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Peter hadn't thought a serial killer was brave enough to live so close to Cowley, but then again, they had met some fucked up specimens who would probably do it for the thrill. Opera drifting across the hall was what alerted him; the only people in Oxford who liked opera were criminals and DC Morse.

He sat up, the unfamiliar shadows of the new flat shivering back from the empty starless reflection of the window where amber street lights sunk through like honey into the floorboards and tinged the cream walls with dusky electronic orange hues. Fucking opera. He got enough of it at work. It reached a crescendo and lilted back into an uncertain murmur. He lay back down. Fucking opera.

Just his luck to move into a flat near some insane bloke listened to opera every night thinking about the downfall of the Oxford City Police and stuck cuttings from Dorothea Frazil’s glowing articles about Morse to his wall. Probably had a collage, no, a shrine dedicated to him. Probably went to every choir service and hung around street corners looking for shiny Jags to trail before going home to listen to Morse’s Best Of Opera collection which had been curated from a personal perusal of Morse’s shelves, wherever he lived, during a break-in. Peter wondered how many stalkers Morse had.

The fucking opera welled up again in an Italian shriek and Peter heard someone on the floor above drop something loudly on the ceiling. The serial murderer next door let the record caterwaul for another minute before it fizzed out to silence and everyone from the ground floor to the top took a collective sigh of relief and burrowed under their covers. Fucking opera.

The building settled after a while and Peter drifted off to the quiet drone of the occasional car sluicing past through the rainy streets and the unfamiliar creaks of the new flat becoming used to his presence.

*

He wasn’t sure, without a complete appraisal of the evidence, if he was relieved that it was Morse across the hall and not one of his avid, bloodstained fans. Mostly, it was just a relief to know he could bang on the door in the middle of the night to tell Morse to shut the fuck up with the fucking opera and not get murdered. Well, probably not get murdered.

“Should’ve known,” is what he says in lieu of a greeting. He locks his door, turning away from the confused wide-eyed look he’s getting from across the hall. “No one likes fucking opera except you and madmen.”

Morse shakes out of his shock and bristles, as per usual. “Other people like opera,” he says waspishly. “What the hell are you doing here ?”

Peter turns back around to give him a once over. Morse has on one of his awful cheap suits, the wrinkled shirt showing like a little belly where his jacket doesn’t button down far enough, his trousers aren’t crisply creased down the centre (rather, creased in every other direction) and his hair is already curling out of it’s water-flattened pancake style mess as if it puffs up like an animal trying to make itself appear larger when he’s angry. His mouth has lost the slackness and twisted up scornfully, knuckles white around his keys, just like him to be angry about the fact Peter exists outside of Cowley. “I live here. Moved in yesterday. Mind you, if I’d known what the neighbours were like I would’ve run far in the other direction.”

“Well I live here. Move somewhere else.” Morse is ridiculous. Morse is a child.

He snorts. “Yeah, fair enough, I’ll just go talk to the landlord shall I? ‘ Here mate, the guy across the hall is this annoying prick from work, I’ll take back my deposit, thanks very much ’?” He rolls his eyes. They must look fucking stupid: having a stand-off in this mildly damp corridor with the peeling beige paint, sizing each other up. “Grow up, Morse. It’s not like I knew you were here. Last I heard you were living in a shack up at Lake Silence.”

Morse glares at him, not unusual. “Fine. I need to go pick up Thursday, get out of my way.”

“I’m not in your fucking way,” he says, but Morse is already brushing past and flouncing down the stairwell. Fucking git. Peter follows him, popping a cigarette in his mouth with a sigh. He hasn’t got a murderer for a neighbour, he’s got a three-year-old. Christ.

He can see Morse speed walking down the street towards Cowley to pick up the Jag. He’s pushing it a bit, the sun is well up, coating the early morning mist with some kind of silver shine. Morse’s curls look even more frazzled from a distance. Peter shakes his head, fucking opera .

*

The day drags. It’s a paperwork sort of day that makes him want to gut himself with Morse’s clicking pen and then brain himself with Morse’s slow clacking typewriter. God if Morse doesn’t make everything ten times harder than it should be. He takes a break around noon to sporadically throw balls of paper at Morse to get him to stop making noises with his pen and his paper and his everything. Morse is breathing too loud .

Thursday appears from his office just as Peter manages to get a hit on Morse’s bouncy thatch of hair and shoots him an unforgiving glare. “Sergeant, leave Morse alone.”

He refuses to sulk and mumbles something to the tune of “Yes sir”.

“We’ve got a new Detective Constable coming in,” says Thursday, which finally gets Morse to stop clicking that fucking pen. “DC Fancy. I got a ring to say he’s coming up in a moment. It’ll be good to have a new helping hand, don’t look so glum about it.” Thursday gives all three of them (him, Morse, and Strange) a positively fatherly smile. It’s like this new DC Fancy is their annoying younger cousin and they’re being told they have to babysit him while the parents go out for a fancy meal. Not that he or Morse know anything about either of those things, if there’s one thing he knows it’s that Strange is the only bloke on their team who has a stellar family life. Even Thursday has the runaway Joan and army boy Sam.

“Running a bit late, isn’t he?” says Morse sourly.

Peter agrees, but still, he says, “Not like you can talk.” Morse and Thursday had been a little behind schedule that morning, just as Peter had predicted.

“You slowed me up,” Morse says. Scathing is the look Peter would use to describe the look he’s being given.

Thursday ignores them both and disappears on out into the rest of the station to find their missing DC Fancy. Peter watches him go forlornly, wondering how fucking annoying this new DC can be, maybe he’ll beat Morse’s record of the most irritating member of the team and he’ll be forced to play nice so he can leave Strange with the new boy. Not that Strange and Morse get on all that well now anyway, Strange takes his Sergeant responsibilities very seriously , so seriously that it’s irritating.

Peter shakes out a new cigarette. “Bets on this new DC taking your spot as bagman.”

Morse scowls. “He won’t.”

“The gaffer has a soft spot for newbies.” He hopes he doesn’t sound as jealous as he thinks he does, in all actuality that pain has faded to a dull ache, it’s hard to be jealous of the guy who has been shot and stabbed and targeted more times than anyone else at the station, and the guy who’s kept his darkest secret too. “Just look at you and me.”

“I think I know Fancy from when we were both in uniform,” says Strange, unsurprisingly, because Strange knows everyone. “Nice guy.”

“If he turns out to be some annoying little twit you can take him then. I’d rather suffer opera boy than some new twat.” Teaching anyone the ropes sounds like Peter’s worst idea of hell. At least Morse knows what he’s doing and does actually follow Peter’s orders, even when he doesn’t want to.

“I’m right here,” says Morse.

Peter shoots him his best withering glare. “I noticed, opera boy. You haven’t stopped clicking that fucking pen for two hours.”

Morse lifts the pen, keeping direct eye contact, and starts to click it again.

“Come on matey, it is quite annoying now.”

With a betrayed air, Morse drops the pen again and starts shuffling his notes on a car theft with punctuating sighs. Peter finds himself trying to will Morse’s desk to set on fire by the time Thursday comes bustling back in with some fluffy haired little prick who looks like he’s just spilled out of school with a dapper little half-smile on his face. He gives up telekinetic arson and exchanges a look with Morse like they’re kids choosing partners for a school project.

“DC Fancy, this is DS Jakes, DS Strange, and DC Morse. Oh, and WPC Trewlove,” he says as he gestures to the room, Trewlove poking her head around the door frame.

Fancy raises a hand in a jaunty little wave and Peter feels like he’ll throw up.

“I’ve got a call from the Bodleian about some stolen books, sir,” she says, glancing down at her notebooks, “apparently they were quite expensive and the librarian was keen to have a detective on the case.”

Peter jumps to his feet at the opportunity, saying, “Me and Morse will take a look at that one, sir.”

Thursday frowns, his massive hand on Fancy’s slim shoulders. “I was hoping you’d take Fancy under your wing for a little time.”

Think quick, think quick . Morse is already swinging up from his chair and shrugging into his jacket like he’s going to be asked to look after a new DC. “Well, you know sir, Morse has a lot of knowledge about… libraries, books, architecture, all that. And Strange would love the opportunity to strengthen his leadership skills, I’m sure.” He pats Strange on the shoulder.

“We really should be going sir,” says Morse from the door, “before other important scholarly artefacts are stolen, they’re so important to culture and it’s also imperative that we show our willingness to help the institutions of Oxford.” His serious expression brightens. “And I know the staff very well because of that time I got stabbed.”

Peter contains his laughter, sidling to the door Morse is half hanging out of, earnest eyes still fixed on Thursday. Way to fucking guilt trip.

“Does it really need the two of you?” Thursday gives them a shrewd look but passes Fancy off to Strange. “One of our best, most steadfast officers, this one,” he says pointedly.

The two most wavering and unreliable officers careen out into the corridor with Trewlove’s stifled giggles muffled behind them, pulling on their coats as they hurry away from any being called back and being forced to take Thursday’s new adoptee under their wings. He pops a cigarette into his mouth as they swing into the garage to pick up a car, already having a swift argument about who’s driving. Still, better than having DC Fancy on their case.

*

“Well it could have been another serial murderer after reading material to stage some Morse murders, sir,” he says. “We didn’t know it would be some old bint who can’t read the signs about not taking books out of the library.”

“Wonder she could read the books she’d taken at all,” Morse says.

