SO HERE IT IS, MERRY CHRISTMAS

“Listen to that,” Doyle greeted Bodie gloomily as he joined him in the VIP room. “I mean, just listen.”

 Bodie caught the end of the song on the radio and understood immediately. Time for Doyle’s standard speech on how Christmas was all about consumerism: the third world starving while other people ate turkey and gave each other stupid trashy presents they didn’t want.  

 “’Orrible song, that. They should shoot Gary Glitter.” Doyle was obviously, and predictably, warming up to his topic nicely. “It’s getting worse than the Sound of Music. In fact it is worse. They play this over and over and at least you only get the lonely bloody goatherd once. ”

 “Slade,” Bodie informed him, trying not to let ‘High on a hill with a castle moat’ creep into his brain, where it was sure to hover for the rest of the evening, or even all night if the standby at HQ turned into a callout.  Well, he could always yodel the bad guys into submission.

“Slayed what could be a decent film if they didn’t keep burstin’ into song, you mean?”

 “S.L.A.D.E.” Bodie spelled it out, and sang a few bars despite wondering if it really was worse than Julie Andrews and needles pulling thread or one little girl in a pale pink coat (heard).

 “So here it is Merry Christmas everybody’s having fun. Except you, you miserable bugger.”

 Doyle glared.

 “Christmas is…”

 “Christmas is fluttering snowflakes, rosy-cheeked children, twinkling lights on trees surrounded with presents…” Bodie said blithely.

“Right. Except that it’s…”

 “Frenzied shopping and eating, a slight to the poor and downtrodden and puts money into the wrong pockets,” Bodie helped. “You know, I have heard this before.”

 “Yeah,” Doyle sighed, glancing at his watch. “Go on then. Looks like we’ve got all night, at this rate. Tell me I’m a miserable… oh, you already did.”

 “You haven’t told me I’m an incurable romantic yet though. Think mistletoe. Think hot toddy in front of a log fire…”

 “Think the world’s criminal population deciding to knock off for a few days. Or Cowley rolling up and announcing drinks all round and a bloody great salary increase – and cancelling this bloody standby.”

 “Can’t you just forget the bad bits about it? Remember the good stuff?”

 “Like being stuck on some bloody stakeout with a thermos of tea and you singing Silent Night and farting?”

“Farting? I resent that.”

 “So did I, the Christmas I cooked for you. Well, the first one.”

 “It was the sprouts,” Bodie nodded. “And whose fault was that? Who decided to invite me round before we went on shift in the first place?”

 “You ate them. And the rest. Mind, I did wonder if it was only because there was no lunch on offer elsewhere.”

 “A bird would probable have got stroppy about me digging into a home-made Christmas dinner and then buggering off to save the world before I was expected to express my gratitude in kind,” Bodie said calmly. “You at least understood that sort of thing.”

“Charming.”

 “I am. Always.”

 “Yeah, right.”

 “You do remember that Christmas?” Bodie asked.

 “And the hangover,” Doyle said, grinning suddenly. “Want some tea?”

 “Yeah,” Bodie nodded. They sipped it silently as the clock slowly ticked the night away.

 
Doyle’s last-minute invitation to eat before starting their Christmas shift was a bit of a surprise considering how his partner had been grumbling about Christmas non-stop for days if not weeks. All the same, it was an extremely welcome surprise, even though he tried to accept it as casually as it was offered.

 Considering Doyle had done a good job with the roast chicken and trimmings (although he’d boiled the damned spuds because of the extra fat, the daft sod), he hadn’t eaten much of what he’d produced. In fact he was uncharacteristically on edge.

 Bodie was lavish with the praise, but once his plate was clean – and even before, if truth be told – he found himself watching Doyle.

 Doyle cleared up, clattering the dishes, looking miserable. Bodie finally came to a conclusion: he was probably just a poor substitute for whoever Doyle had really wanted to cook for.

 Yes, that’s what it would be. Should he commiserate?

He thought about the pros and cons of that a bit. Sympathising with Doyle about women who didn’t understand the job would probably make him more miserable than ever. Not sympathising, however, might mean Doyle sunk even deeper into the black mood that seemed to be coming on. Sometimes you couldn’t win with Doyle.

And then the phone rang.

The next 24 hours were hell. Sharing a car with Doyle was uncomfortable because of the sprouts, to start with, but even after that Doyle didn’t seem to snap out of the general anti-Christmas mood.

Even a couple of less than generous shots of whisky with Cowley didn’t seem to cheer Doyle up much – in fact quite the contrary.  

