiles at him without a hint of warmth. “How is your shoulder?”
“Still a bit stiff. Gran, please—” Henry starts.
She cuts him off with the barest jerk of her head. “I know what you’re going to say, but the fact is, you’ve been making us all look bad.”
Of all the things Henry might have expected her to say, that one would have never occurred to him in a thousand years. “I’m sorry?”
“Of course, we all appreciate your efforts,” she continues, “but you’ve been rather letting the side down.”
“It’s all about being a team player, Henry,” Philip puts in condescendingly.
“You can’t be the sheriff of London,” Bartholomew adds.
“If we let you carry on running round town, you’ll continue to be exceptional, and we can’t have that. You’ll put us all out of a job,” Mary tells him, like this should be obvious instead of the maddest thing he’s ever heard.
“With respect, ma’am,” Henry tries, intending absolutely no respect whatsoever, “you can’t just make people disappear.”
Mary smiles viciously at him. “Yes, I can. I’m the Chief Inspector. Now, then. Basil in HR will have the details for you. Off you pop,” she says, gesturing to the door. “There’s a good lad.”
With little other option, Henry leaves the office in a daze, wondering what the hell just happened.
He could quit. Perhaps it’s a sign that he should go back to school. He’s only in this blasted line of work in the first place because of family expectations. But somehow, he can’t bring himself to even consider it. For one, it feels like letting them win. For two, it turns out he actually likes what he does. Not the guns and intimidation, though thankfully there’s not actually much of that day to day. But Henry likes helping people. Making connections in the community. Building relationships and serving those who can’t protect themselves. Standing up for what’s right. He’d had plans for when he moved up the ranks. Working to implementing initiatives and reforms. Which comes back around to: abandoning that just feels like letting them win.
It’s only temporary, he tells himself. He’ll take the Sergeant position in Sandford, and look to apply somewhere more… dynamic after a few months. Somewhere he wouldn’t be under his grandmother’s thumb. Edinburgh, perhaps.
As he gathers his belongings and prepares to leave, he comes around to the realisation that he doesn’t have much to pack, nor many people to tell. The fact of that hits him harder than he expects. He never thought he was lonely here, but that’s only because he never gave himself time to be lonely. Sure, he gets along with everyone at the station—the only people he sees on a regular basis—but does he actually have friends?
Christ, this day just keeps getting more depressing.
Well, there’s one person he definitely needs to tell. He rings Bea’s office and finds out she’s out at a crime scene, so he finishes up at the station and heads out there. After flashing his credentials to the PC on duty, he ducks under the police tape and enters the house, which is crawling with PPE-clad forensics inspectors. Henry squints at each of them in turn, looking for the short one, when Bea pops up in front of him—recognisable mainly by the eyes peeking out between the white hood of her PPE suit and the mask covering the lower part of her face—and waves him back outside.
“What’s up? I’m a little busy,” she says as she tugs her mask down.
Guilt twinges behind his sternum at that, but he shoves it away. “I’ve got news,” he says grimly. “I’ve been transferred.”
“I know,” she says, not unsympathetically. “Philip told me.”
“And you couldn’t give me a little warning?” Henry scoffs.
Bea scrunches up her nose. “Sorry. I thought it would be better if you heard it from them,” she says. “It’s not all bad, is it? You always said you wanted to move to the country.”
Christ, he wasn’t expecting this from her, too. “After I’d met someone and was ready to settle down,” he protests. “As if I have any chance of finding a boyfriend in Sandford.”
“Because that’s going so well for you in London,” Bea returns.
“Ouch, Bea,” Henry pouts.
“Just saying,” she shrugs, unrepentant. “When’s the last time you went on an actual date? Not just picking up someone for a night.”
Henry huffs out a breath and crosses his arms over his chest as he looks back at the house. “I don’t remember. It’s not like I’ve met anyone worth pursuing.”
“Because you’re too focused on your job to even try. It’s only ever about the force with you.”
“We’re actually supposed to call it ‘the service’ now,” Henry points out. “Official vocab guidelines state that ‘force’ is too aggressive.”
