Chapter Text
"You can’t be serious," Bernie’s grip on the back of the chair tightened as she stared, disbelieving, at the personnel file held out towards her.
"You’ve known me long enough now, surely, to know I’m always serious,” John didn’t smirk, but the glint in his eye was warm and he let the arm holding the file drop to his side quickly, knowing Bernie wouldn’t take it. He studied her silently. She was thinner than the last time he had seen her, and there was a new hardness in her dark eyes. She stared at him pleadingly, unusual for the stoic Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection officer.
“With all due respect sir,”
"You’ve been selected by the Security committee. They think you’re the best choice to head up the detail. Their decision is not negotiable."
"It’s a glorified babysitting job that hardly even needs doing," Bernie seethed through clenched teeth. “The ex wife of the new Prime Minister isn’t exactly in anyone’s firing line,”
Joining the PaDP was never in her plan, having spent the better part of her life serving with the Royal Army Surveillance Group, she had intended to spend the rest of it with the 32nd Regiment as well. Then a roadside IED had blown up her convoy, landing her back home - where she hadn’t needed any makeshift land mines to blow up the rest of her life.
So she’d completed the mandatory counselling sessions and her rehabilitation, accepted the medical discharge from the armed forces, and on the recommendation of her old school friend John Taylor, she’d joined the PaDP, spending most of the last year in planes and ships and other countries, protecting diplomats that spent just enough time in the UK to justify homegrown security, but were never there long enough to really put down roots.
Bernie needed a diplomatic assignment; something that would get her out of the country again; away from her poky, bare-bones flat that she couldn’t call home even after the year she’d lived there, away from the commute to work that took her past Marcus’ mothers house that was still home to her children and ex-husband, none of whom she’d spoken to in months.
“Non-negotiable Ms Wolfe,” John said again, eyes flashing with warning, Bernie knew she was skirting insubordination and had been since she scoffed at John’s proposal that she needed a new challenge.
"Is it the injury, do they think I’m not fit to do this job," she demanded.
"Are you?" John asked, not unkindly. They hadn’t spoken much since the incident and Bernie knew he wasn’t questioning her physical ability to do her job. Despite his unaffected demeanour though, she knew he worried about her.
"Of course I am,"
"Good. I’m glad to hear it.” John nodded decisively, “You start tomorrow."
"Damn it, John! You know I don’t deserve this!" Bernie stood, swiping the personnel file from the desk and waving it in exasperation. She took a deep breath and stood straighter, drawing her arms behind her, one wrist gripped tightly in her free hand as Henrik simply raised an eyebrow. The file not letting itself be forgotten as she felt it brush against the back of her thigh.
"This has nothing to do with what you deserve, Ms Wolfe. That will be all."
Assistant Director John Taylor watched the tall, slim woman as she turned away, stiff with rage she was barely containing; the personnel file gripped in her hand tight enough that it boughed in the middle, no doubt creasing the papers within harshly. He sighed, Bernie Wolfe would give this assignment her all, he knew that, but he also hoped that the assignment would give her something in return.
***
Two hours later, Bernie padded across the threadbare carpet of her living room to the kitchen. It was a small flat in the middle of Greater London, barren of home comforts. She’d rented it fully furnished and hadn’t changed a thing since she’d moved in. She grabbed a short glass from the cupboard and the half empty bottle of single malt from the counter before making her way back to her bedroom. She poured three fingers of honey coloured liquid into the glass staring out of the window from her bed, the city skyline glittering with the light of lives being lived, even at 1am on a Thursday night. The view was the dismal flats only saving grace, Bernie would spend hours staring from her bed when she’d first moved in. Letting it take her breath away and calm her roiling thoughts as she tried to keep the promise she’d made just over a year ago to figure out what she did want.
Bernie sipped her drink and placed the bottle and glass down on the floor next to the bed, wincing as her back twinged at the odd angle. She checked the time on her phone, running her fingers through her unbrushed hair. She was due in Holby City in five hours, and a meeting with her new team an hour after that. She still needed to review the file she’d thrown onto her coffee table when she’d stormed into her flat and not given a second glance since. She didn’t have much time, and she knew she had to try to sleep.