 Bodie watched him pick up his jacket, and decided it was time to act. He asked him if he could repay the hospitality if, if course, Doyle had nothing better to do.

Doyle’s eyebrows raised. Another shrug. Then he gave a fairly disinterested nod.

 A whole lot of whisky later – Bodie’s hospitality didn’t run to much more than that but he was more generous with it than Cowley – Doyle finally confessed that Christmas in London made him feel lonely, and always had. Sharing it with some girl he’d just picked up didn’t interest him, somehow and steady girlfriends – well, CI5 wasn’t conducive to those. The family were too far away to get there in the few hours they had off. So it had seemed logical to invite Bodie – at the time. And having done so, he thought Bodie might just have turned up to humour him, hence the awkwardness.

 Bodie told him he was a prat. Doyle apologized for being melodramatic.

Bodie poured some more whisky. Put the television on. Confessed to Doyle that Christmas did the same to him, and in the past he’d usually volunteered for duty rather than sit on his own waiting for it to be over.

 All in all, it hadn’t been a bad Christmas, Bodie thought. They ended up in front of the television, complaining cheerfully about the rubbish they put on. Bodie unearthed a packet of Chow Mein, which tasted like glue and needed to be washed down with yet more alcohol.

“Penny? Doyle asked.

“Could murder a mince pie,” Bodie said, wistfully. “And was thinking of that gourmet Christmas dinner you served me and the liquid one I served you.”

 Doyle snorted.

“Has to be more to Christmas than packet meals, though. Christmas is turkey. Christmas pudding, brandy butter…” Bodie added.

 “Why aren’t I surprised food comes into you reminiscing about anything, including Christmas.”

 “Not just food…” Bodie struggled. “Carols. Getting an Action Man.”

 “Action man?” Doyle sniggered.

 “Least it wasn’t a Barbie,” Bodie chuckled. “Although I do remember stripping one to see ‘er boobs.”

 “That doesn’t surprise me either. Maybe I shouldn’t ask how you got your ‘ands on a Barbie in the first place.”

 “Kid down the road,” Bodie said. “She never did want my Action Man to get up close and personal with ‘er Barbie, more’s the pity.”

“Shame,” Doyle said, with a total lack of insincerity. “You didn’t try it on with Barbie’s owner, then?”

 “I was eight. Mind, by the time I was twelve, things improved. Had to teach her what was under Ken’s plastic Y-fronts, didn’t I?”

 “Naturally. So, Christmas is all about plastic dolls and food. Typical.”

 Doyle was getting back into his swing, so Bodie decided to fend that off immediately.

 “There was permission to hit the booze cupboard as I got older as well. That helped tolerate the Hills are Alive….”

 “Another snowball, dahling?” Doyle lifted his little finger.

 “Don’t. Me mum actually likes those. But seriously – what would it take for you to enjoy Christmas, or what bit of it we usually get?”

 “Already told you: pay rise and not spending the night here.  And – I dunno – doing something different at Christmas. Avoiding the singing bloody nun.”

 “Well, the idea has certain merits, my lad. Didn’t get you a present, so if it was in my power to grant your wish…”

 “Of course you didn’t get me a present. You never do, unless you can count that five-year old bottle of Ouzo you brought me once to get rid of it. So ‘op off to Cowley and tell him we’re due for a Christmas off, there’s a good lad. I’d like to see that.”

 “’Course. And I’ll tell our beloved Dr Kate that you’re under immense, Christmas-induced emotional strain and see if she’ll send you off to a Muslim country to recover. They don’t have Christmas, y’know.”

 “Sensible lot.”

 “Dunno. They can’t eat or drink or fuck during the day for a month, y’know.”

“Not a religion for you then,” Doyle half chuckled.

 “I’ll treat that with the contempt it deserves. So. The perfect Christmas for Raymond Doyle would be, basically, time off. Anywhere particular Sir would like to spend it?”

 “Anywhere without bombers sounds good right now, after last year.”

 Bodie disguised a shudder, not really wanting to remember that, or most of it. But like the lonely goatherd, it crept into his mind anyway.

 
The brand new shopping centre – deserted at five in the morning on Christmas day – looked tawdry rather than elegantly decorated somehow. Mud and traces of slush smeared once-pristine flooring, along with blood from where they’d carted one of the bodies away. Blood the same colour as the heavy ropes of tinsel and baubles.

