Share Your Toys, Timothy!

Finn was staying at the Jones' house during the Easter college holidays, followed along a little later with Abbey on his arm and they embraced him in turn. While his fiancée joined her anxious parents, Finn handed Tim a mobile phone. Tim lifted his eyebrows.

"It's a new pay as you go phone, supplied by Ammo." The Scot spoke very softly, his lips close to Tim's ear as they embraced in consolation in Tim's moment of need. "It is completely untraceable to you. Ammo is the main contact for operations while Malc is calling in all his favours from his contacts; all your friends are tracking the culprits down. No stone'll be left unturned. They will take care of everything. Roger and Geoff know nothing. You, Roger, Geoff and me, as family, stay out of it completely so we are not implicated. OK?"

Tim nodded his thanks, "They have escalated this thing too far, this has to be an end to it," he whispered back. Finn nodded his silent assent and Tim put the phone in his pocket.

~~~~~

"... She virtually shut her life support system down to hibernation level both to protect herself and the baby, she will probably only remember what happened at a deep subconscious level, if at all," the younger of the two doctors droned on in the doctor's cluttered office, "Hopefully she will put this horrible experience behind her."

Tim could barely hear what the doctor was saying. He had not slept for 85 hours and the adrenaline that had kept him going thus far was already draining from his blood as relief set in. The only thoughts running through his head were that his babies were fine, both his beloved Chelle and their unborn child were going to be OK and Michelle would be awake soon, neither of them physically the worse for wear for their horrific ordeal.

The doctor had mentioned tests for sexually transmitted diseases, which had so far returned negative results, but they would continue to be monitored for any latent problems. Her mental health was uncertain but the appropriate consultant was on hand, he assured him, to make her assessments once Michelle was in a position to be able to respond.

They walked back towards the private room where Michelle lay. The clinical consultant wanted one last check before leaving Tim alone with his slowly awaking wife. Tim stumbled, the fatigue catching up with him. The older of the two consultants, old enough to be Tim's father, fully aware of the ordeal he had been through, caught his arm, steadying him. Tim smiled wanly at him and the doctor nodded back without expression but maintained the steadying grip on Tim's arm until they reached the room. Inside, Jenny and Abbey were maintaining their vigil, both looking dog-tired to the limit of their endurance. In the waiting area at the other end of the corridor Tim could see Roger lying down on a bench seat, while Finn stood walking up and down. Finn waved when he saw Tim and he nodded in reply. Geoff, Tim knew, had returned to work today after going home for the first time since their ordeal began and getting a night's sleep last night. Lesley was at home looking after their children. The family members, both the Smiths and the Jones, had done all they could to support the couple in their time of need.

Minutes later the consultants left the room silently, the older one with a small, satisfied smile on his face, barely expressing the delight he felt at the satisfactory outcome of this particular case, as he closed the door quietly behind them.

Michelle looked so beautiful lying there, Tim thought; if you ignored the black eye, split lower lip and the bruised cheek. Her skin colour was so much better than a couple of days before and the air tubes that had initially maintained her air intake had been removed. Michelle was breathing without any additional aid and appeared unlaboured. She looked at peace, as if she was having a much-needed rest, the slight rise and fall of her chest ample testimony to her returning vitality, the large bump below holding the promise of an additional life to come.

~~~~~

The police detective, Sergeant Oliver Norris, looked just as uncomfortable as he felt. He stood there shifting from foot to foot, wrestling with what to say. He had ended up exactly like this the last time he had confronted Mr Timothy Smith. That was over two years ago, he remembered with a grimace. That conversation had begun with so much promise and ended extremely unsatisfactorily, in fact even now he hadn't long gotten over the ramifications of that misguided attempt to get one over on the notorious Smith family. He hoped this time the result would turn out better but he had no great hopes in that direction. This wasn't even his case but he had been asked to do this task and he was never shy of responding to a challenge.

Tim stood next to Norris just outside Michelle's room, so their conversation didn't disturb her while he could also keep an eye out to respond to her if she awoke while he was outside the room. He was loath to leave her alone, especially now that he had sent the Jones' family in its entirety home to rest, but recognised the need to be kept abreast of what the police were doing with their investigations.

