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It's just after six and James is smoking his third fag of the day, his coat pulled tight around his thin frame to ward off the cold that still manages to creep through four layers of cloth. The fog hasn't lifted yet and the old Gothic buildings of Oxford are still mostly hidden behind a milky white curtain.
Back in seminary, before, as he likes to think, they all used to get up at first light. There were morning prayers to attend, running to do, last minute assignments to finish; he can translate Latin with a comfortable ease now, though the words often flummoxed him before; they never were where they were supposed to and never quite meant what they said.
James stretches his aching neck. He enjoys sleeping, these days. He catches a nap whenever he can, goes to bed early, has a lie-in on Sunday; it almost feels like sloth, but he rebels against that feeling of guilt. He still believes, yes, but he does not believe that he owes God anything, not any more, not even his guilt.
A car door slams shut and James flinches, the movement making his head and neck throb painfully. It's Wednesday, the middle of a so far quiet week, and he has no reason to feel like he does, drained and tired and empty, his head already hurting when he was woken at the crack of dawn by his mobile ringing.
He takes a last drag of his cigarette, then grinds the stub out under his heel and tries to ignore the blood smeared along the door frame behind him.
A little down the street, just in front of the police tape, Lewis gets out of his car, his tie askew. It's a tiny detail, but that's all James seems to see these days, all the tiny details that make up Robert Lewis. How he takes his coffee, how he straightens his files, how he holds doors open for James, how there is a tiny spot just under his jaw that he misses when shaving, how his tie is always slightly crooked. James wants to reach out and straighten the almost daringly purple piece of cloth, probably the latest gift from Lyn, but he doesn't. He never does. Instead he kicks the stub of his cigarette closer to the curb and stuffs his hands into his coat pockets.
Lewis doesn't say good morning, or ask about the case. Instead he hands over the paper cup in his hands, steam curling like vines from the small opening in the white plastic lid.
"You look like you need it more than me, lad," Lewis say, his face crinkling slightly with a barely suppressed smile when James lifts his eyebrows and cocks his head in silent question.
"That bad?" James asks.
He wraps his hand around the cup that feels warmer than it should simply because it has been in Lewis' hands. The coffee is hot and too sweet; where James likes his coffee black, Lewis likes his sugar with a bit of coffee. It burns James' tongue and tastes better than any coffee he buys himself. The gesture, as much as the coffee, warms James better than any coat could.
Lewis moves up the raggedy staircase to their crime scene, where SOCO and Dr Hobson are already at work, in front of him. His coat moves with every step he takes and James, two steps behind him, smells the tiniest hints of Indian takeaway and a scent that is uniquely Lewis, half aftershave and half laundry detergent – one that James has never managed to find.
Laura looks up from where she is crouched over the body of a middle-aged man wearing a bathrobe, when she hears them step up behind her. Her crime scene suit crinkles as she straightens up.
"Hit over the head repeatedly with a heavy object," she says and points to a corner of the small, draughty room where a still full bottle of Jack Daniels is lying, bloody and with hair and bits of skin stuck to its thick bottom.
"The first blow knocked him out and he hit his head on the table on his way down. That was most likely enough to kill him, but whoever did this didn't stop. There was some serious anger involved, here."
Her gloved hands gently moves the dead man's to the side so Lewis and James can see the damage done to his skull.
"I would put time of death around two hours ago."
"And a very good morning to you too, doctor," Lewis says and grins, moving to kneel down beside her.
"I don't know about you, Robbie, but I can think of better things to do at six in the morning than wade through someone else's brain matter."
James leaves the two to their well-rehearsed bickering to take a look around the rest of their crime scene.
The flat is a one-bedroom hole with a barely-there kitchenette that's half buried under dirty takeaway containers and pizza boxes. The bathroom doesn't a have a window and a lonely, naked light bulb dangles from the ceiling, flickering in and out. James doesn't step inside.
There is a last door that can be bolted from the outside just next to the bathroom. It can't be more than a cupboard, judging by the size of the door. The metal of the bolt seems well-used and James slides it open easily.