 Now they’d turned the lights on, a Christmas tree was blinking, the parcels below it scattered somehow in the chase. Polystyrene poked out of the gaudy wrapping of one of them, and Bodie remembered a tiny pang of disappointment that the gold paper and red bow hadn’t hidden a real present, big kid that he was.

Doyle was leaning against a counter. Of course, Doyle was a leaner-against-everything, but this time it was probably sheer exhaustion rather than the subconscious (or probably perfectly conscious) posing the daft git tended to indulge in, but at least he was upright.

Something like thirty hours they’d been up, trying to track the bastards down, getting shot at, driving through streets lit up with reindeer and baubles, cluttered with last-minute shoppers.

 Even before that they’d had days on end of long hours. Hardly surprising that Doyle had come within inches of taking one of the bullets fired by the fleeing bombers.

 But he hadn’t. That was a Christmas present in itself.

 Then there was a dull explosion outside, immediately followed by a smattering of self-congratulatory applause by the bomb disposal guys.

 Bodie didn’t join in, all too aware of what could have been: the damned thing going up amid Boxing Day shoppers. Or going up in Doyle’s face, before it was clear there were hours, not minutes to go on the timer.

 That was another gift.

 Finally getting out of the place was another one.

 Both of them fell asleep fully clothed, at Doyle’s flat. Bodie was even too exhausted to remember that he should be hungry. Doyle was obviously too exhausted to comment on it.

 He’d been hungry the following morning though, he remembered fondly. Christmas breakfast-cum-lunch was scrambled egg (on wholewheat toast, of course), when they were clean and sated. Bodie hoped Boxing Day wouldn’t be marked by salmonella, but that was the sum total of what was to be found in Doyle’s fridge.

They went into HQ. Wrote reports. Accepted a generous shot of malt with the old man – the measures seemed to be increasing as the years went by – and finally went home.

Later, images of Doyle’s hands around the bomb casing flickered in his mind even as they settled in front of whatever rubbish was on the box. Then, they faded and slid away, replaced by a sense of wellbeing as he settled down in Doyle’s armchair and turned the television on.

 “… roster,” Doyle said.

 “Roster?” Bodie blinked.

 “The Christmas roster for next week,” Doyle told him. “Murph just brought it in. Wake up, Sleepin’ Beauty. Oh, and we can go ‘ome.”

 “We’re on it?” Reality hit Bodie properly. “The roster?”

“We’re on it. Christmas Eve at two until Boxing day at two. Not exactly a surprise, is it? But, if you were listening, the job’s off. We can go.”

 “Excellent. Perfect. You could cook us an early lunch on the 24^th, then. Just… no sprouts and preferably something better than scrambled eggs,” Bodie suggested, recovering rapidly and grabbing for his coat.

 “Inviting yourself, are you?”

 “Better than sitting around waiting to answer to Cowley’s beck and call, innit? And on Boxing day evening…”

 “We could watch telly?” Doyle raised an eyebrow. “Lonely goatherds, maybe. Or you got something more interesting in mind?”

 “Might have if you stop grumbling, maybe not. Like me producing a real gourmet meal.”

 "Courtesy of Sainsbury’s. Full of E numbers. Or anything as long as it’s fried or roasted or basted with butter, right?”

 “Well, feel free to go find yourself somebody who cooks you some tofu then,” Bodie said sharply.

 “Nah,” Doyle shook his head. “Can’t have you getting miserable on your own.”

 “I’m not the one that gets miserable at Christmas,” Bodie pointed out. “You are.”

“True,” Doyle nodded. “Well, less so these days. But no sprouts.”

 “Then no lonely bloody goatherds. I can’t get that out of my mind.”

“Yodellay eeoh,” Doyle sang. “Why are we still here?”

 “Because we’re daft sods. You got any beer in?”

 “Might have,” Doyle said. “Think the takeaway’s still open?”

 “Could be. Although the place’ll probably come with a tinsel warning.”

 “I can do tinsel,” Doyle said. “Well, in small doses.”

 “There’s a lad,” Bodie said. “I’ll bring you a bit round on Christmas Eve, shall I?”

 “And you know where you can put it.”

 “Tsk. It’s prickly. And if you get stroppy, I’ll bring my Slade LP round.”

 “So here is is, Merry Christmas, everybody’s having fun,” Doyle chanted. “Bugger, now you’ve got me at it.”

 “See,” Bodie grinned. “You’re getting into the spirit. Fancy a quick round of ‘High on a hill’?”

 Doyle’s expression spoke volumes. But he was grinning all the same.

December 2006

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