Bea rolls her eyes at him. “See? This is what I’m talking about. I think this could be good for you, Henry. Help you slow down a bit. Get away from the stress of all this,” she says, with a vague gesture to London at large, he supposes. “Especially after your injury…”
Henry’s hand moves to his shoulder without his permission, and he digs his thumb into the scar tissue briefly before pulling it away. “I’m perfectly fine.”
“I know. But that’s all you are, isn’t it? Don’t you want to be more than fine?”
“And you honestly think moving to Sandford will help with that,” Henry says sceptically, not bothering to make it into a question.
“I think you don’t know until you try it,” Bea tells him. “Besides, what else are you gonna do?”
“I suppose you’re right,” Henry sighs.
“Of course I am.”
“But not about the point of entry.”
“What?” Bea says, blinking at him in confusion.
Henry points at an attic window with marks around the latch, visible from even where they’re standing. Clearly, no one has noticed because there aren’t any forensics investigators anywhere around it. “That window’s been forced open.”
“Goddammit, Henry,” she swears under her breath, then turns and stomps back inside.
Henry gets two messages from his new Inspector, a man named Shaan Srivastava with a rich, deep voice who certainly doesn’t sound any kind of country bumpkin Henry’s ever met. The first informs him that they’ve got a cottage in town arranged for him. Henry’s spent the last five years in a cramped studio in London, and frankly isn’t sure what he’s going to do with an entire house. He thinks, briefly, that perhaps he’ll finally have space for all the books that are boxed up in storage at his mother’s, then dismisses the idea. He’s not going to be here long enough to move in books.
The second message from Inspector Srivastava comes in not long before Henry’s mobile service becomes extremely dodgy, and informs him that, actually, said cottage isn’t ready.
Fortunately, Sandford’s only inn appears to be entirely vacant when Henry arrives after dark. Unfortunately, the ‘suite’ they give him is even more bleak than Henry’s sad flat—furnished with a sagging mattress, an armchair featuring a spring that pokes directly into the sitter’s lower back, and a telly that was probably a bargain basement buy in the nineties. Henry unpacks his single suitcase into the wardrobe, then lies on the bed staring at the ceiling for approximately ten minutes before he can’t take the silence any longer.
He doesn’t have to open Google Maps to find the pub—it’s no more than a couple hundred meters down the road, across from a cafe, a newsagent, and a Chinese takeaway restaurant. They’re all closed and dark, save the pub, which is the only thing keeping the town from looking uncannily like someplace that’s been deserted in one of those post-apocalyptic zombie films. Even through dingy windows that look like they were last cleaned sometime in the previous century, he can tell that it’s actually surprisingly packed for a Tuesday night, but Henry supposes the residents of Sandford have nothing better to do. Which, he realises bleakly, now includes him.
The inside is much the same as every other pub he’s ever been in—dark wood, low ceilings, dim lights. This one has a hunting rifle hanging above the bar, which Henry frowns at as he settles onto a stool. He’d read a statistic once that there were more guns per capita in the country than the city, which had seemed somewhat obvious to him. After all, there were also a lot more sheep than people out here. Still, he’s never liked guns, and he likes them even less after having been shot.
“Another whiskey, Dottie,” comes a voice to his right, and Henry glances over.
Well, he means to glance. Except, the man standing next to him at the bar is quite possibly the most beautiful person he’s ever seen before, and Henry’s gaze gets stuck on him. In the warm light cast by the wall sconces, his brown skin is nearly glowing, and the shadows are doing an exceptional job at emphasising sharp cheekbones and a jaw that could cut glass. His lips are full and slightly damp, with a little gap between them in the middle that Henry already knows is going to drive him mad. Then there’s the eyelashes, so long they cast a shadow over his cheekbones, and eyes so deep and dark Henry feels pulled into their gravity. And the man isn’t even looking at him.
Henry doesn’t understand how a man like this ends up in a place like Sandford. Doubly so because he seems, based on his accent, to be American.
“Right you are, love,” the older woman behind the bar with bottle blonde hair and dark lipstick, who must be Dottie, replies.