The space inside is almost completely taken up by a li-lo, barely as long as James' legs. A thin blanket with green and blue rocket ships is folded neatly on top. Cartoon characters, Peppa Pig and an assortment of superheroes that look as if they were cut out from cereal boxes, are taped to the walls, a small stack of small clothes in the corner.
When James was seven years old, his mother left with an American actor she had met at Crevecoeur where he had been shooting. She packed her bags and left, and James woke up to a world where he didn't have a mother. His room turned into a shrine to past happiness, old pictures of his mother stuck to the walls; his father didn't set foot in James' room until James moved out.
"Do we know where the child is?" James asks, stepping back from the doorway, back from the smell of dust and mould, back from his own dusty and rarely looked at memories.
"Child?"
Lewis looks over from where is poking through the slanting stack of unopened mail. Some of James' emotions must show on his face, because he abandons the post and steps around the body to James. James feels a hand on his elbow for a bare moment, silent support that James hadn't even realized he needed, before Lewis leans around him to look into the cupboard.
"This child," Lewis says, almost to himself, and then turns to shout for one of the constables.
When they step back out of the house and onto the street an hour later, the air that seemed chilly not an hour ago now suddenly feels balmy on James' skin. He tips his head back and just breathes.
For a moment, he imagines he can see his father walk away from him and, for a moment, James almost follows.
They stand in front of the whiteboard, shoulders touching, while they construct their case from photographs and marker notes.
Lewis is writing down details about their victim and the timeline they have worked out so far in black marker, placing pieces of information under the pictures James has already pinned up.
Despite having worked with him for almost five years, James still has trouble reading Lewis' reports before he types them up, but, for some reason, his handwriting improves profoundly when he is writing on the board.
MATTHEW RILEY he prints down neatly, 38.
James is holding an exercise book, that has the name Benjamin on the inside of the cover in slightly wobbly, but otherwise uniform letters. Year 3, it says underneath.
It's not much, what they have so far. An approximate time of death, a murder weapon and a missing child.
It is almost impossible, SOCO told them, to determine whether or not there was a fight. Their victim didn't have any defensive wounds, but the flat was in such a sorry state that they were unable to determine whether any additional mess had been created by an altercation.
James has just put down Benjamin's work book, when Innocent walks up to them.
"What do we know so far?"
"Not much, ma'am," Lewis starts and gives her the sparse facts they do have.
"Has the son been found yet?"
"No, ma'am," James says, "We sent a patrol to his school, but he never turned up there today."
"Is there any indication that he was kidnapped?"
Lewis and James share a look.
Lewis answers hesitantly, "No indication of that either, ma'am."
"No – Lewis, what aren't you telling me?"
"SOCO found bloody fingerprints on the bottle of Jack Daniels, our murder weapon."
James gestures to one of the pictures on the board: a close-up of said murder weapon, lying on it's side on a dirty and bloodstained carpet, small, almost delicate fingerprints, red with blood, visible on the bottleneck.
"The lab is comparing them with fingerprints found on Benjamin's school things," James continues.
"Are we assuming that the child murdered his own father?" Innocent asks, her brows drawn together in a frown.
"We're following every other possible lead, ma'am," Lewis assures her. "We've questioned neighbours and colleagues and asked about enemies or people with a grudge against Mr Riley, but nothing so far."
"Do you at least know whether this was self-defence?"
"According to Doctor Hobson, the victim's knuckles were bruised, like he had been in a fight. We don't know if Riley was in a brawl or prone to bouts of violence against his son. Without further evidence or Benjamin himself, we can't say anything for sure yet," James says.
Innocent nods her approval at their work so far and then waves them on. "Keep at it, the both of you. Either way, we need this case solved and the boy found."
"In that order?" James asks, sotto voce.
She looks between James and Lewis.
"You two have become too much alike," she says, and leaves without answering James' question.
"I think I'm flattered, sir," James says, once Innocent is safely out of earshot.
They manage to cobble together Matthew Riley's last night with the help of neighbours' statements and CCTV footage.