Thursday scowls. “Did it really need the both of you?” he says again, apparently letting them off the hook was a morning whim that has faded with his mood. His office is full of tobacco smoke, which can’t be good for that hacking cough and the bullet rattling around in his lung. But fairs fair, and Thursday hasn’t asked where he was that night at Blenheim Vale, so he won’t play mother hen.

“Absolutely,” says Morse, “Jakes couldn’t find a —”

“Alright,” he snaps, waving between them both with his pipe. “Finish up your reports.”

He elbows Morse as they shut Thursday’s door and sit down. “I could have done that by myself easily . I was the one who asked for the list of people who had booked out —”

“Let’s be honest, the librarians could’ve figured it out. They hardly needed a detective present, a uniform could’ve done all that for them.”

His coat still smells like Mrs Archibald’s cats and he picks a hair off his carefully pressed trousers. “Would you rather have been doing paperwork all day?”

“Don’t mind them,” says Strange, “they’re always bickering.” He has some sort of vague uncle smile on his face as he addresses Fancy. “Ever since the off.”

“It’s a neighbourly dispute, mind your own business.” He wants it known that he has unwittingly moved in next door so it doesn’t raise any embarrassing questions when people see him and Morse walking home together every night.

“Neighbourly?” Strange stops his benign smiling at the wide eyed Fancy and turns to them both.

Morse huffs. “He’s moved in next door.”

“I didn’t know you lived there.” He turns to Strange. “He played opera music last night. Well past midnight.”

“I was thinking,” Morse complains.

“Do it quieter. There’s nothing to think about anyway. Were you thinking about how to bag old Johnny who practically came to the station to confess to stealing that dog?” He doesn’t bother looking up, he’s already bored of Strange’s grin, Morse’s frown, and Fancy’s awe at being involved in a spat between the big names at CID. Fucking twats.

Morse starts clicking his pen. “I was thinking about how much nicer it was when I didn’t have any neighbours.” Even though he didn’t even know Peter was one of them last night, fucking fantastic. He’s more antisocial than Peter thought.

“Has to beat prison neighbours.” (Fancy’s eyes widen in his peripheral and Strange stiffens. Pricks.) “Move back to that shack if you’re so bothered.”

Morse seems distinctly un bothered though. In fact he almost sounds grateful that Peter brought it up. He remembers all t o o well overhearing Morse’s prickly conversation on the matter with Strange who would only refer to the whole fiasco with an ominous ‘ it ’. (“ What, you mean prison?” Morse had snapped.) “Yeah, well. At least in prison I knew everyone was a criminal, with you it’s always hard to tell.”

“Me, a criminal! Morse, remind me again which one of us spent the summer hanging around with a bunch of posh-o murderers?”

“Wasn’t me. You didn’t tell me you had summer plans, Jakes.” He smiles one of those nasty closed lip things and Peter feels an unbidden real smile twitching at his own cheeks.

He rolls his eyes. “Like you’d catch me around Lake Silence. Come on, they must have had some dirty secrets.”

“You should’ve been there, summer hols of a lifetime,” he drawls in an unexpected plummy accent.

He can’t help the hoarse cough of laughter as he bends back down over his typewriter, remembering with morbid amusement seeing Morse black out drunk on the peripherals of several things he’d had to deal with over the summer. He’d seen Morse at Bixby’s a few times when he’d been called out to police disputes, even if he hadn’t told Thursday. “Looked it.”

It’s been a surprisingly good day, despite the odd morning, he reflects, ignoring Strange’s perplexed stare. Morse hasn’t been too arsey, and he escaped having to deal with a new detective. He and Morse have been practically on good terms the whole day from teaming up to avoid Fancy to a pretty fun conversation with no feelings hurt, despite Strange’s flinches and hisses from the corner. Fancy is looking at them both like they’re fascinating objects from outer space and keeps trying to involve the whole room in a conversation about sport while he types doggedly about a car theft and stoutly ignores Morse’s pen clicking but it’s a good day, all in all.

*

They crash at the Lamb and Flag after work, Thursday keen to welcome Fancy into their midst although he’s wearing the martyred expression of an old, grey whiskered dog dealing with an overexcitable puppy. Strange just looks enamoured with the new boy, like he’s finally found someone else who doesn’t deal in acerbic and sarcastic insults as a conversation must and is desperate to make Fancy his friend.

“You play any opera tonight Morse and I’m breaking in to throw your records out the window,” he says, taking a sip from his foamy pint.

Morse rolls his eyes. “Just knock on the door when you want to sleep and I’ll switch it off.”

“There are other people in the building other than me, you know?”

“What’s this?” asks Thursday, pulling away from the somehow still flourishing conversation Fancy, Strange, and some of the uniform are having about football.

“Jakes moved in next door,” says Morse, he sounds almost accusing which is a fucking liberty.

Some of the lads are guffawing at that, pointing at him like his misery is something to be ridiculed.

“It wasn’t on purpose,” he amends for what feels like the thousandth time that day. “If I had known. Believe me when I say…”

Fancy perks up over his beer. “You two don’t like each other then?”

There was a shout of drunk laughter and Morse shrugs in embarrassment.

“They’ve been a lot better recently,” says Strange in that stupidly affable voice. “Probably still not good enough for living right next door though. One of them will have moved by the end of their leases, I guarantee you.”

Peter shakes his head. “I’ll take you up on that Strange. We’ll both stay longer than the end of our leases. Notwithstanding imprisonment, extreme injury, or moving in with a girl. Neither of us will move out of annoyance.”

“I’ll take you up on that,” says Strange.

Morse scoffs. “I’m not that annoying.”

“Sure you aren’t matey,” he says, appeasing.

He frowns at the betrayal once again. “Next time you need a murder solving don’t come running to me.”

*

Their block of flats is quiet as they fumble up the stairs and to their respective locks. Morse looks over his shoulder at him for a moment before the door shuts softly between them and he disappears into the shadowed mess of his own apartment. Peter falls into the clean space of his own flat, which hasn’t seen any signs of being lived in. He hears the first strains of opera drifting over the hall and he almost doesn’t mind.

*

Of course Fancy had to sprain his ankle doing nothing more than walk out onto the field. Fucking embarrassment. Thursday isn’t there to be fatherly and full of advice so Strange is giving him the full Uncle Jim treatment with pats to the soppy git’s head. Trewlove, looking stunning with her hair down, is acting as pain relief as Fancy only has eyes for her and seems to forget his ankle every time she so much as looks at him.

Morse bursts into the tent with DeBryn, shaking his head scornfully. “That ‘footy experience’ really helped, Fancy.”

“Well, get that suit off,” says Peter, feeling a malicious grin drifting onto his face. “What? We need a sub, come on!” He tweaks at the lapel of Morse’s coat, ridiculous thing to be wearing in this weather anyway.

“Why can’t you do it?”

“If the ground is really as dangerous as all that I’d rather not. You’re younger than me, always running after the crims, now you get to run for the country. How about it?”

Morse smiles at him without any teeth. “Oh, I see. You just don’t want to mess up the hair.”

“A Sergeant is ordering you Constable,” he says, popping a cigarette into his mouth. “Hop to it.”

He strips quickly, Trewlove manning the entrance to protect his modesty (like he has any of that left), scowling at Peter all the while. His skinny freckled arms and legs are so pale they might actually reflect light.

“Jesus, you ever get any sun?”

“Why are you looking?” he whines, pulling a spare white t-shirt over his head and jumping around to pull some tracksuit bottoms up.

“Not like we ever get to see the great Morse in anything other than cheap suits, prison wear, or your posh set get-up.” He shrugs, tossing Morse Fancy’s trainers which should be around the right size.

“You forgot hospital gown,” he says, leaning down to tie his laces.

He snorts. “How stupid of me. Try not to break a leg.”

“Good luck matey.”

“Good luck,” echo Trewlove and Fancy as Peter helps him into the giant costume.

“You look like a fucking freak. Win this or I’m putting you on general duties.”

Morse sneers out of the face gap and waddles off.

*

“Only you could turn this lark into a murder,” he says shakily as they watch the ambulance blare away with DeBryn and the little kid. He turns to the hobbling Fancy and Trewlove and asks them to take statements from all the tents, especially the West German. He grabs Morse by the shoulder and pulls him over to the film crew. “Come on, we’ll see if they caught it. Strange, you ring the station.”

Morse’s hair is sweating into looping curls and he’s still wearing his gym kit but he follows Peter without complaint about his appearance, which is to be expected honestly (no modesty). “You reckon he’ll be alright?”

He shakes his head. “Time will tell. DeBryn’s got that covered, Morse. We don’t need to worry about it.”

Morse doesn’t reply, just as well really because how fucking stupid is he? Of course they’re going to be worrying, he’s worrying. He can feel it fizzing under his skin like a record left to play, skipping over the same fuzzy part of the disc.

“That’s the Swiss runner isn’t it?” Morse taps the screen as they watch the replay of the afternoon’s events, one of the giants careening into the German just before he falls, beyond in the black and white shadows, the boy flopping backwards on the bench.

“Dead man’s called Karl Pfuscher.” Trewlove, her loose curls escaping her headband hurries up to them. “That Swiss one was subbed this morning,” she says, quickly taking stock of what Morse is pointing at, “Verfelli, I think his name is, called in sick.”