She pulls a bottle of whiskey off the shelf, pours a double into a glass, then pushes it across the bar to the man, who takes it and leaves without once glancing Henry’s way. Henry, on the other hand, turns in his seat to watch him go—Christ, that arse is criminal—completely unable to help himself. Before he can see where the man ends up, however, someone clears their voice behind him.
He turns, sheepishly, to find a man with large glasses and a thick moustache watching him a little too shrewdly. Henry swallows down his apprehensions and puts on his most innocent smile—the last thing he needs are these people deciding they hate him already because he was a little too interested in another man’s arse.
Fortunately, the barman smiles amiably, seemingly willing to overlook Henry’s slip. “What can I get you, sir?”
“Er, can I have a… tonic water, please?” Henry asks. He very much wouldn’t mind a gin and tonic, or a glass of wine, or even a lager, but after everything with Bea he’s never gotten in the habit of drinking alone. Plus, tomorrow’s his first day, and he needs to keep his wits about him.
The barman frowns, but he nods and grabs a glass and fills it with ice before topping it with tonic water and a slice of lime. “Now, you wouldn’t, by any chance, be the new policeman?”
“Police officer, yes,” Henry corrects automatically. “I’m Henry Fox.”
That seems to warm him up a bit. “Thought so. I’m Stu Porter, and this is my wife Dottie,” he says with a nod to Dottie, who smiles at him. “Welcome to Sandford, Sergeant Fox. If you need anything, you let us know, alright?”
“Thank you,” Henry says, then retreats with his tonic water to a small table where he can sit with his back to the wall and take in his surroundings.
He’s not alone for long.
Henry’s just convincing himself that he shouldn’t stare at the gorgeous man, who has taken up a game of pool across the pub, when a Black man with purple hair sets his beer on the table and drops into the chair opposite him, as if Henry’d been expecting him. How Henry missed his presence in this pub says several uncomplimentary things about his ability to be distracted by a beautiful face.
“Did I hear that you’re Henry Fox?” the man asks.
“Yes,” Henry confirms cautiously.
“Sergeant Henry Fox?”
“Are you expecting another Henry Fox here?” Henry asks before he can think better of it. Thankfully, the man just laughs.
“I’m PC Pez Okonjo,” he says, sticking out his hand across the table. “Percy, actually, but if I catch you calling me that I won’t tell you where the good tea’s kept at the station.”
“Noted,” Henry replies as he takes the proffered hand. Pez’s grip is as strong and warm as his smile, and Henry finds grinning despite himself.
“Shaan told us you’d be arriving today. Shame about the cottage,” Pez says, taking a sip of his beer. “So, first impressions of Sandford?”
Henry thinks of the empty streets and rundown inn, and says, “Oh, well, I only just arrived, I couldn’t possibly say.”
“Mm,” Pez hums knowingly into his beer. “A politic answer if I ever heard one. You had a very specific expectation, coming out here, didn’t you? And so far it’s probably living up to it. One high street, a church and a pub.”
Henry huffs a laugh. “You said it, not me.”
“I promise you, Sandford’s more than it seems,” Pez tells him. “There are loads of interesting people here.”
Henry can’t help it—his eyes slide over to where the beautiful man is, Christ, bending over the pool table to take a shot. When Henry looks back, hoping the dim light conceals the heat on his cheeks, he finds Pez grinning at him.
“I see you’ve already noticed our dear Alex,” he says. “He’s still pretty new, like you. Been here less than a year.”
“He’s American.”
Pez hums again. “On some kind of ‘sabbatical’ from his fancy lawyer job, finding inner peace in our lovely, quaint town, or some such. Got himself a cute little cottage just outside of town and everything.”
Behind Pez, Alex walks somewhat unsteadily to the bar and orders another whiskey. At the moment, it seems the only thing he’s intent on finding is the bottom of a bottle.
“So he’s only here temporarily,” Henry says, trying to keep the disappointment out of his voice. The odds that Alex was queer, single, and potentially interested in him were already abysmally low, but knowing this small bright spot in Sandford would soon wink out was disheartening.
But Pez says, “It’s open ended, apparently,” with a shrug and a smirk, like he can read Henry’s thoughts. “Hey, I could use another pint. What are you drinking?”
“Oh, it’s just tonic water,” Henry says.
