Lights of London City
by Mab
There was a poster by the bowling alley exit – 'the inside story', with its illustration of a bowling ball's inner workings. Doyle's eyes flicked on it, flicked away, as he and Bodie walked out that door into the damp night air. Inside story. Doyle didn't think so. Cowley and other departmental higher-ups must be shedding D-Notices the way that a chain-smoker shed cigarette ash.
His hands tingled. It's just reaction, he told himself. The atom bomb-squad boys (and god, he hoped that they didn't get to see much action) had waved their geiger counters around and declared that Doyle and Bodie would be safe, and no more likely to have important pieces of their anatomy drop off than any other bloke. Bob of the Bowling Alley might have faced impending nuclear martyrdom with calm, but Frank had been less ideologically inclined. He wouldn't have carried around something that was going to kill him and leave him unable to enjoy his great white myth of Africa, would he? Doyle wiped his hands against the side of his legs. They were still tingling. Dirty feeling.
Bodie was right behind him, past the brick facing on the wall, past the concrete tiles scrawled with graffiti, out under the orange-glow lights of the street, wet pavement flashing with the white and blue lights of the cars that had brought Cowley and his cavalry there just that little bit too late. And speaking of dirty, there was the fat man who'd roped Doyle into bowling with that other bloke; sitting under guard in the back of a car and looking very sorry for himself. He'd played the game, and made barbed little jokes and added up his scorecard like it didn't matter that everything around them would be radioactive rubble in just a few hours. Obviously, it didn't matter to him. Doyle already knew that some people didn't give a shit – but the scale of Fat Man's obliviousness left something sick and hollow in Doyle's gut.
Bodie leaned back against a car, his gaze on Fat Man. "Tell me, 4-5. You ever regret the abolition of hanging?" His face was washed out in the dark, barring the occasional glare of bright colour from the flashing lights, but his voice was full of malicious energy.
"Always sad to see the way that noble traditions are given up. And he wouldn't need much of a drop, not with that gut on him."
Fat Man heard them – it wasn't as if they were being quiet. The soldier standing guard over him by the car smirked.
"Not unknown for occasional decapitations, you know. If the rope was tied the wrong way and there was a lot of weight and the drop guessed wrong and all." Bodie's voice was musing, pleasant, an intelligent man considering the bygone glories of Mother England.
"Shame, that. That there isn't hanging anymore, I mean." Doyle shoved himself off from the car. God, it was getting late – or early - depending on how you looked at it, and he felt heavy as lead. He wondered how long they'd have to hang about here being useful as tits on a bull. But then the Cow appeared in the unlikely guise of saviour and sent them on their way, after demanding a further summary of events. What was there to say that the old man didn't already know? They figured out that where all these bastards were that there the bomb must have been also. Dead simple, really.
"Want to collect your own car or shall I just drop you off?" Bodie pulled out onto the rain-slick street.
"Nah, just straight home, mate. Not like you can't take me in again tomorrow."
"That's right. Live to be your bloody chauffeur, I do. Imposing on my good nature." Bodie sighed for the wickedness of the world, and the wickedness of one Raymond Doyle in particular.
Doyle grunted in tired amusement. "Yeah, that's me. Live to make your life miserable." He shut his eyes, opened them again as a traffic light in front of them turned green, shut them, opened them as they drove through London, lit up against the ordinary night, and sleepy as London ever might be.
"Come up for a moment?" he asked Bodie when they reached his flat. No reason that Bodie should. He'd want to get home, wash the sweat off himself, put his head on his pillow and sleep. But Bodie only said, "Yeah, why not?" and got out of the car and locked it behind him, and paused for a moment to coax a wandering cat closer. It approached suspiciously but permitted Bodie's hand to touch, a couple of firm swipes across its back before it scampered away in search of mice, or a dustbin with a lid askew.
"Silly little bugger," Bodie said as it left. "Got your keys out, then?"
Doyle jangled them in front of Bodie's nose, and Bodie flourished his hand towards Doyle's door. "Let's get inside, Ray. Bloody perishing out here."
"Not as perishing as it might have been," Doyle said, turning key in lock with slightly unsteady hands. Just as well that they hadn't shaken earlier that night.
"Perishing is for cold. Would have been a hot time in the old town tonight, instead." Bodie practically shoved him inside the door, and shut it behind them, insouciantly lifting Doyle's keys from his grip and attending to the locks himself.
"Bloody strange sense of humour you have."
"Suits me, Raymond, suits me." Bodie found the light switch and, rubbing his hands together, made his way to the booze, and poured two fingers worth of neat scotch. "Want one?" he asked with innocent cheek, the surface impression of boyishness only slightly disturbed by the lightning speed that dispatched the alcohol down his throat.
"In a minute." Doyle wandered into his bedroom, not bothering with the light. It felt dank in there; he should put the heating on, get some clean clothes and run a bath for himself, wash the sweat-stink off his body, wipe away the blood that still crusted inside his nostrils. Instead, he walked to the window, looked out at the street. There was someone wandering up the road, meandering a course that suggested that he was worse for drink. Why not, mate, Doyle thought. Hope you had a better night than I did. There was one light besides the streetlights, in a window across the street. Keeping odd hours as he did, Doyle often saw that light glowing through the net curtains. Shift-worker, insomniac, who knew.
He ought to put his own light on, but he didn't, just stayed at his post by the window, looking outside, cocooned within dark and the four walls of his bedroom.
"Ray?"
Doyle turned sharply, ready to gut Bodie with words if he committed the crime of lighting the bedroom. But Bodie did no such thing, just made his way with sure steps in the dimness to Doyle's side.
"Thinking, are you?"
"Maybe."
"Can do too much of that, you know." A kindly voice from Bodie, rather than teasing. Doyle exorcised the passing burn in his eyes with a glow of irritation.
"And how would you know that?" he scoffed, still looking out his window, imagining the quiet scene below a nightmare of blacked-out dark, confused cries, sirens, a glow of fire in the distance, the gentle rain of poison. Not that he or Bodie would have been here to see it.
"Learned the hard way." Bodie stood too close, and Doyle turned to shove him away, but that was too much effort. Easier just to lean against Bodie's sturdy body and put his arms around his waist. Bodie reeked, the same way that Doyle did. Not a deodorant in all the United Kingdom could stop a man stinking after he disarmed an atom bomb, although, Doyle thought with mordant humour, he'd certainly endorse one that could. He laughed, the sound muffled in Bodie's shoulder. At least, he thought it was probably a laugh.
"You all right?" Bodie enquired.
"Shut up," was all the answer Bodie got. That, and a firmer grip around his waist. Doyle didn't feel too bothered by it all, because by then he was fairly sure that he was holding on for the benefit of them both. Bodie certainly didn't seem in any hurry to let him go.
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