“Who replaced him?” Peter can’t tear his eyes away from the murder playing out on the screen in front of him, he doesn’t think he’s ever seen a death on camera like that before.

“No one knows,” she says, “George is — DC Fancy is still asking questions, but I thought I should come and tell you…”

“Thank you Trewlove.” He can’t even find any amusement at her slip up, he can’t stop thinking about the ambulance, about Dr DeBryn. “We’ll find out where he was staying and have a look-see.” He clicks his fingers as Trewlove walks away. “Morse? Are you ready for this?”

“What?”

“Are you ready for a big case?” Something inside him is thumping too hard, like his ribs a contracting with every breath. He realises he desperately wants the answer to be “yes”, that he can’t do this alone any more, not after losing him for the summer. The summer he felt crippled.

Morse blinks at him, once, twice. Peter feels embarrassment surging under his skin. “Of course,” he says finally, stupidly soft like he knows which makes him irrationally angry.

He swallows. “Go and get your suit back on then. I’ll find out where this Verfelli was staying.” He watches as Morse drifts away across the sunlit grass, his dark golden hair is like a lion’s mane. Are you ready? The delicate sound of opera drifting through walls and across the corridor simmers somewhere at the base of his neck. Ready.

*

Verfelli lies on the bed at Amber Lodge Hotel as DeBryn gives him a preliminary examination. Peter’s hands still feel cold from helping Strange lift the body out of the wardrobe. Morse peruses the edge of the room, in the mirror Peter can see that his expression is focussed, not on anything in front of him, but on the case.

“Some sort of wire garrotte is my best guess,” says DeBryn. “I’ll know more after I’ve had a rummage. Shall we say three o’clock?” He bustles out.

His fingers a twitching for a cigarette. “This morning by the looks of things,” he says, eyeing the uneaten breakfast and still full shaving bowl by the door. “Morse, shall we have a look over at Pfuscher’s?”

“Take Fancy with you,” says Thursday suddenly. (He and Morse exchange a hidden dark look in the mirror.) “He needs to have a poke around something like that. You’ll steer him right.”

Morse spins on the spot, taking in the room with his measured gaze. “Two dead, one injured. Are you looking into a gang side to this?” His shrewd eyes are on Thursday and Strange. He’s right, there’s only one reason Thursday and Strange could have for leaving them babysitting.

“No harm in checking it out,” says Thursday, patting his pockets like he might have dropped his keys at a crime scene. Morse sighs like he thinks it’s a waste of time, which it probably is. “I know having three of you process it is a bit over the top, but it’s all about team work after all.” Peter wonders what pressure point Bright has on Thursday. Maybe he gets threatening letters in that shaky, looping hand like ‘You don’t have this lot playing big happy families by the end of the week and I’ll have your wife brought in to making threatening eyes at over my horn rimmed glasses’.

He eyes Fancy who is slouching in the hall with his hair flopping in his eyes and decides that Morse really isn’t all that bad. “Alright.”

*

As they leave Amber Lodge, Fancy, sitting in the back of the car like their unruly and annoying teenage son, asks, “What are your hobbies?” It’s like he’s got a book on how to make conversation with your new colleagues, Morse could do with a look at that, all things being said.

“Jakes likes football,” says Morse helpfully.

He glares at Morse who is ignoring him and paying attention to the road as Fancy starts talking. He wonders what kind of extreme punishments he can bring down on his head. As he watches, Morse smirks.

Morse really is that fucking awful.

“Morse likes opera,” he cuts in, which leaves Fancy floundering for a conversation topic about fucking opera for about a minute before he helps the poor bloke out, despite Morse’s violent scowls, “Ask him about all the crimes he solved with his knowledge of opera.”

And because Morse can kill any conversation dead, which is an admirable quality in that moment, he says, “Do you want to hear about the one where my favourite singer hung herself in her cell or the one where a vicious serial murderer grew obsessed with me and stabbed me under the Bodleian and had my photograph hanging up in his den?” Fucking killer. He says it so bluntly as well, Peter can only smile out of the window.

“Well.” Fancy sinks further back into the leather plush of the Jag. “You don’t have to —”

“Good, I’m trying to concentrate on driving.”

Fucking killer. Conversation stone dead. Bullseye. He almost feels a little cruel for enjoying it.

*

The rooms at Woodstock Inn are quiet. Fancy hovers awkwardly in the middle of the room watching them as they turn over everything in sight.

“What would he want a painting and a clock for?” Morse is holding up a jumble of receipts. He’s spinning around looking for the non-existent items.

Peter shrugs, poking around in the bedside table. “Sent it back home as a gift for someone?”

“Odd,” Morse decides, which means he thinks he’s found the be all and end all clue. “Why not just wait to take it back home in his suitcase?”

“Someone desperately needed the clock, they didn’t know what time it was.” He opens the wardrobe and flicks through the clothes hanging up. “Tell you what’s odd. It’s fucking empty in here. Verfelli had clothes everywhere, paper on the desk…”

“Couldn’t he just be a neat person?” asks Fancy. He looks perplexed.

“Could be. But we don’t take could be’s,” says Morse peering out of the window.

Fancy pauses, bouncing on his heels so his fringe flops up and down. “Strange works very differently,” he says finally.

“Strange is a meat and two veg copper. Morse is an opera and obscure literature references and random seemingly unimportant pieces of evidence copper.” Peter peeks under the bed for good measure.

“What kind of copper are you?”

“He’s a meat and veg and gravy and dessert copper,” says Morse dryly from the en suite, his voice echoing.

Fancy spins in a circle.

“Are you going to help, Detective Constable Fancy?”

“Of course Jakes, sorry.”

He glowers at Fancy’s back and he feels Morse’s head pop around the bathroom door and can imagine the look of amusement on his face. “ Sergeant Jakes to you, or sir . I’ll accept ‘Sarge’ if you’re feeling chummy.”

Fancy winces, his shoulders going up to his ears as he pokes around the desk with one finger. “Yes Sergeant Jakes, sir.”

Morse snorts loudly and comes back out into the bedroom. “Nothing here, is there?”

“No clock or painting,” he concedes, mulling it over in his mind, the more and more it seems odd.

“Odd,” says Morse again.

“Odd.” He hums and waves Fancy and Morse out in front of him.

*

“Special Branch,” says DeBryn when they all reconvene at the morgue. “Taken away the body, no doubt they’ll be at the station too.”

“That was quick,” says Thursday, “even for Special Branch.” His and Strange’s hulking figures in the corner don’t make the morgue feel any warmer. He feels like their large presences should make the room feel less terrifying and more alive, he never has liked the morgue, but their grim faces make everything seem worse. No gang angle then, he surmises.

“They took your notes, I suppose,” says Morse carefully, drifting around in the corner, his eyes faraway and somehow still calculating.

“But not my mind.” DeBryn smiles at Morse in that way people do when they find him endearing, which normally annoys Peter to the ends of the earth, but now it’s coming in useful. Morse smiles back, one of those quick flinches of a smile. “The bullets I removed from Pfuscher were the same the surgeon removed from the McLean boy —”

“The case is closed,” says Thursday with finality, “Bright will want us back at the station.”

Morse spits back fast. “Two dead, one little boy injured and it’s over just like that?”

“Just like that.”

Fancy, who had been looking put out at not seeing the postmortem is now looking between them so fast it’s a surprise he doesn’t get that floppy hair in his eyes.

Morse scoffs. “You can’t be serious .”

“I am,” says Thursday, quelling any argument. He storms out. Thursday storms everywhere these days though, so it hardly makes him and Morse flinch. Strange follows at a sedately pace. Boot licker. (That would’ve been him a year ago.)

Fancy drifts half-way between following them out of the door and staying put.

“As you were saying, Doctor?” says Peter, turning his attention back to DeBryn who smiles with polite amusement over his bow-tie and large glasses. Peter fucking loves DeBryn sometimes because he continues as if there wasn’t an interruption. He speeds up his speech but there’s no danger of Thursday coming back, Thursday doesn’t turn around once he’s made a decision.

“Didn’t get a chance to start on Verfelli, but whoever killed him knew exactly what he was doing.”

“Hired killer?” muses Morse aloud, glancing at him. “In light of Special Branch swooping in…”

“Possible,” says DeBryn. “Pfuscher’s teeth… very interesting. Bavaria, I think WPC Trewlove said, but he was wearing rather odd dentures on his upper teeth for a chap from Bavaria . East German.”

“Is that why Special Branch took it? Russian?” Fancy is leaning forwards from his wall slouch.

“Possibly.” DeBryn sighs, pushing his glasses up. “Not much more I can tell you, I didn’t get to finish the postmortems.”

Morse nods, his eyes focussed on the ceiling, forehead creased in that thinking frown. “Thank you, Doctor. And well done on the McLean boy, I hear he wouldn’t have survived without your help.”

They leave DeBryn blinking in their wake like a startled hedgehog. Damn Morse and his charm, he’s going to need to up his game if he wants results as fast as Morse gets them.

*

“You’re going to keep on this case, aren’t you?” They’re walking behind Fancy, who has bounced ahead at the sheer joy of being allowed to drive the Jag.

“Aren’t you?” Morse looks at him, eyes sharp.

He rolls his neck, fiddling in his pockets for his lighter. “Our ground, the way I see it.”