Michelle had been drifting in and out of various levels of consciousness all morning without being sufficiently awake to recognise or respond to him and this intrusion from the police officer was an unwelcome one.

Tim recalled the phone call from Ammo late last night. Three of the bastards caught. Toby, though, got away, leaving one or two leads to follow. There was a fifth man involved too; he found out. The three culprits questioned didn't know who he was; Toby had brought him along, apparently for the ride. The three had now been taken care off and were already ... "underground", Ammo had said.

Tim looked at Michelle through the window. Norris followed his eyes and looked through the glass. It was easier to talk, thought Norris, not having to look into Tim's eyes. He began.

"We've had the DNA results through, and identified three of the perpetrators as the same three guys from that alley incident a couple of years ago, if you remember."

Of course he would remember, Norris thought, permitting himself a grim smile, he was there, wasn't he? They both knew that but neither could admit as much. Norris actually had a grudging respect for this man, ambushed alone yet beating three determined thugs, each of them half his age, inflicting serious bodily harm on them and barely receiving a scratch. And now this, this obscenity was more than he would wish on the worst villain he'd ever had to deal with.

"Is that right?" Tim asked quietly as he ran his eyes from his wife's peacefully resting face along the banks of get-well cards and vases of flowers allowed in the room during daylight.

"Yeah," continued the copper, "We've got problems with the evidence though." he cleared his throat.

"What problems?"

"Well, the DNA evidence and exhibits from the previous case were initially kept because it was unsolved, but being a simple assault case they should have been destroyed long ago and the evidence can't actually be used, so the Super asked me to destroy it all. I had no sooner done that than we heard that the back-up samples kept by the lab had been lost. Also the forensic team can't find any forced entry at your house, so your wife may have been duped into letting them in or had trusted one or more of them enough to open the door to them. Anyway, the Super asked me to come and see you and explain."

"I thought that young officer ... Benson? ... was the detective on my case?"

Norris nodded at the mention of young Benson, an earnest young detective but still rather wet behind the ears. "Yeah, this is his case and I assure you he is burning the candle at both ends, tracking these guys down in order to bring the perps to justice. But the Super thought, as we had a bit of form together from the alley assault, that I ought to come and admit to you that we had this problem with evidence. See, we can pull them in on suspicion but cannot force them to give DNA samples unless we have other evidence. Also, Mr Smith, I wanted the opportunity to ... er ... clear the air between us."

"Yes?"

"Yeah, we got off on the wrong foot last time. I didn't know you from Adam, except that you were the son of a renowned villain and brother of the two Smiths what had been causin' me grief for years and, I confess, I tarred you with the same brush as them. I was wrong, as I realised a little bit late in the day."

"It happens," Tim smiled, he could see that Michelle had opened up her eyes briefly, blinked against the light and closed them again. The smile was for her, not for Norris and he wanted to end the conversation as soon as possible so he could return to his wife's side.

"So, I just wanted to say that when I got back to the station that time I got the weapons checked for prints and DNA and you were right, they had their dabs all over the handles and more, so they were clearly their bats. I also found a trace of unidentified DNA on the tip of one of them. By the time the results came through, I had already ... er, looked a bit more careful-like into your background."

"Yes?" Tim filled in the pause as the detective wrestled with what he wanted to say, anxious that the copper finished his train of thought so that he could get into see Michelle, whose eyes and reopened once more, stayed open and were looking around the room for him.

"Look, I don't know what kicked off this feud between those three guys and the unknown assailant, but it was clear that you - sorry, he - was only defending himself. And doin' a pretty damn good job of it," the detective smiled, "So, for the first time in my life I didn't follow up on the evidence. I just told those bloody toe-rags that there was no evidence of their so-called gang of attackers, no substantiation that any such mob even existed and that you, named by them as the only assailant they could identify, had alibis that were absolutely cast iron." He paused again. "Anyway, I wanted to apologise to you for my attitude. Well, MacDonald seems to have forgiven my transgression in the last few months, so I hope you will too."