Sighing, she wrapped herself in a robe, left the glass of whiskey on her bedroom floor in favour of grabbing the neck of the bottle and retrieved the file from her coffee table, setting herself down on the small table in the kitchen. She took a long sip of whiskey directly from the bottle and opened the manilla envelope to the first page.
The first thing she saw were two pictures of a woman about her age, and her breath caught in her throat. She’d seen pictures of Serena Campbell before over the years, mostly grainy newspaper shots of her standing dutifully next to her husband, Edward Campbell, as he rose from local councillor, to MP, to shadow secretary, to Prime Minister. Though, by the time he was elected they were in the trenches of a rather public divorce and so now, six months in to Edward’s second term, Serena had been replaced in those newspaper pictures by a young blonde named Liberty, who would have looked more at home in the wives and girlfriends section at Emirates Stadium than she did next to the podium in front of the imposing black door at Number 10.
These pictures in the file were different, more personal somehow. The first was of Serena, dressed up for some function or other, she looked poised and confident. Her brunette hair was swept back from her face, ruby earrings dropping elegantly from her ears, matching the shock of lipstick painted expertly on her demure smile. She wore what was no doubt a horribly expensive scarlett dress, which dipped low enough at the front to be just the right side of proper, and the silk flowed over her skin, accentuating her curves beautifully. She was, in a word, breathtaking.
The second was a group shot, at a bar if the background decor was to be believed, Serena was sitting on a sofa, flagged by a group of men and women all pressed together for the photo. She was dressed far more casually in tight jeans, a black tank top underneath a brightly coloured, flowing blouse, open at the front. Her hair was lightly mussed, as if she’d run her hands through it just before the picture was taken, her face was parallel to the camera, smiling at the man sat next to her, her profile striking in its softness even as the rest of her exuded the sensuality of a jungle cat, dangerous and alluring.
Bernie sighed, sliding the pictures aside and leafing through the rest of the papers to find the profile report.
—-------
Field Report, Thursday 26th December, 21:30
Submitted by PaDP Officer Mike Reid
Subject: Serena Wendy Campbell
DOB: 31/12
Residence: 47 Forestry Gardens, Holby City
Marital Status: Single
Cohabiters: Jason Haynes, Nephew
Education: St Winifred’s School for Girls
UCL
Harvard
Occupation: Vascular Surgeon, Holby City General Hospital
Physical Description: Caucasian Female, 5’6", 130 lbs. Brunette hair. Brown eyes.
Medical Conditions: None
Allergies: None
Significant relationships: (SEE ATTACHED REPORTS)
Romantic: Current - unverified
Last known - classified, FYEO file
Summary: Standard twenty-four hour rotating shift surveillance. Subject schedule fluid, frequently unverifiable.
Communication link: Team commander only per subject request. On-person com links refused.
—-------
The file was bare bones, though Bernie considered there wasn’t really much to know. Serena Campbell used to be a politician’s wife, not much else to say. Bernie made a mental note to call Mike Reid in the morning and find out what, if anything, he hadn’t been willing to put on record about the assignment.
She continued flicking through the papers, pulling out the page marked Eyes Only containing the details of Serena Campbell’s last known romantic liaison. It stated, quite simply, that she’d been divorced from Edward for about five years, and until eighteen months ago, Serena had been in a public relationship with a metropolitan police officer named Robbie Metcalfe and officially had not been with anyone significant since. Unofficially, she’d been having an affair with another ex-wife of a low level politician from Stepney which, by all accounts, had ended about six months ago.
The relationship had been kept under cover far better than the relationship with the male police officer, the reasons for which were obvious enough to Bernie, regardless of the validity of them. It wouldn’t do at all to have the public believing that their Prime Ministers’ wife had left him for a woman, despite the fact that it was the Prime Minister that left his wife for another woman first.
Bernie idly wondered if her own sexuality had played a part in her being posted to this detail. Since her divorce, she hadn’t made an effort to keep her newly discovered preferences a secret, but she’d never been one to shout about her personal life from the rooftops. But perhaps the powers that be had just seen two women about the same age and that had been enough for them to assume they’d work well together, no further similarities needed.