Morse nods, a private grin disappearing in the glare of the sun, but Peter catches the edge of it. For some reason it aches somewhere deep inside that he’s never made Morse smile like that before. He’s starting to think that maybe if he hadn’t… maybe if he wasn’t Peter Jakes and maybe if something inside him wasn’t so damn broken, he might have been good friends with Morse for over a year. That they might have been good friends, good partners. That maybe the whole Blenheim Vale mess wouldn’t have happened because Peter would have been by his side the whole way, providing an alibi and not letting Morse get his stupid scarf stolen.

“Sorry I didn’t help last time.”

Morse’s head swings around lightning fast. Then, softly, God why is he so gentle , he says, “Don’t apologise. After I — I didn’t expect you to come, after I found out. Everyone else didn’t have an excuse. You had a pretty damn good one in my book.”

He won’t cry. He won’t cry. “No excuses this time,” he murmurs.

“Well, glad to have you aboard.” Morse does his closed lipped pleased smile. “Destination nowhere careers and frankly dangerous toeing of the line.”

He’s still giving him an out, still . “You think a Blenheim Vale kid has got much of a career to look forwards to anyway?” They don’t normally reference it so casually, so obliquely, it makes his chest hurt.

“Still.” He doesn’t even sound pitying.

Peter shakes his head, letting the afternoon sun sink into his skin. “Guess it’s working in our favour that we live next door.”

Morse smirks. “Knew you’d warm up to me eventually.”

*

He covers for Morse while he goes to talk to Dorothea Frazil about pictures of the contestants and any old references to Karl Pfuscher. It feels deadly easy. Before he would have ratted him out, said in a loud voice when Thursday walked past “My, my Morse, where the hell have you been for the past ten hours?” But now he just muddles something about thefts and annoying witnesses, which is true, and does Morse’s paperwork for him, which feels like a betrayal to everything he’s ever stood for.

Even Strange notices something's up, and Peter (probably uncharitably) thinks that Strange wouldn’t notice a crime unless it came with blaring lights and an obvious punch-up and direct fingerprints leading to the culprit. “You and Morse have been getting on this week.”

“ Love thy neighbour ,” he drawls, flicking his lighter. “ Absence makes… ”

Strange nods comfortably. “Well, we did all miss Morse.”

The fact Peter can’t even disagree is concerning. He just hums non-committally.

“What’s up with that?” Fancy asks like he can just go around asking after Morse like that. Morse has seniority. It goes against his principles .

Strange answers anyway, because apparently he doesn’t care about his matey’s privacy. “He was framed for a murder by some corrupt higher ups. Went down for a month or so. When he got out it turns out he was hanging around with the posh set up at Lake Silence. Still helped us solve a murder and managed to become a witness to another. That’s our Morse.”

“Posh set? How’s that then?”

“He was up,” says Peter flatly. “Went to one of those Oxford universities? Not sure if you’ve seen them about? Oxford is pretty famous for them.” He rolls his eyes, taking a long drag on his cigarette. “Stop gossiping like housewives and get some work done.”

Strange gives him a thoughtful look that doesn’t suit his friendly nice son-in-law face. “You used to be fine with gossiping about —”

“That was before Blenheim Vale,” says Peter. And Strange can’t possibly know how much that means to Peter, how much he sits and smokes and thinks sometimes, how Morse went into the breach for him and slew at least some of the monsters. “Get back to work.” He can still pull seniority on Strange and sometimes it’s petty and malicious when he does it because he remembers, he remembers that in the end it took Strange a long fucking time to do the simple task of finding Bright, that it took a long fucking time for Strange to leave the pockets of powerful men.

*

When Morse gets back, they reconvene in secret in the locket room.

“And this Doctor Schneider, he’s here in Oxford?” he asks, leaning over Morse’s shoulder to look at the little packet his best friend from the Oxford Mail has put together for him.

“Hopefully. When we’re alone I’ll try and get a call through, see if we can work out some kind of meeting.”

He hums, flicking through the pictures. “Alright. And no sign of our sub for Verfelli?”

Morse shakes his head and some of the wild almost ginger curls tickle Peter’s forehead. “Not that I can tell. If we are getting involved with — with spies… ” He manages to sound derisive even though he’s obviously worried. “… Do you think we need back-up?”

“We’ll be alright. You would’ve done this alone in a heartbeat.”

Morse turns slightly to look at him and his eyes are very close and very serious. “I mean it, Jakes. If you get in trouble —”

“If we get in trouble,” he corrects. “And we aren’t going to. This has to be done. Steven McLean, Morse.”

He pinches his lips, searches Peter’s face for a long moment. He feels like a suspect, like a witness, like a piece of intriguing sheet music. “Alright.” Morse’s fingers tap on his wrist, inexplicably. “Alright. I’ll try and chase up Doctor Schneider.”

He feels the grin. He feels something bursting under his skin. He’s never had a partner before. Normally working with Morse is like torture, working with anyone else somehow even worse. But now, with Morse’s calm eyes on his and the memory of his fingers on the inside of his wrist it’s like he’s never known anything else but being partners with Morse. It feels like if they got a suspect in a room right now they would have him split open in minutes. It feels like they’re one and the same.

“Alright. I’ll see what more I can find on his translating work.”

*

Morse’s flat is much like he would expect. Scotch on the side, records and books and papers strewn across the room, the table littered with notes and queries to follow up on (various cases he recognises from recent weeks ever since Morse has been back).

“The mind of the great Endeavour Morse,” he says, as he flicks his fingers over unfinished scrawls written on a paper napkin about suspects and witnesses.

“How do you know —?”

Peter rolls his eyes. “I’ve waited outside enough hospital rooms and heard enough about you in the courtroom to know your first name.”

Morse frowns, dropping onto a kitchen chair with a groan. “You want a drink?”

“Alright.” He sits down as Morse reaches under the table for half a bottle of scotch and behind him for two glasses without getting up which don’t look clean but Peter is too tired to care. “What did Schneider say?”

“Strasbourg, Council of Europe, senior translator,” Morse rattles off, digging around in his pockets, “so they didn’t get much time to talk. Pfuscher was working a lot apparently. He wasn’t the one Pfuscher rang either.”

Peter frowns, leaning back. “Who did he ring then?” He’d found out Pfuscher’s phone records from the hotel.

“Not sure yet. Seemed happy in his letters, very much in love with Danulke, hoping to marry in the summer. Had a girlfriend here in Oxford at one point called Samantha.”

“Surname?”

“Smith, Brown, Jones… something boring. I have a general address so I can go poking round.” He bit his lip. “Also knows this Professor Alexander Richmond who… Well, I know him.”

Morse seems to know every person with a doctorate in Oxford. “Anything I should know?”

He shrugs, mouth twisted up in that confused frown that means he’s smelled a rat. He takes a sip of his scotch. “Richmond used to try and hire people to work for the government. Tried to hire me once.”

“Why am I not surprised?” He sighs and takes a ruminative sip of Morse’s cheap as dish soap scotch. “Of course you would be recruited.”

Morse snorts. “I went to speak to him. That call to the gatehouse wasn’t in the log book according to a Mr… Mullion, by the way. Richmond… he was both very forgetful and had incredible memory. Remembered some inane details about an encounter we’d had but wouldn’t even recognise Pfuscher.” Morse taps his fingers on the table. “He’s hiding something.”

“Reckon he tried to or did recruit Pfuscher?”

His mouth pinches together further. “Definite possibility. How do you feel about a trip to London tomorrow?”

He stares at Morse. “So bad you need to go and ask the queen about it all? Opera concert which will reveal all about the case?”

Morse glares at him. “I got a call from someone who knew I was asking questions, asked me to meet them up in London.”

Fucking hell but does Morse get himself in the worst shit. “I don’t know how you survive one day to the next,” he says finally. “London sounds fun, don’t know how we’ll swing it with the gaffer though.”

A slow half-smile is slipping up Morse’s face, wrinkling the corners of his eyes and the deep grooves around his mouth. He shoots a quick glance at Peter over the top of his glass before taking a satisfied mouthful.

“What?”

Morse shrugs, looking like he’s chewing on the inside of his cheek to stop smiling any more.

“ What ?”

He shrugs again, a slight laugh slipping out and echoing into his glass. Sort of self deprecating. “I don’t know. Peter Jakes just agreed to bunk off work with me to go to London chasing an ominous caller.” Morse looks back at him, eyes glimmering under that wild fringe of gold-auburn curls. “How did we get here?”

“You sticking your nose into things you shouldn’t,” he supplies.

“You are too, for a first.”

“I’m not letting you go alone. We’ll make up some story about chasing no good leads all day about that pickpocket Bright wants getting. Stole his wife’s sister’s sewing club’s sister club’s lead stitcher’s brother’s watch’s hour hand, didn’t you hear?”

And Morse actually laughs and Peter doesn’t ever think he’s heard Morse laugh before and something squeezes too tight around his lungs and he thinks, for all the derision he’s placed on Thursday and Strange and DeBryn and Bright for the same thing, that he’s fallen for Morse’s stupid unkempt charm. It’s almost too much to bear.

*

Escaping from Cowley is almost too easy that morning. Morse runs Thursday in and Peter catches him by the door “just in time” because he thinks he has a lead that could “take all day to follow up on so they need to get a shift on now” with a “sir, could I borrow Morse for the day, this’ll take two. You’ve got Fancy to make up for it anyway” and then they’re off down to the garage to grab the Jag.