There are no cameras close to his home, but Julie finds him two streets over, already visibly unsteady on his feet, as he makes his wobbly way to a dingy little pub called Sheep's Head. According to the owner, a portly man in his sixties who handles his dish towel like a garotte, Riley had six pints, feel asleep at his table, was woken and shown out the door around half three. It takes him an hour to make his short way home and he turns the corner toward his house and into their blind spot at close to half four.
By the time they have looked at all the available CCTV footage, the lab has gotten back to them. The fingerprints on the murder weapon belong to Benjamin. The technician on the phone assures Lewis that there is no doubt or error, they have run the prints twice already to make sure.
Lewis thanks her and ends the call. He runs a weary hand down his face.
"Pint?" he asks James, who, at three in the afternoon, also looks like he is ready for this day to be over; or maybe like he wished it had never begun in the first place. This look of quiet despair and obvious tiredness is one he has been seeing on the lad's face much too often lately; James, in Robbie Lewis' humble opinion, and bugger everyone who might think otherwise, is much too young to look like he has gone through a war and come out the other side only barely in one piece.
James looks up from the files he was pushing around his desk and nods. He follows Lewis out the door, one step behind him.
Their usual pub is mostly empty. The lunch rush is over and the evening crowd won't come in for a couple of hours yet. Lewis takes James' order and shoos him to an empty table with the barest of smiles on his face; it's enough to warms James, though, just when he was beginning to think that today would be a day where he just can't get warm. He watches Lewis hand over a note and wave away his change, then deftly handle his wallet and their two glasses. He moves between the tables, never once bumping into any corners or chair legs. James looks at Lewis and wonders if he used to dance, when he was a younger man; if he would still dance, with the right partner.
James ale is put down in front of him with only the smallest of sounds when glass meets wood and Lewis sits down in the free chair next to him. It's a new development. His governor used to sit across from him, always, but lately he sits by James's side. Lewis lifts his own glass in salute and takes a large sip. The bit of foam on his top lip is promptly licked off and James quickly turns to his own drink, taking a swig himself. His cheeks feel traitorously warm and, not for the first time, he curses his pale complexion.
They sit side by side for a few minutes, silence between them that doesn't need to be filled although James wouldn't mind hearing Lewis speak. It might get him out of his head, where memories he hoped he had forgotten, or at least buried deep enough for them to never surface again, are chasing each other around the picture of a man with a deep gouge in his head and the school picture of a small, shy boy – ‘He's a slip of a girly boy’, his father used to tell his mother. ‘He needs to toughen up.’
"I don't want to find him," James finally admits softly and his father's voice falls silent. He's not looking at Lewis but staring into the froth of his ale.
"James –" Lewis starts but then doesn't follow up with anything.
It's never a good sign when he starts with James' name. What follows is always either a reprimand or an insight James would rather do without. He doesn't mind that Lewis can read him so much better than anyone else. But there are things about himself that he's trying hard to forget about and Lewis has an almost careless way of dragging them out, right into the open, laying bare his weaknesses, as if he wasn't aware of them.
Lewis takes a deep breath and James braces himself, like he is waiting for a punch.
"We're coppers, lad," he says, his voice slightly gruff but gentle at the same time and James wants to cry for some reason. It was never violence that broke him, never harsh words; it was always gentleness. "When someone commits a crime, we catch them."
"Is this justice then? Arresting a child because his father is –" he stops himself, takes a draught of his Guinness.
"James. We're not going to toss him into prison."
"If we find him, he is going to be a criminal for the rest of his life."
"He needs help."
"He already helped himself." It comes out harsher than James intended, and more honest. For a moment he is afraid he has given away something, shown too much, but then Lewis' mobile rings and his governor takes his too keen eyes off him.
"Lewis." He listens. "We’ll be right there."
The mobile goes back into his jacket pocket.
"We found the boy."
He gets up and walks out without looking at James again. The alcohol suddenly feels like a weight in his stomach, sloshing around. He wishes he had gone with orange juice.