Tim smiled. "He's a terror that Sergeant Pat MacDonald, I don't know how he gets away with half of what he does." Michelle, he now noticed, was fully awake and her eyes had finally located him through the glass. She was smiling broadly in recognition of her loving husband.

"I know," grinned Norris, the first time he had been amused by the sorry episode since it began, "MacDonald took away my unmarked car on some pretext and I was given this ancient old Panda to drive around for 18 months."

"That's the car we call Noddy," Tim grinned, "Pat only keeps it as a deterrent. Any police car that comes into Monroe's automatically comes up on Pat's tracking board. It stops young officers sneaking a car in with a slight prang for repairing on the QT."

"Well, he certainly took offence at me pestering you over that Alley incident."

"Pat likes his cars running smoothly and takes any distraction at the garage personally. He can hold quite a grudge!"

"Well, that's all over now. Mr Smith. Once we've got 'em in custody we'll separate and break them down until one talks. I can assure you that Benson'll track down those guys, the four you mentioned to him plus the fifth guy."

"Fifth guy?" Tim asked, more than a little distracted now by Michelle's sweet smile through the glass.

"Yeah, maybe Benson hasn't mentioned it to you yet. He found some CCTV footage from a petrol station they called into on the way to your house. They were all wearing masks sittin' in this guy Stuart Aspen's motor, three in the back and one in the front. We can see the index number clearly on the tape. When Aspen paid for his fuel, dressed in a Robin super hero fancy dress costume, the station manager asked him to take his mask off before he let him in the store, so we got a nice picture of Aspen on the security cameras inside too. The four other guys in the car are all in masked costumes and can't make any features out. Er, the testing company we use is Aspen Labs Limited, run by Aspen's Uncle Charlie, he is currently helping us with our enquiries over the missing back-up samples. You can be sure Benson'll get Stuart Aspen for a start, though."

"Sergeant Norris," Tim said very quietly, "This is completely off the record, but you only need look for Toby and the fifth guy, whoever he is."

"Why's that?"

"Let's just say that three of them, including the driver Aspen, have er ... gone to ground, shall we say. You won't find them, ever. Apparently those three didn't know who the fifth guy was, as he was invited by Toby, at least as far as the other three knew."

"And how do you know this?"

"Are you a religious man, detective?" Tim's face was set grimly, anxious to get this over so he could see to his wife and unborn child.

"Not really, I believe ... I guess, but I'm no churchgoer, why?"

"Well, the new testament of the bible was apparently written in Greek, generations after the original Hebrew words were spoken. Then it was translated into Latin; hundreds of years ago it was turned into an English that barely anyone nowadays can understand unless you are a history professor."

"So?"

"So when somebody says something that they want to demonstrate is cast iron they say it is 'Gospel', even though it's been misheard and mistranslated via untrustworthy and unknown sources, right?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

"So when I tell you, completely off the record, that you need to find Toby in order to finger the fifth guy and that the other three won't ever be found, than you can take it that that's better than Gospel, OK?"

"OK."

"I've gotta go, my wife is awake and I want to go to her. Have a good day, detective."

"You too, Mr Smith."

Epilogue

Two weeks later, Tim's brother Ned pulled his beat-up old pick-up truck over to the kerb and parked in the road in front of Tim's house. When he walked up the drive he saw Tim working on his sports car in the garage with the doors wide open. It was a nice bright sunny spring day. Tim looked up from polishing his pride and joy and waved at his younger brother.

"Hi Tim," Ned saluted back, "Jus' to let you know that t'fourth bit o' ... scrap you wanted collectin' and getting' rid of's been disposed of."

"Permanently?"

"Permanently," he emphasised, "Never to surface again, in fact it has already been dropped into the steel smelter and should be fast approachin' 1370 degrees 'bout now, any owt left when t'dross's scraped off won't be recognisable and end up buried in a slag heap somewhere, never to see t'light o' day."

"Thanks, Ned, I do appreciate it."

He briefly flashed a smile. "No worries. I offered to help an' was glad that one of me contacts came up with the info that he were hid in' out at that motel turned out to be true."

"Did he say anything ... before?"