“You don’t drink?”
“I don’t drink alone.”
Pez grins. “Well, you’re not alone now, are you?”
“I shouldn’t,” Henry demurs. “First day tomorrow. I need to make a good impression.”
“Pshaw. We’re nothing to worry about. You’ll be fine,” Pez says with a dismissive wave of his hand.
Tempting. But Henry shakes his head. “Even so. Nothing for me.”
“Suit yourself,” Pez shrugs.
In Pez’s absence, Henry’s eyes find Alex again, who seems to be now exchanging heated words with one of the other patrons. The man is large in pretty much every dimension—notably taller and broader than Alex, with the kind of a neck that appears to have rejected the concept and instead merged with the slope of his shoulders. He’s accompanied by a smaller, weaselly man, who hovers by his elbow like a remora tagging along on a shark.
“Fuck off, Darren, it’s not up to you,” Alex snaps at the large man.
“For now. Just you wait. Your days are numbered,” the man snarls back. He looms threateningly over Alex, though the latter seems utterly unintimidated by this posturing. Alex has a whiskey in one hand and the cue stick in the other, knuckles going pale as he grips it like he might be considering testing out its effectiveness in pursuits other than pool.
“Should we be worried about that?” Henry asks as Pez takes a seat at his table again.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” Pez says dismissively. “They’re always at each other’s throats. It’ll blow over soon enough.”
Henry doesn’t know if he believes that. There’s something in both their faces, a particular look that someone gets just before violence makes the leap from theoretical to practical. But Pez knows them much better than he does, so he asks instead, “Who are the other two?”
“Big guy is Darren, as you might have guessed,” Pez says. “Local chap, born and raised, furthest he got from Sandford was uni down the road. That’s where he met the other one, Hunter. Another American, if you can believe it. Came for a study abroad trip and turned into one of those obnoxious Anglophiles who starts saying things like, ‘I’ll just pop off to the loo,’ like he wasn’t born in Boston.”
Henry bites back a laugh at that. “Charming,” he says, forcing himself to turn his attention away from the argument. “How did you end up in Sandford, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Why, don’t I seem the country type?” Pez returns slyly. He drums his fingernails on the top of the table, each one painted a different colour.
“Not exactly.”
“I told you, Sandford’s more than it seems. But you’re right, I didn’t grow up here. When I was in uni, my parents decided they didn’t like the chaos of London any longer and moved out here. I thought they’d gone barmy. But when I visited, I found I quite liked it.”
“And you’re not…” Henry hesitates. He already likes Pez, and he’d rather not offend him.
“Bored?” Pez accurately guesses, grinning at him. “Sometimes. But that’s not always a bad thing.”
Henry opens his mouth, about to ask what kind of things Pez does for fun around here, when he’s interrupted by a shout and a crash on the other side of the pub. Far from blowing over, Alex and Darren’s argument has apparently come to blows instead—Henry looks over to find Alex on the floor among an overturned table and shattered glassware, and Darren heading toward him with his hands balled into fists like he’s about to finish the job.
Instinct and ingrained experience take over, and Henry’s on his feet and moving before he even knows what he’s doing. Pez’s half-hearted, “I wouldn’t—” barely registers, because he’s already halfway across the pub and putting himself between Darren and Alex, who is somewhat unsuccessfully struggling to his feet.
“I’d rethink that course of action, if I were you,” Henry warns.
“Just who the fuck do you think you are?” Darren growls. He tries to loom menacingly, though it’s less effective on Henry, who’s about the same height as him. Which is not to say that Darren doesn’t have at least two stone on him, but that’s the thing about guys like Darren—the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Plus, he, like Alex, seems to be extremely drunk, if the liquor wafting on his breath and the glazed look in his eye are anything to go by.
Henry doesn’t waver. “Sergeant Henry Fox. Try something, and you’ll find yourself under arrest.”
Darren laughs at this, like Henry’s told a joke, and looks back at Hunter, who puts in his own loud guffaw. “No, you’re not.”
“I am.”
“Nuh uh.”
Henry cannot believe he’s having this argument with a man whose IQ seems to be in the double digits. “Are you trying to insist that I’m not who I say I am?”
