#set 28

VI: quiet evening

"So," said Herc, carefully, "About Saturday."

Carolyn sighed. "Go on. What circus of horrors do you have planned? And please bear in mind that two years is hardly a milestone, at our age."

He grinned. "Well, I did consider having a string quartet serenade us—"

"Oh, good Lord."

"—as we sit beneath a floral canopy on the balcony of the most expensive restaurant in town, before riding home in a horse-drawn cart—"

"Hercules..."

"But then I thought, perhaps you'd like it best if we just had a quiet evening in together?"

IX: in the street

Douglas noticed it first. Stifling a smile, he nudged Martin, and the two of them attempted to communicate it to Arthur, but had to stop when it became clear he thought they were playing charades.

Instead, they walked behind the pair like a couple of giggling schoolboys, seeing the headmistress holding hands with her boyfriend outside of lessons. In the street, no less, where anyone could see.

Carolyn turned round, eying them suspiciously. "Why have you all gone so quiet?"

They arranged themselves into various positions of baffled innocence.

I: crime scene

"What do you think you're doing?"

Martin flinched at the sound of his DI's voice. "Dusting for fingerprints. What was I supposed to be doing?"

She huffed. "Interrogations. I specifically told you to handle those yourself and leave Arthur to hand over to scene of crime. You know what he's like trying to talk to suspects."

Arthur poked his head out from under the victim's couch. "Nothing under here, Sarge. Oh, hi Mum."

Carolyn frowned. "So—"

"Constable Richardson volunteered to start the interviews," Martin explained. "At least two of the suspects are ex-girlfriends of his."

VII: early morning

Aida awoke with the sunrise, every morning -even with a sturdy blind on her window, she managed to strike up a deafening dawn chorus.

Theresa maintained that their daughter had inherited the early-rising gene from her father’s side, and since that was undoubtedly true, Martin didn’t at all mind being the one to go to her.

One morning, when Aida was about six months old, he noticed that she wasn’t crying today, but singing to herself in a sort of nonsense scrawl of syllables that somehow sounded like happiness in its purest form.

II: lost in woods

Once Arthur's suggestion to reenact Hansel and Gretl had been well and truly vetoed, Martin did briefly consider climbing a tree for phone signal, but his ordeal in Uskerty was a little too fresh in his mind.

"I could do it," Arthur offered, cheerfully.

Martin thought about Arthur as a person, and his general senses of balance, coordination, and personal safety.

"Better not," he said. He looked around, and started off in yet another direction. "I don't think we've been this way before..."

IV: on the roof

There was a ladder lying alongside the barn. Douglas stepped around it, and continued towards the milking shed.

"Douglas! Up here!"

Obediently, he looked up. There was Arthur, perched on the roof of the barn. Douglas waved.

"What on earth are you doing?" he asked, conversationally.

"I was rescuing Talisker," Arthur said. "She was up here miaowing her head off, and I thought she was stuck. But then she got down by herself, with the tree... and her branch pinged against the ladder, and... toppled it."

III: fire alarm

Martin all but chokes awake, the smoke slowly filling his little attic room through the gap where the door doesn’t quite meet its frame. For a dizzying second, he doesn’t even register the sound that’s awoken him: but then it surfaces again, the high-pitched wail of the fire alarm, screaming move, and fast.

He crosses the room, and opens the door for just an instant before hurriedly slamming it again. The bottom half of the rickety wooden staircase that leads up to the attic is already in flames, blocking his escape route completely.