At the station, Julie is waiting for them and leads them to one of the family rooms, a slightly more homey version of an interview room, with a small, red and blue table in the corner with a basket full of scrap paper and pencils next to it. There is more light here than in the interview rooms, but James always feels more out of place and claustrophobic. All the chairs are too small for his frame and the windows in the wall and the door, supposed to make the room seem more open, make him feel like he is a goldfish stuck in a glass bowl.
Benjamin is focused on his drawing, the fifth, all of them variations of bright red, green and blue interlocking shapes. The LSCB worker is typing something on her phone, throwing looks in Benjamin's direction every now and then.
Benjamin is wearing dirty pyjama pants and a jacket that looks like Julie's.
"He was standing outside a supermarket," Julie says and then falls quiet. She looks pained and James wishes he could tell her he shares her vexation.
Lewis puts a hand on her shoulder, just for a moment, never too long, never resembling anything but companionship.
"Good work."
"Thank you, sir."
James does end up feeling like a goldfish once he is squished onto a plastic chair, knees up to his ears; a goldfish out of water, desperately gasping for air. His governor sits down next to him, seemingly perfectly at ease with his legs, which aren't that significantly shorter than James', awkwardly stuck under the table.
The lamp makes an annoying buzzing noise, a very angry mosquito, and the headache that's been building the whole day hits James squarely between the eyes. He closes his eyes, just for a moment, before turning on his chair slightly to be able to look at Lewis and Benjamin both.
"Hello, Benjamin," Lewis says, his voice soft and kind, like the man himself – unless you are one of the criminals of this world or an Oxford don, in which case he won't find the tiniest shred of sympathy for you.
Benjamin stays quiet, but he looks up from the table. His face is pale, his eyes red-rimmed, and there is the shadow of a bruise still on his cheek
"Can you tell us what happened this morning?" Lewis asks and James is glad that he doesn't have to speak. He isn't sure he could.
"You’re not in trouble," Lewis tries again.
It's a lie, but it's a kind lie, James thinks. There are times when he wishes people would still lie to him, be a little kinder in their truths.
"We found your father, Benjamin," James says. Both Lewis and Benjamin turn to look at him. "He's dead."
"We know that he hurt you," James continues, "and we know that you were only defending yourself."
James leans forward and slouches down at the same time, trying to make himself smaller.
"Will you tell me what happened?"
The lamp buzzes and James' head throbbing and the way they sitting means Lewis' thigh is pressed against his own, the warmth of the man's skin seeping into his through two layers of trousers. It feels like it's the only thing that is keeping him from flying apart.
Benjamin's eyes are green and dry. He nods. It's a very adult nod, a nod that says ‘I'm aware of what has happened and I am aware of the consequences and I am not surprised by any of it’. No child should ever look like this, like they are already disillusioned with the world.
"He … he was shouting," he says, his voice and lower lip wobbling. "He always hits me, when he shouts. Mrs Roberts told us you're not supposed to hit people, even when they say something mean and I didn't want him to hit me and I – I didn't want to hit him, because you're not supposed to, but then he was on the floor and I was so scared, because he would be mad and sometimes when he is really mad he locks me in my room." Tears are running down Benjamin's face now, but he keeps talking. "But – but he knows I don't like the dark and I didn't want to be in the dark. And I thought – I thought that sometimes there are spiders in the bathroom and when I hit them a lot they don't get up again."
It all comes pouring out and with every words Benjamin seems to shrink, folding in on himself like he is expecting them to hit him as well, like he is already shielding himself.
When they walk out of the family room, Julie is still waiting for them outside, a silent sentinel.
"We’ve found his aunt," she says, her face drawn. "His mother's sister. She's down near Bristol, but she's coming up to get him. She seems nice." This last remark is addressed to James, who only nods and then turns away to look into the room, where Benjamin is still wiping at his eyes, the LSCB worker sitting next to him but not touching.
Lewis compliments Julie on another job well done and James says something about getting a head start on the paperwork and walks down the hallway without waiting for Lewis.
When he sinks down onto his desk chair and buries his head in his arms, Benjamin's tear-stained face seems to be burned onto the backs of his eyelid: He feels like he is seven again and spending the first Christmas without his mother, like he is nineteen and on the cusp of losing his faith; he feels like he is thirty-eight and about to cry.
