Title: Misdirection

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: Not mine

Ships: Galex, Chris/Shaz (Caz?)

Summary: Alex starts to doubt her own sanity when Molly appears in 1981. She is torn between her feelings and the evidence that proves Molly is actually Catherine Drake – her ex-husband’s sister – who is due to die in a hit and run that afternoon. Can Alex prove the truth before she looses her daughter for the second time?

A/N: Thank you for all the fantastic reviews: Gem6, monkey-in-hell, heighho, Virgin in a brothel, Mc Fish, FirstDraft, and Emzi.x.

--

“Right then, Bolly Knickers is in such a good mood that drinks are on her tonight. She had some good vibrations in bed last night.” Gene swanned into the CID behind this joyous announcement, and a sighing Alex followed.

“Ray…I want you to check out all the dodgy used car dealers – check if anything’s come in with a new paintjob. Shaz…get histories on Richard Kolby and Susan Gearny. I want to know who cares about Kolby enough to want to mow his down his spittin’ image. Chris…get yer mind off yer honeymoon and go over the witness statements.”

He said this all in one long breath and finished with a slam of his office door.

Alex, still shaky, lowered herself into her seat and began aimlessly moving paper around and she tried to comprehend what she’d just seen.

Nothing really caught her eye. Statements, old (ignored) paperwork, a few memos…a progress report with the bigwigs at three – who arranged that? Well she was going to have to miss it.

She couldn’t hang around here anymore. Alex stood and pulled her coat back on. She had seen Molly after she’d been drawn to the school – the school held the answers and that was more important than any stolen car right now.

--

Alex was surprised at how little unease she had had in coming back to her old school again. Perhaps now that she had some resolution (as awful as it was) she didn’t feel sick looking at the building anymore – as she had done every single day she’d attended after her parent’s death.

And now it was three o’ clock and she was standing in the schoolyard with a line of other mothers who lived near enough to not have their children board there.

It was foolish, she knew, to just expect Molly to appear. If the clown was involved it could hardly be a positive thing…but even if it had been just another mirage, she couldn’t afford to miss anything.

The bell rang, and there wasn’t a stampede, so much as a trickle of students leaving. One by one children left with their parents, and eventually Alex was alone in the playground.

Another five minutes, she thought. Just five, then ten. She was just about to decide on a cut-off point of four o’ clock, when the door swung open.

“Mum!”

Alex just stood there, unable to move, as Molly – her Molly- raced towards her. If this is a trick, she thought, there would be a reckoning…

But Molly didn’t disappear, or fade, and Alex didn’t suddenly wake up. Molly wrapped her arms around her mother’s waist and it was really happening. She was so warm against her that Alex realised how cold she had felt. All she could do was kiss her daughter’s hair and cling to her.

“Mum!” sobbed Molly. Her voice was muffled. “Mum…it was horrible…”

“Molly…Molls…I know…” sobbed Alex.

“There was this crash and…and I woke up here and…and I didn’t know where I was…the car crashed…I don’t know what happened to Evan!”

Alex could barely take it in, but she tried to get to grips with this. “You were in a car crash?”

“Yeah…and then it went dark and I was here! Only there were these puppet-like monster things first and…and I didn’t know where you are. It’s been days and-”

Alex felt her eyes stinging with tears and she kneeled down and peered up and her sobbing daughter. “Shh…its okay Molls…I’m here. I’m gonna take you home and you can tell me everything.” She smiled. “And we can have that birthday party, okay?”

--

It was three-forty in a meeting room at the station. A clock was ticking behind Gene, and the three officers in front of him were studiously ignoring him as they flicked through files and scratched their petty little comments.

God he would rather be at a Tory conference than stuck in a room with three superiors and without even a glimpse of Bolly’s legs to keep him going.

“I’m sure she’s just finishing up some important paperwork,” he said, thinking how stupid that sounded even to him.

“She’s forty minutes late,” said the one in the left. “It must be a particularly impressive report she’s completing.”

“Is she still in the building?” asked the one in the middle. “Did she sign the visitor’s book to say where she was going?”

“We follow your rules to a tee sir,” said an uncomfortable Gene. “She didn’t sign the book so I’m sure she’s still in the building.”

Of course, the book in question had only been signed by four people – all of them superiors – as the book was only ever taken from its vital duty of keeping Viv’s chair stable with prior warning of a visit. He chose not to mention this.

Minutes ticked away. He hoped to god they wouldn’t start without her. She was so much better at this modernising bullshit…

“Uh, excuse me…” Chris’s head popped around the door. “The Guv’s needed…”

“Excuse me gentleman,” said Gene, “duty calls.”

There was a smattering of conversation about rescheduling, but Gene only gave a few dismissive ‘yeah’s and was gone. Seconds later he was back in his familiar corridors with Chris striding after him.

“Skelton, if that was a clever ruse designed to save your Guv from an unpleasant situation; I will personally buy you a gold plated toaster for the wedding.”