“Fucking hell,” says Morse, swinging into the driver’s seat. “Fucking hell. He finds out we’re anywhere other than some grimy back alley looking for some six-year-old thief we’re getting punted into next week.”

Peter can only grin and it feels wild. “Better make the most of it, then.”

*

He hasn’t been to London many times since being in Oxford . It’s just close enough that it feels tantalising but just far enough that it feels like a waste of time and money. Sometimes Oxford feels busy, normally after a long day poking around dodgy farms and sweeping around great manors which probably have bodies stuffed behind every ornate painting with your very own guide (Morse) walking you through every morbid exhibit. But London somehow feels even busier.

“Maybe we should’ve taken the train,” says Morse as they fight for a parking spot near the rendezvous spot. “I feel like the poor beauty’s going to get stolen.” He honest to God pats it like he’s one of those weird dickheads who think cars are cock extensions.

“Don’t be an odd fish about everything ,” he complains, slumping down further in his seat. Somehow Morse had found a classical and opera station that apparently wasn’t just for serial killers… maybe he should contact the radio towers and work out if there’s a way he can find out the names and addresses of every freak who listens to opera in Oxford and the next time Morse gets sent blood spattered opera lyrics he can run through a list until they hit a match. “Jesus fucking Christ if that stupid bint doesn’t move her fucking arse.”

“And that’s why Thursday doesn’t let you drive.”

“The old man lets me drive, who do you think was chauffeur when you got yourself locked up?”

Morse sniffs. “Explains why he was so eager to have me back.” He’s got a pious look on that Peter can finally recognise as a joke rather than an assault on his intelligence. It’s nice to know Morse isn’t a dick all the time.

He tugs on his bow-tie, feeling like a black and white Doctor DeBryn. “Any ideas on the costumes?”

“Lets hope it isn’t a date with death.” And he absolutely isn’t funny, but Peter finds himself laughing anyway.

*

The bloke seems surprised to see Peter for a moment, before carefully schooling his features back to unreadable and running off through the crowds. He’s talking fast and in riddles so Peter lets Morse do the talking and does his best to exchange supportive confused looks with Morse. “Are we being followed?” Morse asks at one point, and it really does feel like they are. Every way the bloke goes is a warren winding deeper and deeper into the city, anyone would be hard pressed to tail them through the dense crowds and winding routes through seemingly forbiddingly shut doors and rushing traffic.

He has the stupid urge to find some adult’s hand to hold, like he used to at the nursery orphanage before Blenheim Vale when crossing a busy street. At least Morse looks slightly like he knows what’s going on, like his vague understanding of the Signals and the fucking… what was it? Cheese, Chess, and Golf Society? From that absolutely insane case with the vicar where he had been grudgingly impressed and happy with Morse’s showing up of Bright. God, what a long time ago. Strange in uniform as Morse’s thankless puppy. Thursday running himself ragged trying to keep Morse on as his bagman. The all-consuming jealousy that haunted Peter every day.

Now here he is, following Morse and a spy through the streets of London and actually trusting and maybe liking one of them. Morse who told him about his plans to continue the case and Morse who let him tag along to London when the obvious underlying notion had been to ‘come alone’. Morse who looks so silly and lost in London with his evening suit and wild hair.

Morse who he found slumped under a tree about a month ago next to Joss Bixby’s body. Morse who he had seen multiple times before that skulking around the Belborough’s and Bixby’s and the Wildwood’s every time he got called out on a plummy complaint about commoner yokes or some such. Morse always hovering in the background, glazed over.

Then they’re getting in this stupid blue jeep that looks like an American nightmare, or otherwise a very odd country vehicle for the middle of London. It sticks out like a sodding sore thumb and if they are being followed it’s like a beacon. Nameless twat’s problem really, not his.

And they’re rolling away from the curb in a strange gentleman’s car. How many case files has he read with this beginning? ‘ The two fucking stupid twats got in the car with a nameless spy in the middle of London after a vaguely threatening phone call. Needless to say they’re both dead as dodos. ’

Morse glances at him and he wills up a confident grin. Morse looks amused and he assumes it failed on the confident front.

*

The place is silent, all rich décor and old ponces sitting around with cigars and pipes. All the curtains and armchairs are brocade and heavy patterns; the wood all dark, varnished mahogany; the books all golden titles embossed on deep burgundy, maroon, and forest green.

Peter sticks close to Morse, whose eyes are flicking around every quiet room, cataloguing it like a crime scene. Something about the place reminds him of Blenheim Vale. The stench of old power. He can imagine, every time he blinks, that each room is devoid of furniture, tomb-like silent, ghosts drifting up grand staircases, the blank eyes of Blenheim Vale peering out through the decades. He hates old houses. He hates old power.

The room they’re led to is decadent; shimmering silver cutlery, glittering champagne glasses for a whole wedding guest list, candles with rich white wax, plates heaped high with food that no one is going to eat, the shelves all around piled high with those first editions that no one has done so much as run their fingers along the spine, let alone read them.

At the table, the man they’ve been following greets his friend.

“I bear grave news,” says the man sitting at the table with the menu held lightly between his index and thumb. “The chicken pie is off .”

Morse turns around to watch the butler leave, eyes still moving swiftly around the room.

“I call that a very bad show,” he continues.

This is the kind of place that Morse thrives in. It reminds Peter of the time he sparred with the dickhead who’d been in charge of the stolen ancient artefacts when they’d been looking for Frida Yelland (or at least Morse had been, he doesn’t like to think about what he said then, about Frida running off with some guy, the memory of finding out it had been her father who had —).

“Morse,” says the man who rushed them through the city. “And your friend, Jakes is it?”

He doesn’t respond, eyes roving over the riches. Peter doesn’t either, his eyes on the pair of them. He wonders if that’s what it’s like to have a partner. They seem to occupy space beside each other like they’ve been accommodating for the other their whole lives.

“Singleton,” he says, pointing to himself and then pointing to the man already seated at the table, “Louis. Louis, Morse and Jakes.” So they do know his name .

“You have thirty seconds to tell us who you are and what you want or we’re leaving,” Morse snaps. Peter can tell by the lines around his mouth and his frown that he’s tired of the games for today.

They continue in a riddling way to tell them they work for the government. “St Peter in Chains” whatever that means, but Morse knows people who are buried there so it must be important. Peter feels out of his depth, he always does in places like this.

“Are we going to get a straight answer?” He’s proud of the drawl he manages, despite the itching desire to walk away and never come back. “We’re tired of riddles.”

“They answer only to the crown,” says Morse matter-of-factly. “That’s what they were saying with the whole ‘traitors’ and ‘Royal Peculiar’ and ‘traitors all’.”

Peter eyes them and their stupid peacock way of sitting behind the table. “They couldn’t just say that?” It feels nice to talk about Louis and Singleton like they aren’t there, like this is a conversation they can have with eyes on them and it doesn’t even matter. It feels like an affront to the two spies’ sensibilities. It feels like an attack on old power.

“So what do you want?” asks Morse, neither of them have taken a seat.

“To help, of course.” Singleton looks like he’s offended they could be taken in any other way.

“On what?”

Singleton eyes them both for a moment. “Pfuscher.” He makes it sound like an expensive clothing brand somehow.

“And what’s in it for you?” Morse paces over to the window, his shoulders look tense and Peter can only imagine the shrewd frown creasing his eyebrows. He looks so out of place in his cheap suit. Peter wants a cigarette.

Neither of them answer that. “You should take a look at Sebastian Fenix,” says Louis, and his voice is plummy and refined like Morse’s friends up at Lake Silence.

“The perfumer?” Morse says it like it’s a French word and it’s so Morse that he feels a little more at home.

“The world famous multi-millionaire perfumer playboy and philanthropist,” says Louis delicately. He sits in his chair like a bird.

“And why can’t you take a look at it?” Peter hopes blunt questions will get blunt answers with a string of reasons but Louis just raises an eyebrow.

“You’re policemen. Every game must be played according to its rules.”

Peter hates games and rules. Every serial murderer in Oxford wants to play a game with Cowley Station. He remembers Mason Gull. He remembers the puzzles, he remembers Morse playing the game.

“Is what happened to Pfuscher in some way connected to Fenix?” Morse has turned back from the window, his curls haloed by the noon sun.

Louis and Singleton move in closer together for a moment like they’re in silent conference, like that’s all it takes for them to understand each other, to be right next to each other. Peter wants it more than anything. “He acted as interpreter for Fenix for a while,” says Singleton. “Fenix has a factory north of Oxford. We’d be very interested in anything you might pick up.” Like they’ve already agreed to helping them with whatever is going on.

“Particularly anything being made in Laboratory 4.” Louis smiles at Morse genially. Laboratory 4 , he’s liking this less and less, this is about Steven McLean, not Sebastian Fucking Fenix.

“Why don’t you take a look?” Morse sounds unimpressed.

“Do you love your country?”

So fast it’s a lightning strike Morse says, “Do you still beat your wife?”

It’s one of those conversations Peter can’t make head or tail of, falling into allusion and hints, metaphors and threats and barbed words but he can understand Morse’s sharp tone. Morse doesn’t like it, Morse doesn’t trust Singleton or Louis, Morse is going to check out Fenix anyway.

Louis huffs an amused sound.

“We’re on the side of the angels.” Singleton leans forwards as he says it, as if that will convince them of his earnestness. They sound like crackpot loonies. They sound like they’re reaching the climax of their villain speech confession to several brutal murders laden with religious imagery. “Quite literally.”