But he's a grown man, not a child any more, he's not going to cry, especially not here. Instead he turns to the one constant in every copper's life: paperwork. It won't solve anything, but it’ll at least help keep his mind occupied until he can go home.
He knew there was a reason he despised Wednesdays.
Waiting for Benjamin's aunt, briefing Innocent when she stops in on her way home and finishing their reports so they won't have to come back to it first thing tomorrow, takes until ten. They will have to add the missing SOCO reports, but that can easily be done in the morning.
James saves all his work, prints out one copy and sends the other off to Innocent, before turning his computer off. He stretches until his back pops while he waits for his computer to power down. What he really wants to do is get drunk, but drunk is not a good state for him and he is not going to come into work hungover, so a cigarette, the no-name, half empty bottle of red wine and the leftover Chinese takeaway that's waiting for him at home will have to do.
He looks up after shrugging into his coat to find his governor already at the door, coat on and desk as tidied up as it ever gets.
"Come on, lad."
James follows Lewis out of the station like they are tied together by an invisible thread, lets himself be manoeuvred into the passengers seat and sinks back against the soft leather as Lewis steers the car out of the car park.
Not five minutes ago, he had wanted to be alone, but now the thought of his flat, silent and dark, sends shivers down his spine. He pulls his coat tighter around himself and Lewis, without looking over, turns up the heat.
Nightly Oxford passes in a blur of architectural marvels and weeknight pub goers. Every now and then James can hear classical music or the occasional acoustic indie song through the windows. The music of Oxford, in all its eclectic variety, is one of the reasons why he chose a transfer to Oxford in the first place. Oxford itself, for all its age and withering glory is unapologetically alive.
"Hungry?"
Lewis voice shakes James out of his thoughts. The car is idling at an intersection, red light bright in James' eyes. Food is the last thing currently on his mind, so he only shrugs, which of course means that Lewis stops for takeaway at the Indian place around the corner from his flat.
They walk into Lewis' flat, takeaway bags in James' hands, in silence. James can't quite call it comfortable; in the car the silence grounded him, but now it seems to weigh down on him, a cross on his back.
The takeaway gets distributed evenly between two plates, both men moving around each other easily. Once they each also have a beer, they sink down onto Lewis' sagging couch. They eat mostly in silence which is broken only by the clinking of cutlery on plates, the muted sounds of chewing and the occasional question to pass the left over rice.
And James almost manages to relax.
Fifteen minutes later, plates scraped clean and first beer drunk, Lewis puts his cutlery down and leans forward, arms on his knees.
"Talk to me."
James looks down at his hands, linked as if in prayer, and almost breaks out into hysterical laughter. Forgive me, father, for I have sinned.
"What would you like me to talk about, sir?"
"None of that now, lad."
For just a moment, James is very much tempted to ask ‘None of what now, sir?’ and play the ignorant fool a little longer, to keep with the theme of the day. He looks at his governor, who is still looking at him – and there it is again, plain to see, that kindness – because when Robbie Lewis cares he cares. And James wants to tell him, wants to tell him absolutely everything Lewis wants to know, but not talking has become such an integral part of him he doesn't know how to break this self-impose silence any more.
So he says nothing, only picks at the label on his beer bottle, hoping to be understood without words.
"You – this was personal to you," Lewis says, after a few moments of quiet. It's a statement of fact, not a question, in typical Lewis-fashion hitting the nail on the head almost on the first try. "What you said at the pub …" And there it is: Robert Lewis, DI, piecing together a whole life from almost nothing, "Did your father –"
"My father," James interrupts, suddenly unable to even imagine Lewis actually saying it, "used to get black-out drunk and beat me, lock me in my room for days. When I was nine, he passed out in front of the fireplace and I thought ‘What if’. I thought ‘It wouldn't take more than a little push’. Cases like this make me remember," James continues, desperate suddenly to get it all out. "And they make me wonder how much of him is in me. How much I am like him."