“No, I’m saying you’re not a policeman in Sandford, so you can jog on.”
“Police officer,” Henry corrects. “And I am a member of the Sandford police. I’m new.”
“Oh yeah? When’d you start?” Darren challenges.
“Tomorrow.”
This elicits another derisive laugh. “Well then, how ‘bout you mind your own bloody business tonight, Sergeant Fox.”
“Yeah,” comes an unexpected agreement from behind Henry. Alex is now standing—well, mostly, since he’s also leaning heavily against a wooden column—and glaring daggers at Henry for some reason. “This doesn’t concern you.”
Henry is momentarily flabbergasted. “I beg to differ. I am an officer of the law, and I won’t allow this to turn into some kind of brawl. Especially considering you’re heavily inebriated and half his size.”
That, it turns out, was the wrong thing to say. Alex’s eyes somehow narrow further. “I don’t need protection from some rent-a-Prince-Charming with a saviour complex,” he sneers, looking Henry up and down disdainfully. “Now if you’ll ‘scuse me—”
With that, he makes to push past Henry—to what end, Henry isn’t sure. All he knows is that if he lets Alex at Darren again, someone’s going to walk out of here with a black eye, or worse, and it’s probably going to be Alex. So he grabs Alex by the arm just above the elbow, merely intending to keep Alex and Darren apart, with the nebulous further goal of getting Alex outside and sending him home for the night.
But Alex surprises him. Displaying a stunning degree of dexterity for someone in his state, he twists out of Henry’s grip, stumbles half a step away, then turns back and socks Henry right in the eye.
The pub goes dead still, and the only thing that breaks the silence that follows is Alex’s horrified, “Oh, fuck.”
To his credit, he looks just as shocked at what just happened as Henry feels, but right now Henry doesn’t give a fuck about his remorse. “You and you,” he says, his voice full of deadly calm as he points at Alex and Darren, “are coming with me. I’m taking you both to the station.”
“Hey, I didn’t—” Darren starts, but Henry silences him with a look.
Grabbing both of them by the shoulders, Henry frog marches them out of the pub and onto the street, only to realise he’s missing a vital piece of information.
“Right, er—where is the station?”
The next morning, Henry’s sporting a wicked shiner along with his new sergeant’s uniform when he arrives at the station. Despite the unusual accessory, the desk sergeant barely blinks at the sight, instead just waving him through and telling him Inspector Srivastava would be in shortly. He hadn’t seen much beyond the processing area and the cells last night, the latter of which he stops by on his way to see how Alex and Darren are drying out. Henry might have a black eye, but he doesn’t envy them their hangovers.
Except, there’s no one in the cells. They’re all empty, doors unlocked, and Henry’s mind starts racing. Did something happen? Did they somehow… escape?
He hurries into the main operations room, ready to sound the alarm, only to find Alex sitting on a desk, apparently in a jovial conversation with Pez, who’s smiling up at him. Alex looks surprisingly fresh, wearing a new button down shirt and well-tailored slacks, his curls perfectly styled.
He’s also eating a slice of some kind of white cake. Everyone is, in fact.
“What’s going on here?” Henry demands, drawing everyone’s attention.
Pez gets up, a cautious expression on his face as he extends a hand toward Henry like he’s trying to gentle an agitated animal. “Now, Hazza, don’t get worked up—”
“My name is Henry,” Henry cuts in firmly. “And I’m not worked up. I arrested him last night,” he says, pointing at Alex.
“That you did,” comes a deep, smooth voice from behind him, and Henry turns to see a tall South Asian man with a neat goatee wearing a senior officer’s uniform. He stops in front of Henry and extends his hand. “Sergeant Fox, a pleasure to meet you. Shaan Srivastava. I understand you had quite the welcome last night.”
“You could say that, sir,” Henry says, shaking his hand out of instinctual politeness, despite his continuing bafflement with the situation.
“Please, none of that ‘sir’ nonsense,” Shaan says with a dismissive wave. “Sorry to hear about the eye.”
“It’s not that bad,” Henry says automatically. “Sorry, I’m afraid I’m rather confused. Why is he not locked up? And why is everyone eating cake?”