"He never said owt, saw me comin' an' tried ta make a run for it. He didn't survive me runnin' him off t'road. Rolled half a dozen times before he stopped. Stupid prat didn't even have his seatbelt on. Banged up me nearside wing a little. When he tried to make a run for it, I couldn't let him get up to speed or he'd have got clean away. I guess I hit him a bit too hard. The boys at Mac's towed an' crushed the car with the er ... package inside. I went with Jeff when he used his rig to tow t'whole consignment t't'smelter. Carl arranged the timin' at every stage. We left after we saw it fed in an' sealed up grand."

"Thanks, that's good work, Ned." Tim looked around to make sure Michelle was still inside, out of earshot, "Guess we'll never know about the other man...."

"Nah, 'fraid not, trail's gone cold," Ned admitted, as he ran a hand over the smooth polished British racing green painted surface of the E-Type Jaguar.

"Lovely car, Tim," he said, "Nice finish you've got on that paintwork. It'd be great to take Manda down the coast for the weekend in somemat like this...."

Tim pulled the keys from his overalls pocket and tossed them to him. Ned caught them one-handed.

"It's ready to go," Tim said, "I've just fitted the soft-top, checked the tyres and fluids and still has a full tank from after I last used it. Fill up the tank again before you bring it back on Monday. If I'm not here, use the garage clicker in the glove compartment to put it away and leave the keys on the workbench. The garage closes automatically after 90 seconds."

"Thanks, Tim, Bro, I'll look after it," as he slid into the sports car with its top down, "No worries!"

"You better!" Tim yelled at him over the roar of the engine as his younger brother fired it up. "Leave the keys to the truck, I'll get the body and paint shop to give it the once over in the morning and have it back here for you to collect by Monday morning."

Ned nodded his head and tossed his truck keys to Tim, shouting above the delicious throaty roar, "I never thought I'd live to see this day. You never paid any attention to what she said but Mum was always asking you to 'Share your toys, Timothy!' I never thought you ever would!"

He laughed and revved the engine again, reversed out of the drive, grinning all the way, waving to Tim before driving somewhat less than sedately up the road.

When Tim turned to go back through the garage towards indoors, he saw Michelle sitting on the floor by the open kitchen door, a cup of coffee on its side next to her limp hand, the contents forming a dark brown puddle on the concrete floor of the garage. Her eyes were wide open in shock but her other hand rested comfortingly on the large bump on her stomach. Tim rushed towards her calling out,

"Chelle, are you alright? The baby...?"

"Was ... was that Ned just then?" she haltingly replied, her lips and face drained of colour.

"Huhuh?"

"Bo, when, when I was being ... attacked, I remembered some of it just now. It just came flooding back. They all wore party costumes with masks; one of them wore a Batman mask. I shut out the sound but I couldn't stop taking in everything I saw, images that had I buried deep inside me ... until now. Over and over again that masked Batman kept saying the same thing, 'This'll teach you to share your toys, Timothy!' and that was exactly what Ned just said."

"You couldn't hear him?"

"No, the engine was too noisy, but I read his lips and the shapes that those lips formed as he said those words exactly match all of those memories of those lips that came flooding back!"

"Manda still has the keys and knows the alarm codes, Ned must've let them in."

"Yes, he must always have been envious of you, of us. I understand what you need to do, Bo. Go do it, honey."

"Are you gonna be alright, Chelle?"

"I'm fine, we are OK, me and the baby, she's perfectly alright."

"She?"

"Yes, believe me, a mother knows, Bo." she smiled serenely, "we connected that night, you know. She was screaming with what was happening, she felt my pain. I turned my mind in to her, calming her down, which worked ... and now she's calming me down. She's not ready to come yet, but she's comfortable, impatient to meet you, but waiting for when the right time comes."

"Charlotte?" remembering the names they had discussed and shortlisted.

"Yes, Charley, from your middle name. She's absolutely fine. We are both perfectly fine. I will ring Mum in a moment and she'll come over just in case, and back up my statement that you were here with us all day. Just go and get Ned for me, for us, please. Get him but also get back to us safe."

"I will, you can depend on it, my love."

Tim kissed the top of Michelle's head, got up and ran to the truck.

THE END