James will never forget how it used to be when his mother was still there, when he would wake up on spring Sundays to her singing while she was doing laundry, when his father would smile at him over the breakfast table, when they would take turns reading goodnight stories to him, Greek myths and German fairy tales and Shakespeare, and always do the voices without prompting.
"You catch monsters for a living, you could never be one."
"How do you know?"James can't help but ask.
"I don't believe in your holy stuff, me, but I believe in you, bonny lad. You never let me down."
"I’ve come awfully close."
It's a night, it seems, for confessions and self-sabotage.
"No, you haven't," Lewis says, his voice so very sure.
It warms him up from the inside better than Indian spices ever could. He used to feel like this whenever he walked into a church, complete and accepted – holy – but hasn't in a long time, not until now. Imperturbable faith, thy name is Robert Lewis.
And there is, really, in this almost sacrosanct moment, nothing else for James to do but lean over to breach the little space that is between them and kiss the other man, this unwavering, brave, kind man. It is the most-repressed reflex James has; it is his original sin, his apple from the tree of knowledge.
And today, when he feels light and good for the first time in years, like he is finally at home in his own skin, when his heart is full of Robert Lewis, he will gladly be tempted.
The kiss, the simplest of its kind, a warm press of lips against lips, a little dry, only the tiniest bit wet, lasts only a couple of seconds. To James it feels like half an eternity and no time at all.
He feels like, in this moment, when he is kissing Robbie Lewis, when they are kissing, James Hathaway finally knows faith again.
James realizes he has closed his eyes when he opens them to the sight of blue-gray eyes, closer than they have ever been, looking at him. This close, he can see every single line on Lewis' face, every single wrinkle that his history has put there, can feel the warmth of the other's breath on his own face. His hand has found its way to his governor's cheek and the skin under his hand feels paper-thin and almost fragile, so unlike the man it belongs to.
For probably the first time since he has picked him up at the airport, back when they were nothing more than strangers, James has trouble reading the look in Lewis' eyes.
"I’m sorry," James says, his voice steady, and scoots back, taking his hand with him, folding them in his lap again, a silent supplication. "I shouldn't have done that."
He expects a gently-worded but clear rejection, a fatherly pat on the shoulder and maybe a ‘Geroff, lad, never mind’, although James isn't sure he is going to hear anything over the sudden crescendo of his heart, which has decided that now is the time to beat its way out of his chest and to freedom.
Instead, Lewis simply looks at him, that inscrutable emotion still in his eyes and a small frown between his brows that he usually only gets when he is this close to solving one of their cases.
"Why not?" Lewis finally asks, in the blunt, no-nonsense way of his.
It is not what James thought he would say and the unexpectedness of the question startles him into being honest. "You shouldn't want what you can't have."
"Ah, lad." There's a bright red flush on Lewis' face, but he carries on – and that, too, is Robert Lewis: embarrassed, sometimes bumbling, always brave. "You have me, James. Don't know what you’d want an old man for, but you have me."
And then Lewis' hands are pulling James' over into his own lap, gentle, like they’re something precious, like James’ is something precious and it hits James then, with his hands, and his self, so carefully cradled in Robbie's capable hands – to Robbie, James is precious.
"Are you for me?" James whispers.
The smile on Lewis' face is more than enough answer.
Thursday dawns bright and clear and the first sunlight finds James Hathaway in only his pants and a too-large, soft-washed t-shirt wrapped around Robbie like an octopus missing a couple of arms. Robbie's left arm, the one that's currently buried under six feet of lanky, fair-haired sergeant, is asleep and tingling like the devil, but James's face, tucked against Robbie's neck, looks more peaceful than Robbie has ever seen it and he’d be damned if he did anything to make the look of utter contentment disappear off his awkward sod's face.
He turns his head to look at the alarm clock on his bedside table, which tells him that it is only 6:45 and they still have time to have a little lie-in. He tightens his hold on James, who grumbles into his neck but doesn't wake up, and closes his eyes, just for a little longer.
Robbie has spend a long time not holding the person he loves most in the world; it almost makes him believe in God that he gets to do it again, now, a second time.