“Ah, the cake is on Mr Claremont-Diaz,” Shaan says, nodding to Alex. Who has now approached Henry, holding out a piece of cake on a plate with a tentative smile just tugging at one corner of his mouth.
“It’s tres leches,” he says. “My small way of apologising.”
“No, thank you,” Henry says, exasperated. He looks to Shaan again. “Surely cake is not considered an appropriate disciplinary action in Sandford?”
“Certainly not,” Shaan assures him. “But given that this is their first offence, we’ve decided not to pursue the disorderly conduct charges. Both Alex and Darren have received an official rebuke, with a warning that more serious punitive measures will be taken if it happens again. So the only question that remains is whether you intend to press assault charges.”
The station is silent, every one of them waiting to hear Henry’s answer. Perhaps none more than Alex, who meets Henry’s eyes with a level look—unlike his horror last night, or the sheepishness before Henry rejected his cake, Alex’s expression has hardened now. There’s something like defiance in his eyes. Almost like he’s challenging Henry to take a shot at him. Which is frustrating beyond belief, but at the same time, Henry’s stuck here for who knows how long. He doesn’t need a reputation as being difficult, or to make enemies by going after a member of this tight knit community.
Plus, Alex is—well, still the most beautiful man he’s ever seen. Perhaps Henry can manage an olive branch.
“I’m sure it was just a misunderstanding,” he says with a tight smile.
Everyone lets out a collective breath of relief, and Shaan claps Henry on the shoulder and suggests they take a tour of the station. The mood has lightened again, and everyone is smiling and laughing again as they return to their conversations and their cake.
Everyone, Henry cannot help but notice, except Alex.
Life in Sandford is somehow both better and worse than Henry feared. On one hand, the peace and quiet have helped his anxiety a bit, and he doesn’t ever have to worry about if today will be the day he faces down a crackhead with a Kalashnikov. On the other, it often feels like his job is meaningless—in the few weeks he’s been here, his major calls to date have included rebuking a man trimming hedges that weren’t his, collaring a shoplifter in the supermarket, and tracking a missing swan. On one hand, Shaan had assigned Pez as Henry’s partner to help him get acclimated to the community, which has gone a long way to keeping Henry sane; Pez is charming and witty and most of all, he seems to actually enjoy Henry’s company. On the other, that’s not something that can be said for many of the other residents, who seem to share the prevailing opinion that Henry has a London-sized stick up his arse.
No one seems to have quite as dim a view of him as Alex does, though.
It’s absurd, really. If anyone should be holding a grudge about their first encounter, it’s Henry. He’s the one who came away with a black eye. But even though Henry has tried to let bygones be bygones, Alex seems to have nursed his anger over the indignity of being arrested and—even more likely, Henry has to admit—over the slight of his cake-slash-peace offering.
Unfortunately, in a town the size of Sandford, there’s no avoiding encounters with him. At the pub, at the supermarket, at the charity book sale to repair the church roof—every time, Alex slings insults, which never fail to make Henry bristle and become short with him before he can stop himself, which just reinforces Alex’s low opinion of him, and around and around they go. Henry knows Alex can be charming and amiable. Hell, half the town seems to be in love with him, from the old ladies at church to little Claudette Cooper, who’s only ten years old, and Henry can hardly blame them. When Alex smiles, he lights up the entire town like the summer sun.
It’s probably better that he hates Henry, to be honest. Henry doesn’t know if he’d survive the full brunt of that smile.
So Henry’s life in Sandford is fine. Not demonstrably better or worse than his life in London, just different. And just boring enough that he catches himself hoping something interesting might happen.
As a police officer, he should have known better.
One thing that Sandford hasn’t changed is his insomnia—Henry still finds himself staring at the ceiling in the middle of the night, his thoughts too tangled up for his mind to rest. In London, he might have made himself a tea and tried to read, but in Sandford he’s taken to going on walks around the slumbering town. It makes him feel useful, in a way, even though he’s not doing anything.