“We’re not spies,” says Morse. He raises a hand in exasperation and paces back to stand next to Peter.

“Neither are we,” Louis says primly. Peter thinks that’s a fucking joke.

“Then what are you?”

“Keepers of the secret flame.” (He snorts, God give him fucking strength . This is worse than Morse’s operas.) “Guardians of the realm. Britain’s last line of defence.” (Fucking hell.)

Singleton gets up and goes to the wall of books.

“So why me?”

“You are a policeman,” says Singleton, “and so is your nice friend here.” He pulls a book out of the shelf. “You can legitimately look into matters beyond our sphere of influence.”

“And you can just as legitimately wipe your hands of it if anything goes wrong,” says Morse with that pinched toothless polite smile he usually saves up for the most annoying of Chief Constables and condescending educated twats from the universities who don’t think policemen can read.

Singleton looks amused. “Something like that,” says Louis, smiling through his irritating moustache.

A long silence. Morse turns on one foot towards the door. “Enjoy your potted shrimp.”

He sighs and holds out the box he’d pulled from the bookshelf. It’s white and compact. “It’s entirely your decision but this may prove instructive.” His eyes are glittering.

Peter reaches out and takes it before he knows what he’s doing.

“Our perfumer is quite photogenic,” says Louis.

“Burn it when you’re done.” Not spies his fucking arse . “We have copies.”

*

The drive back to Oxford is quiet. Peter drives so he can have control of the music and so Morse can think and stare mournfully out of the passenger window. In his lap, Morse has the box Singleton and Louis gave them. Every so often he opens it and stares down at the coil of film, his eyes thoughtful.

“Up for a late night tonight?” asks Peter as they reach the edge of Oxford.

Morse hums questioningly.

“We’ll need the gaffer’s film player to look at that.”

Morse smirks, all pleased like. “Good.”

“Did you seriously think I was going to leave you in the lurch now?”

He shrugs, tapping his fingers on the white box. “I don’t know.”

“We do this together, whichever way it goes. Last time I left you to go it alone you ended up in prison, you need me to keep you in check.”

“Together.”

*

“The old man’s been looking for you,” hisses Strange as soon as they return to the station. “Why weren’t you answering the radio?”

Peter shrugs off his coat and hangs it up next to Morse’s. “We were on foot most of the day.”

Thursday’s head materialises from the cloud of tobacco smoke in his office as if on cue. “Where the hell have you been?”

“Chasing leads,” says Morse.

“Did it go anywhere?”

Peter waves a flippant hand. “Maybe, we’ll have to see how it turns out. Pickpockets are notoriously difficult to catch… We’ve got a general area where they’ll be. We’ll chase it up.” (They do, they found it days ago.)

Thursday disappears with an unconvinced growl.

“So what were you actually doing?” asks Strange as Thursday’s door slams.

Fancy pokes up from behind a great sheaf of paperwork. “You weren’t actually…?”

“What were you doing with Thursday yesterday?” Morse slumps down at his desk and gets out the crossword rather than doing anything useful.

“Why did you stay behind at DeBryn’s when you were told to —”

“— Why did you leave me to deal with Blenheim Vale alone?”

Peter starts tapping on his typewriter loudly. “Both of you shut up and get on with some work.” Morse sinks down without a fight, his haughty blue eyes disappearing behind his crossword focus, Strange stiffens and reads a report with harsh flips of the pages, Fancy eyes them all like he’s unsure which side he should take or what the argument is about or whether something serious is happening to the team. Peter is tired.

The gaffer starts coughing and he doesn’t stop for a long time.

*

He drops a saucer of biscuits and a cup of tea on Morse’s desk. The only lights are theirs, glowing hot pools of molten amber light. Morse ran Thursday home a few hours before, Fancy and Strange had gone out to the pub after that. Now Cowley is silent on the top floor, the night guard are only a muffled murmur several floors below. Morse looks up, one hand still caught in his curls, a confused half-smile on his face. “Eat up, Constable.” He looks odd in the low lights of the station, more angular, his hair more golden and more ginger, eyes sharper. “Go on, that’s Cowley’s finest cuisine.”

Morse does. He asks, through a mouthful of crumbs, already lifting the tea to his mouth, “Are we going to watch that tape then?”

Peter takes a sip of his own tea and nods. “I think Thursday keeps it in that cupboard behind his desk, I’ll go have a poke around.”

It takes until Morse has finished his tea and biscuits for Peter to find and set up the projector and work out how to slip the reel in properly. The ticker tape sound of the machine fills the room and Morse leans against the cabinet beside him, sipping his tea thoughtfully as a video of Sebastian Fenix and Karl Pfuscher flickers on the wall. Peter’s never had this much video evidence for a case before. Hotel de Geneve, says the sign behind them. They meet with some old bloke and there’s a lot of nodding and handshaking. Pfuscher with some kind of odd ‘I told you so’ expression on his face when he turns to Fenix. Fenix looking sour.

“What has that got to do with anything?” He glares at the wall where the tape has run out and now only lights flicker on the cream walls.

“I guess we know now that Pfuscher at least knew Fenix.”

He turns to look at Morse who is staring off into the middle distance, frown pinching the crows feet of his eyes. Morse looks too old already. “Talk to Doctor Schneider again in the morning?” His voice feels too soft and Morse jumps then nods. His eyes are very close and very blue. “Let’s pack this away and we can go home.”

Morse nibbles his bottom lip. “And we’ll work out how to get into Fenix Factory, see if we can get a meeting with Mr Fenix.”

“The ‘ multi-millionaire ’, ‘ philanthropist ’, ‘ playboy ’,” he says with the lavish accents of Singleton and Louis.

He smiles. “That’s the one.”

“Why don’t we put Trewlove on the pickpockets, she’ll be happy to cover for us and we can say she got us all the leads in the report. Bright loves it when Trewlove gets a mention in the reports.”

“Let’s go home,” whispers Morse and it’s — Peter isn’t going to cry.

*

They stand on opposite sides of the hallway. They smell like night air. Morse looks ancient and ethereal in the bad lighting of the corridor. He looked like a luminescent firefly caught forever in amber out in the cool silence of the night as they wandered home below the stars.

“Goodnight then,” says Morse. He smells like night air and he looks like the wind.

He wants to — But he won’t. “Goodnight, Morse.”

*

“Apparently in one of his last letters Pfuscher had wanted to see this Miss Bagshot,” says Morse, taking a sip of tea. They’re squirrelled away in the locker room, both watching the door intently. “Their old languages teacher. So I went to see her too, it was her number that he called for three minutes. She refused at first to remember that Pfuscher had called her and then she changed , just like that.” He snaps his fingers. “Said I was either brave or stupid and this wasn’t something we should be sticking our noses into. She said to leave it to Special Branch. I think she’s an agent too, something about this is between Russia and the West. She threatened me, good as.”

Peter frowns, turning around to smooth back his hair in the cracked mirror. “An old woman?”

“A proper old battleaxe,” Morse corrects, turning from the door too so his tea steams up the mirror. “Do you have to do that every five minutes?”

“Do you have to look like you’ve got a bird nesting up there?”

“Birds couldn’t nest in your hair, it’s like an oil slick, they’d never fly again.”

He rolls his eyes. “Ha ha ha. Let’s go find Trewlove and go to the Fenix Factory.”

*

“We’ll give you all the credit in our reports,” he wheedles, holding out the slim folder. “All you need to do is wait at this square and nick them. They’ll be there today.”

She takes it slowly, her eyes narrowed. “And what are you doing?”

“You know what we’re doing. We’ll do all the paperwork as well as long as you say we were with you until you had the culprit and then we went to follow other lines of enquiry.”

Morse is employing the full force of the big blue eyes next to him.

She sighs, snatching it delicately between her index and thumb. “Alright. Stay safe.”

“Thanks Shirl, if anyone asks you thought it was so we could plan a surprise birthday party for Strange.”

She rolls her eyes and readjusts her hat before disappearing into the swell of officers in the mess.

“ Shirl ,” repeats Morse with a smirk, “Fancy won’t be happy.”

“Don’t be jealous.” He throws Morse the keys to the Jag.

“Coming from you.”

It hurts probably more than it ought to. Maybe it just hurts so much because it’s so fucking true. He’s always been jealous of everyone and everything. Because Morse always know how to go for the kill shot. He slips in the passenger side of the Jag before he realises that Morse has stopped several steps behind him. Then Morse is hurrying to swing himself in the other side.

Morse turns to face him. “I didn’t mean it to — to upset you or…”

Embarrassment immediately burns up his spine. “No it’s — it’s fine.”

“ Peter .” (Oh fucking hell.) “I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry for?” He doesn’t mean to sound so harsh but it doesn’t matter anyway because Morse just stares him down. “You didn’t do anything.”

“You should’ve been Thursday’s bagman. I’m sorry that I —” Morse is apologising to him .

“Hardly your fault.” He doesn’t mean to sound so soft. “Come on, let’s go before the old man catches us and drags us back inside.”

“Listen I’m still —”

“Drive.” But he’s smiling.