“Er, no,” said Chris. “It’s Richard Kolby. ‘E’s dead.”

--

Alex took Molly back to the flat and she subjected it to the criticism only a modern-pre teen could. It was boring. It was old. It was so eighties.

“If we’re both like that Sam Tyler guy, then why am I here?” she demanded. “I wasn’t even alive in 1981. I’m not that old.”

Alex pulled a face while still marvelling at the intelligence of the girl in front of her. “Thank you very much. And I don’t know – you don’t fit the pattern at all. Talk me through it again.”

Molly sighed. She’d already been subjected to the dregs of the food in the flat (Alex hadn’t been shopping and didn’t feel like advertising Molly’s presence to Luigi and her workmates yet) and had to face an evening without Sky television, a computer, or that bloody Unwritten song she loved so much. Asking her to go through the traumatic story again was unfair, but Alex needed every hint she could get might save herself and Molly.

“Evan was taking me to school and I was playing with the radio and the song that came on was the one that man said-”

“Man?”

“The one with the gun.”

“Layton? Ashes to Ashes?”

“Yeah,” she leaned her head against the back of the sofa. “And then it was like there was someone in the road…and Evan swerved.”

Alex leaned forward. “And then?”

“There were these puppets…one was yellow and one was pink…”

Alex had already had this dream. “Zippy and Bungle?”

Molly shrugged. “I dunno. I couldn’t understand them. Anyway, it all went black and I woke up in a classroom and I was being told off for being asleep in lessons.” She moved closer to Alex. “I was scared…”

Alex stroked her head. “I know, baby. But you’re with me, whatever happens.”

Molly peered up at her thoughtfully. “What happened to you? You’ve been gone for weeks…I thought…I thought…”

Alex didn’t remember a night like this, where they had cried together, since she’d had to explain about the divorce. And she’d understood the divorce…she barely had a grasp of this herself.

“That man – Layton – he took me. He-” she couldn’t say he’d shot her, “-something happened, and I woke up here. I’m a Detective Inspector, just like I was back home. Only guess what?” she smiled conspiratorially. “I work with the people Sam Tyler wrote about…Gene Hunt…and Ray Carling…and Chris Skelton…it’s like a story come to life.”

She thought of the people she worked with fondly, being stuck with them wasn’t so bad, especially now she had Molly.

She rubbed a thumb across Molly’s cheek. “I thought about you every second, though. I’ve been trying so hard to come home to you. I made recording so that it felt like I could talk to you. I’d like you to listen to it.”

Molly nodded. “Later, yeah?” she said in the tone of voice teens and pre-teens get when their parents want them to read or listen to something that’s good for them.

Alex huffed with laughter. “Later.”

--

The night was quiet and peaceful. Alex didn’t let Molly go more that four feet away, and listened to her talk about (and criticise) her new home.

“How long ‘til Sky’s invented?”

This was rapidly becoming her favourite line. How long was it, exactly, until the modern commodity was invented? Some were easy enough, but even Alex couldn’t remember when Molly would be able to get her hands on a Sugar Free Red Bull.

“Sky? Look out the window; there it is- all dark and cloudy.”

Molly wrinkled her nose. “Ha ha. Seriously how long?”

This gap in Alex’s knowledge was saved by a knock at the door.

Considering that there were only two people who ever came up to see her (and Luigi would never let Chris and Ray out of his sight to check on her of an evening) she could safely assume that it was Gene Hunt at the door.

“Bolly get your arse downstairs and start ordering,” was his greeting. “By my reckoning you owe me forty pints and a bottle of something big and expensive.”

“Oh yes,” she said, leaning against the frame and raising an eyebrow. “How do you work that out?”

“Very easily. One for every minute you kept me waiting at the meeting from hell. And one big one when you avoided every call to get your arse to the station after the body of Richard Kolby was found in the street outside his house.”

“Richard Kolby’s been found dead?”

“Yes. It may be the dirty messy type of police work you’d rather avoid, but when I say be at a crime scene I mean it!”

Alex tried to look contrite. “I’m sorry. But there was an emergency.”

“What kind of emergency?”

“Are you Gene Hunt?” Alex closed her eyes in exasperation. Molly was peeping around behind her and attempting to sound far younger and more precocious than she actually was. It was her latest thing now that she’d noticed she was getting less leeway as a pre-teen.

“This is Molly,” she explained. “My daughter. She’s been staying with friends.”

“I expect your mum’s mentioned me,” said Gene, who was still eyeballing Alex.

“Not really. Sam Tyler wrote it all down though.”

Alex flinched. So did Gene. He recovered first.

“Let’s go inside, shall we?” he said. “And your mum can give me the first of the many drinks she owes me.”

A/N: Hope this is satisfactory so far. I will say…there are still a few big twists to come – it’s not all as clear as it seems! Plus there’s at least one snog coming up!

Let me know what you think!