Tonight is one of those nights where sleep seems destined to evade him even at the start. A thunderstorm has rolled in, which should have been soothing, but he’s feeling more restless than normal, like if he doesn’t get out of this box of a room he might go mad. And so, just after midnight, he shrugs on a trench coat, grabs an umbrella, and shuffles through the dark, empty lobby of the inn and lets himself out through the front door they never bother locking.
At this time of night he might have expected to see a few folks still out and about, seeing as how the pub only just closed, but the steady rain has rendered the streets utterly deserted. It drowns out everything else outside the immediate bubble of his umbrella, blurring the dark, street lamp-lit streets into an impressionist painting and deafening him with the dull hiss of water on the paving stones. There’s something almost meditative about it, and he’s just wondering if perhaps he should invest in one of those machines that will play the sound of rainfall to help you sleep when a sharp, metallic bang, like the lid of a dumpster slamming shut, cuts through the curtain of peace.
Henry stops, everything in his body snapping to high alert. It’s probably nothing, just some other poor soul who couldn’t sleep deciding to tidy up and take out some rubbish, but he feels duty-bound to investigate. Though it’s hard to be sure of its origin because of the rain, the sound had definitely come from his right, possibly from the alley behind the pub. When he rounds the corner, though, the alley is empty.
Well, naturally, no one was going to linger out in the rain after throwing something away. Then again, perhaps it was merely a very large rat making its escape from the bin into the night. ‘Not everything’s a conspiracy, city boy,’ as the others at the station were fond of reminding him.
Henry shakes his head at himself. He should probably go back to the inn before the rain finishes wicking its way up his trousers and he ends up completely soaked. Turning, he heads toward the back lanes behind the high street and passes two other alleys before he sees it: the blurry, dark shape of a person crouched over a lumpy mass on the ground.
Not a mass—even from this distance, he can tell it’s another person, lying supine and unmoving. It’s not clear what the crouching person is doing, but they don’t seem to have noticed Henry’s presence. Henry hesitates for no more than a few seconds, protocol scrolling rapidly through his head: he doesn’t have any kind of weapon on him, nor protective gear. Could the sound he had heard have been a gunshot?
No. He’s certain of that. The potential that he could render aid outweighs the risks.
He approaches quickly but cautiously, his grip tightening around the umbrella handle. As he expected, the thrum of the rain only muffles his approach for so long, and once he’s within a couple of meters, the crouching person looks up at him.
Henry falters mid-step. Even in the dark, he recognises Alex immediately—his dark eyes huge, curls plastered to his face, his clothes soaked and clinging to his skin, and the expression on his face is not anger nor surprise but real, palpable terror.
His hands are covered in something that looks black. Henry’s stomach twists.
“Henry, please,” he calls over the rain, “you gotta help me.”
“What happened?” Henry asks as he closes the remaining distance. He shifts the umbrella over Alex’s head, and cold rain immediately sluices under the collar of his coat and down his back.
There are no lights in the alley and the other person’s face remains hidden in the shadows, but there’s no mistaking the dark stain spreading across his pale shirt. Henry presses a hand to the man’s neck and feels only cold, lifeless skin. No pulse. Shoving a hand in his pocket, Henry pulls out the torch he carries with him but rarely uses and shines it on the dead man’s face. It takes him a second to recognise the square jaw and wide nose, broken more than once in the past, but he does.
It’s Darren.
“I didn’t do it,” Alex says desperately, frantically. “I just found him like this, I swear. I tried to help but—” He gulps. Nothing was going to help this. “You gotta believe me.”
Henry looks back at him, takes in the odd pallor of his skin and the way he’s shaking, not just from the chill of the rain. He’s probably in shock and panicking. Silently, Henry grabs Alex by the arm and stands, then takes off his own coat and puts it around Alex’s shoulders, heedless of the way the rain immediately soaks through his own clothes. It’s honestly the least of his worries, especially when Alex clenches his bloody hands in the front of Henry’s shirt, his long eyelashes clumping together as he blinks through the rain up at him.
“Henry,” Alex pleads, his voice breaking over the second syllable, “please, you gotta—”
“I believe you, Alex,” Henry says. Alex sags against his chest in relief, and somehow Henry ends up with an arm wrapped around him, feeling tremors running through his body. He takes a deep breath and tightens his grip. “I believe you.”