*

The Fenix Factory is a concrete monstrosity that rises up behind barbed fences and great tarmacked expanses of car parking. Clouds of grey smoke spill from the turrets and it smells like artificial flowers and fruits, even inside the Jag. It hulks under the grey skyline with its large letters proclaiming “THE FENIX FACTORY”. Peter thinks you have to be a fucking arsehole to have your name in letters that big. He imagines if Bright had his name up on the side of the nick instead of Cowley, what a fucking laugh that would be. Or Thursday. DS Jakes from Bright Thursday Station, ACC Deare City Police. (Except no, no it’s not Deare any more because Morse fought the demons and Morse won, in the end.)

Morse leans forwards over the wheel as the man at the gate lets them past, peering up through the Jag’s wind shield. “Oxford’s gleaming spires.”

“Probably why they didn’t let them build it in the city.” Peter doesn’t like the way the gates crunch behind them. He fiddles for a cigarette.

“Not in the Jag, Thursday will bring Bright down on our heads.” Morse slaps his hand gently.

“Every Chief Constable in the city. Your second spell in prison Morse. Aiding and abetting Peter Jakes smoking in the Jag. I can’t believe you took Thursday’s Jag anyway, you could have taken any one of the others.”

Morse shrugs mulishly, slamming the Jag into park. “Strange will be driving him anyway, they can take a different car.”

“What’s happened?”

“Strange is picking him up tomorrow morning,” Morse says eventually before shooting out of the car. When Peter catches up he only says, “Did you see on the sign in sheet that Pfuscher signed in on the eleventh at almost eight in the evening and never signed out?”

He diverts from Thursday’s mood swings ever since Blenheim Vale and turns his attention back to the case. “Odd. You think he was thrown out? Had to run away? Make a quick exit?”

“I don’t know,” he muses, craning his neck to look up at the building. “Not sure we should ask either, I don’t want to be too far on their radar. Let’s see what we can pick up while seeming like mildly idiotic policemen.”

*

A lady in an ugly lime green boxy dress lets them into an office that couldn’t be more different from Singleton and Louis’s if it tried. Although it has kept the wood panelled walls and arched ceilings of it’s tradition, Fenix’s office is all slabs of modern leather sofas, a long clear fishtank, and a glass desk with a high backed leather desk chair in front of a massive mirror. The round glass coffee table at the centre of the room makes it look like the office came right out of the catalogue and in to a room that doesn’t quite fit. Everything is too low for the practically cathedral ceilings. The huge window makes it feel like an asylum or old boy’s school.

Morse drops immediately to his haunches to stare at the fish. Peter wonders if Morse has any pets and then remembers that he lives next door in the strictly no pets allowed flats. He seems like a cat person, but maybe that’s just because he’s staring at the fish so avidly.

“There’s something in there,” Morse murmurs, “in the chest. Where have I —”

The door swings open. Fenix is a short man with dark thick curls and a well cut three-piece suit. He looks self-important, almost rodent like with his bright, dark eyes. “Remarkable creatures,” he says, approaching the tank as well. He says something incomprehensible (Latin), then, “Commonly known as the Estuarine Snakefish. Secretes a lethal toxin from the spines on their dorsal fin which stick up when disturbed… oh, or threatened.” Somehow he makes the whole thing sound like a warning, just like the warning Miss Bagshot gave Morse. Up close he looks tired.

“Goes by the name of Tiddles, presumably?”

Peter can’t help the small laugh as he paces under the window.

Fenix pulls a singularly unimpressed closed lip smile worthy of Morse.

“That’s an unusual pet.”

He stares out of the window at the milling factory workers. The air smells sickly sweet even here, like they’ve entered a hypnotic dreamworld of scents, tantalising but also just not quite right. Something unnatural, smelling something when there’s nothing to smell.

“I am attracted to unusual things,” says Fenix. Slimy git. What the hell is that supposed to mean?

Peter turns from the window. “What is it you do here? We’re curious.”

“Fatal flaw in cats, Mr Jakes.”

“Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back,” says Morse pleasantly. Peter decides not to press the Sergeant issue because Fenix seems like the type who dislikes police authority. God he wants a smoke.

“We make perfume. And an awful lot of money.” He lifts a bottle from the glass coffee table like he’s a salesman. An awful lot of money , he sounds like one of the posh set out at Lake Silence that always set Peter’s teeth on edge.

Morse’s wrinkles tighten around his mouth. “Dollars and scents.” God he’s fucking awful.

“It’s easy to mock but to make great perfume takes… genius. ” (Fucking hell.) “And a nose that would shame the greatest sommelier in the world. Thankfully I possess both.” (Fucking hell.)

“And no end of modesty.” Morse’s eyes are flinty.

“A much over-prized virtue. Come. Let me show you.”

Before they leave, Morse’s eyes fall back on the fishtank. And there’s that look again, a clue .

*

They leave the Fenix Factory with nothing more than a dislike for the man himself and the impression that something smells fishy under all the sweet perfume smells. Even Laboratory 4 had been a mystery, all great metal barrels reaching up into the shadowed walkways above them with untold secrets. The shining plastic woman in her green dress, the hulking bodyguard who could threaten with appearance alone.

Something wasn’t right.

As they drove away, Peter at the wheel this time, Morse started to think out loud. “Pfuscher was here, and he didn’t sign out… So why did Fenix say that he didn’t… Either Pfuscher didn’t come here to see Fenix, or Fenix is lying about seeing Pfuscher recently. Pfuscher as Fenix’s translator in Geneva… there was a reason that was filmed. Working hypothesis: Professor Richmond recruited Pfuscher, Pfuscher was placed with Fenix for a reason. Maybe Fenix found out… Or Pfuscher found something out and he needed to get a message…” He looks darkly at the gift bag in the backseat. “Vesperti perfume… Vespertine is something that blooms in the evening, probably not relevant.” He waves a hand, turning back to the front. “Still, that missing clock and picture…”

“What about the fishtank? What did you see?”

Morse shakes his head. “I’m not sure. The bronze edge of — of something . ‘W’ something etched in capitals. In this mock treasure chest fishtank item, one of those tacky ones, you know?”

“This is all very James Bond,” says Peter as they roll out of the gates, signing out on the sheet which glaringly misses Pfuscher’s clock out time, now he looks for it. “Tonight we’ll go over everything and look for things beginning with ‘W’. I didn’t like Fenix, too many threats for head perfumer . What was all that about villains and heroes and getting the girl at the end? That we’re going to get the ‘bad ending’ while he gets the money and the girls. Fucking wanker.”

Morse smiles, knocking his head back against the seat. “Mind if we listen to opera?”

Fucking opera.

*

He’s pretty sure he can speak Italian now. Fucking opera.

Trewlove waves them down by the entrance and says the pickpockets didn’t show but that the story had passed muster. They were in the clear.

Fancy sidles up as they enter the main office. “Sarge, a Doctor Schneider left a sketchbook belonging to Karl Pfuscher on your desk. Are you still looking in to that?”

“I’ll pass it right along to Special Branch,” he lies, hiding it quickly in his desk drawer.

“Who’s Doctor Schneider?”

“The less you know the less you have the lie to the gaffer.” He lights his next cigarette with the end of the first. “Not a great way to start off your career, listen to Sergeant Strange. Where is Strange?”

“Out, some sudden death. He wouldn’t take me with him, said I had paperwork to do.”

For some reason Peter feels bad all of a sudden. He treated Morse like shit when he’d first arrived and he’s been treating Fancy like shit as well. “Well, me and Morse are having lunch now. Come with us?”

“Hasn’t he got paperwork?” says Morse, materialising by his elbow.

“Don’t be a prickly fucker, Morse. Play nice.”

Morse raises a sarcastic eyebrow but when his expression goes back to Fancy maybe he sees… maybe he sees what Peter sees: a young Morse desperate to please, perhaps a little different from Fancy, but ultimately the same. “Get your coat, Fancy,” he says finally.

*

They steal Trewlove away from the desk as well to treat her to a thank you lunch. She looks surprised which is a shame, Peter likes Trewlove sort of abstractly, she’d become useful during Morse’s self-imposed sabbatical. She’s a good officer and with a brain that could be comparable to Morse’s at a push. So it’s a big shame that none of the others have ever asked her out to the Lamb and Flag before. Fancy, still limping from his fail at the races, stares at her the whole walk down in a frankly annoying strength of devotion.

After they’ve ordered (“Morse, don’t disobey a Sergeant, buy a fucking sandwich”) the table falls into an uneasy silence. They make an odd group: Trewlove in her uniform, himself with his sharp weaselly face, Fancy with his loving puppy looks, and Morse with his melancholy frown and shock of curls.

“So, do you normally go against Inspector Thursday this much?” Fancy breaks the silence.

Peter snorts. “Morse is always going against the grain, normally we have Thursday on side though.”

“And normally I don’t have you,” says Morse, like that’s a fair trade in his books. Thursday for Peter.

Trewlove shifts awkwardly. “I always thought you’d be a stickler for rules, Detective.” She glances at Morse. “You were always spoken so highly of by Mr Bright and Inspector Thursday.”

“Before Morse got shot and had to take light duties at Whitney Station, Bright wasn’t such a big fan,” Peter answers for him, “after that Bright started respecting the brains. But no one’s liking Morse for his adherence to rules or playing by the book.”

“Anyway, before Thursday liked to stand by my side a bit more,” says Morse, blushing over his sandwich, “after well .” He raises a sarcastic eyebrow which says being shot and losing Joan .

“I always thought CID would be different.” Fancy takes an exuberant slurp of soup.

“ Did you think it’d all be happy families?” Peter asks sarcastically.

Fancy shrugs. “No, just thought it would be more simple, I suppose.” He smiles that guileless puppy look and Peter is reminded painfully of Morse, for some reason, even though Morse was never really like that. “This is fun though.”

He and Morse exchange glances. “Fun, sure,” he says finally, rolling his eyes. And Morse just shakes his head. They both know it’s never easy and never really that fun when it gets down to it.

*

“Of course you almost get strangled,” says Peter, pulling Morse into his flat. “If that Bagshot hadn’t —”

“You would’ve stopped it,” says Morse like this is fact or something.

“Or we would’ve both died.”

Morse rolls his eyes. “Well, I didn’t die.”

“I’m never waiting in the car again, I hope you realise.” He drops down at his kitchen table, watching Morse.

“I thought it would be just —” He waves a hand. “Just a safehouse.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he says with a sigh, “I guess we know now.”

He frowns. “We know why Pfuscher died but we don’t know who this NEWS lot are, or where , or what they intend to do next.”

“Brilliant, more mysteries.” Peter pinches his lips together. “We should tell Thursday what we’ve found, now.”

“Jakes…”

“You know we should.”

“He won’t want to get involved. He never — Always too late.”

Blenheim Vale. Peter eyes Morse, leaning against Peter’s wall, his hair wild and unkempt, shirt tails coming out the front of his trousers. “So, we tell him, and then we go and do what needs to be done anyway.”

“We,” Morse repeats, like it’s any kind of question.

“How many times do I have to tell you: I’m not leaving you to do this shit on your own any more.” He wants to do something stupid like hold out his little finger to pinky swear, like he’s still a kid. He needs to promise this to Morse. He needs to.

Morse is looking at him like… like something . Peter can’t read him. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I — I promise.”

He starts to smile, maybe sort of disbelievingly. “Would have been a time you wouldn’t have ever —”

He doesn’t want to have to say it again, the name of that place. Blenheim Vale has come up enough the past couple of days, more than it should. He doesn’t want to say I’m not that jealous child any more (he doesn’t know if it would be a lie). “Morse. I’m not leaving you again.” He’s never staying in the car, he’s never staying glossy eyed and drunk in the pub, he’s never, ever letting Morse get back to him bloodstained and bruised. No more prisons, no more hospitals. Morse’s throat is garishly blue and purple where he was choked.

Morse’s expression softens. “I’ll be just across the hall.”

Peter doesn’t ask him to stay right here. He wants to. He really does.

*

“Are you… are you going to drop it now?” Fancy is watching them across the office with big eyes.

“It doesn’t concern you,” says Morse. “It’s better you don’t —”

“They’re going to drop it,” says Strange. He’s eyeing them with an expression that is almost scared. Or worried. “People have died for sticking their noses in that, it’s not for meat-and-veg coppers, like Thursday said.”

Fancy is watching them still. He’s probably thinking about the fact Morse and Peter told him they weren’t meat-and-veg coppers. He’s probably thinking they’re insane.

“We’ll drop it,” Peter says, for the peace of Strange’s mind. He looks at Morse and winks. “Can we have the crossword out of your paper, Strange?”

“You get into that now, too?”

“No, just beats sitting around waiting for a new case to come in.”

“We’ve got cases,” says Strange.

“Nothing interesting though,” says Morse. “Unless anybody’s been murdered on stage at an opera recently?”

Strange snorts. “Well, alright.”

Heads bent over the crossword at Morse’s desk, Morse whispers, “We’ll go back to Fenix’s tonight. There must be something we missed.”

“Wouldn’t mind a poke around in that freak’s office while he isn’t there,” Peter says grimly, watching Morse’s pencil idly mark in another answer.

“Will you kill me if I put my hand in his poisonous fish tank?”

Peter glares at the side of his head. “ Yes .”

Morse snorts and looks up at him. He’s very close. Beautiful in the way that Morse is when he’s trying to — well, the way he always looks, really. “Well, try to make my last moments on earth pleasant, then.”

“You aren’t stinking your hand anywhere near that thing.”

“So you are going after it still?” Fancy hisses, loitering near Morse’s desk. “I knew —”

“Shut up, Fancy,” says Peter. “It’s need to know basis.”

Morse laughs, his eyes are still on Peter’s face. He doesn’t know what to do with that.

*

Morse, of course, (because he has no respect for Peter’s health) sticks his hand in the fishbowl of certain death but is miraculously unscathed by the beast. Peter punches him on the shoulder so hard he almost drops the hotel key — because that is what is in the chest — back in the water.

“Idiot,” says Morse, rubbing his shoulder mournfully.

“You’re the one who almost dropped it.”

“You hit me .”

“I’ll kiss it better if you’re going to whine about it.”

Morse sticks his tongue out because he really is a child.

“You’re lucky you didn’t get bit by that thing, I wouldn’t be sucking the venom out I’ll tell you that much.”

Morse opens his mouth, probably to let him know that’s not how venom works, or something, when Peter hears a noise. He claps a hand over Morse’s mouth and shushes him quietly. Morse goes very still under his hand.

One moment. Two.

Footsteps in the corridor. The room, for all it’s Bond-villain furniture, is bare of hiding spots.

Peter and Morse stare at each other. Morse is warm under Peter’s hand, he could probably move it now, but it’s nice to feel his breath against his palm, know he’s alive still.

Silence reigns outside the door. Peter, regretfully, moves his hand.

They’re still looking at each other, his hands hang uselessly at his sides. He doesn’t let his gaze drop. He won’t.

Morse opens his mouth to speak again, Peter knows by the look in his eyes he’s about to say something stupid. He knows Morse, more than he ever thought he did. “Peter.” He’s said that twice now, in the past couple of days, more than Blenheim Vale has been said, maybe. Peter hasn’t been counting those with as much care.

“Don’t,” he murmurs hoarsely. “Not —” Not now, not here.

Morse’s eyes soften and harden somehow all at once. “Jakes, I —”

“Later,” he says, promises really.

He looks surprised.

“What?”

“Just —” He pauses. “Okay, later.”

*

After the NEWSagents (God but Peter is tired of Oxford criminals trying to be funny ) are all either dead or in custody and the paperwork is in neat piles and Thursday has apologised for not taking it seriously, or whatever, there is a moment of silence. Peter and Morse look at each other for a long moment.

“Home?” Morse asks, like they’re going to the same one, like they’re —

Peter spins on his heel. “Strange, we’re heading.”

“No victory drinks?” He’s smiling at them sort of hopefully.

“Not tonight. We were up all night.”

Fancy , of all people, snorts.

“Get your mind of the gutter, constable. Dirty fucker.” Peter pointedly does not blush at any implications or lack there of. “Morse, come on.”

Morse snorts and mutters, “Yes sir ,” under his breath in a way that would have had Peter steaming mad a short while ago. Just makes him smile now. He’s fallen for the charm, the way everyone does, damn .

They walk home together through the early evening. It smells like night time already even though the sun is still up. The air is breezy and fresh, calm. Peter feels like something is in his chest, pressing up against his ribcage, threatening to burst free.

“Morse…”

“Jakes?”

“What… When — Well.”

Morse laughs. “Yes?”

He doesn’t know what else to say. They go into the building and then up the stairs. Their corridor is quiet and empty. “You want to come in?” he manages brusquely.

Morse is looking at him like he’s some fascinating and amusing puzzle. “It’s a wonder you ever get any , if this is what you’re like.”

He stares at Morse. Brilliant, stupid, beautiful Morse. “Who said you were —? Who said I was trying to —?”

He throws back his head and laughs. Peter doesn’t know how he ever survived without that sound. “Jakes, just open the door and… and we’ll see.” His head his cocked and he’s smiling all cocky, the bastard.

Peter looks up and down the corridor. Shrugs. Opens his front door, grabs Morse by the shirt collar and drags him into the flat. “So…”

“Don’t overthink,” Morse says, his collar still in Peter’s white fist, still smiling now more gentle. “Just…”

He darts forwards and kisses him square on the mouth, so hard it hurts his teeth and chin.

“Ow.” Morse is laughing at him.

“Well, if you’re going to complain…” Peter can’t help but laugh himself.

“No.” This time Morse kisses him. Him: Peter Jakes.

He’s thinking about him and Morse choosing to help librarians find books rather than babysit the new boy, he’s thinking about Singleton and Louis and their perfect partnership. (He’s thinking about Morse, who went to Blenheim Vale and killed the monsters; Morse who calls him Peter sometimes.) He wants this, so much he can hardly kiss him back.

“Yeah?” says Morse and for a moment he looks worried. Like Peter could ever have him like this once and then never again.

“Yeah,” says Peter. “Yeah.” He’s promising again. Promising he’s never leaving Morse, not ever again. He’s tired of wanting and never having. He’s tired of the jealousy. “Just not too much opera, please.”

He grins, quick and bright. “As long as you don’t ever call me Endeavour.”

Peter quietly promises himself that he will definitely be calling him Endeavour at least once. “Of course not, dear.”

Morse kicks his shin.

“Ow.”

Morse kisses him.

“You’re supposed to kiss where it hurt to make the pain go away,” Peter whispers into the little gap between them.

Morse narrows his eyes. “Oh, no. I was only kissing you to shut you up.”

“I will be stealing that tactic, believe me, you never fucking shut —”

He closes his eyes, Morse just keeps kissing him (but Peter swears he feels him smile into it, and he can only smile back).